HeyThereHawsey's Xanga

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:19:51 GMT

Ashley says I don't post enough. Problem is, I don't really have much to say.

Let's see...December...December. I got thrown out of a bar on Christmas Eve. All I wanted was a pen to give this girl my number. I just shouldn't have gone behind the bar to get it. There were only two bars in that town. One was closed for the holiday, and I got thrown out of the other. I sat outside for ten minutes, and my buddy Mikey came outside. He'd gotten thrown out for doing the exact same thing (for an ashtray). Then they threw Howie out, just for good measure, since his two moron friends got thrown out.

January...hmmm...I really don't recall anything.

February, I met a girl named Amy, and for a while it was good. I mean, yeah, she didn't have a job, so that was kind of disconcerting, but whatever. And sure, she was technically married at the time. But she was in the process of wrapping up her divorce. So it's all good, right?

Wrong. My first sign should have been when we were fooling around and she asked "Aren't you bothered by how many people I've slept with?" Well, no. I can't say I can put a number on it, for starters. Should I be? There were a multitude of things after that which were obvious warning signs that I immediately ignored. She was a cute girl, and so far as I could tell, she liked me. A lot. She even said so. A lot. I introduced her to my friends and told my mom about her. Life was good.

As it turns out, I was just a goddamn meal-ticket to her, and she was stringing me along so she could last a little longer with some free meals and drinks. I meant absolutely nothing to her. I wish there were some way I could put out a warning about her on okcupid.com, where we met, because she's just gonna do this again to some other chump. I call myself a chump because, at the onset of this whatever-it-was, we had a discussion on keeping things light, not too serious. As it turns out, to her, that meant she could lie through her teeth. "Not sleeping with anyone else" meant that when she flaked out on our plans, she was out with and underneath other guys. And I bought it blissfully, because she was so sweet to me when we were together. There was a post on her blog that had a picture of her smiling with a guy kissing her on the cheek. The caption read "The evil smirk on my face is because he thinks I'm in love with him, too."

Needless to say, I feel a little used.

I don't mean to make this sound all "woe is me," because something good did come out of it: my friendship with Amy's roommate, Kate. Kate, well, is absolutely nuts, and that's why we get along. We're both good, nice people who enjoy doing outlandish things to see how people will react. Her realm of outlandishness is just in an entirely different realm than mine. It's a good dynamic. She's the one who started making me realize what was going on in the other bedroom of their apartment. And I'm grateful for that.

Now before you start saying "Oh, there's goes Jeff falling for another girl," stop. This might be the most absurdly platonic relationship I've ever had with a girl (which isn't saying much, given my propensity for asking every girl I know out at some point). There's discussion on the table, actually, for us to be roommates after Amy moves out (a few months, but my lease isn't up until mid-July anyway). Like <insert corny relative> used to always say, there's a silver lining to every cloud. I'm making friends, and really, I'm quite happy about that. I still don't have a ton of friends here, mind you, but it's progressing. And I have a date on Friday with a cute girl red-head named Kelly.

There's a big part of me that longs to move back to the Midwest--I think I even have the resources to pull it off, if I want. The plant manager at our plant in northern Illinois, Ken, thinks the world of me. He's the guy who hired me, actually. But there's this stubborn streak in me that wants to prove that I can make work, wherever I am. It may not be the prettiest adjustment, or the fastest, but goddamnit I'm gonna make it work.

So anyway, there's the biggest part of February through early April.

I went to a concert last night with my buddy Neal from work. Ida Maria, whom I'm absolutely in love with, introduced by Southerly and Ruth. It. Was. Outstanding. I didn't really care for Southerly, but if you want some music to listen to, I'd suggest either Ida Maria or Ruth.

I got a tattoo a few weeks ago. "Play Like a Champion Today" on my right shoulder. An old friend from HS and I went to get them together when I was back in Indiana earlier this month. I like it.

Speaking of which, I was back in Indiana earlier this month. There's not really much to say beyond that.

I guess that's all the shit that's fit to print. In a few months, we'll pick this up where I left off.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 05:32:52 GMT

As previously mentioned, I can't go home for Christmas this year. I don't have the money to buy a plane ticket thanks to the onset of student-loan repayment and me splurging on a nice gift for my parents this year to accompany the sweet TV that now rests above their fireplace. I also don't have the vacation time--the plant is closed until 2 Jan 2009, but I still have to be there to do, well, completely uninteresting things. I have the rest of this week off, and as great as that initially sounds, the combination of being effectively snowed in until Friday when it warms up again, and not really having anyone to hang out with makes the time off pretty depressing. I don't know how or when it happened, but I'm suddenly one of those people who's miserable, but slightly less miserable when he's working.
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What the fuck is wrong with me?

Don't get me wrong, I get to spend Christmas Eve with these folks from work. One of them's Howie, my aforementioned partner in the drunken ruination of people's lives, and the other two are his mom, Pat, and step-dad, Denny, both of whom work at the plant as well. I'm pretty thankful for this But Christmas Day...well, shit, Christmas Day. I'm gonna make the most of it. How, you ask? Well, for starters, I'm not putting on pants for at least a day. I'm also going to massacre some zombies in Left 4 Dead on my xbox. That's about the extent of my plans. I'm going to do absolutely nothing and it'll be everything I think it can be.

Like I said, I'm effectively snowed in. This city is tragically inept at dealing with snow. In a normal year, they/we only get 2-8" of snow, and most of it melts off pretty quickly. Over the weekend, we got over a foot of snow--with 6 more inches expected tonight. I haven't been able to get my truck out of the parking lot since I parked it there Friday night. I hadn't--and still haven't--gone to the store to get food. I had soup, oatmeal and beer in my fridge. I've been walking down to the 7-11 around the corner to get sustinence, which usually includes a few roller dogs along with whatever else looks tasty. What a terrible choice. My body hates me.

Well, that's enough depressing for one day.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:30:46 GMT

I'm consistently impressed with my ability to screw things up something fierce.

Cutting myself down into pieces,

The way I see it, this is somewhat of a defining moment in my life. I can drown my sorrows with Bayside albums and bottles of bourbon like I always do, or I can try to build on how rough this weekend was.

Too hard on myself, it would seem.

For once, I'm gonna try the second option. So, in no particular order, here are things that I want to accomplish by this time next year:

That everyone could see my worth but me.

- Quit smoking. I know I've said it about 100 times in the last year. Maybe the 101st time is the trick.
- Lose 60 pounds--40 by the homecoming/Klein wedding clusterfuck in October. Like I told them, it's not about the first day of the rest of their lives--it's about me looking sexy as hell up there in a tuxedo.
- Find something to do on my weekends other than get liquored up and watch football/baseball/basketball.
- Prove to myself that I am who I want to be.
- Stop worrying about being alone and live my life.

I'll take a stand, devise plans and figure it out.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:07:46 GMT

Per the request of Mr. Kenneth Eugene Cox, I’m gonna try to do “This Week in RAGE!” well, weekly. Lucky for you I’m ready to hand out more verbal ass-whoopin’s today. So without further ado, it’s time for This Week in RAGE!: Music Edition.

Number 3: Preteen girls at concerts

I attended a show at the Hawthorne Theater last night with my buddy Ross Uthoff. Hellogoodbye was headlining, with PlayRadioPlay, Ace Enders and Never Shout Never opening. While these acts were all quite entertaining, I only got to see the last two songs of the first act, Never Shout Never, because of these stupid preteen girls. Know why? Well, being in, naturally, the Hawthorne District, everyone had to get searched before they went into the show. The doors opened at 6, show started at 7. The inherent problem is that every single fucking one of these ‘tweens had an unnecessarily large purse which had to be dug through by security before they could enter. The result? I didn’t get inside until 7:45.

The couple behind us in line didn’t get tickets ahead of time, and was just hoping there’d be a few left for them to snatch up. This was not the case. As we neared the front, they found this out and, having chatted with us for the hour-plus we’d been in line, they told us to “have fun with the 12-year-olds,” to which two of these ‘tween-queens said “Hey! 12-year-olds are fun!”

…really? Are you fucking serious? You really think that the people who are old enough to drive, smoke and drink legally are going to think you’re fun? Fuck off.

And then the screaming—sweet baby Jesus, the screaming. Just shut the fuck up, kids. Enjoy the show, bob your head, jump up and down, and don’t make my god damn eardrums rupture every time they play a song you like. Luckily for me, they were serving AMF’s in the 21+ section of the venue, so after two of those, a vodka-tonic and a few Bud Lights, it didn’t bother me as much as it had earlier.

Number 2: Shitty covers of songs you shouldn’t be covering

The second-to-last act last night, Ace Enders, opened with a cover of The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony.” When I first heard the drums I knew immediately what it was, and my excitement lasted approximately 0.001 seconds. Know why? Because they had NO, I repeat, NO strings. They had a recording of the violin/viola from that song, and that’s it. You know why you shouldn’t have covered that song, Ace Enders? Because you don’t have anyone playing the goddamned fiddle. You mean to tell me that out of the 20-ish people who were playing there that night, not one of them has ever screwed around with the violin enough to pull off the same five notes over and over again? Get the fuck off the stage. More importantly, do you think there were any more than 10 people in the crowd old enough to know “Bittersweet Symphony”? Absolutely not. Ross and I were belting it out, and we were the only people I saw doing so, because most of the people there were either two years old when that song came out, or too busy changing those kids’ diapers to have heard it when it came out.

And as good as Hellogoodbye was, they too did a shitty cover that seemingly no one but Ross and I knew—Reel Big Fish’s “Beer” on the ukulele. Though entertaining, you think any little 12 year old shithead even knows what ska is, let alone Reel Big Fish? Hell no they don’t. In my head, I could hear conversation I would have had if I had a daughter there:

“Daddy, what’s that weird music they’re playing?”

“Something you’ll never appreciate, dear. Now pipe down, Daddy’s been reminded of something very important by this song.”

<<commence boozing to help forget the musical inadequacies of my child>>.

Number 1: That guy at the show

You know exactly about whom I’m speaking. That guy who wears the shirt of the band he’s going to see, or buys some merch and then puts it on immediately. Really? We’re seeing Hellogoodbye and Ace Enders? No shit! I thought this was fucking SLAYER shredding some “Reign Blood” on us. Get the fuck out of the theatre, you’re an embarrassment to us all.

Don’t be mistaken, I bought merch while I was there, but I did what you’re supposed to do: ball that shirt up, jam it in your pocket, and wear it the next day.

Raging Corrections: My apologies are extended to lovely Bridget Mayo for not including the city of Buffalo in the category of "Cities where there is at least one woman I like." Let the record show that I do, in fact, like Bridget.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:44:11 GMT

I’m in the mood to pick a fight so it’s rants and ravings time, or, as Adam Carolla puts it on his morning radio show, it’s time for THIS WEEK IN RAGE!

Number Three

I saw this on indystar.com today. Here’s the gist of it: people want to reference their religion on their license plates, and the BMV is trying to save themselves an eventual lawsuit a la “One nation, under God” a few years ago in California. Completely understandable, and under this new policy, people who already had license plates which referenced their deity are allowed to keep their plates so long as they get their renewals in on time. Some lady didn’t get her renewal in, and now she’s suing on the assertion that over 2 million people in Indiana have the “In God We Trust” license plate which is available through the DMV and ergo she should be allowed to have her license plate which reads “BE GODS.”

The only thing in common between these two plates is the word “God.” Do you know why we’re allowed to have plates which read “In God We Trust”? Because it’s the national motto of the United States of America as approved by Congress in 1956—it’s not just some shit somebody came up with on the fly. It dates back to Francis Scott Key and the origins of The Star-Spangled Banner. The Star-Spangled motherfucking Banner! So she thinks just because she thought of “BE GODS” on the fly that the motto of the greatest country on the face of the earth isn’t good enough for her? Fuck that and fuck her. What really bothers me about this is just how fucking pretentious and lazy she is for doing this. I mean, really, does she truly think that a license plate with two words on it is going to change someone’s life? Oh my God! I saw “BE GODS” on the back of someone’s car. It’s so clear to me now. God is like the muffler—there’s so much bad in the world, but if I filter it all through Him, everything seems to be much better, cleaner and clearer! If you want to make an impact in a stranger’s life, don’t depend on a $48 dollar vanity plate to do the work. Get your ass out of your car, find someone—anyone!—and ask if they’ve heard the Good News. You’re not doing your god’s will by driving your car around all day. Suck it up, get out and do what you’re supposed to do.

Number Two

You know what really grinds my gears? People who don’t find this funny. Seriously, try saying “DELETE COOKIES!? OM NOM NOM NOM!” in your head in the voice of Cookie Monster and not laugh. It’s impossible not to laugh if you’re a halfway respectable human being. Hell, I’m in most respects a terrible person, but I have that blown up and taped to my wall in my office, and I giggle every damn time I see it.

Number One

People getting married. As of Saturday, November 15, my best friend since HS, Cameron Klein, is getting married. What. The. Fuck. Not only that, but he’s dumb enough to have made me his best man. Man do I feel old. While he’s marrying the love of his life, I’m still getting drunk and being incredibly irresponsible. Swiss and I came to the conclusion that it’s just never going to happen—which, honestly, I’ve been told since I was about 15. More importantly, he told me I’m not allowed to get with any of the bridesmaids! What the fuck!? What the hell is the point of being the best man if you’re not allowed to have your selection of the women on the other side of the aisle? I want to be the best man because he’s my best friend and saved my life? Fuck that!

I took a girl on a date on Tuesday, and she failed every possible test/thing that I look for. I mean, they’re not hard things. All I ask is that you have something interesting or at least original to say, that you be nice to the wait-staff at the restaurant, and then, well, there’s the car door test. If you don’t know what that is, ask me sometime. But she not only failed it, she failed it three times.

If you ever move to some place where you know very few people, allow me to give you one piece of advice: don’t waste your money on match dot fucking com. I’ve spent five months on there, and you know what I’ve gotten? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Admittedly, husky guys who drink too much and write blog-columns entitled “THIS WEEK IN RAGE!” aren’t ideal candidates, but I should have been able to find some moderately attractive woman on there who’s just as fucked up as I am.

Sadly, this is not the case. It seems to me the only women I connect with are the ones who live in excess of 2200 miles away, be it Terre Haute or Philadelphia.

So in conclusion, here’s to you, here’s to me, and if you don’t like it, fuck you, here’s to me.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:28:37 GMT

For you kids still at Rose, if there are any of you who read this, allow me to give you one simple piece of advice: never, under any circumstances, cross Dr. James Mayhew.

Spring of my junior year, I was taking ME302 Heat Transfer with this man. Through a series of unfortunate/retarded events, I ended up not attending the last five weeks of this class because he had told me there was no way I was going to pass, when in fact there was a quite significant chance of me earning a passing grade. Upon realizing this, I got in a few arguments with this man, and ultimately decided that the only way I could win was to prove him wrong.

I ended up studying for two days straight and got a better grade on the final exam than Matt “Dude, you really need to come to class even if you’re not going to pass” Rutkowski, and a C in the class. Consequently, I damn-near developed an ulcer because of the uncertainty of this situation.

But Jeff, that was two years ago! Why does that matter now?

I’m glad you asked. The reason it matters now is because that man, Dr. James Mayhew, haunts my dreams. I tore out of bed as fast as I could today, not only because I was late, but because I swore I was late for a Heat Transfer test. I went over to my bookshelf and got my book out before I had the epiphany of “Wait…what? I’m not in college any more, and haven’t been in this class for a long time. …Fuck! I’m late for work!”

I blame another ME I work with, Jason from Jaw-Juh Tech, because he and I had a discussion not that long ago about how much I hated that class.

I went to the Oregon/Stanford game in Eugene on Saturday. Let me tell you one thing that makes tailgating on the west coast nice: there’s so many homeless people here that you don’t have to clean up your overabundance of beer cans. We have bottle and can deposits here (a nickel each), and when a hobo spots him a shiny nickel, he’s all over that like a lesser homeless man on a penny.

The guy I went with is a man I’ve mentioned a few times already—my “boss”, Howie Coleman. He asked me to get to his place at 6:45am so that we could be ready to tailgate by 8:30.

Naturally, he wasn’t ready. What did I do? Crack the first Busch Light of the day. It’s the only acceptable choice at that point. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

About 14 hours later we had made it back to his town, Gladstone, and were drinking again (don’t worry, I quit boozing at halftime so I could drive home). Gladstone…well, Gladstone is Portland’s redneck cousin to the south. It’s a small town, only a few bars worth going to, and mostly residential off of the main road through town. It’s like a mini Terre Haute.

Consequently, with only a few bars to go to in a small redneck town, most of the lady-folk in said bars have been going there since they were old enough to see over the counter and ask for a brew. As a rule in towns such as this, they tend to be in their early to mid 30’s.

So let me recap:

I’d been drinking for well over half a day at this point.
I’m in a bar full of women ~1.5x my age.
My boss is going to wingman for me whether I like it or not.
No one in Oregon knows all the stories that are littered across the Midwest about me. This is a good thing.

The solution? Cougar hunting. I’ll just leave it at I gave my number to a few women whom I’m almost certain are engaged/married, and at the very least had kids. Hey, ya gotta do whatcha gotta do, right?

Long story short, I wound up getting reallllyyyy drunk-tired at about midnight, and walked back to my boss's place to pass out. Unfortunately, the door was locked. The only option at this point is to pass out on his front porch. He came back an hour-ish later, opened the door, yelled "Door's open, Nancy!" and handed me a beer.

It was a good night.

I got (sort of) a promotion the other day, to the Lean Six Sigma Kaizen Event Leader, which is really just a fancy way of saying I come up with projects to improve my plant, and then implement them in week-long events. From what I can tell thus far, it’s added duty onto what I was already doing, so that kinda sucks. But I do get two weeks in Toledo at the start of December, which is nice, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been anywhere remotely close to home for Christmas.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:41:26 GMT

As most of you know, I’m an avid fan of the Not-rah Dame Fightin’ Irish. Do you know why they consistently get Top-10 recruiting classes in football (even if they’re not always utilized as well as they should be)? They get the best recruits for three reasons:

1) They’re Notre Dame, the second-most winningest team in college football history. No matter how terrible of a season they’ve had, everyone wants to play for the alma mater of Joe Montana, Knute Rockne, The Four Horsemen, The Bus and so many other football legends.

2) If you can handle the load they need you to take, you will get your time in the sun. It might not be immediate, but it will happen. This is especially true in the case of receivers and tight-ends. There’s no player to whom Jimmy Clausen passes to significantly more than any other receiver. Some get significantly more yards than others depending on the routes that they regularly run, but most get the same amount of chances to catch the ball and make a play.

3) It’s not about you. It’s about the team. Do you know why Joe Montana, arguably the best quarterback to ever play the game, hasn’t had his number, 3, retired at Notre Dame? Because no one’s number has ever, ever been retired at Notre Dame. Not one. Because it’s about the team, and not you.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Barack Obama got elected into the highest office in the land last night, and I’ve never been more excited about politics. Moreover, my home-state, the Hoosier State, voted blue for the first time in 44 years, and even if our blueness came only by an incredibly small margin, a win is a win is a win.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as excited as I am. As a matter of fact, some people have been downright revolting in their disappointment regarding the results of last night. I saw four general opinions in The Great Post-Election Facebook Status Debate: 1) WOO GOBAMA!; 2) I’m leaving the country; 3) That sucks, but I still love America; or 4) I hope Jesus comes back soon to save us from this peril. (Sidebar: I really seem to like lists right now.)

We’ve had eight years (35.6% of my life thus far) with the worst president of the modern age of America. To be so unwilling to try a new direction after eight years of what can only be described as a cluster-fuck of epic proportions that you threaten to leave the country or start praying for The End of Days is crass, obnoxious, and downright insulting not only to me, but to the millions of people who filled in the bubble next to President-Elect Obama’s name yesterday and the principles of democracy itself. Instead of graciously saying “Well, that sucks, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” (name from whence the italicized section came), you say “Well, fuck everyone else. Jesus had better come back soon, or I had better get a green-card, because America just isn’t worth it any more.” You undermine every bit of the work done in the last 232 years with thoughts like that.

He’s not a black president—that’s demeaning. He’s the President of the United States of America. Not the President of the Poor Americans, or of the Black Americans, or any other subcategory of our country. He’s the President of the United States. So maybe you’re not going to get as many chances to touch the football as you would on some other team—but you know what? Someone else is getting the chance to better their future by proving that they can handle what their President needs them to handle, all at a minimal expense on your part. Because it’s not about you. It’s about the country. It’s about the US of A, the Star-Spangled Banner, E Pluribus Unum and the 300 million people from sea to shining sea.

"It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disable. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, The United States of America."

--President-Elect Obama, last night in Grant Park

God I feel patriotic.

Honestly, though, I’m mostly just disgusted by the people whose response to this election falls in the previously showcased category of #4. If your god is perfect, omniscient and all-powerful, then his will is being done, and therefore quit your bitching. America isn’t suddenly going to become Sodom & Gomorrah, we’re not going to start sacrificing goats, and god is not going to wipe us off the face of the fucking earth just because John McCain didn’t get elected.

Enough with the political rambles—on to the completely disjointed and unrelated rambles!

My cousin called me piss drunk from the rally in Grant Park last night. All I heard was “WARRRGBLH WOOOO!!! SKDFSKLDJF WOOO!!!!” Yup, she’s related to me alright.

Many of you heard me tell tale of THE BOTTLE MAN. Well, not only did he get evicted, but they parked a 20’ dumpster under my balcony to throw his shit in from next door. Epic.

I went downtown with Ross for Halloween. At some point, Ross was chatting it up with a hot brunette that wanted him to take her home. Being the upstanding gentleman with a girlfriend that he is, he chatted it up with her for awhile with no intention of taking her home. She was wearing a fedora as part of her costume, and in the band she had tucked a Swisher Sweet. I had been out of smokes for hours at this point. I put my arm around her, talked up Ross for awhile, all the while slowly reaching into her hat, pulling that sum’bitch out of there and lighting it in front of her. She was not happy, but I am awesome.

I got new glasses. They're fucking sexy.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:15:50 GMT

I went to the bars with Ross Uthoff Friday night. At one point, we were in this bar called McFadden's (an Irish pub in ChinaTown...weird). He proceeded to give me shit about not having any game. Six minutes later, I was making out with a cute German girl named Miri.

Booyah.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:13:42 GMT

It occurred to me after I got back on Sunday from my 10 day trip to Indiana that I won't be able to make it home for Christmas. I mean, I knew this already--I used almost all of my vacation time to be back in Indiana for homecoming, and I was fortunate enough to be able to stick around even longer to "work" at Rose for my company. But now it's really hit me--I won't be home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or NYE. I've got the options of a) cooking a turkey by myself; b) saying "Fuck you, turkey" while eating take-out and watching the Macy's Day Parade with my friend Jack Daniels (Do they even show that out here? It'd be on so early. I don't know. Time zones are confusing.); or c) hoping that one/many of my coworkers invites me over for the holidays. Let's be honest, there's no way I'm cooking a turkey--and even if I did, I'd probably follow it up with option 'b' anyway.

So, that sucks.

I've been alright with living 2300 miles away thus far. It hasn't been great, honestly. I've made a few friends, though honestly my best friend here is my boss, Howie, who deserves a blog post unto himself. He basically treats me like I'm his kid brother, gets me drunk, and we cause shenaniganry on an epic level for usually being in a business setting.

But, ever since Cory died it's been a lot harder to live here. Even the sales lady at work, Tami, noticed how homesick I was/am, and I talk to her maybe once a week. Cory and I weren't the closest by any stretch, but it definitely hit home. Hard. My gut reaction is to move back to the Midwest, though not necessarily IN, as soon as possible for when something like that happens again--because it will. But most of the people I care about won't be there in two years, and I know in my head that I can't base my career around people who aren't going to do the same for me. I mean, it'd be ideal if we all could find jobs in the same city, continue to grow up/old together, so on and so forth. But that's not how things work, and I know that. I'm just really torn between kicking ass at my job--which I have been doing, by the way--in order to advance my career, or to try to find a job with maybe a lower ceiling that would put me closer to those whom I love. I mean, I can't quit until July 16, 2010 anyway unless I want to pay back my signing bonus (I don't), so I guess it's a moot point until that time anyway.

Nonsequitur ramblings:

Dana's getting married. I don't really have anything to add on to that. Good for her and Zach.

Maybe I should go to my cousin's wedding next weekend. I'm just tired of flying. And I don't want to go to Virginia unless I get to see my favorite southern girl, which I don't think is likely.

My mom keeps dropping the 'g' word. That's right, that 'g' word: grandkids. I'm 22. I don't have a girlfriend. I've been on two dates since I moved out here, none since the beginning of September. This is gonna get old. Fast.

Alright, that's my blogging for this quarter. I'll see you in three months.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:24:45 GMT

So, I got a work cell phone on my first day here. It's one of those sweet Nextel 2-way things. Problem is, whoever had this number before me was both a)popular and b) too lazy to inform her loved ones of her new number. I've gotten a few moderately funny voicemails, and I'm going to start chronicling them. Here's today's:

"Millie? Is this Millie? Hi Millie, it's Elaine, I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday. You're getting old, but I'm even older. I don't really know whose phone this is, I think I called the wrong number, but just in case Millie, I wanted you to know that I wished you a happy birthday. Happy birthday Millie."

Sounded like a grandma. You'd think when the voicemail says "You've reached the voicemail of Jeffrey Kennedy, if you could just leave your name and a number at which I can reach you, I'll get back to you asap," she'd realize that my name, in fact, is not Millie. But that's being an octogenarian for you, I guess. She was probably too busy organizing her collection of souvenir spoons and listening to The 700 Club to realize that a man with a booming, powerful voice is not her friend Millie (And yes, I was referring to myself there. Egomaniac 4 life).