Birthdays!

Birthdays are exciting times.  A time to buy and/receive presents, buy and/or eat cake, cry and/or weep silently to yourself.  All great things.  This past week or so was my brother's birthday.  We're not much of a gift giving family, but he was driving up from Florida, so I thought I'd get and decorate him a cake, something I've never done before.  I have watched a few episodes of King of Cakes, or Who's the Cake? or whatever cake reality show is out there.  I don't know, it was all delicious though.  

Building a cake from scratch.

So thus began my cake decorating experience.  And let me tell you, it was terrific.  The first thing I did was purchase my ingredients.   I'm not very good with choosing colors, so I picked a blue and white cake, because blue reminded me a cake which didn't cost all that much.  Then I found some black icing, to represent all the colors in the rainbow.  Because that's a thing that represents something important.  And this is a very important cake.  Lastly there are the candles.  I'm not a fan of trick candles, mostly because after the birthday-person is done spitting all over the cake for the last five minutes, "hilariously" trying to extinguish the twenty candles sputtering around, I've already thrown up five times.  So I found some nice candles that spell out Bath Yard Hippy.  

Now comes the part where I prove how artistic I am.  I wasn't sure what I was going to write on the cake, but I knew it had to be heartfelt and beautiful.  Like a rainbow, whose infinite colors are all represented in the black icing.   

Nailed it.

Now that I've successfully spelled out my feelings, it's time to add the candles and then light this thing up!

Happy Birthday Smiley Face Mike!

So turns out my brother actually wasn't able to show up when he had originally planned.  But that didn't stop me from celebrating his birthday!

Happy....birthday?

happl blerrrrrgh?

So the candles were able to add much needed color to the cake, and that's a nice added bonus.  I'm not certain the color is edible, and after my brother had to pick the wax out of his teeth, a week later, when he finally got to eat the cake, I'm almost positive it wasn't edible.  But he got to eat the cake, and he'll have to keep on eating it, because I didn't get any food for his visit.   

Happy Birthday Mike! 

Just like starting over.

I need to lose weight.  It's not that I'm obese or anything, but I have so many pairs of skinny hipster jeans that desperately need to be worn.  And these awesome horned rimmed glasses.  Is making fun of hipsters not a thing anymore?  I'm already bored of it.  

So weight.  The trick to losing weight is to exercise and eat properly.  And that's the part I have trouble with.  Just...all of it.  I don't want to spend my time making my own lunch, so I often eat out during the day.  Being on the road all the time, it's just easier.  And exercising is something that's fun to do when I've got a lot of energy and time.  Wait, I didn't mean fun, I meant something.  Exercising is something to do when I've got a lot of time and energy.  And I never have enough energy.  I always have time.  I just feel it's time better spent napping, or coming up with my exercise plan for tomorrow.  And you should see the plan for what I'm going to tomorrow!  It's impressive.  I'm already tired from it.

Let's start with eating right.  Apparently all you can eat for breakfast is scrambled eggs.  Anything else is a pain to make and makes you fat.  But not eggs, because eggs are protein.  They also have cholesterol, which is both great and awful apparently.  I stopped reading about it, because it's just depressing and confusing and makes me want to take a nap and eat an egg McMuffin.  Which is not just eggs.  But so good.  How good is that?  Seriously.  And the carmel mochas?  I would live off of those if I wasn't off caffeine, because caffeine makes me sleep wrong.  

Hello 1995.  I missed you.  Did you miss me?  Remember Seinfeld?  Hilarious.

I say sleep "wrong" because sleeping "right", and here's where I make some serious assumptions, doesn't involve waking up in the middle of the night and throwing your pillows at ghosts and robbers who've invaded your bedroom.  I'm not sure why robbers would want anything in my bedroom, as it's easily the least impressive room of my house.  I do have a pretty sweet tv though.  

For lunch, you can eat almonds.  Uncooked and unsalted.  Just like posh cavemen used to do.  Except they probably used salt.  But we can't use salt, because salt takes away water from our bodies, and water's important for not dying when it's time to exercise.  The key to drinking enough water is to always have water on you, that way, when you're thirsty, you just have your water conveniently right there!  Otherwise, you'll literally buy any other drink other than water to quench your thirst.  It's a Catch-22, except where there's some awful thing preventing you from drinking the water you so desperately want, it's just your brain going, "Why do I want to pay for water when I could pay for a Dr. Pepper (or a Faygo for all my Juggalos out there)?"  The answer you don't.  And you won't.  Or at least I won't.  Paying for water.  What am I, at the bottom of the water table like some peasant?  Hardly!

Stay tuned next week for more rantings about eating chicken for dinner for the rest of your life and nothing else, ever, or you'll die.  But the chicken will kill you too.  It's a catch-22! 

A Day in the Life...

This is another request.  I hope I can do it justice.​

My days start out all pretty much the same.  I wake up a half hour before I have to get in my van to get to my first job of the day.  This gives me time to shower, cook some eggs or oatmeal and get dressed.  I usually forget to shave, so that helps save some time.  And I've laid my clothes out on the floor the day before, so I know just where to find them.  It's a good system.  ​

​Now I'm in my van, driving to my first stop of the day.  Who knows where it is!  I do, actually.  There's no surprise there.  I'm just trying to liven up this experience for you.  It's pretty mundane so far.  I'm listening to a podcast or an audio book, because the radio makes me cry.  I'm not sure when the maximum amount of Chicago or Nirvana you can listen to is, but I've just about reached it.  I'm definitely done with the Eagles.  Lousy radio.  But I digress...

Interesting side note, one podcast I listen to, called the Nerdist, ​was the inspiration for the name of this blog.  Okay, maybe 'interesting side note' was hyping this up too much.  

​Today, my first job is an hour away.  And I skipped breakfast, so I went ahead and got a bagel from McDonalds.  I don't like the number of calories that it shows next to that bagel.  I still order and eat it, but I don't like it.  Well, I do like it, and I'll do it again, but I'll still stare squinty-eyed at those calories, daring them to say something to my face.  

​Now I'm at my first job!  And it's a mystery!  A staff member's email isn't working!  Dun-dun-duuuun!  And then the plot thickens!  Turns out, the doctors had just fire their office manager a couple days ago.  They also turned off her company credit cards.  The credit cards that she used to pay the bills.  Bills of which also included the email.  So this was a tough case.  I figured this out when I got onto their website and it said, "Suspended."  But that's okay, how were the doctors to know that their office manager was doing her job!  They're just people too!  Poor, over-educated, stupid people.  I kid.  And in case this is ever used as evidence in court, this entire website is satire.  None of this ever really happened at all.  Especially not short sighted dentists firing the one person who kept their huge, highly profitable business running.  Because that'd be silly.

​And I'm off!  Back to Indianapolis to figure out why a computer keeps shutting down!  Another mystery!  Well, sort of.  Turns out it was set to shut down after fifteen minutes.  Okay, so that was easy too.  But surely they can't all be this easy.  On to the next job!

Now this next computer won't boot into Windows, and the doctor really needs it working.  So I sit down, ready to start my magical repair skills.  That's when he comes up to me and says not to bother with it, because it's under warranty, they are just going to replace it for free.  Another problem solved!  I'm making record time here.​

​My next job is more awkward than hard.  An office had purchased a $100,000 piece of equipment and then decided they didn't like it.  Maybe it's because it sucked, or maybe they had buyer's remorse, or maybe they hated their sales rep.  Who knows!  I'm not saying they hated their sales rep because he sold them a piece of garbage that didn't work and they really regretted it, but it's possible!  But they had it all wrapped up for me, and really didn't want to talk to me, so I toss it into my van, loosely tie it to a shelf with an old stretchy cord that most definitely can't secure anything, and head back on the road!

It's now three in the afternoon, and I have to go help move an x-ray from one end of an office to another.  We've done this three times with this same machine, and every single time, something breaks and it takes us weeks to get it back up and running.  But not this time!  This time I'm here.  And we get it running immediately!  Just kidding.  It breaks and it's still not working.  I'm hoping someone else can fix it tomorrow, because I wash my hands of it.  Actually I don't care when anyone gets it running.  It should have been tossed in the garbage years ago.  But what do I know.  I'm just a tech who apparently has to do very little during the day.  I guess now I can see why it's been hard for me to justify any raises over the years.  Who knew!