This is week 137 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 952): See You Next Tuesday, Adverbially

We hung around playing with the baby all morning and then went to #1GF!’s friend’s house for a small party. Her friend has a big, boisterous family that is full of really funny, really loud people. Most of the time there are so many funny stories and conversations going on at the same time, that it’s hard to focus on just one. They’re always a good time, but without fail, at least one person will locate and cross any lines that you may have to get you to laugh.

I got roped into a game of Taboo, and ended up so far in the lead that it was a head-shaking shame. I tried to throw the game by pretending that I didn’t know the answers, but I ended up blanking out for real. We still ended up winning, but most of the fun was in the other players yelling and berating each other when they couldn’t get an answer.

After the game, I stepped out to the kitchen and had a piece of a diet cake. It tasted like regular cake, but eating a diet cake just seemed wrong to me. If you’re going to eat cake, eat cake. The baby was great, despite not sleeping all day, and fell asleep on me while I stood in the kitchen. Not even the ongoing yelling an taunting from the current game going on at the table could wake her.

They moved on to another game where one person had to guess an object that the rest of the players decided upon. The players would give vague, single word clues to describe the object, and the less clues the guesser needed, the more points he or she got. I only observed so that the baby could sleep.

Now, during the game, one woman looked for support because she was reprimanded for a clue she used to describe her sister in a previous game. When asked what the word was, she looked down at the table and softly shrugged out, “cunty”.

The MaBeGroMo basic period ended on January 1st, but there were a few rugged individuals continued their pursuit of pogonotrophy for an additional seven weeks to attain “MaBeGroMo Champion” status.

If you still have your MaBeGroMo beard, you have earned the right to call yourself “MaBeGroMo Champion” for another year. Be proud, young man, for you have earned one of the few awards available for excellence in bearding.

Whether you run off and pawn your award or continue your pursuit is now up to you. Just make sure you get some good pictures if you decide to shave it off.

We’ll see you next December for MaBeGromo V.

Until then, happy bearding.

Reclusive author, J.D. Salinger passed away in his New Hampshire home a couple of days ago at the age of 91. He was most famous as the author of The Catcher In The Rye, which has sold over 65 million copies since it was first published in 1951.

I put together a music playlist in Salinger’s honor.

One Hit Wonders Of The 60s, 70s, 80’s, 90’s, & Today

I compiled over 175 one-hit wonders spanning five decades from 60’s through the 2000’s. There are a few good, a few bad, and a few downright ugly songs on the list, but all of most of them will drag you kicking and screaming down memory lane. The list is by no means complete, and all the song titles are available below the player.

Enjoy!

This is week 136 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 945): Christmas Is Over

I went out to shovel at 1PM because all of my shoveling from the day before had been negated by the constant wind. It was zero degrees with the windchill.

We took down the Christmas decorations, and I made one of my favorite dinners: pasta with leeks, apple-smoked bacon, and Italian parsley in an egg sauce.

Monday (Day 946): Imagination Vs. Reality In Baby Care

What I Imagined A Day Of Baby Care Would Be:

6 AM: Get up with baby feed her. The baby smiles and thinks all my jokes are funny.
7 AM: Baby goes to bed and I start writing.
11 AM: Baby wakes up cooing gently for food, as tiny cartoon birds fly in patterns above her crib to entertain her. She has a wonderful time while I prepare her food.
12 PM: Baby goes in for a nap and I split my time between writing the great American novel and fending off agents who want me to sign on with them.
4 PM: Baby wakes up to feed again. We have a good time playing after she eats. She simply loves Perl, and even though her code is not as efficient as it could be, she has a good handle on regular expressions.
6 PM: Mom gets home, takes the baby, and after a few button pushes on the Food-A-Rac-A-Cycle, dinner appears on the table as if by magic.
7 PM: I put on a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, and retire to the office to write for an hour.
8 PM: I emerge to let the evening untangle while I sit on the couch and let #1GF! feed me bonbons.
10 PM: I drift off to sleep with a sense of satisfaction for raising a child and writing the great American novel.

What A Typical Day Really Is:

3 :XX AM: Something happens that the baby doesn’t like, and she spends some time venting about it in her language, which we can’t really understand.
5 AM: Baby goes back to sleep.
7 AM: Huh? Wha? I’m up, I’m up.
7:15 AM: The baby gets up and eats. I grab some cereal, take out the garbage, and re-shovel a path to the car that the wind has obliterated once again. I come back in and take the baby so that #1GF! can get ready for work.
8:45 AM: I get the baby to sleep, and get the tub and towels ready because it’s bath day.
9 AM: I shower, respond to e-mail, and start editing LOR 116. I’m twenty weeks behind on posts, and estimate that I won’t be writing another book for at least that long unless I let LOR die.
10:15 AM: The baby wakes up, and I bathe her, change her, and keep her occupied until her bottle is warm.
10:45 AM: I feed the baby and walk around burping her. #1GF! calls and reminds me it’s our anniversary. I thought that it was six days away. The odds of me going shopping are fast approaching zero, so I give her gift by wishing her a happy anniversary. It will happen to you one day. Oh, you’ll see.
11:45 AM: The baby gets a bowl of solid food and I walk around burping her. She throws up on my shirt. She doesn’t seem to mind. Oddly, I don’t seem to care, either.

At a time when my feedreader is choking on the bones of abandoned blogs that are being voraciously devoured 140 characters at a time, my blog is turning eight years old. That’s a long time for something to exist on the web without a viable business model. I think I know how the dinosaurs felt.

I had to drop to a weekly posting schedule to make room for a book and new baby, but 548,083 unique visitors still managed to drop by here in 2009. Even though that was down from 1.3 million visitors in 2008, I still feel the same awe that I felt in early 2002 when there were twenty-nine people a day reading along: I still wonder who those other twenty-six people are.

So, Thank You (Yes, You)!

The blogsphere is now packed with leaner, funnier, and better marketed blogs than this one, so I want you to know that I appreciate you spending some of your time here sifting through the literary rubble for something amusing to pocket week after week. I really do. So even though I can’t pay you in money, when you die, on your deathbed, you’ll receive total consciousness. So you got that going for you…which is nice.

Whether your one of the site’s 400 subscribers or just someone who checks in once and a while, thanks for helping to make this another great year.

Gunga galunga…gunga — Gunga galunga.

-Jon Dyer

This is week 135 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 938): Pwned By Lunch

I wasn’t admitting it, but the running around and lack of sleep were quite literally making me sick. I spent the morning answering #1GF! asking “Are you all right?” by waving her and trying to convince the both of us that I just had a runny nose. I was working on the power of positive thinking.

In the afternoon, we went to a friend’s house for a 1PM turkey lunch. It wasn’t like “Oh, let’s make some leftover holiday turkey into sandwiches.” This was a full turkey cooked specifically for sandwiches. If that wasn’t impressive enough, each of the more than five different cookies that were put out for dessert looked better than anything I had ever made. It was the first time I ever felt pwned by lunch.

I kept my hands out of the cookie tin so as not to spread any more germs than necessary, and made a mental note never to invite these people over to eat unless I could afford a caterer and learn to extend my literary lies into the real world. Sometimes, there’s nothing to do but concede that there are levels that you will not reach.

We went home at 5PM, and I fell asleep on the couch. I spent the rest of the day in and out of consciousness, and had a miserable night’s sleep. I woke up with mechanical regularity during the night, and at 3AM, I was positive that I was going to throw up. which isn’t an expected feeling for people who have been out of college for a number of years. I lay on the cold bathroom floor until the feeling subsided, and returned to bed to reclaim what few dreams I could corral.

Once again the MaBeGroMo basic period has come to a close. You’ve listened to a number of unsolicited opinions on your new testosterone-driven look, and none of them deterred you. You went against the grain in a small way and did something that probably feels a lot better than it looks.

Congratulations!

Right now, you’re probably at the point where you unconsciously rub your beard or mustache to help you through tough decisions. Well, one is upon you: Do you take a picture of your beard and trek back through the snow to civilization, or do you make the run at the “MaBeGroMo Champion” title?

Before you decide, give you’re beard a good rub and look over this list. If any of the following apply, you might not be ready to give up that beard just yet.

You May Not Want To Give Up Your Beard If…

• More than fifty percent of your vocabulary has devolved into well-timed grunts and staring,
• You spend a lot of time battling Sauron,
• You can’t remember how it started, but you’ve been wearing an animal skull as a hat for a while now,
Continue Reading…

This is week 134 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 931): Horizontal Snow

There was a blizzard going on, and the winds were some of the loudest we’d heard since moving into the house. Everything was rattling, which was pretty impressive considering that these little piggies live in a house of brick. The wind kept us up a good portion of the night.

When we got up, the trash barrel (that was weighted down with garbage) was ten feet from where I left it the night before. We couldn’t see out of most of the windows because they were covered with snow. Where we could peek out, we could see that the snow was going by the window horizontally.

I went out and shoveled through a three-foot drift to free the cars, and then moved them into odd angles to act as wind breaks. I didn’t know if the idea would save me any future shoveling, but the neighbors were sure to think that we both came home wasted.

I came in, showered for warmth, and took care of the baby. Even though it was a Sunday, #1GF! worked from home.

The day ambled by. We made chicken soup for dinner, and it wasn’t the greatest, possibly due to a lack of salt.

Later in the evening, I finally turned down the opportunity to be interviewed about my beards for a magazine because the reporter had a million questions and I couldn’t find the time to answer half of them with something witty. Maybe turning down free publicity was dumb, but the baby takes priority these days.

I put together Better Blogroll over two years ago to give Wordpress users a lot more control over the way that Wordpress handles and displays their blogrolls. Since then, it’s been downloaded 13,666 times (No, I couldn’t believe that number, either).

Two main updates went into Better Blogroll 3.0. First, the plugin now includes the ability to display link ratings as defined in your WordPress Links Manager.

More and more people have been using the plugin as a replacement for the default WordPress links widget, and many have been asking that the plugin be available without the link randomization that Better Blogroll was originally written for.

Randomization is still available, but now the links can be sorted by title or rating as well. With the addition of category groupings introduced in version 2.9, the plugin can act like a very configurable version of the basic WordPress Links widget.

For more information about Better Blogroll, head on over to my Better Blogroll Widget for Wordpress Page.

This is week 133 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 924): Nothing Is Real

#1GF! gave me a break from baby care after my outburst in the car the day before. It was like having free down time, and I wasted it by inserting inappropriate bleeps into an Ella Fitzgerald Christmas song to make it sound a lot dirtier than it was. Then, I got slightly productive and spent some time writing one of the backlogged Life of Riley posts. When I emerged from the office at noon, the baby was clean and dressed, and I wasn’t.

In the afternoon, I did some photo editing to create the baby’s first Christmas card, and then made a seven picture baby montage as a stocking stuffer for the baby’s grandma. In thirty years, when my daughter looks back on the cute hat she was wearing in her first Christmas photo, she’ll never know that the moment we shared with everyone never really existed because she didn’t actually like wearing that hat. Ah, the modern world. Soon, nothing will be real.

When I returned to the family, I finally set up the high chair, and then ruined a roast by adding enough garlic to put an end to half the cast of Twilight.

Originally aired on CBS in 1978, The Star Wars Holiday Special tells the story of Chewbacca and Han Solo flying to Chewbacca’s home world to celebrate Life Day, a Wookie holiday that is similar to Christmas.

It marks the first appearance of Boba Fett, if that’s enough to get you to watch all two craptastic hours.

Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Art Carney, Diahann Carroll, Harvey Korman, and Beatrice Arthur, and Chewbacca’s father, Itchy star.

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

Happy Life Day, pal.

Enjoy.

With two weeks to spare, the annual beard shaving pictures and story are now available. This year, the mountain man makes another trek into the city using several well thought out aliases to avoid being recognized as the R&B powerhouse, MC Butterworth.

Check out Beard Shaving 2009 so that you too can see why it’s better that I don’t have a boss.

The Quest For Every Beard Type

Due to the requirements for an in-production beard based short film (and pure pogonotrophic laziness), a mere two new styles were accomplished and added to The Quest for Every Beard Type. The total number of beards completed rises to 27 out of 36.

This is week 132 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 917): Carpet Bombing With Decorations

I made some pancakes for breakfast and they didn’t come out all that well. Then again, even bad pancakes aren’t all that bad. I was dressed by noon, and #1GF! was already taking some Christmas pictures of the baby because the mall picture from the day before didn’t come out as well as we had expected.

#1GF! set up two decorated mini Christmas trees, and then put the baby in her Christmas dress, sat her on a chair with a polar bear, and snapped off as many shots as she could before the baby stopped cooperating. The baby was happily confused by the process, but the shots came out better than the picture with the mall Santa.

I assembled our pipe cleaner Christmas tree and #1GF! did the lights and decorations. I worked some more cradle cap medication into the baby’s scalp while #1GF! rummaged through boxes of ornaments. “So, what do you want on the tree this year,” she asked without looking up from one of her boxes.

“I don’t care,” I said, because I really didn’t care.

“You have to care a little,” said #1GF! after finally looking up from the box she was rummaging through.

“Listen, as long as I don’t have to hang an ornament, you can put pink unicorns and Santas made of tampons all over the thing if you want to.”

“That’s the spirit,” said #1GF! while shaking her head and digging deeper into a box.

“Look, we already have a crackhead wreath outside because of me, let’s not pair it with a crackhead tree. You know I’m not a decorator.”

#1GF! had a hard time arguing with solid logic, so she picked and placed ornaments until the tree was sufficiently festive.

I started homemade mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner, and realized that I had accidentally bought mozzarella instead of cheddar. There was no time to run out to the store, so I had no choice but to roll with it. Even a bland homemade mac promised to be better than the boxed variety.

While dinner was cooking, I pulled my recently returned manuscript out of its manila envelope and started to read it for the first time in a couple of months. I only made it through the first paragraph before stuffing it back into its envelope. I wanted to edit almost every line. It was not a happy time.

#1GF!, on the other hand, was having a grand time decorating the house. She stopped for a moment and held up a hand-made Santa head. “Where can I hang this?” she asked. The thing looked like it teleported out of a craft fair in the ’70s.

“I have just the place.” I opened the trash drawer.

“I am not throwing this away,” said #1GF! with genuine offense. “Someone made this for me.”

“Are they dead?”

“No.”

“Then…” I eyeballed the trash.

I spend all this time making a personalized photo Christmas card to send out to family and friends, and #1GF! comes home, takes one look at it, and says that she’ll get a card at Sears instead.

I don’t know what gets into her sometimes. Maybe “Merry Christmas” isn’t politically correct anymore.

Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” has been around since 1958, so there’s no doubt that you hear it a thousand times a season when the radio stations switch over to the all-Christmas format.

At some point last season, I was sitting on the couch reading a magazine, and the song came on the radio faintly in the background. Brenda Lee’s twangy country vocal and the low volume caused me to hear something that wasn’t there. From then on, I couldn’t help but hear the song without smiling.

I wish the same problem onto you:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This is week 131 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 910): My Crackhead Wreath

We returned the crappy mini Christmas trees to the home megastore, and then went to the mall to get the baby’s first picture taken with Santa. #1GF! dressed the baby up in a red velvet dress with white fur lining, and twelve bucks later, we had the baby’s first Christmas picture.

Although the dress was heating the baby up, she didn’t complain. She just sat and stared straight ahead at the camera like a tiny member of the Claus family. No one could get a smile out of her, but at least she didn’t cry. You can see the result on the Vetoed Dyer Family Christmas Card.

I went to take the baby back from Santa, and he tried to ignore me. When I started taking the baby out of his arms, he said that he wouldn’t mind holding her more. I took her back semi-forcefully while #1GF! collected the card.

The baby was hot, so instead of putting her back in her car seat, I carried her through the mall in my arms. A lot of people smiled at the baby as we passed, and even though I hadn’t done much in making her what she was, I couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of pride.

We picked up some aspirin and a bunch of red bows at Walmart, and then went to a craft store and picked up thirteen fake wreaths for under $50. The wreaths and bows were for #1GF! to decorate our windows, and the aspirin was for me because the baby screamed in Walmart until we were forced to change her in the middle of one of the aisles when no one was around.

When we got home, #1GF! put the bows on the wreaths and fluffed them up. My job was to stick them on the windows. I didn’t fluff them or put bows on them because I am no good at that sort of thing. I did one wreath, and while the other twelve were saying “Merry Christmas” to passersby, mine was yelling “Street Pussy!” and trying to sell itself for crack.

Shun those razors like Angela Lansbury in a string bikini, Gents, and join men the world over who are making their annual migration into the state of beardedness.

The fifth annual MaBeGroMo starts today.

Thirty days of no-shave earns you a “participant” title, and those completing the full 75 day extended challenge may rightfully claim the title of “MaBeGroMo Champion.”

Banners and Badges

If you’d like to advertise your participation in Mabegromo, or simply show support for those making the migration, there are three Mabegromo banners available for you to download and put on your site this month:

240×120

125×125

120×80

Good luck. Hopefully, I’ll see the new, badass version of you in thirty days.

Happy bearding.

This is week 130 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 903): Not A Boy, Not A Wookie

I started the day off by cleaning the bathroom. Not because I wanted to, but because I had a couple of hours of babylessness to fill.

To unwind after that couple of hours of joy, I spent a fair amount of time transferring and expanding on an old Finetune Friday Christmas playlist to Last.fm only to find out that they wanted me to pay them just to play it. You know what? Fuck that shit. I’m not paying to stream music. I wanted to flush the PC down my freshly scrubbed toilet, but then Last.fm would still be out there laughing at me with its hand out, and my innocent, but elderly PC would be all wet and minty blue.

I growled and trudged into the baby’s room. #1GF! dressed the baby in one of her better outfits, and I watched as she threw up all over it. #1GF! put the baby in overalls and a blue shirt. “How’s that?” #1GF! asked as if I cared if the baby wore anything but white onsies all day.

“Awwww. I have the cutest son ever.”

#1GF! opened her mouth wide with offense, and marched the baby into the bathroom. I followed and caught her trying to put a barrette in the baby’s hair. I had to stop her. “We are not doing the whole ‘barrette in the hair’ or girly headband thing. Who cares if people think she’s a boy or a girl? She’s a baby.”

“She does not look like a boy.”

“Okay.”

“Say it. She doesn’t.”

“Fine, she doesn’t look like a boy.”

“Alright then.”

The barrette fell out of the baby’s ultra fine hair and clicked on the tile floor.

This is week 129 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 896): Happy Trails, ROCKET CAR!

“So what do you want to do today?” #1GF! asked me.

“Get dressed?” I replied. Sometimes, it’s best to start small.

We did get dressed, and then drove to a large Honda dealer to have ROCKET CAR! appraised. I had already locked in a price that was below dealer cost through e-mail. The car we were going to see wasn’t a manual, wasn’t the color #1GF! wanted, and it had 88 miles on it (which is about 80 more than I like on a new car), but you have to make a few concessions when you’re below dealer cost.

Interestingly, the dealer didn’t bother with the dog and pony show that goes along with appraising my car. They took a look at the outside, peeked at the engine, and looked up what they could wholesale it for. It took a lot less time than usual, but in the end, they undervalued it, anyway.

We left Honda and went to a local Subaru dealer to see if they could do any better on the trade. We saw our salesman, and he brought out the manager to appraise ROCKET CAR!. Oddly, the manager didn’t find it necessary to say hello. The salesman tried to introduce us to him, and he begrudgingly shook my had without taking his eyes off of the car. He didn’t bother with #1GF!. Within a few minutes, the manager walked away without saying anything.

“Well, I guess he got what he needed,” the salesman said in a surprised tone.

We certainly didn’t. The manager went into the building, leaving us standing in the parking lot. When we followed, the manager gave the salesman the lowest bid on my car that I had gotten from any dealer. The manager left such a bad taste in my mouth that I didn’t bother haggling. You don’t expect to be treated like royalty when buying a family sedan, but you don’t expect to be treated like garbage, either.

Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe he wasn’t. In either case, if that was how the sales manager treated people who wanted to make a purchase, we couldn’t imagine how he treated customers who needed service after the deal was done. And with J.D. Power’s Subaru ratings, I had the feeling that there could be a lot of service. I had to tell the salesman that I was sorry but I had better deals on the table with other dealers. We left.

I wanted to get #1GF! a new car before her first day back to work, but there were only hours left and it didn’t look like it was going to happen. I felt bad, but you can’t get desperate when you’re buying a car, even if the woman you’re buying it for deserves it.

When we got home, I gave it one last try. I called the Honda salesman back and I got connected to a woman who couldn’t speak English. I dialed again and got the same woman. Thinking that the salesman’s card was a misprint, I called the dealer directly, and they connected me to the same woman again.

I called the dealership’s internet manager and left a message that for $500 less than he was offering, I would come back and purchase the car that night. Remember, I was already below dealer cost on the car, and running out of time, and yet I still found it necessary to continue pounding on the deal a little more. All he could say was “No.”

Within fifteen minutes, three different people from the dealership called me back to try to make the deal happen. After the experience with Subaru, it was nice to be dealing with people who really wanted to sell us a car.

This is week 128 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 889): Raking For The Boss lady

#1GF! and I were out the door at 7:30AM to go rake the family cottage. Wait, let me rephrase. We went to #1GF!’s brother’s house together, and #1GF!’s brother and I were tagged for raking duty. The women folk were tagged for child care. #1GF! stayed for a bit so that the baby could visit her cousins.

Before I went to go rake, one of the baby’s cousins wanted a kiss goodbye, so I bent down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Her head shrunk back and she looked at me with a furrowed brow. “You’re face is scratchy,” she said as she rubbed her cheek. She then turned to #1GF! and said, “Make him shave.” In this family, they’re no longer building ladies, they’re building boss ladies.

I don’t know how it got down to just #1GF!’s brother and I raking a family cottage that neither one of us uses. Oh, wait. Yes, I do. One year, #1GF!’s brother volunteered to rake the cottage and dragged #1GF! along. Then, the sister in law got roped in to the event. The sister in law eventually figured out that raking sucks and had a baby to get out of it, leaving #1GF! and her brother to rake.

Luckily, #1GF! met this nice guy who loved her and didn’t mind helping her out. A few years later, #1GF! said, “Wait a minute. Why am I still raking?” and had a baby to get out of it. The brother and I don’t have ovaries, so we had no way out of the raking unless we were in the hospital waiting for a baby to be delivered, which required precise timing that was way beyond either of us. So, the two of us were stuck raking the family cottage on our own.

This is week 127 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 882): Octogenarian Love Making

We woke up to the baby crying so often that we no longer bothered setting the alarm clock. This day was no different.

#1GF! got the baby under control, and I shuffled off to the kitchen for a bleary bowl of cereal. The first mouthful of sour told me that the milk had turned. I poured the whole bowl into the sink. An earful of crying followed by a mouthful of sour milk wasn’t the greatest way to start a day.

I looked through the cabinets and found some ancient packets of instant oatmeal, so I tore those bitches open and dumped them into a bowl. I threw the bowl into the microwave for a couple of minutes, and when it came out, it smelled like sweet, steamy sewage. I turned on the tap and got the same sewage smell. For some of the highest water rates in the state, smelly water is more common in my town than I ever remembered in the city. The oatmeal followed the cereal down the drain.

I was cranking the key and pumping the gas pedal, but my day was refusing to turn over. All I needed was a punch in the face and a glimpse of two eighty year olds making sweet, tongue-waggling love on my lawn to ensure that the rest of my senses got off to the same bad start. I left the kitchen and avoided looking out any windows on my way back to the den.

This is week 126 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 875): Beard Growing, Password Cracking Machine

It was October 25th, so as has become the custom, I put down my razor and started my annual winter beard. It gives me two good months of growth before the holidays.

I watched the baby for a bit so #1GF! could go back to bed. When she got up, we cleaned up the house a little.

I loaded some remote control software and logged into one of #1GF!’s family’s PCs to get rid of a fine piece of malware called Windows Enterprise Defender. It sounds legit, it looks legit, but it’s a piece of malware.

I was happy to resolve the problem, and even happier that I didn’t have to spend an additional couple of hours on the road thanks to some remote software, but that malware was a fat pain in the ass to extract. Once the virus was cleaned up, my father called to ask my opinion on a laptop. I guessed that it was going to be PC day. I was ready to shoot down his laptop as overpriced and underpowered, but the laptop he found was a pretty good deal. He bought it on the way over to see the baby.

The baby was tired, but stayed awake while my parents were over. My father opened the laptop and went through the setup process. It was Windows 7, which looked exactly like Vista to me. I needed to install a virus scanner for him, so he shut down and we moved to a room with network jacks. Once we were back up and running, my dad forgot the administrator password and we were locked out of his brand new laptop after a record ten minutes of use.

This is week 125 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 868): All Kinds Of Pie

The baby’s cousins came over for a visit, and I did “up high, down low…too slow” with them. You know that game. They high five you, then when they try to low five you, you pull your hand away. The kids liked it just as much on the thirtieth time as the first.

When they tried to do the same to me, I threw a wrench in like I always do.

“Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jowwwaaaan.”

“What, honey.”

The little cousin held her hand up. “Up high.”

“A pie?”

“Yea. Up high?”

“Well what kind of pie are we talking about here.

“Up high.”

“Blueberry…Blackberry…lemon…rhubarb…it better not be mincemeat. I am not a fan of mincemeat pies.”

“No. Jon. Listen. Up. High.

“I forgot apple. Your grandma makes a great apple pie, doesn’t she?”

“Yes. No. Jowan. Up. High.”

“Oh, see, I thought you brought me a pie.”

“No.”

“Are you sure.”

“Up high, Jon. Here. Right up here. Up. High.”

“Fine. But, I’d rather have an apple pie than a high five. Are you sure that the pie you brought isn’t in the car? I’d better go check.”

Her shoulders slumped. “There is no pie, Jowan. Up. High. Up High. Don’t you get it? Not pie. Up high. Up here. Right here. Up high.”

“This seems like a ripoff.” I slapped her hand up high.

“Down L…”

I slapped her hand before she finished. “Too slow.”

“Up high,” she said again.

We played until I learned to play the game properly.

This is week 124 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 861): Turn Around, Bright Eyes

All I know about this day was that I made a pro/con list to help me decide whether to take the job with my old company, and we started watching Frost Nixon, but ended up too tired to finish it, even though it was only 10PM. There are no other notes from the day, so I’m going to assume that Bonnie Tyler came by singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” until I told her to get the fuck off of my lawn.

Monday (Day 862): Guiltily Pushing All In

I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that someone was in the house and lay there straining to hear the smallest noise over my paced breathing. It took me a while to piece together that the pillow next to me wasn’t #1GF!, and that #1GF! was probably the person prowling around in the kitchen. I got up to verify because there’s no sense in getting murdered over a hunch. It turned out to be #1GF!, who mouthed, “Sorry” when she saw me squinting at her.

I went back to bed and had a dream that I was in class, and a guy kept kicking my chair to intentionally annoy me. I turned around and broke his finger. He stopped kicking my chair almost immediately. I then had to go to a college function to meet a prospective employer. The businessman looking to hire me clapped me on the back and told me that I was lucky that he smoothed over the finger breaking incident with the dean. I rolled my eyes internally and smiled at him like he had done me a favor.

This is week 123 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 854): The Golden Turrets

In the morning, #1GF! was outside with the baby talking to the neighbors because that’s what it’s like around here in the summer. It’s a genuine neighborhood. #1GF!’s family was supposed to visit, but bagged on us. I have to say that I was a little disappointed.

#1GF! looked up cars because she made a deadline that we were going to get a new car before her maternity leave was over. As we sat on the couch talking over the blander points of family sedans, the second feeding of the day came up. The baby fed and fell asleep on her mother after arching her tiny back and stretching her arms so that her fists were alongside her ears.

“We have a baby,” said #1GF! with a bit of amazement.

“Yes, we do.”

#1GF! and I took that baby out for a walk in the early afternoon and the same issue came up. #1GF! turned to me. “You know, sometimes I can’t believe that we had a baby.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Sometimes I feel like we’re just watching her, and I worry that someone is going to come by to pick her up.”

“It’s all very unreal, isn’t it?”

“It is. I sometimes feel like this can’t possibly be happening.”

I hugged her. “It’s happening all right. And no one is going to pick her up. I shredded the receipt.”

This is week 122 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 847): Enjoying The Bone Alone

I got up at 6AM to take over watching the baby, so that #1GF! could catch up on some sleep. Once the ladies were both out cold, I started reading one of #1GF!’s library books because I had no books of my own left to read. I was so far outside of the target audience that I quickly drifted off and started thinking about the plot to my next novel.

#1GF! was soon up to take over the baby care once again. I put ribs in the oven at noon, put the baby down for a nap, and then went to waste some time mashing up songs with Audacity. I gave up after a few hours of getting nowhere.

The baby had been asleep for hours and the house was quiet. I cut some potatoes and set them on the stove to boil. I dried my hands on a kitchen towel and looked around for something to do. Instead of starting something productive, I found myself simply waiting for the baby to wake up. I soon realized that I was leaning against a counter and staring at the cabinets.

My mother wanted a picture of the baby, so I imported the contents of the camera. The sheer volume of pictures that #1GF! had taken seemed almost excessive, given the amount of time the baby had been outside of the womb, but I couldn’t blame her. I found seven decent shots and created a four by five inch collage with Gimp, and saved the copies onto #1GF!’s thumb drive so she could have them printed at her leisure.

I wanted to eat dinner with #1GF!, and because 6PM on was prime scream time for the baby, I timed the ribs to be ready at the blue hair special hour of 4PM. After four hours in the oven, the ribs were pulling away from the meat with zero effort. They were just begging to be eaten by any nearby carnivore. No, really. I could hear their little voices calling through the oven door. At 4PM, I took that sweet barbecue pan out of the oven and gently placed it on the stove.

The minute those ribs touched the cook top, the baby woke up and initiated a sonic bombardment that would run over two hours. The baby wasn’t even close to the kitchen. Not only does the baby seem to know that she should start screaming at dinner time, but she manged to evade my dinner timing trickery. #1GF! and I definitely enjoyed the ribs, but we each enjoyed them by ourselves against a backdrop of screaming.

This is week 121 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 840): The Avalanche

The first thing I did in the morning was to spill a full bowl of Cheerios all over the kitchen floor. The room looked as if someone had placed a tiny charge at the bottom of my bowl and set it off as I walked across the kitchen. I shook my head and surveyed the havoc for a second before #1GF! walked in. “Don’t come in here,” I said, holding up a hand. “It’s a mess.”

She surveyed the room, lifted an eyebrow and smirked, waiting for the explanation of why the floor looked like a birds eye view of the sinking of the titanic.

“I have no idea what happened,” I said. “I couldn’t repeat it if I wanted to.”

#1GF! shook her head and walked away to tend to the baby.

Once I got the kitchen cleaned up, that minor incident was enough to tilt my mood into a general malaise. I walked into the other room with #1GF!.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you?” #1GF! asked. “They’re just Cheerios. You’ve got twelve cubic feet of them in the cabinet.”

This is week 120 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 833): Catching Stupid

I took the baby out of the bedroom at 7AM and tried everything to calm her down so that #1GF! could get some rest. When I finally gave up, I put her in her swing, and she promptly fell asleep. I sat at the table reading.

Once #1GF! was up, we gave the baby a bath, got showered and walked down to the town “Endless Summer” festival that takes over the main street of town every year.

The festival drew more derelict looking people than a Walmart on a Saturday, and was just about as exciting. As unusually snobby as it sounds coming from a guy who wears a hobo’s beard and hasn’t held a traditional boss/slave job in more than a couple of years, the whole thing made me want to sell the house and move to a new town.

We left the festival soon after we arrived, and sat on a bench under a pergola near the main bath house. A woman walked by in an extremely short skirt and stripper shoes, saying “…and once I signed that contract with god, there was no turning back.” I was intrigued to know the actual terms and conditions of that contract, but I wasn’t interested enough to sit through the horror story that probably led to it’s creation.

This is week 119 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 826): Rejections And Yelling

When I woke up, I took the baby out of the room so that #1GF! could catch up on the sleep she lost overnight. The temperature outside was hovering in the 60’s and you could feel fall creeping around the creaky hallway floor.

Once #1GF! was up, I grabbed a sandwich and we sat down to watch Kitchen Nightmares. I glanced out the window and noticed that the neighbors were all out working on their houses. I felt like I should be doing something too.

I changed the baby four times before noon, which seemed like a lot to me, considering it was only my portion of the changings. The baby soon fell asleep, #1GF! jumped into the shower. I sat by the window reading a book. So much for keeping up with the Joneses.

The baby woke up before the shower was over, and I tried to keep her quiet long enough for #1GF! to dry her hair.

As if the cosmos was determined to cram something useful into my day, a neighbor came over and asked me to help move a twenty-nine inch tube TV. Do you remember how big those suckers are? The larger models that were introduced at the end of the tube TV life cycle aren’t quite a one-man job to carry, but not quite a two-man job, either. They’re perfectly balanced to pry themselves away from your meager three-fingered grip and through the floor, unless of course they force you backward, using a couple of your ribs to cushion their fall. When you have two people, it’s more of the same, just with more fingers and ribs getting in the way. Luckily, this TV didn’t have to go more than a few feet, so the job was done in under ten minutes.