Therapy

My therapist and I have come to an arrangement. Since I’m fixed, he naps while I peruse his library for the hour. Today it was B.F. Skinner’s Walden II. Good stuff.

Since my crisis last year, a few things have become apparent. Letting go of my small insurance companies has ended the phone calls such as:

Can you fix this thingamajig?

Highly unspecific questions send me into a dumbed down state I no longer care to inhabit. Spoon-feeding these dolts was killing me. I’d stop what I was doing long enough to research the problem, usually to find an already existing report or able to quickly modify one.

And because I don’t get inane questions out of the blue, I’ve made a significant breakthrough with my biggest account. It seems I’ve been doing maintenance. Now I’m doing development.

If you’ve ever used a banded report writer, you understand the problem. Their capabilities are limited when dealing with multiple files in one report. I’ve cobbled together a technique to assemble them beforehand and shoot them to the report. Anybody can do that. But I was able to fashion a matrix of bolded and unbolded labels and fields in a variety of locations. It rocks and enables me to save them a ton of paper. This is particularly important as we are leaving the legacy dot matrix printed forms (another arcane skill) for lasers.

You really can’t imagine the luxury of a five-part form coming off a printer. You have to print it five separate times on a laser. Therein lies the rub. Collation is a bitch. We’ve got a $30K printer to shoot at and I hope to get intimate with it.

One prob going to laser output is the doc is easily counterfeited. Those old DMP copies had gorgeous provenance.

My therapist says I’m an open person who’s managed to fashion a well-balanced life, something of which to be proud. I’m starting to see that my professional life was more complicated than was healthy.

Among the factors which must be considered is that I’m married to a Force of Nature. Currently, we’ve a house for sale (no, we didn’t close), a business to close and one to move. Were the Wife anyone else, her head would spin right off. Instead Jody seems to thrive on it. She’s running the stores and looking at properties on her days off. Needless to say, I’m just waiting for orders. By now I’m enured to the fact that whatever happens, it will entail millions of trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot.

When we opened Rubenesque for Less, she chose a Celadon wall paint with three, three I tell ya, metallic enamels to be sponged on. I was so tired and sore when that damn store opened, I thought I’d die.

Another of my changes is I don’t work out any more. I do my penance in the yard.

And I’ve added carbs back to our regular diet. Life is too short.

BTW, I’m fucking loving my new blog theme. Like all good things, it is highly parameterized. The truth is that any sufficiently designed technology anticipates your every need. Duh.

There is not to my knowledge any black in my theme. The primary font color is Midnight Blue. The header is pollen illuminated with an electron microscope.

You may notice I’ve not added back all the bullshit. If you ran my old cobbled up theme through an HTML checker, red lights went off everywhere and the biggest offender was always that fucking Amazon widget. God damn those people, I’d love to help them sell books I’ve read. Help me help you.

And yes, I’ve had a few Natural Lights, due any man who endures and pays for therapy.

The Going Out of Business Sale at Linnea’s continues apace with a general agreement among her customers:

Honey, we’re gonna miss you, but you’re doing the right thing.

Currently, and changes often come hourly (for instance, we caught Sean Coon at City Center park on Saturday while looking for locations), she’s engaged in a brutal series of buyout/management/purchase/lease negotiations with the entire populous of GSO commercial property owners.

I feel sorry for all of them. The things she’s said to her landlords are priceless. Maybe some day I can relate them.

Rubenesque must have new and larger digs. We took the current location as it was convenient and cheap. We flattered ourselves that big girls in line at Cookout! would notice the sign. That has not worked out.

So, absent our purchase of the Southeastern building downtown, it appears at this moment that you can expect Rubenesque to move and Linnea’s to continue there in a reduced capacity.