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 364): The Old, Angry Man

I woke up groggy and turned on the radio, which was set to the oldies channel because even though my in-car entertainment might be death metal, when I turn on the radio lately, I happily listen to the oldies. The DJ started a monologue about “Remember the cartoons you watched as a kid?” and I was groggily nodding along and saying things like “Ha, Jabberjaws” or “I hate smurfs” to no one in particular when it hit me: The DJ wasn’t talking about old cartoons of the 50’s. This guy on the oldies channel was talking about cartoons from my childhood.

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, there. Sure, I remember The Jackson 5ive, The Herculoids, Thundar The Barbarian, Top Cat, Grape Ape, Hong Kong Phooey, Speed Buggy, and the friggin’ Wonder Twins, but I’m not old, man. Oldies stations are supposed to talk about stuff that old people enjoy, like, I dunno, pudding or something. They are not supposed to communicate with me directly because I’m not their target audience. Right?

Just as I was shaking my head at the station’s audacity, “Photograph” by Def Leppard came on, and I said something like “Yea, bitches. ROCK! Who’s old now?” #1GF! thought it was a good time to point out that I hadn’t changed the channel and was still listening to the oldies station. Damn hell crap. Are you telling me that when me and my mullet-wearing friends were in the basement listening to Pyromania on cassette on a boombox and wondering what “Onta Glieben glauben Globen” meant, most 25 year olds weren’t born yet? Fuuuck me. Wear all the big shorts and t-shirts you want, but when the oldies channel is talking directly to you, you might want to start stocking up on pudding and Depends.

After my episode, we spent the rest of the morning trying to figure out what we were going to use the rooms in the new house for. You’d think that we would’ve thought about that at some point in the last few months, but we seemed to have designed the house in a more general plan that would suit everyone without considering how we would use it. Once we decided what would go where, we realized that the house probably wouldn’t fit our awesome purple couch and we’d have to sell it. I was old, I was losing the purple couch, and the day was not going well.

We went over to dinner at #1GF!’s mom’s house, and on the way over, I put Louis Prima in the CD player. When “Angelina” came on, I couldn’t help thinking that I always wanted a daughter to name Angelina after a woman who took care of me as a kid. As I listened, I got a little sad because at my age, the odds of an Angelina pattering around my house is pretty much zero. It’s just the cards that I got dealt. I love kids, but most of the time, I’m perfectly fine with not having any of my own. There are great benefits like having all kinds of time to yourself, being able to leave sharp and poisonous objects all over the floor, and saying “fuck” really loud whenever you want to. You can even have some nice stuff because there’s no tiny person there to throw up on it. But, sometimes when I hear songs like that, an abstract thing like never being able to name a kid after someone drags me down. #1GF! gets like that sometimes too. We have our moments, but you can’t focus on what you don’t have or you’ll miss everything that you do. And we actually have quite a bit to be thankful for. Like each other and our families.

Dinner was great, and on the way home, we stopped by the house to get me good and riled up about how poorly matched the brick on our house was. I’ve burned out a good portion of my lifetime supply of anger at this point in my life, but sometimes things like that get my fuse re-lit. I spent the whole night having conversations in my head about that fucking brick. It was such a waste of time, but I couldn’t seem to control it and it ended up coloring the rest of my night.

Monday (Day 365): Hugo, Man Of 1000 Faces

I did the food shopping unusually early, and the only people in the store were restocking shelves. It was depressing enough to help me to understand why people buy nips at 9 AM. I got out of there fast, put away the groceries, and went over to the house to tear out the phone and cable wiring so that it wouldn’t get in the way if the painters decided to show up.

It only took me a couple of hours to get everything ripped out, and I was home piecing together the Life of Riley from the previous week. If I don’t keep up with writing it every day, this weekly post becomes a marathon writing and editing fest that eats the entire day. This post took me until about 7:30 PM just to get four days roughed out.

There were only a couple of other noteworthy events from the day. When a friend called and I rubbed one of my eyes while talking, my contact lens slithered off of my retina and into my head somewhere. Because I was on a corded phone, I was stuck trying to divide my attention between the conversation and the contact that was burrowing into my brain. I’m no stranger to having contacts stuck in my head, so I was able to ignore the problem until the call was over. Once I hung up, I went downstairs and coaxed the contact out of my tear duct by the tiny corner of it that was visible.

While searching the web, I accidentally found a toy that has been a life-long childhood mystery. It’s the only toy that I can remember from my cousins’ house when I was a kid, and I probably only saw it for fifteen minutes before getting completely bored with it. Everyone I’ve ever asked about it thought I was inventing memories, and I have never really been sure if they were right. Well, 30 years later, I know that I’m not crazy, because I finally have proof that Hugo, Man of A Thousand Faces existed.

When #1GF! got home, I told her about resolving the mystery that had bugged me on and off for thirty years, and she asked if I had ever just asked my cousins about it. I never actually thought to solve the problem so directly, so my victory felt a little less victorious.

After watching My Kid Could Paint That, #1GF! read and edited my Life of Riley post, which was full of mistakes because of my inability to find simple errors after staring at the same words for a few hours. It’s not often that she reads my posts out loud to me anymore, so it was a rare treat.

Tuesday (Day 366): Jon, El Hombre De Las Mil Barbas

I wrote in the morning and didn’t bother showering until noon. When you’re on a writing binge, and the odds of coming into contact with another human within eight hours are close to zero, there’s no real point in making showering a priority. Most days I only shower out of habit, anyway. Once I couldn’t write any more, I checked my stats, showered, and went out to look at lights and faucets for a bit. When I couldn’t look at another choice, I went home and checked more stats.

After #1GF! got home, we went to house to check on the house progress and found that more mismatched brick had been installed even though we had told the contractor to stop until a brick that actually matched our house could be found. I had the closest thing to a nutty that I’ve had since the project started. Even though it was pretty late, I called the contractor immediately to tell him what was going on. It didn’t seem like I should be calling a contractor to give a progress report on his job, but I’ve done it with other contractors. I didn’t think that I’d have to do it this time around, but that’s my own fault for being optimistic. At least the kitchen was installed by our kitchen people, and that looked really good.

I made Mexican food for #1GF! and while checking more stats, I found that my beard quest had been linked by numerous sites worldwide. I can’t understand a lot of those posts because I don’t speak the languages well enough, but I can translate a bit of Spanish, and thought it was awesome to find a page that linked to me called Jon Dyer O El Hombre De Las Mil Barbas. That’s “Jon Dyer Or Man Of A Thousand Beards” for the English readers out there. Ay Ay Ay, if I only had that on a T-shirt.

Wednesday (Day 367): Granite Templates

I started my day eating cereal and watching a really bad Charles Bronson movie called Mr. Majestyk and then wrote all morning. In the afternoon, I went to meet the granite people so that they could template the counter. A portion of the counter was missing from their plans, so they had to figure out the dimensions for part of our counter on the spot.

Once I got home, I talked to #1GF! about the missing slab, and she mentioned that the counter sounded like it was the same size as the one in our apartment. I jumped back in the car and headed back to the house to stop them from creating a 12″ counter. The installer laughed at me because I simply misunderstood.

I went home and called the contractor because in the fifteen minutes I was at the house, I found more things that were wrong, such as the windows right next to each other that weren’t the same height. He didn’t return my call, so I decided to distract myself by writing a couple of WordPress posts. I still hadn’t heard anything after a few hours, so I used Best Foot Forward to update my list of May’s best posts. BFF makes updating my monthly “top posts” lists so easy that I can’t believe that someone else didn’t write the plugin first.

I ended what was far from my ideal day by making a bad dinner out of some good ingredients because I tried something different. When you experiment, sometimes you are going to fail.

Thursday (Day 368): Robots, CD’s, And Lazy Douches

Went over to the house to point out more issues, and found one guy working all alone. Instead of getting pissed that there wasn’t a whole crew there to keep the guy company, I went home and got him an old clock radio so that at least he’d have a little music while he worked. I left my car door open when I dropped it off, and the worker heard Six Feet Under blaring out of the door. He was really surprised that I liked metal, and we talked about it a little. I think music is still better than anything for creating conversations out of thin air.

When I got home, I found two CD review submissions waiting in my inbox. I regularly accept submissions to have CD’s reviewed in my Shotgun CD reviews, but I ended up rejecting both of these. One was compared with Celine Dion like that’s a good thing, and I just couldn’t see myself reviewing something like that in a positive light. The other was a punk band who, although they were technically tight, just didn’t do anything for me. I always feel like a dick about rejecting CD’s, but I try to do it as nicely as possible. My thought process is that if I buy a CD and it sucks, I’ll tear it apart, but I’m not going to have some band spend their money to mail me a CD if I go online and find that I don’t enjoy their music. It feels too much like I’m setting up a trap, and I’m not about to crap on some struggling band for fun. Instead, I thank them and pass on the review.

I felt a little better after helping someone get Better Blogroll working, and then felt like a dick again because I sent a copyright notice to someone to take down a post that they had copied word for word from my site. I’m all about giving stuff away, and I’m all about free, and I’m happy to have people who want to link to me. People use my pictures and words all the time in languages that I can’t possibly read, and I think it’s great. What I don’t think is so great is when someone copies an entire post word for word and pretends like they wrote it. Those people are lazy douches. I’m not one to claim that there is an ounce of original thought left in the world, but come on, man. The guy didn’t respond to e-mail, so I sent a letter to his host notifying them of the infringement.

I worked on writing this marathon Life Of Riley post, ate pizza, and watched another episode of So You Think You Can Dance. I will fully admit to watching every episode of the show year after year, but I only give a crap when there are poppers and lockers on. Jazz Dancers? Don’t care. Tap? Bo-ring. Jumpy ballet stuff? ZZZzzz. Person who moves like a robot? I make #1GF! play that stuff over and over while I do the robot all over the room like I’m Turbo and there’s a youth center that needs saving. Zvvvt Zvvvt I. Am. A. Ro. Bot.

I flipped on the TV to catch the weather before bed, and stopped on the Spanish channel because, well, you never know what’s going to be popping out of where on the Spanish channel. Some sort of soap opera was on, and it seemed strangely familiar. After hearing some bloop bloop music, I was convinced that I was watching a remake of Desperate Housewives in Spanish. I called #1GF! in because she actually watches the show, and told her my idea. After picking out a few characters who were named similarly to the original series, she started to believe my crazy notion that Amas De Casa Desesperadas is a Spanish version of Desperate Housewives. I looked it up, and that’s exactly what it was. As a man, I deduct two man points from myself for discovering this, but add back two for watching the Spanish channel for a length of time.

Friday (Day 369): Small Win With Gimp-Savvy Search

I wrote a bit in the morning before trying to remix “Mr. Bigstuff” using Audacity. Audacity is an awesome free audio tool, but I don’t exactly think that it’s a sequencer, not that I have any idea if I need a sequencer to remix songs.

I eventually went to the house to check on the contractor. There was still only one guy over there, but at least he had a radio to keep him company. I went home, checked my stats, wrote, and worked on getting a domain back for a band I used to do the website for because they let the domain name lapse. Even though I had been working non-stop, when I looked up at 5:30, I didn’t really have much completed.

The guy who stole one of my posts finally responded by e-mail saying that he gave me a link as credit for pretending my post was his. He was still using the entire post, but he wrote “Thanks, Dyer” at the end of it with a link back to my main blog page. I had already contacted his host because he hadn’t responded, so I politely told him that I still wanted him to take my content down. He was still using the whole post without linking to the original article, and the only reason that he put a link on the stolen post was that he got caught.

I was playing around with some Firefox settings and ended up putting together a Firefox search plugin that searches gimp-savvy.com for public domain images. Even though it was small, I chalked this one up as a win for the day. To add it to your list of Firefox search engines, go to the Gimp Savvy page at Mozdev.org.

Saturday (Day 370): Bombardier to Pilot: F Bombs Away

We got up early and #1GF! and I went to a plumbing place to pick out a faucet, to the granite place to pick out another slab, to the kitchen place to find some brackets, and then to a local home improvement store to look at lights, fans, knobs, and other stuff that we haven’t decided on. By noon, it was about 95 degrees and we went to Chili’s to refuel. Have you ever had a soup and salad there? Yea, me neither. What man eats soup and salad for lunch? Well, I did this time, and even though the potato soup tasted more like a bowl of Velveeta, the salad, big ass bowl of chips, and free drink refills made it a little more man friendly. If you can’t serve good food, I’m happy with a big portion of mediocre food. There were free refills on everything, but we couldn’t even think about refilling anything by the time we were done.

While we were there, I did a magic trick to impress #1GF!. There was a bawling baby who walked by, so I looked at it. I have no idea why, but babies always seem to instantly stop crying when I look at them. #1GF! thinks it’s awesome every time it happens. After successfully casting my baby spell, I probably said something like “See that mu’fuckin’ shit? I’m like the mu’fuckin’ baby master. oooOOOOHT!” Despite my long standing habit of using “fuck” like it’s the word, “the”, #1GF! doesn’t tolerate too many f bombs. She asked if my current attempt at conquering the “rap industry standard” beard was causing me to swear more. I hadn’t noticed an f-bomb increase, but I would imagine that my preference of using the words fuck, shit, mu’fucker, and bullshit more often have more to do with the house than my choice of facial hair.

We went over to check on the house and the neighbor had mowed our lawn. We thanked her and started talking about the house, and she asked me what was going on with our mismatched brick. It was something that I couldn’t answer because no one really shows up to the job much anymore. She agreed and said that there is only one guy at our house at a time, and mentioned that she had seen the contractor’s trucks over at a bigger job in Hingham. When the neighbors are noticing that your house is neglected by both you and the contractor, something is very, very wrong.

#1GF! and I went in the house to see the finish work that was being done, and it saw that it wasn’t really finish work. There were a lot of problems, and I completely lost my head again. It seems that I’m in a pattern of pointing out mistakes only to come back to find new mistakes created. I don’t want to be doing that. I don’t care if you work in I.T. or masonry, or carpentry, or down at the local Wal-Mart. If everyone does what they were supposed to do correctly the first time, there would be such a reduction in stress in the world that people would randomly hug each other for lack of anything better to do.

Seething turned to nearly yelling within about fifteen minutes, so even though it was 7:30 on a Saturday night, I called the contractor to set up a meeting. I need to know when my job is going to be worked on and when things are going to start going well. When the contractor asks for cash, I rush a check right over. I don’t put the wrong amount, forgot to sign, or give a personal check. I drop off a bank check for the right amount within 24 hours of the request. Sometimes, I get it to him that day. Why is it that work on my job has to be done at least twice, pushing the schedule back by weeks at a time? Measure twice, cut once and everyone ends up happy. I was so pissed about the whole thing that I had to have #1GF! drive me around in the car for a couple of hours just so that I could calm down.

When we got home, the hot weather had drawn in the beach crowds, so going to our local joints wasn’t in the cards. We decided to grab some subs and head home. We ate and watched a shitty movie called Slipstream which should’ve been called Anthony Hopkins’s Artistic Time Wasting Bullshit Machine, although that level of truth in the title probably would’ve kept people from sitting through this massive waste of time.

What I Learned

• The oldies channel has my number and I’m well on my way to Tapioca Town.
• The big, comfortable couch won’t fit in the small house.
• I grant people too much leeway in the expectation that they’ll do the right thing.
• I hate the feeling that I need to babysit adults.
• I swear a lot.
• I am not crazy. Hugo, Man of A Thousand Faces really existed.
• The supermarket can be cool when you’re there when people are normally at work, but depressing at 9 AM when you’re the only one there who isn’t getting paid.
• There is a complete remake of Desperate Housewives in Spanish called Amas De Casa Desesperadas.
• Audacity really isn’t a sequencer and remixes aren’t easy.
• One of the workers at my house is a fan of hardcore and metal.
• I may soon change my name to “El Hombre De Las Mil Barbas”.
• I’m usually fine with people copying bits of my stuff, but I found that my tolerance limit is 100% copy with 0% credit.
• Making a search plugin for Firefox is surprisingly easy.
• Icons for Firefox search plugins need to be converted to Base64 strings.
• I still have a level 5 spell against crying babies.
• When you experiment in the kitchen, you will sometimes eat crappy food.

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