Boss: I don't drink. After that first hangover, I said, "this is not for me." So I don't drink. I worked in the resort business for ten years taking care of drunks. I know there is a difference between drinking and being a drunk. I knew people who drank cologne.

Employees: Gross!

Joel: What are you talking about? That's how you finish out the night. Drinking cologne is the only way to improve the smell of your breath after you've gone around and drank all the empties. It's the only thing that can combat a hundred stranger's combined backwash.

>>Then I looked across the sea of cubicles and saw a new employee pop her head up and do that kind of jaw drop smile face. We made eye contact. Instinctively, I batted my eyelashes, then laughed. She sat down. I sat down. Looked at the clock on the computer. Three more hours to go. Then I thought, you only get one crack at this whole big ongoing mess. Nah! I've got things too good. This has been one rollercoaster of a ride year, but it's ending at the very tippity top. Hey I didn't get arrested, like last year!

Happy New Years!

Lowlights:

1. Demoted at work (less money)
2. The Death of the Goodness Project
   
3. Patting myself on the back and boasting to people about how I paid off this certain bill to the University. When in fact I had not been paying on it for many many months, and I just assumed that all this extra cash I had lying around was due to my sound money managing skills.
4. Dealing with a job that's not making me a better person in anyway, besides teaching me how to tolerate something that I should not learn to tolerate.
   

Highlights:

1. Demoted at work (less responsibility)
2. Camping trips with Rachel - WI, Bad Lands, Black Hills.
3. Drinking coffee on the North Shore of Lake Superior watching the sun rise, feeling full of sunlight and confetti.
4. Visiting the Forevertron for the first time.
   
5. Visiting the The Annual Mustard Festival and learning so much about mustard.
6. Seeing The Twine Ball.
7. Putting all my poems into a book.
8. Being a part of Pete and Brennan's 1940's basketball movie and meeting Mike and Andy.
9. Starting up a "band" with Brian Just and calling it, "Das Freakout". and regularly going to his house to "practice".
10. Putting my pen drawings online and people liked them more than I expected.
11. "The Binder" I made a financial ledger that Rachel and I now have used for three months to keep track of our individual and combined expenses.
12. The "Financial Click" - it sounds absurdly simple, but this year what a budget means finally clicked for me. Before I would just try not to spend too much money, but I  had no idea how much money I really had to spend. This year it finally clicked. I get it now. It's like in math or something, you understand how the parts of the equation work, but you don't "get" it. I get it now.
13. Getting my mom's truck!

Happy New Year!

I have organized my four sets of poems into a book. It's 44 pages long and an unnamed reader declared, "I sat down just to read it for a bit, but ended up reading the whole thing. It's actually inspiring, and funny." They are for sale for $5.00. The cover is heavy card stock so you can put it on your toilet next to your Reader's Digest magazines. All the poems are available for free on this website, so you can preview before you buy.  Click here to buy.

All of this years poems are up. They are going to be called "Preventative Maintenance". This is the first year that I've titled a poem set with something other than the name of one of the poems (or in the case of Funny Stories About Thirst & Drowning, two). The title is hinted at  in the poem "Fountains". The Idea behind the title is two fold.

As a mechanic in the National Guard we spent the lion-share of our time performing PMCS (wikipedia link) Preventative Maintenance, Checks, and Services. It's the act of inspecting and re-inspecting equipment at various intervals. It's a good habit. Heck, it's a great habit. It's like cleaning the bathroom every Sunday, and inspecting the drains every month, stuff like that. And one of the stages of entering adulthood is the transfer of these tasks from your parents, to you gradually. It's how you define what kind of household you are going to have as an adult.

The second idea is the negative side, how constant maintenance prevents you from your mission. The world throws so much rifraff at you, too much stuff to process, and it all wants your constant attention and upkeep. You must decide what things to worry about and what not to worry about.  You get hooked into a dependency hell (wikipedia link), eventually chasing things you have no interest in, but need, "The constant maintenance of his life, prevented him from living it."

So I guess you could say the poetry set is about striking a balance, or you could say I'm a beach ball since I kind of just made all that up. Enjoy! -Joel Lueders

I posted 3 poems on the "things to read" from this years set.