Iowa detail -- Day 1

So this is Iowa. I get off the plane which was two hours late and can already feel the humidity.
The airport is tiny and easy to escape, and the car rental lady is very nice.

No one in Iowa seems to care that I am a big old queer.

I drive to Ames, find my hotel finally, then go out for a drive to see the sights and find dinner... also to get a bunch of crap I forgot.

I find the University and it is AWESOME. Well I really just love the trees and the buildings like the great red brick horse barn.

I drive around, finally run into an area with a lot of stores and hit the Big KMart for the things I forgot. Soda is really expensive here, and there are no liqour stores. Finally find a liquor store which informs me that all grocery stores and convenince stores sell booze. Ah.

A shining beacon of hope in the night.

I find a Taco John's (across from a Taco Time!) and return to the hotel.

The next morning I run to the work campus and figure out what the hell I will be doing all day, which is WALK. The square footage of the building is 11 football fields on 4 floors. Whew. There are also cool things like level 2 and 3 labs, which are empty so you can go in and look at them with no danger of contamination.

For lunch the boss of the customer service folks takes me to a great pizza place Great Plains Sauce and Dough. It should be called Great Plains Dough and Cheese because that is what most of the pizza is made of. TONS of cheese, on thick whole wheat or oat crust. I liked it quite a bit, and it was cheap. 2 slices and a coke set me back 5.66, with free soda refills.

We tour the main street a little and then head back to the campus. After work I go to cool down in my room then venture back out to look for the supposed gay bar, a big box store, and a proper grocery store. Gay bar is non-existent. Grocery store is odd, frozen food is NOT cheap here. The soda is still not cheap, which I figure is because of the deposit on bottles. The store brand soda makes me laugh.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaaaw!

Dear Bing...

You are a piece of shit and here is why:

I am sure you are just as adequate as Yahoo! search or anything else. But my coworker wanted to search for something this morning so she went to GOOGLE and typed in BING. (Actually, she typed in "BLING", because your name is so stupid people cannot even remember it.)

Yeah. They are using Google to find you, Bing, which is kind of like using your TomTom to find a Garmin dealer. It is not quite a compliment.

We all have the perfectly functional items we use every day, that work really well, and we all have the new shiny things we try for a while because they were a gift, but turn out to not be all that great.

Sorry, Bing. You fail.

RSI and storms a brewin'.

My right arm, the one I use to control my mouse all day, is going numb. From the fingers to the shoulder. I believe this is known as a Repetitive Stress Injury, or something like that. Crap.

I have NOT earned my pay today. I have wasted valuable tax dollars. Why? I have nothing to do. Our systems go down, everything screeches to a halt, and even when it is working again we have to go back and figure out whose fault it is that the thing broke in the first place.

I went out on our building's back patio and watched the huge thunderstorm roll in. We could see the eerie wall of clouds and the rain on the mountains in big grey flannel sheets, but it was still as the grave and hot and humid in town.

I have a terrible taste in my mouth. I need a wisdom tooth removed, a crown put on one tooth, fixed bridge for the other side of the mouth. Plus I am sure that half of my problem with taste is from quitting smoking. Nothing is how it was once before.

Which is one of those truths of life people relate constantly. The only thing that remains the same is change. Thank you, Melissa Etheridge, see you at New West fest.
So how do we embrace change?

This really has been a theme of my life for a few months now, I really started to notice it when I heard Robert Bly on the Prairie Home Companion several weeks ago.

THE SLIM FIR-SEEDS

The nimble oven bird, the dignity of pears,
The simplicity of oars, the imperishable
Engines inside slim fir-seeds, all of these
Hint how much we long for the impermanent
To be permanent. We want the hermit wren
To keep her eggs even during the Storm;
We want eternal oceans. But we are perishable;
Friends, we are salty, impermanent kingdoms.

--Robert Bly

Fail Day

Walk into work to find that all our databases are down. Perfect for the one day in my life I will have people visiting ME specifically at work from another part of the fucking country.

I forgot this meeting so I am not dressed appropriately. I may have to go home and change at lunch. Here in No. Colorado, every day is casual Friday so I am wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and sandals. I would wear at least slacks and real shoes for this if I weren't such a moron. I can still use my long illness as an excuse.

So no email, all systems down. This is going to be a long day.

Back from the dead.

So anyone who notices my facebook will know I was REALLY REALLY sick for the last 10 days.

I am not sure exactly what it was, the doctor said it was a “virus” of some kind, and that my chest x-ray was clear of pneumonia and TB. I got antibiotics (for the secondary bronchial infection) and an inhaler and some steroids and crap. I also got over a week at home in bed for the most part, breaking my back from all the coughing and gasping for air.

I had a lot of time to develop new hate for things I may not have otherwise noticed. Like “Whale Wars”, this asinine new show on Animal Planet channel.
I would just like to point out that Animal Planet is like the FOX or SPIKE of the “science-y” channels. Many of the shows on AP are of questionable educational or even entertainment value, and some of them are fraught with lies and sensationalism. Animal Cops is what I watch when allowed (which means “in the house alone sick for a week”).

I also have developed a deeper hatred of the vagina clowncar shows like “18 Kids and Counting” and “Jon & Kate Plus 8”. Frighteningly, the two most recent episodes *I* watched, one of each of these shows, had to do with the filming of the show and the lighting issues. WHO THE FUCK CARES, I want to see some Kate bitch smack-down on poor Jon, or watch the hi-jinks of the low-IQ fiancée of the next Duggar kid to get hitched. Actually I want blood. So I tune in for Clean Sweep at 3 AM and watch tiny-dicked men fight to keep their trophies from high school sports, when their dreams were not buried under their kid’s Lego and their wives’ Disney collectables.

Yesterday (Sunday) I finally left the house to go somewhere other than to the doctor. We went to IHOP. The employees there are the craziest bitches in the world. There is one woman who I swear never leaves. Ever. Every time I have been to IHOP in the last six years she has been there, no matter what time of day – 3AM after the bar, noon on a Sunday, 4 PM on a Wednesday…..ALWAYS THERE. This would be amazing if she didn’t suck so hard with her pretend friendship and calling people by name, but the wrong name, and assuming what you want because you frequently – like twice-- order the same thing.

Anyway, sitting watching the traffic go by, I see the craziest thing: A motorcycle with two passengers, pulling a trailer with a powder pink casket on it. Seriously. I meant to say “Whoa a pink coffin on a trailer behind a motorcycle!” but all I could say was “CORPSE!” – which really got attention from the family.

Back at work today. No one has really talked to me much, which is just fine. The day really drags when you feel weird still and are used to being asleep for 20 hours of the day. Also quitting smoking means no more smoke breaks, which means it feels like it should be 6PM instead of 1:30.

As soon as I get home, I think I am going to pass out for about 10 hours.