Category: Stuff

Garbage Smell Gets A Laugh

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

As you might have guessed, I saw The Smurfs with Lil’B this weekend.  I love having a “little brother” because it gives me an excuse to go see all the kids movies I want to see anyway, but my friends won’t go to with me, without looking like a pervert or predator.  I told Lil’B not to grow up… And then immediately kicked myself because my mother used to say things like that to me all the time and I HATED IT.  (Actually, what I told him was never to get older than 12 because then his ticket price goes up.)

The last time I saw Lil’B we talked about what we would do this time around and I mentioned the movies.  There are a lot of movies out that look good and that I want to see, but I don’t get to the movies that often.  Lil’B has wanted to see Transformers 3, which I saw several weeks ago with Michelle.  It was good and I don’t think it would be a problem for him to see it, but there are a few whole sections in the movie (as with so many these days) where they play pretty fast and loose with incidental human life.  Many, many innocent bystanders would have been hurt or killed if there was an ounce of reality to the scenes on the screen.

Anyway, he had mentioned that he still wanted to see it and I suggested that we could go on our next outing (this past Sunday) if it was still out.  He seemed happy with that.  So when I picked him up on Sunday I told him, “You have three choices.  We can go see Transformers, The Smurfs or Captain America.”  (I was hoping he’d pick Captain America but I’d be happy to see any of the three movies.)  Before I even finished saying “Captain America” he was saying “The Smurfs!”  He was very excited.

Yay!  You really are still a kid! I thought.  Which, of course he is.  He’s only 9, but I’m aware that we’ll be coming up on a time, very soon, when he will be in that awkward, in between stage, where he’s still a kid, but kind of not.  I am, in equal parts, looking forward to and dreading that time.

He watched the movie in his usual position (with his head buried in his Icee cup), but no longer with the seat trying to swallow him alive – when did that stop?- and while he was busy slurping away on his Icee, I was thoroughly engrossed in the movie, laughing at all the lame and corny jokes…  Well, almost all of them.  When Tim Gunn, playing Henri, a character whose purpose I still don’t understand said to Neil Patrick Harris’s character, “Make it work”, I groaned.  And when Smurfette, voiced by Katie Perry, suggested a marketing slogan to NPH, “I kissed a smurf and I liked it?”, my palm may, possibly, have met my forehead.  What was kind of fun, for me, was that the mom two seats down from me, seeing the movie with three kids lil’er than Lil’B, and I kept laughing at all the same places.  This movie is full of grown up jokes, which is a sign of a well thought out movie.  Unfortunately, it also tends to prompt lil voices to ask, “What happened mommy?  Mommy, what happened?  Mommy?  Mommy?”

Off. Track.

As I was saying, while Lil’B was buried ears deep in his Icee, I was laughing at all the jokes and puns and visual comedy and so it was all the more gratifying to me, when in the scene when Gargamel, or as Sofia Vergara’s character calls him, “Garbage Smell”, get’s his due, Lil’B actually laughed out loud!

There’s hope for this kid after all!

If I Were A Smurf

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

If I were a smurf
Even smurf for a smurf
I’d smurf outta smurf in the smurf
And smurf on what I smurfed then smurf
Smurf smurf with the smurfs
And smurf after smurfs
I’d smurf it with who I smurfed
And I’d never get smurfed for it.
Cause they’d smurf up for me.


If I were a smurf
I smurf I could undersmurf
How it smurfs to smurf a smurf
I smurf I’d be a better smurf.
I’d smurf to smurf
Cause I smurf how it smurfs
When you smurf the one you smurfed
Cause he’s smurfen you for smurfed
And everysmurf you smurfed got desmurfed

If I were a smurf
I would smurf off my smurf
Tell everysmurf it’s smurfen
So they’d smurf that I was smurfin’ alone
I’d smurf myself smurf
And smurf the smurfs as I smurf
Cause I smurf that smurf’d be smurfful
Smurfin’ for me to smurf smurf (Oh, to smurf smurf)

If I were a smurf
I smurf I would undersmurf
How it smurfs to smurf a smurf
I smurf I’d smurf a smurfer smurf.
I’d smurf to smurf
Cause I smurf how it smurfs
When you smurf the smurf you smurfed (smurfed)
Cause smurf’s smurfen smurf for smurfed (smurfed)
And everysmurf you smurfed got desmurfed

It’s a little too smurf for smurf to smurf back
Smurf its just a mismurf
Smurf I’d smurf you like smurf
If you smurfed I would smurf for you
You smurfed wrong

But you’re just a smurf
You smurf undersmurf
Smurf you don’t undersmurf
Smurf it smurfs to smurf a smurf somesmurf
You’ll smurf you were a better smurf
You don’t smurfen to smurf
You don’t smurf how it smurfs
Until you smurf the smurf you smurfed
Smurf you’ve smurfen smurf for smurfed
And everysmurf you  smurfed got desmurfed
But smurf just a smurf

~~~~~

Guess what I did this weekend?

Newsflash

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this special announcement:

 

I bit the bullet and paid for my own domain the other day.  The only change that has come is that now, instead of being https://riggledo.wordpress.com it’s just http://riggledo.com.  If you proactively navigate to https://riggledo.wordpress.com it will automatically convert to http://riggledo.com, however if you’re one of the people who subscribes to my blog via Google Reader (or something like it), you will need to update your information to get my posts to come through.

I found that out the hard way, because I’m a narcissist who subscribes to his own blog.  Love me anyway.

Anyway, this will be the last post to come from the .wordpress account.  From here on out everything will come from riggledo.com so if you want to keep reading, please update your subscriptions!

 

We now return you to your regular prog- blog reading.  Good night.

Nobody Thinks This Is Funny But Me

~ riggledo ~ 3 Comments

One of my favorite blogs to read when I need a good laugh, The Bloggess has a tag on her blog “Nobody thinks this is funny but me”.  It’s almost never true, of course, but I think today, that’s probably going to be a perfect tag for this post.  I forgive you.

~~~~~

I was working on my menu for next week.  You know, the one that comes up on my nifty little website that has weekly meal plans and exercise plans?  You know, the one that I’ve done a pitiful job of following for months now?  You know, the one that I could actually do a pretty decent job of controlling my weight and getting into shape if I’d just follow it?  You know the one for which I’ve been paying for over a year, even though I only half-@$$ed follow it…  Yeah, that one.

I was working on next weeks menu, and I came across a menu item, for breakfast that I did not want.  One of the things I like about this website is that it provides the menu, but then you can substitute anything they suggest that you don’t like for something that you do.  You gotta know, every time they suggest “brussels sprouts” I hit that swap button faster than you can say, “ew gross.”

I confess that I usually change the breakfasts they suggest because I don’t have a lot of time, or gumption, in the mornings to prepare the smoothies they recommend (not to mention I only own two blenders and that’s a lot of dish washing if I follow their suggestions.)  I usually change breakfast…

These were the suggested alternatives… FOR BREAKFAST!! :

Now you know why I like this program!

Baby Steps

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

I keep clicking on the Firefox tab with WordPress on it thinking, I should post something here and then I click on the Microsoft Skydrive tab thinking, I really want to work on my book.  And then I click on the facebook tab to see if I can fish yet.  And I just keep bouncing around between the three tabs trying to figure out what to do now, while effectively doing nothing at all…

I’ve done a little bit of work this morning, which is, of course, what I should be doing.  But I either don’t have a lot to do right now, or I’ve forgotten something terribly important…  Honestly?  Either one is possible.

I’m not sure why I’m not more enthusiastically following through…  Well, maybe it’s more accurate to say that my enthusiasm for the two writing options is equal and one seems to cancel out the other.  But the truth is, I’m also aware that I set out to write something very different the other day when I was here, and I’m… not really embarrassed, just reluctant, I guess, to make another stab and having something like that be the end result again.

Finally, though, I just decided that I needed to get this out of my system and then I can go back to the book and so here I am.  You’re welcome!

There have been a few, relatively small, but relevant and significant developments recently that seemed worth sharing.

After the Spring EMT class ended, I had some idea of the path I wanted to follow.  My end goal in this Emergency Medicine business would be to work part-time as a Paramedic (with a good salary) and part-time in some sort of Community Outreach/Education role.  (OK, if I’m being completely honest my ideal scenario would be to do something along those lines with a Fire Department, where I could make a Fire Department salary and work Fire Department hours, without having to be a Fire Fighter.)  I mentioned all this to Mr. Williams on the way out of the building on the last night of class and he told me they have positions like that in the San Francisco Fire Department and when I was ready he could put in a word for me.  Great!  So now I just have to get ready…

But in order to be ready, of course, I need to go to Paramedic school.  One of the prerequisites for paramedic school is between five hundred and a thousand hours of practical experience in Emergency Medicine.  But how could I get those hours and still support myself?

A few days later I had a conversation with my boss about the possibility of me working part-time in my current role, fully expecting him to be negative about it.  Much to my surprise he immediately, and without hesitation said, “sure.”  Of course, almost immediately he started to backtrack.  He wasn’t so sure it would work in my current position, but he was happy to help me find a place within the organization where it would work.  He promised to make some calls.

Some time passed and nothing really happened.  He told me periodically that he was trying to touch bases with a specific someone in a specific department that he thought I might fit into with my skills but of course the specific someone was never around when he went to see her.  They played a lot of phone tag and missed e-mails and finally, just as I felt nothing was ever going to come of it he copied me on an e-mail with the woman and her assistant, with a suggestion that she and I should talk directly.  I was of course open to that and she wanted to set up an informational interview… in five weeks.  Beggars can’t be choosers.

A few weeks ago, John asked me if I had met with this woman yet.  I told him I had not but that I had an appointment scheduled with her.  He suddenly had the “brainstorm” that I might be a good fit in the department in charge of disaster recovery and business continuity and he promised to contact the person in charge of that group.  I don’t think that ever happened.

I had sort of given up the hope that things would work out for me to work part-time for my current employer when the time finally rolled around for my informational interview.  As expected, the person I met with didn’t really have much to offer in terms of possible positions within the company under her direction.  She agreed that disaster recovery/business continuity might be a good fit for me and lo and behold, she works with those people.

While the informational interview itself, didn’t garner much result, I came away with some good advice about my resume, and her promise to send a note to a gentleman in Southern California who oversees disaster recovery/business continuity for the entire state for the company as well as reaching out to some of her counterparts in the medical centers to find out if they have anything that would fit the bill.

Later that day, I was CC’d on a couple of e-mails between the two and as it turns out the SoCal man will be here in Oakland next Monday for meetings and agreed to meet me for lunch to discuss my situation.  Later still, that day, I had a meeting with John (my individual Monthly Meeting which happens about once a quarter, whether I need it or not).  He informed me that he had discussed the idea of reducing my hours with his boss and his boss was open to the idea.  Suddenly I find myself with a realistic option to work for my current employer reduced hours (part-time) and work part-time as an EMT, if I can find a job.  I would keep my hourly wage, though I’d no longer be salary.  I’d keep my benefits with only a slight increase in the cost of the premiums and with the addition of the pay I’d earn as an EMT I’d only be making slightly less money than I do now.

Now I just need to find a Part-Time EMT job.

In November, the contract for Emergency Medical Services in my county changes hands.  At the end of May, I submitted my application to the new company, on-line, just for the hell of it.  I really didn’t expect anything to come of it.  There are about to be a lot of much more qualified, experienced people looking for jobs in this field and I’m just fresh out of school.  I took all the preliminary steps and e-mailed the recruiter to make sure he was aware of my interest and background…  I may have mentioned I was the top of my class…  maybe.  The recruiter did acknowledge my e-mail and then I didn’t hear anything else.  I can’t say I was surprised.

The same day as my informational interview and my discussion with John about me working part-time, I got an e-mail from the new Emergency Medical Services provider.  It was a questionnaire they called “the next step in our hiring process” designed to get a feel for my personality and whether I’m really built for this type of job.  One of those “there are no right or wrong answers” kind of questionnaires, but with questions like, “are you better able to identify dangerous or risky situations, than others.”  I think I have the right temperament for the job.

The process is slow.  They take over in November and I know they’ve already hired the first round of people; the people who have to ready to work on day one.  But it is my understanding that they are also hiring a second wave of people and that they did reserve a block of jobs specifically for people who live in town and who are new graduates.  It may take a while still but it’s not at all beyond the realm of possibility that I will get hired with this company.

I’m not, by any means putting all my eggs in one basket either.  There are other companies that I have applied to and still more that I should/will but things are looking up.

~~~~~

In other news, it turns out that I know somebody who knows somebody who might know somebody.  My friend Karin had a brainstorm the other day that might turn into something good.  She has a friend who has lots of connections in lots of different industries and places and as it turns out Karin’s friend knows someone who “has connections in the publishing industry”.  Karin sent the first two chapters of my book to this friend who will read and comment on them and send information about publishing.  Certainly, this is a far cry from the success that I fear, but it’s a step in the right direction and a lot further than I was yesterday.

Now I just need to hurry up and finish the book.