this is just sad.

one the way home from work tonight, we heard a commercial for smash mouth playing the emerald queen casino. has smash mouth really sunk so far as to be playing the tribal casino circuit? have they even been around long enough to pull off such a feat?

most of the acts playing the casino circuit are 70s and 80s has-beens... this has got to be a first for the mid to late 90's set... jesus, didn't they just have a hit on the shrek soundtrack not that long ago?

I will admit, I had half considered going to see joan jett when she played there, but it was a weeknight, it's like a forty mile drive, and I just couldn't be bothered. she's still hot tho.

but smash mouth? that's just sad... you'd think they could catch on to some reunion type tour for frat boy nostalgia from 1999... what's third eye blind doing?

shamrock pitch.

we went to see cloverfield the other night. I went in with low expectations, and upon leaving got pretty much what I expected, plus a really horrendous headache.

but after thinking about the movie a bit, I've realised it was a really awful movie, actually.

I'm all for suspension of disbelief, especially in the case of a ginormous monster devouring new york city. but this movie was pushing it a bit. I would have have done things a bit differently...

for one, why was the monster so frickin' huge? pretty sure that would have been the largest creature on earth by far. was it supposed to be an alien or something? 'cos while they made a reference to coelacanth as the possibilities of the abyss and how no one knows what exists deep in the oceans, I'm pretty sure we can rule out a thousand foot long creature the size of a city block. hell, even those gargantuan squid are only a couple hundred feet long, and they don't weigh thousands of tons. hell, even the blue whale is only 200 tons, and it can't survive outside of water, it would be crushed under its own weight on land. why couldn't they have made a smaller monster? maybe more of them? a brood of a dozen or so of those fuckers, maybe fifty feet tall? that would have been a lot more terrifying, and believable.

the parasites were pretty cool, but weren't fleshed out enough. they could have had a much larger role in the carnage. and if these parasites lived off the host monster, wouldn't that mean they'd have some way of getting to its gooey insides? most parasites nourish themselves with blood or something, tho I suppose it's possible they ate dead skin cells or something. but if that was the case, why would the monster be rubbing them off in annoyance? larger creatures, like sharks and sunfish, tend to encourage those symbiotic relationships because they're beneficial. if these were harmful or annoying parasites, they must have been hurting the creature somehow. which means one of two things: they should have either ripped humans (and our soft, pink skins) to shreds, or the monster shouldn't be invincible.

neither of those criteria appeared to happen. while the side effect of a parasite bite WAS cool (probably the best part of the movie), it was no way as instantly damaging as yo would have expected. and seeing as the military was having some trouble with the monster, it would appear impervious to the best the military could offer. so how do you posit a parasite that is kinda bad for humans for not ridiculously powerful, and yet able to get through skin that smart bombs couldn't penetrate?

the worst part had to be the ending... it had the same problem as AI, in that it should have ended about ten minutes before it did. they had a perfectly framed shot for the end credits, and they blew right past it for a cheesy ending that defied logic. either that, or those kids were nearly as invulnerable as the monster. they managed to get up and run away from injuries that should have killed them ten times over, and they just kept doing it. it's sad when the most unrealistic part of a movie about a giant space mutant (or whatever) devouring a metropolis is that the damn kids just won't die.

I probably wouldn't have been as annoyed with the movie if the shaky cam would have stopped. I understand the idea behind it, that it added a sense of urgency and authenticity for the audience, but did they really have to give the RETARDED guy the camera? there were several scenes (the bridge, for instance) that I had no idea what was going on, and was only able to infer from after the fact. I don't know if that was intended or not. but running down a corridor, with the camera bobbing all over the place, or worse, pointed at your feet, is a great way of having me feel REALLY unwell by the end of the movie. I'm wishing I would have brought some dramamine. or watched it at home on the small screen.

after the movie, as we were walking back to the car and staring up at the space needle, we were pondering why seattle never has any apocalypse type movies. I guess it's easy to attack places like new york, where you have millions of people in a small space. to get that kind of carnage in seattle, you'd have to traipse all over several suburbs, and it's just not as exciting (or efficient).

I guess if I want to see bad things happen to the space needle, I'll just have to settle for this.

I'm "scary".

in the past week at work or with co-workers, I've heard the phrase "you're scaring me" about eight times. I'm not sure why this is. some of the things that have "scared" co-workers...

- eating tofu for lunch

- admitting ownership of a pink nintendo DS

- making a joke that a co-worker friend "tosses the salad" in response to him saying if he drank too much he'd "toss his cookies", and then having to define "toss the salad" to everyone, as none of them had heard the expression

- making another joke at the aforementioned co-worker, claiming we weren't that much different, "I'm in MENSA, you're in NAMBLA" and then having to again explain my joke (which really ruins the humour, but these people aren't the most cultured or intelligent lot)

- reminiscing about my pastel T&C Surf t-shirts from childhood

- making a reference to jonathan swift's a modest proposal (and, you guessed it, having to explain the reference)

- recommending brokeback mountain to people after heath ledger died

- knowing of and having seen nude pictures of the deceased posted on the internet

- insisting that the aforementioned movie was not gay porn, and pointing out there was actually more boob than wang in the damn movie

- opining that jake gyllenhaal was better looking than heath ledger

- when the receptionist mentioned seeing a trailer for "the hobbit" online, I asked if it wasn't actually hobbit porn she saw, as I wasn't aware a trailer existed (making the connection of fetish pornography to something obscure viewed on the internet is too sophisticated of humour, I guess)

- invoking rule 34 as explanation for the above

- finding the idea of naked midgets with furry feet somewhat amusing and not at all unusual in this day and/or age


as I was leaving the office today, it was pointed out that it was a common theme for people to express fear of me, and the co-worker asked why I thought that was. I don't think she was impressed with my answer:

I work with small minded idiots.

seriously, if the people I work with can't handle pop culture, basic internet culture and even mildly homosexual innuendo, they're pretty much dead to me.

and they wonder why I do my damnedest to make them uncomfortable and refuse to conform to their values.

too old to be juvenile, but I'll never outgrow puerile

I'm a very immature person in a lot of ways. I find scatological humour to be the second funniest type of humour, a close runner-up to the schadenfreudistic joy I get from watching people hurt themselves. really, is there anything more amusing that seeing a guy take a football to the groin? or a punk kid on a skateboard try a trick only to fail miserably and land on his face? or better yet, catch a railing with his crotch? it's not like I'm holier than thou on this either, I know perfectly well that other people laugh at me when I hurt myself comically, and encourage this. after all, if I weren't wincing in pain, I'd be laughing my ass off right next to you.

so it should stand to reason that I talk about poo a lot. it hasn't gone unnoticed by pretty much anyone I've spent more than five minutes with that I can steer a conversation to some bodily function or another within four minutes. it's a talent.

so why should my blog be any different?

I've long held the belief that pooping at work is one of the most satisfying feelings in the worth. YOU'RE GETTING PAID TO POOP! obviously, this is 50% better if you poop during overtime. perhaps the only thing more satisfying (in a slacker mindset) than pooping at work is blogging about pooping at work.

in high school, one of my friends had a poster that illustrated the shit list. it had some omissions, however. I'm pretty sure I've invented these new shits myself...

my favourite is the "gay porn shit"... I love these poops. it's the sudden realisation that, upon turning around to flush and setting eyes on the behemoth monstrosity to crawl from your butt, that you realise if such a beat could come OUT of you, you should be able to fit the same IN you. I've made a few of these poos over the year, and am confident that if I hit truly dire straights, I could fall back on a career in gay porn without much discomfort.

much more rare, and thus more special, is a shit I haven't come up with a catchy name for... but it's only happened to me once. after doing my business and cleaning up, I stood up to flush and essentially reloaded the chamber. I realised I had to sit right back down and double down. this wasn't a liquishit food poisoning thing either... this was a normal, healthy, solid poo and its sequel. it was a peculiar feeling, and one I will cherish until I go senile.

new prezzie.

miyuki bought me a prezzie today. I'd commented for years how I always wanted an artist manikin, but never had a reason to buy one. I'm a terrible artist, can't draw to save my life, but always thought it would be cool to play with.

my first pose? walk like an egyptian, of course. she didn't like that, so I went with the universal pose every man would recognise.

she didn't get it. help her out, guys?

pretty sure I'm dying.

I woke up this morning with a headache. this isn't unusual for me, I get headaches all the time. but this headache was worse than normal. I originally chalked it up as an odd hangover, as the night before I drank three bottles of OB at ann & jules' place with dinner. I had a hankering for korean beer, and just couldn't resist something called "oriental brew"... I also couldn't help but giggling at OB being some sort of "original [gangsta] beer" or something. it wasn't a bad beer, tho I was surprised to read the label mentioned it was made from rice. figured rice beer probably makes for a different hangover, and left it at that.

headache continued throughout the morning. it was bearable, but annoying.

around 11am, I had to load a drinking fountain into my car and deliver it. this required lugging an awkward, fifty plus pound box across the warehouse and wedging it into my back seat. not exactly a sisyphean task, but enough to get my heartrate going. and as my pulse went up, so did the pain in my skull. a horrible throbbing right behind my left eyebrow, stretching all the way over to my temple. at this point I first postulated to my fave non-mooki canadian, paul that I likely had a brain aneurysm and would likely die. he lightened my spirits by pointing out it's more like a tumour and I would be dead within hours.

I took some of my loverly canadian tylenol (the good shit with the codeine in it) with a monster energy drink (1000mg of taurine) and my headache had mostly waned by mid afternoon. it had subsided into a normal dull pain, the kind I live with nearly daily. by the time miyuki and I decided to go to the gym, I was feeling as good as I normally do.

two minutes on a stair-stepper had me wishing for merciful death. I couldn't even make it ten minutes on a stationary bike after that, and we left early. I called my mom (a former RN) ont he way home, hoping she'd tell me something important (like go to the hospital now, you dumbass) but she came up devoid of useful help, other than it might be a sinus headache. instead, we stopped at the drugstore, bought some antihistamines and excedrin sinus. I took an antihistamine, an excedrin sinus and an aforementioned canadian tylenol with a stiff double white russian (technically a "honky", my variant using vanilla vodka to make it extra "white"). that, and a long, scalding hot shower (lots of steam) will hopefully have me feeling good/unconscious in no time.

either that, or I'll be dead by dawn. miyuki is terrified of this theory, but I think that has more to do with my telling her I would likely crap my pyjamas after death, leaving her a disgusting legacy to clean up in the morning. she's currently sitting on the couch, watching dirty jobs and weighing the pros & cons right now, counting the life insurance and wondering if it's worth the mess... I've assured her my deathly dookie would definitely be enough to inspire much vomitus, just to keep her on my side.

still, if I die of a brain aneurysm, I expect both of my readers to avenge my death...

bullet dodged. almost.

it was more a glancing blow, I guess. no REAL harm, but it'll sting a little bit.

my W-2 showed up in the mail yesterday. so I did our taxes today, as that was the final piece of the puzzle... miyuki got hers last week, and we had all of our other stuff already done.

last year, we ended up owing over $1100 in taxes. that sucked ass and our savings took a sizable hit from it. it's the whole concept of us both making a decent salary, but not owning a home or having any children (the IRS frowns on using cats as tax deductions). we both reduced our deductions from 1 (as in each of us) to zero, and bumped up our retirement a little bit. it wasn't enough to get us in the black.

despite the fact that we put about $9k into tax-deferred retirement plans and I had nearly $1800 in deductible student loan interest, we still owe money. but at least this time we only owe 10% of what we owed last year, so that's easy enough to swallow.

the plan for 2008? I've already had EXTRA taxes taken out of my cheque. we're going to max out our retirement contributions, from 10 to 15% (which we should have been doing all along). between paying extra tax and reducing our taxable income, I'm hoping we might actually get a little bit back next year, instead of owing.

and for 2009, we should be in the drivers seat for taking on a mortgage. all our finances should fall into place, the debt will be gone and we can afford to take on the extra expense. and seeing as mortgage interest is deductible, we'll be sitting on a HUGE refund from that point on. those first few years of mortgage payments are basically nothing BUT interest payments... and hey, unlike children, a mortgage actually builds equity instead of robbing it... the timing is looking good, too. dubya's little recession should be pulling out of its nosedive with a (hopefully) democratic president in office, so the market will have bottomed out and some of those condo or house prices in seattle will have fallen back to earth a it into a more reasonable range.

it's good to have a plan. it's even better to have that plan fall into a timeframe that seems reasonable, as opposed to "in ten years, blah blah blah..." we're right around the corner. woot.

what a rip-off.

we ordered a large pizza from zagi's tonight... this is what they sent us:

seriously, they call that a LARGE? it's barely as big as our entire stovetop, and won't even fit in our fridge. way to go half-assed, zagi's.

it was really tasty. the "some velvet morning" specialty pie... white sauce, prosciutto, guinness carmelised onions, and we added roasted yukon potatoes... very tasty.

relapse.

I'm on the cusp of doing something bad. I'm really close to falling off the wagon. I'm about to renew my addiction to cardboard crack.

in high school, I played magic the gathering. my friends had been playing it for months, but I had a girlfriend. boobs trump nerds, hands down. but when we split up, I spent a LOT more time with my friends. and all they did was play magic. since it was boring to watch, they set me up with a starter deck. we went to the hobby shop and I paid ten bucks for a "precon" deck. it sucked. I got my ass handed to me every time. and since I'm incredibly competitive and more than a little neurotic, I started buying cards. that's the downside of the game, money usually equates to winning. kinda like everything else in life. your ability will take you so far, but your bankroll can make you unstoppable. if I spent more than my friends, I'd win more.

I had a better job than my friends. I worked in a library for about $7 an hour while they made less than $5 at a movie theatre (this was 1994, mind you). over the next several years, I dropped close to a thousand dollars on cards. and I was damn near unstoppable. the only one who could match me was moe, and he's the friggin' master at all things games. well, and piper, but he's a freak. he built a deck out of nothing but our cast off commons and pwned all of us. before pwned even meant anything. but he's a genius, and he rarely played.

I've been REALLY nostalgic for those halcyon days, ages 17-20. and the two themes of those years, more than anything else, were drugs and magic cards. now that I'm thirty, married and have a stable job, drugs don't seem like such a hot idea. magic cards are relatively harmless, with the exception of the hit my wallet will take. and my street cred, of which I have none anyway.

I'm drawn to the customisable nature of the game. I played with three of my friends in high school almost exclusively, and we all interpreted the game very differently.

moe always played white, or sometimes white with a red tint for direct damage. he liked the notion of a "weenie horde" to overrun opponents with simple infantry type, easy to cast and easy to replace. he was also drawn to the "pure" notion of the white knight/paladin/hero/etc. he loved playing shit like "wrath of god" and wiping everything off the table. fucker.

steve prided himself on being "black and blue". steve is an asshole, even moreso than me. he enjoyed more than anything else the idea of fucking with people. those two colours offered the most disruptive combos and he ran with it.

wilson played black and red, the two most destructive colours. he did a lot of damage, but always lacked balance and ended up losing, usually by harming himself as much as everyone else. he didn't seem to care. he just enjoyed the chaos.

I played an italian deck, with equal parts green/white/red. I started out with just green and white because I thought those colours best represented my personality, but also came to figure out that they suited my playing style as well. I only added red because playing without direct damage is for pussies.

we had various theme decks too. moe's "quicker than shit" was incredible... red/green, lots of creature based mana and direct damage. he usually won within two minutes. I made a novelty deck called "tossed thallid" that was a variation on weenie horde using thallid spore counters and hurricanes for the direct damage (hence the tossing). it wasn't very effective, but it was cheeky.

I'm trying to find people to play with again. I looked it up, and they're up to series ten. I quit playing after series four was released, and bought a shit-ton of revised (series three) cards (including a full sealed box) when I realised they were getting rid of the best cards. I'm scared to see what they've done by series ten. every time they released a new set, it seems like they weakened the best cards (or killed them entirely) and things got gimmicky. I'm going to start off slow, buy a couple decks and a few booster packs, and see if I can even recognise the game. if it looks too lame I'll chalk it up to "you can never go back again" and give up. but if it's remotely promising, I'll probably sink a ton of money into it and fuel my compulsive desire to do whatever the hell it is I feel I need to do but can't properly explain.

I just hope this doesn't end up like that damn pirates game, and I have some people to play with. it'll suck to drop a hundred bucks or more on shit I'll never get to use. again.

may the flying spaghetti monster have mercy on my soul...

what the pho?

after the gym tonight, we stopped for pho at our friendly neighbourhood pho place. the good one. I decided to try something new. I ordered the soft tendon. I probably won't be doing that again. but I can say I tried it.

it was disgusting to look at. it tasted alright, a bit salty, and kinda slimy like beef fat. if it didn't look so repulsive, I'd probably get it again. I still won't get tripe. I do think I'll switch to brisket from the round eye steak (am I the only one who speculates that "round eye steak" refers to white people they've cut up and put in the soup?). the brisket is something too marbled for my liking, but it tastes so much better...

I also had a bit of a "seattle freeze" moment. there weren't many people in the place. a couple tables over there were two guys, meathead looking types. a couple of hoochie girls came in shortly after and sat behind us. one of the meathead guys ordered an extra large combo. this is a roughly two litre bowl of soup, and it had pretty much every part of the cow in it. it was an ambitious order, but they have it on the menu for a reason. oh, and a diet coke. 'cos after all, you have to have everything in moderation.

when he ordered, one of the hoochies said, really loudly, something along the lines of "jesus christ, where will you stick all of that?!" he responded, "all of what?" and the two hoochies started giggling.

this was mostly disturbing to me because it was so loud as to completely drown out the conversation mooki and I were having. but it also seemed really annoying. I'm sure she thought she was flirting. he probably did too. but I'm from seattle. I'll be the first to admit that I am not overly friendly to random strangers striking up unusual conversations with me. to be approached in such a matter, completely unprovoked, just seems weird to me. it would make me uncomfortable if it happened to me (mostly because these were hoochies and not attractive ladies, but attractive ladies have pretty much never struck up conversations with ME for no reason). hell, it made me uncomfortable just witnessing it.

I'm sure by now the four of them have all gone to some seedy motel and/or one of their places for raunchy sex with each other. I'm debating taking up a collection for the mutant children they are likely conceiving as I type this. but mostly I just don't give a shit.

is it any wonder I expect to end up a hermit in a unabomber shack with a bare bulb swinging over my head and little else by way of furniture?

I need me one of them guvment jobs...

a few days ago, we got confirmation from homey security of mooki's application to remove conditional status from her permanent residency... they gave us a receipt number (used for tracking and all future correspondence on the case) and cashed our cheque for $545. the notice was dated january 4. we received it january 12.

on monday the 14th, I went to the homey security website to add this receipt number to my "portfolio" so I'd receive email updates as the status changes, but it wouldn't accept the number. I called the 800 number and tried the automated system with the same result. so I sat on hold for twenty minutes to ask if there was a typo or something (don't get me started about how the guvment doesn't make mistakes, they originally set her green card's expiration date at one year instead of two).

they asked me when the notice was mailed. "on the 4th, ten days ago."

"that's too new! you need to wait at least fifteen MORE days before it'll show up!"

it takes them four weeks to punch a damn number into the system for filing purposes. in the meantime, we have zero visibility on the case and have no way of verifying they're doing everything properly. by the time we DO get to see a status, it'll be much more difficult to correct any errors because the process will have moved on to another department.

four weeks to put a label on a folder and log it into a system. at least four weeks before we'll get a notice that she needs to go in and have her "biometrics" registered. again. when I first heard about biometrics, I was impressed. I imagined this whole system where they took all sorts of samples for cloning of an illegal army for the next gulf war or something. turns out that's just a fancy word for fingerprinting.

yup, we're paying another $80 to they can make sure her fingerprints haven't changed in the past two years. I was always under the impression that fingerprints were kinda like, y'know, PERMANENT, but obviously homey security disagrees. after all, I may have had mooki replaced with an illegal mexican or stepford robut in the past two years, so they need to make sure she's still the same person she was before.

talk about retarded. gotta love bureaucracy...

awesome.

I get the impression this kid puts all of paul's high school parties to shame. they were talking about this on the radio on the way home, and various party tricks you can do to people's houses when you don't know them. throwing a grandfather clock out a second storey window into a pool was pretty bad. pissing into someone's VCR was bad too.

I always go for the simple (and scatological) route... who doesn't love an upper decker?

the psyche of xian: a primer

this morning miyuki pointed out that sometimes I rub people the wrong way, and that I should be nicer. I tend to tease people, and I'm too sarcastic in nature.

the notion that I should just turn the volume down on my "mean" dial doesn't make much sense. there's a great anecdote from the crying game that is really fitting (swiped from the wikipedia page):

The scorpion, wishing to cross a stream, asked the frog to let him ride his back over the stream. When the frog asked the scorpion how he could be sure that the scorpion would not sting him, the scorpion replied that if he did sting him, it would mean death by drowning for both of them. The frog complies, carrying the scorpion on its back across the stream. Before they reach the other side, however, the frog feels pain and realizes that the scorpion has stung him. He protests, "Why did you sting me, Mr. Scorpion? For now we both will drown!" The scorpion replies, "I can't help it, it's in my nature."

I hated childhood, and my extension, most children. this is the logic I give when people ask me why I haven't bred yet. and the ONLY reason I hated childhood was other children.

my family upbringing was fine. sure, I fought with my sister, but that's normal. my dad instilled a bit too much competitive drive in me, but he thought that was for the best. probably would have been too, had I had any innate talent. my mom was nurturing and all that, and to be honest, the first five years of my life covered the bases about as well as anyone could ask.

then I went to school. I didn't have much social interaction with other kids before school. there was one boy down the street who, already at the age of four, was a bit of a hooligan, and has probably been in and out of jail since. the only other kids on my block were two home-schooled wiener-kids. they were, what is called in modern parlance, "special" in every way. I look back and realise how naive I was, and wonder how the hell those two ever survived. seriously, think of rod and todd flanders, but without the street smarts. these two kids were retarded for jesus and probably just retarded. odds are pretty good they're running some church somewhere and diddling little boys.


growing up, I got picked on a lot. I was a year younger than everyone else in my class, but still one of the biggest kids. a lot of my teachers didn't understand why I got teased so much, and several of them figured I just should have taken care of myself. morons didn't realise I was at a pretty good disadvantage there. I was smarter than most of the other kids, but definitely not tougher. I got beat up more or less constantly. my dad told me to fight back, but that was a mistake. the more I fought back, the more kids that jumped in to help the other guy. kids are such a chivalrous lot. did I mention I was usually getting beat up by kids much older than me, too? like 4-5 years older. I learned pretty quick that my only defense was to turtle, go down and start bawling. this reaction stuck with me through middle school, when I finally snapped. some pretty boy popular kid decided to augment his "rep" by picking a fight with me, thinking he'd have it easy. I snapped. threw the fucker around like a rag doll, slammed him several times into a brick wall. I don't think I ever landed a punch, 'cos I didn't (and still don't, to be honest) know how to hit people. as I was walking away, he went for round two and tried to tackle me from behind. he ended up eating dirt until a teacher broke it up. literally. I just sat on him and mashed his face into a flowerbed. it was the first, and only, time I ever won a fight. that kid instantly lost his "cool" status, and I gained bupkis.

I only had a few friends before high school. and often they weren't the most loyal bunch. I can really relate to arnold rimmer in a lot of ways. his one "friend" once tried to eat him, and later threw his favourite sneakers (with a compass in the heel) into a septic tank. rimmer was wearing them at the time. while my childhood betrayals weren't nearly as dramatic, they were frequent. they left me jaded and unwilling to trust most people, even those who present themselves as allies. high school was a little better, I fell into a group with other rejects and misfits. I haven't seen most of them in years. with most of them, all we really had in common was the proximity and being forced to be in school at the same time. take away those restrictions, and the friendships pretty much fell apart.

I've always acknowledged the likelihood of me ending up in a unabomber shack, bare bulb swinging over my head in the breeze, as I write out poorly written diatribes against humanity. I often tell people that I'm waiting for the comet to crash into earth, and I certainly hope bruce willis (or whoever else they send to stop it) fails miserably and we all die. it just seems fitting. people can be so shitty to one another for no good reason, and it really bothers me.

I think I may have just gotten kicked out of my fantasy hockey league. every year I do fantasy baseball and hockey with the same core group of people, and a few new people. and every year, I end up in a pissing match with one or more of the newbies. I'm usually right, but I go too far. I can't resist mashing their faces in a flowerbed, and it gets old for everyone else. it's entirely possible i won't be invited back after this latest outburst.

like miyuki said, I need to be nicer to people. less caustic, less abrasive. I need to tone down the sarcasm and quit trying to tease other people before they can tease me. I just don't think it's going to happen. the behaviour has been reinforced over the past twenty plus years, it's not going anywhere. it's my one defense mechanism against a horrible world. I really can't help it that I'm happiest when I see other people suffer. schadenfreude is a real thing, and when bad things happen to deserving people, I find it amusing. maybe because it makes up for just a tiny bit of the bad things that happened to me when I was too young, naive and innocent to know any better.

instead, I'm half prepared for the time when everyone ultimately gets sick of my attitude and walks away, leaving me alone in my shack. because sooner or later, everyone does indeed walk away.

I'm not sure how I pulled this off...

I may have just talked myself into a nice little raise. sort of.

I had already convinced my boss to give me a nice raise. it wasn't what I asked for, but it was close. I think I just closed the gap.

my company offers a small commission program. it's basically 1% of the profit you make in a month beyond $10k. most inside sales and counter sales types, this amounts to maybe $20 a month if they're lucky.

I don't work on the counter. I do commercial quotations. I deal with million dollar condo jobs, and some of them are pretty high end. I'm not supposed to be eligible for this program. no one at my branch in my position has ever gotten it. but I did.

a typical month for me will net me an extra hundred bucks, maybe two hundred in commission. a monster month will net me like five hundred extra.

I'm just peeved this didn't go into effect a year ago... I had a REALLY nice job that we got some amazingly deep backside discounts on, would have been an extra $500 in my pocket back then. but oh well. I'm gonna be happy that I have it now, since I probably shouldn't. an extra hundred bucks or two each month is nothing to sneeze at. I'm definitely going to be looking for ways to break the system tho. I'm pretty sure I can figure out ways to manipulate numbers in a beneficial way for myself.

it's a minor victory. but a victory nonetheless. and it does put me in a better position down the road if we ever move and I leave the company, since I'll be able to tack a couple thousand extra on my annual salary...

she's nearly bona fide...

Label/Receipt Number: 7007 2560 0000 1880 9728
Status: Delivered

Your item was delivered at 7:12 AM on January 4, 2008 in LINCOLN, NE 68501.

we sent off miyuki's application to remove the conditional status on her permanent residency. threw in a ton of "proofs" that our marriage is legit, as well as a cheque for $545 (stupid greedy governments). hopefully they won't need another interview and they'll just accept things as is. we sent off a copy of our lease, car insurance, bank statements, various pictures and thank you cards addressed to us, and even the plane ticket confirmations for our vegas trip. I'd certainly hope that's enough...

it's just too bad I so horribly botched the pictures from the grand canyon. we would have had some good shots of us in front of a giant gaping hole, had I not screwed up loading the film in my antique SLR camera. we're going all digital from now on. next big trip we make, I'm plunking down several hundred on a digital SLR...

so yeah, we should hear back within a few weeks, and then we won't have to deal with this again until it's time to renew in ten years. and I'm hoping the renewal process is like renewing a driver's license...