dr_lizardo

Well, as of about 4:05 pm this afternoon my association with Yankee candle and Aerotek which supplies headcount to YC is concluded. I was gracious enough to hand off my ID badges to my supervisor rather than just dropping them off somewhere and disappearing. People wished me well in my next job.

We went home early, since everything was squared away for inventory and there was nothing for us to do.

Consequently, after a small bit of shopping I had time to go home and do this.





Been a while since I've taken the time for such stupidity as cooking with tea lights. The way I've done it before was just to put the tea lights in a burner on the stove, but the wax runs out and later tends to burst into flames when you use the actual gas. It seemed to actually work better this way, with the tea lights on an inverted large iron skillet. Initially I suspected It wouldn't work at all this way since I had to use two iron burner grates to keep the upper skillet far away enough for the tea lights to burn. With only one grate the tea light wicks would touch the pan being heated, and would go out.

So next week I'm off to Syracuse for Swift orientation, followed by maybe a week or a week and a half of farting around doing stupid stuff like this until I start with a trainer. Hopefully I won't run out of money between now and the next time I have a round of rent and bills.

I guess that's why I'm feeling tense. My hands are cold. But really that's just me doing the worrying to myself, so to speak. I have some ephemeral material crap that I could sell, if I need a little more cash than I have.

There is a buddhist story I've been thinking about lately. To paraphrase it.

A notorious brigand came into a village and was burning houses and doing other antisocial things when he came upon an old monk, seated in meditation.

He said to the monk, who appeared undisturbed at his arrival, " I could cut your head off without batting an eye"

the old monk replied "and I could have my head cut off without batting an eye."

The brigand understood that he had met someone greater than himself and immediately sat down and began to practice meditation, eventually becoming a significant buddhist teacher.

The thing about the wold of constant change is that there is nothing you can depend on, not even that your head will still be attached a minute from now. If you are dependent upon circumstance for your state of inner peace, you are merely a leaf blowing in the wind, with no control. That old monk had taken control of his own mind and entirely released himself from dependence upon external circumstance.

I feel tense now because I don't have that detachment from depence on the world that that old monk had. I'm still worrying about money, worried that something could derail the trucking career that I've worked so hard to get into. If something did derail that career, could I still take control of my mind? And if the career goes well, I shall find it much easier to feel calm within myself, but how much of that will be merely due to favorable external circumstance and how much due to my having taken posession of my own mind? I will however give myself some credit for taking contol of my mind; I made a decision to attempt something difficult and I followd through and did it.

And to almost completely change the subject

When I'm not slaving at yankee candle for eight hours at a shot I do in fact like to burn scented candles. I've been considering bringing a couple of big jar type candles with me on the road. I would not be surprised however if there were rules against burning candles in company trucks. They are kinda expensive and it would not do to have them get burned out, bringing about expensive repairs and late delliveries.

also

it woud be sort of embarassing if I just had a slight burn on the interior upholstery of my truck, when at some point i had to turn it back over to the company, and my truck smelled like lilac blossoms, plumeria, and possibly burnt upholstery. would not be real conducive to my image as a macho truck driver.

it would be even more embarrassing if one had eaten something particularly disagreeable to one's digestive tract, and one were farting out lots and lots of methane; with the right mixture of oxygen to methane, in the presence of an open flame, KA-BOOM. You might not totally explode the cab of your truck but maybe you'd blow out a window or two and that could be real cold if it was the middle of January. On the other hand lots of truck drivers are smokers and surely some of them must fart as well, and I've never heard of that combination of traits resulting in a truck cab explosion, so perhaps concerns about this particular hazard are not to be taken seriously.

Now and then I have periods of up to several hours wherein I feel relaxed. I'm not in such a period right now, but if things go reasonably well, and I study my Zen reasonably well, i might get to have some more of them.