The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘California’

Weekly Wacko (16)

Lean, Mean Crying Machine

The past few weeks have been very stressful to me, and I’m about to whine about stuff like I did before (blah blah blah), but I’ll try and keep it interesting (read: I’ll make fun of myself).

Last week (le what?!) I found an apartment. This week I started at my new job. Today my co-captain of the move left. The co-captain was more commonly called: mom, ma, and her favorite, lady (she has proclaimed this website “the greatest space on the internet. period.” Note: my brother and sister do not have websites).

When I moved to California about 2 years ago (Feb 5, 2008), my mom came with me to do much the same as we did this trip. Apartment hunt, furniture shop and drive me to work the first day (this mama’s boy tradition dates back to my first internship).

When she drove me to work the first day in California, she then drove around and did some errands, and finally caught a flight to go home – all before I got home from work. So, as she dropped me off for work (a little ways away from the location so my co-workers wouldn’t see that my mom drove me to work – I’m an ADULT now!) it was our final goodbye. I saw that she was upset, which made me upset. And that, combined with the scariness of my first real job, a new home where I knew pretty much no one (except Anna and Whitney) … made me cry like a little girl.

I don’t deal well with emotions. I’m a boy. I’m an engineer. And at 25 I’m living in my 11th new home. I am one emotionally stunted monkey. When people see me interact with emotions it’s like watching a calf take it’s first few steps – it’s awkward, you want to help but don’t know how, and you crave veal (kidding?).

Anyhow. I decided crying like a baby was a good tradition, so as I left to walk to work today (my hotel is across the street from my work) I cried like a baby. Thankfully I walked to work looking into the sun which made it more socially acceptable. Or maybe I’m just very passionate about my first week of work.

Just a reminder, I’m an adult!

The weird thing for the crying this time was it wasn’t started by SEEING my mom be upset. I think it’s a fair guess she was sad to go, but usually my emotions are reactive – they start up when I see others emotions in action.

I think this is because I am much more stressed about this move – I feel bigger expectations (and my boss confirmed this by saying, not in these words, “this is Brad, and he thinks he’s a hot shot”), and I have an outside work project going on. Let’s just hope I don’t take to crying all the time, because that would be annoying.

But don’t worry for me – there are two bright spots.

At my work there are a lot of acronyms, and an acronym finder. When I was reading through some documents today one of the acronyms I came across was my brother’s name. I found this funny so I ended up looking up acronyms for my and my family’s initials. This is surprisingly entertaining to me, but that is maybe a bad sign.

The real bright spot is this. I work in Texas. And one of my co-workers names is … Peggy Hill! Are you serious!? How great is that?

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De Jour of the Week (2/4/10)

2/4/10
A poem to my new paycheck – Texas’ taxes are lower than California taxes.

Helloooo Beautiful!

Just LOOK at you!
(And I can’t wait to meet your friends, too!)
I’m so happy I don’t even know what to do!

You’re gorgeous, you’re beautiful, you’re wonderful!
You light the fire in my very soul!
With you I realize before something was incomplete … and now it is whole.

What will we do, now that we’re together?
We’ll do something great – it’s not a question of if or whether.
I’ll be flying to Arizona, San Francisco, and wherever!

You make my heart sing
With the promise of video games you’ll bring
And pointless crap that two weeks later I’ll look at and say, ‘what the hell was I thinking?’

Oh yes, you and I, we’ll get along swimmingly
Ideas for things for us to do come to me far too easily
Just wait til summer and then … you’ll … see …

Texas. You tricky ho-bag.
My plan has hit a little snag.
My electricity bill will be WAY more here – in fact – my bill will be exactly as much as my pay increase so it all comes out even … what a misleading roller-coaster drag.

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Du Jour of the Week

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Weekly Wacko (15)

Tee-niniest Bit of Fun

Today (1/21/2010), my Mom and I drove around a Houston suburb to look for an apartment. As part of my move, my work paid for a real estate agent of sorts. She does apartments though. This woman, S, also had another agent working with her, K, who was learning the area.

I can’t write well enough to capture their accents, and I can’t remember word-for-word what was said at any one apartment, but here’s a sampling.

The four of us saw four apartments today – who knew that could take so much time. The first two were cheaper apartments, in every sense of the word. Coming from a studio I was fine with a smaller apartment, but it was clear S did not like the cheaper places. My mom was not thrilled with them either.

At the second apartment complex my mom noticed a sign posted outside some of the doors. It was alerting people about an ‘incident’ that had recently occurred where three residents were robbed at gun point.

My mom told me, ‘this place is out.’

(I’m not in California anymore – a news report is on right now about a nut job who went and shot randomly at the state capital. A state Senator wants better security. But, get this, you’re allowed to carry guns there with the right permit. Not California.)

The third complex S was very excited about – it was more expensive and blah blah nicer, fancier. This is the one I ended up picking. The woman who saw us around there was … unique (of the six places total I’ve seen – five of them had females show us around, one was a guy). She was a sweet lady, but a bit chatty for me.

After my mom, S, K and I left, we had this (not exact, but same idea) talk:

S: Oh, gosh, I’d forgotten how she can go on.
K: I know it! That poor thing!
S: You think she has that ADD? Bless her heart. [Note, ADD is not something you catch like ‘that bug.’]
K: You think so? Bless her heart.
S: Maybe. I just wanted her to shut up.

As my mom said (somewhat tongue-in-cheek), bless her heart is a southern get of guilt free card that allows you to say whatever you want, as long as it’s followed by bless his/her heart. I wonder what the equivalent is when you write a blog poking fun at people? Bless everyone’s heart.

(Ok, not in California again – another news report about the KKK trying to RECRUIT, door-to-door, in a town near where I’ll be living. To be fair, when I moved to California one of the first reports I saw was Code Pink (a super liberal group) trying to get a Marine recruiting office kicked out of California. And they of course had ridiculously stupid quotes from them saying the Marines are this, that and the other.)

We ended up spending more time with the chatty woman because we went back for a second look. When she would tell a rather long story, the go-to response from S and K was, “aw, that’s so sweeeet.” Example: a young resident played chess with an older resident when most of the place had been evacuated for Ike. When the apartment held a get together the young resident sought out the old resident to say hello. This story took about 5 minutes though. But you know what, ya’ll, that’s so sweeeeet.

Another funny thing with the chatty woman was a clever move on K’s part. I asked about submitting a maintenance request, and the process for that. The chatty woman said you can come see me. A little bit later the chatty woman came up to me and said that K asked a great question – I can also submit a maintenance request ONLINE (i.e. not in person)! I looked to K and she and I smirked.

And possibly the best story with the chatty woman. Before we began a tour at any apartment we had to give our drivers’ licenses. When the chatty woman gave them back, she looked at each one and declared to the room that she was the oldest one there. And then, a true southerner, she called my mom her first and middle names.

The five of us were at one large apartment complex, so we of course couldn’t walk. The method of transportation of choice: golf carts. With five people this can be tough. At one location we left K behind, but at this location we decided to all pile in. S told me to take shotgun since I’d need to look around.

S: K, you sit in the back with us in the middle, since you’re the tee-niniest one.

At this location we were shown around by a very nice woman who apparently found out the ‘cool slang’ fifteen years ago and then decided to stick with her guns on those words.

“Ya’ll this faux-pond is the bomb.”

“I saw a possum and it made me all wiggy.”

Overall an amusing but tiring day. My work is 0.8 miles from my home, and not on the first floor (bugs and flooding). And I’m pretty close to where I saw a wild hog yesterday. Sweet! [Update, today 1/26 this bomb-diggity woman called me and had my name all wrong. My first, middle and last names could all be first or last names … she chose to call me my middle name, first name. Interesting.]

My mom told S and K that I might write about them on my blog – if either of you was dedicated/bored enough to check this out, thank you for a fun, amusing and helpful day!

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