Can Men Be Replaced?

I’ve been seeing lots of stories in the news recently about the rising popularity of sex robots among Japanese men. With the evolution and refinement of robotic technology, these robots are becoming more accomplished and lifelike with each passing month, and this is presented as a potentially serious threat to women. With regards to the Japanese, this is a particularly vexing question, since that country already suffers from a negative replacement birth rate. If female sex robots are the future for Japanese men, then Japan is literally doomed.

But, I’m thinking that it’s men who better be worried. Speaking as a man, I can say without hesitation that it hasn’t been a great couple of years for my gender, what with all of the sexual harassment allegations flying around everywhere. Can you imagine how it might go for my grandson once robotic technology advances another twenty years or so? What’s a woman to do if in the year 2030 she is presented with a choice between Bot #5678, a dead ringer for Brad Pitt, or Frank in accounting? Sure, Bot #5678 would involve a sizable upfront investment, but he would be covered by a thirty year warranty. Frank, not so much. In addition, Bot #5678 would have other things going for him that poor Frank couldn’t possibly compete with:

Bot #5678 would never forget to take out the garbage.

Bot #5678 would never not ask for directions because his GPS is built in.

Bot #5678 would always listen and respond immediately to spoken demands.

Bot #5678 would come with an empathy add-on which would force him to always share his feelings.

Bot #5678 would never forget birthdays and anniversaries.

Bot #5678 would excel at all household chores, especially if equipped with the vacuum attachment.

Bot #5678 would understand every aspect of the female anatomy.

Bot #5678 would always prefer romantic comedies over anything in the Fast and Furious franchise.

So, fellas, I have seen the future and it’s not very bright. We better get our act together...and fast!

My Love/Hate Relationship With Snow

I have a complicated relationship with snow. It’s very much a love/hate thing. I love how it looks when it’s falling. I love the anticipation that accompanies a weather forecast that calls for snow. I love the feeling that comes over you when you realize that a blizzard is coming and you have a refrigerator full of treats. I love how you feel when you venture out in it for the first time, laying down the first footprints.

But, that’s where the love part ends...abruptly, and is quickly replaced by deep, intense hatred.

I hate the fact that a snowstorm no longer absolves me of all of my worldly obligations. When I was a kid, six inches of snow meant freedom. There would be no school, which meant no homework, which meant spending the day building snowmen and throwing snowballs. Now, a snowstorm means I have to shovel the stuff away from the entrances to my house and drive through the stuff to the office where my worldly obligations await my attention. I hate how this shoveling business gets harder each year, leaving me stiffer and stiffer with each new storm. I hate how the world looks a mere 48 hours after the snow stops falling, a dirty, slushy mess. I hate having to share the road with all of the obnoxious owners of 4-wheel drive trucks who think that by virtue of owning such vehicles they are rendered immune from the laws of physics. I hate how freaking cold it is after a snowstorm. I hate the prospect of a loss of power. But mostly, I hate how a miserable little 3 inch snowfall reminds me of what an insufferable wimp I am compared to my hearty brethren in Maine. Also...note to self: Never, EVER move to a State where this sort of thing happens for five months a year.

On a brighter note, this particular snowfall has a silver lining in that it is a very finely frozen sort of snow, which means it can be removed with my leaf blower. In addition, today was the only day over the next three weeks that was appointment free, so no one will need to be rescheduled, a major win. 

One more thing...when I consider that my brother had to sling mail in this sort of weather for twenty years, my admiration for him goes off the charts, making me very grateful that he is now retired, sipping his morning coffee while reading this blog. Good for you, big brother.

A Brave Woman

How quickly the pace of life changes. From Christmas Eve through New Year’s Day, everything slowed down. There was plenty to do, but the rhythm and structure was gone, each day lacking a fixed schedule. Now, suddenly, I’m back on the treadmill with a vengeance, facing two weeks of back to back to back meetings, with the space in between filled with specific and familiar duties. The strange thing is...I think I prefer the treadmill. It requires greater discipline, and I take an odd comfort in discipline.

So, today Lucy has an appointment. I have shared previously here our need to find a place to board her during our upcoming floor tumult. I wrote about our unnerving experience at a local doggie daycare establishment in Short Pump. Later that day my sister told me that someone had posted a reply on Facebook asking me to send a private message concerning this matter. Intrigued, I looked and, behold, it was true,(a little reading through the Bible in 90 Days humor there). A very sweet and kind woman who has been a faithful reader of this blog and therefore was familiar with the trials and tribulations of Lunatic Lucy, simply could not bear the thought of me boarding her in such a scary place. She miraculously offered her own home, where she lives with her own skittish sheltie, Maggie, as an alternative. Of course, in this world there exist skittish dogs...then there’s Lucy. There’s a very real possibility that she will go bonkers at the meet and greet, forcing this angelic woman to rescind her kind offer. Nevertheless, today at 4:00, I will be sitting on a sofa in a house of someone I have never met to discuss terms. If this thing works out, this lady, (whose name I am withholding because A. I don’t have her permission to use it and B. My desire to protect her identity if things don’t work out), will be my new hero and earn a permanent place on our Christmas card list.

In preparations for this meeting, I have tried to imagine how it might go, and my morbid and warped imagination has conjured up a whole host of off the rails outcomes, including but not limited to, a repeat of Lucy’s imfamous Christmas Eve projectile pooping fiasco. But, my experiences in life have generally taught me that things never turn out quite as badly as we imagine they will. Our feared worst case scenarios seldom materialize. Maybe Lucy will conduct herself with great grace and decorum, in which case my reader might suspect that I have exaggerated her psychotic tendencies. I dearly hope so. On the other hand, if things don’t work out, I will always be grateful for her willingness to help poor Lucy out. Dog lovers sometimes do crazy things because of that love...like volunteering to dog-sit this girl:

The Bible in 90 Days?

Ok, so my church has challenged it’s members to embark on a plan to read the entire Bible in the first 90 Days of 2018. When I first heard of this scheme, I was skeptical of how the membership of Hope would respond to such a thing. Don’t take this the wrong way, but my impression of the congregants at my new church is that they wouldn’t necessarily be a group that would be all that eager for the Word of God. Writing that thought out makes it sound like a gratuitous insult, now that I read it, but it’s not meant to be. It’s just that Hope is a rather affluent, comfortable group of people, not a demographic which I associate with spiritual hunger and discipline. Boy, was I wrong! At last count, Hope had sold over 1400 special read the Bible in 90 Days bibles, the cost of which was subsidized by a couple of members. So, apparently, I have misjudged my new congregation. After two days of this project, I have made it through the first 28 chapters of Genesis. A few observations:

Having been a Christian for most of my adult life, I am quite familiar with the Bible, having read it with various levels of consistency and seriousness over the years, even having read it through once before, years ago, albeit over 12 months instead of 3. However, I must here confess that it has been quite awhile since I’ve spent very much time in the book of Genesis. I know every story. I’ve read them all before. But, going through 28 chapters in two days brings into sharper focus...some truly bizarre stuff.  

So far, it occurs to me that the book of Genesis probably should be banned from the public schools, or at the very least, one should have to provide an ID before being  allowed to read it, much like we must prove our age to consume adult beverages. Holy Cow, every where you look there’s somebody sleeping with somebody else’s wife, or even worse, somebody else’s slave girl! There’s rampant nakedness, mass circumcising, and even deliberate, premeditated incest. There’s drunkenness, lying, stealing and entire cities dedicated to decadence. Let’s just say that God’s chosen people cannot be accused of producing an account that makes them look very noble. The Bible is not a whitewashed, airbrushed, purified account of the Jewish people. So far, they are presented as quite a duplicitous, conniving, cutthroat bunch. But, to tell the truth, this is the thing that has always drawn me to this book. The biggest hero of the Old Testament, King David, is presented to us completely unvarnished. We see him at his admirable best and his scandalous worst. If it was only glorification and propaganda, why would the story of his despicable behavior with regards to Bathsheba be included in the narrative? For someone like me, this full picture of the heroic and the horrific give the Bible it’s credibility, and it also gives me hope. If a man about whom it was said, He was a man after God’s own heart, could suffer such monumental failures, then the fact of my own failures places me in good company.

Anyway, I’m only two days in, so who knows how long I’ll keep up the pace. So far, so good.

On a side note...I’ve enjoyed reading all the punditry over the past couple of days about how far the SEC has fallen in the college football ranks, of how the other conferences have caught up and, wow, how about the Big Ten going undefeated?!! So, the fact that the national title game will feature Georgia vs Alabama is truly hilarious to me. Listen up people...put away the shovels. Apparently, the stories of the death of the SEC were greatly exaggerated!

2018...

It’s New Year’s Eve and as of this hour, I still have no plans for the night. Yesterday began what will be a three week journey through a massive to-do list in preparation for having our downstairs hardwood floors refinished. 2018 will be the year which begins in chaos, our daily routines in tatters due to an October dishwasher malfunction. We made it through three or four items on the list yesterday in what felt like a hollow victory since the list is so long and daunting. Today, I’m thinking, will be consumed with taking down and packing up all of the Christmas decorations along with an extensive grocery shopping trip. My wife has designated 2018 as the year that she will be on a mission to throw stuff away. When she found me stacking up empty boxes from the Christmas present wrapping room for transport up into the attic, she shocked by instructing me to tear apart each box and put it in the recycling. Apparently she is dead serious with this out with the old business, so I’m hoping that I’m not included! 

One of the items on the list for yesterday was to visit a doggie daycare business in Short Pump. In a couple of weeks we will need to retreat from our house into a hotel for five or six days while the floors are being worked on, which means we will have to do something with Lucy during the day, since dogs cannot be left unattended even in dog friendly hotels. Lucy has never been boarded anywhere...for obvious reasons, making finding a suitable place a troublesome prospect. 

So, we walk into this place yesterday afternoon and are greeted by the sound of scared barking coming from behind a set of double doors. Later, we were allowed to observe the inside of the facility where the scared barking was coming from...a series of cages in various sizes, occupied by shivering dogs in various stages of nervous breakdowns. Then, we notice that one of the primary care givers was a rather large African-American man. Great. Two of the top five things that terrify Lucy the most on full display...large containers and a black man. But, it’s only for like seven hours at a time, and then we will come get her...and take her to our hotel room for the night. This is gonna be great!! Of course, I better not count my chickens. Before this establishment will accept Lucy, she must pass muster by enduring a trial run day, whereby I drop her off at 8:00 in the morning one day next week and let her interact with the other dogs and staff to see how she gets along. I’m half expecting to get a call from the large black man by ten o’clock demanding that I come get Lucy immediately, since she has barricaded herself behind several overturned cages and has taken several chihuahuas as hostages. Damn that dishwasher!!!

While all of this is going on, I’ll be starting the 36th year of my business career. When I finished my planning a couple days ago it became apparent to me that 2018 was going to involve more resolve and determined effort than has been required over the past few years. There are lots of extenuating circumstances on the calendar which require...money, so back to work I go. I will still have time for writing in this blog, but will probably write less about politics for the simple reason that when I’m fully engaged in the business of my business, politics gets regulated to the scrap heap. It’s only when I have lots of free time and greater access to leisurely pursuits that I find politics interesting. When I’m busy, politics falls back to its default position of being simply annoying. 

I have no list of resolutions for 2018, not that I can’t find things I need to be resolute about, but rather, the things I need to improve about myself are eternal, always on my list of things to work on. I will forever struggle to be more patient, kind, and understanding. I will for the rest of my natural life battle the accumulation of unwanted weight. Making a list of my personal failings only serves to remind me of their continued existence and my past failures at self improvement. So, instead, I have condensed my goals for 2018 to a workable phrase which I hope to pursue consistently throughout the year...

...Love people, use things, and worship God.

The Great Retooling

Yesterday began a two day process I endure on the last couple of work days of each year. I call it The Great Retooling, whereby I bring a big, empty box into my office and begin throwing things into it. It’s like a spring cleaning, only in December. This year it was made worse by the fact that, for reasons I cannot recall, last year’s Retooling wasn’t done. So, this year I had two year’s worth of business minutiae to dispose of. By the time the shredder guy showed up, he needed one of those fifty gallon trash cans to gather it all. Of course, maybe this year I went a little overboard. I made the snap decision to finally part with my appointment books from 1991-2014, keeping the last three years only. Now, if some auditor from the SEC shows up demanding to know where I was on March 20, 1997 at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I’m going to be out of luck. I was more sanguine about my bold decision to finally part with all of my tax returns from the last century, and the first decade of this century. Surely the IRS will let those bygones be bygones.

Today will be part two of the Retooling, and the harder part of the two day ordeal. This is the day that I plot and scheme my way to solvency. I start out by taking inventory of assets under management. Then I examine every detail of the previous year’s transactions. I then plot all of this data onto a spreadsheet, comparing it to the same numbers from the previous three, five, and ten year numbers. From this data, I can then make a reasonable projection of what I can expect for 2018. I say reasonable because, I am in the investment business, an enterprise known for laying waste to a whole host of well thought out projections. Still, I will labor on with my planning. I will then make a list of the many special expenses facing me in the coming year. A quick survey reveals many such expenses on the horizon:

# My son’s wedding

# Kitchen remodel

# New carpeting upstairs

# Two three week Maine vacations (self inflicted)

Once tabulated, I then will determine just how much business I will have to produce to meet these obligations, working backward from the amount of money required to the amount of effort necessary. I have a feeling that today’s calculations will be a sobering exercise. However, this year I will be aided in my work by a new partner:

This fine new leather briefcase was a Christmas gift from my wife and smells even better than it looks. It was bought to replace my old briefcase with which I have had a wildly successful 30 year run. But, the thing was starting to show its age, and the high fashion ladies that work in my office have gone to great lengths to shame me for carrying it around. While it is true that it was in bad shape, even getting to the point where it would leave little chunks of itself behind on any surface on which it was thrown down, it was still hard to retire the old girl:

So, I didn’t. I placed it on the floor behind one of my filing cabinets...just in case this new one is cursed or something. Listen, I built this business carrying this old thing around. I’m not about to throw it away just because it’s actually started decomposing. I am nothing if not loyal.

Anyway, I have said all of this to be able to explain the best part of yesterday. While cleaning out a drawer of my credenza, I came upon a photograph that stopped me dead in my tracks:

I found it at a particularly low point in my day. The enormity of the task was beginning to weigh on me when this picture slipped out of a pile of thank-you notes I had kept from clients over the years. I stopped. I sat down. There was no clarifying remarks on the back, so I have no idea where we were or what the occasion was. I just stared at these two strange people, familiar, yet almost strangers. We couldn’t have been more than mid thirties, meaning that this was over 25 years ago, meaning further that we were broke, with two young children. I have that cocky look of a man on his way up who thinks he knows everything, who is trying desperately to make everyone think that he isn’t actually scared to death that he’s going to be a horrible failure. But then I look at my wife...there she is, maybe 30 years old, a stay at home mother of two toddlers, looking radiant, thrilled to be dressed up and out from under the crushing weight of Mom responsibilities, if even just for this one night. That smile. Those eyes. She is ready for whatever setbacks I will encounter. She is ready, willing and able to provide the encouragement I will need when the skies become dark and laden with doubt. Every day when I come back home from my latest triumph or failure, she is going to be there to make things better. She will not allow me to give in to self pity on the bad days, or to pride on the good days. She will remind me that no matter what happened that day at work, I had duties and responsibilities right here at home, speaking of which, would I give the kids their baths? 

I slipped the picture into a special compartment in my new briefcase. It will remain there for the rest of my life.

A Ridiculous Meal

Last night, I took the family out for our only restaurant meal of the week. It was at Maggiano’s, and it was ridiculous.

Our reservation was for 7:30 pm. We arrived five minutes early to discover a large jostling crowd just inside the revolving door. Pam made her way through the throng to announce our arrival only to be told that they were behind in their reservations due to the fact that a man had fallen down the stairs earlier. In literature, this is what is known as foreshadowing. 

We found a spot in the lounge to wait out the promised fifteen minute delay, which turned into thirty. But, it’s Christmas...and who are we to begrudge the proper care of an elderly man fallen down a flight of stairs? We relaxed at our table until our buzzer finally began it’s buzzing. We were escorted to a table by a waitress who was oddly unaware of any man having fallen down the stairs. I let it go. She seemed nice.

There was a special Holiday Menu which extolled the virtues of the family style ordering regime whereby the table picks one salad, one appetizer, two pastas, two meats, and two desserts from a list of possibilities, all for the exploitive price of $44.95...each. But hey, with the pending lawsuit coming from the old man, a restaurant has to do what a restaurant has to do. My family surprised me by reaching consensus quickly. Our table would be served a Caesar salad, zucchini frittes, gnocchi with Italian sausage, ravioli, chicken piccata, beef tenderloin, topped off with a dessert of apple crustada and tiramisu. Of course, my kids being my kids, they ordered a strange assortment of adult beverages featuring copper cups, festive colors and what looked like twigs from the herb garden sticking out of the top of the glass. 

I am a veteran of Maggiano’s, so I know the importance of pacing oneself early in the meal. Although I truly love the zucchini frittes and could put on a gluttony clinic on them alone, I limited my intake to two. I also showed Herculean restraint by completely passing on the bread basket sitting provocatively at my left elbow, it’s heavenly bread smells wafting skyward. No... I knew what was coming, so I resisted.

Then our able waitress brought the main dishes, struggling to find space on the table for the four huge plates. The first taste of gnocchi put an end to my restraint. I began devouring all of the delicious bounty set before me like a man possessed. I warned myself quietly to save room for dessert, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to resist the tiramisu no matter how many slices of tenderloin I inhaled. By the time it was over, we had six takehome boxes of overflow, and a bill for over $400. My wife made the observation that we could have stayed home and ordered pizza instead, to which I observed, Yeah, for a month. As I rose from the table to leave, I was supremely grateful that I was on the ground floor of the establishment, since if I had been asked to negotiate a flight of stairs at that point, I would have suffered the same fate as the future plaintiff in the case of Old Geezer vs Maggiano’s.

After driving around for an hour or so looking at Christmas lights, we finally made it back to the house where we all managed to waddle into the house without incedent. When someone suggested that we all get back into our Christmas jammies, Sarah made her first Dunnevant-esk quip when she deadpanned, Sure...if they still fit.

Now, 12 hours later, Pam is preparing her famous Christmas breakfast. The enthusiasm level for this long awaited meal isn’t as robust as in past years. 

Something tells me we will rally...