that was quick.

so last night, in my pissiness, I logged onto monster, updated my resume and sent a few off... figured nothing would come of it, at least not anytime soon. one of them was a headhunter agency, and they called me today. I have an interview friday. not for any specific job, per se, but to be added to their files for potential positions. would be truly ironic if I ended up back at my current employer, since they've used this agency in the past... there's just something satisfying about the idea of having some leverage. 'cos really, nothing would hurt herman more than me putting in two weeks notice and disappearing. and yet they couldn't retaliate or anything if I put in the proper notice and don't burn any bridges on my way out. I even have the perfect reason lined up... "working in my father's shadow causes too much politicking, I'd rather stand on my own two feet."

does have me wondering tho... other than the part time job in college, this is the only "real" job I've ever had. I've had one employer, in five or six different capacities. my experience is in purchasing, so that's pretty straight forward... but I would like to get out of plumbing entirely. and other than the interview in canada (which did produce a job offer, just no immigration guarantees), I've never had to interview for anything. every job I've had has been awarded to me directly or indirectly through nepotism.

this has been a season of change. new bride, new apartment, maybe a new job. it's exciting, and a bit scary.

stupid logic.

so my dad has convinced me to NOT be a hothead about the whole work thingy. he's gonna pick up the truck for me while I sit through the stupid meeting... and I should just send herman a little email explaining how I don't appreciate the way he's treating me, and cc it to his boss. "killing with kindness" as my dad says... best way to get the better of someone is to not show anger. seems dumb to me. a brick through the windshield is far more direct, but oh well.

I got on monster last night and sent off a few resumes tho. couldn't hurt to have a contingency plan.

so uhh, anyone hiring in the seattle area?

it's unofficial but plainly obvious that my boss, hereby known as herman goering (both for his fascist tendencies as well as the fact that he has no balls and belongs in a dress), is trying to run me off. it's assumed this is because I tried to leave him high and dry with the alaska thing. he's claiming it's because I snitched on him to corporate about his 25 hour work weeks.

and yes, I was trying to get the fuck out BECAUSE of his 25 hour work weeks, among other things. the favoritism of the skank dispatch girl, the rapid mood swings, the lack of any effort put forth, the hypocritical "do as I say and not as I do" attitude, the petulant abuse of power... he's a horrible boss. I've had some really good, fair, hard working bosses, and I've had some shithead bosses. and herman is queen shithead.

it's summertime, so there are a lot of people on vacation. and by "a lot" I mean three. one showroom, one warehouse (the weakest link who does nothing anyway), and one sales counter. I asked if I could get off early a few hours on wednesday for moving purposes. I was denied. so I made arrangements for moving thursday after work, knowing I got off at 3 anyway. I made all my plans for the 1st, reserved a rental truck, etc. and since I was told I could use vacation for friday only, I'm also taking friday off. friday was kosher because it's before a long weekend or some such bullshit. and also because he knew it wouldn't help me in my move, being a full two days after I'm supposed to be out of my present place. I'm taking it anyway. fuck him.

so I tell him today I have to pick up my truck at 4, and will thus be leaving no later than 3 when my shift ends. he tells me I have to stay until 5. why? because we were supposed to have a sales meeting (that doesn't even affect me) at 6am, and two weeks ago I threw my name in with the other people who requested it move to after work. he never said that was okay, and we all assumed it would be at 6am anyway. in fact, he STILL has not said the meeting it after work. but now that he knows I needed to be off, who wants to bet me a crisp twenty dollar bill he now decides to change the meeting to afternoon?

fuck him. I'm leaving at 3. I will have put in my 8 hours and gave him ample warning that I needed to be elsewhere. he can try to write me up for it if he wants. he's being a petulant ass. he's blaming me for shit he caused to himself, and he's just lucky his boss is out of town this week. if he keeps this shut up, I'm gonna nail his ass to a fucking cross.

I don't care anymore. I'm gonna start looking for other work. or maybe if I'm really lucky, I'll have some sort of lawsuit on my hands.

da big game.

miyuki and I went to see the mariners friday night so I could watch my newest man-crush pitch... they lost in twelve innings.

pics are here.

now corinne can quit complaining...

wedding pics

honeymoon porn to follow.

why I hate statistics.

one of the warehouse monkeys was asking some "trivia" earlier and feeling superior because no one knew the answer... the question? "who is the most recognisable musician ever?"

there are SO many problems with that question. the answer "according to the radio" is johnny cash. now I'll grant that the man in black is an icon, but I'd be hard pressed to slot him above the likes of sinatra, beethoven, lennon, michael jackson or elvis.

so how is this quantified? asking people on the street who the first musician they thought of was? are we limiting to 20th century only? is there a MINIMUM age requirement (surely britney spears has had more press in the past five years than jerry lee lewis had in his entire life, just based on the VOLUME of press nowadays). who was the demographic polled?

the answer to this question, hands down, SHOULD BE elvis. elvis is universally recognised all over the planet. you see the likeness of the jumpsuit and crap in EVERYTHING, movies, cartoons, etc. and there's more conspiracy theorists and impersonators for him and his life than nearly anyone else...

but according to the warehouse monkey, it's johnny cash... the RADIO said so! and if I didn't believe him, I just need to look it up!

right back to the top of my shit list...

everyone remember the crazy bitch landlady I had in redmond? she's STILL causing me problems.

miyuki and I got the kickass apartment in ballard. but we have to pay an extra $300 pet deposit because of the redmond bitch. when they checked references, she claimed I left the unit smelling of cat piss. uhh, no, crazy bitch, that was the foot of MOLD crawling up the walls.

so she's cost me another $300. and nearly cost me the apartment. also hit a minor snag with the bitch ex-wife's inability to pay her car payments, but I was able to talk my way out of that one. can't get around the extra pet deposit tho.

I really want that "woman's" brain to hemmorhage. what pisses me off the most is she considers herself a pious, christian woman... and she's the fucking antichrist. seriously, if I had to choose who was more deserving of getting kicked in the nuts between her and dubya? her, hands down. she is pure fucking evil.

and there's nothing I can do about the damn slander. she has sullied my credit report with flat out LIES and I can't do a bloody thing about it.

really, is inoperable brain cancer for those deserving of it REALLY so much to ask?

and people wonder why I'm not religious...

why do people have to suck so much?

talked to GMAC about the ex's car. you know, the one that's under my name. she hasn't made a payment in three months. as of the end of today, a balance of $874.71 is owed on it, to cover the payments for june, july and august as well as all the late fees.

I've sent her an email giving her until 2pm to pay it. if she doesn't, I'll be forced to make the payments and take the car. miyuki's not thrilled about the idea of taking on a second car payment, but I'm not thrilled of the idea of not getting any credit or mortgage for seven years if they repossess the car.

I told her she'd have until next saturday to make other arrangements for travel. I have sincere doubts she'd ever give up the car, even if I did just drop $900 into it. if it comes to that, I'll report the damn thing as stolen. technically, it is. the car is in my name, I made the payments, and she has it without my permission. paying the impound fee would be worth having her sit in jail for a few days... 'cos it's not like she'd be able to post bail. heh.

so much shit to deal with... so little reason for it.

yeah, so THAT happened...

miyuki is doomed.

a mostly trouble-free wedding ceremony, punctuated by my driving us to the wrong courthouse... we got there eventually, and had a really cool judge (he was wearing a hawaiian shirt and a bolo tie!). we got a little speech about canoeing, too...

went out for a fancy dinner at anthony's... watched BJ drink about the girliest drink on earth (all it needed was a little paper umbrella). sent everyone off around 9pm and crashed shortly after. did get to watch a bit of felix pitching as well, which was nice. forgot about ordering our matching mariners jerseys until after the sale ended, so we didn't get them.

our "honeymoon" was spent driving all over seattle... submitting insurance forms at corporate so miyuki will have insurance, dropping off the rental app for a kickass apartment in ballard, getting copies of our marriage certificate, getting miyuki a social security number... we had pizza at romio's and a wonderful indian dinner. we also went to see broken flowers last night, which was most excellent, and bought us some media... sin city, stripes, the jerk and strongbad emails dvds, and the new cds by aqualung, turin brakes and the arcade fire ep...

today is my first day back at work. miyuki's been left at home alone with the babies. I certainly hope the babies are still there when I get home...

I need a bigger car.

to help put miyuki's mind at ease, we've started packing the car tonight, so she can have an idea of how much will fit.

I never realised how much shit I pare down each time I move. she's lived in one place for 25 years. there's too much crap. I told her we'll have to come back for the rest at a later date, and she needs to prioritise what's important. hopefully we'll have her travel docs by thanksmurder and can come up in october for the rest of it. there's no way in hell all of this will fit. the trunk is stuffed and the backseat of the car is mostly full. enough room for maybe four or five more boxes... I have this great fear that I'm going to have to unpack the car so a triage can be performed on the boxes already packed... non-essentials pulled out, replaced by more important things, and packed back into the car.

glad we started doing this tonight instead of tomorrow morning. I was hoping to be on the road by 10am. wouldn't happen had we waited til 8 to start packing...

at least dinner was tasty. everyone kinda kicked in to help make satay chicken skewers. I was in charge of the skewering of the poultry and making the rice. woo. I helped with the sauce too... I'm a big boy!

heh.

philosophy humour in dilbert.

I bet 80% of the dilbert reading population has no idea who the hell xeno was...

how will you be remembered?

had an interesting experience tonight. a coworker of mine, the lead warehouse monkey, if you will, had his last day. we'd known he was going to be leaving eventually all along. he's a college grad who was just biding his time to get his pilots license so he could join the air force. he worked a shit job, and being ridiculously overqualified, was easily the best guy we had in the warehouse. but on top of that, he's just a legitimately nice guy. he's a prankster in a harmless way and everyone gets along with him.

I offered to buy him a beer after work to give him a proper send off. I asked everyone else to come along with us. it's a tradition, isn't it? go out for beers one someone's last day.

there are fourteen people at our branch. four showed up, including the guest of honour. me, him, and the two youngest warehouse kids (they're like 24). no one else bothered. they had better things to do or family obligations or whatever. they couldn't even stop by for twenty minutes to say good-by.

that just doesn't seem right to me. here the most likeable person at the branch is leaving, and no one cares.

it kicked my paranoia into overdrive, too. I know I rub people the wrong way. I'm caustic and I'm an ass and most people don't like me. for that very reason, I try to avoid this kind of situation. on two occasions I've even called in sick on my "last day" just to avoid the embarassment of realising no one gave a shit, or worse yet, was happy I'm gone. I've been on the other end of those situations too (let's drink to that ass not working with us anymore!) and find them really uncomfortable.

just has me wondering what it says about the people I work with that they can't even be bothered to go out and wish a coworker well, when this guy has always been supportive and friendly to the rest of us.

boy I'm glad I got kicked out of the boy scouts...

was just reading a story about an eight year old girl was killed after being struck by a TREE at a boy scout camp in jersey. this brings the death toll for BSA affiliated people to ten on the year.

gee, you think maybe they're being punished for kicking out the gays and atheists?

we all know I'm an ass, but I find this to be hilarious irony. the righteous boy scouts are being razed by freak acts of nature... four killed by lightning, another killed by a tree snapping and falling for no reason whatsoever, plus another five dying in drowning or hiking accidents.

now if only the republican party would start experience some of that smiting....

r kelly should go back to making sex tapes...

now that I have cable again, I have mtv. and mtv still sucks ass. even the digital mtv channels are beginning to suck more ass.

I've seen the video for r kelly's "trapped in a closet" a couple times already in the twenty or so minutes I've had mtv hits on. and I gotta say, that is THE ABSOLUTE WORST SONG EVER WRITTEN! all I can think of when trying to listen to it is the family guy episode that parodies randy newman (you know, the post apocolyptic one where they go searching for twinkie factory?).. such inanely stupid lyrics...

has me wondering if there's still a problem with collusion between the recording industry and the radio/video people. 'cos I really can't imagine anyone actually WANTING to play that crap without a briefcase full of cash, coke or midget hookers trading hands...

king felix.

check out this line:

8.0 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, W

the mariners may suck, but felix hernandez is the friggin' second coming... he's gonna make it worth watching them, at least on every fifth day... I wish I would have gone to that game tonight.

and this kid is only 19 years old... jesus h christ.

one door closes, a trapdoor opens...

I officially turned down anchorage today. wasn't an easy call to make. I know I wouldn't be happy up there, but in my company, it's frowned upon to decline "opportunities"... so I had resigned myself to staying where I'm at for awhile. being miserable, but at least staying in the city I love.

then I get a phone call about portland. I'm still wanted down there. and the timing might not be as bad as I had expected, meaning it's possible.

fuck. after I figure I'll stay put, now they're talking about moving me again. and it'll be harder to turn down. 15 minutes outside of portland, starting a branch from the ground up, close to family...

I was looking forward to moving back to ballard. I was looking forward to going out for sushi at sam's each week. and even more at musashi's. I was looking forward to a dozen mariners games each summer with miyuki. to once again having easy access to a half dozen awesome arthouse movie theatres.

I'm sure there's sushi in portland. and the city isn't totally devoid of movies (but it pales compared to seattle). there's no pro baseball there tho. and I don't know portland like I know seattle.

I know miyuki would prefer seattle, but I don't know how great her preference is. she's mentioned how it would be nice to be near my family. I suspect she just wants to spend time with the year old monkey nephew and not much else. and while it would mean being three hours closer to my family, it would mean being six hours away from hers instead of three. this'll be her first time away from home, and that needs to be taken into account as well. it's a lot easier for her to visit from seattle than portland.

the job would be a step up, but there wouldn't be more money. in fact, it would mean a pay cut when you factor in the income tax. and it's not like it would be moving to a cushy job like anchorage would have been. small branches provide a whole new set of stresses. it's a different environment. far more challenging, which is good, but I'm already terrible at taking work home with me. I don't think I should be compounding my stress further by taking on more...

argh. this sucks.

I'm at a loss.

it's a broiling 85 degrees in my apartment. and I've got the chills. pretty sure I have a fever by the amount of heat radiating off of me.

my roomie is out of town. there's no one here save the cats if I die of a massive fever, and I'm pretty sure they'll just eat me.

if neither of you readers has heard from me by noon tomorrow, please call the paramedics and have them bring 'round a meat wagon...

re-connected.

I've missed two hours of work, but I'm finally reconnected to the internet at home.

got home from alaska to find internet was out and the digital cable was acting funny. after waiting all day for it to fix itself, I called in and had a tech come out this morning.

the cable was having problems because of a bad connection.

the internet was having problems partly because of me. the original modem they gave us didn't work. so I busted out my spare. then it stopped working. when the guy came out to replace the modem, it turns out there was a conflict between the MAC and IP addresses, probably because I introduced a foreign peripheral to the mix. oops.

but now it's fixed. router works. I can go into my shitty job for six hours. woo.

sigh.

it's about 10:30. checkout of my room is noon.

I'm due back at the airport at 8pm.

I've gotta figure out what I'm going to do for eight hours. I figure a road trip down the coast will kill a few hours. and maybe I'll go see a movie at some point this afternoon too.

I'm looking forward to going home. let's just hope I don't end up MORE sick from the flight home. I've been hacking up both lungs all morning.

blah.

damn fine sushi.

okay, there's one thing I've enjoyed about anchorage. little japanese restaurant called arigato. they have a dinner combo called the kimado boat. it was amazing. and huge. had I actually tried to eat the shrimp, I never would have finished. miso, salad, edamame, the most tender chicken teriyaki I've ever had, four pieces each of salmon and tuna sashimi, two pieces each of tuna and salmon nigiri, and a large portion of veggie tempura. including tempura onion rings. that was awesome. the green tea was tasty too.

I found it kinda amusing how the waitress showed me how to eat edamame. has me wondering how many people have tried to eat the whole thing and not just the beans inside. but I also gotta wonder how many people would walk into a sushi restaurant, order a large sushi dinner and not have ANY idea how to eat edamame...

good stuff. I was gonna go catch a movie afterwards, but I mixed up the movie times for the two theatres I could find. oops. wasn't gonna hang around for an hour, so I came back to the hotel instead.

how lame am I that I'm wasting my entire trip in alaska in my hotel room, watching tv and playing online? and how lame is it that I don't care? not like I'm gonna go hunting or fishing, and I don't know anyone here. what am I gonna do, go sit in a bar alone and drink? lame...

well crap...

so alaska isn't seeming like an option. even if I do decide to come here, I won't have an apartment in place or anything. and, in fact, i may not be able to be up here by sept 1. I may need to train a replacement at redmond, which would hold me over past my lease expiring. after coming up here, I'd be stuck in a hotel until I could find a place to live. and what to do with the cats?

miyuki has expressed her preference to stay in the states awhile. that rules out running away to canada.

the timetable for portland isn't working out well. it would also require an extended stay in a hotel at some point, or at the very least moving in with my parents for several weeks. I'm leaning against going to portland anyway, I'd like to not be as reliant on my family.

if we stay in seattle, I'm stuck in a frustrating job. I may get to move to another branch, but it's not a guarantee. only positive I can see about staying in seattle is it settles the living situation. I'd have a bad commute, but it wouldn't matter when I left redmond, be it two weeks or six months. there are a few other local branches, and the corporate office to fall back on. plus I'm fairly certain I can get miyuki a job quickly at corp, which would also mean she'd have her own health insurance (thus saving me $350 a month in premiums).

no matter what, I have no idea what's going to happen at the end of the month. I was hoping to have an idea by the end of the weekend, and I won't. all I've done is rule out alaska. I won't know til next week about portland, but I'm tempted to just stay in seattle.

sigh.

argh.

after spending four hours either at the branch or at lunch with the manager in anchorage, I still don't have an offer in place. no financial issues were discussed, despite my asking. I'm expected to call next week and tell them if I'm interested. then they'd tell me what they'll pay me. and in the meantime, I'll have nowhere to go when I'd get here. it's not a good situation.

it also has me 99% sure I WON'T be moving to alaska. I'm not comfortable with how things have transpired. unfortunately, now that they've invested a thousand bucks in sending me up here, they're gonna expect me to stay. and when I decline, they're going to be upset. which means I'll be blackballed and banished to redmond forever.

so you know what that means, kids? we start looking into moving me to canada. a year of hell in redmond waiting for that process, then moving back to the home of poutine, hockey and socialised health care...

meanwhile, I have about 28 hours to kill before my flight home. I'm gonna go look for a moose.

yup.

I'm sick. fuck.

first impressions of anchorage

dear lard this town is flat. main arterials are five or six lanes wide, too. guess that'll be helpful when it's twenty below and there's eight feet of snow on the ground.

I drove around for awhile, including through "downtown"... what a joke. other than a few office buildings, a couple government buildings and a few shops, there didn't seem to be much. don't recall seeing any buildings taller than three stories either.

there's a hooters! not sure if that's good or bad.

there are about ten japanese restaurants I noticed, including a benihana's. I got dinner at a place called sushi ya. spendy as hell, $19 for two rolls. one of them was a $13 "hey ya roll" tho... deep fried spicy tuna roll with more spicy tuna and avocado on top. spiciest damn tuna roll I've ever tried, too. and I'm not worried about dropping $20 on sushi. I'm getting reimbursed for everything but the tip.

I saw most of the chain stores I'm used to seeing. went into best buy, couldn't find sophie b hawkins new album. no surprise there, so I bought weezer's new one instead. had to get something for the car, 'cos the radio here sucks. cd was $14 with no sales tax. seems about normal price. no tax is nice.

I've seen a lot of yellow people, so that should help miyuki if we come here. in addition to the aforementioned japanese places, I saw a ton of chinese and thai restaurants, and one polynesian place, but it looked like it was closed for good. one of the chinese places even had a big sign guaranteeing a one minute drive thru. one minute chinese food frightens me.

there are a LOT of liquor stores in this town. that doesn't bode well.

I've only seen three non-alaskan license plates. one california, one utah, one florida. who the fuck would drive here from florida? that would take like three weeks...

maybe it's just the places I've been so far, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of ugly people. I'll fit right in.

saw a couple movie theatres that appeared to have all the same hollywood drivel you can find in any decent sized american city. I want to check out the beartooth theatre tho. it's the arthouse one that's also a microbrewery/pub.

hotel internet was down for at least an hour (I'm writing this offline).

I've somehow ended up with a migraine. sucks balls. ran across the street for excedrin migraine and mountain dew. it's only helping a little.

more later.

license to ill.

marriage license is in hand. new clothes for the day are purchased. courthouse is booked for the ceremony. dinner resevrations at anthony's made.

hot damn, I'm ready to get married!

crashing in a jet plane...

so I'm wondering about the timing of that plane crash in toronto today, as it's coming JUST far enough ahead of my trip to alaska to freak me out. I haven't been on a plane in thirteen years. I've had less than stellar experiences on them too (worst flight was with a case of walking pneumonia, I thought my head was going to explode from the unbearable sinus pressure).

I'm actually not afraid of flying at all. the thing that bothers me the most is the germy environment. I've been stockpiling on 'airborne' leading up to the flight to hopefully prevent getting sick. but the idea of a plane crash? doesn't bother me. if you're on a plane that goes down, there's not a bloody thing you can do about it. so just sit back and enjoy the ride.

I tend to get a wonderful sense of euphoric denial when bad things happen, so they don't bother me much.

what I'm most concerned about for my trip on thursday is screwing up somehow. not getting my car to the right parking lot or not finding my flight or something equally ridiculous. since I haven't flown since childhood, I have no idea what you're actually supposed to DO when you fly. doesn't help matters that things have changed significantly in the past four years as well.

it'll be an adventure anyway. I'll have my ipod, a book and gameboy in tow, that's for sure...

paypal can eat my asshole.

this is the second time they've done this to me. I check my online banking and show an $27 insufficient funds charge on my savings account. see, I don't use my savings account 'cos it pays like .2% interest. I put all my savings in ING which pays 3.15%.

however, paypal doesn't work without a bank account. when I use it (which is infrequently, maybe three times a year) I put it on a credit or debit card... but it defaults to your bank account.

I bought something on ebay the other day. little $10 item, actually a limited run comic book from an artist I like. I changed my payment options to debit card, got to the next screen and changed my ship-to address so it would be sent to my work. by changing the address, it changed the billing options back to my bank account. it didn't tell me this. so I deduct the $13 from my chequing ledger and don't think anything of it. until today. my $10 comic book plus shipping now cost me $40.

I'm deleting my paypal account. I flat out refuse to use their "service"... if that means I no longer use ebay, so be it. fucking fascist assholes.

I love the daily show.

tonight's episode had bob costas, with a clip from an early interview of his with ichiro. he said the entire interview was done in japanese with a translator, except the last bit. ichiro said on of his "bad teammates" taught him to say: “it's as hot as two rats fucking in a sock in August in Kansas City.”

lard bless cable.

on the net front, I'm making progress... I switched out modems to my old one, and it worked a bit. but then it stopped working, so I dunno what happened. but the wifi was working for a few minutes, it gives me hope...

sigh.

I hereby renounce my geek status. I can't get this thing to work.

my powerbook can connect to the net if it's hooked direct to the modem. but this thing is easy like sunday morning when it comes to net connection, macgyver could get it hooked up using bubblegum and dental floss.

I can't get the modem initialised. I can't get the router to acknowledge the modem. I tried calling tech support for comcast, they told me to call netgear. tried calling netgear, they wanted money. unless roomie already did something with her computer, I dunno what to do. gonna suck to have to do all my internetting in the living room tho...

I did a bit of shopping today on my lunch break. got some shiny new duds for the wedding. had to ask the lady at the register if it matched tho. _I_ thought it looked good, but I tend to make REALLY bad fashion decisions. mocha brown slacks, beige poplin shirt, and a silk patterned tie with both colours in it. total of $91. miyuki called me and said she bought not one, but two dresses for $42. and that's canadian. so I think I spent too much. oops.

not much else I can do about this net problem until roomie gets home. but at least I have digital cable to keep me entertained. been watching the marlins on espn, only the second time all season I've seen them (first was against seattle on a local channel)... they're even beating a very good cardinals team, which is nice.

geekly inadequacies.

I got home from canada to last night to discover the roomie not only got a cable modem (like she had mentioned), but also digital cable. her mom is going to be moving in when I leave, but I guess wanted to get the utilities set up beforehand. hey, I'll take a month's worth of free digital cable...

there's a problem with the cable modem, tho. I can't get my wireless router configured to work with it. it's REALLY bothering me too. I'm no genius when it comes to computers, but I can generally get things jury-rigged in unorthodox but functional ways. I spent an hour and a half last night trying to get it to work, and couldn't get anywhere.

I do suspect I need to call comcast and get them to change the MAC address... if it's set up for something other than the router, that could be causing my problems. if not, I'm just an idiot and am too old to be playing with that kind of tech.