all over the road

This Friday finds my mind wandering aimlessly with a side of fright.  First the fright part.  Two weeks ago, my company laid off 200 employees.  For the first time in 25 years of being in business we had a lay off.  The whole situation was quite surreal.  Upon walking into the office, I opened outlook and was welcomed with an email from our CEO announcing the layoffs.  It went something like this.  “By the end of the day, 200 coworkers will be ruthlessly escorted out of the building and will have to drive immediately to the unemployment office.  We wish you luck…”  or something like that. 

Upon reading the email, the temperature in our building must have dropped a good 15 degrees and it was eerily quiet.  My first plan was to begin removing many of the electronic documents that I have saved in email and on my work computer hard drive that I would need for home.  Then I almost wanted to start cleaning off my desk so that I would be prepared if I got the call.  By 3:30 in the afternoon, they hadn’t come to me yet, so I assumed that they wouldn’t for the day and at 4:01pm I ran out of the office and drove home thinking about the poor souls that came in to work that morning not realizing that by the end of the day they would be unemployed.  I have to assume they were offered a nice severance of some sort. 

So, this morning we had our team meeting and someone announced that they had heard a rumor that round two of layoffs would be going down on Monday.  I am not one for rumors since they usually are just rumors.  The funny part of the rumor was that they would be laying off 900 people this go around.  We all discounted the rumor, but I surely left the meeting feeling uneasy about what might go down on Monday.  Even if the 900 number is absurd, I have to wonder if they will be letting anyone go.  In this current state of the economy, it would suck to be unemployed, but luckily for me I am a professional balloon twister and have a second form of solid income.  Also I have a sugar mama (my wife) that is also an amazing Kindergarten teacher.  So, I guess I shouldn’t have too much to worry about since as they say “everything happens for a reason”. 

Besides, what could happen to me can’t possibly be as bad as what ex Illinois Govenor Rod Blagojevich has gone through in the past 24 hours.  I have to assume that his inspiration to not quit while being impeached must have been from recently watching the classic film A Knights Tale, where Heath Ledger fails to quit when everyone has discovered that he truly is not a Knight only to see Heath Ledger’s character get “Knighted” for being so brave.  I wonder if Rod Blagojevich might have thought that by not quitting, he would be “Knighted”. 

I got a good laugh out of the process when he compared his situation to Dr. Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and Nelson Mandela.   He mentioned that he tried to bring perspective into his arrest last year by thinking about those leaders.  If it were me, and I was arrested for pay to play, I might be thinking about Jesus Christ instead, because when they convict him for the corruption, that might be all he has left while in Prison. 

In other news, instead of buying my wife one wii fit for Valentines day, I bought her two.  When I decided that I would get her a wii fit, I tried locating them, without much success.  I finally found one through bestbuy.com and ordered it immediately.  I was told in the confirmation email from Best Buy that delivery would not be for a week or two.  So after work I got my hair did and dropped into gamestop next door, and much to my displeasure, they had 4 in stock.  I called the wife (she obviously knows that I am getting this for her for Valentines day) and she asked me to buy the one there because she just couldn’t wait the two weeks for delivery.  So, I did.  Much to my chagriness (I don’t know what Chagrin means and I am sure chagriness isn’t a real word, but I don’t care) I received an email from Best Buy that night with tracking info for the Wii that shipped out immediately.  Tracking shows it will be at my house today.  My wife hasn’t even opened the other one yet.  I will likely be making a trip back to Gamestop tomorrow now to return one of them. 

I am eagerly looking forward to this weekend.  It’s Super Bowl weekend.  I don’t really care for once in my life since I have little interest in the teams playing this year.  I am looking more forward to the food than anything.  Since I am not twisting balloons tomorrow, I will be making home made Jambalaya, Chili, Chili Cheese Dip, Cookies, and Rice Crispy Treats to take with me to the party on Sunday. Maybe I missed a calling in my life, but cooking for 5 or 6 hours is a great stress reliever for me.  Amidst this new push for weight loss, I am giving my diet a day of rest on Sunday and I plan on consuming more calories in one day than what I have consumed in the past two weeks.  My record for chili was set last year at 6 bowls over a 5 hour period.  My anus and wife have both already begun pleading with me to let that record stand and to abort any attempt at blowing it out (yes, pun intended).  Why they don’t play the game on Saturday to give our bodies (digestive tract) a day to recover before going back to the workplace on Monday is beyond me.  But then again, maybe Monday will be a short day for me anyway.

Filed under: Anus, Fatty, Hair cut, Wii, asspain, weekend, wife, work

Funny hair talk

After all of my consideration as to what I would do upon my arrival home this evening to celebrate peer pressure in my life, I ended up working late.  I didn’t leave the office until 7:30 so instead of even going to the gym, I decided to swing by my local hair chop shop and have some of my receding hairline manipulated.   I have a weird relationship with the…I don’t know what really to call it…it’s not a barber shop because women work there and there is no candy cane pole spinning, and I don’t want to call it a salon because that is downright gay.  So, the relationship is a love hate relationship.  It’s right by my house, which is nice.  The women that work it are all Polish/Russian/Ukrainian, which is nice because I can’t understand what they are saying 98 percent of the time which I’ll take even though I know that they have to be saying something funny about me.  It’s an even trade really…make fun of me all you want, so long as I don’t have to listen to the stupid things you talk about.  It’s kind of like watching a spanish soap opera.  You hear what they are saying, but I sometimes will make up conversations in my own head purely for self entertainment value.

Tonight I didn’t have to make anything up because I was one on one in the shop, so the lady had no choice but to speak broken ukrainian english.

Let me back up for just a moment.

There are only three women that work there.  The owner, the fat one, and the hot one.  Before you cringe at the fact that I am married and refer to another woman as the hot one, I do so in jest because to the normal man, she would be considered hot, but to me she is as ugly as they come because she sucks at cutting hair. The fat one is hotter than the hot one because she knows exactly how I like to have my hair cut.  And she does this thing at the end with a warm towel and blow dryer that is almost as good as a happy ending in my book.  I could seriously fall asleep that is how relaxing it is.

I do not know the names of any of the women because I don’t speak Russian anyway.  So, I can’t call in and ask “Is the fat lady cutting hair tonight?”  I guess I could…but that would be downright pressing my rudeness threshold.  I digress…

Last night on my way home I drove by, and the Hot one was there.  I sat outside like a stalker waiting to see if my plump lady emerged from the back, but no such luck.  I drove off.  Tonight I drove by again, and knowing the schedule I have before me gave in to the fact that tonight there will be no hot towel rub down in my future.  So, I went one on one with the Hot one.

Funny story #1:  The Ukrainian hair stylist just got back from vacation from Miami beach and she was distraught at the fact that everyone is beautiful in South Beach.  This girl could seriously be a European model and she went on for a good 5 minutes about the fact that in Chicago, she gets lots of attention from boys, but in Miami Beach she didn’t get the attention that she had hoped.  Wow.  I don’t know if she has any clue that in the US it’s good to refrain from telling people about how hot you are.

Funny story #2:  Ukrainian people are deathly afraid of Barack Obama.  This woman straight up told me that if Barack Obama is voted president she is moving back to Ukrain.  After laughing so hard that she had to stop with the hair cut, I asked for clarification about what she had just said.  She went on to explain that the economy right now will become worst if Barack Obama is voted president.  She likes Hillary Clinton for the simple reason that when Bill was president the economy was the best it’s ever been and Bill Clinton was the reason that she and many of her family and friends moved to the US.  Her main argument about why Barack Obama will be so bad was based on the fact that she heard that his wife didn’t like white people, which once again, set me into a fit of laughter.

Not only is the hair lady ugly for sucking at cutting my hair but she has a slight shade of racist too.

Funny Story #3:  When trying to talk to me about Las Vegas, she asked me if I had ever seen the movie:  11 Friends of Las Vegas Ocean.  “You mean Oceans 11″ “yes, that is the movie”.

This might not be as funny to you as it was for me hearing her say that, but I still got a kick out of it.  I have a newfound fascination with the mind of Ukrainians.

Filed under: Barack Obama, Hair cut, Hillary Clinton, confused, stupid