I pulled another beautiful "Pat only" maneuver today. I've been broke for awhile now. But, its okay, because I have a job. And all my money "difficulties", ie staring at a balance of 25 dollars, were gonna end today. Becuase today I got paid. Then, me the genius, I left the stupid blinking check at work. Yeah, only I would forget a check like that. Well, at least I singed up for the direct deposit so I won't even get anymore checks.

I love being a complete failure at the day-to-day affairs of life.

My coworkers get increasingly awesome as we get to know each other. We were chatting about the presidency today and I was staying out of it because I don't know shit about the democratic primary that is currently "on". Then Adam suggests that we should just elect Richard Nixon.

Me: Nixon is dead. He's been dead. In fact, he's pretty well on his way towards complete decomposition at this point.
Adam: That's fine, we'd just call him "President Skeletor".

I laughed by balls off. I mean, c'mon, imagine a skeleton, preferably dressed like skeletor from He-Man, waving his bony, well, finger bones, and saying, "I am not a crook".

Its gonna be a night of beer. Not sure if video games or a bar is going to be involved, but it will be good.
- posted by Pat @ 8:15 PM

 
BRINGING BACK THE BITS:

today's retro bit is brought to you by myself actually. Its the quote of the day.

Me - "I'm not paranoid, you're just an idiot."

to Dan(onthisGrog). Dude, the rabbits are totally coming after you.
- posted by Pat @ 1:03 AM

 
Hit the Rhino last night. I got pretty trashed because everytime I tried to leave, the bartender, a sexy blonde lady, was hitting on me and kept bringing me more beer. I wanted to stay and see what happened, but I had to do this whole super lame, "wake up in time to get to work" thing. So eventually I left and kicked myself the whole way home. I mean really, what's more important, work, or a girl?

I prolly should have said girl, but I was drunk and I did not have my priorities straight.

And Rhino continues to rule because of that. I spent 6 dollars, had 6 pints, two or three of those dollars were tipped. Many comped beers.

So I talked to my GM today. He was all like, "Hey anybody want to go to Inida?" I was all, "Hey sure, we're just training people, right? So its not, like, actual work?" GM- "... I guess". Me - "Rule, sign me up."

So I'm going to India. I'll be leaving somewhere in the mid to late february time. And no, I don't know where I'm going. It sounded like dubabuh. I know that's not it, but I'm not real good with this whole, "listening and making sense of what other people say" thing. Additionally, I'm teaching myself to be a Unix admin in my spare time. Seems like a useful skill to have. Well, provided I'm gonna be working on Unix systems.

And now, to go roll in the mud which is in the States, because, you see, I'm going to India. It goes to 11 over there. Not 10, 11.

And yeah, its gonna be effing summer. So all you jokers are gonna be freezing, and I'm gonna be all kicking back, getting a sunburn and wondering why in the hell I can't find a decent beer.
- posted by Pat @ 8:02 PM

 
I've really got to start writing stuff down. Stuff like, "if the roast beef smells bad, don't make the sandwich no matter how good roast beef, cheddar cheese and mustard sounds". And no, to all you people who thought like me, making the sandwich and then assuming that the mustard and extra sharp cheddar cheese would somehow make the roast beef good again is not correct.

Also stuff like, "paper work is awful. Get a secretary." I suppose that note should be prefaced by, "get super rich to afford a secretary", but if I don't write it down I will forget. And really, I hate paperwork. I really hope I get rich soon so I can hire someone else to do it.

Additionally, I should take a note to, get rid of this cold. And my coworked should take a note to, not come into work when you're sick. Because this better be a cold. Not what ever the fuck had you up puking half the night.
- posted by Pat @ 6:36 PM

 
And now that my post removal has been accmomplished, let me tell you a little story about a man and his cell phone. That man, you see, is me. And I just got a cell phone. Its not much of a story, but there it is. And here's the climax of it:

(773)580-7516

Oh what thrilling writing. I'm sure the critics will love it.

Work is totally ruling right now. Its difficult, I'm learning stuff and the people I work with are totally cool. The only thing that's gonna rule even more is when I get paid. That, sadly, isn't for awhile. So I must continue with my life of poorness, or something.

And now, the exit.

*exit*
- posted by Pat @ 8:14 PM

 
The weekend rundown, brought to you by, shit, I don't know. Something or other. Oh right, my inability to fall asleep before 2 am.

Friday: Had some Pabst out with James and John. Then we played Mario Kart Double Dash. I cannot stress how awesome that game is. If only I had paychecks already, I would get that. Or maybe not, as I'm a travelling consultant and would never get to play it.

Saturday: tried to get more pabst at a local liquor store, they did not have it. So I got a six pack of Miller High Life tall boys. Tasty, but no PBR. The tallboys were enjoyed to the tune of Tony Hawk Underground and robot anime. Its something with a G, can't really remember right now. It was good, but my memory bites.

Sunday was hanging with the fam. My cousin Chris came in from England. He's a rocking guy. Sadly, he got in on thursday and nobody told me. Arrghh...

And tomorrow I will begin my practice run at being an Ab Initio guy. Its got to be better than lecture. Lecture I don't need. So I'm pumped. Real stuff, real fast and real cool. Or something. I'm not really sure yet. I'll find out tomorrow.

good stuff: Writing. Funny lady, good writing.

And now, the sleepage.
- posted by Pat @ 1:02 AM

 
The first week of work is in the books. Ugh. I am very much not down with this whole "waking up before the sun" garbage. However, the whole "getting paid thing" is a defenite upshot.

So I slept a bunch during work, half slept, drank loads of coffee to not sleep or was so bored I wished I was sleeping. Oh, and I'm wondering why I bothered to get a degree at all. My teacher type guy spent about 15 minutes today explaining how his nested ifelse statements worked. Now, to someone who isn't in compsci/compEng or something where programming is an important part of your degree, I can see needing a little aside to understand ifelse. Its reasonably intuitive, but if its new, you still need it. However, a room full of people who have spent at least four years programming, really don't need that. That's just an example but the past two days have been like that. Unrelenting explanations that are geared to us about 4 years ago. It makes me want to hurt him.

And developing for them is somewhat similar to playing with lincoln logs. I take premade components, slap them together then hook them up with lines. A monkey could do this. I'm so glad I spent four years getting a degree so I could do this.

Argh....

And that's all I've done. Its been a boring, lame week. Hopefully things will start getting better. Or maybe I'll just start going into work drunk. It always seems to work in movies.
- posted by Pat @ 6:33 PM

 
two points for you if you guessed that I went up to Rhino with Dan(notonthisblog) and got trashed last night. If you didn't guess that, well, all I can say is that you're new here or stupid.

Work starts tomorrow. Its gonna be pumpful. Or, you know, something like that. Maybe I'll get canned on the first day. Maybe I'll get run over by a car or get involved in some kind of hideous CIA masterminded plot. Or, maybe those damn Aliens I ordered a couple of days ago will show up and I'll have to fight them. I mean hell, I can take them. I've been practicing with a hockey stick for, seriously now, three or four whole days.

So no one told me until it was way too late that Cowboy Bebop is mainly depressing. I was just "lucky" to only see the happy/funny ones. Its quite depressing. It paints a very bleak picture that just did not jive with the upbeat nature of the opening theme song. Ohh those punks. However, it was an amazingly well done series. I thoroughly enjoyed it and heartily reccommend it to anybody. And if you know me, you can even borrow it.

And now, back to football. And maybe I can do some food scavenging or something to fill this giant hole in my belly.
- posted by Pat @ 5:29 PM

 
And the people, they danced in the streets with joy...

I got my Anime. Whooppee!! My life, once again, has a deep and necessary meaning. To watch the anime. Of course, this is gonna totally ruin my plans to start getting to sleep earlier, but hey. You do what you can, right? And really, what's more important, me watching all this awesome, awesome anime I just got in, or making sure I'm bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for my first day of work? First day of work is like first day of school, effing syllabus day and no one is gonna care. So I say, bring on the sleepless nights. Bring on the amazingness which is FLCL, Trigun and Cowboy Bebop.

And suddenly, all is right with the world again.
- posted by Pat @ 5:53 PM

 
The Job prep continues. I spent 'bout 1.5 hours getting new pants yesterday. They rock. They have those sweet "comfort straps" so that when you sit down or put on like 25 pounds they still fit comfortably. Two of those and a pair of throwback dockers to when I wore them for gradeschool. Yes, those kinds of pants. Too big in the waist, to long in the inseem and that very washed out gray that you see on Catholic grade school students. I'm going retro in my own, personal very lame way.

Today was the hair cut and buying a belt that isn't all busted up. Belt is also dockers, continuing in the retro trend, and its got a fairly simple but large, dull steel buckle. I like it. And the hair cut. This was odd. In fact, so odd to me, it gets its own paragraph.

I'm going to the barber I tried to go to last time but was closed because it was a monday. Roll in. Get immediately taken care of. Now, its not the head honcho, but he's got a line and no one else does, so I go with the dude. I'm thinking, "I'll get a good hair cut and he was the only person to call me over." So I go, sit down. Throw down with the standard, "short on the sides, back and trim the top" which essentially means to the barber,"I don't know or care so do whatever the fuck you want, just don't make me any uglier than I already am." He starts cutting. First time I've ever had someone use a set of clippers with guard engaged and a comb. It was good. Gotta get that again. The weird part was how it ended. It ended like RoTK, ie about 12000 times. First, he uses the short hair trimmer, and oh my god...

What the hell am i doing? Is my life really this sad that I'm giving a blow-by-fucking-blow account of a goddamned haircut?!? Sweet shit, I can't wait for my fucking job to start.

Okay, I know it was a problem when I was drinking everyday, but at least I had stories to tell and share. And this grog didn't stare at me everyday and say shit like,"you neglect me Pat, why do you leave me all alone?"

Oh wait, right. I'm supposed to have cohorts. I'm calling you out Haji, where's the love? You jerkhole.
- posted by Pat @ 7:35 PM

 
Its been a real quiet kind of week here in Chicago. I've been doing laid back, energy conserving things because I've got this whole job thing starting up next monday. I'm not sure how its gonna go, me waking up at 6 am every day when i've been waking up at noon or later for 6 months. But, at the very least, it should make for some interesting mornings. Or, very blearly, "where the hell is the coffee" mornings.

I'll be sporting some sweet new bruises from walking into shit before my brain engages.

Update: Haji is finally back from his vacations so this won't just be the "Pat all alone" show anymore. And as much fun as this has been, just you and me, its time for other people to get back into this relationship. What can I say, I'm a big fan of sharing.

Or something.

Sorry, I'm just not funny or anything right now. I've been playing Tiger Woods 2004 all night and as much fun as that is to repeatedly hit the damn ball into the water even though the stupid thing says its gonna clear the hazard by, oh, 50 yards, that's not real entertaining reading material.

So I'm just gonna sign off now, and hope something interesting happens tomorrow. Like, maybe I'll have to fight off some aliens or something. I'm sure that me attempting to fight anything can only be a source of pure, comic gold.
- posted by Pat @ 1:40 AM

 
Per the norm, I'm listening to Guster:Keep It Together, and everything is right with the world. No idea why, it just is.

Last night. Wow. I am the man with the super power. My power: avoiding the soap opera. You know the soap opera of life. You've got a friend or two, does something real stupid and suddenly everyone is having little conferences in the back room, or outside, or upstairs and suddenly I'm deprived of one of my favorite games: tracking who is hooking up with who during the night. It ain't me, so I might as well know and give people shit for it the next day.

So I've got this bubble. Its the official "Soap Opera Prevention Bubble". This bubble extends to as far as I'm paying attention so it can, and will, grow and shrink over the course of the night. How do I create this bubble or field? I have no idea. Sometimes its best not to question the wonders of God's infinite wisdom.

This bubble was invoked well before I realized it. In fact, it was prolly created as soon as I was approaching Dan(notonthisblog)'s house. There's just something absolutely awful and totally fun about New Year's at Dan(notonthisblog)'s house. Good tradition and always a story. Always an awful story that's funny because I laugh at pain, but its there.

The first thing the bubble did was try to get me to go home. It knew it would fail at least a little before the night was over. However, I had spent a considerable amount of money on beer, so I was staying until the beer was done. I'm on my second to last beer and I meet the official bullet head of that party. He's the guy that seems okay at first, bunch of great stories, but he refuses to believe that you ever understand him. He's also the first guy to ever have more impressive "holy shit, last night..." stores than me. Of course, I didn't realize that he was the bullet head until later.

People are showing up, party is, finally, starting to swing. Sexual innuendos are flying. I keep popping outside for a smoke. Its nice and cool out there, and then one time, I come back in. People are missing. This is, by and large, okay. I didn't do a very accurate head count, but I wasn't particularly worried at the moment. Then I got the most intense desire to meet new people. Maybe it was because there were some attractive females I didn't know there, or maybe I was getting drunk. Far more likely is that the bubble new what was going on and needed to get me the hell out of the soap opera that was brewing.

By this point, whatever happened has already happened. I can honestly say, I don't know what happened last night. I was just kinda, you know, there. If last night ever gets turned into a made for TV movie, I'm the lovable dork in the background who makes the comic relief for the people watching at home so they can either A.) go get some more popcorn or B.)Have a nervous chuckle while they prepare themselves for what's going to happen next.

So I'm bubbling, and I've got like 8 people protected by my bubble. Its like I said, its not allowed to happen inside the bubble. And I protected them. And they were glad. Sometimes they would venture out of the bubble for a beer, or a shot or something. That was always a mistake. They would leave, come back like a half hour later with that, "Oh sweet shit, how the hell did I get involved in this particular pile of crap. I just wanted a beer!?!" face. They'd look at me and invariably they would say, "I swear, I'm not leaving again."

Finally I break down the permanence of the bubble by walking around for a bit. People keep walking in and out, get involved and uninvolved and, by and large, this is funny to me. Just watching these things happen around me like some kind of freakish brownian motion where for some reason, I'm always cold.

Eventually, the soap opera dies down and Dan's parents come home. I totally got to drink with them. That's been one of my goals for a number of years. So I'm talking to Ms. Shine and she's all like, "Hey, I've got some Ham and some Mostocolli, DO IT." So I obliged. Got me an eating mate in Ryan Duncan and we went to hit the Ham. We ate like barbarians. I was just hacking off big hunks of ham and passing them out on forks. Kinda like cocktail weenies on toothpicks. So we ate Ham. And Theresa showed up and had carrots. And then the mostocolli, which Brian Tracy and I ate all of.

But, there's a problem with all of this. Note earlier I said the soap had died down, not ended. And now I'm upstairs while the major players, and the Bullethead, are downstairs. Two points if you just guessed that without me and my bubble shit flared. So I eat for like 45 minutes, then go back downstairs. Hid from the bullethead who keeps trying to make me do another shot, and tried to establish some kind of wide angle bubble ray. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it was at this point that I noticed that Invader Zim was on Dan's computer, so I sat down and watched that for awhile. Talked to some people, and then, 'round 'bout 6.30 am, I left.

The soap opera was dead.
The bullethead was not.

I got home to my bed while all those other jokers were fighting over broken chairs and thought about my night. I actually giggled myself to sleep for about a half an hour. Yes, I do think last night was that effing humorous.

To recap: I'm a more powerful superhero than Andrew Ballester because what I originally dubbed the ability to "not have stupid people talk to me" has been properly id'ed as "avoiding the soap opera". And his super power of "the reflex" has been killed. Ha-fucking-ha Andy. You're super weak.
- posted by Pat @ 6:55 PM