#303 In which our hero shakes off the cobwebs of apathy and returns to his scribbler’s desk.

Hi! Hi!

This blog is one of those things that sits at the back of my brain and occasional pokes at me, saying, “Hey! Hey! Update me! What’s your deal?” But lately I’ve been sorta apathetic about non-work related writing. Plus, with this new job I no longer have an office to myself, I sit in a cube where anyone strolling by can look down and see what I’m writing. But honestly, that’s a bit of an excuse… I suspect that most people—if they care what I’m writing at all—only see words on paper, not “OMG that dude is wasting company time writing blog entries! Must call HR!!”

A big part of my reluctance to just hammer out some entries is that:

A.) I’ve structured my writing so that entries are generally of a long and involved sort. I feel like I need to write something of substance to fill them out. I mean, the last time I wrote here was for my annual Father’s Day letter to my dead dad, so that’s some weighty stuff. Following that up with how I can never seem to get a decent Reuben sandwich out feels a little frivolous.

B.) I’ve gotten way behind on stuff that’s happened to me. Like the new job, and the girls’ starting school again, and how my wife just bought a new horse… I feel like I can’t write about the most recent stuff until I get past the stuff that’s already happened and then you’re talking about writing four entries, not just one and oh-my-oh-my who has the time?

So.

So, I’ve decided that I’m going to re-think the way I structure this thing (and that is probably a completely esoteric writer’s thing: who really cares if my writing is following an established hierarchy week to week? I do.) and take a page (i.e., completely rip-off) another blogger’s page whom I recently rediscovered, Mimi Smartypants. She chucks together a bunch of sometimes random topics, gives each its own subhead and calls it done.

I can do that.

And so I shall, starting later today.

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#293 In which our hero helps his wife enter a contest thereby exposing some of his lesser qualities. Pt. 3

When we last left our hero, his wife had just lost the contest.

My wife was devastated. She had worked so damn hard on this contest. She cried and cried.

I was furious. Furious that cheating had won the day, not effort. Furious that the people running the contest over at major horse feed manufacturer HAD to see what was going on, but did nothing to fix it.

During that last, horrible week I vented a good deal of my anger and frustration on EXTREME SICK. I wrote pretty nasty things on her posts, still anonymously. I called her a cheater. I said she didn’t deserve to win. I called her a coward when she refused to publish my comments.

It was not my finest moment.

But, I walked away from all the bullshit once the contest was over. There was no appeal, nothing to do about it except try to comfort my wife.

But then. Oh, but then.

EXTREME SICK wrote a snotty post on her personal blog about how she wished horse people could just be nicer to each other, and how she tracked the IP address of posts to learn that one of her competitors was posting nasty things to her blog (EXTREME SICK thought it was The Scientist posting, not me) and oh, woe-is-me why can’t we all just get along?

This completely flew in the face of the confrontational posts she had made during the contest and was clearly nothing more than her rubbing my wife’s face in her victory.

So I commented on EXTREME SICK’s shitty post, using my real name this time. I told her that I knew she had cheated her way into first place, and hoped she was proud of how smart she was to suss out my real identity from my IP address. I also told her that I had an intense dislike of her; a visceral reaction that struck me when I saw her very first video.

I also told her that I was walking away. There was nothing I could do to sabotage her victory, and I wasn’t going to try. I was done.

That is, I was done until her husband emailed me the following day.

He used my work email, which I suppose he though was threatening in some fashion. I wasn’t impressed. I mean, I can use Google, too.

He called me names and was basically an arrogant prick. He said that I could “make this all go away” by apologizing. There were some veiled threats, even though I’m not sure what he had planned. Tell my boss that I bad-mouthed a woman online? Try to hack my credit report?

The ironic thing is that I was sincere about walking away from the whole thing. Until I got this email. I responded in kind, reiterating that I knew he cheated for his wife (funny, but neither of them ever denied this) and that he needed to drop the bullshit posturing because he didn’t intimidate me and wasn’t likely to any time soon.

Basically, I prepared to go to war.

Now, I have to say I can’t really blame the guy. He was defending his wife. I get that. I would have done the same thing. But threatening me, even is a round-about way, was more than I could bear.

Then I told my wife about the exchange, and things got REALLY ugly.

She was angry at me. Not, not angry, enraged. She told me she wanted to be done with this bullshit, that she had cried enough, and that I was just fanning the flames.

Fuck that guy, was my response.

She wasn’t happy with this. She demanded that I apologize immediately. She frankly pushed some buttons that she should not have. But she made her point.

I apologized to EXTREME SICK and her arrogant prick of a husband.

I emailed them both to express that these past few weeks weren’t me at my best, and it certainly wasn’t an accurate representations of who I really am. Worst of all, my actions cast my wife in a negative light, and perhaps made her seem like a bad person. That, I wrote to them, was unforgiveable.

My apology was heartfelt, even though I doubt they believed a word of it.

That done, I did walk away. I haven't read a word about the contest, EXTREME SICK's personal blog or anything that might get me fired up again.

Looking back now, I’m rather amazed at my behavior. I mean, I turned into the worse of Internet trolls, not something I would have expected from myself. It was driven by anger and frustration, but that didn’t make it any more excusable.

In a way, I’m glad it happened. I learned something valuable--it would have been great if I could have learned this lesson without having my wife’s hopes and dreams violently dashed like they were, but I had no control over that.

I learned that it’s waaay easier to turn into an abusive dick when cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet. This is no surprise to anyone who’s ever read a thread on just about any message board ever, but it had never happened to me. It was alarmingly easy for me to take on the role of troll. And when it was happening, I felt… not good, but empowered. Like lashing out could actually make a difference.

It didn’t of course. Not in any positive way.

But, I’m hopeful that next time the roles are reversed, as they surely will be some day, that I can step back and remember that the asshole at the keyboard on the other end of the Internet maybe isn’t a dick by nature, maybe he’s just so enflamed by something that he’s lost his mind for a minute.

Like I did.

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#292 In which our hero helps his wife enter a contest thereby exposing some of his lesser qualities. Pt. 2

When we last left our hero, his wife was suddenly down by more than 1000 votes in an Internet contest.

This miraculous accumulation of votes seems more than a little fishy to me. The Scientist did a little Internet sleuthing and discovered that EXTREME SICK’s husband was a web administrator.

As it turns out, The Scientist’s brother is bit of a computer deity, so she asked him if he thought there could be cheating going on. He looked at how the website was set up, and reported that anyone with even a little background in web administration would be able to exploit the system to rack up a boat-load of votes without much effort. More to the point, it could be set up to be virtually undetectable for the people overseeing the contest.

There were a couple back and forth messages from The Scientist to the contest reps questioning just how things were supposed to be working. It was during this period that we were told that you could actually vote FIVE times a day (not just once, as we were told from the beginning), if you cleared your cache after every vote. This pissed me off royally. I suspected that EXTREME SICK figured this out early and that this was the source of many of these mysterious votes.

In short order EXTREME SICK was in the lead by thousands of votes. It was clear that there was no catching here. I don’t doubt for an instant that the majority of these votes were fraudulent. And I was pretty angry about. You’re taught that “cheaters never prosper” when you’re a kid, but it was clear that this cheater was going to prosper the whole way to a free trip to Kentucky.

And then something ugly happened. I started to comment on her posts. Anonymously.

I like to believe that it was the tenor of her writing that put me over the edge. Because every post was written like a 14-year-old’s diary entry, full of over-the-top expressions and snarky comments. For example, she wrote that most Dressage riders (my wife rides Dressage, remember) wore “clown make-up” during their rides. In my anger and frustration, I took a few pot-shots at her via comments. Nothing too terrible, but certainly nothing kind.

And even worse than her writing was when she wasn’t writing. The idea of the contest was to post every day for a month. She wouldn’t post for days at a time. And, amazingly, even when she hadn’t posted in days, her vote tally continued to rise.

So my anonymous comments on her posts started to become much meaner. I expressed how she was obviously cheating, and she didn’t deserve to win.

But even as EXTREME SICK’S votes reached untouchable (and unbelievable) levels, I still thought The Scientist would win the contest. Remember that it was the top TWO vote-getters that would receive the prize. The Scientist and the #3 woman were pretty close in votes, but my wife seemed to keep just ahead of her.

I should mention that this #2 placement was due to the incredible outpouring of support from our friends and family. And not just close friends… there were a lot of friends of friends who voted their asses off. I heard stories about people going to their university’s computer lab and going down the row, voting five times from each machine. It was really touching how hard people worked to prop up my wife’s vote count.

But no-one worked as hard as The Scientist. She made calls, drove out to barns, interviewed people, took lessons on horses, tried new and sometimes dangerous things and recorded everything on video so she could share her experiences. Incredibly, she managed to get first-hand experience with all eight disciplines over the course of a month. She even threw in an extra discipline when she went to train with a mounted horse “posse” so she could know what that was like.

I’ve rarely been more proud of my wife. She kicked ass top to bottom.

On the strength of her video serious, I still expected her to come in second. This would cause some awkward moments if she had to share a booth or whatever with EXTREME SICK, but that’s a small price to pay.

Then something happened in the last week of the contest. The Scientist dropped to third.

She was still regularly posting her Great 8 series, our friends were still out beating the bushes for votes… but she started to slip. Then she started to fall. It was gut-wrenching.

EXTREME SICK was about TEN THOUSAND votes ahead of #2 at this point, so no-one was ever going to catch up to that. But The Scientist was still neck-in-neck for a long time. Then about Tuesday, she was behind by 200 or so votes. Then Wednesday it was 500. Soon it was more than 1,000.

I kept a brave face for her, but by Thursday I was pretty sure she was going to lose. Did I think the second place girl was cheating, too? Yep. But there was nothing I could do about it. And at least she had the sense to keep the lead to hundreds of votes, not thousands.

The last day of the contest came and that was it. The Scientist was in third place, by about 1,200 votes.

To be concluded.

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BRAIN STRAIN

This morning a blog topic popped, unbidden, into my head. It was perfect: something I could write a reasonable length post about, didn't require me to edit photos to make it interesting, and would be easy to write. It was so perfect and obvious, that I felt no need to write it down on the spot, being that I'd easily remember it for later when I had time to write.

Then I forgot it.

On my drive home, I remembered what it was but, being in the middle of traffic, had no means of recording it. Since this was the second time it came into my head, I was sure I'd remember it this time.

Nope.

I've been racking my brains for the last hour an hour, trying to remember just what the hell it was. No luck. At one point it did come to me, complete and perfect, and I thought Yes! That's it! Then, something on TV caught my attention and it was gone, just like that. Crazy how the brain works (or maybe, just how my brain works).

So, instead of the thoughtful, funny and moving post that should be here, you get this. Blame my brain.

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MIGHT WRITE

Hey! What do you know, it’s NaBloPoMo again! And what better way of celebrating an entire month of not posting by a month of posting every day?!

And it’s not that there’s been any shortage of things to write about. I could use the excuse that things have been busy at work (and more than a little odd, too… but I probably shouldn’t write too much about that), and finding time to sit down and write is difficult, or that there’s been other things commanding my attention in the past couple months, or that I keep posting updates on Twitter so it’s not like I’ve completely abandoned this blog… but those are all just, well, excuses.

I really want to get into the habit of writing more. I want to, but it’s so easy to just sit down in front of the TV or Internet and let the entertainment (i.e., porn) wash over and not have make any sort of effort. Add to that my normal lazy tendencies, and you have a recipe for looong stretches of no updates.

And remember that book I wrote? I finally went through it one final time and made final edits, and it’s as done as it’s going to be. I think it’s good. The few other people I’ve shared it with think so, too. Now I need to make the effort to get it out to the wider world. Maybe I’ll post an excerpt here.

Anyone, I’m going to take NaBloPoMo as an opportunity to get off my ass and write.

Here goes.

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BLOG FOG

I sometimes think that I’m really missing the boat with this entire blog thing. That instead of posting occasional op-ed pieces about back yard flooding or shoes or religion or what-not, I should be obsessively recording every little detail about my children because, well--let’s face facts here--they are goddamn adorable. But every once in awhile The Scientist will say something like, “Don’t you remember how Lily used to do this thing?” and I’ll be like, “What? I don’t remember that AT ALL!”

Both girls are definitely growing up fast. It’s hard to believe that there was a time when Lily could talk, but her sister could not. Now Macey is a little chatterbox, and it’s hard to get her to shut up at times. It makes me wish I had done a monthly update (ala Dooce) so I could always look back and say, “Oh yeah! Macey was only two when she tried to choke to death on grapes! Good times… good times….”

But, I’m held in check by the knowledge that nothing is more boring than listening to someone talk about their kids. It even bores me, and I can relate as a parent. Frankly, if it’s not MY kid being cute, I don’t give much of a crap.

Maybe this is my way of warning you, the three or four people who read this on a regular basis. I may start trying to capture the adorableness of my kids. It’s probably futile, because the stuff they say that gets me rolling usually is funny because of the way they say it, or the expressions on their faces. It may come across very much like trying to explain why a joke is funny.

Of, if that fails miserably, I’ll probably go back to naked triplets*.

* Amazingly, this remains my #1 hit on search engines, even though I only wrote once about those dumb girls, and that, more than a year ago.

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FANCY DANCY

I'm generally not a "OMG! This video is soooo the awesome!" But this just makes me happy.

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THIN FIN

I'm tired and I was about to go to bed... without posting. Here we are at day 30 of NoBlowMe and I almost screwed up. That would have been a kick in the head. Being that I'm too tired to come up with a decent post, here's a funny video. If you've seen Mallrats and/or you're a Kevin Smith fan, you'll enjoy it. Otherwise... well, it's all I got.

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TAPPED CRAP

Good Lord, what date is it? The 26th? Thanks to Jesus because I am serious running out of motivation to update every day. Pfft. Note to self: bank a bunch of entries before November of next year. I had hoped to sprint to the finish line, but rather, I'm at a pathetic crawl. Even The Scientist (the non-writer in the household) has whipped out the beginnings of what is sure to be an interesting multi-part saga.

I actually have a couple of topics in mind; but it's the drive to write that's lacking, not the ideas. Like I wrote before... turn something into a must-do from a can-do and suddenly it's a chore to me.

I'm this close to filling up my blog with those dumb "what Star Wars character are you?" quizzes.

All right... that's enough garbage for tonight. To make up for it, I promise an interesting post tomorrow. I'm totally cereal.

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FEMME MEME

Dressage Mom has tagged me for one of those bullshit meme things. I usually think they are pretty stupid and ignore them, but this is my wife and I do need to post something pronto before I go to bed so...

SEVEN UNUSUAL THINGS ABOUT ME.

1. When I order take-out Chinese, and the rice come separately from the meat/veggies, I always eat a couple bites of plain white rice first.
   
   
2. I have a geographic tongue. When a dentist first told me of this, he called it a "psycho-reactive tongue," which is way cooler than geographic tongue. I never noticed it before it was pointed out to me.
   
   
3. I have gout. Which is ridiculous, because in my mind gout is a disease only to be had by fat cats in three-piece suits and bowler hats. Or fat kings. Neither of which I am.
   
   
4. I suffer from ocular hypertension.
   
   
5. I'm rather terrified of sharks (bit of cheat on this one, since it was a NoBlowMe topic last year)
   
   
6. While I'm a writer by profession, I'm a terrible speller.
   
   
7. I secretly developed a fetish for the 1893 World's Columbia Exhibition (aka, the Chicago's World Fair) after reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.
   

There, done. Now to bed. Final updates to the Maryland trip tomorrow.

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WRITE BLIGHT

Oh boy. NoBloPoMo day#19, and I’m tapped. Only 12 more days, but I think I’ve run out of crap to write about. Or maybe the spirit to keep going. Worse yet, we leave for Maryland to visit the in-laws in two days. I had hoped to create a bank of posts in advance, but now I can hardly fill up the space day by day. Not good. How am I going to be creative during the hustle and bustle of the holiday?

At least I should return to Ohio with a bunch of stuff to write about. Holiday gatherings are like that.

I’ll attempt to be less lame tomorrow. At least I'm not just posting about my shoes.

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HAIR SCARE

Hey! What’s new? Yeah? That’s cool.

Me? Nothing. Oh wait, there is one thing. I shaved my head.

Goodbye hair. We had a good run.

Yes, the treatments are going well, thank you.

So yeah, shaved my head. This is something that I’ve been thinking about for some time, and something that The Scientist has been urging me to do for years. This past summer I finally agreed, but told her that I’d have to wait until the Fall. Obviously, I’m a pale-skinned white boy, but I do get a little color in my face. Not only would shaving it in the summer make me look like I dipped the top of my head in white paint, I’m sure I would have burned the hell out of it in the sun.

But, waiting for Fall has allowed what meager suntan I did get to fade away, so I’m pretty uniform all over. Also, it allowed me to use it as part of a kick-ass Halloween costume; even though that meant I had to shave my goatee, too. I think I actually miss my facial hair more. Anyway, my angry rant about Halloween tomorrow.*

* Tomorrow?! You say? Since when do I post more than once a week? Well, it’s November 1, meaning that NaBloPoMo has started again! I’ll be posting (or attempting to do so) every day this month. I’ve stockpiled a few topics to help get me through, but if this NaBloPoMo is anything like last year’s, expect a few posts about what I ate for lunch or some similar boring crap.

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BUSY HIZZY

Seems like I’ll have days and weeks where I don’t have much to post… then I’ll suddenly get creamed with a bunch of blog-worthy stuff. That’s what’s been happening lately; starting two weekends ago stuff started to happen--not all of it good--and I thought I needed to get to it and post something to my loyal fans (and or the people who accidentally came here looking for naked pictures of the Satterfield Triplets naked--here’s a hint, guys… use Google images with the keywords “Satterfield Triplets.” It took me all of two minutes to find some photos of them naked. PS: Eh, I’m not impressed).

Also, I’ve been busy at work, my preferred place to write blog entries. In fact, since I stopped to write this entry, six things have come into my in-box. I need to read these new briefs over, then get to the other stuff that I left hanging from last week--including stuff for a big new business pitch happening tomorrow.

So, I have stuff to write about, honest. Hang in there. Until then, here’s the most recent keyword searches that brought people to my site, annotated.

satterfield triplets picture
No surprises here.

satterfield triplets
Again, I wasn’t that impressed.

steampunk costume ideas
Oh yeah! That Steampunk costume party was last Saturday. It was a lot of fun. Something else to write about…

need to know about hurpis
Need to know about a dictionary.

meshuggna
oy gevalt!

super head
Huh?

does pfaltzgraff scratch easily
In my experience, no. We’ve been really happy with ours.

shark shit
Again, huh?

horse-widower
Hope they found this.

satterfield triplets nude
Honestly, guys, they aren’t that sexy.

vicki Satterfield
Wait, they have individual names?

He groped mother’s boobs
Good Lord… I don’t even know what to say about this. What entry did this even turn up when they searched? Ugh!

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MONDAY FUNDAY

Monday morning.

I should be working (I have several job jackets on my desk giving me the hairy eyeball) but nothing is due immediately, and sometimes on Monday I have a hard time getting back into the groove. This is especially true this morning. I blame The Scientist.

See, Macey started to fuss at 5am, so The Scientist got up and brought her into bed with us. Which is fine, she settled down immediately and went back to sleep, as did I. But there was something about having one of our children in bed with us that made it feel like a lazy Sunday morning to me, and my wife finally poked me and said, “It’s six-thirty. Get up!” my brain was all, “What the fuck? You tellin’ me it isn’t Sunday? Shiiiit!”

So here’s a bunch of unorganized things of note that have happened lately:

We had a garage sale.

Actually, our entire street did. Or rather, the non-stick in the mud families did. This was organized by our garage sale veteran neighbor, who had the 4-1-1 on everything you needed for a successful garage sale in our town. Like, a permit.

I was a little horrified that our city requires you to pay five bucks to get a neon green piece of paper with your address on it to confirm that your garage sale is “legal.” Along with the permit came four sheets outlining what you can and cannot do at your garage sale, heavily weighted to the “can’t” side of the equation.

I humped a bunch of crap out of the basement and lined it up neatly in our driveway and let the invisible hand do its magic. And it was very successful! We got rid of all the big crap we no longer wanted (and only moderately wanted in the first place) and made a few bucks in the process.

It helped a great deal that everything was Priced! To! Move! The gigantic bulky end tables? $8 for the set! The dirty snow blower that desperately needs serviced? $10 (but I actually took $5)! The 1980s-era stereo with speakers? $5! The tiny black-and-white TV? Fifty cents!

The basement has never looked better.

We took a vacation.

A little one. We just ran up to the cabin (I’ve mentioned my family’s cabin before, right? Ah, yes I have) for Saturday and Sunday morning. We brought up some friends, and Mom met us up there and it was a good time. The girls are getting old enough to appreciate it, and I always enjoy my time up there. The Scientist’s severe allergies to mold and mildew make it… challenging… at times, but we’ve figured it out, for the most part. There was hiking and drinking and over-eating and poker and it was all-in-all a very fun weekend.

That is, until the trip back home.

We always dope up the girls with Dramamine, just to be safe, since the roads are a little twisty-turny. Well, we didn’t on the way home. About an hour into the trip, Macey let out a big burp that sounded more than a little on the wet side. The Scientist and I exchanged terrified glances and looked back. Macey was still just watching the portable DVD player, seemingly happy. Whew, we both thought. Glad she didn’t--

And that’s when the puke flood gates opened up.

The Scientist was driving, and I was still looking back at Macey when the dam burst. It’s always funny to watch little kids puke… unlike adults who look around in desperation for something to yak into, little kids just let it come. All down the front of her, all over her car seat.

We pulled off into the nearest gas station. She had started to cry, and The Scientist took her into the bathroom to comfort her and clean her up, leaving me to deal with the puke-splattered car seat. Which actually cleaned-up fairly easily. Lily took the opportunity to remind me several times that she didn’t get car sick, for which we were happier than she could ever know.

We dosed both kids, waited about a half hour, then got back on the road. Fortunately, there were no further incidents. But the car did smell like puke for the rest of the trip.

I parked cars and took a leap of faith.

Right across the street from our church is a catholic church. Every year in July this church has a little festival on their property with rides, games of chance, fried dough, that sort of thing--I’m guessing here, I’ve actually never been to it.

Anyway, this church pays our church some amount of money to allow fair-goers to park in our parking lot. And here’s the thing: there’s nothing tricky about the parking lot, you don’t need a pass-card to get in or anything like that. It’s asphalt, flat, marked by lines. So you might think that the church would say, “Fantastic! Give us that check, and have at!”

But it doesn’t go down like that. Rather, the parking is this amazingly over-orchestrated affair with signs, roadblocks, 2-way radios, flashlights, parking cones and a bunch of volunteers.

All of this is run by one little old lady at the church, whom we will call Sue. The parking lot deal is Sue’s baby. It’s her territory, and you are wise to tread softly when entering her territory.

I got a frantic call from Sue on Tuesday night. One of the guys scheduled to work the parking lot had been hit by a tram (apparently he was time-traveling in the 18th century) and had sprained his ankle. Could I fill in? Sure, I figured… I hadn’t been the best parishioner of late, so I figured I’d better jump on any opportunity to get good with God. My shift was the final one of Thursday night, 8-11pm. “I’ll mail you the instructions,” Sue informed me. I reminded her that I had actually volunteered for this parking lot duty before a couple years ago, and wasn’t sure if she needed to waste a stamp. She assured me she did, and that was that.

Two days later my instructions arrived (the morning of the duty--Sue must have been sweating bullets worrying that I’d get them in time) and, honestly, I never opened them. It wasn’t until after my shift that I opened the envelope to review the five pages of instructions. To say that these instructions were thorough is to bad-mouth the gods of thoroughness. Everything was covered… how to hang the signs, where to place the signs, where to block off certain parking spots, and with what, and for how long… and so on. When to close the lot. How to operate the radios--because you needed a “front lot” person and “back lot” person, and it was critical that they be in constant communication. I mean, what if you didn’t block off the lot when it was full and someone had to--I shutter to even imagine it--drive through and not find a spot and have to drive out again?

But in all fairness, I suppose all the rigmarole isn't completely superfluous. I mean, if there’s actually people from the church there, I suppose any troublemakers would be less likely to, I dunno, key cars or try to break in to the church or whatnot. But is this event of such a scale that it requires five pages to properly explain? I guess Sue wasn’t willing to leave anything to chance.

And just to reinforce this, Sue was there herself to review the policies with me again when I got there. In the course of discuss the night’s clean-up, she noticed that whoever had put the FREE PARKING sign over the usual Church Parking sign had neglected to first cover it with the protective plastic sheeting--which is clearly outlined in the SET UP section of the instructions. “Oh boy,” I thought. “Somebody fucked up. Sue isn’t going to like this.” Sue seemed to take it in stride, although the look on her face was clearly a long-suffering “Why do I even bother?” I suggested I could go put up the protective sheet now, but Sue told me that “it’s too late, now.”

Luckily there were no parking shenanigans on my watch, and I spent most of the time texting stupid things to my wife.

But one thing did happen at the end of the night that’s worth noting.

Around 11:45pm we started to tear down all the parking materials (because if they stayed up all night--well, that just would NOT do) and I had to remove some signs from the rear lot. As the lot is designed, it does downhill a bit before it exits to the street. And it winds around a corner. So it happened that I ended up on the top of an eight foot tall wall, in the dark, looking over the edge. I would have taken about a minute and half to walk around. Or! my brain suggested for some unknown reason, You could just jump down! I shined by flashlight (Please make sure flashlights are OFF!!! and return to the box labeled “Flashlights And Batteries” at the end of your shift”) on the ground, didn’t see any rocks or glass and jumped.

Now, I’m a 200lb. guy, and don’t make a habit of leaping off walls or, well, anything. I think my brain had the imgine of me lightly springing to the ground like a cat (or a ninja!), but the reality was somewhat different. I landed hard on my feet, which immediately slid out in front and deposited me rudely on my ass.

Of course, it was at that moment that my brain spoke up and said, “Jesus, dude, that was stupid.” Damn you, brain!

Anyway, my ankles hurt for the rest of the evening, but I didn’t manage to do any lasting damage. Which is nothing short of miraculous.

And on that note, I must now return to work before someone notices I'm blogging and not working and I again land hard on my ass.

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LUNCH BUNCH

I went out to lunch with a bunch of the copywriters a couple of weeks ago to welcome a new writer to the staff--not that I got a welcome lunch when I came here (but I’m not bitter or anything). At one point, out of the blue, one of the writers said, “Hey, do any of you keep a blog?”

Naturally, my first thought was “It’s a trap!”

I’m always paranoid that someone from work will find this blog. I probably shouldn’t fret so much, I’ve been pretty up-front about my love of this agency. But still, I’ve probably written more than I should have, and I’m always afraid of it coming back to bite me on the ass.

So I just sat there and didn’t say anything. There were mostly mumbles from around the table, “eh, I wouldn’t have anything to write about;” “my life’s too boring to write down;” “I don’t have the time.”

The guy asking the question went on to say that he was thinking of starting one. I mentioned how you have to be careful about what you write about work, and immediately he says, “well, of course I wouldn’t write about work.”

Yes, of course not. Blogging about work would just be stupid.

When asked what he would write about, he thought maybe fishing or another hobby. He pointed out how the best blogs focus on one topic.

Hmm, I thought. Is that right?

By and large the blogs I read are like mine, slice-of-life. They aren’t just about parenting or industry insight or whatnot. Matter of fact, I find the narrow focus blogs a little boring. Then again, almost all the ones I enjoy are written by people with kids. Then I started thinking, good God, have I become a mommy blogger? One of those intolerable harpies who chronicle every cute utterance and petty playground slight in overwrought purple prose?

Ugh! But, looking back to recent posts, I see I have discussed a man sucking his own dick; considered the pros of eating a shit sandwich and invited my readers to watch donkey porn.

I think maybe the mommy brigade isn’t quite ready to welcome me with open arms.

Whew.

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