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 245): Go Pats?

We went out to Sears and Home Depot to get an idea of what we’d need for appliances and what we’d be paying. Again, we were faced with nearly endless choice for refrigerators, never mind with stoves, dishwashers, washers, dryers, and microwaves. It was still fun, but there was a lot to think about. Sometimes, I think that there may be too much choice in the world.

We ate dinner and watched the Super Bowl because #1GF! was interested. I think it’s funny that she thinks that I don’t know anything about sports because I don’t watch them. I just find watching games to be a waste of my time, but that doesn’t mean I’ve never played or watched a sport before. It’s just not my thing. Anyway, the Pats lost the Super Bowl and
it was my fault.

Monday (Day 246): Thinking Like A Quitter

I spent the morning putting together basic bathroom design in Sketchup and then started digging through my RSS feeds. Within an hour, I decided that I was sick of the web, so I started searching out domain names for a new site idea. One hour later, I was again sick of the web again.

As if knowing my mood was souring, an e-mail came in from a former co-worker who described how happy he was with his new job. As I read, I realized that my old company may have skewed my perception of all corporations. Don’t get me wrong, I liked my former job, but the necessary evil of large scale corporate bureaucracy tended to push everyone toward mediocrity. The only people seemed content were career corporate types who worked the system rather than working within it, and people who were happy to be working there because they believed that it was the best that they were going to be able to do. Everyone else was either frustrated or slowly having their edges ground off until they just didn’t care about their jobs anymore. It was sort of a white collar factory (if there is such a thing), where respect and raises were doled out based on your uniform class more than the work that you did. I guess not all jobs are like that.

I shrugged and had given up on everything, so I decided that I could change my mood by pouring myself back into Sketchup to lay out more bathroom ideas, which I did until it was time for bed. Once the lights went out, I stared into the darkness thinking that it was time for me to give up the dream and go back to work. People will pay me a lot more money for a lot less work than this, but money isn’t the real issue. The issue is about putting a mark in the win column. I left my job because no one cared about my successes, and now that I’m on the web, the successes haven’t been there. Even a small win can be enough to keep you going, and without them, you have nothing to consider but your failures.

Tuesday (Day 247): Busy, Busy Busy

I haven’t been this busy in a weeks. Once I got #1GF! off to work, I added a couple of more bathroom ideas that #1GF! had requested. Once that was done, I spent the morning compiling a list of Inkscape tutorials that taught me some tricks that I would never have figured out on my own. #1GF! called me to remind me to eat lunch, which I agreed to, but completely forgot about because I started working on the foundation of another WordPress widget project. At some point during all of this, I set up an appointment to talk to the contractor about getting started on the house. Once #1GF! got home, I showed her the Sketchup designs and the shiny button for the Inkscape post, and she was apologetically unimpressed with both. I gave up and made her burritos.

Wednesday (Day 248): Winter Rain

It was cold, rainy, and foggy which is the worst kind of winter day. If it’s snowing you’re at least insulated from sound and comforted by being protected from it inside a nice, warm building. When it rains in the winter, it’s dreary and the cold seeps into everything.

The only good thing about this day is that we signed on with our contractor.

Thursday (Day 249): Maid Service

I polished off Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, from the reader recommended book list, which was an excellent suggestion from M-Shel. for the next seven hours, I cleaned the bathroom and kitchen from top to bottom. Once #1GF! got home from work, we went back to the kitchen place to pick out our cabinets. They had the appointment written for Friday, but they were nice enough to keep the appointment anyway. Two and a half hours later, we had our cabinets picked out. We picked up a pizza and headed home to think about appliances. Being tired of choice, I worked on finishing up my happy post.

Friday (Day 250): New Stage of Hobo

I spent the day working my beard page, and went out to dinner with a couple of #1GF!’s friends. I wore a shirt and a T-shirt because it’s been so damned cold around here, and even though I used to wear dress shirts every day, I was amazingly uncomfortable. The T-shirt and shirt would move independently and I would squirm to try to get comfortable before we left so that I wouldn’t look like more of a dork at dinner. When dress shirts feel weird, you’re at a new stage of hobo.

Saturday (Day 251): Lost In the Supermarket

#1GF! got up at 5 AM because she was going to visit her family, so I got up with her. She was out the door by 6:30 AM, and I was left alone to figure out what to do with myself. I had some errands to run, but no stores are open that early on a Saturday, so I had to choose between kicking on the computer or watching Grindhouse: Planet Terror on Netflix On Demand. The computer lost.

Planet Terror was a perfect re-make of a bad B movie, complete with overdone gore, bad special effects, scratched film, warbly audio, fake previews, and even a film burn and lost reel in the middle that jumped the movie forward a few scenes. It was neat to watch the movie’s style, but the movie sucked, so it’s a little hard to rate. I could appreciate it if someone made a perfect restoration of a Pacer, but I wouldn’t be able to say that it was a good car. I would think that it was neat, and wonder why someone went through the trouble. That’s the same way that I feel about this movie. It gets points for style, but nothing else.

Once the movie was done, I drove to the library to pick up some new books, but after an hour of wandering, I headed out the door with nothing. I met a guy on the way out who just pointed at my T-shirt and said “Amoeba!” with a surprised expression. I was wearing the Amoeba Records T-shirt that my cousin gave me when I made my pilgrimage to the amazing San Francisco record store years ago. We talked about how awesome the store is and both wished there was something like it in Boston. With nothing left to talk about, I went down the stairs, and he headed up.

On the way home, I pulled into the market to pick up some food. I grabbed a red basket as I normally do, but had to abandon it for a cart by the time I was through the second row. There was a lot more people in the store than normal, but then I do all my shopping during the week when the store is peppered with a few mommies and old ladies who refuse to make eye contact with an oddly placed beard master like me. Today, the store was teeming with old men being piloted around by old women, guiding them down the aisles like tugboat pilots guiding barges through unfamiliar waters. Swirling around them, were a lot of women who were fond of the comfortable, but devastatingly unforgiving fashion choice of sweatpants. As usual, I was shopping with my walkman on, which blots out the white noise and chatter, making the store into an unlikely music video for the Viking death metal of Amon Amarth. The music makes the mundane seem unusual.

Once I got home, I worked on a new chart of beard types and put it on my beard page. I finished off the day with a sandwich for dinner and a plate of cheap cookies, which a paid for in the form of a crazy dream. I’m not sure if it means anything, but it was too strange not to write down.

*Bonus: Saturday’s Dream

I was getting mugged, and I ended up attacking the guy and throwing him around like a rag doll. After throwing him sideways into the side of a car, I choked him out in the gutter. I wasn’t really sure if he was dead, so I thought about turning myself in, but #1GF! and I were in a rush to get somewhere, so I decided I’d turn myself in later. We headed to try to find our car, but all we could find was a cab with a Rastafarian driver. As we were resolving ourselves to the cab ride, we were attacked by Nudges. The creatures were all white and about the size of a person. They had long spindly arms, long clawed fingers, and big ugly looking alien heads attached to their round bodies without a neck. They ran out of white Barba Papa looking houses and wrapped themselves around them everyone in sight. Even though they had long claws, they really didn’t do anything but hang on to people until they fell over.

One jumped on the cab driver, so I tried to free him by grabbing the Nudge and throwing it. The Nudge grabbed at the cab driver, so as I flung it 200 yards into the air, the cab driver went with him, flopping like a rag doll on his own trajectory. Again, I thought that I should probably turn myself in for that too, but I instead decided to steal the cab to get to our destination.

Before we could go, a pregnant lady and her man jumped into the back seat and demanded that we take them to the hospital. So that they wouldn’t know that I just flung the cab driver to his possible death, I tried to assume his identity. I threw all his licenses in the glove box, and even though I thought it was gross, I put on his multi-colored Rasta hat. We told the couple we’d be right back, and got out of the cab and started walking. The guy I had choked out earlier ran by with a gun, and didn’t recognize me, probably because of my hat. I was relieved and not relieved at the same time. Once he turned a corner, #1GF! and I started running in the other direction.

We ended up at a garage where I was dropping off an old mattress. The guy at the garage kept trying to offer me a job because he saw me haul in the mattress and thought that I would be perfect for hauling around heavy stuff at his shop, but I kept politely refusing and thanking him for offering. I think at that point we borrowed a truck from the guy to head out to our destination, which, I never found out because I woke up into a new week.

What I Learned

• I’m prejudiced against corporations, but not all corporations are the same.
• There are no wins for me on the web.
• Learned a lot more about Inkscape.
• Winter rain feels worse than snow.
• Some people will talk to you about anything.
• Sometimes a million books don’t mean anything if you’re not open to them
• Cookies + Sleep = weird dreams.
• Style can only get you so far.

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Posted in Life of Riley