Jeff Likes to Tell Stories

Welcome to my blog. I haven’t kept up with it in a while. But I hope to get back to writing the types of stories you’ll find here. If my life was a sitcom, these might be considered scripts for the show. I write about my life, my interactions with my family and those strangers I encounter on a daily basis. My more serious writing can be found in various places. But I often post them on Medium.

Artistic Tendencies, News Outta My Control / 12.11.2005

Every November I am consumed with the outdoors. It's not that I want to be but when the leaves fall from our trees there is nowhere for them to go but on our lawn. And one of my prime domestic jobs is to make sure they get to the street where the county can vacuum them (Quicktime, 2.2 MB).

I have never been the woodsy type. However, I am forced to contend with nature on this level once each year. And this year we have a particularly unruly crop of dead and moldy leaves. The dry November and strong winds have stirred up leaf dust that blocks the sun, makes me sneeze, and irritates my eyes. I'm surprised the Environmental Protection Agency hasn't teamed up with Homeland Security to issue a Mother Nature Red Alert.

If I must (and my wife tells me I must), why not make the best of it. To make my suburban nature experiences more enticing I often devise creative diversions: attempts to mold nature to my own iconoclastic ways (and to give new meaning to the phrase yard work). You might remember my lawn art (next to leaf blowing mowing our lawn is my least favorite home owning activity). Household boredom creates a black hole that is unstable. It must be met with an equal creative force.

Idiosyncratic Celebrations, News Outta My Control / 09.10.2005

On our recent family trip to Disneyland I noticed something new: all the announcements and cautionary instructions for rides were both in English and Spanish. The all-American theme park had changed in a remarkable way. My Southern California friends are surprised when I tell them that bilingualism is very much a part of our lives in Washington, DC as well. No, not in those hallowed halls of the Capitol but on the streets and the marketplaces around town. Signs on our busses and at retailers like Home Depot and Ikea are in Spanish and English (the only holdout of any...

Idiosyncratic Celebrations, News Outta My Control / 01.10.2005

A new month: time to reset my internal calendar to remember birthdays and pay bills for October. If your birthday happens to be at the beginning of the month, you might not get your birthday greeting from me on time. I can only start thinking about October events at the beginning of October. I've set my credit card due dates to be about the 10th of the each month so I don't incur late fees when I remember on the first of the month that I even owe money. I’m a typical overwhelmed modern who has compartmentalized his life into...

Fairly Odd Parents-Present, Worker's Comp / 17.09.2005

Police Cordon Off DC during Bomb Scare

Another typical workday: a suspicious package left at Starbucks.

Every workday afternoon I log my activities and daily accomplishments into an Access database. We do this to track the amount of time each project takes. But the bonus is I can see just how I spent my day. It's a 21st century diary of sorts.

It occurs to me that at week's end I sometimes wonder just how I spent other parts of my life, the non-project parts. Did I experience anything interesting? Where did the time go?

Between a full time job and a full time family, it's easy to simply live in the present. When my head hits the pillow it's hard to remember anything but the pleasant unconsciousness that immediately beckons.

So at the end of this week I'd like to mention some of these off-hour occurrences, a typical week-in-review:


Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 13.09.2005

What would a contemporary family vacation be without a visit to a theme park. How about three theme parks? Yes, on our recent sojourn to Southern California we hit Sea World, Legoland, and the jewel in the theme park crown: Disneyland. The Gates family scores while Jeff photographs the whole incident. After Sea World and Legoland, my wife and I weren't looking forward to our trip to the Magic Kingdom. It was the day before our return home and we were already starting to segue to our previous lives on the East Coast. To say nothing of the cost: a family of...

News Outta My Control / 11.09.2005

With the focus on the Katrina, I want to take some time to remember four years ago today. In part because time is mitigating our immediate horrors of this tragedy and in part because today's anniversary falls on a Sunday (when I am home and not retracing my exact steps to work on 9/11), I am rereading stories posted to Dichotomy: It Was a Matter of Time and Place. As new events supplant the importance of older ones and as new generations grow up to experience their own history, the nature of September 11, like December 7, will evolve. I...

Child's Play, Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 10.09.2005

Family vacations are so much fun. At least that's how I remembered them from my youth. The night before we left for "parts unknown" was full of hustle and bustle as my parents scurried about while my sister and I relaxed in front of the TV. Getting to bed early so we'd be in the car at 4 am, we'd traverse the desert in the coolness of the early morning dawn. All I had to do to prepare was be excited.

However, as a parent I now know the truth. Getting ready for a family vacation is hell. It's one thing to literally stuff the family minivan with every conceivable item you may ever need --in fact, everything you own. It's another to pack for a trip by air. For, of course, the airlines have consistently refused to allow us to stuff their cargo bay to the gills.

So two weeks ago when we finally deposit our luggage at airport check-in and wind our way through airport security, suddenly we are light-headed with the relatively little we are lugging around. That is when the vacation truly begins. We are on our way back to my ancestral home: Hollywood, USA.

News Outta My Control / 03.09.2005

We continue to pour in additional supplies every hour in this area. Massive quantities of water, ice and food, 5.6 million MRE's, over 13 million liters of water. We have 2,800 National Guard in New Orleans as we speak today. 1,400 additional National Guard military police trained soldiers will be arriving every day. Michael Chertoff Secretary, Homeland SecuritySpeaking to CNN My neighbor, Mike Lee, came over this evening to show me something he had picked up at our local surplus store: an MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat). These are food packs used by our armed forces in Iraq. And they are now being distributed to...

News Outta My Control / 02.09.2005

The governor of Texas today said that his state would take 25,000 people displaced by the hurricane. He called them refugees. And that is what they are. In the richest country in the world Mississippi is the poorest state and in many places here it looks very much like the third world. Elizabeth Vargas Reporting from Gulfport, MississippiABC World News Tonight Let's get our priorities straight.(Petrolcide T-shirt from Standpoint) I live on a precipice. If I look straight out at the vastness before me I see opportunity and good fortune. I live in a constant heightened state and I am always looking ahead. I...