The Jack Noodle Journal

We finished up season 4 of “The Wire”. We are lucky enough to have some chums that recorded season 5 when it aired on HBO so we don’t have to wait for it to be released to DVD in September. We are into it up to episode 4 now. Last season!

Man oh man. That series keeps getting darker and darker. I had heard it was pretty bleak. Bodies are piling up (no don’t tell me! no spoilers please!). I was really bummed out by the end of season 4. Oh! That show is SO good though.

I watched the extra features for season 4 which had a not so uplifting piece on Baltimore and how screwed up American inner cities are.

After that we watched the movie, “There will be Blood” which I liked a lot more than I thought I would. I had been worried that Daniel Day-Lewis would over act it more than I am comfortable with. He did a pretty awesome job. I was quite mesmerized during the first half of the movie. By the end, even though it was an entertaining and well done ending, it left me with a bit of a feeling of hopelessness.

So with all that dismal (very entertaining) viewing and an alcohol fueled discussion of doom and gloom with friends in the backyard over the weekend, I have created quite the concoction for myself. I’ve been feeling a tad blue and bummed out at the beginning of this week.

I should watch more cheerful fare.

The war in Iraq (and Afghanistan still?), sky high fuel prices, a sinking economy, the housing market collapse, poor employment numbers, general malaise.

I’m starting to worry that I might not be worried enough.

Things have been going really well for us this year.

Are there boots waiting in the wings to drop?

It seems like the news media is telling us over and over again that we are all screwed.

How can I be prepared? What are we going to do? I have this weird dread bubbling down under the surface.

Is there a recession coming? Is it already here? Will my job be safe?

If people don’t have money they surely won’t be going out and buying new jogging suits, sneakers and apparel items. Low sales in new kicks directly affects my position in paycheck receiving. If you can’t afford to fill your tank with gas how can you afford a pretty new dress or outfit?

What can I do to make myself more recession proof? What sort of gig should I be trying to land?

Alright.
Deep breaths.

Maybe I shouldn’t panic.

Like I said, we have been having a really good year so far. I should just chill out and enjoy it.

I need to stop the worrying.

Friend of the family, the lovely Allison has been vacationing over in Vietnam. Looks like she is having a wonderful time. Check out her travel blog here.

Good for her. Traveling all the way over to that foreign country all by herself. I think I would be too much of a scaredy cat. Maybe not.

Make sure and hang on to your passport Allison!

I find it interesting when people pick unusual vacationing spots. Maybe Vietnam isn’t that unusual? That’s not the first place I would think of going though. K says stuff like, “I would love to go to Portugal”. Really? What makes you want to go to Portugal?

I would love to visit Paris.

Yeah, that doesn’t sound as hip as saying I would love to go to Vietnam or Portugal.

I think Japan would be awesome to visit.

Someday I’ll be a traveler.

Oh yes…

THE WEEKEND!

soon… any moment now… oh weekend how we love thee

Maybe I am making too much of it? Sketching some sort of formalized strategy down on paper can’t hurt though. Get those thoughts in order. Perhaps it won’t be that big of a deal and everything will work as smoothly as I am planning. We’ll see what the bosses say I guess.

K will be going back to work part time at a new school come the end of August. She was lucky enough to find another teacher mom to job share with. We are going to try and arrange our working schedules so we will be able to take care of the Little Noodle without using daycare. We can’t afford daycare. Can we? Having one of us use a large portion of our paycheck to pay for G to go to daycare so that we can go to work to be able to afford to pay for the daycare bill that will allow us to go to work to afford to pay the daycare bill that allows us to… Doesn’t make sense to us.

What we are proposing is that K works her 2 and a half days while I stay home and take care of Gilby. K will take care of him while I am working my days at the office. Perfect. To get me freed up for G Noodle fun on K’s work days I will be working 2 of my 10 hour days at the office and finishing up the rest of my 20 hours telecommuting from home. 2 days at the office and 2 days at home.

The main goal isn’t to get me out of the office and teleworking full time. Believe it or not, I do enjoy working in an office setting. My 2 days at the office would be scheduled so that I could attend the weekly scheduling meetings and hopefully keep connected to the camaraderie of my fellow workers. My telecommuting goal here is to achieve a flexibility that allows me to stay home and care for my child.

In the past I have done full time freelance work from home and understand the discipline and self-motivation needed to sustain that sort of homework. I have all of the equipment needed for the 20 hours at home. I am ready to farm digits!

I have a proven track record as a hard worker and good soldier for the company. For over a year now I have been successfully managing the time and workload of my current flex schedule of 4 tens (have worked as an employee for the company for 2 years and as a freelancer with them for a year before that). This new arrangement will actually require me to keep tighter records on time and workflow. I am looking forward to keeping more detailed accounts and records of all of my activities. Pound for pound, while watching each minute, it might actually be the case that an increase in productivity will occur at home with the new schedule.

The biggest challenge that I can imagine so far to the 2 days at the office and 2 days at home plan is lining up files and images in one sitting for the taking home 20. The photographers take their photos and a stack usually builds up and trickles down to production. I will have have to take a more active roll in the acquisition of images to work on. This is something I should have probably been doing all along here. Maybe 20 hours wouldn’t have to be plucked all at once? There is nothing saying I couldn’t come in on an off day to pick up more files to take home with me. If I could get a nice solid, speedy connection to the FTP server, allowing a trickle of work to come in is more acceptable.

A nice speedy, hearty connection to the FTP server from home would cover a multitude of sins.

I have been working on the same ongoing project with the same client now for a year. I have got a nice routine down. The current tasks we are performing for them can be done easily from home. There are often hundreds of images stacked up and ready to go which is also a bonus in this situation. If a different client has a rush job that needs all hands on deck to process quickly, I am only a phone call, email and FTP download away and will quickly jump onto the new task.

I would be working two days at home, but wouldn’t be locked there. If I had to tow Gilby in to the office for 15 minutes to get new instruction or files that probably wouldn’t be a problem.

One of the bonuses to me only using my office workstation 2 out of the 5 work week days is that a freelance person can be brought in during busy work cycles and use my station for 3 days a week.

Overall the 2 days at the office and 2 days at home plan makes a lot of sense and seems like something that shouldn’t be a problem to easily incorporate into the company’s work flow. I think the greatest benefit of this plan to the company will be a happy and content employee and a happy and content employee’s family.

Informative link: Quintessential Careers

I got invited out for a daddy movie night last Sunday. Yay! I’m part of the club now. Kids are home with mommy and the dads go hit the movie theater. Long time supporter of the journal, Officer Steve invited me along with him and Officer Matt. I had a lot of fun. I hope I get invited again.

I had to wait quietly in amazement while they discussed Ultimate Fighting Championship though. I think that’s what they were talking about? All I know about UFC is from what I’ve read on The Vig. I have got a lot learn about this daddy stuff huh?

We went and saw Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (not Dark Knight). It was pretty alright. I liked it better than the first one. I don’t remember liking the first one. It was definitely a gorgeous picture. So many awesome creatures! Guillermo del Toro kept up the momentum he got going with Pan’s Labrynth in the fantastical, magical, nightmare visions department. Very well crafted.

The computer graphics on Hellboy 2 were fairly unobtrusive (thanks to del Torro’s magic), but the puke-fest that was the previews before the movie were filled with horribly obvious computer scenes and graphics. When did Hollywood stop trying to trick our eye? Why are we standing for it? There was a time when you couldn’t tell if something was real or computer generated! People! All we are watching these days is Pixar cartoons!

It had been a while since I had seen a movie in the movie theater. Hellboy 2 is the first movie of the summer season that I have seen so far (maybe the only this year). I think the last time before Sunday that I was in a theater was for the movie Juno. I’m not too upset by that. Nothing is really peaking my interest this year. I don’t really have any desire to see another Batman movie, except maybe to see Ledger of course (like everyone else).

I more interested these days in saving my $9.50 for a ticket and $11.00 for snacks and staying home with our episodes of The Wire on DVD.

oh man.

K, G and Mr. Baptist were (are) up in Sheltonville delivering Mr. Baptist’s fishing boat to it’s new home with the crew up there. I stayed here with the pups, cat and work.

I just got done with my self imposed 6 hour (solid) mission of yard work. Boy oh boy, our yard was a mess! There’s still plenty left to do but it no longer looks like the yard of an abandoned house.

The yard and gardens have been neglected this year. We have been gone quite a bit. Also, remember how earlier this year it never seemed like there was a good yard working day that wasn’t raining? Last week it was too hot for the leisurely yard worker (oh wait we weren’t in town anyway). Oh yes and the needs of the little one have gladly sucked attention away from the out of doors.

Yes I feel good about the dent I put in the Noodle grounds today. Mowing, pulling weeds and cutting back branches is so therapeutic and relaxing for me. Great way to let go and let the mind wander.

Morons who say, “Oh I just love the way ivy looks” (I’ve heard it said in my presence), have obviously never had to do battle with it. That crap is everywhere!

Don’t get me started on the continuous mountain of leaves that the giant holly tree in front of our house sheds!

So yes, therapeutic.

The bosses took the company on a white water rafting expedition last Thursday. Some sort of team building, we appreciate our employees sort of retreat. I had even more fun than I thought would. It was pretty rad.

I work with some fun kids, that’s for sure.

We went with a rafting company who provided all the gear and professional guides to take us down the river. Let’s see if I can find the link… Here it is. The guides and set up were awesome.

We went down the White Salmon river which is right across from Hood River on the Washington side of the Columbia. I guess the rapids are category 3 and 4 where we went down. Did I say that right? Category 5 is the most devious?

It was exciting. I would totally do a rafting trip again in the future. Oh man and I loved wearing the wetsuit! So form fitting and cozy. The water of the White Salmon is very cold and we would have been in a world of hurt without the warm wetsuits.

After the rafting adventure we went back to Hood River and did some category 4 and 5 beer drinking (no worries, we were being driven around by a short bus).

When we were there Thursday, everybody was starting to set up for the Gorge Games. I think we were just barely catching a small start, the beginning hints of, the buzz and excitement that is going on up there right now.

I wonder if I can watch some of those events on internets?

Hey there, hey there! What the heck have you kids been up to? It seems like it has been forever since I have visited this here journal.

The Noodles have been having many exciting summer adventures.

Mr. Baptist and Ms. Bee have rented a house over at Rockaway beach and we have been staying there at the coast off and on over the last couple of weeks. I came back a time or two for work duties at the office.

This was baby’s first trip to the ocean. K and I love being on the coast and it was awesome introducing the boy to the sea air. I always get a weird inner reflectiveness, a mellow contemplativeness on the beach. So I was like, “Spirits of the ocean! I give to you… my son!”. It was a tad anticlimactic though. Gilby fell instantly asleep when the white noise of the ocean touched his ears. I’m not sure if he was aware that he was even on the beach.

How was your 4th of July weekend? Ours was quite fun. We spent it up in Shelton with the Sheltonvillians. We blew lots of stuff up. It was a pretty relaxing weekend up there.

Yes. It finally feels like a summer these days.

I’ve been shooting some video this summer. I captured a lot of the Shelton fun. I have been annoyed with my lack of video shooting up until recently. Remember how gung-ho I was about being a video producer about a year and a half ago? I spent a thousand bucks on a new camera and a thousand bucks on new software and then didn’t do anything with either one. Somewhere along the way I lost my interest in it and didn’t want to exert any effort towards video. We’ll see. I’m slowly getting back in the saddle.

Having Gilby to film has helped rekindle some of my video interest.

I have been amazed watching our almost 3 month old grow and develop. It seems like he’s picked up the pace over the last couple of days. Is it possible that we are seeing the first signs of a personality stirring? He’s quite a character already. He’s found his hands and has been grabbing and holding stuff now. It’s only a matter of time now until he’s grabbing the car keys and asking to borrow the car to drive to Vegas.

The young Gilby bought the new Coldplay album “Viva La Vida” for his mommy K’s birthday last week. I’ve been listening to it and think that it’s pretty good. A tasty morsel. Entertaining and an enjoyable experience for the ears.

I’ve expressed a fondness for Coldplay in the past I’m sure.

What I’m curious to know is when did Coldplay become music snobbery’s whipping boy? I’ve read a number of mean spirited things about this new album on the interwebs. You music snob folks are making me tired. What did Coldplay ever do to you? Sure, it is what it is. Enjoy the music or don’t. Weirdos. There is no need to bludgeon the poor boys. Nobody likes a bully.

The real question we are boiling down to here is: What will YOUR album of the summer be?

I do enjoy contemplating and declaring me a summer album.

I don’t think Coldplay will make my album of the summer short list.

I have been listening to “The Slip” by Nine Inch Nails (surprise) nonstop lately. It’s been on repeat in the car. This one has grown on me much more than the last two. It’s awesome. Definitely a grower though. NIN albums don’t usually make it to my album of the summer lists for whatever reason. Maybe this year?

A major contender for my summer album trophy is “Seeing Sounds” by N.E.R.D. I got it yesterday and may have already ruined it with too many listens. It has a good hot fun in the summertime feel to it that is required by an album of the summer.

We’ll have to see what the hanger-outers and party people say though. Picking an album to remember the summer by requires the input of your peeps for sure.