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 168): Bozo

When to #1GF!’s niece’s birthday party, and they had a jumpy thing in the back yard. Wasn’t there a time when those things were called moonwalks or am I just 400 years old? I was in the thing initially just making sure that her little niece didn’t get creamed by the older kids, but ended up rough housing with the kids. I’m 35. Sometimes I think that there’s something wrong with me because kids find me so appealing. Adults generally don’t act like idiots, but I do. I think once I get my house, I’m going to have a jumpy thing for my birthday and make adults jump in it. I shouldn’t have been so worn out by jumping around in the thing, and I probably need to get back to the gym. It was a little shameful how out of shape I’ve become in the last few months.

Monday (Day 169): Clerks

Worked all day building the dyers.org store.

Tuesday (Day 170): Clerks II

Worked half the day on the store and the other half on ad management.

Wednesday (Day 171): Ugly Code

Worked almost the entire day building a Perl script to scrape me some data from the web because I’m tired of waiting for other sites to supply it. I gave up with a “good enough” after about eight hours, but I’m a little ashamed that the script isn’t the least bit elegant. For some reason, I have trouble with ugly code even if it works.

Thursday (Day 172): Thanksgiving

#1GF! and I rounded up the parents and went to Thanksgiving at #1GF!’s sister’s house. After dinner, we played Hobin’s dice and Catch Phrase. We left by 8 to give #1GF!’s sister a chance to get a little sleep before her 4AM shopping excursion on Friday.

Friday (Day 173): FTF

I caught up on all my weekly reads and started putting together my FineTune Friday Holidaze playlist. It took longer than expected because I’ve never really thought about who sings the versions that I’m used to.

I was supposed to be writing during that time, but found myself stopped by the feeling that I’m not only full of shit, but wasting my time. When writing stops feeling like I’m giving you anything worthwhile, it turns into a chore. A leftover turkey sandwich helped me to get over myself and started on my posts for the following week. I think mostly the feeling results from focusing on my earnings instead of the fact that I’m doing what I want for a living. There are way easier ways to make a living, folks, but none are as appealing to me.

Saturday (Day 174): The Builder

Finished off rough renovation designs in Google Sketchup, and spent the rest of the day searching for builders. We searched online and then drove around town to see who was building what. Once I completely burned out, we walked down to grab some dinner from a local restaurant. It’s been bothering me that my plans are from memory and slightly off, but #1GF! thinks they’re fine because a builder is going to get their own measurements anyway. I would rather present perfectly measured plans, but she’s probably right. There’s no way to get good measurements before the closing and I’d like to get moving on finding out what renovations might cost and how long they might take, so for the second time this week I gave up by saying, “good enough”.

What I learned

• Everyone loves Hobin’s dice (I’ll put together a post on it soon)
• A good turkey sandwich will cure what ails you.
• Sometimes you have to let ugly code live.
• Sometimes “good enough” is good enough.
• Beyond a basic level, money is not as important as getting what I want out of life.
• Walking at night in the cold seems like a crappy idea, but it makes getting back inside seem so much nicer.
• I’ve somehow become someone who enjoys the holidays. I don’t think it will be too many years before I’m in Cosby sweaters and fake antlers. What have I become?

Posted in Leisure