Blogspot left room for a second Header, but they didn't leave enough room to type everything I wan

Friday, February 26, 2010

I can haz adulthood?

You know those moments you have where it begins to dawn on you that you're growing up? I don't mean the literal birthdays, like where you get cards that say "Happy 30th Birthday" so it's abundantly obvious that you're a year older or hit a milestone birthday. I mean the more subtle moments in life where you have realizations that you're maturing. Well fine, aging.

I mean, I do still eat Ramen noodles and EasyMac for snacks at work and play video games - so I'm just like an early-30-something college kid.....with my own kid. Who for some reason totally started calling us "mom" and "dad" and not "mommy" and "daddy" already. Yeah, he's not 3 yet. Kind of a weird feeling. I want to be "daddy" for a few more years.

But I digress. Oh yeah, moments in life where you realize you're growing up. There's the more blatant of even the subtle moments. Buying your first house. Filing Married2 on your taxes for the first time. Spending more on a vacuum than you did on a TV (don't laugh at this one, when you have two Siberian Huskies, you get the nice Dyson).

And then there's the other more subtle moments that take a little while to click.

This past weekend, Mrs. HokieJayBee and I traveled for her grandmother's funeral. Obviously a sad weekend, but it was good to see her entire family. Mrs. HokieJayBee's dad is one of 8 kids, so there's a lot of family spread throughout the world. So, albeit the reasoning was a sad one, getting everyone together was very nice and we had a good weekend of visits.

And our all-grown-up moment. We totally made a hotel reservation, and made it for three people and didn't lie and say it was for one person. Yeah. Don't scoff. You've done it too.

Hotel employees have to laugh at customers. I know I've been on bachelor party trips to hotels with the reservation made for one dude and for some reason this one dude reserves a 2 double bed room and needs 2 roll away beds.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse, and Other Useless Ramblings, Again and Again Again

I’ll start this week’s jumble post with an update from last week’s. It turns out differently than you might think. Upon arrival at work in the morning one day recently, there was most definitely a Pepsi truck outside. A HA! I will now totally go in the kitchen and spy on this evil evil person and try and thwart their plan to make me buy Diet Caffeine Free Strawberry Clear Horrible Pepsi, when I want a Mt. Dew.

So I put my crap down on my desk and head to the kitchen to heat up my pop tart. Of course I normally don’t heat them up. They are definitely best served cold straight from the foil to your mouth. Frosted anything is win, cold. But my box of pop tarts was all I had even close to resembling a reason to head to the kitchen at 8:30something in the morning. There he is! Loading the machine as we speak, that evil evil man. So, first, I was right last week, I do hate my Pepsi *guy*. He didn’t look too menacing. Looked like a pretty normal guy. We had the generic-two-guys-who-don’t-know-each-other-head-bob-“what’s up”-moment. I went to the microwave and turned to watch him complete his evil soda machine loading deeds.

And I totally saw him do it with diet Slice/Sierra Mist (whatever Pepsi Sprite is) mixed in with the Dr. Pepper!!!

Me, being of nice, polite, and totally always able to keep quiet and not be outwardly not-bashful or shy about aggressively approaching someone……maybe I did say, “Sweet! More Diet Caffeine Free Flavored Pepsi stuff when I want a Mt. Dew.” Maybe I did say it.

And here’s the shocker. His reply, “Yeah…..sorry about that. That’s what they tell us to do at the distribution center to get rid of the crap that don’t sell. Otherwise it’s just trash and we can’t sell it past a certain date.”

I didn’t reply along the lines of, “well it’s trash either way, before that certain date.”, but I wanted to. But seriously, read that. The local Pepsi bottling/distribution plant teaches their drivers to load the popular soda racks with the stuff that doesn’t sell??? Wow. I mean I guess it makes sense that they might vaguely make suggestions to their drivers on how to move some of the slow moving product. But for it to come off almost like a policy? That’s a little disturbing to me.

I think Jeremy (well at least that’s what the Pepsi patch on his shirt said) saw how taken aback and surprised I was at hearing this. He reached into his crates and handed me a 20oz. Mt. Dew and said, “sorry about that last week.”

What I said, “ah no big deal man, thanks.”
What I was thinking, “HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP. Free soda! Free soda! This dude is cool in my book. Fill that machine maliciously to your heart’s content! Free soda! Free soda! Did you ever know that you’re my hero!!! The wind beneath my wings!!!! Free drink! Free drink!”

Sometime later that morning I returned to the kitchen to heat up some Ramen. Wait, what? You don’t still eat Ramen and pop tarts? I don’t care that I’m not in college anymore. Ramen is phenomenal. Worth every penny of the $0.06 price. I’m not kidding. Anyways, in the kitchen, on one of the tables, were about 6 sodas with a note to help oneself. The diet caffeine free craptastic ones. Wow, this guy not only gave me a free Mt. Dew, he stopped his evil maniacal ways and is giving out the lesser sodas too.

NOPE! Those must have just been the sodas so old he couldn’t even do the loading/selling trick. They must’ve been so old he couldn’t sell them. Because, even after my apology, my free soda, and the other free ones on the table – there was still crap soda blocking the good stuff in the machine. He totally bought my silence! My angst at the Pepsi delivery company can be silenced; I am a soda machine etiquette whore. I’m a damn soda popstitute.

*This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse – My Estrogen Levels are High*
It’s not really this week’s sign, since the events in question happened a couple weeks ago, I’m just getting around to writing about it now. But apparently my Estrogen levels spiked recently. My wife is a teacher. She had some free tickets to a local aquarium for us to use. Basically the aquarium was to be kept open late on a Friday night for local teachers and their families to go for free, outside of normal business hours. She had a flyer for the event. She sent me the flyer on e-mail. We reviewed it, determined we wanted to go. My parents and brother live pretty locally to us. We asked them if they wanted to go too, to see the aquarium with lil HokieJayBee. My mom couldn’t, but my dad and brother wanted to go with us.

We checked into the availability for us to bring additional family members to the special after-hours teacher’s family aquarium event. We had the flyer, we had the aquarium’s website, and we had the recording on the aquarium’s information line. All three differed on the topic. From teacher and immediate family only can come, to teacher plus family all free within reason, to teacher immediate family free with extended family available to attend after-hours but pay normal aquarium entry rates. We had invited my dad and brother, and they were going to come with us – now it was a matter of their entry fee.

Mrs. HokieJayBee and I had made the calls and searched the websites and read the flyer and we were hitting that near-fight a couple hits in frustration at something else. Just frustrated at the whole thing and the incongruence between the aquarium’s information sources, we’re both trying to just get a straight answer. We basically hit the point that we’re bringing my dad and brother, and they’ll probably have to pay their own way in. We decide she’s going to send me the flyer on e-mail and I’ll print it and we’ll bring it so that we’ll at least have one form of proof as to what the aquarium rules were for that night.

And when she sent it to me on e-mail, it was attached, and her note in the e-mail said: “Here it is…”

Note the three .’s.

What she meant by the … “I am so done talking about this, I’m frustrated we can’t get a straight answer from the aquarium, so here’s the flyer, print it for us tonight, we’ll take your dad and brother, see you soon, love you.”

What I read in the … “Hey fucktard, here’s the flyer. See how it says immediate family free and others can come but have to pay. Why are we still talking about this? Why are you fighting me on this? Why do you hate me? Why are you such a jerk? I hate you. You’re a stupid idiotic fool and I regret ever meeting you. I’d rather poke myself in the eye with someone else’s trimmed toe nails than go to the aquarium tonight with you. Die in a fire.”

So I commenced to then start a real fight back at her on e-mail over the … and what she meant by it and why is she so mean and why does she hate me and do I look fat in these pants.

High estrogen levels.

*Got Me. Again.*
We have a decently fancy phone system where I work. I mean, I’m techno enough to be ok on computers and like with the home theatre system. But I don’t know anything about telecommunications. We’ve got these decently fancy Nortel Networks phones at work, and they’re hooked in through the computers and such. Never had a problem with them. Except, the clock displayed on the big screen on the phone is off. It’s been off for a long time. And it’s not off like an even amount like there’s a daylight-savings-time thing.

They’re off by an hour and 17 minutes. Yeah. All day every day, they’re off by an hour…….. and 17 minutes. WTF? I say, “Got me. Again.” because the phone clock gets me like 5 times a day, every day.

“Sweet! Lunchtime!”……”Damn, nevermind, only 10:45.”

“Sweet! Time to head out!”….”Damn, nevermind, only 3:30.”

*Speaking of Clocks Being Off.*
Am I behind the times? Or really far ahead? Someone catch me up. Am I really really really behind the times? Or am I so far ahead of the times I never caught up to fall behind? Am I so late to the scene to make fun that I’ll seem late for still even talking about it, even if it’s negatively?

What the hell is the fascination and how the hell is “The Jersey Shore” popular? Seriously people.

Ok. So the reason I even bring it up is I got an e-mail from a friend I really respect. (i.e. wouldn’t expect them to send me a “Jersey Shore” related e-mail) I googled the application that is becoming popular as the “Jersey Shore Nickname Generator”. Yes I did.

Put in my name. If I were a steroid filled, fake tanned, hair gelled idiot on MTV right now, I’d be “Juice Box”. I put in my middle name the second time, since I technically go by my middle name, and I’d like to introduce you to “Juice Springsteen”. Hell yeah.

*Catch and Release, or Keeper.*
In last week’s cornucopia post I alluded to things being hectic at work lately, with more to come. I’ve decided to limit the novel to a few simple lines. I worked for Company DDD. Company DDD was owned by Company BBB. For reasons they haven’t even totally told us, there were some super secret squirrel meetings and Company DDD had to go away – quick fast and in a hurry. So Company BBB sold Company DDD to Company AAA. Company AAA is also under Company BBB. So now I work for Company AAA, still under Company BBB. Same desk, same job, same clients. Different letterhead. Get it? Neither do I.

Anyways, in the weeks leading up to all this, needless to say, it’s been quite stressful around here. There were some layoffs. There were some people leaving. No one had a guaranteed seat at Company AAA. And frankly, if the lawyers and all the super secret squirrel stuff didn’t go down straight, all of us were out of a job. It was a very stressful time.
Two days before the acquisition, my Manager came up to me and needed me to come by his office, he needed to talk to me. Crap, really? Called to the principal’s office? I’m not going to be retained? Dammit all to hell.

So I stroll down to his office. He shuts the door. He proceeds to ask me which new logo I like best for our new Company AAA.
“I’m a KEEPER!!!!!” I got to voice my input on the new logo!!!!!1one11oneone1!!shiftone!11!!1111!

I think I moonwalked back to my office.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse, and Other Useless Ramblings, Again

I guess I’ll open with the standard blogger bit, “sorry I haven’t been posting as much lately, I’ve been busy, I’m tired, I’m sick, I’m sick and tired, I’ve been traveling, a ferret broke my computer, zombies came from Montana to Virginia and ate my brains, etc.” The truth of the matter is twofold, regarding my lack of posting. First, I admit, I do a lot of my post-writing, or at least rough drafts of posts, at work. Shhhhhh. No really, I take breaks occasionally and spew thoughts down onto (virtual) paper when I can. Well, heaven forbid, a little secret, I’ve been busy at work lately. And it’s been hectic here at work recently on a few other levels – more on that in a near future post. Needless to say, my normal creative time has been spurned by actually having to work, at work. Jeez.

Secondary to that, with creative time limited to where I can’t even work out outlines and drafts, let alone full posts when they come to me, is that I’m my own biggest critic. I’ve tossed away about 50 rough drafts lately of stuff I deemed unworthy of posting. You know, since so many literature critics and publisher editors read my blog…… But what I mean is that, not only has my time available for the verbal diarrhea that I call BorderlineTMI been limited, I’ve been harsh on the work and scrapping it before posting. I don’t know which is the chicken or the egg here.

Low time to post = work I’m not satisfied with so I don’t post it?

I’m overly critical of my own work = so I don’t *really* get into the writing unless I’m pretty sure it’s going to be bombtastic = so I don’t finish it properly, or I just slough off a writing opportunity because I’m worried that the low time to post will result in a work I’m not satisfied with so it won’t be posted?

All of which defeats the purpose of a blog that is admittedly about nothing, other than clearing my head of the demons disguised as useless ramblings of thoughts. Or simply mental weight loss. The more I write this stuff out to you (all), the lighter my head is because I don’t have to think about it anymore. And I can spend more time thinking about important things like bacon, bacon on sandwiches, and why can’t I remember Ben Affleck’s character’s name in Dazed and Confused. Man he was a dick. Wait, he played a dick character in Mall Rats too. Mr. Jennifer Garner totally got his start in movies playing assholes!

/channeling my inner-Asian-drive-thru-worker-from-Dude-Where’s-My-Car/

And then…..

And then….. I totally also remembered it’s been approved by blog admin for me to do cornucopia smorgasbord posts. Instead of writing at length on one useless subject in my own twisted ways, I can write on a British metric shit ton of subjects in my own twisted ways. Or like 10 things. British metric shit tons are a lot. 10 is probably more like it. Maybe I’ll do like 5 things, in shorter bursts, once or twice a week, and try and be better about larger topic posts. Yeah, we’ll try that.

Without further ado……another smorgasbord post. (Look I used that properly! Without further adieu. Without further, a doo. Temerity Jane would be proud.)

Ok, I don’t know if you could tell, but there was like a 5 minute pause between when I typed the last sentence to when I’m typing this now. I had to go for a walk. I totally had one of those OMGWTFBBQ moments and just needed to let my brain take it all in and not freak out. Weird shit happens sometimes, and it frankly weirds me out. And now I’m pissed for today that I didn’t use up my weird cosmic psychic points on a lottery ticket – but rather on this post. See, in the previous line, I linked to a Temerity Jane post where she basically lists all her language and verbiage pet peeves – one of which I remembered as “without further ado”. (if you’re not reading her blog, you should be, at least for her monthly cliff-notes version of Cosmo.) (I just lost man-points didn’t I?)

So I went to her blog to search for the subject post, so I could link to it here. And she’s got some ads on her site. No biggie. And freak-out time….one of today’s ads features one Mrs. Ben Affleck. Yeah, Jennifer Garner. Yeah. So earlier I blabber about bacon and Ben Affleck above? I mean, like why did my brain choose him today as my outlet for randomness? Then I try and be funny and call him “Mr. Jennifer Garner”. Then seconds later I link to Temerity Jane’s page to find Jennifer staring at me? This was all just too much to handle. So I took a walk.
And now I’m back. So really, without further ado.

*This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse*
I’m sure most of you know, from real life or just reading on here, that recently Mrs. HokieJayBee and I got a brand new 50” plasma. It’s nice. Real nice. And we totally shouldn’t have purchased it. Because less than 7 days after installing it. Our second zone AC/heat unit went out at the house. A new $4500 unit later, it’s less lunches out with the work crew to try and save some pennies. Which means more lunches brought from home. Which means more leftovers and more microwaveable crap. So I recently brought some Hot Pockets. Blech, I know. And I totally stole them from Mrs. HokieJayBee’s stash, so they were Lean Pockets. Double blech. And all I have to say about them, is, yeah, they were FRIGGIN AMAZING. They were Lean Pockets Garlic Chicken White Pizza. And they were two breaded lunch pockets of pure win. Yeah, I said it.

*Life’s Little Victories*
Same day last week when I brought the Lean Pockets of Euphoric Bliss, it was totally a double whammy good lunch. You know that feeling when you’re finishing a meal, and you’re like, “man, I wish I had one more little thing. Like, not another entire side dish. But, just one more little tasty morsel of something.” And you’ve eaten your double pack of Lean Pockets, and you’ve eaten your yogurt, and your granola bar? And you’re just craving one more bite of something to finish it all off? And you stand up to go to the vending machine to get one more little snack? And you’re cleaning off your desk from the lunch trash you just made? And you feel a lump of something solid still in your lunch bag when you go to move it? And you reach in and totally find a single brownie in a zip-loc bag? And you do the, man-I-thought-my-lunch-was-gone-and-I-was-going-to-get-a-snack-from-the-vending-machine-but-found-a-brownie-DANCE?

I just realized as I scan my sticky-notes-of-blog-ideas that I have a good amount of food/lunch based ones. Authorized title change: This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse, and Other Useless Ramblings – The Work Lunch Edition

*When Did They Change Bananas?*
Yeah, I mean when did the fruit and vegetable scientists change bananas? I had a banana with my lunch the other day, and it tasted normal, it was a fine banana. But it was totally different. One reason I never really took to bananas growing up, was the fact that I’m a texture/consistency guy. And those godforsaken stringy lines that you have to peel off the banana, after already peeling the peel off the banana – just flat gross me out. So, I shied away from bananas for pretty much my whole life. The look and feel of those stringy things on bananas just makes me vomititious. And this lunch banana I had the other day, didn’t have ANY of the weirdo vein strings. NONE. When did they change bananas? And why wasn’t I notified so that I could start enjoying such a lovely fruit again, earlier in my life?

*Wait, They’re Called What?*
So the other day in my office’s kitchen, someone left out snack food on the sharing table. You know, the one table in your office that everyone leaves fair game food? Whether it be something they just brought too much of, or on purpose to put on the sharing table, like chips and salsa. Well, the other day, this free-for-all snack was a Brittish/Scottish cracker/cookie packet of “Digestives”. Yeah, digestives? I totally had to google it to find out they’re not some sort of old-people-fiber-Ensure-fake-dessert-keep-your-shit-firm-kind of thing. Apparently they’re just the British equivalent of a coffee/tea dunking cookie/cracker, or even a simple graham cracker to us hillbilly ‘mericans. I’m thinking someone lost a job over the naming of the cookies when they noticed horrible horrible horrible sales here in the states.

Boss: “Winston, ol’ chap, get in here.”
Winston: “Right O.”
Boss: “Why are our North American sales so bloody low this quarter?”
Winston: “I haven’t the foggiest. We can’t seem to sell our Stomach Assimilation Cookies or our Intestinal Track Swiffers.”

*I Hate the Pepsi Guy*
I guess we’ll stay with the work kitchen thing we’ve got going today. So, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, there’s vending machines in our work kitchen. One food, one drink. Our drink machine is a Pepsi product based machine. No biggie. I’m not some whacked out Coke head that I won’t drink Pepsi products. Actually, come to think of it, other than the main product Coke>Pepsi itself, I prefer Pepsi products over their Coke counterparts (Mt. Dew, Dr. Pepper, etc.). Anyways, the reason I’m talking about this here is because our Pepsi machine delivery guy is a total dickjob. You see, he doesn’t do inventory control by buying and stocking less of his lower sellers (i.e Diet Caffiene Free Pepsi), and subsequently buying and stocking more of his higher sellers (i.e. Mt. Dew or regular Pepsi). He does inventory control by putting the low sellers at the front of lines of the popular rows. Want a Mt. Dew? Have to wait for someone to buy that Diet Caffeine Free Strawberry Pepsi first, which has been strategically placed in front of the Mt. Dew rows. Or buy it yourself and pour it down the drain, and then buy your Mt. Dew.

This is level one dickheadedness. Total level two asshattery happened to me the other day. I head to the machine to grab a soda. “Hey! Nothing is blocking the Mt. Dew row! Sweet!” So I buy the soda. Get the bottle from the machine. Head back to my desk. Crack it for the first drink. Spit the goat urine out all over my office floor. Upon inspection, totally got had with a Diet Mt. Dew. Dammit! It should be noted that a diet Mt. Dew, in the same green bottle, turned around facing away from you in a vending machine, looks *exactly* like a real Mt. Dew. I didn’t realize vending machine-ism was such a maniacal malicious game. Does this mean I can pay him with slightly less valuable coinage that looks just like real money? Like Canadian quarters instead?