This is week 91 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 630): Less Programmable Than A Big Trak

I woke up out of a dream where I was saying, “Well, it will be about twelve months before we get foreclosed on.” I have no idea what the context was. I then drifted back off to sleep, only to wake up about an hour later thinking, “Well, Congressman, I don’t really give a fuck what the legislature thinks.” Again, I have no idea what the context was. If each weren’t strange on their own, the combination made me doubt my own sanity.

Once we got out of bed, I made #1GF! the most boring breakfast sandwich in the world. I wolfed it down so that I wouldn’t waste any energy trying to extract any enjoyment out of it.

I was looking for something to do while #1GF! finished eating, so I tightened up the railing on our attic stairs because it had been installed so poorly that it wiggled about a half inch. It would drive me crazy whenever I noticed it, so while I had it in mind, I decided to fix it.

The screws holding the railing to its supports were so tight that I couldn’t tighten them by hand. I could visualize the installer not having a screw gun handy and saying, “So, it wiggles. Fuck it. Good enough.” I grabbed a screw gun and in under ten seconds, I crossed something off my “list of 100 things that make my house suck”. Seriously. If everyone just did their jobs…

It was raining again, so I went down to the basement to check on our shrine to the window of perpetual overflowedness. The robot was sleeping in front of it, and popped his eye open just as I walked by. He whistled like I wouldn’t notice that he was asleep. He doesn’t have the circuitry to know that whistling implies guilt rather than absolves it. I ignored him.

I looked out the window and there was only about an inch of actual water in the window well, so my mud dams were holding back the water from our weeping window of doom. Unfortunately, the water that would’ve normally flowed into that window well was forming it’s own new body of water that was threatening a window nearby. This house is like the hydra of home problems: You solve one issue and two pop up in it’s place.

I turned to the robot. “Sorry to bother you, but did you think you might warn me about lake Onario Junior over here that’s threatening to flood this window?”

The robot kept staring out the window of perpetual overflowedness because, well, that’s what I had instructed him to do a few weeks back. “I can’t believe that a farm kid on Tatooine could build C-3P0, and a huge corporation can’t crank out a basement robot with advanced logic circuits.”

The robot has limited capacity for language, so he spun in a circle thinking that I wanted him to do a trick. He made it three quarters of the way around before tangling itself up in his cord and falling over. His black wheels spun in the air while I stood over him shaking my head. I set him upright. “No more tricks today, pal. Why don’t you just take a nap, and I’ll come back to check on you…” The robot shut down. “…later.” I shook my head and thought, “Worst. Robot. Ever.”

I went upstairs and played a couple of rounds of Carcassonne with #1GF!, and got my ass handed to me twice in a row. I’d never admit to it, but she seems to beat me in most card or board games once she gets the hang of them. It’s inevitable.

To make myself feel better, I called a ton of people on my contact list and left them generally nonsensical messages. On one, I remember simply calling out the guys name like a ring announcer and hanging up. Only one person out of ten called me back.

The only one to call me back was an engineer friend of mine. I didn’t want to tell him about the baby on the phone, but the odds of seeing him and his wife before the baby is born seemed to be getting more and more remote. I told him that #1GF! was knocked up, and, of course, he thought I was playing a joke. I was forced to define “knocked up” as “pregnancy” to effectively close any linguistic loopholes.

Once he accepted the story, he was pretty excited, and his wife called a little while later because she was so excited, too. They both wanted to talk to #1GF! and she, being #1GF!, got all welled up when congratulated. It’s nice to have good friends.

Monday (Day 631): The Dead And Living On Facebook

I wrote a few posts and then went into Facebook to see what was going on with everyone. I was looking at friends’ statuses, and I found out that someone had set up a foundation for a guy who lived next door to me when I had my first apartment. A little link jumping, and I found out that the guy died of cancer back in 2001. It was weird to have no idea that someone I used to see every day had been dead for seven years, even if he used make things really uncomfortable by hitting on my girlfriend at the time right in front of me.

Once the weirdness wore off, I chatted with an ex coworker who said that he thought that I’d have no trouble getting a job if I started looking for real. I’m not sure how true that is, but I appreciated the thought.

Tuesday (Day 632): The Home For Feeble Computer Addicts

I got #1GF! out the door and somehow got this mindset that I didn’t want to waste a minute of my day. I don’t know where it came from, but I was set on being productive. The mindset would fade in and out of my day like a boss looking for a cover sheet to a TPS report.

I checked my site stats and got a little down because my traffic has been dropping. I’ve been trying to pull back on the blogging because it just doesn’t pay, and when you drop from five posts a week to one or two, it’s natural that traffic is going to drop. If I don’t let it drop, then I’ll keep chasing it, and I’ll never be more than a broke blogger.

Because checking stats is not very productive, I checked my list of things that needed to get done on the dyers.org. Why I considered this more productive than say, I dunno, a job search, is beyond me. Ok, it’s not beyond me. It’s just avoiding the inevitable.

On the list was getting the beard pictures from 2008 posted. As if screwing around on your website was suddenly the definition of productivity, I sat down and wrote out the story of the bearded mountain man. Seriously. That became my priority. I spent more time than I expected putting together the pictures and trying to weave them into some sort of story. So much for using my time to do something useful.

Once the story of the bearded mountain man was roughed out, I started the communication portion of the day. I checked my e-mail (which I had been neglecting since the end of last week), talked with my parents to make sure that they were OK, and corresponded with a woman from Chicago Public Radio. The woman from Chicago Public Radio was looking for contributions to an unemployment blog, and I thought that I might fit as a contributor because of my lengthy leisure period. It wasn’t a paid gig, and the most that I would get for anything written would be a link back to my blog.

Currently, a link from my site to the unemployment blog would give more juice than the unemployment blog back to mine because the unemployment blog is still very new and hasn’t quite built up a readership yet. I sort of shrugged about the link “payment”, but I was more interested in what I could contribute than what I would get out of it. I sent an e-mail asking what I could do and then sat there staring at the screen.

Even though I know that I need to stop posting and start looking for a job, I wrote another post about Wordpress. “Come on man,” I said out loud to myself in a pretty derogatory tone, and strangely foreign accent. “There’s only so much time in the day, so let’s not waste any more of it.”

So, I tried to write the opening scene to my book. I only made it through a few pages before realizing that I didn’t have a solid grasp on the characters or where the story was going. Writing a book is not like blogging. Writing a book is hard. After writing out a single scene, writing even a bad book seemed like more of a monumental undertaking than I had anticipated.

Once I couldn’t write another word, I checked my e-mail again and had another offer from an Australian company who wanted me to contribute an essay and my beard chart to a book about hair. Again, there was no payment offered.

Rather than sink my time into another project with no prospect of pay, I thanked the publisher for the offer and declined, politely and explicitly stating that I didn’t want any of my works to appear in their book. I’m all for helping people, but sometimes, I get a little tired of sinking huge amounts of effort into projects and getting nothing but a pat on the back.

#1GF! and her mom dropped by in the afternoon, and #1GF!’s mom was going to spend the night at our house. #1GF!’s mom went in for a nap, and I went back to writing my book. #1GF! sat on the other side of the desk and ran diagnostics on her PC.

I wanted to keep the sound of tictacking keys from keeping #1GF!’s mom awake, so I closed the door to her room. The door wouldn’t stay closed. I attacked the problem from another direction and tried to close the door to my office. That door wouldn’t stay closed. I went through the rest of the doors and found out that there are more doors that refuse to stay closed than otherwise. For what we paid to have things fixed in this house, you’d think we’d have at least a handful of doors that stay closed, but no dice.

Within twenty minutes, #1GF!’s mom was up because she couldn’t sleep. We have a PC hooked up to our TV as a DVR, so I suggested we set her up with her favorite web games on the big screen. #1GF! went in and put a pillow with a mouse pad under her mom’s arm as she sat on the couch. She then handed over the wireless mouse. Not only was #1GF!’s mom in awe of the setup, but I think she was in heaven.

I went into the office to continue writing, and every once and a while the ticktacking of my keys would be interrupted by a “WOO HOO!” or some clapping. #1GF! and I would look at each other with raised eyebrows. As it kept going, I started “Woo HOOing and clapping back. If someone came in, I’m sure that they would’ve thought that #1GF! was hosting day care for her two feeble, but computer addicted companions.

We cooked up some ravioli and home made sauce for dinner, and ate in our shadeless fishbowl of a dining room. After dinner, #1GF!’s mom went back to web games, and I went back to finishing up the beard 2008 story.

#1GF!’s mom is a night owl, so I moved on to reading some RSS feeds to delay the time that the house went dark. I eventually had to give up to avoid falling asleep at the PC. Even though I wanted to have a productive day, I went to bed thinking, “What I really should’ve done today was to put some actual effort into getting a job.”

Wednesday (Day 633): Key Lime Pie Trumps All Woes

#1GF! headed out to work, and I drove #1GF!’s mom home. Once she was safe and sound, I dropped into a local coffee shop to visit her brother. He was sitting at the counter sipping his coffee and reading the paper like he usually does. We talked for a few minutes before I headed home.

I hung out at home for about twenty minutes before going to an annual physical that I haven’t gone to in about three years. I’m never adamant about keeping a strict doctor schedule because there’s never anything wrong.

Right or wrong, I look at physicals as tests. Not keeping your body in shape is like not studying. I hadn’t been to the gym since I quit my job, so I was a little concerned about passing. I felt shame about how high I thought my blood pressure would be.

When I got to the hospital, the gate for the parking lot was broken and someone had tacked a note on it that said “No tickets. Flat fee: $1.75″ on it. I was not too psyched about paying to park to see the doctor, even if it was cheaper than a cup of coffee.

I went inside, and stopped into a run down pink-brown tile bathroom that hadn’t been updated since pink-brown tile was popular. When I came out, I noticed that there weren’t many people walking around the hallways. It’s odd to be in a relatively empty hospital.

I walked down the empty hall to the doctor’s office and found two people sleeping in wooden chairs in the waiting room. The doctor was running late. I let the receptionist know that I was there, and sat down in one of the wooden chairs to wait too.

I looked around the room because, really, what is there to do in a doctor’s office? The doors were blonde and heavy with square windows like you’d see in an old school building. And protruding out of their middles were brass knobs that were rounder than any knobs that I’ve seen. As I wondered when the last time this place had been remodeled, the guy next to me started snoring.

He woke up as he was being called into his appointment, and both people went in, leaving me in the waiting room alone. I stared at the walls and then at the magazine rack. It was all magazines about golf and money that seemed as if they would last a very long time without getting tattered. Above the rack was the reception window, which I noticed was a full-on replacement window instead of a simple sliding piece of glass. I didn’t know if that indicated that the hospital had enough money for a replacement window or not enough money for a glass slider.

As I was running out of things to look at, I heard what sounded like a small child clomping down the hallway. I had my back to the doorway, so I saw the reflection of a small girl being steadied by a hand held above her head as she walked along. It appeared that the reflections were walking through the flowers in a large painting that commemorated the short life of someone’s nine year old daughter. I turned in my seat to poke my head out of the door to see the little girl walk by. She smiled from behind her bottle and then looked up at her mother who was smiling too.

Once the little feet were gone, the waiting room and adjacent hallway were very quiet. There was no bustle, no visitors, no life. Before the lights went out and a madman with a chainsaw had a chance to come busting out of one of the rooms, I was called in to the office. Despite no exercising, everything, including my blood pressure, were dead normal. I was out of there in ten minutes with a passing grade. I was that kid you hated in school who forgot to study and still got an A.

As I was leaving, I got my $2 out to pay for parking. As I pulled up to the gate, I saw the parking attendant and his neon green jacket walking towards the hospital. I put my $2 back in my pocket. “Thank you bathroom break,” I muttered as I drove through the upturned gate.

I dropped over to my parents’ house to raid their game shelves, and then did some food shopping. I came home, put the groceries away, did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and had a sandwich. It was inexplicably already 2PM. I then read some RSS feeds, even though I felt like I should be looking for a job.

When #1GF! got home, we ate dinner and then sat in front of the TV.

“Hey, what’s going on with your speakers,” asked #1GF!.

I was suddenly horrified, pissed, and sort of crumpled at the same time. The hours that I spent setting up my speakers was wasted because someone had turned both of my speakers completely sideways. I didn’t mark their positions on the floor, because neither #1GF! nor I would move them.

“Your mother must’ve done this,” I said to #1GF!.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well then who could’ve done it.”

“Your parents.”

“Yes, it certainly could’ve been them.”

“Didn’t you mark the floor?”

“Nope.”

“Well, do you have the measurements somewhere?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You can set them up again though.”

I just shook my head. “No way.” And after a pause, “That really sucks.”

“I won’t set them up again. This is going to be the baby’s room, so I guess it’s time to let things go. Bye media room.”

“Hellooooo baby.”

#1GF! whipped out a key lime pie that she bought me at the store, and I showed her the ice cream sandwiches I bought her. We both had a slice of pie, and I set the speakers to at least point toward the couch. We sat eating our pie, happy to have each other, and the speaker issue was locked in a room with all the other things that we don’t need to be worried about.

Thursday (Day 634): It’s A Girl

#1GF! and I went to the doctor’s to get the results of her second trimester screening. Pregnancy screening is a little nerve racking. You can try to help this little person by living your life as healthy as you can, but with birth defects, there isn’t much you can do to prevent them. They’re going to happen or they aren’t. You hope like hell that they don’t, but given our ages, #1GF! and I had reason for concern.

We sat in the waiting room, and The Ellen Degeneres show was on. I tried not to laugh because I’m a man, and men do not laugh at daytime talk shows. We lack the vaginas to be in the target demographic and will refuse any attempt to reel us in.

“I’m nervous,” #1GF! said through slightly watery eyes.

“Don’t be,” I whispered. “Everything’s going to be fine. I love you no matter what.”

“I love you, too.”

She squeezed my hand.

We were called into a little room and sat on a couch where a councilor went through the test results. Even though we’re pretty old to be having kids, all of the tests showed the lowest risk possible for the tested defects. Even though the tests are more of a guideline than a guarantee, we were both really happy. Then, the councilor told #1GF! that she couldn’t believe her age because she looked ten years younger than she is. #1GF! was double happy. We were then told that we were going to get the last ultrasound, and could find out the sex of the baby if we wanted. #1GF! got a little weepy, and I was sure that if happiness were combustible, it would’ve sent her into orbit.

We went into the ultrasound room and told the tech that we wanted to know the sex of the baby. While the tech worked, I found out that you can get a bachelor’s degree in diagnostic medical sonography, and I can understand why. She took all kinds of pictures, labeling things like “feet” and “arms” that only had a vague resemblance to limbs unless you knew what you were looking at. She played the heart beat for us, which would’ve been cool if we hadn’t heard it on the first ultrasound.

When she was nearing the end of the exam, the tech couldn’t get the baby into the right position because it was squirming all over the place. She jiggled the ultrasound wand on #1GF!’s belly to coax the baby to move. Finally, she hit a button.

“See those dots there? Those are labia. It’s a girl!” She typed “IT’S A GIRL!!!” on the screen and saved it with the picture.

“I’m having a little girl,” said #1GF! said through teary eyes.

I just smiled, thinking about how unbelievable this all was and feeling a little smug that I’ve thought it was a girl all along. Then, as if to prove how ridiculous it is that I be allowed to reproduce, I thought, “Ha. She said ‘labia’.”

After #1GF! wiped off all of the ultrasound goo, we left the room and stopped into the councilor’s office so that #1GF! could tell her that it was a girl. While #1GF! and the councilor were talking , I drifted off slightly. To the tune of a Ricola commercial, I thought “Laaaaaaabiaaaaaa”. No one was looking at me funny, so I was pretty sure that my brain to mouth filter rerouted the traffic and kept the idea from entering the real world.

#1GF! went off to work, and I went home to put together info for the Attorney General’s office about my plumber shafting us with a cheap boiler instead of the high efficiency model that we paid for. I was missing one bill, so I started sifting through a beach bag of bills and paper that I haven’t gone through since last year. Yes, it was a beach bag full. No, I couldn’t find the bill.

When I got back to my desk, I signed up for the open beta for QuakeLive and… Now, hold on there. I know that I’ve said that I think that video games lead to a false sense of achievement for the unemployed, but the idea of playing a full on first person shooter within a web browser seems like it might become the next evolutionary step in PC gaming. As a geek, I had to check it out. I only played a couple of quick games, but it seemed pretty awesome for being browser based.

Fun time ended quickly, and I started sorting and filing the beach bag of paperwork, which led to me going through my entire filing system looking for outdated and misplaced records. I wanted to have it all cleaned up by the time #1GF! got home, but ran out of time. Even though I shredded at least a trash bag full of decade old bills, there were piles of paper that still needed my attention.

When #1GF! got home, she told me about the major layoff that happened that day. It put a major damper on her exciting news, but didn’t manage to ruin it.

Friday (Day 635): [explosion] QuakeLive! [explosion]

I shredded stuff all morning, and then played QuakeLive on the thin premise that I needed more experience with the game if I was going to write a post about it. I don’t think that I was fooling myself, so I didn’t bother trying to convince others of my cover story.

Three hours later, I had very little written, and a fairly large amount of shame.

When #1GF! got home, we went out for Mexican food for dinner to mull over the days events.

When we got home from dinner, I showed #1GF! a baby name search engine that I found. It wasn’t really a search engine, but a search engine like front end to a baby name database. She thought it was cool.

“What do you want to name our little girl?” asked #1GF!.

“I dunno. Mercedes?”

“Stop.”

“Mimo? Mookalaka?”

“Stop and stop.”

“Pepsi? [I wolf whistle and draws a seven in the air]?”

Then, I got a taste of my own medicine, and #1GF! called out nearly every name from the database as if it were a valid question. It made me understand briefly what it must be like to live with me, and it wasn’t pretty. We made little progress on names, but we can always fall back to Mocha or Majondra if we run out of time.

Saturday (Day 636): The Lunatic In The Parking Lot

We got up and out the door early to ruin a few errands. We went to our kitchen place first, and ended up hanging out for a while. We could’ve called with the questions we had, but we wanted to drop by to see them because they’re such nice people.

#1GF! told them about the baby and the ladies all had a little crazy lady excitement festival. It was sort of neat to see.

While we were there, they asked me to fix their website for them and offered to pay me for it. I hate charging people for things that I think are easy, but I wanted to help them out no matter what I made from the job.

#1GF! and I excused ourselves once another customer came in, and we went to Friendly’s to have shakes and fried sandwiches. From there it was all errands. We went to one mall for hangars and canisters, and then to another mall so #1GF! could get some clothes. I can barely help with my own clothes, never mind #1GF!’s, so I sat in the car like one of those 90 year old men at the mall that you know are waiting for a woman that you’ll smell long before you see.

#1GF! wasn’t perfumed, and I wasn’t quite 90, so I pulled out my cell phone and looked at it. I had my cube with me, so I used the phone to time myself in a couple of speed rounds. If anyone was around then, I would’ve looked like there was something wrong with me. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, but I can guarantee that I would’ve looked like it.

Imagine you see guy with a big beard and biker sunglasses sitting in the passenger seat of a car in a parking lot. He’s wearing all black and doing a Rubik’s cube while listening to straight radio teen pop at a decent enough volume that you’d knock on the window and call him a pussy if he were any bit good looking. As it was, you walk around to the next aisle, just in case he sees you and thinks you’re food.

After a couple of rounds of the cube, I turned off the music and called a ton of people from my contact list. It was the same thing I had done the week before, and I wasn’t counting on any of them calling me back. I left messages for everyone except Macoosh who actually picked up. She asked if I was at the food warehouse because I always seem to call her from there. I told her that I wasn’t at the food warehouse, but that it was only because #1GF! wouldn’t let me go there this week.

Once #1GF! came back, we drove by my parents’ house and stole a fax machine (wait, wha?), and then went to a bedding store so that #1GF! could look at quilts. I never realized how expensive a simple comforter is or how easily I can lose #1GF! in a store. Both are relatively insane.

Then, we went to Baby’s R Us. There is more baby stuff in there than I ever thought possible, and it all costs $300. I have no idea what we really need and what is going to be a waste of money, making the whole excursion a bit confusing. We wandered around there for a little while looking at cribs, strollers, changing tables, play pens, and little tiny clothes until I pretty much had my fill.

As we walked out into the windy New England night, the cold clawed at our jackets. It was as welcome as a muddy dog.

“Are you overwhelmed?” asked #1GF!.

“Not at all. There’s no way that I’m going to let this baby overwhelm me. That’s not my job. I’m her dad, and I have to start acting like one. My only issue is that I don’t know what’s necessary, and whats a waste.”

We ran over to the auto parts store to pick up a bulb for #1GF!’s car before heading to a local home megastore to pick up a couple of blinds. I grabbed a cup of coffee as we walked out of the megastore and #1GF! realized that we lost a gift card.

I’m from the city, so I think, “You drop money or a card, it’s gone.” It was a $30 card, and I said “Oh well, and got in the car. #1GF! looked at me like I was insane, and told me that we were going in to get it. I got out of the passenger seat and sighed.

We walked to the register, and the card wasn’t on the floor, so #1GF! asked the clerk if he had seen a gift card. He said that he turned it in to the service desk. The service desk had sent it to bookkeeping (?) who had to send it back to the service desk through a giant suction tube. Unfortunately, when we got home, we found out that the gift card was short $24.98. We didn’t know if I failed to track a receipt, or if someone had gotten a free $25 purchase. Either way, I didn’t really care.

By the time we got home, it was 6PM. #1GF! had poached eggs, and I had Ramen noodles, which I haven’t thought about eating in fifteen years. For some reason, both of us thought our simplistic dinners would be fun. I cooked my noodles and #1GF! found Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back on TV. She left it on because she loves me. My evening was complete.

I got three different call backs from earlier in the day, so I missed most of the movie, but it didn’t bother me. I can pretty much quote it on demand, anyway. I talked with one person about a short film idea that I had and the conversation went pretty well. I talked to another person who asked me if I was high on drugs. I hadn’t changed the way I was talking between calls, and I haven’t ingested anything but aspirin in fifteen years, so I wondered if I should start tailoring my conversations even among my geek friends. I didn’t think I had to, but who knows? When people ask you if you’re high when you’re not, does that say something about your personality? I hope not.

What I Learned

• You can play a decent FPS in a browser. In fact, I’m willing to bet that in the future, manufacturers will eventually offer more browser based games than downloadable ones.
• It’s hard to be interested in giving away things for free when you’re not earning money.
• Writing a book is not like blogging.
• Very few of the inside doors in my house actually stay closed.
• Even though shredding is fun for a few minutes, it gets tedious fast.
• A microshredder is like crack for the paranoid.
• Yes, Ramen noodles still taste good after all these years, even if they’re still just as bad for you.
• Modern gamers are older women who play web games. And they have an excitement level that makes us old school gamers look like we have no idea how to enjoy game play.
• If you want to horrify me, move my speakers.
• Exercise has no affect on me. I am superman.
• You can go to school to get a degree in ulstrasound. They call it a degree in diagnostic medical sonography, because if you say, “I have a degree in ultrasound,” it kind of sounds like you’re full of shit.
• There is a ton of possible required equipment for babies and it’s all $300.
• I’m going to be the father of a little girl.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

Posted in Leisure