So Anyways

Halloweenie or Curmudgeon?

Apparently I'm getting old.

I've grown to pretty much hate Halloween. I have nothing against kids dressing up in goofy little costumes and trick or treating. A lot of them are really cute, and I get a kick out of seeing them having fun. But, I get annoyed by grown ups coming to work dressed up like the kids they apparently still are.

If you're 45 years old, and you have bulges that protrude from practically any part of your body, you just so do not need to wear a Superman costume, with tights and a cape, to the office. Because even if you're proud of that bulge, the truth is, it looks nasty. If you're not 27 and ripped, then I don't want to see your bulge. Especially not at the office.

If you're 39 years old and you work in a professional office, you really shouldn't come to work wearing a big huge mouse head.

You and your friends probably shouldn't come to work dressed as Hot Lips Houlihan, Radar, and Hawkeye Pierce.

What you do inside your own home is up to you. Dress up to your heart's content. Have all the fun you want. Just don't come to work and make me see you that way.

I made a comment to that effect today to a co-worker, as we both stood there slack-jawed, staring at a "good girl gone bad" who was in actuality a 62-year old grandmother. Instead of agreeing with me, though, he called me a curmudgeon.

I kind of took offense at that. But before getting too worked up, I decided to look up the definition just to make sure I wasn't over reacting.

According to wordnet.princeton.edu, it means I'm "a crusty irascible cantankerous old person full of stubborn ideas."

That pretty much sums me up. You can just call me Crusty, for short.

Salutational Shenanigans

Sometimes the dumbest things tick me off.

Today, the dumb thing that's bugging me is e-mail etiquette (or the lack thereof). I'm not even talking about obvious things that everyone is more or less aware of  -  things like - don't "reply all" to a whole list of people just to say "thanks"  - or - don't e-mail 27MB attachments - or - don't forward stupid chain letters.

Instead, what's bugging me today is the greeting or closing people use in their e-mails. I work in an extremely e-mail-centric environment, where it seems like 90% of my daily communication (even with people who sit in the next cubicle over) is by e-mail. I get lots of e-mail everyday - enough to have grown to be very picky about how a proper e-mail message should be structured. (Talking here about work-related e-mails, not personal e-mails...)

Is it too much to ask for the sender to start the message with "Hello Todd" or "Hi Todd" or even just "Hi"? If you send me a message with no greeting at all, it just puts me in the wrong frame of mind immediately. It's not necessary to be overly formal, but it's kind of nice to be "greeted." It's no different from having someone walk up to you and just start giving commands or asking questions without saying "hi" first. It's just kind of rude and puts me in no mood to pay attention to the rest of the message.

If you can't bring yourself to say "Hello" or "Hi", at least start the message with my name:

         "Todd, would you please do x, y, and z for me?"

Just don't start the message with no greeting. That really annoys me.

Almost as annoying are those people who don't use a pleasant or respectful closing.

Most people around here close their e-mails either with "Regards"  or  "Best regards". Usually, unless I'm annoyed at the person I'm writing to, I close mine with Best regards. If I'm annoyed, I'll just close with a plain ol' Regards, thinking there's no point in wishing the "best" of anything.

Unlike how the lack of a greeting bothers me, though, the lack of a closing really doesn't bother me. If people just sign their name at the bottom of the message without any kind of closing, that's OK. It just means they're all business. Since it's at the end of the message, I guess it doesn't put me in the wrong frame of mind to read the message like the lack of a greeting does.

The thing about closings that really bugs me is when people abbreviate the closing. Like, they type "Rgds" instead of "Regards". Or "BR" for "Best regards". Is it really that freakin' much more time consuming to type 3 more letters to actually spell the word?

OK. I feel better now that that's off my chest, and just in time for the weekend!

Checking In

Just checking in to make sure this thing still works...

I managed to survive the Week Without Ed (barely), and even survived an incredibly fast and furious trip to New Jersey and New York at the end of Ed's week away, when I got to spend some time with his parents, see the house (and town) where he grew up, meet some of his best pre-Arizona friends, and see all the sites in New York City. Since getting back, though, life has been brutal - catching up at work and trying to fight off a nasty flu-like bug I apparently caught on the airplane or in NYC. There just hasn't been any time or motivation for blogging.

I'm trying a new tactic to free up time for blogging. I usually try to write blog entries either first thing in the morning when I get to work or at the end of the day just before I go home. Neither method seems to work, though, since I'm usually frazzled at both ends of the day. I'm trying the "eat lunch at my desk and blog" thing now to see if that works any better. We'll see.

So the trip to NJ/NY was fun. Ed left on Monday night, and I followed out on a Thursday-night red-eye flight, leaving Phoenix at 11pm and arriving in Newark at 6:30am. I expected to be totally zapped at the end of that flight, but I managed to not only stay awake all day on Friday, but to be somewhat sociable. I was kind of proud of myself. Of course, by the time it started getting dark that evening, I had trouble keeping my eyes open, but that's really not all that unusual, even under the best of circumstances. It was fun to see where Ed spent his formative years and to meet some of his friends from the Before Todd era. I have to say, the picture I have always had of New Jersey (refineries, toxic waste dumps, and graffiti-strewn 'hoods) was pretty well put to rest. It actually was nice - and green. As a southwest desert boy, I'm always impressed by how green and tree-filled other states are.

And, I think I know now why those states are so green. It rains there. Lots of freakin' rain. Although it was cloudy and misty the entire trip, our one day excursion to NYC could only be described as Noah's Ark rainy. I've never seen so much rain in my life. It didn't stop us, or even deter us much - we managed to see nearly everything we had planned to see - but we got totally drenched in the process. Because of concerns over terrorism on the subways while we were there, I tried to minimize the amount of stuff I took into the city with me. Which meant I had one pair of jeans with me - the pair I was wearing. After about an hour of trudging around the city in the torrential downpour, they were completely soaked, as was everything else I had brought, including my poor cell phone, which died as a result and had to be replaced. We took a short break mid-day back in the hotel room to recover from the drenching, and I tried to use the hotel room's hair dryer to dry them out. That wasn't terribly effective, so I spent the next ~24 hours walking around wet.

Now, I think I'm paying the price for that. I'm not sure what it is, but I've got something that's making life somewhat miserable. No symptoms other than a low-grade fever and a headache, so I'm not sure what I caught. I'm just hoping the terrorists didn't get me with some kind of biological weapon on the subway. I think the birds were all hiding from the rain, so I'm pretty sure it's not the bird flu. Whatever it is, though, I'm ready for it to go away so I can get back to my normal, chipper self.

So, it looks like this thing is actually working. Time to get back to work...

Home Alone

I'm a little worried. Ed's going away for the week, and while I'll be joining him on the East Coast next weekend, in the meantime, I'm going to be left to take care of the little family all by myself. I'm not sure I'm up to the task.

That kind of bothers me because I used to pride myself on just how independent I was. I lived alone for 10-12 years, and I always managed to take care of my affairs better than most people I knew who had families (or at least a wife at home) to help take up the slack.

But that ended over three years ago. Since then, Ed and I moved in together, and I quickly became the stereotypical "married" man who can't take care of himself. I don't buy the groceries. I don't cook. I barely remember how the microwave works. Ed takes care of all that, plus he takes care of the 4 kids all day every day while I'm off to work at the office. Now, they're all going to be dependent on me to take care of their needs, and that should make them very very worried.

Lucky for them, their food doesn't require cooking. I just have to remember how to pour it out of a bag and into their bowls.

Beyond all that, I'm thinking the house is going to seem really empty. I think I can figure out how the TiVo remote works, but I probably won't feel like watching anything. What fun is TV when you have to watch it all alone?

Wish me luck. It's gonna be a long week...