Today was a good day

Had an interesting thing happen today, received my annual evaluation. I work for a large IT company that specializes in DoD contract work. Contractor work is pretty cut-throat at that level and it's usually everone for themselves. The base I work on seems to be above that and people seem to pull together pretty well as a team; military folks, contractors from different companies and civil servs as well. So my supervisor hand delivers my evaluation, which usually means bad news. So I'm a bit nervous as he hands me my eval to read and sign. He's got a stoic look on his face so I'm dreading the read. Then one by one I read through the items seeing one "excellent" after another. I get to the end and low and behold a perfect evaluation. Not only was it perfect but it even had added comments from both my supervisor, and the actual customer. I look up and he's smiling from ear to ear and shakes my hand and tells me congratulations. I get a job well done from the folks I work with and then my wife treats me like a king when I get home. Days like his don't happen too often, but when they do...boy life is good.

Life comes at you all at once

As we age doesn't become apparent that life is a series of peaks and valleys. At times you seem to have everything together and all is well; at others it seems like there's not enough time in the day to get it all done.I guess that's why life is such an adventure.

Lunar Event

How often is one treated to a Full Lunar Eclipse first thing in the morning followed by an exquisite Full moon that night.

August 28, 2007 was a good day.

Optimisticality

Recently, I gave a friend some advice. She is generally a very positive person and usually keeps a small group of us feeling the glass is half full. I think I just endured a fairly terrifying experience and I'm happy to report I stand behind my advice; In fact I took it.

The world of DoD contract work can be ... less secure[pun intended] than regular commercial work. In fact the process of acquiring a security clearance can be very time consuming. My company dropped the ball on my clearance and a few days ago I was placed in a status of no jurisdiction. Basically that means I could no longer work around classified material. Since that's pretty much all I do that meant I couldn't work. So I go through the humiliation of being escorted from the building and having local middle management throw around terms like leave without pay.

Proudly, rather than go on the offence I chose to simply be a part of the solution. I provided documentation showing I had been inquiring for months as to my clearance status. As it turns out, I was a casualty of our company security officer's negligence. So, conference calls were arranged and my clearance process should begin again in a day or so. In the mean time my interim status will be reinstated and I can begin working again. Throughout the ordeal I remained positive and kept the glass half full.

Considering I kept that outlook in the face of what seemed like I was loosing the job all together, I'm pretty proud of that.

It was kinda fun traveling the road less traveled, thanks Hope ;P

Book recommendation (poetry)

Everything Preserved
by Landis Everson edited by Ben Mazer

Amazon Link

From Publishers Weekly

Everson, who makes his book-length debut in his 70's as winner of the Poetry Foundation's Emily Dickinson first book award, swapped poems with a young Jack Spicer and John Ashbery, then stopped writing for 43 years until a recent creative outburst. This volume-divided into two sections, one for nine poems written between 1955 and 1960, and the other comprising the remaining 66, written since 2003-quickly establishes the charms of the playful early work, as in a poem that describes "at least twenty deer" driven by famine to graze on the speaker's pillow and other "poor, unfamiliar pastures." There is a plainspoken, aphoristic strangeness at the heart of many of these early poems-set to subtle music. "The perfect form of woman is a ghost," Everson writes in his last and most ambitious early piece, "The Little Ghost I Played With." The recent work is much more uneven-though much of it has been published in major literary magazines-and there are still plenty of pleasures to be found. Everson evokes the ordinary with a continually surprising touch: percussive language evokes longing for a deceased lover ("I'll take your long legs and / the afterthought of thunderstorms / or sex all day rolled up"); a lemon tree in Eden "hides the smell / of new babies"; and a space probe begets thoughts on onions and innocence. "I am / written on thoroughly, a lost novel / found again," Everson writes, as if starting an autobiography, then turns unexpectedly: "I remember the predictable plot too late, / realize the silly sad urgency of moss."

Folks this read is only for serious poetry lovers, there are many advanced elements in this one.

Never pull a poet

Fellow poets! Never overlook the diverse uses of your skills...


Extenuating Circumstances
a poem by Paul Violi

I don't know how fast I was going
but, even so, that's still
an intriguing question, officer,
and deserves a thoughtful response.
With the radio unfurling
Beethoven's Ode to Joy, you might
consider anything under 80 sacrilege.
Particularly on a parkway as lovely
as the one you're fortunate enough to patrol
‹and patrol so diligently.
A loveliness that, if observed
at an appropriate rate of speed,
affords the kind of pleasure
which is in itself a reminder
of how civilization depends
on an assurance of order and measure,
and the devotion of someone
like yourself to help maintain it.
Yes, man the measurer!
The incorrigible measurer.
And admirably precise measurements
they are‹Not, of course, as an end
in themselves but, lest we forget, a means to propel
us into the immeasurable,
where it would be anybody's guess
how fast the west wind was blowing
when it strummed a rainbow
and gave birth to Eros.
If we accept that a parkway
is a work of art, the faster we go
the greater the tribute
to its power of inspiration,
a lyrical propulsion that approaches
the spiritual and tempts‹demands
the more intrepid of us to take it from there.
That sense of the illimitable,
when we feel we are more the glory
than the jest or riddle of the world
‹that's what kicked in, albeit
briefly, as I approached
the Croton Reservoir Bridge.
And on a night like this, starlight
reignited above a snowfall's last
flurry, cockeyed headlights scanning
the girders overhead, eggshell
snowcrust flying off the hood,
hatching me on the wing
like a song breaking through prose,
the kind I usually sing
through my nose:

So much to love,
A bit less to scorn
What have I done?

To what end was I born?
To teach and delight.
Delight . . . or offend.
Luck's been no lady,
Truth a sneaky friend.

Got the heater on full blast,
Window jammed down,
Odometer busted,
Speedometer dead wrong:
Can't tell how fast I'm going,
Don't care how far I've gone.

--------

Can you just picture the ticket book on the ground as the thoroughly disgusted officer makes his way back to his cruiser, head shaking?

Never judge a book by it's cover

This will give you chills... http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?ei=UTF-8&vid=646496&cache=1&fr=&.fdbk=mail:v/0