What a Difference…

…a year makes.  Here I am, just freshly turned 39 — yesterday, in fact.

A year ago, when I had just turned 38…I went on vacation and suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning that put me in a Virginia hospital.  The effects lasted for a month afterward.

My marriage was severely on the rocks.  We hit a low time in our relationship, one I don’t wish to repeat.

My job was stagnating.  Day in, day out, the same thing.

Today?  We’re planning to go back to Virginia in just under two weeks.  I’m scared of it, a bit, and excited for it, a lot.  My marriage?  Still kind of crummy…not a lot of happiness in our house, but there’s more than there was, and I think we’re on the mend.  I’m leading a $500,000 project at work, with actual hopes for recognition, if not a real raise or anything.

And best of all, I’ve been accepted to a decent MBA program and will be starting classes in a bit less than five months.  My life will be crazy.  I will be driving three hours to school every other weekend.  I will have reading and homework every night, and it will take time from my family.  My work will not slow down, and I will be frazzled.  And I’m planning on enjoying every last minute of it.  (maybe not the increased screaming from my 2-year-old twins)

I am actually working TOWARD something.  Something better, at that.  I have a purpose.  I have a goal.  I have something to make me feel young and alive.  I need to feel young and alive.  I’m ashamed at all of the years I’ve wasted, and I don’t want to do that anymore.  In 2011, when I am 41 years old, I will hold a fresh, new MBA in my hands, and I will hit the ground running.  I will get a new career and earn twice the money I earn now, and I will provide a better life for my family.

They surely deserve it.

Em. Bee. Ay.

Yup, big changes coming down the pike.  I applied to business school.  I was ACCEPTED by said business school.  This July, I start the Weekend MBA Program at Michigan State University.  Nineteen months later, I’ll have an MBA, and hopefully a whole new job which will unlock untold riches for my family and me.

What has me at a loss, though, is wondering if getting into an MBA program — a decently good one, at least — is a bigger deal than I think it is.  I mean, getting into Harvard Business or U of Michigan is a big deal, no doubt.  I’m getting into a program that’s ranked somewhere between 37th and 50th, depending on who you ask — not top-notch, but not un-ranked like Baker College or Lawrence Institute of Technology.

So I spent a couple of months on my application — getting transcripts, resume, recommendations; writing essays; taking the GMAT exam.  Then, five days after I submitted my application, boom, I was accepted.  No interview or anything.  I had prepared for a 3-10 week wait, as cautioned by an e-mail from the program.  Nope.  Five days.

It’s burnin’ me up…is that a big deal?  My reaction was, “oh, cool!”  Then we went out to Chili’s to celebrate.  Should my reaction have been more along the lines of, “Oh. My. God.” (sit down in chair and fan face) “Honey, give me a blow-job right fucking now, because I. Am. The. Shiz-nit!”

See, I don’t know.  I’m assuming it’s good, but I don’t want to go around crowing about it, if this is actually relatively normal.  At the same time, if this kind of thing never happens, I’d like to know about it so I can be appropriately proud.

Well, regardless, I got into a decent MBA program; one with a GREAT career services department, and I should be poised to break into a good-paying management job in March of 2011, and I’m damn happy about that.

Labor Day Weekend

I’ve had a lot of thoughts to blog on since my last — the Beijing Olympics, the underage gymnasts, the election, the Democratic Primary — but I haven’t blogged on any of them.  Obviously.  Instead, I’ve been thinking about friends and keeping in touch.  I quite frankly say that I don’t have any friends.  None.  And to my knowledge, I don’t.  I have acquaintances, I have co-workers, I have relatives…but friends?  People whom I would invite over to hang out…or conversely people who invite me over for anything?  No.  None.

Yet, I ran into an old ex-friend on the internet last week.  Maybe it was just this week, I forget.  We were close college friends, there was a situation, and we haven’t been friends since the 1990’s.  Running into his web persona was… something.  I don’t know, not really an epiphany, not that strong or relevant.  Not even a sub-epiphany, if such a thing exists.  Just a “something.”  It kind of brought back the memories of when we were friends, and stayed up all night drinking beer and launching matches across my apartment.

It made me think of all the people I’ve lost touch with — and I suppose this being my 20th year out of high school helped bring it to a head — and I’ve been on a kick lately to catch up with all of those people who I used to know, and have let fade in the rearview mirror for a decade.  Or two.

Maybe the pre-cursor to this “something” was the realization that there’s not going to be a 20-year high-school reunion for me.  There was a five-year, and I shined it on even though I lived 5 miles away from it.  There was a 10-year, and I lived in another state and could’ve gone, but my “I didn’t like those people then” side out-voted my “I wonder what they’re up to” side and I didn’t go.  I regret that decision, I should’ve gone.

When I graduated from high school, that was the end of my contact with pretty much my entire class.  All the people who I’d spent the last twelve years of my life with, who’d picked on me, who’d laughed at my jokes, who’d asked for the answer to #12 — cut off like flicking a light-switch.  There was no “keep in touch” from me, no “give me your number in college” from me.  No, my attitude then was 100% “good-bye, good-riddance.”  The same holds true with my graduation from community college three years later, and from the university four years after that.  I don’t have old college buddies that I keep up with.  I just don’t.  I guess other people do.

So, I don’t know, “something” has been giving me the urge to find old classmates on Myspace, on Facebook, on Classmates.com.  I’m finding some — finding 74 people in the infinity of the internet isn’t really as hard as I thought.  I’ve sent out a couple of “what have you been up to” messages but gotten no replies.  I can’t say I’m surprised, really.  I haven’t ever been a close kind of person, so this reconnecting thing isn’t natural for me.  I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the people I’m trying to reconnect with thought I was an asshole 20 years ago and suspect that I’m still one now.  I kind of am, actually.

Oh well.  I’ll see what falls out of this.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and all that.

I Am Generation X

I am not a Baby Boomer.  Please do not treat me like one.

I could stop there and have summed up a whole lot of my take on generational dynamics.  However, I think it may be a bit lacking in substance.

So yeah, I am Generation X — I was born between 1964 and 1981, as it seems to be classically defined.  We got one of the first Atari 2600’s when I was nine.  When I was 13, General Motors laid off most of the City of Flint…and since I grew up in Michigan, that single act pretty much depth-charged my attempts to find an after-school job.  Why would McD’s call me, when unemployed 30-somethings with a kid to feed would pledge their loyalty to the Golden Arches?

That attitude has plagued my entire work career — why would anyone hire ME when every other applicant has 15 years more maturity and work experience, as well as more college and/or more willingness to pledge their entire soul over to Widgets, Inc? (or whatever employer it was)  I have fought an uphill battle to stay employed in the face of overwhelming numbers of more-experienced, more-trained, more-established Baby Boomers who also posess, coincidentally, a monumental selfishness as part of their Code of Ethics.

Picture the “Me Generation” as a meat grinder, and “Generation X” as a juicy strip of tenderloin.  Possessed of an “I win, you lose” mindset, there has been no way that my Baby Boomer supervisors and managers were ever going to let some (as is popularly perceived) apathetic slacker bum get ahead while they were on watch.

And now they’re starting to retire.  In the next few years, all of those managers are going to be leaving open jobs, then it should be MY time yet…I have a sneaking suspicion that some few will cling to employment just long enough to eliminate those open positions and crow about cost-savings before they, too retire off to a condo funded with MY Social Security contributions.

The ironic thing?  After the “Me Generation” turned down ballot proposal after ballot proposal to fund the schools I was enrolled in…they now want ME to approve ballot proposals for Senior Citizen Services.  I finally have the chance to choke them off and make them quit sucking me dry…and my generation has completely given up the desire to vote.  Our legendary apathy is going to make our taxes go up to feed the very Boomers who have kept us poor our entire lives.  We have a chance here, and I’m going to watch my generation squander it.

Yay, Generation X.  Here’s a slogan:  “Generation X: Sacrificing ourselves for the MIllenium Generation — Even though they won’t say ‘thanks!’”

Wow. Wha’happen?

Geez, when’s the last time I blogged?  May?  Cripes!  So much for that daily-journal-get-the-angst-out-be-happier concept, eh?

So, back to the griping.

I hate the dismissive two-finger wave drivers give while still holding onto the steering wheel.  You get it when you’re a pedestrian, mostly when a driver’s stopped at a stopsign, and you start to cross in the crosswalk, and they give you the “go ahead” wave when you’re already walking.  Like they gave me permission to exercise my right-of-way or something.

You know, while still holding the steering wheel with thumb, ring and pinky fingers, they give a quick brushing-off motion with the index and middle fingers.  Sort of “you may proceed, knave, and then begone with you.”  It’s different if I stop on the curb and see if they’re going to go…yes, very different from when they are already stopped at a stopsign and I’m in a crosswalk and…

..oh, hellsticks, it sounds all petty and whiny like this.  Nevermind.

Wait, I guess the whole dang thing can be summed up as: “I hate people.  By and large, the people around me are fuck-tards.”

Words, Words….More Words…

Well, it’s another Wednesday, coincidentally.  I’m at work.  I should be working.  I’m blogging.  Depending on who you ask, that’s either very, very good, or very, very bad.

The new camera has spurred me into taking a lot more photos lately.  I think it’s because the quality of them is so much better — it’s like I have a shot at creating some really nice pictures, whereas with the cameras I had before it was a foregone conclusion that the camera itself just wasn’t going to capture the image very well.  It was possible to get a really nice photo…just not probable. Kind of like if you meet a guy with a shaved head and swastika tattoos, it’s possible that he owns a nice, kosher deli…just not probable.

Not a lot goes on in my life.  I lead a boring life.  Most evenings are full with a)get home b)cook dinner c)eat dinner with family d)wash dishes e)settle toddlers down f)random chore (ie: garbage night, vacuuming, replacing light-bulbs, sweeping kitchen, watering plants, mowing lawn, etc)  AAaaaaand…by then it’s bedtime.  Most nights, really, I’ll climb onto the internetic sub-highway at 11pm or so, and surf when I should be sleeping.  That’s my “me-time” I guess.

Let’s see…we broke in our fire-pit on Saturday.  I built this thing at our last house.  Then we moved.  So I dug up and transported four wheelbarrow loads of rock and gravel to our new place and re-dug the pit.  Yes, I moved a hole.  We had our first real bonfire in it, though, with s’mores-roasting and the whole schlemiel.  Yes, we ate s’mores, my wife told scary stories… the kids got scared… and went inside…  And I sat out by the fire by myself until midnight waiting for it to burn down enough to go inside.  It was actually nice though.  Very quiet.  I don’t get much quiet in a house with four kids.

And there we go.  I’ve managed to get paid for half an hour of blogging.  That’s a win in my book.

Marathon Day

Mein Gott in Himmel.  That’s all I can say after the day today was.  (happens to be an awkward sentence, but meh)

Today my oldest daughter had her ballet recital…then we had to go to a wedding, wherein my oldest daughter was the flower girl.  And my wife was the “wedding coordinator.”  Just nobody told HER that before hand…but more on that later.

So how did my day go?  Well, once at the recital, my job consisted of wrangling the twins and slapping my son’s hands whenever he made a twin scream…which meant I slapped a hand about every 5.4 seconds.  The recital was an hour…an hour spent shushing toddlers, corralling toddlers, holding toddlers, picking up toddlers and fetching toys for toddlers.

Then we went to eat, which was okay.  Then to the wedding, where we got there an hour-and-a-half early…an hour and a half spent keeping toddlers off the photographer’s stuff, out of other people’s stuff, and out of the way.  And once the wedding started, I spent another hour pushing toddlers in a stroller, fetching dropped bottles and shushing screams.   And after the wedding we went to the reception where again it was time spent shushing toddlers, putting toddlers in high chairs, taking toddlers out of high chairs and keeping toddlers from getting stepped in by already-drunk wedding guests.

So from 10:30a.m. until about 6:30 p.m. my day was a blur of toddler-control, and I ended up tired, but feeling like I hadn’t been anywhere or done anything.

Oh, and the wedding coordinator thing?  My wife thought she was just to stand at the head of the aisle and tell the bridesmaids when to start walking…until people started telling her she had to control the bride’s fucktard/brat son, and was supposed to have decorated the pews, and was to help the bride get dressed, and decorate the entire church, actually, and the reception hall, and the minister her own damn self (pun intended) was ON my wife about everything.  Would’ve been nice to get a heads-up on that one.

Oh, and my wife dropped our (her) nice digital camera and it’s broken.  It shoots video okay, but photos have suckworthy horizontal bars across them.  Yaysticks and happyturds.  Just what we needed…to spend a hundred bucks on another camera, or on a repair on a camera that’s only worth about a hundred bucks.

But I guess, once we got home, I had a glass of port wine, and we made pudding.  A day that ends with pudding is a day that ends well, I guess.  Mmmm…….pudding.  <sigh>

Phew — Imports

So, that’s done. What follows this post is about a dozen more posts containing my entire blog from MySpace. And hopefully I don’t have to type “MySpace” that much more on here…it feels blasphemous. I’m actually embarrassed to have a page on that site.

Anywho, they’re just straight copy-pasted into Word, de-tabled, left-aligned, copied here and hyperlink-stripped. So they have all the nice what’s-yer-mood, whatcha-listening-to crap that My– um, you know — puts on their blogs. So my posterity is covered, anyway, so to speak.

Sadly, I’ll keep that page on that site, though…

MySpace, April 20 – May 26, 2008

Monday, May 26, 2008

So What’s The Big Deal?
Category: MySpace

Okay, so I guess I just don’t get what the big deal is about MySpace. I signed on so I could have a place to blog, ‘cuz keeping a journal is supposed to reduce stress…at least the “experts” say so. That, and it’s kind of neat to play around with profiles and edit the style pages a bit. That’s all I do here. Really. This whole emphasis on friends at this site serves only to point out to me just how many people I don’t know. I have what, ten friends? Maybe? And two of them are a radio station?I just spent the last hour looking for the few people I know…and failed. I looked for people who I went to high school with…and failed. I looked for people I knew in college…and failed. I looked for people I used to work with…and failed. I looked for people I work with NOW…and failed.

In part, this has to be backlash from living a life largely without friends. I haven’t kept up with anybody…and now I have no idea where they are or what they’re doing. I honestly don’t know how people on here can have over a thousand friends. Do they just “friend me” to everyone they run into? Are they just an icon collection to them? I don’t get it.

Maybe I’ll have to cop out and see how many bands I can collect…but it’s not like they’re going to really pay attention to little ol’ me, anyway. I could try to connect with all of the 15 year old hotties here…if I were one of the 32,000 registered sex offenders who have MySpace accounts.

Sigh…

And worse, the only people who DO read this are people who know me, so I have to be kind of sanitary here. I’m thinking of moving this whole thing to some other blogging site so I don’t hafta worry about it anymore.

1:10 AM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove

Friday, May 23, 2008

I’m That Guy

I’m that guy…you know, THAT guy. The guy with dirt under his fingernails, and grease on his hands. I’m the guy who likes to work on his own car, who replaced the clutch in his own motorcycle. I’m the guy who likes to install faucets and light fixtures, and likes to build things around the house. I’m the guy who likes digging holes and planting trees and who likes fixing the lawnmower almost as much as using it. I’m the guy with a 60lb toolbox, and power tools, and various solvents and oils in the garage. I’m the guy who likes waxing the car, and knows that rubbing compound will take out most scratches on the car. I’m the guy who likes to shoot stuff with a shotgun…and then reload his own shells, and then shoot more stuff. I’m the guy who spends the weekend in dirty jeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap, rather than shower and shave all 7 days of the week. Yeah, I’m that guy.

9:52 PM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove

Saturday, May 17, 2008

I’m That Guy

I’m THAT guy. No, not HIM…the other one. I’m the guy who’s been married for eleven years to the same woman. I’m the guy who has four kids…all with the same woman….whom I’m married to. I’m the guy who drives the crappy car and lets my wife have the nice one, because she hauls our kids around…or at least I did when the nice car held all the kids at once. I’m the guy who actually likes mowing grass, and snowblowing the driveway, and painting the kitchen, and watering the flowers. I’m the guy whose favorite sound is the laughter of my children. I’m the guy who can’t stand it when my job takes me to the pediatrics floor of the hospital, because I abhor the sound of children crying in pain. I’m the guy who thinks that Christmas is for the children, and that Santa Claus is alive in every one of us. I’m the guy who thinks that a child’s innocence is sacrosanct, and that those who violate and shatter that innocence should be removed from our society….unpleasantly. I’m the guy who wears my wife’s high-school ring around my neck, every single day; who feels naked when he forgets to put on his wedding band. I’m the guy who may joke about various hot-looking women, but who would never cheat on his wife. I’m the guy who thinks less (MUCH less) of guys who put their wife down while out with “the guys.” I’m the guy who’ll give $5 to a homeless person, and try to preserve their dignity when I do it. (“Excuse me, I think you dropped this, sir.”) I’m the guy who’ll help push a neighbor or a stranger out of the ditch. I’m the guy who’ll drop work in a heartbeat if my family needs me. I’m the guy who weeps every time he hears a newborn’s first cry. I’m the guy who wants to show my family the world. I’m the guy who wants to barbecue burgers on the deck, and roast marshmallows over the campfire. I’m the guy who’s a father, and a husband, and wouldn’t change that for anything.Yeah, I’m that guy.

10:59 AM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove

Friday, May 16, 2008

I’m That Guy

I’m that guy. You know, THAT guy. I’m that guy with glasses, Dockers and a button-up shirt, wearing track shoes. I’m that guy who says “I need to return this” when he’s thinking “take yer fuckin’ piece o’shit back and give me my goddamn money back.” I’m that guy driving the Volvo, with jazz coming out of the windows, but not TOO loud. I’m that guy who looks like a repressed asshole, like a college-educated jerk — kind of pudgy like he’s never done an honest day’s labor in his life. I’m that guy who looks uptight enough to blush if a girl looks at him. I’m that guy who gets caught looking at a girl’s legs and tries to camoflage it by looking for a garbage can that isn’t there, or something. I’m that guy who looks like a nerd…a twitchy nerd…a twitchy, uptight, Volvo-driving, stupid-expression-wearing, nerd. Yeah, I’m that guy.

10:56 PM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Bloggity Blog

I haven’t blogged here in a while. It’s become harder to really let myself say what I want around people that I know. I know anything I blog here is going to be read by my neighbor, and my tae-kwon-do classmate, and my brother-in-law, and my wife and…well most of my friends are people I know. So I can’t blog anything about them. Some of my friends live in the same house as me…so I can’t blog –– and as punctuates most everything I do, a baby pooped and I have to stop what I’m doing and go handle shit.

8:16 PM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove

Friday, April 25, 2008

I Dunno

What’s wrong with people? Are we actually getting stupider (legitmate word if you’re in 4th grade) or is there just an extreme shortage of people willing to point a finger and say (loudly) “Hey, you! You’re doing it wrong!”Today, I was waiting to turn left out of a driveway. I had to wait for cars…nothing strange there. But then the guy waiting to turn left INTO the driveway waved me out. There were no other cars coming, but there WERE cars waiting behind him. I stared at him for a second, then waved him out of the way with both arms… the physical version of “hey, stupid, get outta the road!” And he waved me out again, this time impatiently. To get things moving, I pulled out — squealed out, actually, and in the company van, too.

I fumed about it the whole time I was driving. I mean fer chrissakes, don’t they tell drivers anymore that if they’re in the middle of the road, they shouldn’t just STOP and wave people out of driveways? If they don’t have anyplace to be, maybe the drivers BEHIND them actually want to go somewhere. Thus the reason they’re in CARS, on the ROAD, trying to DRIVE SOMEWHERE! And I thought about it some more. Why didn’t the guy behind him honk or something? He was being a moron and holding up traffic…I’D have honked — a long, loud “Git the f*ck outta the road, you f*cktarded ass-mummy!!” If I’d have put the van in Park and gotten out, he’d have been mad at ME.

And I thought about it in a broader sense. The morons rule the world. They cross the centerline of the highway while driving…and the people they’re playing chicken with don’t flash a light or honk a horn or anything. Morons pull out in front of people, then slam on their brakes and turn…and nobody honks or anything. Morons cough or sneeze on you or your family, and if you say anything they either pretend they don’t notice, or they get mad at YOU.

One time, I was waiting in a long line to pay at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Indiana, and this dizzy bitch walked past everyone and straight up to a register. NOBODY said anything…so I did.
“Ex-CUSE me, but wait your turn.”
“Oh,” (and this absolutely floored me) “I thought I just walked right up…”

I thought I just walked right up?! Never mind the eight people waiting with their bill in their hands. Never mind the existence of lines since the beginning of freaking HISTORY…no, SHE thought she’d just walk RIGHT UP! Gawd! How did she survive the drive to the place? How many red lights did she run because “I thought they meant everyone else,” and how many pedestrians did she run over while driving on the sidewalk because “I thought I just drove over here…” Is she serious? Really?

So I dunno. Maybe it’s because the biggest thing anyone reads anymore is an issue of People magazine. Maybe it’s the whole Real World-Surreal Life-The Osbournes-ANTM-Survivor-Big Brother-Tila Tequila-Paris Hilton-Hamster Dance-America’s Got Talent mentality that’s being fostered by our televisions. Maybe it’s all the artificial colors in our food. Maybe everyone’s Zoloft is reacting with their Zantac and causing stupidity. I dunno, but it’s really annoying.

Hey! Stupid people! Please stop!

9:50 PM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Randomnity
Current mood: cheerful

I haven’t blogged anything in a while, and should. It’s harder to do when people who know me read my blog…like, oh, I dunno…my wife. Can’t go on about my extra-marital exploits; can’t complain about my girlfriend’s shortcomings; can’t talk about that court order at ALL.Yeah.

My brother-in-law (BIL) moved in with us last weekend. We cleaned out a corner of our basement and made a space for him. It kind of saddens us that all we can offer is an unfinished basement — bare cement, plastic sheeting over the pink insulation for walls, and the ceiling is floor joists and heating ductwork. I was able to run a couple of extension cords to his “room” for power for his 47 different video game systems. He’s also borrowing one of our cars while his is KO’d. Again, I’m kind of embarrassed that it’s older than he is — it’s an ‘84 Crown Victoria…it’s navy blue, 17 feet long and slow. It gets all the gas mileage of a V8, and has all the power of a 4-cylinder.

On the other hand, I’m actually proud to be have something to offer — we finally have a house big enough that we can clear out a 10×12 (or so) room without really cramping our lifestyle (if we actually have a lifestyle…I suspect we don’t.) and we have a car that is in decent shape that has done nothing but sit for a year — heck, my BIL driving it is actually HELPING us out…the car needed to be driven to kind of keep it in working order. It’s not going to send us to the poorhouse to have another person living here, not by a long shot, and that’s a decent feeling.

(subject change…) Home improvement season has started. Some people call it spring, I think. We’re starting to work on the house to start making it what we want. We put in new solar lights by the sidewalk, and we’re testing out different samples of paint on the walls. I stained the porch, deck and the kids’ swingset, and they all look much better. We’re starting to water the yard, and the grass we planted last fall is sprouting nicely this spring.

Oh, and I got Guitar Hero III for about 1/2 what it costs in the store, so I’ve been playing the $!t out of that for the past coupla days. It’s not a real guitar, but it’s fun.

Later.

11:41 PM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove

MySpace, March 24 – April 8, 2008

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Poisoned
Current mood: infuriated

We just got back from vacation.Correction: We just got back from the bar-none worst vacation I’ve ever had to endure.

We rented a minivan and got a great deal on a time-share condo for a week in Williamsburg, VA. Prescription for success, I know. We set out on Saturday evening, planning to drive through the night while the kids slept, buoyed by road-food snacks and Red Bull.

How wrong we were.

After twelve hours on the road, I passed out while driving somewhere in West Virginia. I had enough warning beforehand that I was able to stop the van and not kill my entire family. My wife thought I was dead. My kids were screaming my name. I didn’t know any of this. My wife woke me up, we pulled the van off the road, and I got out and vomited in the ditch. That afternoon we checked me into the ER in Winchester, VA. They thought I’d had a heart attack and ran EKG’s, cat scan and a chest x-ray. Not to mention the dual IV’s filling me with fluids and a heparin drip. And they stuck a nitroglycerin patch on my chest. They really thought I was going to heart-attack on them.

Then they admitted me for the night, and kept me awake by sticking needles in me every two hours…and they starved me until they could run an EEG on a tilt-table…which made me pass out again, go figure. After finding nothing beyond exhaustion, dehydration, etc…my wife bitched loudly enough that they let me go, and we made it to Williamsburg a day late.

Well, let’s skip Tuesday and Wednesday — I spent Tues. in bed and saw the ocean on Wed…amongst choking down every bite of food that I ate, and battling waves of nausea and diarrhea.

Thursday we set out to see some plantations…and my wife almost passed out while driving, just like I did. And we realized that the van we had rented — a brand new Grand Caravan — was piping carbon monoxide and gasoline fumes in through the vents, and poisoning us. Poisoning me. Poisoning my wife. Poisoning my seven-year-old boy. Poisoning my five-year-old girl. Poisoning my 17-month-old twins. Poisoning us.

We made Budget bring us a replacement, out in the middle of nowhere of Virginia, and we finally had a clue what was making us all feel terrible. Not the flu, not just wussyness. We were poisoned.

And then Friday and Saturday we drove home…our vacation thoroughly ruined. I saw the doctor on Monday, and she confirmed that all of the symptoms I’m still suffering from can all be chalked up to carbon monoxide poisoning. It may take another couple of weeks to truly get this crud out of my bloodstream. I (and any of us) may show side effects up to 40 days after our exposure. My kids may have permanent developmental damage. We have to wait and see. At the very least, we got a free van from Budget — we did NOT pay for our poison van.

And so we wait and see. We wait and see when we stop feeling nasty and nauseous and dizzy and numb. We wait to see if any long-term effects show up. We wait and see if we can get over our first real vacation in five years being so totally raped by this. We wait to see if we need to hire a lawyer and go for the balls.

I have nothing good or especially funny to say about all of this. Deal with it. We have to.

5:04 PM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove

Thursday, March 27, 2008

I’m Bitching About Drivers Again

I had to take a road trip for work today — not like interstate long, just 30 miles to Frankfort and back. Man, am I the only one whose head isn’t up their ass?Here’s a great refresher lesson for drivers: If there are cars coming, wait.

Again: If There Are Cars Coming, Wait.

One more time: If There Are Cars Coming,

Wait.It’s like I’m not even there, sometimes — like there’s a gap in the visible light spectrum the size and shape of whatever vehicle I’m in. Here are some scenarios for all of you who need them:If you’re waiting to pull out onto a busy road, and there are cars coming…DON’T pull out. I know it’s a departure for you, but try it. If you’ve already waited for three cars, maybe DON’T pull out in front of the fourth car. If you’ve already waited for a full minute…DON’T pull out in front of whomever’s next. If someone asks you how many cars you wait for before pulling out, any answer except for “all of them” is WRONG! It doesn’t fricking matter how many cars you wait for — if there are more cars coming, you keep your ass off the road!

If there is a school bus or garbage truck on the shoulder, and you want to drive around them…but there are cars coming, WAIT! Let’s actually NOT pull into the oncoming lane when there are oncoming cars in it that are…well….oncoming. It’s not your lane, it’s theirs…keep the fu(dge) out of it!

If you’re waiting to turn left across traffic…and there seem to be large metallic objects approaching…WAIT! If you think “I’ve waited long enough,” and turn in front of them, you may be having a nice T-Bone for dinner tonight. Don’t be stupid, even if it’s a challenge.

And here’s another: If you pull up to a road you want to turn onto, and there are two cars coming, but miles of empty road behind them…just wait for those two cars, and THEN pull out, okay? You won’t be getting anywhere any faster by jumping out in front of them like an asshole…and who knows, they might have been going much faster than you like to go, and you’ll succeed in pissing off people who are behind you where you can’t see them pull a bazooka out of their back seat.

Oh, and motorcycles count as cars. Yes, they do, actually. No, I’m serious, they do. Whatever, jerk, STFU and wait for them, too.

11:19 PM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove

Monday, March 24, 2008

Day-to-day Poop

I’m just finishing the day after Easter. Or as my wife seems to like calling it: Thanksgiving. I am so beat, I actually left work at 1pm, came home, and took a 2-hour nap. Saturday night, we had to be easter bunnies — that’s what mom’s and dad’s do, and there shouldn’t be any kids reading this and getting their universe rocked with this revelation.Where was I? Oh yeah, we stayed up late Saturday to get easter baskets together. This after spending the day cleaning our house to host 15 people for Sunday dinner. So I partook of my first “energy drink” ever. You know, the ones with “Taurine” and “Guarana” and “Guacolocospirulene-L17″ and so on. As it turns out, the darn things work. I drank the thing between say 4pm and 6pm Saturday. I didn’t have my first yawn until 3:30a.m. Good lord in Hoboken, it was like drinking a Sweet-Tart.

So today, I got up at my usual 5:30a.m….after getting a not-usual three hours of sleep. I was dragging ass. I bought another one of those drinks at work and downed it, but this one had some different brew of ingredients, and it made me all hyper-twitchy-stumbly, then it ran out and I realized I was sitting at my desk, staring out the window, completely lights-on-nobody-home. I left.

But Sunday was nice. We hosted the Famn Damily — 17 people in our 1500 sq. ft. house (my wife insists 1400, bleah) including our children. We had two kinds of ham; mashed taters and gravy; green bean casserole; home-made mac’n cheese; taco dip and chips; meatballs; rolls; orange jello-whip stuff; 5-layer salad, deviled eggs and two kinds of pie. Uurp. After dinner, we had three kids whipping beach balls at each other in the living room, with the twins toddling back and forth through it and remaining unscathed like that scene in “The Untouchables” where the baby carriage bumps down the stairs through the middle of the gunfight.

All in all it was a good Easter. The kids liked their baskets. Dinner was low stress despite all the people. Then I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. getting the house into something resembling normalcy and getting a start on all the dirty pots and serving bowls. And that leads into the three hours of sleep before going to work today. Aack.

It was four degrees this morning. Stupid me, I tried to stick the new license plate tags on the car. That didn’t work. Luckily they stuck this afternoon when I tried. And what’s with having to scrape off my car windows after Easter, anyway? That’s not right. I don’t care if Easter is in mid-March…it’s supposed to knock off this winter shit now.

Tae kwon do tonight again. Now that the tournament is done (I didn’t go) there’s less emphasis on sparring and more concentration on our requirements for our next belt test. I have my form pretty well learned — Tae guek II. Chim-bee position; left low block, step forward, punch; right low block, step forward, punch. Forward inside block, forward inside block; left low block, forward kick, step forward, high punch; right low block, forward kick, step forward, high punch; forward high block, step forward, high block; spin counterclockwise and right high block; spin clockwise and left high block; low block to the rear, forward kick, punch; kick, punch; kick, punch with ki-yi, face forward; chim-bee position.

Like, I know, right?

11:29 PM - 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment – Edit - Remove