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 281): The Lincolnic Leprechaun

I went to a St. Patrick’s Day parade with #1GF!’s family because it’s something of a tradition for them. I don’t really go for parades, but I didn’t have anything to do, so I tagged along. We wound down blocked off streets behind the parade route by ignoring barriers and giving policemen quizzical points down the streets that we weren’t supposed to be driving on. Oddly enough, they let us through each time with a wave.

The big draw for the kids of this particular 30 minute, small town parade is that they throw a lot of candy off the floats. Because I had never been, I had no idea that each of the kids would be leaving with full gallon freezer bags. This wasn’t including #1GF!’s brother’s take.

One of the people throwing candy had #1GF!’s brother hold a candy bucket while he untangled some strings of beads, and then forgot to take the bucket back when he ran off to rejoin his float. #1GF!’s brother started hucking candy up in the air like he was part of the parade and I think he still had a half bucket left once the ground was saturated.

Most of the time, I stood back with #1GF! while she watched from the curb, but there were a few occasions where I would walk up and drop pieces of candy into the kids’ bags. At one point, this little kid named Michael (I know his name because his father was chasing him yelling his name as he chased the candy throwing floats down the street) He was under 8 and had the strings of his hood tied so tightly that his face barely poked out of the the drawn hole. Well, he was all over the place, and I eventually backed over him while he knelt behind me picking up candy at my feet. Once I picked the kid up, he scurried off to where his father was with an “I’m OK! I’m OK!”

After that, I stayed mostly out of the way, with the exception of diving fully extended on the ground to wrestle a piece of candy from #1GF!’s sister. That only happened once, but everyone seemed to get a good WTF? laugh out of it. Maybe it looked a little nuts, but it cannot be said that I will avoid physical humor to make people laugh.

Afterward, we got some coffee and wandered around Home Depot looking at tile and faucets. At some point, #1GF! asked me when my beard was coming off, and I told her that her niece told me that my beard made me look like “Abraham Lincoln or a leprechaun”, so I didn’t know if I should. Even though we were in good spirits, the decisions eventually wore out, so we went home where I made #1GF! fettuccine alfredo and broccoli.

Monday (Day 282): Best Foot Forward

#1GF! went out with her Mom, so I spent the morning making a St. Patrick’s day playlist full of traditional Irish tunes. Once I was done, I wrote my Life of Riley post and checked Best Foot Forward into the WordPress Subversion repository.

The only other thing I did was a review of a new site that K requested. I think I gave her more information than she was looking for, but I don’t think that saying “looks good!” is worth as much as some constructive pointers. I may not be a web guru, but I’ve learned a lot in the last nine months about web stuff and I’m willing to share it with people who ask. This is especially true if that person is the only other blogger that I’ve been CD shopping with.

Tuesday (Day 283): New Phones and No Insulation

I got a call from the contractor in the morning, so I had to run over to the house to drop off a kitchen plan. Once I got there, I found out that the plan didn’t have enough measurements, so I had to call the kitchen place to have them e-mail me a more detailed plan that I’d run back to my apartment and print out. It was then that I found out that there wasn’t any insulation in the walls of our house, and because you can’t blow insulation through brick, all the outside walls have to be gutted to get some insulation in there. Even though I was sure that #1GF! would be on board, I decided to call her to make sure that she was ok with the additional expenditure.

While I was on the phone an insurance inspector showed up to inspect the property. The house was obviously under heavy construction, so she asked to take pictures of the property and come back in a couple of months when we were finished. Thanks to the drawn out battle with an insurance company who did their best to screw me out of every dime after my house fire, insurance companies get my defenses up. Even though the agent was nice enough, my lack of trust in insurance companies verges on paranoia when inspections and cameras are involved.

Once she was done, I headed home home to grab the kitchen plan still hadn’t arrived, so I got the dimensions of our washer and dryer printed out because they are going to be a tight fit in our laundry closet. Once the plan arrived, I ran all the papers back over to the contractor. I had to get back to the apartment quickly because I was approaching the beginning of one of those five hour windows where I had to wait for the phone guy to show up and switch our phone service.

I thought that the phone switch was going to be a simple thing, but it ended up requiring a new box, a new internet modem and some new wiring. As if I wasn’t already paranoid from the insurance guy, I had a phone guy installing new boxes and wires that I wasn’t aware of. The tech ended up powering down my PC not so gracefully by stepping on my power switch. It was an accident, and I save pretty often, so it turned out to be no big deal.

Then he had to use my PC to activate the switch. As an ex security guy, I don’t let anyone except #1GF! touch my PC. I watched him the whole time, and as he activated the modem, he allowed through some ActiveX controls. When I asked him about it he said that they don’t install anything but you have to click them anyway. That’s not actually true, and I know it, but I wasn’t sure if he knew it. Once he was done, I swept out the controls that he added and did a full spyware and virus scan of the PC. The only things I found were the controls, which were easy to remove, but for a non-technical person, I doubt that they would’ve known what to look for.

By the time I was finished with everything it was 4PM, so went through the Netflix watch instantly new additions and called it quits for the day.

Wednesday (Day 284): 403: Forbidden

Talked to the contractor several times and dropped off more washer and dryer specs on my way to do the food shopping. I planned to make some nice pork chops for #1GF!, but got side tracked late in the day and she ended up cooking. I felt bad that she had to cook because I couldn’t get my shit together because I was planning to have everything ready by the time she got home.

Before bed, I mentioned that it was probably time for me to get a job because I’m not getting anywhere on the web and I need some interesting problems to solve. That’s when #1GF! forbid me from getting a job. She actually used the phrase, “No, I forbid it”. I couldn’t help but laugh, but I have to admit that that is a pretty cool thing to have happen.

I guess she wants me at home to take care of all the issues that come up with the house and because she says that me at least attempting to follow my dreams is inspiring. I understand needing underdogs to root for, but being the underdog and failing constantly gets pretty old after a while. People need wins to get them through life. Right now, even though my site got bumped in Google page rank from a PR4 to a PR5, my wins aren’t big enough for me. I have a lot of technical skill and creative ability that need to be put toward something bigger.

Thursday (Day 285): Talkbox Playlist

I started the day by creating a Finetune playlist featuring all talkbox songs for DigitalDarryl because in the last eleven month’s I haven’t been able to work the idea into a FineTune Friday theme. After I was done, I added some friends in the FineTune app because I’d love to get more people involved with FineTune Friday. I doubt it will help because the community features of Finetune are severely underdeveloped and difficult to decipher.

I called the contractor and a couple of granite places, played a game of Canyon Defense, and ate two pieces of bacon and a handful of peanuts for lunch because I was too lazy to do something as simple as pull out two pieces of bread. That’s lazy. I was also too lazy to write down anything else I did that day, so it is lost forever to the sands of time.

Friday (Day 286): Ohmmmmmm

#1GF! and I went to look at granite at a granite warehouse, and they were constantly moving large slabs by crane overhead, making us move out of the way a lot. Afterward, we went to another granite warehouse that was supposed to be unfriendly, but they were closed. That was fine with me because was less interested in stone than I was in food.

From there, we ran an errand for #1GF!’s Mom, and then went to lunch at a barbecue place next door. We sat at the bar, and this particular place has about 15 TV’s all on different channels and you can get a box to listen to whatever station you want. We din’t care about the TV, so it was pretty quiet for a good portion of our meal. Then, some guy sat down right next to us and started cranking the basketball game. I swear that he kept turning it up, because it got to the point where I was having trouble hearing #1GF!, who was sitting right next to me.

In situations like this, I have many solutions vying for my attention. One wants to ask the guy nicely to turn it down a bit. Another wants to get a box, tune it to a soap opera and push it as close to the guy as I can with it cranked. Another thinks that I should stop thinking like the center of the universe and not allow myself to be bothered by someone else. Then there’s a part of me who simply wants to bounce the guy’s head off the counter, throw him off his stool and choke him out. I sort of felt like a pussy, but I chose to try to ignore the guy and continue on with my lunch. He was not the problem. If I was annoyed, it was my problem. Right? OOooosssaahhhh.

That night, we watched the most kick ass movie called Shoot ‘Em Up, where Clive Own goes on a two hour killing spree. Some of his kills are simply because people do annoying things like slurp coffee. It was wall to wall action, complete with one liners, fifty on one gun fights, and just a ridiculous amount of violence. #1GF! hated it, and I loved it to death.

Saturday (Day 287): Cooking For Easter

We got up and went granite shopping until noon. I think we’ve seen a billion pieces of granite, yet we haven’t seen anything that we’ve really liked. How is that possible? We went food shopping and then headed home to cook for Easter. I started by making up a recipe for orange hazelnut biscotti, and then made a couple of quiches. One was cheese, but the other was a concoction of sausage, garlic, onion and spinach, which was sort of made up, too.

Once I was out of the kitchen, #1GF! stepped in to make two plates of baked French toast before we headed over to #1GF!’s Mom’s house to move a couch. Never let it be said that #1GF! doesn’t lift objects that are bigger than her. #1GF!’s Mom gave us apple cake and Anginetti cream puffs before we left. It was late by the time we got home, so I grabbed a piece of apple cake and watched an episode of The Wire until it was time to turn in.

What I Learned

• I learned that I can make up my own biscotti recipes.
• That there are a lot of talkbox songs out there.
• That there are people in the world who are way more socially retarded than I am.
• That I’m forbidden from getting a job.
• That people need underdogs to root for.
• That creating a series of Wordpress plugins can help give you the authoritative links that you need to help boost your Google page rank.

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Posted in Leisure