Saturday, July 30, 2011

48 weeks to go

1. Entering four weeks without call. Thank fucking Jeebus.

2. My son has an imaginary friend named Bally. (Bahli? Who the hell knows.) It's a girl with "eyes the same as mine". She is older than him. When he was telling me about her he stood back to back with her so I could see she was taller than him. That was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.




Unless he sees dead people, then it's not funny at all.

3. Weather continues to kick ass. There is rain up here. Life-sustaining rain at least every other day. Meanwhile Texas is so drought-ridden even tropical storms dry up before landfall, apparently.

4. Interview in Fort Worth scheduled. Working on interview for Corpus Christi. The Corpus job actually seems like a slightly better gig overall, except my wife doesn't really want to live in Corpus.

5. Mom's surgery went fine, but the recovery was constipated complicated. She's better now.

6. Don't really have anything else to add. Sorry for the weaksauce post.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

50 weeks to go

1. Job is way busier than advertised. Average call as an intern was easier than this shit. Only difference is during internship I wasn't at home to wake up my wife with every page.

2. Had I known I would be working in house 7 to 7 instead of the promised 8 to 4:30* then I would not have chosen to live this far from the hospital and rely on public transportation.

3. One in five people up here qualify as miserable human beings. I mean that as an objective assessment of their value as human beings, not a commentary on their subjective emotional state.

4. Two in five people up here qualify as genuine, nice individuals. Nobody's dropping egg in your beer or anything, but they might lend you a bottle opener if they see you with a couple longnecks.

5. The summer climate here is incredible. I'm sure the pain of winter more than counterbalances it, but I could spend every July for the rest of my life in small town Michigan.

6. Did a quick phone interview for a job in Fort Worth and am scheduling an in-person soon.

7. Mom having surgery in a couple days. Fuck me being 1000 miles away.



* I.e., if these devious fucks hadn't lied to me during the interview process.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

51 weeks to go

Here are few random thoughts as the first legit week in Ann Arbor winds down.

1. The people up here are thick. Probably fewer morbidly obese folks than the Metroplex, but there are no skinny people. Except the Asians.

2. I'm developing an awe of poor people. Just trying to live for a week without a car is very difficult, and it's probably easier in Ann Arbor than most places. It took me 90 minutes to buy $20 worth of groceries today. 30 minutes to walk to the store, 20 minutes to shop, and 40 minutes to carry all that shit back.* This weekend I had to pay $3.50 per load to do a single load of laundry at a time in the basement of my apartment because I didn't want to spend 40 minutes on a bus carrying my dirty laundry around. Basically being poor means you have to actually pay MORE to do a lot of things. Totally fucked.

3. My coworkers are total caricatures.
-- Super hard core gunner Asian chic
-- Indian guy who came to America and tasted alcohol for the first time and has never looked back
-- former Mormon who broke from the church and now drinks liquor and caffeine in the morning just to spite them
-- Arabic guy who spends all day trying to cut deals on the phone (while I take care of shit we are actually supposed to be doing) and makes at least 3 suggestions per day regarding things the department should pay for (like home internet bill, new laptop, mobile 3G hotspot device, etc)**

4. Ann Arbor never got the memo that rollerblading is douchey. On the flip side the bus drivers all wave make conversation with you.

5. Mother-in-law will be staying with us a few days after helping the wife and kids drive up. If she sleeps in our bed I don't know how her daughter's going to explain the carpet burns with a straight face.

* Bagger put my bananas in the same bag as the milk. By the time I got home I had banana mush and a slimy milk jug. Pissed.

** Not really a caricature so much as just annoying.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

llogg vs low-flow toilet

no contest.