This is week 81 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing 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.. This edition was a lost episode that was written later and back-posted just to keep the dates straight.

Sunday (Day 560): Creme What Now?

All the shopping and work that filled the previous couple of days had me not wanting to move, so I lay in bed staring out at the water for a little while before getting up. #1GF! coaxed me into going out to breakfast, and I didn’t put up a fight because sometimes it’s nice to sit at someone else’s table drinking someone else’s coffee.

After breakfast, we headed for the outlet mall and then the regular mall to get some Christmas shopping done. The whole day vanished in a flurry of shopping, which, thanks to the internet, didn’t end when we got home.

Once I was good and burned out, I spent the night going through Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated looking for a Christmas gift to bake for one of our friends who has a sweet tooth. If you’ve never read either magazine, they’re like Bon Apetit for people who don’t know what the fuck creme fraiche is, but don’t believe that recipes should be so dumbed down that they that start with a packet of soup mix or boxed ingredients.

Monday (Day 561): The Plumber Finally Answers

I still hadn’t gotten a call from the plumber, so I called for a third time to try to resolve the boiler problem I discovered on the previous Wednesday. I didn’t know if he was on vacation or avoiding me, so I prepared to leave him another message.

The plumber finally picked up, but said that he didn’t have the money to replace the boiler. He went on to let me know that there was absolutely no way that he would pay to have the boiler vented up the chimney as he originally agreed. I thought that both statements were horseshit, but I was just trying to get through the holidays, so I put the ball into his court and asked him when he would have the money. He said he didn’t know.

I fucking hate when adults make me treat them like children, but what could I do? I could either sit in silence on the phone, or I could try to get him to commit to something. I asked him if he thought that he’d have the money after the first of the year. He reluctantly gave me a “Yea, sure” or some semi-committal answer that sounded like it was only meant to get me off the phone. He could’ve used “whatever” and had the same effect.

I couldn’t fucking believe this guy, but I decided that I’d let the situation go until after the new year just to try to keep a legal battle from tarnishing the otherwise cheery mood of the holidays. I always want to think that there’s a payoff for treating people with a light hand, but I wasn’t seeing it here.

The plumber was still throwing attitude around like I was requesting a boiler that was a simply a nicer shade of blue, but I still tried to give the guy a break in case he was having a tough time around the holidays. I know that there have been times in my life where I forgot to keep my bad day from overflowing into other people’s lives. I figured the guy would eventually realize that he was wrong and rectify the situation before it escalated.

Holding my tongue doesn’t come naturally to me, and as a result, it makes me hold situations in my head a lot longer than necessary. It’s a leftover from the old days where I might not have been the toughest guy around, but if someone came at me, they could expect me to keep coming at them. And at them. And at them.

I can remember getting into a fight in a train station and getting my nose broken. If you’ve ever broken your nose, it not only stings, but it bleeds a lot. When I got my nose broken, I remember being really, really angry and almost offended that this kid had broken my nose.

I don’t remember much about that fight, but I can remember holding the kid by the neck on the concrete platform and punching him in the head fast and hard, over and over, until he was begging for a “time out”. Even though it was more than twenty years ago, I can remember laughing and telling him, “There are no time outs in life, buddy” and kept right on punching. And all the while, I made sure to blow my nose on him to cover him with my blood and snot. I only stopped the fight when I got bored.

In those days, the attitude was to make sure that if someone hit you, he would never do it again. And neither would anyone else who heard about it or saw it. It seems animalistic, but making the punishment far exceed the crime made people think twice about throwing that first punch. Attitudes like that have no place in an adult world, but years of training can be hard to shake.

I don’t think that there are very many people out there who met me as an adult would know that there’s still a kid with the broken nose somewhere inside me with an attitude that was carved out of years of hard stares and street fights. That kid is useless to an adult world, and I’ve spent a decade replacing escalation with negotiation to give myself the breathing room to focus on what matters.

These days, I work hard avoid even verbal fighting in favor of finding solutions that everyone can live with. I give people leeway, and don’t cut to the bone. If the opposing party chooses to fight instead of negotiate, I still try to negotiate. And being calm and trying to find common ground when I want to tell someone to go fuck themselves can make the me hold on to unresolved negotiations longer than I have to. To keep myself from having an hour of mental conversations with the plumber, I busted open my new power supply and installed in my PC.

I don’t know exactly what it is, but there’s something cool about new PC parts. Maybe it’s the shine or the feeling that I’m going to make something better. Maybe it’s just the brightly colored wires. I’m not sure. It only took a five or ten minutes before the new power supply was installed and my rig was back up and running.

I took some time to get online and figure out what I’d be getting people for Christmas, and I think I did OK. I made Fettuccine Alfredo for dinner, and then sat in front of the TV. I found the TV portion of the evening extremely boring, but was unwilling to use my brain to find something better to do.

Tuesday (Day 562): Strings And Tape On My TV Again

I found myself having conversations in my head with the plumber whenever my brain was left to idle too long. I went back to working on the 54 point convergence on the TV that I started the week before. Like all stupid projects, time got away from me and I worked on the convergence for a good portion of the day. By the time I gave up, the picture was still a little off.

The contractor dropped off his iPod because I said I’d reset it for him. He left ten minutes later, and I discovered about twelve minutes later that the iPod looks like it needs to be resynchronized with iTunes to unlock. I didn’t have an iPod cable or iTunes, so I couldn’t do anything for him. I hate not being able to fix things, but Apple isn’t my area of expertise.

#1GF! brought home subs because neither of us was interested in cooking. I was a little concerned because the last time we had subs, the house flooded. Thankfully, nothing happened.

Wednesday (Day 563): Solid Boy And Striped Girl Fail At Shopping

I woke up in the dark and didn’t know if it was 2AM or two minutes to the alarm. While fumbling to get figure out what time it was, I accidentally woke #1GF! up, and she groggily told me that there were about 45 minutes until we were supposed to get up. She fell back to sleep and I lay there in bed thinking about household projects until the alarm went off. When I got up, I emptied the dishwasher, made the coffee, and checked the basement for leaks because it was pouring again. Like my morning, the basement was amazingly dry.

Once #1GF! was off to work, I called my sister who was in town for the holidays. I told her that I was going to pick her up in a half hour to get a little Christmas shopping done. Then, knowing how my family operates, I delayed a half hour before I left. When I showed up, my sister was still in her pajamas. She’s on vacation, and unemployed guys like me don’t have a strict time schedule, so I didn’t mind.

We each had a few ideas for gifts and headed out to get some shopping done. We hit an outdoor mall and picked up a few things, but accomplished less than we would’ve liked considering we walked through almost every store. Thinking we might’ve been failing because we lacked the fuel for success, we stopped into Friendly’s for lunch.

Each of us had a shake and a grilled sandwich, and my sister talked about how unfair it is that there are no Friendly’s or Friendly’s like establishments where she lives. Maybe its an East Coast thing. I’m not saying that the quality of Friendly’s food is stellar, but it is nice to be able to have a shake, a sandwich, and some french fries to make a day of shopping seem a little more palatable.

After lunch, we headed to the local indoor mall and managed to pick up only one gift between us. We headed to another indoor mall and came out with absolutely nothing. That’s when I decided that our success had less to do with fuel than it did with the fact that neither one of us likes shopping.

My sister wasn’t happy with our low (and falling) success rate, so we decided to give up and head to my parents house. We learned to play a two player game called Hive (a Christmas gift from last year that was still in the shrink wrap), which I really liked for its simple rules and strategic nature. I don’t think anyone else liked it as much as I did.

#1GF! came over after work, and we all ate pizza and played some more games. #1GF! and I left a little late for a school night, so we decided to leave one car at my parents’ house and drive home together. It seemed like it would make the drive more fun, and it would save gas.

Thursday (Day 564): Thanks for Saving Christmas, Sprinkles

#1GF! dropped me off at my parents’ house on her way to work, and despite the early hour, my sister was ready when I got there. My sister and I were going to continue our Christmas shopping expedition from the day before, so we went to the post office, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond, and K-Mart. Half the day was gone before we knew it, and we had very little accomplished. We were not in great spirits.

To raise our accomplishment rate, we headed out to You Do It Electronics so that I could pick up a gift for a friend of mine. You Do It is the Massachusetts mecca for geeks and nerds. It’s always an instant pick-me-up for me, but my sister was more impressed with it than I thought she would be. I picked up a gift card and wish I could say that I was cool enough to not have been smiling and laughing at the free pocket protector that came with it.

By then, it was 3PM, so we grabbed a quick lunch at a nearby restaurant. My food seemed fine to me, but my sister thought that there was something seriously wrong with her food. I eventually tasted it and it seemed fine to me. She ate most of it, possibly on the second opinion. Sometimes a smell or taste can depend on the circumstances, like getting hungry because you smell a steak grilling and then realizing that you really need a shower. After lunch, it was back to shopping.

We wandered through a Target without buying anything, and looked around for a Costco to get a gift membership. We couldn’t find the Costco, so we popped into their main competitor to see what their prices were like. Call me crazy, but I thought that people joined food warehouses to save money. This particular store seemed like it was just as expensive as a supermarket. Sure the packages were insanely bigger (who needs that much mayo?), but the savings didn’t seem to add up on most of the things that I checked.

We were tired, beaten, and heading home, but I asked my sister if she wanted to make the drive to the outlet mall to see if we could knock the rest of the gifts out. Neither one of us is into shopping, but we figured that if we kept pushing we wouldn’t have to shop the next day. She agreed, and we made the drive down to the outlet mall.

I had no idea what to get my sister, so I proposed a secret plan that we could get her some clothes, and I’d just wrap them up and deliver them on Christmas morning. It would ruin the surprise factor, but I figured that she could approve of what she got, and I might stop her from buying more crazy orange striped clothing. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea, because I have absolutely no fashion sense and tend to stick to solid colors to avoid any sort of matching. If they ever come out with Garanamals for adults, where I can match a monkey shirt to monkey pants, I’ll buy a closet full of them.

I was surprised, but my sister agreed to the idea. So there we were: Solid boy and striped girl attempting to purchase clothing that didn’t suck. I was trying to drag my sister into business clothes, and she was locating every horizontally striped item in each store. After five or six ladies’ clothes stores of me actually trying to find ladies clothes that would look good in a business way without looking too businesslike, we still had nothing. I told her, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Even if you don’t buy anything, this shopping trip has become your present.”

Hours later, it was cold and dark, and we had a couple of shirts and a coat that she really seemed to like. It wasn’t the business outfit that I had envisioned, and it wasn’t the cool, hip clothes that she seemed to gravitate towards, but the clothes seemed to ride the line between the two fairly well… even if one of the shirts was striped. My sister seemed pretty happy with her gifts, and I was relieved to have bought her a couple of gifts that were guaranteed not to be returned.

We got back on the road at 8:30 PM, and made another run to Costco to check on their gift memberships. This time, we managed to find the store, but it was already closed. We went down a back road and accidentally ended up at the Target that we were at earlier. I have no idea how I got there.

We bought a couple of things from Target and headed back to Best Buy at 9:45 to make one last purchase. In these last few hours of shopping, our success rate climbed to an acceptable level for people who had been out shopping all day long.

As we were driving home, the worst Christmas song in the entire world came on, and I made my sister listen to the opening verse. The singing sounds like the No Talent Ass Clown himself or that “Walking in Memphis” guy, if either of them were gargling with sand. The sound of the song makes you want to change it even before you get to the lyrics.

The lyrics, on the other hand, are worth hearing once just to gauge the kind of shit that can make the radio these days. The song is about some kid trying to buy shoes for his mother who’s minutes from death. The kid doesn’t have enough money, so a guy in line spots him the cash, and we’re supposed to feel bad and get the warm fuzzies at the same time. My sister stared at the radio, and her reaction showed that she was drowning in the sheer awfulness that drained out of the song like an open blister. I couldn’t help but laugh.

I mean, really? Mommy’s minutes from dying, and your dad let you go out shopping? Shoe shopping? And even though he knows that you’re an eight year old going shopping by yourself, he sends you with pennies to pay with? Seriously? Is this the step dad from hell who is trying to get out of some parental obligations because the kid’s mama is kicking off? Or did the kid pull this scam on every shoe store in the area around Christmas to feed his father’s cross dressing habit?

My sister couldn’t answer any of these questions, so I said that I was going to write my own song. It would be about a puppy who saved a one armed baby from being run over, only to be hit by a car with a wreath on the front. The dog would be owned by a blind woman who needed him to see, and she would get run over by a bus while mistakenly setting up her Salvation Army donation pot in the middle of the road because the dog wasn’t there to guide her.

Ironically, the one armed baby wouldn’t turn out to be a live baby, but a baby jesus figurine that was recently stolen from a local church. The puppy would be a hero and would limp into an orphan’s arms and say “Rie Ruff You”, giving the kid the one thing he wanted for Christmas and restoring his belief in Santa Claus.

My sister seemed to think the song might have a shot, so you may want to look for this hit during the holidays 2010. It may be titled, “Thanks for Saving Christmas, Sprinkles,” or “Santa, Bring Me A Puppy”.

Friday (Day 565): This Blog Is Inefficient

I went out to do the food shopping at 8:30 because the word was that mother nature was gearing up to drop a foot of snow around noon. As I putting away the groceries, I noticed that our new fridge was inefficiently laid out.

I emptied some of the shelves to put them in a more efficient order, only to find that the shelves have a very limited set of configurations. A very inefficient set. I growled at the fridge and put all the shelves back with only slight efficiency increases. It was a better setup than before, but I was irritated because there are so many better ways that the fridge could’ve been designed.

I mean, even the can rack (ha. Can rack.) on the door is poorly designed. It holds nine cans. Who the hell buys a nine pack of soda cans? Anyone? Yea, where I’m from, can packs come in sixes and twelves. So with this can rack, I can either have three extra cans on a shelf, or have three empty can holes that are a waste of space. What dope smoking fridge designer thought nine would be a good number?

Holy shit. Am I… talking. About the efficiency of the fridge layout? Seriously. Why are you reading this? Reading this blog seems inefficient. You must have lint to pick off of your sweater or something, don’t you? Gah.

Once the fridge was back together, I headed out to Costco to buy that elusive gift membership that I hadn’t been able to pick up. Everything went smoothly, and on the way home, I closed a bank account that was way under the minimum required limit thanks to all extra money that went to fix outstanding house issues.

After grocery shopping and the couple of errands, it was already 1PM. I went home, had lunch, and poured my first cup of coffee for the day. I sat in front of the TV watching G4 and watching the snow through the window. It was snowing so insanely that you couldn’t really see down the street and the high winds made it pointless to shovel.

I called #1GF! every hour with snow reports telling her that she better get on the road before everything got jammed up. I did it an emergency snow reporter way to make her laugh, which lightened her up a bit. She didn’t heed my warnings though, so it took her longer than usual to get home. She did get home safely and in good spirits, which is always good.

Saturday (Day 566): Mail To The Center For Nut Preservation

It was still snowing like hell when we woke up, so #1GF! cleaned the house and I explored some new cable channels we suddenly acquired since moving in. We have a bunch of DIY channels, a history channel, and a military channel. I don’t like to sit in front of the TV, but how could I not watch a show about tank restoration? How?

Once the snow calmed down a little, I went out to shovel the foot of powder that had piled up. Halfway through, the guy next door asked us if we wanted him to plow the end of the driveway. What was I going to say? “No?” I said, “Hell, yea! Thanks!” and the guy cut a half hour out of my driveway shoveling.

I ended by cleaning the snow out of all the window wells in case we ended up with a sudden melt. The wind was so high that you could throw snow in the air and never see it land, but I didn’t mind. Maybe it was the Gor-tex, maybe it was the beard, but I stayed out longer than I needed to because it felt good to be out in the cold.

After I came in, I unpacked a few stray boxes and turned a stupid little closet into a place to store games. The closet is now loosely referred to as the Forbidden Closet of Mystery And Games. I didn’t know if #1GF! would go for me occupying an entire closet with games, so I was trying to be sneaky about throwing all the games into it. Of course, being the noisy, beard wearing man that I am, I got busted halfway through, but #1GF! seemed to think the new forbidden closet was a fun way to get a few boxes unpacked and off the floor.

We unpacked for the rest of the day, and when I started cooking dinner later on, #1GF! realized we didn’t have one of the ingredients we needed. Rather than switch to something else, she ran out to the store to get it. I protested, but she went anyway. Nothing like making a dude feel like a scrawny little bitch by going to the store in a snow storm while he stays home and cooks. Shall I put my nuts in the prepaid envelope and mail them to The Center For Nut Preservation, or can I keep them as long as I promise never to allow them to produce any testosterone in the future? Gah.

After dinner, we watched The Guardian, which, no matter what #1GF! tells you, sucked ass. It was as if someone had a list of formulaic plot points that needed to be included in a Hollywood blockbuster, and just jammed them in without really thinking whether they tied together or had any relevance to the plot. It just was not good.

What I Learned

• Sometimes and iPod needs iTunes to unlock.
• I learned how to play Hive, which has become one of my favorite quick strategy games.
• There is very little flexibility to improve the efficiency in the inside of my fridge because it was probably designed by a crackhead.
• Having your lady run out in a snow storm to get something at the store while you cook will make you feel like a wussy no matter how into equal rights you think you are.

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