To Drown

Drowning is hard
But not when you work in an office.

Here and Today

Sometimes I feel satisfied with my placement in life. I am happily married, have a stable job in IT and have a roof over my head.
This should be enough.
Shouldn't it?
There are times though, I wish my life had taken a different route and wonder what avenues I could have taken instead.
If only there was a way to peer into another plane of existence, another timeline where I exist as well.
*On First Street I am a writer living in Queens, NY.
*On Second Street I am a director living in Pasadena, CA.
*On Third Street I am a architect living in Auckland, New Zealand.
*On Fourth Street I peer around the corner and wonder where time has gone.

Manchester Part II

We find ourselves in Manchester yet again in a place a little different from our first Manchester abode.
Instead of a fourth floor apartment we're now in a two-floor townhouse with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a garage.
After getting settled in we will do what I am referring to as: The Dinner a Month Challenge. Doing this will force us to get out more and actually see more of Manchester and the surrounding area. I've permanently lived in New Hampshire since '08 and I am yet to see much of what Manchester, Concord, Portsmouth and other Southern New Hampshire cities have to offer.

This is our rough schedule as it stands so far:

March – Moe Joe’s Restaurant – (Portuguese\America)
2175 Candia Road
Manchester, NH 03104
(4 out 5 Stars - Had Portuguese Breakfast: 2 Eggs, Linguica, Home Fries with sauteed onions, peppers and crushed garlic, and a Portuguese English Muffin)

April - Bonsai's Restaurant – (Chinese\American)
2264 Candia Road
Manchester, NH 03109-5716

May - Aloha Restaurant – (Chinese\Hawaiian)
901 Hanover Street
Manchester, NH 03104-5420
(3 out of 5 stars - Egg Rolls, General Gau's Chicken, white rice)

June – Café Momo – (Nepali)
1064 Hanover Street
Manchester, NH 03104-5506

July – Moritomo Steakhouse and Sushi Bar (Japanese)
32 Fort Eddy Road
Concord, NH 03301-7404

August – Nutfield Ale & Steakhouse (American)
55 John E Devine Drive
Manchester, NH 03103

September - Pochito’s Mexican Restaurant & Cantina (Mexican)
33 South Commercial Street
Manchester, NH 03103

October - India Palace (Indian)
573 South Willow Street
Manchester, NH 03103

New rigs, new setups, new devices

Boredom.

While most people get to go around and have fun, go to the beaches on the ocean, hang around peaceful lakes and spend time with friends - I work.
I work, I eat, I sleep and I work.

Sometimes I write, but not often enough. I need a real hobby - writing is a career choice, although more of a side project than anything else.

My new future hobby: range shooting.

Go figure?


Sig 556 (with Sig 550-style furniture)


Glock 30

Post Grad Life Pt. 3

*Just about everyone moves away from our current apartment area, either back home or to other living arrangements.

*Bought and built a new desktop computer, the first new desktop I've had in seven years.

*Haven't lived at home for six years at this point and have been with girlfriend for over three and a half years.

*Co-writing one major writing project as well as producing an animated variety show\comedy website\blog. (I'm the one on the right side of the main picture.) Might also have another co-writing project coming up.

*Been at current apartment for almost two years and actively looking at other apartments to live at.

*Both myself and girlfriend now have full time jobs with benefits.

*Won a bid on a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee at an auto auction. Fixed up a bit and now selling for a small profit.

Post Grad Life Pt. 2

*Fifteen month long I.T. contract job carries over as we move from Manchester, NH to a third floor apartment in Derry, NH. It's a much nicer, two bedroom apartment for $960 a month rent.

*Purchased a newer used car (2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse) right after the Accord's untimely demise. The cost was a little over $8500 for a car with half as many miles almost twice the horsepower and a much larger engine.

*Purchased a truck (1993 S-10 Blazer Tahoe) for winter purposes for $800. Insured, registered and brought down to RI to have it worked on by friends. Gas line and brake line replaced. Put about $1000 of work into truck, still running well for the exception of a few electrical and button-related hiccups.

*Longest contract job ends, followed by over two months of unemployment and unemployment checks.

*Contract Agency connects me with my first full time job in the I.T career back in Nashua less than a mile down the road from my last workplace.

*After a year of owning the Eclipse it has cost over $1400 in repairs and maintenance and soon another $1400 if it isn't sold before the work needs to be done (i.e. new brakes, new tires and cable-shifter issues). The car also is experiencing paint-delamination, which would cost up to $1000 to re-paint and fix.

New Obsession

Never make the mistake of actually going and physically seeing and feeling something you really want, as it'll only make you want it more...







Moto Guzzi V7 Classic

"...solitude is the richness of self."

I am the loner that everyone knows and nobody knows.

Disobedience in the eyes

I sit here in an uncomfortable wooden chair meant for dinner parties with a cheap liquor and I write.
I write to write, but I also write for financial gain; which is the sad, but honest truth. I am too tired to coast along under the thumb of debt. The same debt just about everyone knows of. I write and write and write. I change and edit, add and remove, simplify and complicate. And with help too.
I would like to live a life free of heavy loan expenditures, constant car repairs and of bigoted backwater crossroads.
Here I see the big picture and smile in the face of it and although it doesn't smile back I find myself filled with hope. The hope that someday I can pull myself out from under that thumb and live the life I truly aspire to have.

A free life.

Falling Seasons

Autumn is the only season of the year I feel homesick. It's a perpetual anxiety that lingers throughout the day and night that stems from the feeling of the cool, but not yet cold weather.
Something about open skies, a bright sun and an almost wintery chill that comes through screened windows to exposed skin that reminds me of a past that I cannot fully recall.
At home the trees are about to change colors and the bay is creeping onto the property and for once everything seems quiet - except for the occasional ocean breeze and scratching of fallen leaves scuttling down the dead end road in small packs.
There needs to be a large screened porch surrounding me with a view, with wicker chairs and classical music playing on a small radio with the smell of frying eggs coming in from a kitchen window.
I feel like traveling, but at the same time I feel like settling.
When I wake up in the morning I want to walk to my large sliding glass doors and see rolling hills and mountains or the large expanse of an ocean or sea while sipping hot tea.
During the Fall I wish I was home.

Never stop walking

Pick up your damn feet and keep on walking
do not pause to look either way,
but instead concentrate ahead and never stop.

Memory Ballad

Every dream is a constant reminder of the past, present and future based on personal experience. In these dreams there is an inherent recollection of every exposure, intimacy and savoir-faire of a person. Whether they are young or old, male, female or in between - it doesn't matter.
I used to remember my dreams, and in those most lucid moments I could pick out my own timeline as though it was written on a chart. Here I was born, and over here I cried, and here I laughed, loved, kissed, ran away and returned.
Dreams are abstract documentaries on your psyche, and a cross section of your own longevity.
Where do I stand at these crossroads? In what direction do I point myself? When does past, present and future become one? Or does it choose to remain fully hidden under psychosis or under one's unwillingness to remember?

Death of a Four-Wheeled Turtle

As one car passes another takes its place.

And it only seems like yesterday that I was so excited to pick up my first car with money I had earned and saved over four years. And it was only last week when that first car, which I had put so much time, money and effort into died a quiet death in the town it had gotten so used to inhabiting. With a full tank of gas it sputters its last gulp and ceases to drive.

Now, with my second car I hope to not make the same mistake again. But sometimes I think about my first, like a person's first love, wondering if it's in a better place - its remnants now spread thin among many being useful to others where it just wasn't to be for me.

For me cars are like dogs, they are companions that you can't quite talk to you, but you have a mutual understanding however frustrating the relationship can be. And for now I am learning the language of a new companion.

Sun Baked Tiles in Desert Sands

My car is a dead shell,
a turtle with no legs.

Nicotine

I am like nicorette,
nice and good for you.

I stop the bad habits,
the unclean and unhealthy ways.

But still,
at the end of every day,
you steal a smoke and recede,
and you never say.

by Benjamin Cardoza
written November 21, 2006, 3:04 AM