Category: Uncategorized

Pissed Off About Time Passing

I just had to open a file for work.  The name of the file needed to be the date that next week ends in yyyymmdd format.  In other words, 20130104.

2013.  Can you believe that next week is 2013?  I sure has hell can’t.

I met my wife in 2007 which is proof of that statement, “Time flies when you’re having fun” because it feels like our lives together have really just begun.  How can we be entering our sixth calendar year together?  That’s crazy!

I started my current job in 2004 with the belief that I would be out doing something else in two years.   Now it’s 2013 and I’m still here.

After Star Wars became a huge hit in 1977, George Lucas announced that he would be making nine Star Wars films in all and that each would take three years to make.  That would put the release date for episode nine in 2001.  My dad joked that I’d be 30 years old and that I would have to take him to the movies instead of the other way around.  2001 was 11 years ago.

I graduated high school in 1989.  The turn of the century felt like some far off distant land.  Now we’re in the third year of the second decade of the new century.  That’s insane!  I should also mention that my 21st birthday turns 21 in 2013.  Think about that.

The Red Sox ended all of that curse of the bambino bullshit in 2004… Nine years ago.

Carl Yastrzemski played his final game in 1983… 30 years ago.  (oh and by the way, Yaz is now 73 years old)

Here’s the worst one, by far…

I still remember being all jazzed up about the start of the 1980’s.  The 70’s are over, man.  It’s time for the 80’s!  Bring on the flying cars and moon bases!  WOOHOO!  I was nine on January 1, 1980.  It seemed like such a massively humongous event.  Now, suddenly, 1980 has morphed into 2013.  Urgh!

What the hell happened???

Obligatory Pissed Off at the NHL Post

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while.  Maybe because after more than three months of lockout, I just don’t give a shit anymore.  Maybe.

The NHL made a proposal to the NHLPA today.  The national hockey media is all abuzz over it.  It seems to include serious movement by the league toward the demands set by the players association.  Good.

Of course it comes as we approach the league’s mid-January deadline for cancelling the entire season.  That would be two labor cancelled seasons in eight years.  That would also be suicide.  The offer also comes as the players union is trying to decide whether or not to decertify and throw the whole labor negotiation into the US courts.  That move would probably cancel this year and next year and maybe the year after that.  But hey, at least they wouldn’t be saddled with a 10 year CBA, right?

None of this is what specifically triggered my need to write a pissy NHL post this afternoon.  As has happened each time one side or the other generated excitement, I fully expect the other side to ruin the optimism.  That will most likely happen after a 3:00pm Eastern time conference call with the players union leadership.

No, what pissed me off this time was something that NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said.  Allow me to quote Mr Daly via this Pierre LeBrun ESPN article:

“We are hopeful that once the union’s staff and negotiating committee have had an opportunity to thoroughly review and consider our new proposal, they will share it with the players. We want to be back on the ice as soon as possible.”

I added the italics, because that’s what pissed me off so much.  As soon as possible, Bill?  Really?  It’s DECEMBER 28th, and you want to get back on the ice as soon as possible?  What an asshole.  Hey Bill, as soon as possible went out the window when the first day of training camp was missed back in September.  You missed as soon as possible more than three effing months ago.  Thank you Deputy Commissioner Daly, for once again blatantly insulting your millions of fans.  Those millions of fans who allowed your league to post the highest earnings in its history last year.  That’s over 3 billion dollars worth of insulted fans.

I hate them all so much.

I HATE THEM ALL SO MUCH!

Friday

It is Friday.  That is good.  Tomorrow is Saturday.  That is better.

My wife seemed a little better last night, but she said she felt just as lousy.  She’s wondering if the antibiotics are causing an allergic reaction.  I hope not.  She’s working from home today.  The kids are going to an arcade with their father and then coming back to our house.  My worries about the reaction to Santa’s gifts is a little less today than it was a couple of days ago.  They are both using things that didn’t seem to go over all that well when they were opened.  That makes me happy.

We don’t have much planned for the weekend.  We had a get together scheduled with Larry and family and Mike and family, but pneumonia has postponed that for a couple of weeks.  It will be good to see everyone all at once again.  It’s been much too long.

All that’s left is a trip to the Apple store.  The kids and I all got iPads for Christmas (yes, we are all spoiled rotten.  Mostly me!) and the kids want to get cases for theirs.  I thought that maybe if Jen is feeling better by Sunday afternoon we might take a shot at seeing The Hobbit, but that’s probably not the smartest idea on my part.  Mostly we should just stay home and take care of Mom.  I think that is the best plan.  I’ll take care of any errands that need to be run, and the kids can stay in their pajamas, which they both love to do.

It’s the last weekend of 2012.  Let’s hope 2013 gets off to a healthier start for all of us.

A Crappy Couple of Weeks

You know what?  These last two weeks or so have pretty much sucked.  Christmas and Christmas Eve celebrations have been the only bright spots in an otherwise ugly period of time.

First I got sick with what was probably the flu.  Immediately after that, my wife got sick with what appeared to be the same bug.  We still had a lot of Christmas shopping and prepping to go but we spent most of the week prior to the holiday in a nyquil induced haze of uselessness.  Entire days were spent in bed trying to sleep through the illnesses.

Near the end of last week Jen started improving.  A day or so later I started to slowly improve.  We scrambled through the end of the Christmas shopping, and started getting ready for the Christmas Eve party, but for the most part it was just a struggle to keep ourselves up and at ’em.  Once I started to feel a tiny bit better, Jen started feeling worse.  Oh great.  Christmas Eve came and she fought her way through the cooking and hosting like a trooper.  Christmas day she did the same, all while getting sicker and sicker.  We both felt like Santa was at less than his best this year.  Jen took care of all of it, and I am dazzled by the success she had, but I feel like I could have been more helpful, and if we hadn’t lost that week to the flu we could have made some of the kids’ last minute gift wishes come true.  That was a big part of the problem this year, the kids took their sweet time putting together a wish list and in the end my step son was still asking for things as late as 12/23, and then come Christmas morning he was expecting to get those things.  He tried to act like he wasn’t disappointed, but we could tell he was a little bit.  Next year I need to do a better job getting a list to Santa out of them both as early as humanly possible.  I might have them start taking notes on ideas for next year, tonight.

Don’t get me wrong, Christmas was a big success.  Everyone was happy.  I just feel like I should have contributed more, and I failed to surprise Jen at all.  She got great stuff.  It’s just that everything she got was on her wish list.  I didn’t manage to wow her with anything.  As for the kids, the last paragraph makes it sound like they got socks and underwear and nothing else.  That’s not true.  They got new iPads!  They got awesome games.  They got books that they are going to love.  They got a lot of great stuff.  I just wanted to do better by them and I couldn’t because I spent the week leading up to Christmas as a flu riddled basket case.

So maybe you’re asking, this is all in the past.  Why is that fat red head saying that he’s still having a bad week?  Well for me, New Years is ruined because of work.  I’m on call all day, and they are guaranteed to work my fat ass off all day and night.  It’s going to suck.  I still have a lingering cold and cough.  Not bad, but it is still there.  As for Jen?  Oh nothing.  Just fricken walking pneumonia, that’s all.  She kept getting sicker so she went to the doctor yesterday and got the news.  Pneumonia!  Are you serious?  How bad does that suck!  She feels really sick and she is just miserable about it.  I feel miserable because I’m here at work and not at home rubbing her feet and cooking her some Campbell Chicken Noodle Soup.  I should be home with her right now, but instead I am here working.  I hate it.

So what it comes down to is this.  This week and last week have sucked in many ways.  I am hopeful that things will start turning around soon, but the next few days still may be a continuance of the current suck fest.

Send some get well wishes to my beautiful bride.  She’s an angel and she needs to feel better soon.