Aperture Science Chronological Life Data Tracking System

(Insert obligatory excuses about a two-month gap in posts here.)

2010 is gonna be a good year, I think. Lots of change on the horizon for yours truly.

In five days (holycraponlyfivedays!) I will be getting married. It’s definitely a bit of an untraditional ceremony – there isn’t one! It’s looking like we will be having a small dinner with Jess’ mom and my parents on the night of the wedding (the 9th), and then a larger family deal somewhere later this month. The real full-blown wedding ceremony will hopefully take place sometime within the next year. I can’t imagine how much fun that’s going to be to plan based on just this one – we don’t have rings, our honeymoon is going to be just staying here, Jess is sick – still, I’m happy that we’re finally able to get married.

Work… arrgh. Work has been all kinds of stress lately, but hopefully that will be changing in the near future. A lot of the problem was that our CIO (Boss’ Boss’ Boss) has been only marginally present in the corporate environment because of a really nasty battle with lung cancer; unfortunately he passed away late in December. Currently his position is empty, with one of the directors filling in as interim CIO. It looks like this particular director might get the position, which is rumored to bring a rather wide-sweeping management shakeup in the IT department. This could be both good or bad (and I’m sure I will have more to say on the issue later).

We’re also still looking at the possibility of Jess going into the Air Force as an officer sometime next year. Maybe. Possibly. To be honest she doesn’ seem very enthusiastic about the idea, largely because of pressure from her parents. I’m hoping that once she’s out from under her mom’s umbrella that she’ll decide to do it on her own, or stop wasting time and figure out what she does want to do as a career. If she does go in the service, though, that will most likely mean me stepping down from my job and following her to whatever posting she is assigned (pending of course the whims of the military).

Gotta admit, I’m nervous about all three of these things. Any one of them is a pretty major event, and they’re all likely happening within the first half of 2010. I definitely have the feel-good-vibes about the wedding, but the other two are just wild cards. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.

Obligatory resolutions that may or may not be realistic and/or followed: less WoW/practice guitar/keep working out/manage finances better/be good husband.

The other day Reggie’s gtalk status was “Gentlemen, how do we kill the MOON?”. The following conversation ensued.

me: You don’t kill the moon – you only hope to wound it so you can get away.
Reggie: I don’t even have to be faster than the moon, I just have to be faster then the person next to me.
me: Exactly!
Reggie: The moon is vengeful.
me: The moon is ruthless.
Reggie: The moon holds a grudge.
me: The moon was given swirlies as a kid.
Reggie: The moon once shot a man in Memphis just to watch him die.
me: The moon shot the sherriff – but it did not shoot the deputy.
Reggie: The moon went on a tri state killing spree, and still hasn’t been caught by police.
me: The “LASER” belongs to the moon, not Dr. Evil.
Reggie: The moon hates puppies.
me: The moon kills a kitten every time someone masturbates.
Reggie: The moon also kills the masturbator. Because, if nothing else, the moon is fair.
me: Truly the moon is wise and just.
Reggie: The moon when to Harvard Law school, and graduated, not just with honors, but with a parade.
me: The moon then went on to build a time machine. From a DeLorean.
Reggie: Because while the moon is a scientific genius, it is not very original.
me: The moon is a very left brained individual, it’s true.
Reggie: The Moon is so smart, it went on Jeopardy and made Alex Trebeck cry.
me: The moon really is not made from cheese. The moon HATES cheese.
Reggie: The moon is lactose intolerant.
me: However the moon loves ice cream. Poor moon.
Reggie: The moon has a hard life. It was born in the wagon of a traveling show, it’s mother used to dance for the money they’d throw…
me: The moon hates that whole tides thing. It’s very sensitive about its weight. Hyperactive glands.
Reggie: The moon wishes people would stop mentioning that whole “low gravity” thing too.
me: Space is a cold, harsh mistress – the moon needs a blanket.
Reggie: The moon is lonely and looking for someone to love.

Jess and I went to the zoo this weekend courtesy of some free passes my mom had. They’ve put in this really nifty Asian garden – tons of bamboo, a huge koi pond, the works. I’m going to have to go up there some time with my camera and go nuts.

After we came back from the zoo I brought Jess over to my apartment, and since we live in Florida I immediately went for the fridge for something cold to drink first. One the way there I caught something out of the corner of my eye that caused me to do a quick double take before bursting out in laughter. Jess gave me that WTF look, so I had her come in to the kitchen to see…

I made sure to watch her expression as she came in, and the look on her face told me that she was thinking the exact same thing I was.

That’s right – my salt shaker is having its way with my can opener.

Every once in a while I will get extremely lucky with what I say and when I say it, and it’ll wind up striking a chord with someone – that perfect phrase that can help lift someone’s spirits, or help them with that elusive self-realization. It’s pretty nifty when it happens (okay, I lie, it feels great) but it’s rarely when I expect it to happen, and a lot of times it’s never when I think I need it to happen.

( Screw it, I’m tired of retyping everything after this line. Blog or bust!)

I hate talking to my mom sometimes. She’s very good at hiding it, but sometimes there’s just this utter despair in her voice, and I can tell she’s close to tears. I know she’s not happy with her life and where things are right now, and I know there’s absolutely nothing I can do or say to make it better. I hate feeling helpless.

I won’t lie – money is part of it. My parents have never been wealthy. There’s always been food on the table, but it’s very much a paycheck to paycheck situation. They’ve always had “his” and “her” bills, and kept the separate bank accounts in addition to a joint account. This actually caused a huge problem a few years ago because my stepdad kept to himself how far behind he was on several of the bills – they wound up having to declare bankruptcy (which really sucked for my mom because not only had she paid off almost all of her credit card debt, she actually completely lost a several hundred dollar positive balance on one of her cards). They cleaned up their finances after that, both working their respective retail jobs (true story, I don’t make that much but I pull in more than the two of them did put together >.<) and handling their own bills again.

Until about a year ago when my stepdad hurt his knee and had to stop working. He was on disability for a while until they got surgery to fix it… but he hasn’t gone back to work, just stays at home and watches movies and plays internet poker all the time (God, I wish I’d never set them up with a computer. If I had known this would happen I definitely wouldn’t have.)

So my mom works her retail job. She does the bulk of the housework. She does a lot of the yardwork. And… that’s it. She just exists from day to day, trying to make ends meet while my stepdad blows through his retirement money to pay the mortgage and “his” bills.

I can tell she isn’t happy, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Woke up this morning feeling just ever so slightly not awesome, and as the day progressed it just got worse and worse, ending up with me sitting at my desk with the chills.

So I’m home, taking it easy and quietly hoping that this stops just shy of a full blown fever. I don’t like being sick. >.<

I was entirely unproductive today, both at work and at home. Kitchen is a mess. No creative stuff done.

I’m really bad about email.

I mean, I’ll read it as it comes in (usually), but just let spam and what not build up until one day I finally throw up my arms and shout “Enough!!” and finally decide to do something about it.

Well, tonight was that night.

1,663 spam. 800 trashed. And a couple hundred ligitimate emails that remain in my inbox. Of course this isn’t including the 12,000 or so spam that were properly filtered off to their little spam corner.

Stupid email.

I remember back when I first got my email account. Nobody really sent anything to it, friend or spammers, and any email I got was special. Like getting postal mail from a friend when you weren’t expecting it – except now postal mail is just as bad with junk mail. Sometimes I just wish I could just go incommunicado – just, y’know, stop getting mail of either format. Some days it really feels like more hassle than it’s worth.

—

I spent a good chunk of today’s creative time working on a secret project while cursing Comcast under my breath for not having working internet.

No, seriously, it’s a secret. I’m not gonna tell you.

I’ve also worked a little more on getting inside Grizz’s head to get ready for an upcoming RP story as well as try to learn a little more about my characters. That’s probably going to be the bulk of my free time this week, hopefully, if I can keep from getting distracted by other stuff.

And if I can avoid afternoon naps. >.>

I’ve never made it a secret that I’m not happy with my workplace. There’s a huge amount of stress, everything is just rushed, and it’s just really not a fun place to be any more, at least not in my department.

One of the things that I think helps contribute to this is a sense of separation from my coworkers. I always find myself thinking in terms of “them” and “me”, instead of “us”. I don’t feel like a member of any team, and they’re certanly not people I consider friends. Just… guys who work in the same building I do, and for the same boss. I don’t really hear rumors or news or anything like that, so I always find out things far behind the curve. An awesome example of this is when I found out one of the guys’ wife was pregnant just a few weeks before she gave birth. Everyone else knew but me. They’re also an entirely different generation than I am – I’m not the baby of the group but almost all of my coworkers are older than me with families of their own, and completely different interests from me.

It’s also extremely frustrating trying to get their assistance with things that I can’t do on my own, since they all have their own projects and tasks they have to work on. It very much conveys a feeling of “How cute, he’s trying to be an engineer”.

Now I feel like I should clarify that any feelings of separation that may exist are probably exacerbated by the fact that I am physically separated from my coworkers by a good distance. They all sit in an open cubicle area just near the bosses office, while my desk is down the hallway, far enough away that I usually don’t get any office chatter or anything. I don’t really consider this a bad thing though – I really like that I can be alone for most of the day, and also the fact that I have a door I can close to isolate myself if needed. Being able to play music helps too.

It’s kind of weird to stop and think about. I don’t like that I’m separated, and yet I value that separation. <scratches head>

Edit 8/5: Awesome. We’re having a department wide meeting, right? Guess whose name didn’t get included.

—

So today’s creative activity wasn’t anything major – just plucking at the guitar a bit and brainstorming some RP ideas before a nice long nap snuck up on me. However, the RP ideas are starting to take root and I’m hoping to get some of them actually on paper (disk?) later this week, starting tomorrow!

Yesterday Jess and I finally took advantage of the tickets from my missed shuttle launch ( *grumble* ) and decided to head down to Kennedy Space Center for the day. It was about 9 AM or so when we hit the interstate, and according to a quick glance at Google maps on the way out the door it would have been about a 2 hour drive. No sweat, right?

Well, unknown to me Google decided that the best place for me to get off the interstate was an exit that was about 5 miles before the one I should have taken, leading me through a fairly abandoned town and to what could have only been the restricted back gate of NASA. It was close to where we needed to be since you could see the launch pads and everything, but at the same time nowhere near where we needed to be. So we spent a good bit of time not exactly lost, just not sure how to get there from where we were.

Now my car has this weird quirk where sometimes the a/c box will actually get too cold and completely ice over, not allowing any air to blow through the vents and into the car. I noticed this starting to happen on the interstate but wasn’t really worried since I thought we’d be leaving the car soon.

Also, I’d planned on getting gas at Kennedy Space Center, so I really didn’t have a ton to spare.

The end result of all this was Jess and I driving around the back roads of Florida with no a/c and the needle hovering over empty. Fun fun.

Fortunately we were able to make it back to the interstate (and nearby gas stations) without adding more than 45 minutes or so to the trip – and once Jess was able to get a signal on the cell phone, we hit the KSC website for the correct directions.

Once we actually got to KSC it was a just a fairly normal theme park visit. Jess was the shutterbug for most of the trip, and we both got to see some areas of the space center that we hadn’t seen before – the Saturn V exhibit for her, the International Space Station center for myself, and a few other things that were new to both of us!

So after all was said and done it was a pretty awesome trip. I would have preferred a slightly different beginning, but sometimes you just have to take the bad with the good, right?

—

So, one of my projects (for lack of a better word) this month is to do some form of creative exercise each day, be it writing, drawing, music, whatever. Just something. I will be tacking that on to the end of my posts here,, just as a way to hold myself accountable for doing it as much as anything else. We’ll see if it’s still happening at the end of the month!

So this morning I went to work.

Just an average day, really. Got in the office about 7 or so, plopped my laptop on the desk and wandered off to get some coffee. Coffee acquired, come back to the desk and log on to the computer. Don glasses, settle in chair, brush at an itch on my shoulder – time to work!

As I started working on my normal daily stuff I felt another little itch on my shoulder. Not even an itch, really, but more of a tickle. I felt it again a few minutes later on my chest underneath my shirt, and when I absently brushed at the spot it felt like nothing more than a wad of lint under my shirt.

I kinda loosely grabbed it through the shirt and pushed the fabric up so the lint would fall out of the neck. My plan worked perfectly except for one small detail… a spider the size of my fingertip plopped out of my shirt and onto my desk. Now I have nothing against spiders, and when I find them I usually escort them outside.

However. They do not belong in my clothes. Especially when said clothes are on me.

Luckily I didn’t really have to worry about his freedom anyway – when I’d grabbed him through the shirt it knocked more than a few of his legs off, and there wasn’t a whole lot of motion. I brushed him off my desk into the trash and tried not to imagine that every single itch and tickle I felt for the rest of the day was another spider. >.>

Anyway. After a long period of not blogging, I have been convinced to pick it back up. It’s not that anything hasn’t been happening… I just haven’t written about it. We’ll have to see what I can do to change that. With any luck I’ll introduce you guys to my cat in the next day or two – with photos!

Also I am really starting to dislike this blog theme. I gotta get that fixed.

This morning I was getting ready for work, listening to the 80s station on the radio as a usually do. Business as usual, right?

Then I get in the car, still on the same radio station and head to work. And…. System of a Down? I was a little boggled, to be sure, especially when Foo Fighters followed it.

They changed the genre on me! Now where will I go for my 80s songs?

*sobs*