The Add-On

Imagine the following scenario... Someone joins your  family all of a sudden, and you must do your  best to accommodate and welcome them. You take them out to family functions with you. You, for all intents and purposes, make him or her one of your family. All this in a matter of months or even days from meeting this person. You didn't grow up with them, and, to throw in a little more complication, he or she is not from your same culture.
Given this scenario, of course you're going to rub each other the wrong way once in a while. Of course it's going to be difficult to accept this person's way of thinking. Now, imagine you're a "helicopter" parent, the kind of parent that hovers over your children at all times and bails them out of every situation, every time, all the time. And imagine that this new person, the add-on, doesn't want your help all the time. He or she doesn't need it. Talk about counter-culture or being rubbed the wrong way.
I hope by now that you have figured out that this is the case right now with my future in-laws. They are good people, both of them. They care an awful lot about their children, and that is something to be admired nowadays. However, in caring so much, they forgot that their children are not children any more. The Girl is in her mid-20's, and her brother is in his early 20's. In fact, he turned 21 just last week. (More on that later.)
My in-laws are definitely helicopter parents. They try, sometimes too hard, to help out their children with all of life's issues. This is completely the opposite to my upbringing, where my mother left me alone at the hospital once because she was "not a world-class internal medicine doctor." That is, when there was nothing she could do for me, she didn't get in the way of those who could. This carried on into my adolescence and adulthood. She will not get in my way when my problems are enough for me to handle. She will, however, jump right in and have all the right answers when I need her help.
The issue with my future in-laws is that they are attempting to extend their oversight into my life. I've been on my own, more or less, since I was 16 years old. I was in college then, living in an apartment, getting into all sorts of trouble. The only trouble my parents helped me with was any monetary issue. All other things were not so big that I couldn't handle. My future in-laws, however, like to offer criticism, constructive or otherwise, at every one of the plans that The Girl and I have come up with as we go into our wedding next year. The setting for the wedding, the timing, and even the decorations are all wrong.
When I met The Girl, one of the things that attracted us to each other was that we both wanted to go to Africa and do relief work in some of the poorest, most troubled parts of the world. Well, her parents will have none of it. They don't think that an African "voluntourism" honey moon is "traditional" enough. And don't get me started on their opinion of incorporating Mexican traditions into the wedding. That's a whole other issue that still gives me heartburn.
Still, I must admit that I am happy that they love and care for their daughter as much as they do. And I am very, very thankful for all they've done for me. They've fed me quite a few times, and that ranks pretty high up in my book. But they have also began to try to influence me and my decisions more and more. It took four days of negotiating to agree on a lease for the apartment. Four days on something that took The Girl and I a few hours last year.
My Grandfather always said that you take the good with the bad, and that's is exactly how I have tried to lead my life. I have a wonderful fiancée who needs no add-ons. Her parents, mentors, and role models in her life did a great job in making her the woman that she is now. Still, sometimes you need to stop chiseling away at your sculpture and let the environment finish the job.

Happy Little Computer

So I bought myself an Asus eee PC. It is small, lightweight, and great to carry around for writing on the go. See, I have a new calling when it comes to writing. But more on that later. Anyway, this little machine came with a Linux distribution on it called "Xandros". It was good for a day or two, but then I started noticing problems. The system kept asking for updates that were not there. It also would crash too often because the computer would run out of storage space? Did I mention that it only has 4 gigabytes of storage space?
While 4GB might not seem like enough, it is enough for me. The plus side of  this little machine is that the hard drive is what they call a solid state drive (SSD). SSD are known for resisting impacts and for being lower consumers of energy. The bad thing is that they are new, and so they are costly. This amount of storage space is enough for me because this will not be my primary computer, and I plan to use it more for internet surfing and for writing. Both of these activities do not require much memory use.
My main computer will now sit at home and serve more as a desktop for getting things done in my home "office". Besides, I dropped it the other day, and it will now be three weeks before I get it back. (The repairs to it were free, though.) So I will use the netbook, as these mini-laptops are called, for writing on the go and the main one for working from home.
At any rate, I am very happy with this little monster now that I've taken Xandros out and installed "Easy Peasy Linux", a variation on "Ubuntu" Linux. By the way, I tried successfully to install Windows XP on it, and it ran well for a little bit. Then, all the windows updates were installed and slowed it down way too much. Easy Peasy is just that... Easy to install, easy to use, and it has all the Linux and Open Source software that I need to get things done. It even has Open Office, which I can use in a pinch to punch out a spreadsheet or even a paper.
Of course, there are other things that have made me very happy recently, but those are for a post at a later time.

Of course I want more money. Who doesn't? But the trick with money is to earn it by working for it. Your head has to hurt or your fingers have to bleed to truly enjoy the money you've earned. Because, if it comes free, you'll more than likely just spend it away. Do you have a dollar of your childhood's allowance? If you do, good for you. Chances are you don't.

Personally, I want to earn my money as much as I can, not excluding the once-in-a-while stroke of luck. I have plans for what I want to do in preparation for having a family. See, God gave me several gifts, and I want to put them to work. Much like the juggler with great hand-eye coordination, I want to work on these gifts of writing, creativity, three-dimensional thinking, and knowledge of all things science. If I develop these well, and put them to good use, I'll never be out of a job... I'll always have work to do.

Because that's the thing about life... You always need work to do in life or the bad, evil things come and take over your life for you. It's the aimless youths who don't have a field to plow or a car to fix after school that get in trouble. Humans are funny like that. Give us something to do and something in return for it, and we'll gladly do it. Give us a dream to conquer and a nightmare to fear, and we'll do great things.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do.

More Is More in Vegas, Baby

The Girl and I came to Las Vegas, Nevada, with her mother and brother. Tonight is our last night here after being here since Friday. That's five nights of Las Vegas. That's five nights of excesses, gambling, drinking, shows, music, lights, camera, action... Five nights I won't soon forget not so much because of what I did, but because of what I did not do.

The best thing of how I feel about Vegas is that The Girl feels much like I do. We both think that the excesses of this town could be better put to work. There is not enough recycling done. There is too much alcohol being served too liberally. Too many people are spending too much money, and many of them can't even cover their next rent bill. Too much! Too much! Too much! We don't hate Vegas, but we don't particularly like it, either.

You see, my idea of fun has never (and hopefully will never) HAVE TO include drinking. Call me crazy, but the idea of numbing my senses in order to have fun doesn't sound like fun. Sure, I'll drink in social situations. I'll drink a mojito or two (as I am doing in the picture to the left). Nothing strong. No need. Fun to me is all about laughing, forgetting my problems WITHOUT adding on to them. I love to feel alive.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for most humans. Humans love to be addicted to something. (I'll confess... I love cake.) And the thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of entrepreneurs in Las Vegas know this. They use our own human psychology to take our money. And they have become quite adept at it. I got a taste of this the day we got here.

I sat down at a slot machine and put in three dollars. Before I knew it, I had made $53. That's a $50 credit. I took out my winnings and handed the money to The Girl. (She's better at administering it than I am.) The question lingered in my head the rest of the day: Could I have won more? I felt the need to go back and gamble again. So I did. Yet my experience (or lack thereof) with gambling prevented me from gambling it all away. In the end, I ended about $10 ahead. The rest was either gambled or eaten away. They have the best buffets in Las Vegas, and the Mexican food is not bad at all.

Take this experience of mine and multiply it a few times, then multiply that times millions. That is how Las Vegas makes money even though there is so much being wasted. Give a little, knowing that the customer will come back for more, then take them for all they've got. It is the perfect business model, and no one seems to care. No one worries that there are entire city blocks being torn down and rebuilt at great cost. No one seems to worry that entire family budgets are blown on games of chance.

For The Girl and I, the worst thing is that Las Vegas represents one extreme of a continuum whose other end encompasses places like Somalia, Darfur, and Bangladesh. As much as we waste here, the losses are nothing compared to the loss of human life and treasure in war-torn regions of our world. But Vegas doesn't care. People walk aimlessly from one attraction to the next, oblivious (consciously or not) of the horrors that other humans who are worth just as much as they are wake up to every morning... The nightmare that it is to be poor, hungry, and infested with parasites.

I don't mean to be a "buzz-kill", but you can only take on so much of Las Vegas. People like The Girl and I, who really mean it when we say we want to save the world... People like me can only have so much fun in Las Vegas. We gladly paid eight dollars each to see a car collection. I gladly paid $80 for both of us to see a variety show. But I could never spend excess money so much so that I could not pay the bills, or feed my kids. I can't see myself spending money to the extent that I enebriate myself to the point I don't know what's going on. I can't. I just can't.

More Fears

I was telling The Girl the other night about how, in another universe, we never met, and I got a chill down my back. At this point in my life, it is really quite the scary proposition to think of a life without her. This is why I think I've become more afraid of "stuff". I've become more afraid of crime, of road hazards, and of the world in general. But I'm not afraid for myself. I'm afraid for her. I'm afraid that those things will come to her.
It's hard to explain.
I just don't want anything to happen to The Girl, and it probably won't. In fact, odds are that something will happen to me way before it happens to her. Great! Now I have another thing to fear.