Terrible Analogies

…or is it Merry Memorial Day?  I can’t remember.  

Anyway, being a veteran myself (U.S. Air Force) I’m taking this unexpected free time to get my MAME arcade machine back up and running (thanks go out to House Of Husar for rekindling my long-smoldering classic arcade game obsession).  Its been in pieces ever since we moved into the new home, and lately I’ve been itchin’ to get in a few sessions of Robotron and Gauntlet 2.  

Usually I draw the short straw at work and am forced to put in a few hours on Memorial Day, so it’s nice to have these few fleeting days off of work

Easter Sunday:  I woke up early and slunk downstairs to pour myself a heaping bowl of Cap’N Crunch, sprawled out on the couch, and repeatedly flipped the TV back and forth between the Cartoon Network and the Speed channel.  I was in that mystical zone, somewhere between waking from a dream state and slipping into a sugar coma, when the wife gave a shout from somewhere upstairs.

I heard the patter of feet above my head.  Seconds later I watched as the cat tumbled down the stairs quickly followed by Karin, who breathlessly suggested that I go outside.  There’s….something on the street.

Putting my cereal bowl down, I slowly heaved myself off the couch and stepped into the garage.  Giving the oversized garage door button a clumsy, meaty slap with the palm of my hand I quickly pawed through my hair in an attempt to look presentable just in case I bumped into a neighbor.  The clunky sound of chains and sprockets squealed as they pulled the garage door up and over our heads.  Shading the morning sun from my face with raised hands, my squinting eyes strained to adjust to the light, then strained yet again to try to comprehend what they was seeing.

The first thing I thought of was Spring Heeled Jack, but this couldn’t be…could it?  This demanded closer investigation.

Strange markings covered the street in front of our house. What could they be?

Oh...I get it. It's Easter, no? They must be bunny tracks!

Bunny tracks outside our front door

Wow...it looks like somebody left something behind.

The Easter Bunny left a small gift on everyone's doorstep!

Inside the hollow plastic egg was this Easter greeting

Kudos to the neighbor who went through all this trouble!

It’s as if the fine people at We The Robots created this in homage to my pathetic life:

The comparison is so accurate that it borders on the eerie…

It’s no wonder I have no time to pursue more noble endeavors such as the arts, sciences, and maths:

Ah well, I guess we deal with whatever life throws at us in the best way we know how.  At least whatever cycles I can spare I tend to spend them on either running, lifting, or aimlessly surfing the tubernets in an effort to avoid real responsibilities.  As long as nobody complains, I’m happy.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my beer.  Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 

Don’t drink too much…remember, work awaits you in the morning.

Here’s hoping that you had a nice, relaxing Valentine’s Day.  

It appears that the weatherman couldn’t have been more wrong about the forecast.  The weather was actually quite comfortable in southern California.  In between celebrating the wife’s birthday and Valentine’s Day I managed to squeeze in two trail runs in as many days.   When the rain does finally arrive I plan to spend my days in the gym, so it’s all good.

Not to get all non-sequitur on you, but for no apparent reason reason I’m been thinking about The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air recently, and something’s been bothering me about the show’s premise for the past three days.  If the Fresh Prince and his mother lived in the projects, and the Fresh Prince had an extraordinarily rich aunt who lived in a wealthy and prominent neighborhood of Los Angeles, why would his aunt let her sister live in such a squalid, dangerous location?  

It seemed that his mother and her sister were on good enough terms to let the Fresh Prince live with the aunt apparently with no conditions attached.  If they were on such good terms, why couldn’t his aunt kick a few bucks his way, helping he and his mother escape from a strangling life of targeted, criminal, gang-related violence?

I mean, here’s the aunt who’s dripping with jewelry, three self-centered kids, a powerfully-connected husband who happens to be a well-respected high-ranking judge, a smarmy butler, gardener, and an unknown number of servants lurking in the background performing a variety of tedious tasks all in an effort to keep her comfortable in the lifestyle to which she’s accustomed.  Floating in a pretentious sea of haute culture and callous celebrity, his aunt couldn’t lift the three fingers it takes to write a check that could change the life of an extremely intelligent, grounded, good-natured child that deserves the opportunity to excel beyond his wildest dreams, breaking the cycle of turbulence and strife that his family has no doubt experienced for generations?

This is, after all, family.  No?

Through a delicate, subtile combination of psychology and extreme violence, I’ve managed to wrangle the next five days off from work.  In my head I had planned out a few days of long trail runs and hill work in preparation for my attack on Mt. Whitney, but as luck would have it, it appears that one of those “storms of the century” type deals is going to start rolling into San Diego starting Friday evening, and I’m told it will linger around through at least Monday.  Great.

But at least I won’t be sitting in front of my laptop coding some abstract program, administrating Sharepoint or our Project 2007 environment, installing an iffy change control for a developer who can’t write a coherent sentence to save his life, or resurrecting a dying server that houses a database which contains the true name of God or some other business critical app.

But hey, I guess I should be grateful that I’m employed.  I mean, that’s what the news tells me, right?  In this current economy I should just acquiesce, fall on my knees, and grovel eastwards in reverence that a nameless corporation sees fit to take advantage of my talents, milking me for all I’m worth, draining me of my soul and slowly wringing out by carefully measured increments my will to live.  

And to think, I used to be such an upbeat guy…  ;-)

If it’s Friday, and you’re sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup in front of your corporate computer dreading what the day is about to wrought all over your shocked face, take comfort in the fact that I’ll be at Disneyland with the wife, eating a big stack of pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse, zipping down Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and deftly maneuvering the claw machine at the Disney arcade in a desperate attempt to pluck a stuffed fish or teddy bear for the birthday girl Karin.  

Yes….her birthday does fall on Friday the 13th.  Heap that fact on the teetering pile of innumerable reasons why I love her.  Heh…