Walt-O-Matic

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Butterfly Effect. It basically goes that since we live inside a large, enclosed, inter-related system that everything has an affect on everything else, and thus a wee butterfly on another continent can merely flap its wing, and the resulting draft can cause a cascade of events that do anything from opening a black hole to causing rioting in France.

Today, I discuss how one man’s desire to get a little nookie has left me abandoned in a sea of the unfamiliar. I’ll chronicle my adventures, and in this installment expose how women are covertly entrapping men.

Long story short in order to begin my own: Meet Jeff. Jeff marries my sister. Sister puts out. Sister has baby. Other sister goes across country to see new baby and help new mom. Local niece and nephew left without adult supervision. Meet Tamara, super adult with accompanying vision. Tamara leaves husband to babysit kids… for a WEEK. Husband, me, left to fend for self. So, collapsing the plot, because Jeff got some, I won’t.

Moving on, now that you have context, I’m at home fending for myself this week. In order to help me accomplish this task, Tamara has prep’d the place. For example, I might need to dress my self for work. Here’s how she’s handled that.

That’s right, she’s labeled my dresser.

And the sad part? It helped.

There’s this story about a guy who’s trying to capture some wild pigs. Only problem is, he can’t get close to them. Anytime he does, the pigs spook and run off. So, he gets an idea. He puts some feed in the middle of a field where he sees some pigs running. The pigs eventually learn about the feed, and eat it. Each day, he brings feed and puts it there in the pile, but does not approach. Eventually the pigs learn it’s easier to go to the feed than to work for their own food. One day he skips a feeding, and the pigs return and wait for the food, eventually leaving hungry. They’ve stopped fending for themselves. In his next plan, he puts a post in the ground where the food is. The pigs aren’t sure, but approach without threat in due course. Eventually he builds a small section of stand alone fence. The pigs learn to ignore it. Over the next few days he adds sides, and eventually has a full scale pen with an open door. The pigs march in, get food, and leave. Then he adds a gate, and the pigs ignore it as well, and then one day while feeding, he marches up and closes the gate. The pigs, having given up their freedoms and knowledge of self sufficiency over time in small increments for minor conveniences now find themselves trapped, and eventually on the kitchen table.

Men are pigs, with slightly better hygiene, and with slightly worse table manners. And, it is the process of dating and marriage that snares a man until it’s far too late.

The catch, however, is that women have help. Corporate help. And by this, I mean the evil folks at Pampered Chef.

Oh sure, you may think your wife is off at a party having fun, or you’re getting a great deal, perhaps winning free door prizes in hopes of the ever elusive antifreeze filled ice-cream scoop! But no, here’s what’s really going on: they’re feeding her devices like Q supplies 007.

It’s only day one, and I’ve just discovered in my wife’s absence that my house is littered with them. After you see this with your own eyes, you won’t doubt there’s a conspiracy afoot.

I come home from work at 8:30pm and decide to cook myself some dinner. And, by dinner, I mean Spaghetti-O’s… the low maintenance food for men.

In the cupboard, I discover the one last can. So, I pull out the fancy can opener and go round and round a few times.

Now I’m male, an engineer, and fairly strong. This black blade of death contraption merely morphs the lid of the can into a frictionless surface so that when I pull out an old fashioned can opener, which I used in college when I used to be self sufficient, it would no longer work.

Those bastards! I have only ONE can of food and this genetic gender sensing device has just locked my tasty morsels from my taste buds.

Ah ha! But I’m a man, and I’ll use brute strength. So I pry and pry and pry, until I eventually succeed in ripping the frigging lid of the can, as pictured.

Now what I like about Spaghetti-O’s is that they give you a lot. What I don’t like about Spaghetti-O’s is that they cram them all into one small can, so that when you get it open, they won’t pour out.

You have to smack the bottom of the can again and again, repeatedly, until you dislodge enough to make an air bubble and they come whooshing out. That is except for the fifth of them at the bottom that refuse to budge without even more whacking.

So, there I am whacking away, only to discover that the lid of the can I was just prying off had been mysteriously scored in such a way that it had a time release. The obvious happened.

Pisses me off, cause right at this time the cats are hearing cans crashing and come over where they stand on the hind legs and stretch against my leg begging, emphasizing their innocent love by drilling their claws in with excitement.

No kitty! Down! Not for you!

Still not put off (don’t worry, I do get there), I opt to use a fork and pluck out the burr covered lid.

It was at this point I knew there was a conspiracy. One can. Evil can opener. …and now, no forks.

Seems that as this chain of events was happening, it all had to have been carefully crafted, because that’s the only way that each necessary step could be a precursor to the disaster that followed.

Part of eating Speghetti-O’s is knowing you can do something nice, like saving the labels for the local schools.

What schools do with labels, I have no idea. Maybe they save up a few metric tons and glue them together into play ground equipment, I dunno. But we’ve been saving labels for years, and I figure why stop now.

Only problem is, the zillion steak knives I bought my wife for Christmas are gone. Oh, I eventually find them, they’re on top of the fridge instead of on the counter. I can only assume that she foresaw I’d injure myself and put them out of harms way.

Like a true guy, because they were in a slightly inconvenient place, I opted to use a butter knife instead. We had at least three of them.

So, like a pro, I slid the knife under the label to break the seal as my wife so expertly does.

And, that’s when I discovered two things. First, I’m not my wife. Second, they use some really freakin’ strong glue these days. I guess the labels must be so valuable, they don’t want people running off with them willy-nilly.

It all became fairly clear to me, as I was eating my cold Spaghetti-O’s (two zaps in the microwave and I just got impatient) that the food, the new kitchen utensils, the missing forks, and the magic glue were all too elaborately coordinated.

I know I’m male, but I’m not that incompetent. Like the pigs, I’ve been trapped by warm hugs and hot meals. Now that my wife isn’t here, I don’t just miss her, I sit in the corner crying for her return.

I’ve never felt so helpless and alone. I’d want my mommy, but I’m sure she’s in on it too.

It takes considerable effort on the part of a restaurant to hit the low end of my service scale, prompting not only no tip, but a LiveJournal rant. Ruby Tuesday of Chantilly, VA — congrats. You win the big loser award.

Monday lunch started out well enough, the typical indecision about where we were going to go, when we were leaving, who was gonna go, and who’d do the driving.

For whatever reason, the developers were craving salads. Personally, I think the only way for that to happen is if someone tampers with the water. Except as we all know, developers don’t drink water. They survive on sodas, caving only to diets when chicks start pointing fingers and laughing.

Ruby Tuesday came up, as it has long been our fall back plan for the utter stupidity of Bungalow Billiard’s royal screw over in which the more one tried to be kind to other customers, the more Bungalow charged.

I managed to talk a party of six into going, and we left early, like 11:15am, as to avoid the lunch rush. I was in such a good mood that a decision had been reached, that I even offered to drive.

We got there and were seated promptly. That’s where the geometric decay curve in service started.

For the astute, you may notice that you can’t put 6 people in a car. Well, okay, you can put 6 in Alan’s car, you can barely put 4 in mine. And, like I said, I was driving.

Consequently, four of us arrived minutes early, and the other two followed. Everyone ordered water, so this was not exactly difficult to screw up.

Four at the table ordered salads, and James and I were the only two non-salad-conformists and opted to get a cheap appetizer instead as the meal.

I might point out that the point of an appetizer is to serve two functions. One, to come out -before- the meal. And, two, to come out -quickly- before the meal.

The herbivores of our group managed to fill their plates, and I mean FILL their plates and return to the table. They leisurely ate their entire plateful, and went back a second time to refill their troughs.

To which they again returned to the table and took their leisurely time eating the second helping. With plates clean, they then sat in silence as they waited for the check.

The waiter never came by to see how things were, didn’t check on the food in the kitchen, and never brought any refills, much less the check.

We eventually had to have another waiter page him over, and James canceled our appetizers (which constituted our whole meal). The waiter just nodded, didn’t say a word, didn’t check back with the kitchen, and didn’t apologize.

In fact, that’s when we realized that he hadn’t said a single thing since we ordered the water.

As luck would have it, the manager was passing by and asked us how our meal was. My intention was to let James have the floor, but something snapped, and I explained how we had ordered appetizers about an hour and a half ago, and that we hadn’t seen our waiter since, and that the guys who came in last were done eating two servings of the salad bar.

The only reason they had superior service was because it was *self* service.

The manager offered his apologies. I said it went beyond apology, that this was downright embarrassing — we were leaving the establishment, not coming back for a very long time, letting our coworkers and friends know what happened, and in the meantime were going to go across the street to Wendy’s because a fast food joint that was filled with minimum wage immigrant workers that couldn’t speak English natively treated its customers better.

It seemed to strike a nerve, especially since I was making sure my voice carried over to the neighboring tables.

The waiter who served us was cowering in the back of the restaurant. If I had had any sense, I should have made him stand by as I chewed out the manager.

Now let me show you why Ruby Tuesday gets the dingbat award. When you mess up, especially involving public relations, you make amends to those you screwed over.

The manager, instead of providing some coupon for some food at a later date, offered to pick up the table’s meal.

At first it sounds like a nice offer — but check out what this really means. It means that the people who benefited from getting food got their meal free (and salad bars are cheap); the people who got nothing, got an additional nothing. What’s up with THAT?

Anyhow, I did get a rousing thanks and pat on the back from the coworkers who got free shuttle service and a meal. I suppose that was worth something.

For the record, I kept my word. We did drive over to Wendy’s, and to be fair, I placed a complex order and timed them. The time was now 12:30pm — mid-lunch in high volume Chantilly. A number one, super-sized, with extra pickles and extra onions — total elapsed time: one minute and 15 seconds, and that included paying.

As an added perk, I found a penny on the floor. All Ruby Tuesday had was discarded gum.

With that incident, Ruby Tuesday has been added to my list of places to avoid. The list is small, but I hope that when I vote with my feet that others who hear the tale also spot the illogic and avoid putting themselves in similar jeopardy.

So, that was Monday. How was Tuesday shaping up?

Well, Tuesday started off by getting up early to go to a Microsoft event. We had an invitation to come out and see a technical presentation of Microsoft’s new development platform! It sounded exciting and we’ve been waiting weeks for it. Obviously Microsoft, the king of innovation had much to show off.

It used to be, back in the early 90’s, that when Microsoft held such an event it would flood conference centers with geeks. We’d get a pile of goodies, and when the curtains parted, we’d get a sneak preview at some amazingly cool ideas. The event was fun and we felt special.

It was at one of these conferences, I had a chance to talk with the lead guy for Microsoft’s C++ compiler. When asked about the long term plan and release cycles, he explained that the Microsoft compiler was more like Jello. When it stopped jiggling, you took advantage and shipped it. It was this hackery that led them to try a “subscription” model, which evolved into MSDN as we now know it. He further added that they had pretty much exhausted all their ideas, and while Borland was jamming on new features and innovation, Microsoft just added some simple dialogs around cut’n’paste code –nothing clever– and called them Wizards. He couldn’t believe how the masses bought into this so easily; there was no logic – nothing special – it didn’t do anything – and it was amazingly small. However, give someone a ‘wizard’ and it must be magic.

The tone was different this time, however.

I was the first to arrive in the room, and there was no one to greet people. Others came in a while later, and there was no one around. Eventually someone showed up when the room was full and said we needed to do registration, so could we all exit and re-enter?

They were serious. Rather than calling roll or passing a sign-up sheet around, we all had to get up, exit the room, stand in line, say our name, and re-enter again, taking the very seat we left.

Then the presentations started. Except they had audio problems. The speakers on one side of the room weren’t working. And rather than going for a conference room (not a conference hall or center, but a room) that was deep, they went for wide.

The speaker tried shouting, but it didn’t work. The correct solution would have been for him to go to where the speakers were malfunctioning, talk in a normal voice, and let the working speakers do their job. No such luck.

The speaker asked us what language we used, and by a show of hands, well over 99% of the room used C#. He proceeded to tell us how Visual Basic was his favorite language of choice, and spent a full hour going over the new features that were added to it.

Bad move.

VisualBASIC to a C# person is like public transit is to a bulldozer driver. Sure, if you have limited knowledge and only want to go where someone else has planned a route, you can do so with minimal effort on your part — but if you have to forge new and better ways for those that follow, you need a serious tool that puts you in control, not one that takes you along for the ride. Besides, C# has had since its beginning all the features they were showing off. And what were the new features? 1) It didn’t reformat your code (oh, like every other competing product knew not to do since the start of time). 2) You could document your code. 3) Look — wizards that gave static templated code fragments. Meanwhile the live demo we got had on a number of occasions crashed or hiccuped.

We almost busted out laughing. This was a repeat of the C++ discussion from ten years ago.

Then things moved from bad to worse. The next speaker didn’t use a microphone; he softly mumbled. His big thing was about how Visual Studio was great for doing architecture work. He spent a whole, boring, monotone, slow-paced hour drawing six boxes and five lines.

A software architect, for those not in the field, is more like the guy who comes up with the blue prints. He’s got the big vision, and a high level way that it can be implemented. The actual designer, who’s stuck with the supplies, people, and raw reality may have to make engineering tradeoffs and changes so that the equivalent structure gets built. So, for the most part, architecture is about communication about the conceptual design of a system. Get that? Communication. Visual Studio, however, is a tool. It’s the backhoe. It does the work. This is like someone putting a word processor in a screwdriver. It doesn’t belong, but it does jack the price up.

The next person up was the marketing person who was gonna tell us all about licensing this new product. And to say that they’ve over complicated, split up, recombined, renamed, and screwed with the pricing and product model so that you can’t tell which way is up is an understatement. Bottom line is that if I want all the tools at my disposal, the new price tag is $4,500. Hold tight — per person.

That’s right, my junior developer, who never got any architecture experience in college because Microsoft licensing wouldn’t let him or his professor buy a discounted educational copy, is now costing me more because I’m supplying him with tools he doesn’t need. If I’m driving to the store for a quart of milk, I do not need the booster rockets of the space shuttle. Geez.

Microsoft has got to be out of its mind. This is getting insane.

For a recap, if you buy Apple’s latest Tiger operating system you get with it *ALL* the development software and documentation Apple has for *FREE*. And for each additional developer you add, the cost per head is roughly $17.50. You read that right, less than $20.

What’s REALLY sad? The XCode tool which comes with Tiger is better!!! And if you don’t wanna switch to Apple, go with Eclipse (www.eclipse.org) — it’s FREE, commercial grade, extendable, and open source. And if you want BASIC, of all things, get RealBASIC, at least your source code will work on Windows, Apple, and Linux/FreeBSD, not just Microsoft only.

It used to be that when you attended a conference, you’d also get complimentary personal copies of the compiler. This was sheer genius. You’d go home, install it, learn it, and go to work and ask for it. Microsoft in their jab-everyone now gives away a timebomb trial copy so you can “eval” whether or not you want it. Once it explodes, it can’t be reactivated or upgraded. And let me say, Microsoft’s uninstall of such things that intertwine with an operating system doesn’t normally go smoothly. Consequently, you need to buy MORE software just to run the TRIAL software so you don’t screw up your system running THEIR software. Arrrggghh!

What is it about the world that makes Ruby Tuesday and Microsoft experiences like this so common? Why does the general public put up with it and keep going back?

As for me, I’ll be eating my cheap food while I work on my free software… oddly enough, those that take a peek seem to be really impressed with the graphics and capabilities, not of the burger, of the machine.

At work we’ve had a new member join our team of geeks, and the better part is that she’s a woman. More importantly, she’s got a sense of humor and knows how to have fun. At one of our group meetings, I passed out cans of Flarp, which is a kind of putty that makes rude fart noises when you try to push it back in its container. She got one, and she uses it. Totally cool.

Valentines rolled around, and I thought it would be fun to send her a tongue-in-cheek valentine, just to poke fun at HR.

So, I opened Word, grabbed some clip art, and wished her a Happy Platonic Valentine’s Day, making her a custom card with a very strange graphic. The text read something along the lines of “You may have noticed this isn’t the traditional heart and red construction paper, which might convey the wrong message, so I’ve opted to send you a spleen on non-glossy typing paper.” In the middle of the page was a huge blobby spleen with gross veins sticking out — it looked like a medical journal sketch.

At the bottom I included a legal disclaimer that stated that my lawyer had advised me not to include any candy or presents with the card, as it may inadvertently be used as evidence in a class action law suit against me. I had even further added in small type a legal disclosure statement that indicated the originator was already happily married and that this card did not constitute an invitation for a relationship, advances, nor any emotional favoritism, and that such cards were only being distributed to close friends with a sense of humor, and the inability to hire legal council due to lack of financial backing.

They say it’s the thought that counts, and I discovered that it takes a lot of work to show none was put into it, but I managed.

You try to do a friend a favor, and you see where it gets ya…

It all started out with a visit to my good friend Laurie at the radio station today. I thought I’d drop in, say hi, see how she was doing, chat, and maybe go to lunch. Laurie was working the booth, and there were no other DJ’s around. The radio station isn’t large, but it’s fairly popular, playing contemporary rock and pop for the metro area. Laurie’s career had brought her here, and she was more of what we call a big fish in a small pond — enough to have her own show and loyal set of listeners. He radio wit can’t be beat. I got a tour of the station, a high level explanation of the mixing board, saw where the media was kept (which was new since much of it had been moved off of CDs and onto weird funky digital tape-like cartridges with high storage capacity), and Laurie even put me on the air and chat with a few callers.

This all happened in about the span of ten minutes, just before Laurie got the emergency call. I’ve never seen her look so worried. She was highly conflicted, as abandoning her post would surely get her fired, and the issue she needed to take care of couldn’t wait. She made the decision to leave. Yes, that’s right, leave a live radio station unattended. She apologized and took off, too worried to tell me where she was going, or to remember to take her cell phone which sat by the mic. She was gone in an instant.

Soft rock came over the monitors, and it was obvious that the song was about to end. Laurie had just inserted a new DAT tape a few minutes back while we had been chatting. I leaned over the mixer, hit the green start button, the tape started rolling, and apprehensively swapped the fader positions. It had worked!!! Dumb luck, or fantastic observation skills on my part, I managed to seamlessly transition from one song to the other on the air live. I was bursting with pride.

A new idea struck me. If I kept feeding tapes, I ought to be able keep things running semi-smoothly until Laurie got back, saving her job. It was risky, but I figured she’d had little to do. Laurie is one of these friends I feel very close to and would move heaven and earth for, without her having to ask, if it were in my ability.

My pride started to fade as I screwed up the next transition. I let one song completely end and cut into the next abruptly. A forgivable mistake, but I had to make sure that didn’t happen again. The next few songs weren’t as smooth as the first, but certainly not as bad as the next. I kept hoping Laurie would realize she left her phone behind and would either return to get it, or pull over and call. I suspect in the end that she figured I had left right when she did. Perhaps if she were listening to the station, she’d know someone was still manning the booth.

That’s when I noticed the FCC log. She had been casually filling this thing out, and I went into a mad scramble to figure out what had been playing for the last 20 or 25 minutes. I don’t know music, I was just shuffling tapes, and these things weren’t labeled.

In times of stress, time tends to distort, and it felt like hours — songs were ending faster than I could keep up. That’s when two things hit me. One, I hadn’t been playing any commercials, and two, I needed more DAT tapes. I was at the end of the last one.

I scrambled into the side room to the shelf where they were stored. Unfortunately, Laurie had mentioned that she was reorganizing them, and they were unlabeled, or at least to be fair, unlabeled from my perspective. I couldn’t read the writing, and many of them had numbers written on them identifying them in blue Bic pen. I was now on a mad dash for the master look-up sheet.

I never found it. I think she took it with her when she grabbed her purse on the way out. Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, that’s when I realized that about 20 minutes of silence had been coming from the other room. I was so focused on finding that sheet that I totally overlooked we were broadcasting a dead signal.

Certain I had just gotten Laurie fired, I grabbed a tape in the middle of the collection, ran back into the control room, jammed it in, and hit the green button. Christmas music started coming out of the monitors. Tinkly bell, slow Christmas music. I didn’t know if I should stop the song in mid-play and substitute something else, or whether I should let it roll and swap out afterward. I’m certain people were wondering why in the world holiday music was playing in February. Maybe it was some weird “Year of the Rooster” thing for the Chinese New Year. The whole experience was just horrible, and it kept dragging on.

All the while, I kept asking myself, “Where the HELL are the people who run this station and why aren’t they here?”

Turns out the answer was that they have a fairly hefty commute, and the later shows actually sleep on a different schedule, so with the morning backup they couldn’t have gotten there if they wanted to, and in reality, they weren’t aware of the problem in the first place. Laurie was senior enough not to need that kind of supervision. Crap. Crap. Crap.

The guy who -was- supposed to show up called in to call in a favor of Laurie, asking her to take his slot. And so did the chick after that time slot as well. How did I know? The answering machine went off and I heard it from the manager’s office, which had the door open. I couldn’t get to the phone, and never figured out how to open the mic on the desk to let listeners know what was going on.

Seems that the two following hosts were dating, went out to eat, and managed to get food poisoning or the flu or something. The girl didn’t sound well, and left no explanation, while the first caller was a little more graphic (though polite) in his description. Apparently there’s this bug going around which causes you to feel rotten and you’re throwing up all day.

So, recapping, I’m now working a triple shift (that’s 9 hours), for a radio station I don’t listen to, on equipment I don’t understand, playing unlabeled music, for a friend I’m extremely worried about, all so that she can keep her job.

This dragged on for hours and hours in the most painfully detailed way you could possibly imagine. And the guy who was supposed to show up (at least according to the schedule) was late — possibly stuck in traffic.

Some days it just pays to stay in bed.

And there’s the problem: I was in bed. Laurie hasn’t worked in a radio station for years, to the best of my knowledge. It was all fiction.

The whole friggin’ event was one of the most detailed and realistic dreams I’ve had in my life. I’ve been graced with ever so few, and it just turns out that the day before our big demo at work, for which I have to get up for early, I had one.

That’s right. The alarm goes off, and my brain has already worked a stressful 9-hour day. My body was physically exhausted. What should have been a refreshing night’s sleep left me totally drained. I had dark rings under my eyes.

I was now fifteen minutes late for leaving for the office by the time I showered and left the house. By this time the high school kids are on the corner, which means the buses are screwing up traffic. This morning’s commute is going to be longer and uglier than normal.

Leaving the house was a bad omen. I sleepily kiss Tamara goodbye, she asks if I have my scanner, and I show it to her, get in the car, start it, …and I open the car door. I go up, the door is locked, and my keys are in the running car. I ring the doorbell, and Tamara answers it quite concerned.

“I forgot my cell phone,” I explain, as I go inside, take it off the charger, and return to the car. I close the car door, pause it, and get back out.

I ring the doorbell, as the front door is still locked, and Tamara answers, this time too kind to say anything.

“Forgot my bag,” and walked past her to the kitchen table where I snagged the bag of books and media I needed for the demo today. I go back to the car, get in, close the door, pause, too tired to think up a decent explicative, and get back out.

I ring the doorbell. Tamara’s poised at the door.

“Forgot my DVD,” and walked past her to the kitchen table where I picked up the data disc I had burned the night before.

Back to the car. However, this time I see Tamara laughing her ass off through the storm door window. Oh, she might have been feigning politeness, but deep down she was getting an amusing chuckle out of this. By now so much amusement had built up that she was bursting out in laughter.

Mornings and Walt don’t mix well. Or wait, was that Walt doesn’t mix songs well… no wait, that was the dream.

When I got to work we had far more people running through our demo area than expected. I ended up having to edit a proposal with some technical content. And even though the pacing was better than yesterday, the day felt just as long.

When it was over, our boss took us out to a happy hour. Now don’t get me wrong, I sincerely appreciate the gesture of appreciation. However, I don’t drink, and I don’t enjoy secondhand smoke, and there was certainly enough of both. I was getting a headache, partly due to the chemically enriched tobacco, and partly because I had had little to eat.

Jumping ahead, Alan came over afterward to go out to a steak dinner. Long Horn was selected, primarily because of great food, great prices, and great service.

Obviously, because I’m still writing, you can expect that at least one of those three criteria weren’t met.

Our waitress, who was new to us, indicated that she recognized us as regulars. This was a good start and was about to bump her up to the 20% tip bracket.

She took Alan’s order, then Tamara’s, and Tamara asked about splitting the check, and then the waitress split. She never took my order.

Curious to see how this was going to play out, I waited for her to return. I’d waited at the fictitious radio station, I waited all day during the demo, and now I was waiting to see if I was going to get to eat.

She came back, put a salad in front of Tamara and myself, and Tamara mentioned that I’d really like to order now. Some how she equated splitting the check as sharing a meal.

I gave my regular order, and to keep things simple, asked for Thousand Island dressing. She took two steps away from the table, literally, and asked me again, double-checking the Thousand Island dressing.

A lot of time passes, some proxy drops off the salads, and you know enough by now to guess that my salad had nothing on it that resembled Thousand Island dressing.

So, I didn’t touch it, and waited even more for her to come back and refill drinks (which never happened the whole night), and to ask how our food was. By this time my steak arrived.

The manager came over to see how we were doing, and I filled him in on what was going on. Nothing major, but this wasn’t the consistent service we normally get. He offered to fix my salad, and I accepted.

The new salad arrived, and I asked for A1 sauce for the steak. And after a long while, I heard A1 being delivered to the table across the partition from us. They, confused, apparently didn’t order A1.

It showed up at our table along with an explanation that our shrimp would be out in a little bit.

You should instantly be asking yourself if we ordered shrimp, because that’s exactly what we did. We informed the proxy waiter that we didn’t order that. He went off in a mad scramble to cancel the order with the kitchen.

From there on out, the meal went fine. It wasn’t until we asked for our check that the insanity resumed. Prior to that time, we had little to no contact with our server, the would-be recipient of our tip.

It seems that there was a problem getting the shrimp removed from our check. And this process took about 20 minutes to coax the computer to do it. The manager solved the problem by subtracting the amount of some other food item we also didn’t order. As a result, the tab had one ‘Lucky Lunch’ removed from the total.

Now, both Alan and Tamara had credit cards in their hand when they were given the bill. But this didn’t stop the waitress from running off again.

Tamara had enough time to finish her drink, hit the restroom, and return for me to tell her a story.

The story was that when we went out to Red, Hot, and Blue the night before, I went to the restroom. As I was in the stall, a dad came in with a little girl and they entered the adjacent stall. She was complaining that she had to go pee, but didn’t want to do it in the boys’ bathroom. Her dad assured her that no one was watching, and when that failed he went into a nice explanation about gender differences and why dad couldn’t go in mommy’s restroom. Turns out the complaint from the little girl had nothing to do with either, it turns out our amenities weren’t as nice as the girls’ bathroom. Our toilet paper didn’t have flowers on it. HA! And you thought I was joking in my last posts; here’s a child exposing the elaborate pampering the female gender gets. Equality my foot.

Eventually the waitress returns, collects the credit cards, and we spend another wait getting them back.

All in all, I’m ready for this day to be over. I look at the clock, and it’s not even 7:30pm yet. The night’s still young, and Hell has a treasure trove of experiences waiting for me. What next? Already TiVo recorded a show that the super bowl stomped on and I had to manually reschedule. I’m afraid to touch anything.

I just want to crawl in bed in the fetal position and wait for midnight to pass.

So in reflection, Laurie dear, in many ways this crappy day is your fault for abandoning me in a world that never really existed. If I didn’t care so much about you to save your fictitious career as a high profile DJ, I might have actually gotten some rest and been able to cope. Should you fall asleep tonight, please swing by and pick up your cell phone …which should have been a major clue to me, as you don’t have one of those either.

Argh!

As I’m sure you’re well aware, corporations have discovered that by combining sick time and vacation time into one pool, they can actually save money in the short term, while creating the illusion that you’ve got more paid vacation days.

In the good old days, you got something like two weeks of honest to God vacation — it was yours, you _earned_ it, and if you left the company you got paid for it. In addition, you had unlimited sick leave, the catch was, you had to prove you were sick if it lasted for more than three days or you had quite a number of days off compared to everyone else. When you weren’t feeling well, you’d stay home, the office wouldn’t be affected, you could return sooner, and companies were more productive over all. Then HR and CEOs got involved.

Now all that sick time comes out of your pocket. Sure, you get three weeks of combined sick and vacation, and if you don’t get sick at all (highly unlikely), you can, in theory, make out with an extra week. However, in reality, it doesn’t work like that. You get sick, your kids get sick, your car breaks, and all of the sudden these things start eating into your vacation time. The greedy corporate world loves it, because the more you’re sick, the less you are on vacation later.

But, what happens next is almost as predictable. Employees not wanting to burn their vacation time on sick leave come into the office coughing, sneezing, pushing elevator buttons, opening doors, and infecting everyone. The net result is that far more people get sick and start passing infections back and forth, so just as you start to get well, but have your immunity down, you catch it all over again. Productivity suffers, and usually HR and the CEOs are so out of the loop as not to notice.

Whenever I’m at death’s door, I always make sure to put on my best game face and wander the executive halls, shaking as many hands as possible before the Grim Reaper finally takes me. I figure if the people making the decisions are affected by their decisions, perhaps they’ll change the policy.

As an aside, I worked at a health care company that employed a lot of statisticians — these are the guys who could calculate projected profits and losses. We had unlimited sick time, but it was rare for people to use it. How did they pull this stunt? Easy. They put a water cooler right near our offices. It was easier to get a glass of purified water than it was to walk down the hall and get a Coke. It was cheaper for us, and we thought we were getting special treatment. Then I talked to HR. Nope. For the few bucks they paid to have water brought to us, keeping us healthy and hydrated, they more than made up for it in unused sick leave. In fact, by making us go home if we didn’t feel well, we were more than likely to return the next day. I got to see the statistics once, first hand; through common sense, cold-hearted calculations, and the willingness to spend a little now, the company managed to save hundreds of thousands. Very clever.

Needless to say I do not work for a health care company full of statisticians at the moment, which is why I’ve been dragging when this winterly cold weather front moved in two weeks ago. Sure, you might like global warming with the 70 degree weather in the middle of December, but when it alternates with 30 degree weather, it’s enough to put congestion in one’s sinuses. And that it did.

I’m not sure why our sinuses are designed the way they are. One minute you’re having a pounding headache where your brain is trying to claw its way out of the front of your skull, and the next they want to flush in the middle of a conversation. And, the problem with that flushing action is that if you blow your nose, it all clogs back up. You have to let it gently drain like water. It’s as if the mucus wants to do things on its own time or not at all.

Even sleeping has its creative side. You can feel fine during the day, but when the sun goes down, you feel like crap. You wake up in the morning and your throat is dry, sore, and raw. Post nasal drip, something you think would be moist and comforting, gags you, keeps you up all night, and irritates your throat to the fullest extent.

Cats don’t seem to be plagued by the same diseases we humans do. My cat, Nova, is sporting quite the attitude with me. I’m watching something on TiVo, feel my sinuses break into labor, and I go running into the restroom before my water breaks. There’s Nova lying on the sink, which is filled with water so he can help himself.

I come running in, flip up the toilet lid, and dangle my head over it. Right on cue, my nose starts leaking this clear stream of stringy liquid. Nova stares at me. The next nostril opens up. Two strands start flowing. Great, now I’m choking, it’s seeping down the back of my throat. I open my mouth, and now I look like this hellish pez dispenser dribbling goo from all holes in the front of my face. It’s like clear, melting silly putty drizzling under it’s own weight.

I’ve never seen a cat do this, but he cocked his head sideways at me, shook it gently from side to side, and had this expression on his face that clearly said, “Dude, can I tell ya something? That’s friggin’ gross…”; and with that, he cop’d an attitude, slid down from the sink, and walked out the door in the “yeah, like I can drink anything while you’re doing _that_” flip of his tail.

I don’t know whether to laugh that I just grossed out my cat, or be offended my own cat just knocked me down a peg. In all seriousness, I did the only thing I could, face streaming with goo. I yelled out to him, “Oh yeah?! Well you lick your ass!”

I suppose it’s an event like this which makes my wife think she has to drug me without my knowledge and haul me away for a week, which by the way, I think you need to know a little something about Ms. Andretti:

We’re coming down I-66, the popular hangout for cops that have finished their donut break, and we’re coming over a hill and there’s an authorized vehicles only sign — a major indicator of speed trap potential.

She starts out at 55, but as time goes on, the car starts creeping faster and faster until 60, 65, 70… and about this point I start to say something when the ticket goes from speeding to reckless.

Oh, and I’ve learned, too. You can’t say “sweetheart, you’re speeding” — that’s wrong. First of all, it’s direct and accusatory. I thought maybe I’d have to share in the blame, “we’re speeding.” No good. “Oh hell, we’re gonna die!” is right out. And “Slow Down!” sounds like I’m telling her what to do, even if preceded by a “please”, or a “please, dear God,….”

No, the correct course of action, I’ve been told, is to casually say “check your speed.” Which allows her to look at the speedometer and decide just how many MPH’s she wants to shave off, if any. I raise her awareness level, but am not a prick about it when said in this manner.

So, back to the story, we’re cruising down this hill, the flux capacitor is about to trigger, and I say ‘check your speed’ as we are doing 87. Her foot comes off the gas, and the needle drops to 85. …as we pass the police cruiser parked on the median pointing the radar gun up our engine block.

“Oh, you are *so* busted.” And I’m looking behind us for the flashing lights.

Nothing.

“What?!?” I’m looking back there, he must be waiting for break in traffic.

Still no lights.

“See?” My wife explains, “I’m driving safely. He’s not gonna get me.”

“Safe?!?” I’m still trying to mentally process that comment as I’m analyzing what in the world is going on. “Crap. He’s radioing ahead. Slow down before this next hill. There’s probably a cop car there.”

“I am slowed down,” she said as we crested the hill, the car actually leaving the pavement for a split second.

“You’re doing 75!” And, still, no lights behind us, no cops in front of us, no drag nets, and no swat team pulling in from helicopters.

“Told ya,” she insists. “It’s not like I’m driving all in and out of traffic, changing lanes, and besides, there’s no one around.”

“No one around?!?” My mouth drops open, and I point to the six cars in front of us. “Who are they?”

“I have a car’s length, maybe two.”

“You drive like this when I’m not here?” which was probably the wrong question to be asking at that moment.

“Nah,” she tries to comfort me, “I’m careful when you’re in the car.”

When I’m in the car?!? Hell, she’s the most precious thing to me, and I learn that she takes her life into her own hands just for the sporting thrill of it when I’m not around? Egads!

Then it dawns on me what happened.

“He saw you were a chick, that’s why he didn’t come after you.”

“He did not know I was a chick.”

“I bet he did. He saw me, figured red hair, nice smile, awesome bod, had to be a chick.” For guys, we don’t even have to be in a car to get a moving violation. Cops just like to play mind games.

You know those electronic signs on the side of the road that say ‘POLICE — YOUR SPEED IS’ and then it flashes your speed? You, however, are so certain a cop is going to jump out if you’re one mile over the speed limit, and write you a ticket. So you go real slow. MIND GAME. The real purpose of those devices is to measure the average flow of traffic on the road because the state is required to update the speed limits in accordance with traffic flow. However, the population sees those signs, slows down, and each year the speed limit drops lower and lower. What you should be doing is accelerating. This throws off the curve, and if enough people do it, they have to raise the speed limit. When they put them up in my neighborhood and side streets, I make multiple passes with a higher than average speed to push the bell curve to what’s reasonable.

“So you’d tell the cop that? That there was no one around, and that you were driving 85 safely.”

“Yes. Why yes I would.”

“It’d probably work, too,” I grumbled to myself. “Oh, you see officer, I had to speed, my breasts fell out of my bra and I was trying to adjust myself to put them back in, would you be a sweetie and go get me a crow bar? I may need a hand. Oh, what large hands you have,” I mocked in a deep southern accent.

“He didn’t know I was a chick!” my wife insisted.

“Well, I do,” and with all this sexual tension building from running from the cops, she was lookin’ pretty hot I might add. Luckily, I was feeling much better from the week long vacation, and could do something about it.

Unfortunately, for me, I now had to pee like a race horse.

We pulled into the drive way, I unlock the door, and go running into the bathroom. Nova’s sitting on top of the toilet reservoir as I run in, flip up the lid, and start to whip it out. He looks at the lid, my belt, and slowly draws his face up to meet mine.

His concern is obvious: ‘Oh, hell no. You are not pissing on me, I’ve seen what comes out of your face.’ Again, he snuffs me as he leaves.