The Chris Casey Experience

I can keep it a secret no longer: I’m starting my own side business designing Web sites for small businesses. I have far too much Web design “in me,” especially while working at a job where the management doesn’t seem to think much of my ideas (which are, of course, brilliant). You can only update static pages and send out friggin’ mass emails for so long before you start thinking, “Say, I have eleven years of experience doing the professional Web design thing; perhaps I could leverage this somehow to help fill the money bin behind the mansion. Getting kind of sparse in there.”

Of course, these days it’s not enough to hang out a shingle or wear a plain white T-shirt with “WEB DESIGNER” across the chest in block lettering. You also need connections, you need plans, you need bigger better deals *snapping fingers repeatedly*. I’ve spent the better part of two weeks trying to write a business plan as a result, and let me tell you, a more boring and repetitive document you’ll never see. It’s like taking a grand idea and disassembling it, like a music box, until you have a sad little pile of concepts which individually seem mundane. “Companies need Web sites; I provide Web sites” is where my head was to begin with; simple but effective. “Companies need Web sites, and so I do this and this and this and this and this and contracts and hosting and marketing and five-year projections and pricing and blah” takes all the fun out of it. I mean, it’s nice to have an explicit road map and guarantee that I won’t end up in the gutter and everything, but where’s the charm?

I get the feeling I’ll be saying “Where’s the charm?” a lot the next few weeks.

I went to work for a couple of days this week. BOOOORING. Thus I shall amuse myself by recounting random things from the cruise. Follow along if you wish.

• We met a nice young couple from Finland who unfortunately had unpronounceable Nordic names. Seriously. Like some sort of exotic bird call rather than sounds created by any human mouth. So my wife and I started privately calling them “Rolf and Inga.” If by an amazing coincidence one of you happens to be reading this: Even if we did ever learn your names we’d still call you “Rolf and Inga.” Sorry. It has momentum now. You’ll never escape it.
• A big “thank you” to the tour guide lady in Belize whose name was something like Ngosi for introducing the delightful phrases “You better Belize it!” and “UnBelizeable!” to my wife’s everyday vocabulary. No really. Thank you SO FREAKING MUCH.
• Despite all medical evidence, it is demonstrably possible for a human being to eat for 16 hours straight.
• Apparently I’m allergic to Neutrogena Fresh Cooling sunblock. I’ve been wanting to scratch the rash on my legs with a gardening trowel for over a week. Good thing I have the sand flea bites to distract me.
• My wife gets a little huffy when I take pictures of an attractive woman’s butt. Who knew?
• I couldn’t tan if you painted me with tan house paint. Burn, sure; tan, no.
• Street musicians in the Caribbean seemingly have no trouble when strange people walk up and start playing their instruments. Shipboard musicians, on the other hand, freak out when anyone comes within fifty feet of their stuff.
• Don’t try the conch nuggets. Get anything else. Trust me.

Ding, cruise is done! We took the Carnival Valor from Miami to Grand Cayman, Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras, Belize, and Costa Maya in the Yucatan, plus a couple of days at sea in among all that. We had a few panic moments (“Where’s our tender? What do we do now? What did that guy say about poisonous snakes in his thick accent?”), but all told it was 98% fun and relaxation, 1% confusion, and 1% severe sunburn.

We kissed a stingray, got kissed by a dolphin, visited Mayan ruins, toured Belize City, saw dance and music and culture, ate enormous quantities of food, spent hours on our balcony, lumbered around in gaudy shirts taking pictures of everything like a couple of tourists, and otherwise enjoyed the hell out of ourselves. Unfortunately, we had a room directly below the restaurant, so we heard a lot of THUMP THUMP CLOP CLOP CLOP tap tap SCROONCH while we tried to sleep. I also had some sort of weird allergic reaction to the spray-on sunscreen, which gave me tiny red itchy bumps all over my calves and stomach. Ah, the price we pay. Plus the four grand or so. At least nobody got sick.

I go back to work day after tomorrow. Thank heavens I added a few extra days to recover; I’ve been in a fog since Sunday night. I can’t even come up with a funny way to end this post. (So maybe I’m back to normal after all. Har har.)

Now everyone can see how much I suck. Hooray.

My wife’s birth certificate came in from Puerto Rico this afternoon, AFTER she had already requested another copy using some funky online form that the P.R. Federal Action Administration (or something like that) pointed her toward. She’ll have two copies and wants to try to get a passport with one of them.

We’re off to the Caribbean. Hooray hooray.

Oh crud, now she’s gonna make me go shopping.

Personal stuff ahead, and it’s a long twisting story with no real ending to boot. So that’s two reasons you probably won’t want to read this update.

Still here? Okay: Donna (my wife, for those scoring at home) and I are going on a cruise. We don’t have passports, but we’ve gone in the past with just our birth certificates (which I understand you won’t be able to do after this year, but at the moment that’s still kosher). We came home and realized we had lost our birth certificates. Well, crap. But hey, we still had six weeks. We found an official document which sure looked like her cert, and I sent off for another copy of mine from the state, so all was well.

Donna decided she wanted to get a passport. Great. She filled out the paperwork, sent off her birth-certificate-like document, paid extra to expedite things, and we were assured that she’d get everything back in plenty of time. A few days rolled by, she tried on her swimsuits, we got all excited, etc. Then we got a call from the state department: Donna’s birth document was NOT a reel-O-fficial birth certificate. Well, double crap. Okay, so we’ll order her a copy and get that all sorted out. No problem, right?

Except for one tiny thing: Donna was born on an Air Force base in Puerto Rico. We started fishing around and discovered that a request for official documents from P.R. could take up to six weeks. At this point, we had about four until the cruise.

Multi-crap.

Donna immediately sent an official request to P.R. next-day air which they didn’t actually sign for until four days later. We asked my brother-in-law the missionary to call the Department of Records for us and speak some of that there Spanish to them, but they didn’t seem too interested to help out. She’s been looking into those companies which tout two-to-four-day certificate delivery service, but they all say the same thing: Ultra-Super-Fast Service Guaranteed except Puerto Rico, which can take up to 30 business days. The cruise line says she MUST have a birth certificate or a passport to get on the ship. The State Department says she MUST have a birth certificate to get a passport. The fact that she has documents which she could not have received without a birth certificate (driver’s license, marriage license, teaching certificate, etc.) doesn’t enter into it. Puerto Rico says “Get back to us after the World Cup’s over, okay?”

So now we’re taking it to the next level. I wrote letters to my U.S. representative and to the rep from Puerto Rico. Donna called our U.S. senator’s office today. She also got the number of the P.R. consulate in Orlando, Florida. Everyone she’s talked to today seems very willing to help. After a week of very bleak news, we think we’re finally getting somewhere.

We may have just paid cruise money for an $89 plane flight to Miami. If I post a big “WOO HOO” then we got her cert. Otherwise, prepare to read the darkest, angriest blog post in the history of mankind. The suspense is killing me. Literally.

I’ve spent a few minutes over at archive.org plucking up a bunch of my old Web updates and vomiting them like lovingly digested worms into the gaping mouth of my new Web site, so that it may grow healthy and strong with the history of its forebears. Good lord what a disgusting and convoluted analogy. I’m sorry you had to read that.

It’s not the entire history of my stupid little site (stretching back to 1995), and it’s not even comprehensive for the period I do have, but it’s content. I was also blogging before blogging was cool, so that should get me some points with all you young kids. Hey, this balding, greying 40-year-old is JUST LIKE YOU! Doesn’t that make you wanna accept me into your clique? I even listen to that rap music you guys are all excited over, and I have one of those Xbox 360s! We can totally play HALO 2 and hang our pants off our butts and talk about Howard Dean and how much fun it is to pierce our lips and … Hey, wait, come back here!

I notice that my traffic has jumped since I added some content on this site. For those of you passing through … er, hello there, don’t mind the dust, this site isn’t exactly live but it’s not “PRIVATE GO AWAY MY SLIP IS SHOWING” either. I’m moving stuff over from an old static site which I’ve been cluttering up with content (such as it is) since 1994. I know it’s not all that impressive, but it’s mine so bleah.

Real content will follow soon. I tell you what.

Where the hell have I been, you ask? None of your beeswax, I reply.

… Okay, okay. I have this amazing idea for a Web site redesign. I’ve been working on it off and on since even before my last update. Seriously, you guys are gonna plotz (in a good way). I wanted to get that new design up and out there before I resumed updating this site with whatever the heck it is I usually type here. Canning recipes or something. I forget.

Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men often prevent a person from getting Web sites finished in a timely manner. To be honest, the jay-oh-bee has a siphon attached directly to my enthusiasm-for-Web-stuff glands, so when I come home all I want to do is crack open some sitcoms and drool gently on the upholstery. New Web design? Oh yeah yeah I’ll get to that not much left won’t take any time to finish up placating hand gestures

Three-hundred-odd days of hand gestures later, here we are. I really don’t have much left to go on that Web design (honest!) but you’ll just have to bear with me. I’m easily distracted and none too bright. You know, a typical webizen.

Um. Not like you guys, of course. You guys are cool.

Anyway, new site’s a-comin’ one of these days. It’s based on a blogging engine but it’s not a blog … exactly. No more than this page is a blog. Well, maybe a little more. Aww, just wait until you see it, okay?

I’m back. The passing of my mother in January took a lot ouf of me. I’ve been tired all the time, scatter-brained, distracted, hard to concentrate on anything; sort of a cross between depression and ADHD. It wasn’t until April before my wife mentioned that I was acting halfway like my old self, and even then I’d just stop in the middle of things and drop into a blue funk for an hour or so. My wife, already long-suffering, deserves some sort of medal.

I’m probably gonna be a downer for a while yet. If you’ve come here to read something ha-ha funny, like more diatribes about Jay Cronley, you’ll have to wait until I can muster up some ire at his sophomoric writing style, humorless and uninspired subject matter, and poor grasp of paragraphing. Right now, I’m just not really up to it.

If you’d like to read it, I’ve saved my original post about Mom [below]. It’s hard for me to read even now.

In other news: I may start redirecting you guys to another Web site soon. I own about eight URLs and have a pretty nice Web space that has a lot of cool backend options, and yet for some reason I continue to plink around in this pansy Cox space that doesn’t even allow for really basic custom CGI. Laaaaame. So if the two or three of you who have this place bookmarked suddenly find yourselves redirected, don’t panic. Just update your bookmarks like good Interweb citizens and carry on.

So wish me luck as I’m about to enter … the blogosphere. Dun dun dunnnnnnn.