Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Did I really say that?

My mouth gets me in too much trouble.
I was minding my business this morning, parking my truck. Because I have been there forever, I have a parking pass that allows me to park a couple hundred yards closer. There is this security guard we call the Parking Nazi. He is a real ass. Just about everyone I work with has a story about an encounter with him. We sometimes sit around and swap stories.
At any rate, Robocop was patroling the restricted area. He pulled in behind me. I got out and started off. He said "Hey, do you have a parking pass?" I answered in the affirmative. He demanded I get it and bring it to him. So I said, Hey, there's no need to act like a dickhead.
I showed him my parking pass, started off. He waited until I had gone about 30 feet, pulled up and told me he wasn't going to put up with me. He demanded I stop and came over and called his superior. Who came out and asked me what the problem was. I said "Him".
I explanied that I had broken no rules, and did not care to be treated like a criminal by anyone. He tried to cover, saying that I had to display my parking credentials. I turned and pointed at my truck "See the blue truck. See the parking pass on the dash. That's where it was. Can you see it?"
At any rate I am now on double secret probation. The guy is seriously on this power trip and needs to be brought down a couple of pegs.
Next time I see him I will have to tell him that we all sit around and tell stories about him and laugh at him. He is just the kind of pompous ass that it will eat at him thinking about us laughing at him.
Nah, I'm just not mean enough.

Monday, January 25, 2010

The Line

When you are in a relationship, you have to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to you. You need to be aware of your partners needs and moods.
Mrs A is sitting next to me.
Do you still love me?
Of course my dear.
At this point you know at this point that she is looking for something more that a yes. Don't give in at this point.
How come?
I don't know, I just do?
This is not the answer she is looking for, she will have to take it to the next level.
If you don't know why, maybe you will quit loving me.
You have set it up, now to go in for the score.
I don't think about it. It is like breathing. I don't think about breathing, but like breathing, it is something I must have in order to live.
He shoots. He scores!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

30 And Counting

That would not be me.......
That would not be my marriage.........
It would be how long I have worked at Boeing. Although my actual Anniversary is tomorrow, the Company took me to lunch yesterday. I generally could care less about this sort of thing usually, but the prize in the puddin' was that I got to take the rest of the day off after lunch. Not to mention that the two choices for lunch were steak and salmon. Our cafeteria at work is pretty bad. Admittedly better than the School Cafeteria or the soup kitchen, but definitely south of fast food. I think of it as fuel as opposed to food.
The luncheon was at the Bellevue Club, a hoity-toity members-only kinda place. Everything was very nice and the food was excellent. Shake and pictures with the BIG BOSS. The head of Engineering for BCAG and VP of BCAG, Mike Denton is a nice guy. There were about 20 of us celebrating our 30th, one her 35th. Each one had to get up and say howdie and give a short autobiography.
"I stood on the tarmac of Boeing Field in Seattle on December 28th 1967 and watched the very first 737 take off on it's delivery to Lufthansa airlines". Some of you with rudimentary math skills might catch the fact that 1967 from 2010 does not equal 30. I had a couple of breaks in service. The first was because Uncle Sam decided he needed me. Very much against my will I was dragged, kicking and screaming into the Army, where I ended up as the Liaison Officer for the locked Psychiatric facility on Okinawa. As I explained, it was excellent training for my career at Boeing.
The second came when we lost funding for a top secret research and development project I was working on. The laid me off two weeks before Christmas, with no warning and no notice. I swore I would never go back. But of course I did, and I really don't regret it. It has been fun and a challenge.
I guess I'll stick around for a few more years.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Why animals eat their young

Because if you don't terminate them when they are small, they will turn into teenagers.
First of all, V came in the other night and announced he needed money for the Debate Team trip to Stanford. He has known about it since before the Holidays. The information he gave me said that the money was due by Jan 8th. He handed it to me on the 12th.. The actual trip is the weekend of Feb 8th. $200 for the room. Airline reservations another $175. Food and spending money, an extra $100. Total, almost $500, and I had to hurry and make the flight reservation before it filled up.
Not to mention that the night before, I reminded him that garbage pickup was the next day, and he just blew it off. Mrs A, ended up having to take it to the curb as she was going to work.
I was pissed enough that I told him to go away because I didn't want to see him right then.
Big debate tournament this weekend Saturday V uses the bathroom, uses the toilet and messes up the seat, doesn't flush and leaves his dirty boxers in the floor.
He won two trophies at the debate tournament. Second place in Extemp and third in Congress.
He got home late (11:00) from debate and by the time he unwound it was close to midnight, but I wouldn't let him go to bed until he cleaned the bathroom. We had left it for him and just used the one downstairs.
I told him that it was bad enough he chose to live in a filthy room, but he had no right to bring his filth out where the rest of us to have to deal with. It was really EEEWWWWW.
So he spent the day cleaning today.
It was either that or death by swirly.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Quiet Weekend

Didn't do a whole lot on the weekend. Saturday, L came over and she and Mrs A went shopping. I donated $100 to the cause. I had brought home work to do, so I spent the time doing data collection and collating. Boring stuff.
The reason I brought work home was that I went out for lunch and didn't come back.
A bunch of us that used to work together try to get together every Christmas and catch up. This tradition is over 10 years old, and is always fun. Our annual holiday fell through in December, so we decided to get together last Friday.
We went to BJ's Brew Pub. I decided I didn't want to go have a couple of beers and then go back to work.
Right before lunch they come to me and say "You know the statistical analysis you did on the costs on the last airplane? We need you to do it on the one before that, so we can do out headcount predictions for the next one"
I told them it would not get done Friday, but that I would work on it at home over the weekend and have it for them by the end of shift on Monday.
Lots of tedious number crunching At any rate, while the women were out, I put on the blues station and crunched numbers.
Sunday, R and "i" came over. We had a huge box of pull-ups for her, and she had promised to reorganize our spice cabinet. I'm not saying I'm a bit of a packrat, but some of the spices went back to 1985. They were probably still good..........................
All in all a nice quiet weekend.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Remote

I am not the ultimate Hi-Tec guy, but I need the basic amenities. You know, the 50" high def LCD TV with cable, surround sound And dvd player.
When the country went digital, I had already been there for over a year. Comcast set me up with a free converter box, so I had no problems.
The downside was the universal remote needed to run all the stuff. It is not really user friendly, but we have learned to live with it.
Second part of the story, I bought a very expensive laptop computer for Mrs A and I. Not for any one else. Just for the two of us. The old laptop became community property. I am deleting all personal information off of it and using it as a recording studio for my old vinyl. When I am not using it, it is free for anyone to use.
V. is sneaky. He is a technogeek, and there was this brand new high end laptop sitting there. I told him he was not to use it. Since I was still setting up things, I left it unprotected. I had a sneaking suspicion that V. was getting up in the middle of the night and messing with it. I know there is some way of checking history, but I don't know how.
So yesterday I password protected the computer.
When we got up this morning, the remote for the TV was missing. Mrs A and I made a quick check around, and it was nowhere to be found. Didn't have time to get serious about looking. When I got home, I tore things apart looking for the remote,, and came up empty. I knew that V. was the last one to use it, since the TV was on Comedy Central and Mrs A and I never watch that channel. He was upstairs taking a nap.
I went upstairs and woke him. "OK you were the last person to use the remote, you need to get up and find it!"
Much grumbling and "I don't know where it is"
"Get up and find it. I am pissed and not likely to get any better until YOU find the remote that YOU had last!"
He got up and came down stairs. After a cursory search, he went out in the kitchen, looked back at the living room and said "There it is right there" and came in and fished it out from under a chair.
"See, it just fell off and got lost"
Where it landed was under the sectional. It would not be possible for the remote to have landed where it did without a considerable amount of assistance. The physics just don't work. Someone had to have deliberately put it there.
Now let's see......someone was pissed because I had password protected my new computer, and was the last one to have used the remote, which mysteriously disappeared, and then found in a very short period of time when confronted...................
A picture is beginning to emerge..................
The dog did it.

Friday, January 01, 2010

Laughing through the tears

As I mentioned the other day, my Aunt Mary Rose Glahe passed away on Christmas eve day. She was a very special person to me.
When we were growing up, her family lived right outside Olympia, Wa. The trip now is about an hour down the freeway, but back then it was about double that. We went down there or they came up here pretty regularly. I was close to my cousins growing up, but eventually the moved to Utah, which to me was the equivalent of moving to the back side of the moon. After they moved, I think the only time I saw them was in 1970 for my Grandfathers' funeral in 1970.
A few years ago My cousin Ginger and I got back in touch, and have visited back and forth a couple of times a year. She and her husband, Pat have a beautiful home in Coberg, Oregon.
When Mrs A and I first started going down to Coberg to visit, Aunt Mary Rose would come over and visit along with her brother, my Uncle Fred.
When we first got back together, we figured out that it had been about 32 years since we has seen each other. But the minute I walked in the door, it was like the years in between had evaporated. We spent several hours remembering things we had done when we were kids and such.
I had spent a couple of weeks in Olympia with them a couple of times, working in the strawberry fields. The most significant thing I remember about strawberry picking is that they paid us in silver dollars. That and the strawberry fights, and eating strawberries until I couldn't eat any more. In fact, to this day, I am not real fond of strawberries.
I also recall the time we went camping at the ocean at Westport, at Twin Harbors State Park. In the middle of the night a rain storm moved in and we got drenched. When the air mattresses started floating, we had enough, broke camp and headed home. Olympia was about held way home, so we showed up and Aunt Mary Rose and Uncle Franks' house wet, bedraggled and chilled to the bone. I was never so happy to see their porch light.
Shortly after she passed, Ginger sent a very nice piece talking about their experience, and included some stories of life with her parents. A couple of them were downright hilarious.
I read them sitting there on the couch laughing right out loud with tears running down my face.