"Bad news on the doorstep..."

(title quote: Don McLean, American Pie)

"She's dead, Jim." - Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Star Trek (original series, episode: Wolf In the Fold)

Hello again, my determined and faithful readers! When last we met, I was telling you about my automotive woes. It is worse than I originally thought.

"Don't cut my throat, I may want to do that later myself." - Casey Stengel

On Friday, I dropped my car off at the shop because it was losing power. The original thought was that an in-line fuse had blown, either from giving a jump start to my dad's car the day I left the lights on, or from the accident my wife was involved in on 9/11, when she was hit from behind. I learned late Friday afternoon that the alternator was filled with oil that had leaked from the mid-engine seal that I was told was leaking earlier in the summer, when we brought it to the shop for basically the same problem. They could replace the alternator, but didn't expect it to last long, since the new one would soon begin taking oil from the leaking seal. As a result, they wouldn't warranty a new alternator, which would cost more than $500 to replace. They predicted the new one to last 2-3 months before it too stopped working due to the oil leak. The oil leak would cost a minimum of $1000 to repair. The shop advised me earlier in the summer to sell it as soon as possible before something like this happened. I didn't have money to replace it at that time, and could not think of any options to get the money at that time, so we did the best we could and have now reached this point. The car is a total loss. It is only worth a little more than the money it would take to repair it. Therefore, I have come up with two possible options to replace the car. We can take out a home equity loan or cash in my retirement.

The first option leaves us with some additional financial commitments, while the second option takes away our cushion.

"You have to go broke three times to learn how to make a living." - Casey Stengel

Since my wife began working, we have been using my father's car as our second car, as we needed it and he doesn't really need to be driving very often with his medical problems. His car is also extremely unreliable and riddled with mechanical problems. In researching solutions to our transportation crisis, we have come up with, I feel, the best possible solution. We applied for the home equity loan this morning. If we are not approved (which would only happen if the company decides I haven't been at my current jobs long enough - everything else checked out well within their parameters for approval), then we will have to use a portion of my retirement savings. We will be buying two cars from the same car dealership, paying cash (or cashier's check at least), and hope that gives us the leverage to get the best possible deal. The only payments will be on the home equity loan, as the cars will be paid in full at purchase. No car payments and two cars in the driveway. My parents will get their car back, but I've already talked to my father about driving. We will know whether or not we are approved for the loan by the end of the week.

Even in this calamity, the Law of Attraction seems to be at work. In late April, we went car shopping, because we knew that, with my wife working, we would need a second car. I fell in love with the Chevrolet HHR that day. We came very close to driving home in one, but I backed out at the last second. When my wife and I discussed it later, I told her that if I decided to leave my job, a car payment would leave me trapped and unable to leave the job. Since then, I have been using visualization and trying to tap into the Law of Attraction to get to the point where I could purchase an HHR. I didn't think it would happen quite this way. A local car dealership has the car I want. I hope they still have it, or can get a similar one if and when the loan is approved, or the retirement money is withdrawn. My wife just wants something that is reliable and gets good gas mileage, and is small but not too small.


Having two reliable vehicles will be a great asset to us. Currently, my father's car randomly slows down and refuses to accelerate or go over 35 MPH at times. Our car had no air conditioning and no heater or defroster fan. Both cars leak oil. My father's car leaks transmission fluid as well. They have both recently been involved in accidents. While our car still looks pretty good, my father's car was ugly before the accident (it's a huge teal Ford Taurus station wagon of mid-90's vintage with handicapped plates and a large yellow ribbon on the rear lift gate) and is even uglier now (with one headlight shattered and a skinned bumper).

My wife and I both think that new vehicles will help to raise our self-esteem and give us better self-images, get us to work and home from work with less frustration, and generally make life smoother, both physically and psychologically. I know that is reading a lot into a car purchase, but sometimes our physical environment determines our mental state to a large degree. It would also enable us to use some of the loan money to take a much needed vacation together, giving us a low-stress weekend of quality time to reconnect and enjoy each other's company. We need a weekend getaway more than you could imagine. It will also allow me to purchase a new game system or maybe even a second home PC so that I can actually check out new games and playtest them, since I am supposed to be doing this for my game store job, so that I can make recommendations to customers. We get sample games to playtest and have the ability to check out games for this purpose. We are expected to do so frequently to keep abreast of all the newest and hottest games on the market, but I have not been able to do so, since my only game system is a badly outdated XBOX and my PC is a few years old. So, I guess that even this is for the best.

"Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out."
- Ernest Lawrence Thayer, Casey At the Bat

In other dreadfully depressing news, my team... the team that my mother watched while she rocked me as a baby... the team that my brother followed fervently from the time he was a child... the team whose stadium was the place where I spent many bright days of my early childhood... the team I made a pilgrimage to watch in the days after my brother's death... was eliminated from playoff contention on the final day of baseball season yesterday. The Mets, who were almost considered a lock for the playoffs, suffered one of the worst pennant race collapses in the history of America's game. A team that led the division by 7 games with 12 games remaining in the season, completed a total meltdown and lost the division by a single game on the final day of the season to their rivals, the Phillies yesterday.

"Well, that's baseball. Rags to riches one day and riches to rags the next. But I've been in it thirty-six years and I'm used to it." - Casey Stengel

I am still in shock and saddened. A day after John Maine flirted with the first no hitter in franchise history as late as the 8th inning, and struck out a total of 14 batters, their playoff hopes were obliterated by the Marlins, who scored 7 runs off future Hall-Of-Famer Tom Glavine in a single inning. Even when the Mets are winning, they are still seen as the underdogs, the lovable losers. Those "Amazin's" as Casey Stengel called them, always seem to find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I can definitely identify with them. They are my team.

"If anyone wants me tell them I'm being embalmed." - Casey Stengel

"I keep thinking tomorrow is coming today..."

“The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

It has been an interesting week, for me at least. As a band director, while most teachers got a little over two months of time off during the summer, I only got a single month off. As I have said, that month was almost always spent preparing for the coming school year and marching band season. We were lucky if we could sneak away somewhere for two weeks, or if I could find an interesting place to take the 6 graduate credit hours I was required to take every 5 years for recertification. A few years ago, I took a course at VanderCook College of Music at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. That was a LOT of fun. While everybody else in the class was paying way too much to live in the dorms, I took a chance on Priceline and was staying at the Palmer House Hilton for only $50 a night. However, since I was in class most of the time I was in Chicago, I didn't get to see much of the city on that trip. At least it was an escape from routine.

This summer, since I basically knew I would not be returning to my teaching job fairly early in the summer (late June), I didn't take the graduate credits I was planning on taking. I didn't spend countless hours in preparation for the upcoming marching band season or school year. I took the month of vacation and took a chance to breathe. I took the time to come to terms with myself, or at least begin to do so. I began to write. I started on the long journey towards self.

I didn't really expect to feel too much emotion when the day I was supposed to start working again rolled around, but I was apparently wrong. I had thought that since I made this decision and I had come to terms with it, that I would be okay when that day came upon me. That day was this past Monday. I was wrong.

"Take some time before you go
Think of Monday's coming down
And the people that you knew
The ones that aren't around..."
- Counting Crows, If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel Is Dead)

I started to notice the tension inside of my... soul, for lack of a better word, on Sunday evening. Things were getting under my skin. It was not a good day. When Monday came down I realized that something was seriously wrong. I was not surrounded by my students.

For the past thirteen years, the last Monday in July has been the day that the entire band returns for the beginning of full day camp. It signalled the beginning of two solid weeks of intense rehearsals beginning at 8 a.m. and, in recent years, going until 4 p.m. Two of the busiest weeks of the year for me for so long and now, this day that in years past I had prepared so meticulously for had dawned empty and grey. Any other year, music had to be prepared to be handed out when they arrived, nearly a hundred eager faces, along with permissions slips, handbooks that outlined all of the band's procedures and policies, fundraising packets for one of the year's biggest fund raising events. This year, if those things happened, they would be happening without me.

I didn't think it would hit me.

It dropped me.

By Monday afternoon, I had a serious meltdown. I didn't even see it coming. I kept thinking that I was okay with everything, but I was just avoiding the emotion. It was still there, buried deep inside, white hot. This year had just become profoundly different from the more than a dozen that had preceded it.

"So I put my head on the ground
And the sky is a wheel
Spinning these days into things that I’ve lost
But you can keep all the years."
- Counting Crows, Goodnight L.A.

Over the course of the week, I received little reminders that things had irrevocably changed. I received the notice that my insurance coverage had expired. I received a note about my pay scale rate. Then, the car decided to exact its revenge. It was a reminder of the car we were about to buy about a week before I started thinking that I might want to leave my job. I really wanted that car, but not enough to stay unhappy in my job, with my life. Some things are more important than money. That's just not so easy to remember when it's 4:30 in the morning and you can't find sleep because you're worried about where the money is going to come from.

"Its 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday
It doesn't get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle of these lives which are completely meaningless."
- Counting Crows, Perfect Blue Buildings

We do what we must to survive. My students always picked up on the fact that I was funniest when I was under pressure. They loved to sit near me on bus rides to competitions, because the closer we got to the nail-biting pressure of the performance, the more my wry sense of humor would come through. The result this week was this post. If humor is how I cope, then I think things aren't too bad. Towards the end of my career, particularly the last year, I had lost that sense of humor. I relished any opportunity that I saw a spark of it. I'm happy to have it back.

"But i don’t mind the days
Gone rolling away
Cause all this sunlight feels warm on my face today."
- Counting Crows, Goodnight L.A.

Walking on the boardwalk out on the inlet yesterday was nice. Even though it was sunny and hot. I realized that it felt nice just to be. Here it was, the week of the last Monday in July and I wasn't running around going crazy with stress, putting in a bunch of 18 hour work days in the heat, standing on a tall metal ladder in the sun for a lot of those hours, baking in the sun. Last year's camp felt strange to me, but I didn't realize why at the time. I think time was winding down and I didn't even know it.

This morning, I took the car to the shop. The auto infirmary. The place where they cast out the demons and make things whole again. When I spoke to the mechanic this afternoon, the news was good, but tempered. The alternator was okay. It was a battery problem. Now, my car is a sports car. The mechanic called it a "little hod rod with an engine that's really too big for it." It needs a special battery apparently. I never knew that. The last one I put in was the standard for the normal production version of the car. That explains why it wore out so quickly. The "sport" version has extra bells and whistles that require more power. The repair cost half what it would have cost to replace the alternator. However, there is a seal leaking where the driveshaft enters the engine. This would be a major repair... over a thousand dollars. The car is 8 years old and has almost two hundred thousand miles on it. I was advised to sell it before that problem becomes more than the minor nuisance it is currently. I have reliable transportation for now, but inside, there is a time bomb.

Yesterday afternoon I received a call from one of the retail stores where I submitted an online application. They wanted me to come in for an interview today. The store is about 35 minutes from my house, driving on the local version of the Autobahn, a largely undiscovered road used only by locals in a hurry to get somewhere. It is all prepared to be interstate highway when the project gets funded and reaches this far, but for now it is a mostly unknown way to bypass all of the tourist traffic. The average speed of traffic is about 80 m.p.h. I love that road.

The interview went very well. The manager of this retail music store was brought in to turn around a store that had suffered years of mismanagement. He said he only wants to bring in staff with a strong knowledge of music and movies. He wants intelligent people who are hard workers and know how to interact with others. We got along great. He basically told me that the job was mine for the taking. Even though I know I can do this, some part of me is still scared to do anything except what I've spent the last 14 years doing. I told him I had to be able to meet my expenses. He is calling his district manager tomorrow and calling to make me an offer. As long as it is reasonable, I will take it. For the first 60 days, I would be allowed to quit without notice if I found another job, and not have it count against me. I'm still waiting to hear from the game store that is looking for a manager-in-training. That would pay much more. This will pay more than what I'm making now. It's all about taking steps.

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb." - Winston Churchill

Now, I'm not usually into the whole meme scene. I don't even know how to pronounce it. But if it is something that is interesting, promotes fellow bloggers, or helps the blogging community, then I will participate. The "Face Behind the Blog" was interesting. I wasn't sure how much anonymity I would want to keep, but now that I am not pressured by an employer and the band parents to not have a web presence (that's right, I my principal received complaints because I had a website, an AIM screen name, played online games, etc. so I didn't feel I could blog unless I had total anonymity, and the one time I tried, even with total anonymity and my identity acknowledge nowhere, I had to shut it down), I feel more liberated to allow myself to be myself. This time, I would like to participate in a tag from HollyGL that I think is helpful to other bloggers. Allow me to present this installment of...

Blogging Tips

It’s very simple. When this is passed on to you, copy the whole thing, check out the blogs on the list and put a * star beside those that you like. Add the next number (1. 2. 3. 4. 5., etc.) and write your own blogging tip for other bloggers. Try to make your tip general. After that, tag 10 other people. Link love some friends! Just think– if 10 people start this, the 10 people pass it onto another 10 people, you have 100 links already! Here are the tips:

1. Look, read, and learn.http://www.neonscent.com/*****

2. Be EXCELLENT to each other.http://www.bushmackel.com/*****

3. Don’t let money change ya!http://www.therandomforest.info/*****

4. Always reply to your commentshttp://chattiekat.com/***

5. Blog about what you know & love.http://sugar-queens-dream.blogspot.com/****

6. Don't use filthy language-buy a dictionary.http://shinade.blogspot.com/*

7. Whenever possible, spread some positive thoughts and love. The world needs more of them.http://ailema4ever.blogspot.com/****

8. Write down from your heart or head. Either way asks yourself why you ever get started.http://chocmintgirl.blogspot.com/**

9. Try to make your template something unique and easy to look. Your template gives the blogger identity as much as the post content.http://psychosomaticwit.blogspot.com/**

10. Take risks creatively with your writing. You'd be surprised how little it takes to bring out the poet or novelist in you.http://remedialrumination.blogspot.com/*

11. Find your own voice! Your writing should reflect your unique personality. Don't ever try to be something you're really not just because you think you have to in order to get people to read your blog. http://gazing-into-the-abyss.blogspot.com/

--End Copy--

I know the instructions say to tag 10 people, but since I've only been doing this for less than 2 months, I'm going to pick 5 (hey, Holly did it too). If you would rather not participate, that's okay too.

Jod(i) at Beyond the Cracked Window
Dan from Cafe Leone
Bobby Revell of Revellian
Amanda from This Side of Reason
Rhea at The Boomer Chronicles

"Out there in the shadow of the modern machine
Walks St. Robinson in his Cadillac dream."
- Counting Crows, St. Robinson In His Cadillac Dream