Gar Gar Gar...

If you read my other blog, you'd be treated to my rant about change and redesigning my blog and growing a beard...but it doesn't really apply, here. So...if you'd like to see all of that, look here (click me).

Instead, you get the rest.

The boy is at a funeral today. He looked really good before he left. Funerals are hard, because on one hand, I want to be there for him. On the other hand, I never knew the person and a lot of his extended family doesn't know he's gay. So...it's awkward for both of us if I'm there. I asked him if he wanted me to come with.

I guess I'm staying home again.

But I've got an appointment with career services at 2 this afternoon, so...I won't be sitting home doing nothing ALL day.

I still haven't heard from the unemployment office. Do they just...call? Or something? I dunno. This not having an income thing is really a drag, and I got paid today! I think I've got one more paycheck coming for the two days I worked this week. And then? Nada.

Ugh. Anyone want to loan me their job?

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Unemployed: Day 2...

So, after a night full of dreams about zombies, I made this completely unrelated video blog. It's kind of long, so I understand if you don't watch it, as it's just another video confessional dealy-o. Forgive my absolutely terrifyingly scary paleness. It's winter in the Midwest and I don't tan for fear of getting cancer.



Now I need to shower and put on some real clothes. And eat. Eating is good.

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Unemployment: Day 1...

So...here's the deal. I wanted to talk without having people offer me advice, so I talked to the camera. This could be chronic.



So there.

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Fired...

Yup. I got fired today.

I don't really have much to say right now. My mom told me I should get drunk as hell tonight and tomorrow start looking.

I'm most upset that I won't get to talk to my customers and let them know they won't be seeing me anymore. Unfortunately, there were some I liked. The rest? Fuck 'em.

My boss fired me and then told me he could write a letter of recommendation if I wanted it. I got up to walk out and he started telling me what to do. I looked at him and said, "You can't tell me what to do; you're not my boss anymore, remember?!"

So...yeah. Not graceful. But whatever...I told him I appreciated that he could write me a letter, but that it was shitty that after giving them two fucking years of my life they couldn't give me two fucking days of notice. He said there was nothing else he could do. I told him I didn't want to be there anymore and asked him what I would have to do to be able to just leave. He asked for my keys, but first I cleaned out my vaults with all my sticky notes, drawings, etc. I accidentally locked my vault without putting my coin back in it. I just tossed the keys on the counter and said, "I guess you can put those away. I don't work here anymore!" And I walked out.

Debbie tried to put a hand on my shoulder and say she was sorry, but I just kept walking and told her, "I'll see you later. I still bank here, you know."

And I walked out. I couldn't stay. I would have cried.

Ugh. This has seriously been the worst month of my entire life.

Out

And PS. I hate to be bitchy, but it's really a bummer that a post I put so much work into yesterday didn't get ANY attention. So...whatever.

Winter Fun!

Just what I needed!  Some good old winter fun!  This weekend we went snow tubing at Villa Olivia in Bartlett, IL.  It's the home of Robb's winter job and the reason I don't see him for four months every year.

I went with my friends Amy and Kylie, and after a great breakfast in town, we made the trek to Villa.  We didn't get there as early as we'd have liked, but it wasn't too terribly packed yet.  Besides, this was worth waiting in line for:



After about two hours of that, we decided we wanted Robb to take us on the ski lift.  The girls hadn't been on one (ever?), so we rode down and then up. 



Up was...fun...ish?  Loading the chair, Robb sat in the middle on his side, leaving me NO room, and as the chair came around I was forced to scoot out of the way of the pole and sit on Kylie's lap.  We all screamed and laughed as they stopped the lift, and I got situated, thoroughly embarrassed.  Ugh.  You can't take some people anywhere!  Luckily, there is no video of THAT.

It was really a good time.  I certainly needed it.  And despite coming home queasy, napping, and then going to bed before ten o'clock, it was a great day! 

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formspring.me

Ask me anything! http://formspring.me/Jd5iron

Roll Call...

Let me recite for you a litany of today's customers:

Sweet.
Funny.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Rude.
Stupid.
Rude.
Rude.
Funny.
Rude.
Rude.
Sweet.
Rude.
Stupid.
Lazy.
Lazy AND Stupid AND Rude.
Stupid.
Funny.
Sweet.
Sweet.
Sweet and Funny.
Nondescript.
Stupid.

Ad nauseum.

Can you tell I'm ready to go home?

Out

Anger Management...

Yesterday, at one point, I was screaming at my printer at the top of my lungs and smashing my fists on the desktop like some kind of giant baby throwing a tantrum. No, really.

My day went like this:

Me: I would love it if my camera worked again magically.
Camera: Okay! Done.
World: Oh, no...we can't have that.
Crap: We're on it!

And the floodgates opened.

Before I left for work my packages from Amazon showed up. I waited all day to get home and play the game I bought for my Wii. I was short $19.01 at work. I got home and popped said game into my Wii and it wouldn't read the disk. I tried and tried, to no avail, getting angrier all the time. That's what I do when inanimate objects malfunction...it's my rage trigger.

So I tried another game, and it worked perfectly. It was definitely the disk.

I called Robb to vent, and our conversation was sort of like this:

Me: I need to vent or I'll die.
Him: My phone's about to die; I'll call you later when I can plug it in. I'll call you later.
Me: Don't bother. I'll be at church...or lying in a heap because my head exploded. Bye.

Out of sheer hope, I cleaned the disk and tried again. No luck. So I threw it back into the box and got on Amazon. Their return policies are wonderful. I chose to print my own prepaid shipping label. I hit print after installing our printer driver on the new computer, and it started. Here's how it went down:

World: Ready, printer?
Printer: Ready! Ready crap?
Crap: Ready!

Out of ink. Paper jam. Flashing light that wouldn't go off no matter what I did. Print job that wouldn't cancel.

My printer was in dangerous territory, because NOTHING makes me angrier faster than printer malfunctions. I wish I were kidding, but I've been known to beat the shit out of a printer that won't stop being an idiot. I once punched a printer in the face and it spit out a handful of gears, and from then on it worked perfectly. It was so odd...

I have anger issues. I've always been a person with a terrible temper, but I've mostly gotten it under control over the years. It only comes out once in a while (mostly when printers are involved).

So...I did what any sane, logical, rational, calm person would do. I screamed," CANCEL THE FUCKING PRINT JOB!!!" at the top of my lungs and slammed my fists down on the desk top, scaring the cat out of the room.

I'm sure there were other choice words, but I was in a fugue at that point. I raised my fists at the printer, and then I put them down, unplugged it, emailed myself the link to the shipping label, and said I'd do it tomorrow at work.

I think that's progress. Don't you?

Out

Happy News...

So, I pulled my camera out of my bag and took the battery out, poked around at the insides with a paper clip, poked at some contacts and junk...nothing I hadn't done before...and I said a little prayer (also not something I hadn't done before) and Beep boop boop beep, IT TURNED ON!!!

It's ALIVE!!!!!!!!

Sweet mother of chins; it's alive!!!

See? Happy thoughts DO bring things back from the dead!

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Sad News...

It's not about my job, for once.

No. It's about what happened to me on Valentine's Day.

I had a wonderful Valentine's Day. I went to church, went to my writing group, prepared the boy's presents, and then went out to eat with him and some friends, where my pink chocolate chip cheesecake was a SMASH! It was wonderful, the whole day.

Except...I broke my camera.

I was passing it around the table to show a picture of the bowl I melted while making said cheesecake, and I dropped it. Everyone went *GASP!* but I assured them it was fine. And I picked it up and turned it on...nothing. It was dead. I tried cleaning out the battery case, squeezing it, dropping it again, among other things. No luck.

My friends, it's time for me to buy a new camera. I'm scared...and poor.

Out

My pastor just used an example from Twilight to illustrate the idea of the Transfiguration...I still have a little throw up in my mouth...

I'm watching Inglorious Basterds [sic] and the best part of the whole movie is when Frau Hammersmark looks at her card and says "Ghengis khan?!" Hilarious!

I Have the BEST BOYFRIEND EVER!!!

Seriously. He had flowers delivered to me at work for Valentines Day. It's the single sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me! I have been smiling all day long.

Now I just have to figure out how to get them home...

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My Two-Minute Commute...

So, I live blocks from work. I leave my house fifteen minutes before I have to be at work, and I'm ALWAYS early. I can't stand being late, probably because my mom was always late for everything.

Today I was driving, and I came to the intersection of two major roads. Watch what happened.




And I was late. Ten minutes later the train finally moved. But I got some great pictures of train graffiti.

Check them out on Facebook!

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This is a test blog from my cellular-type telephone device. Is it working? It's like 150 characters long...difficult to get a point across.

Shakey No Wakey...

Apparently last night at around 4 AM we had an earthquake. Now, I live in Illinois, so this is big news around here. I was shaken out of bed for the last one (years and years ago). I awoke that time to all the dogs in the neighborhood barking and all the lights coming on. This one, though? I awoke to a text message.

Apparently I slept through it. They said it was a 4.3 on the Richter scale, and it happened just outside of the next town over. But then they said it was a 3.8 and it actually happened closer to Elgin. Well, whatever the case, I slept through it.

Boo.

Out

The Answers to Those Burning Questions...

So, yesterday I posted a call for questions, and despite a somewhat bizarre obsession about my Jesus in Space novel, I got some pretty good ones from you all.

Before I go any further, let me answer all of those questions about said novel: This Jesus in Space novel is the product of ridiculous hours in front of a keyboard during last November's NaNoWriMo campaign. Jesus and his disciples blast off into space, and hilarity ensues. It's best if you don't ask.

As far as reading it is concerned: No one is reading thatn ovel until I do, and it's my goal this month to start reading it. That would require I print it. I have not printed it yet and I have no money to buy ink or to get it printed at this moment, but I get paid on Friday, so we shall see. If I read it and it's not absolutely horrid after my few months away, I'll let you know.

Anywho, enough about that. Moving on.

David said...
1. What Scripture do you want read at your wedding?

Wow. Honestly, I've never given it much thought. I can tell you what I don't want read at my wedding. I don't want "and the greatest of these is love" or "a cord of three strands." I want something that hasn't been made cliche by thousands of wedding readings. Maybe something out of Song of Solomon...I don't know. That's a good question that I'll have to give more thought to when I have a bible in front of me.

Emily said...
1) What's the place you've always wanted to visit but haven't been able to due to time/money/political climate?

London. I have this dream of going to London. I don't really know what I'd like to see, but I just want to go. It has this romatic mystique to it (in my head) and I'd love to spend some time there listening to people talk. My second choice would be Sydney, Australia. Again, I could sit and listen to people talking all day long, but I'd love to see the Sydney Opera House from some other angle than the one you always see.

Argent said...
1. If you could meet a character from fiction, who would it be and why?

I would love to meet Harriet, from Harriet the Spy. Better yet, Ole Golly from Harriet the Spy. They're just some great characters that I think it would be wonderful to spend some time with. I'm sure Harriet would think I was boring or would write something cutting and true about me in her notebook. Second choice? Maybe the Good Magician Humphrey from Piers Anthony's Xanth series. It always seems that strange and wonderful things happen to people who meet him. I'd be interested to see what my three challenges to get into his castle would be.

Mostlygrocery said...
Hey Justin!

1) What annoyed you most when working in retail?

Most? I guess that mean I have to pick just one thing. I wish I could say that was a hard thing to do, but really, I know exactly what annoyed me most: people who pretended I wasn't there. I'd say hello; they wouldn't respond. I'd tell them to have a nice day; they would grab their groceries and leave. I just wanted to smack them and say, "If you want to treat me like I'm not even here, why don't I just leave and then YOU can figure out how to run this damn register!" Second choice? People who got mad at me for the prices. Because everyone but my paycheck knows I control the store.

So, there you have it, folks. Answers to life's most pressing questions. If any more come in, I'll add to this post. If not, there you go! Be careful in all this snow we're getting, and if you're not getting any snow, lucky you!

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200th Post: The Question Game...

Hey all, it's my 200th post! Here I sit staring at the screen wondering what in the world you'd like to see from me...so you know what?

I'm turning it over to you! We're going to play the question game, in which you ask me one or two questions that I have to answer in the next post. For the next two days, I am an open book!

Fire away!

Out

Creepy Tooth Children...

Can I just tell you, we have our desktop background set to change every five minutes or so, and it cycles through all the factory preloaded backgrounds.  I closed my internet browser one time and went, "AUGH!"  Scared the bajeezus out of me!

This is what I saw:



Does this creep anyone else out?  I sort of love it, actually...like little tooth babies.

Seriously though, this computer came with some REALLY ODD images as default backgrounds.  They're one of my favorite things about this computer, honestly.

Eek.  I think I'll have nightmares with those little tooth babies in them someday.

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Jump Drive Dump...

I was clicking through my jump drive and I came across some great photos.

Defective signs are one of my guilty pleasures.  Any time we're out I look for them.  We once saw one that was supposed to say Randy's Market.  It said "Randy's Ma."  Love it!

And then there was "Road anger."

And this one:



That's right.  The Abbott Ho.  That's in the north side of Chicago, sort of near Boystown.

So great! 

And I don't know if I'm the only person to love these buttons, but I take pictures of them all the time:



I just love that it's two men.  Maybe I should sell this image to some kind of gay gaming blog...it would be pretty much perfect.  I've got about eight of these pictures (from all over the country), and they never stop amusing me.

And lastly, here's a picture of me squinting in the sun...in my old glasses...after not having shaved for three days.  It's not pretty.



Yikes.  Why do I do this to myself?

Anywho...there's that.

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Getting to Know...ME!

So, I was going to post this a while back, but my motivation got flushed (along with my job security). So now I'm back, and hoping to fill you all in on a little bit about me that maybe you don't know.

Sure, we have our laughs and talk about me go-go dancing or whatever, but I realized that a lot of you don't know me.

Where to start?

I had pneumonia when I was 2 and almost died. My parents divorced when I was 6, and my mom remarried and we moved when I was...eh...8 or so, I think. We lived in the country on 3 acres. Hiking through cornfields at night was a pastime.

This is the problem with posts like this. I have a really hard time keeping any kind of a grasp on my own timeline. I need to write it down (or have my mom do it) so I have something to reference. Moving on.

I got glasses in second grade. My brother and I (he's 2 years older than me and in Iraq with the Army right now) visited my dad every other weekend from 6 on Friday to Sunday at noon. And on Wednesdays we saw him from...eh...6 until something. I don't really recall. I just remember eating a lot of ham patties. I can't look at them now without gagging. Alternate weekends were noon on Sunday to 6 pm.

When I was ten, my sister was born (really she's a half-sister, but we never look at her like that). My brother and I wanted a boy. He cried when it was a girl. Ha!

When I was in seventh or eighth grade I got bifocals. I have terrible eyes.

When my brother was 18 he joined the Army. Nothing else has improved our relationship more than that. I love my brother.

Random stuff: I don't eat beans (unless they're green beans).

I used to love mustard and now I hate it.

My first car was a 1988 Buick Century.

I used to be terrified that people would find out I was a Christian.

Then I embraced it and was terrified people would find out I was gay.

I came out for the first time to a friend of mine over IM. She was kind of destroying her life over me, and I should have done it sooner. I told my mom I was gay during an argument about money and how I wanted money but wouldn't tell her about my life and why I broke up with my girlfriend, etc. I told her I was gay and her face went to, "Oh, come on..." And then to "Oh my God!" and then to "Is it my fault?" She kept giving me hugs and telling me she loved me. Then she asks me, "Have you ever been attracted to a boy?" HA! I spent my whole life attracted to a boy.

And now I have one. On the 25th it will be 4 years that we've been together. We joke about how long those years have been and about what pains-in-the-ass we've been, but really, we love each other very much.

My dad and I stopped speaking about five years ago (six?) or so. It's a long story. Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with me being gay.

I'm sure I missed something.

Anything else you'd like to know?

Out

Worst Book Ever? Quite Possibly...

Let me start this post off with a disclaimer: I am easy to please. Okay. I'll let you get all those perverted thoughts out of your head right now. Take your time. I'll be here. ... ... ... All done? Good. What I meant by that is this: When it comes to books, I like everything. Seriously. Most likely, if I read it, I'll find SOMETHING good to say about it or some redeeming quality.

Let me tell you something. When I finished reading THE MYSTERIOUS FLAME OF QUEEN LOANA by UMBERTO ECO, I threw the book across the room. No, seriously. Threw it. It was worse than Jurassic Park 3. I treat my books with dignity and respect without fail, but y'all? I threw it across the room.

"Why did you hate it so much?" you might ask.

Well, on its surface, it seemed like a good premise. A guy owns an antique book shop. He has a stroke. He loses his memory. He goes back to his boyhood home to try and jog his memory, sifting through a whole attic of books and comics from his childhood. And the dust jacket said something about those things taking on a life of their own. Uh-huh.

Dusty attic, possibility for adventure, a book about books. It can't fail!

Oh...but it did.

What I got was pages and pages and pages about Italy before and during WWII, about the comics of the day, the newspapers, the music, etc. I kept waiting for it to get better. I kept waiting for SOMETHING TO HAPPEN. He worried about his blood pressure. He made a phone call. He discovered a chapel hidden in his boyhood home that was full of old writings of his. NOT EVEN THAT WAS EXCITING!

No, no.

And then he finds Shakespeare's long lost First Folio. "Ah," I thought to myself, "Here's where things get interesting."

Then the section is over, and in the next section of the book he's in a coma or dead or something He doesn't even know. We live through 150 pages of his memories coming back. We get to see where pieces of his findings gain relevance. We get to read over and over again about his obsession with some girl in his life whose face he can't remember. And just when he's about to see her in his dream/coma/whatever?

Spoiler alert.

HE DIES! End of book.

I slammed it shut and threw it across the room. It never got any better. I just kept reading because I thought, "Well, it's going to get interesting here shortly. He's going to find something." And when he does, hundreds and hundreds of pages later, he goes into a coma. And then when he's about to find something there...HE DIES!

Seriously. Worst. Book. Ever.

Has anyone else read it? Did I miss something?

Someone reviewed it on Amazon and said, " The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana was not only a very accessible book but, more importantly, it was at once both immensely enjoyable and thought-provoking. "

Qua? Have you ever left the house before? I mean...really...

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