Me? I’m heading down via airplane. My family, via the writing on the back of my shirt.
Got to get up at 4:30am tomorrow for my 6:59 flight. Talk to you from Atlanta.
Love to all. Even you, the lady who got mad because we sent her pay stubs to the address she gave us.
I have strep. Low fever. Icky.
They gave me a 3-day course of Azythromycin so I don’t have to take anything the day of the race. I feel like crappity crap.
Love to all.
I had dinner plans with my oldest last night. He asked me last week if, one night, he and I could go to the diner together…. just the two of us.
I got home from work at 7:25pm. My son sprinted over to me and said: “Are you ready? are you ready? This is going to be so awesome!” For a minute, there, I thought that he was confused about what we were doing… then I realized he was just thrilled to be hanging out with me.
So, God: I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but: Thanks.
We were out the door by 7:35.
Dinner in our house normally takes 15 minutes at best. And it usually involves my daughter rejecting whatever Maggie made, and my youngest wanting to be finished quickly so he can have desert.
My oldest and I chilled out over omelettes toast for an hour. We had a really wide-ranging conversation about school, friends, my father, smoking, alcoholism (he does NOT know that I’m a recovered alcoholic… he actually brought it up in a completely different context)… it was, as he said later, “awesome.”
He said some amazing things. He said he’s glad Maggie told him about my father (and my trying to contact him recently) because it makes him understand that my father is sick… and instead of getting angry at him, he just feels bad for him. “It’s sad for you and me, Dad, but it’s REALLY sad for him.”
My goodness.
He said: “We have a lot of traits in common, Dad.”
He said: “I can tell you’ve worried about work, because you’ve been a little irritable.”
He said: “I love spending time with you just you and me.”
He explained the intricacies of the 5th-grade school day. He did a fabulous imitation of one of his teachers when she gets mad. He told me about his new hockey and baseball teams.
We decided to have dinner together once a month from now on. Frequent enough to be a really good thing, but infrequent enough to keep it special. Again, his idea.
So, the only way I can wrap this post is to say it again: Thanks, God. Seriously.
Love to all: even you, the commuter guy who repeatedly coughed jelly doughnut onto the train floor.
5:32am – two of my kids have been up for a while. Usually, I’m the only one up when I leave for work. Both have sore throats. Mine’s been a little weird the last two days, too.
I do not want to get sick before Atlanta.
I think I might try to sleep in tomorrow morning, since that’s my last chance to get a good night’s sleep until Monday, most likely.
Love to all.
!–begin geek rant
My company is financed by an outside company. It’s the only way we can afford to grow. It’s an expensive proposition: they get chunk of sales off the top, and in return we get 95% of our receivables within a few days of billing them. Such is the tradeoff of the small business concern.
Sales data is entered remotely, via their extranet.
They had to set up another account for us today, because of something we were doing that required a different accounting method. I called the rep because I hadn’t received my password.
She said: “It’s the same as your current login.”
I said, “No, I actually changed our password right after you set up the account.”
She said “But I just got it and gave it to your partner. Isn’t it -”
And then she told me my password.
Now, in every fucking half-secure system on the planet, passwords are encrypted, and tech people should only be able to CHANGE a user’s password, not look it up and give it out. This security method allows tech people the ability to help a user who has forgotten their password, but unable pull the user’s password and get into their account.
And if the passwords are just STORED somewhere in employee-accessible form, they’re ripe for stealing.
I told my rep this.
She said: “What would you do with any of that information, anyway?”
I said: “For starters, I’d take all of the stored employee data and go on a massive identity theft binge.”
She said: “Well, we won’t hire YOU.”
Ha fucking ha.
I’m kind of blown away. This place is owned by a fucking BANK. Then again, I should have suspected as much when they told me that fixing a Java error in their accounting software was a “feature request.”
Shit.
!–end geek rant
Love to all. Even you, Pedro the tech guy.
Love to all. Even you, Chompy McChewalot.
“What’s Bush going to do after he leaves office… teach?”
The audience laughed heartily. It was, after all, an NPR show, and NPR is famously liberal, right?
But you know what? It’s pretty pathetic when the idea of your current President attempting to teach a course is obviously laughable, because the guy’s so factually inept and logically splintered.
Leader of my country, indeed. Sigh.
Love to all. Even you, the guy with the tan khakis and dust-covered fleece pullover.
I just came from New York City small claims court. We had three different claims against the same company, covering various invoices over the course of time. The client is a notorious deadbeat who has scammed dozens of people out of tens of thousands of dollars. The way I found out that we were in serious trouble was when my new partners saw we were working with them. Turns out they had owed them $40,000 a couple of years ago.
The owners of my first company got tagged as well, having worked with them a year ago. I found this out over lunch.
This time, though, it seems they are actually declaring bankruptcy: the CFO, the Creative Director, and other employees of their firm are sending resumes out left and right.
Small claims court was actually fun. My friend Lisa went with me, and we basically chit-chatted for three hours. She wanted to see what it was like, because she’s starting a claim of her own.
My case was called dead last. DEAD LAST. The funny thing? The only other time I was in small claims court, the same thing happened. Dead last.
My opponent didn’t even bother to show. This is good, because I presented my well -documented (if I do say so myself) case without opposition. This is bad, because it means they can present an excuse to the judge, if they so choose. If the judge buys it, we have to do this again.
Anyway. I’m a bit fried and a bit tired, but I’m really happy that I have a business that can get tagged for 12 grand and not close, friends who will sit with me in court for hours, and a family at home that will be glad to see me… if they’re awake.
Love to all. Even you, The Weiss Family.
In the summer of last year, I told my son that when he beats me in ping-pong I would let him watch Jaws. I was confident in the fact that it would take years. YEARS! The DVD would remain on the shelf, unwrapped and pristine, until well into the 2010′s. Heck, we’d probably need to buy the NEXT video format, because DVD would be totally obsolete by the time he beat me.
We watched it last night. I forgot what a terrific movie it was. Quint is the man.
Love to all, even you, Mayor Vaughan.
p.s. 21-19.
My son was really touchy last night. We were playing Fight Night 3 on the XBOX 360… and little jokes that were normally part of our banter made him get all sullen and depressed. He was playing the game with this really sad face, doing that thing kids do where they make every body gesture with that sad air of defeat.
At first, I got a bit annoyed, because it’s no fun to play with someone when they’re acting all bummed out. But I self-intervened and instead asked him what the scoop was…
…and lo and behold, he talked.
My 10-year-old boy is so unbelievably self-aware that he actually said: Dad, I think because I don’t react when I get picked on so much in school I get upset by things that normally wouldn’t bother me at home.
So we talked about the kids who make fun of him. The kids who constantly use the f-bomb. Who make fun of him because we don’t let him watch TV-MA or most TV-14 shows. More importantly, HE talked about it, and how it made him feel.
It’s hard for me to talk to him about this stuff, because I want SO much to:
In the end, I did a lot of listening… but also told him that he should know that he’s not a doormat, and if he feels that kicking some kid in the balls would shut that kid up, well, I’d back him up if he got in trouble for doing it.
Now: I wouldn’t say this to most kids… including my other two. Because they’d consider it a license to do it. But my boy doesn’t. He just REALLY needs to know that we’re there for him, and that we’ll support him. Maggie has given him her own version of this speech.
We’re meeting with all of his teachers in a little over a week to talk about how things are going for him, socially and academically. I’m interested to see their persepctive.
This parenting thing can be hard… but what I have to remember is that it’s not as hard as being a kid.
Love to all. Even you, the parent who tried to kick an oncoming sled.
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