May 2002 Archives

WAM-BAM

I'm debating with myself whether I can turn this into a 'long-story-short' entry...

Well anyway:

Print jobs, print jobs. We send jobs out to various & sundry printshops, lithographers, etc., all day, every day. We have a set of reliable vendors that do an awesome job for us. But you gotta keep the pool fresh, so we try to add new vendors to the list every now & then. So I decided I try out this guy who's been bugging and pestering us for work for ages. We'll call him "Gary", since that's his real name. Last week, I called him and told him I wanted to send a job his way, and so what would his timeline be for the job...and so blah blah blah, "a couple days" after we sign off the proof it'll be ready. Wonderful. Great prices. Great turnaround.

oops. Did I say "great prices"? Well I should've known better. Great prices = trading for some other disaster down the line. Oh but I had high hopes.

So I sent the job down to him, let people here know what the job schedule will be, and headed off for a long 3-day weekend of fixing broken water pipes and scalping my skanky lawn down to astroturf length.

Then today, I call up good ole Gary to ask him when I could expect a proof and to verify turnarounds. The conversation might've gone something like this:

JP: So if I okay the proof right after you send it, can you have the job ready by Friday?
Gary: Hah! No.
JP: Geh...
Gary: Like I was telling Warren*, when you sign off the proof, then we'll talk about the deadline, but it should be a week after that...
JP: That's nice Gary. So when you tell me it will take a couple days, you were obviously cracking wise, because who in their right mind would think that's believable right?
Gary: Well that's right Jeremy, like I was telling Warren...
JP: No Gary, Warren can go play with his calculator. You told me a couple days, and I believed you, because I do work with printers that pull that sort of thing off all the time.
Gary: Well I don't know who you're using, but...
JP: No. No 'buts' Gary. I want you to go out behind the shed, cut yourself a switch and give it to your nearest press operator so he can stripe you with it, because you're going to have that job ready on Friday, and yes, you will, figure out how AmericaWest flies stuff to Flagstaff, and then you're going to make it happen.
Gary: Well Jeremy, you can't expect...
JP: Yes I can Gary. Now I want to hear a 'Yes Sir.'
Gary: Now Jeremy...
JP: No, not 'Jeremy', 'Yes Sir'
Gary: But...
JP: 'Yes Sir'
Gary: Yes Sir.

* Turns out our handy-dandy purchasing guy, Warren, somehow interjected himself into discussing project deadlines with Gary somewhere along the lines

...but...the conversation didn't quite go that way, much as I might wish. Somewhere after 'geh', it went more like:

JP: oh...ahh...well....when could you have it?
Gary: Well like I was telling Warren (curse that Warren), we'll need about a week after you ok the proof.
JP: ahh. Well can we speed up the proofing? Could you get the proof on a flight up to Flagstaff so we can cut a day off that part?
Gary: Ah. Jeremy we don't do that sort of thing.
JP: oh. um. well. Let's just do a fax proof then....so...erm...*if* I sign off the proof right after you fax it to me, could we get the job sometime next week?
Gary: Now Jeremy, we'll talk about that tomorrow after you ok the proof...
blah blah blah...grovel grovel grovel...concede concede concede.

How embarassing. Now we have to renege our deadlines with everybody. I feel jilted and dirty. It's like he took me out to dinner, invited me up for a nightcap, etc. etc., and now he's hurrying to put on his shoes, button his shirt and race out the door before I can ask for snuggles.

I watch far too much cable.

Still griping,
Jeremy

Water hazard

We took the kids to a movie last night, and Giselle managed to stash a box of Sweet-Tarts, and took them to bed with her. So this morning, Amanda comes up and asks me to please not let Giselle take candy to bed with her again. I ask what happened, and it turns out that Giselle woke up and was griping about how much she itched. So Amanda sized her up, and noticed the incriminating evidence of a dozen or so circular Sweet-Tart-sized indentations all over her body.

eheh.

Well anyway, today I noticed water flowing into the street from where my meter box is situated. So I sidle over and notice that both my and my neighbor's meter boxes are completely filled with water and the ground is soaked. Great. Why did I buy a home again? So I spend the afternoon bailing, and digging everything up, including the 6" plastic access pipe for the flow valve. And this is tons of fun, since it's all buried 18" down to keep it below the frost line. Well the water pipe was busted right where the access pipe sat above it. So my guess is that when Paul was moving the RV out of his driveway last night, he decided he needed to back in and out in some hideous series of contortions until he finally managed to run over the access pipe thereby busting my water line. I can't prove it. I can just add it onto the cat-grudge. Of course, it could just as easily have been the 100 year old lady across the street, backing out and overshooting the road. So it's temporarily patched up until I can spend a whole day removing it and rebuilding everything.

The Flagstaff newspaper has a front page article today about the drought, and how restaurants are considering witholding drinking water unless it's requested by the customer. Well thank heavens for the small things, I guess. Maybe if we could also get down to core issues, such as people running over water supply structures willy-nilly, we'd make an even bigger dent. And I'll tellya another thing. The weeds sure do love it when you don't water your lawn. !@#%!

Yours truly,
Mister Crabs

Sympathy for the Clones

Look out: The drought is so bad that a "Crack and Fissure Warning" has been issued for the Arizona desert.

Okay then.

I was in the bathroom after work today, and Giselle, as always, was on the other side of the door explaining something to me. She was trying to tell me about a game she wanted us to play when I was done, and I guess my "uh huh...uh huh"-ing wasn't convincing enough, because all of a sudden, this little arm pokes through under the door, and she starts explaining it again, but this time with emphatic hand gestures of how the game works. Well that did it. I clenched up from laughter and had to call it good.

By some amazing stroke of genius, Amanda and I managed to find somebody to watch the kids Saturday morning, and we went to watch Attack of the Clones. I definitely need to see it again soon. One of the things I was glad to see come back to the films was the ability to actually feel compassion for the unamed grunts as they were taking one for the team. Pathos for Stormtroopers? I never would've guessed. That sort of feeling was definitely missing from Jedi and Phantom Menace.

Oh man, the aspens are really taking off in the front yard. Another checkmark in favor of zeriscaping. I should've known better than to plant a lawn. What the heck. Kids can have just as much fun playing on river rock and ant hills. :P

Moisture in retreat.
Arakis. The three-fold land.
Mocking my hubris.

Jeremy

Emissary of Emesis

Tonight I struggled through a freelance project that by all accounts shouldn't be a struggle. It's business cards for heavensakes. But the guy wants to print temporary cards on his desktop printer until he's ready for the real deal at an actual printshop. Yep, klaxon's going off all over the place. As is so often the case, the guy exists in an agnostic relationship with his inkjet printer, and nothing I give him prints correctly on his Avery blanks. Trying to walk him through his troubles over the phone and by email only serves to further my understanding of why network and IT people are such cranks. It truly must be the rarest of personalities that has the zenlike peace of mind to successfully and compassionately deal with this sort of thing.

Gads, there is a loose droplet of barf in this room somewhere. Those tantalizing whiffs are so troubling. Harrison regurgitated dairy in the kitchen earlier this evening and although I was sure I got it all, there's still some sniffage roaming about. What a treasure of parenthood vomit-duty is. I have to admit that I'm pretty uncompassionate during the heat of the puke. I'm not properly programmed to selflessly comfort my kid as they retch nasty things all over my person. Nosiree, I'm moving at bullet-speed like Neo in the Matrix, grabbing the nearest washable cloth item that I'm not actually wearing, while aiming the aforementioned child's face away from me, and at anything that won't take me hours of scrubbing to clean up. I'm not saying I just leave them to suffer in their dreck, it's just that the comforting comes after the bomb has gone off and I've had a chance to clear out the more gruesome carnage at the crime scene.

Old Navy and Target commercials give me the creeps.

OK. That's it for me.

Jeremy

Auras & Embers

Oh man, those pictures of Fidel Castro/Neil Diamond are still cracking me up. That is just a freakin awesome picture of Castro. And then Jimmy Carter's expression...Heheh.

I just got over an incredible migraine that hit me earlier this evening. Usually I see flashy geometric patterns that warn me a drilling headache is on the way. But today, it just nailed me without any warning--KABLAM! Holy crap it hurt. I wanted to barf my guts out so bad. When I see the aura, I usually just down 4 ibuprofin and go to bed. But if they start hitting me out of the blue, it's really going to bite.

::waits for overwrought mother to search hundreds of websites for connections between migrains and cancer:: oy.

There's fires cropping up everywhere here. There was a 500+ acre fire North of Payson yesterday. Today, a fire burst out on the other side of the peaks and a bunch of kids who were on a campout had to be evacuated, but the hotshots are all clustered up here and they stamped it out pretty quick. Then later this afternoon, an 800 acre fire started racing toward Prescott. Hopefully they'll be able to head it off tonight. There's at least another 6-8 weeks before we get any reasonable rain, so it's looking pretty ugly.

Okay. Tiredness. Need to sleep.

Jeremy

Oh man, I almost forgot about this. I was reading the Arizona Republic today, and they had this big front page picture of Jimmy Carter paying a visit to Fidel Castro:

And I was looking at this picture thinking "Jeez, that REALLY reminds me of something." And so after several minutes wrestling with it, it finally ocurred to me:

Hah! I got a good laugh out of that one. I doubt Mom would be quite so amused =)

Jeremy

WKRP

I rearranged my cubicle Friday. I set it up so my back isn't as exposed as it was. One of the guys I work with, Rob, was laughing. He started calling me Joe Compound. And then Barb, the art group leader, started cracking up when she brought a project up to me this morning because she had to stand on the other side of the desk and felt like she was being interviewed. So I said to heck with it and put some Less Nessman white tape on the floor at the entryway to represent my imaginary door.

I dropped Amanda off for a much-needed & well-deserved massage appointment today, and took the kids to the park while she was there. Giselle of course, instantly attached herself to the nearest small blonde girl and away they played. Man, I never befriended other kids instantly like that. It just amazes me. And then there's Harrison. He was my little buddy the whole time. Which is cool, because he's usually glued to Giselle. Except that the entire time we're there, he's calling me "Mama" in front of all the other Dads and their collective kids: "C'mere Mama!" "Mama carry me" "Mama Lookit" "Mama Mama Mama". And then at home he's calling me Daddy-Gramma. It's plain & simple freaking me out. I just love that crazy little booger.

I watched Spider Man this weekend. It was excellent. I was just sitting there smiling the whole time. They did a great job catching the feel of the comic. Spider Man was my big hero as a kid. I didn't turn out to be a big ole comic book collector fanatic, but the movie brought back all the cool stuff about Spidey that I felt back then. I remember begging Dad to read one of the comic books to me when I was really little, and how funny it was when he got to this part where Spider Man called King Pin a "lard butt" and Dad just stopped, said "Wow" and shook his head, not quite sure what else to make of it (I know he wanted to laugh too...but it's crucial to let the parents save face when you're a kid).

Star Wars Episode II is coming up in a few days. Not sure what to do about it. We'd need somebody to watch the kids for hours on end while we wait in line. Can't quite afford that right now. We'll end up waiting a while to see it, I'm pretty sure.

Son calls me Mama
Maybe he won't change. Should I?
Estrogen grows breasts.

Jeremy

Addictive personalities

I'm starting to develop boredom issues with Subway sandwiches. I find myself cheating with Burritos Fiesta and Jack in the Box tacos a lot more often these days. Heheh...Amanda can't fathom how I can eat Jack-in-the-Box tacos. Come to think of it, I can't either. They use a slice of American cheese for pete's sake, and the BeefProduct™ is ground so fine, it could be gravy. But there's just something tasty about it that keeps me coming back. I think they use a finer grade of grease additive than most folks, for one thing. Plus, to pass the time while waiting in the drive-thru line, you can glance to your left at the crisped loogies on the wall, and fascinate yourself with the various strata that define cold and flu season from spring allergy season.

Still, Subway takes Visa debit cards, and that's what makes the grade 80% of the time, plus you can imagine that you're being health conscious by eating there. Never mind the fact that you better not get any cheese or mayo if you want to be heart healthy, and oh by the way, the 12" subs are for tubbies.

Oh man, I've been tripping out over the new Doritos Xtreme chips. We are definitely walking the fine line between unhealthy and deadly levels of sodium, MSG and FD&C Red 40. Those suckers are absolutely caked in the stuff. It's so potent that getting it off your fingers isn't the usual lick'em off or wipe on your pants procedure, it actually soaks through the epidermis like benzene and leaves a permanent red tattoo on your fingertips. Yum Yum.

Strange. I'm having this sudden urge to rearrange my cubicle for some reason. Glutamate poisoning! Gah!

Limbic system duped.
Bag of Doritos exudes
Poison liniment

Dormilón

I found out something interesting today. I was writing a short story about my youth growing up picking cotton and cabbage in Avondale, and as I was looking up "lazy" in my trusty English/Spanish dictionary, the primary translation turns out to be "perezoso". What the heck do you think of that! I always knew my close blood relatives and I carried the lazy gene but to know that my family is named after lazy...well it just blows me away.

I can just see my great great grandpa down in Sonora Mexico, slumped over his plow in the middle of some dusty field and the neighbors walking by "eyyyyyy, Señor Perezoso!" and it just stuck. Which is fine with me. There's another thing I can blame on my genes when I feel like it. Something I wish I could take back to my high-school/college years..."Hey Jeremy, you late-sleepin somethin'er'nother, get your butt outta bed...ya lazy, goodfernothin..." -- "Hey, I'm Perez. That's how it works. It's a dominant gene. Not a thing to be done about it. Seeya around 2:30."

Well I figured I could take this little train of thought somewhere, and I'm doing nothing with it. And I gotta run.

Best of intentions.
Genetic disposition
Overwhelms efforts.

Jeremy

Sepsis

There exists a way that is upright before a man,
but the ways of death are the end of it afterward.
—Proverbs 14:12

I went and grabbed some burgers at Burger King on the way home tonight. Amanda was feeling crummy, and I was late getting off work, so it seemed a good excuse for fast burgers. And as is my usual routine, about 1/3 of the way through the burger I pick the tomatoes out because they're predictably horrible. Except this time, as I'm shlorping 1-1/2 tomatoes out onto the wrapper, I notice the 1/2 eaten tomato has moldy sockets where the seeds should be. The wave of nausea was mercifully quick, and gave me time to consider my situation. It could certainly be worse, what with hidden threats like e. coli and mad cow disease waiting in the wings at every bite. Not to mention the fact that every time I consume a quarter-pound patty, I'm depriving mankind of like 12 tons of grain or something. But this time all I've got to show for it is a couple clots of mold. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to induce vomiting in a situation like this. What are the symptoms of mold poisoning anyway? Hallucinations? Dementia? Bloating and cramping? How would I know the difference from any other day?

We drove down to Phoenix this past weekend to get the 30K mile service on the car. Voting with my wallet, as they say. The Flagstaff Honda dealership wants to charge $120 more than Phoenix. Heck with 'em, I say. So we went & visited my sisters, brother in law and nephew & niece. We grabbed some pictures of the kids which I'll slap up here at some point. Harrison wiped out in a huge slick of mud. What a mess. Sometimes you gotta just drive the kids home nekkid.

Burger King exists
To tempt me at my weakest
With wax fries and mold

Jeremy

Team Spirit

Remember how I said Fridays were going to be Hawaiian shirt days here at work and how I don't own anything remotely close to Hawaiian? Well I showed them all! Now I'm the laughing stock of my whole building. WOO! :-D








Jeremy

Mystery Meat

OH NO! The spam THE SPAM! Last night on my home email, and this morning in my work email, I got a spam email from the same account with a subject line that says: "DO ME NOW!"

Oh I REALLY don't need this. It's bad enough getting the 'Ab Buster', and 'Make millions while sitting at home on your big fat butt' spam emails, but now I'm getting Pr0n spam? Sure, I could be more carefull with where I dole out my yahoo email address, what with scum like eBay, shareware sites and consumer review websites. But I'm super strict with where the work email gets left behind, which is to say "reputable" software companies and vendors. The fact I got "DO ME NOW" at both emails on the same night is bugging the heck out of me. Either Adobe is getting into adult services, or somebody's address book got hacked/virused...well either that, or I've started subscribing to HOT BABES while I'm AT WORK :P. Well my address is out there now. And as far as the spammers are concerned, I'm sure I might as well be a huge elk standing in the middle of an open meadow, it's hunting season, and I'm wearing a day-glo orange tarp over my back. CURSE THE PrOn INDUSTRY!!

Hah. I guess my post yesterday flipped Mom out and got her calling all the oncology hotlines and websites to figure out if my fingers are going to fall off. Heheheh.

There is an absolutely unbelievable picture that the New and Improved™ Hubble nabbed of the "Tadpole Galaxy" (Arp 188).

Supposedly another galaxy, passed close to this one and spun counterclockwise around it and whipped out an arm of stars. If the Milky Way were the size of a baseball, this galaxy would be about a quarter mile away. The picture looks like it's been touched up a little bit to make the galaxy stand out more from the background. But still, it's pretty amazing.

Check out the Astronomy Picture of the Day

Fingertips are numb
Mother calls the CDC
Before gangrene spreads

Jeremy

Counting the chickens before they hatch

Today, as I was trying to give one of our print sales reps down in Phoenix a hard time about what he named his RV, he gave me an education that the names on those RV's are just cutesy RV model names, not like the name you'd paint on a yacht. Well they're still goofy.

There's a guy that works in our office who has blonde hair that he pulls back in a ponytail, and he drives a blue VW Bug. And so I was driving to lunch yesterday, and I saw this blue VW headed in the opposite direction toward where we work and I saw the blonde hair pulled back and the ponytail. So I put on a big cheesy smile and was waving, and just as we passed each other, the reflections in the windows faded enough for me to see it was some unknown girl with blonde hair & ponytail staring straight ahead, REAL HARD, as if to say crawl back under your rock you filthy stalker. OY! Ha! That gave me a good laugh. One of those embarrassed & not a darn thing you can do about it, underwear hanging on the flagpole, kindof laughs.

A little earlier this evening I heard Giselle nagging Amanda on and on about something. And a couple minutes later, she shows up in front of me "Daddy, can I do x, y and z?" And I know how this game works: "Well what did Mom say?" ::silence:: "What did Mom say?" ::silence:: "What did she sayyyyyyy?" ::silence:: And Giselle is looking up at the ceiling. So I yell out to the other room, "AMANDA?" and I can hear her voice breaking: "WHAT!"..."Ummmm, did you tell Giselle she could do x, y and z?"..."NO!!" And as soon as Giselle hears the 'no', she holds up her hands in the gesture of pleading her case "But I wanted to be sure that both of you were CORRECT!" Ohhhh MAN, I was having the hardest time not busting out laughing as I'm explaining that no she can't do x, y, z, and why it just ain't right to play Mom and Dad against each other 'cause we're always going to find out.

Fooey. More and more, the tips of my fingers feel like I'm wearing rubber gloves and it's really starting to drive me crazy. The chemo seven years ago had a side effect of tearing up the nerves in my extremities and it did its duty. I feel like I'm getting clumsier and clumsier. I was turning around earlier to carry a bowl to the microwave, and it just whisked right out of my hands like it was a slippery fish or something. I drop my keys at the front door all the time, it's like I'm drunk. Maybe this just happens naturally to everybody after they hit 30. I just have a handy scapegoat.

Green shoots of grass are finally starting to peek through in the lawn now like so much five o'clock shadow. One of the cats went on a suicide mission a few days ago and crapped amidst my rose thorn defensive field. The rose canes were all piled up like a campfire with a big turd buried underneath. Man, that cat really took one for the team. I can't help but feel a little bit proud of the rotten varmint. We just bought some cayenne pepper, so I'll start dumping that in the flower bed and see if it makes things more forbidding. I'm also going to look into how to make artificial quicksand.

Feline pride displayed
'Neath a pyre of bloodied thorns
Cats are counting coup

Jeremy