Warmer Climate...PLEASE...*sob*

This blogs a short one but I know you will feel my pain. Just spent an awesome weekend in Las Vegas. Weather was warm, casinos were a sad spectacle of human boredom, security was eyeballing me wondering if they could take me (they can't by the way), and the food was... meh. Who goes to Vegas without going to a buffet anyway?

I had lots of fun. Sang some good music, hung out with friends, even watched a minor league hockey game and saw a fight!!! The weekend temps there were in the low to mid 50's the whole time, but, alas, it was time to return home to the frozen tundra which is SLC. We were sitting at Jack In The Box getting ready to hit the road and out of curiosity, I jumped on my good buddy's iphone to check the weather...

Salt Lake City Las Vegas


...Salt Lake City will have a low of ONE DEGREE on Christmas Eve! Whose idea was that? Could be worse... Could be in... Who am I kidding? I wish we had sun!!!

The Hook-Up Magnet!!!

Long ago God paired up everything into twos and sent them on a cruise. Thousands of years later most of my friends have taken on the responsibility to do the same for me. I don't know if it is because of the Christmas season and the thought of me being single gets the hook-up mojo going in my "homegirlz," or that I am oblivious to everything and girls are throwing themselves at me. Probably not the latter...

People are constantly trying to fix me up with girls from work, church, their relatives, and so forth. My neighbor has been trying to persuade me to go out with this girl at the post office for about a year. It's to the point where the mother of the girl is bugging my neighbor to just bring me to the house to take her out. The only thing that I really know about this girl is that she is very tall, somewhere along the lines of 6'2" . I am 6'6" ( depending on what shoes I have on) so the height is not really a problem. My brother made the comment that we could breed "super athletes". So the question is how do I get from here to having superhero children? I am really uncomfortable around new people and never know what to say. So I try to get to know a girl before I go out with her.

A friend of mine from California hit me up on Facebook the other day. She was raving about a girl she met at a dance in Huntington Beach and how we would be perfect for each other. I was then firmly instructed to call her promptly or she would revoke my "man card". I can imagine how I would sound during the phone conversation with the mystery girl:

"Hello?"

"Hi I'm Jr."

... Long awkward silence...

"Okay. It was nice talking to you..."

I'm not much of a phone conversation guy (ask my friends), but I will party 'till the crack of 9:30 PM because that's how I roll. I must have a big target on my forehead with flashing lights that says "Single. Please fix me up!" But, keep trying folks, I'll find a winner in there sooner or later. Hopefully sooner...

Thanks for the Vent Session...

Hole In My Soul...

So I went out with a girl the other night to see Paranormal Activity. I had seen it the week before and thought it was kind of weak. The girl I went with has a big problem with scary movies and made me enter into a verbal "contract of conduct" before she would even consider seeing the movie. I was not to make any noises or sudden moves that would intensify the scary scenes. I was not to mention that was once ghostly activity within her house (another blog for another time...) and I was NOT to make fun of her thereafter about the screams that would ensue. I agreed to the stipulations, but being the sensitive guy that I am gave her some chances to back out.

There is hardly any gore in the movie so she figured it wouldn't be too bad but she was also vary aware of the actions of people around us. There was a group of women behind us who got up and left 15 minutes into the movie... she considered leaving. The first loud noise... she considered leaving. Ouija Board scene... she considered leaving. Most of the movie was spent with her cutting off the circulation in my arm because of her death grip, meanwhile, I am dosing off during the movie. Probably would have fallen asleep if it wasn't for a certain someone trembling next to me. Don't get me wrong, this girl is one of the toughest women I know, but this movie rocked her to the core. She actually went so far as to scream during the movie. And of course I did give her ample opportunity to get out of going before hand.

She was soooooo mad at me about "MAKING" her see Paranormal Activity. She even went as far as accusing me of having no soul. No soul? Ouch right? I said to myself, "Self, you have as much soul as James Brown," but still felt bad about her reaction. Wanting to make her at ease about how much the movie disturbed her I took her out to eat. She did later admit, in between bites of an Apple Bees Blondie, that I must have been an evil genius to be able to manipulate her so masterfully. First of all, it does say in my profile that I'm an genius of the evil kind and secondly, I'm not saying that I manipulated her, but a persons actions can be predicted... if you know what buttons to push.

She had also purchased a brand new bed during the day and I almost ruined the first night in the new bed for her. So I stayed over until 3am to make sure that she was soothed. But hey, at least I got her to sit in my lap during the movie...

Thanks For the Vent Session...

Why am I awake?

So I have to start work at 6:30 am, but why did my body decides to wake up at 1:15 am? I hate the fact that I am awake right now at 3:53 am... so I decided to complain about it on the Inter-web. I think part of the reason I am awake is because I had a dream about layoffs. My job lost 50 guys yesterday and I wasn't among the lucky few, or unlucky depending on how you view waking up at the crack of dawn. So now I must wave goodbye to any chance of weekends off for the next little while, but at least they pay me overtime for it.

I still feel bad for the guys who were let go. I overheard management say it was trimming the fat, but it seems needlessly cruel to refer to somebody as unwanted weight (man... I'm hungry). Me and my partner at work are on loan to another company to help out with their equipment testing so that makes us immune to the layoff axe, but sooner or later some company suck up is gonna take my place. It might be survivors guilt that keeps me up at night, but it could also be because I fell asleep at 6:30 pm the night before and didn't eat dinner... I am gonna make a chicken pita.

Thanks for the mini Vent Session... by the way... clowns... scary...

Show em your GRRRRR face...

I went out to eat with some friends a few days ago. Being Polynesians, we naturally start making fun of each other. One of the girls started to tell a story about me and made a growling sound as she pretended to lift some heavy object in the story. We all laughed, but that got the ol' wheels turning... do I make that sound unconsciously? I started to travel back into my memory and realized that other people make the growl when they describe me lifting things also. I hope that I'm not walking around all day making the sounds of distant thunder to innocent bystanders. The last thing I need is an old lady keeling over because she thought a bear mauling was eminent. I'm already big and scary looking. I don't need people to think that I am a wild animal in heat too. It makes me wonder what other things I do subconsciously as well...

Do I do the things that drive me crazy? Do I slurp my noodles, or chew with my mouth open? Do I say things like supposibly instead of supposedly? Do I constantly raise my eyebrows when I speak to people like Shaq does or pronounce the word cross with a "T" at the end? These are just a few things on a long list of things that I might do.

Now I feel self-conscious about the things I do. I bite my lip when I pick up salt shakers, pencils, the morning paper, and the car keys. Sure you would expect some kind of audible vocalization when lifting heavy things, but why take the chance. There is another side of me that wants to embrace the snarl, a more primal and wild side of my brain. In this spirit, I would like to try other bestial articulations. Maybe a howl as my boss greets me in the morning, or a gruff bark to the neighbors. I'm even willing to try a ...meow. Maybe not.

Thanks for the Vent Session...

Vertigo

Ever do anything that you really don't want to do, but do it anyway. I have a fear of heights but not of flying... go figure and I spent the majority of the day 40 feet up in the air on a scissor lift. If you've never been in one, count yourself among the blessed. These dang contraptions are unstable in the best of conditions. A stiff breeze will send it plummeting faster than Vanilla Ice's career or like that poor baby in the lullaby rock-a-bye-baby (this song may also be a contributor to my fear of heights).

Anyway, I was working on the lift, trying not to throw up all over the deck every time it swayed, when one of my co-workers thought it would be funny to smack the bottom of my lift with a ten foot stick of pipe. I feel the banging race through my body and the subsequent shakes and sways of the lift and I figure that the lift is malfunctioning, so I brace myself for eminent death. As I watched my life flash before my eyes (wondering whether I should have had a better last meal, of all things) I hear the cackling of my co-worker... the rage that bubbled to the surface would have made the Devil himself quake in fear. I lower my lift, all the while cursing his name, jumped over the railing, and grab him by his shirt collar. Powered by my anger, I lift him about a foot off the ground, with my left arm, and threaten to break off his arms and beat him to death while shaking my fist under his nose. Then I unceremoniously drop him to the floor and stomp off before I carry out my threats.

Usually, I am a very calm guy and keep in mind this guy is about 60 years old, but I couldn't care less if he saw 61 at the time. I feel that I "may" have acted a little rashly, but my life did indeed flash before my eyes after all. Looking back, I think I may have given him a mild heart attack. What did I learn from all this? I need to live a more interesting life so I can have something good to watch at the end.

Thanks for the Vent Session...

Working with Beyoncé...

I know it's been awhile, so I would like to apologize to the two people who look at my blog. Sorry. Now that thing is out of the way, I'd like to tell you about my day...

Last week, I purchased a brand new phone. It's nice being able to keep in contact with friends and loved ones. It is an electric blue and has an awesome mp3 player that doesn't need headphones to play songs, but the best part is that it holds like 200 songs. So I went to my iTunes and loaded the sucker up with some good stuff to listen to while I stand around at work pretending to be busy. It's really cool because it's like having a soundtrack.

As both of you may know, I work construction. Construction guys are a fairly rough and manly bunch. The guys that I work with are former military men, bar brawlers, and are forbidden to return to various foreign countries (more on that in another blog), so when I say rough, I mean "the kind of people that can make Clint Eastwood cry ," rough. And then there is me.

I listen to a wide variety of music and I happened to remember I had a phone and brought it in with me. I'm just minding my own business, listening to a Dragonforce number called Through the Fire and Flames, bobbing my head and pretending to inspect the electrical conduit in the ceiling, when my buddy comes up (one of the ones forbidden to go to certain countries) and starts to groove out with me.

So we are both standing there bobbing our heads like stunt doubles in the movie The Night at the Roxbury. He's digging the speed metal and rap just as much as me when our boss shows up. Johnny Cash is up next with A Boy Named Sue. The Boss digs that so he sticks around to have a listen. So then there are three of us grooving to the tiny speaker on my cell phone. This makes the rest of the crew curious as to what we're doing. In short order, we have eleven guys bobbing their heads in time pretending to inspect pipe in the ceiling. This goes on for about ten minutes and by then three songs have gone by.

I put 200 songs on my phone and it was set on random. I had no idea what songs I had on there, let alone what would come up next. So when Beyoncé showed up with Halo, nobody really reacted right away. They were too caught up groovin' to the beat, but then one by one they started to take notice. Within the space of two seconds, I went from being the cool guy with speed metal blasting from his shirt pocket, to the guy who had just sprouted a third eye in the middle of his forehead. That's what you would think by the way they were looking at me. I had never seen so many guys take off so fast since the Olympics. I was shunned the rest of the day... or I may have hidden in shame.

I'm not saying Beyoncé sucks. She is über talented and I still love her music (even though she made me look like a fool in front of my co-workers). I am just saying that there are appropriate times to listen to certain kinds of music. What is the moral of this story? Let's just say... playlists are now my friends.

Thanks for the Vent Session.