Facebook is a harsh mistress

There's something ironic about having been pushed to Facebook by collective peer pressure at the age of 34 and having reconnected with so many of my high school friends. Then again, I don't recall giving into much peer pressure in high school. How else to explain why I was a complete tool. My avoidance of most things other people seemed to enjoy led me from high school to four exciting years in college with nearly the same girlfriend and no stories, good or bad, involving drugs and/or alcohol. On the bright side, the first time one of my daughters calls home drunk in college she won't be able to say, "Oh, dad, I know you and mom used to do it all the time!" That statement will be half true but she don't gots to know that.

Facebook has been a little bit of a revelation. I've avoided it for quite a while and for exactly the reasons I mention above: because most people seem to like it. I didn't want to be "that guy." But, the fact is, if nothing else it allows you to manage friendships, past and present, with the proper amount of distance in almost anonymity. I think I'm going to enjoy this. It's a mostly pleasurable walk down memory lane. Girls I haven't talked to in decades, guys I haven't seen since the early '90s. It hadn't been written yet, but if there was a song to sum up my high school year's in their entirety, I'd have to go with Ben Folds' "Best Imitation of Myself." It's not a perfect match, but I connect with Ben a little bit in that song. Who knows.

Back in the present, I'm glad to have power and internet access. My satellite has been searching for a signal for most of the afternoon leaving us time to catch up on shows we've DVR'd. It's back to work in the a.m. regardless of the road conditions.

Snow Day!

Nothing takes me back to when I was a kid like snow. I love snow. To borrow a phrase from Tracy Morgan, "I want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant." I love snow even more these days because my kids like snow, too. My oldest daughter gets crazy when it flurries. She's convinced even the least little bit is going to be a blizzard. Then again, the only snow she can remember before this one was about 10 inches.

Anyway, today the snow completely threw off my work schedule, but in a good way. Only half the office showed up and those who did went home early, including me. I pretended to work when I got home by walking around with my blackberry. Instead I watched last night's House and The Pineapple Express. We'll see what happens with the weather tonight as to whether I actually venture out tomorrow or not. I think I'll watch Baby Mama tonight.

I started work last night on that children's book I mentioned earlier. I think the children's book market is ripe for soft-core pornography. I kid. Seriously though, Sunday I started on the general illustration and yesterday I started work on the story. That and my $7 meal at McDonald's are the signs of me turning over a new leaf.

Saturday...in the park...I think it was the 4th of July

None of that headline is true beyond the fact that it's Saturday. I'm at home with the girls this morning. I hesitate to say I'm babysitting. So many people get all up in arms about whether you can actually babysit your own children. Today they're acting like perfect little angels, which leads me to believe these may actually be someone else's children, so let's say I'm babysitting.

Speaking of kids, I've been thinking more and more recently about trying to write a children's book. I asked for art supplies for Christmas - mainly just a few sets of pencils and a nice art pad - and I've really been wanting to combine my previous art skillz (the ones that never paid the billz) with some kind of writing. Since I tend to be pretty juvenile, it seemed like a natural fit: I'll write a children's book.

I've spent the week trying to come up with an idea and I think I'm slowly developing one. It'd be about kids that work office jobs while their parents go to daycare of some sort. I'm thinking these kids work a white color job in an ad agency. It would be set in the future, but only by a few years, yet one kid - maybe the main kid - wears a space suit and doesn't like being asked to explain it. I'm thinking the kids would be between 3 and 5. Old enough to actually accomplish some stuff, but too young to get the irony.

So, anyway, I've been hoping to carve out some time start with some preliminary sketches of each of the characters. Start assigning them some traits, maybe flesh out a rough story. I'm thinking maybe 1,200 words or so and maybe 20 pages. The right audience would be my oldest daughter's age and she just turned four. Who knows, maybe I can pull this off.

An Historic Day

What a long, strange ride the last eight years have been. As I'm typing this, former President George W. Bush's helicopter is leaving the capitol headed for St. Andrews Air Force base. From there he and Laura will head home to Texas. And so ends his tumultuous two terms as President. I can't help feel a little melancholy about Bush's departure. I voted for him twice, but I was far from his biggest fan by the end of his second term. Still, I think he served as President in the best way he knew how. Sure, you can take issue with his ideals, his choices, even his belligerence or ignorance. But I think Bush is a principled man, a hard working man who cares deeply for this country, and he's leaving office under not just a cloud of embarrassment, but a full on hailstorm. He'll go down in history, at least over the short term, as the least popular President in history. He leaves as a housewarming gift for President Obama both a lingering war and a lingering recession. His legacy is one of complete and utter failure. I think that's sad.

As for Obama, welcome Barrack to your sweetest dream and your worse nightmare. You inherit and awful set of circumstances to rectify. And quickly. These problems aren't of your making, but you'll no doubt be held accountable even over only four years for finding quick and long-lasting solutions.

Today's inauguration was breathtaking. The speech was magnificent. The spectacle was nearly unmatched in my lifetime. This goes down as one of the seminal events of my 34 years. It's right there with the explosion of the Challenger and 9-11. Fortunately, this is an historic event that we should all remember fondly. Welcome, all, to a new age.

PS. Dear Barack, please keep gas prices low.

My Daughter Crapped on the Floor

I spent some time trying to come up with a headline to lead into a story of my daughter taking a dump on the floor and couldn't really come up with anything. I got nothing.

So, anyway, she's gotten into a habit lately of slowly removing her clothes over the span of about 10 minutes. It's like she's a little stripper roaming around the house. A little stripper that loves fruit bars. So, she loses the socks. A few minutes later, it's the pants. And finally her turtleneck onesie. By this point I'm searching my wallet for a whole bunch of one dollar bills. Anyway, she's running around in her diaper and stops midway between me and my wife. At this point, time sort of slows down. If this were an action movie, a car would crash through the side of our house or a hale of gunfire would break out. Instead, my daughter takes off her diaper, bends over slightly, I believe there was a slight groan, and then plop, turd on the carpet. It was kind of a little bit awesome. But really more nasty than anything.

30Rock and Other Awesome Stuff I Don't Deserve

If you think you have a sense of humor (and hey, most people think they d0) and you're not watching 30Rock, you're missing the funniest show on TV since Seinfeld went off the air. Seriously, there are a handful of shows that come along in a generation that are so well written, so well acted, so perfectly put together, that even while you're watching it, you realize it's genius. For me the ultimate standard is, "Would I want this on DVD?" The show has such genius, it's almost like being able to see 10 years into the future to figure out which fashion trends to avoid now because you'll look back at pictures and see how big of a 'tard you looked like. Tight rolling comes to mind. I'm also reminded of wearing cardigans and turtlenecks together. What look again was I going for in middle school again? Grandpa? Librarian? Who knows what I was going for, but I achieved "jackass" with aplomb.

Speaking of awesome stuff, well, actually that's a bit of an overstatement. Speaking of things that are way better than you expect since you have extremely low expectations, I ate at McDonald's today...and it was not terrible. Katy Perry kissed a girl and she liked it. I ate a sausage biscuit (two, actually) and I liked it. I ate at McDonald's once in 2008 and that was for an afternoon ice cream. I ate there 2-3 times in 2007 at most. Anyway, we promised my daughter she could pick our breakfast location as sort of a pre-birthday treat. She picked McDonald's. After many, many attempts to redirect her to Chick-Fil-A ("Look, Katherine! There's a cow in pajamas!") she still picked McDonald's. But you know what, it wasn't bad. I got two sausage biscuits and a sweet tea for $3. The whole ticket was just over $12. Now that's value.

Another awesome thing: Syracuse pounded Notre Dame today, 93-74. For those who don't remember or just don't care, this is actually a rivalry that goes back way before ND joined the Big East. I'm talking the Digger Phelps days. I've always hated Notre Dame. This win feels good.

And finally, I spent some productive time at work today. It felt good to get in for a few hours and knock out some to-dos. Should make next week a little easier to handle.

Dinner with Friends

My wife and I were fortunate to have a couples date night tonight. And no, before you ask, the evening did not end with a bowlful of car keys. We hooked up with some friends from our church for a night at Longhorn. I had a steak the size of softball glove. It was delicious and, given the week I've had and my feelings of inadequacy at work, it was nice to have my dominance over an animal reaffirmed, if only indirectly. I mean, I didn't slaughter the cow or anything. I didn't pick the cow out of the group and then outsmart him before moving in for the kill. "Hey, look over there, Flossie!" then whack, sledgehammer to the side of the head. But still, it felt good to eat a steak. Incidentally, I also had a salad, but having my dominance over lettuce reaffirmed wasn't nearly as fulfilling. Anyway, it was a good night. Tomorrow I'll get back to dealing with our smoke detector problem, which will inevitably result in a call to an electrician.

Let the Job Search Begin

Today at work I got figuratively kicked in the face so hard I'd have rather been literally kicked in the groin. As it turns out, my boss has no faith in me. She didn't say it exactly. There was talk of strategy and expectations, timetables and return-on-investment, but I was like that dog in that Far Side cartoon. All I heard was "blah, blah, blah, Ginger." The end result is this serves as the wake-up call I need. It's like I'm answering the phone and instead of hearing, "Good morning, sir. This is your wake up call," I'm hearing, "Get out of bed, crap bag."

On the bright side, I have a business trip to Vegas coming up next month. That should be sweet.

Update on my New Year's resolution: After eight business days, I've spent just over $36. That's actually really good for me. Today I ate at KFC for $2.11. That meal included chicken fried steak, two sides of mashed potatoes and gravy, and a biscuit. I like the heavy set woman who works there. She's always so friendly and she tells everyone to have a "blessed day." Sure, work sucked today, but I'm still very blessed.

Odds n' Ends

A well-educated hand surgeon tells me my hand isn't broken and he has the X-rays to prove it. I'll take his word for it, but my hand still hurts like a mother. The X-rays also showed something called a carpal boss, which is a painful bony bump on the back of the same hand. To put that in layman's terms...

The carpal boss, an unmovable bony protuberance, is located on the dorsum of the wrist at the base of the second and third metacarpals adjacent to the capitate and trapezoid bones. This bony prominence may represent degenerative osteophyte formation and/or the presence of an os styloideum, an accessory ossification center that occurs during embryonic development. When this condition is symptomatic, patients present with complaints of pain and limitation of motion of the affected hand.

So, apparently I have an unmovable bony protuberance. I used to get those in my pants in junior high all the time. Anyway, just so you know, I'm going to be fine.

On an unrelated note, I saw a Bentley on a tow truck today. Now that's karma.

On an equally unrelated note, the best band you've never heard of is The Fratellis. They've entered my current top five, joining the likes of Fall Out Boy, The Killers, Dwight Yoakam and The Darkness. I've kicked Wheatus to the curb for a little while, but I'll swing back around the block in a few months and they'll still be sitting there and I'll pick them up again. Also itching to get back in: OK Go.

Rough Day

So, in addition to working 3+ hours in the office today, I fell down my stairs at home before I left. So far it's a banner day. I jacked up my left hand pretty well and I'm not positive I don't have a bone break in there somewhere. Might need to get an X-ray on Monday. Work, on the other hand...no pun intended...also feels like falling down stairs assuming the stairs were covered in honey and thumbtacks and I'm naked. These days it's just one report after another. It's only a matter of time before we get TPS reports and TPS report cover sheets. I'm only half-kidding.

Resolution Update

So far so good on my New Year's resolution related to spending less on food. I'm four days into the work week and I've spent $15.17. Best of all, I've avoided table service meals altogether. I'm in the cafeteria having "lunch" right now at a cost of $2.06. I'm eating a cup of pudding the size of beer stein and drinking a cup of water (I had a big bowl of oats for breakfast). Miraculously, I was not charged for the water. Maybe there's a new system set up by my company where the cost was automatically deducted from my paycheck. You think I'm kidding? Get a load of yesterday's meal in the cafeteria:

1. 1 dinner roll
2. 1 order chicken tenders (3 small tenders, each the size of a roll of quarters)
3. 1 order potatoes, mashed
4. 1 cup pudding w/ whipped cream and crumbled up cookies on top
5. 1 cherry coke zero (bottle)

Before my 20% employee discount, this meal was...wait for it...$9.18. As you can see, my employee discount makes our cafeteria's food merely exorbitant, but just short price-gouging. During the summer, my co-workers and I save money by eating at the local amusement park. Seriously, this meal should cost about $6 at most regardless of any discount. It's not like my company employees topless waitresses. Hell, we have plastic cutlery.

As it happens, there's a McDonald's on our campus. Now, while McDonald's doesn't serve mashed potatoes or dinner rolls, if I' d purchased the exact meal there substituting Super Size fries for mashed potatoes and, say, a box of cookies instead of the dinner roll, this meal would've cost less than $7 and it would've come brightly packaged and served to me by a surly teenager of indeterminate ethnicity. Anyway, I guess I'm going to have to start eating my fatty meals at McDonald's, which seems counterintuitive to the mission of most health care systems, or so I'm told by the one I work for.

Moms say the darndest things

I broke my consecutive-days-blogged string last night at a mere five days. Thanks to playing basketball until after 10 p.m., I was just too beat down to collect my thoughts. Maybe I'll drop two on today.

One topic came to me this morning while I was talking to my mom. Sheila seems to have the gift of understatement when it comes to food. It hasn't been that long ago that my mom told me she and my dad had been eating healthier. Apparently, they'd been eating more fish. "Great," I said. "What kind of fish?" My mom said with a completely straight face, "Oh, I don't know. Whatever kind they have at Long John Silver's."

A few months later she and my dad came to visit us and when they do we typically go out for a meal at least one of the nights of their two-night visits. My dad likes Red Robin, probably because he can really get down with bottomless steak fries. He loves restaurants that serve things in unlimited quantities. I know that's why he loves Golden Corral and the Olive Garden. I suspect that if a mosque sprang up next to my parents' house that offered all-you-can-eat tacos on Tuesday, my dad would immediately convert to Islam. Anyway, I digress. So we went to Red Robin and my mom spent 10 minutes scouring the menu, you know, because they offer a lot of exotic burgers. After saying she wasn't that hungry, she settled on the Monster Burger, which is described in the menu thusly:

– AKA – the Open Wide Burger. Two huge beef patties, melted American cheese, fresh ripe tomatoes, crisp lettuce, pickles, onions, mayo & Red’s pickle relish.

When the burger arrived, she seemed oddly disappointed it was so large. She ended up removing one of the patties. I think I saw my dad have a mini-stroke since the wasting of an entire beef patty more than compensated for all the "free" fries.

Anyway, so there's a pattern here with my mom. This morning she was complaining of having had some lingering stomach pain over the weekend. In fact, she's had stomach pain for six months, which has caused her to change up her diet a little. The discomfort was still with her yesterday morning when she and my dad went to Denny's. My mom says, "You know, with my stomach, I just haven't had much of an appetite. I didn't want much so I ordered the Grand Slam." Nice.

By the by, I went to wikipedia to see if it listed what's included in Grand Slam since I couldn't find it on the Denny's menu. What I found instead were some crazy news tidbits about Denny's. Apparently Denny's hates minorities.

Rock of Love Tour Bus

Sometimes in life, not very often, but sometimes what was once almost perfect is made perfect with but the slightest of adjustments. Take the hamburger, for instance. Great sandwich, sure, but when you add cheese (as Mr. Kaelin did in Louisville in 1934) it becomes the perfect sandwich. Or how about Cherry Coke? Color TVs? Foreign-made cars? There are tons of them. Anyway, my point here is that last season's Rock of Love II was almost perfect. To borrow a phrase from Ron Burgundy, "If you don't think so, I will fight you." But this time, they took Brett Michaels and sent him on tour with 20 or so of the nastiest, trampiest, sleeziest, unscrupulous-iest bimbos in the world. Oh, and they kicked off the tour in Louisville. And voila! Perfection.

I'd like to thank VH-1 for giving me something worth watching on Sunday nights. Take that Desperate Housewives, Cold Case, 24 and Masterpiece Classics on PBS. You just got your world rocked by a washed up hairband lead singer and a bunch of skanks.

Back to the Grind

Tomorrow is the first work day of the new year. As you can imagine, I'm beside myself with anticipation. Ugggh. Ok, so that's sarcasm. I'm getting in bed a little bit early tonight to build up my strength. It shouldn't be too awful, but at some point in the next 60 to 90 days I'll be getting a new boss. That'll be my seventh boss in just over eight years. Don't get me wrong, in this economy I'm fortunate not just to have a job with good benefits, but have a relatively well paying job. But I just wonder if there's something else out there for me. Something more challenging where I can actually advance. My job is the main dissatisfier in my life right now and I'm committed to figuring out some where I go from here in 2009. Still 361 days to go.

New Year's Resolutions

A full three days into the new year seemed like enough time to finalize my New Year's resolutions. The top of the list is no different than any of the previous five years or so: lose 15 lbs. I've gotta get lighter because I'm packing around a five-month-old in my mid-section. I have one pair of jeans that fit. My other jeans fit like women's Jordache. Anyway, so I'm going to try eating better, eating less and exercising more. Failing that, tapeworm.

Resolution number two, no more $10 lunches. Some of my co-workers and I singlehandedly buoy the local economy with too frequent lunches. I have to cut back. I'm talking more KFC, more Hardee's, more Taco Bell, more Chick Fil-A. I need less Chili's, less Red Robin, you get the idea. Mainly I think I just need to concentrate on restaurants without servers so as to avoid constantly paying for tips. Maybe you're asking how I'm going to simultaneously increase my intake of fast food and decrease my body weight. The answer is, of course, bulemia.

And my third resolution is to watch more sports and spend more time with my damn weiner kids.

These are a few of my favorite things

As I'm sitting here, it dawns on me just how great a day today has been, the events of which are culminating in this celebratory post. As I sit here, laptop in lap, there's a fire to my right that couldn't exactly be described as roaring, but it's eager and persistent. It's sort of hissing, like the kind of fire you'd make if all you had to make a fire was a car cigarette lighter and some old rulers. I'm watching my beloved Orange hang on to win a squeaker over the Bulls of South Florida on the hardwood and it's a Friday night, a full two days before I have back to work. My house is clean thanks in no small part to my sisters-in-law having volunteered to come over and get everything back in ship-shape. One of my sisters-in-law even stayed late into the evening, diligently finishing up the laundry. This must be what it's like to have a illegal alien housekeeper, except instead of paying her under the table it's like she has 80 hours of community service so we don't have to pay her at all. Yes, it's truly been a good day. I even had Penn Station for lunch.

Now I'm thinking about some things that would make this day even better. Here's a not-quite-exhaustive list:

1. Sandra Bullock wanders onto my property brandishing a very small knife, like the really small one on a Swiss Army knife. Maybe she's probably in my yard for some totally legitimate reason - maybe she thought she saw Ben Affleck and a friendly face is what she needs right now, who knows - but I assume she come to sell drugs to my kids. So, I hit her in the midsection with a big tree branch. Then, I lure her near the garage by pretending to be injured and commence to whip her with a fishing rod like I'm caning a Phillipino boy.
   
2. In the early morning hours there's an awful racket of heavy construction outside my bedroom window. I'm thinking, "What is that awful racket!" I march to my daughter's window to find out what all this ruckus is about to see a Taco John's is being built across the street.
3. CNN news crawl: Golden Girls movie due out this spring!
4. There's that funny noise coming from my fridge again. Could be the icemaker. I'd better investigate. Ha, would you look at that? It's doing that thing again where it takes water and turns it into peppermint patties and Susan B. Anthony dollars.
5. Wait, there's my cellphone. It's Dan. He's asking me if I've been listening to sports talk radio. "I'm watching the Sugar Bowl," I say. "Why would I be listening to the radio at night?" I say. He tells me Brett Favre has just been suspended for the entire 2009 season for -- and I'm quoting here -- "conduct detrimental to the NFL stemming from unwarranted, uninvited and unreturned sexual advances toward Nick Jonas, the youngest member of the Disney boy band, The Jonas Brothers. "

If I could only pick two, I'll take 2 and 4. If I can only pick one, then 5.

Hello 2009

A few weeks ago I decided to commit myself to blogging more in 2009. I really feel like I need the challenge of writing more often. I can't really blog freely at blaagendazs anymore. Too many people I work with started reading it and, while more traffic is normally a good thing, opening up some of your more intimate thoughts and opinions to people at the office is a little dangerous and a little stupid. Especially at my office, where even Nancy Pelosi would feel a little stodgy. Anyway, that's the reason for the new address.

A few observations from today...
1) Apparently Kevin Costner founded wikipedia. See for yourself.
2) Dude, Where's my Car? is a very underrated comedy. And then!
3) At the risk of being disappointed for the zillionth consecutive time, I'm psyched as there appears to be a very good horror movie on the horizon. The Unborn looks like the best horror movie since The Ring at least judging by the previews. It's due in theaters on January 9th.
4) Kudos to Burger King. It's nice to see someone kicking McDonald's ass on TV.

Ok, that's all for now. This is the kind of crap you can expect to read every day for the next year. It's the Year of the Ox, baby. It's my year.