14 Things About Me

Oh lordy, I been tagged.

1. For the past three years, I have forgotten my actual age.  I said I was 26 when I was 25, 27 when I was 26, and 28 when I am 27.  Apparently my Alzheimer's is getting an early start.

2. Even though I look maybe 200 lbs, I weigh close to 250.  Most of that is from stress eating followed by a healthy workout twice a week.

3.  Few people can correctly guess my height, weight, or age.  I'm a hoot at parties.

4. I didn't take my first drink of alcohol until I was 22, and even then that was at a convention for Modern Drunkard Magazine.   

5. I was almost a cook in the Army.  Come my 17th birthday, the military got a hold of my ASVAB scores and collectively creamed themselves.  I knew the Army recruiter by association and we talked for quite a while.  He almost got me to sign a contract that day before I backed out of it.  I still can't believe he tried to pass off $900 a month as a crapload of money.  Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo that.

6.I have been married once before. It took a lot for my parents to come around the second time as they don't trust the Internets, and I met both of my wives through online video games.  I am also a sucker for a sob story, and I'm happy to say that I managed to lose that particular weakness, to a point.  It's gotten me into more than a little trouble on a few occasions.

7.  While Silviar will disagree, my biggest vice is reading.  I devoured three books yesterday alone, zinging through Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. 

8.  I'm running out of things to say about myself.

9. Food service will not hire me due to my psychological profile.  The real problem is that they won't tell me what about it gives them pause.

10.  My favorite show, hands down, is The Venture Brothers.  I'll need to get their 3rd season on DVD.  A close second is the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, with CSI being a distant third.

11. Three to go.  I can do this.  Everyone around UMSL knows me as 'that motorcycle guy'.  It has gotten to the point where most people in the parking garage know exactly where my bike is and where to be when I've just entered the complex.  I believe I am starting a riding gear fashion trend.

12.  I'm the chef of the house.  Marf makes excellent meals, but she prefers it if I cook.  I'm quite adept at burning meat, and the potroast in my backpack is testament to this.

13.  Reserved

14. Reserved

Good lord, either I'm just very tired or not an interesting person.

Hell, I should be President

I'm fully convinced that any Human Resources department is staffed by a shit-eating chimpanzee/dog hybrid creature, sniffling at each pile of feces before sampling a bite and snarling to the rest of the drones, "I want someone with five years' experience and a business degree, but we're only going to pay them $28,000 a year!"

Think Anubis, only stupider, longer arms, and bad, bad breath.  This is what I see.

I mention this because I glanced at jobs on Monster today.  I also applied for a few jobs at Wash. U., only to find out that hey, I'm not qualified because I don't have 5 years accounting experience.  Never mind the pay range they're offering starts at about 60% of what I make now, and caps at just over 110% of what I make now.  The job wouldn't give more than $36k a year, and I have seen CFO positions asking for a BSA (B.S. Accounting) and 5 years experience for $200k. 

Why in the blue hell would I accept $36,000 when I can get six times that for the same experience?

I'm telling you - Anubis with fecalphilia.

Two posts in two days.  If I'm not careful, I might start a trend.

Anyway.

Yesterday wasn't too bad of a day post, uh...posting.  Good weather, nice easy ride back to the house, parked in the garage and had a meal of rice, soy sauce and Tuong ot Sriracha.  Essentially Vietnamese ketchup, and it adds some good spice.  Too much, maybe - I forget that hot and carbo has a multiplier effect.  Heh.

After quietly howling into a loaf of bread (which I subsequently ate) I packed up the gear and went to karate class.  Matsubiyashi Shorin-Ryu has been really good for me, and we went through fighting techniques again today.  I'm finally getting the hook kicks down better than I was - just need practice.  And a heavy bag, maybe.  Ran through my first staff kata afterwards, and gave one of the sensei's my recipe for bacon fried rice.

I got home to find the garage door open, and my downstairs neighbor's car outside of it with some sorta dust on the roof of it.  I figured 'no big deal', parked in the garage, and grabbed my gym bag.  Got to the back door just in time for my neighbor, Gonzalo, to come out and tell me some interesting news.

"Justin," he said, "Did...you see the garage door?"

Of course I saw the garage door, but I didn't see it.  He showed me where the car hit the garage door, hence why it was locked in the up position.  The best part was, I didn't care.  The garage door is a piece of rotted crap with no lock on it anyway, and it only keeps the thieves out because they perceive it to be locked.  Suckers.

We tried to get it back on the rails, but there was nothin' doing.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the minibikes until I had of flash of inspiration.  I'll put them in the basement!  Fantastic!

Fortunately, it wasn't too bad of an idea.  Yes, I gouged the crap out of my pinky finger getting them downstairs, but we cleared the garage out except for crap I didn't mind "donating" to the neighborhood thugs.  I was going to put my disc lock/alarm system on the DL, save that the batteries in it act like a smoke detector when they're low.  You know what I mean -beepbeepbeep...beeeeep....beeeeeep...bebebebebebeep...

The landlady should show up on Wednesday to fix the door.  We'll see what she says, but if she says no she's not going to like the result.  I've decided that if she's not going to take the responsibility of maintenance seriously, I would call the city and a lawyer, in that order.  Pennywise, pound foolish sadly.

Bawwwwwwww

I hate it when I feel like this blog ends up being a harbinger of emo.  That's what happened to the 'ol LJ, and that's why I kicked it out of my life (not to mention the ex-wife checked it regularly, making it an excellent firestarter when she got home from work).  I prefer to think of it as an experience best left forgotten.

To be honest, though, sometimes it's hard not to be a little(okay, a lot) down and write about it.  Let's take the week before last, for example.  It ranks fairly high on the Worst Week Ever scale, and I daresay I won't have another week this bad until I'm old and grey.  On the bright side, that means there's going to be a lot of nice weeks in the future, and I'm looking forward to them.

Marisol may have already written about this, and in fact I'm fairly sure she has.  Tommy died two weeks ago of liver cancer.  In life he was an incredible person, someone so selfless and fun-loving that I doubt I'll ever meet his caliber anytime soon.  I can't say again, because the world is filled with incredible people, and I do know more than a few.  Tommy was a fourth-degree black belt and was going to become an Olympian when the Summer Games rolled back around in '12.  Tommy was 21.

Twenty-one.  How the hell does someone get that kind of nastiness that young?  What's worse, the doctors didn't even catch it until it was far too late because this was a man who could break nunchuku on his chest and not notice, where bruised or broken ribs were shrugged off unless he had problems moving.  I guess that's what he thought this was until they did a biopsy. 

Suffice it to say, I'll be getting a full physical pretty soon.  The worst I've had are kidney stones (three now, I discovered, in about five year intervals), but there's no sense to not be proactive about such things.

Bad enough, we discovered that on that Tuesday, which was the same day I discovered that I was going to be out of a job come December 1.  They finally got their act together  up in the Motor City and said that the account was going to be done on the last day of November.  The management was going to be done in late September and the temps were getting the axe at the end of the week.  On the bright side, I'll get a check for about $4,000 on my last day, and I figure I can squeak out at least two parties paid for by the company. 

After that, my ex called to say that while she was already a week late in picking up the kid for her term, her plane happened to explode on the runway or something on Saturday, so she was going to stay with us an extra day.  Normally this wouldn't be a problem (lolz, we're used to it) save that we were supposed to be going to Tommy's wake, which we could no longer do.  Instead, we spent the day at the zoo with the kid and got a fresh perspective on her leaving, the little brat. I almost felt bad she was going!

Close call.

Now the job search is back on fo' sho'.  There's plenty of accounting stuff out there (which is why I'm going back to school for it) and if I find something that pays the same (or better) I told Marf she can quit her craphouse job and kick back and relax all winter.  Woman's been working herself into a funk, I swear.

I've managed to recover emotionally from all that crap that's been going down.  Looking forward to the end of the semester and hopefully a new job so I can use some of that scratch I'll be getting to make a few purchases I've been hoping for since Marf got her iMac a few months ago.

That's enough for now, I think.  We'll see what I can come up with later.

I'm alive, I promise

Just been very busy as school has started, plus getting Aerianna ready for her pair of trips this week and next week.

Oy.

I'll write more when I have words in my brain.