And the winner is...

We are moving to San Antonio, Texas. The Cancer Research Therapy Center has offered Dr. Wife a great job. She will start at the beginning of May, and I will move down and join her as quickly as we can sell the house and finish teaching.

It is going to be a whirlwind couple of months. So come catch a Resistors show and drink a bye-bye beer with me.

I cannot imagine the chaos that the next few months will bring. Back surgery, ending school, finding a new career, moving to texas, buying a new home, selling a home. Crazy I tells ya, crazy.

Whether vain

Despite my dislike of yard work, spring is good for my soul. I spent my last day of break outside. I finished removing last summer's rust from my daughter's little wagon, leaving a coat of red Rustoleum gleaming in the sun.

I found the local hippie hangout, The Bourgeois Pig, ordered a Boulevard Stout, and set about organizing my lesson objectives for my last two months of teaching.

I can't help but be a bit melancholy about that. I feel I am leaving a job unfinished. But that's the nature of it. Teaching is static. A new class, the same topics. Rinse. Repeat. I see the upcoming months full of work and chaos and am finding comfort i the little task of chemistry teaching.

I had placed a lot of hope in physical therapy and epidurals. I feel cheated that I have to endure another surgery just to walk right. I want to lift bags of mulch to the garden. I want to carry my daughter into her bed when she falls asleep watching the heffalump movie. I've spent my life hating my body. And, despite how shallow it is, I'd like to be strong and handsome. I would like it if I didn't have to resent my body.

The young and good looking stroll by arm in arm, or eying an arm to arm. It's nice to watch and admire. The wind is threatening skirts and ball caps cocked crooked. It is time for a stroll to see if I can regain some feeling of foot or hope. I'd take either.

These chips need more salt

I spent the day at a casino. Playing poker. Texas hold 'em. What the hell? Certainly not normal for me. Spending 15 bucks on new underwear stresses me the hell out, so how could I sit down with $120 and play some 3-6 limit cards, much less for over 5 hours? There are a few factors that come into play...

• The teacher across the hall, affectionately dubbed "No Hair" by my daughter. He's bald, and plays a lot of poker. At a casino, online, with friends, at the drop of a hat, he will break out his mad poker skillz. He talked me into joining in, and gave me pointers before hand and during lunch to improve my play. Sound advice, from a man who spends as much time playing as I spend chasing my daughter.
  
• Spring break is only spring break if at least one day out of the break I goof off. I hadn't done that yet, and today was the last day. So far the break has consisted of house cleaning, bad spinal news and more physical therapy, and potty training.
  
• I needed to have a sustained, day long control-freak heart attack.

I was shaking like meth addict three days into rehab. I made some beginner blunders, that's for sure. But damn, it was fun. I folded, checked, raised, called, bluffed, got caught bluffing, and had a great time. It has some limitations for me as a lifelong hobby...

• First, it is a solo thing. Sure, you're in a group, but it's not a chatty, friendly bunch of guys. It's a bunch of people trying to trick you into talking your money into their hands.
• Secondly, it's money. Want to know what I stress about? Money. More than anything else in the world. It makes me a little nauseous. I never spend $100 for fun, much less gamble with it.
  
• Last, time. Poker takes time, and frankly, I don't have much. I would have to trade out my bass playing hobby, and I'd rather give up my liver than my bass.

So I will go again, and I will like it. I will even seek out opportunities to play. But I think the folks at 1-800-BETS-OFF won't be hearing from me anytime soon.

Oh, and how did I do? My $120 went back in the bank, I bought lunch, and I have enough left for a trip to the bookstore. It probably would have been better for my financial future if I had lost it all, but coming home with extra cash is great for the ego.

Dr. Wife Out on the Job Town

It has been a rocky road for the soon-to-be-Dr. Wife on the old job front. Here's the snapshot:

• Job interview and subsequent offer from a promising small company in Virginia. Company immediately purchased and everyone laid off.
• Job interview in New Jersey scheduled. The next day, this gigantic company ate another gigantic company and called a hiring freeze to digest itself.
• An old colleague in San Antonio working for a non-profit cancer firm called to set up an intview for her at his old job. Interview scheduled, all seems stable.
• Monday morning, New Jersey called. It seems the company burped and made room for a few more essential employees (taste like chicken). So they flew her out that afternoon.

So this week she flew to Jersey, will interview for a day and a half, will fly to San Antonion, will interview for a day and a half, and will then fly home to get back to her 12 hour days writing the dissertation. It is wearing her out, but I will be surprised if this doesn't net her offers in Jersey and Texas.

So what say you, wise readers? Jersey, or Texas?

Put the needle on the record

It has been one hell of a week. Tuesday and Wednesday were 13 hour work days, with parent teacher conferences in the evening. It is exhausting to manage kids all day and parents in the evening. The upside is, I get tomorrow off as reward. Then next week is spring break. I will be napping. I can almost taste the sleep...

Today, however, was another epidural injection. I find it ironic that to begin the process I must first roll onto my side and curl into the fetal position. Then the anesthesiologist numbs my back with a topical anesthetic. This is then followed by the insertion of a long, sturdy needle through my back muscles and into the fluid space around my disc and spinal column. Then he pushes cortisone steroids into it. The feeling is a lot like boiling water moving down the muscles of my leg into my foot in a flash of pain.

Useless statement of the day: I don't like it.

It has left me shuffling stiffly around the house. I'll be able to function again tomorrow, and will know in a week whether or not this has done any good.

Beach Blanket Bingo

I'm pretty pumped this week about my weight loss achievements. I am back in the same size jeans I wore at the end of college, and they look good. I'm well below 200 pounds for the first time since then as well.

Despite the back troubles, I am keeping on track with the get fit goals. I've been a bit of a slacker this week, but am looking forward to some meal planning this weekend that should get the ball rolling again.

The impetus? Puerto Morelos Mexico.
My fraternity brothers and I have rented a house for a week in July. A few assorted wives and friends will be coming along. The daughter will be with grandparents, so it will be sun, cervesas, and swimming for grown ups.

I want to be good looking in the ol' bathing suit. Not necessarily abs of steel, but I certainly want people to be glad my shirt is off on the beach. Hell, I want folks to be glad my pants are off at the beach...

Stuck by stuckhere...

Are you jealous, as I am, that many cool kids get to go to the south by southwest music festival (affectionately referred to as SXSW)? Do you crave to be a part of the rock and roots action? Are you instead drinking a beer in your living room trying to hide from the daunting pile of dirty laundry mere feet from your couch? Then this is your lucky day! Thanks to the festival administrators and one baddass website you can download several hundred free tunes from the bands involved. It's legal and encouraged!
It's almost like I'm there. Except it's creepy when I wave a lighter and scream freebird at my computer...

New job...

I am about to enter my last quarter as a teacher. I'm throwing in the towel. I surrender. It has been something that I have excelled at and pushed the boundaries of. But enough is enough. It's a tough job that gets worse as you get older.

I am still, however, completely clueless as to what comes next. More school? A new career? And where will that be? My wife has about a month left until she is Dr. Wife, PhD. Although that sounds glamourous, it is really just stressful, as she is interviewing for a select few jobs that happen to all be located on edges of the US. Currently, we are in the wheat-fed middle.

So help me out. Career advice, por favor!

Limping...

So here is the problem. A few weeks back, I herniated two disks in my back. Same story as 5 years ago. No specific injury or incident. All of a sudden, I couldn't walk. Immense pain that crippled me for a week. Then the pain let off, and left me with some sciatic issues. Half of my left leg is subject to bursts of immense pain. The other half is constantly numb, including my left foot.

Last week I had an epidural injection of cortizone. That's a big ass needle shooting steroids into my spinal space. It hurt, and so far has done nothing. The good news is, it's the first in a series of three. Oh, shit. That's the good news.

I am praying desparately that this doesn't mean surgery, but that little floating chunk is taunting me... like it knows how much I want to rip it out and start riding a bike.

The eye of the beholder...

photo copyright Matt Whitlock of Zeta-Alpha Studios, 2005

Every now and then, I feel unkempt. Not quite together. My clothes seem to fit poorly, my hair not quite disciplined, and I truly doubt that the wife will remain as such.

Then I attend a Truckstop Honeymoon show. And halfway through the gritty vaudevilian banjo/bass thwacking goodness I look around. And that, my friends, puts it all in perspective. There is nothing uglier than a bunch of grinnin' hillbillies. Overalls, dirty denim, sweat-stained flannels, and straw hats that have obviously been chewed by mouths lacking all requisite teeth. I felt dashing.

The music of the two is as genuine and real as they. It tells of getting kicked out of summer bible camp, chasing a mosquito fogging truck on bikes, and the things that make momma cry. It is written by two people who obviously mated for life and are as comfortable with each other as, well, old denim.

The married couple that make up the band aren't exactly models themselves. Katie, the prettier of the two, thumped the strings of the upright bass in worn out jeans, self-cut hair, and horizontal stripes stretched across her pleasantly pregnant belly. Singing makes her damn good looking, despite a rather intense gaze. Her husband, Mike, well...

Some people are born for their jobs. Looking at Mike, he was given an option: serial killer or redneck roadshow rockstar. At times his eyes blaze maniacal. His unwashed, uncut, unshaven head dances over the top of his banjo with an eerily lucid awareness. I promise you all, I will continue attending their raw performances if for no other reason than to prevent him from slipping into his alternate career. Because he would be just as good at that.

And for those with an ear for banjo and meth, check out Fast Food Junkies, the opening band. Damn fine night in Kansas, it was. Damn fine.

Crocus

It is blustery cold, but the crocuses are blooming in the garden. While some may call this a wonderful harbinger of spring, I know it for the truth. It is time to begin yardwork.
Mowing, weeding, mulching, pruning, dethatching, fertilizing, watering, repeating. I can't stand it. If it grows, it makes me sneeze. And yet I am compelled by neighborhood guilt and patriarchal tradition to make myself into some sort of harvestless farmer.
I dream of green concrete, wrought iron ivies, and sprinklers that spray single malt into my mouth as I lounge by a self cleaning pool...

A journey of 1000 miles...

I'm not an accomplished writer, but I'll give it a shot. Let's make a deal; you read, I'll write. I'm not swearing to volume or high quality, just some musings from time to time. An occassional smirk may occur.