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 371): Virtual Vs Actual Priorities

After eating breakfast and watching MadTV, I spent the entire day writing Life Of Riley Week 53 while #1GF! cleaned out her closet. I think that my priorities might be really messed up.

Monday (Day 372): Umbrellas And Boxes

#1GF! and I started the day by going over to the house and having a 90 minute talk with the contractor about all the issues that we have with the way things are going. It was 90 degrees and humid, which should’ve added to the frustration, but everything went really well. I only dropped four f bombs and didn’t use them directed at anyone. The contractor seemed to understand where we were coming from and said that he’d take steps to get things moving faster and in the right direction.

#1GF! headed off to work to save corporate America, and I drove up to the barber shop to get a help solve the world’s problems. I think we had the gas problem solved by the time my haircut was done, but no one wrote down the solution, leaving the world to continue to suffer at the pump.

From there, I picked up some packing boxes and grabbed some lunch with an ex-coworker. The city where he works has a very large Asian population, so it’s pretty common to see people walking around with umbrellas open in hot weather. It makes perfect logical sense, but it’s not something you see commonly in other towns. After lunch, I picked up a couple of iced coffees and dropped them off to #1GF! and another ex-coworker to get them through the day. I thought about getting a mess of them for all my other old co-workers, but I didn’t really want to be in my old workplace. It’s too weird. I remember when other people coming back to visit after quitting, but I didn’t want to be that guy. The closest I was going to get to my old job was the parking lot, and it was too damned hot to call everyone out in that weather even if it was for free coffee.

Instead, I went over to my parents’ house and tried to get a window shade out of the window. I have no idea what sort of contraption held that thing on, but even with my dad, me, and the instructions, we couldn’t dislodge the shade from the window. We eventually gave up because my father had somewhere to be. By the time I got home, it was 4:30 and I spent the rest of the day writing.

Tuesday (Day 373): Bad Hair & Cofee Bowls

As I was making faces in the mirror and thinking, “Wake up, fucker”, I noticed that the back of my hair was a lot longer than the typical whiffle cut that I normally sport. It was too long to cut with any clipper attachment that I had, and because it was in the back of my head, I couldn’t see it well enough to cut it evenly with scissors. I didn’t notice it at the shop, because I never look at my hair at the barber shop. My barber has been cutting my hair the same way for 20 years. I never tell him what I want, and I never pay attention to the results. It always comes out the right way. This time, even though I felt really bad about it, I had to go back to my barber and ask him to fix it my Alfalfa hair because I couldn’t do it myself without looking like a mental patient.

The first thing that my barber said when I showed up was, “What’d I do?”, and I told him about the long hair on the top of my head. He took a look at it and said something like, “That’s not the way you get your hair cut. What was I thinking?”. As I was waiting, a guy walked in and said, “Was my hair appointment at 10 or 10:30?” When my barber told him 10:30, he said, “I thought so,” and walked out the door. I’m almost positive that the guy had a 10, and my barber might’ve pulled a fast one to get me into the chair, but no one seemed to be complaining.

After getting my hair into my typical configuration, I headed home to take pictures for the Rap Industry Standard beard so that I could shave it off. That’s beard #25 on the list for those counting. Once I was done trying to look like a rapper / total douche, I sat down to write. I spent a couple of hours playing with a couple of sentences because I couldn’t get the wording to say exactly what I wanted. The one thing that I wanted more than anything was a magic Kangol that gave the wearer better better writing ability.

When I got sick of words and pictures, I decided to try my hand at music. I downloaded a couple of sequencers and a drum machine and tried to make something interesting with them. When I failed harder than I did at writing, I played with the drum machine and tried to drop some fresh beats to make up for my lack of a magic Kangol. I don’t know why I thought that a software drum machine would produce better results than the hardware version sitting under an inch of dust in my office, but I gave it a shot. Nothing fresh, dope, or hype came out of that session, and I ended up closing out without saving a thing.

At night, #1GF! and I met some friends for dinner at a local restaurant. It was weird to meet people for dinner on a Tuesday, but our friends have such a crazy schedule that you have to take the time when you can get it. We were having a good time, as we normally do, and as we got our dinners, we asked for refills on our drinks. I drink black coffee with anything, but the coffee cups in this particular restaurant were about half the size of a normal mug. The waitress said she’d try to find me a bigger cup, so I thanked her and off she went. Not five minutes later, she came back with what can only be described as a soup bowl filled with coffee. I laughed, but she did exactly what she said she would. Every sip felt like I was finishing off my cereal in the morning, but I certainly appreciated the effort.

Midway through dinner, the air conditioning went out because the restaurant had lost power and was running on generators. The TV’s were working fine, but the kitchen and the A/C were not. Luckily, we were one of the last tables served.

In the middle of the night, I woke up to a strange sound and thought someone had broken in. When I listened further with my supersonic ears, I realized that there was no movement in the living room, so I drifted back to sleep. When I woke up a few minutes later to the noise again, I figured out what it was. The mouse traps that we set months ago had snagged a mouse. I had forgotten about the trap because it had been so long. I went outside and let the sucker go and put the trap back to see if we got anything else.

Wednesday (Day 374): Lots Of Workers

I flipped on an old movie called Double Indemnity to get me through my cereal, and ended up watching the whole thing. Old movies are typically too slow and have too much bad kissing in them for me to watch, but this one had a few twists and the action moved right along. One of the leading men was Edward G. Robinson, which I only know through his caricature on Bugs
Bunny cartoons and through the vocal style of The Simpsons character, Chief Wiggum. Even though I had imitated Robinson in my childhood by saying things like “Myah Myah. Get him, Mugsy”, I had never seen him in a movie until today.

Once I got moving, I went over to the house and talked to the contractor. There were more people there than I had ever seen at the house, so I was pretty happy. Afterward, I did the food shopping, but then felt like I should’ve talked to the mason about the brick because I still wasn’t happy with it. I decided to go back and ask him why the brick didn’t look right. He explained the situation pretty well, and pointed out a few places where the brick had settled that might also need work. I’m still not really happy with the way the color of the brick turned out, but it seems that there isn’t much that we can do besides paint the whole house.

The faucet that we wanted for the kitchen couldn’t be delivered until the middle of July, so when I got home, I made a few calls to see if I could find it anywhere. I managed to find one, but couldn’t get it at a good price because I don’t have a plumber’s license. Through the magic of our kitchen people, we were able to get the faucet delivered in a week. Our kitchen people are the best. Really.

I spent a good portion of the rest of the day improving combining a series of Perl scripts that I use regularly and doing some basic maintenance on the ol’ PC. I made a little pasta salad for dinner with Boar’s Head feta instead of Athenos feta, and the result came out a lot creamier than usual.

Thursday (Day 375): The Photo Editor

I tried to put out a Shotgun CD review, but found that I wrote so much about Brad Sucks that it needed its own post. I ran out to do some food shopping because I have a tendency to only get what fits in a little basket or in my bare hands. If it doesn’t fit, it gets left behind for another day. I didn’t use a basket this time, and and old lady saw me walking along holding a big box of Cheerios. I grabbed the milk and she called after me, “You got your Cheerios and your milk. What more do you need?” Indeed. What more do I need?

As I was running around, I got a call from Macoosh in the afternoon asking if I could retouch a photo for her photography business. Her internet connection was bad, so after I checked on the contractor, we met for lunch on the roof deck of one of the local restaurants. Seriously, eating lunch looking at the ocean is a good way to spend a couple of hours on a summer day. If you happen to be fair skinned and have the sun on your left side, then the relaxation comes at the cost of a burn on one side of your face that is broken up only by the white mark where your cheap sunglasses were.

When I got home, I finished up the Brad Sucks review and then spent a couple of hours on the photo. My only task was to remove a bra strap that was fouling up a decent picture, but I ended up whitening up the eyes and teeth slightly just for the hell of it. Macoosh was happy with the result, and I have to say that it’s almost impossible to tell that the strap was there even if you’re looking for it.

#1GF! and I checked on the house, and I spent the rest of the night writing while she watched re-runs. I ended up eating two pieces of cheese on old rollup bread because I had too much too do and too little hunger.

Friday (Day 376): New Counters & No Work

I answered e-mails and wrote until noon, and then headed over to the check on the house. It was great to see a ton of workers there. I went to a local home store and then a lighting store to do some recon on lights even though there was no way that I could really pick anything as half of the decision making panel. I went over to my parents and helped move some furniture. When going through all the things I had to do, I found out that a family cookout wasn’t on Saturday, but a week away. Even though that lessened the pressure, it didn’t lessen it by much. By then it was 4:30 and I didn’t feel like I got anything done, so I went home and spent a couple of hours roughing out this post before #1GF! got home.

Once #1GF! got home, we went to the house and found that the counter had been installed. The seam wasn’t in an ideal location, but we trust the installer, so there’s probably a good reason for it. Even though no one was in the house when we got there, the bulkhead was open, both doors were unlocked, and half the windows were wide open. This is the reason that you have to check on a house a couple of times a day when you have people working on it.

We went to dinner at a local restaurant and saw some friends of my parents that live near us. The husband asked what I was doing for work these days. I said that I hadn’t worked in over a year. When he asked how that was possible, I said that I planned the move ahead of time and put together the savings to cover an extended leave. That’s when he said something that everyone thinks: “Savings? Or [head nod to #1GF!]“. #1GF! and I both smiled and explained that I still split the bills down the middle with her.

He seemed pretty amazed, but I think that the biggest thing in being able to take a year off is deciding what’s important. If it’s money money money, then you’ll never take a year off even if you have your expenses covered, because there will never be enough. If getting out of your job is a priority, you forgo certain purchases, get fine control over your finances, and save up a year’s worth of expenses. If you don’t even know what a year costs you, you can’t even think about time off. But once you get your finances in order, whether you stay or leave becomes more of a personal choice than an obligation. Having more choice where it can actually make a difference will make a difference in you.

When I got home, I spent a couple of hours working on some music mix that I was trying to put together while #1GF! watched TV.

Saturday (Day 377): Lights, Lights, Lights

Looked at 4,000 lights in a bunch of catalogs, and then went out to the stores to look at 4,000 more. We stopped into El Serape to refuel, and I’ve never had black beans that tasted so good. The waiter didn’t seem interested in anything more than getting our food to us quickly and efficiently. He did a good job, but there was zero chit chat. Refueling didn’t help, and by the time we got home we were wiped out and couldn’t get the energy going to get to a graduation party that we wanted to get to. I was actually so brain dead that I watched Krush Groove simply to pick out the old school rap cameos. The movie is unwatchable if you have enough energy to hunt for the remote. Afterward, we watched Juno, which was a little annoying for my taste. The actors did a good job, but iIt seemed like they threw dialog for a jaded 23 year old into the mouth of a 16 year old and expected that no one would notice.

What I Learned

• There are too many choices of lights.
• Being referred to as someone’s photo editor sounds pretty cool.
• Remixing music is not easy.
• I don’t know when to stop when it comes to photo editing.
• Boar’s Head feta makes a creamier pasta salad than Athenos.
• El Serape makes some kick ass black beans.
• I now know what Edward G. Robinson really looked and sounded like.

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