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 301): Nothing To See Here

After I cooked breakfast, I started looking up info on green technologies while #1GF! cleaned the house. I didn’t even realize she was cleaning until the vacuum was on, and by then it was too late to help out. We had nothing pressing to do, so we eventually went out to a furniture store to browse. We ended the day by hitting a local restaurant for dinner and watching a really crappy sci-fi movie called Sunshine.

Monday (Day 302): Taxes and Fish Cakes

Attempted to watch The Simpson’s Movie first thing in the morning, but found that the disc was cracked and had to order another copy. Once #1GF! got out the door, I assembled the taxes. Because I was pretty sure that there wasn’t a local place that did photocopying, I decided to scan and print all the documents myself. Scanners are not a fast way to photocopy, so it took me a half hour just to get #1GF!’s taxes printed. Just as the last page came out, I ran out of ink and staples, so I ended up having to make the drive up to a local office supply store anyway.

Once I got home, I finished scanning and printing my own taxes, and then used Eraser to wipe the files from my drive with 35 passes of random data. Call me paranoid, but I didn’t even like the idea of having the scans temporarily on my drive. You can take the man out of data security job, but you can’t take data security job out of the man. When I was done, I went to the post office and physically handed the envelopes to a postal worker. At least I think it was a postal worker.

I went over to the house to check on the progress, and by then it was 3:30, so there was no way that I was going to fight the traffic to get to the market considering #1GF! wasn’t coming home for dinner. Once I saw the progress, I headed home and wrote the Life of Riley. I made some fish cakes at 8PM so #1GF! wouldn’t come home and think that I was incapable of fending for myself.

Tuesday (Day 303): April Fool’s, Bitches

I nailed everybody with my So Long And Thanks For All The Fish Post. I thought it was pretty funny that people who know me fell for it hardest, while only the ladies from Chi-town firmly refused to buy into the lie. Every time I started feeling bad and thinking about adding a comment that would expose the post as a hoax, another person got sucked in.

I actually went so far as to make sure that I published #1GF!’s prank of karmic justice after midnight so that anyone getting the RSS feed would have an equal opportunity to fall for the prank. I was really psyched that I was able to pull one over on my readers, and even more psyched at all the people who came out of the woodwork to in opposition to my resignation. That was pretty cool for me. Thanks, folks.

Wednesday (Day 304): The Checker

I started the day by taking out the garbage and cleaning up for our apartment maintenance inspection. They have to enter our apartments every quarter to check smoke alarms and the like. It’s the biggest thing that I will be psyched to be done with once we move out. It almost kept me from moving into this apartment in the first place because I consider it to be an invasion of privacy.

I headed over to the office to give notice that we would be moving out and then requested that the inspection take place soon. They requested the move out notice in writing, but sent over the maintenance guy within the hour. I got the notice over to them and once the inspection was completed, I went over to the house to drop off a check to the contractor. The house was getting insulated, which is certainly progress.

From there, I did the food shopping while listening to Valient Thorr. Headphones really make the food shopping go faster even if it does make me more likely to flash the devil horns at random cans of peas. After rocking through all the aisles like I was in Valient Thorr, I ended up in the checkout line of a checker who couldn’t figure out how the credit cards worked. I swiped, and the total went to zero, but she made me swipe again. Nothing happened, because the system had already accepted my card. She had me swipe again before I asked her if she was sure that the card hadn’t already gone through. Before dismissing me like I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about, she called over a manager to fix the broken system. That’s when the manager pulled my receipt that was sitting on top of the machine. This was the same checker who a few weeks before had continuously scanned a bag of coffee until I told her that she had to weigh it. I’m not going in her line for a few months until she finds her groove as a checker.

Once I got home and got the groceries put away, I added a direct link to getting my posts by e-mail to the top menu of my site. There are a few people who get a daily digest sent to them by e-mail rather than visit this site, and I wanted to see if having the link more accessible would increase the number of people who use it. It makes getting updates so easy.

Once the update was done, I wrote for a while. I thought about upgrading WordPress, but the hacks that I have in place kept me from tackling it. #1GF! cooked a stir fry and I told her it was too salty. She cooks so rarely that I hate doing that to her when she does.

Thursday (Day 305): CD Browsing

I made my second attempt at watching The Simpson’s Movie while I ate my cereal. I knew that it was going to suck, but it sucked way harder than expected. Once #1GF! got out the door, I evened up my beard a little. I’ve had it for five months now, and I haven’t really given it much of a trim in about three. It doesn’t look good, but at least it’s a little more even.

Once I was satisfied, I got in the car and went CD shopping. I didn’t really want to go, but I had nothing to do, and I didn’t want to waste the whole day at the PC again. I went to a couple of stores and came out without spending a dime. I don’t spend money anymore. Whenever I go to buy something, I shrug and think , “I don’t need this” and then put it back. Without having any stresses, the desire to consume is greatly reduced. I love music and all, and it would be the thing that I would be most likely to purchase, but with so many free and legal alternatives available, buying CD’s seems like a waste of time for someone with no disposable income.

Watched Into the Wild after dinner, which cured me of any ideas that I’m antisocial. I was bored during a good part of the movie, and didn’t understand what the big deal was about some kid who went out in the woods and poisoned himself. It’s certainly a tragic miscalculation, but the way that it was romanticized seemed ridiculous to me. If you want to walk out in the woods, great. Go for it. If you want to blame your parents for everything that’s wrong with your life, that’s your prerogative. But if you’re going to go out in the Alaskan woods by yourself in the middle of winter, don’t expect me to think you’re some sort of hero when you starve to death out there. It’s more likely that I’ll think that it was an avoidable tragedy that could’ve been avoided if you weren’t so stupid.

Friday (Day 306): CD Browsing II

It was raining, and the dreariness was seeping into my apartment. Rather than sit in it, I decided to hop in the car and drive 90 minutes down to a CD store on Cape Cod. I didn’t listen to the radio, so I whistled and made up songs the whole way. I felt more than a little crazy, but no one got hurt. I forgot how long the ride was, so I stopped into the Cape Cod Mall to take a leak. I thought about getting some lunch, but then I felt really isolated.

I decided to forgo lunch and head for the store. I went through the CD store in about an hour and came up empty handed again. I found a couple of CDs that were interesting, but I didn’t care enough to buy them. I thought about stopping into a bar and getting a sandwich, but my sense of isolation had not improved and I didn’t feel like being out and alone, so I headed home. That wasted half a day, but really, what else did I have to do?

When I got home, I had a sandwich of capicola that was supposed to be used by that day. I ended up having dry bagels and ginger ale for dinner, so the “use by” date was probably a couple of days off.

Saturday (Day 307): Mr. Smelly Writes

Got up with a headache and watched a couple of episodes of How It’s Made while I ate my breakfast. I had no idea that so much of what we use every day is made by giant robots. Who designs the machines? Who programs them? There’s a whole robotic world out there that I’m not privy to.

I spent some time retouching a scanned picture for #1GF! in the morning, and learned a little more about what works when retouching photos. #1GF! went out, so I wrote a few posts. By the time I looked up, it was 5PM and I still hadn’t showered. At least this post got written by Sunday like it’s supposed to.

What I Learned

• Learned a little more about retouching photos, although I still don’t find The GIMP to be very intuitive.
• The Use By Date on meat is more of a guideline than a rule.
• If I could tie out an international, multiclass mutual fund with a pencil and a ten key, then I can do my taxes with a pen and a calculator.
• You guys would miss me if I was gone.
• It takes more effort to fool a lady from Chi-town.
• I’m not antisocial. I’m slightly socially challenged.
• My poor memory will be my downfall.
• 300 days is a long time to be without a job even if it is by choice.

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