unlike my last bit, i think i have a legit corporate america gripe…

…’cause sunday found me at my fucking OFFICE for a couple of hours.

today was a “deceptive” day when it came to the weather – it looked gorgeous…not a cloud in the sky…and keep in mind that LAST week we were in the eighties. today? barely fifty, with a wind…but at least it LOOKED pretty, right?

most people who know me know i tend to be a wee bit animated when i speak. i pace. i gesture. it’s what brings my voice “to life” in my eyes, and it’s what helps make me a successful salesperson over the phone, provided i am allowed to pace and gesture (and have loud music going), which fortunately they cover me on two outta three at my inc.com gig by setting my desk up so i can pace and type with a desk height of exactly thirty-one inches…

…and i only know this ’cause they had a nurse come in and measure what the appropriate desk height would be for me to do all this at once.

the problem comes when you move desks – typically you get a weeks notice, and you have to submit for them to re-measure you unless you happen to have saved the email from way back when when they did it the first time. i, oddly enough, still have the email.

but i also, oddly enough, was just offered my new gig three hours before i left on thursday AND took friday off, which means i would have to submit my “facilities request” on monday and they would move me (best case scenario) THIS thursday, but most likely next thursday.

at this point i would like to interject a little history lesson…

when i worked at star tickets doing concerts my day gig was in the office, and part of that was making sure that everybody’s computer worked. if they had asked me on monday to fix something and i had said, “i’ll get to it by thursday” (let alone by next thursday) i would have been shit-canned pretty quick. but that’s small company america, versus corporate america. in the latter, they just shrug their shoulders and say, “these things take time”.

see, i didn’t have the wrong JOB, i just had it in the wrong PLACE. yes, that’s my excuse…

now in this case you’re thinking, “but you can STILL work, you just have to sit down…”. good theory – except that the same nurse will also make sure that you have your desk at JUST the right height to be comfortable while seated if you asked her to. the girl i’m taking over for asked – and got it.

she was also five foot nothing. AWESOME girlfriend height for me – but not so much if i have to sit and the chica’s desk. i couldn’t even sit with my legs under the thing…it squished my knees. and so it would be, until this thursday…or next thursday…

…or today, when i thought about it and realized i had watched them take apart a desk and set the height a time or two. takes one guy with decent upper body strength, and a cordless drill with a screwdriver bit.

i can cover that.

so up to the office i went, drill stashed in my backpack, and when i start my new job tomorrow my desk is set up perfectly for me from the word “go”. no paperwork is needed, and if any has been submitted, one of the guys i work out with works in that department so i’ll make sure it “disappears” before anyone notices or complains.

sometimes the redneck way IS the right way, dang it! pass me the bourbon!

i did see a card i thought summed up today nicely…

…it was in the section marked “anti-valentines day cards”.

it showed a little kid, probably around ten, in a 1977-era photo, holding out a big home made valentine. below the pic it said, “the next day little timmy got his heart broken” – and on the inside in child-like print it said “valentine’s day sucks!”.

amen.

i’m not even SINGLE and i feel that way. i’ve had a couple of my female friends ask me what they should get their guy. i told them all the same thing, but none of them listened:

nothing…it really doesn’t matter. this isn’t our holiday…this is y’all’s holiday.

for us, you don’t need to get anything. romantic gift for a guy? doesn’t really exist – and it’s kinda uncomfortable for most to receive. just enjoy a nice dinner, have sex with us, and let us crash out in peace – and all is well. no purchase required.

we had it ruined for us, as i said previously, by a pretty girl somewhere along the line.

note that i use the word “girl” instead of the word “woman”. it’s cause i’m referring to a minor here, folks.

(at this point i would like to add that neither i nor the sponsors of astrowhore.org condone, endorse, or recommend any sort of romantic or sexual relation ship with anyone under the age of eighteen; unless, of course, you’re under eighteen…or she’s really hot and has a convincing fake i.d.)

no, i’m talking about leftover childhood trauma. that’s what got the guys mumbling and panicky in the bit i did yesterday. see, somewhere back when they were a kid, they got a girl they had a crush on a card, and decorated it up, and tried not to be TOO sissy, but still express some ten-year-old equivalent of romantic interest, and things did not go well…

“the next day little timmy got his heart broken – valentine’s day sucks!”.

so now the same guy has to go out and go through it all again, and the panic sets in. he’s ten all over again. at least, that’s my theory…and i’m sticking to it.

we get two entries today due to buzzed out text messages…
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today is what i call “gift card day”…
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i left something on the dangle here…

…as in what happened the rest of wednesday.

so, the plumber shows up, and i give him the ME approved version of what’s up…

(i.e. the short version)

thursday night had water leaking out, ran drano and all was well for a day or so, then it came back, so i did more drano and a drain snake, then all was well until last night, so i repeated and today (wednesday) came the great flood…

in a way i feel like having the plumber over was a waste of money. thinking he might need access to the back end of the shower fixtures, i realized that the wall right behind them was the closet in my “stacked with stuff” guest room. thirty minutes later i had the closet open and emptied, and discovered that the wall had already been cut open (i assume by other plumbers past) and then taped back in place with duct tape. i should have looked, but waited for pipe boy to arrive.

the first thing he asked was if we had access to the back end, and when i showed him, he had me pull off the tape and pull out the chunk of wall…and that’s where the source of that mornings tsunami became apparent – you saw the elbow joint of the tub drain, and the t coming out of the slab, and connecting them was four inches of DEAD FUCKING AIR and nothing more…but a four inch chunk of pipe lay off to the side.

“well, that’ll be simple”, i commented.

“not really, bro…this is an expensive job”, pipe boy replied, “like around six HUNDRED dollars or so…”

“SIX HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS?!?!?’, was my response, in a not so “indoor voice” – “for FOUR FUCKING INCHES?!?!? dude, this is plumbing, not penile enlargement surgery!!!”

(not that i need such a thing, i’d like to add)

“well, that MIGHT be the source of the leak…but it might be further down. what we have to do is chisel up your slab, and then crack this iron pipe off the main in the slab, which given the age of your house is probably lead…so that will take some doing. then we re-run the pipe from the main up, reset this t-joint, and re-connect to the tub there. that four inch chunk probably separated due to the house settling, but might not be the actual cause of your water leak…”, pipe boy rambled off.

“ya know, we’re not in vegas or anything…”, i quickly replied, “and while there is a chance that the source of the water i had to mop up this morning COULD be further down in the slab, or along the main, or an underground spring guarded by leprechauns, or whatever, i think the smart money is it came from the water’s inability to JUMP from the drain on the shower to the pipe from the slab…water doesn’t JUMP well unless there’s some pressure on it, which a drain wouldn’t have…so i think it’s safe to bet the farm on THIS being the source of the leak. i tell you what…how ’bout i pay you $100, you slap a pipe to connect those two, and if the leak persists i’ll call y’all back and we can explore the $600 option…deal?”

“no can do, dude”, he responded, “we’ve got to go the full way on this”.

“then you can go”, i said, and paid the $35.

and from there the day got longer than this entry…so i’ll finish this up tomorrow.

2020 UPDATE: since i have no idea if i have the wrap up, i connected the two myself, which couldn’t be done with straight pipe (not that even) or accordion pipe (not that varied) so i used car radiator hose (no bullshit) because it was flexible enough to do the job and i know damn well the shower never gets hotter than engine coolant. up to code? no. workable? yes. and the problem was solved…for twelve dollars. fourteen years later it’s still good, i might add. fuck that $600 bullshit.

11/20/2006: “”

tell ‘ya little story ’bout my boy named shane…

…cool motherfucker, typically drunk and profane

this last weekend went to watch u.f.c.
when from outside came a scream, not of glee

“fuck you bitch, you fucked my best friend…
…get outta here or i’m gonna call the law…”

well the next thing ya here was a shot gun getting racked
damn el camino took a shot in the back
smoking out its tires
tearing down a road not paved
never would have happened if the bitch had behaved!!!

and that was just SATURDAY in the trailer park. i can’t WAIT to hang out there for at least part of turkey day!!! that’s when his neighbors can drink all they want and not have to go to work or church the next day!!!

either that, or the parent i dealt with yesterday was just WAY paranoid…

…it all has to deal with a little addiction of mine i don’t talk about too often.

claw machines

you know – those machines you put a dollar in, and you get to make the little crane thing drop down and pick up stuffed animals? well, around ten years ago i dated a girl that was the fucking MASTER at these things. she taught me how to look at the machine and see if anything was actually retrievable, since when they load them they actually do it in a fairly specific way that makes it to where you actually CAN’T get anything out of them.

i didn’t use this new-found information back then – but ten years later i started to, and we ended up with lots of muppets around the house. most were eventually given to charity. and for the most part i don’t play them any more, but occasionally i get the jones and yesterday was one such day ’since i had a quarter in my pocket.

across from the typical machines is one that’s set up specifically for kids. the claw has a suction cup, and let’s you play with a token the store folk give you over and over again until you actually score a prize. a woman was in there with her daughter playing it and she won a little necklace at the same time i won a stuffed animal.

but her necklace came out broken.

the muppet did not.

needless to say the little girl was upset. she went back in to the store to see if they would give her another token while her mom waited by the machine. i heard this all behind me, so i turned around and held the cat out to her mom and said, “here, she can have this – i just won it to see if i could.”

she shook her head and said, “no – we don’t take things from strangers”. this was the mom saying this. sounding like she was reciting what her mom told her. with no kid in ear shot, i might add. my response probably needed some mental editing before i said it, but it didn’t receive that courtesy run through the filter.

”lady, i just pulled in out of the machine right in front of you…it’s not like i loaded it with razor blades and drugs…”

okay, that didn’t go over well. and i probably shouldn’t have wrapped up with…

”…and it’s not like i’m cruising the internet trying to pick up your girl, i’m just trying to balance out claw machine injustice!”

now she looked scared. i just smiled and left. probably not the best way to handle it, but at least no cops got involved, right?

no, not her…
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my mom was a big believer of the “three R’s”…
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for all those curious about the lifespan of a convertible top motor in my world, i now know the answer…

…about seven weeks.

give or take.

fuck me.

the cool thing about astrowhore is not only does it allow you, the reader, to keep up with my life without ever having to actually talk to me if you don’t wanna (and going off my phone usage and social calendar, most of you prefer just hitting the site) but it also allows me to remember exactly WHEN certain events occurred, since i talk about some of them on here.

for example, i couldn’t remember how old copper was when somebody asked me, but i know i got her summer of ’92 (thanks to the site) and i know she was around three then, putting her at around seven now (same age as buffi, give or take). i know what day i got my current car (april 23rd of this year) and i know that six weeks later the top motor went out.

i also remember what a pain it was to find a place to install the fucker once i got one off eBay – a used one that apparently had…oh…around EIGHT WEEKS left to live.

i know this because i found the entry referencing the day i got it fixed (july 15th) and counted…six weeks for the first fucker, eight weeks for the second. there a couple on eBay right now for $250 (the one i got was listed at $150, and i talked him down to $125 including shipping, but then had to pay another $115 to get it installed) and it only lived for eight weeks. i’m thinking if a new one is $350 or less, i’ll pay it just to get what i figure must be a year warranty or more (i might ask the garage how much it will cost if they get it versus going through a dealer) and then that will be my next big expenditure once i get out of the hole this weekend’s major expenditure set me in…

…but never mind that now.

on the up side, it’s only half broken – yesterday i went to put the top back before we went to austin, and it stopped 90% of the way back because the cd changer had slid forward and was blocking it. when i moved the changer, it wouldn’t go down anymore even though nothing was in the way – but it would go back up. once i got all clear, checked the motor for something leaning on it, etc, it still wouldn’t go down – but it will go up on it’s own…

so, i have to release the pressure and put it down by hand, but it will go up in full auto mode.

(kinda like parts of my anatomy – but never mind that now)

so, it’s only half broke – but needs some fixing. i’ll get the guys at the garage to check it out before i go and buy parts…but that will still have to wait around four weeks for me to save up money. fall’s a-comin’…i can’t be without topless driving once the weather cools off just enough, can i?