Cell Phones will KILL us all

I have this theory. Not supported by facts. Just a gut feeling

Cell phones will kill us all.

Dead.

It’s not as if they haven’t warned us about them for years. Notice how a cell phone has helped to make this woman completely oblivious to violent horrors. This one starts so sexy you worry about your mother walking in, but trust me, stick around and you'll see what I mean.

Not only are they distracting us. They will start to kill us.

They might rain death from the sky:

Be used as weapons to kill each other while Britney Spears sings in the background.

Or, hell, they might just start shooting though the atmosphere and kill left and right in what is not even the most ridiculously violent cell phone commercial I’ve seen. Considering the events of the last few weeks, I'm betting people at Motorola wish they'd never done this one. In fact, I have trouble believing it's a real ad or someone's spoof. It's got to be a spoof, right? Right? I'm too lazy to find out.

This observation was prompted by seeing an ad a few weeks ago where the guy’s heart was replaced by a cell phone or something. It's called Droid DNA, and if this shit doesn't scare you, I don't know what will




Now, there's a fucking reason that this shit did not fly in the Matrix universe. Yet here it is presented as some sort of "bonus" to your cell phone prowess. What the shit sort of universe do we live in now where we are meant to identify with the smug guys who share shit between their phones like video of santa falling off a stair banister and really messing his internal organs so bad his mother wouldn't recognize them (sidenote: Little known fact, we are all just little organ farms for our parents, so they are very familiar with them)





 I’ve always wondered what the hell is up with uber violent ads for cell phones, or creepy ads where computer arms interact with the phones. I don’t know what the hell these ads are trying to say that’s positive. They seem more like a warning.

I avoided cell phones until I had to get one for a job. Then I’ve kept it low tech. I have a dumb phone. I don’t use it to go online. I use it to call and text. Sometimes I take really crappy pics with it, but beyond that, nothing. I enjoy having a cell phone, but don’t care about the high tech ones.

I was at lunch with coworkers and one of the more tech saavy guys saw me pull out my phone to check the time, and made a comment about being old school. Yes. And when your phones start to kill you or the rest of humanity, I will be here, hiding. 

Got wife to watch Blink

So I'm a bit of a Dr. Who fan. first episode I remember is a vague recollection of the Tom Baker version on PBS when I was hanging out at a friend's house in 7th grade. His dad watched it. I noted it, and it stuck in whatever brain cavity things from that time period stick in that you can recall decades later, cause I don't remember shit about ANY OTHER watching habits of parents of friends, or even the friends themselves.

Then many years later, I was flipping around the channels and caught an episode of the reboot, the one where Rose meets her father on the day he died. It's pretty nuts, and I remember thinking "Wow, that guy from Shallow Grave is in this." Since that is what Christopher Eccleston was to me.  I also saw the second episode around that time, must have been a marathon or something that day on PBS.

A couple years go by, I hear things, and Dr. Who shows up on netflix or something, so I check it out. And I soon get hooked.

I've been raving about it ever since meeting the wife. I also raved about Lost and Battlestar Galactica. She watched them, enjoyed bits, and hated other bits. She really loathes having spent so much time on Lost, as the only redeeming factor was Desmond/Penny to her. But she keeps trying, and I keep trying her stuff.

I hesitated watching Big Bang Theory and The New Girl, but I am thoroughly hooked by those shows after some time (although Big Bang Theory is a season or two behind, since we don't get TV really, and their show isn't easily available for people who like to use Netflix, Hulu+, Amazon Prime, and Redbox - so yeah, it's my fault that I don't watch the ONE thing they are available on).

Wife even made a wedding vow to watch Doctor Who with me. This was not prompted by me at all. This was what she came up with.

We slogged through. She had me fast forward the nightmare enducing parts, like the WWII gas mask two parter. If it's creepy as fuck and gross to boot, she doesn't want to play.

So she's decided after a season and a half of Tennant and she wants to skip ahead to the next doctor. She just doesn't like Tennant like she did Eccelston, and she's seen some of Smith. Before we can do that, I said, there are a few key episodes you still have to see. Blink and Silence in the Library I think, since they introduce major additions to the Whoniverse. We'll miss out on the Master's intro, but seriously I think if wife saw the head spider things that come from that one and I wouldn't be able to get her to sit through another episode ever. He hasnt' been an issue in the Smith years anyway, so no worries. (I know jumping ahead is sacrilege to some people, but screw you, did you start with the first episode 50 years ago and watch every one in order? No you didn't cause that isn't possible unless you are British and old, and if that's the case why the hell are you reading my blog?)

Here's a bit about Blink for the uninitiated:


Tonight, after a day of cooking, wrapping gifts, cleaning and more chores, we sat down and watched Blink while wife did some online shopping for gifts. First 25 minutes, she wasn't into it. After hearing from me and others that it was THE BEST episode, she was not impressed.

Just Like McKayla

So after the needling, I asked her to hey, tone it down, and put down the computer, let me rub your legs, and let's close out the last 13 minutes. 

And she loved it. 

Yeah, it's that good. 

Tonight I saw Crazy

Tonight I saw crazy. Wife and I left work and on the way home, I convinced her we should just stop at the grocery store and get her a flu shot. I already had mine a month ago, but she was a walking target, and she's hard enough to take care of when she has a cold.

The ladies at the grocery store pharmacy thought it was funny that I was "making" her get one, as wife put it.

After the shot, we had to linger around the store for 10 minutes to make sure wife didn't have a crazy reaction to the shot. Unfortunately, they told her the side effects that could happen, so for the next ten minutes, wife kept telling me her lips were tingling and that she was feeling weak.

We got some coffee creamer, energy drinks, and much needed toilet paper as we are down to our last rolls. We were discussing whether we should get buns or not when it happened.

This 40 something blonde woman with a cart and 12 pack of soda comes up into the bread area. "Hey, excuse me!"

She's talking to another woman that's near us.

"Excuse me, but you have no right to hit my car like that."

Obviously, shit was going to go down. I didn't get a look at the other woman. The 40 something blonde was well dressed with a long black coat and looked "Businessy." That's the only term I can think of to describe her. She was talking on about the parking lot.

Wife and I, being highly non-confrontational creatures except with each other and our families, scooted down the way a bit and out of ear shot. I had my back to them. Wife kept watching them over my shoulder. Not long after, the blonde woman came by again, her wheeled cart bumped my hand cart. She was looking at my wife.

"Nutcase."

She was looking for some sort of comraderie with the wife. But she wasn't getting it. Wife and I moved on. Wife had forgotten about any tingling lips and faintness she had been experiencing.

As with everything that isn't fiction, there were two things that stuck with me.

One, the woman had taken the time between whatever had happened in the parking lot and then to get a cart, grab a 12 pack of soda, and then track the other woman down in the bakery. WHO DOES THAT!?

Two, the best she could come up with during all that time was "You have no right to hit my car."

Me to wife while driving home: "I mean, really, what do you say to that?"

I told wife this is why I want her with me when I leave the house, because things like this are too much for one person to absorb without help.

Wife: "You mean this happens all the time?"

Me: "No, but it happens enough."

The Target Clerk Dipshit Conundrum

I don’t know what it is with me and clerks. Maybe it’s just that I have more contact with them in usual life. I have another short anecdote about a clerk. It may not be as embarrassing as the “I love you” incident, or as fascinating as the “trapped in the car wash” scene, but its up in my top five cause it happened a week ago and I still can’t shake it.

So wife got this lovely shirt for me for my birthday. The T-shirt is run of the mill screen print with this design on the front:

And that’s it. I love it and wear it on weekends. What’s really nice is I get compliments on it from fellow fans of the Doctor. That’s right, random strangers stop me and tell me, Nice shirt! One of my coworkers squealed in delight when I wore it on casual Friday, the other two had no idea what the big deal was or really heard of the show.

That’s all preamble to the following conversation had at Target last week. I was wearing the shirt. I was with the Wife, and we were checking out with a small hand cart full of items. The line below is when I slip between what was actually said, and what happened subsequently in my head. Enjoy.

Clerk: What’s with the shirt?

Me: Hmm?

Clerk: What’s the deal with the shirt?

Me: Oh, it’s just a show.

Clerk: I get that, the Daleks and all, but what’s the deal with it?

Me: Um, it’s just the Daleks crossing Abbey Road.

Clerk: Yeah, so, is there a point to it?

Me: Um, well, I think it’s just mashing two well known British icons together into one image.

Clerk: Huh. Whatever. I don’t see redfoot. Where’s redfoot?

Me: Um, I don’t know.

Me: Listen here you dickwad. I love that we live in this new internet age where you don’t have to feel bad for having a hobby and apparently feel that no one can love something as much as you. You remind me of  a hipster version of simpsons comic book guy, and you need to take down the superiority a notch. Really, it’s a show, I like it, I wear a shirt to display that appreciation, which is the only shirt I own with anything, not even a logo, on it (besides the subsequently bought tshirt with a Sherlock design). Just because someone doesn’t go through the trouble of learning every fuckiing nuance of a decades old tv show doesn’t make them less than you in whatever fucked up version of reality you live in. There’s no mystery to the shirt, it’s a mashup of two images. That’s it. No mystery to solve. No clever little Easter eggs for only the “true” fan to appreciate. What you see is what you get. Now go choke on a fucking adipose  you twat.

Me: have a good night.

Clerk: (shrugs and turns to next customer)

Off my meds. Feeling OK.

Part of being on antidepressants is the kooky thing where when you have been taking them long enough, you think you don’t need them. You feel fine. Which is what you took them for in the first place.

I don’t always feel that way, but I am a guy, so sometimes I just plain forget to take them. I put the pills by the sink in the bathroom, in the kitchen, or anywhere else I am sure to be in the mornings, but invariably, they become part of the background decoration of that area of the apartment and I just look right through them and don’t remember to take them. Then the next day, I’ll be freaking out about something, or feeling panicked or shitty, and then it occurs to me that I forgot my pills.

I had that happen again three weeks ago, however, I didn’t notice missing my pill for four days. And by then, it wasn’t because I was panicking. I just noticed I didn’t remember taking a pill for several days.

I had started to take the pills back in Fargo, when I was trying to help fiancé find work in the area while keeping going at a job I no longer found challenging or fulfilling. I had started to skid down the sadness road. I thought about death a lot, not like suicide, but  just a sort of thinking about death a lot way. It’s just easier to think about death than a job you don’t like, a family that doesn’t support you or your fiancé, a job market that is insane, and a world that thinks so little of everything you do.

Yeah, so I got some pills. They helped. I didn’t think about death quite so much. But things were still shitty beyond reckoning. By this point, we’d moved to the cities, wife had a job but not me, I had cut off my family because they didn’t support my wife and any attempts to explain my feelings about the situation were met with a general statement about how it was all in my head. To be frank, I haven’t tried speaking to them since March and life has gotten a lot easier without them. They’ve tried to get in touch 3 times since then by email. The last one had the sentiment “We miss you and will welcome you back whenever you are ready” which is nice, but again asks me to accept all blame and that I’m nuts and that they did nothing wrong. Also, wife sent a lengthy response in May or June about what they could do to make things right, but they haven’t taken us up on it.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I accidentally quit taking my pills, and by the time I noticed, I also noticed that I was OK.

Part of this, I think, is the general state of life affairs right now. I’ve got a job I love, I get to work with Wife and have lunch with her, I don’t have to deal with my family, and wife is out of her own hell hole of a job at Hennepin Technical College. Things are going well.

They could always be better. Wife is now applying to job after job and going through the same mindfuck I was going through in my job hunt: mostly that you can take two hours out of your day to go visit with an interviewer, send a thank you, send a follow up a week later, and still never get the common courtesy of a thank you for applying call or even a note to say they went with someone else. I go balls out and want to send a snide letter, but wife still thinks it may be possible to be hired after three weeks of hearing nothing and doesn’t want to send anything even slightly aggressive. I talk a big game, though. A few weeks ago, against my better judgement and at wife’s request, I reached out to the mnartists.org editor to see if she was interested in another piece from me. Though she can’t explain what she wants, and the pieces she publishes are far less professional than she seems to think they are when my own pieces weren’t meeting some professional standard she said she had, she seemed to think that it was me who couldn’t meet her expectations. Rather than get snipy, I just let it go and wrote a piece for the blog that I still haven’t had time to retool for pitching to other publications.

Then I watch shows like New Girl, a show I like, but last episode the main character is trying to get a job, is sitting in a waiting room with 5 other applicants, which NEVER happens and if it did you should run away since they don’t know how to stagger schedules so people aren’t waiting for hours. She breaks down and cries during her interview, freaking out the interviewer. Later in the episode, she goes back and interviews again. We are meant to believe that this attitude got her the job. BULLSHIT. There were five other perfectly reasonable people in that waiting room who probably didn’t break down and cry during their interview, and you’re telling me she got it over them? I hate America. Still like that show though.

Another thing along those lines is movies about mental illness. Everyone gets cured through sheer force of will. How fucking American, right? If “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” has it right, all we need to get through crippling depression is to spend a week in a ward, and all our problems will be magically solved.

So anyway, I have been off my meds for three weeks now, and I’m doing OK. It’s weird to get emotional over things now. Songs can get me misty if they hit me at the right time. I wept through the last half hour of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which is a really awesomely good movie, but probably not worthy of a good cry. This is painting me as a crying conundrum, but it really isn’t that often, and it’s during genuinely emotional things and not over seeing something like a puppy in a teacup. I’m enjoying these new emotions and the catharsis they bring rather than not feeling or bottling to boil over later.

Not sure if I will continue to try life without meds, or if I will go back on them. Wife is in my corner either way, so that’s nice. 

Emotional Gut Punch at the Minneapolis Photo Center

Today I went to the Minneapolis Photo Center because a friend of mine, Dan Koeck, had a couple photos in one of the three exhibits they opened up yesterday.

I'm planning to write more eloquently about the exhibit to see if I can't get my foot in the door at one of the magazines in town that cover such things. Tonight though, I'm still trying to come to terms with what I saw and how it affected me to the point where I just had to leave the building, go back to my car, and cry it out.

First exhibit:

Mark Seliger, a former Rolling Stones photographer who has probably shot your favorite photos of bands and actors, has a book out of the same name as the exhibit. The poster is a bit misleading, since the other 20 or so photos are portraits of Holocaust survivors, and most of those seen out of context don't scream Holocaust survivor. Take this picture for example: 

What was tough about the exhibit wasn't so much the photos as the quotes from the interviews. I don't have a copy of the book, so I don't know how they got these people to give such mind-blowing quotes, but I would be reading along and come across emotional gut punches that turned any preconceptions I had into dust. "The day we received the tattoos was a good day for us; we had received them as if they were passports for life."  

"Sometimes people ask, "Did it make you a stronger person?" I don't think suffering makes you strong." 

One sole survivor of her family talks about leaving her mother in the bunk, knowing she would be dead when she returned, how she escaped and moved to New York. "I never discussed the Holocaust with my husband." 

Another: "I find that the best ones went, and we who survived are the worst. My father and brother could never survive, not even a day. They were fine, sensitive, idealistic."  This same person discusses suicidal thoughts after the war. "I gave myself a year. I told myself that, if I could make a human being out of myself, I would continue. And if not ..." 

Those three dots still bring the tears to the surface. 

Holy fucking shitballs, I was glad to be the only person in the exhibit, reading these stories, writing down the quotes that suckerpunched me. 

Then, in the hallway, the second exhibit. The theme and name is "The Human Condition: A Survey of Humanity" 

So after reading the stories of Holocaust survivors, I was taken through a wide array of photos showing the best and worst humanity has to offer, the joyous and the depressing, the weird and the amazing. Here's the winner of this show, titled "My Father, Pensive" 

And it just makes you want to fucking wrap yourself up in puppy kisses and orphan dreams cause I see myself, too, sitting there in 40 years wondering what the hell's next. 

Another photo had me creating a hell of a story for two little girls and the state of their lives when this is where they live: Check it out here. They apparently live in those mini-tubs? Shit, man. 

And this one, the second place winner, must be seen in person. It's called Before the Briss, and the lighting is just unreal. 

So, after being primed with Holocaust survivors and then washing through decades of photos that detail atrocities and triumphs of the human soul since then, (more here), you come to the third exhibit, Photographer Doug Knutson's portraits of Nobel Peace Prize winners. 

Now, you'd think after the raw nerve scrubbing of the past two galleries, that portraits of nice people would be just the thing to help salve the open wounds of your soul. Not so. 

Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, The Dalai Lama and others look right at you, in you, and you can see their goodness and feel how you pale in comparison, and you finally can't hold it back any longer and have to leave to go back to your car and back to your wife who is in her fourth day of sickness but getting better, and back to your life of personal and interpersonal struggles. It's a cold day. The first layer of snow sticks to the pavement in this rather dismal, industrial section of north Minneapolis. Winter is coming, and we're all going to need some emotional super-juicing to get through it. The exhibits run through Jan. 4, so go see them. 

Wife's Exit Interview Questionnaire

Length of Service:     13 months      

Reason for leaving:   There are so many, it’s hard to narrow down to just a couple. Here are a few. 1. Jean Kreutter, the disabilities services director, disclosed my disability to people without my permission, which after consulting with LDA Minnesota I was advised that that “I would suggest you find out who you can speak to in HR regarding a complaint in which your supervisor is violating your confidentiality and, in a back-handed manner, discriminating based on your disability.” But considering that my concerns were never given credence when I raised them (which I will get to shortly), I figured continuing to raise concerns would be another dead end, so it is better to leave Hennepin Technical College than continue to be discriminated against. I made this clear in a recent letter to my newest supervisor. I’d bet nothing changed. 2. Despite having been promised the opportunity to teach and advance my career while at HTC, it became clear that Lisa Larson would never allow that to happen, she actively discouraged me from pursuing advancement and wrote a ridiculous review of me not meeting expectations in work ethic or teamwork when in fact I have been working overtime for free, I have increased the Writing Center’s visit rate by more than 800 percent and have a 96 percent return visit rate from students – despite this success I was often berated and treated like dirt. Lisa Larson even said “well anyone can do your job.” When I was able to win a free ticket to a $450 educational event in my field, Lisa said I would have to take vacation time to go to it and did not support it. I ended up working longer hours and going to the event on my own time, then bringing that knowledge back to HTC as a free benefit to students. Lisa actually said I should look for conferences that focus on paragraph development and sentence structure, which is not something that exists, and would be like asking a math instructor to go to a workshop on how to add and subtract, it’s counterproductive. 3. On another note, when I raised safety concerns after specific threats from a specific student, Lisa Larson did nothing to help the issue. I filed a report through the code of student conduct in early July, and the matter was still unresolved by the time I left in October. In mid-September, my husband bought me mace to carry with me, and tweeted about it, and this was the FIRST time that campus security had been notified about my safety issue. So to put it in as few words as possible, I am leaving HTC because of discrimination, safety concerns, and I was discouraged from advancing my career in any way.

1.                  What did you like most about working for Hennepin Technical College?     I love working with students. I have been teaching in higher ed for about 10 years and thought I would make a career of it, but HTC has convinced me that I should put my three bachelors and two masters degrees to better use outside of academia. Students were my life, and when the opportunity to teach a class along with running the writing center were taken away from me, I knew it was time to end my career in academia. So in a way, HTC killed any remaining enjoyment I got from being an educator and forced me to start fresh in a new career.  Thanks!

2.                  What did you like least about working for Hennepin Technical College?     Lisa Larson, Jean Kreutter, being told I don’t matter, being told I am worthless                                              

3.                  Did your supervisor explain your job duties and responsibilities? Yes          No x   

Comments       This is a tricky one. When I started, I asked countless times in person and in email to have a list of job responsibilities and duties, but was never provided with one. So I went with what I was told, but that would change depending on the mood of my supervisor. In addition, my supervisor changed three times during the year I was at HTC, so the new supervisor would often contradict the old supervisor’s instructions and promises, and get mad at me for continuing to work under the existing guidelines. Lisa Larson’s catch phrase is “This is the first I heard of it.” She used that no matter what issue was presented to her. This sort of thing happened on a near weekly basis.                                                                     

4.         Did you understand what was expected of you on the job?  Yes            No x                     

Comments       For some reason, I figured it was my job to make the writing center successful. I did that by raising student visits by more than 800 percent the first year. This September, we were up 300 percent over last September. I also had a 96 percent return visit rate from students, so I believe that indicates they found my services helpful. Many even drove down from the Brooklyn Park campus to get help at my center rather than any other service providers. I worked with other service providers on campus, and reached out to teachers. I even sent hand written thank you letters to each teacher who had a student visit the center. Despite all this success, I still got a negative review from Lisa Larson and was constantly told I wasn’t doing anything right. I think that’s just nuts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

5.            How would you describe your work load and duty assignments?

Fairly assigned  x  Unfairly assigned             

Comments       Another tricky one. I felt the work load was sufficient for the center. I think that changed in the past couple months as the writing center operations were given over to the LRC (a less successful service) so I think the workload as it was shifting was ridiculously easy. As someone with more degrees and experience than many instructors at HTC, I felt unchallenged. I doubt Lisa Larson understood what a wealth of experience and education she had in me, as she often seemed to think I just had a high school education, at least that’s how she talked to me. When they removed all autonomy from me, and it became clear that my success over the past year would be absorbed and attributed to Jean to make her failing LRC look better, I knew it was time to go.                                                                                              

6.         Did you ever suggest changes to your supervisor regarding your work?  Yes x        No      

Comments       Invariably, when I offered my opinion or input on a work issue, I was shot down and told I was wrong. I learned if I wanted anything done, I just had to do it, watch it succeed, and then accept the punishment for being successful.  In fact, the whole decision and organization to move the writing center under the LRC umbrella was made without once consulting a single CLA in the writing or math centers (outside of the brief consultation with the facilitator, but I think my feedback to her held up the forward movement of the consolidation, and led to further shutting the CLAs out of the process)                          

7.            Did your supervisor explain to you why the change could or could not be considered?

Yes      No x   

Comments       I don’t think knee jerk reactions of the sort offered by Lisa Larson come with sufficient explanation. For instance, she said I could no longer lock my door to insure my safety from a specific student threat when I was alone in the center. Her reasoning was that other people on campus work with students in offices by themselves, but this didn’t take into account the specific threat to me. I also work with students every day, and in 10 years had never raised such a concern. Lisa Larson said I needed to work through the Code of Student Conduct on this issue, but again, doing that led to months of no action or movement to keep me safe. Lisa never even notified security about the issue.                                                      

8.            How would you rate the evaluation process at Hennepin Technical College?

Good               Poor     x                      Fair                  Unfair  x         

Comments       My review last month from Lisa was completely ridiculous. I have invited her to come and actually watch me do what I do with students, but she has never once taken me or the previous math CLA up on that offer. Her review was based entirely on her personal interactions with me, which are skewed as she does not listen to any input and assumes the worst of me.  My numbers speak for the success of my methods, yet even 800 percent growth doesn’t merit more than “meets expectations.” I wonder what would exceed them.              

9.            What could we (Human Resources) have done differently to better serve you?

Comments       More leadership training for administration on how to listen and not automatically shoot down ideas, how to treat people with dignity. That’d be a good start.        

10.        What can Hennepin Technical College change to better serve its employees (overall)?

Comments       Listen to them. Treat them like human beings with dignity                          

11.       Would you recommend the college as place to work?  Yes               No      x         

12.       What other comments or suggestions do you have about your work experience here?        

I write all this fully knowing that none of it will mean anything. After a year, I’ve seen all but one other CLA leave under similar circumstances, but nothing was ever done to correct the issues those people raised. Instead, the narrative is created that those people were bad workers and difficult to work with, thereby negating any need to reflect on HTCs role in the process.

Wife and I ROCK the North Shore

The best advice I have if you are planning a trip to the north shore is to bring my wife. It will increase your enjoyment of nature's beauty to the point where you will start to question existence in a my-wifeless universe.

First some pics I couldn't fit elsewhere in this blog: 

Yup, north shore baby.

  

 On the north shore, people fuckin skip rocks. It really is this idyllic. I know!

 The Angry Trout Cafe deserves every bit of praise it ever gets. Oh My God they are good. DO NOT SKIMP HERE. Order what your heart wants and skip a meal later, you will not regret it.

We got there just past color peak season, but it still frakin rocked.

 

For one, wife is a whiz at packing. After all the time she spent living out of a suitcase shuttling between her shit life in Grand Forks and her weekends with me in Fargo, she became very good at it. As Malcolm Gladwell would point out, she put in her 10,000 hours of packing.

Problem is this last week she was off her game. She had an interview scheduled for Thursday night, which after working until 6 p.m. didn't leave any time for packing once we got home. However, she got it done and we got out on Friday by 8 a.m. Wife don't pity no fools when it comes to packing.

For two, you are likely to hear the best combinations of the English language ever spoken when you are traveling with my wife. Here are a few excerpts:

"I just want to see a goddamn tugboat and a goddamn lighthouse in this goddamn town, then I want some pie."

"I need some coffee before I kill an orphan."

Deer in the North Shore just stand there and pose for pictures

Dogs in the North Shore drive, but they are crap at parallel parking

For three, if you've played your cards right, if you've been a good boy for four to five years, doing dishes, laundry, driving, shopping, cooking, you get rewarded. We drove up to the Lutsen ski resort, where the gondolas were still moving up to a distant mountain (Minnesota Mountain). The scene was breathtaking. 

Then wife, who has a deadly fear of heights, says

"I'll do it. I'll go up with you. I owe you for so much, so this makes us even."

And it does. Her fear of heights is like anyone's worst fear. I doubt I would be able to hold live snakes for wife, or scuba dive in an eel tank with waterproof spiders. This was her equivalent. So we took the eight minute gondola ride up, and up, then up some more. Then we got to this chalet thing, Lake Superior off in the distance, trees with most leaves down, but still smatterings of mustard yellow and fire orange smeared on the hillsides. The floor of the balcony at this chalet was a wire mesh that wife didn't realize was 30 feet from solid ground until after we were nearly done and I asked for the camera to do a foot picture.

That’s what wife does for me.

She also knows how to splurge. We're still paying for the weekend festivities, but oh how we ate like kings. Poutine slathered in rainbow juice, Herring that sprang from Lake Superior onto our plates with a final look as if to say, "It is my time, please enjoy me." Smoked trout that stank up my hands for hours after. And the Pie. It was this fruit crumble thing from Betty's Pies outside of Two Harbors, and each bite was like tasting little balls of sunshine that burst forth and still brings tears to my eyes thinking about it five days later.

Last slice of heaven

Then on Sunday, we made our way from Lutsen Resort, Stopped at the Split Rock Light House for a spell, ate awesome burritos at Burrito Union in Duluth, a city I think must be the Portlandia of the Midwest because oh my god the hippies/hipsters/lefties.

We got back on Sunday.

And oh, I forgot to say, the Thursday before we left, my boss emails me and asks if my wife is still looking for a new job. Out of the blue because my boss and everyone I work with is awesomesauce personified and I can't believe it. It's a temp job that may last two weeks to two months, and it gets wife out of the miserable mess that HTC has become and into something that begins to approximate a wage that she is worth. It's not what she plans to do with her life, but it gets her out of the hellhole and into a head space that is healthy and human.

Wife was still not sure about leaving her job, since it's a steady thing and she loves to help students despite all the bullshit that they throw at her every week. Then she got an email from her new, and third, boss in a year that questioned her integrity on her time sheet. So wife let off a stern email, I went to the school the next day to get all her shit, and she emailed the HR people to tell them she was done. Simple, clean. And they haven't talked to her since.

Next blog, her exit interview. It's a thing of beauty.

The Lexington Makes Wife Forget Her Shitty Job for A Magical Night

It's hard to shake off a horrible week at work sometimes, and Saturday was no different for the wife. She spent the morning in a familiar pit of "When the fuck will one of my resumes hit and get me out of this horrible job?" Her pit has the added benefit of mice and bats. She used a microphone at a meeting to tell the entire staff and administration about the mice and bats that live with her. The next day, there was a box of mouse traps in her office.

It's hard not to think it was a prank, rather than a really lazy custodian's way of dealing with the issue.

But we had plans, and I was able to talk her out of the pit to take a short nap before one of the best nights out we've had since moving here.

First, we drove over to St. Paul to the block where they filmed Grumpy Old Men. The three houses were nestled into a block with beautiful trees. The colors in Plymouth are absolutely the best I've seen anywhere in years. Seems that fall is always a bunch of yellow trees that lose their leaves with the first stiff wind. This year, with the drought, the leaves are all sorts of reds and oranges and yellows. Everywhere you look, it's like the label on an Oktoberfest bottle.

Our next stop, Fitzgerald Theatre for the Prairie Home Companion. Wife has always wanted to go to this. We had tickets for the top corner of the top balcony, which is vertigo inducing. After I walked back down to get a couple drinks, whiskey for me for some reason, and rum and diet for the wife, I walked the five million steps back to the top. The last few steps before I got to my row, I seriously wondered if my legs would give way while trying to tip toe down the row to my seat. I made it though.

The Minnesota Opera opened the show, and got us both misty eyed even though we had no idea what they were singing. It was a wonderful evening of music and drama, but the thing that oddly enough got to me the most was the program notes about the show.

After the show, we went to The Lexington, where we had our groom's dinner last December but hadn't been since. That was a serious mistake, because their food was amazing. We started the dinner with some Old Fashioneds, which were whiskey central and took one sip for the wife to get a bit loopy.

I'm good at making steaks. They look weird, but they taste better than anything I have had in a restaurant, so I don't get steaks. I got the seafood linguine, which was excellent, particularly the whitefish part of it. Wife kept reading about their steaks though, and took her chances on a steak, medium rare.

I swear, they must age their meat in a room filled with shamans and Buddhist monks who do nothing but put out positive energy, then douse the steaks in angel tears and Care Bear blood because holy Jebus Wife's steak was incredible. Absolutely incredible.

We then got this Wellington thing for desert on the house brought out by our awesome goddess of a waitress. It was a pastry wrapped around a brownie, marshmallow and melted chocolate and even though I don't care for chocolate I would sacrifice my future children for this desert maker to live with us and make us deliciousness every day. We topped it all off with some Irish coffees and called it a night.

Slight Reboot for Less Bitchin'

You may have noticed a few changes in the ol blog lately. Guess word of my blog had spread a bit to people I was not comfortable having know of it, namely wife’s employer. So after some panicked deleting and whatnot, I calmed the hell down and managed to save most of it. However, I lost most of the summer’s updates, but as they were mostly about how wife’s job took a turn for crazyville, an office she shares with mice, lice and a couple bats (really, REALLY), it was hard not to let my anger about the whole situation bleed into every piece of the writing here.

The place is horrible, and worth all the anger, particularly the many ways they circumvent things like employment laws and health codes. She had a day-long meeting of the kind they do to pretend that they listen and respond to concerns, but really don’t. However, after 30 minutes of people complaining that they don’t have access to filtered water or a fridge, wife stands up and says “Filtered water would be nice, but I would really appreciate not having to work with five mice and two bats. My students have now named them. If one of them falls out of the ceiling on me, I'm gone. No notice, I'm gone. I guess it's hard to for me to care about filtered water because of that.”  That kind of shut up all the other complaints for seeming frivolous by comparison.

But, I didn’t start this whole endeavor to become a repository for gripes about my wife’s work, and I think she feels bad when it takes over my blog. So, in a way, this is a good little partial reboot.

Time to take a breath and note the things that are going right:

I’m married to the woman of my dreams.

Phone calls from creditors has gone from 12 a day to 0.

Last week, we got to do a day trip to Red Wing. This weekend, we will be going to Prairie Home Companion for the first time. Next weekend, we will go to Duluth and the North Shore for a mini vacation.

I have a great job, and it’s only a matter of time before wife does too.

I get to be creative and write for a living.

I’ve got an amazing group of coworkers.

I get to carpool with wife nearly every day.

We have enough money to cover food, gas, bills, and rent.

I can do cute jigs for the wife, and make up new lyrics for songs on the fly as I serenade her.

Octoberfest season

Things like this Cowboy Pumpkin Duck in a Hula Skirt exist.

Asshole Bosses Should Be Fair Game

As someone who has been through the long, hard slog of job hunting, I consider myself something of an expert on job advice columns. You read them, you get advice solicited and unsolicited from others. Some of it is helpful. So much of it is bullshit.

One piece of advice is helpful, but bullshit at the same time. That is the advice to never talk poorly about your former places of work.

I understand that being negative about where you worked before makes you look like a complainy pants, and that the potential employer may not want to bring such negativity into their place. That makes perfect sense.

But let’s take, say, a really bad job for shits and giggles. Say your last job was shredding documents illegally for Enron, or digging mass graves in Bosnia. What the fuck are you supposed to be positive about? “It gave me a great appreciation for proper organization!”

I think part of me just has a bad gut reaction because if you do have a legitimately bad boss, you are supposed to lie about it. And that lie props up bad bosses everywhere. It gives bad bosses free reign to be dickholes to their employees, as long as they are being assholes to white male employees anyway. If you don’t read This Article  that sparked this blog entry, and you should, at least read this excerpt:

It is nearly impossible to successfully sue your boss for being a bully. While there are decades' worth of precedents on gender and race discrimination in the workplace, just being an all-around jerk is sanctioned boardroom behavior.

"The standard for outrageous conduct is so high that people lose those lawsuits," says Dr. Gary Namie, the director of the Workplace Bullying Institute. "Nothing is considered outrageous when committed by management."

So when it becomes OK to lie about your former places of work where you were let go because your asshole boss kept asking you to work 60 hours a week and one time you needed to attend a funeral and he waited an appropriate amount of time before firing you. When it becomes OK to lie about it, all bosses everywhere are protected species. This rule works out like gangbusters for former bosses, who have no reason to be reasonable. I've known people that think Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross is the model of a motivating boss. Not the personification of human pit stain.

I’ve lucked out in the boss department, I should say here. I’ve had good and not as good, but with the not as good ones I was in a position that I didn’t really have to interact with them more than a couple times a year. But luck should not give me an edge over others because I can be honest about what management styles work well with me.

And it rankles me that there’s a management class that can be assholes, not get called on it, and can still fuck your shit up when any employer calls for references.

It warms my heart that Minnesota courts are starting to reasonably explore the issue of office bullies, at least on the legal terms of keeping people safe from violent work environments. That’s something at least, and something that might get higher ups to care about more than just numbers, but how their middle managers get those numbers. 

Fargo Vs. Cities. Pros and Cons Comparison

Staying in Fargo	Moving to Twin Cities	Winner
Still get to see the RedHawks in a pleasant park with good food and good seats	Get to go to St. Paul Saints, but it sucks	Fargo
10 minute commute. Most places in city easy to reach in under 20 minutes, and parking doesn't suck anywhere.	Going anywhere takes forever. 20 minute commute, finding parking near big events sucks	Fargo
Would have lost house by now	Household income doubles what it was in Fargo	Cities
Job leading nowhere, wife unable to land one	wife and me both employed at same time for first time in our 4.5 year relationship	Cities
Broke	Ability to start savings account	Cities
Hateful bitch of a neighbor	Hateful kids as neighbors	Draw
Favorite places keep closing (Silver Moon, Lauermans, Red Bear, Ralph's)	Favorite places are still kicking, and there's always somewhere new to try	Cities
Cost of montly mortgage cheaper than rent	Still, getting double what we earned in Fargo	Cities
Shoveling, mowing, gardening, fixing appliances	Renting, don't got to fix shit	Cities
Dealing with bank about mortgage and selling house for no gain after five years	No mortgage headaches. Rent sucks, but we have a pool	Cities
Fargo Street Fair	Art-A-Whirl	Draw
Squirrels galore	Deer, wild turkeys, geese, cardinals, bluejays	Cities
Red River Zoo	Como Zoo	Cities
Working every day	Unemployed for 8 months, but now working every day	Fargo, sort of. Complicated, but after 7 months it will be as if I never stopped working, income-wise
	When twins are doing poorly, tickets cheaper than Saints tickets	No comparison with Fargo
Got to see Patton Oswalt	Got to see Paul F. Tompkins, Neil Gaiman, and Amiee Mann at one event	Cities (sorry Patton)
Writing for Area Woman is a scam	Tons of freelancing opportunities	Cities
New Library	Tons of libraries, free museum passes inside!	Cities
Politics of a Red State	Politics of a Democratic state	Cities