Phoenix: The City Specifically Designed to Make You Get Lost

"If you'd just pull over and ask for directions, you wouldn't get lost. Typical man..."

Au contrair, italicized one. I worked out the route from my hotel to my destination with the 2 front desk ladies and Google Maps the night before, and had solid directions written on a sheet of paper in letters large enough for me to read without my glasses (then they wanted to find their houses on the GMap satellite imagery, like all GMap newbies).
I took I-17 south, exited Jefferson. No problem.
I took a right on 16th St., in the groove.

Then the groove rapidly transformed into a rut.

Cut to the chase: It was the wrong 16th St. I should have kept going on Jefferson until I reached the next 16th St. It seems that there are 2 of each numbered street in Phoenix. You start at Central, and then the numbers go up in both east and west directions. The term for this is, I believe, all fucked up.

I should have arrived 15 minutes early, instead I was 15 minutes late. They understood though.

You know, numbers can actually go pretty high, I've heard. Duplicating street names like this is probably not necessary. Except in Phoenix, that is.

Update:
Ok, my mistake. On the west side of Central they are Avenues, on the east side they are Streets.

Its still stupid though.

Astros Succeed in Making Me Insane

Are you happy now? Was it worth it? Wouldn't it have been more satisfying to win a game in the World Series instead?

Apparently not...

I may go back to the parallel universe instead. I bet they won there.

My brief adventure in a Parallel Universe

Today started like any other workday, I got up and herded the kids along through breakfast and getting ready for school, got ready for work myself, and then drove them to school. All was as it should be.

And then, as I walked out the school parking lot to get in my car and go to work, it happened!

At first I didn't notice because I was preoccupied in thought about what I was going to do today. I opened the car door, sat down in the driver's seat, and was just about to close the door when I noticed there was strange stuff on the floorboard of my car! I thought, "Hmm, who just put strange stuff on my floorboard? What were they doing in my car? Is there anything missing?

I glanced over at the passenger seat to see if my backpack was there and, in it's place, there was a child carseat strapped in.

My eyes grew wide in astonishment! My leather seats had transformed to cloth! My automatic transmission lever was now a manual transmission lever! There was weird shit hanging from the rearview mirror!

There was only one possible explanation. I had mysteriously fallen into a Parallel Universe. Yes, a parallel universe where things were similar but not the same! I suddenly realized that I no longer had my 2 kids, I now had an infant. Was it a boy or girl? What did he/she look like? Do I now have a different wife too? What does she look like? Where do I work? Where do I live? My spirit bent near to the point of breaking at the thought that all I knew, everyone that I loved, was now gone, irretrievably out of reach forever. I was a stranger in a strange land.

Then I glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed my car parked directly behind me. Waves of sheepish relief washed over me as I hastily exited the vehicle and Groucho-walked to my own.

And I thought, "I better not tell anyone about this." So keep it under your hat, okay?

The Astros Continue Their Drive to Make Me Insane.

...and it's starting to work. blblblblblblblblblblblblbl!!!!

The Joy of OPV (Other People's Vomit)

Monday morning. Hit the snooze a couple of times, start thinking (fuzzily) about what I'm going to wear to work today (it got cold last night), what is on my plate when I get there, yada yada.

Oh, BTW, it appears that my son has puked in his bed last night and then proceeded to sleep in it. He doesn't sleep in one spot all night, so he unconciously spread it everywhere. On the bedspread, on the bed frame. The puke on the carpet is from the original hurl, judging from the splatter pattern (I saw CSI once). Good Morning!!

My second week at my new job and I have to call in for a sick day to keep said son home from school. New supervisor doesn't sound thrilled, hopefully he just hasn't consumed his entire allotment of morning coffee yet.

Sheets are okay, just a little seepage, no chunks. Wash 'em, move on to the next layer up. The blanket has a small chunk on one edge, flick it off and wash it too. Now for the top layer...

EEWWWW!!! GROSS!!!!

Q. What do you get when you cross mostly-chewed noodles, Hi-C Fruit Punch, and stomach acid?
A. EEWWWW!!! GROSS!!!!

Haul beadspread out to the back yard, just as far from the house as I can get. Take handy-dandy nylon scraping tool (normally used for scraping dishes prior to washing) and start scaping puke. The partially chewed, pink noodle chunks oblige nicely, but the fluid portions have congealed. Scrape/wipe in grass/repeat/repeat/repeat.

On a positive note, the rest of the week should be, comparatively, much better.

Unless it's contagious, that is...

Urp.

The Astros want me to go insane.

But I'm not taking it personally.

You'd think, though, that they could at least occasionally beat a team which is named after underwear for your feet. I mean, White Sox, come on! They can't even spell socks right. Why not have a team called the Off-White Joxtraps? "The Joxtrap baserunner left quite a skidmark when he slid into second base, Bob." The Red Brassiers (Red Broz for short)? "That chest-high fastball hit the Broz batter twice, so on to second base, Sparky." Or maybe the Skin-Tone Girdlez... "No one can get past second base with the Girdlez squeeze play, Milo!"

Remember, there's no crying in baseball. Whining is okay though.

Waaah.

Trolls. Must. Die.

Ok, so blog newbies learn the hard way, just like everything else. I kept getting spam comments and finally figured out how to keep that from happening. Of course, now I probably won't get any comments at all now, but that's better than spam.

The internet was founded on the Usenet, a collection of newsgroups on any subject you can imagine (alt.rec.sex.teletubbies.tinkywinky). You could research topics from the existing archived posts, or post a question and get responses from all over the world. It was great. Then the trolls arrived, and started clogging up the newsgroups with ads for porn sites and penis enlargement pills. Many newsgroups died because of that, others migrated to groups on portals such as Yahoo or Google, where access was more easily controlled.

Trolls are now trying to infect the blogosphere with their crap. If you happen to see any trolls, please kill them. Thank you.

Oh yeah, I have a blog. Forgot.

Who can blame me? I just changed jobs and moved from Austin back to Houston in the last 4 weeks and boy, are my arms tired. We had to find a house fast so we wound up (ecchh!) renting. Not only that, we have to go back to the Austin house every weekend to finish cleaning out the crap and making it ready to sell. But paying a mortgage note and a rent payment every month is sooooo satisfying, I think we'll just keep doing that for awhile.

What a cool job I have now. I'm working at a NASA facility supporting the computer hardware that is flying on the Space Station. In the building next door is the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, which is the gigantic swimming pool where they practice spacewalks and shit. Downside: Fucking Acronym Hell (FAH). I thought the computer industry was bad. I found an acronym dictionary today, its 100 fucking pages long! And its 8 years old, so I'm sure the latest edition is 150! At least they all have multiple meanings, it helps to simplify things. Sigh.

Oh yeah, don't forget to watch out for Muslims with AK-47s. Or without...