Dear friends,<\/p>\n
It’s been a little while since I added something to this mess. How long? To me, it seems like I last wrote a lifetime ago. You’ll have to bear with me here, since I haven’t written anything longer than a Twitter post or a cover letter for a resume for ages.<\/p>\n
A resume, you ask? You sound surprised, but I’ll explain.<\/p>\n
You may recall that I was working for McGraw-Hill answering phone calls from their salespeople to fix computer problems, reset a password, connect to the Internet, and hook up a printer. Sometimes this was a tough job when the caller was crying or when the systems causing the problems should have been out of my reach. Luckily, people don’t change their router passwords like they should, and sometimes they try to connect to hotel WiFi networks that are actually well documented. Given a bit of time, it’s easy to look stuff up and appear to be a genius. This wasn’t rocket surgery, as the kids say.<\/p>\n
As jobs go, it wasn’t all that difficult. Sure, it meant not living full time in the mountains, mostly abandoning my piney paradise, but my colleagues were great and it represented a steady paycheck. It meant that I could finally dig out of the financial hole I’d wallowed in since leaving the Festival of Dirt<™> during my largely unsuccessful attempt to build a private computer repair practice. With the very notable exception of developing great friendships, starting an independent business in a small mountain resort town seems doomed to failure.<\/p>\n
The downside of working for a book publisher in 2018 and an academic publisher in the age of Republican ascendancy, is that these fortunes are tenuous and education of the populace is not as cherished. That’s probably why they closed our office in California and off-shored our work to a third-world country<\/strike> right to work state that pays minimum wage for the same work—Ohio. <\/p>\n
The upside of working in Northern San Diego County is moving in with my lovely sweetheart. We’ve been dating for over a decade and she’s been waiting and waiting and waiting for me to settle down and take a moment to think about what’s really important—sitting in a cold cabin, broke and sulking, or spending sunny days with a sweet girl. That’s when I called up the courage to propose marriage.<\/p>\n
And that’s exactly what we did.<\/p>\n
We got married at a real, bona fide castle and made up our minds to live happily ever after. Being as non-committal as ever, I made clear my intention to review this whole marriage thing on our 50th anniversary to see if things were working out as planned. This seems like a fair compromise and should serve to keep both of us on our very best behavior.<\/p>\n
I subsequently got a new forever job working for a California state university. One of them. It’s up to you to guess which one.<\/p>\n
There’s an awful lot of stuff in the middle of all of this that I’ll get to in a little while. What’s also coming is, essentially, me figuring out how to work a new camera. I hope it’ll be worth your time, but it’s pretty important to note that it may not be.<\/p>\n
Let’s waste your precious time together, shall we?<\/p>\n
Yes, lets.<\/p>\n
Your pal,<\/p>\n
– bob<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear friends, It’s been a little while since I added something to this mess. How long? To me, it seems like I last wrote a lifetime ago. You’ll have to bear with me here, since I haven’t written anything longer than a Twitter post or a cover letter for a resume for ages. A resume, … <\/p>\n