brykmantra.com

Don’t let anybody tell you that unemployment isn’t a lot of work; my wife is online every night, finding job leads and forwarding them to me faster than I can read them, much less send out my resume. So far there’s one editor position at a marketing/self-help media company that I want so bad I can taste it, and several other possibilities that aren’t as tantalizing, but still perfectly acceptable as gainful employment. I keep track of what I’ve sent out by printing out the websites where I applied.

I’ve also had doctor appointments today, trying to squeeze them in before the 31st, and I’ve got another tomorrow.

I’m going to have to go back to work just to get some rest …

Also, I promised The Wife that I’d cook tonight, and she wanted my special blackened chicken, which I haven’t made in a long time. If I do say so myself, that was one of my best meals ever; I have to give partial credit to Gordon Ramsay, whose restaurant makeover show on BBC America is what I was watching while I cooked. It was definitely an inspiration.

Vickie scooped me on the death of Robert Goulet tonight, but failed to scoop me last night on Porter Wagoner.

Yes, I know it’s grim, but it’s just a little game we play. It doesn’t necessarily have to involve people’s deaths, but people managing to LIVE doesn’t seem to generate the headlines anymore …

This is interesting: MusicShake.com, where you can put music tracks together to make little songs. (Via Attack of the Show.)

And finally: Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again:

A few quick notes before my birthday is over: Thanks to everyone who left birthday wishes in the comments of the previous post; and this would be a good time to say that I recently started having to moderate all comments, not because of any stalkers or comment-flamers, but because of the damn stupid spambot bastards. I intend to implement some more of the spamproofing tools, but until then, your comments won’t show up until I notice that they’re waiting for moderation. … It was a good birthday, as birthdays go. I went to see Spiderman 3, while my wife was at work, and I was so underwhelmed that I left about half an hour before it was over — I just felt like my time could be spent better elsewhere. … And that elsewhere was at home, meeting my wife so we could go out to eat at my favorite type of birthday restaurant, a Japanese steakhouse. Then we came home and I worked on my garage computer for a while, then I took a bunch of pictures of my birthday cards and stuff, which I uploaded to Flickr, so check ‘em out. I also uploaded a bunch of pictures of Molly and Bristol, so check those out if nothing else. Some of the shots of Bristol are particularly nice … That may not seem like much of a birthday, but remember that I’m just skimming over quickly here … A had a nice birthday surprise, BTW: I noticed in my visitor logs that I’ve gotten traffic from Wired Blogs — it turns out that they used, and gave me credit (and a blog link) for one of the photos I’ve had on Flickr: It was a picture of one of my mom’s medical monitors from her stent surgery in December of 2005, and they were using it in an article about when former Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital! Pretty weird, huh? Anyway, I got credit for it, and it’s the most prominent use to date (out of about four instances) of my Flickr work by other people — and four uses is also not bad for somebody using a five-year-old Sony Cybershot … Also: Another birthday present for myself (we don’t usually get each other major presents, since we can buy our own much better) is some music software, as I mentioned last week. I’ll talk more about that when it comes in on Wednesday or so …

1. We had the last of our Japan tours today, at least for another six months. The difference this year is that we went all out and ordered really elaborate flower centerpieces for the pizza luncheon, and a few of us alert office workers got to take the flowers home at the end of the day. I got especially industrious and snagged four bunches. They were pretty exotic arrangements, including Bird of Paradise, yellow roses, and some things so unusual that even my wife isn’t sure what they’re called.

Pictures will be forthcoming.

2. Another bonus: They vastly over-ordered the pizzas, so almost everybody was leaving with at least one full box. The downside: The pizza wasn’t that great — Papa John’s thin crust, with an even thinner cheese-and-sauce topping base. In past years, we had always gone with Domino’s, and it was always great.

Maybe even the Japanese have their pizza standards, so they didn’t eat as much.

Still, it didn’t taste too bad, and the Roma tomato slices were a nice touch.

And it was free.

Also: there was fruit, and we got to score some of that too.

3. It’s always interesting to see what the Japanese wear to our plant; there are always a few people that picked up cowboy garb on their visit to our sister facility, Southfork Ranch.

That’s right, we’re corporately related to J.R. Ewing. We’re so proud.

Anyway: One of the Japanese women today had on a black denim motorcycle vest with white stenciled lettering. In a big, Old English font, it said “SUGAR ANGEL”, then, in smaller black letters below it, “Beauty must increase every day.”

Oh yeah, born to be wild.

4. Which brings up one of my favorite sites to mention here: Engrish.com, which features photos of hilarious fractured English used in Asian advertising and products. You’ll find lots of examples like the jacket I mentioned above in the clothing section, of which this is typical.

Last week on Lost we got a glimpse of a diagram/map of several of the hatches (most of which we’ve never seen) in relation to each other, plus some other scribbling that we weren’t given time to make out.

Fortunately, TV Squad has a great screen capture and analysis of the diagram, so if you like the show, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

I found something cool at the supermarket on Sunday: Berries and Cream Dr Pepper.

I mostly quit drinking sodas three years ago, but I picked up a bottle of this new stuff, because hey, it’s new, and besides, I’m missing half a lung, so I can do what Iwant.

It’s not bad, a little milder than regular Dr Pepper, and just a hint of the berry flavoring; it actually made me miss regular Dr Pepper.

But I’m bringing this up to mention this: One cool thing about the Internet is that you can find things like this: A beverage industry message board, that has been discussing this new drink since December … and getting quite excited about it.

That’s the Information Age in action: Everybody finds a niche.

For my own future reference: It was 90 freaking degrees outside on Sunday, and it’s only April — but fortunately, it was cooler today.

Again, for future reference — but first some background:

Last summer we started using a lawn service. The landscaping crew that our neighbor was using came over to ask if they could do our lawn too, and since it was 100 degrees out, I said, “Okay, but just this time.”

They attacked the job like a swarm of landscaping locusts, and had the whole thing finished — including edging and trimming — in less than half an hour, about the same time as in would take for me and my wife to get our equipment out of the garage and ready to go.

Plus they only charged us twenty dollars.

After that, it’s pretty hard to go back to doing it ourselves.

Anyway, I bring that up because they came by on Saturday for the first time this year, and we were needing it, especially in the back yard, with the winter onions coming in thick this year under the trees.

Not that I was about to break down and mow the place myself, being short half a lung and all, but I was getting tempted to call them and tell them to get out here …

Holy freaking cats it got cold this morning! That’s to be expected since it’s winter, and it barely got down to freezing, but here’s the bizarre part: Yesterday it was almost 90F, and today the high will be in the high 30s.

That’s quite a cool-down.

Maybe that’s why I’m getting a sore throat on top of everything else …

But it might be our last hit of winter for the year, so I’m making vegetable beef soup tomorrow for the second week in a row.

Because any time after March and it gets too muggy in Dallas to make soup …

My receptionist has been out the past couple of weeks, so we’ve been hobbling along with a series of temps, each more dud-like that the last.

We’ve put up with the temp we’ve got today since Wednesday, but just barely. She’s got a bad attitude and little capacity for learning.

I usually tell our temp receptionists to send the calls to me if they don’t know what else to do with them, but they invariably abuse the privilege and I end up getting calls from anyone who doesn’t ask for a specific person.

I’ve told our current temp three times that if somebody calls and asks who is in charge of any particular thing, that means that they’re trying to sell us something, and their calls should therefore be sent to Purchasing — which is the department that PURCHASES things.

Each time, she said she understood, but apparently not.

Today I was walking by and she said, “Hey, this guy wants to know who’s in charge of purchasing computer equipment …”

I keep telling myself that Cristina is coming back to us on Tuesday …

At the first of the year, I asked New Boss in Training to approve the routine 2006 Holiday List before I distributed it to the managers. He looked at it and said, “Presidents’ Day?? Why do we take off on Presidents’ Day?!”

But before I could respond that he had mistaken me for someone who is consulted on decisions, he was on the phone to the High Holy Corporate Office to try to get that day off grouped with another holiday, like Christmas, when people actually need an extra day before or after, instead of just on a Monday in February.

It makes a lot of sense, which is probably why our bureaucrats shot it down.

And that’s the story of why we still get this next Monday off.

Be sure to relate this story to your children, and your children’s children, so that it may continue to inspire many generations to come.

And so we come to the end of another Valentine’s Day. We usually don’t like eating out on V-Day, because most major restaurants in the Dallas area are even more crowded than usual on that day, plus a lot of places (Japanese hibachi places seem really bad about it) jack up the prices on a special “Valentines Menu”.

Local restaurants in our little burb usually don’t do that, so I talked her into going out to Mi Case Tex-Mex — the place where I pick up takeout every week — and we were really glad we went, because there was another couple from church there, one we didn’t know a whole lot about since we’re still kind of new, and they invited us to sit with them.

So we had some great conversation for a couple of hours, and discovered we have a lot in common, including playing music, and liking a lot of the same TV shows.

So it was a really nice change from our usual Valentine’s Day, where I pick up more upscale takeout than usual, and we spend the rest of the evening hiding from the crowds.

(And PS: Hi to Donette and Dave, our newly much-better-acquainted friends, who I hope I can add as my newest readers!)

My stimulant-challenged ordeal is over! Those weren’t necessarily the drowsiest 42 hours of my life, but I’m still feeling brain lag from missing all that caffeine.

Caffeine without don’t well do so me.

I’ve never been a big coffee drinker. I have maybe four to six cups in a year, like when I’m having sinus problems, or when it’s bitterly cold and I can’t warm up any other way — and can’t find anything else hot to drink, like soup or tea.

I also drank quite a bit of coffee in my temp years, in the early 90s, when the offices I worked at didn’t provide tea or ice, and I was too broke to bring my own, but that didn’t start me on the road to a coffee habit.

It’s a good thing, too, because it might have been a gateway drug to the hard stuff: Lattes, Mochas, Cappucinnos, and all those other fancy names that let Starbuck get away with charging 5 bucks for flavored water in a cup the size of my thumb.

In fact, disdain for Java is one of the many things my wife and I have in common, which is handy because among other things it eliminates the need to have a coffe maker alongside our tea brewer.

Which is not to say that the caffeine craving from coffee is much worse that than from tea or soft drinks.

In fact, as I mentioned in my previous posts, the buzz from ill-considered consumption of Cokes and Dr Peppers in my youth was the cause of many a sleepless night.

When Caffeine-Free Coke first came out, when I was in my 20s, I decided to try some. I was working at the credit union, and Monday was always our busiest (and most stressful) day, so I reasoned that maybe cutting out the caffeiene would help the stress.

So I took a two-liter bottle to work and drank it all day instead of my usual soft drinks. I don’t recall it really helping my stress level, because after lunch I started getting really fatigued, and a had a headache that no amount of aspirin would get rid of. I promised myself that as soon as I got home — assuming I made it — I would take a nap.

Before I got home, though, I stopped at Chinese Kitchen to get something to eat, hoping that might help me feel better, and in the course of that meal I chugged back about 6 or 7 small glasses of their strong iced tea …

And guess what: My headache went away, and I no longer needed a nap.

That was my introduction to caffeine deprivation.

That didn’t happen yesterday. I was dragging a little, and unfocused just a tad more than usual, but with no major physical symptoms.

That’s probably because I went cold turkey on soft drinks about three years ago, as part of cramming for a cholesterol test. My wife had recently started the low carb thing, and had explained the theories of how sugar contributed to the retention high cholesterol more than fats, so I figured I’d give it a try.

Because back then it wasn’t just soft drinks — I was going through a candy phase too — but I was drinking way too many, so after the cholesterol test (on which my results were disappointing, by the way), I just never picked the cola habit back up. Now, I only have one or two cans a month at most. I’ll sometimes get an urge for that caffeine-and-sugar kick, as well as the carbonation bite, but I just drink one and don’t get hooked again.

It didn’t seem like I was drinking a lot of Cokes back then, but now when I go into a convenience I’ll remember how I used to always get the largest size of fountain Dr Pepper that they had, in addition to all that I drank at work, and it’s a little shocking to remember my former consumption rates.

These days my caffeine is limited to iced tea and sugar-free Red Bull, and in recent weeks I’ve been cutting down on those — although this morning I did chug two in quick succession, just to get my system back in balance after 42-hours of stimulation loss.

And now I’m able to type without making mistakes every word.

Which is a good thing, I’m told …

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UPDATE: There’s was something I had in my mental outline to include with this post, but I didn’t make it to the draft stage: I was going to mention that my wife has been off caffeine for just over five years now, so she’s like, “Welcome to my world.”

It’s required major adjustments to her lifestyle, and the headaches were quite fierce at first, but she’s learned to adapt.

Makes my under-two-day ordeal seem petty, I know — but hey, it gave me something to blog about.

Okay, you folks deserve more than just the aforementioned Sick Update, so here’s some more stuff:

At least my wife is taking care of me, as evidenced by the cake shown here. There was a party for one of the hairdressers at her shop, and the birthday girl didn’t want the leftovers, so we got the cake, plus lots of deli coldcuts, including (yum) swiss cheese.

Plus, as I already mentioned, she’s been making Symphony-bar brownies, and I even wheedled her into picking up some Cherry Garcia ice cream.

Have I got a great wife or what?

But I have a feeling that I’ll be entering the office tomorrow by way of the receiving dock …

Probably as a result of this bucket of medicine I’m having to take every day (and maybe all the sugar I’m eating), my heart has been pounding out of my chest this past week, but it’s better tonight, plus my chest doesn’t feel as tight. This was also my first day without a nap — I was tempted, but I resisted, so I could sleep through the night.

Another sign of my increasing energy level is that instead of just vegetating in front of the big screen TV today, I got out my laptop and played one of my older games, Age of Empires II, Conquistador Expansion.

I actually prefer playing AoE I, starting in the Stone Age and clawing my way out, but I couldn’t find those disks (since stupid Microsoft makes you load the disks each time), so I settled for starting in the Dark Ages with a tribe of hardy Celts. I picked the Highlands and Random Map options, and the game put me on one side of a river, with all three AI opponents of the other side, so as soon as I advanced to the second age and mined more stone, I walled up all three ice bridges and secured them with towers.

Usually at that point it’s just a waiting-and-fortification game, but the Persians in particular have been on a castle-building binge (I counted FIVE!), and I’ve almost mined up all of my territory’s gold and stone, so a more aggressive strategy must be adopted — in this case, one involving priests, catapults, and lots of wall-building peasants.

That’s right: Pack us a lunch, Ma, we’re goin’ mine-stealin’!

Then we’ll follow up with a few transports full of bombardiers for a rousing round of “Ventilate the Castles”.

Good times.

Anyway, that’s for another night. In the meantime, I feel more invigorated just having played, and more confident that I’m getting better.

I’ve been a (free) member of Classmates.com since early on, and had their constant announcements clog my mailbox ever since, but it’s never been of much use to me until now: One of my old college-era buds contacted me!

Everybody has friends that you can go years at a time without seeing, then you’re in contact for a few years, and then they swing back through; Terry is that friend for me. The last time I talked to him is when I was going through the divorce with Psycho, back in 1993. I hadn’t even met Karlyn yet, I don’t think. I didn’t even know how to fix a computer.

Whenever you get back in touch with somebody after so many years, you start thinking about all the new things to catch them up on, which makes you remember just how far you’ve come.

Just another reason for having old friends.

Anyway, we haven’t really communicated so far, just exchanged stock Classmates.com “quicknotes” and email addresses. It’ll be interesting to see what he’s been up to all this time, although according to his profile he’s back in Lubbock and doing well.

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Okay, that’s all I have the energy for tonight, but it’s more energy than I’ve had in the past week, so that’s a start …

It’s been almost a week since I went to the doctor, and tonight I’m only marginally better, but I’m going to work tomorrow, no matter what. I haven’t had to miss this much work since I was temping in late 1994. It’s making me nervous and depressed.

And I won’t even be there a full day: I have to get another scan in the afternoon. Of course, I probably wouldn’t be able to make it the full day anyway, so at least the scan gives me an out.

But the bad thing about the scan, other than just the fact that it’s a scan, is that they told me today that I can’t eat or drink anything for four hours before the scan.

Are they nuts??? I’ll dry up and blow away. Seriously, I don’t eat huge meals, but my brain needs nourishment every once and a while or else it starts to wander off and stumbles into all sorts of mischief, none of which the rest of me is aware of until it’s brought to my attention.

And besides, even if the lack of sustinence for a huge chunk of the day weren’t bad enough, I can’t even drink water, and water is an important part of getting over this mess. It’s even on my prescription bottles.

I plan to pack a Sherpa-satchel with Power Bars and fluid for immediately after the scan, just so I can make it to the parking lot …