The Blog with No Name

So, my older brother got engaged. He announced this to the fam with a simple email. No details on how he did it, how much he had to drug her, and a ballpark date of when he’d actually Seal the Deal. Pretty typical Drew style. He did make his proposal in Thailand, which is pretty sweet. Rumor has it an elephant was involved and a squadron of F-16s wrote something in the sky with pink smoke. At any rate, congratulations, Drew!

When will you let me meet her?

I know I’m totally late to the micro-blogging party, but I just re-discovered my Twitter account. I think I’ll start using it.

This past weekend I was in Detroit.

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I guess it’s a sign that I’m getting old when I’m the one yelling at obnoxiously loud and inebriated kids behind my apartment building who are laughing, carrying on, and urinating in public at 2:30 AM, “People are trying to sleep around here!”

I guess it’s also a sign that I’m a total nerd when my first thought after the extreme annoyance subsided was “Dude, I could blog about this,” and then stayed awake an extra 10 minutes composing this post in my head.

As you can tell, I’m not a very good writer at 2:40 in the morning.

I apologize for the lack of new posts. Truth is work is sapping a lot of my will and motivation to update the blog more frequently. I do enough writing at work through emails and documentation that I’m rarely in the mood to whip out well-written post. I guess that isn’t much of an excuse, but the my well of creativity has been pretty dry lately.

Work is going well. My job is in a transitional period. Lots of changes are happening and will continue to happen over the next few months. I think most of these will be good changes, and by the end of the process, I’ll be in a better position in the company than what I am now. However, during the process there is a lot more work to do with fewer resources. The real challenge of my job these days cramming all my work into an 8 hour day. This isn’t possible, so I have to be willing to put in some extra hours (like on weekends). I don’t mind this so much though. I don’t have much of a life, and I’m rich with extra time.

Really, there isn’t that much new in my life these past few months. I’m still single contrary to some hypotheses with no real prospects. I work, play video games, and hang out with friends. That’s pretty much my life these days. It’s a good life, and I have very few complaints.

First February posts should always include an astute observation.

The snooze bar is probably the greatest invention in the world.

Sleep well.

The other day I saw a car with two interesting bumper stickers. On the left side was one of those Darwin fishes. The driver was obviously a disciple of Evolution and its chief mechanism, Natural Selection. Not too uncommon, especially in Seattle. However, on the right side of the bumper was a sticker that said: “Proud parent of a German Shepherd.”

Now, cleverer people than me can probably come up with some really pithy quip about the driver thinking having a dog-child is somehow evolving, but I cannot come up with anything remotely good. In fact, I’m just so overwhelmed by the inconsistency and weirdness of the two signs that I’m boggled beyond use.

I have two shoes. I have one on my left foot. I have one on my right foot. Both are the same make and model. Both have the same colors. Both are tied with the same knot. Both are laced in the same manner. Both are in the same physical condition with the exception that the sole of my right shoe might be slightly more wore down due to a slight shuffle of my right foot when I walk. However, there is one key difference between my left shoe and my right shoe. My right shoe comes untied, and my left one does not. Can anybody explain this? Why is that my right shoe comes untied almost daily, whereas the shoestrings on my left shoe remain steadfastly tied?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Well, we’re almost 48 hours into 2007. So far so good, and I even woke up tired and cranky today.

2005 was easily the worst year of my life, but 2006 was probably one of the best. Though I’m not sure if I’m only saying that because it is in such close proximity to 2005. You know how if you put an ugly person next to an uglier person, then the first person looks much better? It might be like that. 2006 may still have been a relatively crappy year, but since 2005 was really crappy 2006 look much better. The single most important thing that happened in 2006 was getting my current job. I know I talk about it all the time, so I’ll spare the words this time. Suffice it to say that I’m still very thankful for it. It transferred my bleak and impoverished outlook on my future in 2005 to a rather gilded and optimistic outlook on life. Because of it I can do things and afford things (like my school debt).

I’m excited for 2007. Lots is in the works, and I think it’s going to shape up into another banner year (unlike some all-too-vocal idiots). It might be getting pretty expensive considering all the things I’d like to do including a trip to Florida, more skiing than normal, paying off a significant portion of my debt, and a hunting trip later in the year. I hope I can get enough vacation time to do it all. But life is more than just doing stuff; it’s also about being. Now that I’ve gotten past that gag-worthy “philosophical” sentence, I’ll explain what I mean. Somebody asked me recently what I aspired to do with my life. I couldn’t really think of a better answer so I just kinda mumbled, “I dunno, be a better man.” The answer felt pretty lame at the time, but I’ve realized after some mostly sleepless nights that that’s something I really do need to work on. My external life is fairly in order (the diaspora of my clothes are a notable exception), but my internal life needs a fair bit of housekeeping. On that note, I do have a New Year’s resolution: avoid hard drugs, loose women, pickpockets, and a life of crime. Should be pretty easy to keep.

Longest post title yet? Maybe.

I was able to enjoy Christmas in Alaska with an abridged family. My older brother had to stay in Ohio due to work duties. The poor guy. It was an interesting Christmas. My parent’s kitchen was in the final stages of a renovation, so it was barely usable. In fact, when I first arrived there was no water. Needless to say there were no Christmas cookies this year, which means that basically half the point of Christmas was gutted. We also didn’t have a Christmas tree because the living room was completely wrapped up in plastic until two days before Christmas. Instead we had to make do with a Christmas Plant:

That picture is taken with my T-Mobile Dash, which is a nice smartphone but has a crappy camera.

So, was this the saddest Christmas yet? Perhaps. We were a man down, we had no cookies, Dad was working a lot, and we had to make do with a plant. Still, it was good to go home and spend time with the family. I also got to see some old friends from high school, and the first offspring from one of my friends. I guess this is what happens when one gets older: Christmases get different and friends get kids. I think I can cope with that.

The weather was fairly dreary, cold, and snowy. I don’t think the temperature ever made it out of the teens, and several times it dipped into the single digits. We did get a bit of sunshine, so here’s my obligatory picture of the sun passing through the hanging valley across from the house (again pardon the crappy camera on the phone):

The nice thing about being in Alaska when it was so cold is that when I come back down to Seattle the sub-40 degree weather seems warm. I still haven’t turned on my apartment heater yet.

I didn’t take my shaver with me, so I haven’t trimmed my manly facial hair in a while. It’s a short, prickly, and annoyingly sparse beard right now. It’s very prickly, but I’ve grown attached to it, so I can’t bring myself to trim it. I think it’s in these moments I really need a woman in my life to say, “Shave your stupid face!”

Check out one of my first gifts through work connections:

SOCKS! Branded with the vendor of the platform I admin! Tubular! This is why my job rocks. Rocks my socks.

Seriously, folks. Really, can it get much better than sitting in a high-back leather chair at a 24 hour diner during the wee hours of the morning with dear friends you haven’t seen in months with a full spread of bacon and eggs laced with Tabasco sauce before you, capped by a good beer? I submit to you, here and now, it can’t get much better for me.

More snow came down just in time for the commute home from work. You can only imagine what this did to traffic. It’s predicted to snow some more tonight, so I brought my laptop home from work. Hopefully it’ll be a snow day, so I can sit under warm covers sipping hot tea while working. That sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Earliest I’ve ever seen snow in Seattle. Maybe this means we’ll have a better ski season this year. I doubt it will stick though. Traffic is going to be awful tomorrow.

What’s with Washington and it’s cities coming up with really lame slogans? Seattle’s new promotional slogan is “metronatural.” That is so hippie post-modern sounding I want to scream. What does that even mean? It’s probably worse than Washington’s recent attempt at a slogan: “SayWA”.