The weekend was pretty low key yet again. We had a big hailstorm Saturday night, and the sky looks threatening again today. Fortunately, Erin and the kids are coming home tonight - I say fortunately, because I am kind of tired of eating my own cooking. :) I actually tried a couple of new recipes this past week, and while the lasagne was good, the casserole I made last night isn’t something I’ll make again. It’s ok, but not what I’d call an instant hit. After I’m done with the leftovers, I’ll never eat it again.

Aw man - I just remembered that I have to renew my drivers license, today being the last day of the month…

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Oh, you don’t want to know what I really think. Now look sad and say ‘D oh.’” - Homer’s brain

I had a job interview this morning. I was pretty nervous about it. I don’t get nervous about a lot of things, but job interviews are one of them. It’s true. I did a search on this blog for the word nervous, and it was only used twice with regards to me in all the years I’ve been doing this thing.

So, I’ve been mentally preparing myself for this interview ever since it was set up earlier this week - maybe even ever since I put my resume in for the job. I even had exactly which shirt and tie I was going to wear with my suit all picked out.

This morning, I got ready for work, and had some time to spare, so I checked my email. When I was done, I got up, put on my shoes, and went to head out the door. It was raining a little bit, so I wondered if I should put on my rain jacket. As soon as that thought formed in my head, I realized that I hadn’t put on my suit, I was just wearing the shirt/tie I picked out and some dress pants. I looked at my watch, thought that I had an outside shot at being able to get changed and still catch my bus. I ran up the stairs, pulled off my shoes and pants (didn’t hang the pants up) and threw on my suit as quickly as I could. When I got out the door, I thought that there was virtually no way I’d catch my bus, but I left anyway, mentally kicking myself. As I rounded the corner, I saw that my bus was just pulling out of the terminal, so I kicked it into high gear. Fortunately it was the regular driver, and he recognized me, and waited. I caught my bus.

It gets better - just stay with me on this one…

So, the interview was at 11:00, and I headed down a couple of minutes early, just to make sure I wasn’t late. Before the interview started, my boss walked in and handed me a raise - good sign when you’re interviewing with someone who just gave you a raise, right? Anyway, the interview went ok, I think I got the real me across, which is all I can really hope for - if I’m not right for the job as me, there’s no percentage in getting the job pretending to be someone else. As I’m heading for the elevator, I reach for my security card, and realize that I left my suit jacket in my office. In my office. I felt like a complete tool for going through all the stress over wearing my suit, only to forget the jacket in my office.

If nothing else, I got a blog post out of it. The decision will be made next week sometime, and it’s out of my hands, so I won’t worry about it until I get/don’t get it.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I’d say the pressure has finally gotten to Dad, but what pressure?” - Bart

I went out and played ball last night for the first time all season. Overall I did ok - I missed a couple of balls that were thrown way over my head at first, an I didn’t make any good contact in my two at bats - though I did beat out an infield single. The knee did pretty good, though it’s a little stiff this morning. I think I’ll leave it until next year before I give it another attempt.

When I got home at around 9:30, Erin had left a message on the machine, so I called her up and talked with her and William for a while. It’ll be good to have them back home on Monday.

Simpson’s quote of the day:
Helen Lovejoy: “Honey, wake up. Honey, it sounds like Ned Flanders is having some sort of crisis.”
Reverend Lovejoy: “Oh. Probably stepped on a worm.”

Last night I didn’t do much at all - watched TV, ate supper, played around on the net a bit. Very quiet night. I did spend some time on my favourite site, missing Erin and the kids - less than a week to go :)

Tonight, I am going to attempt to play ball. I don’t think I’m good for more than a couple of at bats, but we’ll see. Hopefully the weather holds - it’s pretty nice out there right now.

Despite going to bed early last night, I slept in this morning, and had to skip the shower (thank goodness I didn’t do any hard work yesterday ;) Then I ran to the bus stop, only to see that it looked to be gone already. Turns out it was running later than me, so I caught it, and got to work at basically the same time as usual.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I hope you enjoyed my one-man pie fight, kids!” -Krusty

Usually the titles of my posts have some sort of sideways connection to what I’m thinking at the time - this post is an exception. I don’t know how the phrase “Maplethorpe Academy” popped into my head, so naturally I put it into the title.

Last night I spent some time working on upgrading this site. I didn’t actually accomplish anything, but I did get some ideas. I also attempted to run a network cable from the Mac to the router in the basement - it seems silly to be using wireless for what amounts to a permanent home for a computer. I didn’t get very far with that though - I’ll have to move the couch away from the wall to get a good angle on seeing what’s going on. I also cut up some cardboard boxes. Oh, and I practised shuffling poker chips - I was doing 4 chips (two stacks of two) consistently, and started working on 6 chips. I don’t know why, because it’s a truly useless skill to have, but I thought I should try to learn it.

Oh yeah, and we had a crazy storm yesterday afternoon - the rain was coming down so hard that my windows were sheeted with water, and I had to go to a different side of the building to confirm that it was actually hailing too. The SW corner of 22nd St. and 1st Ave had so much water built up that vans were almost up to the top of their wheel wells. The hail wasn’t too bad - probably somewhere between pea sized and chick-pea sized (leaning more towards the small end of that scale) but it did last quite a few minutes.

So, to jump back to the site upgrade topic - does anyone actually use the style and layout dropdowns on the menu, or do you all just use whatever style I set as default? I think having those styles is causing most of my upgrade problems, and while I could figure out how to deal with it, it seems like a lot of work for very little benefit.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Could you cook my dinner for me? My parents aren’t home and I’m not allowed to use the stove.” - Ralph Wiggum

With Erin and the kids gone, the weekend was pretty low key, and very very quiet. I somehow managed to go grocery shopping twice, and made myself a nice lasagne. I really need to start trusting my cooking instincts though - the recipe didn’t say to put Mozza on top of the whole thing, and it looked odd when it was done because of it. Very tasty though, and even better today as leftovers for lunch.

I basically took the weekend to unwind and catch up on all the TV that I’ve recorded and not watched over the last couple of months. I watched a bunch of poker while reading, caught up on The Daily Show, and watched all the football from last week. Talk about some crazy CFL finishes - the league is highly entertaining this year, and with all the parity, 6 of 8 teams are shaking their heads and saying “we’re a better team than our record indicates.”

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Guys, do I have a Bea O’Problem here?” - Moe

There’s a list of violent kids’ games making it’s way around the web, which reminded me of a game that we used to play on the playground in elementary school. The school had this octagonal sandbox with a 6 inch wide edge all the way around it. What would happen was that we’d split into two teams (in the traditional picking of teams) and each team would start off on one side of the sandbox. The goal was to stay on the wooden side of the sandbox while simultaneously pushing the other team off. The game tended to be fought on two fronts, and eventually it would get down to one person left on one of the teams, and that person would try to fight off attackers from both sides. Occasionally successfully.

We called the game “Push” and most recesses we had ~10-15 kids playing I think. There was some interesting strategic elements to the game - do you line up with a good front line player backed by a good support person, or a good front line player backed by someone who was also a good front line player? Oh, and we usually only played in winter, so the sandbox edge was frequently slick with ice, but conversely the snow made for a softer landing when you got pushed off. We played a lot of “murderball” which is what we called the #1 game on that list (I think - the description is close enough anyway) We played with a football though, and there was a clear goal in mind of returning the ball to the initial thrower. We played a lot of touch football (very non-violent, I only remember one broken collarbone - not mine) and some full contact basketball, not to mention the obligatory hockey games.

Good times.

Simpsons’s quote of the day: “Gentlemen, I have decided there will be, uh, no investigation. Now if you will excuse me I’ll go away.” - Mayor Quimby