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. This edition was a lost episode that was written later and back-posted just to keep the dates straight.

Sunday (Day 588):Tea Bags and Cheap Screwin’

I made a broccoli and cheese omelet for #1GF! even though she didn’t want it because, sometimes, I don’t take requests. It was snowing, and the snow was whipping by the window horizontally. Horizontal is the new vertical when it comes to snow this year.

We watched Hancock, which really could have been good if they took the idea of an unwilling superhero in a different direction. Instead, the movie seemed ended up being sort of dumb. I want it known that I had the plot figured out from the first time Will Smith and Charlize Theron met. I wish that I didn’t, but wishing doesn’t make good movies. Good writing does.

I went out to shovel in the 20 degree weather and met another neighbor. I usually work really hard to remember names, but we were talking so long that by the end of the conversation, we both had to ask what each others names were. She was a nice lady. She told me to come over if I ever needed a tea bag. I tried my damndest not to smirk like the immature idiot that I am.

I went back into the house and #1GF! and I put on Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Mooooorgan Freeman. I can’t say Mooooooorgan Freeman without doing a horrible impersonation of him.

This was another movie that would’ve been really good if they went in another direction with it. It had started with some cool ideas and a lot of decent action, but then the action sequences and the plot turned really, really stupid about three quarters of the way through. Come on. You’re going to tell me that the greatest assassins in the world take their direction from a loom that knows binary? Seriously? Are these the most gifted, yet gullible idiots of all time or something? Ok, then.

Things didn’t get much better with Rounding First, which I completely gave up on less than halfway through. I have no idea how this movie got on my queue. The first line in the description mentions a coming of age tale, which I’d love to blame on #1GF!, but she has no recollection of adding it, either. Maybe I added it thinking it was going to be some sort of Superbad knockoff. It wasn’t that at all. Not. At. All.

#1GF! made me lasagna (“There are a million good looking women in the world, dude, but they don’t all bring you lasagna at work. Most of them just cheat on you.”) and I put up a blind in the TV room. I’ve installed a lot blinds in my day ranging from cheap to expensive, and let me tell you, this was the worst install that I’ve had so far. Yes, they were the $4 cheap kind.

Even though I drilled pilot holes for the screws, I managed to strip not one, not two, but four screws on one bracket. I had to pry each of them out with a pair of needle nosed pliers. #1GF! was on the phone, and I could hear here say, “No, that’s just Jon swearing. [pause] Yea, he’s putting up blinds. [pause] I don’t know, hold on. What’s going on, Hon?”

I was balanced on the edge and back of the couch reaching over my head to put in the screws. The blinds were being installed into one of only two rooms in the house that heats, and I was right above the heater near the ceiling. My aggravation with the screws was compounded by what seemed like the hottest temperatures I had felt in the house since being in the attic this past summer.

“These cheap ass fucking piece of shit ass screws keep friggin’ stripping! [calming] That’s what you get for $5, I guess.”

“Oh. [back to phone] He’s just having a little trouble putting up the blind,” she said while walking back to a room that seemed more sane.

I found it odd that I used “friggin’” and an F bomb in the same sentence, but I can only chalk it up to running out of basic swears to work with. I grabbed one of the screw cans that homeowners always have in their basement, and pulled out four better screws that were the same size, as the cheap Chinese crap that this blind came with. The all American screws drove right in without issue.

I finally finished the blind and ate lasagna with #1GF!. She seemed really tired, so she sat on the couch while I cleaned up. After dinner, I had the second blind installed less than ten minutes after opening the package. I used my own screws instead of the ones in the box and everything went perfectly. Now, the TV room seems a little cozier and we don’t have to look out at another house when we’re sitting on the couch.

#1GF! was watching a bunch of crappy shows, so I decided to work on the Rubik’s cube. A few of the orange stickers had come off, making them difficult to tell apart from the white side. I tried using a Sharpie to mark the white side with W’s, but all the W’s wore off within a day. I pulled off the remaining stickers and asked #1GF! for nail polish. I put dots on the white squares where the orange side used to be, so now I have some sort of ghetto cube. The nail polish hasn’t worn off, so it seems like it’s a workable fix.

#1GF! gave me her pregnancy book to read because there was a section in there for dudes. Half of it can be summed up with, “Yes, you can doink a pregnant lady without your baby grabbing your wiener.” The other half can be summed up with “Be supportive of your lady by growing your own vagina”.

The book talked about how dudes get morning sickness and take on the symptoms of their pregnant ladies. It also talked about how putting the seat down would help the pregnancy along. Look, I’d do anything for #1GF!, and I’m all about helping #1GF! get through this pregnancy in the most comfortable way possible, but it was beyond obvious that the book was written by a woman for women. I’m totally interested in helping #1GF!, but I’m not interested in being #1GF!. I’m not going to grow a vagina, ok? I refuse.

Monday (Day 589): Hey, The Plumber Answers

I wrote a little bit in the morning before dropping the PC back at my aunt’s house. I felt bad about the PC, but there wasn’t anything else that I could do. The air was cold, the pines were frosted with snow, and there were twelve wild turkeys roaming around her back yard. It looked a lot more beautiful than it felt.

I dropped by my parents’ house on my way home, and chipped up some of the ice up with a flat head spade. I shoveled up the compacted tire tracks that rode the line between ice and snow, and allowed the sun to make light work of whatever was left. I thought that I should get myself a flat head shovel one of these days.

When I went inside, my parents had a number of suggestions on what I could do with my time, and various ways I might try to make money off of the web. I wasn’t very interested because anything that has to do with making money from this site turns out to be a lot more trouble than it’s worth. I figure that getting back into the work force might be a little more interesting. I think I need bigger problems to solve with a bigger payoff than I’ve grown used to over the last couple of years.

My mother wanted to know if #1GF! and I would go on a family trip in the Spring, but I couldn’t commit to it because #1GF! would be seven months pregnant by then and in no shape for flying. It was too early to tell anyone about the pregnancy, but I didn’t want to lie. I just had to sidestep the issue and be noncommittal for the time being.

When I got home, I worked on roughing out the weeks of backlogged LOR posts that are choking this site into submission. I took a break to take care of some unpleasant business that wouldn’t go away on its own.

I called the plumber and he finally picked up. He admitted that he had been intentionally avoiding my calls, that he would not vent the chimney as we agreed, and that it would cost me an additional fifteen hundred dollars to install and vent the boiler as I had originally requested. He told me the price difference between the high efficiency boiler he was contracted for and the low end model that he installed was only $400, and I didn’t seem accurate, but I didn’t have the information to back it up. He also said that the best that I was going to do was to get him to vent the boiler out through the back of the house. There was no way he was going to vent it as he had originally indicated. The location of the vent he suggested would be within two feet of three different windows, which didn’t seem very safe.

He played hard ball, and the discussion got heated. Right in the middle, the call dropped. We both thought the other had hung up, so I called him back. He accused me of hanging up on him. I explained that I thought he hung up. Why would I call back if I hung up? I tried to laugh it off, but he didn’t lighten up. Nothing’s easy. It’s all a negotiation. This one just happens to be taking too long to complete. The plumber wouldn’t budge despite the fact that he was the cause of the entire issue, and he had yet to offer a simple apology for making the mistake. I hung up with no real solution in sight.

I looked up boiler information and then called a couple of plumbing supply house to get the price difference for the two boilers, but they didn’t stock the boiler from my contract so they couldn’t price it. I called the gas company to ask what the install of a the boiler in my contract would cost me. They gave me a ball park, and it was in line with what I had already paid the plumber. Things were not going well, but I resume my quest for information in the morning.

#1GF! and I had leftovers for dinner, and I did the cube a couple of times. Times were under five minutes, but never under four.

Tuesday (Day 590): Negotiation And The Truth

I called plumbing supply houses to find out the difference in cost between the boiler we paid for and the boiler we got, and it was over three times what the plumber had claimed. Then, I estimated the cost we’d pay to the gas company in extra heating bills for having a boiler that was 7% less efficient. I called the plumber and left him a message that I thought I had a solution to our problem. He didn’t pick up again, so I called the Attorney General’s office to see if I would be able to submit a claim if needed. They cleared me to submit the case.

I wrote for a while and the plumber finally called me back. We went through the numbers and I told him how much I wanted him to refund to me. He freaked out. I kept my cool and explained that we were on opposite sides of a negotiation and we’re trying to meet in the middle. I pushed him to give me a reasonable counter. His counter was ridiculously low. Maybe what I was asking for was high, but it was still lower than the plumber’s cost for a new, high efficiency boiler.

I explained the numbers and the plumber called a plumbing supply house to verify their accuracy. When he called back, he said that I had matched up the high efficiency and low efficiency boilers incorrectly. I had estimated the cost of an RV5 boiler to replace an P205, and he thought it should be a RV4. I was sure that I matched up the numbers correctly, but I didn’t have the numbers in front of me. I said if that information was correct and he mailed me the check, we could end this and I wouldn’t complain to him to various agencies. He said he really didn’t care about the relationship because it was dead anyway. Nice. And the crowds chanted, “Assss hole. Asssss hole.”

Wednesday (Day 591): Upgrades And Downgrades

I started the day by running a defrag and a malware sweep on my PC before diving into a WordPress 2.7 upgrade. I’ve been on WordPress since version 1.5, so I’ve done enough upgrades that the process doesn’t phase me.

I have to say that version 2.7 made a big difference in the way things are handled on the admin page. It’s a lot slicker now. Unfortunately, the upgrade sounded the death rattle for Ultimate Tag Warrior, which I’ve been using for a lot longer than I should’ve. Once UTW was out, I had to find a new related posts plugin to handle the related post box at the end of my posts. I tested a few, found one that I liked, and installed it. I also installed a plugin that delivers a custom message to visitors depending on where they are being referred from. I was interested to see if it would help convert StumbleUpon traffic into regular readers.

I looked into upgrading my theme, too, because WordPress 2.7 will now allow for threaded comments. I had spent so much time on WordPress already that I had to give up before I ran out of time to get some posts written. Threaded comments would be fun, but I really don’t get enough comments that it’s a priority. I put it on the back burner for when I had more time.

The cabinet guy showed up to fix a few things that we requested. He added pulls to our bathroom drawers and, in the process, fixed a drawer that someone else had installed incorrectly. He installed a toe kick that he was sure that he put on, and tacked down another that he thinks someone pulled off when they installed the dishwasher. Half the things he fixed wasn’t his fault, but he took care of it anyway. That’s why I rave about them.

He didn’t have the pull for the kitchen or the touch up paint, but he confirmed that our cabinet door was cracked so that the office could order us another one. He also took off his shoes when he came in because I wasn’t wearing shoes. I told him that was unnecessary, but he said he didn’t want to scratch up our floors. Who does that? The kitchen people really kick ass.

I did some Facebook chatting with an MIT friend about process evolution, where processes are created by the group. I was always interested in process engineering because I like to make things more efficient. We went back and forth arguing top down versus bottom up process creation, and it made me wonder if MIT is an atmosphere that fosters high level thinking or whether the dude just thinks about this sort of stuff a lot.

I also chatted with an ex-college roommate that I haven’t talked to since college. I was pretty drunk back then, so I used to treat the guy like crap, so I was surprised that he wanted to talk to me. We chatted for a while and it was almost as if I were remembering it all wrong. My M.O. has been to get rid of friends every few years and start over, and I’m only finding out now that it’s sometimes interesting to go back and see people that I had completely forgotten about.

A friend who never calls called me out of the blue just to talk about film projects and stuff. It was like communication day for me.

Once #1GF! got home, I sat reading the pregancy book while she watched the news.

“Hey, do you know that pregnant women aren’t supposed to eat nitrates?”

“No, but OK.”

“Yep, that means no more hot dogs or ham steaks.

“What?

“No pepperoni…”

“WHAT?”

“And I think no… more… bacon.”

“Noooooooo!”

“Yep, no more bacon for the baby.”

I had to find alternative foods for dinner, because wrapping things in bacon is the most delicious way to give the impression that you know how to cook, without actually learning how. #1GF! sat across the counter looking at me while I cooked. She had a strange look on her face.

She blurted, “I told [her friend] that I’m pregnant. She dragged it out of me. She had all these questions. I couldn’t lie.”

I looked at her through my eyebrows from across the counter. “It’s really early for you to be telling people, isn’t it?”

“She dragged it out of me.”

“I’m just saying that if you wanted to tell her that’s fine, but it’s early.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s fine. I don’t blame you. It’s exciting. As usual, I’m just being cautious.”

“Well, when should we tell then?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I’m just really nervous about it. I want people to share in our joy, but I don’t know if I’m ready for everyone to share in our grief if something goes wrong.”

“Look, if anything happened, [her friend] would share in it. Good or bad.”

“You’re right. I just thought that you’re supposed to wait until three months. Our parents don’t even know.”

“Well, let’s tell them.” And then with a smirk she added, “You’re parents are going to die.”

She was right, but I feared that I might have to downgrade #1GF!’s security clearance. She was prone to giving up information with the slightest torture.

Later, #1GF! and I watched The Wackness, which turned out to be a pretty good movie. Ben Kingsley stars as a psychiatrist who trades treatment for pot, and eventually ends up being friends with his teenage dealer. The acting was good, the story was good, and the music was slow ride through 90′s hip hop. The movie gave us the line, “I got mad love for you, shorty. I want to listen to Boyz 2 men when I’m with you,” a modified version of which I regularly use on #1GF! now.

Thursday (Day 592): The Strangest Day Of My Life

#1GF! was home on a sick day from work, and I spent the morning writing and editing a backlog of Life of Riley Posts. I was only up to week 79 out a possible 87 weeks.

We had to go to the obstetrician to get the first ultrasound for the baby. I am a man. I have been trained as such to not show fear if I can help it. I don’t know how well I did, but this was as close as I had been to being on the X-Files. There were stirrups and an internal probe in that room, and even though I’m prone to trying to protect #1GF!, I was really relieved that this was not my appointment. I don’t think I’ll ever complain about getting a physical again.

The tech shut the lights out, and I folded the coats on my lap. A tiny baby appeared up on the monitor. The baby moved and jumped on the screen, and there was enough detail that I could make out the tiny fingers. It was probably the strangest moment of the strangest day of my life. #1GF! reached out for my hand. I sat there wide eyed and grinning slightly and the baby became very real. I was stunned, excited, and absolutely amazed.

Fifteen minutes later, we were in an office getting printouts of the ultrasound. The tech handed a set of grainy black and white photos to #1GF!. “One set for the mom,” she said, and then handed me mine. “And one set for the dad.” I heard the words and took the pictures. Everything sort of snapped into focus. For the dad. Me, the dad. I’m someone’s Dad? I’m someone’s Dad.

#1GF! was whisked off to another room for more lady type examinations, and I went out to a waiting room. I sat and wrote in my notebook grinning like an idiot at what I had just seen. Five minutes later, #1GF! came out and told me that the doctor asked if I wanted to be in the room with her. I thought it was supposed to be lady type examination, so I didn’t think I was supposed to be in there. If they were inviting me in, I figured that I probably had the wrong impression of what was going on.

We went into a little room, and #1GF! had to put on a johnny. I was confused as to what my role was, but was trying to be supportive. I held the coats because I wasn’t really sure what else to do. The doctor came back in and we talked about any questions or concerns that we had. We talked about a couple of things because we were still a little too stunned to think of what to ask. The doctor was going to start an exam, and I blurted out, “Um. Ok, uh, can I, you know…” and I motioned toward the door.

“Oh, sure, you can go,” said the doctor. “We can put you into the waiting room until this part’s over.”

“Oh thank you. Thank you. I, well, you know…” I know I was blushing.

The doctor led me out to the waiting room and said she’d be back in a few minutes. There were two women and a four year old girl in the waiting room with me. The little girl leaned around her mother and looked straight at me.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

The other woman chuckled and I said, “I know, right? It’s all ladies in here. Don’t worry. I have a lady of my own in the other room.”

The little girl accepted my answer and went into a long monologue with me about how barbie cars don’t have seat belts. I didn’t really have a response, so I went back to writing and the doctor arrived soon after.

This was easily the strangest day of my life. While we were walking out, all of the nurses surrounded #1GF! to get a look at the ultrasound pictures. “Oh, isn’t that cute!” they cooed. I didn’t know if they were all being nice or if they were all into babies that much. Either way, it was nice and incredibly supportive.

Maybe it’s not a universal rule, but it’s a rule for me: Men don’t cry. When we got out to the car, I welled up. I didn’t cry, but fuck man, seeing those little fingers was a moving experience. #1GF! wanted to tell her mother that she was definitely pregnant, and I said that it was no problem. We grabbed some coffee and headed over to her mother’s house. I kept welling up randomly on the ride and looking out the window.

“So, why are you here?” her mother asked.

“I was at the doctors,” answered #1GF! coyly.

“What are you pregnant?”

I sat there beaming like an idiot.

“Yes,” said #1GF!

“Ahhhh congratulations,” she said to #1GF! through teary eyes. They both hugged and cried. I simply sat there grinning like an idiot.

“I couldn’t imagine you without kids,” she said to me. “Kids love you. It would be such a waste.”

It was a really nice thing to say to a beardo like me. We stayed for a while and #1GF! made me tell the story of the eloquent speech I made upon finding out that my lady was with child.

Once the excitement died down, we tried to fix #1GF!’s mother’s answering machine, which was suddenly having a problem with the sound quality of the messages. We were there anyway, so we figured we might as well do something useful. Not letting a baby mature me any, I left test message after test message using the answering machine to make me sound like I was calling from a big rig in outer space. The machine, although fun, seemed like it needed to be replaced.

We asked her mother to keep the news quiet, and she said, “Oh, it’s your news. You have to tell it.” We left soon after.

I thought that we should probably tell my parents too, so I called them to see if they wanted to go out to dinner. My dad had just left to go out, so I suggested we go to dinner the next day. #1GF! made me promise that whatever way I told them that #1GF! was pregnant, I was not allowed to torture them with an elaborate scheme. I could promise no such thing.

#1GF! and I went to the Alehouse for dinner, and when we got home, we had a message from the mortgage guy with a sub 5% rate on it. We missed getting the rate, but the closing costs were pretty high anyway.

Friday (Day 593): Mind Sanding With Heavy Grit

Here’s a trick right out of the #1GF! playbook: When your man is in the shower on a cold winter morning, throw a towel in the dryer and surprise him with it when the shower shuts off. That warm towel on a winter morning is awesome. Have I mentioned how nice she is and how I don’t deserve her? She is, and I don’t.

As if to balance out the niceness, the first thing that I did when exiting the shower was to kick a corner molding and tear open my foot. It bled pretty nicely, and I managed to only get a single drop on the bathroom floor. I will still be accepting warm towels in the morning even if I have to bleed for them.

I went out and did the grocery shopping, and then looked at sanding the bathroom door to get it to close. I didn’t sand it, but I looked at it for a few minutes to see if I could make the problem resolve itself by thinking about it. I was sanding it with my mind, dood. It didn’t work, so I sat down to plow through the Life of Riley posts. I made it to week 81.

Later on, my sister called, and I talked to her for a while before my parents showed up to to pick #1GF! and I up for dinner.

My parents came in and I offered them a drink, but they refused. While they sat, I told them that #1GF! and I couldn’t go on the next family trip. Because I’ve become rather infamous for trying to back out of family obligations, they weren’t too happy. My mother asked why in a very disappointed tone. The setup seemed complete, so I stepped up for the punchline.

“Because #1GF! is pregnant.”

The room went dead for ten or fifteen seconds and then suddenly exploded. I really thought my parents were going to lose their minds. My father said something like “I’ll take that beer now” and gave my mother the wine bottle. She took a couple of good swigs before getting a glass. My mother put her head on the counter to try to process the excitement. Even though they seemed like they would fall over with shock at any second, I don’t think that they could’ve been happier.

We asked that they keep the news quiet because it was still early and we still weren’t ready to tell the world yet. “It’s your news,” they said, as if this were common knowledge.

My dad went through stories of my mom’s pregnancy, and we told them them about my eloquent reaction to the news and went into stories of the ultrasound.

“Have you thought about what you want to be called?” I asked my dad. “Gramps, Papa, grandpa, or whatever?”

“Oh I don’t know,” he said. His nostrils flared like something was coming. “Grandpa [expletive] Face?”

I laughed, and my mother popped. I thought that she was going to suck in all the air in the room with her first shocked breath. “Oh, that’s TERRIBLE. Don’t you say that.”

“OK, now we could do that if you want,” I said “but it’s going to cause problems if you have to pick up the kid from school and he’s telling everyone that ‘[expletive] face’ is coming to get him.”

I called my sister back and gave her the news. I think she was pretty shocked. “Thanks for taking the pressure off,” she said.

We all went out to dinner and there was a woman behind us who had the most obnoxiously loud laugh. I had mixed feelings about it. Yes, sometimes things can be annoying, but I tend not to get annoyed by people for having a good time. If the lady was screaming for no reason or repeatedly yelling “BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS!”, I might get annoyed, but how can you worry about someone for laughing too loudly? I can’t.

Saturday (Day 594): Prunes, Cubes, And WJDA

I bought a jar of prunes for #1GF!, so I plopped one into a white, unbreakable Corningware bowl to prove to her that they weren’t all that bad. One click of the spoon against the bottom of the bowl, and I was transported back to my grandparents’ apartment when I was a kid.

My grandfather ate prunes in orange juice in a Corningware bowl every morning in that apartment. And as a kid, I ate my share of prunes at the small kitchen table with him. Although, I never really understood soaking them in orange juice, the smell and sound transported me back to a time when we would sit in the kitchen and eat breakfast while the radio on top of the fridge rang out the bells and gulls of WJDA’s old time radio format.

#1GF! didn’t have such fond memories of prunes, and she ended up eating half of one once it was mixed in with a bunch of other fruit. I don’t believe she has touched the jar since.

I checked the weather to find out the track of an impending winter storm, and had to listen to fifteen minutes of repeated sound bites from the Hudson River plane crash. I eventually had to leave the room because the repetitive nature of the news absolutely annoys me to no end.

I sat at the kitchen counter jotting notes and solving the Rubik’s cube. I did it in over five minutes, then in 3:28, then in 2:40. I had broken the three minute barrier. I didn’t think that I could much faster with my current method, and after watching a video of a six year old solving a Rubik’s Cube in 37 seconds, I thought that I should probably give my cube a rest.

I made pork chops for dinner, and used orange juice instead of water to cook it. It came out pretty awesome.

#1GF! and I sat down to watch Tropic Thunder, which should’ve been named Tropic Blunder. Or Tragic Thunder. Or maybe Crappy Shit Movie. Sure, the movie had a lot of stars, but I’ve found steaming piles in my yard that entertained me more. Maybe they could’ve spent the salaries on all those big names on some comedy writers. When Tom Cruise is the funniest thing in a movie, you have a problem.

What I Learned

• I learned about process evolution, the opposite of process engineering.
• Maybe I wasn’t as big an a-hole as I thought in the old days.
• I can solve a Rubik’s cube in under 3 minutes.
• Rubik’s cube stickers are not high quality and peel off after a few weeks of heavy use.
• Rice cooked in orange juice instead of water is really good.
• There are small children out there who can do the Rubik’s cube faster than I can.
• I cannot sand doors with my mind.
• Lady doctor appointments are insane.
• Suddenly getting the chance to be a dad when you thought there was no chance is indescribable.
• 2009 seems like it will finally be a lucky year for us.
• Nitrates (bacon, ham, hot dogs, pepperoni) are all bad for the baby.

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Posted in Life of Riley