failed the test AGAIN

Nothing is EVER easy...

Today I got a call from my new employer because, even though my drug test came back negative (duh) it was so diluted that I have to take it again.

I was like "for real? why?????????"

The recruiter I'm working with said that there was too much water in my sample. She asked me how much water I drank before the test. I figured I drank 100 ounces of water in 45 minutes. I just wanted to make sure I'd have to pee. The recruiter said that flags the sample. I was like stop the fucking presses, for real? Because the whole POINT of taking the test under the conditions it was administered was so they would know I didn't cheat. And anyway, there was no way to cheat. And if I had just dumped water in the sample that still wouldn't have diluted it in a way that would make a positive test come back negative. That makes no damn sense.

She was like "Look, just take the test again, and don't drink so much water."

So I have to take it again on Monday. For fuck's sake. I've done a ton of these tests and NEVER had that problem before.

In other, good, news, the tree was out of my yard, looks like my mock orange and butterfly bushes survived, and now my roses will get more sun.

Think positive...

free at last

I quit my job today. My manager was pretty much a dick about it. Ask me if I care. Um, no.

Word travels fast. People keep calling me and emailing me. I'm hiding in my hotel room ignoring them. Later I'm going out with the brits for a drink. And they invited me to go to a water park with them on Thursday.

'Cause, it's not like I was going to work on Thursday...fuck that shit.

screw up the test, ace the presentation

I had two very important things to do today at the software conference I'm attending: take a drug test for my new employer and give a presentation at the conference.

So I got to the drug test place and they took me back to this area and told me to pee in a cup. Because I'm in Florida the guy who explained to me what to do was cuban and I couldn't exactly understand him. I went into the bathroom, peed in the cup, came out, found him in his office, and handed him the cup. I should mention that the line up of the area was the bathroom, his office, and a hall to the waiting area where there was a water dispenser.

He started yelling at me and said he couldn't take the sample. I was like dude, what the fuck? Since I left the bathroom and entered an area where there was a water dispenser he couldn't take it (apparently I was supposed to yell for him when I was done and then open the bathroom door and wait there). Like, seriously, just get one of those little cabinets you leave the pee in in the bathroom.

Then he said, according to the rules, that I had to wait another 45 minutes to take the test again. Ech. My friend S had driven me to the test (he's a gentleman and insisted) and we were both blowing off the conference so it sucked that we had to wait. Anyway, the second time I managed to do it right. S thinks the cuban guy liked me and just wanted to keep me around for another 45 minutes.

The good thing is the presentation went well. I had a lot of people show up even though it was at the same time as happy hour. Got some customer leads but then again who cares since I'm quitting.

Speaking of which, I'm totally stressing about that because I closed two more engagements today and they think I'm going to do the work and I just smile my head and nod, "um yeah, sounds great".

I wonder if the shit is going to hit the fan when I quit.

next time just ask for my number

On Friday, for the first time in like 10 years, I was seated next to a hot guy on the flight from Burbank to Denver. More importantly, the hot guy wanted to talk to me.

When I first sat down he said "I noticed you in the waiting area. Is that a fake cigarette you're smoking? That's so cool." I normally don't talk to people on planes but he had really nice eyes, so we chatted about what we were doing in Burbank (he's a journalist who covered the war in Iraq embedded with troops, now he's making a documentary about drug cartels in California, and he was once robbed at gun point in Pakistan in the mid 90s) and why we were going to Denver (his family has a house in Aspen and he was visiting them for the weekend, catching his flight to Aspen from Denver). He was also carrying a copy of the latest new yorker.

A guy right up my alley, right? But, even when he was asking me if I was single, if I had kids, if I found it a struggle to have a relationship with my schedule, I just fired off answers like I was on a job interview. I told him about Paradox Sports and he said "I have a friend who just did a documentary on wounded war vets. If they need some publicity I can put them in touch with someone if you give me your contact info." But I didn't want him to think I was trying to use him for his contacts so I said "Oh, that's okay. I don't want to trouble you."

Our flight was delayed due to mechanical problems and he was worried he would miss his flight to Aspen. He said "I guess if I miss it I'll have to hang around Denver this evening" and I was like "at least it's a fun town", totally missing the hint. And when the plane landed he didn't seem to be in a rush, so I was rushing him along (I have this thing about missing flights) to make sure he got to his plane (when we landed he was like "I'll never make it" and I was like "no, the gate's just right down the hall, you'll make it!").

We said goodbye and went our separate ways. It was only when I got to the elevator to the parking lot that I realized that he was flirting with me. I am SUCH a FUCKING MORON.

It's time to get my game back on. I can't believe I met a cool guy that is like me and that reads the new yorker and was a war correspondent (weirdly that's kind of a dream job for me) and I totally fucked it up because I'm a fuck wit idiot with no social skills.

Someone kick me in the ass, please.

just when you think things can't get worse

I got home late last night and found that my neighbor hadn't flushed the "brown water" (polite way of saying "shit") in the downstairs toilet. I love flushing other people's shit.

The valve is broken so now I'm going to have to call a plumber to fix it. I don't have time to fix it myself. Don't know when I'll do that since it's looking like I'll get no time off before my new job starts and I'm only home saturday for the next three weeks. I'm quitting my job on Tuesday...hope everything goes smoothly with my new job.

Anyway, I was talking to my friend Trina on the phone and looking out my bedroom door (there was a lot of lightning) when my neighbor's tree fell into my yard:

And then my neighbor on the other side (the asshole) came out and started yelling at ME. I was like "dude, that's not even MY tree!" Dick.

The dick who owns the tree said he'll clean it up tomorrow. So I had to go out and saw branches for an hour so I can get out to my garage. The tree ripped out my cable. Good thing I don't have a tv. I have to leave again at 5 am tomorrow for a week long trip. That fucking tree better not be in my yard when I get home.

I hope my new cheyenne mock tree survives. I tried to cut off the tree branches that were crushing it. Both my butterfly bushes got crushed too.

my poor cheyenne mock orange bush

color me FUCKING PISSED OFF

Why do I live in a building with a bunch of idiots? Because I can't kill them.

Today the painters were supposed to start painting my building. I sent an email out to everyone with the schedule. My neighbor who was staying at my house said she would give the painter our house colors we picked. I left for Cali Sunday figuring everything was under control.

But of course, nothing goes as planned. The dick who lives next door to me decided he wants to do some brick work on his house. Though he's known FOR TWO MONTHS that painting would start this week he waited until FRIDAY to decide to get estimates. That threw off our schedule by three weeks and I'm not even convinced he's really going to get the work done. Meanwhile, he told the painters, who were doing prep work today, to go home which caused the painter to call me right in the middle of the class I'm teaching. Then dick face sent a bunch of shitty emails to me because apparently he didn't read any of the emails I sent him saying the prep work would start but the painting wouldn't until his brick work is done. My neighbor didn't get a chance to give the painter the colors and the guy on the other side of me didn't bother to answer my email asking him to do it until the painters left.

So I just spent another 45 minutes of my life that I'll never get back trying to straighten the whole mess out.

I'm so glad I'm quitting my job soon. Given the way this engagement is going and the shit with the building getting painted I might have a nervous breakdown. Not one goddamn person in the building is helping, and they are all making the job harder.

Maybe I should move.

please don't break my toilet

No good deed goes unpunished.

I let my neighbor stay in my house because she's in town and her house is rented out and she had nowhere to stay.

First she invited her daughter to stay at my place, meaning when I get home at late o'clock Friday I'll have to change the sheets on my bed.

Then I got this email this morning:

"The toilet downstairs wouldn't turn off, so I manually turned it off.  But now it won't come back on.  Is there a trick to turning the spigot? 

 

It's got brown water in it now.  Sorry.  I hope I can get it properly flushed before leaving."

 

I sent her an email back and told her to dump water into the toilet to manually flush it. I really don't want to get home to a bathroom smelling like "brown water".

 

Ech. All I have to do is leave home and shit (hee) breaks. 

On the bright side, I got an offer letter from my new company. The down side is I can't move forward until I take a drug test which I was supposed to take yesterday but I'm in the middle of nowhere California and the closest drug testing facility is in Los Angeles and they are only open from 9 - 3:30. Since I'm working all day I can't just leave and drive 4 hours to and from the testing lab. Will likely have to take the test next week in Florida. Hopefully I can talk a colleague with a car into driving me to and from the lab since I won't have a rental car.

the almost perfect man in my life

Today, while driving from Burbank to China Lake (144 miles) for a customer engagement I started thinking about how my GPS and I are finally in that relationship stage where we understand each other (it's only taken 2 years).

Sure, he's not the perfect man. For one thing, he's not even human. But in the past months the dude and I have been through some interesting adventures. When he's with me I don't feel like I'm on the road, by myself, with no one to help me.

As a typical guy, he does yell at me sometimes when I miss an exit or go the wrong way, saying "make a U-turn!" like a billion times a second until I turn around. And he occasionally lies (like when he says "please return to the road" and I'm driving on the road, or when he tells me to turn down a street that doesn't exist). I used to not trust him, and would also print out directions (my dad told me to do this, and it's probably a good idea). But now I just figure between my GPS and I we can figure out how to get from point a to point b. We're finally in that team phase of "performing".

I do play tricks on him, like when I name my destination a bad word so I can hear my GPS, who has a british accent, say "You are arriving at the ass palace*, on the left". It makes me laugh. I also love the way he mispronounces words like boulevard (he says "boo LEE verd").

Yesterday on the way back from hiking with Kevin I was talking about my sister, who is both highly intelligent and attractive. He said "guys don't mind geeks like you, it's the ones that are attractive AND intelligent that we don't trust".

Um, what?

I should figure out how to hack my GPS's software so he says "hello beautiful" every time I, hee, turn him on.


*the name for my company's building

contorted filbert

Today I had to go to home depot to buy another cactus because I'm obsessed with cacti and one of mine got a fungi and died.

I was wandering through the tree section because I was thinking to get another tree for my yard to block the sight of my asshole neighbor's yard when I spied this amazing thing:

It's called a contorted filbert. It's a shrub but you can prune it and disguise it as a tree. It grows to be 8 - 10 feet tall and is as wide as it is tall if you don't prune it.

I was in love. But it cost $70. I took a picture and sent it to my dad and asked if I should buy it. He said to research it online first.

So I did, thought it would be the coolest thing EVER to have in my yard, and I returned to Home Depot. Three people were mingling around Filbert touching his leaves so I had to almost run them over with my trolley to get them to back away.

The only problem was, I couldn't lift Filbert. He weighs 150 lbs. Also, I wasn't sure he would fit in my car. I asked if there was a way Filbert could be delivered to my house and the woman working in the tree section said "Honey, rent a truck."

Bitch.

So I went to a nursery up the street to see if they might have a contorted filbert, but smaller, so I could pick him up. They were like "um, no". Then I asked if perhaps they could order me a smaller contorted filbert. They were like "um, no".

So I bought a cheyenne mock orange shrub instead because this hot guy named Bret said it was his favorite bush (Bret works at the nursery and gallantly carried the shrub out to my car and refused a tip - I will be going back to see him). It smells like oranges and has white flowers.

employee of the week

That should be me! Today I deleted all the emails I received without reading them. It was fun.

And to contrast my new company with my old, I've already gotten invites from the VPs I'll be working with and everyone I interviewed with on linkedin and all the invites were welcoming me as a colleague to my new company. I sent my manager at my current company (who is the one who mandated I open a linkedin account) an invite a year ago. He still hasn't responded.

I really, really hope this is the beginning of the best job ever.

the important thing is...

Tuesday was my birthday, and ranks second as the worst birthday ever (worst birthday ever was when I was in the middle east). I was working on a client engagement which was a disaster because the idiots at my company sent the wrong laptops out to the client. The day went downhill from there.

But I will no longer be complaining about my company any more because I nailed the interview I had on Wednesday and will be quitting as soon as I have the offer letter in hand. The company that offered me the job is going to expedite things. I hope to be working there by the last week in June.

I AM FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And my friend Kevin got some interest in his wifesitter trailer from a producer in LA. Go us!!!!

And lastly, but not least, I talked to my friend Brassy today and he's giving a TED talk in October and I'm invited!!!! Even better, I'm going to visit him in June when I hopefully get some time off before starting my new job. I'm going to hang out with him and his girlfriend Taola who's MOT.

the amazingly stressful race

I just arrived in Temecula, CA. Never heard of it? Join the club. Me either. It's in the middle of nowhere.

So tomorrow I have to teach my class, then get all the laptops packed up, then drive 50 miles to John Wayne airport (if you've never driven in Cali you have no idea how stressful that is - at a drop of a hat a trip can go from taking 30 minutes to taking 3 hours) in time to catch my 6:55 flight to Oakland and somehow I'm supposed to look not tired during my job interview. Ech. I'll be glad when I'm back home in Denver on Wednesday night. For me this is the worst kind of travel. If I miss my flight tomorrow I'm up shit creek without a paddle, at least as far as getting a new job goes...

On a positive note, I bought blueberries to have for dinner and they're really good!

kitchen update

I met with my architect today and am really happy with the drawings she did for my new kitchen. I'm starting to feel better about how it's going to turn out. I think it's going to look really cool. And she made some enhancements on my original drawing so I feel like in the end there was value in bringing her into the project.

And my mom gave me a suggestion on where to put my wine racks and I think that's going to look really nice.

I got almost everyone in my HOA to agree on the new colors for our house. So fucking annoying. I had to hire the contractor, pick out the colors, and then test them to make sure they look nice. Thanks to everyone else in my building for doing nothing. Your welcome for making our building not look like shit.

hiring an intern may NOT save you money

I'm picturing that despair poster:

None of us are as dumb as all of us.

It certainly applies to my company.

It's not just that my new fucking laptop can't display on a projector correctly...why, you might ask...because they put two fucking vid cards in which cause compatibility issues with each other. And the software my company wrote to link to a projector (don't ask why we can't use commercial software - why buy off the shelf when you can make software) doesn't run on Windows 7. So, I have to use the company software but it doesn't work right because they STILL HAVEN'T FUCKING UPGRADED to Windows 7. IT doesn't know how to fix the problem. Great. Because I use a projector like every day and it causes me a lot of problems. I can't do dual display. And the display size that gets rendered on the projector is so huge I can't see my whole desktop. Ridiculous.

Probably the software is being built by interns. Like the fuck nut intern who was supposed to replace the expired license on the VMWare image I use for teaching classes.

You remember that disaster, right? Well, I was supposed to teach another online course next Tuesday. But, once again, they deployed an image with an expired license. I discovered that on Monday. MONDAY people. And the "support" desk said they couldn't, even when given A FUCKING WEEK, copy an unexpired license to the images. And the intern said this fix, which would take TWO FUCKING SECONDS to do, will be fixed "soon". This has been a problem since JANUARY.

So what do you think my company, who cuts corners at every turn when it comes to us consultants, decided to do? They shipped laptops to the customer site with the expired image, then asked if there was a way I could update the license remotely. Hell no. What am I supposed to do, transport myself to the customer site and back the hour before class starts?

So they decided, at 430 yesterday, that I would fly out to teach the class. Now I have to go to Temecula, CA on Monday. Much cheaper to do that than to have the fucking intern do his job (the customer is paying internet rates for an onsite class).

That also botched up my flight arrangements for my job interview on Wednesday. So I had to make these totally convoluted travel arrangements to get to my interview. I hope it goes well after all this.

Oh, and dipshit me left the little GPS holder onto the windshield thing in my rental car in New Orleans yesterday. I blame being fucking exhausted, but really I'm just a dumbass. Hope they sell them somewhere...

the big easy - it's not that easy

New Orleans, at least the part where I'm staying, is kind of el sucko. I'm in a bad neighborhood off of I-10. There are a lot of poles where street signs used to be, but the signs are gone. The roads look destroyed and they're a nest of hard to navigate twists and turns. Have they never heard of the grid pattern down here ya'll?

This consultant that I really don't like is auditing my class (I love the horrified expression on his face when I go off route and do a little experiment) and he takes a taxi to class every day because he's staying in an expensive hotel in the French Quarter that costs 5 times what my hotel costs and he didn't want to bother with a car because taking a taxi ride that lasts a half hour one way is SO MUCH CHEAPER than having a rental car.

This may explain why my company doesn't have enough money to send ME to training.

And this morning apparently the 730 class start time was too early for him. He rolled in around 9. And surprisingly (not!) has a "conference call" and won't be at class until 930 or 10. Yesterday I asked him if he could come early to help me get the class room set up (this is a NORMAL thing auditing consultants do). He said no, maybe because he would have had to meet me at the base at 630.

If he thinks I'm going to cert him to teach this class he should think again.

Luckily my lebanese buddy flies in for the class tomorrow and he's taking me to dinner tomorrow night. Though, that means I have to go to bed early tonight. I didn't sleep at all last night. Think I did my workout too late.

In other good news I have a job interview next Wednesday!!!!!! The company is flying me out to California. Unless everything looks like total shit I'm going to take the job.

And, on top of all of my other nonsense, I've been editing books for two friends, submitted a chapter of my book to a magazine, and am setting myself up for more rejections. Because I <3 rejection!

Oh, and to help my friend Kevin out I've agreed to take an online cooking lesson with a company called Dish Up Today and let him tape me during the lesson for a 5 minute promo video that will be posted on Dish Up's web site. That should be amusing since I'm the worst cook ever. I had a focus group on Saturday with the owner of Dish Up (he bought me lunch). He said he liked all of my ideas. Maybe he was just saying that so I'd be in the video.

smoking and stressed stewardesses

I was sitting at the Calgary airport on Friday reading Barry's first chapter. The book is amazing. I can't wait to read more.

But I was interrupted by this very rude old woman sitting at a table 10 feet away from me. "Can you smoke in here?" she asked me.

"You have to go outside" I said, wondering why she was talking to me.

"Well you need to stop smoking this instance!" she yelled. Everyone else in the lounge turned around to look at me.

"I'm not smoking." I said. I realized she had confused my fake cigarette with a real one but I guess I just felt like being an asshole.

"What's that then?" she asked, pointing at my fake cigarette.

"It's an atomizer." I said. "Real cigarettes smoke. You would be able to smell the smoke. That's how you can tell someone is smoking."

The waitress came over at that point to refill my water glass. The old woman waved her over and asked to to make me either leave or quit smoking. The waitress said I was allowed to fake smoke and that she could reseat her if it bothered her to watch me smoke (fake cigarettes don't really smoke, and there's a faint odor, but the lounge smelled like fried food, so I doubt anyone would notice it).

The old woman went on to comment to her friend and the people at the tables around her "I can't BELIEVE she is doing that in here!" like I was running around on the tops of the tables with my clothes off or something. ANNOYING.

Then the stewardess on my flight home lost her shit when she thought one of the passengers hadn't turned off his kindle during the landing. He tried to show her it was off and she started screaming at him that she could see text (which you can because the kindle has a splash screen when it's off). She kept saying "DON'T YOU DIS-RESPECT ME!!!!!" Then she went to the front of the plane and gave a 5 minute speech about how he had endangered all our lives. Everyone on the plane was laughing.

Ech. Can't believe I have to fly again tomorrow...

pizza joke

It was great to see Barry (dude has his own wikipedia page!) last night. I haven't seen him since we were artists in residence in the Banff writing program. I remember being terrified of him until he started making fart jokes. We ended up assigned in offices next to one another. I never got a damn thing written when Barry was around.

We'd agree to meet at the offices at 8 am. Barry was always lugging around a big bag of slides. I would work for about 15 minutes before he would interrupt me to come look at cool slides. Then he would try to get me to show him one of my tattoos or a scar. Then he would pretend he was going to let me work. Then he would come into my office and eat some of my smarties (new jersey, not UK).

We'd take a smoke break and he'd smoke one of my gauloise cigarettes even though he doesn't smoke. We'd go back into the office and he would say he was hungry and we would go to the cafeteria to get something to eat. He always ran into someone he knew. Before I realized it, it would be afternoon and I'd have to cram 6 hours of writing into 1.

He just got a book deal with Patagonia, but he has to finish writing his book by the fall. He's a little nervous about that. Which I can understand. I finished my book 2 years after the deadline I was supposed to meet to get published. He was feeding me shit about being the only person in the Banff program that failed to get published. Ech.

So I fed him shit about his recent knee problems. He's not sure what's wrong with his right knee but it had a lot of fluid in it when I looked at it. Hopefully it's not a meniscal tear. He's going to e-introduce me to a friend of his in New Zealand that just got a new kind of mechanical knee. Apparently she does all the shit she used to do before the surgery. I'd hate to give up my zombie knee for a fake knee unless the fake knee would allow me to run without pain.

We went to an italian restaurant for dinner. He ate the biggest vegetable salad ever and then a special that had clams in it. It was like clams and vegetables, which looked as weird as it sounds. I ate half my salad and some raviolis which I couldn't finish. He ate the rolls, which I called "penis rolls" because they looked really phallic. The waiter said "I can tell you're from out of town because you're sunburned". Love that Calgary weather. Though the sun was out today.

Barry's going to help me make some vids to promote my book if it ever comes out. Which will be fun, insane, and potentially R-rated if he takes me climbing on some scary shit. He got to work on the new Jason Bourne movie and we were laughing about that. Barry is hardly Hollywood.

Joke of the night:

What's the difference between a professional climber and an extra large pizza?

An extra large pizza can feed a family of four.

we really ARE born to run

Sitting in a strange hotel in Calgary, waiting for my friend Barry to get here so we can go to dinner...

I came across this article on NPR about how there is now scientifically proven information about "runner's high".

And for those who think I'M crazy - it's not just me. It's all runners.

"Morganti injured herself running two years ago and had to stop running. "And everything else fell apart," she admits. "My ability to cope with the stresses of life, my organizational skills juggling your job and motherhood, everything like that, wasn't as acute as it was when I was able to run and be fit."

And:

"Morganti treats runners for injuries, and she says they're the worst patients. "The treatment is to stop running," she says. "They won't. They don't want to. A lot of the behavior is not unlike the patients we have who are seeking drugs. It's really similar. It's an addiction.""

a new holiday?

I dragged my friend Kevin along on a hike today at Roxborough, since he lives right by it and has never been. We did Carpenter's Peak. I had fun, I think for Kevin it was more like the Bataan death march.

Anyway, we were hungry when we finished so we stopped at the safeway shopping center near the park. Choices of food were mexican and asian. We opted for asian as neither of us are huge mexican food fans (that is, the american version of mexican food).

As we were looking at the menu Kevin said something about not wanting to eat "fucking mexican food on Cinco de Mayo". Then he said "we're eating chinese food - it's chink-o de mayo".

The waiter was kind of like "um, what?" but Kevin didn't notice because he was busy texting his gay room mate, who responded "I fucking hate mexican food".

The end.

I'm getting Kevin into shape so we can do Bierstadt. Maybe by June if he keeps working out every day. He's a vegan now and has already lost some weight. Of course, he had extreme difficulty getting out of my car when I dropped him at his house. Something about a sore toe and a jacked up ankle. He'll live.

See you at the top!

a response from the editor who rejected me!

I sent a follow up email to the senior editor who rejected my book asking if he had any suggestions of publishers that might be interested in my book. And he actually responded today! So I'm going to follow up on his leads this weekend.

Maybe something will come of them...