Category: general

Friday already?  Awesome.

The other day, Sharaun joined Facebook.

Since then, I’ve been demoted to fourth place.  Keaton, New Kids on the Block, Facebook, and then me, laboring along trying to catch up and bringing up the rear.  That’s how the race is shaping up.

Over the years, I’ve always managed to stay away from the social networking thing.  When MySpace was the jam, I chose to abstain.  When Facebook’s more “college” clean and neat look became so obviously better than MySpace’s “highschool kid” clutter and everyone jumped ship, I kept my distance.  Friendster, no sir.  Bebo, heck no.  And, when every person I’ve ever worked with, all the way back to the skeezy dude who slammed lines on the prep table at Subway when I was 16, asked me to join them on LinkedIn, I made a special e-mail rule to send the requests directly into the bin.  “No thanks,” I thought.  The blog right here has always been enough “putting it out there” for me.

People have come to know of my social networking resistance, and chide me for it.  I’m too good for it, they say.  Too cool.  Think myself above it.  Am just reveling in the “coolness” of being the last holdout.  I’ve heard it all.  I dunno if it’s something like that or not, but I do kinda get a kick of someone asking, with a touch of incredulity, “You’re not on Facebook?”  In fact, people have gone so far as to send me articles about Facebook.  Here’s one of the best: “You Have No Friends. ”  After you read it, I bet you’ll be almost convinced you should join… I was.  Almost.  (Who am I kidding, I’m sure you’re already ‘bookin’ with the others.)

And so it’s come to pass that I, a social networking virgin, have watched my wife lift that pipe to her lips and draw deep – and end up hopelessly addicted from the first hit.  It’s been a measley two days and she’s strung out on the thing like a Facebook junkie.  Each night I get to hear about who she “found” that day, get to share in the rejoice as lost souls from the gradeschool-chum milk cartons in her mind are found alive and well, working in Des Moines for the school district.  Hey, did you hear that awkward skateboarding kid from Bible Camp is a fireman and noted philanthropist in Boston?  Dude, Dylan is a roughneck?  Wonder how he ended up in that line of work.  OMG, Amber is totally into chicks!

I gotta admit, it all looks a bit fun.

Not quite fun enough that I’m compelled to sign up for myself, but there is a certain appeal to seeing pictures of things you remember from the past (Tuesday’s entry, anyone?).  I suppose, now that Sharaun is on, I can kind of peek over her shoulder now and again for my own secondhand-smoke fix.  Can surreptitiously stay caught up on who went to the dentist, who just got a new Jeep, and whose kid is in swimming lessons via the nightly Facebook status reports.  I’m sure soon she’ll put it on her iPhone and I can get updates at any and all times.

So, if you see my lady in and around your Facebook area… can you spraypaint on her fence or whatever and let her know I’m gonna be gone for an hour or so up at the gym and Keaton’s running wild in the backyard?  Thanks; I can’t get her to turn her head from the dang screen.

Goodnight.

Sunday.  By tradition (or decree, depending on your bent), a day of rest.  And, who am I to mess with tradition?

(Note: I read somewhere that Stephen King once said to an editor something along the lines of, “Whoever made the rule that sentences can’t start with ‘and’ is an idiot,” and went on to note the usefulness and impact of doing so in literature.  And I gotta say, while I’m not a bona-fide writer, I totally agree on this one.  It’s got to be one of the worst, most limiting rules of grammar.  So, I do it.)

My sabbath plan includes a trip to the gym, listening to some music, and reading a little from my book (ten years later and I’m once again trying to finish the Wheel of Time series… but we know how that’s gone for me before).  The iPod is on a Grateful Dead thing, shuffling them up disproportionally – not a bad thing, it’s a good day for some Dead.

I talked about the rain the other day, in the context of our night-of-horrors with sleep-averse Keaton.  Well today the sun’s out and (most of) the clouds have retreated to wring the mountains dominating the eastern horizon.  Most of the time sun after rain is a welcomed change, but we could really use some more rain here… and the bright skies did none-too-much to drive off the chill in the air – so it’s more the kind of sunshine and blue skies you admire from behind windows.  It’s does pick-up the mood a bit though, cheerier than grey and wet to be sure.

So after the gym, and after a quick contorted nap on the loveseat (Sharaun had the couch), we piled into the car as a family and went grocery shopping together. This is a rare treat for me, as more often than not I’m banished from trips to the grocery store.  Sharaun doesn’t do well with my experimentalist approach to  discovering new foods – and has a low tolerance for my aisle-wandering in while I search for interesting stuff I’ve never eaten before.  I want to buy steel-cut oats in bulk, am drawn to the cans with Spanish labeling and a picture of a rooster in flames perched on an ear of blue corn (what the heck could that even be, I wonder), all of the sudden get a hankering for some braunschweiger on rye toast.

In the end I went along with “the list,” and we stuck to our normal fare.

And now I’m outta here to read a little bit more.  Goodnight.

I try to explain: When I take a call, I have to bring the rock. My customers come first. Women don’t understand this.

Fight after fight after fight, woman after woman after woman, and none can appreciate my level of commitment to the game.

It’s not that hard, at least to me: Dude calls needing a fix, I answer, tell dude I got his fix, dude and me meet and I get paid. If it was any simpler, I’d be out of a job and you could get rocks from a vending machine at the corner store. Anyway, with the pot of gold at the end of it all you’d think a woman wouldn’t care about the means (women like money, mostly a man’s money).

Simple job yes; easy to be good at it no. For my part, I bring people skills, finesse, character. Dudes don’t buy from me just because I’m holding, dudes buy from me because they want in on my action, want to be around me, know me.

And I know them.

Broke, hungry, tired, and willing to ignore it all for my junk. It’s the cycle: Trading junk for money and money for junk; taking significant losses with each exchange. So they come to me with crumpled money and crumpled spirits and I give them a toothy smile and a baggie that’ll send them over the moon for a while, maybe help them forget why they traded the junk for the junk in the first place. They’ll come back.  I got a record, I get repeat customers. My rock is the same as any rock on the street, but with my rock you get my record of service, my smile, my lighter if you need a light.

I have a reputation to maintain, how do you think we pay rent? I’m not the top and I’m not looking for the top, dudes know that and feel comfortable with me. They keep coming, they tell friends, they put my name in their favorite songs and sing funny lyrics about me and the rock they buy from me. I’m their connection to what they need so I need to be there when they need me to be there. Money doesn’t come on your terms, comes on money’s term.

Just cut me a break OK? I’m gonna run out, move this rock, and be right back to clean up the dishes. You just keep turning out the flapjacks, put them on a plate in a stack, and put another plate over them to keep them warm so my butter still melts when I’m back. You can’t be mad, I’ll come back with at least $20, more than you’ll take standing here my old boxers and t-shirt making pancakes… right? Yeah, I know it’s right.

So look: When I take a call, I have to bring the rock. You want me to say it again?

When I take a call, I have to bring the rock.

Thanks for the pancakes.