I did have something nice and unexpected happen this morning. My daughter called me between classes today.

"Dad, you have to be at the Sabres games next week?"

Yeah, I cleverly reply.

"Do you think one of those could be a Take your daughter to work kind of thing?"

Wow, made my day, maybe it is darkest before......

Sorry for yesterday's rants peeps, the bastards have been getting to me and I was walking around feeling like the air was getting sucked out of every room I walked through, resulting in that devastatingly handsome current user pic.

I apologize....it's gonna be alright (curtis mayfield just told me so)

Night

I thought the patronizing insulting events of being undervalued and the crappy dinner at the Chophouse (courtesy Music Choice) could be soothed by an stroll through Elmwoo by night. The answer was no.

I didn't see a familar face which too sucked and was a good thing. I think if I started talking about the insanity of it all, I would have just lost it.

They're trying to find work, I try to console myself. It doesn't work, because they need to do better. I'm good at what I do and have worked so it's not arrogance to say that my group is better with me. What I do is fairly trivial in the grand scheme of things, but to get basically get offered a rotating registers is flat out fucking insulting.

I clicked on a pile of epeeps my spaces and I apologize. I guess I was looking for sympathetic cyber shoulders to lean on. There is a lot of disingenuous bullshit floating around the cable company and I guess I was trying to reach out to real people.

I've never been in this situation before. I get universal praise for my work (the full page ad in the news last sunday was me) from all the stuff shirts, but it doesn't seem to matter.

If this reads like venting, I guess that's because it is.

Bounced a check, my car cd player broke and had my intelligence insulted.

It's been a full, fucking day.

Off to go apply a tourniquet to my self-esteem

Later

My current bosses hauled me into an office today, wishing to know where my head was at. I'm still not sure. I suppose I should be grateful for their trying, but they want me to think about being a roving office person in order to stay on the Adelphia pay roll when Time Warner comes to town.

I think after the all the extended day leaving me no more rewarded, doing all the commericals, doing all the ads and sundry other print crap, plus all the other stupid ass marketing crap, they want to make me a glorified counter person.

They were spinning it as seeing another side of the operations. I spin as I'm in marketing too.

Anybody hiring?

Well, not really, but it's a maybe. My lovely firm is partnering with ESPN for a party Sunday night at Pearl Street. So, I have to work, but at least drink is involved. It's for Sunday night baseball. C'mon down peeps. You can get cable swag and I'm working on getting the important stuff (beer) (and food) discounted

Updates to follow

Always thought it ended this way

It's been one of those weeks. I've had 3 12+ hour days. Tuesday was no big deal, a business dinner that ended early enough I could still enjoy the night. Wednesday I found myself on Arena duty for the Sabres game, which in and of itself was fine, but I had to be ready for a Thursday road trip to Syracuse for a conference. The bus for that was leaving at 6am. That meant getting up at an hour that only be seen after a binge.

Of course, the Wednesday night hockey crowd wouldn't leave my crappy little Adelphia area until the 3rd period of the game was 2/3's gone. I'm shutting off lights, computers and 38 out 39 tvs. You'd think these things would suggest.

Stagger home at 10pm, back up at 4am yesterday, right to syracuse and sit through a conference in a room that was roughly heated to about 200 degrees and devoid of air, only to hope back on the bus with its excessive air conditioning. We got back into Buffalo at 6. I still had last night's Sabres game to work. I'm running through the already admitted crowd and turning stuff on, breaking down barriers and hoping the fatigue doesn't show (by this point, my knees are calling me names for the events of the past 20 hours).

Nothing like running on fumes, when you get your first epeep sighting. I had the pleasure of running into (e:vincent). I hope I wasn't babbling in an overcaffienated, unslept, oversugarfied (is that even a word)state. By the second period of the game, I felt like the Sabres were playing, like my knees were turning to water. The day was filled with crap catered food. I knew it was wrong when I peaked with an ice cream cone. The rain felt good. I had a "wait out the traffic" beer at cobblestone and the cool rain was reviving.

My boss said I could come in late, by daughter needed a ride to school this morning, so that slightly rumpled soul at Spot at 7AM was me, trying to wolf down a mike before it got me. It is possible to feel hung over when you haven't drunken much. I figured that was the only way to tell my taste buds I still cared.

Getting older sucks.....good thing I still got my looks......shaddup!

is such a study in Disingenuousness. I'm starting to associate the big ticket restaurants around town by the cable network that takes us there. I believe the thinking is that the if the network schmoozes the cable affiliate, the cable affiliate cranks out more support for the network offerings. It is usually 15 minutes about work and actual business talk spread over 3 hours of bullshit and over-Carnegie-izing.

You hear the phrase May Sweeps. For us, it means these occasions double. Tonight, it was Oxygen's turn. They took my department to Oliver's. We were seated and I couldn't help but think of the estrip post talking about steaks and restaurants, So I had one. It was alright, but not quite as good as Fiamma's when OLN took us there which was close to Chophouse quality as purchased by ESPN.

I work in a strange industry. The Western Door restaurant was produced by Discovery. TNT took us to Daffodil's. It's an empty shell of a social life. You see interesting places with people who are desperately trying to impress. No matter how hard they try, there is little I can do. They really have to wow my boss and her idiot of a boss (this schmuck is screwing with how you can see the sabres game on thursday). The networks with little to offer get to take them and us to Chef's since the
big cheeses can't be bothered to get into their cars.

The same screne gets repeated with false sincerity. Dinner, some tchotckeys, and hollow promises. I'm not complaining because I get to places I could never afford. I saw a former colleague at Spot Tonight who laughed at the travails. It cracks me up a little to see the same "dance" played out on basically an every other week basis.

I work in a strange industry.

It's true, you can too cool for your kids. My eldest is 14 and in the youth group at the Unitarian Church on Elmwood. My ex serves as one of the group's advisors. Each year the youth take over the Sunday service. I always look forward to it because it is one service that is honest and from the heart. Besides, it's one of the few times that the Grateful Dead, White Stripes and Black Eyed Peas feature in the hymns.

Anyway the kids come out and line the front of the church for the duration of the service. There is a section for quiet contemplation/meditation. My ex and I get along very well. She came up to me and asked if I'd pitch in at this spot. It became clear what she meant momentarily. The music the kids chose was Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" as interpreted by Johnny Cash. It's a great record with a baseline that can inspire the most rythmically challenged into a healthy bout of "White Man's Overbite." A few of the kids start getting into it. The group at one end including my child looked more like they were waiting for the song to end. My ex sprung into action, tossing a few precussion instruments to some and grabbing one young man into a dance. As she and her partner start up, my daughter eyes find mine. I feel that tell tale smirk coming across my eyes. She is suffering teenage mortificiation. As my ex started to briefly head in my direction, I thought my child was going to have a stroke.

Lucky for her, the song ended.

She recovered enough after the service to introduce me to her mom's dance partner. "You're the dude who hooked her up with U2?" I nod yes. He started to walk away. He leans back to my daughter: "Your parents are so cool."

The look on her face made my day.

Just lost my post

Nothing to see here

Show's over

Move along

The recent wave of folks making the leap to 30 got me thinking. I wonder sometimes if we think too hard about the number of our ages in correlation to how we ought to behave.

I work with a woman who turned 35. We get along really well and do good work, but she was bumming because she was holding herself to one of those lists we all make about "by the time I'm (fill in age here), I want to do this and this........" I tried to tell her that you can't hold yourself to those standards because everybody who makes those lists usually makes them at a time when your biggest concern is how much beer money you have for the weekend. I think that helped along with if she wanted I could started "acting 42." She declined which is good, because I really don't know how.

Age is truly relative. I guess I feel lucky, because I was always one step ahead of all the drinking age changes. A family friend complained to me that he couldn't do something now that he was 56, even though nothing changed from 55. I was at another gathering where a doddering old woman of 27 was looking for help since she was no longer 26. I did the gentlemanly thing and offered to take her out back and shoot her. You're never too old to have a drink come out your nose.

I guess it makes me think that sometimes limitations surrounding age are sometimes self inflicted.

I was in Frizzy's a few months back with some people I used to work with at the Adelphia call center. Outkast came over the pa and somebody asked what the name of the song was. Without thinking, I piped up and said "Roses." The entire group was staring at me dumbstruck that I, teetering on the brink of old farthood in their eyes, would know that. A brief pause and I was pronouced "cool."

In the distance, I could hear my daughter cringing. Maybe it's because I have a few more miles on me than the bulk of the epeeps, but the numbers are just numbers that's all. It's the people who matter.

End of sermon