Monday, July 31, 2006

Hotter than Phoenix, Arizona???


It is so fucking hot out today.


I feel like I should be more popular because my entire apartment is air conditioned. Won't some one use me for my climate controlled environment??? We could watch a movie or listen to Robert Goulet or just stare at each other awkwardly knowing full well what this visit is all about.


That's really all I have to say about that.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Me, a grown up?


I think everyone has those moments when he realizes how old he is. You see a kid with purple hair and you can't identify with that anymore, you start talking about the weather, etc.

I've come to the sad realization that I've probably reached adulthood after I did the following two things both in the same day:

1) After waking up, I checked the weather for the day to make sure I was adequately dressed for the conditions before leaving the house.

2) The traffic report caught my attention on the radio and I actually turned it up to make sure I didn't need to alter my drive home.

I swear, I get lamer by the day.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Hector Watch - 2006


This past weekend I went on a wonderful camping trip with my coworkers and some of our participants (that is actually a picture of the sunset on friday night). Southern Kettle-Moraine has a great, completely accessible cabin that we were fortunate to use. We had almost reached the end of our supposed adventure when the real adventure began. We had already gone to the beach, set up tents, grilled hot dogs and played hours of spades. Here's how the rest of our weekend unfolded.

Hector is a 42 year old man suffering from schizophrenia and living with a developmental disability that gives him a rating of mild mental retardation. Regardless, Hector is a smart man. He catches on to pretty complex ideas easily. We never saw what happened next coming.

Hector likes attention. In fact, he needs almost constant attention from others or he feels like people are being mean to him. This is probably the reason he followed my boss to the bathroom. At approximately 9:30pm, Hector was seen standing outside the bathroom door talking at my boss. This being somewhat of an awkward situation, Hector was told to go back to the campsite and to wait. As this story progresses, keep in mind that the campsite was within view of the bathroom, literally 30 feet away.

Later, everyone was getting ready for a dessert in the cabin. It was 10:30pm and Hector had not yet made an appearance. It was assumed he was at the campsite he was told to go to after the bathroom incident. However, upon further inspection, it became quite apparent that Hector was no where to be found.

The time was 10:35 and so began "Hector Watch - 2006."

Phase One involved driving around the campground looking for Hector. It was pitch black and Hector had no flashlight, we knew he could not have gotten far. Soon enough, it reached the point in a missing person search where yelling becomes acceptable and cries of "HECTOR!!??!!" were heard by all.

Phase Two began at approximately 11:30pm when it was realized that something must be wrong. Where the hell was Hector?
The park rangers were called in to assist in the search. They began canvassing the area, driving down all the roads searching for Hector. Perhaps Hector was in hiding though, so at about 11:45 they brought out the loud speakers. "Hector Santos, please come out. You are not in trouble, we just want to know you're safe." Alas, no Hector.

Phase Three involved members of the Sheriff's Department being called in at 12am to find Hector. It was approximately midnight and the search team began going site to site waking all campers in the park up to ask if they had seen Hector. This was also the time during which the Sheriff's Department thought Hector might have come back to the cabin and was hiding. At this point, I was in the cabin with the other participants, most of them asleep. Suddenly, there was a loud crash, a shout of "Sheriff's Department! Stay where you are!" and some flashlights. There was a lot of swat-style maneuvering through the cabin, looking under beds, and scaring one of our participants so badly that he spilt his urinal on himself. The Sheriff told me it was 1am.

Phase Four. Until this time, all searchers were positive that Hector was still in the park. There was no way he would have left the paved roads and walked into the woods in the middle of the night without a light source. However, after two and a half hours with no sign of Hector, anything seemed possible. They called in the police dogs. They called in flight for life to begin an aerial search.

It was 3am and a call came in from a woman who said she had just seen a man walk out of the dense woods across the street from her house. She was having a graduation party for her son and they were still up drinking. This man approached her and said "hello." He was covered in blood, caked in mud, had no shoes or socks but claimed he was fine. The man of course was Hector. The paramedics responded to check on Hector, and his guardian went to pick him up.

Hector had finally been found. EIGHT miles from the campsite. Almost immediately after walking right past the campsite and along the beach, Hector veered straight into the woods and just kept going. With no flashlight. He claims he slid down a hill into mud in which he later lost his shoes and socks. He had bruises and hundreds of scratches and scrapes from walking into trees and through thorns. The most interesting wounds however, were the puncture wounds on his arms and chest clearly not caused by vegetation. Hector had walked into a barbed wire fence.

Of course we were all worried while he was missing, but when he turned up in good shape considering he had just walked through almost EIGHT MILES of the FOREST in the DARK, the whole situation was just ridiculous. How could he have possibly missed the campsite, especially considering we had already been at the park for 35 hours and there was one of those huge, white vans with the automatic wheelchair lifts and all that jazz parked in the driveway? Why didn't he stop any one of the hundreds of campers at the park and tell him or her that he was lost? What in the world makes someone think it's a good idea to walk through the woods in the middle of the night rather than stay on the PAVED trail? When he realized that he was clearly going in the wrong direction, why the hell didn't he stop trudging through the woods and turn around? Or stay put? Or yell for help?

Well, the reason he did none of those things is quite simple. He was following the detour signs. You know, the kind that you see in the pitch black middle of the forest. Oh, and also there were Indian drums leading him. Plus, he likes to get attention.

Hopefully you think this is as funny as we all did. The people I work for - what a riot.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Another waste of time

Isn't there some sort of blog tracking tool out there..... You know, maybe I would put in all of my favorite / friends' blogs and it would email me when the blogs are updated? It'd be kind of like blog day planner. Ideally, Kyle would sit in the back seat of my car and inform me of my list of blogs to read much like he informed me of my list of tasks to do at work. Perhaps I could add my blog reading to my list of tasks to do at work. Because, honestly, sometimes I look at different blogs three times a day just to see if maybe the writer happened to update in the last few hours.
I mostly blame this on having no cable.
Also, I have no friends.
I think this embarrassing admission might make me seem kind of pathetic. That's why a nifty blog-planner will keep me abreast of current blog happenings so I can view them at my leisure instead of obsessively checking and inevitably being disappointed when there is no update.

So there you have it.
I'm lame.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Is this creepy?


Every morning I leave my apartment between 8am and 8:05 to drive across the city for my job. I pull out of the parking lot and slowly back into the alley. Once properly aligned, I begin the slow crawl through the alley in anticipation of what's become a regular part of my morning routine. You see, not only is 8am the time I choose to drive to work, it is also the time the funeral home next door chooses to do whatever it is they do with their assorted dead bodies. Every morning, I drive past and wave at the two men sitting in the back of the funeral home with their gurnees and body bags. Usually, there is very clearly a human corpse lying on a gurnee under a white sheet awaiting its particular fate next to these two men. I'm not really certain what or who they're waiting for, maybe they just like to take dead bodies out for a cigarette with them. I used to think this was kind of creepy. But then I felt kind of obligated to wave because I did pass them every morning and they clearly recognized me. So now every morning, before I get to work, I've already waved at a dead body or two.
Does this make me creepy?

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

A day in the life of a job seeker


When I was searching for a job, it took every ounce of motivation I had to write a resume and fill out those incredibly annoying online applications over and over again. But, it all paid off when, in due time, I found what I assume is the greatest job in the history of the world.

Fast forward to this past weekend when I decided it was time that Kyle find a job. This is a result of his pending eviction from his home due to a negative cash flow. It took every ounce of collective motivation to stop procrastinating and start applying for jobs.

Things we accomplished other than job searching:

1) Painting my entire apartment (with the help of the fabulous Michael Poellmann).
2) Realizing that we will never be pool sharks by playing at least 20 games.
3) Figuring out how that record player works
3b) Devising the perfect drinking game devoted solely to Robert Goulet's extensive use of the words "love", "lover", "lovely", and "loving".
4) Going to the grocery store upon deciding that we needed to drink a bottle of wine and it could not wait.
5) Eating Cheddarwurst that we impulsively purchased after buying the aforementioned wine.
6) Getting into the swing of things with a good morning beer.
7) Renovating those lamps with some spray paint.
8) Having people over to eat, drink and be generally merry.

Finally, after he was here for three (fabulous) days, Kyle and I began looking for jobs. The ultimate goal being, of course, to apply to jobs. We were able to waste more time by finding over 40 jobs and failing to apply to them. Eventually, we ended up staying in all day writing resumes and applied to 7 whole, adult, real life jobs all over the country. It was really an operation if you will, involving two computers with Kyle and I simultaneously applying. Of course, this would have been easier had we not failed to save almost every cover letter we wrote and then accidentally deleted it, only to write it again. Anyway, who ever said Kyle and I were efficient or effective at accomplishing anything? We're much better at watching four seasons of the sopranos, becoming completely nocturnal and almost disastrously impulsive.

In conclusion, I would like to say that I am very proud of us, that Kyle owes me his fourth paycheck, and that hopefully he finds a fabulous job.