Dale Miller

I made a plan early this year to have eight parties at my house that roughly coincided with the solar calendar. I wasn’t truly trying to track the sun, but the intervals worked out nicely. The next is scheduled for June 20th. If you are reading this and haven’t received an invitation, consider yourself invited. You can visit http://dale-miller.com/party to find out the details. If you are coming, please let me know so I can plan food/drink/etc.

I have spent most of today with a headache. Nothing I do seems to make it go away. Otherwise, my weekend has been okay. I volunteered to work a beverage tent at Riverfest last night. It was mainly an excuse to get myself out of the house, but it’s kind of fun. The crowds are a bit much, but I occasionally just like to sit on the sidelines and people-watch. As a result of getting out, I stayed up far too late, slept in this morning, and haven’t done anything worthwhile so far today except bemoan my aching head.

I really need to go to the grocery store because I’m just about out of things I want to eat. I’m not a big fan of driving in the rain when I don’t have to, so I’ll probably make do until tomorrow. Also, the thought of driving eighteen miles (each way) just to have variety doesn’t appeal to me right now. That is one disadvantage to living in the middle of nowhere.

I have been spending far too much time on the couch recently watching television. It used to be that I would have my television on less than an hour a week. Now I’m up to several hours a day — mostly Netflix “watch instantly”. Somewhere in between season 3 of “Red Dwarf” and “The Ant Bully”, it occurred to me that Netflix probably had some exercise videos. In fact, they do. Last night I worked my way through “Crunch: Pick Your Spot Pilates” and this evening “Crunch: Super SlimDown”. They aren’t terribly difficult workouts, but they were enough for me at the moment. I am going to try to do *something* every night to fight off the pounds. It’s not as fun as taking pilates at UALR, but it’s far better than nothing.

I was at least a bit productive today. I climbed under the house to fix the persistent water drip that I’ve known about for nearly two months but hadn’t successfully patched. This time I cut out the section of pipe and used a splice that I bought last week. I really don’t like the fact that this house is plumbed with polybutylene, because it’s hard to repair. Nonetheless, I fixed the leak and have one fewer thing to worry about. While I was in a productive mood, I got out the lawnmower and headed down to the street. I actually managed to get the yard near the house mowed earlier in the week, so this morning I tackled the right-of-way. I got part-way through and apparently killed another lawnmower. I’m not certain it’s dead, but I can’t keep it running. I’ll tear into it soon and see if I can make it last the rest of the summer, but I don’t have high hopes. I pulled out the string trimmer and finished the area I had started so things at least look better than they did.

In other news — I received another anonymous card this past week. If the author perhaps reads this, I just wanted to say that you are on my list of favorite people, and I hope to continue to hear from you for some time to come. The fun thing about anonymous cards is that I can pretend they are from anyone.

I realized that I should have applied for unemployment insurance benefits last week. Since I didn’t, that left this week. Because it wasn’t raining, and I wanted to see something different, I went to the office in Russellville rather than the one in Little Rock. The application went smoothly, and I should know the results soon. As I left the office there, I noticed this bright thing in the sky. I think I remember it from a couple of weeks ago. It was so nice to see the sun rather than rain, I went on a drive. I headed up US64 to Clarksville, and then decided to come back on the south side of the river. The only problem was, I was getting hungry for lunch. I thought I would find something along the way. From Clarksville to Midway (on Ark 22) there is nothing. From Midway to Dardenelle there is an equivalent nothing. Since 22 dropped me on the south side of Dardenelle and I was heading south on 7, there wasn’t much. I couldn’t bring myself to stop at McDonalds, and decided that a late lunch at the dairy bar in Ola sounded like a plan. I was thus disappointed to find that the Ola Dairy Bar is no more. I ended up coming all the way back home and ate Hot Pockets. Not quite what I had in mind.

Upon arriving home, I found a nice greeting card in the mailbox. It was anonymous, but offered words of encouragement and support. That made me happy.

I now have a resume. It’s not necessarily a *good* resume, but it’s better than what I had. I need a good way to simply say “I can do whatever you want me to do with computers. I’m just good that way”. I can’t figure out a reasonable way to get that point across to potential employers. In any case, I have now posted it to dice.com and applied for a couple of the jobs listed there. I also need to spend time learning to write good cover letters. I think I’m insufficiently diplomatic.

I want to have people come to parties at my house — I really do. Last night’s had a better turnout than the previous one, but still nowhere near what I had hoped. I sent out email invitations to a large number of people. For this party I had 45 people respond with “no”, 10 with “yes”, and 6 with “maybe”. The rest never responded at all. So I was expecting a small turnout and planned accordingly. The final count of attendees was 6. We ended up spending much of the time playing Rock Band and just talking. That’s a far better way to spend an evening than sitting here alone, but I would have enjoyed a few more people. I like to think the ones who came enjoyed themselves.

I have the next one scheduled for June 20th. We shall see how that works. If I again have almost no one, I may have to just quit trying.