Super Bowl

Well, I don't care about either teams in the Super Bowl. But I love the Super Bowl. So I don't have any other options. Gambling it is!

Just Because

Chronicling the minutiae of everyday life and molding it into an entertaining 500-1000 word post is not that easy. It takes a lot of effort, which frankly isn’t one of my strongest attributes. That’s why, despite my obvious and considerable talents, I can barely muster more than two posts a week. But I also have legions of fans to appease so I’m going to break out everyone’s favorite super lazy blogging style: Bullet points!

• Occasionally something comes along and enriches your life in ways you didn’t even know were possible. It’s like a void that you weren’t aware of is filled with joy. That happened to me recently when I was introduced to my new favorite blog ever (thank you Jessie). I never knew how much I needed a guy berating cute animals in my life until I had it, now I don’t think I could live with out it.

• On a similar note: sometimes you don’t realize a need for something until it’s too late. For example, say you haven’t had a car in a couple of years. Then you buy one and a few months later an ice storm hits. That’s when you realize you could use an ice scraper. This is a problem when your car is frozen in a block of ice like a woolly mammoth. Luckily I’m an engineer so I reek of ingenuity; these instances are my time to shine. I used a spatula, it was brilliant. Basically I’ve made the ice scraper completely obsolete.

• There are things that make me sad and there are things that make depressed. The fact that Paul Blart: Mall Cop is the #1 movie in America three weeks in a row falls into both of those categories.

See, I probably could have made three individual posts out of those but who has the time when TV has been so good lately. Maybe I’ll write about that.

The Gambler

To me there really is nothing more glorious than waking up on a weekend morning with nothing to do and doing just that. Laying around all morning drifting in and out of sleep, catching up on your Tivo then rolling out of bed at the crack of noon. That’s living if you ask me and that’s exactly how I spent last Sunday. About midmorning I started to get a little bored though, not bored enough to actually get up and do something with my life mind you, but bored none the less. Occasionally in cases of extreme doldrums such as this I’ll turn to online poker. There are free tournaments you can play in that I’ll use just to pass the time when I have nothing better to do. When I logged on to the poker site though I noticed that I had $5 in my account. SCORE! From time to time the poker Gods will give you free money to encourage you to deposit more of your own money to lose to them. Trust me, it’s effective. Anyway, I was pretty pumped to be able to play with real, free money instead of fake money. In the last two days I’ve turned that $5 into several hundred dollars, because I’m good at poker. I don’t say this to brag, it’s not that impressive, it just got me thinking.

I’ve spent the first half of this week working outside doing more bridge inspections. It’s terrible; you might have noticed it’s been a brutally cold week. I still can’t feel my toes. I can already see what I’m going to be thinking about tomorrow. I mean after I get over the thoughts about how I didn’t pay $130,000 for college to hang out underneath of bridge while my balls freeze off. I’ll be thinking, in two days I was able to take $5 and turn it into almost as much money as I will make the first two days of this work week doing something fun instead of doing something awful. Why would I not just quit my job and gamble for a living. And inevitably my mind would drift off to what my life would be like as a professional online poker player. Here’s a hint, it involves a wireless connection, a pool, and spreadsheets.

Why don’t I do it you ask? Well I’m really not as good as I imply first of all. Secondly, it’s stupid and impractical. I mean, you probably won’t be surprised to know that $130,000 in schooling comes with some pretty massive student loans.

So what’s the moral of this story? Sometimes I daydream about what I’m going to daydream about in advance.

Seriously...

I don't even care how this looks. This goes against everything my blog is about but I'm posting it anyway. Mostly because I didn't have anything else today, but also because this is the cutest f'ing thing I've ever seen in my life, and I'm enriching your life by sharing:

I can't even handle looking at that it's so fucking adorable. It's so cute that I want to get a kitten and then break it's leg so I can have one of my own. What?

Where's The Fire?

Like most people who work in large office buildings I try to ignore fire alarms as long as possible. When an alarm sounds everyone just sort of mills around until enough people have decided to take it seriously that everyone leaves. I work on the 25th floor and there is no way in hell I’m walking down that many flights of stairs unless there is a grave emergency.

Unlike most people I like to get into work early. Mainly so that I can leave early, I enjoy the fact that I’m already home from the gym by the time most people are leaving work. The added bonus is that I get to fart around for an hour or hour and a half before most of the office starts showing up to work. It’s great, I don’t get why everyone who can do this doesn’t. I mean I’ve figured out a way to work a normal 9 hours, be home by quarter after 4, and really only actually do 5 or 6 hours of work a day. It’s genius really.

There is however, one instance when these two ideas conflict. When the fires alarm goes off at 7:20 in the morning it happens for a reason one would assume. They don’t run fire drills when there are only 12 people in the building. Not wanting to die in a blazing tower inferno myself and the 2 other people in the office at the time evacuated. Walking down 25 flights is not the ideal way to start the morning though so we decided to ignore all safety precautions and take the elevator. Well the elevators weren’t working, perhaps some sort of automatic shut off when the alarm goes off, so we had to take the stairs. Eventually we make it to the bottom. At this point I was pretty tired and pissed off so if there wasn’t a roaring fire I was not going to be happy.

So what caused the alarm to sound? The elevators weren’t working. So not only did we unnecessarily walk down the steps from the top of a 300 foot building, the elevators were broken and we couldn’t use them to get back up.

Dammit.

Happy New Year? The Jury is Still Out

Things got pretty weird there on New Year’s Eve didn’t they? They did, you’re going to have to trust me on that one. I’m not going to get too into it because, well, I’m just not. If I wrote about all the dumb things I did under the influence than it would consume all of my time. While I’m sure it would provide endless entertainment to the readers, I unfortunately have a job so I’ll keep it to myself, and of course all those who bear witness. Anyway, the culmination of the weirdness took place in my bedroom at the end of the night, whenever that was. The result of which was to wake up Thursday morning to find that my closet door (which was already kind of broken) has fallen off the tracks into my wall, ripping the light switch clean off. It was quite a scene. I also noticed in the mess that I had managed to remove a blazer, sweater, dress shirt, and under shirt all at the same time. They wear completely intact in a ball on my fall as if I had just jumped out of my clothes in one move. It was amazing. I may or may not turn into Superman after my 11th or 12th vodka tonic, but that’s another story.

Consequently I had to replace the light switch in my bedroom*. Now, I’m fairly handy around the house (you can smell my super manly pheromones from there can’t you?), but I’m no Ty Pennington. Except that sometimes I get a little serious and misty when thinking about all the hardships those families on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition have had to endure (See: manly). Anyway, it’s a pretty easy process; the only issue is that it includes electricity. I have no business being around electricity. Once when I was around 8 or 9 I tried to unplug the dryer and ended up getting shot across the laundry room and my left arm turned black.

I managed to restore the light switch to working order (with the exception of the light and fans switches working in reverse) but I feel like I’m not out of the woods yet. Let’s all just hope that I don’t kick off 2009 with a tragic electrical fire. If so I might need to borrow some pants, I don’t have a closet door to shield my clothes from the flames.



*Never under estimate the importance of light. Getting dressed with only the TV to illuminate things is difficult.

Tis the Season...

Merry Christmas!

The Bromance is Dead...

On occasion you run across a person who claims to have lived a life without regret. They will throw out a bunch of old clichés like everything happens for a reason, or whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and claim that they would change nothing. I personally don’t believe any of that garbage for a second; though even if I did I certainly would never consider myself one of those people. I’ve done plenty of regrettable things. I mean, I went to college. And I drink, how could I not have. They range from the obvious, major regrets* to the seemingly benign but actually huge regrets**. Sure I learned something valuable from these events and hopefully was able to take something positive out them to better myself, but that doesn’t mean I still don’t wish they never happened.

I say all of this because last night I realized the biggest regret of my life has recently occurred. The opportunity of a lifetime has completely slipped away without my even realizing it. While watching Whitney: From the Hills to the City I saw it, a preview for a new MTV reality show: Bromance with Brody Jenner. Ever since Spencer Pratt went off the deep end and grew that creepy flesh colored beard Brody Jenner has been without a bro. Following in the footsteps of the immortal Paris Hilton*** he’s decided to turn to fill that void. How did I not know about this show? How did I not apply to be on this show? I’ll never forgive myself. Could you imagine the possibilities of being in a bromance with Brody Jenner (I’d call him B Jens, we’d be that tight)? Right now we could be douching it up all over LA. Meeting Lauren Conrad at Les Deux and being total tools. Going over to dad Bruce’s house and pretending we don’t want to bang his stepsister. Getting a suite at the Palms so we could be douchy in Vegas for a weekend. The possibilities are endless and I missed my chance.

I’m going to be crying myself to sleep for weeks over this.




* See: May 2005; Car; Guard rail on North Capitol St.

** I missed a flight the day after Thanksgiving last year and I’m fairly certain that it completely altered the course of my entire life, not in a positive way. But that’s another story for another time. Or probably never, because that’s not how we roll on this blog.

*** If you ever doubt what direction you should be heading in life its generally good advice to just do what Paris Hilton would do.

I see you...

Oh hello. You’re still here? Well you may have noticed that I have written anything in well over a month. I’ve been thinking lately that I should remedy that situation. I know you loyal few who continue checking this blog semi frequently are clamoring for a new post and I want to enrich you life with my amazing wordsmithing*. There is a small dilemma though. If you’re still reading than it safe to assume you’ve read quite a few of my posts. If that is the case then you know that I’m at my best (in the sense that my writing is more amusing for you) when I’m complaining about something, doing something stupid, or just having an overall crappy life. That is my wheelhouse (it’s a gift) and therein lies the problem. My life is awesome right now; I really have nothing to complain about. And let’s face it you guys don’t really want to hear about puppies and unicorns and pissing glitter and shooting rainbows out of my ass. That’s boring**. Even more boring than the other things I write about (if that’s possible). However I think I may have come up with a temporary solution while I ease back onto the blogging horse: my roommate. My roommate regularly says things that are creepy, inappropriate, or just plain weird and I figure why should I keep these things to myself? It seems selfish so I think I’ll occasionally offer up his best material for your enjoyment. Here’s a winner he said last night, mostly unprompted:

“I’m pretty sure I would fuck Zac Effron. He’s prettier than most of the girls I’ve dated.”

See what I mean. You should look forward this.

He also told me that I have a beautiful falsetto. But that’s not weird. That’s just a fact.




*Part of amazing wordsmithing is making up words like wordsmithing.

**On second thought shooting rainbows out of my ass would be pretty exciting, but I can’t actually do that. I was being metaphorical.

Yes We Did

Today I am very proud to be an American, and particularly proud to be a Virginian. Barack Obama ran on a message of hope and right now I am very hopeful. I hope that the results of this election signals a change in the political discourse in this country. I hope that Obama’s victory means that a candidate can no longer use Rovian style scare tactics to create derision, fear, and disconnect to win an election. I hope this means that Americans finally care about what a nominee has to say about important issues and how they intend to solve the countries problems than anything else. And that simply repeating irrelevant half truths and lies to a crowd to get them riled up will no longer work. I hope that calling someone an elitist, socialist, or possible Muslim is not a viable path to the White House anymore. I hope that this election means that people don’t want to hear about a candidate’s vague semi-relationship with possibly unseemly characters; they want to hear how you’re going to fix the economy or health care.

I hope that Kay Hagan’s victory over Elizabeth Dole in the North Carolina Senate race means that being not Christian enough no longer means you’re unfit for office. Hopefully a solid platform of ideas is more important than which church you attend and what God you worship and that being a non-Christian doesn’t mean you are immoral and corrupt in the eyes of Christian voters. Some of the greatest minds in our countries history added the separation of church and state into the constitution for a reason. The gap in that separation has been closing dramatically and I hope that the results of this election start to widen it again.

I hope that once almost universally respected politicians like John McCain and Elizabeth Dole no longer have to lower themselves into the muck to appeal to the lowest common denominator of their base. I hope that intelligent debate can finally prevail over rhetoric aimed at the ignorant.

John McCain gave a gracious and eloquent concession speech last night. It was beautifully moving in its message that serving ones country and a spirit of comprise should take precedence over partisanship. The funny thing about that speech is that had that been his message all along he may have won this election. Instead he ran to the right, unleashed that lunatic Sarah Palin to ignite a base and the rest is history. I hope that the message of his speech takes hold and that he goes back to the Senate to lead that charge. I fear that it will not. Several times throughout his speech McCain had to pause, while talking about the need to work with the new president to make positive change, to let a round of boos die down. At one point a man in the crowd yelled, “You deserved better.” He was absolutely right. John McCain did deserve better. He deserved to not have to lower himself to appeal to a person like that.

Nice to meat you

I came to a fairly sad realization today. Before I tell you what that realization is though let me learn you a little bit about myself (I know you don’t care, but trust me, it’s relevant).

Eric Fact #1

I’m lazy. Like most people, I like to do as little as humanly possible and still remain a productive member of society. I often fail at that task. And I don’t mean failing at doing as little as possible, I mean I’m often not a productive member of society.

Eric Fact #2

I don’t like to waste any time. Well, that’s not entirely true. I waste a ton of time, how can you not when the internet exists. What I should say is I’m very selective as to what time is appropriate to waste and what time is more useful. For example, time can not be wasted in the morning before work. My alarm clock is to the exact amount of time I need to get out of bed (immediately, snooze buttons are for the weak), shower, get dressed, and go straight to work on time. I don’t understand how people can relax read the newspaper and eat breakfast when they have the horror of an entire workday hanging over there heads. To me the time after work is much more productive, and at the same time more relaxing, than time after work so the sooner one gets to work the sooner they get to leave and enjoy their day.

Eric Fact #3

At times I spend money recklessly. Here’s the terrible part of that, I rarely spend recklessly on cool things. I always find myself in a situation where I think to myself, man I would love to buy this awesome sweater, or perhaps a new iPod, but I’ve spent like $700 on food this month (that includes beer also, I just wanted to mention that so it would seem less ridiculous).

Based on fact #3 I recently decided it was time to make a lifestyle change. In order to guiltlessly purchase things I need, like bedroom furniture (a Wii?) or some new clothes for work (Guitar Hero?) I’ve been eating lunch at work everyday and cooking dinner at home. It’s worked out great, I save tons of money. But here is where facts #1 and #2 come into play. I’m far too lazy, and consider it a huge waste of time, to make lunch in the morning before work. My solution is to go to the grocery store by the office and stock up on groceries that I can leave here and prepare lunch daily in the office. It’s really a great solution but it allows me to not only save a few dollars a day, but also time spent preparing food at work is time spent not working. So win-win for me.

All of this is an extremely round about way of coming to the sad realization I alluded to earlier. Here it is:

The most important decision I make all week is based around which lunch meat I’m going to buy for my sandwiches.

I know you’re thinking this sounds trivial, but I’m not sure that I can understate the importance of this decision. If I’m going to eat the same sandwich no less than 4 days out of the week it better be a damn good sandwich. Nothing can ruin a mood more than an entire weeks worth of bad lunches. Trust me; you did not want to be around for the roast beef fiasco of October 13-17. It wasn’t pretty.

Although now that I think about it, if the biggest aspect of your life is making a decision between turkey, ham, or corned beef it could be construed as sad, or it might say that you have an awesome life. I’m going to go with the later. Mostly because I have a glass half full kind of attitude today. Why am I in that chipper state of mind? Because I went with pastrami for this week and it was delicious.

The 2nd Debate...

So I'm watching the debate right now. I don't have much I want to say about what the candidates are saying because I doubt anyone reading this cares about my politics, but I will say this: Tom Brokaw, shut the fuck up. This is sort of important, let them talk for Christ's sake. There is pretty big decision coming up in a few weeks and we kind of want to hear what they have to say. Who cares if they go over a minute. Dammit.

How Did This Happen?

I don't eat very much. I'm skinny and I have a small appetite. I don't know if I'm skinny because I my lack of an appetite or the appetite develop because I'm so skinny. It's the chicken and the egg and all that crap, the point is, I don't eat very much. Sometimes I don't finish dinner because I simply get bored. All the cutting and chewing and sitting up straight is just not worth it when I could be relaxing and not moving. Occasionally I skip dinner all together because I ate a late lunch. This is why the following list is so perplexing to me:

A Complete List of the Food I've Eaten in the Last 28 Hours

2 Nature Valley Bars
2 packs of Oreo Cookies
2 Ham and Cheese sandwiches
Half a bag of Utz Kettle Cooked potato chips
Half block cheese (with crackers)
3 pieces of pizza
1 everything bagel
1 16-20 rib eye steak
Mashed potatoes
Corn

This may not sound like that much to some, but it's a veritable binge for me. I've been trying to figure why I'm so hungry lately and I can only come to one logical solution. I'm pregnant. A few months ago I wouldn't have thought it possible, me being a man and all, but then that one dude (you all know who I'm talking about, I don't feeling like finding a link to the story) got knocked up and everything changed. Expect to see me on Oprah in the very near future.

Vacaton...

I just got back from vacation late last night. A week where the entire day consisted of relaxing on the beach, then going back the house and relaxing by the pool, then relaxing in the hottub at night.

I took today off just to keep the relaxation going before going back to work next week.

So what do I wake up to at 8 in the morning?

A jackhammer. Right outside of my window.

I hate you Baltimore. I hate you so much.

Thoughts...

- I saw a homeless man reading the newspaper this morning. I thought it was nice that he was keeping up on current events, but I was really curious as to what he might be reading so I decided to ease in for a closer look (I'm like a ninja). He was reading the stock market report. I've said this before, I'm not really sure what irony is, but I think a homeless man check stock prices qualifies as ironic.

Although, maybe he wasn't a homeless man. Maybe he was just a really dirty broker. I shouldn't presuppose that someone is homeless simply because they're filthy and sitting on the sidewalk. They could just be a hippy.


- We have a new neighbor. My roommate met her first and this was his description: a hot, blond, australian girl who just graduated college. I know, sounds pretty awesome right? Well, I met her on Saturday night.

She's from Florida. That totally ruins it.

Moral of the story: My roommate can't tell the difference between a southern accent and an Australian accent. And he's an idiot.


- Yesterday I played Guitar Hero for the first time. I'm terrible at it. I feel like this makes me more and less cool at the same time.

This is the headline for today's featured story on Yahoo!:

Even Paris Hilton has fallen prey?! Holy shit, we're all screwed! Oh wait, she's an idiot. We're fine.

A brief foray into politics...

I don't really get into to politics very much. Well, I don't talk about it on my blog anyway. I doubt many people care about my opinion on most matters, mainly because I'm generally ill informed. But I would like to just throw something out there. Sarah Palin's children are named Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. I could be wrong about this, but I believe her husband is eskimo, and maybe these names have something to do with that. I'll claim ignorance on that. But if that's not the case I don't think I could ever vote for someone who gives their children such terrible names. I'm just saying.

Trig? Really?

Who knows maybe she's just a former sprinter who loves ESPN (or NASCAR), Val Kilmer movies costarring midgets, the pan flute, and triangles.

I have a group of friends who love to read my blog. They ask me about it all the time. When they bring it up it's always in a semi mocking tone as if they think it's super lame. But secretly I know they love it because they check it every day. I'm on to you guys, just so you know.

Anyway, since I how much they enjoy my awesome musings on life, and pretty much everything about my blog in general, I know they'll be super pumped about this. I would like to congratulate Brent on being the 25,000 visitor to I'll Think of Something. You're sort of famous now so enjoy it.

A List...

A Partial List of Dead Animals That I Have Been Close Enough To In the Last Week to Catch a Horrible Disease

1. Squirrel (s)
2. Bat
3. Deer*
4. Large Bird**
5. Bat
6. Groundhog***
7. Small Bird****
8. Cat
9. Human? *****
10. Orange mystery animal ******


* It was only a deer leg. I don't want to know what happened to the rest of it.

** I think it was an eagle. My coworker disagrees. Probably because he hates America.

*** Or woodchuck if you prefer.

**** Baby eagle?

***** It was just a bone, but it looked eerily like an arm bone.

****** It was long and skinny. Sort of ferrittish, but to big. It could have been one of these. Which would have been sad, because they're cute. And not native to Pennsylvania.

Day 2...

As I was driving further north into Pennsylvania I got to thinking more about creepy guys eye flirting thing, and then I figure it all out. I think this son of a bitch is trying to kidnap me and take me on a romantic weekend getaway in the Poconos. Luckily I'm on to him so I'm going to have some sort of shank ready at all times to repel his advances.

Right now we're just outside of Scranton, PA. I'm pretty big into agrotourism so I'm going to try and book the irrigation room at the Schrute Farms B&B.

And that is the last "The Office" joke I'll make. I've been so excited just to be near Scranton that I've been making them all day and it's annoying people.

All right, gotta go. I'm meeting Jim and Pam at Poor Richard's to see Scrantonicity. Peace.