2009 – Year of the Annoyance

Well, the year 2009 has gotten off to a quick start for me and it was quickly apparent what kind of year it was going to be. 2008 was definitely a year of transition for me and a lot of other people I know. A lot of change going on and most of it was for the better.

Now, 2009, it’s shaping up to be a bit different. Basically 2009 is shaping up to be, well, annoying. First off, I felt I had to work on January 1, a day most people take a holiday for. I did only work a half day but I still had to work. And as part of my work I bought a laser printer for the company I am part of and brought it into work and got it setup. It had a few glitches but since I was printing two sided documents I didn’t think much of it. Little did I know that I had gotten a printer that really didn’t want to work much. While I was on travel the next week my partners tried to use the printer to actually print out some technical manuals as reference for our new employees. Unfortunately the printer’s idea of printing was to stop every few pages and require someone to press a button before it would continue. So instead of one person actually getting other work done they had to stand there and push the button. Which I heard about the first two or three days of my travel. I eventually got another printer that worked better and we were able to return the first printer and get a full refund but it was, welll in a word, annoying.

The next annoyance was on the day I flew out to Detroit. I was running a bit late but going out to my car I wasn’t too worried since it was early in the morning so there wouldn’t be much traffic and I could make up for lost time. As I got out to my car I noticed that it looked like my windows were damp from the fog overnight so I figured I would wipe off the windows before driving. So I tried to wipe off the windows. The moisture didn’t wipe off, it stayed there and it felt really cold. I suddenly realized it was ice, on my windshield, in San Diego. Guess what most people in San Diego don’t have in their cars? If you guessed ice scraper you now understand my problem. I will say that my Hertz card made an excellent substitute for the amount of ice I had to scrape off that morning.

So I ended up being a bit late to the parking garage and then to the airport and had to stand in longer lines than I had anticipated. At least the flight went well and I got into Detroit okay. However, the ice scraping was just the start and I was deifnitley scraping a lot of ice in Detroit. And not just in the morning but in the evenings when I headed back to the hotel. And not thin ice one morning, it was a thick, almost impentratable layer that I had to chip off. I finally remembered some of my cold weather experience that I’ve tried to block out and turned the car heater on to blasting, which helped. Of course when one of my partners joined me in Detroit on Wednesday it warmed up then and he didn’t have to scrape ice off in the morning or not as much ice. And he was complaining about how it wasn’t cold enough while I was shivering away. At least I had been able to get a pair of thermal underwear for this trip so I wasnt’ too cold but still… I lived in Wyoming for five years, lived in Oklahoma growing up and I’ve had enough of winter for a while.

Anyway, back to the annoyance, the next major annoyance has been a tooth. Part of a crown chipped off right before the new year and I wasn’t able to get into a dentist until after I got back from my trip. The dentist was willing to be low key on the tooth repair but my tooth chose to not cooperate. Turned out there was a hole in the crown and the tooth underneath was rotting out and needed to be yanked. The dentist did a good job on the tooth extraction but of course it is annoying to need a tooth pulled. And there have been problems with the temporary bridge that he put in until everything healed up. I have been back several times to either have my bite re-adjusted or to get the temporary re-glued in. Right now I’m very happy that I’ve had the current temporary in for over a week and it seems to be holding. Now, just hold on until the middle of March and the first part of April, sigh.

So those are the major annoyances I’ve had so far this year and I suspect that the annoyances will continue on. Not anything that is overwhelming by itself and something good comes out of the occurrences in the end but still… I could really do without these things. I have been thinking of labelling years in my life based on a ten year cycle that I seem to run through. If I were to name the cycle it would be the TASH cycle, for my full set of initials and would consist of the following years. I start in the year 2 since I was born in ’62. The digit correspond to the last digit of the year.

2 – Year of Good things – Hey, I was born in a 2 year and in looking back my 2 years seem to have good things happening in them
3 – Year of Inner Focus/S**t Happens – The 3 years tend to be challenging for many different reasons. My first 3 year I almost died and according to my Mom my behavior changed a lot. And my son came close to dying in a 3 year and as a result I learned a lot. Good things usually result from 3 year actions and aren’t usually quite so drastic but it can be hard to live through at the time.
4 – Year of Inner Building – Not a very dramatic year but a time of just getting along, nothing overly bad, nothing overly good just meh. ALthough my sister was born in a 4 year and that was a pretty good year but most 4 years are a lot quieter.
5 – Year of Prosperity – In these years I tend to do well in finding financial improvements. For example, I got a job in 95 out of the blue when my family really needed it. Now if I can just use this knowledge to plan ahead for 2015. 🙂
6 – Year of Testing – There is usually some kind of learning experience I go through which tests my limits in some way. My first year of marriage was in a 6 year as an example.
7 – Year of Consolidation – After all that testing I spend time consolidating what I learned and making use of the knowledge. As an example, 97 was the first year I was webmaster for our company website after spending a year working on internal sites.
8 – Year of Transition – Just been through one of those, although it was at the extreme end of the scale. Mostly good events but it can be a challenging type of year to live through
9 – Year of the Annoyance – See above description.
0 – Year of Character Building – Yet another year that is challenging to live through. As an example, my son was born in a 0 year.
1 – Year of New things – In these years I am busy trying something new and trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing. Examples are my first year of college, first year in a commercial company after working defense for many years, my son’s first year.

Just a quick assessment and review of a ten year cycle that seems to run through my life. Now if I can just get ready for next year, the Year of Character Building, sigh. I’m ready for a 4 or 5 year, thank you very much. 😉