Quote of the Day: Nigel Rees

"My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw--which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker."


Notice how today's quote is connected to yesterday's quote?


Good news. I hit and even exceeded my quota this month.

Quote of the Day: George Bernard Shaw

"A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell."

This week is pretty busy since it's the end of the month and I am in sales.

Quote of the Day: George Santayana

"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."


I missed my bus twice and now my whole is a little off. Too off to blog.

Quote of the Day: Logan Pearsall Smith

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading."


Most of you probably know about my bad habit of reading while I walk. I do it quite a bit because the number of books I want to read for outnumber the breaths I will have on this planet before I will be forced to leave it so I really have no choice from a time efficiency standpoint.

Until this morning, my bad habit had left me surprisingly unscathed. Sure, I've ran into the occasional fire hydrant and/or person but I was stronger than most of them so the damage to my person was fairly limited.

That all changed this morning as I walked to the bus stop when I decided to read the last section of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas because I was pretty into it. The problem is that my neighborhood is pretty dark at 4:30 in the morning. It's not so much a reading problem most of the time because I either read books on my iPhone or use a flashlight app to illuminate the pages of one of those old-fashioned things. It does create a bit of a walking problem because there are so many obstructions and overhanging vegetation that one is practically forced to walk in the road and jump back up on the sidewalk when a car comes your way. This solution works pretty well because there are not a lot of cars out that early. The solution fails; however, when you run into the curb because you don't see it and tumble to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

Don't worry, my iPhone is okay because I had the foresight to cushion its fall with my body. Sure, my arm may hurt, I may have gravel in my hand, and my pants may be ripped, but at least I don't have to wait another 2-4 weeks for a new phone because that would have really blown my budget.

Quote of the Day: Alexander Dumas

"All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope."


I've had a rough day. I've been hung up on, told I am no longer allowed to call one of the biggest banks in the world because I violated protocol, told my manager was going to be told about my combative attitude, and just generally kicked in the crotch for the first three hours of my day.


However, I just saw a ray of light burst through a crack in the dark wall of clouds. A guy I have been trying to track down at a very large company finally got back to me and said he wanted to talk. He turned at to be the CFO. So that was quite a coup.

Quote of the Day: My Boss

"If there's one thing I learned in life it's never trust anyone who uses your name twice the first time they meet you."


Think about it. You know he's right.


Today, I realized I am still enough of a small-town rube to be a little awed by the fact that I was talking on the phone during a conference call to a guy located in Bangalore.


I ended a phone call today by thanking a guy for taking my call on a Friday afternoon and he responded with, "Don't worry about it. The alternative was worse." I have no idea what it means but I think it is now my personal slogan.


So, this week we implemented our first budget since buying our house and I am proud to announce that I lived within my budget this week with four cents to spare which is not too shabby considering that this week contained my first trip to the land of the $15 burger - AKA the Lunchbox Laboratory in Ballard. It was worth every penny. (My personal allowance is for things like eating out at work, books, music, and trips to the store downstairs - in other words, all non-Stacey related entertainment.)


I am in the midst of waging a battle this week against my laptop's anti-virus because it insists on blocking The Seattle Times as a "dangerous website." Other than a new Big-Brother like authoritarian streak in my software that deems all knowledge dangerous, I can find no explanation. Very frustrating.

Quote of the Day: That is all today

"Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy."

That is all today.

Quote of the Day: Gottfried Keller

"A human life is a schooling for eternity."


That's it for today and tomorrow will be light as well.

Quote of the Day: Jean-Paul Satre

"Man is condemned to be free."


Some random guy yelled at me this morning for looking at my iPhone while I walked. He got in my face and said, "Wake up."

I said, "Don't tell me what to do."

"Just put your toy away and pay attention to me."

"Mind your own business."

"You could have ran into me."

"Maybe you should watch where you're going then," I said.

Things kind of deteriorated after that. There was even a point in the conversation when I uttered the very mature school-yard taunt, "Just keep walking, tough guy."

I should have acted better. I need to learn not to let random stranger telling me what to do set me off so much. (You can ask my mom. I was even worse as a teenager.)


On a side note, this country was founded by Puritans and the impulse to self-righteously regulate the behavior of others is still going strong. It's just moved from sex onto to more frivolous things like environmental causes, calorie-counting, and cell phone use. (All good things, just not good things to be preached to about by people who invade your privacy.)

Quote of the Day: Anita Brookner

"Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists."


I think I am losing my wife to a video game. We've never been very big video game people but she has been obsessed with Tetris ever since I gave her my old iPhone. It really is quite amusing because she plays and thinks about it a lot. If it gets too quiet in the house for too long, I know she is off somewhere playing Tetris. I think the whole thing is my fault because the first time she told me one of her first scores I expressed amazement that it was so much better than my highest score at my peak. She even admitted that knowing she was that much better than me is part of the attraction.

I am not too worried though because I know she'll come back to me. I liken her fling with Tetris to the brief but torrid affair I had with Scramboni when I first got my iPhone. Sure, we were very hot and heavy there for a while but the flame burned down to nothing but cold embers after just a few months.


Speaking of obsessions, I am obsessed with finding the Skillet truck http://www.skilletstreetfood.com/ but the universe is not cooperating with me. The thing moves around every day and they only publish two locations a week so it can be hard to catch. I had been trying for a while when I finally tracked it down to Pioneer Square Saturday afternoon but they were out of food when I got there. Curses.



PS
If you are curious why I am so obsessed with trying its gourmet street food let me share two words with you. "Bacon Jam." These two articles should also help.

http://mobile.seriouseats.com/2010/06/street-food-profiles-skillet-street-food-in-seattle-washington-wa.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+seriouseatsfeaturesvideos+%28Serious+Eats%29&utm_content=Google+Reader


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204456604574201934018170554.html

Quote of the Day: Jon Hammond

"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."


So Stacey and I rescued a young girl from the clutches of an evil gang of n'er-do-wells yesterday. We were our for a walk last night at a park last by our house when we saw a fairly attractive and very physically diminutive young woman trying to extricate herself from an awkward conversation with a man in a wheel chair. She kept saying, "I no understand," as she tried to walk away.

We couldn't tell if her awkwardness had to do with her lack of English or something else so Stacey made us stick around and wait. We finally walked over to her at Stacey's insistence when a gang of four guys popped up out of nowhere and surrounded her. We knew they were trouble because they were in the trouble-causing demographic of 18-24 year old males and they were wearing wife-beater under-shirts and riding BMX bikes.

When we got there we could tell she was scared as they asked her lots of questions like where she lived. I was trying to figure out what combination of words I could speak to rescue the damsel in distress without getting beat up when Stacey blurted out, "Are you okay? Do you want to come with us?" I guess I looked respectable in my business-casual attire and Stacey was obviously a girl so she jumped at the chance. She said yes and ran towards us so we walked her out of the park and home to her house. All the guys did was look at us as we walked away. It was like I was a superhero.

We learned that she was an exchange student from Spain and didn't like that the bar age in the states was 21 not 18 like it is back home. We told her to be careful here and she said she would never go out alone again. I told her it was all right to go out by herself as long as she never stopped for anyone. In America, we can't afford to be charitable even to cripples. (By the way, using the wheelchair guy as bait was genius.)

Anyway, I feel pretty good about myself.

Quote of the Day: Robert Louis Stevenson

“When I am grown to man's estate I shall be very proud and great. And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.”


I'm pretty sure my teenage self is kicking my adult self right now for not saying something like, "Run," "Say no," or "Are you going to to tell him about us?" when the guy sitting six inches away from me at lunch proposed to his girlfriend and she said nothing af first. It was kind of awkward because my friend Mark and I ended up in the pictures and we didn't even know them.

I would say that I am not so sure that a Pan-African restaurant in the company of friends is the appropriate venue for a proposal of marriage but I am in no position to cast stones since, unbeknownst to me, when I proposed there was large bird of prey ripping the entrails out of a small rodent right next to us along with a man taking pictures of the gruesome scene. If I read that in a book I would dismiss is as heavy-handed symbolism but I swear it's true.


Speaking of books, I am keeping myself busy with this today. http://iwl.me/. You just paste in a sample of your writing and it tells you who you write like. I am pretty sure it's a scam because my fiction has been compared to Stephen King, Chuck Palaniuk, Stephanie Meyer, James Joyce, and David Foster Wallace who I also apparently write like in my work e-mails. On the plus side, it did say my blog and Facebook posts read like PG Wodehouse which I take as compliment.

Quote of the Day: Pearl Buck

"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work."


I am not sure why but I haven't had much to say this week. Maybe it has something to do with being so worried about hitting quota. The summer is always a slow time in sales but things are finally starting to look up after a long month.

I have made some fun blunders at work this week. I e-mailed a guy about a project he was going to use us for next month like he told me to when we spoke two months ago. He e-mailed me right back and said all plans were off and he seemed a little put out. Apparently, his company announced that they were closing down his division a mere 27 minutes before I hit send on my email. Yeah, I looked like a real jerk. (I also kicked his dog and insulted his mother.) So feel free to use me as an example if you ever need to justify surfing the Internet at work.

I also sent a case study about how our solution can outperform everyone else's. It turns out we used his company as an example of what happens when you use our competitor's solution and get horrible performance. He seemed cool with it but I would not have sent it out if I had read it carefully and seen his company's name because it's just a little too confrontational. Curse you, Internet for ruining my attention span so much that I can't even read a five-page document all the way through. You can use me as an example for that too.

Quote of the Day: Albert Einstein

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

Man, I am having a heck of a time hitting my quota this month. This is my worst dry-spell ever.

Quote of the Day: Orson Welles

"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."


This might be a week of light posting.

Quote of the Day: F. Scott Fitzgerald

"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."



Stacey and I learned a few things last weekend.


We learned the proper way to wash a car thanks a nice homeless drunk on malt liquor. We were washing a car at the Brown Bear in Lynnwood when a guy I assume was homeless based on his lack of teeth, scruffy clothes, and the malt liquor he had concealed quite cleverly in a brown paper bag walked up and said something about putting soap on the wrong way.

"I know," I said. "The soap's not coming out of the brushes so we have to put the soap on first."

"Hey, I am a professional detailer. My buddy owns a car shop."

"That's nice," I said.

Anyway, he kept going on and on about how we were doing it wrong until Stacey finally said, "Look, we know how to do it."

"Hey," he said, "I am not a dumb____."

"Nobody said you were."

"She did. Look at her. She thinks I am a dumb____ but I am not."

"Maybe you should head on out," I suggested.

"But I'm not a dumb___."

Finally, the message of "Leave" penetrated his drunken haze but he still wouldn't let it go. The whole time he was walking away from us he yelled about he wasn't a dumb______ even if Stacey thought he was.

See, this is why we can't go out in public - Stacey picks too many fights.



We also learned not to skip church because when you do cars blow up. We left early lasts week because of illness and on the way home the tire of the car next to us exploded and sprayed rubber shrapnel all over us. When a big chunk hit our window and shook the whole car we thought we were being shot. So we won't be missing church this week come Hell, high water, or missing limbs.

Quote of the Day: Lorraine Hansberry

"Never be afraid to sit awhile and think."


That is what you will have to do right now because once again I am too busy with good things to blog today.

I will mention one thing before I go. Yesterday, I participated in a customer video where I got to talk about one of my favorite possessions. I'm not shy by any means but it was nerve-racking being under those lights. On the other hand, the make-up they made me wear was delightful.

Quote of the Day: Benjamin Disraeli

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."


I lied. The stories will be tomorrow.

Quote of the Day: Jean Cocteau

"Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying."


My Fourth of July report will be your typical bad news / good news scenario. The bad news is that my wife was near death's door for most of it. The good news is that I finally got my new iPhone 4. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. The only bad thing is that I lost all record of any texts and calls that occurred between yesterday and June 14th. (I know it's not really a big deal but I like to compulsively save all my correspondence so my future biographers will have something to pore over. I never delete anything - not even the ones where I look like a jerk.)

Don't worry, the iPhone thing works out well for Stacey too since she gets my old one. I am quite proud of myself for finally converting her over to the dark side of "digital distractions." Her phone is pretty much useless right now anyway so it's for the best.

We had a pretty laid back Fourth. Since she wasn't feeling well and I got up way too early, we went to bed before the Fireworks started and I was okay with continuing my tradition of not going anywhere near crowds on the 4th.

We also had brunch at the Portage Bay Cafe for the first time, once again proving that organic food can be just as fatty and delicious as the regular stuff.

I did some manly things this weekend I need to brag about. I changed the locks on two doors after Stacey showed me how and I cooked animal flesh over a propane grill just like my ancestors used to.

Stay tuned for tomorrow when I'll tell you about the time we almost died and the time Stacey picked a fight with a homeless man.

Quote of the Day: Calvin Coolidge

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”


I figured I should end the week with a positive quote because I learned that "A Maxim a Day Keeps Bad Feelings Away," at least if you're a man. http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture/a-maxim-a-day-keeps-bad-feelings-away-18232/


I just got back from a team lunch where we were waited on by the worst waiter in the world. I am not sure what we did but he hated us so much he did nothing but argue the whole time.

There were five of us so we took two tables but apparently we took the wrong seats. The first words out of his mouth were, "In my experience I have found that people prefer to sit on this end." He pointed to the empty seat on the far end and shook his head when we didn't move. "I'm just trying to be helpful."

Then he argued with us about what kind of oysters to get. "Sir, you don't want a baker's dozen. Those are all different kinds. You should all eat the same kind so you can compare notes afterwards."
"I'll be eating not talking," said my boss.
"Sir you are not listening to me. What if the lady doesn't like big salty oysters?"
"Fine, just bring me whatever you want."

My co-worker ordered a burger well-done which also displeased him. "Can I talk you out of the well done? How about medium well?"
"No, I want well done."
"Well, I hope you don't have a time constraint."

The rest of the meal followed a similar course when he took forever to bring our food out, threw it onto the plates with no sense of presentation, smashed my crab salad, and then huffed about the amount of black pepper I put on it.

Somebody obviously needs to read his maxims. (The pithy little sayings, not the magazine.)

Quote of the Day: Kingsley Amis

"Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.”


This will be a bit of a grab-bag since I haven't written in a while.


As some readers of this blog may know, I have lost roughly 185 pounds in the past year and a half. I once topped out at 408 pounds and for the last couple months I have been hovering anywhere from 220-205. I am fairly tall so I wear it well but I am getting close to committing to taking those last 20 pounds off in the next six months as a matter of principle. The only thing stopping me is that I know it will require me to take my pain and sacrifice game to the next level.


The only drawback to losing so much weight is that I can no longer eat a triple cheeseburger without immense pain later even if it is from Zippy's. Next time I will not give into peer
pressure.


One of the great disappointments in life is that "secret sauce" is always nothing more than Thousand Island dressing. I think the day I realized that was always going to be the case was the day I became an adult.


A few nights ago, some guy showed up at my door trying to sell me an alarm system. He gave me a huge song and dance about waiving all types of fees. I asked him to leave some literature. He said he couldn't because I had to decide right then. He said, "We either do it now or part ways as friends."
I said, "Let's just part ways." Seriously, what a horrible sales pitch. As if I would make a decision like that in five minutes without consulting my wife.


Speaking of wives, last weekend Stacey and I went for a walk before heading to Fred Meyer to buy yet more stuff more the house. As we were leaving the store a woman stopped us and said, "I just want to say..." I was pretty sure she was going to lecture me about who-knows-what so I was pleasantly surprised when she said, "You guys are a really cute couple. I saw you walking by my house earlier and it was so nice." Sorry to leave on a sappy not but that's how I roll today.