Two Zero One Two - Here We Go!

I have been in the television advertising industry for nearly 22 years. I have been a data entry clerk and a VP of Operations. I have supervised a staff of 12-15 at my peak.

Half of my career has been spent in a managerial capacity during which time I spearheaded efforts to streamline agency operations. I know how to find ways to greatly improve efficiency resulting in a more pleasant "user experience." I have been the liaison between IT programmers and other departments in helping develop systems which allow more work to be done, and with greater accuracy, with the same staffing levels, and at the risk of sounding Romneyesque, sometimes with less staffing levels. And yes, I derived pleasure from it.

When I started in this business the amount of paper being used was unbelievable. The business of getting a broadcast-quality tape of an advertisement out to a cable network and on the air, as well as the subsequent tracking of effectiveness and reporting data to the clients, required a mountain of paper.

Back in the early 90s, media buyers (those who negotiate rates and arrange a schedule with national networks and local broadcast affiliates) would write up the schedules on paper forms. In a large agency with 10-15 buyers, these schedules would quickly become stacks of paper.

Buyers or their assistants would fax these orders out and then place the paper in bins. Data entry people would come and gather these stacks, take them back to their workstations and begin inputting the data on their DOS-based computers.

Requests for tapes to be sent would also be written up on forms and given to the traffic department. The traffic people would prepare a request, on paper of course, and fax it to the tape duplication facility.

In my branch of the industry, we were more about selling products immediately (think food dehydrators, miracle knife sets, or inflatable beds) rather than merely providing brand awareness for a client. This involved a need for toll-free phone numbers to appear in the ads which involved a need for large telemarketing facilities to handle the call volume. This meant more paperwork.

Media schedules would be faxed to telemarketers so they could plan their staffing levels based on when they would anticipate an influx of calls. Every morning the telemarketing company would return the favor by faxing over a shitload of call activity from the previous day.

The agency also had a staff to comb through this data and accurately attribute the calls to a specific airing of an ad on a specific station or network. My first job in the industry was to manually input this call center data from faxed pages which had been marked up with a pen by analysts. Media buyers and account managers would then print out stacks of reports in order to analyze the effectiveness of the media and make adjustments to future media as needed. Some even had weekly scheduled meetings to sit around a desk and read through these books together.

The process evolved to a point where the telemarketers would begin sending over data files rather than faxing the data. I worked with the IT department to design an efficient flow which enabled our system to take these data files and match up with our own data to automatically assign clusters to calls to specific ad placements. This was pretty cool in an era when we didn't even have email in our company, and if a fax machine broke down you were well and truly screwed. Imagine 3 or 4 people waiting their turn to fax out a stack. I've seen it and lived it.

[My sincere apologies to all the folks in accounting who have had their own mountains of paperwork. I didn't intentionally leave you out of this; I just think people reading this get the idea by now.]

The availability of email and office software began to flip this world upside down. From 1995 until around 2003 -- mind you, that's just 8 short years -- I witnessed my paper usage decline by at least 98% while efficiency increased by the same rate. In recent years I realized that many times I was still printing documents which really didn't need to be printed at all. It was habit coupled with the comfort of holding something tangible in my hand which would quickly become clutter on my desk. This clutter necessitated making file labels to keep things organized and neat, and insure that I would never see those particularly pieces of paper ever again.

Since 2008 I've made a conscious effort to stop all that. Files can be organized and stored on a hard drive. They can be easily retrieved when needed and I've never seen a brown ring stain from a coffee mug on any of these documents.

In the latter half of my career I have transitioned away from all the operations and management responsibilities to focus on what I love most: media buying and campaign management. It is far more satisfying for me than having to supervise the work of others, performing the dreaded annual reviews, being handed resignation letters because the employee's music career was taking off, having to begin the arduous interview process, or reprimanding an employee for pulling out a knife threatening a pregnant co-worker. Thanks but no thanks!

I get incredible satisfaction from making a few keystrokes and a minute or two later I've placed a $100,000 ad buy on a cable network. No assistant needed. No paper used. (At least not by me; I cannot vouch for what happens on the receiving end.)

I am extremely versatile or I never would have made it as far as I have. My experience is wide and varied. My career has taken me to several agencies with vastly different environments. The smallest had 2 employees when I started; the largest had over 500. Technology has allowed me to leave the cubicle environment, drop the commute, and work from my home which I have done for 11 of the past 12 years.

Thanks to so many similarities between the agencies (let's face it: after 20 years everyone eventually settles in to a similar set of procedures for doing the same work) I've never had trouble adapting to a new job. The longest was about 5 weeks at the aforementioned 500+ employee agency. I absolutely hated it during those initial weeks and then everything started to click. It was the peak of my career in so many ways.

After 2 decades in this industry, I'm pretty good at seeing trends and knowing when the waters are about to get choppy. I saw it in 2007 at the 500-employee agency when a large client (if you had an iPhone, you were signed up with that telecommunications giant!) announced they would be "reviewing" the agency at the end of the year. I expected the worst and had 6 months to prepare myself financially. In the end it was the bloodbath I imagined.

By the summer of 2008 I was fortunate enough to be rehired by an agency where I had worked at the beginning of the decade. Going back there was so easy because I knew the people, the systems, and the procedures. I told myself going in that it would be the last job I'd have before retirement. Well, assuming a steady course of business without any drama. You know what they say about assumptions.

Things began to slow down. I could see the writing on the wall and I knew some kind of instability was on the horizon.

During my career I have obviously known a lot of people. Almost all of my close personal friendships developed with people from my work. So when I started being coaxed to bail out and join a Dallas-based agency, I was reluctant at first. Despite the fact that I knew and had worked with 5 current employees of that agency during the course of my career, a number representing about 25% of the entire staff, it still was a difficult decision to make. Another job change, particularly one initiated by me, was not my preference.

However, the warning signs at my agency continued to grow and my workload had diminished significantly. After several phone conversations over two months with the Dallas-based agency, I finally made the decision to take the leap and I started there on March 28, 2011.

It felt right, and I thought it was a pretty cool testament to my reputation that I was hired without ever having an in-person interview thanks in no small part to the word-of-mouth recommendations from other employees there who had personal knowledge of my work experience and ethics. I still haven't set a foot in the Dallas office.

After my first week, I had already been handed a number of projects, mainly building media proposals for perspective clients, in addition to my media buying responsibilities. Frankly, I was startled by the volume of work being throw my way. Suddenly I was feeling utilized and needed again, and I was being stretched professionally in ways I never thought possible. But I thrive on that and enjoy developing efficiency procedures for myself which enable me to turn projects around more quickly and hand them off upon completion.

It was not an easy transition though. Six weeks passed and my personal adjustments to this agency were still a work in progress. I had surpassed the previous record five weeks of love-hate squirming before the waters calmed. By the time 3 months had passed, I was seriously wondering if I hadn't made a huge mistake in leaving the prior agency. Maybe job insecurity was something I could have lived with in exchange for having clear workplace communication and logical, familiar procedures.

Shortly thereafter, Hurricane Reality hit the shoreline at the ex-agency and 16 people lost their jobs. My instinct was still intact apparently. Any fantasy I'd harbored of returning, or kicking myself for leaving in the first place, quickly evaporated. To be fair and honest, there is no such thing as the perfect job environment. When I would sit down and imagine everything I didn't like about the ex-agency, it suddenly made the current agency look pretty good. (Big perk: no electronic time sheets to fill out.)

I still struggled for months. At the end of August I had received a job offer with a more generous salary and compensation package, and I agonized over that decision for days before rejecting it. Despite the passing of 5 months and still feeling a sense of being blindfolded while working, I didn't feel right in giving up and moving on again to the perception of another greener pasture. This situation would either improve or I would figure out a way to adapt.

It seems ludicrous that I was even having this adjustment dilemma. I have always thrived best in a smaller agency environment. Being one of two media buyers in my department makes things pretty simple. Business was heavy and brisk. New clients were coming on board. What more could you ask for?

The volume of work was such that we needed a third buyer. It wasn't essential, in my opinion, but helpful. In the event that one of us was out, the entire burden fell on one person. It wasn't impossible but it was a load for sure.

For me, the idea of adding this 3rd buyer was equally important in that it would force the opening of communication a bit more in addition to spreading out the workload. After all, if two of us are raising the same issues, that has to get someone's attention!

Barely a week or two had passed before I started to see warning signs flying about like arrows on fire.

Communication did not improve. Basic standard operating procedures did not suddenly materialize. Questions and suggestions continued to vaporize into the electronic ether. My workload and responsibilities started to disappear. The almost daily calls with requests for media proposals just abruptly stopped. It wasn't because things had slowed down so much. The work simply shifted to the new buyer. For all my years of experience and highly developed intuition, I didn't need a shitload of perception to notice I was suddenly being phased out passed over.

The rationale for adding a 3rd buyer was supposedly to lighten the load from the two of us doing the work. Another of those "arrows on fire" was when I realized the 60/40 workload split between the two of us evolved into more of a 60/30/10 split after the new addition. Gee, thanks! I no longer had an excuse for waiting until 5:30 to scoop cat shit out of the litter box.

It was quite clear that my issues and concerns were mine and mine alone. I could either drive myself crazy with the notion that maybe someday this agency would perform at the basic operational level as every other agency, providing clear directives, and create a sense of teamwork and camaraderie, or I could adapt and just learn to work within the framework of what was given.

As 2012 neared and finally rolled around, I made a conscious effort to stop feeling a sense of personal failure whenever I was given directive on a Friday to get something on-air or worse, off-air, the following Monday. Under such circumstances you do the best you can do and some factors are out of your control. But I was getting there. I had accepted the fact that suggestions at improving communication and streamlining processes were not likely to be entertained, that even basic minimal operational enhancements would be an uphill struggle, even if they made perfect sense in my mind. The lights would remain off and I could adapt to working in the dark, or not. So, darkness it was.

Earlier this week we finally got the long-awaited server upgrade. I was happy with any flicker of light at the end of any long tunnel. On Thursday I worked exclusively from my home PC while connected to their server -- checking email, managing my Excel documents, and placing media buys. I no longer needed the company-supplied PC to comfortably do my work efficiently.

I got all my work documents transferred from that PC to a public folder on the server and by Friday I never even needed to turn on the company-supplied PC. It was a rare breath of fresh air, a sense of moving forward into a new year with a newer way to work. Cleaner. Less clutter on my desk. I was even wondering whether I should box up the company PC and send it back or hang on to it as a backup just in case anything happened to my PC down the road.

I have boxed it up, along with the printer they supplied which I never have needed to use thanks to being 100% paperless in my work. What a contrast to the old days when I'd go through a friggin' case of paper every few months! This equipment sits in my kitchen ready to be carted off to Fed-Ex on Monday.

I marvel at the sleek and minimalist appearance of my workspace now. Emphasis on "space" rather than "work" because on Friday the 13th at around 5:05 in the afternoon, I was dismissed from my job.

At that moment, my access to the long-awaited awesome new server was permanently disabled. But hey, it was rockin' my world for a day!

The only reasons cited in my termination were "bad fit" and a "cultural" differences. Oh, the irony.

I can only hope when they sent out the email announcing my departure they utilized the industry-standard closing line of "we wish him well in his future endeavors."

Work used to happen here.

Questions having immediate answers:

Do I need to toggle my monitor back and forth between work and personal PCs? No.

Should I de-clutter and send back the company equipment I don't need? Yes.

Do I need to use a personal day to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday? No.

Do I need to worry if my lunch breaks run longer than an hour? No.

Should I alert someone in the office if I'm running late? No.

Do I need to scan my internet bill as a PDF and email to anyone for reimbursement? No.

Should I fret over dysfunctionality? Give that a rest.

Will I need to visit the Dallas office? Not in the foreseeable future.

Do I have any excuse for not resuming my Rosetta Stone Spanish lessons? No.

When will I be able to take some extended vacation time? Now would be ideal.

The Kona Reality Channel

Bankruptcy is a strange process.

Within a week after filing, txrad and I began to get junk mail for all sorts of things including new car loans, and credit card offers. Until now the credit card offers have been outrageously rigged with things like a $300 credit limit, and $39 annual fees.

I have been tossing them all in the trash. I was counting on being able to keep my Discover card which I have had since 1989 based on my excellent payment history, and the fact that whenever I call them, they praise me for being one of their best customers. And during the past 4 years of dealing with the other debts, having credits limits reduced drastically, and interest rate hikes, Discover never touched my $15,002 credit limit. Odd, but that's the fact.

So I did my best to protect them. I quit using the card for 3 months prior to filing bankruptcy so there would be no need to drag them into it, particularly since my credit card debt was 100% business related, and not personal consumer debt.

Lo and behold, txrad informed me today that he was unable to use the card at a store this week. I tried to log into my account and was unable to due to a "special situation" related to my account. Uh oh.

Funny thing is, I had no problem logging in 2 days ago to pay not only the balance due, but all charges since the statement ending date! That's how good I have been to Discover.

So I guess I'll have to get on the phone and see if they still think I'm one of their best card members. I really don't get this. The risk was prior to me filing bankruptcy. But I also understand this is all just a stupid numbers game. I'm supposed to get in line with the others who have suffered misfortune and prepare to pay out the ass for a prepaid credit/debit card to help build my credit, and pay them a monthly fee for the convenience!

What?

Yes, to get a prepaid card, meaning that I give them x amount of dollars every month that I can use to buy stuff, they get transaction fees just like the do on a credit card, but they want an "activation fee" and a "monthly service fee" which exceeds even the $39 annual fee charged by the credit card companies to help folks reestablish credit. I don't get it. (Well, I do; it's called preying on the downtrodden for profit.)

Fortunately, I remembered getting a offer for a CapitolOne credit card this week that had no annual fee. And I know they knew I had filed for bankruptcy for two reasons:

1) They specifically mentioned my need to rebuild my credit, and

2) CapitolOne took a pretty major hit in the bankruptcy!

Fancy that.

I applied online, fully expecting something to go wrong, but it was approved. It'll be interesting to see if my credit limit will be $300 vs. the maximum of $3,000 mentioned in the offer letter, but I'll take it. No annual fee, and presumably I will be able to go online and pay far more than my balance when I have the need to use it for a purchase in excess of my credit limit.

The Discover card situation threw me for a loop today and I had to go see what was set up for autopay on the card and get it moved over to a payment directly from my bank account. The cell phone bill and the garbage collection service were the only two. The last thing I want or need right now is another $24 or $29 payment declined fee. I'm done with that shit.

Yes, bankruptcy is a strange process. It also keeps you on your toes.

All That Remains Is The Wait

Today was the dreaded Meeting of the Creditors in the bankruptcy process. I didn't think I'd be the least bit nervous but this morning I felt like I needed a tranquilizer as txrad was driving me downtown for the meeting.

My lawyer had told me he'd be there at 9:45 for the 10:00 meeting. I got there at 9:40 and was really needing to have a few words with him and for some reassurance. The minutes seemed to pass in slow motion as I waited on him to arrive for what seemed like an eternity. Finally at 9:59 he came in the door.

There were a couple of other bankruptcy cases ahead of mine and I was getting increasing nervous as I listened to the trustee and his assistant quizzing the people.

I'm happy to report mine went quite well, about as close to perfection as you can get. Quick, painless, and efficient.

Nothing more to do now but wait for the judge to dismiss the debt and send me the dismissal of debts letter. That should take about 3 months. But I should not have anymore appearances ahead of me with trustees and I probably won't have to visit with the lawyer again. I feel....released.

How To Waste a Weekend

1. Find a new game, like Zuma Blitz. Guaranteed to waste hours.

2. Exercise your creativity by creating a new blog header, even though you have nothing to say because you are lacking creativity.

3. Take a long nap on Saturday and Sunday.

4. Eat out close to home so you can get back quickly for a nap.

5. Pick out a new paint color for the kitchen using paint samples you have had around the house for a year or two. Plan to paint in the spring.

6. Spend an excessive amount of time in a hot shower.

7. Check Weather.com frequently to see if you are hallucinating that winter has arrived.

8. Stare at the New York Times newsreader but don't bother to read anything because you simply don't give a shit.

9. Think about everything you wish you were doing, and will do, oh... in a month or so.

10. Scold the cat.

Bonus round: Feel good about yourself because the day you have chosen to take off this week is forecast to be the warmest of the week. Whether you do anything productive with it remains to be seen.

The Joys of Bankruptcy

After meeting with my bankruptcy lawyer the week before Thanksgiving it was decided that our filing date would be Thursday, December 2. The reasoning for this is that it's a day before I get paid and therefore the least amount of cash would be in my bank account. One of the rules is that I can't have over $750 in cash available on the day I file. Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

On Thanksgiving I was checking my account balance and I had roughly $1,100 in the bank with a week to go before filing. I was getting nervous and started looking for bills to pay early. There was the utility bill which was not due until after December 2, as well as the water bill and the internet access bill. I went ahead and paid those online and that took me down to $735. Yes! I could now relax as that would still leave me plenty to use for groceries and other routine expenses prior to the filing date. I figured I'd be down around $300 by then.

There was a small glitch, however. My Dish Network service is setup to be paid annually, and in the mayhem of the moment, I suppose I had not paid much attention to any reminder emails from them.

On Friday after Thanksgiving, I went to the liquor store with my bank debit card and was unable to get authorization on my purchase. Then I went to the supermarket and had the same problem. I was a bit suspicious now. I came home and logged into my bank account online and there are few words to convey the shock of discovering that my balance was over $400 in the red. Yes, a negative $400 balance. And right there on my screen was that processed transaction of $1,215 paid to Dish Network, courtesy of my credit union, along with the courtesy of a $24 fee for being so generous.

Now, here's how this shit works, as most of you know. Once there is one fuck up, you are virtually guaranteed of having additional fuck ups, hence the term clusterfuck. Life would have been fine and dandy if the credit union had rejected the transaction and charged me a fee for insufficient funds. Dish Network would have been happy to get their money a few days later. All the other transactions I scheduled would have passed through the gates and I would have been relatively unscathed.

Yes, dear friends and other readers, once your bank does you such a favor, buckle up for the clusterfuck, because they will only do you one favor, not three or four such favors. The Time Warner bill bounced. Ding! Insufficient funds fee posted on both ends. The utility bill bounced. DING DING! Insufficient funds fee posted on both ends. The automatic deduction of $9.95 per month for my Quicken BillPay service bounced back. They did generously go ahead and pay my water bill while simultaneously suspending my account. Ding Ding Ding!!!! Suddenly I was $555 in the hole. And that qualifies as less than $750 by anybody's math.

Thursday rolled around and we headed to the lawyer's office for the 4:00 appointment. After waiting there for 10 or 15 minutes, the laywer emerged from his spider hole and proclaimed that there was "a problem." He'd had some computer glitch that erased all his appointments, he had no idea our appointment was at that time, and he had not even reviewed our paperwork yet!

We had to hit the reset button and start over. So between last Thursday and yesterday, I was thinking I had dealt with all my financial issues and laid them to rest. Oh, but there's always a straggler!

Yesterday I tried to make a call on my cell phone and THAT had also been suspended due to funds not clearing my bank. Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding!!

You gotta love how this shit just cascades! And I'm sure there are people out there less fortunate than I am who have this happen to them more often. And at some point those are the people who probably figured out they might be better off without a bank account, and just use cash.

Since I had been paid on December 3, I had already taken care of all these other problems by the time I realized there was an AT&T cell phone issue. I tried logging into my account online to do another bank draft and was instructed to call customer service. Yes, AT&T customer service! You know, that's the one getting rave customer reviews these days.

So I got a guy on the phone and I explained the situation to him, and he told me he could take the bank information on the phone and process it.... for a $5 convenience fee. I said, "You've got to be kidding me, right?"

As if I hadn't already been fucked enough, now AT&T was wanting to charge me a fee for paying my bill. GOD BLESS AMERICA and Wall Street. After I protested, he retreated and said he'd waive the fee since I had tried to do it online and failed. What a nice guy.

After a few seconds he informed me it wasn't going through, and that my only recourse at the time was to go to an AT&T store and pay CASH. "What?" I asked. "I have no other way of paying this bill than to drive 15 miles to a store and pay cash?"

"That is correct," he replied. I mumbled something about switching to Verizon, he mumbled something about that being fine, and I hung up.

By this point, my lunch was getting cold, and I was having back spasms so severe that I seriously contemplated taking a Lortab. If it hadn't been a work day, I probably would have.

Later, after I'd calmed down, and had spent half an hour or so checking out the offerings from Verizon, I logged back into my AT&T account and decided to try this again using a credit card. Voila! Payment accepted and service restored! My question is: why did that customer service representative not suggest I do that? Or offer to take my card info on the phone?

Ironically, after all of this, my cell phone is suddenly not staying charged for a day even with no usage. I think that is an omen.

Meanwhile, I am starting this entire scenario over again. I am waiting on the lawyer to set another filing date between now and next Thursday prior to my Friday pay day. And sooner would be better than later. Given the fact that when my pay check was deposited last Friday, I was already $555 in the red, going in to file bankruptcy with less than $750 in the bank is NOT going to be a problem the second time around.

If I can do this with a bank balance greater than say, $35, rather than a negative number, all the better.

Farewell to Limboland

If my life was a book, it would have many chapters. Most of them are short. The current one is long and rather boring, but things are about to ratchet up a few notches.

Austin, Texas has been my home now for 13 years and aside from my life growing up on the farm, this is the longest I have ever remained in one place. When I moved here, George W. Bush was the governor of Texas. I absolutely love Austin and I think it's one of the best places I have ever lived. It's not just the city I love, but my house here has proven to be ideal in terms of comfort. It feels like home. Leaving it might be one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made. However, I am being pulled away by feelings I cannot ignore. I need a change.

Normally I sit here at my desk on Saturday morning and hope the weekend can be stretched for as long as possible before I return to work on Monday. This one is a little different. Election day is Tuesday and frankly, I'm ready to get on with it. I need to know what awaits us all in 2011 and beyond. And it could easily have an impact on the next chapter of my book: Where to go next. But the election is just the start of it.

November is going to be pivotal in another way. By Thanksgiving, it is my goal for txrad and I to have filed for personal bankruptcy. This is something that has been hanging over our heads for 3 1/2 years and it will be such a relief to put it behind us and move on, figuratively speaking, and probably literally.

In December I plan to officially bury the rotting carcass of a corporation which was the catalyst for our financial calamity. And by some date in February the debts should be dismissed by a judge, just in time for the new growth of spring. And by late February we should be getting a nice taste of what the new congressional makeup will be like.

In the meantime, I am focused on my immediate goals and pondering the great what next and where next question, even as a firm date for that decision is far from certain. I figure I really have about 3 years, if I need to take that long, unless I want to still be here when this asshole gets out of prison.

Having the freedom to basically go anywhere is reminding me of when I was deciding where to go to college. It was exciting to have that choice and I can tell you there probably isn't a college anywhere in this country that wasn't under consideration at some point. I bought the Fiske Guide to Colleges, or whatever was available back then, and figured I might as well get my money's worth out of it by working through all 700 pages! And there's not a state in the US where I haven't looked at real estate. Well, that's a lie actually. Alaska is off the table. Wasilla is not in my future. A view of Russia from my back porch is not on my priority list.

As with college, there are some practical matters to take into consideration when deciding on our next place of residence. Practicality takes a lot of the fun and spontaneity out of the process. At some point I will need to narrow down the list of options and get serious. And as much as I would like to live in a place far removed from extreme right-wing politics, this election cycle has demonstrated to me that there might not be such a place. Sure, there are places which are probably better suited for progressives than Texas happens to be, but there's really no escaping the nut-bags entirely.

After Tuesday, we'll have a good idea just how short that short list really is. And that will be the first day of my Farewell to Limboland chapter.

{sigh}

Let me tell you a simple fact: I don't deal with limbo very well. I feel as if my life has been in limbo for several years. I've basically given up on seeing any progress on the political front, and that has caused me to focus on areas where I have more control over the limbo situation -- my personal life.

I can't even seem to figure out if I'm depressed or just incredibly frustrated with this feeling of stagnation. I know a huge part of it is related to my upcoming bankruptcy. I'm not depressed that I'm doing it. On the contrary, I can hardly wait to get it behind me. And I keep putting it off for what appears, to me at least, to be valid reasons; I'm just not at all sure they are worth the wait.

For anyone reading this who isn't aware of the circumstances, my financial woes are not the result of a reckless spending spree beyond my means to pay. I had maintained an impeccable credit record through the years and by 2005 I was basically free of debt, aside from the mortgage, for the first time since I was around 20.

It was in 2005 when I was running my own advertising agency when things got seriously out of control. Where I had been very practical and conservative in the management of my personal budget, I was the exact opposite in the management of business finances. My quest for success, even in the face of impossible odds, completely blinded me to my dire situation. Imagine compressing 18 months of a frantic desire to achieve what wasn't meant to be down to a single intoxicated night in a casino with a wallet full of credit cards and an ATM machine next to the craps table. That is how it seems in retrospect. $150,000 in debt and nothing to show for it except for boxes filled with television station invoices which I would seriously like to remove from my sight.

As my credit score sank into the crapper due to my inability to make even the minimum monthly payments on the cards I had used for cash advances to fund my business, I began receiving notices in the mail from other cards that my credit limits were being reduced. This was happening with cards not used to fund my business; cards which in some cases hadn't even had a balance on them for months.

Ever since that world collapsed at my feet at the close of 2006, I have continued normal everyday life, using the "good" credit cards as I always have -- purchasing day to day necessities like groceries, and paying the balance in full every month. Only one card has never reduced my credit limit. I don't want to name names but it rhymes with uncover. It also offers a very lucrative "cash back" feature which I recently used to order gift cards from Loews and Sears. Most importantly, it was that card and the unaffected credit limit which allowed me to pay for my surgery back in March. So I understand the importance of having a card with a generous credit limit for emergencies.

Things get very tricky when you are filing for bankruptcy. You are required to report certain financial events and transactions, and the one I'm most concerned about is the requirement to "list all payments to any creditors totaling more than $600 made within 90 days immediately preceding the filing" for bankruptcy.

The last payment to that particular card was $1,300 on August 20 and I haven't used it since. My plan is to wait and file for bankruptcy the week of Thanksgiving which will eliminate my need to report that transaction and hopefully leave that card out of the process. Even so, there are no guarantees that the card won't be revoked once I am on record as having filed for bankruptcy. (This is why I redeemed most of my cash-back points for the gift cards!) I'm just hoping, since I have been a card member since 1989 and have a flawless payment record, they will overlook the bankruptcy, just as they overlooked my plummeting credit score and never touched my credit limit.

Part of me has to ask myself if it's even worth the wait. Life won't come to and end just because I have no credit, or very limited credit. Cash-back rewards are great, but in the grand scheme of things, that's not even a cherry on the cake of life.

There are other stressful financial aspects to filing for bankruptcy. I cannot have more than $750 in the bank when I file. These last 4 months of the year are when a lot of recurring expenses come due: car insurance, homeowners insurance, and property taxes. And while I have money to cover those, I have to plan this out very carefully.

The property taxes are the big whopper and I don't think that bill comes until sometime in November which is another reason I have opted to wait. It is possible to pre-pay early, but the funds go into an escrow account rather than actually being paid on the taxes, and then once the bill comes, I have to get on the phone and arrange to have them transfer the funds from the escrow account. It's probably not a big hassle but I'm using it as an excuse to wait. And as I wait, I torture myself.

I am also not dealing very well with the aging process and the resulting recognition of mortality, but if I were to get into that right now, it would double the size of this post, so I will just address it in a way which directly relates to bankruptcy.

My "American Dream" has always been to simply have a roof over my head, live in a comfortable home, and be able to grow a wide variety of vegetables in a large garden. Turning 50 this year made me realize I'm not quite there yet and that perhaps I need to get serious about it if I really want it. We both love everything about our home here in Austin, the neighborhood, and Austin itself. But the soil here, or actually the lack thereof, is not conducive to gardening, nor is the climate particularly accommodating in the summer.

It is also getting increasingly difficult to get away from here to go visit my mother in Arkansas and as she is aging, I should probably be going more often, not less. Living in Arkansas would facilitate having more frequent visits during the last few years of her life and would give me better growing conditions for the garden I so desperately want.

Unfortunately, in the context of my present reality (not to mention the economic reality), this is easier to fantasize about than to actually do. If we were to sell our house for top-dollar, it would not be a problem to pay cash for a house on a decent piece of land somewhere. I'm sure we'd need to since a home loan might be difficult or impossible to acquire right after filing bankruptcy. And then the reality of the logistics sinks in. We have to sell this house before we can buy another. That's likely going to involve a period of time in between with more limbo.

I suppose part of my problem is that I tend to pile too much on myself at once. I need to break this down into manageable segments and accomplish one at a time. Moving is something I should not even be thinking about for at least six months, and then it might not actually happen for another six. That is a worry I do not need to take on right now.

First priority is the bankruptcy. I have a hunch that once that is done, I can perhaps take a deep breath and proceed to take the next step in life with a clearer mind. In the meantime, I need to learn how to cope and focus on the smaller tasks at hand.

A Weekend of Chores

I'm not sure I could document everything I did around the house this weekend but I'll try.

Saturday: Gathered up some books, VHS tapes, clothing, a 5-disc CD changer, and a portable DVD player for Goodwill. Hauled enough crap out of the house to fill the dumpster. I cleaned the kitchen and did several loads of clothes, and watered all the outside plants. I cleaned litter boxes and gave the tub/shower a once-over cleaning prior to taking a shower. Then I took the stuff to Goodwill and stopped at the liquor store to give the manager some cherry tomatoes I had picked from the garden.

I came home and organized all the Tupperware in the cabinet prior to making dinner (but not prior to getting a wee bit drunk).

Sunday: I wasn't sure I'd be able to get motivated two days in a row to do anything, but I did. I had to run to Home Depot this morning around 9:00 to get a string cartridge for the weeder. I then trimmed a much-needed path through the tall grass out to the garden. After that, I gathered up all the bathroom rugs and two kitchen rugs for washing. Then I starting running the vacuum. And I vacuumed thoroughly. Most pieces of furniture got moved so I could vacuum under and around them. Good and thorough. I did two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two hallways, the den, living room, kitchen, office and lastly the utility room.

The living room was the most time-consuming with two big chairs and a sofa to move as well as three tables. In the end, I rearranged the furniture just a bit: swapped out the positions of two chairs, moved a table and repositioned the sofa about two feet further back in the room away from the TV.

I took out one houseplant which looked like crap, cut off dead stalks and re-potted the one healthy part of the plant. Hopefully it will survive. Then I decided to go back to Home Depot and pick up another houseplant. I ended up buying six. One of those has already been re-potted and is sitting in its new home in the living room. It's the one you see on the right.

I want a few plants in the office after I get done cleaning and organizing in here. Incidentally, that was my primary project for this weekend -- and I did get some done in here; it just wasn't my primary focus. I figured I should focus on the rest of the house during the weekend, and I can work on the office during breaks throughout my workday since I'll be sitting here anyway.

The Tot is already trying to dirty the coffee table. I need to get over the notion that it is possible to have a spotlessly clean house when there are four animals living in it: two cats and two humans.

Those 3 on the green bench were already here and are doing OK. I won't show you the sickly one.


The next 3 pictures are the other plants I picked up. What a great surprise for Sheldon... maybe. Hopefully he won't have internet access while on his trip and check the blog. And maybe it won't be much of a surprise either way since he takes care of the plants!

SURPRISE! Six new babies!

I'll try to be nice and get a few more of them re-potted before he gets home Tuesday night.

For a Friend (Or For Me)

[Edited completely rewritten for clarity and to make it less "cryptic."]

On of my blog pals/Facebook friends has been dealing with depression related to loneliness. Been there, done that. It was routine for me to have that when I was in my 20s and searching for love.

However, depression is a sneaky bastard. It will find other ways to creep into your life. Solve the loneliness issue and, like magic, you can get depressed about any number of other things. I know. I've been morbidly depressed since March and what is ironic is that I have absolutely nothing to be depressed about!

Sure, falling on my face and breaking an eye socket and cheek bone wasn't exactly a blast, nor was forking over $9,000 and some change -- out-of-pocket -- my idea of a desirable spending spree. I'm not even depressed about that.

I just seem to get depressed for no reason whatsoever. A cloudy day on the wrong day, or too many of them consecutively. Or getting a letter requesting my presence for jury selection on Monday.

Yep, that's a sure winner! And I can't even look at the bright side: that I get an afternoon off from work with pay, or that I might get 8-10 days off from work with pay. Seriously, if I wanted that I could do it. It's called a vacation. And I need one. But my idea of a vacation sure as shit doesn't involve paying for parking in downtown Austin and sitting in the courthouse watching lawyers make money. Pass on that.

That isn't the source of my depression though. It just helps fuel it. I get depressed by politics, racism, people who think the state has a duty to control what women do with their bodies, oil spills, economic disasters half way around the world, wars with or without end, gang violence, assholes trying to control the minds of children by editing textbooks, tornadoes, earthquakes, (sinkholes are cool though as long as no one gets injured or loses a house), getting old, people dying, spent fuel rods, abandoned animals, hunger, AIDS, waste, inefficiency, forced genital mutilation, and low fidelity.

Those things and a hell of a lot more depress me far more than sitting here thinking about the cost and inconvenience of having two titanium plates installed in my noggin'.

I ache when my friends are depressed. And I don't have any answers. It is a mystery to me. And apparently a fact of life. I guess this is why some people use Jesse Ventura's "crutch" of religion. It gives them a sense of hope, something to lean on for emotional support in times of need. Lucky them. Speaking only for myself, I find that depressing...like having a lifelong dream of visiting Italy and having to settle for the Venetian in Las Vegas.

When someone figures it all out, let me know.

March Liquor Consumption Plunges to 10 Year Low

This is not an April Fool's joke. However, it does only apply to our household, not the nation as a whole.

Today marks 31 days (last time I counted, that's a month!) during which time I have not had a tequila shot, a glass of scotch, a glass of wine, or even a sip of beer. No alcohol since March 1st.

By and large, the month of March was a wash-out for me. I've been focused on little else outside of recovery from all the broken and fractured bones in my face, and the surgery on March 18th. By my estimation, there were around 17 days in the month of March when I only consumed food via a straw. And there were some additional days when the solid food I "ate" was mashed into pulp prior to putting it in my mouth so that all I needed to do was move it around a bit and then swallow. I didn't actually start chewing food until this past week.

I almost wish my fall had happened on February 28th instead of March 1st. At least I could say there was an entire calendar month of distance between then and now. But 31 days is a month regardless. And April is a new month. Time marches on and healing continues.

This afternoon I got my stitches removed which hurt like hell on a couple of them. So now the only souvenirs I have are a couple of titanium plates & screws. I will treasure those for life.

Various & Sundry

I'm having one of those days. Maybe 3 weeks of broken facial bone issues and liquid diets is hitting my limit of tolerance. Maybe it's the healing process that's getting on my nerves. Itching in places I cannot comfortably scratch wears on my nerves.

Blogs that have to put a [Trigger Warning] on a post which links to an article about a 90-year-old man killing his 89-year-old wife in a nursing home are getting on my nerves. A [Trigger Warning] for THAT? For Christ's sake, it goes on in every damn city in the country every goddamn day! It's sad, but...triggering? How do some people even face the day? If that's all it took to trigger me I think I'd just shut everything down and play solitaire all day.

What not just rename the blog "[Trigger Warning]" and be fucking done with it? That would have all the posts covered.

Work got on my nerves today. Systems and procedures and processes. The whole shebang.

I went to the Department of State website today to check out passport applications, just to see how complicated they have become since 9/11/01. I haven't applied for one since the late 80s. Not big changes but there was a question in there regarding where you plan to travel and what dates.

That irritated the hell out of me. Do I need to have plans before I apply for a passport? I just can't have one and be spontaneous? The damn thing is valid for 10 years. And there's only room there to list one trip and one date. Stupid pointless annoying question.

Stop me because I could go on and on.

Let's switch gears before I have to [trigger warning] cut something.

Question: iPhone or Droid or other?

What do you like/dislike about your phone?

I know a couple of people who have gotten a Droid recently. They seem to like it.

I may be stuck with AT&T and their products for awhile. I have my mother on my Family plan with AT&T with a RAZR which is about 10 times the phone she really needs, but it was one of the most basic I could have gotten at the time.

Now with all the QWERTY keypads and shit, I can't even think about upgrading her phone. There is no point. She just needs to be able to dial or pick up and answer. Period.

The Droid is a cool phone but Verizon doesn't seem to offer a basic phone like that (the RAZR), even for "free." So I guess I'm stuck keeping her on AT&T as well as me and txrad. When I decide to upgrade or when I need to, guess it'll be an iPhone. Or not. No biggie and no rush either.

Gonna go wash my nappy hair, shave my face and see if that doesn't elevate me to a better frame of mind. Then I can go sit and watch TV and see what Rush or Glenn said today to throw me right back into a tizzy.

Is it Friday yet?

Pain In Perspective

Being home from the hospital less than 48 hours after having facial surgery involving two incisions, two titanium plates, and two or more screws (I didn't inquire about the quantity of screws), it just doesn't seem right that I hurt everywhere except where I had surgery!

This additional pain started to kick in Friday afternoon when I awoke from my 2nd nap around 4:00 PM. It increased throughout the evening and into this morning. The worst of it was this morning when I was trying to get myself out of bed. It was dark outside and I had no idea what time it was. It hurt so much just trying to raise my head and turn it in the direction of the clock that I decided it just wasn't that important. I needed to urinate but not "like a horse" as the saying goes.

It seems like I spent a good 20 minutes just devising a strategy about how best to pull myself out of bed. Getting one leg out from under the covers was a nice start. Then the other. Then getting my right leg off the side of the bed and slightly turning my body so I could put one hand on the dresser to use as leverage. This was not easy.

I remember the surgeon telling me to not be a "couch potato." He wanted me to be active and to practice getting my mouth open nice and wide. What is odd is that I don't remember anyone telling me about the possible side effects of general anesthesia, particularly when these side effects are far worse than anything I have experienced since being hit by a car while riding a bicycle in the late 80s -- an experience that sent me head over heels onto a street, flat on my back, and subsequently left me bed-ridden for about 2 or 3 days, despite the fact that I walked away from the accident feeling fine. Apparently, the quickest method of recovering from this anesthesia hangover is to drink lots of water and flush out all the nasty residue.

I have a very clear memory of the pre-op meetings with various nurses on Thursday evening. The guy who was setting up my IV drip might have given me something to lay the foundation for the general anesthesia. I only suspect this because he said something along the lines of "welcome to Margaritaville" as he was injecting it.

Things started to get a little funny after that. I remember my surgeon showing up and asking me if I was ready. I remember a nurse saying that I wasn't going to remember or feel anything, and they were going to give me something else to make damn sure I didn't even remember getting the anesthesia -- some kind of memory eraser which would backtrack for extra insurance. But then again, at this point I could have been hallucinating the whole damn experience.

I remember being wheeled on my bed cart to the surgery room. Someone said I'd need to be transferred from that bed onto the surgery platform thingey, and if I was involved in that transfer, I sure as hell don't remember it. I remember someone slapping those monitors on my skin and that may have been the last of my memories while my body was comprised of the same parts as it was when I was born into it.

I always thought anesthesia would be like being awake and having a memory and then it just stops at a certain point. In fact, there was a big fuzzy area that may or may not have been reality. There were conversations that I'm pretty sure were not reality. And then, as if no time had elapsed at all, I was being awakened and it reminded me of waking up about an hour before landing after a long 9-hour flight to Europe in which I slept maybe 3 hours after two glasses of wine.

The surgeon was speaking to me. Probably said something about the surgery being a success. I may (or may not) have asked him if he had to do the bone graft. He may (or may not) have answered me. I may (or may not) have asked to look in a mirror. And then I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever about being transferred back to my room. I have no idea how I got into a standard open-butt hospital gown vs. the warm and cozy Bair Paws gown filled with warm air and wind speed of my choosing.

I do remember the doctor telling me I would be staying overnight, that txrad had shown up, and was told the surgery was successful, but that he could come fetch me in the morning. Prior to the surgery, I had been adamant about being sent home the same day, and that was a possibility, but I also knew that with my surgery being moved from early morning on Friday to Thursday evening, it increased my chances of having to be in the hospital for a night. But honestly, at this point do you think I cared? I was quite happy to not be going anywhere.

The nurse was hooking me up to a blood pressure monitor and an IV drip, as well as that thingamabob they clamp on your index finger to measure something... pulse? She turned out the light and left me to rest. The beeping of devices continued throughout the night with the occasional boa constrictor on my arm checking my blood pressure. I'm guessing that happened every hour.

Around 11:00 the nurse came and refueled my drug stash. She came back around 2:00 or 3:00 to deliver another round, and to remove the blood pressure & pulse monitor.

"I'm going to miss that thing," I said, referring to the blood pressure device. Then the real drama kicked in. I woke up a short time later, and this time I was relatively awake for the first time since surgery, and I needed to pee. Immediately. I'd been getting IV liquids all night and I'd been sipping water frequently.

I got up and started trying to figure out how to get in the bathroom. My IV was attached and because it was hooked to a machine regulating the delivery which was plugged into the wall, I couldn't just wheel it into the bathroom. I started trying to figure out how to call a nurse. I grabbed the phone and dialed zero. It rang and rang. At this point I was seriously about to break out in a cold sweat when I noticed a cord on the floor. It had the red call button for the nurse on it. I don't remember what I said he she answered. I think I just said "help."

I swear I think I had to get up to pee about 6 or 7 more times before morning, but at least after the 2nd time, I had become a pro at pulling the IV tube out and going to the bathroom without needing to wait on a nurse, even though they were quick to respond. I think 15 seconds was about the longest I ever waited, but it was nice to get up and do it myself without having to rely on anyone, even though I was paying for the full-service.

The red button did come in handy a bit later when I called to have some more drugs delivered. Now I may have been totally out of it, but I swear my mind was like a Swiss watch when it came to establishing the drug schedule, and by the end of the night I was giving them a 20 minute heads up that it was almost time! I think I had 3 different nurses on duty during the course of the evening and I sure as hell wasn't going to let any of them get lax on me when it was time to put the party favors in my IV drip!

It was around 7:40 Friday morning when breakfast arrived. I had been sleeping like a baby on a water bed when it was delivered. I saw a cup of yogurt, a big glass of milk, a small glass of apple juice (at first I thought it was a urine sample which had been put there by mistake), and finally, a mysterious entree on a plate under a stainless steel cover. Visions of scrambled eggs and pancakes were dancing through my delusional head as I lifted the cover to find a bowl of oatmeal. Ahh, yes. Silly boy, you're still on a liquid diet, remember?

This was the first food I'd had in 23.5 hours. I put some of the brown sugar in the oatmeal and sucked that bowl dry through a straw. Then the apple juice. Then the yogurt, and finally I leaned back on the bed, clutching the glass of milk, savoring each sip. Just as I finished, the next nurse on duty arrived at promptly 8:00 to inquire if I needed anything for pain. I let her know that last dose had been brought in around 3:00 and that yes indeed, I did think it was time for another round, on the house.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't really get to enjoy sailing away on that round. From that point until the time I left, it was like a non-stop visitation experience. My surgeon popped in to see me and removed the fat wad of gauze he had stuffed between my cheek and gum which was now soaked in blood and breakfast.

His assistant stopped in to see me right after he left, and then the nurse from my ER visit on Tuesday night popped in to see how I was doing. Another nurse came in with some souvenirs for me to take home, and then txrad walked in just as I was thinking I might get a few minutes more of sleep.

The nurse returned to unhook everything and I said, "I hope I got the bulk of the drugs that were in that IV." Probably not terribly original, especially since this is Austin, Texas, but she grinned ear to ear nonetheless.

My surgeon's assistant had some prescriptions for me which she called in to the supermarket pharmacy close to our house. One is an antibiotic horse pill I'm to take twice a day for a week, and the other is a pain pill. I think it might be the pill form of the liquid pain med I was getting through the IV. Or close enough. It goes by the name of Lortab 7.5 but it's basically like a turbo-charged Vicodin.

Yeah, baby. Yeah!

I took one of those puppies last night about 8:00 and was ready to hit the sack by 8:30. I had some pretty elaborate dreams about being at a flea market. Sounds mundane, but imagine a flea market being run by David Lynch and Dennis Hopper. Also my silver neckchains were turning into metal snakes.

Anyway, I think I have digressed. I was talking about pain. I've never thought I had pain tolerance. I have managed to get through 49 years of life without any surgery other than wisdom teeth removal, never had to deal with a lot of pain, and certainly never broke any bones. I have looked around me at people going through surgeries, some multiple, some life-threatening, and I wonder how they do it. I have always been in awe of such people and never imagined I'd ever be in that group.

I'm not sure how I was able to come back in the house on the night of March 1st, after I fell and busted all this shit up, wipe my face off, and go to bed. And SLEEP!

The next morning when my doctor referred me to a surgeon and told me I was probably going to need an operation, I was mortified. On March 5th when I saw the surgeon for the first time, he suggested that we wait a week for the swelling to go down, and then re-evaluate. He thought it might not be necessary, or if it was, it might only involve an incision through my mouth, and a worst-case scenario might involve multiple incisions. I chose to focus on the "no surgery" possibility because I'm a wimp.

A week passed and as I went for my follow-up, I had come to terms with the inevitability of surgery, but was still hopeful I could get by with just one incision in my mouth, but the doctor seemed to be thinking this would be two incisions minimum. And if my lower eye socket was severely fractured, it could involve a bone graft! I was just shocked by all this since I'd been relatively pain-free thus far. Sure, there was some discomfort, but constant throbbing pain had been dealt with effectively by taking ibuprofen.

Then the following Tuesday night during dinner when my jaw locked up on me, I was entering the proverbial World of Pain. Aside from feeling like a rod had been jammed into my jaw bone preventing me from closing my mouth, I had throbbing pain like fire shooting down my throat when trying to swallow. It was bad enough that for the first time in my life, it was ME who initiated the call to my doctor, and it was ME who told txrad I needed to go to ER.

And then things would get even scarier. While in ER, my surgeon asked them to go ahead and do another CT scan. Apparently the one I'd had done two weeks earlier hadn't been great quality. He viewed the scans on Wednesday and called me. My injury was worse than he thought.

When I went in on Thursday afternoon for my pre-surgery consultation, he told me this was one of the most complex breaks he'd ever seen in his 20 years of experience. It was not going to be an easy fix and there was a possibility he wasn't going to be successful. In that case, he told me he'd send me to Dallas to the surgeon who trained him two decades ago.

I feel the same about mistakes as I do about pain. I try to avoid both. But when I make a mistake, it might as well be a whopper. I was starting to wonder if my little excess tequila incident and falling on my face hadn't turned into the biggest fuck up of my entire life. How did one little drunken incident at home on the privacy of one's own patio turn into a rare injury not seen by a specialist with 20 years of experience?

My surgeon was reassuring though. He said, "If I didn't think I could fix this, I'd just send you to Dallas right now. But I want you to know it's going to be a challenge."

He then had me initial several pages of forms which outlined potential issues caused by this surgery, including blindness, if the surgeon happened to get a little too jittery with the knife around certain nerves. How I maintained my composure during that meeting, without passing the fuck out, is beyond my comprehension. This was escalating into all my worst fears being rolled into one tight little package.

But I hadn't come this far just to change course. It was now at the point where I had to continue with him and invest just a little more faith, and roll all my dice that night, or start over with a new face in a new city, a few days later.

I had a level of comfort with my surgeon, a bond which allowed me to understand what he was saying even if he didn't say it. When he said, "I know you can't open your mouth wide, but when you're under the anesthesia, I will get your mouth open wide," I was hearing this: "I am going to pry your pie hole open so wide it's going to make the corners of your lips crack and bleed, and you better know this is true." And I was OK with it. I needed to get fixed and this was the guy I trusted to do it.

Now the ball is mostly back in my court. That cheek bone, even with the plate, is going to have a tendency to go back where it was unnaturally if I don't work on stretching my mouth open in the coming days. It is my responsibility to get it moving again, to get it flexible, so it will heal normally as desired. That may be a bit more pain, but I have to do it.

Now is not the time to sit back and tell myself the worst is over. It is over as long as I do my part and with a bit of luck I guess. Just a little more pain isn't too much to ask when the alternative is an overnight trip to Dallas.

And for a replay of surgery no less.




[Note to my friends in Dallas: just kidding! Dallas isn't THAT bad.]

Unexpected ER

Hope you had a great St. Patrick's Day. Mine was certainly unique.

Last night while having dinner (thankfully I was nearly finished), I heard a bone pop in my jaw and suddenly I couldn't close my mouth at all. I had food in my mouth which I had to spit out because I was afraid to attempt swallowing.

This was freaking me out because after 2 weeks of recovery with no significant pain aside from the first couple of nights, I was experiencing piercing pain from my mouth to my left eye, across my left cheek, all the way to my ear. And swallowing was one of the most painful things I've ever endured. It was even causing pain in my throat glands.

After a few minutes of not being able to get the jaw to snap back into normal position, I was freaked out enough to call the doctor at 9:45 PM. He suggested I apply heat to it and try to relax for about 15-20 minutes to see if it would pop back into place. He seemed to think it was a muscle seizing up on me, not a bone issue.

I was in such agony that I could not relax even for a minute. txrad drove me to the emergency room. They gave me a Valium, hoping that would relax the muscle. It didn't help although it did make me silly by around midnight. Unfortunately I was still in too much pain to even enjoy the silly feeling.

They gave me a Vicodin and did another CT scan once the machine "warmed up" which took maybe 45 minutes! We waited quite a while for those results to come in. Finally I was released around 3:00 AM and given a 2nd Vicodin for the road, so to speak. (Glad txrad was driving!)

I was in bed by 3:45 and slept surprisingly well. I awoke at 8:10 this morning, still unable to close my mouth, but it wasn't as severe as last night. I've been in varying degrees of pain today but none anywhere near as severe as last night.

I did have an unexpected 3-hour nap this afternoon but guess I needed it after the trauma of last night and little sleep.

When I got up I had a message from the surgeon on my phone. When I called him he confirmed that it was a "boney issue" rather than primarily a muscle issue causing the lock-up. He's also going to try and arrange to have my surgery done Thursday afternoon as soon as my physical exam is completed around 5:00pm.

I'm very optimistic this will happen even though it's only 12 hours ahead of the scheduled surgery time on Friday morning. Every little bit helps when pain consumes you.

I guess if you don't see a post here by Thursday evening, you'll know I'm knocked the hell out, so to speak!

March: In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb

This has been a strange month. Two weeks ago today was the first day of a long recovery after my fall the previous night. My face looks much better although there's still some blood in the white part of my eye, and there is a definite indentation at the left side of my left eye where the orbit is broken. I can't really tell from looking at my face that my cheek bone is broken. However, it's very obvious when I try to eat or open my mouth wide. And the numbness on the left side of my face is really irritating sometimes.

It's also been two weeks since I had a drop of any alcohol. Sixteen or seventeen days ago I would not have considered that a possibility. Funny how life can turn on a dime when it needs to. And I can't help but see the irony that I'm now sleeping better than I have in years, and generally feel better than I have in years, with more optimism than I've had in years, all while having at least 3 broken bones in my face.

In spite of my progress, the countdown to surgery is under way. I go in for a pre-surgery appointment and physical on Thursday after lunch, and then surgery is scheduled around dawn on Friday. I've never had surgery before so this has been weighing heavily on me, but I'm honestly so tired of not being able to chow down that I am looking forward to it, and to the permanent recovery after that.

I just hope the post-surgery recovery goes faster than the first time around when I was sipping food through a straw for a week and then easing my way into soft meals. Without a doubt, I have a few more days of straw sucking starting on Friday. The month of March is shaping up to be one big blurry month of discomfort from start to finish.

I am, needless to say, looking forward to April. I will turn 50. And that's not a bad thing either.

Rediscovering An Old Me

Monday night marked the one-week anniversary of my Great Tumble. I decided to celebrate by watching a 30-year-old film I first saw when I was 20. Back then I was so infatuated with the film that I must have watched it 12 or 15 times in the movie theatre before owning (or renting, I can't remember) a copy on Betamax tape.

It was the 1980 film, Hopscotch, with Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson. In 2010, the film has aged and it caused me to focus more on how life has changed in the past thirty years. Matthau is dead. Sam Waterston has aged beyond belief. The concept of a guy writing a book on a typewriter, with or without the presence of Liquid Paper, seems comical. It was almost as inconceivable as the notion of dropping coins into a phone box and asking an operator to make a "bill to" call to Salzburg, Austria.

Revisiting this film after so many years was like attending a 30-year high school reunion and realizing that those days are gone. Nevertheless, I found it an oddly comforting way to celebrate the events of the past week.

The conclusion of Monday evening without a drink was another milestone: seven days being sober.

I did have a triggering event at work yesterday afternoon. Something happened requiring me to do a rush of unexpected work late in the day when I was already tired, and I was thinking about how much I wanted to wash away that frustration after work with a tequila shot. I managed to derail that desire after a few minutes of analysis and making an effort to put everything in perspective. Attitude, and the way I choose approach the unexpected, are key. Clinging to negativity can be hazardous to your health.

After going to bed last night, I didn't fall asleep for nearly an hour. It wasn't restlessness; it was a far more relaxing evaluation of myself and my current mental state. I feel like I have been reunited with a part of myself that I had forgotten even existed. It is the me I haven't hung out with since I was in my 30s. It is the me who was completely capable of entertaining himself in the evening without the crutch of booze. It is the me who had no blog or no Facebook page. It is the me without any concept of what my life would be in my 40s. It is the me who was excited about the 21st century. It is the me of then merging with the me of now.

My evenings belong to me again; they do not belong to a bottle filled with amber hooch.

Even the depth and quality of my sleep is something I haven't experienced in years. I was feeling like the new mattress, which I purchased in November to help with my back pain, had been a waste of money. As recently as two weeks ago, I was seriously wanting to check the purchase receipt to see if I was within the 90-day return window. My quality of sleep was horrendous and some mornings I had to carefully ease myself out of bed to avoid a severe back spasm. What a relief to know it had nothing to do with the mattress and everything to do with how I was living my life.

I have also discovered that I'm no longer stressing about finances. The VISA card with a $500 credit limit no longer needs to be monitored on a weekly basis to determine whether or not I need to send a payment to avoid hitting the charge limit. I no longer fret over the debit card tied to my checking account, and feeling like I need to enter receipts in Quicken to be sure I'm not going be short when the mortgage payment is due. The Hooch Emporium, with its 5% discount for cash or debit card payments, is going to miss me. The feeling is not mutual.

I am finding it very difficult to put this feeling of freedom and liberation into words. I will keep trying.

As someone who hasn't had solid food in a week, I'm in remarkably good spirits. However, I'm keenly aware that a pile of french fries would sure kick those spirits up another notch.

How I Allowed Something I Love To Almost Kill Me

First, let me be clear about one thing. I am not the kind of person who will use my personal experiences with alcohol as an excuse to get on a soapbox and start warning anyone of the need to abstain from the "evil" of it. I will save that soapbox rant for cigarettes. Or for things with which I have no personal experience, like heroin or meth.

txrad and I were smokers and drinkers when we met back in 1990. I'd only been smoking for less than 2 years, and only picked up the habit while hanging out all night in Denver coffee shops because... well, sitting around in a bohemian environment guzzling coffee and chain-smoking cigarettes seemed pretty cool.

We both started working at an advertising agency headed up by a vegetarian who was hostile to cigarette smoke. That proved to be a good fit for us because within months, we had both quit smoking and drinking, and had given up meat for a vegetarian diet -- something I'd tried several times previously and unsuccessfully.

We maintained this for years.

In 1997 we moved to Austin and we spent $0.00 on liquor, beer, wine and cigarettes. In 1998, while at a company picnic, I decided to have a glass of wine. It wasn't to celebrate anything. I simply felt like getting a little buzz going because I could see the writing on the wall regarding the company's future. Thus began some light and occasional drinking that year.

In 1999, my premonitions about the company were becoming reality. The future was uncertain, barely two years after packing up and moving from Los Angeles to Austin. Drinking increased although certainly not at any outrageous level.

The rest speaks volumes about me and how I chose to handle the stress of an unstable decade ahead.

There is something else worth noting in this chart. From 1998 through 2001, a lot of the alcohol expenditures were with meals while dining out, so the cost relative to the amount of alcohol consumed was high.

By 2002 we had largely quit dining out during the week. We were spending far too much money eating out almost every night of the week, and we decided to start cooking at home to save money. We figured we'd also save money by drinking at home. Pretty soon, what we were spending on booze far exceeded what we'd been spending on restaurant meals.

I would venture to guess that 2004 was the year when drinking excessively every night of the week became the norm. That was also the year I started my own company, and by the end of 2006, that was also, for all practical purposes, needing to be shut down due to lack of clientele and clients unable or unwilling to pay their debts. My company was insolvent; I'd loaned tens of thousands to the company to keep it floating, all of which I had borrowed, and there was nothing to show for it.

And I was aware, even in 2004, that moderation with tequila was difficult for me. I tried this:

Nice try. It didn't work. So, party on! Forget about it, at least at night.

2007 brought on some new employment for both txrad and myself, but that didn't stop the drinking which by now was a well-established part of our nightly routine, and one which accounted for the 2nd largest percentage of our budget, right behind the mortgage payment.

Yes, you read that right. We have essentially been drinking (and smoking, since about 20% of this is for cigarettes) a 2nd vacation home payment every month. Or a Maserati Quattroporte payment. Pick the guilty pleasure of your choice. And this had been going on for 5 years at roughly the same level.

Trust me, I knew what we were spending. If I was able to pull together a 10-year chart from Quicken in a matter of minutes, you know I've been monitoring my spending month-to-month. I was appalled by it. But I kept telling myself I could take corrective action "next month."

It hasn't been a great decade on the political front either. And I used liquor to numb that pain as often as I could. A Bush speech was a guaranteed night of severe intoxication resulting in an inability to absorb the last half-hour of whatever he was blathering on about. Same for election years: tie one on real good at every state primary. I'd get rip-roaring drunk on Friday and Saturday. I'd get ripped on Thursday because it was Friday-eve. I'd get trashed on Wednesday because it was Friday-eve-eve. Sunday was ripe for ripping because the weekend was over. And Mondays were a perfect excuse to let hell break loose because it was simply Monday.

What I failed to grasp is that this excess would eventually take corrective action with me if I didn't act first. The first evidence of this was in March, 2008 when txrad fell down a flight of concrete stairs and landed on his head on cement. He suffered a concussion, fractured ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a speech impediment, all of which required several months of recovery. And to this day he still has a slight slurring of speech when saying certain words.

There were medical expenses he incurred which have yet to be paid, aside from what the insurance company covered. That was the same night I wrecked my car trying to drive home which was another $2,000 out-of-pocket for repairs because I was too scared to file an insurance claim given that my bumper and license plate were missing in action and probably sitting in the parking lot of an apartment complex where I plowed into a retaining wall of rock.

But the heavy drinking continued.

I always thought alcoholics and people with alcohol-dependencies were the types of people who wake up in the morning and need a beer or a cocktail, and continue drinking throughout the day and into the evening. Because I never wanted a drink in the morning or afternoon, I figured I had to be OK. I just wanted to get drunk at night.

And it wasn't enough just to get a buzz. It wasn't enough to be sloppy drunk. Something about me had to go that extra mile. You know, the point where you wake up every morning and have no idea what you watched on television the night before, no remembrance of eating dinner that was so carefully prepared, and no idea of conversations we had. Basically there was a black hole for the last hour of each previous night before I collapsed into bed. Some life, huh?

I don't think it helped that I was drinking premium tequilas which minimized hangover conditions. I rarely would have a headache the next morning. Rather, there was a dull numbness looming over me which would dissipate by mid-afternoon. I could get through the most trying workday, only to go for a replay in the evening. It had gotten to the point where I had no idea what it feels like to sleep well, to have multiple dreams, to wake up refreshed, and to have energy during the day.

And then came my accident last Monday evening in which I had an intimate moment with the concrete patio. What I apparently didn't learn in March of 2008, I think it got me this time around. I guess it wasn't up close and personal enough to witness txrad's trauma and take corrective action then. I had to go through it for myself in order to break this pattern of destructive behavior.

Tuesday night was rough in terms of breaking the habits. I was standing around in the kitchen watching txrad prepare food, and didn't know what to do with myself or my hands. When I'd reach for some water my hand would inevitably go to the spot where the shot glass has sat for the past few years. Sometimes my hand would instinctively go there when I wasn't reaching for water. And it wasn't like I wanted a drink; I felt too crappy for that. It was simply habit, as well as knowing that I didn't feel as good as I should be feeling at 7pm, and 8pm.

This scenario replayed on Wednesday night. I felt frustrated. I didn't know what to do with myself. Everything else was the same: same TV shows, txrad busy preparing food in the kitchen, but no beer on the coffee table in the living room and no shot glass of tequila in the kitchen to reward me for getting off my ass to go in there.

By Thursday night I had realized that I needed to keep a glass of water on the coffee table in the living room where I had previously kept my beer. My habit was to have a drink there within easy reach.

Saturday night I had come to the realization that I needed more changes here to keep me distracted. It's not enough to simply abstain from alcohol while doing every thing else exactly as I have done for the past 8 years or so. Watching the same TV shows wasn't cutting it because I associate almost of all of them with a steadily increasing intoxication level as the evening progresses.

I decided what was needed was a serious distraction. Something we haven't done in awhile. I put in a James Bond flick, Casino Royale. I needed action for distraction and I needed duration to keep me awake past 9:15. It worked because I stayed awake until 10:20 and managed to finish the film. And I didn't need to jump up every 15 minutes to do a shot. (I did need to jump up every 15 minutes to pee from all the water I'm drinking, but that's OK.)

I don't even remember how long it's been since we sat and watched a DVD without losing track along the way due to intoxication.

Am I completely done with alcohol? I will probably resume having a glass of wine or two at some point. A couple of beers some nights. I don't want a bad tequila experience to ruin an appreciation of lighter adult beverages which I enjoy, but don't render me shitfaced. The problem is having tequila in the house. Even when we'd open a bottle of wine at night (which was getting increasingly infrequent), we'd move on to a beer after finishing the wine, and then a series of tequila shots until I had achieved the black-out phase.

The most-recent warning sign I should have heeded was when we discovered jumbo sized 1.5ml bottles of premium tequila at a great price. They would have been a great deal if they had lasted a month instead of 3 days.

Even some fine scotch in the house didn't get abused. I had 2 bottles of scotch sitting in the pantry which lasted for more than half of 2009 and into 2010. That was something I enjoyed sipping and savoring once a week, or sometimes once every 2 or 3 weeks. I would pour only enough for 5 or 6 sips... to warm the cockles, so to speak. But then I'd move on to the beloved tequila.

The only nights when responsible drinking would take place were those nights when there was no tequila present. And I usually went to bed feeling incomplete. I can hardly believe I allowed this to control me for so long, and at such an expense: on the finances, the "repairs," and the health.

It has also had an impact on my social life. I felt chained to the house because it was a "safe" space to drink. I didn't like going to parties because I knew I'd get drunk, and then there's the issue of driving home safely. In retrospect, I think this also had an impact on visits to my mother. I would limit my stays to one or two nights at most because I was ready to get back to my drinking and smoking routine. As a 40-something, the idea of sneaking around my mom's house or yard, trying to get a sip of booze (which I never did), or a quick drag on a cigarette (which I did do) seemed ridiculous.

I think the best plan would be to transfer the monthly filthy-fucking-cigarette budget to beer and wine. We'd be healthier and our finances would be healthier. I like beer and wine; I enjoy both. But I don't love either of them. By the 3rd glass of wine I'm pretty tired if it. Same with beer. But with tequila, an adequate amount was insufficient. Too much was never enough. For some reason, I wanted enough to escape life.

I've come to realize that life isn't that bad. I have a pretty damn good one and there is much to be thankful for including a job I love, a partner I love, a house I love, a city I love, and friends I love.

2010 is a year of change. I may not feel like it's going to be positive change for the country politically, but it can be positive change for txrad and me. Both need to happen, and I have far greater control over one than the other, so it might as well start here, at home.

Feel free to discuss. Berate me. Chafe me. It probably won't be anything I haven't already said to myself. I'm weak, but I'm getting stronger.

I may even pull out another movie tonight.

Curling Hopes Are Dashed

I guess I won't be going to the Lone Star Curling Club on Sunday after all. The last thing I need right now is to fall on my face again, although I do need to keep it on ice. Keep ice on it gently.

It is amazing how quickly your life can be turned upside down by one bad mistake. Monday night I was discussing with txrad how excited I was to be going back out to the curling club open house on Sunday to throw a rock or two.

We were making dinner and doing tequila shots, as usual. Shortly after dinner I walked out the back door and one second later I remember the extreme impact of my face against concrete. I distinctly heard the multiple snapping of bones.

I pulled myself up and went to the bathroom to survey the damage. Blood was running down the left side of my face. txrad was watching TV and had no idea this had happened. I was so annoyed with myself I decided to save the news for morning. I washed away the blood, applied some arnica gel to help with the bruising and swelling, and went to bed.

It was not a very good night. At some point I awoke, hoping that the memory had been a dream, but knew from my pain that it wasn't. I had busted my shit up real good.

txrad called and scheduled an appointment with a doctor yesterday morning at 10:30. The doctor referred me to another clinic where they do the CT scans. I had that done on my face and brain this morning.

I suppose the good news is that I have no brain damage and my jaw isn't broken. The bad news is that I have extensive facial damage with fractures around my sinus cavity, the eye orbit, and my cheek bone, and this will apparently require several hours of surgery.

The doctor wanted me to make an appointment with the surgeon as soon as possible but unfortunately the surgeon's office is closed on Wednesdays. Great.

Tomorrow I should be able to get in there, with any luck, and get a fuller assessment of what I'm in for this month.

This is by far the worst injury I've ever had in my life, and will be the first time I've ever needed surgery. Lots of people have had to undergo similar procedures. People have horrific car accidents, some people engage in extreme sporting activities during which time, an accident can lead to broken bones and smashed faces.

During the Olympics I would cringe when hearing about an athlete who was competing again after x number of surgical procedures to correct this and that. And this is one reason why I would never have made a decision in life to become a race car driver, or a skier, etc. Do it long enough and sooner or later something bad can happen.

My friends, as I know now, it's really no different with irresponsible drinking. Do it long enough and sooner or later something bad can happen. I can't tell you how many times I've been en route to a liquor store and mumbling to myself that "nothing good can come of this."

And even though you know you need to clean up your life, doing so is always just one tomorrow away. Well, welcome to tomorrow.

I should be completely freaked out at the prospect of surgery. Part of me is a little anxious about it. Part of me is angry with myself and I could also sit here and continually kick myself mentally for being so stupid and irresponsible Monday night but that's not productive either. You can't change the past, as much as you might like to rewind and redo.

The biggest part of me is more focused on cleaning myself up to make sure this never happens again in the future. I'm no longer agitated about leaving my 40s behind in about 7 weeks when I turn 50. No big deal. Something about pain and the idea of facial surgery makes birthday milestones inconsequential.

The joys of still being a 40-something ended around 9PM Monday night. The time between now and my actual 50th birthday will be about nothing but recovery and progress, and living my life as a 50-something quite differently from how I lived my life as a 40-something. Time to grow up and enjoy middle-age.

The real irony here is that I was looking forward to the first week of March passing without any incidents. It was two years ago this week when I was dealing with a very similar situation with txrad, and I was ready for that 2-year anniversary to come and go. But here we are in a role-reversal. I guess the score is even now.

That post two years ago ended with this question: "Have we learned anything yet?"

Yes.

I love tequila but let's call it a tie game and forget overtime.

I love my face, my bones, and my health & well-being far more. And I love txrad. All of those things are far more important to me than any reposado or añejo.

I'm just not sure why it took an event such as this (or these) to make me put things in perspective. I never thought of myself as being one that couldn't ascend until I figured out where the bottom was.

Moving On

I seriously need to do some cleaning around here. Lots of books need to be donated, particularly the books on film production and screenplay writing.

Back when I was in my 20s and even into my mid-30s, I harbored notions of writing a screenplay and making a film. I certainly had a wealth of material and experiences to use. But it kept turning into one of those "I'll get around to it eventually" scenarios. And the books were always on the shelf as a constant nagging reminder.

At some point in life, I suppose we have all dismissed an ambition. I'm not sure why that happens. It's not age per se but I think age plays into it. I am certainly not too old; I simply lost my will over time. Getting into a long-term relationship and being happily involved in a career certainly played a big part. By the time I was 37 and making the move from Los Angeles to Austin, I believe I had already accepted the fact that it was never going to happen.

Twelve years after that, the books no longer taunt me or even intrigue me; they simply take up space and collect dust.

Question of the Day:

What lofty ambitions have you had in life which you have discharged?

Countdown to Extinction

I was thinking about life today and probably wasn't in a very good frame of mind while ding so since it was during work hours. But I decided that life is just a waste.

Kids are spending an insane amount of money these days, going into deep debt just to get an education in order to be productive members of our system, paying taxes, and contributing to our growth, which incidentally is probably going to stop at some point.

Between the time they graduate college and start seriously approaching retirement age, they will only participate in four census counts, or to put it another way, vote in ten presidential election cycles. And they should consider themselves lucky to still be alive by then. And if they are really lucky, they'll get another two census counts and/or four or five election cycles after that. And then presto: that investment dissolves and nothing is left behind but memories and money. If they were wise and successful.

Speaking of the census, I first started digging that after the 1970 census. I became obsessed with population data and could reel off exact figures for many cities during my teen years. Ever since then I have eagerly awaited the next census to see how cities have grown or shrunk.

We have one coming up next year, and it's only the 4th one since my obsession began in my teens. By the time the next one rolls around, I'll be retired, if I'm lucky enough to be alive. And I will have voted in 3 more presidential cycles.

I keep wondering if anything is ever going to change in a positive direction in that regard. I think not.

What a waste.

Anyhow, I plan to be counted as a Travis County resident in 2010. One in a million or so.

3

I've only smoked 3 cigarettes since 8:30 this morning, and I went over 5 hours today without one at all. If I can do that much, I can do much more. I can break this fucking habit. It doesn't have to control me.