{"id":66690,"date":"2011-10-05T02:10:05","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T06:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/66690\/4-years-3rd-quarter-smell-winter\/"},"modified":"2011-10-05T02:10:05","modified_gmt":"2011-10-05T06:10:05","slug":"4-years-3rd-quarter-smell-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/66690\/4-years-3rd-quarter-smell-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Years, the 3rd Quarter and The Smell of Winter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Four years ago today, I became a resident of Washington state, arriving here from California. Weirdly, I had three occasions today to say in three real life encounters, \u201cit\u2019s funny you should ask that, because I moved here four years ago today.\u201d The first two were instigated by me as I tried to create rapport with potential customers at work; the third was at a gas station where I was the customer.<\/font><\/p>\n

I mark today as my arrival date in this state even if I mark the end of September as my departure from California.\u00a0 A speedy driver in a car can make the trip from Seattle to San Francisco in 13 hours or so; I took 3 days.<\/p>\n

Invest half an hour in Joko TV and watch the Tour d\u2019Moving d\u2019Joko\u2026 Here is my home movie chronicle of my epic journey from California to Washington.,<\/p>\n

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In some ways, I\u2019m surprised I made it here alive.<\/p>\n

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and at my new home…<\/p>\n

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I reflected recently in status updates here and on Facebook about the Autumnal equivalent of the wonderful feelings one gets on the first sunny and warm days of spring.\u00a0 The first rainy and cold days of Fall generate the opposite feeling.\u00a0 Today, I had the same sort of summer\/winter juxtaposition that I was negatively referring to in my first comparison.<\/p>\n

It happened at work.\u00a0 I had just unboxed a new range.\u00a0 I brought the empty box back to receiving and asked the manager there if he had need for this cardboard structure.\u00a0 He asked me to bring out to the outdoor garden department whose manager had been asking all morning for something to put her dead plants in for compost.\u00a0 Fall: the season of dying.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t get out to the outdoor garden department of my store very much, and as I wheeled this empty box out to them at about 10 AM, the first thing I noticed was the temperature difference. 70 degrees inside; 55 degrees outside.\u00a0 Then I noticed the smell.\u00a0 Pine. Peat. Flowers.\u00a0 Nothing smells quite like the harmony of odors one gets in the garden department of a big home improvement store.\u00a0 It\u2019s a wonderful smell.\u00a0 {erhaps it was because I had to first pass through the Christmas displays (yes, they\u2019re already up) to get to this smell, but I was immediately thrown mentally into the heart of Winter.\u00a0 Ah, the coziness of a fire in the snow, the congregation of family, all those great memories rekindled by the amazing power of the olfactory sense were brought afresh by me wheeling this empty box into the Garden department today.\u00a0\u00a0 The sense of smell\u00a0 has remarkable memory inducing qualities. I got this wonderful feeling of Winter… and as I generally love life, I got reminded of all the beautiful feelings of winter…<\/p>\n

This romantic nostalgia for the change of seasons is all well and good when under a greenhouse roof and being paid $18\/hr. The wonder of cold and wet weather is quite something else when faced with a 4 mile bicycle ride in the rain when budget cuts have killed bus rides in your area.\u00a0 This was my scenario on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\"\"Like dogs, we bicycle riders notice one another.\u00a0 We can\u2019t help but judge each other too.\u00a0\u00a0 Me in my helmet and bicycling gloves am a step above the simpleton rider.\u00a0 I nod to the guys in their spandex and flourescent shirts who are quite obviously really into cycling.\u00a0 Me, I\u2019m somewhere in between.\u00a0 I do what I have to do the best I can, even if I don\u2019t really want to be doing it, and certainly don\u2019t enjoy it.\u00a0 There are times when I\u2019m coasting downhill and the wind becomes exhilarating that I enjoy it, but for the most part, not having a car really sucks.\u00a0 People see me riding a bike and they assume it\u2019s because I am saving money, being environmentally conscious or wanting to stay fit.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 None of the above. Its because the goddamn courts won\u2019t let me drive due to my history.<\/p>\n

I made a huge step today in fixing that.\u00a0 Come Winter, I\u2019ll have a car.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I mentioned work.\u00a0 I have the next two days off.\u00a0 I HAVE TO make a significant home movie in these next two days, but I have no idea what it will be about\u2026<\/p>\n

LOOK AT THIS CHART!!!<\/p>\n

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Today marks 90 days since I\u2019ve been re-employed.\u00a0 This is a good thing because my benefits kick in today.\u00a0 I now have medical insurance again.\u00a0 Each hour I work now generates vacation pay.\u00a0 That\u2019s a good thing\u00a0 Since I\u2019ve started working again, my video production has dramatically fallen off.<\/p>\n

I was thinking about covering this song\u2026 the one I chose for my 3rd quarter \u201crandom\u201d recap.\u00a0 Anyone got a better idea?\u00a0 In any case, 14 videos for the quarter makes for a concise quarterly re-cap video.\u00a0 Enjoy!
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Four years ago today, I became a resident of Washington state, arriving here from California. Weirdly, I had three occasions today to say in three real life encounters, \u201cit\u2019s funny you should ask that, because I moved here four years ago today.\u201d The first two were instigated by me as I tried to create rapport […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,44,17,10,8,25],"tags":[81,398],"class_list":["post-66690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-holidays","category-home","category-life","category-music","category-world","tag-joko","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}