So, Do I Install the Active X?

Jesus Christ. I was going to start this off with another installment of Vocational Errors by Your Host Mark (an extremely popular feature here at Flunky Boy...not sure what to make of that) but I've been getting my ass kicked by my current job lately and I can't seem to focus on my ridiculous past occupations. I'll spare you the details but basically I've been attending a whole slew of trainings lately and my function during these sessions is to act as support for the presenter (usually my boss). I stand in the back of the room and wait for people who are having computer problems to call me over. I then scurry (yes, scurry) over to them and hopefully fix whatever issue they are having as well as get them caught up to where the rest of the class is.

Most of the classes have been rather large (30+ people) and although I know that one of the reasons that I even took this job was that I wanted to step out of my "comfort zone" and experience/learn new stuff...holy hell is it draining. We had a small group at a training this morning and I honestly don't know that they have ever used a computer before. I was going from user to user answering some really basic questions:

"How do I get the screen to look like his?" (usually while pointing both at their computer screen and the projected image at the front of the room at the same time. Oh, and their computer screens typically have hundreds of smeared fingerprints all over them)

Um, you click on the folder here.

"What? The little blue link?"

Yea, ok, sure. The little blue link. Click that. It'll open and you'll see what is up on the big screen there. No, you have to actually click on the...yea. Right there. No, use the mouse...and..

"Ooooh!" (and then they beam up at me like I'm magic)

Fuck me.

All of this takes a lot out of me. I know intellectually anyway that doing these trainings will get easier with regard to doing the presentations and getting the message across and all that happy horseshit but I don't think it'll get any easier on my mental energy depletion. After being in one of the sessions I want to go to a nice quiet place for the rest of the day. But most likely I will not be able to do that. Stupid mortgage. I also can't understand why people in these trainings, most of whom are of reasonable intelligence simply CANNOT follow simple directions. At the beginning of each training we mention that they might get prompted to install an Active X control thing and they should go ahead and install it. Literally 5 minutes later I'm running over to someone who has fallen behind because they did NOT install the file and now the program is frozen. "Oh, I saw that but I didn't know I was supposed to install it." Sigh. I'm telling you it hurts me.

Last week I attended a training, not as a presenter OR support staff but as a student. It was one of these touchy-feely classes that companies love so much. Basically the gist of the thing was that people typically fall into several categories based on their personalities and this was a class on how to recognize those personality traits and how to interact with someone who looks at the world differently than yourself. Sounds almost helpful there doesn't it? The problem I think is that I am clearly an introvert and as an introvert I'm fairly certain that I will not use this method to help me "read" people. I don't like people so why would I want to understand their point of view? They annoy me and waste my precious sitting by myself and reading time (and by "reading" I mean playing Grand Theft Auto). I'm not shitting on the class or even the concept of the program but I just know that I personally did not find much useful information there. It really wasn't bad, it just wasn't for me is all. Meh, at least I got a free lunch out of the deal.

So work is still challenging me and right now I think I'm experiencing my typical "change makes me cranky" phase. I don't know when this phase ends as I have always been cranky. I just feel crankier than usual lately. They did find a permanent place for me to sit finally but the rub is that I still ended up with someone sitting directly behind me. Granted there is a little more room in this space but I still get that uneasy feeling of knowing that there is someone else just over my shoulder. Next time I'll post about the time I worked in a factory/warehouse that made toy trains. For reals.

Goodbye Aunt Edie

My family lost a great lady a couple of days ago. My Aunt Edie (who is my mother's sister) died after a brief illness. We will all miss her very much and my thoughts are with my cousins during this hard time. She was one tough and funny lady and I'm going to miss her tremendously.

During the summers when I was growing up, Aunt Edie and Uncle Woody would have us all over for cookouts almost every weekend. They had a huge backyard and a pool, one of those above-ground circular jobs, so all of us kids (meaning all the cousins) were thrilled to go there. My mother's side of the family is pretty big (my mom was one of 8 kids, all of whom started their own families) so these summer weekends at the Wood's house were pretty crowded. The house I grew up in was pretty small and although there was a decent sized backyard, our landlord fancied himself a gardner and therefore wouldn't allow us to play in most of the yard. So when we would go to Aunt Edie's (yes, I know it was Uncle Woody's place too but I always called it "going to Aunt Edie's") it was amazing because we had full run of the whole yard.

Aunt Edie had a really dry wit and most of her joking around was lost on me as a kid. Kids look at most situations literally so I totally didn't understand most of what she said to me back then (unless she was telling me to stop doing whatever destructive thing I was doing. That shit I understood quickly. Never piss off a McAleavey). I'm really glad that later on I was smart enough to actually talk to not only her but all of my aunts and uncles and get them to talk about their stories. I wasn't quite smart enough yet or maybe I just didn't get enough time to actually talk to my own parents the way I was able to talk to Aunt Edie and other members of my family. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to listen to her and get to understand that she really was a smart and funny woman who raised her family and dealt with what life threw at her with a determination and will that I think is pretty rare.

I poke fun at my family but in the end, they are a great bunch of people. Don't get me wrong, they're all completely batty but I think that's a good thing. If they weren't the mixed bag of nuts that they are it would be really boring at reunions. When we all get together (like we just did this past summer to celebrate Aunt Edie's 75th birthday) I think what shines through is that we all understand that we're in this together. We can lean on each other and look to each other for support during hard times with the knowledge that the help will be there. My family hasn't been the best at communication over the years but I think we're improving. The torch has been passed from our parent's generation onto us and although we've had some missteps I think we're on track. Aunt Edie would be proud.

Beep Beep! Toot Toot!

How-do? I have this flip camera and I've been kinda futzing around with it. Just having fun y'know? At any rate, I thought I'd try shooting my commute home. Now bear in mind that I don't know what I'm doing here. I edited it to increase the frame rate...are you still reading this? Just click the fucking thing already will ya? The high-pitched sounds are the music I had on as well as me complaining about people's driving skills. I couldn't figure out how to fix that.

For to enjoy. Please don't hunt me down and murder me.

Hey! Get Offa My Porch!

Halloween is this weekend (tomorrow as a matter of fact) and I'm not looking forward to it. When we first moved in together, the Wiff (then the GF) and I had zero trick or treaters come to the apartment. Granted, they would have had to have access to the building first so that's probably the reason. The next apartment didn't offer much in the way of Halloween festivities either and it wasn't until the 3rd apartment that we finally had a few kids come to our door. I usually would spend the night worrying that some shithead kid would egg my car or something. Nothing ever happened like that luckily. And now that most of our friends have kids themselves, the possibility of being invited to a Halloween party are lessening too. That's not something I'm missing at all, I just thought I'd mention it.

When we bought the house we were excited that we would probably have a few kids come and do the trick or treat thing. It was going to be fun! We'll get to meet our neighbors! We'll be able to establish our place as the cool house in the neighborhood! We even went the extra mile and bought a bunch of goofy stuff from this catalog and filled up little bags with toys and candy. We spent a couple nights sitting at the dining room table filling up the bags and trying to evenly distribute the chotchkies so that everyone got a fair share. It was a big hit and we got (if memory serves) 80-something kids that year. "Holy crap", we thought. "That's a lot of kids!" We were mistaken. That's nothing. The next year we got over a hundred and it has been steadily climbing ever since. The cats hate it as they associate the doorbell ringing with a terrifying attack or something because whenever it rings they bolt upstairs instantly. Oliver actually growls too. He's wicked intimidating.

We have since scaled back on the extra gift things and have gone with straight candy for the last 5 years or so. But that doesn't seem to matter as last year we got 135 kids. This year, who knows? Maybe we should start giving out Smarties or some other crappy candy or maybe pennies to make our numbers go down (by the way, when did the regular Halloween candies get so small? I remember the "Fun Size" bars being the disappointing standard but now they're all like "mini bars" or some bullshit. Whatta gyp). However, when we were cleaning out the basement during The Great Purge of 2009 we did come across a bag of leftover Halloween toys. We won't do the little gift bags but The Wiff will be handing out those toys on a first come/first serve basis. Hopefully no one will get stabbed on our porch during the mad scramble to get a shitty rubber skeleton and a pumpkin pencil. I don't actually interact with the little buggers because I find them annoying but the Wiff loves it. She does the whole sing-song voice thing and Oooohs and Aaaahs over all the kid's costumes. She's insane.

But Halloween also reminds me that our wedding anniversary is rapidly approaching. It was 12 years ago tomorrow that I proposed to Amy in a bar at Logan Airport. Classy. We were planning a vacation in Vegas and I thought that this would be perfect. Luckily for me she thought so too and we were married 3 days later on November 3, 1997. Happy anniversary Amy (a.k.a. The Wiff)!

I Left the House Again

I went out Saturday night AND it was raining. I want extra credit for that. Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women played out at Great Scott in Allston and since I hadn't seen them play in about a year and a half I really wanted to see this show. Plus, it being their record release, I figured it was going to be a good show. So The Wiff, my sis Mary and our friend Dee piled into the volvo (a.k.a. The Old Girl) and headed over to Allston.

We had plenty of time and so we had decided to grab something to eat before the show. The Wiff had made reservations at this cool Japanese place called Shabu Toki. I had found it while I was online looking for another restaurant over there (that seems to have closed, thank you ever-so-creepy Google Maps) and it looked interesting. I dropped the ladies off at the restaurant and then went to find a parking spot. I figured that since this is my old neighborhood that I'd be able to find a place to park fairly quickly. I was so wrong. I went up and down Brighton Ave a bunch of times, down side streets (even past our old apartment on Chester St) and over into areas that I really didn't want to leave the car. Nothing. No spots to be had. And the rain just would not stop. I had hoped that this would keep the traffic down but no such luck there. Apparently rain doesn't bother young people in the slightest.

After 43 minutes, yes, FORTY-THREE MINUTES of circling and back-tracking I finally found a spot a few blocks up from where the club is. Now normally finding a spot that was relatively close to the club would be a good thing (and it was after the show), but I still had to walk past the club and to the restaurant in the rain. And since I am whatever the opposite of a boy scout is, I did not have an umbrella. "Never prepared". That's my fucking motto. By the time I got to the restaurant I was soaked. Drenched even. And no, I did not have a rain coat either. The good thing about this though is that since I was so delayed in getting there, the food and my beer were already waiting for me when I finally did arrive. That was pretty sweet.

And goddamn that Shabu Toki place was great. I didn't know much about what the whole Shabu Shabu experience was like but I'd go back there again. I don't know that I'd go back on a Saturday night (in the rain, did I mention the rain?) again but I'd certainly try a Tuesday or a Wednesday perhaps. I would recommend it to anyone too by the by. Plus, as a bonus, it's pretty cheap too.

After dinner we trudged back through the rain to the club. When The Wiff and I lived over in Allston this bar was kinda off limits to us cuz it always seems stuffed to the rafters with douchebags and frat boys (is that redundant? I think it might be). I can remember fights spilling out of there and onto the sidewalk and thinking to myself "yea, I'm never going in there". So walking into the club I didn't really know what to expect. The bar area itself is a little wonky but the space is ok. Unfortunately it's another one of these places that decided to have bands play as sort of an after thought. The stage is stuffed into a back corner of the bar where, as Kevin C. said, it "looks like that's where they used to store the empty beer cases". He isn't kidding. There really isn't much of an area for the crowd to stand and watch the show without completely blocking access to the bathrooms. So throughout the show there was a near constant stream (hee!) of people making their way to and from the bathrooms.

Normally I hate crowds (cuz of the whole hating people thing) but for some reason when I'm at a show I can be in a crowd getting bumped into every 2 seconds and I'm ok with it. I'm not saying I ENJOY it, but it doesn't make me freak out or get angry. I think it's cuz there's a sense of purpose or community perhaps when people are gathered in a tiny narrow room to watch a band play. Everyone knows it isn't ideal and so we just get along. I found a space where I could have my back up against a wall (to minimize the bumpings) and as it turns out the sound at the club was pretty decent. The band really sounded great and as always put on a fun, energetic show. I always run into a bunch of people that I know at their shows too so that's cool.

After the show ended I went and got the car and picked everyone up out front 'cuz I'm a fucking gentleman goddammit. When we finally got home I was all wound up so I knew I couldn't go to sleep right away. I watched some god awful television until 4am and then went upstairs and passed out. So there you have it: a night out with me with very little complaining. Ok, so I did moan about the parking issue and the fact that I was soaked oh and that people kept bumping into me and ... fine. Hmph. I still had a good time overall so there. Go by "Your Secrets are Mine Now". Do it.

The Very Timely Death of The Crack

After living with the ginormous crack in our kitchen ceiling for 11 years, the Wiff and I have decided that it's time to fix the mofo. And of course by this I mean "hire some dude to fix the mofo". The ceiling was damaged by what we suspect was the previous owner's kids. The bathroom is directly above the crack and an overflowing tub is the likely culprit. For the first 9 years we lived in the house, we completely ignored the crack and just puttered around the house blissfully ignorant of the blight taking up residence in our tiny, whacked-out kitchen. It was there, and we knew about it but it wasn't bothering anyone so we left it alone. Then in 2007 we put the house up for sale (I know...not exactly the best timing. Thanks economy!) and the crack was like a big ol' gaping mouth saying "HA! No one will pay what you're asking for this place with ME hanging around!" The crack was right.

I had attempted to repair it for the sake of making the house more presentable by using plaster button doo-dads but that didn't work out so great. As I was trying to install them I got a first-hand look at just how bad the damage was/is. When I drilled in the first button, the crack started to open up about 2 feet away from where I was applying pressure. I stopped cold and so did the ceiling. There was a bit of stand off for a few minutes and then I backed off. The crack was taunting me. So I ate the cost of the buttons and decided to smear some joint compound into the largest part of the crack. Yes, it looked shitty but it looked somewhat less shitty than before. I am no artisan. Oh, and then our house still didn't sell. Awesome.

So cut to this past summer and how damp it was here in the Boston area. The beginning of the summer was cooler and certainly wetter than recent memory and when the heat finally did arrive, I noticed the crack had widened. It had drooped more and become more noticeable. And then it started to drop bits of itself onto the kitchen floor. I'd notice little tiny bits of plaster crumbs that the cats had obviously enjoyed batting around the night before. Well goddamn. Now every time I wander into the kitchen (which is a lot...heh, stupid belly), I immediately look up at The Crack. It is now large enough to warrant proper noun status. I secretly think that my joint compound band aid may have aggravated the situation but don't tell the Wiff ok?

And so blah blah blah we're getting it fixed. A few nights ago we had a guy stop by to take a look but it turns out he doesn't fix ceilings (mis-communication there...he's a painter. whoops) so that wasn't so much helpful as it was a complete waste of everyone's time. However, tonight we have a genuine ceiling fixer dude/plaster guru coming over to laugh at our ceiling. Dunno if he'll be the one we end up hiring but it's a start. So fuck The Crack. He must go.

This is The Crack. I hate him.

Stop grinning at me you prick.

We Have Had Our Summer Evenings, Now for October Eves!

The change of the seasons: It's the one thing that people who move away from this part of the country say that they miss. But as my friend Janine pointed out, it's mostly autumn that they miss. It is hands-down my favorite season. Autumn to me is brisk mornings with dew on the grass, clear blue skies, leaves changing color and clean air. It's a light jacket and the nice walk down by the water. It's poems by Dickinson, Keats or Thoreau. It's apple picking, cider donuts and pies. It's sitting in the living room reading a book with a fire going. It is glorious and it should last from mid-September to mid-November.

This year? Yea, this morning it was 58 degrees downstairs in the house. It was 61 upstairs. Fuck that shit. Last night I closed the storm windows in the dining room and some of them upstairs but there are still some open. I had a fire blazing last night so it was at least comfortable downstairs. But this morning when we got up we had to turn the heat on earlier than we have ever had to in the past (or at least earlier than I can remember us doing). Granted I only had the thing come on to 63 degrees but that took the chill out of the air and made getting ready for work more bearable. Tonight we'll close up the rest of the house and hopefully we won't need to have the heat on at all. Usually, since I'm a stingy cunt I like to try to wait until the first of November before turning on the heat. I think I've been able to do that maybe 3 or 4 times since we've lived in that house.

Autumn also means that winter is fast approaching and with that so is my birthday. I'm turning 40 goddamn years old in January. Holy piss. Now I know that people say that "Forty is the new thirty!". Mmm-hmm. You know who says that? Old people, that's who. Forty is forty and that's that. Luckily for my mindset I'm really only as mature as a 15-year-old so I've got that going for me. I'm not one for harping on age normally but this one has me kind of off balance. I guess I just never really thought about getting older and being a 40 year old guy. Yea, yea, stop saying "but it's not really old". I know this. But it's older than I ever really thought I'd be. Not that I'm saying I thought about dying or anything like that, but since I'm not really a well-thought out guy, I just didn't allow myself to think or plan about what I would want/need at this age. Or in the future for that matter. Plus, my own immediate family history doesn't bode well for getting older as both my parents died at a young age, Mom at 58 and Dad at 61.

So what does that mean? I dunno. Thinking about this kind of stuff is new territory for me. I have a pretty good life overall (great marriage, fantastic friends and family, decent job and a house that is still standing) and for the first time in a while the future is looking pretty stable. I say this with trepidation because although I don't believe in much, I do believe in "jinxing" things. Plus, the economy and my own checkered past tell me that there is always the possibility of losing my job and then at least one aspect of my life will suffer. But I've made it through that stuff before so it doesn't worry me as much as it used to. The Wiff and I decided years ago to not have kids and I am still fully on board with that decision. I think it was the right one for us and will continue to be so. That being said, I think there is room for a change soon. Ha, no, not on the "no kids" front. I'm talking about living where we live. Having no kids makes this decision easier to execute.

Ever since I was 10 years old or so I've wanted to live in Maine. Why Maine? Well, because it isn't Massachusetts (anymore). Real estate in Maine, in comparison with what I'm used to here, is affordable. The biggest issue of course is looking for work. Finding a place to live with a decent mortgage is a pretty large problem too. I've been looking at places near the Augusta area and the prices are reasonable. I would like this to happen within the next 3 years. "But Mark, you're a city boy. You've never lived outside of city in anything even remotely rural. Won't you go sort of stir crazy?" I dunno. I don't think so. I have less inclination to go out to clubs to watch a band play like I used to (I still do it on occasion but just not EVERY weekend like before) so I don't feel like that'll be a huge issue. Plus, keep in mind the fact that I really, honestly do not like people and places where there are ... people. The occasional night out with me has usually turned into me hating on those around me and the Wiff annoyed at how intolerant I can be. So maybe living in a less crowded area is exactly what the doctor ordered.

But whatever does happen it'll be ok. For reals. I'm less of a worry-wart than I used to be. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a mess but less so. Plus, I'm looking forward to the trip to Ireland the Wiff and I are taking for my b-day. We're going to Dublin, then down to Cork, Kinsale, and swing up the west coast to Galway. I can't wait. We went to the west coast of Ireland a few years back on a bus tour with a bunch of people but this time it'll just be the two of us and a little rental car. Maybe we'll move there instead....hmmmm.