Yikes

It has been over a month since my last post. I need to start writing again if for no other reason than to vent. Work sucks. It sucks for several reasons. It is poorly structured, I'm underpaid (literally underpaid as I don't make the minimum for my pay grade), the expectations are unrealistic for the workload, and my coworkers have become dependent on me in a bad way. There is no good spot for me. No matter how I move forward, there is somebody that isn't impressed by me which is terrible because everybody that works in my building is someone that I should impress. Oh well.

Wedding planning is also stressful. I can only imagine what Virginia is going through because I'm not even really handling anything. Rest assured, though the economy may be struggling the wedding planning industry is still elbow deep in the pockets of Americans. I'm looking forward to the wedding and actually started getting really excited for it just this week. I have to just have faith that everything is going to work out.

And to confound all of this negativity winter absolutely refuses to let up. We get a couple of days of beauty and then a blast of what it's like to be Canadian. Winter always wears on me. By the end of it I feel like I'm at the end of my rope. The persistent gray skies and the shortened hours of daylight grind on my psyche like coarse grit sandpaper. I yearn for that first day that I can come home, change into normal clothes, and still have enough daylight to do something, anything outside.

Pants

"Don't worry, I'm not a pervert, I'm wearing another pair of pants," the man said as he undid his brown leather belt to expose another brown leather belt of a slightly different shade. The contents of his pockets, well, half of his pockets, were strewn on the counter. He looked homeless and he acted high, but his savings account had sufficient money to qualify him as any random person. But most random people don't have two pairs of jeans on.

Just wanted to get this down. I'll finish it soon.

Jogging, Birthday, Murderer

I went jogging with Virginia tonight and I nearly died. I don't know how far we went but it was too far. Then, since I'm a genius, when we came home I decided to eat edamame with a ton of salt, which dehydrated me so badly that I had the worst headache that I've had in my entire life. Exercising is awesome, right?

It was my dad's birthday yesterday so we went out for dinner last night and Virginia and I went to lunch and a movie with them today. We saw the new Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino. It is fantastic. It is crushingly hilarious and very poignant. I'm not going to talk about the plot because I don't want to ruin it for anybody, but you should definitely go see it.

Work is going to kill me this week. Work tries to kill my every week. My job is trying to kill me. I've been seriously contemplating pursuing a career as a college professor. The varying work schedule, closer relation to my interests, and summers off seem like they would be right up my alley. Research will be done.

This post wasn't as meaningful as I'd hoped, but it's a start.

Quick Update

The last three weeks have been hell at work. I've been putting in 12-13 hour days, so I haven't exactly been motivated to do anything except sit on my arse when I get home. Not too much has changed, but I'll put out a worthwhile blog over the weekend. Check back Monday. Thanks for still checking.

Santa Visits Early

I got a hit on my website from the North Pole. No joke. Here is a screenshot.

Engaged, Freezing, Reading, Exercise, Experiment

I'm engaged! On Saturday night I proposed to Virginia and she said yes! I was a jittery mess. I had this great proposal planned out but I barely managed to stammer out the question when it came time. If I had it to do again, I would've had a stiff drink first to settle the nerves. The ring itself is pretty cool. The diamond in it is from a pendant that belonged to her great grandmother, and the band itself was custom made. It's a concave ordeal that is really unique, and she loves it which is the most important thing. We don't have any definite plans yet, but we've been throwing around October 10th around a lot. We're also probably getting married in California, but fear not because there will be a reception back here in Nebraska. Like I said, nothing is set in stone. I'll update things as we go.

So, now I sort of know what it's like to be up on Everest. Wind chill dipped to -27F Monday morning when I took Dot out to pee. I don't think that it has hit double digits all week, and I don't think that it's supposed to. We're also supposed to get an ice storm on Thursday which will be absolutely awesome. And by awesome I mean terrible. I don't typically mind cold weather, but -27F is just God being a dick. Whatever we did, we're sorry. Give us +25F just one day.

I'm still reading the Greenspan book. I was doing a great job until Car and Driver arrived. Just as I was finishing it, Popular Science showed up. I've finished both of those and motored through another thirty odd pages to put me at 130 of the five hundred some-odd pages. Hopefully I'll finish it before the year is up.

I've exercised the past two nights. It hurts. I've been running stairs in my house. I've gone up twenty times each night and called it good. If I'm getting back in shape, I have to do it as if I were conditioning for a sport. Since Mother Nature is being a rag and trying to imitate the movie The Day After Tomorrow, I'm confined to my house so stairs it is. I took tonight off because I had to run back to work after I got home and so I didn't really get home until 8:30pm. After eating, giving sufficient time for digestion, and talking to Virginia, it's now 12:22am. I'll run them again tomorrow.

I started a stock portfolio experiment last night. I put an imaginary $1000 into several different stocks and I'm going to see how well I can do. I'm probably going to just make myself mad because if I make any money, I'll wonder why I can't just have $1000 to invest for real. Oh well, hopefully I'm as stock-savvy as I like to think that I am. Bed time.

Phone, Huskers, Work, Books

Dot chewed up Virginia's phone just a short while ago. Virginia doesn't know yet because she's asleep, but she's not going to be happy. It has a touch screen and little puppy teeth don't bond well with the thin plastic. I guess that I could be happy that this is the first thing of significance that she has ruined, but I'm pretty much just pisssed. I guess it was bound to happen eventually.

The Huskers beat Colorado this Friday in dramatic fashion. Alex Henerey and his tiny little body kicked a 57-yard field goal to put the Huskers up by two. A few seconds later, Ndamakong Suh intercepted a pass and ran it in for the touchdown. I flipped out. I really don't like Colorado football fans. If I had to summarize them in one word it would be assholes. That's what makes this win so sweet. Not only did we beat them, we prevented them from going to a bowl game. That's like two wins in one. Gooooooooooo Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeddddddddddddd!

Work should be pretty easy this month. I only have five things to check for compliance as opposed to the normal nine or ten. It should be an intensely boring month.

I'd been doing pretty well with my Alan Greenspan book. I've made it through about eighty pages so far which I find impressive because it is a big book. It's very entertaining so far learning that if Greenspan hadn't attained prominence somehow he would be a complete moron. It seems that he knew everybody of importance in both his time and even now. He dated Barbara Walters. He was good friends with Ayn Rand. It's amazing what good ideas and the right connections can do. I don't mean to take anything away from the man because I think he's the most brilliant economist that I'll ever see in my life. People are laying blame on him at the moment for the current economic crapfest but I call these people Republicans and furthermore highly doubt the claim. I think if I were to dig into the facts I would find that Greenspan was barely holding things together with policy and when he resigned the house of cards toppled. Who knows. I won't for a bit because a new Car and Driver just showed up.