Random Links And Observations

I went for a walk this afternoon, and here are some things I encountered:

A tall, gangly teenaged boy on the phone, arguing with his girlfriend:

"You said you'd be there! I didn't know you were going to fuckin' Pittsburgh!"

A little further along the way, there was a tiny, yippy little dog chained up in a yard that was yipping its yippy little head off at this older woman and large young man, who were just standing there staring at it. The yipping was so high-pitched and cartoonishly annoying as to sound like a parody of a yippy dog, or as if someone had forced it to breathe in some Helium.
The woman was saying, in a soothing tone, "Just calm down. It's okay."
Meanwhile I'm thinking, "Why are you trying to reason with the dog? Just keep moving," as it was clear that they, like me, were just passing by. "Why are you standing there antagonizing the thing? Are you retarded?"
It was at that point that I noticed that the woman was not talking to the dog, but to the guy, who, despite his size, was covering his ears like a child, and was letting out a similarly childlike groan.
Oh.
Whoops.
The guy then let out a howl and started to rush the dog, which backed away and increased its yipping to even more manic levels, which caused the guy to retreat, clutch more tightly at his ears, start crying, and wailing, "Nooo-oooooo! NOOOOOOOOO!"
So, yeah.

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As a reminder to those who knew about it, and to inform those who didn't, tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.

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It was my friend Eric's birthday yesterday, and today, to celebrate, he and a bunch of his friends are hitting up a local strip club, which is having an amateur night, and he invited me along.
Unfortunately, that's "local" for him, which means it's in Delaware.
Still, I seriously considered going, since I haven't seen Eric in over seven years, and haven't been to a strip club in nearly eight.
I would actually like to go to a strip club, but I'd hate to go alone, and the circumstances of my life are such that I don't really have any friends that would or could go with me.
But ultimately I decided against it, as, under the best of circumstances, I hate driving anywhere that it takes more than an hour and a half to reach, and being in the thick of Northern Virginia/DC/Maryland traffic on a Friday afternoon is about as far from the best of circumstances as you can get.
If I'd had any sense, I would have taken today off and headed out that way during the non-peak hours.
But then, no one has ever accused me of having any sense.

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I have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday - I'm hoping I'll be put on different medication and be able to get off the insulin - which includes a complete physical. I figured that would take the better part of the morning, so I decided I might as well just take the day off.
When I was considering making the trek to Delaware, I decided that since I'd be losing the better part of my weekend I might as well take Monday and Tuesday off as well.
So now I don't have to be back to work until Thursday.
Too bad I don't have anything to do with that time off...
It turns out that I wouldn't have been able to take today off anyway, as I ended up having some meetings that I couldn't really afford to miss.

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My Boss: I'm planning for us to do an off-site team-building kind of thing pretty soon. Just a day to get out of the office and do something like go bowling, or play pool or something.
My Boss: Or we could just go someplace nice for lunch or something.
Me: Well, as far as the bowling or whatever...I pretty much suck at everything across the board, so I vote for lunch.
(We ended up, based on my suggestion, deciding to have lunch and then go to the Udvar-Hazy Center to see an IMAX movie.)

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I've started hitting stories from around 1981 in my Savage Sword of Conan reprints, and I'm finding that the nudity is starting to disappear, so it looks like my theory that The Universe got them to stop featuring nudity just as, in early puberty, I was on the cusp of becoming a regular reader was the correct explanation.

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I really wish this were real so that I could direct all of the people fruitlessly coming here in search of boob size-related knowledge to buy themselves a Droid:

The Adventures Of Jon And The Very Long Day

So I put in my one day of work today.
And what a day.
First off, Scott was out because he’s taking a Perl training class this week. He’d thought it was only Tuesday and Wednesday, so he was surprised on Tuesday when he found out that it was Tuesday-Friday.
(The Tuesday-Wednesday class is next week, and he and I are taking it together. It’s an intro to Flash.)
Simon showed up – and as close to on-time as seems to be possible for him – but he brought with him a case of Pink Eye, which, in an environment of shared resources (keyboards, phones, stripper poles, etc.) is not a welcome guest, so our boss sent him home.
That would have left just me to man every station, but fortunately we have a system that automatically e-mails people to let them know about OT slots when someone is going to be off (assuming the manager enters it into the calendar correctly, which our boss did), to which someone had responded, so I had some help.
He’ll also be in tomorrow, which is good, because if Simon is still out that means that no one from our shift will actually be there.
Of course, I’m letting the fact that this isn’t my problem be one of my birthday presents and am not worrying about it.
(As an aside, Brian called to ask if Scott is going to be in tomorrow. I said no, and as it dawned on him that he might very well be the one who has to help fill in for us, he said a lot of swear words that I won’t repeat, although I will say that one of them rhymed with gun of a witch and sounded exactly like son of a bitch.)
Even so, it proved to be an irritating day full of minor annoyances and various weird shit that made things even more annoying.
And it was long.
It didn’t help matters any that I didn’t get to eat lunch until almost 2.
Still, once it was over I drove out of there like a bat out of hell, and when I got to the last major intersection I got an early birthday present from the Universe in the form of actually hitting it when the arrow was green. In over a year of taking that route home that’s only happened one other time. Pretty much every other time I get there just after the arrow turned off and have to sit through a full cycle of those long-ass lights.
And then I was home where I eventually settled in to watch – and laugh at – new episodes of My Name is Earl and The Office.
Kathleen called (immediately after which Brian called to have the aforementioned conversation) to plan for a “birthday breakfast” tomorrow, as it would be too much of a hassle for her to go to work, come back to Leesburg for lunch, and then drive back to work.
So as a birthday present I get to wake up early on my day off! Hooray!
Honestly, though, it will be nice to see Kathleen, as I haven’t since back in December when she burst in to my place in a flurry of activity, leaving behind a living thing (the fish) in her wake.
On Saturday Scott and Stacy are taking me out for dinner because, as Stacy said, I’m a “good guy.” When I grunted, she said, “Well, we like you,” to which I responded, “Well, I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.”
Stacy had IMed me at work today to apologize for not de-hairing the couch on Sunday. I told her that it wasn’t a big deal, but she insisted it was, so I told her that I forgave her.
Joke’s on her; I didn’t forgive shit!
(Mostly because I didn’t feel there was anything to be forgiven, to paraphrase Andy – I mean Drew – from tonight’s Office.)
Anyway, now I’m here writing this.
And you’re there, reading it.