I’ve no idea what I’m posting about just now. I’ve 15 minutes, and thought I would, and assume that I’ll have something to say hereabouts.

Well. The school opportunity.

My grandfather recently sent out an allotment from the trust fund he and my grandmother set up decades ago; ten grand, leaving five in the trust for later distribution. The note that comes with read, “Out of everything in my life, I value my grandchildren the most. Take this and make it grow.”

This comes from a family that is quite close, but not in-your-pocket. That is, you can count on them for anything, but none of them would think to ask for help. And none of them would hesitate to come through with help if you asked. Touchy-feelie emotions are not generally discussed, except in matter-of-fact terms. They aren’t repressed, it’s just generally assumed that words are not equal to the task of communicating important things. Actions are preferred, over a period of years. So, the note was unusual.

The money has never happened before, but isn’t surprising. Pop-pops has it, he knows that we kids can use it (all the grandkids are now on their own, as of this year, and most have spawned), and he’d rather be around to see what happens than leave it for the inheritance taxes to chop up. It isn’t a buy-love sort of thing, more a I-can-help sort of thing.

“…make it grow.”

$10k isn’t enough, really, to invest meaningfully. I don’t like gambling, which includes the stock market. You can’t open many businesses with ten thousand dollars. So, I am interpreting the “make it grow” clause as “use the money to make a lasting, deep change in your life, in whatever way money can help that happen.”

Three things I’ve thought of: a trip to San Diego where he lives, to see him after a five year hiatus, and introduce his new Granddaughter-in-law. A bed — I’ve been sleeping on a padded board, and well-rested, as I’ve years of experience to know, produces a happier, calmer life. Gym membership, as well-maintained does the same thing.

Then what? That leaves $7,500, give or take.

Lasting, deep change.

I no longer feel a need to have a hit taken out on anyone.

I won’t use the money in a court battle. I won’t dirty it like that. I won’t … take a gift from one of the cleanest, caring men I’ve known, and use it in a vile battle with spiteful characters who will leave scars and resentment in all parties close enough to spit bile on. I’ll pay that myself, if it ever has to happen.

…money.

I’m making good decisions these days. I don’t overextend myself, I treat me as someone I care for, I speak truly and candidly (unless I’m playing with the wait-staff at Red Robin), and all like that. But the residue from years of bad decisions rides with me, and I am in collections and bankruptcy waits in the wings. Ten grand won’t save that; the money will be protected.

Money almost kept me from seeing friends at the once-a-year chance, Orycon. Money held me to a simple card for my kids at Xmas. Money keeps me from going to see them, as gas is too expensive for even monthly trips anymore. Money is keeping me from living my life the way I need to live it; connected to my loved ones.

So, how do I use the money to make money? The only answer I’ve come up with that works well for a person with negative credit is “school.”

So that’s the longer version of the question I threw to the mindtrust yesterday. Somebody be smart for me. I need more brains than I’ve got to find my way truly, and I’m getting too old to tolerate any more decade-long missteps.

The parameters for my career are these:

*I need to be smart in my job, cannot just drone along
*I need to talk to people at least some of the time
*I get to learn things from time to time
*I get to vary my tasks
*I get to be not-bottom-of-the-food-chain

Extra school is all right with me. I like school. Paying for certificates is all right, as well. In fact, if it helps, buying a degree won’t scandalise me; I’ve never, once, used my technical training in my job. I’ve used plenty of things I picked up on the way, but never what I learned in school.

I’ve come up with one: Project Manager in some company or another. It requires organizational skills, skepticism, analysis, computer skills, personality, leadership, and construction or engineering schooling and experience. And business training. I could get an AAS in Business/Construction Technology in about 18 months.

That one might be a good way to go. I’m still thinking things through.

Counselling. Nice work, suited to my skills and temperment, but the pay is poor unless the degree is high, and the money available won’t get me there, unless I grossly misunderstand the industry.

Hm. I’m ordained. I wonder if I could hang out my shingle as a marriage counsellor/personal counsellor on that basis.

Hm.

You can find him at ~devilsaprentice.

It’s interesting to me that we share some language patterns. And that, independantly, we chose Dream from the Sandman for pictures to represent ourselves.

That said, I have better use of grammer, and am better groomed. But he’s taller.

So.

Othello went to the pokey. He was stupid, vandalised and carroused, and was caught and tried and went to the Place For Bad Boys, and has to serve five days work crew, and community service.

I was all right, supportive and like that, and, when he was in the Big House I was all angst-y. “My son! Ah! My son! Lost, lost to a world where he is just another dissident, taken from his family, lying, alone in the dark, with no one to love him!”

Bridgette snickered. “We don’t know that….”

His 48 hours were, eventually, served (I think it took just about two days), and he climbed aboard a bus to come visit us for a bit. We collected him from the station and stopped at Red Robin for dinner, where the Muse of Clever Thoughts That Get My Ass Kicked visited me. I excused myself and went to the bathroom, and thence visited the hostess station up front. I passed a few pleasant moments with the staff there, and told them of my son’s terrible plight, and that he was just freed of it.

Well, almost.

I told them something like this: “My son has been living with his mother and stepfather and, well, they sent him off to parochial school. Uniforms, short hair, school ties, like that. Well, my wife and I have just gotten him out of that, but we’d like to just sort of welcome him home a bit. I saw the balloons you’ve got for the kids, do you suppose you could have our waitress…?”

Heh.

The wait staff was horrified. None of them knew what parochial school was. I told them it’s like a military academy with lots of bible study. Horror renewed, they suggested that they have a birthday sunday that is a freebie, and balloons, sure, since this is sort of special like a birthday. I visibly stifled a tear at their concern, and thanked them, smiling wanly through moving emotions that were fighting to play across my features. I am certain that each of them felt wonderfully altruistic when I left; they made me so happy, and for so little cost to themselves.

Heh, hee. Hee. Oh, let me rest a bit, to giggle.

[Giggling follows, with an explanation to Bridgette as to its cause]

Snicker.

Okay. Right. I rejoined my family, warm with the knowledge that I had done so much to make so many people feel good about themselves [giggling again], and that I’d done the Boy a good turn at the same time. I sort of prepped him for it, obliquely.

I told him stories. Allegories, pertinent to his particular situation in life, and illustrating high moral points that might instruct him in his behaviors, and make him a better person, and more worthy than before. I told him about going to a strip club with Lothario, where, insufficiently monied to hold the attention of the dancers, I had told the ladies that approached me that, if I’d had money, she (whoever she was at the moment) would have been my choice for a private dance, but my friend at the end of the table had just come on sabbatical from seminary school, and we were a little worried about him; he was drinking heavily and, ah, misbehaving. About half of the ladies went to cling to Lothario, each in turn, while the others stayed with me to pass the time, since I was so pleasant to them, and one even rubbed my shoulders. Othello followed the story, but failed to see how it applied to current events. Youth today. So slow.

I waxed a bit, telling Othello how horribly I felt for him, cast into durance vile, held apart from those who loved him (Bridgette snickered), fed only the lowest foods, and separated from the fair sex. He nodded somberly, and I pointed out that our waitress was a likely sort, pleasant to have about in a sort of ornamental way. And that she seemed to think he was cute — he got just soooo much of her attention.

And, by the way, son, I told her you’d just gotten sprung from parochial school. Oh, here she is.

She brought him a sunday, and balloons, and welcomed him home, touching his shoulder and gushing, sighing deeply as she talked about “what you’ve been through!” She paused, and looked puzzled. “What is a parochial school?”

Othello foundered a bit, tried to look embarassed and flustered and pleased and daggers at me all at once without cuing the waitress. Bridgette, who had been trying hard to not giggle (and encourage me), left for the bathroom where I suspect (although she won’t admit it) she had a damned good laugh. Othello failed to rise up with a suitably glib story, so I stepped in and told her it was like a Roman Catholic concentration camp with ugly ties. Her pity was manifest — she was obviously a girl who felt things deeply — and she touched Othello some more. His shoulders must have been all a-tingle.

She left to pursue her undoubtedly bright career in food service, and Othello glowered at me. “I will get even, you know.”

“For what? Helium balloons? Free ice cream? The attentions of a pretty girl? Fine, I agree, I have sinned beyond the reach of remorse. Do your worst, as you see the need. Heh. I am remorseful, you know. Hm. Hee. Ha, parochial school, gawd, I kill me.”

Bridgette returned, commandeered some of the whipped cream from the dish, and notified me that I am not allowed to go to the bathroom by myself anymore.

I chuckled all the way home, a half hour drive. I’m pretty much incontinent with it now. Parochial school.

Oh, I love being me. I truly do.

It might be interesting to tabulate my posts and determine if I’ve ever put seven days’ of words together in a row. Or, perhaps, not. Not.

Hm. The short version…the short…hm…version….

We have rehabilitated most of the house, both got jobs, got married, and my grandfather gave me a check for some large chunk of change.

Hm. The long version. Well, the longer version.

The house. Ahm. Too much, too much. It’s been enormous amounts of work, most of which was done last Autumn and not much since, and the south end of the house is still stark stud walls. The house rebuilding went into abeyance when we ran out of unemployment, and things became truly ugly for a time.

But we became employed. And ditched those jobs, and took better ones. Then Bridgette ditched /that/ job, and has attained a still better one, and we’re likely to perch for a year or two, just to get a job history again.

She: Ass’t Office Manager of a largish janitorial firm, payroll clerk duties, files & database management.

I: Lien clerk for a major construction company in Medford, with side duties of being the Computer Geek for about fifty workstations, an amazing database (Timberline, if anyone cares and knows about these things — a package I alternately curse and praise), and –

–Y’know, I’ll just take a moment to talk about being a computer geek. I know my way around, but I don’t reflexively snort “install Linux” when people bring me problems, so I’ve never considered myself that much of a compgeek. But. In this crowd of nearly sixty people, all of whom work for eight daily hours at the keyboard, nearly 2/3 of whom work on projects that require formatting and storage and organization and thought, I am the ONLY person with a flipping clue how to make the computers work. Excel spreadsheets are laundry lists, no macros or sorting or lookups or what-have-you. OLDB queries are Black Majick, one, yes ONE query has been written, and is copied for everything, and most of the data unnecessary for whatever the purpose it is being applied to. Timberline, a painful program package to use, but not unknowable, is a mystery to nearly everyone; two people know as much as I do, one of them knows more, and I’ve only seen the damned thing for two months.

I work with people who can’t do a web search.

I work with people who back up their hard drives to their desktop.

MS Access is outlawed in the company because it can not only pulls data from programs, but it can change it and put it back. Well, so can Excel with an OLDB query. Or Timberline. Doesn’t matter. Access is evil.

So I use Access and don’t talk about it. Then I write macros to pull import the data from Excel, write reports, and close Access again, put the shortcut to the macro on other people’s desktops, and have become heralded througout the land as a worker of miracles.

Feh!

Anyway. Where was I?

Jobs. Yes, we have them. Good. Money is good. The lack of it is the source of all evil that isn’t Zelda.

Zelda is married, about which I will go on at some length another time. I am pleased for her, if Truth calls for that from me at this time. I don’t think she’s pleased, but she isn’t leaving, either. Then again, I wouldn’t expect her to; she doesn’t expect a marriage to be a happy place.

Bridgette & I were married May 1 with only direct family represented, if Ed is considered family (and, yes, I do consider him such). Aberdeen couldn’t make it down, and we were set on that date, so we’ll have to marry again at a time when she can fulfill her duties as my Best Man. And wear a tuxedo or tails with a top hat and Converse high tops. And look just cute. I promise pictures for those absent from that gathering. Heather Alexander’s music was played at the wedding (Only the music for the bride’s entrance, The Garden for the ceremony) (I was vetoed in suggesting Creature of the Wood and March of Cambreadth) (and on Happn’in’ Frog. We spiritual types are always oppressed.), and I presented the father of the bride with a receipt when he gave her away. Long story. And our officiator pronounced that we would share internal love, which seems, at least, tidy, although I’d have approved of the eternal variety as well. And all went well, to inlcude the plumbing stopping cold right after the ceremony with 17 family members in the house. I spent my first few hours as a married man (again) unclogging the toilet.

There’s more to be said on this (the marriage, not the toilet), but I think I’d like sleep before work tomorrow. So. There’s the high points, mere facts, hardly worth the electrons to transmit them to other people’s heads. But there they are.

I now have a long cord that permits my laptop connection to the ether while sitting as snuggily (if that’s a word) as the heat permits to Bridgette, much better than being stranded at the other end of the house. I rather expect that I’ll communicate a bit more because of this.

It was, in fact, the reason for the purchase.

And here I am. More personality will, undoubtedly, show through on the next post, now I’ve gotten my backlog out of the way.

I have, with no details that I’ll post here today (maybe later), opportunity to go to about $5000 worth of classes, free. Books, tuition, time missed from work, it’s all covered.

I currently have a AAS in Electronics Technology, years of experience as manufacturing tech, and am employed as a lien clerk/IT guy for $13.50/hour.

How shall I proceed, to maximize my earning potential? My career goals have little to do with money; I want my job to support my bad habits while keeping me mildly entertained.