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I used to be cool. No, really.

March 11th, 2008 | 4 Comments | Posted in Life, Observations, Rants

WasCoolGroup
First Fridays in Phoenix is a community art walk that is hosted by the local businesses and galleries in the downtown area. I used to go when I was in college, back when my course schedule consisted entirely of various art classes and more free time than I care to remember. Now in my thirties, it’s taken me a few days to recover from my first First Friday event in years, and I’ve had a chance to reflect on the experience.

Standing in the gravel driveway behind what is now a home-turned-art gallery, surrounded by a whirling mass of eclectics, with their unkempt hair, earth-friendly woven fabrics, and exhaling a strange, unfamiliar smoke, a realization came to me:
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Forest for the trees

March 7th, 2008 | 5 Comments | Posted in Comics, Observations

Twitter effect

Juror number 110934712 - or something like that

February 20th, 2008 | 5 Comments | Posted in Life, Observations

As I sit here in the juror holding pen, trying to ignore the mediocre morning info-tainment blaring through the televisions, I have a chance to reflect on this whole lottery we have going here.

First off, it’s not as, um, sexy, as it is on Law & Order. Even though the juries on TV are overly diverse, the group that I’m in looks to have been selected from the WASP database. There are a couple of other ethnicities here, but not a whole lot.

Secondly - While some of these folks seem like they were on their way to the office when they got sucked into service, others seem to have been pulled from under a rock. Seriously - who wears a Muʻumuʻu to, well, anywhere? And who has their phone ringer on max right after the bailiff told us to turn them off?

The bright spot is that the court system really has made the effort to make this less painful. Free wireless internet, free coffee and donuts, yogurt and assorted snacks. Movies in one of the other rooms, it’s almost a pleasurable experience. Not at all miserable like the trips to the Motor Vehicle Department that this used to be.

When they call my number I may actually wish they hadn’t. Maybe.

You can catch my updates at Twitter.

Life’s funny sometimes. Other times, eh, not so much.

January 30th, 2008 | 8 Comments | Posted in Observations, Personal

Some of you may know my wife and I have been working lately on purchasing a home. Six months ago we moved into a condominium with the intention of getting in and then getting out. The housing market across the US is dismal; in the Phoenix area the numbers are almost twice the national average, but in the bad way: houses are on the market for twice as long, the prices have dropped at twice the rate as elsewhere, there are tons of people just trying to get out of the market without losing their shirts. The Fed just cut interest rates. Again. Now is a fantastic time for us to buy a home, except for one thing:
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Yep. It’s Monday.

December 3rd, 2007 | 5 Comments | Posted in Observations, Office Life

hatsDon’t you hate it when people flake on the job? Pet peeve du jour goes out to the guy whose job it is to make sure the paper cowboy hat dispenser in the restroom is stocked. Come on!

Maybe it’s just me, but I tend wait until the absolute last possible minute before leaving my comfy cubicle and making my way to the restroom, more out of laziness than dedication to my job. Once there I inevitably find the protector sheets in fanned disarray, the result of shoving a new bunch back down through the dispenser hole, rather than opening up the box and going in the right way. Attempting to pull just one of these out results in one of two scenarios:

  1. The one you are trying to remove tears apart, with subsequent attempts to remove it only yielding little wax-paper snowflakes all over the stall floor.
  2. The one you extract is seemingly linked to all the others in the box . The result is a magic show for one, drawing one sheet after another out of the box, unable to find the seam between them, ending in a display similar to the image above.

Add the fact that you waited too long to get in there in the first place, and you’ve got yourself a real potential crisis. Sure, you can say poor planning is to blame, but that points to me and I’m just not cool with that. Blame always goes away from yourself.

For what it’s worth, there used to be a woman who restocked our bathroom at the office, and she did a pretty good job. Sure, occasionally you wouldn’t here her soft knock on the door and she’d walk in on you, but I’m sure it was no picnic for her, either. At least her attention to detail made sure everything was stocked correctly.

I miss her.

Oh, and by way of a Post Script, I finally had a real insurance adjuster come out and look at my car today. The national people told me that the shop I had quote the work was so expensive that it would almost certainly get totaled…I asked them to get a second opinion.

And the hits just keep on coming!

You’ve got male

November 28th, 2007 | 9 Comments | Posted in Life, Observations, Personal

As I prepared for work this morning, I pondered my existence. Maybe it was just a carryover from a dream I don’t remember, or maybe I just woke up on the Zen side of the bed. Or, maybe all the times the women in my life have complained about how lucky I am finally sunk in. Whatever the reason, I came to the conclusion that yes, there are things I like about being a guy. And no, they don’t have anything to do with the ability to write my name in the snow.
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