Well, duh

Friday night started with some shopping for my niece and nephew. I needed to call my parents from the Oshkosh B'Gosh parking lot to get their sizes again. Talking with my parents is never a 30 second conversation - not that I mind and I'm sure I'd complain if it was. Headed to a restaurant and sweet-talked our waitress into letting us order from the breakfast menu as the other offerings were heavily meat-influenced. She did with a smile and we tipped well as a result. I normally go out of my way to avoid American cheese, but it really hit the spot with the omelete.

Saturday was a quick visit to my grandparents (scored two loaves of homemade apple bread) before heading to Eric's for the bachelor party. Got loaded up and drove about 45 minutes to Fremont. I'm happy to say that I had a greater chance of groin-injury by trying to get into the backseat of a two-door Civic than on the paintball fields. We arrived and found out that we were 'meeting other people' there. Soon after, a few guys drove up in full camoflague, smoking cigarettes and pounding Natural Light. Then "Rob" pulled out a double-barreled paintball cannon (for lack of a better word) and indicated he was 'ready to go'. We headed inside and got fitted with equipment (which consisted of a helmet and a gun) and then headed to the rule board. "Andy" then filled us in about the rules, noting that climbing trees was not permitted. "It didn't work for the Japs, and it won't work for you.", he said with a smile. Jeremy and I looked at each other and swallowed hard. We loaded up our guns and headed out to the fields.

The first game was capture the flag, which my team promptly lost in about 30 seconds. While we stood back to guard the flag, they full on charged us and I declared myself out after getting hit in the back. The second game was last team standing and while it lasted up to 10 minutes, a shot to the thigh as I attempted to run up to the net barrier marked me out again. The third game was on a speed course - no brush to cloud your vision, only plastic barriers to hide behind. At the shot of go, I made a valiant effort to head to the middle baracade and make good use of my gun. Sadly, the gun did a barrel-dive into the sand and rendered itself useless. I gave it to the ref to check it out and he 'fixed' it. At the start of the fourth game, it still wasn't working so I went back to start and had it cleaned. The fifth game was called "President" in which one team has body guards and a president who can only fire 10 shots. The other team is all snipers. I remained crouched in heavy brush for what felt like 30 minutes before hearing "See that guy right there" and feeling paint splatters on my mask. Game six was the final round and I found that my gun would fire one paintball, and then a five-second burst of just air. And then repeat that cycle. For the whole game. Made for a lame ending, but at least I ended up unharmed. I didn't realize how physically exhausting it would be and how truly out of shape I am. Lesson learned. The people we met up with were, however, extremely nice and helpful with the rest of us, as we were quite inexperienced. They only seemed to get mad when we said we had to go, which is cute on a 4th-grade level.

After cleaning up, we went for Mongolian stir-fry for dinner which was excellent. Went to the Timberrattlers game and lasted six innings (at which point we were freezing and watching the home team down 8-0). Went back to Eric's and watched Bottle Rocket. About 1/2 way through, I decided to call it a night.

Sunday was church and then much yard work. The police office whom I thought didn't like us gave us a tarp full of landscaping bark that he had left over last week, so Marie and I filled in the back where our new plants reside. Cleaned windows, tied up extra carpeting, trimmed the front lawn, pruned the trees in the back and so forth. Made a kick ass new spinach pie (with eggs and provolone cheese) for dinner.

Yipes, this was way too much information.

Tigers don't walk upright. Tigers shouldn't have boobs.

I want anyone and everyone who reads this to post in here something they would like to do with me someday.

Then post this in your journal to find out what I want to do with you.

Your politically-slanted bumper sticker has forced me to completely rethink my convictions!

Seven random former job stories

I worked at Wendy's in high school. My favorite job was on the grill because it was easy. On occasion I would work with a sandwich maker named Brooke. She was a pretty typical stoner with a good sense of humor. Later I will come to learn that she lived with my friend Julie for a year with disasterous results. Anyway, Wendy's protocol for mustard application is to squirt it in the shape of a W on the burger, to ensure mustard in each bite. Brooke took it upon herself to instead squirt Eat Shit or 4:20 on the burger instead. I found this to be uproariously funny.

My second semester of freshman year, I was hired to work at the University Library. Mostly reshelving work and checking in/out patrons, handling fine payment, etc. The best part about the job was being able to take a cart of books ready to be reshelved, go up to the 2nd or 3rd floor, reshelve a dozen books and then read in a study corral or wander the aisles. I honestly think I spent more time masturbating than working at that job (thankfully, in a bathroom stall).

Prior to working at Wendy's, I worked at Arby's. At one point, the team was pretty good. I was 15 at the time and highly impressed by anyone who would want to talk with me outside of my group of friends. Bob was one of the 'managers' and destined for fast food greatness. He was in his late thirties, smoked like a chimney, and had a lisp. He also routinely sang Madonna songs when the store was closed. It was there I learned how to shoot pennies (by snapping my fingers) from behind the counter to the condiment stand. I also learned that I looked 21 from a co-worker, learned that another co-worker honestly believed he could fly and learned from a third co-worker that oral sex was the nicest thing you could do for a woman.

Before entering the legitimate working world, I would help my brother with his paper route on occasion. Two doors down from our house lived an elderly couple. They requested to have their paper put inbetween the storm and screen door, despite the woman *always* being there to take the paper from me. I was timely if nothing else. Anytime there was inclimate weather, she'd ask me, in a crotchety, harsh old woman voice, "Did you order this?" in reference to the weather. For the first three or four times, I had no idea what the hell she was talking about and just smiled politely until she closed the door. Another lady on the route thought it would be nice to offer me heated cauliflower with Cheese-Whiz as a snack. Despite her heart being in the right place and being a nice woman, it was rather scary. She did, however, tip well.

At my last job, I hired for a wide range of positions, especially during the summer. They had a number of day camps which required having a cook. I foolishly assumed this would be an easy position to fill. I proceeded to interview the most eclectic and sometimes disgusting group of people I've ever interviewed. As we were desperate, I made an offer to a guy who was extremely jittery in the interview (couldn't keep his hands still, kept bouncing his leg, etc). When he didn't show up for his drug screen (twice), we figured something was up. When we discovered he was in jail for cocaine position, well, that sorta sealed the deal.

The summers after freshman and sophmore year of college, I worked at an insurance company via a temp agency. Carrie B. and Andrea worked there as well and we lucked out by all working in the same department. Our job consisted of testing insurance policies to see if they were fully funded to age 100 (as they were supposed to do). If they didn't, the reps didn't get full commission for it. It was our job to enter the data, run a program to determine their commission and reduce it in the system if necessary. Then we prayed that they wouldn't call us to complain (which they always did). After we got a hang of the process, it went very quickly and we had days where we would work for two hours and occupy the remaining six with office supply fun, literally wandering the building (always carrying folders or reports, to look important) or abusing the company's email policy. I sent Marie three or four emails a day for roughly three months. I read countles books and listened to Weezer ad nausem with my headphones. It was the best job I ever had and our supervisor praised us all the time.

My job for most of my college career was as a computer lab consultant. This meant sitting at the consultant 'station' (which was for some reason usually elevated compared to the rest of the work stations) and browsing the web and pretending to do homework. Every 20 minutes or so, I'd help someone put page numbers on a Word document or refill the printer. It was mindless and the hours were flexible. I never had any crazy people in the lab. Never had anyone curse me out for forbidding their food and/or drink in the lab. Never had anyone browsing porn (that I knew of anyway). My boss tried to promote me as the coordinator of all the lab consultants (essentially, his right hand man) but I had switched majors from CS to HR and instead choose to take my first HR internship.