This is week 89 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.

Sunday (Day 616): Peloooooo Vaqueroooooo

While talking with #1GF!, the conversation turned to how I think I watch too much TV and how I’d like #1GF! to help me stop watching. If we look at talking with people as the highest form of social communication, then talking on the phone would be a lesser form, and talking through chats and e-mail would be less than that. While lower forms of communication certainly have their place when higher forms are unavailable or impractical, I’m finding that these days, lower forms are frequently used to replace higher forms.

Talking through internet chats is a perfect example because I tend to chat with more people than I’ll ever call. That’s fine, but everyone who normally would be called or visited, gets a chat, making me feel like I have actually talked with them. I haven’t. It’s deceiving in that it makes you feel like you’ve talked with people, when in reality, you’ve merely left them a series of meaningless notes.

For me, television is the biggest trap of all, because it actually impersonates and replaces higher forms of communication without being a two way method of communication at all. It gives you the feeling that you’re getting information about people’s lives or having people over to your house, but you’re not. You’re sitting in front of a box that is keeping you complacent by showing you recordings of people who you will never interact with and who are not even there when you’re watching. You have zero interaction, but it gives the impression that you have interacted with someone. That you don’t need to invite anyone over. That you’re not alone.

Man is a social animal, so if you eliminate television and light forms of communication, you are forced to seek out other people to fill a need for communication, no matter how light the need is among some of us. You’ll eventually get bored and pick up the phone or go to visit people because you’ll eventually get tired of the silence. And once you get in the habit of climbing the ladder to higher forms of communication, lower forms become less appealing because you realize what a poor facsimile they are for the real thing.

I’m a male, a geek, and a writer, so I can’t say that I’m built to require a lot of human interaction. If you flip on the TV and the internet, you remove a good portion of the incentive to seek out the company of other people. And that’s not good for me as a person, so the TV, being the least interactive, needs to be the one to go.

But, that’s me. I understand #1GF!’s need to watch TV because she’s around people all day who are always after her to fix things. TV is a good way to shut out everything and relax. I used to do the same thing with video games. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But without a lot of human contact because of the writing and lack of job, TV is not good for me. Like video games give a false sense of accomplishment, TV gives a false sense of human interaction. The web is almost as bad because it’s light, meaningless interaction, and maybe that’s the next thing to go as I move up the chain towards more people, but let’s take things one step at at time.

I explained this all to #1GF! so that she could help me stop watching the TV so much and be a bit more of a social animal. She agreed to give me a little bit of help. It all reminded me of my Kill Your Television idea from years past.

A whole box of pans went missing when we moved, so #1GF! and I decided to hunt for them. We figured that they were in a mislabeled box, so we went through every unopened box from basement to attic. We still couldn’t find them. I couldn’t imagine what happened, unless we threw them away accidentally, or someone still has a box of pans in their trunk that they aren’t aware of. We gave up the search with a shrug and an “Oh well,” but it was the weirdest thing to have a box of pans vanish without a trace.

We got dressed and ready, and I kept randomly using the phrase pelo vaquero. I thought that I was saying “cowboy mustache”, but I wasn’t sure if I was remembering my rudimentary high school Spanish correctly. I wasn’t. I was sort of saying “cowboy hair”, an error which I find strangely amusing. I should’ve been saying bigote del vaquero, but that just doesn’t have the same effect as yelling out “PELOOoo… VAQUEROOoo…!” in a superhero voice.

We drove to #1GF!’s family’s house for dinner, and on the way, two lanes of traffic stopped to let a dozen ducks slowly plod and waddle their way across the street. The ducks seemed completely unfazed by the lines of traffic waiting for them, and not one person honked. It was a little strange for nature and man to be suddenly and momentarily harmonious on a such a busy street.

We had a nice dinner with #1GF!’s family and got to play with the kids for a while. I always play with the kids, but I felt like more of a dad playing with them this time. I don’t know why or how to describe the feeling beyond the odd feeling that I didn’t quite feel like I was a kid anymore.

I ended up dropping one of the kids off my back as they were climbing all over me, and in that split second where the kid doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, we got him to laugh. I asked his mom to check his teeth because I heard them clack together when he hit the floor. I guess that was stupid to have his mom check, because if the kid broke a tooth he’d be wailing at the insane amount of pain. He was fine and went right back to scaling me like a jungle Jon. I made a note to myself, “Don’t let kids fall on heads.”

Before we left, I helped hang a couple of doors. It wasn’t really a two man job, but hanging a door can be easier with two people, so I gave a quick hand.

Afterward, we headed to #1GF!’s mother’s house to pick up a batch of lemon squares. I thought it was a bit of a long ride for lemon squares, but #1GF! had her priorities. I walked in the door doing the voice of Aunt Bernice the smoker and told #1GF!’s Mom that we couldn’t stay long because I had to get over to bingo. I may have said “beeno” and mentioned cartons of Parliaments just to sound more authentically old school. I don’t know why I do those things or why people think it’s funny, but her mom was tearing up she was laughing so hard. As we were leaving, she asked #1GF! if I could stay in case she got bored.

#1GF! and I went home, and I tried to figure out some new moves to solve the Rubik’s cube. I figured out a couple of new tricks, but they didn’t speed up anything because I had to think about them too much. They might save time if I learn to do them automatically, but what are the odds of that happening before I get bored of the whole cubing thing?

I could hear #1GF! in the other room watching Jerry Maguire, as I cubed and avoided the television. Once I couldn’t cube any longer, I read in bed until #1GF! was done with the TV.

Monday (Day 617): Life Of Errors

I roughed out LOR after closing out a couple of my web advertising accounts. The accounts weren’t earning more than could fall out of my pocket, so I didn’t see it as any big loss.

Once #1GF! got home, she read LOR to me out loud and we found a ton of little errors. The post took me all day to put together, so I was embarrassed about the number of mistakes. To be fair, over the last month or so, I’ve taken a week at a time to read and re-read these posts for errors, so I probably haven’t quite gotten used to the single day posting speed yet. Then again, I never did have #1GF! read the most recent batch of posts out loud, so there may be uncaught errors in there still.

I went to bed and read while #1GF! watched TV.

Tuesday (Day 618): Stock Up On Adult Diapers

I did some SEO on some of the beard posts to see if it would make any difference in my search engine placement. SEO isn’t really a priority for me, but I didn’t see any reason not to play with some keywords to see what affect (if any) that it would have on the SERPs. Whether the rank went up or not, I figured it couldn’t hurt to do a little keyword research and analysis. So, I worked on that for a couple of hours.

I headed to the library at 11AM and had a hard time finding a parking spot. It must be a big time for readers. I wanted to pick up some landscaping books, marketing books, and a bit of fiction, but I didn’t pick up anything. I alternated between crouching and standing while reading a Seth Godin book in one of the aisles. I read a good portion of it in the couple of hours that I was in there, and skimmed the rest.

I always come away feeling like I can conquer the web after reading a Seth Godin book, but the attitude fades rather quickly. Although I like Godin’s books, I find them to be more inspirational than instructional. And inspiration doesn’t pay the rent.

I looked at other marketing books like “How to get your business on the web” and found that they were written in 1998. If a web marketing book wasn’t written in the last year, there’s a fairly good chance that the information in it is useless. If it mentions the word “baud” or anything about calling up Prodigy or CompuServe, hide it so no one finds it.

Web data has a very short shelf life. It’s already a couple of years out of date by the time it makes it into a book, so anything older than a year is well past the expiration date. A book that is more than ten years old might as well be about speeding up morse code. I looked around and wondered how much dead information was stored on those shelves. How much of it was entirely useless? I bet that there was a lot. I wondered whether some poor bastard would read these books and consume them without knowing enough to check the expiration date.

I turned to the landscaping books for some inspiration on what to do with my Civil War battle trench of a yard. Unlike the Godin books, the landscaping books proved to be more instructional than inspirational. I could find exactly how to install walls, fences and paths, but I couldn’t find inspiration on where those walls, fences, and paths should go. I slid the book back into it’s spot and figured that I’d find something more current when I got home and back on the web.

I headed to the supermarket and did what little food shopping I had left thanks to the giant tubs of food you can buy at the food warehouses. I only had a few things on my list, so I grabbed a basket.

No matter how short the list, I always seem to fill the basket and end up with things under my arms. Always. At least once or twice a trip, I have to put things down to play tetris to get things to fit in the basket. When the basket is full, I stuff things under my arms. I generally end up looking like an uncoordinated moron.

This trip, I had a full basket in one hand held by three fingers, a gallon of milk pinched between the other two, and three boxes of kleenex under the arm. In the other hand was a twelve pack of soda. People everywhere must wonder if I’m afraid of carriage technology or if I’m against carts for some odd religious reasons.

I dropped the groceries off at home, and decided to go back out to get a bread pan to make #1GF! some banana bread. I absolutely hate bananas, so this was me trying to do something nice for her. I went out to a local overstock home store and looked through the shelves of piled up pans. All I wanted was a triple pack sort of thing with a few different sized bread pans in it. They didn’t have anything like that that I could find in the disarray of pans, and I had no idea what a good price on a single bread pan should be, even if I found one.

I went to the mall, assuming that Wal-mart or some similar place would have a multi pan pack for guys who don’t want to think about pans for too long. Wal-mart didn’t have anything, but a department store did. Unfortunately, there was no way that I was going to pay $30 for a bread pan to make bread that I hate for a girl that I love.

As I stood in the kitchen section, I ran into one of #1GF!’s friends and talked to her for a few minutes. After a quick conversation, I left the mall.

I went even further from home to a full-on kitchen store, and they didn’t have a three pack of different sized bread pans either. All I wanted was a daddy, mommy, and baby type stackable bread pan set. I assumed that they would be pretty common even though I had absolutely no basis for the assumption. To make matters worse, I was getting irritated that no one stocked a set of pans that I had completely imagined.

Welcome to my mind, folks. Please keep your arms inside the vehicle at all times.

The single pans at the kitchen store were more than the original store I had gone to, so I went back to the original store. Now, it was four fucking PM, and not only was the biggest time sink of the day a hunt for baking pans, but I was back at the store where I started. Kill me. Kill me now. Do it with a baking pan just to teach me a lesson.

I went back into the store and bought a bread pan and a couple of square pans to replace the baking pans that somehow vanished. I brought the stuff to the counter and the lady asked who did the cooking. I admitted that I did.

“I like to make a nice lasagna,” she said.

I didn’t have a lasagna pan, and I didn’t mention lasagna at all, but I was thinking, “Ok. This lady wants to talk about random things. Indulge her.”

“Do you make your own sauce?” I asked.

“No, I just throw in a jar of Prego,” she said as she made a dumping motion with her hand.

In my head, I scoffed. Then, I felt bad about mentally scoffing. But, Prego? Really? Eating Prego sauce is like thinking it’s perfectly acceptable to scoop out a refreshing glass of water from the toilet. Yes, it’s water. No, it’s probably not something you should ingest. Prego is the toilet water of canned sauces.

I nodded approvingly like Prego wouldn’t make my dead ancestors roll over and make the living ones swear a vendetta. “I make my own sauce for mine,” I said to keep the conversation going. It was met with silence. I wondered what the fuck was going on. Why was this lady trying to get me into a conversation and then not talking. Was I becoming the subject of a paper for a psychology class she was taking at the local community college? I continued on. “It takes all day usually. Almost feels like a waste to put into a lasagna.”

I was met with more silence. After a minute had passed without a single word, the lady gave me a slip to sign, and just said, “I like cheese.”

The words sort of hung there. How the fuck are you supposed to answer that? Do you affirm it, keep talking, what? the transaction was over, and there was no reason for me to end up as the main ingredient in some crazy lady’s lasagna, so I did the best I could by nodding. “Oh, I get it,” I thought, You’re fucking craaaaazy.”

“Have a good night,” I said as I headed for the door, although I’m not sure she made any indication that she recognized that I had walked away.

I wanted to pick up some flowers for #1GF! at the adjacent supermarket, but I didn’t want to carry a bunch of pans. I went to drop the bag in my car.

I reached into the pocket that my keys are usually in. Nothing. I switched the pans to the other hand and fished around in my other pocket. Nothing. I checked my back pockets on the off chance that I suddenly had developed the habit of storing my keys in the worst guarded pocket in a pair of pants. Nothing.

“Ok, what the hell,” I said to the open air.

I put the pans on the trunk and went through my pockets again, and added my jacket pockets into the mix. Still nothing. I slouched and stared at my shoes. My hands could practically touch my knees. “Fuck,” I thought. “Am I 912 years old or something?” I thought about the time my grandfather lost his car in a parking lot, and thought, “I guess this sort of thing just sneaks up on you, and in no time it’s strained peas and tapioca pudding.

I looked through the windshield to see if I had been dumb enough to leave the keys in the ignition. I hadn’t. I was out of options, so I decided to retrace my steps. I walked back through the store with my head down, partially to scan the floor, and partially out of pure shame. I made it back to the pans and still had seen no sign of my keys. I looked at the floor around the pan rack, and then walked back to the car.

“They must be in one of my pockets,” I thought. I tucked the pans under the big dumb wing on my trunk and emptied my pockets onto the roof like I was being detained by the po po. I stared at the pile of tissues, crumpled up bills, and loose change, and fished through my pockets like they were full of hidden compartments that I could’ve missed on the first pass through.

A very old woman walked up to her car. “You might lose that,” she said about a fiver flapping in the breeze.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing,” I said.

“You OK?

“I lost my keys,” I said.

“Oh, that’s awful. Maybe you can retrace your steps through the stores you were in and ask the clerks. A lot of times people turn them in.”

I thanked her and she went on her way. I crammed all my stuff back into my pockets and dreaded calling #1GF! to tell her that her unemployed boyfriend was trapped at a strip mall because he had turned the corner early and was suddenly losing his faculties. I pictured myself sitting in a nearby pizza shop drinking mountain dew through a straw until she came and got me. It was not a proud vision.

I decided to make a second pass at retracing my steps. I scanned the ground once again all the way back to the shelves full of pans.

“Could I have had them in my hand and dropped them into a pan?” I thought. “No, I would’ve heard the clank. Wouldn’t I?” I wasn’t sure, but I was running out of options before admitting that I was not fit to go out without a caretaker.

I lifted pans and looked through any that I might have moved while shopping. There was no sign of the keys I checked the floor again, just in case there was a chance that I would’ve missed a set of black keys sitting on a white floor on the first pass through.

I retraced my steps through the registers and right out the door to my car. There were no keys. This is the reason that I keep my house keys and car keys on separate rings: If I lose one, at least I’m not completely out of luck.

I decided to go back and ask a clerk on the off chance that someone turned in some keys. It had only been about fifteen minutes, so I didn’t think it would be very likely. “Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but did anyone turn in some car keys?”

She looked at me for a second and said, “Yes…”

It was the best moment of my day. She suddenly got semi-defensive and asked what kind of car. “It’s a Mitsubishi,” I said, practically jumping over the counter. There were my keys. Oh, thank you thank you thank you,” I said. “Where were they?”

“Someone found them right outside the door.”

“I can’t believe it. I feel like I’m 912 years old. Thank you so much,” I said, practically dripping with relief.

“It’s an awful feeling,” the clerk said with a fair amount of sympathy. “Have a good day. And if this happens again,” she called after me, “just check with a clerk. People turn keys in all the time.”

I walked out the door and put the pans in the car. I wanted to get myself a cup of coffee just to savor the relief that I felt, but I decided that I didn’t deserve a reward for losing my keys. I tried to call #1GF! to tell her the story, but the call didn’t go well. #1GF! was half listening and I was half telling, so only a quarter of the information was actually getting through. “I’ll call you in a little bit,” I said before hanging up. “I have to run into the store.”

As if to prove a point, when I got into the supermarket, I couldn’t remember why I was there. I was supposed to be getting flowers for #1GF!, which my legs remembered. My brain was crapping out and decided that I had gone in to buy a banana for some banana bread. I grabbed a single banana and headed for the registers. The lines were way too long to wait in for a single piece of fruit that I hate, so I walked it back to the banana pile at the front of the store.

Just as I was leaving, I caught the old lady from earlier out of the corner of my eye. I can only imagine that after seeing me with my pockets turned out on the roof of my car, and then walking around a store with a single banana, that she figured I was completely insane and stalking her. I could visualize her gripping the pepper spray tighter in the far reaches of her quilted purse.

I left the store and called #1GF! to tell her the story as I drove home. When I got home, I realized that I had completely forgotten the flowers. And I was suddenly hungry for tapioca and strained peas.

I prepped dinner and made banana bread at the same time. I don’t think I’ve made banana bread before, but #1GF! seemed to like it. After dinner we watched a show, and I told her about some of the awesome ideas that I had thought of for the web. After a single sputtering half idea, I couldn’t remember any more. I stood there holding two dirty plates and staring at the floor.

“Don’t you have a notebook for this type of thing?”

“Yea, but these were so good that there’s no way that I thought I’d forget them. Seriously. What am I 912 years old? OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE, START STOCKING UP ON ADULT DIAPERS BECAUSE IT’S OVER FOR ME.”

Like always, #1GF! shook her head and laughed.

Wednesday (Day 619): My Friendly Cousin And My Rude Robot

I started the day with cereal and milk, and the milk tasted sour despite having been bought the day before. It was no way to start a Wednesday, but I ate the whole bowl anyway, because I’ll be damned if some bacteria is going to keep me from a bowl of cereal.

I put away the dishes from the night before and emptied the dishwasher. Once those were done, I sat and read for a few minutes before hopping into the shower.

I got dressed and wandered down to stand near #1GF! while she got ready for work. She struggled to find clothes that fit and I felt really bad for her before feeling bad about myself. I felt like this woman should get whatever she wants and it made me want to run right out and get a job. Unfortunately, I got a message from a recruiter that said she didn’t have anything for me right now.

Once #1GF! headed out to work, I updated my cowbell playlist to over 250 songs, even though I felt like I was wasting my time. As if to continue the trend, I wrote LOR.

Then, I found something amazing. I’ve done enough Wordpress upgrades to be comfortable with them, but I updated Wordpress with their new one click upgrade. Of course I backed everything up first, but the upgrade was as simple as upgrading a plugin. One click and Wordpress was upgraded. It was crazy and thoroughly awesome, even for a guy who doesn’t mind doing things manually.

While I was marveling at WordPress’s innovation, my cousin called and said she wanted to come by. I invited her down, and as soon as I hung up the phone I ran around the house doing light cleaning so that she didn’t think the place was a dump. I set out some banana bread, and I wondered when I would start enjoying romantic comedies or a good cry.

I even moved a bookcase into the office, where it was supposed to go. It’s been in the wrong room since we moved, so this was a good thing that guests were coming over.

My cousin showed up with her boyfriend, and we ate and talked about unemployment, and the weird situations it leads to like wondering if your beard is making you look homeless and about suddenly finding yourself with “in the house” clothes that somehow got designated as extended wear.

Her boyfriend reads my blog, which is typically leads to a weird initial exchange between reader and writer. I think the readers generally feel like reading a blog is like literary eavesdropping. I never think it is. I write what I write, and I’m always amazed when I find people who actually read it.

When I assured them that it was great that they read this blog, the boyfriend mentioned both ROCKET CAR and the robot, so it was obvious that he knew about the jeans issues, and some the other weird stuff I do. Rather than feel weird about it, I think it’s neat to have people along for the ride.

“Well, you’ve already seen rocket car outside with its big, dumb wing, but do you want to see the robot?”

“Well, yea,” they said in unison as if “yea” had a couple of syllables.

“It’s probably not going to be as good as you imagine,” I said, knowing full well that they’d be staring at a shop vac in my basement in a matter of seconds. We headed down the stairs and over to the corner where the robot liked to sleep.

“Well, there it is,” I said.

The robot stared at the wall completely oblivious to our presence.

“I’m going to program some manners into your boards if it’s the last thing I do,” I thought. I think the robot was pretending to be in suspend mode, but I knew that he was watching our every move.

We headed back upstairs, and I waved a finger at the robot not to follow us. I could just tell that if he moved, I’d have to explain the sudden donk of his empty tub as it ran into a pole. It’s like hitting poles is built into his circuitry.

I shook my head and mouthed “E.T.,” and raised my eyebrows as high as I could. The robot shrank back remembering what I told him would happen if anyone ever found out that he was anything other than an ordinary shop vac in my basement.

My cousin, her boyfriend, and I talked for hours until #1GF!’s mom called. She wasn’t having a good day, so I tried to calm her down. It seemed to work.

#1GF! brought home pizza for the four of us, and we ate and until my cousin’s boyfriend asked to see the Rubiks cube. I showed them how to solve it step by step. Before they headed home, I could tell that both of them wanted cubes of their own to solve.

Muah ha ha ha ha.

Thursday (Day 620): Half Lost Day Gah.

I tweaked a Valentine’s Day post that I had put together last year, and then set to write a post on personal blogging. Before I knew it, it was noon. Then, I lied to myself in my notebook and said that I documented the rest of the day on my blog, but when I looked a few days later, there was nothing. Another half day was lost to history.

Friday (Day 621): Junk Cooling Jets

After lacking accomplishment the day before, I decided to unpack my office. We have been in the house for a few months, so it was getting a little out of hand that it wasn’t done. I unpacked all of the CDs, and tried to find places for some of the random junk that was neither useless enough to get rid of, nor useful enough to keep handy. Despite the hours spent unpacking and organizing, the office ended up looking a lot messier than it did before I started.

I wrote a post to mark the official end of MaBeGroMo, which included a MaBeGroMo award for all the dudes who made it to MaBeGroMo Champion status. The award was created in both Inkscape and GIMP, because I love free and effective products.

By the time I finished up, it was 5 PM, so got out of my chair and ran out to get #1GF! a Valentine’s Day present. “It’s 5. You have an hour. You can do this, man.” I jumped up and ran to get my coat. I literally ran in socked feet around a corner on a hardwood floor. It’s a practiced skill that will keep your face from hitting the hardwood floor, but at the expense of looking like a retarded dog prancing on its hind legs.

I hopped into my car and went to the bookstore to grab #1GF! a couple of books. Just as I was walking in the door, I realized that there was an ice cold breeze on my nether regions that I hadn’t noticed before. Since the likelihood of a bookstore adding some sort of junk cooling jet to their entrance would’ve been phased out with focus groups, I realized that my fly had to be down.

I gave up my normal pimptastic ghetto strut and tried to walk normally. “Just a bearded guy looking for books,” I thought as if trying to project the image into people’s minds. “Coats too nice to be homeless… Probably a professor or nerdologist. Nothing to see here.” No one seemed to notice my presence.

I thought about heading for a bathroom to zip up, but walked through the some of the rows of books. The business section was particularly deserted, so I looked both ways down the rows in preparation for a zip up. Oh, hey there old lady in the cafe staring at me. I’m just looking at all the business books here. Just businessizing. For my business. Nothing to see here. Go back to reading that novel and drinking that coffee like this is a fucking library.

I nonchalantly moved over one row. Ah computers. The aisle was deserted, but even if there was someone in there, odds are that it would be a socially inept guy with his fly down too. I looked at the books and saw how little things had changed. All my old favorites were there.

I made my face express, “What’s that? Is that Java?” while reaching for my fly. I nodded and lowered my eyebrows as if looking for a specific book that wasn’t there. Ziiiiiiip. The breeze stopped. Mission accomplished. I stood there looking at the books for a few more seconds to complete the illusion and because, well, I’m comfortable around computer books enough that I’d make them into sheets and sleep under them if I didn’t think the ink would end up everywhere.

I was hoping to replace #1GF!’s library borrowed version of What To Expect When You’re Expecting with her own copy. It was like getting her a Valentine’s Day gift, but without getting her something big enough that she’d feel bad about not getting something for me. I walked around the entire store and ended up standing in front of a bunch of menopause books. “This can’t be right,” I said under my breath. I walked over to the counter.

“I need a book about pregnancy,” I said. “And, I hate to do this to you, but I have no idea what it’s called.” I felt like one of those people who walk into record stores and start “Nah nahnah nuh nah nun WAAAAA”ing to try to get an uninterested clerk to understand what they’re looking for. I was almost on the edge of saying “It’s about this big” and holding up my hands, which would’ve been as effective as saying that it had a lot of pages that were all numbered.

I suddenly realized part of the title. “Oh wait, I think it has ‘expecting’ in the title,” I said, suddenly proud for not wasting a ton of the clerk’s time.

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting?” the woman asked, while looking at me through her eyebrows. I could feel the judgment even though she was trying to mask it.

“Yup, that’s the one. Thanks very much!”

She led me over to a section of books that was almost in the kids section and went on her way. I grabbed the book and a pregnancy journal, and headed to the checkout. I knew that #1GF! had been talking about keeping a pregnancy journal, and even though I had found one for her while unpacking the day before, this one seemed like it was a lot more interactive than a blank set of pages.

I walked by The Settlers of Catan game a couple of times, and decided that $41 that they were asking for it was ludicrous. I asked if they had any Wil Wheaton books. They didn’t. This was a big chain bookstore, so I was a little surprised. I thought that they’d have at least a copy of something that I could thumb through to see if I liked it, but I suppose not.

I paid for the books and left feeling a little bit sneaky. I headed over to the market to get some flowers, but it was full of those last minute carnations and roses for men who don’t plan. Don’t look at me that way. I’m talking about other men who don’t plan. Everything was red and white, and none of them were particularly alive or pretty. I opted to get #1GF! the next best thing: ice cream.

I grabbed the ice cream and headed out the door. Just as I got to the house, #1GF! was pulling into the driveway. She had stopped off to do some clothes shopping on the way home, and it created a perfect tandem arrival.

We went inside and I gave #1GF! her books and ice cream a day early. I hadn’t given her any explanations as to why I had suddenly left the house, so she knew that I was up to something. There was no point in hiding it, so she got her gifts right then and there, one at a time from behind my back. She was rather pleased with her gifts, even though they came delivered in shopping bags a day early.

“You are a sweet, sweet man.”

“It really was nothing.”

“No, this was really nice of you. Come here.”

I walked over and she reached up and planted a kiss on me.

“You know you need to raise your expectations a little,” I said.

She just waved me off like I wasn’t making sense.

While I was cooking up some leftovers, #1GF! burst out of her book and broke the silence with, “Oh I forgot to tell you.”

I stared at her surprised, still holding up the spatula as if it were an acceptable first line of defense.

“When I went to the maternity clothes store, they had a little pillow with Velcro straps that you could put under your clothes.”

“That’s a little weird,” I said before rethinking my position. “Oh I guess that makes sense. Like a belly to see if stuff fits?”

“Yea, it’s so you can see if the clothes are going to fit you later on when you get really big.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Yea, and I put it on and I was huge! I’m going to be enormous!”

“Uh, you know you’re pregnant, right?” I asked. “You know that you’re going to get bigger and a baby is going to come out of there, right?” I pointed at a low undefined area behind the counter with the spatula.

“Right out of your junk.”

She looked at me.

“BOOM! Baby out of your junk.”

She waited.

“Fine. Go on.”

“I’m going to be HUGE!”

“What did you think was going to happen?”

“I don’t know, but I looked HUGE!”

Saturday (Day 622): Valentine’s Day Gaming

I woke up and lay in bed for thirty seconds before hearing, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

I had forgotten already. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“I love you very much,” she said.

“I love you too,” I said without sounding like the words were a race.

The words hung in the air for a few seconds while we both smiled at each other like this is what we were meant to be doing.

I went and grabbed the giant warehouse sized cereal box, poured myself a bowl, and sat at the counter. #1GF! walked in soon after. “You want a bagel or something,” I asked.

“I think I’m going to have cereal today,” she said.

#1GF! rarely has cereal. She reached up into the cabinet and pulled out the Giant MEGABOX of CEREAL. “Geez. How do you pour this thing?”

“I usually put it under my arm and shake out what I can,” I said.

“This thing is crazy.”

“I know,” I said nodding and trying to keep the milk off of my beard.

#1GF! stuck the box under her arm and I sat there grinning. The box made her look unusually small, and she was having a hard time getting the necessary height to pour out the cereal from under her arm.

“I’m getting fat” said #1GF! while looking at her belly, which has just recently started to show.

“You are not fat. You’re pregnant. There’s a difference.”

She stared at her belly. “I know, but look at it. It’s out there.”

“Again, what did you think was going to happen?” I said.

“I know, but still…”

Once we were dressed, we ran out to the mechanic’s to drop off #1GF!’s car. I had Starship’s “Jane” stuck in my head all morning because I recently found out that the song contains cowbell. Other than that song, I’m afraid Starship, Jefferson Starship, or whatever the band is calling themselves on the local carnival circuit these days can just plain suck it. As I’m not a Starship fan, I don’t know “Jane” at all, so I would blurt out “Jane JANE JaaaAAAAaaaane” every so often to the head shaking toleration of #1GF!

We drove over to the hospital to get #1GF!’s second trimester screening done to see if there’s anything wrong with the baby. It’s basically a two minute blood test and they only call you when something’s wrong.

We were heading out to the food warehouse so that I could get a ton of snacks for anyone who might drop by the house, and on the way, we stopped into a local furniture megastore. We didn’t see any furniture of interest, but we did buy the biggest box of Cheez-Its you ever saw. I tried to figure out how we could use five pounds of tomatoes before they went bad, but couldn’t. That’s how I spend most of my time in the food warehouse: wondering how I can use that much of _____ before it goes bad.

Those oversized boxes brought out an oversized appetite, so we stopped into a restaurant for a late lunch. We were told that we could either wait fifteen minutes for a table or take a seat at the counter. We took the counter because I think counters are generally the best seats in the house for groups of one or two people. For three or more, it doesn’t work well, but for two, you can sit next to each other without looking like weirdos, and you get served faster. For two people, there’s no better place.

I had a sandwich and couple of Mountain Dews, which I haven’t had since I was a LAN Admin in a previous life. The meal wasn’t very eventful except that when we were done, the bartender gave us two chocolate hearts with our check. It wasn’t the norm at the restaurant, but that gesture of giving us something small and unexpected, got her a bigger tip. I knew it was a trick, but I really liked the trick and I wanted to figure out how to use it on the web.

We headed over to #1GF!’s mother’s house to wish her a happy Valentine’s Day, and I was asked why I didn’t get off my ass and get a job. It was a very old school moment that I wasn’t too happy with, but it had a logic to it that I could appreciate. Tech pays well. Writing pays poorly. Stop dreaming and get off your ass and get a job.

Even though it was Valentine’s Day, #1GF! and I went over to Macoosh’s house to play games. I can’t remember exactly what we played but one was like a game of charades. We all seemed to do equally well on guessing, and had a lot of laughs. I can’t remember much about the specific gameplay except for three situations:

1. #1GF! acted like she was typing, made an exasperated face, pretended to call on a phone, and then flopped in her chair like she was dead. I stared. Macoosh yelled out “Computer Virus!” like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and was right.
2. The clue was “It’s bigger than a line and smaller than a desert.” The answer was a place. My first guess was the San Andreas Fault, and it was correct.
3. #1GF! got so excited about acting out something that would be really easy for her, that when she was getting up, instead of saying, “It’s a What,” she said, “It’s bowling shoes. DAMNIT!”

We had a good time playing games and torturing Macoosh’s insane cat until it was time for us to shuffle on home.

What I Learned

• I need to eliminate TV, and probably social networking.
• The box of pans really went missing.
• You can make a bouquet out of lobster tails.
• Bigote del vaquero means cowboy mustache. Pelo Vaquero is something like “cowboy hair”, whatever the hell that means.
• People will honk at you for going the speed limit, but have no problem waiting for a bunch of ducks to waddle across the street.
• Some sequences rotate pieces on a Rubik’s cube counter clockwise, while performing a mirror image of the move will rotate pieces clockwise.
• I have discovered a weird odd man out strategy to help solve the final layer of the Rubik’s cube.
• I can solve a Rubik’s cube in 1:47.
• Solving the cube is infectious.
• Seth Godin is more inspirational than instructional, and gardening books are just the opposite.
• The library is full of information that’s as dead as the trees it’s printed on.
• Nobody sells a three pack of bread pans.
• Losing your car keys outside your house sucks ass.
• Even though I firmly believe that it’s perfectly fine to like what you like, I have secret scorn for Prego eaters.
• Wordpress’s one click version upgrade is awesome.
• Other unemployed people have found themselves designating clothes as extended wear.
• Other bearded people wonder, “Does this beard make me look homeless?”
• Running around corners in socks on a hardwood floor is a skill.
• Zipping up your fly in a public place without drawing attention is a skill.
• Some girls will accept ice cream in lieu of flowers.
• Small gifts earn big tips.
• There’s still a lot of cowbell out there to discover.

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Posted in Leisure