I spent Thursday at my Dad’s house for Thanksgiving. My uncle Glenn and his family where there, having a good time, arguing with each other and so on. Glenn is a tall guy, the tallest in the family, and he’s got a great sense of humor. He’s the third youngest of six although he looks older because he used to smoke quite a bit. I just found out that he had a heart attack on Saturday, just a couple days after I saw him, he’s fine now, but I still feel a little shaken up about the news. Normally when I receive news like this I take it in stride. I never get upset, or worried, or depressed. When I was held up, I didn’t think about anything, my mind was completely blank, no anger, no panic, nothing. When my grandfather died I didn’t shed a tear, I was sad though, I loved him. This news though came as quite a shock to me and I feel a little weird about it. Maybe I felt a little more connected to him than my grandfather? I never did connect to my grandfather, he’s old, as grandfathers usually are, also he became more and more deaf as his years passed by, and he was getting sicker as well so maybe since it wasn’t a surprise it didn’t hit me as hard. If that’s right then I’m probably going to have a really hard time when my father dies, when I get married and my wife dies, or my kids. I suppose that’s the way of things. Scary to consider.
Whenever I see these “holiday” episodes on TV or movies the family in question is completely dysfunctional. Is this the american norm? Since I have a lot of fun when around my family I just can’t connect to these people. I just had Thanksgiving with my dad’s side of the family and I had a ball. Usually, in these types of shows, the son/daughter has a problem being civil with the father/mother. This to me is ridiculous; if you know what your parents are going to be like then why would you provoke them by talking about a certain subject or “confronting” their opinions or bad habits. Just leave well enough alone so you can have a decent time without hating every minute you spend with these people. And to that end, if you do hate every minute spent arguing and grousing then why even go? Spend some time alone or with friends. I’m heading out right now to spend some time with my mom’s side of the family, and I’m sure I’m gonna have another great time (even though I like this side just a little less). And tomorrow I’m hanging out with my dad again for his birthday. I suppose what I’m trying to get at is that you can’t choose your family and you don’t have to get along with them. If it’s a hostile environment I think it’s just best to avoid it.
This is my dog, he is a good dog and there are many like him but this dog is mine.
You find your self huddled around a small electronic device; you hoard it and look feverishly at the others around you hoping to catch them in a brief moment where they look at you. Some do. What they see is a person hovering over this “machine” looking like a hungry animal over a five day-old rotten carcass. You look at them and say to your self, “wow, look at that person all c-backed over that” Then you chuckle to yourself and, of course, you don’t look into their eyes or at their hands…. oh never at the hands. If you look at their hands, you risk being called out… being called… whatever someone looks as a person inputting a pin number is called. Even the cashier pretends to do something for the measly 10 seconds, if your blind, it takes to input a pin. All of a sudden the cashier can get a days worth of work in that minuscule allotted time. The person in front of you seems for find a sudden interest in the ceiling tiles or in the carpet. “Is this Berber?” You wonder why nobody cares, shouts out their pin, i mean after all, they need your card do use your “secret” code of 5-4-3-2-1. And so the process repeats until you stand there all c backed over waiting to catch the unsuspecting man, woman or child looking at you while you input your pin. I mean after all if you do catch them peering over your shoulder you could call them… well anything, but most likely, you’ll walk away mumbling under your breath and telling your friends of the audacity of a 12 year old.
till next time!
Just got in the door and started my usual browsing habits when I came across this ridiculous article on Gizmodo about black Friday. Basically you can get the $6k Sony Vaio TT for around $1k during a Webcast lasting from noon to midnight on black Friday. This got me thinking about how I was going to accomplish my shopping this year. Several of my female friends basically ran amok the last two weeks trying to cash in on the pre-black Friday sales all over the place and are now done with their shopping. Unfortunately for me I’m not even sure what anyone in my family wants, I’m leaning heavily towards gift cards but that feels slightly like a cop out. Most likely on December 20th you’re going to see me in stores stepping over piles of discarded merchandise and screaming children to grab a hold of what feeble gift ideas I can come up with. There needs to be a service where you can pick a total budget or budget per person and just let the website figure out what to buy the people based on some simple survey style questions. To take it a step further you should be able to order these items from said site and have them shipped. Hopefully in 2009 we’ll have Christmas shopping truly at the click of a button.
Anybody else think this government bailout thing is all a big waste of time? Think about this for a second. The goverment wants to give money that they don’t have to save corporations that don’t know how to run a business. Let’s put this in perspective, say you’ve got a kid who keeps getting into trouble. Do you go down to jail to bail him out every time or do you let him stew behind bars so he can learn his damned lesson? These corporate CEOs are still making multi-million dollar bonuses even though thier company is going bankrupt. And what about these car companies who can’t get it into their heads that people don’t want to buy gas guzzling trucks and SUVs anymore. Sure gas prices are coming down now, but everybody knows they’ll be going back up. And the CEOs show up in Washington to ask for money when they flew there in their private jets? Screw that. They should have driven down there in the cars they make to show the people that they’re dependable and can make such treks. It gets to me is all, gotta vent sometimes.
So now that grandma and grandpa are gathered for the snoozefest of holidays, (second to any cindo de mayo, or what ever those beaners celebrate) does anyone have any real plans? i mean most holidays involve blowing something up or unwrapping some overly packaged and under rated dvd. (Yea i know they are dvd’s no matter what you pack them in!) So before you pass out from the tryptophan,or have some after dinner and before dinner or lunch or breakfast (what ever time you eat) think of what the pilgrims would do. I personally like to start with a trip to the horse track, where i will bet on horses till i loose my total net worth of 40 dollars. Next i take a visit to the old folks home to vist my grand parents, followed up by gorging on a dead bird and hard bread. After that, before i pass out, i will promptly dig out my copy of Uncle Buck, pop it in the DVD, and let the ‘rents veg out on late 80′s humor while i grab my stick of m1000 and blow the crap out of something. Now thats an american holiday.
till next time!
So the good thing about being an instructor is that once a class cycle finishes, we have an, on average, 2 week cycle break. Generally, there isn’t much to do during these 2 weeks so I really just have to show my face at work in the morning, and then I get the rest of the day off. Now, we all tend to talk about how much we would enjoy not having to work, but with so much downtime, I find myself struggling to find things to do. It seems to me that living a life where you don’t have to work would really only be enjoyable if you had friends who were also in the same situation. So far, the highlights of my day have been replacing the bulb in my driver’s side headlight, and watching Rocky IV (to be honest, watching Rocky IV would be the highlight of any day, so I really shouldn’t complain about that). I guess all I’m really getting at is that not having work is really only enjoyable if you have something to fill the time that work normally would. I’ll probably end up spending my days this week playing Farcry 2 and Fable 2, and then searching for something else once my ADD kicks in.
Tipist out.
Apparently someone is being moved today and it’s my job to do it. In a stroke of pure genius they chose not to tell one of the workers she was being moved until about 5 minutes ago. I can only guess that this is to avoid having to hear her loud and constant complaints. There is only one small flaw in this plan, it doesn’t help me! I’m going to be listening to this woman complain about printer settings, her special keyboard, etc for the next 45 minutes. Now it wasn’t too long ago that I was staring at by alarm clock trying to simultaneously hold on to the last bits of sleep and trying to concoct a reason to call out sick. I love monday mornings, the angry users, the system crashing, no coffee, and an empty water cooler.
Was the flash so bright that Sean had to squint?
