grumpy blog

joy

2004-09-30T10:21:00.000-07:00

The other day Belinda was at a bookstore on her lunch hour, scanning the racks trying to get her fix of the latest bridal magazines, when she ran across the GQ with Lindsay Lohan on the cover.

When she came home that evening, she couldn't wait to tell me that my "girlfriend" was on the cover of GQ. "I was going to buy it for you", she said to me.

And at that moment a tear came to my eye because I realized that I was the luckiest man alive.

comp time

2004-09-23T10:53:00.001-07:00

I am so unmotivated to do work today.

I'm supposed to be working on two projects right now and instead, I am writing this and listening to The Kleptones.

The funny thing is that I'm pretty much shooting myself in the foot by lazing about today. One of my projects is very high profile and was supposed to be finished months ago. But for various reasons (not entirely in my control) it has languished.

The other project is new. I was supposed to start it on Monday and over the course of two weeks, design some bullshit device. Instead I will have one week, because I've been working on my other project.

But wait, the first project will get in the way again in the middle of that week because I'm supposed to visit the client in BFE New Jersey to give a demonstration.

Understand? Good, because I don't either.

The best part is that when The Boss came over to give me a pep talk about how much work I have to do over the next few weeks, he dangled the "comp time" carrot in front of me. The idea being that I would get compensated with extra vacation for not having a life or seeing my fiancée over the next few weeks. Gee thanks.

Comp time is the biggest bullshit perk ever.

What I really want is extra fucking money. Now that would seriously motivate me.

But instead I'm going to have a few extra days of vacation. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? Belinda isn't going to be granted extra vacation out of sheer generosity from her employer, so I will have to spend my extra vacation days in solitude.

Oh, and vacations can be expensive. Where am I supposed to round up a couple of extra thousand dollars to send myself (alone!) to Key West or some shit?

Sure, I could stay home and just relax on the couch for a couple of days and watch Dr. Phil and HGTV, but I'm really not that kind of person.

But I can't say, "No thanks, I'll be leaving at 6 every night and the project will get done when it gets done." Nope, can't say that. So I have to pretend that I am grateful for their bullshit comp time and spend the next week or two in hell.

donnie darko

2004-09-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

Belinda was out to dinner with a friend last night, so I stayed home and relaxed and watched Donnie Darko.

As with Paris Hilton, I am very behind the times. I know. I'm fucking trying to catch up, OK?

This may be the weirdest movie I've seen since Eraserhead. The story seems to borrow heavily from Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five in parts. I won't bore you with all the details of my long-winded opinion since I am probably the last person on the planet to have seen the movie and I doubt I will add anything new.

What I will comment on is that the ending of the movie disturbed me. I mean, the way things ended up in the film it just seemed to be screaming, "The world is better off without you Donnie!" That's not typically the message we want to send to people who are depressed or mentally ill. But there it was, right in front of my eyes and I was a little weirded out by it.

I mean imagine if you were suicidal and you called a hotline asking for help and they actually said to you, "Have you ever considered that maybe the world would be better off without you?"

Weird, right?

Then again, maybe I'm just reading into the weirdness of the movie too much.

party

2004-09-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

What I forgot to mention in my posts about my mother's visit was the reason she came to visit in the first place. Belinda and I had an engagement party. Well, Belinda's mom threw us an engagement party.

Personally, I didn't want to have an engagement party. I feel that it's completely unnecessary, an excuse to get more gifts, especially if the bride is going to have a bridal shower. But Belinda wanted one, and our wedding is going to be over a year from now. So I can be flexible and I agreed to it, because it's what she wanted. I just had one requirement for the party:

We will not be opening the gifts at the party.

You see, this is a thing for Belinda's family, a family tradition. At every gift-giving event they have, after the cake is cut, the guest of honor (GOH) sits down in a comfy chair, surrounded by gifts. The other guests sit in a circle around the room. The GOH then proceeds to open all the gifts. The card is first, the GOH telling the giver how sweet they are and what excellent taste in chihuahua Hallmark cards they have. Then the card is passed around the room for each and every person to read and comment on. While the card is getting passed, the gift is opened and the guest of honor has to ooh and ahh all saccharine sweet and tell the giver what incredible taste they have in fuchsia costume jewelry.

I know that lots of families do this, but mine never has. I find the practice to be a bit tacky. Last year, when Belinda had a birthday party for me, I flatly refused to open the gifts in front of everyone. Her mother, Ms. Biddlebox, kept saying at that party, "Are you going to open the gifts now? Everyone is waiting!" Belinda was a trooper and she pushed back, and I prevailed, no gift opening.

Not so much at our engagement party. Belinda had a chat with her mother before the party and we all agreed there would be no gift opening and everyone seemed satisfied. What we didn't expect was to get pressure from the guests. Belinda's Aunt Lucy, who I love dearly, kept asking Belinda when the gifts were going to be opened. When Belinda said we weren't going to open the gifts she exclaimed, "Oh, you have to!" as if to save us from committing the most grievous of Emily Postian errors. Then there was her cousin, Connie, who kept saying, "You have to open gifts. You have to! Everyone wants to see!"

So Belinda caved. And I don't blame her.

But I tell you, I tried. I really tried to act pleased-as-punch because as I unwrap the stupidest looking wind chimes I have ever seen. But I am positive that I failed and that I may have been saying, "Oh, we don't have wind chimes, awesome. We definitely needed that." through my clenched teeth, the look on my face was really saying it all.

survival

2004-09-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

The mother is gone. Not a moment too soon either.

As predicted, I spent the whole visit catering to my mother's inability to move. This ranged from walking VERY slowly everywhere. Think 90-year-old with a walker. Yes, that slow. To driving her to the front entrance of every place we took her, then I would have to drive around like a crazy person looking for a parking spot while Belinda suffers through yet another one of her often repeated stories while waiting for me to return. While she is droning away and poor Belinda is trying to pretend to be interested, she would smoke a cigarette or two and blow smoke in the poor girl's face. She has to do this since we won't let her smoke in the car or the apartment and my driving around looking for parking is her only chance to get her fix.

I think all the second-hand smoke must have shortened Belinda's life by a year or two just on this visit alone. If that doesn't get her my mothers hideous (and generously applied) perfume will.

I love my mom very much. She really is very sweet and kind and wonderful, but when she comes to visit me, I just don't know what to do with her. It's all made even worse because she doesn't tell me what she wants to do. She just says, "I'm in your hands." Or, "Whatever you want to show me is just fine." COME ON MOM, THROW ME A FUCKING BONE HERE!

Thanks for the kind comments JustAgirl and testypea on my last post. I appreciate your sympathy and I appreciate the excellent suggestion on how to deal with her. Next time I may just try it.

the mother

2004-09-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

My mother is coming to visit tonight. Having my mother visit me is always the biggest pain in the ass.

Belinda and I love my mother dearly, but when she's in town everything becomes 100 times more difficult.

My mother has lived in the suburbs almost her whole life. My grandparents moved her away from Brooklyn in 1957 when she was 11. All she has ever really known is the suburban life of subdivisions where every house looks the same, you drive everywhere and walk nowhere, and shopping malls and chain restaurants.

I lived this life too. But now I live in the middle of a major west coast city.

What's amazing is the effect is has had on my mother. Keep in mind she drives everywhere. Need a gallon of milk? Drive to 7-11. Need a pack of cigs? Drive. Need to get the mail? Drive to the mailbox. Have cabin fever? Take a drive. Having a fight with your husband and need to get away? Drive. Beautiful weather outside? Why don't we enjoy the day by sitting in a tin box and driving somewhere...

She doesn't even have a leash for the fucking dog. Why would you need one if you never actually took the dog (or yourself) for a walk?

My sister and her family live about 2 blocks from my mother's house. On a slow week, she will go to my sister's house three days to visit the kids. My mother has never once walked the two blocks between the two houses to go and visit her grandchildren. Not once in three years.

I am convinced that all of this not walking anywhere has culminated in my mother's ill health (diabetes and sciatica) and her inability to walk anywhere. She's only fifty-fucking-nine. But she can't walk more than half a city block without taking a breather. God forbid that block goes uphill even a slight grade. This is exactly what our street does as you walk from our house to our subway stop, a nice gentle rise.

Here on the west coast, our cities are hilly. It's not like Manhattan where they leveled the entire island when they excavated in preparation for the grid. Or like Washington, DC where the whole city was build on a very nice flat swamp. No, here in our city, there were no excavations, geography ruled, and our grid goes up and over the hills.

And, like any other city, parking is a nightmare.

And don't even get me started on the fact that we live in a 3rd story walkup. Last time she came to visit, we had to plan each day so that my mother only had to descend the stairs once in the morning, and climb them only once in the evening.

And so we have the convergence of a mother who can't walk much of anywhere plus a hilly city plus impossible parking. What does all this equal? Bingo. A miserable time for me and Belinda.

crank

2004-09-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

I am beyond cranky today. Beyond grouchy. Long past grumpy.

The dark clouds have decended and I want nothing more than for everyone around me to be gone. To be alone. FUCKING LEAVE ME ALONE! Don't fucking talk to me. Don't fucking smile at me. Most of all, don't fucking be polite to me.

To be honest you polite mother fucker, I would probably laugh if you got hit by a bus.

Yes, I am in THAT bad a mood. So don't fuck with me today.

dirty laundry

2004-09-14T01:44:00.000-07:00

I do all of our laundry. Every single load of it.

For whatever reason, I ended up with that chore. I always thought the man was supposed to be in charge of auto repair and outdoor grilling.

I am not being sexist. I mean it.

I shouldn't be in charge of laundry, not because it's woman's work, but because women make it into a huge fucking chore.

Belinda has these rules about her clothes. Certain items can't be dried. Certain items can. Some are cold water. If something has a stain, you have to spray it with special stain remover, let it soak in for no less than 2 minutes, then place it in the washer. Oh, but you can't put anything in the washer until there is at least 2 inches of water in the bottom and all of the soap has completely dispersed. You can't wash towels and clothes together. Oh, and god help you if you dried some article of clothing that the stain hasn't completely washed out...

Don't even get me started on the special complex procedures for hanging wet clothes on the drying rack.

And on, and on, and on.

If you wrote down all of Belinda's rules of laundry there'd be more pages than a Congressional budget report.

Here is the procedure for washing my clothes. Stuff washing machine full. Put in soap. Put in 5 quarters. Push go. Drink beer.

It's a little more complicated than that. As I got older, I got more domesticated. I know to separate all the whites from the colors. I wash jeans in a separate load too. But that's pretty much the full extent of my rules.

If something gets mixed up and I end up with a pair of tighty whities in with the jeans, oh well, no big deal. If a red towel ends up in the white and turns everything pink, oh well, no big deal. If that coffee stain didn't come out of my favorite button-down? Wash it 20 more times, it'll come out eventually.

It's a fucking pain the ass to do laundry in our apartment. The washing machine is four flights down in the basement. And there is only one machine, so only one load at a time. We share the machine with 8 other apartments in our building, so often, you'll head downstairs, just to find that someone else beat you to it.

I started to get sick of the laundry routine after a while and I think Belinda sensed it. Now she's helps with the folding and putting away laundry which is that part i hate the most.

Last night, around 11:30, I bring up a load and ask her to help with the folding and hanging. "Not now, I just got cozy on the couch with the dog."
"Come on, it's just one load."
"No, I just got cozy. Leave it and I'll help you when you've finished the next load."
"Belinda, that won't be ready for an hour and you'll be asleep long before that."
"No I won't. I'm not tired. Just leave it."

I walk into the bedroom, and start hanging my shirts anyway. I finished the task about 2 minutes later and walk back into the living room.

Guess who's asleep on the couch all cuddled up with the dog. Must be nice.

princess

2004-09-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

Belinda forced me to go see Princess Diaries 2 this weekend. I am certain that I was the oldest non-parent in the place.

I knew when I agreed to take Belinda to see it that I was in for 115 minutes of horrendous drivel, but sometimes, to please your partner, you just have to jump on the grenade.

I was shocked to find out that the movie was directed by Garry Marshall who has brought us fine entertainment (insert dripping sarcasm here) such as Overboard, Young Doctors in Love and Pretty Woman. What I didn't expect to see in this movie was blatant and shameless use of the product placement.

Oh don't worry, I haven't been living under a rock for the last 20 years. I know movies, even quality movies, have tons of very well placed product shots. It's just how movies are made in the 21st century. It helps defray some of the incredibly high production costs, etc. It's business and movie studios are in business to make money, not to make high art.

What I didn't expect was just how much blatant placement there was going to be in this movie. Here is a fine example. Notice the Vespa logo plastered against the wall? The other logo that is just underneath and to the right of the Vespa logo is a Piaggio logo, the parent company of Vespa.

In all of the city scenes, almost every wall of the set was covered with logos. The logos were placed slapdash on the walls too. Not over storefronts, but just in random locations on some wall somewhere as we the picture linked above.

Many of them were brands European brands like Piaggio and Orange that don't have a large presence in the US. Some of the brands are high end, like Mont Blanc, and the products they sell are probably out of reach of an average teenage girl's weekly allowance. Why put your logo in a movie like this? Because teenage girls everywhere will equate your brand and logo with the princess, royalty, wealth, prestige, etc. Maybe not now, but someday, these girls will be able to afford your stuff, and they won't remember why, but they know you sell the fancy shit they want.

The movie also had the usual product shots that have become so ubiquitous that we don't even see them anymore. Like the Princesses Apple ibook, Coca-cola, Nikon, even the University of California at Berkeley.

What's next? Why don't big corporations start buying the naming rights to movies like they do with sports venues? This way, next year we'll have great movies coming out like:

OnStar Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

McDonalds' Toy Story 3

Maybelline Pretty Woman 2

Smith and Wesson's Matrix 4

This way, we can get the product placement over with right on the movie poster and perhaps leave the content alone. Fuck, who am I kidding, they'll want both.

It's all about getting consumers hooked young. The cigarette companies weren't the only ones targeting kids, all corporations do it. Why? Because we let them. Because it's a free country. Because we were subjected to it when we were kids too and we are so used to being marketed to that we don't even notice anymore. Is the American public numb? Stupid? Clueless?

Besides being predictable, boring, poorly written and poorly executed what other sins has this movie committed? Well in what is almost the last scene of the film, there is a wedding and the clergyman pronounces the married couple Man and Wife.

The movie is also guilty of bringing women's liberation back 50 years.

voyeur

2004-09-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Naked Girl in the Window Across the Street,

I just wanted to write you a letter to let you know I see you. We all see you. Our buildings are less than 100 feet apart after all.

It's not like I go out of my way to see you naked. I swear to god I am not a pervert, really. It just seems that every time I look out my window to take in the excellent view of the city that is probably the only thing that makes my tiny 3rd floor apartment livable, there you are in your window taking off your clothes.

I remember a year ago, before you moved in, there was a sign on your building. Your apartment was vacant and the asking rent was almost two times my rent. So I know that you make a decent living to be able to afford a place like that. I also know that you must have a decent job based on the clothes I see you stripping off and tossing on the floor ever chance you get. I know that at the very least, you can afford to go to Kmart to buy yourself some curtains or maybe some of those nice mini-blinds. Perhaps you've been meaning to do this and it's slipped your mind for the last 8 months, or perhaps you're a hopeless procrastinator.

Either way, you should know we can all see you. I've wondered over the months why I keep seeing you naked over and over again. I thought to myself, maybe she's an exhibitionist. Maybe. Or maybe you are a free spirit and just don't care who may or may not be seeing your naughty bits. Maybe you think we're all myopic over here on our side of the street and all we see is a flesh colored blur in your windows. Perhaps you have a very labor-intensive job and you are too tired when you come home from work to put the blinds down.

Whatever the reason, whatever your motivation, there you are, undressing, naked, bending at the waist to search in the lowest drawer in your chest of drawers without any drawers.

And before you think to yourself Naked Girl in the Window Across the Street (for the sake of brevity, may I just call you NGitWAtS?) that I should just keep my mouth shut and enjoy the show, but truth be told, I am not enjoying it very much at all.

Sure every guy loves the idea of catching a disrobing woman, nay, dreams of being able to watch a woman taking it all off in her window. But as you and everyone else knows there is good naked and there is bad naked. You are definitely guilty of bad naked. Oh, you seem to have a fine shapely figure and all, and you seem not to be old or saggy or overweight, at least from 200 paces through filthy-100-year-old glass.

But seeing you there, undressing in the window, or dropping your towel after a shower is just so, um, utilitarian. And quite honestly, I've seen you naked so many times now, that there is no thrill in it anymore, no excitement, nothing to the imagination. After all, imagination is what really separates us from the animals, isn't it?

In conclusion NGitWAtS, thanks for the show, but now it's time for your curtain call.

Grumpy

mental state

2004-09-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

Belinda and I saw Garden State over the weekend. Great movie. Belinda, who isn't much of a movie buff, loved it. I guess it really spoke to her since she is in her mid-twenties. I didn't quite feel the same connection with the movie as she did, even though I enjoyed it very much.

In the days since we saw the movie though, Belinda has become totally obsessed with Garden State and Zach Braff.

When we got back to work on Tuesday, she Googled "Garden State" and has been reading Zach Braff's blog ever since.

Then she found a connection between people in their mid-twenties who are experiencing what is known as the Quarterlife Crisis and the overarching theme of the movie. Notice that big ad on their homepage? I've never heard of this quarterlife crisis thing, but apparently if you're between 24 and 27 it's a huge problem for you.

Then yesterday, she went out to dinner with her alumni group and one of the other alumni there had just met Zach's brother, Joshua, a week ago at a bar. Joshua apparently released a new book the same week that Garden State was released. Weird synchronicity, huh?

Every day this week she has been coming home from work with a new tidbit and new trivia about the movie from more "research" she's done on Google. I think she must have read every blog post, review and commentary that exists about the movie and Zach.

For instance, did I know that Zach wrote the role of Sam for Natalie Portman, but he never in a million years thought she'd accept the part.

Or, that the movie was financed privately for $2.5 million, but picked up at Sundance for $5 million.

Or, did I know that Zach quit his job as a waiter at a Vietnamese restaurant in LA the day he got the call to be in Scrubs. But he didn't realize shooting wasn't to start for four more months, so he wrote the screenplay for Garden State over those four months because he had no job and nothing else to do.

Then on Wednesday she tells me we're definitely going to see the movie again this weekend.

Um, no?

bikini babes

2004-09-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the belated posting... crazy week.

It was fucking hot as hell here in our city all Labor Day weekend. Belinda and I spent some time down the coast and at a couple of beaches. We also spent some time at home, hanging out in the city. When it's hot, the women here in this city wear next to nothing. I don't blame them, I can imagine that wearing a bra with the sun beating down at you is uncomfortable. I've been known to forego what are normally essential clothing items for me for the sake of keeping certain body parts as cool as can be.

All weekend Belinda teased me:

"Whoa! Grumpy, look at the knockers on that one in the white bikini."
"Oh Grumpy! There's your girlfriend on the boogie board. Look
at her boobies."
"Check out the fine ass on that one!"
"Get a load of HER!"

I fully admit that I notice these types of things. I mean if they're going to show it off, I'm going to look at it. But when I'm with Belinda I try to be low-key about it. I don't do the exorcist head snapping thing or the tongue hanging out thing. I need to show my woman some respect. And honestly, Belinda has got it going on herself, but that is another post.

But we men are programmed to notice bare skin, bouncing boobs, jiggling this and that. And, if we do notice and look at such things it doesn't mean we're going to dump our current girlfriend/fiancée/wife and run off with the next pair of THOs we see in the street. Sure everyone likes a good pair of THOs but it's like art, nice to look at, but it would probably clash with the wallpaper.

So on Sunday morning, Belinda had just woke up and asked me what we were going to do with our day, and to give some of the teasing back I said, "Oh, I thought I'd just stay in and watch all the girls sunning themselves in the park across the street." She looks at me blankly, says nothing, not a word, and walks away.

Maybe I shouldn't tease her until she's had her morning coffee or something...

fuck it

2004-09-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

I had the bright idea to have a contest or something to give away my (now 6) gmail invites.

It seems these fucking things are like roaches in a crack house. Every time you turn on a light there they are, skittering across the floor. At this point I have to ask myself, is there anyone out there who doesn't have gmail?

If you're the one poor schmuck in the world who doesn't have gmail and wants it and you actually read my blog, simply email me and *poof* your wish will come true.

morning funnies

2004-09-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

What a fucking morning I've had.

It starts when first this morning when I walk in the bathroom to see Belinda naked and frantically looking through the closet where we keep all the toiletries. She says to me, "Where did you hide my face wash?"
"Um, I didn't touch your face wash."
"I know I had an extra one, I need it, why do you always touch my stuff?"
"Belinda, do you really think that I am out to get you by moving and hiding all of your toiletries so you can't ever find them??" This little exchange puts me a little on edge.

A little miffed, I went out to take the dog for a poop in the park and to move our car since today was street cleaning day.

When I returned, Belinda had just gotten out of the shower. She just bought herself one of those fancy lady razors for shaving her legs and god knows what else, and used it for the first time today. This is actually momentous because it marks the first time in 3 years that she is not using (read: dulling the shit out of) my Mach 3 for such things.

So when I peered into the bathroom, I saw the new razor sitting on the edge of the tub. It comes with a special suction cup hanger and I think to myself, Oh, I hang that for her. And as I'm standing on the edge of the tub I hear, "It's not going to work there! Shit Grumpy!! You just got grass and dirt all over the tub. Argh!" I step down from the edge, "Now you're getting it all over the mat!!"
"OK, OK, sorry. I was just trying to hang the damn thing for you."

Then its time to head out for work. We walk down to the corner where we pick up the train. The train is always super crowded in the mornings and when the train comes, I motion towards the second car and say to Belinda, "The second car is always less crowded than the first." We quickly hurry down to the second car and guess what, even more crowded than the first. Shit. Belinda, as she turns to run back to the first car before the door closes says to me, "You're completely fucking wrong!!!" Fine whatever.

We're on the train now, heading inbound. It's crowded, but considering how crowded it is we have a decent amount of room. I am standing next to one of the worst subway commuters known to man, the Pole Hugger™. The pole is there for a reason, to hang on to as the train speeds up, slows down, stops, turns and generally tosses its passengers around. It goes all the way from the floor to the ceiling of the train. It is there so that a number of people can share it and hang on. Not today. No, today we have the Pole Hugger™ leaching onto the pole and preventing anyone else from using it.

Fuck that.

I grab onto it anyway. I would not do it if it were a woman, or if the person was kinda dirty. But today's Pole Hugger™ (there's one on every train) was a guy, was pretty clean, and he didn't look like he was insane or packing heat. So fuck him, I have every right to that damned pole too. I reach in, and grab the pole, making it obvious that my hand is there and his chest is extremely unwelcome next to it. Naturally he backs off a bit. But after a minute or so, he starts hugging the pole again and his chest is rubbing against my hand, as if I weren’t even there.

I pull my hand off the pole. A bit in disgust, and a bit in shock (AS IF!) and I let out a little huff. Belinda looks at me, probably not realizing that I just lost my crusade against the Pole Hugger™ and is like "What?”
"Nothing."
"Tell me what it is."
The guy is standing 6 inches from us. I am not going to get into it. I hiss at her, "I said it’s nothing, just leave it alone."
"Oh, you’re in a fucking great mood this morning, just like you are every other morning." And with that, she turns her back to me for three more stops.

I'm the one that's in a bad mood? What the fuck?

What a morning.

hell

2004-09-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

I am in the foulest mood today so I'm going to keep it short.

The project from hell is still going on. I've been working on this since February. This is the longest I have ever worked on a single project since I became a consultant back in the Jurassic (1998).

The Boss says to me yesterday, "Grumpy, we're going to have to keep your schedule open so you can keep working on the project from hell." AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!! One month ago, I thought I wrapped it up. I packed everything up, organized the computer files, made an archive of all the important paper work, and now this. FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!

I see other sweet projects coming through the office. I see them come and I watch them go. Usually some brain dead freelancer gets to work on those.

I have this rule. I will not quit a job over a single bad project. But now I'm starting to think I am going to have to break my rule.

dopamine

2004-08-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

I love Tabasco. I love how it tastes. I love how it burns. I love that it only has three ingredients.

I put Tabasco on everything. In soup, on rice, on eggs, in pasta, on salad, on french fries, burgers, hot dogs, Chinese, Mexican, Italian. Hell, if I could find the right flavor combination, I'd put it on ice cream. I don't just use a drop here and a drop there, either. I use tons of it. I use it the same way that people who love ketchup (never touch the stuff) use ketchup. I pour a little on my plate and dunk. I douse my food with it. The more of this stuff I can get in my mouth, the better it tastes.

On Saturday, Belinda and I went to brunch with her cousin Connie, Connie's husband Brett and Connie and Brett's baby Ursula. I got an omelet. Tabasco was on the table. Eggs and Tabasco are like peanut butter and chocolate, an inevitability. Needless to say, they made a comment about how much Tabasco I used.

On Friday, I went to lunch with my coworkers. I got a grilled chicken sandwich. Tabasco makes a crappy chicken sandwich worthwhile. Some wiseass coworker makes a comment on how I should take it intravenously. Fuck you!

It seems every time I go out to eat I get asked at least one of these questions, usually more:

Can you even taste your food anymore? Yes, I can taste just fine.
Doesn't it burn? No, it doesn't burn, it fucking tickles.
Are you sweating? Yes, I am sweating.
Can you pass the bottle of Tabasco? No, unless by "passing the bottle", you mean squirt some in your eyes.
I don't have Tabasco, I have some of this Louisiana hot sauce, will that do? No, it will not do. I asked you for FUCKING Tabasco. If I wanted Louisiana hot sauce, I'd have asked for Louisiana hot sauce, you stupid fucker.
The bottle is almost empty, did you use ALL that? YES, I fucking used all of that. It's not my fucking fault they put Tabasco is such stupidly small bottles!
Can I have a bite? Fuck you, no.

How is it that in the 21st century and I am still running across people who are amazed by people who eat spicy food?

I am not a freak.

Hasn't anyone ever heard of Mexico, South America, Africa, or the Indian Subcontinent? Are you all living under some fucking rock somewhere?

quicksilver

2004-08-26T16:15:00.000-07:00

I want to be a bicycle messenger.

I see these guys (and almost as many gals) zooming all over the city. On their bikes riding fearlessly between cars, the wrong way down a one-way street, effortlessly blowing red lights while slaloming around 30 mph cross traffic. This has got to be the best job, and the best-kept secret career, ever.

Even better than even my original choice of fallback career, cab driver.

I used to think that being a cab driver would be the best thing for me. You get to meet lots of people. You are your own boss. And, you get paid to drive fast and aggressively. I don't know about you, but I usually drive fast and aggressively for free. I love to drive, but I like to drive fast even more. Sure the money is crap, but who needs to live in a big house with lots of fancy towels? All you need is a small place, a little food and an internet connection (taxi blog?) and you're all set. I am a huge fan of the Night Cabbie. Read up...

Then one day it struck me. I want to be a bicycle messenger. It has all the benefits of being a cab driver. But more. You get to be outdoors all day and you get lots and lots of exercise. The bad thing about being a bicycle messenger is that after about 15 seconds on the job, you smell like a goat. And don't even get me started on the uniform. What's with the studded belt and the lopsided capri pants they're always sporting?

Fashion faux pas aside, I have to admit that the allure of being a bicycle messenger hit me years ago after seeing Quicksilver for the second (OK, twentieth) time. I was in college at the time and I was about to enter the rat race that Kevin Bacon was losing so badly. I was (and still am) wary of joining the rat race to begin with. Maybe it was because I grew up as a latchkey kid, but the whole nine-to-five thing never quite sat right with me, even though that's exactly what I was training to do in college. And then one day, I was lounging with my roommate watching the USA Network or something and there it was, right in front of me, lose the rat race, quit, get a hot girlfriend and ride a 10-speed until your ankles fall off.

I'm certainly not losing the rat race now. I am doing just fine. And no self-respecting messenger would be caught dead on a bike with gears. It's fixed gear all the way nowadays. But every now and then I get a twinge of existential angst. Is this all there really is? This can't possibly be what I was meant to do with my life.

And then I see him, the messenger, zooming down the street passed my office, and I catch myself staring, with my mouth ever so slightly agape.

ridin' the curve

2004-08-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

Sparkey left me a great comment on Tuesday. She quotes:

"In another experiment, subjects were asked to write an argument supporting a specific proposition. Apparently, grumpy individuals expressed better critical thinking and communication skills."
Looks like you are ahead of the curve.
from boingboing.net

Here is a link to that Boing Boing post Sparkey was talking about.

HA! I fucking love it! Let's see that last line again:

Apparently, grumpy individuals expressed better critical thinking and communication skills.

If that isn't me I don't know what is. What the article doesn't mention is that no one likes to be around grumpy people because their better critical thinking makes them annoying and their heightened communication skills alienate their loved ones.

Fuck it, you can't have everything.

invite

2004-08-25T09:12:00.000-07:00

The word on the street, for quite some time has been that gmail will go public by the end of the year. But right now I have one gmail invite to give away.

What should I do?

Should I just lamely give it to the first person who asks? Should I run some sort of contest?

Don't start inundating me with emails requesting it (yet). I'm just looking for ideas on the best and most fun means to give it away.

mr. f

2004-08-24T15:43:00.000-07:00

Got this little email gem from Mr. Freelancer yesterday:

(blah blah blah)
Grumpy, just curious what you will be contributing the presentation.
(blah blah blah)

It's amazing how one line out of a very long-winded email can really go up your ass sideways. This single line really put me over the edge yesterday. Luckily Belinda talked me back from the brink before I went off and did something stupid.

You see, the Boss has decided that Mr. Freelancer would make a good project manager even though he has never worked as a consultant in his life. I don't know why anyone would do this, but here we are, and now our three-member project team is working for him.

I will save you from all the gory details, but on Friday, we talked at length, in a subdued but heated tone, about what I and the other two team members would be doing for the presentation. I don't really understand why it was necessary to send me an email on Monday asking me what I would be doing. Perhaps he killed those brain cells over the weekend?

Here is the response that Belinda saved me from sending:

Mr. F,

I was planning on doing EXACTLY what we discussed on Friday for the presentation. Has something changed that I haven't been notified about?

Grumpy

It's a little bitchy. I might describe it as underhanded bitchy. But that pissant bitch deserved it, the fucker. Belinda and I discussed writing a nice professional response to this. She gave me an excellent suggestion on how to craft a response that was short, sweet, not bitchy, and wouldn't get me fired. But I can't remember a single thing she told me to write since I am so blinded with rage whenever I try to start the response to this email. Instead, I have decided to ignore it, and send no response at all. Pretend I never got it.

Our little 3-person team is toiling away nicely here in the office today without Mr. F. I'm sure he will be in tomorrow. Throwing his weight around as if he actually knew what he was doing. I can guarantee that I will be in a sour mood tomorrow afternoon.

glutton

2004-08-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

I have complained about my job before on here. Today, I'm going to complain again, and probably not for the last time, so fucking get used to it.

I work in an open studio, no cubicles, just desks. It's supposed to be a good environment for collaboration and sharing of ideas. Unfortunately, when my company moved into this space 3 years ago, they didn't spend a single dime to decorate it or fix it up or anything. What does that mean? It means industrial grade fluorescent lights, stark matte white walls and a matching white cement ceiling with a grey indoor/outdoor rug. Nice collaborative environment, huh?

It seems that they're too fucking cheap to buy a couple of gallons of paint and a couple of nice light fixtures. The reason it's dark in here is because fluorescent lighting sucks. No one will turn the lights on because it glares on the computer screens, and the quality of the lighting is piss poor. Do you have fluorescent lights in your living room? Of course you fucking don't.

The worst part is that I think I may be getting S.A.D.. The thing you have to understand is that we've been in this sterile shithole of a space for 3 years now and not a single iota of effort has been made to make it better. What does that mean? You guessed it! Management couldn't give two shits what the environment we work in is like. And why would they? They have offices with windows and doors!

Knowing all of this, I sent this email to the boss today:

Boss –

I am seeing that the lighting in the studio is a bit of an issue in the office…

For about $275 and a couple of hours of an electrician’s time, we could install something like this IKEA wire lighting 1 or this IKEA wire lighting 2.

This may be a good solution to get rid of the ugly fluorescents. Each person can aim the light according to their taste, and I think you can have up to 5-7 lights per string. So you could technically have two lights per desk, and one in the center of the studio, plus lights over the printer and the front cabinets, if needed.

This is just a suggestion. There are hundreds of inexpensive lights like this on the market.

- Grumpy

What the fuck am I thinking? I hate my job, I hate the environment here, and then I go on like I fucking give a shit about my coworkers' well being and fucking comfort.

Nothing good can possibly come of this. Either it will be dismissed by management because "electricians are expensive" or because "now isn't a good time financially". You can't spend $275, what the fuck kind of business are you running here??

The other way I can see this going is that it will become my project. "OK Grumpy, you want fancy lights? Then you do all the legwork, you price them and you buy them. And oh, by the way, we can't hire an expensive electrician, so you're going to have come in on the weekend and install them yourself. Hope that's OK."

Either way, I'm a fucking glutton for punishment.

Update: It would seem that prediction #2 is coming true. The lights have become my pet project. Aren't I a lucky fuck? So now, I have to get 'buy in" from the other two employees here, go to IKEA and buy the stupid fucking lights.

When the boss came to my desk to say it was a good idea, I asked, "Oh yeah, what about the electrician?"
"Um, do we really need an electrician?"
"Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if you could turn the lights on and off using the switch on the wall?"
"Oh, right, good point."
At the risk of sounding repetative, he fucking graduated from Stanford!! Twice!!!

So they're going to hire an electrician as soon as I drive my lazy ass to IKEA.

The best was when I talked to our other two employees about it and one of them says to me, "Thanks for stealing our idea. We suggested that three years ago, fucker."

Great, guess I'll be getting that buy in any day now...

license

2004-08-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

I moved to the state I live in, here on the west coast, about 11 months ago.

Only this week, have finally decided to change my driver's license over. The only reason I am even bothering is because my old license is about to expire, and I don't think that flying 3200 miles to take a shitty mug shot is a worthwhile way to spend my hard-earned blood money.

Getting a drivers license in my new state brings up all sorts of new issues in my life. New issues such as, how blind have I actually become in the last 4 years? 20/40? 20/200? My state only requires that you have 20/40 vision to drive. (Scary huh?) But honestly, I haven't gone for a vision test since I was 12. In my old state, I would eavesdrop on the guy ahead of me in line while he was taking the vision exam at the DMV. I would memorize the letters and then when it was my turn, I would rattle the letters off more from memory than from actually looking at the eye chart. I have never been to the DMV here, I have no idea what to expect. Will I be able to cheat like I did in the past? Or will I fail my vision test and be summarily deported back to the east coast?

Of course, the other issue is, do I actually remember what all the rules of the road are and what all those confusing signs mean. I mean, when was the last time you actually read your states drivers manual? Do you think you could pass a 36 question written exam? Here is an actual sample question from the written exam:

There is no crosswalk and you see a pedestrian crossing your lane ahead. You should:
a. Make eye contact and then pass him/her.
b. Slow down as you pass him/her.
c. Stop and let him/her finish crossing the street.

Where the fuck is my answer "d. Speed up and head straight for him/her, swerving away at the last minute, just missing him/her and teaching the stupid fuck a valuable lesson"?

Thank god I don't have to take a driving test. I mean, think of all the bad habits I've picked up since I was 18. Like pimpin' or talking on my cell phone, holding a cup of scalding hot coffee, and steering with my left knee all at the same time.

I don't think that will earn you extra skill points on your drivers test.

waste

2004-08-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Ugh. Last night, Belinda fell asleep early, and I stayed up to catch up on my Netflix.

I watched Big Fish. So many people I know have told me how great that movie was, and how much they liked it. I thought it was a piece of shit.

First of all, no movie should feature so many people from Alabama. Alabamans are annoying. It's their accent, their love of murdering defenseless animals, and their love of living in mosquito-infested swamps that I have so little patience for. So as far as I am concerned no movie should feature a person who likes these things, unless it makes sense to do so. Like if the movie was about incest and moonshine, then it should definitely have some Alabamans in it. I find Californians pretending to be from Alabama even more annoying.

Second, the movie is about a self-absorbed old fart (played by Albert Finney, who used to be talented) that is about to croak. Oh yeah, and he's a pathological liar. All that this fucker spouts is lies and fabrications. In fact he tells so many lies, fabrications and tall tales, that no one in his family, or even the old fart knows what's true anymore. In fact the whole movie is not about the plot (father and son coming to terms after years of estrangement) but rather the whole movie is just the impossibly tall tales being acted out. The movie tries very hard to capture some of that Forrest Gump sort of feel, but falls way, way short.

By the end of the movie, the old fart has 1-1/2 feet in the grave, and we're supposed to think, "Gee, maybe it wasn't all lies, maybe all of these stories are true! Maybe he's not such a bad guy after all." Fucking bullshit.

What a waste of two hours.

mom

2004-08-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

In 1997 I bought my mother her first computer.

I lived a few states away at the time. The internet was starting to become huge. I had tons of extra cash at the time. I thought it'd be a good idea. She'd learn something new. I'd be able to communicate with her. She'd use it to type a well formatted letter. Or, maybe she'd even feel inspired to start her own home business with it.

The road to ruin is paved with the best of intentions.

It's 2004, she still has the computer, though it's gone through an upgrade or two since the dark ages of 1997. She never did start her own business. She didn't learn a whole lot about computers in the last 7 years either. Sure, she knows some. But every time I visit my mom, I have to clear out 345 spyware programs and 15 viruses. If I didn't know any better, I'd think she only learned two things from that fucking computer:

1. How to send her coworkers, my sister, Belinda and me an endless river of forwarded email.
2. That certain web sites like zone.com and gamehouse.com let you play free games until you're sleep deprived.

Since she discovered email, she must forward on about 4 emails to me every single day. The content is ridiculous. They say things like: Have a nice day, and I'm glad we are friends!!! or LAND OF THE FREE ---------- BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE or THIS IS A HAND OF FRIENDSHIP YOU MUST PASS IT TO AT LEAST 4 FRIENDS!! (What that fuck is a hand of friendship? AND, WHY ARE YOU FUCKING SCREAMING?)

You would think that with all the time she spends reading this emails she'd actually respond to one that Belinda and I send to her occaisionally. But no, whenever I or Belinda send her a friendly "Hi what's up?!" email, we get no response. I can only imagine what happened to those emails. Perhaps she just blindly forwards them on to some unsuspecting soul who is like "What the Fuck"?

The only solace I get is talking to friends and acquaintances about this, and 9 times out of 10 they have a close relative who's the same way. "Oh yeah, my Aunt Bessie, she sends me 8 chain emails a day." So I know it's not just my mom.

What may be just my mom, however, is her zone.com addiction. In case you actually have a life and don't know what zone.com is, it's Microsoft's free game portal. You go there, click on a game it pops up in a little window. Go ahead try it. The games are "free" because they include an advertisement between levels or in the game window itself, or both. Also, the free versions are simplified versions of the "Deluxe" version of the game that they're trying to squeeze $20 out of you to buy.

Every time I talk to her she tells me about her latest addiction. It started with Bejeweled, then TextTwist, LetterLinker, Hexic, and then god knows what else... The latest is Zuma. My mom will ask me out of the blue, "What level are you up to in Zuma?"
"Um, mom, what's a Zuma?"
"On MSN!", she says to me incredulously. As if I were trying to cover up the truth about my own addiction.
"Oh, it's a game, no I haven't played it, mom."
"Oh, you have to! I'm up to level 3,020,641. Can you find me a crack to the deluxe version?" (Hmmm, I guess that makes three things she's learned).

She tells me that there are times when she's playing one of these games and she looks out the window and realizes the sun is about to come up. At which point she runs upstairs and tries to catch 30 minutes of sleep before she heads out to work. Can you imagine? Sitting in front of a computer screen all night, bleary eyed, and realizing that you haven't slept and you now have to go to work?

Oh god, what have I done?

fat

2004-08-11T23:53:00.000-07:00

According to the National Institute of Health's BMI calculator I am obese.

Funny, I don't feel obese. Both my apartment and my job are on the 3rd floor and neither have an elevator. I make it up the stairs with only the slightest quickening of breath. I walk everywhere. Believe me, I do not think of myself as fit and trim. Not by a long shot. I love burritos and pasta way too much to ever be fit and trim. But obese?

Up until now, I haven't considered myself obese. I would consider myself obese if I could say, "That's me!" to any of the items below:

Obese people can't have their shoes tied because their ankles are too big. I tie my shoes just fine.
Obese people don't (can't) leave their homes to work or buy food, their loved ones having to help them survive. I do all my own shopping (Belinda helps) and I take my fat ass to work every day.
Obese people can't go see the doctor unless a crane comes and takes them out through the window. I have never gone out of any building via the window.
Obese people live off of cheesy poofs, chocolate doughnuts, fried chicken and Pepsi. I haven't eaten a single cheesy poof in like 11 years.
Obese people make appearances on Dr. Phil, where Dr. Phil tells them that if they just purchased and read his book, they wouldn't be so damned fat. I have never been on Dr. Phil. Not once.
Obese people are buried in piano boxes when they die. I'm pretty sure I will fit in a normal size coffin when the time comes. But then again, I haven't gone for a fitting.

Yet there it is, my BMI in the "obese" range. The NIH says its so, so it must be. How did this happen? According to their numbers, if I would have to be 6'4" tall to be simply overweight, not obese. I'd have to grow another 7 inches to 6'11" to be "Normal weight". I look at my life (pretty normal) and I look at their numbers (pretty fat) and they don't quite jive to me.

Well, regardless, Belinda and I have started Weight Watchers this week, just in case they are right.

bored

2004-08-10T17:27:00.000-07:00

Bored to tears today.

The project from hell is still going on, even though the boss instructed me to pack everything up. The good thing is that it's not taking up all of my time. The bad news is that it's not taking up all of my time. I have very little to do, but I still have to sit here and pretend like I'm busy.

Belinda has been planning the wedding like a madwoman. It feels like a whirlwind of activity around me. We've been engaged a total of 3 weeks now and we already have a reception site (and thus, a date), we've already figured out who's going to be in the wedding party, and we're going to register this weekend. We're 90% sure where the ceremony is going to be and who the caterer is. She is amazing. Truly amazing. The wedding is like 15 months away.

She should really do this wedding planning stuff for a living. Does that pay well?

Believe me, I am not complaining. If it were up to me, I'd do it like I do everything else, at the last minute.

The only hard part is going to be paying for it all. Because Belinda is moving so fast, we haven't had a chance to save any money or plan financially. A little side note for any readers out there who may be single/never married. WEDDINGS ARE FUCKING EXPENSIVE. Belinda and I are trying to do the cheapest possible wedding without making it obvious that we're white trash. So it's still expensive, but Elvis won't be making an appearance.

In any case, it's been a challenge to scrape up the money and still manage to pay the cable company. But it's worth it, we will save money after. In no time, we'll be all done with the planning, then we kick back for 9 months, get hitched, and get loads of cheesy cut crystal vases.

nipples

2004-08-07T00:23:00.000-07:00

I am not a metrosexual, I am not a snappy dresser, I am no fashionista. But there is one rule all men should follow. Listen up boys:
When you wear a white button down shirt, wear a t-shirt underneath. Seriously.
The ladies (and me) do not want to see your nipples. This should be obvious to you all, but for some reason, I see it all the time. The latest was yesterday. I was in a meeting and I look over at my boss who's writing something on the white board and I could see his chest hair through his shirt. I wasn't looking for it, but there it was, that unmistakable dull greyishness across his chest, like a chest hair Indiglo. I really could have gotten along just swimmingly in life without having seen this. The thing is, he's 40 years old. I would think by now he'd have figured this out by now. But no.

Oh, I hear all you guys out there saying, "Hey, wait a minute! It's summer, we shouldn't have to wear two shirts! It's hot out!" OK, I hear you. Listen up fuckers, it's fucking called air conditioning. Use it and wear the fucking t-shirt.

Have you ever overheard this conversation between two women:

"Whoa, did you see that guy?!"
"Which one?"
"That one over there, you can see his nipples right through his shirt, wow! Nice!"

No, you have never heard this conversation. Do you know why? That's right. Because it's never fucking happened.

Seriously, catching a glimpse of your nipples through your shirt just isn't sexy. Unless you have nipples like Lindsay Lohan.

But then, you have bigger fish to fry.

out of the weeds

2004-08-04T14:52:00.000-07:00

After three weeks of sheer mayhem, I think I've made it through.

I delivered my files to the client about an hour ago, and so far, I have not received a single frantic phone call, not one irritated voice mail, not a single congratulatory email, nothing. Not even a thank you.

As much as it doesn't sound like it, that's usually a good sign. Clients never thank you. Especially not when you put in Herculean effort to get their project done in time, even though they screwed it up in the first place and they seem to be doing everything humanly possible to prevent you from actually finishing it, while complaining the entire time that you're not going fast enough.

Sometimes no communication from the client is a bad sign. Like the calm before the storm. Right now, they're all huddled around a computer screen, awash in its glow, scrutinizing, meeting, making lists, poking over each and every feature, looking for the one mistake or oversight that I made. Even though, it's not possible to not make a single error in the timeframe that you asked for. Something has to give, and it's usually exactitude.

I had this great boss once who actually understood this. He loved to tell people about it too. Over and over again, he would, with a big flourish, take out his yellow legal pad and flip it to a clean page, "Every client wants it all", he would say as he drew an big equilateral triangle on the page with his impossibly twisted and chewed pen. Then he would say, "they want it cheap", and he writes CHEAP at one of the triangle points. "They want it right", and he writes RIGHT at another point, "and they want it fast", FAST goes down at the last point. "But I tell them, here you go", he pushes the pad towards me as if I were the client, "choose any two, you can't have all three", as he circles, CHEAP and FAST, as if circling it was somehow really driving the point home.

I have no idea what his diagram meant, but he is totally correct. Fast, cheap, or right, you can have two, but you will never achieve the third. Never. On all the projects I have ever worked on, never once has this been disproved.

I have many theories as to why clients try so hard to find the mistakes their consultants make. One theory is that clients think consultants are lazy slugs who couldn't make it in their world, so we skulked away in disgrace to become consultants. These guys are dangerous, they are the ones who prevent you from getting repeat business.

Another theory is that the client has never seen anything happen so fast in their careers, and they think I must have cut some corner or other somewhere to get it done. Usually, we accomplish in weeks what the client will take months or even years to accomplish. I do this on a daily basis. I am not super-human. I can do this because I do not have 3 meetings a day, I do not have to write memo after memo, I do not have to succumb to design reviews, endless sales calls from vendors, company meetings, training and benefits, mass emails from the CEO, annoying coworkers who hold you hostage in your cubicle telling you about their theory on lawn care, and on and on. I can accomplish more in a week than any of my corporate peers because I am not inundated with endless distraction. These clients don't really get this, and just assume you have somehow cheated.

Either way, I am done, I am tired and I need some fucking sleep.

Update: I hadn't heard from my client at all. So today (Monday) I called my main contact over there just to see how things went. Seems like everything went perfectly. There were no problems, and everything is proceeding smoothly. In fact, he said he was very impressed with my work, and we will definitely be getting work in the future. Wow. After that, I feel like maybe I should take back some of the stuff I said earlier, but, hey, I was grouchy...

holy fuck

2004-07-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

Busy as hell this week. I have so much going on, I think my brain is starting to leak from my ears.

First I have my job. I am working on two projects right now. I am wrapping up (YAY!) the project with the client in New Jersey. I have about 1 week of work left on that. Then I have a new project that fits right into my comfort zone, but the deadline is so tight (this Thursday) that I'd have to not sleep for the next two days to get it done.

Then I have my own side project that I've been moonlighting on.

Then I have friends coming in from out of town to visit.

So needless to say, I'm running around like a crazy person. Tune in next week though to see if I've gone postal. I will write from my cell, I promise.

ball and chain

2004-07-22T19:03:00.000-07:00

Sorry for taking so long to write. Love, life, and work have been getting in the way lately. I know, how dare they!

Well I went and done it... I asked Belinda to marry me. I asked her on the occasion of our third anniversary.

Sorry if I didn't mention it to you all before popping the question, but I kinda wanted to keep it a secret.

Anyway, I couldn't be happier right now. Belinda is glowing too. I asked her on Tuesday. Tuesday is a good day for such things I guess. I asked her at a gorgeous secluded spot in a gorgeous secluded park here in our fair city. I got down on one knee and everything. She started bawling like a big baby. It was great! After that, we went for a walk along the water making googly-eyes at each other the whole time. Then we had a wonderful dinner at the fanciest (read: most expensive) restaurant in this city. Overall it was a sweet day. Nice, memorable, and I was even wearing the right color socks. Perfect.

Of course, Belinda thinks I'm about 35 months too late. She has been itching to get hitched since about one minute after we started dating. She says to me, "I have known you're the one since the beginning." Wow. Talk about a brain-fuck. I feel like Neo.

Belinda and I have been talking about getting married for quite some time actually. Our conversations (read: brawls) usually started out something like this:

Belinda: Soon?
Grumpy: Soon?! What the fuck are you talking about?
Belinda: You know. Soon?
Grumpy: Oh, that. Yes it will be soon, I promise.
Belinda: Promise?
Grumpy: Yes, I fucking promise. Now stop pressuring me otherwise I'll never ask you...
Belinda: A girl needs to be reassured!
Grumpy: Belinda, we've talked about this a gazillion times! How much fucking reassurance do you need? I am going ask! Just give me some fucking time!

Then a gigantic fight erupts where she tells me how immature I am and I must be afraid of commitment, etc., etc.

Well, now we have one less thing to fight about. Well, no, now we have to fight about seating charts, centerpieces and china patterns. But, hey, at least that's something new!

big four-oh

2004-07-09T10:41:00.000-07:00

I am out of town for the next couple of days to return to the family compound.

We are all getting together to celebrate my sister's turning 40.

Holy fucking Christ.

I can't believe I'm going to have a sibling that's 40. Wake up you Grumpy bastard, that means you're not far behind! Holy shit. I am totally freaking out...

I didn't react this way when she turned 30. When she turned 30, we all wished her a happy birthday, I quietly turned 24 a few months later, and that was it.

Now, it's a decade later, I'm not much further along in my life than I was then. Sure I have the love of my life, Belinda. Sure, I make lots more than I did when I was 24. And sure, I even have a great dog.

But I don't have all those things society tells me I'm supposed to want. A wife, 2.2 kids, a fancy car, a house with a lawn and a white picket fence, a high powered (and high paying) job, a $4000 gas grill, PTA meetings, soccer practice, dance lessons, etc., etc. Nope. None of that. And how am I supposed to have a meaningful life without all of these things?

I have stopped reading my alumni magazine. It's just not worth reading. Who wants to know about the guy who never studied, was on ac-pro for 6 semesters in a row, went to frat parties so he could do keg stands and funnels until he puked down the front of some large breasted coed's tank top. That guy is now a VP at Some Big Company, Inc., and makes $200,000 a year more than I do. He drives around in a Mercedes, and uses his Lexus to take the kids and the dog to the beach. No, no more alumni magazine for me.

The thing is, I am 99% sure I don't want any of that bullshit. I know I am supposed to though. Everyone is supposed to, right? I find is hard to believe that all that stuff will give me fulfillment and happiness. I am willing to bet that Mr. High-Powered-Executive is fucking miserable. I bet he's in therapy and taking Prozac and Valium and Viagra. I bet he has a loveless marriage, his wife is frigid and he has a mistress. His kids talk about what an asshole he is while they smoke pot in the basement. And his dog barks at him whenever he walks in the front door. But on the surface, he, the wife, the 2.2 kids and the dog all have a perfect little Brady Bunch existence, don't they?

I am pretty sure that none of this shit is the key to happiness. But don't ask me what is. If I knew I wouldn't be so fucking cranky now would I?

scumbag, part deux

2004-07-07T18:04:00.000-07:00

If you remember my earlier post about my terrible experience on EBay, you'll be interested to see this little gem I got today:

Your fuckin cheque was returned "unpaid" asshole. I suggest you send me another cheque asap or I will just put you on the back burner and have YOU dealt with extremely easily. Dont fucxk with strangersx assxhole, you are liable to get burned.

Wow. The bad spelling is not mine. How do you think I would be "dealt with"? Since when is "dealing with" anyone extremely easy? Is there a new EBay mafia? Somebody watched way too many episodes of the Sopranos. My response:

Dear Auctioneer,

Threats are not necessary.

I still have not received the necklace. I noticed that you received quite a bit of negative feedback on EBay and your EBay account was terminated. Naturally, I cancelled the check due to a lack of confidence in YOU. It has been over 1 month since I have won this auction, and I still have no merchandise.

When (if?) I get the necklace I will promptly send it back to you.

Sorry it has come to this.
Grumpy

This is starting to get really interesting.

new jersey

2004-07-07T15:29:00.000-07:00

Looks like I will be going to New Jersey yet again.

I have tried and tried to screw up this project and get the client to take it away from us. But nooo... the more I fuck up, the more the want us to do. You can read all about the project from hell here and my shitty job here.

The latest on the project from hell is that we are $30,000 in the hole. Which on a project that was supposed to be only $75,000 is pretty deep in the hole to go. I just got cc'ed on a beg-the-client-for-more-money email. Here is a brief excerpt:

Even with this discount, the invoiced amount exceeds the new purchase order total by $10,400.30.

So it looks like my company is going to charge them an extra $20,000 and we're going to swallow the rest. Ouch. For a company with 8 employees, $10,000 is not an easy figure to swallow.

My opinion is that the person who scoped out the work (my boss) fucked it up. Of course this is not something that he is willing to admit.

As a person who likes to try to predict the future, I'd have to guess that the next time there is a small downturn in the projects we have, my ass is gone from this place. Somebody has to pay for such a large screw-up. Might as well be me. Besides, I don't fit in culturally here. They know it. I know it. None of this has been said, I can just feel it. Even if they don't fire me, I have a bad taste in my mouth from working on this project for the last 5 months, and I will probably quit if I could only get off my self-pitying ass and fix up my resume and portfolio.

So time will tell. For now, as long as this project is going on I have a job. But only because it would take too long to bring a new guy up to speed.

One thing is for sure, when this project does end, I will have lots of new material for the blog...

marathon

2004-07-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

This blog is my way of venting. Belinda's way of venting is to talk with her coworkers. She is the type where she will pretty much tell anyone anything. She is very open.

The other day, the sherpa routine continued. Except this day, I had to carry all the usual stuff as well as her laptop. By the time we got to her work, I was late, I was sweating, my back hurt, and needless to say, I was a little on the cranky side.

Yuri sits next to Belinda in her office. They have an open floor plan, no cubicle walls or anything, so they chat all the time. I have never met him, but Belinda tells me how he makes her laugh all day by making fun of her. All I know about him is that he is older, Russian, works part time, and is very funny. Many mornings, Belinda will get to her desk and tell Yuri, "Boy, Grumpy sure is grumpy today." And then she will proceed to tell him what set me off. The sherpa routine, my personality flaws, whatever.

So after that morning's walk to work, Belinda is complaining about what a grouch I am. She tells him all about our walk and lists off what I had to carry, and Yuri says to her in his thick Russian accent, "Belinda, you don't have a relationship, you have a marathon of harassment."

I love Yuri, he is my new favorite person in the whole world.

driving

2004-07-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

I am not much of a morning person. It's been a grumpy morning.

I don't know what it is, but every time I get behind the wheel with Belinda at my side, we get into a huge fight. Every time.

Take this morning, for instance. Belinda wants to drive because she didn't get much sleep last night and doesn't have the energy to walk or the patience for the subway. I didn't want to drive, but fine, I can understand that. "Belinda, why don't you take the car, I need to stop off at the market, it's easier if I take the train." "No, I want to go with you."

20 minutes later, we're driving down a two-lane city street and I'm about two cars behind a tow truck. The tow truck is going slow because it's towing someone, go figure. For once, Belinda and I are actually early on our morning trek to work thanks to the car. I'm not in a rush; I'm actually driving like a sane person. All I have to do this morning is go to the store (need to pick up one item for my job), drop Belinda off, and park. No sweat, a nice relaxed morning for once.

I can hear the huffing and puffing of impatience coming from the passenger seat.

"What's wrong?"
"Are you just going to just stay behind this guy?"
"Um, what do you want me to do?"
"I don't know, try going around him?" [Heavy on the attitude here]
"Um, ok, what's the difference?"
"We have to hurry! It's 8:30 and I'm going to be late!"
"Belinda, we aren't going to be late. If you want, I will drop you off at work before I run my errand, OK?"
"No."
"OK, you have two choices. You can either keep your mouth shut and let me drive, or you can drive. Why is it that you don't ever drive? Is it because if you drove, you wouldn't be able to order me around?"

Ah, hindsight...

I really wish I hadn't said that last bit. Too late though, it was out there. This is pretty much the conversation every time we drive. In my defense, I can say that she really never wants to drive. But she is constantly telling me how I'm doing it all wrong.

I am going the wrong way.
I am going too fast.
I am going too slow.
I parked the car wrong.
I parked in the wrong spot.
I parked too close.
I parked too far.
I am shifting wrong.
I am revving the engine too slow.
I am revving the engine too fast.
"Are you paying attention? "
"Why are you in this lane?"
I am scaring her.
I am too close to the line.
"What are you waiting for?"
"You went too soon!"
"You are reckless."
"Oh God!"
"You are making me sick."
And my personal favorite, "I just don't understand."

I used to love driving. I grew up the suburbs and driving was my key to freedom from my parents. When I became of age, I was at the DMV on my birthday getting my license. Even as an adult I used to feel a little bit of that same feeling every time I drove. But no more.

I have tried to encourage her to drive more. I have asked her to drive. I have tried handing her the keys. I have even feigned illness to get her behind the wheel. More often than not, she wants me to drive. Why?!?

She does drive occasionally, and I have to say that I absolutely hate how she drives.

oven

2004-06-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

Our oven is on the fritz.

Belinda was home today while the landlord and a repairman came over to look at it, and I just got this lovely email from Belinda:

I tried to explain to the stove dude about how its been taking so long to heat up and I said how it took 2 hours for a quiche to set and he said "that means nothing to me".

Men.

NO! Not men! Some very manly men know all about quiche (savory tart? Now that sounds like, oh never mind...).

Maybe the guy who fixes stoves for a living doesn't give a flying fuck about cooking because it reminds them too much of work? Men? I think not! Could there possibly be lots of women who never go near a quiche unless it's being served to them by a snooty waiter in a fancy restaurant? Of course there are.

I prefer the non-sexist "domestically challenged" myself.

hot abercrombie slut

2004-06-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

Amanda, you're a bitch, and I hate you.

Ok, so I admit it. I never did read her blog much. And, I admit, I was trying to sponge off some of her popularity. I was just hoping that having her on my blogroll would somehow send a reader or two my way. Or better yet, she would notice that I've linked to her and reciprocate on her blogroll, the Holy Grail. And I admit she sure is popular. She's consistently in the Top 3 of the Blogarama Most Cool blogs, whatever the fuck that means. Her site meter claims she's gotten 177,000 hits, which is about 465 times more hits than I have. Search her blog on Technorati and you get 439 links from 357 sources. Holy fucking shit!

But, popularity aside, you ain't running for homecoming queen, Amanda. I can't stand you or your blog anymore. Over the last few weeks, every posting you've done has not only been about the terrorist beheadings, but you link directly to the photos and videos of these gruesome acts themselves. Oh sure, you say:

I certainly don't intend to force gruesome images on anyone - I decided that a safe policy for providing such pictures would be to include thumbnails only for segments of videos that did not depict violence, while using text-only links clearly [indicating] the picture content for those depicting images of the beheadings.

But I really don't believe you. Nope, sorry.

Seriously now, what the fuck is wrong with you? Your profile, albeit grammatically challenged, says that you're a:

Philosophy major, college sophomore in Fall 2004.

Why the fuck is a 19, at most, 20 year old young lady such as yourself, so obsessed with blood and gore? This is not the movies, sweetie, this is fucking real life. Real people are dying in these horrible acts, families are being torn to pieces, the terrorists are fucking winning (!) and you're linking to these pictures and videos to get a few thousand extra hits?!

Maybe you should schedule an appointment with your school psychologist. Seriously.

starfucks

2004-06-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I have gone from liking Starbucks, to loving Starbucks, to craving Starbucks four times a day; to fucking hating Starbucks with such vitriol that it makes me cross-eyed.

It starts with the way you're supposed to fucking order. Short is for extra small, tall is for small, grande (that's Italian for large) is for medium, and venti (Italian for twenty) is for large. What the fuck was wrong with small, medium, and large? Had these words suddenly lost their effectiveness? Did we all wake up one day and say, "Gee, small, medium and large just aren't working for us anymore, we need more words to describe the same fucking thing!" No, it's the fuckers in Seattle way of making customers feel like they're fucking fancy and snooty and fucking more righteous than the people who like to drink coffee that's been filtered through a paper cone.

Speaking of which, what the fuck is wrong with coffee that's been brewed through the drip method? Why must it be that every time I walk into Starbucks, Peet's, Tully's, or the corner Uppity Cafe, I am made to feel like a second class citizen for asking for my "drip" coffee?

It wasn't all that long ago (maybe I'm showing my age here) that I remember when we went to Dunkin Donuts or dare I say 7-11 for coffee that would make hair grow from your ears. AND WE LIKED IT! We even craved the shit. We even drove a mile out of our way to get it!

Then Starbucks came along and said here is this fancy fucking Italian coffee. And the fuckers from Seattle said, "Taste this! Aren't those lattes and cappuccinos yummy? Oh, yeah, that is going to cost you $5 instead of the $1.15 you were paying at Dunkin."

Let me rant on about another thing. Your fucking grande nonfat latte is made with exactly two 1-1/2 ounce shots of espresso. Each of those shots of espresso is made with exactly one tablespoon of fine ground coffee, which gives you a whopping grand total of TWO tablespoons of coffee used per $4.70 grande nonfat latte. The grande (that's medium to the sane) coffee is 16 ounces. Two 1-1/2 ounce espresso shots take up 3 ounces in your cup, which leaves 13 ounces. You're barista (in the 80's these were the same pimply kids who could only get jobs working the fry line at McD's) fills your cup with about 10 ounces of "steamed milk", the remaining 3 ounces is filled with "foam".

I'm not 100% sure what "foam" is or where it comes from, but I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of teenage boys with Barely Legal video's in the back... oh nevermind.

"Steamed milk" is a fancy fucking term for milk made hot using steam. Duh. I can buy a gallon of milk in the most expensive convenience store in the fanciest fucking neighborhood in this city for $4.00. That's 128 fucking ounces people! How much fucking money is Starbucks making us pay for them to boil fucking water??????

Want to know the best part? That fucking 16 ounce grande nonfat fucking latte has almost half the caffeine that drip coffee does. That's almost the same thing as your friendly neighborood cocaine dealer who cuts his product with sweet-n-low.

Fuck no, its worse.

rules

2004-06-25T01:03:00.000-07:00

Not only do I work my 9-to-5 job, but to make a little extra money I do some freelance work in the evenings.

I usually can't even start this work until 8 or 9PM. By the time I get home and we figure out what to do for dinner, make the dog feel like she is loved, make a few phone calls, etc. I usually work until 1 AM, sometimes a little later. This all sucks, but if you keep focused and consider caffeine a food group, it's not half bad.

Belinda is asleep on the couch behind me.

I have asked her again and again to go to sleep in the bedroom. This is for two reasons. First, so she can sleep comfortably, and not wake up with neck pain, which she invariably does. Besides, one of us might as well be well rested. Also, it drives me fucking batty because it makes burning the midnight oil on a project that much more difficult. Hearing the quiet little snores behind my head as I try to work, makes me think about nothing but sleeping, and makes me want to punt my laptop and dive into bed.

I have tried to get her off the couch and go to bed. I have tried to trick her into going to bed. Nothing works.

But she insists on sleeping on the couch (or the cozy chair) in the living room. The funny thing is when she was in graduate school and she stayed up until all hours studying, she insisted I go to bed. For the exact same reasons!

It's funny how the rules are different.

breakfast

2004-06-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

It's official; Belinda and I are going to the same breakfast place that she insists we go to every single Saturday. Again.

I really hate this fucking place. What the fuck is up with her? Not only do we go to the same place every Saturday, she orders the exact fucking same thing every time. Every time. She never tries anything different. Granted it has pretty fancy French food, but still!

When we first moved to this city, this was the first place we ate breakfast in. Her cousin (who knows everyone, and has been to every single restaurant in this city) took us there. We've been back, I'd say, 90% of the weekends since. The only time we've missed it is when we are traveling. When we do travel, even if it's someplace known to have a world-class culinary scene, Saturday will roll around, and invariably Belinda will turn to me and say, "Oh, I miss that place, I wish we could go there."

When we walk in, the staff doesn't even show us our table any more. They treat us as if we're houseguests who've long overstayed their welcome. "Oh, it's you guys again, hi, sit anywhere you want... Whatever." We have to get our own menus. Once, when Belinda took her Aunt there, the waiter said to the Aunt, "If you have any questions about anything on the menu, don't ask me, ask her," pointing to Belinda.

When I sit down in this place, I look at the menu, and I lose my appetite. I have literally ordered everything on the menu twice or more. Every weekend, when we're heading over to the place, I pray that there is a special I'll be interested in, so I don't have to eat the same breakfast slop, yet again. That's not fair, the food is good, just overly familiar. I WANT TO TRY SOMETHING NEW! No. I NEED TO TRY SOMETHING NEW ONCE IN A WHILE!

We live in a city of 3.5 million people. There are literally hundreds of places within 2 miles of our house that serve breakfast. There are easily 50 that are walking distance from us that we could try... but no.

Belinda says that having "routine" makes her feel comfortable and safe. I can understand that, but having a routine that's dragged on for this long makes me bored and want to throw furniture around the house.

arrgghh

2004-06-23T18:47:00.000-07:00

I am having the worst day at work. I am pretty convinced that everyone here is out to get me. Yesterday I had this conversation with the Boss:

Boss: We need to be in NJ by Thursday! [he means next Thursday, not tomorrow -g]
Grumpy: Why?
Boss: Because I'm going to be in NYC Tuesday and Wednesday, and then I can go to the client on Thursday.
Grumpy: Oh. Well I continue to not have good results.

The stupidity of this is staggering. The client pays for our plane tickets, so it's not as if our small consultancy has to absorb extra costs. Now, I have to rush around like a fucking crazy person to try to get everything ready for Thursday. Sure, it would be convenient for his majesty, but I mean, really, is this really best? While I'm rushing around, I'm not solving the basic fundamental problems I am having on this project. No time for the small shit, right?!

To be ready to be in NJ by Thursday, I have to get amazing laundry list of items finished, 90% of which rely on other people to come through in time. And, all these items have to be completed by Tuesday to account for travel time. The likelihood of all of this happening I have calculated to be exactly zilch.

Today, he and I have this conversation:

Boss: Are you almost done? I could use any free time you have on this other project.
Grumpy: Free time? I thought you needed me to be ready by Thursday for the NJ thing.

What I really wanted to say was, "Are you fucking smoking crack?!"

Then I get this email from the fucking overeducated windbag freelancer:

Sorry I didn't make it in today but I've been cleaning my way out of a virus or something in my laptop. It should be clean now, but we'll see. Also, tomorrow I have appointments through lunch and will make it up right afterwards.

Remember that laundry list of items that I mentioned above? Right-O. There goes the first thing not getting done in time. That didn't take long, now did it?

If I weren't such a pussy, I'd quit. Then again, if I weren't such a lazy fuck, my resume would be ready.

squabbling

2004-06-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Belinda and I squabble a lot.

Sometimes I feel like we're a mid-50's married couple in that familiarity-breeds-contempt stage of their relationship. Of course, we've only been together about 3 years, so that's not what's really going on. What's really going on is that Belinda never backs down. Never.

What's interesting is that Belinda knows about this blog. Lots of other guy blogs out there like For Crying Out Loud, The Good Husband, and the sadly defunct I Hate My Wife keep their blog a secret from their significant others. Since Belinda reads this, I need to edit things a little bit. I mean we don't want her knowing everything that goes on in my feeble little brain. But I try not to pull any punches, and to tell it like it is regardless of who's reading or not.

Last night, we were in our squabbling mode as usual, I was getting more and more pissed at whatever it was that she was going on about, and in my frustration I actually said to her, "I can feel a blog post coming on..." I was actually threatening to write about her unless she either comes around to my point of view or just gives me five minutes of peace.

Interesting twist, in the 21st century relationship, huh?

scumbag

2004-06-18T13:22:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, Belinda sent me a link to an item on Ebay she liked. She liked the price even more. It was a necklace from Tiffany's. She has a thing for jewelry, especially fancy stuff from Tiffany's.

The text of the auction included this, er, gem:

Don’t be fooled with fake auctions, and people who copy the Tiffany & Co picture from the Tiffany website, my pictures are taken by me, of the actual item you get, not stolen from the manufactures website to make it look better.

I think to myself, hmm, that'll make a nice gift for Belinda on our anniversary. She wants it. She likes it. I will buy it for her and I will be a hero! Everybody wins. So I bid and I win it. Whoo hoo!

Oh shit, I forgot to check one thing; does the seller take Paypal? Fuck, no. Well I won the auction, and we all know what Ebay says:

Your bid is a contract - Place a bid only if you're serious about buying the item. If you are the winning bidder, you will enter into a legally binding contract to purchase the item from the seller. You should contact the seller to resolve any questions before bidding.

And we all know that the punishment for not following through on an Ebay auction is: negative feedback. Oh no, not negative feedback! Anything but negative feedback! Whip me, flog me, burn me at the stake, but whatever you do, don't give me negative feedback!

So being the stupid schmuck that I am, I sent the seller a check for $107. I never felt quite right about it, but I did it anyway. Then, I didn't hear jack shit from him. I waited a week, justifying to myself, "Oh, you know how the USPS can be..." After a week, I sent him an email asking, "Hey, did you get the check yet?" And another, "Hey, did you ship the item yet?" Nothing. Nada. Niente. Nichts. Zip.

This morning I sent him this email:

I STILL have not heard from you about whether you have gotten the check or not. If I do not hear from you by lunchtime today, I have to assume you have scammed me and I AM GOING TO STOP PAYMENT ON THE CHECK.

Sorry it has come to this.
Grumpy

While I'm waiting for a harried response (and apology) from the seller, I go back on Ebay and check to see if he has any negative feedback. "this is a FAKE .the buyer didn't answer.i want to moneyback." I know the grammar is horrible, but hey, I didn't write it. And this "Tiffany store says FAKE!! Item from Taiwan! Seller said $ back - no refund given" Great. Oh, then I look at the top of my screen and next to the seller's name is this, "No longer a registered user" I am obviously dealing with a person who is both a criminal mastermind and a scumbag.

So after I got back from lunch, I stopped payment on the check. No harm done.

But the real winner in this whole deal is my bank; they get $25. Fuckers.

esoteric

2004-06-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

I just don't get people without a sense of humor.

Sure, sometimes my particular wit can be a little on the so-subtle-I-have-to-think-about-whether-that-was-a-joke-at-all side. I like to think of my humor as "esoteric". Belinda likes to call it "not funny".

Regardless of which camp you side with, there are times when you're in a polite social setting and it's obvious that a joke is being made, even if you don't find it funny, you give a little polite laugh and move on. We all do this, if we didn't society would break down into total anarchy.

So, we're meeting with the freelancer to help us solve a very serious and vexing issue that cropped up recently with the device I've been working on:

Boss: Well, think about it tonight and let us know if you think of any solutions for this problem. Maybe you'll come up with something while you're in the shower or something...
Freelancer: OK (nods head pensively)
Grumpy: (har harring) Well, as long as it's about this, we don't want to know everything you think of in the shower!
Freelancer: (looks at me disdainfully) Riiight...
Boss: (laughing politely)

See, even my pole-up-his-ass boss knows what to do.

lazy

2004-06-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

Belinda asked me, via email, why I didn't write a post today.

I gave her my standard wiseass answers. First, I was too fucking busy to write a fucking post. These posts don't just write themselves. I have to be creative and actually think of something worth writing about. Then I have to edit, rewrite, spell check, etc. I just didn't have time for that bullshit today. Second, nothing happened. That's right, not one fucking thing happened today to put me in a foul mood. Sometimes, very rarely, nothing occurs that pisses me off. Can you believe that?!?!

So for today, I have no crankiness to share. However, I will share with you, two things on craigslist that made me smile. First is this posting "I Almost Won A Darwin Award", which I found on kottke.org. Then there is this one from the rants & raves, section which Belinda sent me. If you ride the subway or public transportation to work, you'll definitely appreciate it.

You gotta love craigslist.

insomnia

2004-06-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

Belinda and I both had insomnia last night.

Except for the fact that I'm so tired this morning that I can barely muster up the energy to sip my coffee, we had a nice time. It's been a long while since we just lay in bed together. We chatted, spooned, squabbled, cuddled, and shared concerns about our relationship.

Belinda gets all freaked out when I get stressed. When I am stressed I close up. I don't talk about my feelings or the detail of my day very much is it is. But when stressed, I talk about those things even less. I think this alarms her. You know how women are. When Belinda gets home from work she tells me all of the fine details about her day, down to the minutest of minute details. At dinner last night, I was doing my stressed/quiet routine. Belinda had been talking for about 30 minutes straight. Going on about the people at work, lunch, the fax machine, the joke she told her boss, etc. Anyway, at one point, she asked me if anything exciting happened at work today. I just responded, "No, nothing happened at work today at all." Which, of course, is total bullshit, I just didn't want to talk about it. It had only been about 2 hours since I left work, and I need lots of time to decompress. When I finally do get my head around the events of the day, I open up more.

That night, lying in bed, Belinda said she took my quietness as a sign that I'm unhappy in our relationship, and unhappy with her in general. That it must mean that I don't value her as a listener and I don't value her help and guidance to get me through the stress. This surprised me a bit since we've been together for three years, and I have been stressed out for about 2-1/2 of those three years. But, I assured her that everything is fine, and that I just deal with stress a little differently than she does.

After that we just laid in bed, quiet. I could hear her breathing slow, and finally, mercifully, sleep took hold of her. That was about 3 AM. I lay there, listening to her breathing, thinking... the storm in my brain finally allowed me to sleep at 4.

That 7 AM alarm was almost painful...

as if on cue

2004-06-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

I got my gmail invite last night when I logged into blogger. Do you think the guys at Google are reading this blog?

So, naturally, I signed up. Wouldn't you?

So far, the one major disappointment is the lack of extra invites. It seems that early Gmail testers got extra invites to give to their friends. I have not gotten any of those. Which makes me feel bad, because I would like to have given one to Belinda.

I've used Gmail to send out a grand total of two emails. It has plenty of features you can go and read about at other, more qualified, websites and blogs.

The one thing I will say is that it's fast. Damned fast.

irre-fucking-gardless

2004-06-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

Irregardless.

That fucking freelancer they hired here at work used the fucking word irregardless today. Anyone who knows me knows that my fucking blood boils some asshole uses that fucking word. Not much gets me more fucking pissed off than that. It chaps my hide even more that an overeducated windbag who thinks he's fucking god's gift to engineering from fucking Stanford (!) said it.

The next fucker who says that fucking word in my presence is going to get all 20 volumes of the OED dumped on their fucking head.

ms. hilton, ms. paris hilton

2004-06-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

Belinda and I watched the Paris Hilton Sex Video last night.

I know, I know... we're so late to that party.

After watching The Fabulous Life of the Hilton Sisters on VH1 about 2 months ago, Belinda turns to me and says, "Can you find her video on the internet?" Baby, I can find anything on the internet. In no time, I found and downloaded the full 37-minute version for us to watch. Which promptly sat on my hard drive, unwatched, for the last two months, until last night.

What I can say is that it was really exceptionally and surprisingly dull and unerotic. After watching it, I felt that I wasted 37 minutes of my life. Going to bed 37 minutes earlier and getting a little extra sleep probably would have better served me.

Sure, it was explicit. Sure, Ms. Hilton is pretty. Sure, there was sex. But both Ms. Hilton and Mr. Solomon are really immature and really annoying. I don't think I can stress this enough, immature and annoying, very stupid of me to expect otherwise, I guess. Their banter was so fucking stupid, that I wish I could have dumped an oil tanker of KY jelly over their heads to shut them up. "Just shut up and fuck! You're ruining it!", I was tempted to bark into my laptop.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the sex. Mr. Solomon is terrible in bed, he takes forever to come, and he's clearly there for his own pleasure not Ms. Hilton's. Not surprisingly, Ms. Hilton's performance plays off Mr. Solomon's. She appears bored, and somewhat anxious for the act(s) to be over. In fact, she seems more excited by the camera and the fact that she is being filmed than anything that's going on around her or into her.

Or, maybe she's just a lousy lay.

Either way, I am most surprised by the fact that I expected oh-so-much more from the worst our mediocre-at-best entertainment industry has to offer. What the fuck was I thinking?

i love being right

2004-06-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

As predicted in my earlier post, Yahoo has taken a shot across the Gmail bow. I got this message when I logged into my Yahoo email this morning:

Great news – Yahoo! Mail is new and improved!

Thanks for being a loyal Yahoo! Mail user. To ensure that Yahoo! Mail continues to be the easiest, most enjoyable way for you to stay in touch, we've made several great improvements to your service! In addition to all the features you currently enjoy, we've made these upgrades:

Streamlined interface: Makes using your mail even easier

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Sure it's 10 times less space than Gmail's 1GB. But it's the first step, and it's enough space to make you think twice before immediately switching. Oh, and no relevant text ads, which has the privacy watchdogs up in arms.

Yesterday, my Yahoo inbox was at 99% capacity, today it's 6%.

ATM illiterate

2004-06-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

ATM's have been our main way of interacting with our banks and our money for quite some time now.

Banks encourage us to use them for as many of our banking needs as possible. Hell these machines can even sell you stamps. It's almost impossible to go through your banking life without using one from time to time. In fact, banks will often charge you $2 if you do some banking with a human that you could have done with an ATM instead.

So why is it that I still have to wait for a fucking eternity behind someone who seems to be ATM illiterate?

What reason can there be to be so fucking slow at the ATM? You don't have that many choices. You can take money out, put money in, transfer money between accounts... what is so fucking confusing?

Perhaps these people are tourists and aren't used to my city's sophisticated style of ATM user interface? Are ATM's in different parts of the country that different from mine? Perhaps tourists from Peoria or Mobile are stumped when they walk up to these complex ATMs?

Hell I've lived on both coasts of this country, and I can assure you, that ATMs are pretty much the same everywhere I've been. Sure the buttons may move around slightly, but it's basically the same choices.

Maybe, just maybe, these people are fucking stupid?!

clickity click

2004-06-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

In the middle of last week, I landed some freelance work in addition to my normal 9-to-5 job. Needless to say, it's been a little nutty lately.

For the last five or six days, I would, basically, leave work at 6 or 6:30, head home, and start working again. Also, all weekend I was stuck inside clicking that stupid fucking mouse...

Don't get me wrong, freelance work is awesome, I get to make a little extra money and pay down some of those credit card bills. I get to work on some cool things that I wouldn't get to work on normally, and generally, I'm happiest when I'm going a million miles and hour and I'm so busy I can't see straight. I don't know why, I just am.

It's bad though because it means that Belinda and I didn't spend much time together screwing off and blowing off steam this weekend like we usually do. During the week, I am unable to give her as much pillow time as she is used to, since I'm sitting in front of the computer, usually swearing at it like a truck driver, until 12 or 1 AM. Chores around the house get ignored, etc...

The worst part is that I work in our dining nook, which overlooks the park across the street. So while I'm stuck inside clicking away, I can watch all the people in the park sunning themselves and generally lazing about in the perfect weather we have here. Maybe I need to move my computer...

With all that said, I'm in a pretty good mood today. I suppose because I have been too busy to think about how much I hate my job or my boss or this stupid fucking project I'm slaving away on. Which is good, considering the week I had last week. So, there is very little grumpiness to write about today.

However, now that I'm my desk this morning, and I haven't had any downtime in a while, that could change at any minute...

explosive diarrhea

2004-06-11T21:13:00.000-07:00

Belinda and I came home to a little surprise this evening.

As we were ascending our stairs (we live in a three story walk-up) we noticed a rather foul smell, reminiscent of the smell of raw sewage.

It seems that Trixie, the most fantastic dog on the planet, had an accident in the bathroom rug. Umberto, our dog walker must have stumbled (not literally) on it, and cleaned up 99% of it. God I love Umberto, talk about going above and beyond.

Please understand how unusual this is for Trixie. Since she adopted me from the shelter four years ago, she has gone in the house exactly one other time. And it was only because she was sick. Back in the days when I was irresponsible and I would go out drinking after work, she has held it for 12, 14, even 18 hours, the poor thing. I bet she could go longer too. This dog defines mind over bladder. In hindsight, it seems that treating her to that little can of tuna last night was probably a bad idea.

So, Belinda and I took Trixie outside in case she had a little extra bubbling up (she did). Then we walked to the supermarket to buy some carpet cleaner to get out the 1% left by Umberto.

Belinda and Trixie wait outside while I go in to get the necessities. While I'm in there, I think, "hmm, maybe I should get some air freshener, since the house smells so bad." Mentally patting myself on the back for being so fucking smart. I know Belinda is allergic to like every single chemical known to man. So I choose the all natural citrus freshener. No chemicals, perfect.

Naturally, Belinda is less than impressed, "I told you twice (!) never to buy that shit, I hate how it smells."

gmail hysteria

2004-06-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

I just spent a good hour trying to figure out how to get myself a Gmail account.

1GB of email storage would certainly come in handy in my email-centric life. Currently, my main email is through my cable company. Very convenient, very fast, kindof expensive. If I were the cable company, I'd be scared shitless of when Gmail goes live.

Gmail is going to be the equivalent of cell phone number portability. Think about this for a second. I am not looking around for a new, better priced ISP because I don't want to go though the hassle of having to change my email. Does this sound like the same reason people we sticking with their much despised cell phone carriers? When I finally do get my Gmail account, I can go through the email switcheroo pain once more, then that's it. I have my single email account for life. I never have to send out that mass email to all my friends, family and acquaintances again explaining that I've moved, or I've switched ISPs and now my email has changed. Never...

So as I'm poking around the web trying to figure out how all these people are getting their invites. Obviously, not just Google employees are getting them. This guy got one because he is an "active" user of Blogger. This guy, works for Google and is giving them out to his friends and to the faithful readers of his blog (huh, a ploy to get more readers?).

Hmm... You can also find some on Ebay for a reasonable $5 or $6. There is even a whole web page called gmailswap dedicated to the cause. This person is offering a personalized sock monkey in return for an invite.

Then it occurred to me. Why am I wasting my time with this stupidity? I have gotten along for 30+ years without a Gmail account. I can probably go on longer without one. Then I realized that there is no way in hell Yahoo! and Hotmail are going to sit around while Google takes away all their free email customers. It's just a matter of economics. The price per GB of hard drive storage has fallen from $5.44 in 2000 to $0.78 in 2004, and continues to fall. At that price even mighty Microsoft will offer 1GB free email accounts. Why? Because they'll have to, if they want to stay competitive.

I'm going to sit and wait it out.

meanderthal

2004-06-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

Once again, it's 9:30 and I just walked in the door here at work.

I'd very much like to get here at 9:00, or even earlier. I work in one of those offices where the time you plop your ass into your Aeron chair seems to make a difference in how people perceive you.

Belinda and I walk to work in the morning quite often. Which is awesome. We used to leave the house after I'd walk the dog, and she'd make us a nice breakfast. But that was taking way too long. So I asked if we could skip breakfast (can't really skip the dog walk) and leave earlier so I can get here at a reasonable time.

Granted, this morning, we did leave about 10 minutes earlier than we usually do. We skipped breakfast like I asked. But the kicker is, Belinda doesn't like to skip breakfast. Which from a health standpoint, I can understand. You've got to fuel the fire, so to speak. So we leave the house and stop for a breakfast smoothie to sip while we walk. At the end of our walk, we stop again for Starbucks. Lo and behold, it's 9:30 when I walk in the door. Go figure...

What made things even worse today was that as we were approaching her office (her office is on the way to mine) we bump into one of her coworkers, who's walking in the same direction as us. Of course, we have to be polite and say hello to her. I'm freaking out at this point because it's already 9:10, and I still have a ways to go. We're walking three abreast down the sidewalk now. While they're making polite small talk, steam is fucking shooting out of my ears.

The fucking coworker, who isn't exactly an old fart, is walking so fucking slowly, that if she went any slower she'd be going fucking backwards!

nine women

2004-06-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

So, if you remember from yesterdays post:

He has even offered an unspecified financial bonus (verbal, not written) if we can pick up the pace and go above and beyond.

So, of course, everyone is up in arms, fire and brimstone are raining from the heavens. Everyone is running around like there is a tornado siren going off, and my fucking life is miserable.

It's the age-old adage, nine women can't make a baby in a month. They just don't get it.

Today, they brought in a freelancer to help me, and to help offload some of my work. This is great, except, I spent half the day yesterday trying to figure out what makes sense to cut loose and have this guy do. Today, and probably half the day tomorrow, I am teaching this freelancer how to use my device (he's still not getting it). In the meantime, I'm not getting any of my higher priority work done, until this polished, overpriced, and overeducated windbag gets up to speed.

The best part is that while we're meeting today, he's going off about how we need to rethink the inner workings of the device. HEY, YOU'RE A FUCKING FREELANCER, DO WHAT WE FUCKING TELL YOU!!! DID YOU HEAR ANYBODY SAY, HEY MR. FREELANCER, EVERYTHING IS FUCKED AND WE'RE INCOMPETENT. CAN WE THROW MONEY AT YOU SO YOU'LL SAVE OUR ASSES?! Nope, no one said that. What we did say is; here is a very defined set of parameters to work with. Here is everything you need to do your job. Get it fucking done, fucking now! You fucking cocksucker.

As you can see I highly regard this particular individual. My boss, who is well pedigreed and highly educated, seems to worship him.

fuck you, you fucking fuck

2004-06-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

Well, my two weeks of being in a relatively good mood is over.

I'm back, bay-bee!!

Today was utter hell. First, from my earlier post, there was the spur-of-the-moment dog-and-pony show for Mr. President and his bimbo marketing twat. That demonstration went off horribly. First, the fucking thing didn't work right. Then, when I tried to do it a second time, I broke the damned thing. Fucking great.

Then I hear rumors that Mr. President had a side conversation with our sales dude, and is not pleased with our pace on this project. He has even offered an unspecified financial bonus (verbal, not written) if we can pick up the pace and go above and beyond. I have worked as a consultant a long, long time. My experience is that NO CLIENT is happy with the pace of a project EVER. Faster, faster, faster, they always want it sooner. It's because they're excited. It is the job of the project manager to say to the client, "Slow down, this is the absolutely fastest the project can go. Here are some reasons... We're moving ahead about 1000% faster than your internal team would have. Etc., etc., etc." My boss? You guessed it. Instead of pushing back on the client, he pushes on me to go faster. What the fuck? I've never seen anything like this...

Needless to say, I am in a very dark place today. I have had motivation problems on this job before, but today? Today, I have lots of motivation to fix up my resume and start circulating it.

FUCK!!

2004-06-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

The president of my clients' company is coming for a surprise visit today. The fucking president!

"Just stopping in for a few minutes at lunch for a demonstration of the device," he says. He calls me directly (at 9:10AM) and kept asking if it was OK. "Is it OK?" "Are you sure?" Riiight, like I'm going to say, "Gee, I don't think so, I have a hair appointment then. Does tomorrow work for you?" He's apparently in town for a huge conference, and since he was so close...

I am so fucked at work it's not even funny. Maybe I'm spending too much time in front of Blogger? Nahhh, that can't be it...

total bitch

2004-06-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

In my earlier post about my weekend in the mountains with Belinda and her family, Belinda felt that what I wrote made her sound like a total bitch. Well, that's not exactly what she said, she said it was, "a bit harsh."

Make no mistake, dear reader; Belinda is wonderful, even if, occasionally, she really pisses me off (thus providing me with 95% of the fodder for my grumpy diatribes). Belinda is everything to me: the love of my life, my one and true faithful reader, even my editor-in-chief when I feel like I might be writing total crap.

When I first started writing this blog, I made a conscious decision to not write about what happened between Belinda and I. I was certain that it would be, at best, a big test of our relationship. At worst, it would be a huge mistake that I may regret for eons to come. I mean think about it, putting your relationship's dirty laundry out on the internet for anyone to read, even the person that makes you grumpy!? It's a surefire formula for having your life blow up in your face.

Then sometime around this post I got brave and decided to write about Belinda. I knew she would read it, but I wasn't sure how she'd react. Read it she did. About 10 minutes after the post went up, I got an email saying, "Should I take this as a hint?" Yeowch! I knew I was in for it when I got home that night. Trying to cut my losses, the instant I walked in the door, I apologized (groveled) and offered to take the post down. Then Belinda did an awesome thing (she is always doing awesome things) and said, "No, don't delete it, I enjoyed it. It was funny!"

So, please keep in mind, this is the grumpy blog, not the taking-long-fucking-walks-on-the-beach-at-sunset blog for chrissake. Belinda rocks, I'm just not going to write about it...

glimmer

2004-06-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I am back from my business trip of doom. There goes two days of my life that I will never get back. And the people I work for don't really care. Fuckers.

There was one ray of sunshine on my trip, however.

My boss stood me up for dinner so he could go "work out" at the hotel gym. Which was fine with me since I didn't want to have dinner with that boring fuck anyway. But, as usual, he made me feel like a fat piece of shit since I had no intention of taking advantage of the hotel gym and pool like he was. No, I was in my room, lounging in front of the TV in nothing but my Calvin Klein underwear, getting fatter by the minute. Nice imagery, huh?

Anyway, I was watching HBO. I don't normally watch HBO, since I'm too much of a tightwad to pay for it. I mean, jesus fucking christ, my cable bill is already 45 fucking dollars a month! And that's just for "basic" fucking cable! Am I the only person who thinks that seems like a lot of money to pay to sit on the couch and get stupid? Shouldn't they be paying us for the privilege to brainwash us with their makeover shows and commercials for purple ketchup? But I digress...

So, here I am, watching one of their comedy specials, and the latest comedian is Lewis Black. I've seen Lewis Black before and I always thought he was a funny guy. But this time I was practically shitting in my boxer-briefs laughing at the boob tube. The weird thing about this is that I NEVER laugh out loud at the TV. Especially not when I'm alone. I'm just not that demonstrative a person, and honestly, 99.9% of the drivel on TV just isn't that funny. But watching Mr. Black the other night, I couldn't contain myself.

Mr. Black really reminded me of myself. He is bitter. He is opinionated. He is angry. He is cranky. He is a crotchety fucker. He uses fuck, fucking or fucker every other word. Just like yours truly, except he is funny.

I think part of the reason he hit home with me that night was that it was the first time I've seen him since I started this blog. The whole time I kept thinking how his comedy is written in the same profanity, anger and sarcasm wrapped voice as my blog posts, and how I wish I could be as entertaining as he was. Damn! Well, at least something to work towards, huh?

I recently exclaimed that Jon Stewart was the funniest man alive, but after the other night, I think I may have to rethink that...

business trip

2004-06-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

Another business trip this week. As you probably (?) read in my earlier post, I fucking hate business trips. Two days of non-stop fakery. To make it even worse, I'm going to rural New Jersey. I didn't even know New Jersey had a rural part! I thought New Jersey was filled with oil refineries, landfills, and towns like Hoboken. Who knew?

Do you know what there is to do in rural New Jersey? You guessed it! Nothing! Not a fucking goddamned thing. The biggest thing in town is a truck stop. It's a 90-minute drive from the nearest airport for Christ's sake! To go out for dinner, you have to drive over the border to New York. Believe me, rural New York ain't much better, but at least there is something there.

I am amazed that someone would locate their giant-sized company in this godforsaken shithole of a town. What amazes me even more is that there are people, smart, educated people, who are practically falling over themselves to work for this company and to live in that podunk town. Idiots.

Throw in a 5-1/2 hour flight (each way), 1-1/2 hour drive (each way), inane conversation until my head explodes, and lots of time sitting in a hotel room in my underwear (the car is rented in the bosses name), and you've got yourself a kick-ass business trip! Yee ha!

pussywhipped

2004-06-01T01:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I just stumbled in from the long weekend in the mountains with Belinda and her family.

Overall, there was less fighting than I anticipated. As predicted, however, there were way too many snippy remarks to remember and plenty polite underhandedness to go around.

The key to survival this weekend was to walk that fine line between Belinda and her family. I haven't been around Belinda's family long enough to feel like I'm one of them yet. So when there is an "event" I feel myself having to both make sure I do the right thing by Belinda, and at the same time, make sure I don't alienate the family.

A fine example of this happened one afternoon when Ms. Biddlebox (Belinda's mother) suggested we eat dinner outside that evening. Sounds nice to me. Being in the mountains is all about being outdoors, the weather is pleasant, so I agree. The sister, Beulah, agrees. Darrell, Beulah's husband (he's an awesome guy and the only saving grace of the weekend) couldn't give two shits where we ate. You gotta love Darrell. Belinda says, "I am not fucking eating outside, there are too many bugs!" I haven't been to the mountain house enough to really know the extent of dinner-time insect activity, but I am sure that with a little citronella everyone will be happy. Reluctantly, Belinda agrees to eat outside with all of us. She seems cranky for the rest of the afternoon.

At one point during the afternoon, she confides with me, "We never ate outside when we came here as kids. It's just stupid. My mother is so ridiculous!" What am I supposed to say to that? I head to the garage to look for as many mosquito repelling devices as I can find. This is my pathetic attempt to make everyone happy and help make the evening go off without a hitch. I know that this is futile, but I do it anyway.

Once dinner is ready, we all head outside. The food looks good, the wine looks good. Belinda, with that sour look on her face, comes outside and takes her seat next to me. As soon as she sits down, Belinda finds a six legged friend in her water. Beulah is swatting her arms. I keep feeling mosquitoes poking around on my neck. Darrell, always compliant and easy going, doesn't seem to notice anything. Ms. Biddlebox offers some Deet to Belinda, "NO! I don't use that shit!" A minute later Belinda watches a mosquito hover and land on her barbecue chicken and proceeds to test it with her proboscis to see if she can use it for tonights' feeding. This was the last straw for Belinda, "OK, that's it, this is disgusting, a fucking mosquito just landed on my food. I'm eating inside!" She proceeds to get up and head in. Admittedly, the bugs were pretty bad; the citronella candle and citronella tiki torches surrounding the deck, seemed to only be attracting the insects. Belinda was only outside for a total of about 3 minutes.

So now here I am. At the table alone, Belinda has just stormed off carrying her plate of food inside hurrumphing the whole way. Everyone at the table has this sort of, "uuuummm... oookkkaaayy" look on their faces, and they're all looking at me. I am panicking on the inside. "Holy shit, what the fuck do I do, what do I do. Oh shit." On the outside, ever the stoic, I coolly take a bite of my roasted root vegetables and look at my fork contemplatively.

So here is where that fine line I was talking about comes in. What do I do? Do I get up and yell, "Yeah, me too!" and storm off inside? This will alienate the family, but probably make Belinda happy as hell. Do I just stay there and pretend it never happened, making idle conversation with Ms. Biddlebox, and let Belinda eat alone indoors? This would probably alienate Belinda big time, and it would result in me not getting any sex for at least a month, maybe three.

So I sat there for what seemed and eternity (read 20 seconds) considering my options. I am certain that I would like to have sex sometime before my next birthday, and I know I am going inside. The question now is; how the fuck do I make my exit? The key here is that I have to make myself look good doing it, or at least not look like an utter fool. I need to make sure that it doesn't seem that I am running after her, otherwise I might seem henpecked. If I take too long to go inside, it will seem like I felt uncomfortable hanging with the family without her at my side. Also, if I take too long, Belinda will be pissed.

I take a couple of bites of salad, place my fork down, stand up, and declare, "Well, I going to go inside, so Belinda doesn't have to eat alone." I gather up my plate, silverware, and wine glass and I stride off.

Not a word is said, but I am 100% sure of what that they were all thinking: "Yup, pussywhipped."

wwe smackdown

2004-05-28T17:14:00.000-07:00

Well, you may remember from an earlier post that this weekend Belinda and I are having the WWE smackdown weekend this weekend.

I'm not really sure what to expect. What I do expect is that it will be interesting and stressful. There will be a decent amount of fighting, no doubt. And I will have to spend a lot of time listening to Belinda say, "Can you believe my fucking mother?"

The only upside to all of this, is that I will probably have a ton of new grumpier-than-ever material for Tuesday!

walk

2004-05-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

Belinda and I have been walking to work as of late. At 2-1/2 miles, it's great exercise, takes us about 1 hour (with a stop at Starbucks) and takes the same time or less than our city's "efficient" subway.

As with everything in my life, there is a catch.

The catch isn't the fact that our walk takes us through one of out city's worst neighborhoods (think strip clubs, crack deals, homelessness, and condoms on the sidewalk), it's that Belinda doesn't have some sort of bag to carry her stuff.

I have a rather cavernous messenger bag. The contents of which are one small digital camera and one book Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling. I have plenty of room left over to carry her stuff. I don't mind, I volunteered to be her sherpa, besides it's my job as her man!

So Belinda gives me a nice pair of shoes, a nice top to wear at work, and the PURSE. The PURSE just fits in my messenger bag, with only a little room to spare, if that gives you any indication as to its size. In the last few weeks, I have taken to calling it the black hole, if that gives you any indication as to its heft. To give you some idea as to how dark and deep the black hole goes, Belinda once couldn't locate her keys for a full week. Eventually at the end of the week they mysteriously turned up in the darkest reaches at the bottom of the PURSE.

As we set out each morning, my bag weighs in at a good 25 to 30 pounds. On top of that, we try to keep up a good pace. This is exercise afterall.

Now, please remember, this isn't the whining blog, so I'm not complaining here about how much the bag weighs, or how far I have to carry it, or that I get a little sweaty carrying it. No, this is the grumpy blog. No whining!

What made me grumpy today was that I asked Belinda to carry it for a little bit about half-way through our walk. I didn't say so, but I was getting a bit tired, my back was aching, and I wanted to unload it for about 10 minutes. As soon as I asked her, she gave me a look and said, "But it's heavy!" Riiiiiight. So she takes the bag, and boy did it feel good to get the weight off my back. No sooner did she put the strap over her shoulder that the complaining started. "The heel of the shoes are poking me in the back!" "The bag is so uncofortable!" "It's poking me in the butt!"

This is just in the first two minutes...

human condition?

2004-05-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

I got this email from Peter at Mildew Hall:

Heyup Mr. Grumpy!

I've noticed that there seems to be a disturbing trend in grumpy blogs - is this part of a new determination that people will no longer be afraid to speak their mind ? If so, I'm all for it!

Peter

First of all, I have to say, "Whoa". This is because someone besides Belinda and me are reading this. Who knew?

Secondly, I had no idea that there was a trend in grumpy blogging. So I decided to do some research. I did this google search and got a grumpy blog in Polish. Maybe grumpy means teenager in Polish, who knows. Blogwise returns these three blogs. A similar search on Blogarama yields exactly one hit, this very blog. Technorati gives me 132 posts in the last 7 days! Feedster returns 4979 posts!!! Whoa! Maybe there aren't many blogs dedicated to grumpiness and grumps, but everyone sure is talking about it! This is certainly not an exhaustive search, and I'm sure there are even more blogs out there discussing general grumpiness, crankiness, and grouchiness.

What I do know is this. People are pissed off. I'm certainly not the only one. Do we have a general level of unhappiness? Or is this just part of the human condition? Are we no longer shackled by Victorian-esque good manners and keeping our feelings to ourselves as Peter suggests? What really is going on here?

Personally, I write this blog to blow off steam. It's a great outlet and a great way for me to be tolerable to my loved ones. Since I've been writing it, I notice that people say things like, "Jeez, what crawled up his ass today??" a lot less. To avoid such things, I write and I vent. I imagine a lot of bloggers do so for similar reasons. Sort of a "dear diary" approach to dealing with being fucking pissed off.

But what about Peter's email, and the disturbing trend in grumpy blogging? Peter's been in the blogiverse a lot longer than I have, so if he says there is a trend, I'm apt to believe him. Are we all going through our lives pissed off more than not? Whats causing this? Chemtrails? George Bush? Terrorists? RFID? Anyone? Anyone?

doppelganger

2004-05-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

So I googled myself today to find out what's going on with my doppelgangers.

There a few other men in the world with the same name as me. No, my real name is not Grumpy. I have a pretty unique name, so when I google myself I get 3 pages of google hits, about 25 hits altogether. It seems that there are about four of us in the USA. From time to time we all do different stuff, win some award, start a new web page, or whatever. I like to keep tabs on all of us and see how we're all doing.

One is me. Another is a dentist in Virginia. The third is a real estate agent in Racine. And the last guy is a high school band teacher in New Jersey.

This is where it gets weird. It seems that recently, the band teacher has been arrested as part of a global child porn ring. So there is some guy out there, no, not just fucking out there, in fucking New Jersey, that has the same name as me, who has been arrested in connection with a global child pornography ring. Not only that, but he is only 2 years younger than me. The closeness doesn't end there. He lives in New Jersey which is pretty close to the state I am originally from. In fact I have relatives in New Jersey (not the same last name though). Which also means his social security number is probably close to mine numerically. Also, having the same last name and being from the same region of the US as me, he most likely fits my description, average height, brown hair, brown eyes, that non-WASP look. Yikes!

I realize that he is innocent until proven guilty and all that. But seriously, in this society if someone even utters your name and child porn in the same sentence, your life is pretty much toast.

What I can't figure out is, what is the universe trying to tell me here? Should I expect to walk into my local bank one day and have them tell me that my assets have been frozen pending my acquittal? What happens when one of my coworkers is bored one day and decides it will be fun to google me? I bet they'll never look at me quite the same way again.

Well in any case, I have my fingers crossed for my troubled doppelganger and I hope our name gets cleared soon.

supposebly

2004-05-25T16:35:00.000-07:00

My sister uses the word supposebly.

What the hell am I supposed to do? I mean she's my sister. She's not a dummy. Yet, she uses it all the fucking time.

Is there some gentle way I can say, "Sis, I love you dearly, but the word is supposedly. IT'S A FUCKING D, NOT A FUCKING B! IT'S FUCKING SUPPOSEDLY! NOT FUCKING SUPPOSEBLY! WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID?!?!"

Sheesh.

Nope, there's no nice way to say it...

prisoner

2004-05-24T15:33:00.000-07:00

I really hate it when coworkers hold me prisoner.

You know, it's when they stand next to your desk and tell you all about their lame-ass weekend activities. You really couldn't care less how their weekend was, but there they are telling you all about it. You're sitting, they're standing, they're droning on, you're pretending to listen, faking a pleasant look on your face. What you're really thinking is, "How the fuck do I make them stop?" You can't just get up and walk away. You cant turn back to your computer suddenly and pretend to be composing an important email. The only thing that can save you is the boss, a fire alarm, or perhaps a sudden urge to pee. Of course, if the boss comes it spells doom because he's probably going to make you do some actual work. That sudden urge to pee is a bit girly and a little too much on the TMI front. So your only recourse, really, is the fire alarm.

I am praying for a 5 alarm fire. It's going to ring, any second now...

weekend

2004-05-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Belinda and I are going away for the weekend.

I can't quite remember, but I think it may be the first time we're having a little weekend getaway since we've been together, which is almost 3 years now. There's always been some reason or other to not go away. Money. School. Work. Time. Moving. Family. Dog. Migraines. So this weekend is it, no more excuses, just her and I in a little bed and breakfast on the coast.

Hopefully, I will be able to keep my grumpiness at bay this weekend and not ruin things. I just want to have a nice time and do some "relationship strengthening". We need this for two reasons. First, because it's been so long since we've done anything romantic. Second, is because the weekend after this is going to be the equivalent of a WWE smackdown.

That weekend, we are going away too, to the mountains. But unlike this weekend, we're not going to be alone. We're going with Belinda's mother, the mother's boyfriend, her sister, her brother-in-law, her nephew, and our dog.

I love Belinda's family dearly. Sure, they're a bit dysfunctional, but they are so nice and just generally warm and accepting of everyone. But over the years, for many complex reasons (and some other blog post), Belinda has grown to become, in a way, the black sheep of her family. They fight. A lot. Not the men, all us men are outsiders. Belinda's family is a family of women who are hypersensitive, emotional train wrecks.

I can hardly wait...

belinda

2004-05-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

As you can probably surmise. I use aliases when talking about the people in my life.

Since Belinda is so special to me, and a supporter of my blog and my blogging (and probably its only reader), I gave her the opportunity to choose her own alias. She politely declined, saying something like, "Oh, it's your blog, you decide." Or something like that.

So I did, I chose Belinda. It's not my favorite name in the world, but it's worlds apart from Belinda's real name. Also, I don't personally know or have I ever met a single person with that name. The only celebrity I could think of with that name was, of course, Belinda Carlisle. I could've done a lot worse there.

Today I get this email:

"BELINDA? Ugh. What a yucky name!!!!!"

I gave you the opportunity to choose your own name... you declined, I chose for you. Belinda means beautiful (scientific wild ass guess, here), you should be happy...

And this:

"Belinda means fat. It just sounds fat!"

No, Bertha sounds fat... You can change it any time you want.

And finally this:

"Belinda is fine. Just funny."

Now we all know what that means, change it now if you ever want to have sex with me again, ever. I am not going to succumb to her mafia-esque pressures. What I need is some information to battle her with. I need to know the true meaning, hopefully it will be good, and I can say, "Look Belinda means ... isn't that sweet!?!?"

So I google "meaning of names" and got this from Behind the Name:

BELINDA f
Usage: English
Pronounced: be-LIN-da
The meaning of this name is not known for certain. The first element could be related Italian bella "beautiful". The second element could be related to Germanic lind "serpent, dragon" or linde "soft, tender". This name first arose in the 17th century, and was subsequently used by Alexander Pope in his poem 'The Rape of the Lock'.

So it either means beautiful dragon, or soft beauty.

It's even better than I thought!

ridin' high

2004-05-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

I continue to astound myself.

I am still in a good mood. Work has been going very well. I have actually gotten to work on some new stuff for the last two days, which has been a great break from the monotony that I have been subjected to for the last three months. Things with Belinda have been going nicely too.

I was a bit grouchy this morning, but that's because I'm not a morning person, and I was running late for work. But that all seems like eons ago at this point.

Don't worry, I'm sure the grump will be back with a vengeance and soon...

holy sh*t!

2004-05-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

I'm in a good mood today! I can't fucking believe it!

Of course, that sucks, because now I have nothing to write about.

pbase

2004-05-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

I love pbase.com. It certainly doesn't make me grumpy. What does make me grumpy is the number of people who either don't know it exists, or who use it without paying their ludicrously low fees.

Pbase is by far the best online photo site ever. It is fast. There is no advertising, no banners, not even that "Ads by Google" thing on the side. They don't try to sell you prints, greeting cards, frames, calendars or any of that soon-to-be-landfill shit the other sites try to hawk on you.

What you do get, for a measly $23/year, is a whopping 200MB of storage space for your pictures. They let you direct link to your photos. They let you upload and download the full size, unadulterated, straight-from-your-digital-camera version of your photos, if you want. You can set up as many galleries as you like. And you can alter the look and feel of the galleries any way you want if you know a little about CSS (they have pre-made CSSs if you're HTML illiterate like me).

And get this, anyone you want can see your galleries. Your Aunt Sophie in Kalamazoo, your great-grandmother in Peoria, whomever. All you have to do is send them the link to your gallery in pbase, and they can see the dog, cat, grandkids, artful nudes, whatever. The link is even easy to remember it looks like this: http://www.pbase.com/yournamehere. Amazing.

Go on, throw money at these guys now.

job

2004-05-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

Like most employed people in this country, I have a job that I can't stand.

The thing is, I'm supposed to love it.

In many respects it's a dream job. It can be challenging. I can pretty much come and go as I please. I work in a small office of 8-10 people, and that means I am certainly not a cog in the huge corporate machine, a number, a worker bee. I do not work in cubicle hell, in fact, there are no cubicles at all, which rocks. I am paid fairly (then again, we're all dissatisfied with our salaries, no matter how high they climb, aren't we?). All this, yet, I can't stand my job.

Maybe it's because there's too few people here and I haven't really connected with any of them as friends. Maybe it's because it's so fucking dark in here (the lights are always off in here so a small minority of people can better see their computer monitors). Maybe it's because my boss is perfect and I can never be as smart, articulate, and properly educated as he is. Maybe it's because it's so fucking quiet in here that I can hear a mouse scurrying across the indoor/outdoor carpet.

Whatever the reason, here I am, stuck. For now...

baby talk

2004-05-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

I love Belinda through and through. She loves me even more than that, which is totally incomprehensible to me, mostly because I'm a man.

Occasionally though, she does a few things that really put me over the edge.

Belinda loves to baby talk to me. Baby talk is a perfectly normal and lovely way to express your emotions and feelings of intimacy to the person you love. I actually like it. It's cute, it allows us to banter in a cutesy way, and it usually is a good precursor to snuggling. Who doesn't like snuggling?

The thing that gets me is when Belinda bursts out with the baby speak. At the seemingly most unromantic moments in life. On line at Starbucks. On the subway at crush time. Standing next to a homeless dude while waiting to cross the street. Walking through the worst neighborhood in the city, with prostitution and crack deals and homelessness going on all around us as we try to get through it all as quickly as possible.

I totally don't get it.

I love the baby talk when we're home. When we're getting close on the couch, spooning in bed. Even when we're cooking and doing the domestic togetherness thing. That's actually romantic. But at Starbucks? What the hell is romantic about Starbucks? I can assure you there will be no spooning happening while the milk for our lattes and macchiatos gets steamed.

I'm a very private person. I do not like other people, especially total strangers, to know about my personal life at all. I like to be cutesy and romantic as the next guy, I just like it at home. So when Belinda starts with the baby talk, at the supermarket, next to the plastic wrap, I tend to get a little grouchy. I see it as letting total strangers in on our little secret love life.

Belinda says it's because she feels that way about me all the time. In which case, I refer to you back to the first paragraph...

headache

2004-05-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

A long time source of my grumpiness is my brain. It hurts. Quite often. Like right now. Been that way all day today. Since lunch. Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that burrito. Who knows.

Something that makes both me and Belinda grumpy are people who think they have migraines. Since the 90s, it seems that it's "cool" to have migraines, and people out there in the world seem to think that every time their head hurts, they must have a migraine. According to WebMD migraine headaches are

"...painful, sometimes debilitating headaches often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and sensitivity to light, noise, and smell."

They also say this,

"Migraines run in families, and a genetic link has been identified."

Now I'm not suggesting that you people that I speak of are faking it. I truly believe that you have a headache. I'm sure it really hurts, too. I will grant you that you suffer from frequent headaches, even. But you don't have a migraine... Come on, get fucking real.

I do not have a migraine. I have a headache. My mother used to say, "Oh Grumpy, you are a headache."

grumpy

2004-05-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

It's like a dark cloud has been hovering over my head today. I am in an insanely foul mood. Lots of reasons for it today. None of which I will get into...

I'm trying very hard not to be outwardly mean to anyone who doesn't really deserve my wrath. I mostly try to stay to myself, and avoid human contact. It's much easier that way, and no one gets hurt.

whew

2004-05-04T09:38:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update on Belinda's laptop. It turns out that the laptop is OK afterall. She drove it down to the other office (where the IT guys actually works) and he fixed it in 30 seconds. It turns out all you have to do is take the battery out for a minute, then put it back in, and it fires up. Now that's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard of. Nice job HP!

fuckup

2004-05-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

well, not a true moment of grumpiness, but I certainly do feel bad.

Over the weekend, Belinda asked me to take a look at her work laptop. She has apparently been having lots of problems with it. It turns out she had a virus or fifty, and being a bit of a tech neophyte, she asked me to help. Apparently the IT dude at her job is in another office, and totally overworked.

So on Sunday, I ran a virus scan and cleaned that up. While I was at it I also ran Ad-aware, defragmented the hard drive, and did a general cleanup. I did the virus scan last, and as I was running it, her laptop ran out of juice and went into hibernation mode. No problem, except that she left her power supply at work. So we took a quick jaunt to work (and Starbucks, my hard earned IT salary) and picked up the power supply. When we got back home, I plugged it in, and fired that puppy up. Except it didn't fire up. Nothing. Hmmm... I let it sit a while to juice up the battery and tried it again. Nothing. WHAT THE FUCK? NOTHING. I tried the power switch again. Nothing. Again. Nothing... HOLY FUCKING SHIT I BROKE HER WORK LAPTOP!

I, of course, maintain my usual stoic composure...

Belinda freaks out. She has lots of work to do over the weekend, as well as, something insanely important on Monday morning.

There is nothing I can do. I've exhausted my limited skills as a fake IT guy. It doesn't turn on, no green LEDs, nothing. No response. I don't know what to do. Belinda continues to freak out.

I don't blame her. I wish I could help...

crime

2004-04-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Some piece of shit stole Sasha's purse yesterday.

Sasha is our office manager here at work. She is a very nice, sweet, wouldn't hurt anyone kind of person. It seems that while she was talking to me over in the lab yesterday. We were just chatting it up about the weekend, how much Best Buy sucks, etc.

While we were chatting, this fucker comes into the office, walks around to the back of her desk, takes her purse, and saunters out of the office. Naturally, no on notices this... Even Sasha didn't notice that her purse was missing until she gets a strange phone call...

Thank god we have caller ID here at work, and that she noticed that her caller ID said "payphone", which is totally strange since the last time I remember seeing a payphone was 1986. Anyway, the caller from "payphone" said that he was calling from her bank, and that someone had stolen her credit card and that he had it. All he needed was her PIN to verify that it was indeed Sasha. Yeah, right. What was this piece-of-shit thinking? Oh yeah, it was warm yesterday, quite warm. So I guess all the bank employees were outdoors, enjoying the weather making all their phone calls from nearby payphones. Anyway, this dude is quite ballsy to be calling the person he just stole this purse from and try to get more information from her.

The good news is that Sasha swiftly cancelled all of her credit cards, and that her apartment keys and cell phone, etc., were not in her purse. Another funny thing is that her brand new 20GB ipod was sitting right on top of her desk, untouched.

The only thing that piece-of-shit got to buy with her credit card was a subway ticket. It seems like a very inefficient escape vehicle, but it is very environmentally conscious, I suppose...

trip

2004-04-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

UGH!!!

I have a business trip coming up on Wednesday. I hate business trips. This is the first business trip I've taken in like 2 years. I avoid them like the plague. I am sooooo dreading this trip. I don't mind the flight. I don;t mind the hotel, I don't even mind crappy airport coffee. What I hate is the social aspects of the business trips. Oh, and I hate New Jersey, too.

On business trips, you have to pretend that you're really interested in how you clients crappy sports team is doing. You have to pretend that you actually know how much better their prospects for a championship is this year, and how great that is. Yeah, this is definitely their year, I know it!! Can we maybe talk about business sometime today?? After the, you talk about the weather. This is most inane, since my client is in New Jersey and I am in California. I mean, is it really all that remarkable that the weather is so nice in California? It just is, deal with it, or fucking move. After the weather chat you talk about how wonderful the lunch was (oh, I LOVE miracle whip sandwiches!). And then, you graciously let them take you to dinner for even MORE inane California weather talk. I can't fucking wait!!!

That's the client side, then there is the coworker side.

I'm going to be trapped on a 5-1/2 hour flight with them, on the way there. It's 6-1/2 hours on the way back. True, you work with them for 8 hours, and that's like a 2-1/2 hour reprieve. But I don't normally sit 5 inches from their face, and I certainly don't normally have to fight with them over who really owns the armrest. (I do, I'm fatter, deal with it.)

And so the clock is unrelentingly counting down the days, minutes and seconds until I have to cram myself on the flying bus (coach for us consultants!!) and pretend, for two days, that I'm excited about their stupid and doomed project. And I can't wait to pretend like I am really grateful for their constructive criticism of the work I've done for the last 12 weeks.

friendster

2004-04-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

I invited a long-time buddy of mine to friendster a long time ago. It must have been 3 months ago by now. My invite was ignored. Which is fine, not everyone is into friendster. I'm not really into it, but it seemed like a good way to waste an evening or two. And it's not really important to me one way or another...

So today I get an email with doooood as the subject.

My friend, who I invited so many months ago, wants me to invite him again because "it looks pretty good". Grrrr. "It looks pretty good" really means "it looks like there is a chance that there is at least one hot chick on friendster, and i want to nail her, so hook me up."

old people make me grumpy

2004-04-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

It's not that I hate old people. In fact, I'm not exactly a virile young thing myself anymore. I'm positive that to many young teenie-boppers out there, I'm way old... In fact, I think old folks are great and that we should spend more time listening to them because, on the whole, they have a lot of valuable life experience and a lot of wisdom to share.

But then, you run across that one in the bunch, the one annoying old person who just wants to make you fucking scream. I'm guessing that they were annoying when they were young. I'd even bet money, that if you were annoying when you were a young person, then you're most certainly going to be an annoying old person, perhaps even more so...

I just don't get it. I mean, I understand that as we get old, that our brains slow down, our senses don't seem to work quite the same way they used to. It's not these people who piss me off. It's the annoying one's that haven't figured that out yet. I mean, if you're getting on in years, don't you think you should go thru life under the assumption that maybe you're senses are giving you misleading, if not false information? How old do you need to get before you fucking figure this out? OLD PEOPLE LISTEN UP HERE, go into situations with the assumption that maybe, just maybe you're wrong. Your senses are lying to you, and, I dunno, ask a question instead of assuming you're right. Most likely the worst thing that will happen is that a nice, sweet young person will set you on the right path, whatever that path is, and you won't seem like such a fucking idiot.

about the grump

2004-04-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

I am a grump. Grumpy, grouchy, cranky, call it whatever you want. I'm it. When people don't know me, they are afraid of me. I am unapproachable. When people, after years of trying, finally get to know me, they tell me I'm a grump, and grouch, but a nice grump or grouch. Whatever. That just makes me even fucking grumpier.

I am not a morning person.
I am not an afternoon person.
I am not a night person.

Maybe I don't like people, maybe I don't like my job, maybe I was born at the wrong time of day, maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I don't know how I got like this, or why I'm like this. My mom tells me that I was pretty much born this way. How is that even possible?

I don't necessarily look the part of the grump. Children don't flee into their mother's arms when they see me walking down the street. I look pretty normal, no horns, I don't wear black from head to toe. If you passed me by in the street, you wouldn't necessarily know I was a grump. Oh, but I am...

Enough about me, I'm getting grouchy just thinking about it.

first post

2004-04-19T18:07:00.000-07:00

I am SO fucking grumpy. Too grumpy to even post something exciting for my first post. I will post again later when my grumpiness is under control.