Tropic of... what? Pisces? Is that the fish one? When does that start?

I've been saying for years that I was going to have a tropical themed party in February, and I've never managed to get my proverbial lime in one coconut to get the idea off the ground. That ends tomorrow. Or, in 20 hours, to be more precise. The night will be spent slicing pork products and marinating shrimp skewers, after a trip to the grocery store for Various Fruits. People eat fruit, right? 'Sgot vitamins. Party starts at 3pm; you're gonna need some sugar in your blood if you want to keep the party going to a respectable hour. Eat the damn fruit.

Work has become even more of a tedious, lucrative blur than usual the past few weeks. They tell me they anticipate employees in my position having more free time in the future, and they'll be assigning us "coaching" to do, which basically means listening to other people do their jobs and telling them how to do it better. I'm not complaining or anything, but I really like saying, "I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job or anything…" and it seems like that will make that sentence harder to utter with a straight face. I ain't mad. I wasn't that attached to my straight face.

I got a raise this week. Ask me what I'm going to do with an extra $0.36 per hour…

You might be asking, "Dan! Multiple blog posts in one week? From whence the sudden burst of literary ambition?" I guess the short answer is that telling short old stories to new people made me remember that my old blog existed, which in turn reminded me that my new blog exists. I think the last post on my Live Journal that wasn't a Russian Spambot was from Ian telling me that if I wasn't going to update my blog anymore, I was supposed to call him weekly with stories, and I seem to have missed a few hundred weeks.

I also don't really have stories, but an afternoon reading my Live Journal suggests the possibility that I never really DID have exceptionally interesting stories. The amount of time I devoted to writing about tacos and naps in 2003 is downright astounding.

There are 40s in the long-term forecast. There's every reason to believe we're all going to get out of this winter alive, but you should come to my party just in case.

More red flags than the Revolution of 1848.

Is "Soviet Laundry Corps" funnier?

I don't really care; I'm done reading the Wikipedia article on red flags for today.

So, anyway, Internet, remember when I used to go on dates with girls and post about it on a blog? Well, I recently started doing one of those things again, and figured I might as well do the other, too.

I've actually been on a handful of one-off Internet dates since I resumed paying attention to my now-decade-old OKCupid account. A quick recap goes something like this:

1) Mostly asked her out because she seemed like a sure "Yes", remembered why we don't aim low.

2) Date went mostly okay, but not well enough for either of us to contact the other again.

3) Met at the CC Club, drank one drink and parted ways, got a message indicating things were not "sparky." Didn't really need the rejection letter after one 45-minute date, but courtesy is nice, I guess?

4) Black Forest with a short girl with 900 Facebook friends and a hangover. Mostly went because she messaged me out of pure curiosity, presumably at not already knowing me? Probably not a "date."

5) CC Club for early afternoon drinks, this time with my own hangover. Mostly a "meeting a like-minded weirdo" meeting, but had a really good time and shared chilli fries. Drove her home to save a bus fare, handshake.

6) Jimmy's on a Sunday night. Weird scene. Lots in common on paper. Talked mostly about cooking. Sort of seemed like a conversation I would have with a co-worker while standing outside during a fire evacuation.

Which brings us back to #5...

We kept messaging back and forth through OKCupid, and eventually exchanged Gchat information. We're not fundamentally similar people, but we're amenable to each other's unfamiliarities, and she doesn't seem intensely proud or protective of the things about her that would concern or even just annoy me about someone newly met. There's an archetype of a girl you might remember from your 20s... The kind of girl who Comes From Circumstances (which, for those of you not up on your geography, is usually in Florida), and generally lives in a swirling shit-storm of chaos and bad life choices. Well, this girl is relatively freshly out of her 20s, and it seems like most of those life choices weren't hers; she just lacked the foresight or upbringing or cold Scandinavian detachment from the misery those around her to grimace and sidle out of the path of other people's bad decisions.

None of this apologia is to imply anything about "long term prospects" (the lady seems not a whit interested in being prospected in any case), but only to explain why she doesn't, in the immediate term, trigger the proximity defense alarm I had installed to warn of the approach of an Elise, or Sarah, or Laura, or, or, or...

It's enough to tip the scale from "toxic disaster" to just "in a transitional phase." When I was 30, I was living in my parents' basement and was freshly out of a fairly disastrous relationship.

We've gone out (or stayed in, as inclinations dictated) a couple times since. We spent most of the weekend together. I used think of dating as largely a means of promoting self-improvement. But seeing as how, in the intervening years since I spent much time at it, I've become a home-owner with a steady job and a 401k who washes forks before I'm out of clean ones, I guess now, if nothing else, it's nice to have a reason to make Hollandaise sauce from scratch. As often as I speak aloud the words "Who am I trying to impress?", it's pretty much never as an explanation of something awesome I was doing; it's usually like, why I was eating cereal for dinner?

Actually, cereal sounds good, but that's neither here nor there.

Stories about Stories about Noah

As of this morning, my most recent blog post on my company’s site is the “most liked” recent post in the entire company. It’s actually just “The Parable of the Motorcycle” from my Stories about Noah series, slightly re-written to focus on the idea that, when people ask if something can be done, they’re not actually interested in how much work it will be, only about the end result. The finished product reads as less cynical than my synopsis makes it sound. The path to a cushy copy writing job is becoming clearer.

On my way to Champlin after work yesterday, the persistent shudder in my right, rear tire that started around the first of the year metamorphosed into a jarring rattle and eventually a blown and shredded tire along north 169. I put the spare on in relatively short order, only to find the spare in only slightly better condition, though it did get me off the freeway and into the parking lot of an appliance store in New Hope where I could stash the car while I ate Mexican food and shopped for tires. As luck would have it, my car was only about a mile and a half from the place selling the cheapest tires in the metro area, well within the radius of my roadside assistance plan’s free towing benefit. All told, assuming that I was planning to buy tires out of my next paycheck or two anyway, the whole ordeal cost me nothing but my afternoon.

I’m off work today at 3:30 which is shockingly early for a Friday. My tentative plan for the weekend involves a lot of measuring, purchasing of bins and shelves, and organizing the two closets off my kitchen. And maybe designing a logo for the Bargain Basement Bar and ordering custom matchbooks from the internet. And probably something involving putting chili on top of other food.

Mortar for the meat castle.

I haven't been updating my blog as often as I'd intended this year. The original theory was that I would have a lot of downtime at work during which I could write blog posts, but I've since directed that spare time toward writing and maintaining the site blog on my company's peculiar in-house social networking site. The blog and discussion pages are already pretty popular, and it gives me a way to pass the time that's within the guidelines for internet usage in the employee handbook.

It's probably not the worst use of my time career-wise, considering the number of job postings for copy writers for the various intra-company publications.

I worked some overtime, I filed my taxes, and I apparently qualified for the fourth quarter bonus. This should make for a pretty flush February, all in all. I've started plans for the Tropical Depression Party on February 18th. I'm hoping that my various invitees' romantic relationships are either too old or too young to worry about the scheduling to interfering with Valentine's plans.

I keep meaning to call Clancy's in Linden Hills to check whether they sell whole suckling pigs. I'm sure someplace on East Lake Street could provide one as well, but if it's something that needs to be special ordered, I don't necessarily trust my grasp of Spanish to be able to express the request clearly.

I spent a lot of money this weekend catching up on bills and buying groceries. I spent $250 between Sam's Club and Aldi. Who wants to come over for dinner? For that matter, I still haven't tried out the awesome latching crock-pot with travel case that I got for Xmas. Who wants to invite me over? I can bring dinner.

Sweater-vest, Beardo, Pigseye, Mom Jeans, Bulky, and Eyebrow.

There are way too many new people at work for me to assign them all unflattering nicknames, much less learn their actual names. It occured to me yesterday that the drastic shift in the median age of my co-workers is probably at least partially responsible for the change to my schedule. The truckload of fresh-out-of-junior-college new reps on the phones has probably made the 10:30 - 7 shift a lot easier to staff. I decided that rather than suffer the undiluted indignity of the opening shift next week, I would just bite the bullet and sign up to work every hour the call center is open next week.

I realize that's the office staffing equivalent of cutting yourself to feel control over your life, but it'll be nice to not have to check my schedule. Combined with this week's overtime, that amounts to almost 3 weeks' pay on my next check and no rent to pay out of it. Current front-runners for immediate self-reward include the 1.5 horsepower meat grinder that Amazon.com keeps e-mailing me about, a second-hand chest freezer, and a new suit or two.

I turned 31 yesterday. Today, I will eat the weight of a newborn child in shiwarma to celebrate with my family, but after that, you should stop by the Bargain Basement Bar for a cocktail.

Is there any sight more nauseating than a sunrise over a cubicle wall?

I'll tell you, 6am is a colder, harsher hour when it's not your signal to go to bed. For reasons clear neither to me nor, apparently, to my immediately supervisor, the workforce management department has seen fit to slide my usual comfortable closing shift up to the bitter pitch black of the early morning. There appears to be abundant opportunity for overtime, and January is my traditional month for financial recovery and social hibernation, so I guess there’s a silver lining to this bone-chilling cloud of pre-dawn rime ice, but it was a roughshod and sudden death that my vacation died this morning.

The new year has also brought the first sign of legitimate winter, which, as it turns out also has an upside. The expired license tabs on the back of my car that would normally mar the dull and dapper semblances of responsible adulthood pending my next payday is neatly obscured by a bulwark of crunchy snow and ice. The truth is, I could afford to buy tabs this week if my work schedule allowed me to get to the Midtown DMV before Saturday. When I say “could afford”, I mean barely. I cleared the holiday season with my accounts pretty well tapped out, though I made it without ever having to think too hard about the costs of the gifts I bought. There’s an argument to be made that the luxury of ignoring your account balance is the real goalpost of financial stability. Worst case scenario, if an especially astute office peeks into the ice cave that holds my expired tabs, the deadline to pay the ticket is still beyond the next non-rent paying paycheck, which will be significantly bolstered by as yet untold hours of mandatory overtime. My dad taught me that the best use of money is to slay petty inconveniences like having to make a panicked rush to the DMV after work. Plus, there’s always the possibly apocryphal story about the “10-day grace period.”

I am unconcerned.

The year of living comfortably

One year ago, I had $5,000 in credit card debt and I lived in my parents' basement. I made $130 less per week than I make now. Today, my apartment is freshly cleaned (many thanks to Stevie for waking up 3 hours before me), the bar is still handsomely stocked post-New Years party and my ten day vacation ends in 14 hours.

My parents bought me a laptop for Xmas, which means that, for the first time since moving to this apartment, I can be on the internet and watching TV at the same time, which, it turns out, is integral to my creative process, so you, Dear Internet, will now be graced with pithy, rambling summations of my day at work three or four times a week, and occasional weekend demands that you come over and eat snacks and drink up my booze.

By the way, thanks again to everyone who came to the party. The guests ate every scrap of appetizer I put out, and dirtied every lowball in the house, but notwithstanding Stevie's now lifelong hatred of confetti, I couldn't have asked for a better party. We also maintain a perfect record of about six parties with no noise complaints from the neighbors. Number seven is tentatively scheduled for early February. Bring flip-flops.