The BlogJam

(that's web log Jeffrey A Martin)

(or for the newbies, Jeff's Sequential-yet-Random Thoughts page)

Drop me a very brief email and say "hi":  jeff@leighandjeff.com

Note sure of the blog format, but here goes:

Thursday, 5:25p, January 8, 2004

Been back home from Christmas in Orlando (Mom turned 60) and New Years Football Marathon in Traverse City.  Work's been fine but in a tedious phase, hard to establish any momentum.  Think I'm past it now.  I should start posting many photos soon.

Thursday, 1:00pm, November 20, 2003

Long time no blog.  Been on a monstrous series of road trips over the last two months, but had some fun.  After the InRoads Conference in Arizona, I had Leigh join me for dinner with Barry Mathews (big brother) and Brad Adams (boss/mentor).  She also got to meet some Bentley folks, Ron Gant, in particular.  We then did the Grand Canyon for a couple of days including a hike to the bottom.  I'll post some pictures soon.

I am happy to be home and working on one job now.  Good stuff but monstrous in amount.

Tuesday Morning, October 28, 2003

The immediate area looks good.  No likely threat over the next couple of days.  Air quality is pretty nasty, we're hanging up pork around the house and getting ham.

Monday Late Night, October 27, 2003

It looks like the Santa Ana winds are over.  The "Cedar" fire, which was the one threatening us is not moving anywhere right now, just smoldering.  It looks like the big threat is over and unless something really weird happens, we're good.  Whew, THAT was fun.  Not.

Monday afternoon, October 27, 2003

Some pix.

Winds have been reasonable.  The smoke cover is thinner (the sky is the color of a formerly-white tub that hasn't been cleaned in too long).  Still some ash following.  Things in the immediate area look pretty good.  Most of the big "Cedar" fire passed several miles to the north yesterday.  I haven't heard what has happened to the Mission Gorge front (which caused the nearby evacuation last night).  The primary worry now for us is that there are continuing evacuations along Interstate-8 several miles to the west, adjacent to El Cajon's east side.  Consistently, areas that were thought to have burned out have started up again and in a different direction (the firefighters have only protected structures, they have been unable to do anything to the fire itself (they did light some backfires in Otay Mesa (the southernmost fire).  

Leigh went to volunteer at the Red Cross today; she's scheduled to do an All-Nighter at a shelter on Thursday night.  

We're hoping that things stay calm enough to allow the firefighters an opportunity to staunch some of the fires.  The fireline is just incredibly long.

It just occurred to me what the sky reminds me of: a city lit night in winter in Buffalo:  low snow heavy clouds orange with the reflection of the city; the ash is like the premature snowflakes.  It's warm snow.

Monday morning, October 27, 2003

All the City officials just had a press conference.  They stressed how well everyone has been working together.  They had nothing encouraging to say and lots of scaring things to say like "we are concerned that the three fires could merge into one."  They're 30 miles apart!  We are sandwiched in between an ocean and an unstoppable wall of flame.  Measures so fare have been completely defensive, bunkered around houses and other structures.  They had an opportunity to extinguish the Otay Lakes fire when it was pinned against the reservoir but they sat miles away waiting at a construction site.  Now it may go 18 miles north to merge with the central fire?  Not good.  Right now the winds are minimal.  They are expected to rise to 20-25mph sustained.  There is no help, there is only luck at this point.  Next house, I'm going to put a swimming pull on the roof.

The sky is a uniform orange-tan.  There is ash on the ground but not a lot in the air.

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Long time no blog.  Lot has happened.  I had out of town training or trips three out of four weeks.  Dragged Leigh to Maine for five days. Lots of fun.  Stopped running.  Leigh's birthday was a couple days ago.  Surf lessons, keyboard, good dinner.  That's not important right now.

Right now we are watching television awaiting an evacuation order.  The City Fire Chief is showing a map of the area; there is a big red line running east-west a couple of miles north of us.  Winds are to the west and to the southwest.  We know of one couple close to us who lives in an area where 130 house were destroyed.  We hope otherwise but suspect that they lost their house.  Currently we have a number of friends in the Mission Gorge area which is currently ordered evacuated (it's directly across Interstate 8 from us.  We're hoping that Interstate 8 is an AWESOME fireblock.  The other Interstates have not been.  Our cats are in the house, so we'll be able to find them in the event that we have to go.  Booga is notorious for his late nights carousing.

The day started slowly enough with that extra hour in the morning.  It allowed us to enjoy the beautiful orange glow of sunrise.  It was a bit too orange, though, as a thick smoke layer exaggerated the color to an unnatural hue.  Early in the day, I was able to see flames when the Scripps Ranch area was burning down.  It's been very smoky since then.

All the City officials are kissing each other's butt on one screen, while in the other screen there is a long shot of our other friend's neighborhood burning.

I'll post this now while we still have power and cable.

Friday, September 12, 2003

Johnny Cash died last night.  Dad had a bunch of his albums.  I remember something about San Quintin.  Danny and I of course got a kick out of "A Boy named Sue."

It looks like all our stuff is done for the house on the bay (http://members.cox.net/spam4jam).  We have keys and will probably spend the night tonight on an air mattress there for fun.  After a nice dinner.  Leigh busted her butt handling everything on both the Vancouver sale and Chicago St purchase.  I just got back from Oklahoma.  We're ready for the weekend.

I'm feeling better about work.  Now that the "invisible and unrewarding" but highly critical overhead is mostly done, the exciting work is beginning now.  Electronic, hyperlinked learning systems.  Very cool work.  Good deal.

Haven't run in a week.  Maybe this afternoon.  It's been hot, I've been out of town and I've been sore (all my lack of activity, I've forgotten about chronic back pain).  I actually put on weight after running for two weeks.  That doesn't seem right.  I need to keep running, though, I can still run the Silver Strand in November.

Hasta.

Thursday, September 4, 2003

Got home from Traverse City on Monday for a few hours before heading to Dallas.  Leigh's parents are doing well, until I forced them to take me to Sault Saint Marie, Ontario.  I am pretty big on long road trips to see new places on maps without actually getting out of the car.  Momma P finished her radiation treatment and is looking good (I'd say "Hot" but the Geiger counters would cry "Foul!").  Went to a Traverse City Central HS football game with Dad, which was very enjoyable.  Actually the whole weekend was.

Still running every other day for 30 minutes or more.  40 minutes on Tuesday.  The 240 lbs of fat is starting to protest.  This time running is a bit more precarious because of the number of systems that are shaky (kind of like my laptop...).  

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

I've been in such a major funk over the last several weeks.  So exhausted and worried with "many masters" of three years of independent consulting.  I don't like to pick up the phone.  Not a good trend.  It's also been way hard to get my arms around the InRoads management for OkDOT.  I've there now, but it's taken two to 2.5 times longer than I expected, even without the distractions.  I am so much more efficient in an office (on the other hand, the stuff I do in offices tend not to be this nebulous and distended.  Chill.  Patience.

I was dreading indoor Volleyball on Monday night, but it turned out to be fun and relieving.  I figured out that if I stand closer to the net receiving serve that I pass a lot better around the shoulders than at the ankles.  Too bad it took me five seasons to figure that out.  My court position at the net on offense has been pretty bad over the same time period.  So our aptly named team, The Ballshank Redemption, played our first game like we had never played together before (we hadn't) getting clobbered 15-14.  We overcame an 2-8 deficit to take the second game 16-14.  We won the last game 1-0 (time limit) with a lot of controversy for one point.  We seem to be the team with the highest slop and controversy factor every season.

Feeling overwhelmed, but I made a bunch of calls, so I feel much better.  It certainly feels better to be disappointing half of everybody you know rather than all of them.  It feels twice as good.

I was pretty sore from my first run, but my run this morning felt much better.  Maybe I finally got kickstarted on this running thing (which will eventually spark a broader effort).  Hope I can stay injury free.

Sunday, August 24, 2003

Leigh's in Michigan visiting the folks.

Whoops, August 24.   That's Danny's Birthday.  I didn't forget (it's on my Outlook Calendar), I didn't even forget to call (not for over three hours at a time, anyway).  I just kept hitting "Snooze" until it's now 11:15p in Orlando.  That's pretty much my personal/family niceties in a nutshell. 

Quick recap for the last 18 months or so:  work, work, stress, stress, work, knee injury to start the summer.  Fat, slow.  Burnt out.  Travel only to work and parents (I actually did a combo trip in July).  Saw the family and met Taylor and Zoe.

Only new thing is the new rental property, which we'll want to move into eventually.

I've doing a lot of work (essentially full time since April) as a consultant on Oklahoma Department of Transportation's MicroStation/InRoads upgrade.  It's good work, but of finite duration.  Haven't done all that much training lately, need to do some marketing.  Used the first quarter of 2003 to write a really good InRoads training manual (but I haven't marketed it very hard (that, in a nutshell, is what makes me a poor businessman:  I don't balance the effort toward the actual money making part (Good lord, I just flashed back to this utterly tremendous "Theatre of Epidorous" I made for Humanities in 1983: it took three people to carry it, but 20% of the grade was on the report, which I didn't do so I got a "B."). 

Anyway, I've achieved a lot of satisfaction over the last three years; my only remaining interest is to find some sort of balance.  I am serving too many masters, I'd like Leigh be a little higher in the priority list and community to be up there higher.

Concerning my slothfest, I popped on-line today (after spending around 24 hours fighting with a balky laptop and backup system (I feel exposed without a reliable backup system, which I do not have right now)) and found out that the Silver Strand half marathon is November 16.  Which should be plenty of time to actually run in it.  Leigh and I were running around 12 miles back in 2000 in prep for a marathon but bowed out to go do "funner" things.  I haven't run since. Got out of shape instead.  The 2 miles I did tonight was a beating, I have never been this out of shaping in my life.  I always used to be able to pop back into shape after a work binge.  That certainly isn't the case at this age.  240 lbs at 37, compressed L4-L5, bad knee.  Marathons and the like exist because, without tangible goals, who would run?

Okay,  I've got to get back to work.  More OkDOT stuff; then some proposals to Bentley,  then tomorrow I'll be attending the American Public Works convention representing Archway and InfoTech (I really am behind on OkDOT).