What I Did on My Winter Vacation

1. Beat Super Mario Galaxy. Emu says he won't recognize the accomplishment until I've rescued every star. For those of you playing the home game, that translates into English as "I'm a whiny bitch who hasn't even managed to kick Bowser's ass yet."
2. Got to expert mode in Guitar Hero 3. Mother FUCKER, that game gets tough. Fun as hell, though. If you don't strike a proper power stance, you're made of fail, though. I have spoken.
3. Damn near broke my hand. We took a bunch of shit to GoodWill today. Way more than reasonably fit into the trunk. I was trying to cram a giant box of clothes into the trunk, slipped, and slammed my hand into the frame of the car. Now one of my knuckles is approxmately three times its normal size. But anything that hurts that much is manly, right?
4. Finally replaced my burned out laptop. I'm a Mac bitch now, which I guess means I get to be even more of a smug, arrogant prick than I already was. I shopped around a bit. Dell's Linux PCs suck ass. Everything else is Vista. Fucked if Vista's touching one of my machines. So I took the plunge. So far, I'm digging on it, but there's a lot to get used to.
5. Fixed my electric guitar. One of my pickups actually fell out of the fucking thing while I was practicing the other day. Fixing the stupid thing turned out to be fairly simple, but I didn't have any spare strings (again). Fixing it without removing the strings was more interesting. This is where I do the Tim Allen grunt, right?
6. Finished Olympos. Spelling, grammatical, and continuity errors aside, hot damn, Dan Simmons can tell an awesome fucking story. Read it. Now. God damn.
7. Read I Am Legend. Wifezilla was awesome enough to give it to me for Christmas. The short story was fucking awesome. After reading it, I couldn't imagine Hollywood being brave enough to stick to the real story (plus, I had no self-control), so I read a plot synopsis of the movie on Wikipedia. I've lost all interest in the flick. Go read the short story, though. Srsly. Fux.
8. Started Bloodsucking Fiends. That book is a bitch to find. Nobody fucking stocks it. I've held off on reading the sequel (despite the awesomeness of overlapping a scene from A Dirty Job) because it's not in goddamn stores and I hate people so I couldn't buy it. Wifezilla ordered it through one of the bookstores hereabouts, so she fucking rocks. Also, Christopher Moore is the funniest son of a bitch currently walking the earth. You're allowed to disagree, but only because you're allowed to be wrong.
9. Didn't rake the yard. Because fuck. Srsly.
   

I shaved my head tonight.

I'm not sure why, except that I'm losing my hair anyway and tonight seemed like as good a night as any. So I scalped myself. It feels really good and I don't think that I look appreciably more ridiculous than I did before. Hrrrmmmm.

The Chosen Beer

I wish my camera phone was better, because something as bizarrely awesome as this deserves something better than the grainy, out of focus crap my razr churns out.

We stopped by the beer shack near our house this evening to pick up a flavored beer my wife's fond of and can't find any place else, and as I passed the He'brew shelf, I swear the clouds parted and sunlight broke through to land dazzlingly upon the display even though it was night time, I was indoors, and the DVD I'd been shopping for at the previous store is apparently a figment of my imagination (at least according to the pubescent brainchildren at Best Buy).

Behold the glory. It's the chosen beer. L'Chaim!

Out of sorts

I'm tense as all holy fuck. Not sure why. Things are going pretty well lately. Maybe it's just the paranoia I've been half-joking about in my recent posts.

I'm good at paranoia. It creeps up on me daily, and I turn around and greet it warmly, and say, "Oh, hi, Paranoia, you're late. Nice day, innit?" And the Paranoia is all, "Why, yes, it's quite a lovely day. By the way, you're mentally incapacitated and people are snickering behind your back and you smell of elderberries." And I'm like, "Shit. Pass the bacon." And then Paranoia goes all, "Fuck you. Just kidding. Here's the bacon."

And the bacon is delicious.

So yeah, tension. It's been gnawing at me. I had a really bad knot in the muscle over my left shoulder blade this weekend, and now my bursitis has flared up so bad I can't use my right arm. Fun. I've been really hard to get along with lately, which is really saying something, coming as it is from a cranky know-it-all with no social skills. Fortunately, wifezilla is willing to overlook it so far, since I'm willing to suck it up and admit I'm being a dick.

(If I'm gone more than a week, she killed me.)

Day 4. Still no shoe. Tensions mounting.

Here there be rambling.

This afternoon was pretty damn great. And that scares me, because Mr. Murphy still owes me a kick in the ass, and it was a Monday. He's gotta have something really bad planned.

It was warm out today. T-shirt weather. I took a walk this morning just because it felt so good outside (my walks are usually motivated by a desire to postpone committing a homicide until the witnesses disperse).

It was a good work day. I got a lot done. Then the UK guys got back to us, and not only were they receptive to the features I requested... they had anticipated them and designed ahead for them. So not only was their answer a rather out-of-character yes, it was a yes, and would you like to supersize your order for an additional fifteen cents?

I stopped by Target on my way home to pick up a DVD set for a friend of mine. I'm really shitty at giving gifts at holiday seasons, so when I see something that makes me think of someone, I usually pick it up right then and give it to them. Actually, that's probably why I'm so bad at giving gifts at holiday season: I can't hang onto a gift once I've purchased it. It's okay, though. I've embraced it. I call them Happy Today Presents and just hand them out.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The internet. It has porn and lolcats. And porn. It has to have surpassed sliced bread as the greatest human accomplishment by now.

No, wait... DVDs. Right. I knew Blue was a fan of the show, so after I made sure she didn't have them already, I picked them up on the way home. Stopped by Target, nicked in, grabbed the last set they had, and cashed out. I was feeling kinda bouncy on my way out, 'cause it's always fucking awesome when you get someone something you know they'll like, so I was whistling my way back to my car.

I got out into the cars and someone started calling to me to get my attention. I turned to look, and this little old black lady in a motorized scooter was trying to wave me down. I walked over to see what she needed, and it turned out that she'd bought a big case of bottled water, and couldn't get it into her car's trunk by herself. No idea why the asshats at Target didn't offer to help her, when it was pretty obvious she couldn't lift the damn things herself, but whatev.

Hey, I used teenager slang from a couple years ago that's totally out of style. I'm officially old.

So I helped the lady lift the water into her trunk, and then talked to her for a few minutes afterward, and she was the most charming little old woman I think I've ever met. I was grinning ear-to-ear for an hour or two after.

Whatever's headed my way is going to be nasty.

Waiting for the other shoe...

It's been a pretty good week for us at Casa del Taco:

1. Wifezilla's broken the 20 pound mark on Weight Watchers and is going strong. Her success has inspired many of my family to follow in her footsteps... and has also given them enough guilt and accountability to follow in her success :) I'm terribly proud of her.
2. My father-in-law is responding well to his chemotherapy. They're going to do another scan at his next session in a few weeks to determine whether he's done or needs a few more. In any case, he's doing well and won't be at it much longer.
3. I got a fucking raise. Healthy one, too. It's nice, both because I've been busting my ass lately and because I've had only one other raise in six damn years. Granted, the end of the dot com bust was in there, but it's still frustrating. Not to mention the fact that my last raise was pretty fucking piddling and I only got it because I got promoted, and they had to give me a raise so the books would work out right. Still, I can't complain. Now I'm making what recruiters tell me I should be. Of course, this comes the day before an interview I was fairly certain I'd knock out of the park, so it's doing my paranoia no good...
   

My grandfather used to tell us that Irish Luck was stepping in a pile of dog shit and then realizing you were wearing your bad shoes (what a lucky son of a bitch I am!). I'm bracing myself for the bad news...

I lack what they call "social skills."

So yesterday my stomach wasn't doing all that great. Let's just gloss over the details and say that what I did to the bathroom wasn't pretty, and it took three flushes of our industrial grade toilets to undo the damage.

I washed up and left the bathroom. A woman was leaving the women's room at the exact same moment, and she stopped and gave me a look of... well, not horror, exactly. Perhaps concern?

It was an awkward moment, and I lack the social finesse to navigate such treacherous waters. But, I reasoned, I've never seen this woman before, so she must work for the other company on our floor. What's the worst that could happen?

So I did the first thing that popped in my head, which seemed pretty funny at the time:

I held up three fingers and said, "That's right. Three flushes." And I walked off for the breakroom to reload on caffeine.

When I stopped to fish my access badge out of my pocket, she walked past me. As in going the opposite direction of the other company on our floor. I watched until she got to the end of the hallway, scanned her badge, and entered our office space.

Shit.

Heh. Shit. I just caught that.

Oh hell... I'm doing it again.