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It’s the thoughts that come to you late at night that throw you for a loop the most – the “what if’s”, if you follow me. I sat around tonight, downloading my many, many, many CDs from over the years into my faithful Mac Mini, and the old gray matter got to wandering/wondering…what if my little boy thinks I’m the biggest nerd on the planet? Seriously…what if?

My friends thinking this – I can deal with. I’ve dealt with it for nearly 20 years, and I’ve gotten comfortable with it. Ever since 8th grade when I had that all-so-brief dalliance with popularity with my buddy Scott Morelli, and decided that ditching “true friends” in exchange for “popular friends” just wasn’t worth it. All who know me now know I’m a nerd/geek at heart…it’s just who I am. But, somehow, my son thinking it is a very different matter.

The boy isn’t even born yet and I’m already worrying about how I size up in his eyes. Is this normal? Is this rational? Regardless of what it is, it’s what is going on…I’ve got some serious stage-fright about how I’ll appear once the curtain is up on this parenthood. And – this is the weird part – I’m confident in how I’ll do as a parent. I’ve got love coming out of every pore for the little monkey, and he isn’t even here yet. In addition, I’ve had a strong notion of the type of parent I’d like to be for many years. Also, I really couldn’t ask for a stronger partner in sprouting this little bean than LampLover. She’s been raised with most of the same values as myself, and we’re both in tune with the basic rules of how we’d like our child to develop. But, outside of the basic “outline” of our son’s growth…I just wanna be cool. I wanna be a dad he can come to and talk with and not worry about any sort of harsh judgement from. My dad was this way with me – granted, it was an every-other-weekend kind of relationship with him, but it was still that way.

So…is it wrong to want to be your son’s hero when he’s not even a part of our physical, breathing world? Any other dads think this same way? Maybe I’m just a nutty monkey. I have no issues with that, really. As long as it all works out in the long run…and it’s a long run still to come. The starter’s gun hasn’t gone off, and I’m already working over the neuroses. Nice…

I don’t have one of those jobs that inspires – no life-changing decisions are made at my work, no lives are bought and sold, no empires created or crumbled. That said, however, I don’t dislike my job. It’s relatively challenging, consistantly changing (something I enjoy that others perhaps do not), and I’m compensated adequately. It’s not a job that inspires. That’s just fact.

So, Mondays are always an obstacle. Add to this that I have been in a allergy-induced daze for the past week (I hope it’s allergies anyway), and you have a whole new dislike for Mondays. There are about 40 elective surgeries I’d rather go in for than go to work tomorrow. Seriously – 42, I think.

But, life will go on – and once I’m there, and plodding away at my desk, taking my two daily allocated “smoke” breaks – which, for a non-smoker like myself, gives me time to walk around and listen to my iPod – I’ll adjust and things will be just ducky. I’ll be a working zombie monkey, but at least I’ll be there. Whiling away the hours until I can wrangle one of those “jobs that inspire”. They aren’t on Monster – trust me.

Other than the zombie worker thing, other things are good. The baby monkey is doing well, and if it is cooperating on Wednesday, LampLover and I get to find out if it’s a SheMonkey or a HeMonkey. As long as all the appropriate toes and fingers are there, and the brain works, I’ll be a happy papa.

Monkey out.

Skipping the obligatory “Dang, I haven’t blogged in a while” drivel…. (you’ve only heard it a hundred ways from a hundred sources).

Big news rumbling in Camp WiredMonkey. You may think you know it, but you don’t…it’s not ready for blog dissemination yet, but contact me and I will release it on a case-by-case basis. That sounds sufficiently snooty. *grin*

Big News has left me so very happy here…it’s been a whirlwind week, and it was sent spinning again today with the sudden announcement that yours truly has new job responsibilities, title and hours all at once. Wow. Good news is that it makes work suck just a little less, and that makes my day just a bit brighter.

Upcoming weekend is a MONSTER weekend in terms of concerts, and I’m trying to figure out if I can make it to just one of them, and praying a miracle makes it possible to hit both. Live comes to town on Saturday and plays a nice little intimate venue in Lakewood – an quaintly upscale district of Dallas known for large old houses and small old clubs. It is bound to be a good show. I haven’t really been impressed with an album that Live put out since they put out their fifth album, “V”, about 4 years ago. I haven’t LOVED one of their albums since their second album back in ’95. Yet, whenever I get to see them, they tend to put on a good show. And, it’s been about 4 years since I’ve seen them live, so I’m eager. Then – on Sunday – Alice in Chains (AiC V.2) plays in Grand Prairie at Nokia. I’ve read about 3 reviews of this tour they just kicked off last week, and apparently it is a great show. It’s AiC’s first tour in over a decade, and they are toting out all of their great tunes. Yeah, they don’t have Layne, but even still…seeing Mike Inez hammer on the bass and Jerry Cantrell dissect the guitar…wow. How can you pass that up? Apparently you can if you’re watching a budget. Argh. Will have to get with the LampLover and see what she thinks about a spontaneous act of irresponsibility.

Lastly, as I promised an update in my last post – the evening with A & E (check your cable listings?) did *not* contain late night trips to Denny’s with stuffed animals or E on a leash…but DID contain a small amount of veldting and a tune about Constitution State fornication. Along with equal amounts of reminiscing, story-telling and alcohol, it was a fantastic visit – only more time would have made it better.

I finally got my new toy to help me post! I’m sorry, but sometimes it’s the smallest victories that make you feel like you have some semblance of control over your life. Good times.

Over the 4th of July, I had the pleasure of getting away from it all. LampLover and I took the invitation of a couple of dear friends, and got away to the mountains for the long weekend. We were in the western arm of the Ozark mountains, in the rural northeastern region of Oklahoma. I didn’t even know the Ozarks made their way into our northern neighbor before we left for this trip, but there they are. It was great for me – made me a little less homesick for travel in the northeast, as it was almost identical to driving in parts of Maine and New Hampshire. LL, our friends and I used the holiday weekend as an excuse to eat lots of food, lay about near the water and take fun nature hikes and blow stuff up. Yep – the great American tradition for celebrating the birth of our nation – let’s see how much of the land we love we can catch on fire! The weekend stayed relatively flame-free, and aside from poking myself in the arm with a lit incense stick (non-scented and used for lighting the fireworks), it was injury free.

Work has been a grind lately. I feel like I caught the hem of my shirt in the big Corporate Machine last month, and it proceeded to pull me in an bend, spindle and mutilate me a bit. Monkeys don’t like being caught between cogs. We don’t really understand cogs. Just give us food (and beer in this monkey’s case), let us sit in the tree and don’t bug us too often. If you do, we’ve got poo and we know how to use it.

Not to overshadow the other post – I’m keeping this one short and sweet. This is my new toy. Only discovered down-side to new toy so far: Inability to post to Blogger. I’ve been trying to post for the last week or so, and so far it comes to the site, lets me create a post, but then won’t update. Doesn’t like Safari or Firefox. *sigh* Oh well – everything else on it rules. We’ve decided to name it Fred, in the grand traditions of great Freds everywhere.