Saturday, December 19, 2009

Tribute to the greatest blog ever written

So for those of you who don't know, I am sort of a newb sometimes when it comes to the intarweb. This morning, I wrote the greatest blog ever written. It had a roller coaster of emotions. It had perspective. I learned how to make Hyperlinks and was trying to insert them helpfully into this heartfelt blog about how I miss my band and I wish I wasn't in Nashville, but it was worded as if not to say that I wish I wasn't here, but more of that I wish I didn't have to move so I could still rock out with my band, because I miss it, and I kinda want to see the band die, out of jealousy...and when I went to post it, there was some HTML error and so I hit "backspace" and the whole thing disappeared...so fucking pissed. But trust me, if you had gotten to read this blog, you woulda probably shit your self with joy/sadness/boredom/amazement. I honestly spent hours crafting that blog, learning how to properly include this bull shit and that when you clicked on it they actually worked...I spilt my emotions out...and the Internet wiped them away because it doesn't like a messy house. I promise if you guys read that blog, you would have weeped. Now, you'll never know. COULDN'T REMEMBER THE GREATEST BLOG IN THE WORLD...THIS IS JUST A TRIBUTE.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

So Christmas is nearly here and this is going to be a weird one for me. For the majority of my life, I had gone to some predetermined location to meet with family(s) on Christmas, and Christmas eve. After my grandma died in 2005, no one seemed to want to continue doing that, so there are uncles and aunts and cousins that I have not seen since Christmas 2004. The only reason this is not too big of a problem is that I really have a hard time remembering their names anyway, let alone "what child is this?" Uncles, Aunts, those are not so much a problem, but when we get into the extended family, it gets fuzzy. My mother is one of 7 children, and I know all of her siblings. My dad only had one sister, who had one child, so that side easy to remember. But my moms side is all over the place. I was number 21 of 22 grandchildren, which makes it even harder to know who my cousins are, because the oldest one is something like 25 years older than me. I know her, though, that's Brenda. But after that, I have no idea. I had my mom break it down for me a couple times and I forgot already. So with that being said, I miss my family, but not my extended family, because I don't know who/what I'm missing.

Anyway, as I have extensively documented before, I have moved a thousand miles south to Nashville Tennessee this year, and this will be my first without ANYONE I know. Further complicating the mater is that fact that my wife is heading back north for the holidays. My mom is coming here, but her and Dean will be traveling on Christmas day, thus leaving me completely alone on Christmas. All this may sound over-dramatic, but truth be told, I'm excited to have a week of alone time. I get to just hang out, watch TV, stay up late, play video games, eat whatever....things like that. It's the Christmas spirit of togetherness that I will miss, as it has been on a downward slope in the past 5 years. Things change and I am well known to fear that change, then embrace the result, as it is usually out of my hands, and I am forced to play with the hand that is dealt. And that usually works out just fine. So my first Christmas as a married man will be one that is spent alone. And as you can tell by my tone, I have mixed emotions about it. Keep your phones on, readers...

-brad p in Nashville

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Saturday Morning Fury

Sometimes this job makes me angry. I think sometimes it's myself I'm angry at. Sometimes, I let things happen here that shouldn't happen here, because I have no spine. I can't stand up to an employee that wants to break the rules, especially if they try to argue with me about it. For instance, just as I was finishing the previous hockey blog, an employee walked in and came to the security desk. She told me that her son was outside and was going to come in and be with her in the mail room. This is a problem because people really aren't supposed to have visitors here for an extended period of time. (Now that I think of it, this really isn't a problem because the kid is gonna be with the mama when he's here (presumably) and there for, this is legal.) But when she says "my son is here, can you let him in?" and I say "no, he's not allowed in here." And she says "Why not? He was allowed last time!" So I look at her with anger, as if to say with my facial expression that I'm not impressed with her and I open the side door to let the kid in. What the fuck people. Some of the employees here just have no clue what the rules are. No idea. And I know they should know, because they have been told before. But what we all must remember, at all times is that people are stupid, in general. Basically, what it all boils down to is that I have a hard time honestly caring about my job. I have a grand idea about doing the right thing, following the rules, and being the best officer on this site. But really, I find it hard to be motivated to do the right thing here. It's freezing over here, I get paid for shit, and it's full or morons. It's exactly what I was looking for, as far as distance from my home, level of physical work to be done and level or "responsibility," but does this job make me happy? Nope...I don't think any job will ever make me happy. To have a job that makes me happy, I would have to take a leap, and I'm just not motivated enough to change my current situation, and I doubt I ever will be.

***section removed to protect the names of the Innocent.***

I'm a little pissed off this morning. Just so you know.

###update###

So as I was finishing the blog, reading it over and spell-checking it, someone came to the door that forgot their badge, which happens all the time. When they forget their badge, I let them in and sign them out a temp one. When she said she forgot hers, I just said over the phone, "alright..." like in a low voice like I was not happy about it, which is about what I usually do when that happens. Well when she came around to the desk to get the temp, she says to me "You did'nt have to say it like that." And that just made me feel like a total jackass. I apologized, but I know I was not a very nice person to her. Fuck today, can I go back to bed please?

My Hockey experience (now) in Music City

I find it funny that once I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, I am MORE obsessed with hockey than I was in Michigan. How can this be? Michigan has a tradition of hockey, with the RedWings and that one hockey team that was in Houghton ages ago, that they still talk about. I move to the south, where collage football dullards run amok, and can't seem to separate myself from NHL.com, hockey blogs, and video game demos. The last part is a bit of an embellishment, as I have only played my demo version of NHL 10 on my PS3 about 5 times in the last month, so I would hardly call that obsessed. (you only get to play one period as either the Penguins or the DeadWings, so, yeah boring.) But I think it's the fact that I can finally latch on legitimately to an NHL team, due to the fact that they inexplicably have one here. I get to root for the predators, which is fine because of the fact that since their inception, they have been relatively successful. They have made the playoffs a bunch of times in their short existence. I never latched on to the Redwings when I lived in Michigan. The only explanation I can give is that, as a youngster, I knew nothing about hockey, but my best friend Pard played it. He told me that the Redwings suck and the Blackhawks were the best. So, I went along and for the rest of my life, I have told everyone that the Redwings suck. That's about it. The Redwings suck because...I said so? Yeah, that sounds right....

So as a life-long Redwings hater, it was easy to follow their rivals in the 90's and early 2000's, the Colorado Avalanche. Since everyone who liked the Wings hated the Avs, I naturally aligned myself with the enemy. This could have been any team Wings fans hated, but it happened to work out this way. When it became apparent that I would be moving to Nashville, I was aware of the fact that they had an NHL team here, and decided that I would look into changing allegiance. This was not that hard to do, as I don't think I saw a single Avalanche game (or highlight for that matter) last season. So I guess I'm a Predators fan now, and I love it. I love hockey, and now I have a team I can actually watch, and be surrounded by the fans, and not feel like I'm just rooting for a certain team just to piss someone else off. I live here, and I root for the home team. The Titans still suck though.

Consider this next part to be a completely different blog...maybe I should just make a different one so readers don't get discouraged by it's length? Part 2 coming next!