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.