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The start of the Vegas Business Vacation

Elise and I are embarking on a business trip to Las Vegas. We are attending the AmerisourceBergen National Healthcare Conference and Exposition. We started out late (go figure). I had a stressful day at work which had me burning at both ends all day trying to get things ready for the trip.

Elise and I finally headed toward the airport at 7:30 to meet Kevin and Amy at the airport at 8. We opted to park in remote parking. Luckily there aren’t many travelers on this particular Tuesday.

Since airport security is heightened now, it took us a good 15 minutes to get through security. Alone. Elise and I were the only people going through security at this point. And my lovely wife decided to bring her heirloom cuticle clippers. They handcuffed her, stripped her of her of all but her skivvies, aimed an AK-47 at her head and husky girl with a cigarette dangling from her lips gave the scene a thumbs up.

Elise didn’t want to part with her cuticle clippers. She reorganized her carry-on luggage and left me with an exposed laptop, power adapter and all of her work notes and clipboards as well as my iBook in its bag and my backpack full of tampons and shoes (I love being married) while she walked 12 miles to the other side of the terminal to check her laptop bag that now contains her cuticle clippers.

I’m sitting here at the gate waiting on the plane, the wife, my boss and contemplating lighting up one of these tampons.

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Heather & Juliette drive in from Des Moines


Texas Princess (from Iowa)

Elise’s friend, Heather and her daughter, Juliette drove in from Des Moines last Monday. I had the day off so I smoked ribs all day to celebrate our nation’s independence. Once the girls rolled in from the long haul, we all sat around the table and gnawed on ribs and poblano potato salad.

After finishin’ our grub, we drove downtown to watch the fireworks on Town Lake. After the fireworks show, we headed home and all went to bed.

I had to work on Tuesday. Elise took most of the day off and took Heather and Juliette swimming and treated them to dinner at El Arroyo.

I came home from Tae Kwon Do and had my to-go order of beef fajitas.

On Wednesday the girls went swimming again while yours truly was at work. I came home and smoked a coffee and chile rubbed pork loin with a buttery white wine & roasted corn sauce with left-over potato salad.

Thursday the girls went to Wal-Mart and a quick lunch at Chick-Fil-A where Juliette got stuck on the slide in the playscape. From what I’ve been told, that was a dramatic ordeal. Then they all did some shopping about town, toured First Thursday on S. Congress and went to the mall to buy souvenirs.

Then they all went and picked up pizza from Austin’s Pizza Garden (awesome pizza!) I came home from TKD while the girls were eating. Having only had a banana for lunch, I was quick to jump in and beat all the females in a pizza eating contest.

I had to leave for work early on Friday and gave Heather and Juliette hugs before I left. They left shortly after I did for the long haul back to Des Moines.

I’m glad Elise had the chance to spend some quality time with Heather and Juliette. Heather mentioned many times that she’d love to live in Austin. We’d love to have her!

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Tetka

Have fun. When you get your high score, let me know.

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How to fix car troubles

We have a high-mileage Ford Expedition. Every once in a while when we put it into park, the engine revs very quickly and have to turn the truck off before it redlines.

Instead of taking it to the Ford dealership and having to pay all of the associated fees, I thought I’d try posting a question on a Ford Expedition forum.

It’s amazing how helpful people can be and how much time and money I saved!

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Measure once, cut twice

Today was a long day at the office. I spent a good deal of time daydreaming about the deck. I hauled ass home, completely forgeting that it was payday and that I was going to swing by the bank to deposit my check (literally, I just remembered that I have a paycheck in my wallet).

I came home and stared at the rafters for a while. I thought I could measure the rafter on both sides of the deck, snap the chalkline and go through them with a pencil and square. I soon realized that that wouldn’t work because I’d have to snap the chalkline on the tops of the rafters and I didn’t have a tall enough ladder to see the tops.

So I measured each rafter 14″ off the supporting 2×6. Dumb me assumed that the support boards (I had to splice two 12′ 2×6’s to span the deck) were square.

I attempted to saw the rafters while they were set in place. I painstakingly sawed one with a circular saw but the saw binded as I would reach the end of my cut. I tried the jig saw but I couldn’t get a good enough angle with my eye to follow the center of my guide line. I tried the laser guided jig saw but the sun was beating down on the boards so the laser wouldn’t show up.

I stared at my rafters some more. I was thinking of everything that I could possibly do aside from having to take them all down and cut them on the ground.

I harnessed my TKD black belt skills and jumped 13-feet into the air and landed a mean front snap kick. 2×6 boards set on-end are hard to kick and cut a straight line. I tried using The Force. I clenched my eyes as well as my entire body and could only muster a fart.

I ended up taking each and every damn board down and cutting them. Scholar Josh didn’t think to measure the boards from the end of the boards that are set square against the house. No no no, he cut them at the 14″ mark that he drew earlier when he thought he was going to miraculously cut them while he was dangling from a ladder with a circular saw.

So I pulled all of the rafters down and cut them. I then put them back up. I wiped the sweat from my brow, sighed a sigh of relief and summoned The Force again.

I walked to the side of the deck to see a straight-line view of how my perfectly-measured, squared-up rafters looked. Theyy looked like cousin Cleatus’s teeth after a night of “smile 3-feet from the ass-end of this donkey while Bubba drops fireworks in the feed trough”.

Yeah, that’s a far-fetched Haiku but I’d rather do that right now than take those damn rafters down and cut ’em again.

Damn you deck. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you.

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Our neighborhood\’s weekly review

Elise and I shopped for almost a year for our house. We found a good deal in Austin’s Circle C Ranch neighborhood.

Just this week ABC cancelled the airing of Welcome to the Neighborhood, a reality TV show filmed in our neighborhood.

Welcome to the Neighborhood pitted seven “diverse” families in competition for one posh house in an Austin, Texas, planned community known as Circle C Ranch. Three neighborhood families, all white and traditional, were assigned to pass judgment on the prospective new neighbors, some of whom were gay, black and/or Wiccan.

Too bad. I have a lot of scrap lumber left over from building the deck and was hoping I could use it to construct a large cross in the front yard and set fire to it in the evenings.

And just yesterday a road a few blocks from our house was closed for 12 hours because a suspicious package was found and thought to be a bomb.

As they say ’round these parts, “Keep Austin Weird”

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Stress relieving shower

So I woke up extra early this morning so I could be fresh for the staff meeting this morning. I began my morning, getting ready ritual as usual.

Back in a time that I like to refer as a time in my life that occured prior to this point right now, I was turned on to the very manly, poofy, scrunchy body washer thing. You know the thing I’m talking about: it’s that loosely-balled mesh material that you squirt the liquid body wash onto and use to cleanse yourself. They usually come in very testosterone-friendly colors like Lovermellon Pink, Luscious Lavender and Easter Lily Blue.

If you’ve ever had a girlfriend, wife or sister, you know what I’m talking about and you’ve used one. I’ve used one for years and years. I prefer the pink one myself. Sometimes, when I’m in a good mood, I’ll pinch it between my butt cheeks and bounce around in the shower like I’m a rabbit with a pillowy pink tail. I’ll sing this great song about how I’m the happiest, hippidy hoppidy clean rabbit in the rain forest. In all of this excitement I slip on the soapy shower floor, bang my head against the shower wall, kick the door open with my foot and my pale, white, lanky body will wind up on the floor in a contorted positition with a pink mesh thing sticking out from back rear that makes it look like I’ve given birth to a carnation.

Elise will check on me and decide that I need to be in an institution.

That aside, I was taking my shower this morning sans the hippidy hoppidy part. I used Elise’s “Stress Reducing” body wash. This stuff is prime body wash. I’m talking about a Grade A formulation here. I bought this stuff for her from the company that sells things for baths, showers and 1978-1997 Cub Cadet riding lawn mowers. This stuff that I was using said it had peppermint, lavender, chamomile, horse chestnut extract, certified organic rosemary, uncertified ginger stamen, black tar heroin and angel boogers (as exfoliant).

I’m still stressed.

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Kick in the pants

I was driving home from Marble Falls tonight and my inner monologue cadence consisted of, “I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job.”

Today was a shitty day. It started off with me being stuck in a line of traffic for an hour while DOT workers moved a median on Hwy 71 just before Hwy 281. Then I get to work and everyone is complaining about everything and everyone.

My current work dilema is staff. Next week it’ll be customers. The following week it’ll be financials. After that it’ll be vendors. The worst is when it’s staff.

I recently had to come down on two employees for absenteeism. We’re a close knit organization and when someone isn’t at work, it puts a huge kink in the hose. The work ethic just isn’t there right now. One of my employees is bitter for reasons I’ll leave unmentioned.

The thing that pisses me off is that all of these issues (I’m leaving 90% of them out because I’m trying not to think about work any more that I have to just to finish this post) can be solved by themselves if they would just take some inititiative.

My most recent hire and I talked for a couple hours this evening. She mentioned her two sons. One is a “go-getter” and the other needs a kick in the pants from time to time. She said they went to counseling a long time ago. The counselor told her that you can’t teach initiative. That’s very true. I don’t know what it’s like to not have initiative.

When I recently interviewed people, I inherently weeded out the candidates who I felt would eventually need a kick in the pants. I’m not a micro manager. I want my staff to be autonomous, and for the most part, they are. But then there are weeks like this one where a spark turns into a fire. The fire can easily be put out with some initiative.

So my boss came into the office today. These recent issues were brought up with boss, yours truly and another employee. Most of what was said by other employee kind of made me look bad – like I haven’t been doing my job.

Other employee left and I said to boss, “Bossman, remember last year when I took on the role of manager?… We had the same problem this time last year with staff. Remember when I asked for your advice and what you told me?”

Last year he basically told me to not stress and that these issues usually resolve themselves. I’ve been biding my time and waiting for this to resolve itself. And it will eventually. That’s not to say that I’m turning a deaf ear to a problem, I’ve been down this road before and in this situation, I know what to do and what not to do.

The other issue is the absenteeism and lack of accountability. I’ve addressed this with certain staff and thought it was taken care of. Well, it’s not. Now bossman is going to talk to everyone tomorrow morning. I’m a little ill about it all because I think I’ve done a pretty good job managing the business and haven’t had to involve my boss in things other than financials. I just feel weird that he’s going to take time out of his day to have a staff meeting about staff… something that I should have taken care of.

So I’m stressed, pissed at myself and won’t sleep for shit tonight because I have a staff meeting at 8 a.m.

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Deck rafters


Deck with rafters

I’ve slowly been progressing with the deck. Earlier this week Elise’s friends, Heather and Lindsey called and said they were going to road trip down from Des Moines to Austin for the week of the 4th.

That prompted me to get the deck done so our guests could enjoy hanging out in the back yard. All that was really left to do to finalize the fruition of my design was to hang the rafters. I drove over to the ol’ HoPot yesterday evening and bought 20 14-foot 2×6’s and loaded them onto my truck. The men that were loading their trucks in the contractor’s delivery area of the HoPot were laughing at me. It was a funny scene.

So I went home and starting hanging rafters. It was exhausting work but I’m glad I’m done for now. The rafters haven’t been screwed down yet so I’m hoping California doesn’t sink and cause the rest of the states to lean and my rafters slide off and kill a possum.

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Where did my hard drive space go + 1ClickDVDCopy

I bought Elise a HP DV1040 laptop for Christmas last year. It’s been a great computer (better, faster, cheaper than my iBook) and has been the only reason I haven’t ‘switched’ Elise to Apple (well, she has her own reasons as well).

So the HP has a 60GB drive. I’ve kept her computer absolutely pristine; I removed hid Internet Explorer and removed Outlook Express. I installed Firefox and Thunderbird for her browser and e-mail client respectively. I wiped out the trial version of Office XP and installed OpenOffice. I use Norton SystemWorks, Microsoft’s AntiSpyware, Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware.

Clean machine.

Her laptop came grinding to a halt. I checked the C: drive to find out that she had something like 30MB of space left. I had a handful of mp3’s on her machine as well as a few photo albums – but nothing that would eat up her entire hard drive.

I got to thinking… I use her computer to copy DVDs (not those that are rented from Blockbuster, of course ;-)). I use 1ClickDVDCopy. I knew there had to be some sort of Temp file that was using a significant amount of drive space.

To spare you the boring details, I downloaded TreeSize Professional and quickly found a 49GB .VOB file that I didn’t need. Tracked down the file, deleted it… *poof*

Hint: search [F3] for “*.VOB” (without quotes)

It was almost as relieving as excavating a breath-inhibiting booger.

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Gainors, grub & more decking

Terri, Grant and Adam flew in from Poway on Thursday afternoon. Elise picked them up from the airport and brought them back to the house and then to the pool for a swim. I got home from work and we all went out for dinner at the Saltlick.

We came back to the house and congregated in the bedroom that nobody goes in and talked for a couple hours. The boys and I wrestled, played guitar and a few heated games of Lightening Reaction. My nephews are such great kids and I feel bad that we live so far away and I haven’t been able to have more time with them.

Elise had to work on Friday. I took the day off so I could spend time with my sister and nephews. Terri went for a jog while the boys and I drove up to Lone Star Kolaches to rustle up some breakfast.

We came back to the house and everybody ate. Terri took a shower while the guys went outside and played with Uncle Josh’s R/C monster truck and tossed the frisbee around.

We all hopped in the truck and went to Mt. Bonnell. After trekking up the steps, gazing down at the river and then back down the hill, we drove around the Mt. Bonnell area, Tarrytown and the Enfield area to shop real estate. Next on Grant’s itinerary was to visit the state capital. It was already lunch time so we drove over to El Arroyo to have lunch with Aunt Elise.

After lunch it was off to the capital. The boys were excited to get inside and explore while Terri and I hung back and contemplated why the capital lawns, all 5 billion acres of deep green St. Augustine, were there no visible sprinkler heads. We looked and looked and couldn’t find any sprinkler heads. It has to be one of those government conspiracies.

Grant and Adam had a spending allowance for Austin – specifically for Texas capital souvenirs. Grant chose a Texas license plate, a pencil, pen and some Tic Tacs. Adam chose a sticker and a capital of Texas paper weight. Adam came up to the counter while I was talking to the cashier. Adam put his items-for-purchase on the counter along with a five dollar bill. The cashier rang up his purchase. $5.08. Uncle Josh looked in his pockets for eight cents. I didn’t have it. Instead, I took his $5 and gave the cashier a twenty dollar bill…

Adam asked for his $5 back. I quickly realized that this was going to be a lesson in economics.

“Can I have my $5?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you didn’t have enough money – so I took your money and paid for your souvenirs for you.”

“Can I have my $5?”

“No. You paid for your souvenirs.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Where did my $5 go?”

“It’s in the bag – the stuff you just bought.”

[Adam then sticks his head into his shopping bag to find his five dollar bill.]

It took two cashiers and Uncle Josh to convince Adam that his five dollars were spent and Uncle Josh helped him pay the extra that was owed.

After our tour of the capital it was time to head home as Dad was coming to pick up Terri and the boys and take them to Cat Spring for the week.

Dad showed up at four o’clock and soon I had an empty nest. Elise came home shortly after and we spent the evening on the deck talking.

Elise and I woke up early on Saturday and drove out to Horseshoe Bay to cater Jack Brown‘s (Mr. Brown is also Elise’s boss’ father-in-law) family reunion at their lakehouse. Elise kept everything organized with her Catering Director superpowers while yours truly slaved over a 450-degree smoker and a deep fryer all day. I cooked hamburgers, hot dogs and funnel cakes for everyone for lunch. Flautas, crab rolls, beef and chicken fajitas and fried ice cream were served for dinner. Two on-site meals for 65 people… It was rough.

We had a little time between preps so Clay took us out on his boat. We (well, mostly Clay since he’s captain of his own boat) taught Elise to ski from the barefoot bar. She did really well and it was so exciting seeing the look on her face while skiing for the first time.

After a little work on the bilge pump, we were out again. This time it was my go. I hadn’t been water skiing in a long, long time. I quickly realized that water skiing is just like riding a bike – you never forget. I popped right out of the water and felt right at home. Clay tried to keep me in the cove as the lake was very choppy. I got out into the main part of the lake before Clay realized he needed to turn around. I went outside the wake and hit the choppy water and as hard as I tried to stay up, I bit it. Fairly hard too.

Clay and Elise came back around to pick me up. I skied for five minutes or so and decided to exit via a boat turn wake jump nose dive. We docked, cleared the boat and it was time for me to start cooking fajitas for everyone.

It was at that point that I realized that something was missing. Something didn’t feel right. I looked down at my left hand and saw that my wedding ring wasn’t on my finger. I never take it off. My heart sunk.

I told Elise. I’m 99.999999% sure I lost it when I wiped out on the lake. Everyone at the family reunion heard about it and felt bad for me. Elise was quick (and sweet) to say that it’s better to lose a ring than to lose Josh.

So I’m pretty upset that I lost my wedding ring.

Thirteen hours later, we were done with the catering. Horseshoe Bay is ten minutes from Marble Falls (where I work) so I took Elise to finally see my office. I gave her the dime tour and then we were back in the truck on our way home. We didn’t get home until almost 2 a.m. and we were beat. Working hard all day and water skiing will really take it out of you.

I didn’t sleep well because 1) I was over-exhausted 2) I was still pissed that I lost my ring and 3) Sunday meant working on the deck.

I rolled out of bed around 9 a.m. and started working on the deck. I woke Elise up an hour later and we went to the ol’ HoPot for more lumber.

We worked on the deck for the best part of the afternoon. I built the steps that lead down to the yard and Elise helped me tack down the the supports for the rafters. According to my original design, the deck is 97.65% done.

And so is my sunburn.

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Dear Hair

Jesus JoshDear Hair,

Why don’t you return my letters or phone calls? I miss you. I love you. I want you back. We had such wonderful times together. How could you just leave me like that? We had beautiful children that I know you would love to see. They’re growing up so quickly out of my nose and ears.

I miss you.

Love,

Josh

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Down Solstice

I walked out onto the deck early this morning and stared blankly at nothing. I came to the conclusion that I’m depressed. I can attribute a lot of this to the flurry of activities over the past few weeks. My parents have been up to visit a lot. I’ve been able to spend time with my brother, who I haven’t seen in years. When company leaves, I get bummed.

Elise has been busy at work so I don’t see her which adds to my stress. I’ve been working on the deck for the past ten days so other daily chores have been put on the back burner. The house looks like shit, things that need to get done at home and at work and I need a haircut.

Yesterday would not end. It felt like I was at the office for a bazillion hours. When I was sure that a few hours had passed, only minutes had passed. It was a stereotypical Monday. I was clockwatching, waiting to go home to eat leftover ribs, flop down on the couch and watch Hell’s Kitchen. That’s all I wanted out of June 20th.

The end of the work day came as fast as slug on his way to the dentist for a root canal. Speaking of: Invertebrate Endodondistry would be a great name for a band.

I hopped into my truck and headed home. On my way home I thought, “Damn, my truck looks like shit.” I haven’t washed it in over a month. There was dirt all over the place, it smelled and the outside was filthy. I got home, changed clothes and washed and dried my truck. I looked at the yard and thought, “Damn, my yard looks like shit.” I mowed. I ran inside to see if I had any time left before Hell’s Kitchen came on. 14-minutes. I ran back outside, edged, blowed the cut grass off of the driveway and sidewalk and turned on the sprinkler.

Two minutes to spare. I threw a plate of ribs in the microwave and watched my show.

Somewhere between “My truck looks like shit” and “My yard looks like shit” I took my shitty attitute to the shitty phone and called my pretty wife.

“Why don’t you come home and help me with the shitty shit that needs to be done around the shittin’ house?!?!”

“Why don’t you take your asshole attitude and go eat a decroded peice of crap?”
(She didn’t really say that, buy my attitude warranted a response like that)

[click]

“Shit…”

I’ve always loved Summer. I love it in Texas when it’s 100+ degrees outside. Usually because we get together with friends and do things outside and in water. Usually we’ll go boating or tubing or hang out on a breezy patio near the water or just in someone’s backyard.

It’s the first day of Summer today and I’m not feeling it. On Sunday Elise and I agreed that we have no idea what happened to May and June. The past two months just flew by like a cheetah on his way to prime rib night at the local brothel. Make up your own band name.

My job is really bumming me out too. It’s not so much the job as it is the commute. I wake up and immediately start dreading the long drive. Once I start driving, I get into my zone. Then I start thinking about what new issue will be waiting for me once I walk into the office. The day eventually comes to an end. And then there’s the commute home. If I look at the glass half full, I could say that driving an hour is better than sitting in traffic for an hour.

I hate being in a rut. Shitty rut.