Excuses, Excuses

People have been asking lately, “Where has Moksha Gren gone?” And it’s true, I’ve been away from the keyboard for a while…ignoring my blog responsibilities…ignoring you, my two or three loyal readers. And for that, I apologize. But I have reasons. Some of them are even valid. Others are almost embarrassing, but I’ll pull them all out for display.

Excuse #1) The Event I can’t talk about

Last week, news reached me that has had me pretty upset and has dominated my thoughts since it occurred. However, the news relates to people who were not yet ready to have these events discussed in public forum…so I was politely asked to wait to mention it in my blog. I was, of course, more than happy to respect their privacy, but it has lead to a lull in my writing since the one thing that keeps popping into my head, the one thing my brain would like to explore on paper is off limits for now as a literary discussion point.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about…sorry. This isn’t meant to be a teaser or to build up anticipation…I’m just venting what little I can.

***Update just prior to posting - I have been given permission to discuss this issue. But will do so in a future entry.***

Excuse #2) F’ing Flash Games

This one is a bit embarrassing, but I’ll fess up to it none-the-less. My brother, Jet has been working up at our new payday store for the last few weeks. Growth has been steady, but the first few weeks of a new store are always slow as you basically wait for customers to trickle in. In his down time he discovered Internet Flash games; these silly little video games you can play for free online. At first I was unswayed. Jet would play the games and I would work on tasks for my job through the home office. But over time I found myself looking over his shoulder and eventually trying to beat his scores. Damn this competitive streak. However, even at that point, I was still under control...just an occasional game here or there to pass a few idle minutes. But then I hit the mother load, a site that had compiled hundreds of these damned games into one spot. I played more and more often and eventually even started setting my laptop on a TV tray next to my bed so I could play as I fell asleep. Only one game in six or seven was worth playing for more than a minute or two, but that made it even worse. Now there was a gambling thrill in even choosing which game to play. In my quest for the next idle amusement, I jumped from game to game like some slot machine junkie running mad with her bucket of tokens. And the shear mass of games meant that even those few programs that were worth playing could keep me busy for days. And they did. I made it to level 15 on Splashback, and touched 159 balls on Ball Toucher. I frittered away hours on Ball and Cubedelic and enjoyed the mindless smashing fun of Black Knight. And the scary thing is that aside from Splashback, which Jet hooked me on, I’ve only made it up to D on the alphabetical listing of games.

So, while it’s true that I could have easily gotten around Excuse #1 and come up with other topics to write about (I still have several bios that need writing), I instead sank into the gutters of Flash addiction. I’m going to try to stay away from the cursed amusements this week so I can write more…but even as I sit here, E through Z are calling me.

Excuse #3) Moonshot put me to work
I’ll admit up front this is a pretty weak excuse and bound to get me in trouble when Moonshot reads this. It is one of the less significant reasons I did not make time to write recently. But it is a reason, so it will get listed.

The fact is, despite the late-night Flash sessions, the Gren household has been pretty productive of late. Moonshot has finally undone most of the damage my years of bachelor yard neglect inflicted to my grass and gardens. She has made slow but steady strides toward a beautiful yard. She does most of it, but occasionally she shoves me out into the heat and makes me do the man jobs: the hedge trimming, the rock moving, the weed eating, the gutter cleaning, etc.

Plus, with Pumkin’s tummy-escape approaching, Moonshot’s nesting instinct has kicked in and suddenly projects long procrastinated are finding their way to the front of our lists. So, Sunday and Memorial Day found us cleaning and reorganizing the unfinished section of our basement. This is the sort of job Moonshot loves. Getting rid of unused items, finding new and ever more efficient ways to store the few things that survive the purge, cleaning in every crevice, and making me hang shelving. Personally, I would have ignored this task for another 3 years, but I will admit…it’s truly an impressive sight to behold. I really should have taken some “before and after” pictures so that you could share my amazement…but I didn’t, so you’ll have to take my word for it. There is now a section just for our camping gear and yard games. We have a full-fledged recycling area. Boxes of family heirlooms like pictures and old 8mm film have been stacked lovingly in a specific closet. Holiday decorations are sorted and arranged for easy access. And I can one again see the surface of my tool bench and now have a basic inventory of what I have in stock. This especially is nice since I discovered that I own five nearly full boxes of 1 ¼” dry wall screws. Which means on 4 occasions I went to Home Depot and rebought them just because I had no idea I already had them.

Needless to say, after all that hard work…I needed a few Flash games to unwind.

Excuse #4) Blondie’s Birthday

This excuse is even weaker than #3 since it only covers one evening, but I’m claimin’ it. Saturday was our friend Blondie’s birthday party. We went out to Kobe Steakhouse, one of those Japanese flippity-flippity / cook-the-food-in-front-of-you / spin-the-egg-on-the-spatula type places. The room was outrageously hot, but the food was good. The company was good, but we found ourselves on the end of the table, unable to talk to too many people over the clang of knives and the roar of the exhaust fan. Dolly and Pinky’s Dad did his best to keep us company on our lonely end, but mainly we talked to each other. And I guess that’s not so bad…I mean, I did marry her and all.

Moonshot and I sullying the grill with our tofu and only had to face a few good-natured jabs. Our friends are slowly getting used to our meatlessness, which is still a relative oddity here in the Midwest.

Properly stuffed, we rolled our overfull selves to our cars after dinner and went out to Dolly and Duran’s place. They too have recently reclaimed their basement and were eager to show it off by hosting Blondie’s karaoke party. Their basement is a bit more impressive than ours since it is home to three TVs, ten or so retro gaming systems, a wet bar, and a festive tiki theme.
In all, the party was fun…although my enjoyment was diminished by my neurotic love-hate relationship with karaoke. You see, the problem is that I fancy myself a decent singer and really enjoy performing for a small crowd…so long as I’m doing what I consider to be my best effort. My family occasionally makes me break out my guitar at get-togethers and while I am always nervous, I usually end up having a blast and people seem to enjoy the show…at least enough to keep asking me to do it again. So, while I’m not amazing or anything, I like to think I’m ok. But karaoke is often problematic because I don’t know the songs. Oh, I know the chorus to almost every song on the list…but the versus are unknown to me. So Saturday night was an embarrassingly typical karaoke event for me. I stared at a twenty-page list of options for far too long, trying to remember if I knew the basic rhythm and structure of any particular song. This is especially hard to do when a different song is playing in the background. And the standard karaoke songs are the ones that you vaguely know, but haven’t heard in years. Anyway, I picked a song I thought was in my range and to which I was fairly certain I knew the rhythm. However, as usual, I got up there and butcher the verse. This pissed me off more than it should which then ruined my chorus which made me want nothing more than to get off the stage. So now I’m up there, mad at myself for screwing up, but equally angry with myself for being so upset in the first place. It’s psychotic, I know, but this feedback loop just continued until the song ended and I returned to my seat to sulk. I’m not proud of it, but I also can’t deny it…I sulk. I try to be sociable and smile, but my mind keeps whirling with my internal dialogue brought on by karaoke.

“Why the hell are you so upset about this?”
“No idea, but it was horrible wasn’t it.”
“Yeah, it was, but only because you freaked out up there. Look around you. Most the people here are horrible singers, half of them are singing songs that they don’t know the words to, and everyone is having fun.”
“Yeah, that’s half of why I’m upset, that I get so worked up over something that is clearly just fun. The other half is that I, for some inexplicable reason, hang my evening’s self esteem on my singing ability.”
“Well, that’s just stupid.”
“Yup, and yet I’ll probably do it next time too”

And so it goes for the next hour or so until Moonshot lets me know that her back and feet are killing her and that she’d like to go if possible. In the car ride home, the internal dialogue above is replayed with my wife voicing the reasonable half of the conversation. She can only shake her head and let me know how insane I’m being.

Out of Excuses

Well, that’s all the excuses I can think of and pretty close to everything we’ve been up to since last time I posted. And since I've run out of excuses and have started feeling slightly uncomfortable about my Flash obsession, I have no choice but to sit down and write.