This is week 108 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 749): Father’s Day

My parents were supposed to come over for Father’s Day breakfast, and I overslept. I planned to make Belgian waffles, but #1GF! didn’t think we’d have enough food, so she ran out to pick up muffins and sausages. I showered in about ten seconds, and didn’t have one thing prepared by the time they got to the house.

My parents brought me a gift for Father’s Day. Considering that I’m not officially a father yet, and Father’s Day gifts are only supposed to travel from child to parent, I felt bad that they only Father’s Day gift to my father was breakfast.

We didn’t end up playing a game or anything because my father didn’t feel like it. It was Father’s Day, and he was the only official father in the group, so the call was his to make. We sat and talked around the table for a few hours, and I made a couple of sandwiches later that were eaten by under protest of not being hungry.

My parents went home, and #1GF! and I cleaned up. I’m not a clean cook by any stretch of the imagination, but a waffle iron always ends up being a damned mess no matter how neat I try to be. I sent #1GF! out of the kitchen because she mentioned that she was tired, but couldn’t figure out why. I explained to her that she was making a baby, and should be laying on the couch or something. She dismissed me, but headed for the den to do as she was told anyway.

It was so windy, rainy, and dark that if felt like winter. We watched movies and TV for the rest of the day to complete the feeling. I found the TV boring, but didn’t make a move to try something else because the weather seemed like a perfect excuse to do nothing. I doubt that we’ll have moments to sit around like this once the baby shows up, so I thought that we should take advantage while we could.

Monday (Day 750): LOR 107 All Day

The first waking thought of the day was what a good life I have. The second was that it was really awful that either #1GF! or I would inevitably die one day and leave the other behind. As I lay there in bed, I found this to be a pretty odd thing to wake up thinking about.

Once I got moving, I sat down and wrote LOR 107. I took a break for lunch, and ended up thinking about how one could produce an illusion of time travel through faster than light speeds. For example, say you were watching an event on earth with a telescope. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, you should technically be able to outrun the image of the what you saw, point your incredibly powerful telescope at the earth, and wait for the event to happen again when the image from the event caught up to you. I was feeling a little smart when I found an almost an identical idea in a book that I was reading. I wasn’t happy to find out that science fiction writers (and probably a lot of other folks) had thought of this idea years ago.

This is week 107 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 742): Baby Shower

I drove #1GF! to family’s house for a surprise baby shower. I enjoy ladies and all, but then there are a ton of them in a big group, it’s a little weird. I stayed for an hour and greeted everyone, and then got out of there to let the ladies do their thing.

I somehow missed a turn and ended up taking a tour through Brockton on the way home. After a circuitous route back to where I should’ve been in the first place, I called my father, who was visiting at his cousins. He wanted me to visit, too, but I was picking up some grout sealer and going home to seal the bathroom tile while I had a little time.

I picked up some grout sealer at a home megastore, and got one coat of it on the bathroom floor before #1GF! called to be picked up. It was 3:30, and she asked where I was. When I told her I was at home, she was not happy about having to wait another 45 minutes for me to come get her.

I don’t know anything about showers, so I thought I had until 5 or so. I figured that I could get one more coat in and get on the road. I got in the car and practically flew to her family’s house to get her. When I finally got there, everyone was gone, and I had to commandeer my mother and her vehicle to have enough room to get all the presents home. It was unbelievable. As I was loading the stuff into the car, I kept thinking that if I was the one having the shower, I would probably be able to fit my gifts into my pockets, and still have room for a frog and a ball of twine.

This is week 106 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment. This one is weighing in at a hefty 7,200 words.

Sunday (Day 735): Seeing From A Child’s Perspective

I made breakfast for #1GF! and we relaxed in front of some home improvement shows for an hour. I don’t know if it was inspirational, but I mowed the lawn and weed whacked soon after.

#1GF! hadn’t been to the beach all year, so we grabbed our chairs and walked down to the beach in the afternoon. It wasn’t too hot, and the tide was following a breeze out to sea, making it feel more relaxing than the surrounding crowds would indicate.

One of the neighbors showed up with her six year old a little while after we did, and sat near us without noticing that we were there. They eventually noticed us (after I waved for a while) and the mother and daughter walked over holding hands. The mother looked down at the little girl and said, “Okay, go ahead.”

The little girl looked at her mother and then at us. She was only slightly taller than #1GF! and I, even though we were sitting down in some low slung beach chairs. Her small face broke into a grin, framed by her bob haircut. She craned her neck up toward her mother and leaned in against her leg. She whispered, “No, you say it.”

The mother grinned. “Well, she just want you to know that when she’s older, she would love to babysit for the baby.”

The child beamed and nodded. Her bob haircut jiggled back and forth.

“Aw, thanks,” I said taking a pragmatic approach to the bucket of cute standing in front of us. “How old are you now?”

“Six,” said the little girl.

I’m not sure at what age girls start babysitting, so I took an educated guess. “So in… seven years then?”

While it seems like a bit of a promotional stunt for MC Hammer’s upcoming show Hammertime than a natural flash mob, it’s difficult not to appreciate a ton of people showing up out of nowhere to do the hammer dance. Any resistance you have to the idea will be broken down by the sheer volume of gold hammer pants.

School’s in sucker. Ans you know… U Can’t Touch This.

Hammer Dance Flash Mob

This is week 105 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 728): An Uneventful Sunday

It was a lazy Sunday. I finished You Suck: A Love Story, and thought that it was neat how some of the scenes and characters overlapped from Moore’s novel, A Dirty Job. Finishing a book would be the closest that I’d get to an accomplishment for the day. I watered the plants, picked a couple of flowers for #1GF!, and generally relaxed. We we went to dinner to avoid cooking, and talked about an upcoming interview.

Monday (Day 729): LOR, Resumes, And Baby Prep

Wrote LOR until 5:30PM and then printed out a few resumes. The pages were coming off of my 400 year old printer with splotches, so I spent some time cleaning the rollers with some q-tips and glass cleaner. Fifteen minutes later, the pages were coming out splotch free. While they printed (and on various breaks throughout the day), I looked through my book of interview questions to brush up on the answers to some of the tougher questions. I figured that if I could answer some of the trickier questions, the easy ones should flow right by. I shut down the computer at 8PM.

I went to bed a couple of hours later, and fell asleep almost instantly. It was as if my mental exercises were as tiring as physical ones. As soon as I fell asleep, I was woken up by the phone ringing. I didn’t get aggravated because it was a family issue. As soon as I fell back to sleep, I was woken up by another phone call. I found myself thinking that being woken up randomly is a part of parenthood, so I had better get used to it.

Tuesday (Day 730): Highway Robbery

I got up, buffed my shoes, threw on a suit, and went to a job interview. I know, you’re thinking, “But what about the dream, J-Dawg? How am I going to quit my job and write if you’re giving up on the dream?” I’m not giving up on the dream, but there’s nothing wrong with exploring options when they’re presented.

I tracked down the source of the animated gif in Nooooooo! to the trailer for a film called Italian Spiderman. I can’t believe that I never saw this before because it is pure and unadulterated awesome without commercial interruption.

Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a cigarette smoking, fat guy with a mustache can…

The Italian Spiderman Trailer

Background: Although the trailer looks like authentic, low budget Italian cinema from the 1960’s or 70’s, Italian Spiderman was actually created as a film school project by Dario Russo in 2007. At the time of the trailer’s creation, the film that it advertised didn’t actually exist, and it was only after gaining traction on YouTube that Russo secured financing to create the forty minute film.

Parts one through ten of Italian Spiderman are available for your viewing pleasure on Dario Russo’s YouTube Channel, and they are as corny and craptastic as they are awesome.

This is week 104 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment. This week marks a full two years without a boss.

Sunday (Day 721): Stained Glass Cake, Pixie Stix, & Raleigh Good Robot Friends

The first thing I did when I got out of bed was to make two kinds of Jell-o. It’s the kind of random thing that unemployed people do so that they have something to eat while they’re sitting on the couch watching Jerry Springer with their imaginary robot friend. The jello is also good to have on hand as a distraction in case anyone randomly shows up and points out that they’re sitting on the couch with a shop vac that seems to have a mullet wig and fake mustache glued to it. Nothing distracts from being caught in a strange situation like the jiggle and shimmy of Jell-o.

Seriously? You’re not buying what I’ve got on the counter because you know the real stuff is in the glass case, right? You know I don’t watch TV during the day, and that the robot isn’t allowed up on the couch, anyway. I had to start the Jell-o the first thing after I got up because it was part of a stained glass cake that I was going to make for a dinner we were going to. Once the Jell-o was in the pans and in the fridge, I set the refrigerator on “Turbo Cool” (no, that’s true), and made breakfast for #1GF!.

#1GF! had been concerned that we were running out of time to get things set up for the baby, so I was working on getting the contents of three rooms rotated to put her at ease. The office had already been moved, so the next thing that had to happen was to move the den into the former office, and all the accumulated baby items into the former den.

The process was a one man job, with the exception of an eight foot sleeper sofa that would be easier with two. I hadn’t lined up any help yet, so I decided to start prepping the couch to get it through the tight doorways without the use of Jell-o or Jell-o related lubricants.

This is week 103 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment. This week clocks in at about 7400 words.

Sunday (Day 714): An Unusually Lazy Day

It was raining, so #1GF! and I sat on the couch all day watching movies and home improvement shows. If I didn’t shut the TV off at 10:30PM, we’d still be watching home improvement shows right now. The only semi-productive thing that I did all day was to reorder and restock our Netflix queue to get some movies into our house that we actually want to watch.

Monday (Day 715): A Better Robot

I wrote LOR from 8AM to 7PM, cranking out 7,600 words (a bit over thirty pages of text for those counting). I had pre-written a rough draft earlier in the week in the hopes of cutting my marathon Monday writing sessions down a bit, but it didn’t seem to do much good.

I’m starting to realize that if I don’t write the framework beforehand, I write all day. If I write the framework beforehand, I write all day and the post ends up a lot longer. There was a time when these LOR posts only took a couple of hours. If only the quality went up with the time invested, my name would be a household word by now. Then, I’d be able to afford to get myself a better robot.

Tuesday (Day 716): Uncommon As A Daisy

I looked through Cooks Country and Cooks Illustrated for recipes, which isn’t all that unusual. This time, I made a list of some of the ingredients that I would need so that that I would actually be able to cook one or two of the recipes for #1GF! instead of casting recipes aside at dinner time because I lacked one or two key ingredients.

I took my list and headed out to do the food shopping. The road to the store is a fairly main coastal road, with two lanes on either side of the yellow line. I was driving along in the left lane listening to whatever was on the radio and trying to stay off of the bumpers of the Mercedes and BMW’s that don’t seem to have any sense of objects that exist outside the driver’s skin.

As I made my way through the maze of hard-braking, blinker-hating morons, the driver of a Land Rover decided to cut into my lane. They didn’t bother to check over their shoulder to notice that the space they were trying to occupy already had a car in it. In a snap, ROCKET CAR! was forced over the yellow line and into oncoming traffic. I hit the brakes, and steered back into the lane behind the SUV, who had decided then to put their blinker as an afterthought to a hard left turn in front of oncoming traffic. It zipped off down a side street.

This is week 102 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment. This week is a long one, clocking in at a little over 7600 words.

Sunday (Day 707): Fabricated Mother’s Day Memories

Even though #1GF! can have anything she wants for breakfast on a Sunday morning (Belgian waffles, omelets, fruits, muffins, or whatever), I can almost guarantee that on most Sundays I will be making a variation of one thing: a bagel, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich. This week, I was leaning towards omelets, but ended up making sandwiches with yellow peppers, mozzarella and American cheese. I think the variations in Sunday sandwiches are more for my entertainment than by #1GF!’s request.

#1GF! and I played a quick round of Pandemic before going out to sit on the stoop. It was windy and cool with clear skies, and felt like we had skipped summer and had stepped into fall six months early. The air had the feeling of stiff school sneakers and the restraint of an impending detention.

#1GF! timed me doing the cube because there were no neighbors around to witness one of my nerdy quirks. I completed it in 1:36, which as far as I can tell, is a record for me. I lightly spiked it on the floor as I went inside.

This is week 101 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 700): What Is Happening To Me

I woke up and turned to #1GF!. “I just had a dream that the weather was going to be 64 degrees with a thirty percent chance of rain.”

“That’s weird,” said #1GF! while wiping the sleep out of her eyes.

“What it is, is the most boring dream ever created. I mean, if you talk about the weather, you’re short on conversational topics. What is going on in your head when you dream about a weather forecast? A mild and nondescript one at that.”

#1GF! just smiled and rubbed her belly like she has a tendency to do these days.

We got up, and I made breakfast for #1GF!. I plugged in the portable radio, and swished through the dials looking for something to listen to while I cooked. I ended up settling on a station known for its bone drying selection of soft classic rock.

The music hovered between the rock of my parents’ generation and music that was released when I was way too young to notice anything that wasn’t played as a string of single notes by a colorful toy. The station leaned into the sleepy reaches of Carole King and The Rolling Stones and refused to get up.

It was unoffensive and unnoticeable, like a grandfather concentrating on the newspaper at the kitchen table. The music sort of hung in the air and quickly faded from memory. While dropping an egg into a pan, the sizzle snapped me out of the blanket of sound that I was wrapped in, and I wondered what was happening to me that I thought that soft hits were suddenly preferable to an actual heart rate.

Because of my beard pages, people tend to submit a lot of beard related links for me to check out. The other day, I got an e-mail from Eirik Ott, aka Big Poppa E, asking me to check out a video for a poem that he wrote called “Beardo”.

“i was digging on your site, and i thought maybe you would appreciate the poem i just wrote about the joys and challenges of having a beard.”

I’m always grateful that people will take the time to send me beard related stuff, but this guy was asking me to look at a poem. Sure, it was about a beard, but still. Poetry? I was torn between my love for beards driving me to click, and the thought of being reacquainted with the mind-numbing curse of iambic pentameter holding my finger at bay.

I put aside my latest revisions of Life of Riley Week 100, and stared at the e-mail as if some cosmic regex would suddenly appear and devour the word “poem” and replace it with something I had a better chance at enjoying, such as “epic metal saga” or even “clever geek humor based comic”. Sadly, no such words appeared.

I sighed, threw on my two dollar headphones, and twisted up my face in preparation for what I was sure would be a coffee shop poetry reading to an audience full of waif like creatures who wore tiny glasses and had propensities toward giant, ratty scarves that didn’t fit them or the weather. I imagined them snapping their long, thin fingers at the end of the performance in place of applause. Before the thought of the clove filled air could give me a headache, I opened the video.

This is week 100 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment. You’d think that week 100 would be celebratory and awesome, but it somehow ended up just like all the other weeks.

Sunday (Day 693): The Marathon Mulcher & The Water Girl

For the first time in a long time, it felt like a lazy summer Sunday morning. I ate my breakfast and sat on the couch reading a book while #1GF! cleaned out her closet and put away her winter clothes. There is nothing that a man can do when a woman decides to clean out her closet, so I continued reading and tried to stay out of the way.

Before noon, #1GF!’s friend brought by some baby equipment for us. Although I’m grateful for the free stuff, I have no idea where all of these contraptions are going to fit in our house. As #1GF!’s friend drove away, #1GF! and I sat on the stoop enjoying the warm summer air that showed up a couple of months early.

I hopped off the steps and picked up more glass from the lawn while #1GF! sat enjoying the sun. I cannot fathom how so much glass got left on the lawn when there was a full dumpster in the yard. Were the workers breaking windows on the ground around the house and throwing away the frames? I shook my head and crouched in the bushes to pick up another handful that had worked its way up through the soil.

I piled the glass on the stoop, and #1GF! threw it away. I looked out at our lumpy, patchy, and generally misshapen lawn, and wondered if our kid would be able to have bare feet in the yard before she lost the urge to. I thought about doing landscaping, but the temperature was slowly pushing upward toward 85 degrees. It seemed too nice of a day to waste on yard work, but the more I looked, the more I thought that something needed to be done.

This is week 99 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 686): Lying Under The Porch

I woke up thinking about all the things that needed to be done around the house. It’s not the best way to wake up on a Sunday morning, but it does set a tone for the day.

I made breakfast for #1GF!, as has become the tradition around here. We had nothing really planned, so we watched a home improvement show afterward. That show turned out to be nothing more than a pep rally for household chores. After the show, I cleaned out the tub drain and then raked the yard, neither of which turned out to be as exciting or fun as they sound.

I raked up all the dead grass and leaves from the yard until 2PM and then picked up glass that was sparkling through the grass nearly everywhere. I still can’t understand how much glass can be left in the yard considering the amount that we’ve already picked up. It’s unreal.

While I worked in the yard, #1GF! dusted and swept the house because she can’t sit idle while other people are working. I told her that making a baby is work, but she didn’t believe me. I tried to put it into terms that she could understand. I told her that if I had to shoot a baby out of my naughty parts, I would’ve quit my job on the second month and spent the remaining seven months in the fetal position on the mere premise of the horror that would ensue. She thought that I was cute, but still didn’t believe me.

Dear 1970’s,

-Jon

70s PSA: VD Is For Everybody

This is week 98 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment. This week is clocking in at a little over 26 pages.

Sunday (Day 679): Easter Dinner And The Lack Of Free Space

#1GF! got up almost immediately, but I, lay in bed. I was tired but couldn’t seem to sleep. By the time I realized that there was no valid reason for me to be in bed, #1GF! was already preparing lasagna for Easter dinner.

#1GF! left to pick up her mother and I stayed and cleaned up. The biggest things I did while she was gone were to shower and make a cracker plate for the small Easter dinner we had planned.

My parents and #1GF!’s mother arrived at almost the same time, and while we were all sitting around the table, and the neighbor next door came out of her house and waved. I had my back turned, but the laughter got me to turn around and find out what was going on. Everyone at the table was waving out the window.

Because I’ve always lived where houses are built in very close proximity to each other, there has always been an unwritten rule that people pretend not to see each other if there’s a pane of glass between them. I suppose it’s a way to give people the illusion of space where there isn’t any to spare. That idea got thrown out the window for a brief moment, and everyone thought it was funny as hell.

We had a non-traditional Easter dinner of lasagna, salad, and sausages at the early hour of 1PM. For dessert, we had a key lime cheesecake, apple pie, and cookies. There would’ve been more food, but I did a fairly decent job reminding #1GF! of the small number of people that would actually be sitting around the table.

Once the bellies were full and the dishes clean, my parents headed out, and #1GF! and I drove her mother home. When we returned, we watched The TV Set, which would’ve been a lot worse if it wasn’t for the all star cast. We followed that up with a couple of episodes of Mad Men because someone said that I looked a little like the main character. I don’t see a close resemblance, but then, we all like to think we’re beautiful and unique snowflakes.

I was looking up some old commercials at for a recent Life of Riley post, and ran into this strange game ad from a time when Saturday morning cartoons kept the kids attention, the gas crisis kept the parents attention, and busting balls was a family pastime.

The more you look back at the 70’s, the less surprising it is that people thought bell bottoms were cool.

Ballbuster: A Game For The Whole Family

(It’s a real 1970’s commercial, and is completely work safe.)

This is week 97 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 672): I’m Not An Actor, I Just Play One On TV

I dug out some shirts for characters in a short film that I was putting together, before spending twenty minutes whipping up a magazine cover that would be used in the film. As I got dressed, I walked around the house trying to learn my lines. A friend of mine would be stopping by at around 1PM to commit the idea to film, and I wanted to be as prepared as I could.

At around 1PM, #1GF! and I sat on the stoop enjoying the sunshine. The air was warm and the flowers were pushing up, making it seem like a perfect day to not be filming inside.

We sat there for a bit, and I would occasionally lean over the edge of the brick stairs to pick up some large pieces of glass that were still hiding in the bushes. As I scanned across the lawn, I could see more glass sparkling as if it were winking at me to come get it. I didn’t have shoes on, so I started taking off my bright, white socks.

“What are you doing?” asked #1GF!.

“I’m going to pick up the glass and I don’t want to get my socks dirty.”

“But you’re ok with getting your feet dirty?”

“Well, yea, they’ll be inside the socks, so when I go back in, I won’t be dirtying up the house.”

It seemed like solid logic to me. I crouched on the lawn and picked up a small shopping bag full of glass.

Our friend from Burning Snowman called from the road and said that he was bringing a camera, a leather jacket, and sack of wigs. I laughed, until he showed up at 1:30PM with the camera and an actual sack of wigs in tow. #1GF! retired to make sauce, and I tried to explain the look that I had envisioned for the film.

In the following three hours, I realized that I am not an actor. You can make all the faces you want in the mirror, but when the camera’s rolling, there’s a distinct lack of feedback to tell if you’re making the right face at the right moment.

#1GF! and I were driving around the other day and passed a U-Haul moving truck. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary…

until we got along side of it and saw this “feature” listed on the door…

This wasn’t any sort of photo editing. This deadly U-Haul really exists out there somewhere.

This is week 96 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 665): Moo Shu Pork Omelet

I made a leftover Chinese food omelet sandwich for breakfast, and I have to say that it was one of the more delicious breakfast sandwiches I’ve made in recent history. We hung around reading for a good portion of the day, with my biggest achievement being the installation of a bathroom towel rack. Oddly enough, that small check mark on the list of things to do made it feel like all the crap that needs to be done around the house wasn’t such a big deal. I don’t know why, but I felt at peace with it all.

At 3PM, for a lack of something better to do, #1GF! and I went out looking for a dining room table. We hit three stores and may have actually decided on one.

I ate leftovers for dinner, and despite my protests, #1GF! had cereal. No matter what I offered to cook for her, or how much I claimed that cereal was invalid as a dinner food, she would not yield. She ate cereal. After “dinner”, we watched Kung Fu Panda, which reminded me that I need to keep a better eye on the Netflix queue.

Monday (Day 666): Dude, Where’s My Evil?

I woke up early and lay in bed thinking about all the things that I was supposed to do. I got up and got dressed because I was supposed to drive #1GF!’s mom to an appointment. #1GF! said she’d take care of it. I protested, but it didn’t do me any good. I changed into my around the house clothes, got #1GF! out to work, and spent the entire morning writing LOR Week 95.

Look. I don’t know where the rumor came from, but this blog is absolutely NOT ghost written by Wil Wheaton.

Yes, we both have brown hair.
Yes, we are essentially the same height.
Yes, we both have been known to have beards.
Yes, we are on the geeky end of the scale.
Yes, we both have blogs that were surprisingly close in Alexa traffic and rank last year.
No, we are not the same person.

Wil Wheaton is a TV star (Star Trek), movie star (Stand By Me), and author who lives on the West Coast. I am a blogger, beardsmith, and man of leisure who lives on the East Coast. I am not a character written by Wheaton to test something different on a new audience. I’m not a marketing scheme. I’m a real person and I exist. I don’t understand why people would think otherwise.

“That sounds exactly like something you’d say to throw us off. Point out the glaring similarities between actor and character before we do, and then convince us that they’re insignificant and coincidental. To be a good actor you have to create a detailed character, and if he has some of your personality traits, it just makes it easier for you to portray him.

Once you get the framework created, you just need to add a few quirks to make him more believable. Maybe you give his girlfriend a geeky enough moniker that it could be part of a secure password. Maybe you make him do something that everyone dreams of like quitting his job. Maybe you create a little conflict with stories of a mysteriously never ending house renovation. Hell, maybe you even make him grow a crazy beard every year just for fun.”

Whoa. Those are real things. I do have #1GF!, I did walk away from my job for no good reason, and I have been growing an annual beard for a decade.

“Uh huh.”

This is week 95 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 658): Throwing Things At The Parade

I woke up at 7AM and lay there thinking about all the things that were going to need to be fixed now that the warm weather was rolling around. #1GF! lay there sleeping peacefully until she realized that I wasn’t. The weather was grey and cloudy like my thoughts, and if it wasn’t so warm, I would’ve expected it to snow.

I made bagel sandwiches for breakfast, but beyond that, I didn’t feel like doing anything. #1GF! kept offering suggestions, no matter how many times I told her that it was unnecessary. I wasn’t interested in a solution. I just wanted to sit and ignore the list of things that needed doing.

In the afternoon, we went to a St. Patrick’s Day parade. We didn’t go because we like to go to parades, but because #1GF!’s mother likes to go to the parade. The St. Patrick’s Day parade has become somewhat of a required attendance event over the years. I have no idea how I got roped in to the process, but I did, so I go.

It’s a small town parade, so they throw candy like mad from every car and float. The kids bring gallon ziplock bags and easily fill up one per child. I didn’t bother with the candy unless it was merely to throw stray pieces at the kids and look the other way like I didn’t throw anything. Every once in a while, I would catch a stray Tootsie Roll, or #1GF! would hand me one and I would chaw on it to pass the time.

We not only saw little Michael on his candy quest again this year, but we had the fortune of standing next to a comedian. I didn’t get the guy’s autograph, but maybe I should’ve. If a coffee float came through, he’d yell out to ask if they’re going to throw free coffee. If a ice cream truck came through, he’d yell out to ask if they were going to throw ice cream. If a bank came through, he yell out to ask if they were going to throw money. Would the hilarity ever stop? I was in danger of shooting liquefied Tootsie Rolls out of my nose every time the guy opened his mouth. If only an obliging ninja star salesman were in the parade, we could’ve taught the guy about irony.

After spending half the day doing my taxes, and topping it off with a fruitless job search chaser, it’s not surprising that by 5PM, I was slipping into a coma. To lift my mood a little, I checked in on some of my favorite feeds.

That’s when I found the following video on Wil Wheaton’s blog. If the 60’s soul revival sound didn’t drag me in, the way that it’s created is absolutely the best use of sampling I’ve seen in a while.

My mood instantly lifted. Check it out for yourself and tell me you don’t feel the same.

“Birds Fly Away” by Theresa Andersson

via Wil Wheaton

First came Vince and the ShamWow. Then came the Slap Chop. And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have the Cock Shot. Listen to Lance: Stop having a boring nut shot. Stop having a boring life.

The Cock Shot (NSFW: language)

Thanks, Mike.

This is week 94 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 651): #1GF! and The Amazing Hobo Sapiens

To start my Sunday off with a side order of fun, I started going through the instructions for my taxes. As I was reading, I found this interesting line:

“Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.”

That’s right out of the instructions. To make matters more amusing, Schedule C is entitled, “Profit or Loss From A Business.” I wondered about how much ink could be saved by eliminating lines like this from federal tax instructions.

After I went through federal and state instructions, #1GF! and I went out for a walk. The weather was nice, so it seemed like a good opportunity to get some mild exercise. Within two minutes of starting the walk, I got a call from a friend that I haven’t talked to in years.

He asked how the blog was going, and I said that I needed to get a regular job. As fun as blogging is, it won’t pay as much as tech does. “I can get you interested in what I had for breakfast, but I haven’t been able to make it pay,” I told him.

The guy mentioned that sometimes when he’s reading this blog, he gets loses a lot of time and eventually says, “Ok, I have to stop reading this.” I’ve heard that same thing from other people, I think it’s one of the coolest things about the Life of Riley. It’s second only to the times when people I’ve never met tell me that they started laughing when a story of mine popped into their head while they were driving to work.

This blog is the potato chip of literature. There is nothing in here of any real literary nutritional value. People know this, and yet they keep sticking their hands into the bag. For me, that’s pretty cool.

I was half paying attention while watching an episode of 30 Rock the other day, and had to rewind in one scene because I had the feeling that I had missed something.

As Liz Lemon steps off the elevator, Kenneth the page says, “Oh, you’re back. I guess I’m not in charge anymore.” He then pulls a sign off the wall:

Sunufa.

You can watch the The Funcooker episode of 30 Rock on Hulu.

This is week 93 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 644): Human Perception Is Exception Based

I made #1GF! breakfast, and then we sat down to watch RocknRolla, a British action movie from the director of Snatch. I didn’t think it was a phenomenal movie, but it was sort of gritty and had enough action to keep me interested. If there were a sequel (which seemed likely, given the way that it ended), I would probably have to check it out.

The sun was shining and it was warmer than expected, so #1GF! and I went outside and stood in the street talking to the neighbors. There were kids hard at play everywhere, so the parents were standing in the street to keep car speeds down.

After the conversation died down a bit, #1GF! and I went for a walk around town. I felt OK, but my voice was still dropping as my cold moved from my head to my chest. I still wasn’t ready to admit that I was sick, because admitting that there is a problem is the first step toward defeat. Or something like that. We walked around for a half hour, enjoying the sunshine and the ocean breeze before heading back.

When we got home, I took twenty minutes to fix #1GF!’s headlight that I had failed to fix the week before. When I got back in, #1GF! looked at me like she was surprised.

“Wow, that was fast,” she said.

“Well, it’s not like it was hard or anything. It’s just a headlight.”

“Why didn’t you just fix it last week then?”

“I guess because it was cold and snowing and I couldn’t get a grip on the light. When it’s warm, things are easier.”

If you follow the Life of Riley series, you may have noticed that for the past nine weeks or so, there have been lines that read, “MISSING DATA [week number]-[day number][A,B,C]” interspersed throughout the posts.

People have asked me about the codes, some even going so far as to test whether WordPress was accidentally omitting data in certain browsers. I wasn’t trying to create work for people, but I thought that the cross-browser testing was pretty awesome.

The MISSING DATA items were simply notes stored in a text file about a subject that I haven’t been able to talk about. As of today, I’ve inserted the missing data into the posts.

To make it easier for people to read the additions without picking through nine weeks of what are typically marathon posts, I created links to all the additions below. Although some are merely blips, some significantly increased the size or direction of the original posts.

Any additions that are longer than a few lines have been starred.

Welcome to our little secret…

I’ve developed a few WordPress plugins and I love to hack WordPress, so there are times when I need to write and test PHP within the WordPress framework. Because my plugins are site-wide sidebar widgets, any errors I may introduce while testing have the potential to affect every page on my site.

Instead of testing my widgets live, I test the underlying PHP in a designated test area that his hidden from regular readers. That way, if PHP barks at me for missing an underscore, it’s more of a private message to me, and not a public broadcast to all of my readers.

Creating a WordPress test area is a simple addition of a page template and test page to your WordPress theme files. Any PHP that you put in the test template can be executed by refreshing a draft preview of the page assigned to it. Because the test page is never actually published, there’s no possibility of it reaching your readers and interrupting the flow of your site.

Want to set up your own Wordpress PHP test area?

This is week 92 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment. .

Sunday (Day 637): Don’t Blame Me For My Beard

One of #1GF!’s headlights had gone out, so I went out to the driveway to get it replaced before the snow started. The light was behind the battery, so it was difficult to get at with my set of regular sized man hands. I figured that I would take the battery out to make the job easier, but of course, the tie down bolts were rusted. Any pressure applied to the nut, twisted the tie down and put it in danger of snapping. It was Sunday before a scheduled snow storm, so I didn’t want to be driving all the way to the auto parts store for something I broke.

I shoved my hand behind the battery and tried to get the light out, but it was cold and I couldn’t seem to get a grip on the rubber boot that protected the light. Just as I was starting to get frustrated, it started snowing. I closed the hood and went inside to scrub a batch of manly, but achievementless grease off my hands.

To try to get at least something checked off my list, I decided to install a dimmer switch on the light over the sink. #1GF! couldn’t stand how bright the light was, and had started getting in the habit of leaving it off when washing pans. Without light, pans don’t get very clean. Considering that a switch replacement isn’t very involved, I thought it would be a quick little check mark to prove that I was still good for something around here.

I turned on the light and went down to the basement to the electrical panel. I clicked off the breakers one at a time until #1GF! called down that the light had gone off. Sure that I was safe, I went back up to start the install.

While pulling out the old switch, the bare copper ground wire touched the outlet next to it and sparks popped all over the counter. I’ve replaced a ton of switches, outlets, and fixtures without a problem. I always shut off the power, and I even go so far as to use one hand at a time, so that if I somehow did complete a circuit, the current would go from arm to toe instead through the heart. Something like this has never happened before.