Oh, you like to cook? No. I like to eat.

I always have to force myself to continue or at least it seems that way. If the deadline isn't sometime in the next hour, I'll put the thing off. I'll convince myself that I got a good start on it and that I'll finish it tomorrow.

Do it now!

Just do it now, please.

And usually the things that I think are going to take me a half a day takes about just an hour.

.

The nieces will be over for Halloween. They like dressing up in costumes but they aren't much for begging for candy but they like giving the candy out.

We're going to have some adults over too, so there are some things to do. I'll bake a few things.

I was called a showoff the other day. I was told the only reason I put such an effort into showing up for a poker game with some tasty treats is because I like to show off.

I was about to disagree when I realized that it was mostly true.

But I don't mean to showoff for myself but to show that cooking can be simple and easy and great tasting.

I'll be showing off a little on Halloween.

What so funny? Ah, nothing. I was just going to tell you to go fuck yourself but that would be rude.

"How are you doing today?"

"Fuck you."

When I'm at that desk I could see over one hundred people a day.

"How are you?"

"More than ready to get this over with."

But number 99 has little idea what has happened the 98 times before.

"How's your day going?"

"Annoyingly."

I hate when people calling into talk radio ask the host how is he. Fucker, didn't you hear the previous fourteen callers ask that same damn question? Get your real question out. Time is limited.

It bothers me being asked how I'm doing person after person. Listen, neither of us want to be here, so let's just get on with it.

"How are you doing?"

"Why? What are you going to do about it?"

My facade is usually pleasant though but I sometimes laugh at how much I just want to be an asshole.

I know it's a 2 but it also kinda looks like a 7

This week his job is my job and my job is also my job.

Although my job is never his job.

I'm pretty sure that I could make a pretty good masochist.

Every time she says. "Oh Timmy, you're such a nice man," in front of people in the lobby, I want to tell her to go fuck herself.

I overheard him say that they must be screwing up his request on purpose just to make him look bad. I wanted to rise from my chair to shout over the wall of the cube but instead I just shook my head.

If they purposefully screw up, then they just have to do it over again and the ones that aren't too busy are too lazy to be doing things twice. They couldn't give a care less about the guy. He's the fuckup.

I've told him many times that he should write foolproof paperwork - like I do, if he wants his stuff done right. "No! They should know what I mean!" is his usual reply.

Dude, you get paid four times as much as those guys. You're lucky that they admit that they know how to read.

I have no life but I'm too busy. What's up with that?

Sometimes, I'll cut and paste a long blog post so I can read it offline because I feel it's less of an imposition.

My dad was a minister for the last fourteen years of his life; I remember him talking about those retreats that some ministers go on. He said, "I used to go to try to get away from everyone telling me their problems but whenever I would go, I would still have someone telling me of their problems."

And it wasn't that he didn't care about people's problems, because he did. It's just that sometimes it just really wears you down and you'll want to take a step back so that you can take a breathe but you can't because the moment you create that distance, it gets interpreted as being uncaring.

It was past eleven at night and I was searching someone's facebook page for a photo. I shouldn't have had to be searching for it, it should have been emailed to me so that I didn't have to search for it but that didn't happen and I was slightly pissed.

Then a chat window opens.

It was a friend that I used to hang around with in high school but graduation day was the last time I had spoken to him. He mentioned that he noticed that I had also missed the reunion, that had recently took place. I corrected him that I was, indeed there, but how was he supposed to know? He wasn't and I don't have any pictures of it on my facebook page. I told him that I left early because I am still not a people person.

He then told me that I am a people person, I'm just not a party person and that one on one, I am actually great.

I told him that "great" was pushing it a bit, which I thought was ironic because I really just wanted to tell him to leave me along because I was in the middle of something.

So, I was doubly angry and facebook was partly to blame but I mostly blamed the folks that didn't email me the photo.

If the photo is so damn easy to get from facebook, then YOU get it.

(I don't mind text chatting to much, just not when I'm doing stuff)

I don't rightly know

Yeah, I uploaded those roof pictures to my iPod Touch and showed them to a couple people. I was asked a couple times, "Where'd you learn how to do that?"

When I was first asked, I replied, "I've been around."

I don't remember where I learned it. Doesn't everyone know how to frame out a new roof deck and then install a finished roof?

Isn't that something that most kids pick up on the streets?

...

I found out where he was working on my first guess. The clues I had where: Downtown Crossing and "at the end of some street, or something."

I knew of only one place that fit the description so I went in. The entrance was two or three stairs above street level, which I liked because it keeps those pesky handicapped people out.

I stepped in and was just about on top of the two girls standing at the front, acting like hostesses. I was hoping to step in, look around and come up with a plan but with the two of them there, I just had to wing it.

I wasn't even certain if it was the right place or if he was even working a Friday night shift. I didn't have many options, so I just asked if my friend was working.

I was told that indeed he was working and that he was upstairs and possibly there was even room at the bar. I walked upstairs to a crowded room. It took him awhile to notice me but when he did he poured a shot of premium tequila for me.

I would have been right at home, if I were a phony, self absorbed, young, vapid profession.

I think I remember changing seats or places at least twice and I remember being served some sort of Miller beer a couple times. I remember joining in on the conversation some lady was having with my friend. I don't remember paying but there was enough of my money missing to indicate that I did. I remember thinking that I was functional when I had left, and I wouldn't leave the bar without settling the bill so I didn't worry about it. I know I took the subway home but I don't know which station I got on at.

I've known Dave for years and years. I met him at my regular place, he would often come in before his bartender shift would start at some high price place. I heard he was a rock star behind the bar. He was good friends with most of the bartenders at my regular place, so pretty much by default that made us friends.

Most everyone, works in different places since the glory days. I'm the only one that still gets a paycheck from the same employer. Dave reminds me that things were different and that for me: things aren't so bad.

Thanks, Dave.

Bows

I'm out of half and half so I'm drinking a damn latte

When people ask me what I'm doing to do on vacation, I usually say, "Some stuff around the house."

Sometimes, I say, "Work on the roof."

There are six sections of roofs and one section has six dormers which each has their own roof, so I have twelve separate roofs.

That roof above, used to be flat. Flat roofs suck, so I added a pitch to it but where I live you aren't supposed to change the roof line without a building permit so I pitched it just a little so the change cannot be seen from ground level.

My house is the highest so the neighbors cannot see the change either.

The pitch is 2" for every foot, which is the minimum pitch for a shingled roof even though most roofers will tell you that it needs to be steeper, at least 3" per foot; contrary to what the manufacturer says.



The roof above, is a nearly flat roof, in parts, which I had been patching since I got the house over ten years ago. The life span of a rolled roof is 5 to 15 years. Patching was getting to be too much so I tore up the roof, put down plywood and installed a rolled roof.

Rolled roofing is ugly and cheap and involves a lot of roofing adhesive. Nobody can see this roof, so I wasn't terribly careful with not getting the adhesive where it shouldn't be. I would rather have too much adhesive than not enough.



I hate flat roofs. I know sometimes they cannot be avoided but I had two dormers with flat roofs that were always giving me trouble. The first one is the one in the first picture and it is in a place where if I were to tumble off the roof, I would slid down a different roof fall a foot and a half and land on another roof.

The second flat roofed dormer was in a section that if I were to tumble off the roof, I would slide down a different roof, fall twenty feet to a different roof if I were lucky. If I were lucky the fall after the slide would be thirty feet.

I don't like hieghts so I have been putting off fixing this section properly until emptying the buckets under the leaks was too much.

There is absolutely no reason in the world why these two dormer had flat roofs other than the person that installed them was a jackass.



When it comes to construction related things, I'm not a jackass so everything had to go.

That's my shadow on the lawn.



With everything gone, I had more choices on what to do, so I pitched the roof at a greater angle than the other dormer. I would say that I pitched it at a ratio of 3" for every foot but I actually pitched it at 11" over 3.5 feet, which just cannot be seen from street level.



I hated the builder ever greater when I got to see inside of things, fortunately there wasn't too much rot from water damage.



I got the felt paper down before the rain came. Now I just need to get the shingles down.

It Came from Green Valley Station

I think anything that you get in the mail that actually came from a person is at least a small treasure.

Unless, it's hate mail.

What I got wasn't hate mail. It was mailed from the far side of the country on October 1st. It was shoved through my mail slot on Tuesday the 5th.

All my mail gets delivered with the sound of "Here's your damn mail," as it crashes to the floor. It's mostly, always junk so I can't blame the mail carrier. Mostly, I just drop it into the recycle bin: unopened, unseen.

But Tuesday was a little different.

There was a birthday card size envelope, that wasn't sitting flat.



Inside the envelope was a card of the non-birthday type even though it was just six days before my birthday. Anyone else who had seen the mail that day would have wondered who was sending my a birthday card.

Inside the card was a sandwich size zip-lock bag. Inside the bag were eighteen items.



The items were double sided disks made by affixing two paper circle framed in metal back to back with tiny adhesive circles of plastic foam.



Each side of each disk had a lower case 'r'.



Most disks, if flipped on the horizontal, would show the corresponding letter upside right, but a couple didn't.



The lower case letter came in six different colors.



Yellow was suspiciously absent.



Also in the card was a note.

I know the note writer has been extremely busy but she took some time out of her day to make these little things and then send them off in the mail.

So far, I haven't failed to smile when I've looked at them.

Show & Tell(ing) what I saw

She was printing a large scale plan on the large scale plotter and it ran out of paper with three inches of plan left to print.

There was some mild PG cursing.

The plotter sits adjacent to my cube which somehow makes me its caregiver.

Instead of asking me to replace the paper, she asked where the paper was located. The paper is located in an out of the way place, so I walked her to its location. I pulled out a roll and she took it from me, even though my plan was to carry it back to the printer myself.

She opened the box and pulled out the 36 inch x 150’ roll and then pulled the spindle, that holds the paper, from the printer. That’s when things weren’t as transparent as to what to do next.

I told her what the next steps were as I was performing them, at one point she squatted down to guide the paper onto the spindle which I had standing on its end.

She’s one of the only people that will try to learn how to do things instead of just asking someone else to do it.

Her head was at crotch level as she was looking down but instead of fantasizing about oral sex, I peaked as far down her low cut top as possible. What I was able to see looked smooth and supple but then I felt a little like a cad, and like I was betraying a certain amount of trust that she had in me so I looked away.


...

I'm not the lady's biggest fan. I think she sucks as a receptionist and I think that she is a phony but that doesn't stop me from helping her out in some of her small requests.

She asked for a table tent and told me what it was to say. "Oh, he's always saying that so I think that it would be nice to give him a sign."

Whatever.

this post is for you

I was avoiding him until I couldn't wait any longer and I had to force the issue. Actually, that's not true, I didn't have to force the issue but I needed his input and him seeing me would force the issue.

He asked, "Are we okay?"

I thought "Fuck, yeah as long as you're okay with me," but what I said was, "Yeah."

,,,

He called me on Friday at about 7PM and he wasn't happy. Someone didn't get their thing approved before the deadline and parts of the event had to be modified. We weren't involved in any disapprovals because the paperwork got hung up prior to getting to us, so I wasn't too worried about it.

When he called I gave him a brief summary. He asked, "Yeah, but who's going to wear this."

I replied by naming two groups of people, the organizers and the folks that didn't approve the event. He was unconvinced and told me to keep my phone on.

About an hour later, he told me things should be all set but I could hear he wasn't happy but at least I think he was more unhappy with the situation than with me.

,,,

"You're incredibly smart and a hard worker, so I was surprised you didn't let me know."

"Yeah, I try not to bother you with everything but with this I should have at least sent you an email."

,,,

I'm not incredibly smart, I'm only surprisingly smart.

,,,

I'm usually left to myself, which is what I prefer but I do need some face time every once in awhile.

There is not one person who sees everything thing I do, there are only people who see parts and I often wonder if people know how busy I am. The only reason I want people to know how busy I am is because sometime things get delayed.

"No really. It's not that I suck at my job or that I think your request can wait, it's just that I have a lot of deadlines that are due now and your thing is only due at the end of the day."

I have a direct supervisor but he's got his own worries, although he does see the 'numbers' but the number 38 under some column doesn't always tell the story.

Click

Dude, what are you going to do? Jostle her neck and punch me for taking photos?




The guy without the bear suit charged and got clocked by the guy with the bear suit.




I only notice September was spelled wrong once I posted this photo to the internet. I had kept forgetting when what race was when so I took a photo.




Geometric.




It's like Friday night.

Creaming Method

Yeah, I use "Creaming Method" with the hope that something other than baking cums to mind.



They're better muffins than the last batch but they took three times as long to make. They did dome nicely.

They are good muffins. I think five are left.

...

It's 8PM and it's nearly 80 degrees.

...

I'll be working on Sunday for the 9to5 job. I would rather not but I need to see stuff. I've been making decisions blind and I need to stop pressing my luck; so I will go to see.

I've really got nothing to say. I just dropped by to brag about homemade muffins.

Winners Win But So Do Losers

The kid won. I should be happy. I was involved with a lot of what people saw.

It was good work but it came at a price.

Winning is better than losing, mostly.

It's been five days since the primary. I haven't spoken to anyone about it yet.

I read a quote of his in the paper. A quote he gave at his victory party. He said something like "It's a new organization, guided by some wise folks, but what really energized the campaign was the young people that got involved."

I checked his webpage every day after the win. It didn't get updated until three days later. I thought, "Too bad one of your young people couldn't find the energy to update the webpage."

I wonder if I could have guess correctly sober

I had more important things that I could have been doing but I hadn't been around for awhile so I dropped by after work and had a few and maybe a few extras. I left before 9PM. I know this because Starbucks was still open and my favorite barista was working.

She saw me, then looked away and smiled like she most always does. The customer in front of me was having trouble placing his order using English so he switched over to Spanish.

I could make out that in addition to what he ordered he also wanted water. I guessed that she explained that they had bottled water and noticed that she made a slight gesture to the display case in front of me. I waited a brief moment before I reached out a bottle of water and proffered it.

She looked at me and asked if I spoke Spanish in Spanish.

"Pequeño," I replied which was my guess at the word small.

I wonder if I could have guessed correctly sober.

I'm a sucker

I've been helping out but I have conditions. Basically, I tell them that I want all the elements and that I don't want to have to go looking for stuff. I think that my conditions are reasonable.

A lot of what they ask me to do involves photographs.

It seems that very few of them can take a photo and when they do get a good shot, it's only at a resolution that's fit for the internet and not for print media. When this first happened, I told them what I need for print but still rarely do I get what I want.

Not all pictures are worth a thousand words.

After, I climbed down from the roof, I was emptying my pockets and pulled out from my back pocket a carpenter's pencil. I don't use carpenter's pencils too often because the line they draw is often thicker than I like. The line can be close to 1/8 inch and frequently I prefer something more precise but, with roofing, a regular No. 2 just can't handle the ruinous nature of stone encrusted roofing material.

As I tossed it onto the dresser, I thought, "That tells a story."



The candidate is not yet thirty years old and most of the people helping him are as young or younger. I figured that they would all have the ability to take all sorts of photos but it appears that they are all too self-centered to take pictures of things other than what they are going to post to their own Facebook page.

It drives me nuts.

Learn to take a freak'n photo.

I've stated out loud to anyone that would listen that everyone should be taking photos of everything. We don't have to use everything but when we do need something, it's unfathomable to not have anything.

I was asked on more than one occasion to take a head from one photo and stick it onto the person's body in a different photo.

"How about you get me decent photos?"

I only swapped heads once. Fuckers.

"His eyes are kinda closed in this one. Can you open them up?"

"No."

I complained about it later to the friend that got me involved.

So they wanted me to spend about two hours digitally altering that photo when whoever was taking it could have merely asked, "Wait, could I take just one more?" They had me waiting most of the day for this picture and then they want to waste more of my time by having me drawing in eyes? Do you know the skill level involved in drawing new eyes onto someone? It's more skill than I have. Not with a deadline for tomorrow.

I used the photo unaltered except for cropping and color correction and when they saw the final product they said, "Oh, you got the eyes open" which made me even more furious.

About two weeks ago, after a lot of frustration in trying to get material from the campaign when they kept me waiting and then still didn't give me everything I needed. My friend called me and said she wouldn't have everything until after 11PM. I had been waiting since 10AM.

"I don't think I can work for you folks anymore," I calmly stated.

"I know," she replied

The next day I walked in and we started talking about the jobs I knew weren't completed and then she started talking about new jobs.

"I'm only committed to the senior piece, the shadow piece and possibly the City Hall piece."

"Oh."

"Yeah, remember? I quit."

"When was that?"

"When I was on the phone with you last night."

"You said that, "You think"-."

"Well, today I'm pretty sure. Actually, I'm positive."

But before I left I had some on the new jobs started because I'm a sucker.

...

If you're wonder what that 100% is about on the pencil, it refers to the wood used in making the pencil. FSC is the Forest Stewardship Council. I had to google it.