The caller-id on tv from Time Warner can be a mixed blessing. I do most of my calling with my cell phone, but when the TW phone rang and displayed my older sister's number on Tuesday night, I couldn't help but cringe. Love her dearly, but she makes me nuts. It's a call I knew I had to deal with but I wasn't looking forward to it.

She is in epic streak of bad luck. She is in the graphic arts/printing industry in Manhattan. Her firm got sold and the new owners started running the business into the ground by bouncing her in late 07. The industry is both changing and rapidly deserting NYC. She hooked on with another firm for a while and booted around this time last year. Since she is by herself, that wasn't an immediate source of panic. This was before the economy took its current swan dive.

Unemployment and 401K draws later, so drastic steps have to be taken. She was busy holding out for the miracle offer and associating way too much with coming back to our parents house. It's for a few months and a chance to attack the job problem from another angle and a little more support, not to mention some relief from the pressure of looking for work around NYC while living in New York.

She had herself wrapped up that coming home meant the end, that she envisioned returning to Buffalo to take care of an ailing parent (which we don't have) or our disabled brother. He has a job and his own place. Somebody had to be an asshole and tell her to prioritize, that those past couple of sentences don't exist as issues, that our younger sister lives in Harlem and has all kinds of experiences in subletting, so she keeps the place, she had their place to stay for interviews as the economy improves and yields more chances. She just needs to accept the offers.

So, a little respect as I took one for the team. She got rolling today and enable my dad and younger sis to get the ball rolling with local storage of her stuff in NYC, getting going with a sublet, prioritizing what to bring to Buffalo for the summer, and more.

I'm still tired from the one man intervention, but if you need a short term sublet -- I know a 2 bed room in Chelsea that could be had for the summer for a comparitive steal.

Sometimes it pays to be the jerk.

I LOVE MY JOB

Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 FM in Ft. Wayne , Indiana , who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.

Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it’s not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature.. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I’ve used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water.. It’s like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch.

So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. With in a few seconds my butt started to burn. Â I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don’t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn’t stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn’t poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.

So, next time you’re having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.

Now repeat to yourself, ‘I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.’ Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day?

I get the feeling the Bisons just don't care. It used to be that you didn't have to be a baseball fan to enjoy a game at SodaBeverage Field. They used to sell the place out. I went to a game last year with my Dad and we couldn't help but wonder what happened. Limited open gates, desolate corridors, oh, where have you gone Mike Billoni? It just seemed fairly lifeless.

The Bisons changed major league affiliations over the winter and I thought that might inject a little more life. They are hooked up with the Mets and you'd thinking the prospect of sucking in HD on SNY might liven the place up a bit. Nope. As part of my reward for being a marketing judge at UB's departmental presentation, I was given a ticket to tonight's game by one of their teachers, a good guy who helps the Zoo out from time to time. Access to beer and burgers, I'm a happy guy, especially when the students are to scared to touch food that is still covered. Risking the wratch of the concessions workers and generally not giving a damn in the first place, I got things going at the grill.

Properly satiated, I settled in to watch a little ball and there is nothing so desolate as a sparse ballpark. I've always been intrigued with baseball architecture a little bit (as I am quite the dork) and the game wasted my interest, so this is what happened. I set off looking for dessert and found the following along the way. Enjoy

Thought I broke my connection before. I was downloading some music and things just stopped. Reset everything only to find out it was Time Warner's fault. As a former reboot monkey, I am glad I was not on those phones for a couple of hours. I remember a few nights when thing broke that the list of waiting calls toppled 500. Gallows humor gets you through those situations.

Just dropped my son off at a birthday party where the main celebrant and his folks are strict vegans. I wonder if it is any consequence that I came home for lunch and immediately downed a double steak-um sandwich.

Got to get to the grocery store, but the bulk of North Buffalo is at Wegman's at the moment so it will wait until the eldest is retrieved when the dust settles.

Thought about the hullaballoo about the Buffalo Bills and yesterday and discovered that I am devoid of opinion. There are those that for whom the NFL draft is one of the high holy days. I am not that guy.

Been cheating on (e:strip) a little with wordpress.

I suppose that at age 45, you need to cut out a few things, but the occasional Swiss Roll can do wonders for a disposition, especially when there are no cookies in the house.

Happened to see (e:Janelle) running the other day. It doesn't look fun. I see enough folks flailing their way around ring road in Delaware Park. Nobody looks like they enjoy it at all. Everybody looks like they are heading for a spinal consult soon.

The lovely mother of my lovely children gave me props today. One of our church friends/acquaintances confided that her teenage daughter is afraid of their dad. Apparently my girls even gave voice to it being cooler if I lived a little closer. Yay for me. I think the friend's problem is that the Dad is on his second family is late 60's/early 70's. Some age divides are too large to traverse. Guess I'm on the right track.

Got to get my paperwork in order to be able to go to Canada soon. It might be a time for a new picture as my current photo dates from the first Clinton administration. Liked the picture, but I think I'm aging decently and look better now.

Was in Barnes and Noble yesterday searching for the new book by Tom Robbins (It was a hoot hearing number one son mutter "B is for Beer" as we walked the aisles. Saw the new offering from ABC News' Cokie Roberts. Cokie is looking an awful lot like David Bowie from the "Modern Love" era. Separated at Birth??

Trying to decide whether it is cooler to run up my charge bill on "The Soloist" tonight. Good excuse for popcorn.

If you ever needed an excuse.

I went to one of the insufferable networking events last night. It's my fourth one and it's like being party scenes in the Ice Storm without the nookie afterwards. The same dull gathering played over and over. The same jerkass printer's rep who hassled me about the non-existent jobs I refuse to send him. The rep from the party organizers whose last sober thought was to order another drink. She sold my folks their last car so she thinks we're buds by association. There is also the one really hot rep from the same organization, but she is actually concerned with doing a good job at the gathering so shenanigans aren't happening.

They set up tables from about 20 firms, most of which don't change from the previous gathering. You load up on your swag, fake a little sincerity, have a nosh, and be on your way. Early on, I ran into a kindred spirit who had the same attitude about the gathering, so it was nice to have somebody to partner in the making of the other attendees.




This progressive dinner changes venues and last night's was at Lasertron. The gathering took over one area with the schmoozing, used an anteroom for suprisingly decent food, wings and whatnot. Driving out there, I was seized with visions of account execs in the Laser tag vests shooting each other. I forgot about the other large scale game they play called cyber sport.

You ride the little carts around and use the sawed off lacrosse thingys to shoot on the goals. Once you sit in the little carts, you do indeed feel stupid. It was actually a pretty good time. Learning to drive the cart and checking your dignity at the door made up for a interesting time. I can only imagine what the two actual birthday parties in the place thought of the knuckleheaded adults shooting each other in one room and doing the above in the other. Good thing my innner child doesn't have an inside voice.

Never drank celebratory beers over two cyber sport wins before.