10 things

After Tuscon, I had a 3-day conference in Phoenix at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort. While I worked, Larry slept, ate and enjoyed the pool all day. Last Sunday, we had a wonderful dinner with two friends that I've known since first grade. There are 6 of us from grade school that stay in touch, though this was the first time in 14 years that I saw one of them.

I'm amazed at the environmental contradictions that many companies have. Like most hotels, the Sheraton has a sign that asks guests to hang up their towels if they will be used again. If you're going to ask patrons to do that, why do you put plastic cups (in plastic wrap) in the bathrooms?

Did you know that Loverboy, The Hooters, Night Ranger, Dokken and REO Speedwagon all released new CD's in the past year? Loverboy and Dokken's were particularly good.

We are dog-sitting Barky for the week. It's been weird to have a beagle back in the house and we've accidentally called him Rodney more than once. Papa Bradstein joked that we'd want to keep him, but I think we'll be like grandparents--come to visit but we're always glad to have the house back.

Since school has been out, I've done near nothing. Yesterday, I watched about 8 hours of television. I can't tell you the last time I did that. One just can't get enough of Law & Order: SVU.

However, I did do something productive yesterday. Our garbage disposal stopped working and I installed a new one. Seriously, it wasn't that hard. Do not think that only a plumber can do it. We did have to call my dad in Chicago twice to ask questions on removing the old one, but I installed it all on my own. I'm really thankful that he did a lot of home repair work as I grew up. It's made me a lot more confident in my "hardware" abilities.

I'm totally hooked on the group, Cinder Road.

I leave for Vietnam in less than 2 weeks. I was originally going to try my luck and not get vaccinated, but everyone has completely flipped out at that idea. My friend Stephanie went this week and got tetanus, the heps and typhoid. It turns out you don't need malaria for Vietnam & Cambodia. I'll probably end up getting scurvy or something weird. My doctor appointment is on Thursday.

Corey lost his 2nd tooth this past week. He was chewing on the end of a water bottle and it popped right out.

Happy Mother's Day to all my favorite moms out there. (That includes you, real mom.)

Friday and I'm off to class

Thanks for all the nice comments on Reggie. It was a tough weekend, but getting back into routines was nice. We had to spend a lot of time at home this week for Rodney, the beagle. I had heard that other animals go through a period of mourning. I just didn't know how bad that could be for them. He's coming out of it though.

On the plus side, I had a lot of nice positives this week. I barely squeaked an "A" on the Econ mid-term, but hey... an "A" is an "A". The grades ranged from 92-29. 72+ (my grade) was an A and 50+ was a B. We still had 6 people flunk. I was mad at myself since 3 of my errors were careless. BUT, I'll be going into the final well positioned for an "A".

LOST has started and as always, I'm mesmerized by it. Naomi... who the hell are you? And Ben is still the creepiest person on TV. Anyone know how many episodes were made before the writers' strike?

Happily the work situation is over. I let go of the person last Friday. (Yeah, last Friday was a pretty bad day.) Unfortunately, it's a lot more work for me, but at least the work is being done right.

Have I mentioned how much I love my study group? There are six of us who now meet on Wednesdays (outside of our assigned groups) to go over the homework problems from the chapters. We get along, we laugh, we eat and we learn. It's exactly what I expected graduate school to be. Four of us from the group will be staying an extra three days after Vietnam to travel to Angkor Watt in Cambodia. Any recommendations on your many Cambodian travels would be appreciated.

OK off to class. Today is our 6th class of Microeconomics and 2nd class of Operations Management. The professor is not very organized for this second class. Plus he treats us like undergrads. Every week is a small quiz to make sure we've done the readings. Memorizing is just a tad ridiculous at age 41. Oh well.

Have a good Friday and a great weekend.

Random Nothings

I'm still here... I swear. I just went through a writing withdrawal after the Chicago trip.

I wish I had more rest once I got to the hotel but that didn't happen. It seems the Westin Heavenly Bed just isn't so heavenly for me. I prefer my beds as firm as can be. Gotta a dinning room table you're not using? Perfect for my bedroom. I don't like my beds mushy and let me say that Westin is the king of mushiness.

Add to it that our conference kicked into full gear last Monday morning, just about the time the news was announcing the Virgina Tech nightmare. Most of you know I'm in marketing, well the association I work for represents higher ed. We had three attendees from Virginia Tech at the conference along with 400 other college and university professionals who shared the incomprehensible feelings that campus was going through. It was quite a somber two days as you can imagine.

While out of town, I also had an employee quit. There are no hard feelings; he felt it was time to leave and I understood his need to move on. However, I hate interviewing and hiring. It's not my strong suit... though it's another opportunity to practice skills. (Look at me being so fucking positive.)

In case you were wondering, I have not been nominated for any of the blogger choice awards. Many of you have probably been anxiously looking, so it's a good you are hearing the sad news from me. If they did have the hot-gay-daddy-from-the-DC-area category you might actually see a nomination. It would definitely be a tight race with the other local candidate.

My backlog of products and meme's are starting to pile up like my parent's basement, so look for a number of those coming out soon. I also have a Blogfather's post that has a lot of jumbled words which just aren't funny enough for human consumption. Don't you hate when those pre-posts don't materialize the way you want them to?

If you're watching LOST, I must say that the 2nd half of this season has really picked up. I mean what the fuck is going on with Juliette? I'm still not figuring her out. And the "Paulo Lies" episode...brilliant. I nearly crapped my pants. Not sure if that winter break re-energized them or not, but I'm all for eight weeks off if the shows are going to be this compelling.

This weekend has finally gone back into the 70's. This is my favorite type of weather and favorite time of year. I spent half my day in the yard getting ready for planting. The other half of the day was spent painting. Our guest room has been this green color that worked for a while and then just irritated me. So finally today I primed the room with two coats. Maybe tomorrow I'll get the two coats of paint up. (You'll see before and afters of that project.)

On a funny note, my boss called me in on Friday to ask me a question. "So I was reading your blog" he says, "and I got so confused in one of your stories."

You can only imagine how my mind was racing trying to remember if I had said anything wrong, offensive or of a nature that would have me fired by day's end. I so need to learn to stop telling everyone about this blog.

He went on, "I had gotten through the story of the vasectomy and how you had to masturbate in the bathroom because you work in a cube. It took me a while to wonder why any gay man would get a vasectomy, but hey I'm not always on the cutting edge. Then I reread the story and realized it wasn't you."

Makes the rest of the week pale by comparison, doesn't it?

LOST in the skies

Aloha.

I write to you from the beaches of Hawaii where I’m supposed to be helping my company run their annual convention. Thus far, I’ve scouted out the nearest Starbucks and walked along the beaches at 5:00 am. (This time zone change freaking sucks!) Rule to the wise, the nicer the place is for a convention, it exponentially decreases the chances of me being helpful.

I landed yesterday after 10 hours of recycled air hell. Connecting through Denver left me on the next plane for 7 hours straight. For those of you keeping score at home, I hate being cooped up for any period of time, let alone on a window seat when I have the bladder the size of a marble. The poor guy next to me would get his laptop all set up and then the Gods of urine would sing their chants. This dude heard ‘excuse me’ more times than I would have preferred.

The great part was that I upgraded myself to First class. Worth every mileage point I’ve ever earned. I was also thrilled to learn we’d be flying on a 777, which are known to have a TV in the back of each seat so that you could watch any of four movies you wanted. Not so with this plane and all of those in our section had to watch one pull-down screen of 16 Blocks with Bruce Willis. Truth be told, I was bored after about the first 3 blocks.

So to kill time and prevent my seat mate from having to get up every hour, I plugged into my iPod and began surfing through the music and videos I had downloaded.

Recently, we have gotten hooked on LOST. A while back, I downloaded the first two episodes, realized it was worth watching and we’ve since watched the entire first season from NetFlix. Luckily, the first two episodes we’re still on the iPod. Jackpot! Another 90 minutes I can distract myself. And since it’s filmed on Hawaii, I thought that would be an awesome tie-in with the trip

Did I forget to mention that the series is about a plane crash? Uh huh. The plane crashes over the Pacific on a strange island …AFTER dropping thousands of feet in the air and losing its tail section mid-air.

And the best part of the opening two episodes is that they recreate the crash scenes OVER AND OVER. People hitting the ceiling of plane; people being sucked out of the plane; luggage hitting people in the head and they die.

Seven different times I had to hit the pause button. Once I even contemplated taking a hit from my inhaler I was breathing so hard. As hot as Jack the doctor is, I had to make a decision.

16 Blocks still sucked, but at least no one fell out of the sky.