Two simple letters...

At school today, I was reading a story a 6th grader had typed during study hall. It was about a zombie elf taking over Santa's Workshop in the North Pole. There was a sentence about how the search party went into the Wrapping Room (where one presumably goes to wrap presents) looking for the zombie elf. However, the author misspelled the word "wrapping." He had omitted the "w" and one of the "p"s. It totally changed the direction of the story for me.

Dishrag Drama

Amy and I went grocery shopping. Looking for a parking spot, we turned our signal on first when we saw a car pull out. The other car coming from the other direction felt that we cut him off and stole the spot. After shopping, we came out to see a wet, dirty dishrag resting peacefully on the rear window of our car. How much did that guy feel that he deserved that spot? Well, enough to go out of his way to find a wet dirty dishrag on the ground, pick it up with his bare hands (probably) and place it neatly on our rear window. After that, I imagine he stepped back, dusted his hands off, and nodded his head in such a fashion to suggest that he was adequately pleased with his actions.

A weird adaptation of "The Sixth Sense"

There is a man at the gym who is rather old and rather rotund. I never see him on the gym floor, working out, though. Anytime I see this man, he is invariably wandering around the locker room completely stark naked, with a towel draped over his shoulder. Just walking around. Or there's also this little lounge area inside the locker room with a television and some nice furniture. Sometimes I'll see him, again entirely unclothed, sitting on his towel, which he has laid on top of the nice leather chair. Just, you know, hangin' out. I am beginning to think this man is imaginary, that he does not actually exist on our physical plane. He may be a man who died on the grounds somewhere, and his disconnected spirit looms around the locker room, carrying on his life as he did before he died. Does he know he's dead? And for that matter, why doesn't he put on some damn pants, already?

Why is it this way?

I only seem to post occasionally anymore, but I've been busy. Now, I know I said that last time...and it's no excuse...but, well, I'm sorry, alright? That's really all I've got to say. I'm sorry. I can change. I know I can. Just give me a chance.

ahem.

That was weird.

On a night like tonight, I get wistful. I'm in the apartment alone, I'm reminiscing. Why? Well, the high school I graduated from posted a position for which I am qualified. And I happen to be looking for a teaching position. So now it all comes flooding back, many of the memories from that time in my life. I hate being cliche like this, but it's hard not to be. It's a formative few years for everyone.

I'm torn about this. I certainly have a better chance of this position than at a school with which I have absolutely no connection, which, of course, includes the entirety of the Columbus area, where I live. However, that position would mean moving, taking my wife away from a job she loves. We've talked about it, and I would be the one to have the benefits and the (not much) higher salary, so if I found a position that meant moving out of the area, she would willingly move and find a job wherever we moved to. But I don't want to make her do that. She loves what she does too much. She's formed many more connections here than I have, and it would be a much bigger burden on her than on me. It's tough.

Hence, why I'm wistful and anxious. I hate not knowing what's going to happen.

Wow.

Holy shit it's been awhile. A lot of things have happened. Here's the short list:

-Got married.
-Went on honeymoon.
-Got in trouble at work.
-Repeat #3, a few times.
-School rocks.
-Bought a Wii.
-Got another kitten.
-The kittens fight.
-A lot.


Getting married was a lot of fun. The rehearsal was...interesting, thanks to a church-employed wedding planner who sucked. She was wearing a black sweatshirt with a kitten on in, playing amongst cattails. Say more? No need. The ceremony went well. The reception, while it had its difficult moments, was a lot of fun. I won't talk about the rest of the night, after the reception.

The honeymoon was amazing. It was an Eastern Caribbean cruise, a week-long one. It was amazing just to get away from everything we have going on here, let alone being in 80-degree plus, sunny-ass weather. We met another couple on their honeymoon from Ontario, and we spent a lot of time with them all week. We took a hike along the coastline of St. Maarten, and we ate a lot of food. A lot. It was fantastic.

Now I'm on winter break from school, but I still have my part-time job to go to. If only I had a full-time teaching job.




If only.








If only.

Things are changing.

I've been in all weekend, taking care of Amy, who's been de-wisdom teeth-ed. It's been a nice little vacation, just a 4-day weekend. I've been watching a few movies I've always meant to (High Noon, THX 1138, White Heat and The Dirty Dozen), along with a few Netflix picks (Vantage Point, Gone Baby Gone and We Own the Night). Avoid Vantage Point at all costs.

Over the 4-day weekend, things are changing for me. In order to take a full-time building sub job at a local school district, I had to vacate the position I've been holding for 2 years at work. Over the weekend is when someone else takes over, so when I'm through with my 4-day weekend, everything will be different for me there. It's like a reboot.

It's weird - the whole time I've been there, I've been trying to climb up - get promotions and raises and higher positions. Got shot down almost every time. Now I'm all but leaving. I could always tell that I'd be able to go far in that company, given the time. And given the chance, I would have. But something else came along that I've always wanted. Now that I'll be going part time, I'll be treated like a nobody.

But it goes with the territory. That company is for people who put full stock in its philosophies. For true believers - and to be honest I never was one. I could fake it, for the paycheck. But now it's a matter of time before I won't have to anymore.

You should enjoy this video

Proper post to follow, but for now, please watch this video I posted on YouTube earlier this evening. And witness. The Power. Of Private. Dancer.


And Headband Lady, also known as Groom's Mother.




You're welcome.

Overheard at work

A woman with a 4 or 5-year old boy (who was, oddly enough, standing up in the back of the cart), comes up to get a coffee sample.

"Ooh, this coffee's from Ecuador. Can you say 'Ecuador'?"
"Eck-a-dor!"
"In Ecuador, they 'hola!' Can you say 'hola'?"
"Yes."

I wish I could be able to write this kind of gag myself.

Clearly this is new to me.

A few weeks ago I joined a gym, at the behest of my lovely. Get in shape for the wedding, that sort of thing. Now, at the particular gym I joined, all new members are signed up for a free session with a personal trainer. The idea is, you get a taste of what it's like, and then they sit you down for the sales pitch. So, when I scheduled a time to come in, they gave me homework: they needed to know what three goals I had for working out and they needed a list of ten foods I had eaten in the past few days. I go to the gym, homework in hand, and meet the guy who is going to personally train me. There are two things I noticed about him immediately. First, when we shake hands, he goes for the "I WILL CRUSH YOUR EXISTENCE!!!" handshake, while I go for the traditional "I am a normal human being" handshake. The second thing I notice is his hair. Now, here is a fellow whose entire personality is concentrated in his handshake and haircut. He has the short, spiky, highlighted tips hair with the wave up in the front. Here's how our first conversation went, for the most part:

"Okay, what are your goals?"
"Well, I'd like to lose 10-15 pounds, tone up in the mid-section area and build up muscle in the shoulder/arm/back area."
"Okay, and about how many calories do you eat in a day?"
"Oh, uh, well, for each item I eat, I keep track of the calories, but I don't really know what it adds up to at the end of the day."
"Oh, okay, well, how many calories is each thing you eat?"
"Typically about 100-200 calories, and I eat 2-3 meals a day."
"Wait, wait - so you're only eating 300-600 calories a day?"
"What? No - that's each ITEM I eat...I eat more than 300 calories a day."
"Oh, okay."
At this point I'll skip forward, to where he's telling me the same thing about 3 different ways.
"It's good that you've lost so much weight so far, but now you want to build muscle, because you don't want to burn muscle away, do you understand?"
"Yes."
And then he kept saying the same sentence over a few times, but this time, instead of saying, "do you understand?" he'd say, "right?" or my favorite "do you agree?" Why would I disagree with that? Basically he's a terrible salesman and he's making up for the fact that he doesn't know a whole lot about what he's talking about by reiterating the one thing he does know over and over again. Anyways, at this point he takes me over to the treadmill, gets me going on that for a warm-up, and says he'll be back in about 5 minutes.

5 minutes later, he returns with a girl in tow. "This is Abbey, she's going to do your session today, and after that we'll talk about how it went."

Abbey asks me if I've ever done this before, and I say that, no, this is something I have never done before. So we start with a quick balance check, which I'm not very good at because I suck. Now, since I've never had anything to do with a personal trainer, the only point of reference I have as to what the dynamic is is, of course "The Simpsons," which tends to be my default point of reference for anything I have no experience with. So, that means my idea of what a personal trainer is is someone who tells you what exercise I'm going to do, and then yell catch phrases at me while I'm doing them. I generally regard them to be outgoing and, well...not stiff. So instead of someone going, "Alright, three more!" or "Keep going, don't stop!" I got something more along the lines of, "That wasn't good. Do it again." or "You're not lunging far enough." The way she acted towards me led me to believe that I had consistently cut her off in traffic for a week straight, or that I had raped her. Which is not true in either case, because those both seem like the sort of thing someone would remember. The other thing I remember her doing was, when we'd finish an exercise, she would just go, "Come on." and then just walk away. I'm in the middle of recovering from my last lunge, which means I have to concentrate all my energy on two things: a) lifting my legs and standing upright, and b) not soiling myself; this woman just leaves.

She also lied to me. Well, she didn't lie to me, she just didn't tell me the whole truth. There I was, laying on an inclined bench, feet in the air, ready to do sit-ups. She informs me that, while I am doing sit-ups, she will be lobbing a basketball at me, and I'm to catch the ball on my way down, and without letting my back hit the bench, throw the ball back to her on my way up again. However, she neglected to tell me that the ball weighed 15 pounds. I had to learn that one the hard way. This bit of information would have prevented me from uttering, "Aw, fuck!" when I just about fall off the damn bench.

As we finish the workout, the girl tells me I did a pretty good job for a first time. This is encouraging. Then she brings me over to the first guy, Mr. Personality, for the sales pitch. Now, at this point, the best way to describe my demeanor is semi-conscious. So, this makes it easier on someone who has no abilities as a salesperson. Now, I've already decided I don't really want to pay for this service, so ultimately my answer will be no. But I've got to sit through it. Now, during the first part, I mentioned the wedding as a motivation to get in shape, and that the Lady is already a member, so he uses that angle. Basically we could pay for 5 sessions a week, and the two of us can split them. I said that that sounds alright, but I would have to talk to her about it to see if we could afford it. He says that if I sign up today, I won't have to pay the $100 service fee (there's always a service fee). I said that I understand all that, but it's still a lot of money, and we're paying for a lot of the wedding ourselves. This is the gist of our final exchange, before we say good day.


"Well, if you sign up today, I don't think she'll be upset, do you?"
"Hahahahaha......oh, uh, listen, I have to talk to my fiancee about this, alright? I'm not prepared to make a decision today."

Laughing at someone usually forces someone to back off a little. This is something I've learned in life.

Blarney!

In observation of St. Patrick's Day, I had a few thoughts to put down. Here is why I morally object to St. Patty's Day.

1) I understand Irish culture, for the most part. Obviously, since I'm not Irish, I won't get it completely. However, I don't think I need it shoved down my goddamn throat. Yeah, I get it. You're Irish and you're proud of it. I don't care. At. All.

2) Speaking of my non-Irish heritage, I find the "everyone's Irish today" gesture a bit much. What if you don't want to be Irish for a day? What If I'm happy with my Italian/Polish/Slovenian/French Canadian/Scottish heritage? Is that wrong?

3) I don't particularly care for Irish music, and I don't want to hear it at work all day. The thing is, I don't think I would mind it if the Irish haven't bestowed upon us the abomination that is Riverdance. I mean, come on. Haven't you done enough?

4) Do college students really need another reason to get completely blitzed? They can't think of enough on their own?

5) I don't appreciate the co-opting of the color green.

6) While we're on the subject of green, if I don't wear it today, I get pinched. So, not only is it encouraged that I wear a stolen color, it's enforced. I've had a standing order since I was about 19: if you pinch me on St. Patrick's Day, I will destroy you.

6a) What about the colorblind? Should they be punished just because they don't know they're not wearing green?

7) Green beer? The only thing more disgusting than that is the fact that for at least two weeks after the 17th, the beer at our favorite local taverns slowly decays from a bright green to a putrid pukey green, until eventually the beer returns to its normal state.

8) Maybe this is just from my personal college experience and maybe you've never heard of this, but Kegs 'N' Eggs? Fuck you.

9) Finally, the fact that those of us who don't celebrate tonight have to put up with increased traffic cops on the roads, and the hungover asses of those that did celebrate tomorrow at work.

Now, here's the disclaimer. I don't have anything against the Irish. They have some wonderful whiskeys. So don't take this as an affront to your entire culture, just today.

Now, sleep!

A continuing series

Reason #4765 why I love my fiancee:

After being snowed in for about 36 hours, Amy and I ventured out into the open world, down the street to Meijer. While in the store, walking between aisles of Rubbermaid trash bins and wool socks, a ridiculously garbled overhead announcement came on, something that was completely incoherent to those not accustomed to the intricate overhead speaker system at Meijer.

Amy's response:
"Wow, apparently Gorth from the planet Zorbo had an anncouncement to make..."


Will you marry me?

First Video!!!

I have a lot of things to catch up on: A trip to Nicaragua for which I promised to create a journal and a powerpoint presentation in particular. However, my first priority was to do something with the Flip Video Camera Nick and Hanna got Amy and me for Christmas. I got nagged a few weeks ago when I a) didn't bring the camera home to obtain new footage, and b) haven't posted any of the previously recorded content. So, to rectify this, here's a short clip of some footage I shot on New Year's Eve at Nick and Hannah's in the Nasty Natti. Naturally, it's of Nick dancin' up a storm.

More to come. Come back soon...

A Better Outlook

This afternoon at work I was in the bathroom and I saw someone at the urinal peeing, only his arms were resting on the separators that stick out of the wall. If he were driving and instead of peeing, talking on the cell phone, hands-free would've been completely normal. But in the bathroom, this is not something you see everyday, which is why I took notice. However, it was kind of refreshing to see, as weird is it sounds to say. This is clearly the most laid-back approach to urinating I have ever seen. We should all adopt a similar attitude.

Scatterbrained

A few updates:

Amy and I started Weight Watchers last Thursday, and I wouldn't say I hate it, but it's a little rough for me. Usually what happens is that I'm starving throughout the entire day as I try to use up as little points as possible, and then after dinner I have about 10 points left that I roam around the food-areas of our apartment trying to use up.



I bought a Nintendo DS last week, too, and Amy was against it, viewing it as money that could have been put towards the wedding. At first. And then I convinced her to buy Cake Mania, a computer game she loves, and I taught her how to play Brain Age. She played Cake Mania for about 4 hours one evening. I am not joking.

Our cat ate some fucked up shit around the house last week, including a whole band-aid and a few scraps of a post-it note, and threw up about 5 times overnight (the band-aid I found still whole in the vomit), so she's been sick the past week. We've called the vet approximately 1,763 times, and I think she just doesn't like her food. She'll eat a little bit, nowhere near her normal amount, and later on try and eat one of her toys. However, for the little amount she's eating, things are entering and leaving her body in the normal fashion, so we're not too worried.

I leave for Nicaragua on the 20th, and I can't help but feel anxious about it. I can't say I've ever been afraid of flying, though I've never been a huge fan of the hassles it puts me through (waiting in line to check-in, waiting in line for a security check-point, waiting at the terminal, waiting to take off, the cramped seats, being fearful that whatever schmo I sit next to will be a huge fatty, thus making the cramped seats feel even more cramped, my ears popping, invariably having to wake-up whomever I sit next to because I will inevitably have to use the bathroom during the flight, getting used to a different time-zone, figuring out where the hell I'm supposed to go after I land, and so on), but for some reason this particular flight makes me feel a little more anxious than usual. And, of course, I don't speak Spanish. So there's that. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy a Canadian flag patch to paste onto my bag.



Okay, here's something I didn't plan on writing. I just saw an ad for a new gameshow called "Moment of Truth." You know that one scene in Meet the Parents where Robert Deniro sits Ben Stiller down and hooks him up to the truth machine-thing and asks him a bunch of awkward questions? Well, that's the plot of the "Moment of Truth." A person gets hooked up to the machine in front of a giant audience (and, of course, viewers at home) and sits their loved one, like, right in front of them. They then ask them questions like (and I'm not making these up at all), "Would you donate your kidney for your father?" and my favorite - the one they asked the guy with his wife sitting right there, "Have you ever touched a female co-worker inappropriately?" Now, instead of extrapolating this into larger social issues about the state of entertainment in our society and so on like I usually do, I'll just sigh despondently and get back to work hermetically sealing my television.

I really can't help it.

This is meant to point out the inherent smart-alecky quality I have that I can't really get rid of.

At work last week, a woman was looking at the coffee bins and asked the following question:

"Where is the Sumatra from?"

Now, in my mind I kind of know what the answer is that she's looking for, but before I can answer, I give her a very matter-of-factly answer:

"Sumatra."

She scoffs a little, looks at the tag which contains the answer she wants, but was too lazy to look at in the first place, and goes away. Works for me.

I'm not that good at this.

I suck at updating things. But here's something I have to get out of the way now:

That's Lucy. She's nice. Moving on.

I know it's been a while, but dammit, there's not a whole lot that's new. I haven't seen anything in the theater since Eastern Promises, and while it was amazing, I kind of missed the bandwagon writing about it.

Work's been stressful lately. I'm slowly meandering into the territory labeled, "somewhat possibly searching for a new job maybe." However, I did get some good news on the job front, and it relates to a contest I didn't really try for in the first place. There's been a contest going on for quite some time, and when it started I didn't try all that hard because I estimated my chances of winning as being considerably low. However, as sales updates frequented, it became clear I was going to win, lest something freaky happen to ruin it, like last Christmas (which feeds it the "me not trying very hard" motif). Well, on Friday the final results came in, and I won a trip to Nicaragua for a week, to take place in February.

The rules were such that they allowed stores of all sizes to compete equally, meaning that the winner would have the highest sales as a percentage of the total store sales. So a higher-income store would have to sell more dollar-wise than a store whose total sales are smaller. That being said, not only did I win in my group of regions (there are 11 regions in the company, and they were put together into four groups) as a percentage of store sales, but dollar-wise I also sold the second-largest amount in the company. So, you know, eat it.


So why do I still feel like anything I do at work isn't enough? More at 11, or something.

Willing Test Subject

A few weeks ago Amy and I went grocery shopping and had a blast. We had three amazing things happen to us.

The first thing happened at the deli counter. I was taking care of that, telling the woman what I wanted and how much, and Amy was waiting at the shopping cart, about two feet behind me. While the woman was slicing our final selection, I got a phone call. I step back and tell Amy to take care of the rest, and answer the phone. While I'm talking on the phone, Amy told me later, a woman and her child also at the deli counter were waiting on their food. The woman looks at me, and then looks at the sign posted near the deli counter and read it aloud, saying "Please finish all cell phone calls before placing orders at the deli counter." Her child asks, "Mommy, why did you read that out loud?" The woman pointed to me and says, "because of him." She said that as if Amy is a complete imbecile and could not talk to a human being and say "No, thanks, that's all we need. Thanks a lot!" I wanted to find the woman again somewhere in the store, approach her and offer her my open cell phone and say, "Hey, I got this phone call, and they asked for a rude, dumb bitch. I think they may want to talk to you."

The second thing that happened was at the checkout line. The clerk was a middle-aged woman, probably mid-to-late 50s. When it got to be our turn, a younger manager-type came up and said something whimsical and left, prompting the woman to say something like, "He could suck the wind out of a tornado..." After that, Amy and I had a brief discussion on who would be paying this time, because the way we do it is, one of us pays, and then the other writes a check for half later. I said that I had paid last time, and she agreed that she would swipe her card this time around. The woman asked, "Are you married?"
Amy replied, "No, we're not - we're actually just engaged."
The woman turned to me and said, "Well, close enough. She's pretty much paid up half through the rest of her life."
I let that linger for a moment, and instead of saying, "What the fuck is wrong with your brain," I just smiled and nodded. The woman, noticing this, said, "Yeah, the smile and nod - better get used to it!"
I smiled and nodded more, which I deemed more appropriate than saying, "Don't fucking say that to me."
The wedding is more than a year away yet, and I'm already tired of the, "better get used to it" sentiment. But, as my brother quipped, "better get used to that."

Finally, after we loaded the groceries into my car, I took the cart back to the parking lot corral. When I was putting the cart in, I noticed another cart there that still had two bags in it: one with two loaves of bread, and another with a box of donuts. I thought for a second, and returned to the car to ask Amy if I should grab the bags. I believe, "Uh, yeah..." was her response. So I went back to the cart and grabbed the bags, returned to the car and chucked them in my backseat. Upon driving home, Amy and I had a discussion about the origins of the bags. Our favorite, however minimally probable, was that the bags were left there on purpose and there was a group of teenagers huddled in a car possibly with a camera trained on the cart or with notebooks in their hands, taking notes furiously as each person inspected the cart and left the bags there, until I happened upon them. Maybe they took notes as they watched me check out the bags, return to the car, go back to the cart to grab the bags return to my car again with the bags and drive off. And you know what? Fine. If they want to take notes about me doing all of that, that's fine. I can live with that, being an anonymous participant in a social experiment. It's good for their education. And furthermore, we got some free bread and donuts.

I've been this way a while now

It's been a while since an update, but here we go.

I moved, and it's going well, despite some minor move-in issues.
I saw a pretty cool Modest Mouse show, had some good times.
Black Swamp was pretty fun, despite the lack of good shows and a lot of rain.

Yesterday, however, was very interesting for me. I won't go into a whole lot of details because I feel it may be inappropriate. However, suffice it to say that there was a work-related incident involving me, my self defense-induced attitude and what I call a miscommunication, but was made abundantly clear to me that my opinion of the situation is completely and entirely irrelevant.

I'm still a little sore about it, but it is also clear to me that I have no control over the situation, and any attempt to rectify it is merely a waste of my time.

More coming soon

Amy and I have moved recently, and it's been pretty hectic. Haven't had a chance to post anything real. However, please watch this video. It features Michael and Jonah from Superbad on a press junket being interviewed by Edgar Wright, writer and director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.