Disjointed Ramblings With No Discernible Thread (a.k.a. "Normal")

I just can't seem to get around to updating this site on a regular basis. I start out with good intentions and positive thoughts about how I'm going to post at least once a week or maybe even twice a week! Holy shit! And then I get all mixed up in my dumb life and I neglect the site. It's not like I forget or anything. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I become keenly aware that it has been X number of days since I last updated and I'm disappointing literally 10's of people (ok, maybe just 10). Before I know it, I've created this mad pressure in my own head about what the next post should be and how it should be a hugely funny/interesting story about how I did whatever with whomever (awww, yeah. Homey whips out the "whom". boo-ya).

But the days pile up and I still can't think of anything even remotely interesting to write about so I....don't. I simply don't write anything about anything. I even went so far during one of my "whooo-hoo-look-at-me-I'm-gonna-be-all-super-creative-and-I-have-all-these-ideas-and-they-come-out-of-my-head-so-fast-that-I-can't-write-them-down-quickly-enough-and-I-need-to-have-some-sort-of-way-to-get-these-great-ideas-onto-the-internet-so-that-people-can-ignore-them" that I went and bought myself a micro-recorder thing. No, seriously. The idea was that I could simply just record the thoughts that are too precious, fragile and fleeting to try to get onto paper or even a computer text file (or, gasp! a fucking blog post) because of course I'd ALWAYS have this recorder thing with me at all times right? I mean, look how small it is! It's totally not inconvenient or unrealistic at all! So I bought it. I've used it as I had intended exactly zero times. I'm a moron. I did record my cat snoring once though. So that's a win right?

Speaking of cats, Molly has a problem. A pretty big problem actually. She has a tumor in her little head. In her right eye specifically. I may have mentioned (I can't remember and god knows I don't actually read this) that her eye changed color last year and although the doctor said, "Meh, that happens, no worries", we were worried all the same thank you very much. Her behavior was different (more aggressive than usual) and The Wiff took her back to the vet to get some scans and shit done. Turns out the eye is cancerous. Lovely. So tomorrow (Feb 1st) she goes in to surgery to have it removed. I'm going to have a pirate kitty. Poor little girl. I'm actually really worried about it but since I'm also completely shut down emotionally and don't know how to express how I truly feel, I shall minimize it and move on. Hold on a sec while I turn this stress and angst into a little hard ball that will eventually eat its way out of my chest....there we go.

So, winter. Can we talk about winter for a paragraph or two? The snow has been such a fucking asshole this year. I know that in '94-'95 and '96 here in Boston there was more snow than blah blah blah I don't fucking care. Back then I didn't have a car and I lived in an apartment where it was someone else's job to shovel this shit. Now it is my responsibility (unless I'm in Miami, right Amy? Wheeeeee!). I am old and decrepit and quite honestly I have run out of places to put the stuff. The snow piles on my sad little postage stamp of a lawn are taller than I am. The snow bank at the end of my driveway is the size of one of those huge SUV's. And this week we're supposed to get even more snow. Great. I give up. Just keep snowing on me. Make my roof collapse. I don't care anymore. I can't fight you Mother Nature, you win automatically. I can't even flip the board (which is a great tactic usually when losing a game).



Last week it snowed too but I didn't care because I was in Miami (ok, technically I was in Coral Gables but fuck you, that's close enough). I never "got" Florida but I moved a little closer to being able to understand it. It was lovely I must admit. The weather was in the mid-70's with moderate humidity. Not oppressive but just enough to let you know that yea, the air might be a little "thick" fat boy. I won't bore you with details about the conference because quite frankly you will not care. I'm in this industry and I had a hard time caring about all of the lectures and presentations. There was one presenter who we were told who's journey to Miami from South Africa had taken 40 hours. Well I can tell you right now that that motherfucker should have stayed home. Holy shit. I've never experienced something that mind-numbingly dull in my life. And this from a guy who read The Simarillian on purpose.

First of all the guy was super nervous, so right off the bat he got my sympathy vote. I feel you mister. This is gonna suck for you. Don't worry about it. Head down and press on through ok? I'm here for ya. Then he started speaking in that weird sort-of-German-but-wait-isn't-that-more-of-an-Australian-vibe accent of his. His stutter was so profound that it was painful. I get it mister. Stutters suck. No worries though, we're not going anywhere. Move through it. Keep yer chin up! He then proceeded to go through each of his slides bullet point by fucking bullet point in such soul-crushing detail that I slowly moved from sympathy, to boredom, to indifference, to finally bare knuckled hatred in the span of 50+ minutes. At the end I didn't want to be glad he was done because I thought I might have been hallucinating and he'd be going back up to go through the thing all over again. I might have died if that happened. I certainly lost all interest in the next speaker I can tell you that much.

The take home messages are that I should be more open to going somewhere warm during the winter months (something I've literally never done before) and that air travel still sucks ass. American Airlines is equivalent to taking a city bus for 3 hours (except a city bus doesn't have the potential to fall out of the sky). I spent the bulk of the flight home wishing foul, awful things on the family seated behind me and their 4 screaming children. If any of the wishes have come true then I'm sure I would have seen something on the news by now. I also wanted to stab the guy seated next to me several times. Why? Well I had the window seat and he was jammed in the middle seat between me and one of my co-workers. He clearly wanted to have a window seat because he kept leaning forward and into my space to look out the window. Dude, look, we're on the right side of a plane that's going up the east coast of the United States. Guess what's out that window? If you said "a shit-ton of water and not much else" then you are correct. Sit the fuck back and I'll let you know when we pass over some land that you couldn't identify if you absolutely had to, ok? He was also one of these guys who when the plane finally came to a stop he bolted out of his seat so he can get into the aisle as quickly as possible. Yea, um...you know that we're basically in the back of the plane here right? It's gonna take a while skippy. Ah people, how I loathe them.