Rising to the Level of Incompetence

My Christmas wish to all of you out there is that you never have to work for a buffoon. Especially a buffoon with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

My employer uses two different software packages to track customers who visit their Web site – a program for counting the number of visitors and hits, and another one to collect their feedback to a short survey question. One of my (many) duties around this place is to collect that data every week, summarize it in a handy-dandy report, and send it to the management team. I’ve done this for about four years now.

This morning, my manager Skippy Whitebread calls me over to ask about the programs, my reporting, and how they work. He was totally baffled by my reports – he couldn’t tell one thing from another. It was like...he was looking at the data for the very first time.

Guess what? HE WAS.

The more he spoke, the more obvious it became: Despite the fact that I’d been sending him this information every Monday since early 2002, he had absolutely no clue how these programs work or what the reports even looked like. He’d never bothered to open a report, never thought to ask any questions about it. It was like he was being introduced to some great new product, and not something that landed in his e-mail inbox every Monday.

Buffoon, I tell you. Buffoon.

This isn’t the first time Skippy has done this to us. A few years ago during one of his really bad obsessive-compulsive phases he decided we need to keep track of every single task we do throughout the day, what time we started working on it, what time we finished, what time we went to break/lunch, etc. It was like billing for a lawyer’s time, only more anal than that. We had to put all this information into a spreadsheet, upload it onto his shared drive, and summarize our weekly performance for him. It took us two hours a week to put this together for him to explain what we’d been up to for the previous 38 hours.

And not once did he ever look at the results.

One week I even went as far as to enter on my spreadsheet “Hey, Skippy - I bet you don’t ever read these, do you?” And since he never called me on it, I’d say I was fairly accurate in my prediction.

We did this for about 6 months, tracking every second for him, until he finally backed off. He’s tried 5 or 6 times to have us do it again, but we protest about “wasted productivity time” and how since he’s in charge, shouldn’t he have a basic idea of what we’re up to anyway? I mean, isn’t that part of a manager’s responsibilities – to know what their employees are doing? He then drops the subjects and goes to find something else to obsess on.

Working for a manager like Skippy really has its drawbacks at times. His OCD is seriously out of hand, and the more stressed he gets, the worse it gets for all of us. He’ll focus on one thing – no matter how trivial it may be – and will drive everyone nuts about it until he switches to something else, which he’ll then pound into the ground. I wish he’d take his meds again, but he refuses. So we all suffer.

Still, Skippy isn’t the worst manager I’ve had. There’s been a lot worse than him over the years. So I’ll grit my teeth and try to ignore him when he’s bouncing off the walls or going from extreme high to extreme low back to extreme high, all in a 3 minute time frame.

Still – if he’d only asked about the reports four years ago, maybe I’d be ranting about something totally different about now.

Thank you for listening.

Winter Is One Giant Headache

My head is pounding like mad this morning, and it’s turning me into what The Lovely Mrs. G. refers to as “a crabby monkey”. Got any bananas?

It’s cold and snowy here in the Midwest, and I for one am already tired of winter. True; winter technically hasn’t even started yet, but already I’m sick of being cold. If it were up to me it’d snow only on Sunday mornings and on Christmas eve, which would only stick to the grass (never the streets or sidewalks). It’d then melt the next day and be sunny and 70 for the rest of the year. When I meet Him, I’ll have to recommend this method of snow to God. Who knows – maybe He’ll go for it. I’m sure He’s heard stranger requests than that.

I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve such a horrible headache, but whatever it is, I’m sorry. I had a bad bout with nightmares last night, which certainly didn’t help matters. So maybe I just need a good night’s sleep in a warm bed. And if that doesn’t work, a bottle of Jim Beam and a handful of Ambien might do the trick.

Okay, okay. I’m not promoting the mixing of alcohol and fistful of sleeping pills. Not a good idea, kids. Don’t try this at home. But the warm bed part? I really could go for that about now.

So I’ll go take a couple of Advil (“The Wonder Drug” – you’ll wonder how you got through your day without it) and hope that the headache – and the snow – go away soon.

Cheap, Cheap!

It’s time to rant once again about Sioux Cityans and their cheap-ass ways.

“Sioux City residents are SO CHEAP...”
“How cheap are they?”

Well, lemme tell ya.

This year, the city of Sioux City outsourced the garbage collection. No big deal – as long as it doesn’t pile up, I don’t care if it’s a city worker or some private schmuck who comes to pick up the trash.

But with this privatization, there’s now a limit on how much you can pitch. It used to be you could put out your garbage can, plus up to 6 extra bags. Not any longer. Under the new contract, any extra trash is charged. In order to throw out more than your allotted can’s worth, you need to affix a prepaid trash sticker to the extra garbage. They’re only .89 cents apiece, and are available all over town. Slap on a sticker, and they’ll haul away the extra.

Now, all things considered, .89 cents a bag is a real bargain. When I moved away from Seattle 10 years ago, at that time each extra bag would run you $6.00. No telling what they charge there now. So we’d been spoiled by years of throwing out everything we wanted, and now the time has come to pay the garbage piper. Buy a sticker, you cheap bastard. .89 cents won’t break you.

So this week being Thanksgiving and all, we had an extra bag of trash. Our regular pickup day was Thursday, which was pushed back because of the holiday, and what with the dead turkey carcass and the remnants our garage cleaning last week, we’d jammed our trash can as full as it’d go. (Yes, I stood on it and jumped up and down. You pay by the can, not by weight.)

So I took our extra bag o’ waste, set it next to the can on the curb Thursday night, affixed our .89 cent sticker, and went to bed, confident that I’d done the socially and financially correct thing for our city.

Friday AM. I get up and look outside. Our extra bag of garbage is still on the curb. Why?

Because someone stole our garbage sticker right off the bag.

Our .89 fucking cent trash sticker. Fucking stolen. Right off the fucking bag.

It very obviously hadn’t fallen off or blown off in the wind – nope, it’d been ripped off in the middle of the night, and I suspect is now affixed to one of my cheap-ass neighbor’s leftover turkey carcass bag.

What is it with people around here and their love of petty larceny? In the 7 years that we’ve lived here, I watched dozens of times as people swipe the aluminum cans from the recycle bin. (It’s not some homeless guy desperate for coins; it’s a middle age couple who drive a late model car.) I’ve lost 3 antennae balls off my cars to thieves. Neighborhood punks will steal your flowers (usually pulling up the whole plant in the process) from your garden every Spring. We’ve had 3 different flags stolen off the front of the house, until the Lovely Mrs. G. finally started bolting the flag poles to the house. People around town have had their Halloween and Christmas decorations swiped right off their front porches. When we lived out in the small Cowtown and had a lovely view of the farm store across the way, I’d watch people pull up all times of the night and steal mulch, water softener salt, Christmas trees, you name it.

It seems that you can’t try to do anything nice for your home around here without some jackass cheap-o bastard ripping you off. .89 cents for a garbage sticker. Gee, I hope you’re proud of yourself, buddy. Maybe there’s a baby out there you can steal a lollipop from.

Yet another reason why I can’t wait to move away from here. It’s imperative that we move somewhere where petty thieves aren’t as prevalent as they are in Sioux City.

So welcome to Sioux City, Iowa – We hope you enjoy your visit. Just watch your wallet closely.

Pumpkin Delight!

There are three events in 2005 that I consider to be “miraculous”:

3 - Miss Katie hasn’t wrecked her new car. (Heh, heh, I’m just keeeeeeding, Katester – relax. And watch where you're driving.)

2 – The Seahawks are in first place in the NFC West. (We’ll see if it lasts.)

And the number one miracle of 2005 (drumroll, please!):

1 – My neighbor finally threw out his yucky Halloween jack o'lanterns on Sunday. 27 days after Halloween, for those of you with wagers out there.

Hallelujah!

Of course, he now has his Christmas decorations up, which I suspect we’ll all enjoy until at least April 1. So take the good with the bad, I suppose. And hey – at least mechanical light-up deer won’t attract rodents as they decompose.

Rotting Pumpkins Redux

Welcome to Sioux City, Iowa – Procrastination Capital of the World!

Do you remember last week when I ranted about my next door neighbors and their inability to throw away their rotting jack o’lanterns? Halloween was almost a MONTH AGO, and yet they’re still there, slowly turning into orange/black ooze.

Well, here we are – Friday, November 25, 2005. I took this picture this morning:



Just in case you didn’t believe me. If there still there on Christmas Eve, I’ll be sure to post the evidence.

Some people.

Back in Black Friday

So it’s Black Friday – and yet here I am, writing in a blog instead of at the mall shopping my little brains out. Funny, no?



Actually, this is the first Black Friday I’ve had off work in several years. My employer changed their floating holiday policy this year and made the day-after-Thanksgiving a set holiday, so I’m actually able to sleep in. Plus, I no longer work retail, so I won’t have to put up with the shopping nutballs later tonight. Sometimes life is indeed good.

Black Friday. A shopper’s paradise, and a retailers headache. I worked a few of them for The Mouse and Rhymes with Darnes and Goble, and they were never what you’d call “fun”. Especially around here.

Sioux City residents LOOOOOOVE a sale more than God, their families, and their 3-pack a day habit. Seriously. Advertise a bag of dog shit as being on sale for 50% off, one day only, limit 2 bags o’ excrement per person, and you’ll have them lined up for blocks, pushing and shoving to get their hands on the discounted poop.

I’ve seen actual fistfights over sale merchandise here. I’ve seen pregnant women trampled in a bid to save $5 on a microwave. I’ve seen people camp out in front of Target, and physically threaten anyone they may think might be cutting in line. (At The Mouse one year, one of our CMs couldn’t get to the door to come in to work because the biddies waiting in line wouldn’t let her up to the entrance.)

So is it any wonder I’m not out there fighting that kind of madness? I like a good deal as much as the next savvy shopper, but the people around here are frickin’ CRAZED.

In the end, for Christmas I’ll probably pay a buck or two for my stuff, but that’s okay. To not go through the hassles and rampage that is shopping on Black Friday in Sioux City, Iowa? It’ll be well worth it.

An Untradtional Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving again – a time to go have a Thanksgiving feast that just can’t be beat, and then illegally dump your garbage behind Alice’s Restaurant. Or something like that.

The images of Thanksgiving are always the same – large families gathered around the table, dear old Dad bringing the turkey out, everyone oohing and aahing the perfectly garnished bird. Everyone joins hands and prays to their own God, thanking Him for the bounty they’re about to receive. Then crazy Uncle Fred belches really loud, unbuckles his belt, and hollers, “let’s eat!”

Yeah, whatever.

My family lives 1,800 miles away, and the Lovely Mrs. G’s folks are 1,500 miles away, so it’ll be the typical Gressel family Thanksgiving – just the 3 of us. And to be perfectly honest, I like it that way. No running from here to there, trying to be on time, no pressure to present the perfect sides and a golden 25-pound Butterball to your picky family. It’ll just be us – a little turkey, a little napping, and maybe a movie. I can do it all in my sweatpants if I so choose – no matching winter-scene sweaters for us.

But that doesn’t mean that Thanksgiving has to be dull – no, not at all. In fact, my favorite Thanksgiving of all time took place just 3 years ago – when it was just me, the Lovely Mrs. G., and Miss Katie...and 10 million of our closest friends.

You see, for Thanksgiving 2002 we went to New York City to attend the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And let me tell ya, it was a blast.



Oh, sure – it was cold outside, and there really wasn’t much room to stand, but it was 100 percent worth every moment of it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I’d won the trip in an essay contest, and we got to spend 5 days all together in the Big Apple, standing in line to go up into the Empire State Building, standing in line to take the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty, standing in line to shop the 5th Avenue stores the weekend after Thanksgiving (bringing on a whole new meaning to the term “Black Friday”), and having a rather nice ride around Central Park, thanks to a horse-drawn carriage.

As far as Thanksgiving goes, we ponied up about $40 each and had Thanksgiving dinner at the Doubletree in Times Square. It was really good – I’m not sure if it was “$40 good”, but it suited the needs. And it was a great way to spend a holiday with your family. Of course, we followed this up with a Broadway show (‘Chicago’) that night, so how can that be beat?

We really loved New York. It was our second trip there, and we’d all love to go back.

But my favorite image from Times Square has to be one of these two. Either it’s the hobo with the cardboard sign:



His sign reads, "Need money for beer, drugs, and hooker. Hey, at least I ain't bullshittin' you." I was tempted to give him a buck for honestly alone.

Or – there’s this guy, walking around in front of the MTV studios, in his underpants. Miss Katie had to tip $2 to pose with her for a photo. (Hey, it was worth it.) He was The Naked Cowboy, and by golly, he sure was.



Doesn't that beat an old boring pumpkin pie?

So this Thanksgiving, here’s my advice. Try something different. Turn off the football game, quit arguing with your cousins, and go out and do something new.

I mean, there’s always a parade to enjoy, if nothing else.

You're a SUPERSTAR!

My employer doesn’t give out pay raises. Or promised bonuses. Or on-time performance reviews.

But they do issue STAR awards.

The notion of winning a STAR award sounds a lot cooler than it really is. If someone in the company thinks that a co-worker, manager, or subordinate has done something outstandingly cool and/or terrific, they can go to our Intranet site and complete a STAR award nomination. Anybody can nominate anyone else at any time – for any reason.

The lucky recipient then receives a little flashing e-mail – “Congratulations! You’ve won a STAR award!” Oooh! Aaaah! Yippee! Break out the Dom Perignon!

And what do you get for your STAR award – A certificate? A trophy for your cubicle shelf? A handsome bonus check? A handshake from the CEO? A brand new Cadillac?

Nope. You get nothing. Nada. Zilch. Just the e-mail letting you know you’ve won. I suppose you can print it and frame it yourself, but why bother? There is no prize – big or small. Just a lousy e-mail.

Oh, wait. That’s not quite accurate. In addition to the generic e-mail, you also get your picture plastered on the front page of the Intranet for a month. They’ve got a little animated rotating graphic of all the monthly winners, so you can be guaranteed that every 10 minutes or so everyone in the company is going to be staring at your smiling mug (taken from your hated out-of-focus badge photo). That way, all of your friends out there in other departments can see that you too have won the “Prize That Isn’t A Prize”.

There are two inherent problems with the STAR award program. One being that they’re pointless, because they mean nothing but an “attaboy!” from a manager who probably should have taken 10 seconds and said so to your face, but chickened out and sent a STAR award instead.

The other problem is that there are no set rules to justify why you’re giving someone a STAR award. It could be that they actually showed up to work on time today. Or maybe you like the way they styled their hair. It’s supposed to be for a deeper reason than that, but I’ve seen people receive them for much, much less. Some people win STAR awards weekly. It seems that every time you turn around, certain individuals are featured yet again on the Intranet, celebrating their latest STAR-award worthy accomplishment. Oooh, yeah. She won AGAIN. B.F.D. Since they’re given out like candy around here (about 400 winners a month, out of a company of only 1,800 employees), there’s nothing special about them. Anybody can get one, and probably has.

But hey – they’re free, they’re fast, and they’re supposedly a great way to make employees feel good about coming to a job where they haven’t had a pay raise since early 2003. If you believe it’s working to build morale, then you’d better watch your money closely, because there’s a Nigerian prince who has a deal for you...

Regardless, I tell you all those details so that I can tell you about the latest STAR award winner within our team, my pal Carl.

Carl is a fairly shy guy who doesn’t like to stand out in a crowd. Somehow this week he pleased one of the managers somewhere, and he was issued a STAR award e-mail Wednesday evening.

So the rest of us come into work on Thursday morning, and guess whose badge picture is featured on the front page of the company’s Intranet? That’s right, our boy Carl. This calls for a MAJOR celebration, doesn’t it? I mean, Carl won, and being the semi-shy, totally reserved guy he is, perhaps it’s time he breaks out of his shell and enjoys his brief moment in the spotlight.

So we decide to make Carl a SUPERSTAR.

We printed out his picture from the Intranet, made him a paper crown, and decorated his desk in anticipation of his royal arrival. (Carl is a nice guy, but he rarely comes to work on time, so we had plenty of time to pull this off.) He finally rolled in at about 8:30, where we all stood and cheered for him, singing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow”. All day long we kept sending people by his desk to congratulate him on being a SUPERSTAR. He was thoroughly embarrassed, and he threatened each of us with extensive bodily harm, but it was GREAT!

But the nuts & cherries on Carl’s humiliation sundae came from his girlfriend, who works in a department around the corner. She heard about our teasing, and ordered a huge balloon bouquet to be delivered to his desk – a dozen huge latex balloon, with a big “Congratulations! You Did It!” silver mylar balloon in the middle. Heh, heh.

By this point he had strangers stopping by his desk to congratulate him on whatever it was that he’d done to deserve such accolades. A few people even grumbled “Hmmph – all I got for my STAR award was a dumb e-mail - I didn’t get balloons”. Poor Carl – he was embarrassed to the bone, and the rest of us had quite the laugh at his expense.

This morning his balloons are still floating somewhat. (They’ve lost some of their glimmer – and helium), and I don’t think anyone has been by yet today to pat him on the back and tell him “Congrats” yet again. But his paper crown is still on his desk, and I’m pretty sure that if I go look in his desk drawer I’ll find a copy of his STAR award filed away somewhere.

Carl was a good sport about it, although I’m pretty sure he’s plotting revenge on all of us right now. Who knows- maybe by this afternoon we’ll all be STAR award winners.

If that’s the case, I hope they send me candy instead of balloons...

Requiem For a Kitty

Somebody ran over a cat last night in the street in front of my house. I came home from taking the family to dinner and saw something big & dead on our sidewalk. Usually it’s a squirrel that’s been whacked by a car, but this time it was one of the neighborhood cats.

A calico, to be specific. I’d seen her around the backyard a few times, usually harassing my old black cat, but I don’t know who she belonged to. (No license, no collar.) Poor thing had been hit in the head, and either stumbled or tumbled across the parking strip and died on our sidewalk. Horrible way to go, if you ask me.

So here I am, outside at 8:00 PM in 10 degree weather, scooping up a poor dead cat and putting it in a plastic bag. The Lovely Mrs. G. was going to call the local animal control office this morning to find out what to do with it – I don’t suppose they’d appreciate it if we just dropped it in the garbage. The ground is too hard and frozen to bury it, and it certainly is too big to flush. So hopefully they’ll tell us where to take the poor thing.

I’m a incredible softie when it comes to animals – always have been. That’s a big reason why I don’t go hunting. I like animals, and prefer to see them up and walking around instead of their head mounted on a wall. I’m the guy who bawled like a baby when the little squirrel I was nurturing back to health died. And I was almost 30 years old at the time. So any poor creature that meets an early demise (other than Mrs. G’s dreaded millipedes, that is) usually earns my complete sympathy.

We have two cats – Jack, who is somewhere around 12 or 13 years old (I’m not sure – he was a “used” cat when I got him in 1995), and Tasha, who turns 15 in December (her birthday I know). Both are definitely in their Golden Years, and I promise you now – I’ll be a total basket case when either one of them eventually goes to the Big Cat Box in the Sky. They’ve both been my friends, my confidants, and a part of my family for a long time, and life won’t be the same without them. Oh, sure – I can go out and get another pet, and I’m willing to bet that the new cat or dog and I will get along swimmingly. But I’ll still miss my buddies when they’re gone.

My dog Ginger and I were inseparable from the day she literally followed me home (March 21, 1980 – I was 14). She and I did everything together, and she was the most loyal best friend a boy could have. She was 11 when I had to have her put down; she had bad arthritis in her hips, and had a hard time walking. I hated like hell to do it, but it was for the best. I knew it, and I think she did, too. It’s been 14 years since I cried over Ginger’s death, but I still carry a picture of her and I together in my wallet. Friends like that don’t come along every day, you know.

My heart breaks this morning for the kids who owned the cat that died in my yard last night. Somewhere out there you’ll find someone standing at their front door, waiting for their friend to come home for dinner. I hope that I can find them to at least let them know what happened; they deserve the closure.

So people – be kind to your pets. Have them spayed or neutered (Bob Barker will thank you later – trust me on this one!), put a collar around their neck so that they can find their way home if they get lost, and every now and then be sure to tell them how much you love them.

I’m pretty sure they’ll know what you’re saying.

The Joke's on Skippy

Nothing – and I do mean NOTHING – in this world is more fun than a really good practical joke. Especially when it’s played on my manager, Skippy Whitebread.

Skippy drives a huge oversized Dodge Ram – you know what they say that little boys who drive great big cars are trying to overcompensate for... Anyway, he took his Dodge Tiny Member in for service this morning to have front end ‘bushings’ or some crap like that replaced. (Hell, don’t ask me anything about car repairs. I know where the gas goes, and that’s about it.)

Anyway, he was expecting it to cost about $300 for repairs, but he got a call at about Noon from the shop saying that his Dodge Phallus was ready to go, and it’d only cost $205. So he spent the next hour dancing around, being overly obnoxious in his O.C.D.-fueled way, telling everyone ha, ha, he was saving a hundred bucks. As if we cared. Congratulations, Skippy. Now go sit down and take some downers.

After a while I got tired of his gloating, so I decided to do something about it. I sent the Lovely Mrs. G. an e-mail and asked her to call his extension and leave him a voice mail (he was now on a conference call – one of his 30 hours of regularly scheduled meetings a week) letting him know that she was calling from the auto shop, and they’d made a mistake and forgot to add labor charges to his estimate. His new total would be $405, not $200. Sorry about that, chief.

And so she did. And when his conference call ended and he retrieved his voice mail, you could see it all over his face. I really wish I had a camera --- the look was worth every bit of effort that went into it. He was seriously mad. Like Colonel Kurtz mad. I heard him call and whine to his wife about the costs, then he came over to bitch to us about it. His $100 savings windfall had just turned into an additional $200 cost. Boo hoo, boo hoo.

Oh, but wait – it gets better.

A few minutes of his rumbling and grumbling later, he disappeared for yet another meeting. (Yes, it truly is a gift he possesses – TALKING about work more than actually DOING any of it.) So I had the Lovely Mrs. G. call him once more, only this time they’d “forgotten” to charge him for four bushings – oops – the original quote was only for two. So the new total would be $810.00. We apologize for the inconvenience, yadda yadda yadda.

Heh heh.

Skippy finally returned from his latest meeting/excuse for not working, and got his voice mail.

Is it possible for someone to literally turn as red as a lobster? Well, break out the butter and handi-wipes, kids, 'cause that’s exactly what Skippy did. I might have to change his nickname from Skippy Whitebread to Skippy Redface. Or a least offer him a plastic bib. Instantly he was up and cussing, using every filthy word his little farmboy imagination could think of (except for “what in tarnation” and “daggummit”, which I’m sure were running through his mind...) He was seriously pissed, and the fact that his 5 teammates were laughing uncontrollably at his discomfort wasn’t helping the matter. But what could we say? We all knew the truth, and it was great fun to laugh at Skippy’s pain and misfortune.

Finally, I had to let him off the hook. He was about to call the auto shop and curse at them, too, so to save those poor souls from an undeserved verbal assault (and to save Skippy from finding sugar in his gas tank for being mean to them), I confessed.

He laughed, we laughed more, I explained all the juicy details, we all laughed again at him, and then we moved on. He went on to another meeting, and I went to log this for all eternity in my blog.

In a few minutes from now he and another worker will leave early to go pick up his Dodge Teeny Weenie truck, which should only cost him $200 or so. Perhaps I should ask him for $20 bucks for saving him over $600 in the process?

No?

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Uh-Oh.

Sioux City got its first dusting of snow for the season this morning – and it certainly won’t be its last. It’s a combo of wet snow/rain that makes for perfect slushballs, and that’s about it.

But hey – dealing with a little sloppy snow sure beats the hell out of driving in freezing rain. There are few driving experiences out there that suck more than trying to drive (and keep your car out of the ditch) in the bitch that is freezing rain -- or her bastard brother, freezing drizzle. Yet another reason why I can’t wait to move out of this godforsaken state.

So it’s snowing again. Pretty to look at for about 5 minutes, and then the novelty wears off. It wasn’t that way when I was a kid, mainly because it rarely snowed in Seattle when I was growing up. An inch or two of wet snow, sticking to the grass, and that was about it. Of course, that was enough to send all the crazed Seattleites into a panic – driving like loons, stocking up on 3 months of rations, closing schools at the mere rumor of a snowflake. It’s amazing – those people drive in rain all year long without so much of a blink of an eye, but when it snows they go berserk. And yet as I kid I couldn't wait for it to snow.

There were a few times I can remember when the snow in Seattle was actually sled-worthy. 6, 8 inches of snow packed on the streets was a pretty good time, as long as you remembered to jump of the sled before you hit the fire hydrant at the bottom of the street. (66th Ave is a mighty steep hill.) Because it never gets too terribly cold there, you could stay outside and sled as long as you didn’t mind having to haul it all the way back up the hill, and as long as you could get away with pretending that you didn't hear your Mom calling you to come inside before you freeze to death.

Alas, such winter wonderland fun doesn’t exist much here in the Midwest, because even though we get considerably much more snow than Seattle, it tends to be 10 below zero at the time, which really doesn’t make for fun sledding. Funny how frostbite puts a damper on the good times, doesn't it? That, and the fact that I’m now 40 and my interaction with snowflakes usually means I’m either scraping or shoveling the shit, perhaps the shimmer is permanently off that diamond.

But still, I do like to watch it snow a little bit, and when we move to Florida I’ll probably miss seeing a little bit of fresh snow around Christmas time......but the fact that I’ll be floating in a swimming pool enjoying a mai-tai and 80 degree weather at the time will probably make up for it.

When Holidays Collide

Okay, so it’s November 14, 2005. Two weeks have now passed since Halloween. And yet my next door neighbor still hasn’t thrown out his jack o’lanterns. He’s got 3 pumpkins slowly rotting into oblivion on his front porch. Two of them have now officially caved into an ugly orange/black goo, while the other one is simply imploding. Yuck City.

What is it with people who get so excited for holidays, but the moment they’re over they lose all interested in picking up their shit and moving on? The nutball cross the street from us usually has a plastic snowman on his roof until the first of May, and the guy next door (again) had his electronic light-up Christmas reindeer in his front yard until Memorial Day this year. You'd think it was some sort of contest to can see who can be the most yard obnoxious. (The kook across the street would win hands down, though - he and his family like to "camp" in their motorhome in their own side yard...)

Me? I’m the guy who’d take down the Christmas tree on December 26 if the Lovely Mrs. G. would let me get away with it. I usually do convince her though that it needs to go before New Years Day, so that’s close enough. Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, Merry Christmas. There. Now, can we put this stuff away?

There’s already a ton of houses around us with their Christmas lights on. The local Boy Scouts are already selling fresh cut trees. (How “fresh” they’ll be in 6 weeks when Christmas does roll around is another question.) And you certainly can’t walk through any retail outlet without an overwhelming sense of Seasons Friggin’ Greetings!

I don’t hate Christmas – I really don’t. I just think it’s way to commercial for its own good, and that it shouldn’t be dragged out to be a three month celebration. Celebrate Christmas for what it’s supposed to be – don’t turn it into an excuse to litter your yard with fiberglass Santas until St. Patrick’s Day.

So fairly soon I may have to walk next door with my shovel and scoop up those rotting pumpkins. (Even the neighborhood hoodlums won’t smash these yucky bastards – they’re that gross.) I ought to do it before they attract rodents or possums or wolves.

And if that fails, then on November 25 perhaps my Thanksgiving turkey carcass will join them on the neighbor's porch, and make one hell of a quartet.

Accounting Hell

I’m really disliking my new accounting class about now. And I haven’t even officially had a class yet.

In the program I’m in, we have only 5 or 6 weeks to complete what is normally a 13 week class. It’s the whole enchilada – no Reader’s Digest version of Accounting for us. So we have to cram a whole lot of stuff into a relatively short time.

That’s why our first class is next Tuesday, but we already have assignments and tests to complete beforehand. With my Econ class, it was okay. I at least had a basic concept of how Macroeconomics worked, and I was able to work with the materials to grasp what was going on beforehand.

But accounting? That’s something new to me. I’ve never had an accounting class, so when they talk about crap like owner’s equity and balance sheets, you might as well be talking about Russian czars of the fourteenth century. It’s all new to me.

But they’re pretty much thrown us to the wolves, handed us a book, and said, “Go for it”. Our first tests are due at noon Sunday, 2 ½ days before our first class session. What’s up with that? Doctors aren’t expected to know how to perform open heart surgery before their first day of medical school, are they? Hell, I hope not.

So I’m struggling with an accounting book that I really don’t understand, and I’m finding my usual lack of patience to be a hindrance. Things usually come fairly easy to me – I’m not accustomed to having to actually work for something.

But I WILL conquer this. I’m not going to let some stupid accounting class slow me down, and it’s certainly not going to be the equity-laden albatross that will sink my 4.0 GPA. Come hell, high water, or financial insolvency on my income statements, I’ll figure this shit out.

Because while I may be fairly impatient, I’m also very stubborn. And what better way to snub this horrendous class than by passing it with flying colors? Ha!

So if there are any CPAs out there who are bored and want to toss their old pal Tommy some hints, I’m willing to listen. In exchange I’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Disney. It’s only fair.

The Cold and Flu Season is Upon Us

The flu is making its way through the Gressel household, and for some odd reason, I’m the only one who hasn’t been dropped over by it. Amazing, ain’t it? The Lovely Mrs. G. washes her hands more than ay person I know (outside of a surgeon, perhaps – or at least we’d like to think so), and yet there she is, suffering with seasonal influenza. Hmmmm...maybe there is something to be said for being slightly grimy. Poor Miss Katie has it, too – she spent yesterday barfing up her breakfast (how’s that for descriptive writing?), and today she’s still down & out.

Meanwhile, I’m okay. Remarkable, since I’m usually the first one to get sick. I’m usually Typhoid Tommy, the germ-giver. But this time I’ve somehow missed it. For now, at least.

I hate getting sick. It would be fun to stay away from work for a couple of days and do nothing but lay on the couch and watch old Disney movies, but right now I have far too much stuff to do to be ill.

I was knocked flat for a week last year with the flu – I’d been a nice guy and gave up my annual flu shot during the shortage, and look what happened. Not this year. Nope; I pushed down half a dozen old men and trampled an old bat who dared get in the way of my flu shot this year. “Look out, you old geezers, Tommy isn’t going to let you stand in the way of his health this winter!”

The sickest I’ve ever been was when I was 19. And amazingly enough, it started on January 1, 1984. I got up and went downstairs, and told my Mom “Geez, I’ve got a huge pimple or something on my back. It sure itches.” She looked, and by golly, there it was – a huge red bump. Next to several more red bumps. By noon I was covered with red bumps.

Chicken pox.

Yes, I was a 19 year old victim of chicken pox, despite the fact that I’d already had them as a kid. My friend Bill’s little sister came home from school with the pox in late September, when then passed onto Bill’s older brother, then to Bill, then somehow to me. And just think – I hadn’t kissed a single one of them.

But this was no ordinary strain of chicken pox – nope, the doctor on January 2 declared them as “super pox”, and I was to be instantly quarantined for the duration of the breakout. Get in your room, and stay there. Don’t pass the pox onto anyone else.

So there I was, cut off from civilization, itching from head to toe with a massive case of chicken pox. They were everywhere – inside my mouth, up my nose (and other orifices which I’d rather not describe in a public forum), underneath my eyelids. I itched like mad, and I went three days without sleeping. The doctor at first said just to take baking soda baths, but that didn’t help. The madness was starting to get to me. Finally he cut me a break and wrote me a prescription for painkillers. Thank God. When I finally slept, I did so for almost 30 hours.

I broke out on New Years Day, and I had the chicken pox through Valentines. 6 weeks. I told you these were “super” pox. I lost 35 pounds in that timeframe; not the best way to do so, but I did.

Finally, the spots receded, and I was allowed to go back out in public around the end of February. It took another month or two for them to all go away – for a while it looked like I just had a bad case of acne. And ever now – some 21 years later – I still have a reminder of the chicken pox – a scar on my shoulder from a pockmark that never went away. Gee, thanks.

Of course, my younger sister broke out with the chicken pox about two weeks after I did, but she only had them for a week or so. But then her asshole boyfriend ended up with them, too, so ha ha. I think the super strain ended after that, but I can’t be too certain of that. Somewhere out there you’ll probably find someone who is packing the germs.

So I’ll go home tonight after class and try to take care of my poor ill family, and be glad that it’s just the flu and not chicken pox. Or measles. Or any other pox. Or even Tourette’s syndrome. (Because it’d be just miserable to try to take care of someone who is cursing you at the same time.)

In the meantime, drink your juice, take a daily vitamin, and...oh, yeah. Wash your hands every now and then.

Gotta Love My Tivo

Of all of mankind’s greatest inventions – the wheel, the car, electricity, the telephone, microwave popcorn – there really is none is greater than TiVo. (Full disclosure: No – I’m not a TiVo employee or trying to brownnose my way into a freebie. I’m just a huge TiVo fan.)

I love my TiVo. What a better way to watch TV than with all the commercials fast forwarded right out of them? Plus, you’ll never have to buy another blank videotape again, then hope to God that you programmed the damn thing correctly to tape your shows when you’re out. TiVo made television so much easier.

Mostly.

I’ve had my original TiVo for almost 5 years now – I won it in an essay contest in November 2000. At first I thought “what would I ever do with that thing?”, but I was quickly hooked. I set up season passes to automatically record my favorite shows, I used the interactive guide to see what was on all 128 channels (which is now about 150 channels), and I learned the joys of teaching TiVo about my TV watching habits, so that when it decides to automatically record shows it “thinks” I may like, it’ll pick up on Disney cartoons and not soap operas. Who said computers aren’t smart?

But my original TiVo lived a good life, and is starting to spaz out on me. It takes forever to set it to record shows lately, and the quality of recordings is starting to lack. (If it was a regular computer hard drive, I'd say ScanDisk and Defrag the damn thing, but alas....) So the lovely Mrs. G. and I went out yesterday to the 8th Level of Dante’s Hell (a.k.a Best Buy) and bought a new one. And yes – as much as I LOVE my TiVo, I equally HATE Best Buy. But that’s a rant for another day.

So we bought a brand new one, then spent four hours trying to hook the fucker up. Between our cable box that the local cable pigs forced us to take on to keep our HBO to our cheap-o DVD player to the RF converter for the cheap-o DVD player and our ancient TV, it was a wiring nightmare. I was just about ready to throw the whole thing out the window, but at last – the new TiVo is hooked up, ready, and pretty sweet.

We put the old TiVo in the basement and hooked it up for Miss Katie to watch; I’m sure it’ll soon be packed with 40 hours of “The Real World” or some crap like that, but as long as I don’t have to watch it, I don’t care.

So tonight I have to go home and get acquainted with my new TiVo. I have to teach it all about my favorite shows, and make it really clear that if it somehow does something stupid and forgets to record ‘Lost’ for me, then there’s going to be a really painful ‘retraining lesson’ involving TiVo’s pretty new front logo and a cheese grater. (Threatening to torture your household appliances really does work – you should see my computer monitor cower in fear these days. That’s respect, man!)

For those of you out there stuck with “ordinary” TV, I pity you. I really do. Ask anyone with the power of TiVo – you’ll see how good life can be. If nothing else, having the power to fast forward through that stupid gastro-intestinal-macarena Pepto-Bismol ad ("heartburn, upset stomach, DIAHHREA!") is worth the $6.95 a month.

Three thumbs up!

The Final Chapter at B&N

Tonight is my last shift at Rhymes with Darnes & Joble. At 11:00 tonight I’ll be officially “retired”, only without any retirement pay, gold watch, or even a measly token office. I’ll be a quitter ex-bookseller, and that’s it.

But I’m okay with that. School is keeping me busy enough that I won’t have time to worry about it. Still, I’ll miss the place. It’s been a lot of fun there (for the most part) over the last couple of years, and I’ve made a lot of good friends in the process. But the worst part? I’ll lose my employee discount. How unfair is that? Nothing sucks more than having to pay retail prices for my reading habit.

I’m still a little bummed abut walking away right before their busiest season of the year, but it can’t be helped. Accounting starts next week, and from what I’ve heard from those who’ve been through the class already, it’s a real bitch. Tons of homework, lots of studying. Since I’m still sporting a 4.0 GPA (and I have a 99.05% in Microeconomics right now), I’d like to keep it intact for a while longer. So I’ll read about ledgers and account balances instead. Not nearly as exciting, but in the long run, it ought to be worth it.

Rhymes with Sarnes & Yoble last week even gave me a raise – which I really appreciated, since my fulltime employer hasn’t given us one in the last 2.5 years. (El cheapo bastardos.) It’s funny how I’m leaving the job I like to stay with the one I don’t, but alas – the fulltime gig pays double what Thymes with Karnes & Poble does, so I’ll to eat a few more shit sandwiches for a while longer until I finish school and can get the heck outta here and away from Skippy Whitebread and his OCD world. The things we have to do to avoid living in a cardboard box...

So that’s it. I’ll go in tonight, fill a basket with books I’d like to have before my discount melts away, then right before closing I’ll make my Visa card smoke like the air at a Dead concert. Then I’ll go back to being just a civilian, free to browse the shelves without having to worry about alphabetically arranging the titles in the process.

And I promise I won’t come in and leave a mess for the current booksellers to clean up. That’d be just rude, and we can’t have that, now can we?

So hurry up, make your final purchases, finish that latte. The doors are closing. Perhaps one day they’ll open even wider for me.