I had, just had, to run an errand in town today. I still had the nebulizer I used to inhale the medication I needed when I had pneumonia. It had to be returned to the medical supplier or I’d have been the next Jim Carroll, sucking dick in the men’s room for money to pay the goddamn bill.

My 5am-to-8pm daily commute has made doing things in town a fucking production, requiring a scheduled day off, an official Congressional order, and a high level of coordination rivaling that of Cirque du Soleil. If we need to run even the smallest errand in town, we have to burn a vacation day (or feign illness) in order to complete that errand. The amount of bullshit we’re forced to eat when asking for a schedule change is out of hand. There’s a really long story that goes behind all this, but I don’t want to get into it. Let’s just say that my carpool was asking to have “work-from-home” Fridays that would allow us to telecommute. So earlier in the week, I requested today off if (and only if) we were still driving to Seattle. If telecommuting was approved for Fridays (and all of us were working from home), I wouldn’t need the day off. Okay, let me simplify this as if you were a 2nd grader: I was to have the day off if we’re driving, or I would work from home if we weren’t driving. And as predictable as the rising cost of gasoline, the word came down yesterday that telecommuting was denied, and we would not be working from home. Bastards!

So, I was working from home today. I was logged into the support queue with my X-Lite softphone, tunneled into the company’s VPN, and connected to our jabber server. I was handling my tickets and doing my thing. One of my pet peeves about the jabber server is chat etiquette. It drives me crazy that the people I work with have to start off a conversation with a stupid question — “You there?” Jesus fuck, people! If my online status says I’m available, there’s a high goddamn likelihood I’m at my desk. Just spit it out! There’s no need to ask for my fucking twenty. One of my co-workers asked me this question shortly after 3pm today, and I replied accordingly. They’re jealous nappy-headed hos because I was working from home, and they had to drive into Seattle. They campaigned, via broadcast message, for everyone to send me a jabber message… “hey, you there?” As you can see by the clips of my jabber log below, everyone who asked got the same basic response, regardless of who they were. It was all in good fun, though.

<Twigg> hey you there?
<Twigg> hahahahahahha
<wafwot> fuck you
 
<Ocelot> hey you there?
<wafwot> I’ll say to you what I said to Twigg…. Fuck you.
<wafwot> C’mon…. get the boss to ask me.
 
<mike> you there?
<wafwot> fuck you
<wafwot> LOL
<mike> your number one too!!
 
<mermaid> I’m to harrass you
<wafwot> Okay.
<wafwot> Just don’t ask if I’m here.
<mermaid> I was told to but I dont want to go with the crowd
<mermaid> I’m cool like that
<wafwot> ‘Ata girl!
<wafwot> Coolest in the whole building!
<mermaid> I know I know
 
<All> Hey u there?
<wafwot> fuck you
 
<wafwot> A broadcast messgage?
<wafwot> You ass.
<Ocelot> hahahahahaha
 
<paul> hey, you there?
<wafwot> Ffffffuuuuuuck You!
<paul> hehehe
 
<the boss> ‘hey.. you there?’
<wafwot> fuck you
<wafwot> lol
<the boss> Ouch hhaha you would not like it
<the boss> what a nice guy.
<the boss> where is that pen I sign your check with? hahah

I so wish I had the wit about me to mention to “the boss” that he doesn’t sign my checks… they’re automatically deposited. Muhahahaha!

Just before lunch, my new phone rang. It was Ditech. He took the day off to move car parts from his garage to Bellingham. I think he took the day off to celebrate 420, but I could be wrong. It’s been known to happen one or two… hundred… thousand times before. After work, I drove out to his house and helped him celebrate the “holiday.” During the 45-minute trip, I realized the “Spring 2007 Hey You There” campaign took to the highway. My carpool buddies were now sending “hey you there” text messages to my cell phone. It was pretty goddamn funny once I had a good buzz kickin’.

As we passed the pipe around just outside the door of Ditech’s basement, he told me they were fixing up the house in order to put it up for sale soon. He told me that the carpet in one particular room is haunted by a mysterious piss odor caused by a former owner, and no amount of cleaning has removed the stink. This was highly funny to me in my state of bakedness. He told me most of the time the carpet in the room doesn’t smell. But sometimes just walking into the house, the stink hits you so hard, it makes Ike Turner seem tender. I couldn’t help but laugh. Not in a mean way. Phantom smells are not something you take lightly. If I’ve learned one thing in my 40+ years on Planet Earth, it’s that jocularity and noxious clouds of urine shall not be fucked with. I don’t make this shit up, people. No, I was laughing because my THC-induced imagination went immediately to a new direct-to-video movie of “Scooby Doo and the Lethal Piss Stink of La Conner” (No, I’m not talking about the Swinomish Tribe. That would be mean.) I couldn’t help but picture Shaggy and Scooby, clinging to each other in a quivering embrace of gayness in the back of the Mystery Machine because they saw a Specter of Pee floating towards them, laughing like Ed McMahon. Fred, Daphne, and Velma solve the case, but Shag and Scoob bumble through and somehow expose the true identity of the Pestilent Pee Phantom as Old Man Meriweather… who of course would have gotten away with it had it not been for those meddling kids. We had a girly giggle over that. I was hilarious! Ditech was worried his tale of tinkle stink might make it to my blog… but I wouldn’t do such a thing for the same reason I don’t make fun of the Swinomish. It was after 9pm by the time I got home from Ditech’s house… thanks to that period of time you have to wait before driving while stoned… so you don’t draw attention to yourself. Paranoia is a stoner’s barometer… or something.

So, that was my 420. Hope your’s was twice as fun. Pass the bong. And the lighter… dumbass.

I used to type this annual letter on paper and mail a copy to my family members with their Christmas card. But, more and more of my family has (sadly) passed away and I was sending less and less cards and letters. And, let’s face it… we are in the 21st century. Who am I, Ben Franklin? (Remember, he was the first Postmaster General, and a publisher… and I knew that without looking it up on Wikipedia. I grew up in Philadelphia, where Franklin was shoved up our ass sideways… bifocals and all.) My career is based on the Internet. It only made sense to go digital and put my Christmas letter on the Internet for anyone to read.

The picture for this update has nothing to do with my year in review. It’s Christmas time. I thought I’d give the guys that read my nonsense a nice little present. If South Park has taught us anything, it’s that the true meaning of Christmas is presents.

I don’t want to see any bitching about sexist images in the comments. How can anyone complain about titties? Titties are not only “sex objects,” they are, quite literally, a food source for newborn babies. In fact, I’ll bet two Jacksons (daddy needs a new bag of weed) that Baby Jesus was suckin’ on a tittie or two after he was born!

Well, there ya go. I’ve successfully tied Jesus to tittes, and firmly secured my rightful place in Hell. Pass the eggnog.

Two thousand six started out like any other year, and there wasn’t anything going on in my life. Same shit, different day. Seahawk fans, though, were glued to their televisions. The Seahawks were playing great football — winning the division, the conference, first-round bye, and home field advantage — on their way to Super Bowl XL. Of course, as we all know, the ‘Hawks lost in Detroit because the NFL referees fucked us. Some of us believe the lunar landings were faked, I believe the NFL wanted Pittsburgh to win at any cost… Jesus, next I’ll be seeing black helicopters and government men in black suits with sunglasses.

By spring, the entire country, including me, was complaining about $3 gas. I was driving my 1968 Mustang, cursing the gas pumps. It typically took about $45 to fill the tank. Even with a recent pay raise at work, $3 gas was making it tough to drive a classic car. I got a 1994 Chevy Lumina from a friend, but that turned into a complete cluster.

So in June, I finally decided to just go buy a used vehicle. I always wanted a truck. I could use a truck to get my ass to work reliably, as well as hauling shit from point A to point B. I did some Internet homework by locating trucks on local lots. I also learned that dealers do not update their web listings nearly as often as they should… lazy bastards. We hit three or four lots without any luck before finding a nice 1994 Ford F-150 on a lot in Sedro Woolley. I signed 173 pages of shit, and drove the truck home.

It wasn’t long before the stereo in my new truck was bugging me, so I put in a new stereo, and a little later I spent the money for a new subwoofer.

July 22nd wasn’t a fun day. Nothing happened. The earth didn’t stand still. Planets didn’t line up. I did turn forty, however, and it sucked a fat one. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been alive for 4 decades, and can remember shit that happened in 1981 without the aid of Wikipedia. And the old joke about your memory being the first thing to go? Never. More. True. Sometimes, I’m as forgetful as Ronald Reagan appearing before the Tower Commission. Godammit, why do I remember that shit, but can’t remember to take out the garbage. I’m so freakin’ old.

Sometime during the summer, the company I work for decided to consolidate offices in Redmond and Oak Harbor into one big cock-waving office in a skyscraper in downtown Seattle. This started me and Tina looking for a place to live. It only took us a couple of weeks before we realized it would be better to buy a house than rent… which quickly turned into putting a new modular home on some land. I must have missed the biology class that covered the colon being lined with currency.

At the end of October, most of the employees of the Oak Harbor office celebrated their final day in the Log Cabin with a pizza lunch. After the weekend, our new place of employment would be the new office in the Westin Building in Seattle. Not much was different between Oak Harbor and Seattle, but the commute surely sucks.

Last month we had cataclysmic weather. We set a new rainfall record in November that makes the rain forest look like southern Arizona. Wind storms knocked power out for a few hours at least once, and we had our first snowfall. Mother Nature lulled us into a false sense of security in December, then unleashed a really big storm that blew over many trees and knocked out the electricity to more than a million power customers. Our power was restored after 26 hours, but others didn’t get power back for days.

So, there’s my boring-ass life in a nutshell. Three hundred and sixty five days distilled down to less than 1000 words. But 2007 is just around the corner and promises to be a little more exciting. I hope everyone’s Christmas (or whatever December holiday you celebrate) is a happy and safe one. Happy New Year!

It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since I last talked to my good friend. She appears to be happy, and looking well. She’s looking more and more like a biker chick, too. She’s been spending some time at the tattoo parlor. Are they still called parlors? I can’t help but think of some dive a stone’s throw from a Navy base, with a grizzled guy smoking a cigar, surround by sample pictures of dolphins, sunflowers, naked women, and the word “Mother,” as some drunk sailor in a crackerjack uniform and a dixie cup hat, with an anchor on his forearm gets a new tat’. That’s a run-on sentence. Fun. Maybe my view of tattoo parlors is stereotypical because I live in a Navy town. Another stereotype… biker chicks hang out in towns named Sturgis with gray-haired, overweight hippies wearing ripped jeans, leather vests, and smell of Harley exhaust. And when a biker chick takes off her shirt, you have to really look and see if she’s wearing a tight-fitting t-shirt or if she’s actually naked. Okay. Wow. Thanks for treats, Maryanne! It’s been quite some time… Hey! Weed for 10,000 Days… think about it. Okay, what was I talking about? Oh yeah… she got some new tattoos she was showing off… and one on her arm that was started yesterday. And even though she says “I don’t ride a bike… and I ain’t a chick,” the next time I see her, she’ll probably have the full-on biker chick thing going.

Anyway, she was in town to visit her son’s grave. I left work and met her down in the cemetery. I visited with her for a little more than a hour. Her youngest son Kyle is almost seven. Seven! I can’t believe it’s been that long! When did seven years start feeling like two? As a kid, I was going to be old like Dad in seven years. Today, I have shoes older than seven. Hell, I have dull pains and bruises that last more than seven years. This turning old shit kinda sucks. Ben Franklin was right when he said the only sure thing in life is death and taxes.

Okay… I’m growing tired of writing a blog entry. It’s harshin’ my… fingers, man. It was really nice to see Maryanne. I didn’t realize how much I missed talking to her ’til today.