I'm mad

I'm mad, and I'm frustrated, and I'm pissed off. Those are the three ways I primarily describe my mood lately. And the funny (read: strange) thing about it is I don't know why. Sure my job's going through as much turmoil as your average afternoon soap opera, but it's not directly affecting me that much. But I've got a horrible short fuse. I've always been a little too quick to freak out about things, but now it's almost to the point I can't control it. I get mad at friends who are going through difficult times of their own, and that's wrong of me. I just can't make sense out of what's going through my head right now. I apologize to any of my friends that I may have hurt in the past few months, I didn't mean it. I just can't seem to handle things not going "according to plan" anymore. and I don't know what to do to fix it. So I'm writing this to admit that I need help. I've talked to my doctor about the situation. I told him I'm not comfortable upping the dose of the paxil I'm on (yes, I'm freely admitting to being on paxil) and he's suggested a psychiatrist for me to meet with. I've been scared and ashamed to do it before now, but I'll be setting up an appointment to meet with him sometime next week. I can't go on like this without risking losing friends and further digging myself into this emotional hole that I've found myself in and can't get out of.

Update part 2

If you don't want see something gross, stay away from Update part 1 below. Anyways, this is a picture of the shadow box g-door's sister made for me. the flowers in it are from my dad's funeral. She took them from the ceremony and dried them for us, then framed them (if you ever need framing, go to Pat Catans in Akron and ask for Charlotte. Tell her Chris said she's the best framer he's ever met). She made a box for me, one for my sister and a bigger one for my mom. They turned out absolutely beautifully and I'm extremely thankful to her for making this memento for my family. Thank you, Charlotte.

Update part 1

Ok, this is the graphic part of my update tonight. Here's the result of the shed building experiment over at G-doors this past weekend. Hard to explain without visuals, I'll have to get a scan of the shed instruction manual to show how it happened. I got my finger caught someplace it shouldn't have been. After a visit to the friendly akron city er and 3 stitches later I was back on the road. Had a whole big finger wrapped in bandage so I couldn't type with it. I've redressed it tonight and can actually use the index finger a little bit. Typing with 9 fingers isn't very fun, kinda cramps/aches the other joints.

P.S. for those curious, the little piece of white is a piece of the bandage that got stuck in a scab. it came off after I soaked it in peroxide. now you know.

My ever inspriring CEO/CTO/CIO/whatever he is

Boss: "We can use these images for the new website, but we'd have to pay for them. some of them are 10 cents, some are 50 bucks, others are 1000 bucks. Or I can take my fancy HP *points at me* have him get all dressed up and take pictures"
CEO/CTO/CIO/whatever he is: "What? like some Chippendales thing? *proceeds to dance like an old person trying to dance cool* Our customers would be throwing up *makes throwing up noises. We'd need barf bags on every page"


oh, and you know you suck when you're so bored you're reposting surveys on your myspace bulletins, and myspace shuts down the bulletins on you. somebody's probably watching my activity saying "Jesus christ dude, go do something else" *clicks to turn off bulletins*

edit:
just messaged a friend who came online. He replied with "bad time, naked girl on bed" And with that, I'm going to go to bed and channel surf and bring an end to my wonderful friday evening.

Nobody's Watching Part 1

Funny stuff. This was a pilot produced for the WB, but since the WB is no more, it's in limbo. Read about it at wiki. Be sure to check out Parts 2 and 3 in the Explore More Videos section.

Dads

Everybody do me a favor. Call your dad, give him a hug, buy him a gift, take him out to dinner. But do it on friday, or saturday, or monday, or tuesday, or any day. Please just don't do it on sunday. Do it every day.

And if they piss you off, or if there's animosity between you, make the first step towards starting the healing process. Best case scenario, you can reconnect before either of you is gone. Worst case, hopefully, you'll be more at peace that you put forth an effort, if something should happen to either of you.

Just love your dads as much as you can while they're still around. I took father's day for granted for 30 years, and can never make up for it now. And it's eating me up inside knowing I'll never be able to make right with him the things that weren't. We'll never get to have the conversations that needed to be had. I'll never get to tell him I loved him.

And don't leave out mom either. Fuck it, just love everyone in your life as much as you can while you can.

And for those of you who have unfortunately lost your fathers like I have, I can only offer you my most sincere and deepest sympathies. Father's day was never an earth-shattering day for me, but from now on, it will hurt. This first one is excruciating. The next one won't be as bad. The next one after that, will be less painful, etc. But there will always be an ache in my heart when this time of year rolls around. I can only hope that all of you who have gone through what I'm going through this year have been able to find your own special ways to remember him on this holiday. And if this has upset you in anyways, I truly apologize. I'm doing this for selfish reasons to help myself, and never intended this to bring pain or discomfort to anyone, please know that.

Vacation Pictures

I've got a gallery of pictures I took while on the trip. I only took pics about 3 or 4 times while down there, but ended up with quite a few. Oh and for those of you questioning my photography skills in the later pictures on the beach, I was told by someone ( who will remain nameless ) to act like I was taking pictures of my family, but in reality focus on a woman in the background, so I could get pictures of hot women on the beach. So that's why some of those beach pictures look like I'm not really trying to center on the family member in them, because, well, I wasn't ;-) I'll highlight some of my favs here, but you can see them all by going here..

Vacation 2006 Pictures





I liked how the sun just sort of looked to be sitting on the top of this little area of trees.




I liked how I caught the gull and the sailboarder in this one. I came really close to getting the sailboarder's sail around the sun, but he wouldn't cooperate ;-)




Not sure what it is about this one, but I just really like it.




I tried to frame the sun on the point of one the lower fence posts, but it didn't quite do what I wanted. I still like the picture though.




The fence from the preceding picture was surrounding this little local cemetary full of graves from back in the 1800s, some of the people buried there hadn't lived more than days or months before passing away.




There's probably a technical photographical terminology for this, but I just really like taking pictures with this kind of perspective to them





What would a set of vacation pictures be without a picture of a wave crashing on the beach?

Post-Vacation Update

Well, we made it back to northeast ohio last night. We left the beach house at 7:45 in the morning, and pulled into Rootstown at 7:10, so we made it back in a little under 12 hours. No problems on the drive back, was very smooth.

For those of you who didn't get to see all the videos I did, here's links to all of the vids:

Day 1 and 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5

Overall it was a good trip. Had some fun, relaxed. There wasn't much going on after day 5, so that's why the videos stop there. We hung out at the house and just relaxed most of the last few days. On friday night we all went out to dinner as a family, then went back to the beach and had a little moment for dad. I had picked up some golf balls that had dad's name on them, 2 of them. I took one and threw it out into the ocean and will keep the other one. We also took one of his old outer banks hats and threw it out into the ocean as a family. It was so painful not having him there with us. I'd done good the whole trip until the last day when it really hit me that he wasn't there with us. But I think he would've approved of our trip, I think it would've lived up to his standards :)

Vacation Update

Been having internet problems down here. But I've been able to get videos from Day 1+2 and Day 3 posted online. For those who want to check them out, go to..

Vacation Video Journal - Day 1 + 2

and

Vacation Video Journal - Day 3

As I get more videos done, I'll try to get the urls posted here for everyone to watch and laugh at my sorry videography skills ;-)

Pre-vacation update

In the next..hour and a half or so, I'll be out of work and headed home to load up the car and make my way south towards north carolina. It's time again for the Semi-Annual Copac Family Outer Banks Excursion Extraordinaire (SACFOBEE for short). It used to be an annual summer tradition to take the family down there, but last year we were unable to due to me not having vacation time here yet, and the passing of my brother-in-law's father.

Anyways, the plan is to get to the Homewood Suites outside of the Richmond, VA airport tonight and stay the night, then get up saturday morning and drive the rest of the way to our beach house on the beach.

While staying there, my plan is to make daily blog updates on what we've done that particular day. Maybe even do some video journals if I feel motivated enough.

This is a much needed break for the entire family. We've had so much crap thrown at us the past couple of years, we need a chance to just get away and recharge the batteries. So, while I'll do blog updates daily, be forewarned, chances are good there won't be much exciting to talk about besides sitting on the beach enjoying the ocean.

IS IT 12:30 YET?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

A look back

Some of the more memoral posts in the life of my blog:

First Recorded Post

First date notes with Tammy

Sister's house fire

Second relationship of the summer falling apart

Hiking and mom trouble

The eharmony rejection

The begining of the Kendra situation

Kendra and I become officially bf/gf

Kendra situation high-point

Beginning of the end with Kendra

Beginning of Dad troubles

Kendra situation officially over

The passing of my father

Rant

Geocaching - return to positive posts

Wow. so much has happened in the past year, it's a bit mind boggling. Here's hoping not nearly as much happens this year :-P

To Tim and Jeff

If you're reading this, stop. Leave and don't come back, please.

HIGH-larious

Geocaching

UPDATE: Should've put this in the original post, but here's the site we use as our reference geocaching.com

Me and the Door's went geocaching for the first time. It was a blast. We tried 4 different caches, were successful in finding 3 of them. For those that don't know about geocaching, you get the latitutde and longitude coordinates of a cache on the net. You enter them into a handheld GPS unit and then go to where the coordinates are located. Somewhere in the general vicinity will be some kind of cache. The caches contain some kind of log book that finders sign and note when they found it. Micro sized caches are only big enough to hold the log book. Other caches are larger and contain kitschy kinds of trinkets. The concept of those is to take something from the cache while leaving something in the cache. Other caches are multi-stage caches. The coordinates you get from the net lead you to the first stage, something in the first stage will give you direction or coordinates to the next stage and so forth.




First one, was in an industrial park in Solon. There was a little cul-de-sac. Took us about 5 minutes of walking around till Scott noticed a fake-looking bird's nest. It had a small quarter sized container in it with a couple folded up strips of paper that consisted of the log book.

Second cache was a failure. It was supposed to be a multi-stage cache, which would've been very cool to explore. Oh well, we'll find a good multi-stage sometime.



Third cache was fun. It was near the gorge in the Brecksville Reservoir. We had to walk up through what looked like an access road for park rangers, maybe. Then we got into the middle of the forest itself. Took us about 10-15 minutes to find this one. Ended up being what looked like a big plastic mayonnaise jar. It was full of a bunch of kitschy stuff.



The fourth cache was a fun one. We were following the directions on the GPS and had no clue how to get to it because there was no roads leading to it. We eventually found an office park that was the closest thing to it. We walked through the neatly mowed grass near the MetLife/Fox Sports Ohio building to a forest where we found a small ammo box.

On the way back to scott's we decided on a way for us to leave our mark on the geocaching world. I've got a set of cheap plastic poker chips. We stopped by Office Max and picked up some circular labels. Scott's got a domain name he hasn't been using for a while. So we're gonna setup a simple site, put the domain name and a unique number on the chips, then start leaving them in the caches that we find in the hopes that someone will find one of our Door-bloons (think dubloons, but since we're Door's we're calling them Door-bloons), go to the site and tell us where the found it. And hopefully our Door-bloons will spread across the nation to other caches.

To see other pictures from our first Geocaching expedition go to my Yahoo Photo Album

blog is back

Hello all. the blog is back after a slight period of time in the Blog Protection Program. It spent a couple weeks as a father of four in minnesota. Needless to say it's glad to be back as a blog.

it's early, I'm trying :-P

raw day

this is not gonna be a good post, so don't read it if you're looking for a pick-me-up





having a very "raw" day as I call them. woke up this morning ok, got in the shower, and for some reason or another I Was back at akron city hospital watching dad thrash around in the bed (as we would later find out as he was dying) I keep flashing back like this alot latley. it hurts so bad. I can't get over how he had to go, it's just not right, it's not fair, and I don't know hwat to do about it. I'm so mad and I'm so frustrated and I'm so scared and I ache so bad inside. I feel like I'm right on the edge between keeping a slight hold on the situation and just totally falling apart. but then again I'm gonna go to bed here and I'm gonna get up in the morning, and life's just gonna keep on going. and I'm gonna have to keep on going with it somehow. most days aren't this bad. but today mom and I both just lost it. didn't help we watched rent tonight. the hospital scene and the funeral scene did us in. we're both having a real hard time coping with the way he had to go, and the shit he had to be put through all through january. it really hammers home the concept that there is no concept of fairness in the world. good things happen to bad people, and horrible things happen to amazingly good people. and there's not a damn thing anybody can do about it. You just have to somehow come to grips with the idea that nothing is forever. change is inevitable. bad change is ever as likely as good change. and there are times when people get flooded with good changes. And there are times where people feel overwhelmed with bad changes. I'm at the point now where I have trouble looking for positives. I used to be a fairly optimistic person, but now I'm expecting my new car to break down. I'm expecting there to be problems with caryn and joe's new house. I'm expecting my dog to keel over and die. Why? because I've been burned for the past year and a half with bad thing after bad thing after bad thing after bad thing. And after each one i'd try to tell myself, well things can't get worse, they'll turn around. Well, they won't. there's no guarantees on anything. There's no "can't get worse" there's always worse. life's not a game, not a story, not a movie, it's a living breathing thing that's not able to be played or written or directed. sorry, I just really needed to get some of this out so I could stop crying. I'll shut up now.

There's no such thing as a perfect life - Terry Pluto

Link to Column

Excerpt:

"Here's a bulletin: Life is not fair.
Sometimes, we get better than we deserve, sometimes it's worse. But it's not fair, and it's not easy.
Not only do bad things happen to good people, but good things happen to bad people. We can drive ourselves crazy trying to figure out why some things happen.
"

Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield

I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined
Im just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you can not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines
We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you can not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
But the rest is still unwritten

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten

Donald Edward Copac

Donald was one of the best men ever to set foot on the face of this earth. He put family above all else in the world. He put other people before himself. He was a diligent hard working man who wants his family to be happy more than anything else. Donald was a great father, a great grandfather, a great husband, and a great friend. He will be missed deeply.

Donald passed away at 7:30, January 27th, 2006.

This will be the last blog post for an indeterminate period of time.

dad

its sometime after 1 in the morning. been running around since 7. thought dad had a third heart attack in 3 weeks, but now we're waiting to see if he's got a potentially life-threatening pulmonary embolism.