Posted 5:50 AM
It ain't Orange Glow...

...but if my life were an advertisement by Billy Mays, the storyboard would read like this:

(video: grouchy Ted typing)
Announcer: "Tired of being down in the dumps?

(video: man and woman talking, man pointing, woman rolling eyes)
Announcer: Are your friends sick of hearing you with the mumble-grumbles?

(video: Billy dressed in superhero outfit, with giant 4 on chest)
Announcer: Try new Billy(tm)!!

(video: Billy perfoming various tasks in newsroom environment)
Announcer: Billy(tm) will wash away your troubles by taking over the crappy work shifts in your life, and performing them with ease.

(video: Ted smiling, laughing, eating dinner and looking at clock that says 7:30pm)
Announcer: Meanwhile, you can go back to your semi-anonymous life working shifts designed to better keep your body running. Watch with amazement as you eat regular meals...exercise...stay awake during your favorite TV shows...and do the things you never thought you'd do again at the same time everyone ELSE was doing them!

(video: man and woman used previously with Ted, pointing and laughing at Billy)
Announcer: And remember...Billy loves mental anguish, and isn't ashamed of it. Now YOU can do the pointing and laughing...guilt free! Try new Billy(tm) TODAY!

I'm ordering mine. It should be here August 20th. Three cheers for getting off the morning shift...since Su seems to be our resident online cheerleader, I'll let her take care of it. In the meantime, let the countdown again. Sorry, no COD.

Posted 5:22 AM
Blind

Some of you have reported problems seeing my title image (particularly inside the friendly confines of Double-U Why Ef Ef). I blame AOL (they probably have bad accounting practices too, but I'm more concerned about their FTP servers). The image is moving to Su's website...so the problem should be fixed soon.

Posted 5:14 AM
Turn down the oven

From the "TMI" file...

I had to change underwear after work Saturday. It was soaked through after shooting SOT teases in 95 degree heat. I wear boxers, fortunately. Autumn can't come fast enough.

Posted 1:05 AM
Where?

is updated again. What in the world is he drinking? Take a guess in comments. Save the knife...the knife is good.

Posted 10:16 AM
At the end of a long, frayed, dirty rope

"Accept the things you can't change, and change the things you can."

It's a motivational speaker/teacher/parent/coach/good buddy/psychic advisor line we've all heard about a million times. It's really the polite way of saying 'deal with it'. I don't buy it. But it's a subscription I've signed up for anyway. And even though I've been asked to be placed on it's 'do not call' list, I keep on getting it. Week after week. Month after month.

For 1 year, I got up and came to the job I work at and loved every single morning. The bitches were minor. The problems were few. Any that sprung up were solvable. It's nice to like your job.

For the last 3 months, I've been getting up every morning and hating work. To go into the situation is moot, by this time most of you have already heard the story...seen the story...and don't care to hear it again. I know I don't want to tell it. It gets me down.

The problem is, there's no forseeable end in sight. Sure, there's a "glimmer of hope on the horizon" the situation will change. That glimmer seems to stay just out of arm's reach. I've stopped reaching for it. It's getting to the point where I hardly notice it's there.

"Change the things you can".

This one I can't. I signed my name on a dotted line that essentially whored myself out to an organization for a period of 3 years. What they do with me, to me, in those 3 years, beyond capital punishment and starvation, is basically legal. I can complain, bitch, moan, whine, sulk, sob, and pound my fists till the bones in my hand are mere fragments. The result would probably just be a sore hand.

Friends, I don't know what to do anymore. I've never felt this demoralized before. Life's rich pageant has marched down another street, and I'm left cleaning up the ticker-tape. If you're missing the ol' Ted, maybe he'll come back. After all, there's still that glimmer...as long as the rope doesn't break in two.

Posted 6:12 PM
A real winner

I had the misfortune of being subjected to about 60 minutes of Christian radio today. Mind you, I'm not anti-Christian. I'm just anti-getting-Jesus-forced-down-my-throat. Anyway, I let it go...simply because it kept the person I was in the car with quiet. But I felt almost insulted when I heard this:

DJ: It's time to play 5 in 10...we'll take the 2nd caller...caller, are you there?
Bland woman: Yes.
DJ: OK...you know what 5 in 10 is...I'll pick a category, you have 10 seconds to give me 5 things in that category. Ready?
Bland woman: Yes.
DJ: The category is...ice cream flavors. Ready...set...go!

Perhaps this is how we should elect South Carolina's next governor. The woman, believe it or not, won 2 tickets to Carowinds.

Posted 5:35 AM
2 bedroom, 1 bath

I've got dwelling envy. And it hurts.

For the last 5 days, I've had the chance to play king of the castle. Not that I'm not the supreme ruler of my nicely appointed yet decidely small duplex...but an opportunity to house-sit for a devoted Buckeye fan (will he ever learn?) gave me the chance to oversee a single-family home, complete with fenced-in yard and flowerboxes on the windows. I washed dishes by hand, tinkered with things that didn't seem to work (that garbage disposal might need another look, T) and admired the sense of permanency their belongings strewn about the place seemed to give off.

I realize I'm still a youngin' in this world. What the hell does Chief Bachelor need a house for? Mortgages, after all, are for the married and weak, right? Stand alone guys should rent. It's law.

But I'm sick of pissin' my money away every month, getting nothing in return but a roof over my head which I'm now sharing with a plethora of ants. I swear my dog said "Whims" yesterday instead of "Woof", expressing his longing for a place to roam where I don't have to put him on a leash.

I'm sure you homeowners will tell me to enjoy it while I can. Fixing stuff is expensive, blah blah. But I wish I'd had the luxury of having a little more money saved when I'd moved here...so I could have bought a house right away. Now that I've amassed close to enough dough for any kind of a down payment...the uncertainty of where I'll be in a year in a half or what I'll be doing makes buying seem silly. I take enough baths already; I don't need to take one on a house down the road.

Just be careful if you ask me to housesit. When you come back, the locks may be changed...indicating I found a house...without having to apply for a mortgage.

Posted 11:49 PM
Where in the world?

Don't forget to check out the adventures of G-Rob's lost knife, updated each Wednesday. :)

Posted 8:45 PM
Note: This blog originally began as a comment on My Evil Twin's blog (see July 9...'Chicken Pot Chicken Pot Chicken Pot Pie'), but it's one of my favorite stories...so I thought I'd share it here.

August 28, 1994:

I turned into Classic 50s on Lindsay Street, a Sonic-type drive-in in Norman, Oklahoma. It was my 2nd day ever as a Southerner. My car seemed as thirsty as I was as it winced into the diagonal space between two carloads of sorority girls. "It's the place for chick-watching", my suitemate Rolando told me. It's also the perfect place to get a cold drink, I thought to myself after scowling at the bank clock thermometer's 100 degree reading.

I looked over the plastic menu. A variety of slurpies...slushies...smoothies. What to get? Blue-Meannie Cremscicle slush, Coconut-Mandarin Madness? Daquiri slush...Is that legal?

I rolled down the window, the searing afternoon heat rushing up and smacking in the face like a angry girlfriend. I pushed the little red button and spoke through the speaker in a flat, decidely Midwestern accent:

"I'll have a large coke".

The crackly voice of a high school girl, pretty sounding despite the low quality, cut a path through the heat right to my ears.

"What kind?"

In a foreign place, at a foreign restaurant, between two foreign carloads of hot sorority chicks in convertibles who could hear my every word, my mind raced. What do you mean what kind? This was well beyond the era of Coke II...and before the dawn of Vanilla Coke. Was there any other kind? What the hell was she talking about?

I tried my best to sound like I knew what I was talking about.

"Uh, regular, please".

I heard giggles. The kind of giggles that come from sorority girls when they're making fun of a guy they think is a total idiot. I stared straight ahead. My thirst was replaced by a pounding in my temples, a slight feeling of nausea, and the thought that maybe I had no earthly business taking my corn-country ass down to tornado alley.

The high school girl crackled through once again. I sensed she had been giggling too.

"Um, regular what?"

This had to be a joke, I thought as my Blazer's heat-stressed engine idled higher as if it sensed the beads of sweat forming on my forehead. But only friends play jokes on you. And with just days of Oklahoma under my belt, friends were still on the to-do list.

I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the hot-chick-mobile to my left. Maybe they didn't think I was an idiot...maybe they found my decidedly Midwestern upbringing cute and charming. I could handle cute and charming. A perfect chance to make conversation by recognizing my own regional dialect deficiencies and playing it up as something that's 'just so sweet', as they say in the South.

I turned instead to the speaker.

'I'll have a Blue-Meanie Creamsicle Slush instead', I told the high school girl. The only question she fired back was 'what size'. Size, I know, is universal.

Rolando would later tell me that I was an idiot for not talking to the chick-cars. He would also tell me that any soft drink in Oklahoma & Texas is called a "Coke". A Sprite is really a Coke. So is a Dr. Pepper. If you want a Coke, order it as a Coca-Cola. It saves time and confusion.

I would later go on an uncountable number of "Coke Dates" (where it was OK to order a Sprite or a slushie if you wanted) with giggling sorority girls much like the ones who flanked me on that August day. I'd also learn the intricacies of 'fixin' to' and my favorite, 'jeet yet?' By the time I left Oklahoma, I could turn the native charm on as much as I could turn the foreign charm on with that same old familiar flat Midwestern accent.

But no matter how hard I tried, the one thing I could never could learn to do was eat a Blue-Meanie Cremescicle slush without the searing Oklahoma heat turning it into mush about halfway through.

Next up in "The Life Of A Nomad"... Chapter 14: I might could mash the button for y'all

Posted 7:15 PM
A June to be reckoned with

I'm not dead. Seriously. You may not have seen much of me recently...both in the blogger world...or the real world...but I continue a somewhat satisfying existence.

If the last 20 days were a room in my house, it'd be the attic. Crammed full of "stuff". Some of it is interesting because it's nostalgic...some is uninteresting because it's repetitive...and some you just wonder, "how the hell did that get there?"

I went home to see good ol' Ma & Pa and the younger brother for a 4 days. For the first time in my life, I took a vacation where I did nothing and was happy to do it. The highlights included 8 hours of sleep each night, going to bed at roughly the same time each night. Waking up, stepping outside, and feeling the damp air of a post-rainy morning breeze over my skin and whisper, "Hey man...it's only going to 62 degrees today...pretty cool, eh?" (Yes, breezes talk on occasion). I read books. Mind you, this might sound like something a 3rd grader would brag about...but I don't read. I hate reading. Yet in 2 days I finished half of a book and read an entirely new one from cover to cover (with chapters and NO pictures!) I felt accomplished. My brother laughed and said it was 'beach reading'. So what? I'd much rather be in Kelly Ripa's book club than The Today Show's.

I got to see Tom & his brothers. We went out for a night of drinking. We laughed till our sides hurt and then paid our tabs and went home to sleep it off. Life should be that simple.

I ate 4 consecutive dinners at home. Real dinners, with spices I can't ever remember and side dishes that sound fancy and taste even better. My dad is the best cook in the world. Sorry, Otis...he's got you beat...only because of experience.

I returned to GreenVegas feeling genuinely relaxed for the first time in months.

Upon return, typical June frivolity ensued...after long work days in increasingly-higher temperatures, we turned the thermostat down with some porch sitting and guitar strumming. I hate the summer days here...they burn a hole through my soul. Night seems to patch those holes, or at least mask them in a cool grip.

Then, the long goodbye. I've grown so frighteningly callous to tossing friendships across state lines, that a hearty handshake and a combination pat on the back hug seems to be sufficient. None of us were happy to see C-fate become a Floridian....so we did our best to give him several round of goodbye dinners peppered with evenings of debauchery. Then, last Wednesday, he and I hopped in his weighed-down Cherokee and headed South. Savannah is a cool town, even though we only stayed for a night...the last Wednesday night I'd get to sit side by side with my Wednesday drinking buddy and have Wednesday beers and mindless Wednesday conversations (we spent almost 30 minutes 2 weeks ago analyzing the camera shots on 'Match Game PM'). Post Savannah, we battled Orlando traffic and meandered down to Tampa to stop and say hello to my favorite aunt and uncle, the neatest most honest simple people you'll ever meet. Then, we headed down to geriatric, steamy Fort Myers...and after a day of helping him house-hunt, headed to the airport. I was callous as usual. It's a poor attempt to mask the fact that I will really miss him. Tee-vee sucks.

Brad-o-ween was the perfect diversion from that. For once in my life, I didn't let the "Cinderella Syndrome" attack at midnight, and I stayed up and out with the best of them and the rest of them until the wee hours of the morning. I wore sunglasses and a silly lei, and reminded myself that it's OK to break the rules every now and again. The next morning, my body reminded myself that it's tough top operate on 3 hours of groggy sleep. The glass slipper is now safely tucked away once again.

The last of the summertime treks begins late this week...the annual trip to Seattle. Since my buddy Chad from high school moved there five years ago to go be a Microsoft guru, I've made it a point to visit once a year. I had never been before. I feel at home in that city. If I had to pick one big place to live, that would definitely be it. It's cool, literally and figuratively. I love the architecture and the fish. The mountains and the coffee. It's a first-class city in second gear. Traffic is bad, but hey, so is Woodruff Road.

If distraction is the way to beat the summer doldrums, I think I've succeded to this point. Whatever it takes to get me through to the Fall. LEAF, anyone?