Photo © 2010 Mike Cohen CC 2.0 BY NC ND

I apologize for the delay. It’s been over two weeks since my last post, and I haven’t replied to anyone’s comments or emails. Part of the reason is that I billed over 30 hours last week on this new software-development job, a heavy week for an off-site contractor. (I’ll have to explain to you the math of billed contractor hours versus employee hours sometime.) And I’ll probably bill about 30 hours this week, too. In between those hours—at least last week—I spent numerous hours taxiing the family around, my Beloved to and from work, my daughter C to and from school. I would get up in the morning, drive around, and get home just in time to start working with the guys at Client Z, out on the west coast.

That’s because we had one working car, and it wasn’t even ours.

As you may recall, July 7, our one working car, the Saturn, died. The transmission got stuck in first gear, and the shifter was kinda just loose in the console. In fact, it wasn’t completely loose, but it also wasn’t attached to the transmission. I drove the car down the street—in first gear all the way—to Mike and his crew at Long Life Auto Repair, my favorite mechanic and also the favorite of my brother and several of our friends. Mike is always busy like you wouldn’t believe. Apparently, the recession has not diminished his business too much. (Possibly the reverse.)

Mike finally got back to me, told me the cable connecting the shifter to the transmission had broken, and to replace it would cost over $400. We had also asked them to look into why the car tended to overheat in stop-and-go traffic; new radiator fan, over $200. The final bill came to $655 and change, money we didn’t have.

Fortunately, I have a better relationship with my parents than Lorelai Gilmore has with hers, and I wasn’t too embarrassed to ask them for a loan. If this had happened next month, after my first invoice had been paid on the software-development contract, I would have had plenty of cash. But writing doesn’t pay as well as you might imagine (in your dreams), and money has been tight. Mom and Dad opened up their checkbook, and we were able to get the Saturn fixed. Kinda. Sorta.

Skipping ahead in the story, it took several days for them to get the parts in for the shifter repair. And then it still didn’t quite work right. It still gets stuck in gear, and sometimes out-of-gear, too. Truthfully, shifting has been hit-and-miss for a while, but it’s always seemed manageable to me. (Maybe it’s the way I drive.) We imagine that it got stuck in gear, and when my Beloved tried to shift, the cable broke. I finally got the car back, a week and a half after it broke down. And while the shifter does work, I can also reliably make it stick in gear. I also know how to get it unstuck.

(Short description, if your curious: Put the car in first gear or reverse, travel in that gear, then come to a complete stop. The transmission will be stuck in gear. To get it unstuck, put it in neutral while the car is rolling. Or alternatively, turn off the engine; that will also unstick it. Similarly, from other gears, shift into neutral while the car is still rolling, or else you may not be able to get it into first. For example, if you’re driving in fourth gear, after you come to a stop you’ll be able to shift into neutral, but then the car will be stuck in neutral. You’ll need to double-clutch or maybe even turn off the engine in order to unstick it.)

The gang at Long Life Auto thinks it may be the transmission, the clutch, or maybe one of the hydraulic cylinders controlling the clutch (preventing the clutch from fully disengaging). I don’t know yet how much it would cost to replace the cylinder, but anything else on that list would surely be a pricey bill for a 12-year-old car.

For now, I alone am using the car, and only for occasional, local driving, which is all I needed it for anyhow.

While the Saturn was in the shop, I was prepared to rent a car (using money we did not have). But my friend Tony (not his real name) had an extra vehicle, a small pickup truck he uses in his plastering business. Unfortunately, he had loaned the truck to his daughter, while her car was down at Mike’s. (Ah! So that’s why Mike couldn’t look at my car! <g>) However, Tony’s daughter’s husband loaned his car to Tony, so that Tony could loan his SUV to his wife, so that she could loan her car to my Beloved and me for a few days. Somehow, they managed to pull that together within 10 minutes of discussion without getting hopelessly confused. And after the daughter got her car back from the shop, they unwound the chain, and Tony loaned us his pickup over the weekend. So I doubly owe them.

Then Mom and Dad threw a curve ball at us. Apparently, they felt bad that they had bought two cars for my brother during his life, and also paid for his wedding rehearsal. And they helped my other brother and his wife buy a house. And all they had ever done for me and my Beloved was to patiently bear with my snotty teenage independence. Actually, they also helped me out after I had totalled my new Geo Prizm in the winter of 1990. And they’ve been incredibly supportive of my writing career, such as it is, even though they may not realize how important that support is to me.

(I promise this story is almost over.)

So Mom and Dad threw us a curve ball. Long story short: they bought us a car. It’s a 2010 Toyota Corolla LE with about 10,000 miles on it, probably a corporate lease before we got it. The car pictured above is not ours, but ours is indeed silver, so it was really easy to find an online photo that looks just like it. Yes, I am now officially part of the lowest common denominator.

I actually haven’t gotten around to taking a picture of our new Toyota yet, but I understand that it’s already gotten into an accident with an SUV, in the parking garage at the doctor’s office. I haven’t seen the damage (if any), but… I had my Geo Prizm only a few months before I totalled it on I-95, and if you recall, the Prizm was essentially a rebranded Toyota Corolla. In fact, today’s Corollas still remind me of my old Prizm.

That’s why I say, God sometimes has an ironic sense of balance.

-TimK

Photo © 2008 David J Laporte CC 2.0 BY

“Why does all this stuff happen to us? It can’t be bad karma. We never did anything.” Or so says the Little One. And I think she’s right. Sometimes shit just happens.

And if it could have waiting just another month or two, I wouldn’t even be in a jam. Incredible. It’s like, just when you think things are looking up and you can breathe easy and ends will finally meet without stretching, the universe is like, “Uh. Hold on a sec—” Or as Dad puts it sometimes, “Cheer up! Things are going to get worse.”

(My Little One is not so little any more, BTW. But I still call her that. She insists. I don’t think she wants to grow up.)

Since last week, I’ve started working this new software-development contract. Last night, I had my first real “Aha!” moment. The engineer I’m working with seems a capable guy and easy to work with. Blessings for a confirmed cynic. Money’s still a little tight, until I get paid on my first invoice, which should happen in about a month. That’s how it is in independent contract work. But we can make it. And in the meantime, I’m keeping track day by day of how much I’ve earned. Yeah, money is a poor motivator, which is something that people say who already have plenty of money. But as it turns out, this contract looks like it will be bearable anyhow, and maybe even enjoyable. I was actually feeling pretty good about my situation.

And then…

Then my Beloved is taking my daughter C to her summer-school class, and the stick shift on our Saturn SL1 stops shifting. (That’s a lot of S‘ssss.) It’s stuck in first gear, and the shifter feels like it’s just hanging loose in the console.

My first thought, of course, is “transmission,” and once you use the T-word, you’re potentially talking lots of money. And this car ain’t worth lots of money. But I wasn’t planning on buying a new car, and I can’t afford one. I wasn’t even planning on buying a new-for-me, used car, not even a cheap one.

A little Googling turned up others who have had what sounds like the same problem. So if it is the same problem, and if my mechanic can find a reasonably priced replacement for the plastic part that broke, maybe it is still worth fixing.

In the meantime, I’m scraping together the cash for a tow truck and a rental car. If this had happened a month later, I wouldn’t need to scrape together the cash. Instead, I have to take time to deal with this, which makes it harder for me to find time for the contract work that will be ultimately pay for the repair.

This sucks. I’m sick and tired of borrowing against my future to pay for today’s emergencies. I wish God would just give me a break, just a small one, just 30-60 days in which I can breathe easy and sit back and go through my daily routine and all my needs will be met without a huge amount of stress.

And on that note… I guess we’ll have to see whether I’m buying a car or not.

-TimK

Photo © 2005 thomas23 CC 2.0 BY NC SA

I’m sitting here in Dunkin’ Donuts, Wednesday morning, with nothing that I feel like writing about, eating a delicious breakfast sandwich that will probably set my cholesterol and blood pressure back six months, mentally preparing for my MRI, which will take place in about a half an hour. “Mentally preparing,” that’s the medical term for “working up anxiety that they actually might find something wrong with me, or that something might go wrong, like I’ll accidentally bring a steel nail file into the MRI room and the superconducting magnet will stab me to death with it, which I’m sure you agree would be not very pleasant.”

Why am I getting an MRI? The same reason I got a new BP prescription. (By “BP,” I mean “blood pressure,” and even though it does have to do with oil, not that kind of oil.) I’m getting an MRI, because over the past several months, I’ve been suffering from headaches, debilitating at times— migraines, we think, probably.

My father also suffered from migraines when he was about my age, and my brother and I were about the same age as my kids are now. Interestingly, as soon as we grew up and moved out of the house, my father’s migraines disappeared. So my headaches may be partially hereditary. The answer, in any case, seems clear: all I have to is wait until the kids grow up and move out, and then I can have nice things again.

In the meantime, my doctor recommended I try a different blood-pressure medication. I had been taking HCTZ/lisinopril, and my BP was about 140/80, on the border of hypertension. Last week, he gave me a prescription for atenolol, which partially blocks adrenaline (a β₁ blocker). Other beta-blockers are sometimes prescribed to treat migraines, and one of the side-effects of atenolol is that it sometimes relieves migraines.

So far, its effects on my headaches have been marginal at best. But give it another week.

One thing I did notice, however, is that about an hour after I took my first dose, my BP dropped to about 100/65, leading to another noted side-effect, dizziness. Since then, my BP has partially rebounded (120/75), but it’s still lower than it was before.

Aside from the new meds, my doctor also asked me to get an MRI. I guess it’s standard procedure when someone begins having headaches, even though 99 and some-large-number/100′ths percent of the time, they find absolutely nothing. (Find nothing wrong, that is.) They originally wanted me to have the procedure done, like, on the same day as my doctor’s appointment. (Ain’t US healthcare great?!) I had them push it off a week. Even so, I’m sure the MRI will make my Beloved happy, who worries about horrors like brain tumors.

It’s almost time for me to go check in at the MRI lab. So let me end this rambling post with one more thought. If I for some reason do not survive the procedure, would my heir please post this to my blog with a note that I told you so!

-TimK

P.S. I clearly made it through the procedure, without incident, which is how I was able to post this to my blog. Maybe I’ll be able to get some kewl pictures to show.

Photo © 2005 Jimmy Hilario CC 2.0 BY NC ND

Ain’t it fascinating how your life can be completely derailed by a few days of computer downtime (and an impending new job, and a birthday party, and Mario Kart)?

My MacBook Pro’s checkerboard-display crashing problem, which first hit back in January, suddenly reappeared about two and a half weeks ago. After several hours of persistence, I finally got the computer to boot again.

All that time, I was not writing.

It crashed then once or twice more during the week, and through persistence I goaded it back, limping along.

This time, the problem seemed worse than it had in January. I felt it was about time to take it in for service. And then it stopped booting at all. I couldn’t get the computer to come back. But I didn’t know how I was going to afford the repair bill.

On top of that, my daughter C’s MacBook, which I use as a backup, it was also out of service. I had been running a data-recovery program on it for months, trying to get every last bit of data I could off of its failing hard drive. Again, I didn’t know where I was going to find the money for a replacement hard drive. But I knew I needed to work something out, somehow.

At around the same time, Danny from Hungary also ran into a similar problem. He ended up buying a new MacBook Pro, and he disassembled the old one and reflowed (melted) the solder around the graphics chip with a hot-air gun. (He posted a cool video of the process on YouTube.)

As for me, through persistence, I managed to boot my MacBook Pro using the install DVD—just once; that’s all it took. And I backed up every single piece of data on the thing.

All this time, I was not writing. I was not blogging. I was not checking Twitter or Plurk or Facebook. I was not reading my email.

Then my parents graciously offered to take me to Microcenter to buy me a new hard drive for C’s MacBook.

After Microcenter, Dad and I swung by a nearby Apple Store to see what the guys at the Genius Bar thought of my old MacBook Pro. We fully expected to have to buy a new one, because we figured it would cost too much to have this one repaired. And that kind of sucked, because just last October, I had them replace almost everything in it. Really. Back then, the computer had suffered from having been dropped and having root beer spilled all over it. (No joke.) Beside that, the DVD drive wasn’t working so well. So I had had it refurbished, which involved a new everything except the LCD and hard drive.

We were pleasantly surprised at the Apple Store, however. First of all, the Apple Genius dude told me they offered a flat-rate $310 repair service on these older MBP’s, which is much cheaper than what I was expecting. And when I told him about the October refurbishing, even though it was technically out of warranty, he snuck in the repair for free.

So my MBP didn’t cost anything to fix, but it took several days. (They also replaced the keyboard and trackpad, which they said were broken; but I swear both were working perfectly when I dropped the computer off at the Apple Store. No charge, so I didn’t complain. But my trackpad does act funny now.)

In the meantime, I installed the new hard drive into C’s MacBook and restored all of my data onto it, temporarily.

This whole process took a couple days, between backing everything up, going shopping, and restoring my data onto the new hard drive. And all that time, I wasn’t writing. (Actually, I did post one blog post, using a very old, obsolete desktop computer in my basement. Not fun.) And once I got my MBP back, it took another day to transfer all the data back to it.

Gotta cut this story short.

Bottom line: I got little work done while I was wrestling with my computer.

And then Father’s Day came upon us, this year also my birthday. And so I took it easy and enjoyed my birthday party. And my brother, bless him, gave me a copy of Mario Kart Wii. And I’ve been spending so many hours playing it that I’m finally sick of it. But I still dream about it all night long. (Seriously.) I felt an intense, primal need to play Mario Kart, to enhance my kewl Mario Kart skilz. But that’s a different post.

In between all this, a colleague contacted me about working this summer on a contract software-development project. And I would really like to have some money to invest in my writing. So I said yes, even though I’m still wary from my last software-developer disaster.

(This time, I’m going to try to avoid Idiotic Decision #3, and try not to become personally invested. From what I understand, they just want a code jockey, anyhow, just someone to sit behind a computer and wrestle with the code, not valuable advice about how to get their code to submit without the services of El Grapadura. So if the code smells like shit, well, at least they’re paying me a mint to slog through it.)

Yeah, I know money is not a very good reason to do something… until you don’t have any. Even so, money is still the most shallow, least compelling reason you can come up with. But maybe it’s enough of a reason just to last me for a few lousy months.

In any case, with me actually earning a living for a change, my blog postings may be spotty and sporadic this summer.

I ran some numbers, and… It’ll be really nice to have some money to invest in my writing.

In fact, as a big thank-you to God and the universe, I’m thinking of holding a monster book giveaway. By “monster,” I mean, “way too big.” I’m thinking hundreds of books, all being given out on blogs all over the Internet. You know, the kind of thing big publishers sometimes do and indie authors usually can’t afford.

Yeah, it would be nice to have some money to invest in my writing.

-TimK

Photo © 2010 flickr.com/yhsoj CC BY-ND 2.0

Isn’t it funny, the snippets of life that our memories recall?

Lately, my online buddy and comrade in words, Jim “Suldog” Sullivan, has been talking about his days as a garage-band bassist. On Monday, he told a story of how one of his bandmates electrocuted him as a joke. And that reminded me of one of my own stories.

Okay, first of all, I must say one thing, as a fellow musician with experience in electrical engineering: Futzing with the ground wires is not a funny joke, dude. I don’t think I would have forgiven as readily as Jim did. He’s clearly a bigger man than I. (Or maybe that shock was simply bigger than either of us suspect.)

About 10 years ago, I was a keyboardist/bassist/guitarist/vocalist in a band called Priority One. Primarily, I played bass. But both D and I switched instruments between songs. So when I was playing keys, for example, he would pick up my bass. On one occasion, we gigged at a venue that had wiring problems. I knew they had wiring problems, because whenever I touched my keyboard’s metal chassis while also touching the microphone, I got a jolt. Either my keyboard or the mixing board (or both) was not grounded properly. As soon as I discovered the situation, I should have immediately done something about it. Maybe find a foam windscreen to insulate my lips from the mic. Or try plugging my keyboard into a different outlet. Or just run a wire from the microphone to the keyboard. (And if that shorted out the electrical system and blew a circuit breaker—or caught the place on fire—so much the better.)

Instead, I figured I could just avoid touching those two things at the same time. We were performing, after all, only one song where I was singing lead and playing keys. But during that song, I realized I needed to tweak the sound on my keyboard. Without even thinking, right in the middle of a verse, I reached up to move one of the controls. Before I knew it, I had almost blacked out from the current frying my synapses. But ever the professional, I continued with the song. People in the audience noticed a strange glitch in my performance, but they didn’t know I had just experienced my own version of the homemade defibrillator.

By the way, Jim says in his band, they typically closed the performance with a song called “Last Stand.” Interestingly, we frequently closed with a fun, bluesy tune called “Last Train Out,” which D had written. Here’s a recording we did of the song, with even less quality than the old recordings Jim has been posting:

Click here for the audio

The Girl Not in the Love-Idiot Book

In Love through the Eyes of an Idiot, I mentioned a few girls I knew growing up who would have made fine companions, but whom I avoided. And I mentioned some others who would have made fine nemeses, but whom I pursued. I also knew a couple girls who made good friends, but I didn’t remember many details of our friendships, because they didn’t manage to screw me up.

One such friend recently contacted me on Facebook. I did remember her, fondly, but I couldn’t even search for her, because I didn’t even remember her name until I saw it there on my Facebook page.

We took German together—and maybe Computer Science, too—at about the same time I met Erika (the “blonde in the pink sweater,” from chapter 3 of the Love-Idiot Book). I loved that German class, because the teacher did not just have us recite vocabulary—unlike a French class I took after I moved to Massachusetts. Rather, my German teacher played games with us. For example, occasionally, we cleared the desks from a space on the tiled floor, and we played German Scrabble: Giant-Size Edition. The same teacher also taught Comp-Sci, and he encouraged me to enter a state-wide programming competition. I made it to the finals, and I still have the program listings from that project. I also remember writing a program to generate cards for German Bingo, which we also played in his class, and another program that created word-search puzzles (for German Word-Search, of course).

Back to this girl I was friends with, whom I’ll call “Bee,” which is not her real name. I remember Bee being kinda cute, short, and she had a boyfriend. (I don’t remember him or anything about him. Not that it mattered, because we were strictly just classmates and pals, as you’ll see in a moment.) Aside from German and Comp-Sci, Bee and I also took a gym class together, and one day they made us do square dancing. (I guess we had to learn it eventually.) Of course, the first thing we had to do for a square dance was to find a partner, a task I absolutely loathed, because I was no good at it. But Bee came to my rescue, and I breathed easier. She told me she wanted to be my dancing partner, because she knew I was “safe.”

Now, many boys might have been upset at such an insult. And I vaguely remember rolling my eyes in disdain. But deep down, I remember feeling touched that she would think that highly of me. And that’s the memory I carry of her.

-TimK

Photo © 2008 “that_james” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

At the Museum of Science in Boston, the last time I was there, they had a display of cockroaches, big ones. (Similar to the display pictured here, which is from the London Zoo.) Even though the buggies were behind plastic, I felt an urgent need to get out of there as fast possible.

My phobia of bugs (except for spiders, which don’t bother me much at all, except that I don’t want to get bitten)… My fear of bugs might stem from my childhood. I spent most of my growing years living in an old, yellow house on the side of a hill. A lot of pleasant memories are attached to that house, and a few creepy ones. Each year, for example, we were attacked by a hoard of ants of various sizes. Mostly, we saw the normal, black, carpenter ants, which I learned to live with and to kill on sight. We set down ant traps sometimes, in a never-ending struggle against these tiny invaders.

But we also got other kinds of ants from time to time, too. On one occasion, I pulled a box of cereal out of the cupboard and poured myself a bowl. The cereal was laced with hundreds (or maybe thousands) of tiny, brown-black ants only a millimeter or two long— I don’t know what kind they were, and I never want to see them again. (Fortunately, I can still eat cereal, but I’m religious about wrapping up the bag and closing the box securely when I put it away.)

Jim “Suldog” Sullivan’s tale of The Ant & the Dishwasher reminded me of this and a couple more of my own. And unlike Jim, I do not hate to kill insect. (Shudder.)

One night when our elder daughter C was very young, I walked into the kitchen of our upstairs apartment, probably to get a late-night snack. Unfortunately, instead, I found the kitchen sink absolutely covered with black, carpenter ants. They were marching into the kitchen from a tiny crack around the back door, straight across the wall to the sink, and then returning via another path lower on the wall.

I freaked. And as I often do when I freak, I searched the Internet for a solution. I discovered that these ants can destroy houses if they move in, though they are otherwise harmless to humans, except as pests. And more importantly, I discovered that the best way to get rid of them is probably just to get rid of whatever brought them into the house. They like sweet, fattening snacks, and they need water. Indeed, that evening, we had sliced open a muskmelon, and remains of the rind were still sitting on plates around the sink and resting in the garbage under the sink. And the sink itself was full of still-dirty dishes from dinner. I was sure that this is what drew the mass of ants into our kitchen.

I instituted a new rule (at least for a few days): Each night before bed, the sink was to be cleaned and the garbage taken out. Also, the wall where the ants had entered, I wiped it down with a solution that one web site had recommended, to destroy the ants’ pheromone trails.

And then I waited.

A few scouts. I killed them. Nothing more. I understand that the smell of dead ants encourages other (still living) ants to stay away.

Fast forward a few years. The Little One had been born, and we had moved into the bigger apartment downstairs. And the fruit flies came, en masse. They started to become a nuisance. Again, the Internet came to the rescue. I set up small, simple traps made of sugar-water mixed with a tiny bit of dish soap. The sugar-water draws the flies, because it’s a source of food for them. Usually, they land on top of the water, their tiny little feet acting like a seaplane’s pontoons. They drink their fill and fly off. However, the soap reduces the surface tension of the water, so that instead of floating, they sink, drown, and die die DIE.

But reading about this tiny species of fly, I became convinced we had an infestation somewhere, and unless I could remove the source of the infestation, none of my efforts to eliminate the flies would succeed. Fruit flies breed on sweet, decaying food. They can even make a nest out of a dropped apple core or a spill of ketchup. And at the time, we had two small children, who I’m sure could easily have left somewhere in the house a suitable medium in which they could breed. And that could be anywhere. I didn’t know where to begin looking, and I found nothing.

… until the flies became numerous enough that I could tell where they were most concentrated.

Some time earlier, we had bought the girls a play kitchen sink, with a little plastic faucet and plastic drawers and cabinets. It sat in the kitchen not too far from our grown-up kitchen sink. Both sinks were clean. But the little plastic faucet had come off of the play kitchen sink, because one of the plastic parts had broken off inside the moulded plastic sink body. Yeah, whatever. It’s plastic. It’s a toy. We had simply slid the faucet back into the hole where it belonged, even though it could now slide out again. Good enough for play, right?

Except that some little girl had clearly removed the plastic faucet, inserted leftover sandwich, and replaced the faucet. That hid the deed well enough so that none of us noticed, but not so well that the fruit flies couldn’t figure it out. I noticed that the flies seemed to congregating around the toy sink. Then that they were crawling under and around the faucet. I pulled the faucet out, and— Phewee! I was hit with the stench of flourishing yeast, as well as a barrage of fruit flies, suddenly freed from their hiding place.

Fortunately, that was good news. The plastic sink went outside, along with its passengers. The fruit-fly traps eliminated some of the last remaining stragglers, and the rest died.

But now, whenever I see a fruit fly, I wonder whether it just stowed away on a banana, or whether it’s planning on having babies.

-TimK

photo by "dragonflysky" on Flickr; © 2007 CC BY-NC 2.0

I have simple tastes. I could survive on soup and salad, and an occasional hot dog, and be happy. I need a roof over my head, companionship, and an Internet connection (because that’s business).

Nonetheless—to answer Jamie Ridler’s Wishcasting Wednesday question, “What luxury do you wish for?”—there are a few things I really enjoy that I’ve given up or scaled back on during the recession. And now that things are turning around and looking up again, I hope to enjoy these again.

• Chocolate for the family — Until our economy improves, we can afford it only as a special treat. And I hate it when I have to tell my kids that we have no sweets, because we simply can’t afford them.
• A glass of wine with dinner — Several years ago, I started drinking red wine regularly, because studies show that there are health benefits to regular moderate drinking of wine. And I acquired a taste for a glass of wine with dinner. But of late, it’s a luxury, only once in a while, but we enjoy it when we get the opportunity..
• Earl Grey tea — I ran out several weeks ago, and I’ve passed it by since then, because I’m the only one who drinks it.
• NetFlix — I consider this business, because I learn as much about writing from watching movies as I do from reading. But when my account goes down to 0, NetFlix shuts me off, and I notice it in more than just a business sense.

Now that the economy seems to be improving a little, and I’m getting more inquiries about my services, and I’m even working with a colleague on a project that could turn into something big, hopefully I’ll be able to enjoy some of these luxuries again soon.

What luxury do you wish for?

-TimK

The Missus & I are proud members of the 9/11 Club, those whose wedding falls on September 11. Of course, people are still getting married on 9/11. Numerous couples, I’m sure, got married today, September 11, 2009. (Just ask Google. He’ll back me up on this, I think.)

And to all of them, I have only one thing to say: “Mazel Tov!”

I might post more pictures next week, because I have to scan them first from the actual photos. (Remember those?)

Today, while I was waiting to have blood drawn, some folk singer on TV was singing a woeful song—I’m sure it was supposed to be woeful—about how she couldn’t forget this day, because it changed her life forever.

Look at these pictures! This is why when I heard that song, I smiled—instinctively—and thought, Yeah. It sure did change my life forever.

The rehearsal dinner, before “What Not to Wear”

Listening to my old friend sing his song “Mighty God”

At the reception.

Getting kissed by a pretty girl.

I’m about to do something in extremely poor taste; and I’m going to explain to you the reason why; and I’m not going to apologize. And you’re going to understand. And more than that, you’re also going to support me.

You see, while 9/11 for most other people holds memories of dread and of grief, for me, it holds memories of hope and of joy. Because September 11 is my wedding anniversary.

Margaret and I married each other on the afternoon of September 11, 1993. That means, this Friday, we will had been married 16 years. Not a milestone, but significant enough to keep us on the dance floor long after all those young whippersnappers have been driven off, leaving us to dance with the 20-years-ers, 30-years-ers, 40-years-ers, and… Well, you get the point.

And we’re not the only couple who was married on September 11. As they say:

Married in September’s golden glow,
Smooth and serene your life will go.

I personally know at least one other couple who was married on September 11. And couples are still getting married on September 11. And they, like Margaret and I, we all have to look to that day—not as an example of what to fear—but as an example of love, of what our lives ought to be.

Why September 11 is a special day for me

For me, September 11 is all about going through the struggle and arriving on the other side, having prospered and found joy. Because before I met my bride, I had spent 10 long, arduous years looking for love, and only finding pain. And then the secret finally clicked, and I changed the way I was looking for love, and I finally found it. The switch was almost magical. I know that sounds too good to be true, and indeed I thought it was at the time. My biggest problem was getting out of the way and just letting it happen. I was like Cinderella, except that I kept arguing with my fairy godmother that there was no way a pair of glass slippers would ever get me to the ball.

Old habits die hard, but they all died a permanent death, when I said, “I do.”

That’s why September 11 is a special day for me, because it represents for me a new life of love and companionship. And that’s why I refuse to let the terrorists rob it from me.

Let me put it this way: We were husband and wife years before the date had anything to do with terrorism. And long after the twin towers have been relegated to a footnote in classroom history textbooks—and I know it’s hard to imagine that day could ever come, but we’re already seeing signs of its approach. That’s why, long after the terrorists have been all but forgotten, Margaret and I will still be celebrating our marriage on that day.

We had 9/11 first. We have dibs! Bad things happen somewhere in the world every day, and I refuse to give up the celebration that day represents for Margaret and me. Because we have dibs. So the terrorists will just have to find another day of the year for their thing.

And that leads me into the tasteless thing I’m going to do.

I’m going to ask you to join with us in celebrating our marriage.

And it even gets more tasteless than that.

I’ve pulled out from my library a number of inspirational books, romantic books, and books about relationships. And I want to give them away with copies of my true love story, Love through the Eyes of an Idiot, because that’s they whole point of the day: the struggle I went through and the joy and love I found.

So starting on September 11 and for as long as supplies last, anyone who orders Love through the Eyes of an Idiot from my online store, for the standard price of $7.97 + S&H, can also choose one of these free-bonus books to go along with it. They’re all in “very good” or “like new” condition, and I’ll be posting a full list soon. But for now, here’s a sampling:

• The Romance Factor by Alan Loy McGinnis – The bestselling author of The Friendship Factor looks at romantic love and finds that it isn’t something you happen upon or fall into—it is something you create. This is one of the books that I read during my own spiritual awakening (chapter 9 of the Love-Idiot book), and that now I wish I had read more closely at the time, because it held solutions for the problems I was facing.

• 100 Ways to Live a Happy and Successful Life: Overcoming Depression by Frank B. Minirth, Paul D. Meier, and States V. Skipper – 3 Christian counselors list 100 specific ways to combat depression, leaning heavily on the advice and comfort of the scriptures. Having gone through and overcome my own baptism of major depression, it now amazes me that this book was in my library all along, and I never cracked it open, had completely forgotten it was there. Because the advice contained in this book are exactly the sorts of things I finally did to win the battle over my own depression.

• Self-Esteem: Gift from God by Ruth McRoberts Ward – Drawing from her experience as a marriage and family counselor, Ruth Ward challenges you to discover your uniqueness and begin to enjoy who you are, whether you’re an extrovert or an introvert. Introversion, she says, is a gift, not a personality flaw. This point particularly resonated with me, because I’m very much introverted, and I remember enjoying and being uplifted by this book.

Also…

• Healing for Damaged Emotions: Recovering from the Memories That Cause Our Pain by David A. Seamands

• Loving Each Other: The Challenge of Human Relationships, the #1 bestseller by Leo F. Buscaglia, Ph.D.

• Addicted to Love: Recovering from Unhealthy Dependencies in Romance, Relationships & Sex by Stephen Arterburn

• Joshua and the Children, national bestselling inspirational novel by Joseph F. Girzone – This is the sequel to his bestselling novel Joshua, my copy of which was borrowed and never returned.

• … and numerous others.

You see, this Friday is a celebratory day for me. And frankly, I’m feeling happy just talking about it.

To be continued tomorrow, as the date counts down…

Subscribe to this blog (via RSS or email), because then you’ll get the next post, tomorrow, in which I list all the books I’m giving away in for my wedding anniversary. Plus an extra something I haven’t revealed yet.

-TimK