The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details 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 70)

Got up to deal with ANOTHER outage of my site. It was down for a while and my host didn’t seem to notice once again. When they finally responded to tell me that it was all set, it wasn’t. I have no idea how many hours the site was down, but I was tired of the reliability issues. I gave up worrying about it and we headed out to the beach for a few hours before hitting some open houses. Because #1GF! had Monday off, we went out to dinner and came home to watch Netflix on demand.

Monday (Day 71)

I wrote all morning. I’m pretty blank on the rest.

Tuesday (Day 72)

Drove to Quincy to get my haircut. There were at least four old guys in the barber shop, none of whom needed a haircut or worked there. Because there were no ladies present, the haircut was peppered with cussing and dirty jokes. Afterward, I did the food shopping and checked my e-mail. I spent $10 in quarters washing the grit off of rocket car. It could use another round because washing at four minute intervals isn’t amazingly effective. Came home and started reading my blogging RSS feeds. Gave up only to make dinner.

Wednesday (Day 73)

Let the maintenance people in so that they could relight the pilot on my water heater. One made fun of the flat tires and layer of dust on my bike. They enter my apartment at least eight times a year for stuff like that, which is something that I’ve never had in any other apartment. If you find pictures of me sleeping or showering on the internet, please let me know. I came up with a fun idea for a post, and worked on it for most of the day. Made a few minor site changes like adding links to the RSS feeds for individual posts in the comments section and making the header image clickable.

Thursday (Day 74)

#1GF1! told me a story about forwarding my site to one of her friends, and how her friend got so wrapped up that she ended up reading a lot more posts than she planned on. Those are little things that make a difference when you’re writing your ass off and don’t know if anyone is paying attention. Continued working on the following Monday’s post for my geeky brethren, and by the time I got Friday’s post done, it was 6PM. The days fly when you’re having fun.

Friday (Day 75)

Gave Finetune Friday it’s own page and added it to Blogcarnival.com to see if we can get some more submissions going. Quickly skimmed my daily blogs and printed out a list of rules for Kubb, before getting ready to go to #1GF!’s aunts’ house to help them get ready for a cookout. The aunts ended up cancelling our trip two minutes before we were heading out the door, leaving us time to go to #1GF!’s mom’s house to fix her computer.

Saturday (Day 76)

Went to a “Christmas/Easter/Halloween in August” cookout with #1GF!’s family. They had a Yankee swap, to which #1GF! and I contributed a hat and a couch pillow, both stolen from #1GF!’s mom’s house. Watching the recognition and shock spread when her mom saw her couch pillow and favorite hat being opened as a gift was absolutely priceless. I was trying not to wake a sleeping baby in my arms, so most of my laughter ended up streaming down my face. #1GF!’s mom eventually got her pillow back, and the party was a success, despite its bizarre nature.

What I learned

• Dumb ideas are usually fun
• If there’s a joke in it, petty crime sometimes pays
• I get a kick out of hearing that people enjoy this site because I really enjoy writing it.
• I spend a lot of time writing and rearranging this site, and I really have to start seriously attempting to make some money from it
• Sometimes letting things go and going to the beach are the best solutions to a problem.
• People who are over 60 and talking in barbershops generally aren’t there for haircuts, so you don’t have to wait for them to take a chair when one opens up.
• Finding people to play Kubb with can be difficult outside of Sweden.
• Money is nice, but working at something you love is so much better than working at something that only benefits you through a paycheck.

Posted in Leisure