Friday, November 10, 2006
Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.
Last weekend, The Wife and I headed up to the Pondarosa, our family’s house in Wisconsin. My mother came up with us, which was nice. Although I definitely felt like I was reliving my early childhood with 4 people and a dog loaded into my pick-up truck. (Only when I was a child, it was 5 people (3 kids) and a dog. And one bench seat. My parents were simply crazy.)
It wasn’t a very eventful weekend up there. It seldom is. But this was a particularly uneventful weekend because it was too cold to go swimming and too warm to go sledding. So Saturday night, we were flipping through the channels and came across the movie Airplane, one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s one of the best-written movies and certainly one of the funniest. But I never realized just how scary it was.
In one scene, the pilot becomes incapacitated and the plane starts to dive. Elaine doesn’t know what to do. The ground control tells her to turn on the autopilot. And so she flips a switch and an inflatable pilot (Otto) slowly morphs into being. (By the way, it wasn’t until I was about 20 that I realized that “autopilot” didn’t really work this way.)
As soon as Luke saw Otto, he started screaming. He did NOT like Otto. As soon as Otto left the screen, Luke was happy. And whenever he reappeared, Luke would get upset. This actually became very entertaining for sick, twisted parents like The Wife and I. We began joking about how Luke’s going to be scared of inflatables as he grows up. This could prove to be quite a problem around holiday time since every lawn seemingly HAS to have an inflatable in it. (I’m willing to accept this for Christmas, and maybe even Halloween. But Arbor Day? Do you really need an inflatable tree?)
By the way, my favorite exchange in Airplane (besides the jive-talking) is:
Doctor: How soon can you land this plane?
Pilot: I can’t tell.
Doctor: I’m a doctor, you can tell me anything.
Pilot: Not for another couple hours.
Doctor: You can’t tell me for another couple hours?
Pilot: No, we can’t land for another couple hours.
This is the humor I love the most. Which is why I purposely obfuscate whatever I can. (Think I have a word-a-day calendar?) I think misunderstandings are funny. I realize it’s extremely annoying to other people (just ask The Wife). But I can’t help it. I think I might be a long-lost Marx Brother.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Domestic Violence
It’s been a crazy week for me work-wise. Lots of projects, lots of deliverables, generally high stress levels. Which has been quite nice, to be honest. Yesterday, I got to go to my first client meeting here at Geeks, Inc. Believe it or not, there’s actually a rather amusing story about that. Fortunately for you, it has little to do with the actual meeting, which was a rather boring one, even by actuarial standards.
I’d been working quite a bit lately on the project, trying to make sure we got everything finalized before the meeting on Tuesday. I wrapped up my project at 5:00 (just in time to send the handouts to production) and then had a few other things to do before I headed home. As is normally the case around here, I was running around like a crazy man trying to accomplish this. Of course, it didn’t help that I got a phone call from The Wife telling me how sick she was and how she’d really appreciate me getting home early to help take care of Luke.
I finally got home around 7:00 and played with Luke for quite some time. He really seems to enjoy it when I come home. Probably because I like to horse around with him. Our new “game” lately has been me saying I’m not going to do something about 5 times and then doing it anyway. For example, I’ll say that I’m not going to tickle him. Then I’ll do it. Then, he’ll ask me to do it again. And I’ll refuse. And so on and so on for hours.
After playing with Luke for awhile, I was pretty tired. It’s amazing how much quicker I tire out than Luke. He runs around ALL DAY. I do it for an hour and I feel like collapsing. So I sat down on the couch to talk to The Wife. Luke ran up next to me and started playing with the Matchbox cars that he had meticulously lined up on the couch. Then he started throwing them on the floor. Then he grabbed one and threw it at me from about 2 feet away. It managed to hit me right in the corner of the eye. Hard.
My initial reaction was to punch Luke right in the nose. It’s almost funny how quickly that feeling came over me. It was almost like I got cold-cocked in a barfight. I don’t know who did it, but I want to kill whoever’s in front of me right now. Amazingly, I managed to stop myself and not kill Luke. I know he didn’t mean to do it, but after years of wrestling (both in high school and with my brothers in non-sanctioned bouts), my reflex isn’t to determine intent. It’s to return the favor. (Note, this had led to way too many instances where I’m horsing around with The Wife and she manages to get hurt. Of course, the bitch had it coming. Kidding! God, she’s going to divorce me and use this as evidence. If only there were a delete key on my computer….)
As I was doubled over in pain, restraining myself from killing Luke, The Wife is patiently explaining to Luke that what he did was “bad.” I’ll say. So we put him in a timeout and he came out of it rather remorseful. Of course, that didn’t change the way my eye felt. And worse, it wouldn’t change the way it looked. Thanks to Luke, my eye was slowing swelling up. I put some ice on it, but it didn’t have much of an effect. And so that’s how I ended up having a very large and noticeable black eye for my very first client meeting at Geeks, Inc. And the worst part is that I’m more embarrassed about who gave it to me than the fact that I had it in the first place.
(Although I must say that I’m pretty stoked that I have a great “just wait” story. Next time someone complains about their kid hurting them, I’ll say, “Just wait until he gives you a black eye before your first-ever client meeting at your new company!” Okay, it’ll have to be a very specific instance for me to say that, but man, will it be worth it!)
I’d been working quite a bit lately on the project, trying to make sure we got everything finalized before the meeting on Tuesday. I wrapped up my project at 5:00 (just in time to send the handouts to production) and then had a few other things to do before I headed home. As is normally the case around here, I was running around like a crazy man trying to accomplish this. Of course, it didn’t help that I got a phone call from The Wife telling me how sick she was and how she’d really appreciate me getting home early to help take care of Luke.
I finally got home around 7:00 and played with Luke for quite some time. He really seems to enjoy it when I come home. Probably because I like to horse around with him. Our new “game” lately has been me saying I’m not going to do something about 5 times and then doing it anyway. For example, I’ll say that I’m not going to tickle him. Then I’ll do it. Then, he’ll ask me to do it again. And I’ll refuse. And so on and so on for hours.
After playing with Luke for awhile, I was pretty tired. It’s amazing how much quicker I tire out than Luke. He runs around ALL DAY. I do it for an hour and I feel like collapsing. So I sat down on the couch to talk to The Wife. Luke ran up next to me and started playing with the Matchbox cars that he had meticulously lined up on the couch. Then he started throwing them on the floor. Then he grabbed one and threw it at me from about 2 feet away. It managed to hit me right in the corner of the eye. Hard.
My initial reaction was to punch Luke right in the nose. It’s almost funny how quickly that feeling came over me. It was almost like I got cold-cocked in a barfight. I don’t know who did it, but I want to kill whoever’s in front of me right now. Amazingly, I managed to stop myself and not kill Luke. I know he didn’t mean to do it, but after years of wrestling (both in high school and with my brothers in non-sanctioned bouts), my reflex isn’t to determine intent. It’s to return the favor. (Note, this had led to way too many instances where I’m horsing around with The Wife and she manages to get hurt. Of course, the bitch had it coming. Kidding! God, she’s going to divorce me and use this as evidence. If only there were a delete key on my computer….)
As I was doubled over in pain, restraining myself from killing Luke, The Wife is patiently explaining to Luke that what he did was “bad.” I’ll say. So we put him in a timeout and he came out of it rather remorseful. Of course, that didn’t change the way my eye felt. And worse, it wouldn’t change the way it looked. Thanks to Luke, my eye was slowing swelling up. I put some ice on it, but it didn’t have much of an effect. And so that’s how I ended up having a very large and noticeable black eye for my very first client meeting at Geeks, Inc. And the worst part is that I’m more embarrassed about who gave it to me than the fact that I had it in the first place.
(Although I must say that I’m pretty stoked that I have a great “just wait” story. Next time someone complains about their kid hurting them, I’ll say, “Just wait until he gives you a black eye before your first-ever client meeting at your new company!” Okay, it’ll have to be a very specific instance for me to say that, but man, will it be worth it!)
