A Conundrum, I Tell Ya

It's been one of those days...

I'd been assigned by my manager Skippy Whitebread to work on a project for Windows Media Center 2005. "Work on that, and only that. Everything else can wait." Uh, okay Skippy - sure, whatever you want. It's your ballpark; I'm just your all-star slugger. So I set aside everything else, as the man asked.

Well. That's come back to bite me in the ass big time. Of course, everything that I normally do is backing up, and people are screaming about it. "Where's my documentation?" "When's it going to be done?" "Why don't I have this yet?" Gee, gang - talk to Skippy - it's his bright idea that I do this reeeeeeeally low priority project instead.

Ah, but here's the problem. Old Skippy is on vacation, so you can't talk to him. Oops.

So things are backing up, and I'm wasting my time and talents on low priority projects. Meanwhile, people are grumbling that their stuff isn't getting finished, because for some reason I've yet to sprout a dozen arms to do everything at once.

It reminds me of being in junior high -- when I was a short little kid in a school filled with giants. And naturally they made us play...basketball. So if somehow little ol' Tommy did end up with the basketball, the conversation would go something like this:

Big Goon 1: "Gimme the ball or I'll kick or ass."
Big Goon 2: "No, gimme the ball, or I'll kick your ass."

Now, what are your going to do? Either way, you're screwed. So usually I'd just throw the ball straight up in the air and then run like hell. Let them fight it out, and hopefully there won't be any ass kicking involved.

But back to today, where it's not basketballs but documentation files up in the air.

I took a deep breath and made an executive decsion. Skippy isn't here, and someone had to make a call. I put his low priority stuff aside and jumped on some of the more pressing matters.
Will he be pissed when he gets back? That's a risk I'll have to take. At least I have a reason behind my madness - something I've yet to see with the assigned project.

We're such a tiny little staff nowadays - layoffs took us from 24 people to 6, but with the same work load. I do everything I possibly can to help this company, but I'm not friggin' Superman. I'm good, but I'm not a miracle worker.

So it's now 5 o'clock, and I'm done for today. Everything will be waiting for me on Monday when I get back. And I have until Tuesday to worry about Skippy's reaction. Who knows - maybe I'll be caught up by then. Or not.

Ho, Ho, Wha???

Today is Monday, September 26, 2005. Keep that in mind, because it is significant for the story I’m about to tell you.

This morning I get up and go to the gym, where normally I’m greeted by a bunch of old guys running around in their birthday suits talking about high school football. (“Attack of the Naked Old Guys (NOGs).”) But this morning I saw something even more shocking:

Christmas decorations.

That’s right; the Siouxland Y’s front lobby is completely decorated for Christmas – lights, garland, holly, a little plastic Christmas tree, stockings hanging on the reception desk, and even a cute little paper Santa hanging in the wall.

Awwww, happy holidays, y'all!

Actually, what I meant to type was: WHAT THE HELL??? It’s September 26th, for God’s sake – Christmas is still 90 days away! Why on Earth would any business (outside of maybe a Hallmark store) hang up Christmas decorations when Autumn is only four days old? It’s still 80 degrees here – and we’re in Iowa!

So. As you can probably tell, I’m not a huge fan of places that “jump the gun” that far in advance. I know it’s done – I’ve worked retail long enough to see Halloween decorations by July 5 and Valentine stuff on sale December 26. But c’mon – this is a gymnasium. I’ve got to walk past their Winter Wonderland for the next 3 months until Christmas. Don’t you think we’ll all be good and sick of it before then?

I really do like Christmas – just only in short amounts. I prefer to put up a Christmas tree in early December, then take it down before New Years. I’m not one of those guys who can enjoy a tree from mid-November until President’s Day. It’s just a bit much, if you ask me.
Of course, my neighbor across the street will leave his plastic snowman on his roof until the first of April every year, and this year the guy next door left his robotic light-up deer in his yard until almost May, so maybe the holidays are becoming longer and longer with each passing year.

So on behalf of the nice (yet deranged) people at the Siouxland Y, I’d like to be the very first to wish you a joyous holiday season. May your days be merry and bright, and may you not gag on all the sugarplum-coated holiday spirit served up for the next 3 months, beginning today.

And be sure to hold onto any sales receipts; most stores only let you return items for 30 days nowadays.

All Booked Up

I am wiped out tired this morning. I worked at Rhymes with Darnes and Hoble last night – which meant I spent most of the night doing everything while the lazy ass leads sat around and did very little. I’ve had it up to here with doing all the work while those lazy shmucks spend the evening hiding in the backroom, and then when you do ask them for help, they bitch about it. So my days of being a happy bookseller with Rhymes with Parnes and Woble are probably just about over. They don’t pay me enough to take their shit, and I really don’t need the money that badly. Try to find yourself a new grunt who knows that store inside and out like I do, will ya.

The problem is that I like working there, though. It’s good to see kids (and adults, too) enjoying reading; something a lot of people won’t do. I’ve always said the best gift you can give a kid is a book. Imagination is a good thing, and it needs to be fed in order to grow. Endless hours of “Full House” and “SpongeBob” reruns aren’t going to do that nearly as well as a book will. I was lucky enough to grow up in a house filled with readers, and I’ve always encouraged Miss Katie to pick up a book and read. Fortunately, I didn’t have to twist her arm on it – she’s a fantastic reader, and it’s made her a much more well rounded person than her classmates who won’t read anything harder than a Froot Loops box.

I knew this idiot on the West coast whose theory on reading was “If the book is any good, they’ll make a movie out of it, and I’ll catch it then.” What kind of crap is that? Can anyone who has actually read the Harry Potter books say that the movies are better than the books? I doubt it. I can only think of one movie that struck me more than the novel did – Jaws. Seeing the Great White on the silver screen was so much more frightening than reading about it. But Jurassic Park the Book was 100 times better than Jurassic Park the Movie. When you’re reading a great book, you’re not only reading the words but you’re building it in your mind -- the image, the background, the characters, the color of the sky, the feel of the wet grass beneath your feet. Movies work with your eyes and ears – but books work with your brain.

Christ – I should’ve been a librarian, shouldn’t I? Keep ranting like that, Tommy, and the next thing you know you’ll be telling people to shush...

So anyway, I do like being part of the bookseller world of Rhymes with Carnes and Loble. I just wish that we were a team again, like we once were. No more of this “that’s not my department” crap.

Maybe I should write a book about my adventures with them?

Nah. It wouldn’t make a very good Lifetime movie...

Working Man Blues

I am so bored today that I can barely stand it. Oh, sure – I have plenty of stuff to do. It’s just nothing that you could call “exciting”, “motivating”, or even “remotely thrilling”. My full time employer is keeping me busy writing worthless stuff; junk that we shouldn’t have to write in the first place. But hey – it’s a paycheck, and it sure beats living in a cardboard box down by the train tracks.

I thought I’d write today about the worst job I’ve ever had, but there’ve been some doozies. I mopped bathroom floors for $3.50 an hour. I loaded food onto airplanes while being screamed at by a redneck and his no-speak-English-good assistant. I wore a moose costume for a theme restaurant. I got slammed against a wall by John Cougar Melonhead’s bodyguard for walking past him in a corridor beneath the Seattle Center. (I belonged there – he didn’t. Didn’t matter, now did it?) So I’ve done some pretty interesting things in this world for 70% of my paycheck (post taxes).

What’s the best job I’ve ever had? Well, that would probably be my time with The Mouse. For the first 3.5 years of my working for Uncle Walt’s company I had a great time. It was just those last few months that began to grate on my nerves, mainly due to really stupid policy changes going on in the division I worked for. Still, I’d love to go work for The Mouse again. They didn’t pay jack, and their benefits were slim, but I’d do it again. Just to see the kids smile. It’d be worth it.

I was also kind of fond of my time working with the Lovely Mrs. G. in Seattle years ago – I was an assistant manager of a customer service phone center (Mrs. G. was also an asst manager there), and although it was stressful and occasionally bizarre, it was still a lot of fun. I liked bossing 17 year old kids around, and I was pretty good at it. I fired my first ever employee there – I can still tell you the exact date, too: December 24, 1986. Yes, your pal Tommy fired a kid on Christmas Eve. Scrooge bastard, aren’t I? But Ron left me with no choice – he and his buddy were updating customer records with bogus phony (and disgustingly lewd) names and addresses. Har, har, right? Yeah, it’s real funny until you mess around in a “live” mode instead of an “update” mode, and accidentally transmit your nasty address information across the system and into the hands of a waiting district manager, who just happened to be standing there when it spit out of the printer. So Ron lost his job on Christmas Eve, thanks to his changing a customer’s information to “Mr. Big’s Disposable Douches” on “123 Tampon Way”, “Bloodyville, WA”. Why couldn’t he have used “1122 Boogie-Boogie Avenue” like all practical jokers?

Termination #2 was about a month later, when I discovered a 16 year old girl who was sitting at her desk, answering phone calls and drinking a large cup of vodka and orange juice. She cried. She begged. She pleased. She was drunk. I felt about half an inch tall, and I puked when I got home. It was not fun.

I fired several more kids over the next 3 years – fistfights, rudeness to customers, sticking a banana in someone’s tailpipe, ala “Beverly Hills Cop”. That’s what you get when you work in a call center filled with 200 people, average age 17. I also made a lot of good friends out of that place, and landed myself a pretty wonderful Mrs. G., although it took another 10 years for us to get together. (Hey, it was worth the wait.)

And yes, I’ve been on the receiving end of the firing stick, too. I’ve been laid off more times than I wish to describe (6, I think, at last count), and I was once made the scapegoat for a company’s bad ways. The president signed up a customer who ended up ripping us off for about $85,000 in fraudulent charges, and since I was technically the “operations manager”, he said I should’ve investigated them before we gave them service. (As if he would’ve let me check their credit. Hah. He practically had a boner when he signed them up – who knew they were wanted by the FBI and Interpol for international mail fraud?) Anyway, I took the blame for it, and he walked away scott free. Of course, he’s dead now, so ha ha to him. He may have won that battle, but I’m the one still breathing. So there.

But now here I am, celebrating 7.5 years with my primary employer. I haven’t had a raise in over two years, and my salary is about $15,000 below what the general consensus says I should be paid, but I’m okay for now. I don’t like how they treat me, but I know it’s not forever. In two years I’ll be out of here, one way or another. And I’m really looking forward to that day.

But until then, at least I can be happy knowing that they won’t make me wear a moose costume. Or at least I hope.

Bummer Big Time

Well, the people from Select Comfort called the Lovely Mrs. G. this morning and said that we did not win their contest. No trip to New York, no trip to Aruba, no $9,000 in prizes. We were so close - but ended up losing. Son of a bitch.

I hate to admit it, but I'm deep down a pretty sore loser. I hate to lose anything - games, contests, anything. I'm not going to cry about it, but I will be disappointed, and I'll probably curse a little bit more. I'm a fairly competitive person by nature anyway, and losing doesn't come easily to me. But I'll try to be graceful in my hour of defeat, and not hope that the winners get third degree sunburns in Aruba. Just first degree, and maybe a nasty case of flea bites.

Okay, time to go find another contest to enter. The best revenge is winning something else.

Clothes Make (or Break) the Man

So I come to work today, and my manager Skippy Whitebread is out ahem...“sick”. Poor bastard couldn’t hack the stress for 5 days in a row, I suspect. Okay, no big deal – we’ll live just fine without him and his obsessive/compulsive ways for one day.

Ah, but there’s a big all-hands meeting scheduled for this afternoon, with some new V.P. of something or another. I’d never heard of Mr. V.P. before Wednesday, when we all received meeting planners to come sit on these miserable hard-as-hell folding chairs for two hours today to listen to some new guy drone on and on and on while our asses get progressively number and number. Since Skippy decided to play hooky today, we’ll all have to go without him.

But here’s the catch – ol’ Skippy was apparently supposed to tell us all to play Dress Up today – ‘cause Mr. V.P. doesn’t like seeing people dressed as commoners (i.e. blue jeans). It offends his California-based good fashion sensibility, I suppose. But Skippy didn’t pass this bit of information along, so we all showed up in our usual work wear: jeans.

The company technically has a “business casual” attire policy for work, but it’s only enforced at the corporate office in the O.C., and not here in Cowtown USA. It’s never been even officially rolled out in our building, and as long as you’re not wearing Daisy Dukes or ripped jeans or marijuana logo t-shirts, you’re pretty much free to wear what you want. It makes sense in my team, as I tend to spend a part of each day crawling around on these nasty-dirty tile floors hooking up computer cables. (The floors literally have not been swept or mopped once in the year that we’ve been in this corner of the building. They’ve got a good half inch of dirt and grit embedded in them.) Good clothes would be trashed within a week.

But today we were all supposed to wear our Sunday best – only nobody told us. So I’m working away and our former supervisor “Shakey” who is filing in for Skippy stops by and tells me I need to go home right now and change.

Well. I decide to take a stand about this. And yes, I am a stubborn mule sometimes. But here’s how I put it:

“One, I didn’t know I had to play dress up. The meeting planner I received didn’t mention it, and Skippy Whitebread didn’t mention it, either. Two, I have a ton of work that needs to be done. If I was to go home and change, it’d take me a minimum of four hours to do so, as I’d need to wash and dry my “better” clothing. (It’s actually clean, but I’d wash it again just to be 100% sure, and then take a nap while it’s in the spin cycle.) So if you want to kiss away four hours of productivity when we’re already overwhelmed with work, then you be me guest, Shakey.”

Well, that ended that argument pretty much right there. I’ll sit here until 1:00 and continue to work, and then I’ll try to sneak into the back of the meeting behind someone who is dressed to the nines, and hopefully Mr. V.P. won’t see me in my disgusting denim.

I’m a decent guy. I showered this AM, put on clean clothes, and even used both deodorant and cologne. I don’t reek of ‘eau du ass’, my teeth are brushed twice a day (even flossed after eating popcorn), and I even manage to run a comb through my rapidly graying hair every now and then. So it’s not like I’m a leper, for God’s sake. It’s just jeans. If Mr. V.P. can’t live with it, then tough shit on him. I don’t work any harder or faster or more efficient when I’m dressed up than when I’m not. But I do find myself more bugged when people insist that I put on a dog and pony show for someone who wouldn’t give me the time of day if we were to pass in the hall.

Sheesh.

Time to go get some work done, I suppose. We’ll see how this meeting goes. There’s supposed to be 200 of us in it; I’ll be curious to see how many have jeans on. ‘Cause it’d really suck big time to stand out in a crowd, wouldn’t it?

The Write Stuff - Part I

The lovely Mrs. G. and I are finalists in an essay contest. I’ve won essay contests before, but it’s been almost three years since my last win, so I’m due. Right?

Anyway, we’re one of 5 finalist couples in Select Comfort’s search for “America’s Sleepiest Couple”. Whazzat??? Well, last June when we were in Minneapolis for our combined 40th birthdays I saw a newspaper story about an essay contest where in 150 words or less you could write about why you & your spouse/domestic partner/live-in/whomever are the sleepiest couple in the United States.

So what exactly do you get for being officially certified as the sleepiest people in all the land? Well, besides ridiculed by all of your co-workers for not being fully awake (I can hear the jokes now – “Yeah, that explains a lot”, or “Hey Tommy, do you need a little nap before the meeting?”), you’ll earn some really cool prizes. Like a brand new Select Comfort bed, blankets, a comforter, pillows, aromatherapy machine, even a white noise simulator to turn those passing sirens into the sounds of crashing waves.

And, if that ain’t enough, oh, yeah. You also win a – get this – three day/two night trip to New York City, PLUS a six day/five night trip to a fancy Raddison resort on the beach in Aruba. Total estimated value of all prizes? That’d be a cool $9,000 smackers, pally! Whoo-hoo! Now there’s a prize worth winning.

Of course, you also get the honorary title of the most sleep deprived humans around. Hey, for a free bed, free trip to the Big Apple, and 5 nights of laying around on the beach in Aruba, I’d be just about anything they asked. Well, almost anything. (A fellow has to have his dignity intact sometimes, you know.)

So we sat down, wrote a delightfully funny-yet-poignant entry or at least we thought so), and then sent it in. Then we waited. And yes, Tom Petty was right: the waiting IS indeed the hardest part.

Sure enough, Mrs. G. got a phone call on August 18 to let her know that she and I are one of the 7 finalist couples! Hooray! We dashed to their Web site, where they’d posted all of the entries, then made our own self-glorified predictions of which entry we thought was best. Was there any sort of bias in choosing our favorite? Well, let’s put it this way: it was sort of like asking a new mother which baby in the maternity ward is the cutest. There’s really no need to ask.

So now we were down to one in seven odds – not bad. But the rules said that there would only be 5 semi-finalists. How come they said there would now be 7? Oh, well – I can’t help that. They told Mrs. G. that judging would take place on or around Aug 31, so we crossed our fingers, put on the Tom Petty CD again, and waited some more.

The official rules said that the winner would be notified “on or about September 9,” so we waited for last Friday to come. Well, as planned, Friday showed up. And no call. But that’s okay – sometimes these things take time. And maybe they’re notifying the winner by mail, right? Hey, it’s possible. So we checked the mail Friday. Nothing.

Well, by this point I was starting to get a little dejected – I’m not exactly what you’d call a “good sport” when it comes to losing things. I don’t like it, and I never have. I won’t throw a fit or cry “foul”, but I will be pissy for at least a day about it.

So let the pissiness begin – or so I thought. For last night around 9:15 the phone rings, and Mrs. G. picks it up. Sure enough, it’s the contest coordinator. At first we were ready to do the Happy Dance – but alas, she tells us that we’ll need to wait a little longer. But the good news is we’re now officially one of the 5 finalists, instead of 7. (Two people got bumped somewhere along the line.) Congrats, congrats, hooray, hooray.

Then they pop this on us: To help us pick a winner, we’re going to e-mail another question to answer – yes, more essay to write. Oh, and we need it back within 48 hours so we can make a decision. Oooookay. So Mrs. And I do our Sort-Of-Happy-Dance anyway, since at least we know we’re still in this thing, then we start getting ready to write an essay for their next question.

Originally the question was “Describe why you’re the sleepiest couple, and tell us about the worst night you had sleeping”. Now, the new one was “How a Better Nights Sleep Will Change Our Lives”. So I got to work, putting together some notes, brainstorming with my lovely bride, and trying to figure out what to write – and in a hurry, no less.

I slept about an hour last night, as my mind was too busy racing, thinking of what to write to waste time on foolish things like sleeping. (Hey, maybe that should’ve been my essay theme!) But by the time the alarm went off at 5:20 this morning, I knew what I wanted to say, so I started writing.

Then we got the e-mail. Keep it to 50 words or less, please.

So most of my thoughts for Essay #2 went right out the window, and I came up with 3 sentences and 48 words that will hopefully do the trick. We e-mailed our new essay back to the coordinator, along with a digital photo of us from our cruise last January, and now we’re back to the waiting game again.

I swear, Tom Petty is gonna get rich off royalties from me, isn’t he?

Anyway, the decision is in the hands of fate and the contests judges now. Are we truly America’s sleepiest couple? Or are we just a couple of runners-up, destined to sleep on our crappy old mattress for all eternity?

I guess we’ll find out shortly. I promise to post the results, either way.

In the meantime, please feel free to join us in crossing fingers, rubbing lucky rabbit’s feet, and avoiding stepping on any cracks or walking underneath ladders for the next few days. We could use all the luck we can get.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime – LITERALLY???

My primary employer is currently having a food drive. Great idea – I’m all for it. It’s a damn shame that anyone in this country ever has to go hungry, and I’m glad to say that the Gressel family supports the local food banks, Salvation Army, and Union Gospel Mission on a regular basis. It’s the least we can do.

But anyway, the food drive is on, and throughout the first floor they’ve set up barrels for people to drop off their canned goods and other non-perishable items. And for the most part, the nice people here have so far been pretty generous.

Except for the sales group.

Now, I don’t know how it is where you work, but the sales team here is basically one great big frat house. They’re mostly overly testosteroned shmucks who think of one person and one person only – themselves. They’re one notch above used car dealers and/or boiler room telemarketers, and that’s not saying much.

So the sales team decided to participate in the food drive en masse. But instead of adding their food to the barrels like everyone else, they had to set up their own table, which has been dressed with a huge banner: DIRECT SALES CONTRIBUTION. As if to show the world – “Ooooh, look what we did! Aren’t we cool? We actually shared something with someone else! You should be amazed and awe-inspired by our generosity!”

Well, that’s the first annoying thing. Here’s the second:

On their magical shrine of donated food there is indeed their group donation to help feed the poor and hungry. It consists of:

About 100 packets of generic Top Ramen (MSRP: 10 cents)
About 20 boxes of generic macaroni & cheese (MSRP: 20 cents)

So those cheap bastards had to set up their own altar to show off their giving ways, and it consists of el cheap-o, generic, overly salty ramen noodles (What, couldn’t they spring the extra 5 cents a package for name brand Top Ramen?) and icky generic mac & cheese. Super salty, super high in fat, super cheap.

I swear the only things missing are a loaf of leftover government cheese and a dusty can of turnips someone accidentally bought 10 years ago.

These guys all make good money. And I suspect that for one or two of them, their hearts were probably in the right place. But couldn’t they give the hungry something they MIGHT ACTUALLY ENJOY EATING??? Just because it’s on sale for 10 for a buck doesn’t mean it’s tasty (or good for you). What’s wrong with maybe a case of canned vegetables? Or some pasta? How about some REAL soup? There are thousands of nutritious, palate-pleasing selections at the neighborhood grocery store to choose from – you don’t necessarily have to buy the absolute cheapest foodstuffs on the face of the planet.

So tonight when I get home I’m going to bag up some REAL food for the food bank. And if it turns out I don’t have enough in the cupboard, then the Lovely Mrs. G. and I will run down to the store and buy the people who have to use the food bank something good to eat. They deserve a decent meal, as all of us do.

As for the tightwad idiots downstairs, I hope the sales team finds themselves on Thanksgiving afternoon carving up a lovely mac & cheese turkey, with a lovely side of salty ramen. It’d be just desserts.

"Sweat" Emotions

Our central air conditioner unit kicked the bucket yesterday. The sucker was probably close to 30 years old, so it didn’t come as a surprise, but I wish it’d waited until it was a little cooler/less humid outside to take a dump.

We had a repairman come out and look at it, and he pretty much shook his head and said, “He’s dead, Jim”. So we’re looking at the joys of dropping $2,500 for a new one. Great.

So things are currently a little sweaty around the Gressel household, as its 95 degrees with a 90 percent humidity rate right now, and it’s supposed to be this way for at least the next 5 days. We’ve got all the windows cranked open and the fans on high, but you know it’s bad when you can’t roll over at night because you’re glued to the sheets.

Growing up in Western WA, I didn’t have to deal with much heat/humidity. Although Seattle is perpetually damp, it rarely gets above 80 degrees, and temps above 90 only happen on average of 3 days a year. But my first real taste of what tropical humidity was like came in 1989 when I went to Florida for the first time. It was late October, and being Seattle, it was raining a cold, slow, drippy rain when I left Sea-Tac. I got to Orlando 7 hours later, where it was 90/90, and I felt like I was in the alligator house at the zoo. I’d worn my leather jacket and heavy Levi’s, and I thought I was going to die. Who knew you could sweat from your eyelids? Ick.

Six years later I moved to Sewer City, and had to acclimate myself to all sorts of non-Seattle like weather: Lots of snow, wind chills, freezing drizzle, heat indexes, ooey-gooey humidity. For the first year I froze while others walked around in shirt sleeves, I pitted out my t-shirts while others were comfortable. But after a while my body decided it could tolerate the extremes, and I didn’t mind it so much. Family members from the West coast would show up though and bitch the whole time about how humid and/or hot it was, but I’d think “Really? ‘Cause this ain’t so bad.”

But now I’m trying to live in a non air conditioned house. I’ve done it before (almost nobody in Seattle has central air – why bother?), but it doesn’t make it any fun. So I’ll try to practice a little tolerance, a little patience, and not get myself all worked up about it. And with a little luck I’ll start saving now for the mega cost of a new HVAC installation next spring, before the family all shows up for Miss Katie’s graduation and spends the week whining at us about how curly their hair has become from the humidity.

And if that fails, I’ll just go find a nice Motel 6 and crank the hell out of their air conditioning. Make the $29.99 room rate look like a bargain compared to the amount of electricity I’ll use. Sure, my teeth may chatter from the insta-cold, but it’ll be worth it, baby. It’ll be worth it.

A Pain in the Gas

I had to break down and buy gas this morning. Ouch.

For $20 I got 6.8 gallons, which driving around town as I do (not much freeway driving in Sioux City, Iowa, I’m afraid), should hopefully last me about a week. Knock on wood, and hope I don’t have a lot of extra running around to do.

The dingbat cashier at the convenience store even had the nerve to say to me “Thank you for your purchase!” in a perfectly insincere, snotty tone as I passed over my twenty. (Mouth breather.) Yeah, yeah, thanks a lot, bitch. That means a lot to me coming from a fat cow wearing too much lipstick and reeking of cigarettes.

Okay, that was a little mean, and was probably uncalled for. It’s not the heifer’s fault that gasoline is $2.93 a gallon. She just stands there and collects the dough, that’s all. But still – don’t try to be so damn chipper about the fact that we’re paying more than double for gas these days, and that this same station jacked up their gas prices four times in one week. Funny, I didn’t see new gas being delivered four times – how come that same fuel is now 60 cents per gallon higher? Sniff, sniff, sure smells like gouging to me... Besides, it's not like I can magically pull the additional expense out of my butt - I haven't had a raise for two years. What makes Bush & friends think I can somehow afford a 50% price hike in my fuel? And that's not counting winter yet, my friends. Keep in mind that we live in a part of the world where 10 below zero isn't just a fantasy - it's February.

The Lovely Mrs. G. and I sure would like to have a hybrid car if we could – her Blazer gets horrendous mileage overall – but we need to have something large enough to haul crap in. For example, we had to rent an appliance dolly this weekend to get the new washer/dryer down the basement stairs. It’d have never fit in the back of my convertible, or if it had, it’d have looked really dumb sticking out of the open top. So for now we’ll stick with what we have, grumble about the gas prices, and secretly curse the smelly ditz behind the counter at the convenience store.

It’s the least we can do.

Goodbye, Earl

Well, we sold Earl last night. Our 1991 Dodge Dynasty LE (the “Grandma Car” as Miss Katie fondly called him) now belongs to a new kid. Miss Katie inherited my sister’s car last month, and she didn’t need two vehicles or insurance payments, which meant one of them had to go. That’s you, Earl. Sorry pal, but you drew the low end of the dipstick.

Earl was an okay car – he wasn't a Mercedes, but he wasn't a Gremlin, either. He was big, heavy, and old, but he was clean and ran well, so what he lacked in handsome looks he made up for in reliability. Plus, he’s got brand new tires, a kick-ass stereo system (Miss Katie’s Christmas present last month – boy, is she ticked that we included it with the sale!), a new battery, a new muffler, and a great big love dent in the door, courtesy of that stupid broad who backed into him in the mall parking lot last June.

So now we’re down to three cars in our house – my convertible, the Lovely Mrs. G’s Blazer, and Miss Katie’s newly inherited Mercury. And that’s plenty – I don’t want to be one of “those people” who collect rust buckets in their yard, never really intending on fixing them up, no matter how much we talk it up.

Our neighbor across the street is “one of those people” – he owns a fairly new pickup and a new van, but he drives this piece of shit old Datsun around town, has a rusted out pickup that sits on the street full of tree branches for most of the year, and has two more rusting cars parked next door in his mother’s yard. I’ve never actually seen him work on any of them, but there they sit, collecting dust, squirrel poop, and slowly rusting back into oblivion.

Fortunately, Earl won’t be joining that scrap heap yet. The kid (and his Mom) who bought him will take good care of Earl, I’m sure. The kid is just finishing driver’s ed., and needed a good first car. Tell you what – Earl is your man. Car. Man-car. You get my point.

So goodbye, Earl. May you bring someone else happiness, too. Just don’t crank that stereo too loud when you’re driving past my house late at night, if you know what’s good for you.