Quote of the Day: Charles M. Schulz

"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."


Stacey and I are celebrating our second anniversary tomorrow and that quote illustrates how she feels about my name choices for our future son.

We went to a European themed cafe on Capitol Hill yesterday for dinner to commemerate our honeymoon to Europe. The place provided a pretty authentic experience - right down to the room-temperature drinking water and my horrible faux-pas of asking for a diet coke. The guy serenading the room with slowed down Jeff Buckley songs on his guitar was the only false note.

Overall, it was a good evening if we did have to go to an American chain to get some real dessert with real American portions. Pears are not dessert.

Quote of the Day: Theodore Roosevelt

"Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft."


The other day I managed to kick a car, endure the owner getting in my face, and still maintain my flawless record of never having been in a fight. (See here for more details on my accidental pacifism.)

There's an intersection I have to cross every day on my way to work that acts as an off-ramp for I-5. It also connects First Hill with Downtown and I swear I'm going to die there. I got lightly nudged there a few months ago by a Terminix truck. So anyway, I almost got hit there again while I was crossing when the white man on the flashing "walk sign" said I was supposed to.

I had to jump back on the sidewalk to avoid being hit by a guy in a fairly nice car making a right turn so I lightly tapped the door panel with my foot. You know, the door panel that almost took my kneecaps off? It probably wasn't my smartest move but I was strategic about the kick - just hard enough to make him pay attention but not hard enough to cause damage.

Well, he didn't like that one bit so he turned around and stopped in the middle of the road when he was parallel to me. (It's strange that there was no one else around during this whole incident. Seattle has a very post-apocalyptic vibe to it at 5:30 in the morning.) He yells,"Hey, what do you think you're doing?"

"Going to work."

"Did you kick my car?"

"Did you almost run me over? Sorry, I get a little emotional when I almost die."

"Stop walking or I'll call the cops."

"Good. I'm sure they'd love to hear that you don't know what a red light means."

"You little punk, you just better there's no damage." He got out to check and discovered there wasn't. All I really noticed about him was that he was not too big and he was wearing his nametag around his neck and that he needed a shave.

"You better hope you don't run anybody over."

He ran over to the sidewalk and got in my face. "It's a free right on red."

"Not when the sign tells me to walk."

"It wasn't on."

"Yes, it was. You need to pay attention."

"Don't kick my car."

"Fine. I won't kick your car and you won't try to run me over." At this point it was clear that neither one of us wanted to fight. We were just a couple of desk jockeys with big mouths." "Sounds like we have a deal then," I said as he walked back to his car.

True, I shouldn't have given his car a love pat but I bet he pays attention next time. It's tough out here for a pedestrian. We're the forgotten collateral damage of Car-Bike war.

Quote of the Day: George Bernard Shaw

"The rational man adapts himself to the world. The irrational man tries to adapt the world to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the irrational man."


I did something weird to my ankle so now I can't use it without an intense stabbing pain shooting through it. It got so bad that I had to give up my daily walk. I have gone from walking 4-7 miles away to walking Zero and it's driving me crazy. I swear I can feel my fat cells making room as we speak. Like Charles Dickens, I need long, violent-paced walks to keep me sane.

Maybe I'm a bad person but I take an irrational and disproportional joy when I see restaurants with bad customer service go out of business. If you're located in the business district and your only response at noon when a customer walks in is to look at them like they're idiots and say, "What do you want? We can't make anything today, too many people called off," I don't think you're very serious about being a profitable enterprise. Likewise, if it's noon on a Saturday and you tell customers you're not open that day even though you're all just sitting there and the sign says Open, you're probably not going to be the Bill Gates of African restaurants in the Greater Seattle Area. It looks like we'll be trying our luck again this week at an Ethiopian place that thinks posting "Hours 4PM-11PM" on both your website and door means that people should know you don't open until 6PM if you even decide to open at all.

I have been wrestling with a philosophical question: Is it wrong to steal a private citizen's traffic cone? Let's just say, hypothetically, that this guy drives a huge company truck and parks it in front of your house everyday instead of his own so that you can't see when you're trying to back out of the driveway. Let's also say he puts a cone out behind his truck so people will think he is on official business. I don't think it'd be wrong to take because my understanding is that you have to be a public official of some kind to endow the cone with any validity. I know because my friends and I used to block off roads as pranks and people did not like it one bit. I'll let you know what my "friend" decides to do.

Remember the new car we bought about six months ago? Well, we got into an accident and now we can't open the passenger door. The only silver lining is that it wasn't my fault. Believe it or not, despite being called a "bad driver who daydreams too much," I have never been cited for any of the accidents I've been in. It's always been the other guy's fault. You can't argue with numbers like that.

That's it today. As you can see, I am a little agitated because of the no exercise thing.

Quote of the Day; Napolean Bonaparte

“The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.”

Control the chaos and win the contest to help us name our firstborn that is scheduled to take this planet by storm on March 12th (ish).

Enter your name choice below. Right now, the rules are it has to come from Shakespeare, the Bible, or be found in the lineage of Medieval European Royalty. Stacey has other ideas like that it won't get our kid swirlied every day.

Quote of the Day: W. Earl Hall

“Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day.”

I have not abandoned this blog. I am just lazy.

Quote of the Day: Anton Chekhov

"A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does."

(I am writing this very quickly so please feel free to point out any errors.)


I want to to thank my mother today for giving me a good upbringing.


Sorry, I haven't blogged a whole lot lately. Things have been kind of hectic. Life got stressful on all fronts. Work is all-consuming in a good way, homeownership is more expensive than I thought it would be, buying cars is a hassle, and I had the worst birthday of my life and that's counting the one where my roommate told me and another roommate that we were "undateable." (I won't go into why here.)


There is a situation at work that bears watching. We are moving offices because we are growing so fast. The problem is our new office might be for away from where I buy my Diet Mountain Dew every morning. I volunteered to be on the committee so I can be the master ot my own fate. We are at Defcon Five on this thing.


Am I the only ones who obessesese about getting defriended on Facebook? I know it probably bothers everybody but I focus on it so much that I eventually figure out who defriended me. I have a list of offenders. I am not sure why it bothers me so much because most of the people I would have defriended first if I did that sort of thing. I guess I like to think I am entertaining enough to keep everyone tuned in. I mean, is something I say so offensive that it's worthy of skipping the hiding option and moving straight onto defriending? I would just like to know why because I hate not knowing stuff. I understand why two single girls defriended me the week I got married, because I was no longer useful in their quest to meet guys. Other's motives are not so clear. I just hope if I run into them in real life, I don't ask them why but there is a good chance I might. (I am real tempted to name them in this post but I know there friends are among my readers so I will refrain.) Yeah, I am a little neurotic. I am also the same guy who couldn't sleep until he heard the real reason for every romantic rejection.


I have been thinking about human relationships and tribes a lot lately thanks to one of my favorite TV shows - Justified. It's about a modern day US Marshal who acts and dresses like a nineteenth century lawman who has to go back his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky because he got in trouble over an itchy trigger finger. (Harlan is famous for fueding redneck families, poverty, and a high homicide rate. It still has those all things too, only now it's meth instead of moonshine.) Anyway, throughout the show we learn that he acts like that because he used to watch old westerns while he as hiding out at his aunt's house to get away from his abusive criminal father. We also learn that no matter what he does he can't escape the ties of family, kin, and clan. In some ways that is a comforting thought. There are many tribes I consider myself a member of. There are relationships I forged in the heat of the battle of life that will never be destroyed. Even though I no longer see those people everyday, I am enough of romantic - in the old knightly sense of the word not the modern sexual sense - to think that if I saw them again we would take up right where we left off and that if I ever needed to gather together people for an epic battle they would be among the first to answer my call. I may be wrong but as Hemingway once wrote, "It's pretty to think so isn't it?"


I do hope and think it's possible for relationships to evolve without disintegrating.


Have a good week.

Quote of the Day: Oscar Wilde

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

Forgive me for not blogging more.

Quote of the Day: Jack Kerouac

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."





I honestly cannot believe people in this country are freaking out about radioactive contamination. People are actually buying Geiger counters and everything. As if we'd ever be cool enough to have our own Godzilla. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's this lack of stoicism that makes me convinced we'd tear this country apart if we are ever visited with anything as devastating as that Tsunami.





I am enjoying the Seattle sunshine today even though I am doing exactly what I would have done on a rainy afternoon: reading and writing stuff inside. I did enjoy not wearing waterlogged shoes all day because I'd gotten drenched during my morning walk like I have every day for the past two weeks.





A couple weeks ago it was brought to my attention that one of the kids in my primary class suffers from anxiety that is aggravated by having to sit next to a certain kid. I was very sympathetic because I realized that's the same effect a certain guy on the bus has on me. The brief moment that exists between him getting on the bus and deciding where to sit is full of dread. I really can't explain completey why I don't like him so much. Everyone else seems to love him so there must really be something wrong with me. I think it has to do with how he tries to make the bus a social experience. He talks non-stop and the few times I have turned my iPod off to listen to him it's either been a rant about George W. Bush or the bosses at his job who "ride his ass." He paints houses for a living and I think that has a lot to do with why people like him so much. I think the middle\upper-middle class yuppies I ride the bus with like the idea of being friends with a "salt-of-the-earth" type who works with his hands and actually has a physical product to show for his work at the end of his day. He knows I don't like him because one time I scooted away from him on the bus and he told the guy next to him, "that guys thinks he's too good for me." No, this guy just has a different concept of personal space. He likes to touch people too much - he even leans on people as he walks to his seat. My wife is the only person who is allowed to put her arm behind me on my seat.

It bothers me that I have such a visceral reaction to this guy so I am trying to work on it. I need to be a nice person. I'll never be friends with him for the simple reason that after a day of trying to talk to people who don't want to talk me I have no conversation left.


So my two resolutions this week are to be a nicer person and blog more.

Quote of the Day: Marcel Proust

"Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces."


I'll let the quote stand by itself other than to say that many traits that are strengths in one aspect of life can be weakness in others. For instance, what is the difference between being dedicated and stubborn? How about focused and obsessed? It's all a matter of perspective.


It's really raining here today in Seattle. It's the type of deluge that makes one want to repent rather quickly.


Yesterday, while doing my duty as a married member of the Mormon church by shopping at Costco, I saw a guy who appeared to be confused as to what country he was in. He seemed to be under the assumption that the free-samples regime operated under some type of barter economy. He approached a woman who was just pulling a couple mini-pizzas out of a tiny oven.

He said, "Can I have a whole one?"

"No, I have to cut them up."

"I want a whole one."

"Sorry."

"Hold on a second," he said as he walked back to his cart. "What if I trade you one of these?" He held up a brand new unopened Gogurt - the real stuff.

"I'm sorry. I can't."

"But it's a full one."

"There giving those away as a free sample in the next aisle anyway." The man said nothing in response to that as he gave up his quest and walked back to his cart dejected. I swore I saw revenge in his eyes.

Sometimes neurotics do great things and sometimes they just annoy the poor sample girl. I try to stay on the great things side of the line as much as a can but sometimes I fear I annoy life's symbolic sample girls too much.

Quote of the Day: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"


Luckily you can do that with rats. It's turns out the aptly named Roof Rat is climbing up onto our roof and crawling in through an opening in our attic that the contractor accidentally created when they put on the new roof we requested they put on before we moved in. The rats have never made it into our house because they are quite happy in the attic warming themselves and breeding. So basically, the rats are using our house as a hostel/swingers club.

We hired an exterminator to take care of them so hopefully we will be rat free in a month or so. Before I learned so much about rats I had just assumed there was someone you could call that would find and kill any unwanted pests in your house on the spot. I also assumed this person would be a very limited actor with an Austrian accent. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Like most things in life rat removal is a process with very little fireworks and much drudgery. But like life it should pay off in the end.


PS
It has been a very rough week and I am glad that our rodent problem is one problem that has an easy solution.

Quote of the Day: Jeff Giles of Newsweek

"Grunge is what happens when children of divorce get their hands on guitars."


I've been conducting a little personal grunge revival this month because there's no better tonic than a little depressing music to get you through a long gray Northwest winter without losing your sanity. If it's hard-rocking and was recorded in Seattle between 1985 and 1995 there is a good chance it's on my iPhone. I am not just talking about the old standbys like Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden but also the obscure stuff I wish I'd known about sooner like Mudhoney, Green River, the Melvins, Tad, Love Battery, Gruntruck, U-Men, and Skin Yard. I promise that's the last of the music talk today since I know it probaby interests less than one percent of my ever dwindling readership.



When I interviewed for my current job a few months ago, my CEO said, "This will be the hardest three to six months of your professional career. Are you mentally ready for that?" Of course, I said yes. Turns out he wasn't lying but neither was I. Working for a start-up in a new role is fun because you get to invent the job from scratch. Sometimes, working for a start-up in a new role is fun because you get to invent the job from scratch. It's been challenging but I have done well and I think we are turning the corner as a company even if some weeks - like the last one - make you want to jump out a window. I not only made it through, but I did it without kicking a single puppy or binge eating even once to make myself feel better. I also totally rocked a company presentation last week at our quarterly meeting.





One thing that helps get me through the day are the crazy inbound and outbound calls I deal with. Since we are too small for a receptionist every call is routed to the inside sales department which consists solely of me. This guy with a very abrasive east coast accent called up the other day and said, "Can I talk to your CEO?"


"He's not here and he is pretty busy."


"Well, I have some clients who want to use your solution and I have a question about it."


"Great, I am on the inside sales team. Why don't you tell me a little bit about it."


"No offense but you are not qualified to handle this."


"I do this every day."


"Just get me your CEO. There's a lot of money involved."


"Well if the deal warrants it I can get our EVP of Sales involved."


"Not good enough. How many people do you have there? Is your company really that big that he doesn't have the time to call me back?"


"Well, I handle the sales process for him and our EVP of Sales handles pricing for him."

"You know what, I bet you guys can't even handle my business. Either that or your CEO just doesn't care. If he did he would have called me back by now."

Guess who we are not doing business with?

I think it was a scam anyway because I looked him up on LinkedIn and he works at some rinky-dink two person company. By the way, for those of you coming here for sales tips, here's one: Insulting people is not a best practice to win their business.



I was also the annoying sales guy myself last month. I had been calling this guy at one of the largest companies in our target industry when John Doe finally said, "You know I looked at your information a little more and I think Jane Does would be your best contact. I'll give you her number and e-mail. Tell her I sent you." I did and we set up a call.

Things went downhill from there.

When I finally got her on the phone she said, "John says he doesn't know you. This sounds like a scam."

So I left a message for John and sent him an e-mail asking him to vouch for me with her CC'ed on it. He replied back a week later without CC'ing her on it and wrote, "I told you to talk to Jane, not me." I replied back that it would be helpful if he would talk to Jane again.

I talked to Jane again and she said that once again John said he had no idea who I was. I got a little frustrated so I forwarded her all our e-mail correspondence as proof and she said "all this e-mailing is making me uncomfortable" as if I was pretending to be a Nigerian prince or something. She said she would only talk to me if John was on the call too.

I emailed John once again asking for his help and this time he replied back so she could see too. He wrote, "Collin, I have already told you we are not interested in your solution."

Your guess is as good as mine.



That's it for today. I promise I will have more posts soon and they may actually be exciting next time. For instance, our bathroom remodel is almost done.

Quote of the Day: Freidric Nietzsche

"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."


If there is one subject I am well acquainted with it is "women." I was raised by one, grew up with too many to count, made friends with several, worked with many, lusted and chased after a few, had my heart broken by a couple, broke a few of their hearts myself, dated a few, and eventually married one. I must be a slow learner because even with all that exposure it took me almost thirty-two years to realize just how unfair life is to the female of the species.

It's sad but true but so much of woman's place in life and personal happiness can be directly traced back to the man she chooses to attempt to romantically attach herself to. (No, the purpose of this post is not to say that all the chicks who turned me down made a huge mistake. I mean it's true but that's not my point today.) Lately, I have just noticed that all the women I know have very different lives because they either married or want to marry very different types of men. So much can be explained by the men in their lives that it's really quite disturbing: geographical location, household income, social circles, religion (sometimes), emotional health, number of children, career paths, and almost anything else you can think of. Obviously, I am generalizing here but I think my observation holds true a majority of the time. I don't care where you fall on the independent\feminist scale either. I know plenty of smart, successful, "liberated" women who yoke themselves to misery by having and indulging a horrible taste in men. The whole thing is really not fair.

Man, I hope I never have daughters because that's too much responsibility. Now I know why men are so worried about what kind of men their daughters end up marrying. If I ever do have one, I will buy a shotgun for the sole purpose of cleaning it at opportune moments.

Anyway, it's just something I have been thinking about lately and I also thought it would be fun to herald my return to blogging with a controversial post.



On a related note, I am not too sure I am happy with being a man either this weekend because it means I feel responsible for ridding our house of the pestilence that has invaded it. We have a mouse living in the walls of our house right next to our bed. The good thing is it's only one and he hasn't gotten into our food yet. The bad thing is we can't get to him because he lives inside the wall itself and we can't find his hole. We can't put poison in the wall because then we would have to deal with a corpse. (We are not messing around with any non-lethal options because I learned my wife is not a rodent fan - to put it mildy.) We have put traps all over the place to no avail. Stacey finally just came up with a plan that's just crazy enough to work. We are going to took off the faceplate of one of the electrical sockets in our spare bedroom, shut the door, put food and traps all over the place, and wait.

Quote of the Day: Jim Rohn

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”


I know a major question on your mind as we start the new year is: Why doesn't Collin blog more? A lack of time, pure and simple. I had been pretty faithful up until three months ago when I changed jobs. I even kept it going through my courtship, engagement, and first year of marriage. I was proud of myself for not being one of those people who stops blogging or interacting online with the rest of the world when they get into a serious relationship. (You know who you are, and yes, I am looking right at you.)

My last job gave me a lot of freedom to do things like take long lunch breaks because I could be the top performer in my department without taxing my mind too much. Although I was making very good money, that got old after a while so I bailed when I was told that the management position I had been groomed to take over for the past year no longer existed due to the financial state of the company.

My new job is a lot of work and it challenges my mind everyday which is why I chose it in the the first place. Unfortunately, I am so worn out sometimes that I have had to let my fiction slide - let alone my blogging - and anyone who know me wells knows how important my fiction is. I would like to say my New Year's Resolution is to blog more but I don't like to lie when my lies can be be fact-checked so easily. I do have some longer posts coming up but tonight the following digest will have to suffice.


I am so glad the holiday season is over. I love my routine and the holidays are all about breaking up your routine. Well, I find my rut quite pleasant, thank you very much.


I did enjoy the part of the holidays where I got to eat junk food and see old friends I wished lived this Seasonally Affected City. (You also know who you are.)


My real New Years Resolution is to lose these pesky extra 20 LBS. Anything more than that will require cosmetic surgery to remove my excess skin. Turns out the body is not meant to get up to 408 LBS and then back down t0 223 LBS. It stretches out the skin a bit. (I guess gaining the additional 185 pounds is the real problem not the losing of it.)


We got a new Primary class today. I think it should be easier to handle than last year's because they are mostly boys. Boys may be rowdy but they are pack animals so all you have to do to get them to obey is establish your dominance as the alpha male. Girls, to say the least, are a little more complicated.


When did I become bad at making and keeping friends?* Stacey and I helped the only couple we met and became friends with after we got married move out of town this weekend so now we are back to square one. I am not sure what happened but I swear I used to have friends. I'm not saying I was Zack Morris or anything but I used to get invited places and I always had people to hang out all throughout my twenties but not anymore. (For instance, Stacey and I would have had nothing to do on New Year's Eve if the power-that-be hadn't asked us to chaperon the youth dance.) We are just not good at making friends with other couples and I never hear anything from my single friends anymore.** Maybe we need to be more proactive now that we are married. Being charming used to be enough but I guess now I need to plan things or something. I assume the single friends who still remember me must think we are too busy being "doing married stuff" to want to enjoy their company now and then. Stacey and I entertain each other quite well most of the time but sometimes a little variety is nice. Maybe I should throw a birthday party next month. I'll bring cheese and let you tour my house. Come on, it'll be fun.




*I am not broken up about this. I just find it to be an interesting development, I am sure a lot of it is due to us not quite adjusting to a family ward (congregation) after being in singles wards for nearly ten years. Don't worry, people still think I am witty and charming. They just don't care.

**This doesn't apply to all my single friends. Some still invite us places and I need to return the favor soon. I also realize there are some people I dropped the ball with that I need to get back in touch with.