You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘The Fucking Car’ category.
I’ve had a blog of one form or another since 2003. There was the first Pondering Tree at Journalspace, which blew up and sucked most of the material down a wormhole back in 2008. And of course there is this one.
In the Fall of 2007 I started teaching at roughly the same time I started publishing fiction. I never expected to teach given the screwball interpretation of the hiring policies at a sister campus. The change in jobs meant a change in what I could and could not post about. Obviously I could not talk in great detail about what happened in the classroom, my own scruples would prevent that if the law didn’t. Nor could I post on certain topics which might be seen as unprofessional.
The entries changed and so did the readership. In many respects it seems to have fallen off since 2007. Part of that is due to the ongoing stall in my writing career, which seems to be holding steady at two story publications. It would help if I would write fiction, send it to market and revise older projects. However, as I type this blog I have the earphones in because the television is going.
I simply can not write any fiction with any verbal audio input. I’ve tried over and over again with the results of staring at a blank screen in total frustration. That frustration bleeds into the relationship I have with the Woman I Love and causes endless havoc. As it stands, writing a blog entry or doing non-fiction with the earphones in, tuned to instrumental music, is borderline difficult.
In any case, the solution to that problem is a writing space where I am alone and it is quiet. I’ve blogged about that before so I won’t beat that horse again.
I find it unwise to blog about the relationship I’m in, or other relationships, which also causes grief from time to time. There is an ongoing feeling that the blog should be a couples blog, which it is not. It is a writer’s blog. Maybe it might be worth the time to create a stand alone couples blog but then it wouldn’t really be mine, it would be OURS.
There is also the feeling on my part that some things truly should be private. The world doesn’t need to know every detail about my relationship with Trinity. Even the Facebook feed doesn’t feature every aspect of our love affair for each other.
Further, writing anything that even feels remotely critical runs the risk of starting a problem. Such comments are often taken as a sign of unhappiness on my part and that the relationship is in trouble.
Which it isn’t. I can’t write fiction when ANY other human being is around. I had a bitch of a time doing it when I lived with my parents as a kid and again in my adult years. I can’t seem to get it done in a coffee house or any place else where humans are talking.
It is what it is.
As for blogging about my summer job, as with my teaching, there are things I can talk about and things I can not. I love the job but I have had my frustrations, the sort of frustrations that would bleed out there in years past. To be candid, I think my greatest frustration comes from enabling parents who put their children at risk with their own behavior. That said, I can’t really go into detail about that either.
Thus, I’m left with little to say most days. If I do have something to say, it is something that can usually be conveyed in less than 420 characters at Facebook.
At Facebook I’ve had some pretty lively discussions over one thing or another, the sort of thing which used to happen here at the Tree. I also use Facebook for many of the admin functions this blog used to serve, such as an online post it note, a record of things accomplished and yes, the things we ate for dinner. Sometimes I vent my spleen there, as I have done here.
Thus I find myself wondering about the future. Perhaps a day will come when the bare dirt around the Pondering Tree becomes overrun with the pixelated weeds and creeper vines of the internet. Should another server crash take place, perhaps it won’t even be that, nothing more than digital oblivion thrown to the four winds of words written and lost forever.
Who knows?
Year 2011 – Fall Semester Prep
We went to breakfast this morning at Corner Cafe in Liberty, the last hurrah for Summer 2011. Below is a shot of the place.
After a Wal-Mart run for some last minute items, I dropped Trinity off at the Pod in order to get some work done on the car. It took longer than I thought it would to clean the windows, wash the car and organize the trunk.
On the Guy Front per the car, the plan is to organize a maintenance kit for each vehicle. Once upon a time in the Army, I had such a kit for my privately owned piece of shit S-10 that my Father fucked me over with after I got back from the Gulf.
Desert tan, folks. Not only had it been through three engine blocks by time I got it, but it was desert tan.
I really, truly, deeply wonder sometimes what that man was thinking. I should spend my independent study session with Terri Lowry writing up some material pondering that particular question.
In any case, the plan is to have a basic kit in both cars by October. Contrary to popular belief among my extended family, thanks again to my Father, I am capable of rudimentary maintenance work on the vehicles. By rudimentary I mean that I can change a battery, change the oil (not that there is a place to do that here at the Pod), check fluids, change tires . . . you get the idea.
I also need to get a full sized spare rim for the ZX-2. It makes me nervous, driving around on the pathetic sort of donut that they give you these days.
Lastly, I’ve all but decided to get a new keyboard, one of the old school clickety-clack Model M keyboards. At the beginning I can hook it up to my laptop and possible make some headway on various tasks which need doing. Later on, perhaps when I convert a space at my Mom’s into a true writer’s space, I can get a writing only computer to go with it.
Then we can see about getting this writing career of mine back on track!
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Aboard the Battlestar Steven Francis Murphy BSG-71
Location: In the Field, Situation Room
Mission: Covering the Flanks
The Teaching Front
It’ll be a full day today, kids. I’ve got lectures from 1100 hours to 1545 hours with a break until 1745 hours. I’m covering for a peer who is out today.
Topics run the spectrum today. They include the following:
-Spanish-American War
-Revolutionary War-Pre-Revolutionary Period
-Grenville and Townshend Acts
-Reconstruction and maybe the start of the Grant Administration
Seven hours of lectures, more or less, in four respective classes. I’ve got a full plate today kids. But I’ll recoup the lost $100 bucks from last Thursday’s debacle.
Prep for Relocation
In a little over a month Trinity and I will (Lord willing and the creek don’t rise) relocate and cohabitate in our new home (which will remain undisclosed for a lot of reasons). I have mixed feelings, as I suppose any male would. I suspect there will be a loss of freedom that comes with the benefit of supportive, loving companionship. Given my lust for autonomy, I often wonder how it will all work out.
Still, I’m willing to give it the college try as they say. I love her, she loves me so now we’ll see if love conquers all problems.
Other Fronts
Nothing to else to report. Tearing Down Tuesday is still out to a potential reprint market. No writing of any note is taking place. And I’ve already covered the RPN-04 update. My father’s status remains unchanged and my mother is taking care of the ZX-2 today while I make money and try to build a career.
A one legged man in an asskicking competition has more time to reflect I suspect.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
The Teaching Front
Good news first. I received my eval from a sister campus concerning my performance last fall. SOP dictates that you are evaluated by your students during the first semester. I never know what to expect from these evals and to be fair, everyone takes them with a grain of salt.
Still, this eval was a morale booster on a week when I desperately needed one. High marks in all categories. It is actually my best eval ever from the students, though I generally do well enough regardless. Even my class from hell during my second semester gave me a tolerable enough eval (and most of the things they bitched about were things they could have fixed on their own).
Normally positive evals from the students are regarded with a certain amount of concern by the Boss I work for. It is usually an indicator that the Instructor inflated their grades. However, I’m sure one look at the grades I doled out will show that I didn’t inflate the grades.
Which means I managed to get a good eval inspite of being tough on the material.
So it goes.
I managed to get the test done this morning even though there were demands on my time. I finally broke down and cut my student mode class to get some time to decompress (something I never get anymore or it is regimented to a specific place on the calendar where I may or may not need it). I am decompressing right now because I have my favorite chore coming up.
Getting “The Bitch” inspected
Every vehicle gets a nickname and I have decided that the Ford ZX-2, a car I have NEVER LIKED, the one my parents will try and saddle me with, the best of all the bad choices (I can always have The Ponderer with the mushy brakes that my mother tells me are not mushy even though I know damned good and fucking well that they are and that the body shop didn’t fix the brakes) will be christened “The Crosseyed Bitch.”
The ZX-2 is a car meant for women, designed with their bodies in mind. I can’t see out of the fucking car. It gets zero respect on the road (my Geo Metro, which had excellent visibility, never had trouble) and I’m certain that if I get injured in a car accident, it will be in “The Crosseyed Bitch.”
So part of getting cornholed is that I need a state inspection. That will happen at 1400 hours (supposedly, having a mechanic as a father has taught me that a mechanic’s word isn’t worth shit).
They will probably find something wrong, at which point another disaster will manifest itself as I will be ORDERED to fix it before the car can be roadworthy again. In the meantime, I’ll have to pull a vehicle out of the crack of my ass in order to go to work.
Not that teaching is a real job, mind you.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Those that done said stuff