Got them "vacation's over, back to work blues"

Yet another vacation draws to an end. Nine days off from work and school both! Yipeee. It has been awesome. This must be what it feels like for someone who just won the lottery, or just retired from their job. No alarm clock ... no deadlines ... no appointments ... no responsibilities ... lol ..... but of course, tomorrow it's back to reality. Actually, it's back to reality tonight since I do have class tonight at CPCC.

So what did I do on my vacation you ask? Ok .... you didn't ask but I'll tell ya anyway.

I got up on Sunday morning the 5th and drove up to Kernersville and spent Sunday, Monday and part of Tuesday with my folks. Dad put me to work for most of that time. We had to repair a fence that got blown down in a storm. It wasn't all that bad. Mainly just setting posts in the ground and concreting them in. Digging two foot deep holes 6 feet apart down the side of a driveway is not my idea of fun, but it went pretty well.

Tuesday and Wednesday I mostly lazed around the house. Cleaned up, did a few odds and ends ... and went for a bike ride at Francis Beatty park.

Thursday I drove up to just west of Morganton, NC and went trout fishing at a state-stocked stream called Curtis Creek. It's about 2 miles of a quickly running stream, mostly about 3 feet deep .... deeper in some places ... which is chock full of rainbow, brook and brown trout. Caught a few trout on fly fishing tackle and had a generally great day. There is something genuinely refreshing and destressing about standing in a cool mountain stream surrounded by nothing but trees and wildlife .... gently casting a fly-line upstream in hopes of luring a big chunky rainbow out from his hiding place behind a rock. I could do that every day if it weren't so far to drive!

On the way back to Charlotte, after fishing, I passed through Belmont and stopped off at Belmont Food and Beverage and shared a couple pints of beer with my bestest friends in the whole world, Larry and Dona. A perfect ending to a perfect day!

Friday I decided to hit a local pond I frequent and do some bass fishing. Not much luck with the bass, but once again it was a golden day out by the water. Fishing rod in hand, birds singing in the trees. No stress!!! After fishing, another stop at BFB to sip a few ales with Larry and Dona!

Saturday my bud Jeff Austin drove down from Kernersville and we spent the day watching some ACC basketball and sitting around in my living room with my two acoustic guitars, picking out some blues tunes. Later that night we joined two other friends up at Midtown Sundries for some cold Guiness Ale and some redhot pool sharking! Ha! After a slow start, I actually was smoking the pool table by the time we packed up and left. My pool cue is still glowing red hot! heh heh

Sunday I watched the ACC Tournament final and then headed down to Gastonia with my neighbor, Don, to once again join Larry and Dona .... this time at RJ Gators, where we drank a few cold brews, snacked on bar food, and watched the NASCAR race. Gotta let my redneck flag fly once in a while! lol

Today .... Monday ..... chores and a quick mountain bike ride down at Renaisance Park. I'll be heading to class in about 4 hours and that will officially be the end of my awesome vacation!

Sometimes I come to the end of a week off actually looking forward to going back to work, but not this time! I could keep on keeping on like this forever! lol

Life is good!! (when you don't have to work!)

Bored on a Monday

One of the downsides to having Sundays/Mondays off work is the whole boredom issue on Mondays. All of my friends and neighbors are back at work and the one or two coworkers I socialize with outside the workplace have Fridays/Saturdays off so they are at work too.

Now, this can be a good thing. Sometimes it's nice to have a day with no one bothering you or wanting any of your time. A day where you're free to do whatever you want to do without worrying about the phone ringing, or someone showing up on your doorstep. Also, it's a great day to get chores done like grocery shopping, going to the mall (ie. Bass Proshop) etc without dealing with the usual crowds.

But ... today I'm just bored. It's another crappy weather day ... gray and cloudy/foggy and misty like it was all day yesterday. Not exactly a good day to take the dog for a spin around Freedom Park or to take the mountain bike for an excursion through the trails of Francis Beatty. It's one of those days where I'll end up surfing the net half the day or going to Blockbuster. I do have to be at school at 6:00pm so I do have something to look forward to. But until then it's gonna be a long day I think!

So ... what needs updating?

Hmmmm ...... no new development on the Todd/Tori front. We're still living apart. Still talking on the phone. Still getting together occassionally. We're not a couple. But she still seems to not know if she wants to be or not. Sometimes I don't either. I'm not really looking for anyone else at this point, but I'm not going to turn away if I happen to meet someone.

Actually, I have met someone recently who I like a lot, but right now we're just really good friends. She's about 15 years younger than me, about 25 years old ... which is sort of different ... but when I'm around her I don't even think about the age difference. Like I said, we're not dating or anything. We're just friends but sometimes I think maybe I'd like to be more than friends with her and lately I've been getting a little vibe from her of the same.

Time will tell. Like me, she is a very, very busy person. She works full time and is involved with a whole slew of outside interests .... number one being that she sings in a band. That's how I met her. The drummer in her band is an old friend of mine and I started going to see them play around the area. She and I hit it off the first time I met her and lately ... I don't know ... we'll see. It is kinda nice to at least be sort of "interested" in someone for a change. Even if nothing happens with it.

Work sucks as usual. The merger is complete and Useless Air and America West are slowly integrating the workforce/management/ etc .... our new CEO talks a good game and promises a new outlook and a brighter future and a new corporate culture .... but so did Wolfe, and Ganghwal, and Siegel, and Lakefield ..... etc etc ad nauseum ..... So our hopes aren't very high.
To quote the Talking Heads song: "Same as it ever was ... Same as it ever was ..."

School is especially tough this semester. I'm still only taking two classes at a time, but this time I'm in class four nights a week instead of the three last semester. So by the time Thursday night rolls around I'm pretty whooped. Gettin' up at the crack of dawn and not getting home until sometimes around 10:30p - 11:00p adds up and my sleep deficit slowly builds throughout the week. By the time Sunday morning rolls around all I want to do is sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep. Since this semester began I've slept til after 10:00am each Sunday morning ... just trying to get back up to speed from the week.

But I'm still really, really enjoying school. The classes are just so much fun. When you're there you really don't think about the time. Usually it flies by anyway. Most of our work is hands on in the lab type stuff. Running the printing presses and making film/plates etc. We don't do that much classroom/lecture type material.

The end of the " new career" tunnel is still a looooong way away, but at least I can finally see the little twinkling light at the end of it. The day I turn in my ID badges and walk out that door a free man will be one of the best days of my life. It's great to have a goal in life!!! And what a goal .... to get the hell out of Satan Airways!!!

Well ... that about does it for today ... I'll try to write more often ....

Check out my MySpace page here: http://www.myspace.com/webturbo

In The CD Player Updated

Check it out below on the right ....

I Love My Adopted Grannie

My Grandparents are all gone. But over the years I've had many "adopted" Grandparents. One of them is Tori's dear Grandmother Arlie out in Brandon, Iowa.

This is just a shout out to Gramma Arlie. She always picks me up and makes me feel good about myself. She is so unselfish even though she has been through as much or more than me in the last few years.

And everytime I talk to her she always says something like, "I just wish I could talk some sense into that Granddaughter of mine so she'd move back in with you and start over! You were/are the best thing that ever happened to her!"

I got an email from her yesterday that really made me love her all the more!

I love you Gramma Arlie!!!!

: )

Words of Wisdom

A dear friend sent me this the other day. She knows all the trials and tribulations in love that I've gone through the last two years, and she's going through similar upheavals in her life right now.

I really like these .... and think they are worth passing along. As Tori and I slowly sort out our feelings for each other, these little sayings certainly can and do apply!

Feel free to pass them along .........


1. I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you..

2. No man or woman is worth your tears, and the one who is, won't make you cry.

3. Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.



4. A true friend is someone who reaches for your hand and touches your heart.

5. The worst way to miss someone is to be sitting right beside them knowing you can't have them.

6. Never frown, even when you are sad, because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.

7. To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.

8. Don't waste your time on a man/woman, who isn't willing to waste their time on you.

9. Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the person, we will know how to be grateful.

10. Don't cry because it is over, smile because it happened.

11. There's always going to be people that hurt you so what you have to do is keep on trusting and just be more careful about who you trust next time around.

12. Make yourself a better person and know who you are before you try and know someone else and expect them to know you.

13. Don't try so hard, the best things come when you least expect them to.

REMEMBER: WHATEVER HAPPENS, HAPPENS FOR A REASON.

Return with me now ... to the era of headphones!

I finally broke down and got an iPod. I resisted as long as I could. I'm weird like that sometimes.

Most of the time I embrace new technology ... the "latest thing" ..... and can't wait to try it out. I was that way when cd's became popular. I couldn't wait to start updating my vast catalog of lp's and cassette tapes to cd's instead!

But once in a while something will come along that I just don't want anything to do with. For reasons I can't really explain. Mp3's ..... iPods .... that sort of thing .... but my resistance finally crumbled. Crumbled at the hands of eBay .... and a damn good deal on a damn good used iPod!
LOL

So now I have to figure out what I want to put on it. It's a 20 gig ..... will hold around 5000 songs, so the manual says. Well .... since I've pared down my once massive cd collection in the last couple of years, I'm not even sure if I could fill the thing up with what I got!

And of course, I won't put everything on it. Some cd's only have 2 or 3 cuts that are worth repeated listens anyway. So I can do some big time culling .... that will probably be kinda fun.

Of course, all the King's X has already been ripped and downloaded. That was the first order of business. And in the last two or three days I've listened to all their songs on the iPod.

Which brings me around to the title of this post.

Remember when headphones were all the rage when it came to really digging into your music collection? Oh I'm talking back even before the Sony Walkman came along. Back when headphones were big, bulky affairs .... that covered half your head. You'd put them on and the world around you would disappear. Even before the music started. Then you'd put in your favorite tape or lp by Rush, or maybe Pink Floyd, or Zeppelin. Or if you were really adventurous, The White Album by the Beatles.

You'd dim the lights in the room, lay down on your back in the middle of the shag carpet, and just get lost in the music. Sucked in. Surrounded by swirling delays and cascading reverbs and feeling for all the world like you were right there on stage with the band.

It was the coolest thing.

I now understand the draw of the iPod. It's the exact same thing. A return to the era of headphones. In the last few days I've found myself getting lost all over again in the cd's I've been listening to for years. Only now I'm hearing everything!! Every little whispered lyric, every bounced delay, every layered multitrack guitar .... all the little nuances that get lost in a big living room on a big home stereo system .... or drowned out by honking horns and screeching tires while in the car.

Wow ..... it is so freakin' cool!

I haven't listened to music in headphones in years! I listened to "Gretchen Goes To Nebraska" by King's X yesterday and just fell in love all over again with that record! Heard things I had never heard before. Amazing. It's like the music has taken on a whole new dimension for me.
I have barely taken the ear buds out in the last 4 days. Just to work and sleep! LOL

Like all new trends or fads, I'm sure the fascination will fade in time and my iPod will become just another part of my day to day life that I take for granted. But for now I'm indulging in some long-lost musical discoveries. All over again.

It's really made me appreciate more the music I already loved!

How cool is that?

Why did I wait so long?

Gotta go listen to Jelly Jam II now .......... ;-)

An Impasse??

Well ....
Not much going on at the moment with my "renewed" relationship. I think we've kind of hit a wall, or a plateau .... or maybe an impasse. Maybe that's not the right word. Hmmmm ....

She is still dealing with the "other man" who just won't leave her alone and get out of her life. I know how he feels. That's the weird part. haha ....

We talked the other day and she said, "I need some room to breathe .... I don't have that ..... I'm dealing with you, with him, with the daughter .... everyone is telling me how to feel and how to live my life and it's driving me insane."

So I've backed off. Not out of the picture .... I mean, afterall, I can't disappear and let "monkey boy" take up all her time ..... she needs to know that I am serious and still care .... but if she wants/needs breathing room I'll give it to her.

She and Stacia came by last week and we had a good visit but I could see the stress on her. See it in her face, in her body language, in her speech ...... perhaps the only thing worse than being lonely and not having anyone to love is having too many people in your life!

Imagine that! hehehe

So for now things are kinda at a standstill. I want/need her to settle her own affairs and get her own house in order.

But I miss her and still love her and do want to continue to try and make something out of our salvaged relationship.

Patience may be a virtue .... but it can be a frustrating one!

;-)

Love is a many splendored thing .... and a many aggravations thing too!!!!

So here it is nearly a month since my last post ..... ahem ..... thank you for reminding me, Steve .... and things on the Todd/Tori front really haven't made much progress.

Well, actually that's not true. I do think we are closer now than we were a month ago. But we are still at the "friends" stage. And probably won't be moving from this stage for some time. But .... that's cool. When I said we were being tentative, and cautious and going into this very gingery, I wasn't kidding!

Not long after my last post, we spent most of a weekend together. Probably did the most intimate talking and sharing we've done since we began reconnecting. Tori looked deep into my eyes and said to me, "I want my husband back, and I want my marriage back."

And I believe her!

But it's just not that easy for her. I think she is dealing with a lot more grief and guilt and depression than I ever have .... and more than I ever knew or guessed. If I've got a trust issue to get over, she's got a guilt issue that is ten times as big as my trust issue. She's got to work it out. On her own.

Plus ... there's another aspect of the whole thing which has to resolve itself.

The other man.

The one I nicknamed "Monkey Boy" way back when.

Monkey Boy is not entirely out of the picture. Oh, they're not a couple. Haven't been for a while. But it boils down to Monkey Boy wants her back as much as I do. And is pretty darn upset about the whole thing going on with me and her.

So now Tori is getting it from both sides. Her husband and boyfriend both laying it on thick with the "I love you's" and promises and etc etc.

I think she came close to a nervous breakdown a couple of weeks ago. And that is the last thing I want to see her go through. I told Tori that she has to resolve the matter between her and MB once and for all .... and on her own. That I would not and could not get involved in that matter.

And she understands and is trying to do that. Once he is out of the picture entirely, we can move forward. But I can't really relax and enjoy this with the slightest idea that he is lurking in the shadows.

So there are several facets we are dealing with. Not to mention my adorable step-daugther, Stacia, who I love like my own child and has been putting the screws to her mom in her own way after figuring out what was going on with us! I think Miss Stacia is overjoyed at the prospect of Tori and I "getting back together" one day. So she's throwing her two-cents in every chance she gets and driving her mom crazy! LOL

I love that kid!!!!!!!!

Well ..... that's the short story for now. It's still good. The two of them came over to my house this past Monday and we had a great visit. I looove having them here and vice versa .... but it will work itself out little by little.

I'm just so glad to have her as a friend again. To have all the hate and animosity cleansed from my heart.

If it fell apart again tomorrow, I will know once and for all that is the way it has to be. And I will accept it with an open heart and nothing but love for her. That's what all this has brought me so far! A renewal in my heart and a letting go of a lot of bad things.

I'm happy.

I'll try and keep everyone more up to date!

love to all ........

Slow and Steady

It's been about a month now since Tori and Stacia invited me to dinner at Olive Garden. That dinner definitely marked a turning point in our relationship, but there is still much work and much talking yet to do.

Last week we saw each other about every other day. Then we spent almost the whole weekend together. We went to the Greek Festival on East Blvd here in Charlotte on Sunday. Ate way too much chicken pitas and baklava but had a great time.

So are we a couple again?

No. Not yet.

We are definitely friends again. Maybe more than "just friends." But we're not a couple again. Not yet. Maybe not for a while. I think we both believe now that it is possible for that to happen.

We've done a lot of soul searching and soul baring in the last month. A lot of confessions .... and apologies .... and reminiscing ........ and looking toward the future. I've always known that I still loved her. I never dreamed I'd here the same words come out of her mouth.

She told me she has regretted leaving me from day one .... that she has regretted hurting me from day one ..... that she has wanted me back from day one ..... but her pride and her stupidity and her bad choices have stood between us all this time. It took an epiphany about 4 months ago to begin slowly bending her back towards where "she was always meant to be."

Ok .... so now the inevitable question is raised: "How can you trust her after what she did?"

The answer: "Faith."
And "Forgiveness."

That's all I got to lean on.
It's all I need to lean on at this point.

I have a strange sort of peace in my heart. Like this was meant to happen.

So that even if it all ends again tomorrow ..... I will finally know for sure. I won't be plagued the rest of my life with the "what ifs" and the "whys" and the "hows" ..... all that has been answered now.

Now it's just a matter of time. For us.

We're moving slowly and steadily and just feeling it all out and going on faith and enjoying each other's company and talking and talking and talking.

I still feel like God's hand is in it. For better or for worse. One way or the other.

As always ..... I'll keep you all updated .....

Now ...... on to lighter subject matter .......
If anyone is at all interested, I have a silly little webpage at MySpace.com.
Click here or paste http://www.myspace.com/webturbo into your web browser.
Check it out and drop me a note or leave nasty comments on the site ..... LOL .......
If you click on the link that says "View All of Todd's Friends" you'll see a picture of my beautiful step-daughter Stacia!
(shameless plug).

Ok ...... that's all for now!