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Location: Knoxville, Tennessee, United States

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Hide the women and children...

"The clouds didn't look like cotton,
they didn't even look like clouds..."


Hide the women and children...cause I'm back.

An update aka "where the hell have you been you big bastard?!?"

Well, I've been really busy here lately. Lots of stuff came and went, leaving me in the wake.

In phenomenally great news, I have a new job. Not only that I have a thriving freelance career, and a fall back job.

As of January 29th I will be an employee of the biggest newspaper in East Tennessee. I'll be in the art department, on the real estate team. It's not a perfect position, nor is it a dream job. It's a start. Also, it gets me the hell out of the print shop. In an odd cowinky-dink, my assistant is leaving
the print shop on the 26th too.

When mentioning to some customers that I'm leaving Burns, they decided to jump ship along with me. Plus, one of the interviews I went on turned out to just be part-time work. But that part-time work has kept me busy every night so far this week. It looks to be a minimum of 60 billable hours every other month. Which is quite a chunk of change. Factor that in with the freelance stuff coming from Burns, and I am well on my way to working for myself. I also am sending off my info to a printer in Atlanta that may want to use me for even more freelance work. My long-term goal is to save up enough money from this work to cover my bills for a year, then leave wherever I'm at. One of my main goals in life, and has been since I was about 14, was to work for myself. So we'll see how that goes.

The magazine is kicking along. My buddy Pillowpants has become my consigliere. I have to hand it to the boy, when it comes to business he knows his shit. The pre-planning he's made me do has opened my eyes, and made me feel more confident. The biggest hurdle now is the purchasing of a high-end digital camera. It looks like I'm going to have to get a bank loan to afford it, but it's worth it. Even if the magazine fails, the camera is something I was planning on buying in the near future anyways. I have most of my obstacles lined up, now I just need a little bit of free time to mark each one completed. It should be an interesting adventure. My mind keeps bouncing between nervousness, and excitement at the shear thought of what I am about to undertake.

The home improvements are taking back seat right now. I want to focus more on getting some projects in the works completed first [Mr. May's website, Community website, and the first few issues of the magazine]. I was gung ho on the home improvements, but now that I have other things to keep me busy, I'm not as concerned about it.

I'm losing more weight. Though the most recent shedding could be due to the fact that I was sicker than hell. I had a stomach bug flat knocked the shit outta me over the past few weeks. Then I was battling a serious cold. At the same time I had another filling pop out. A few weeks ago were a bad week health wise, but screw it. It got better. All I needed was a little time to heal, and healthy doses of medicine.

Women wise my confidence has been bouncing back and forth. The place Pillowpants and I frequent [it's a restaurant with a bar] is a fucking meat market. I don't really enjoy going there, but do for Pillowpants. [More on him later] Though at some of the other places we frequent, we've met some nice women. I was a chicken shit the other night, and should have gone after this one girl. She and a friend were playing pool at the next table over from Pillowpants and I. Pillowpants and I were cutting up, as usual. The girl asked if we had been friends for long, and I said "yeah about 9 years now." She mentioned something about her and the other girl had been friends for about a year. There was my chance, my opportunity. But I chickened out. I must have left my sack here at the house. What's screwy is less than an hour later I was hitting on and being hit upon by a completely different woman. She's cool, but I think I'm going to step aside and let Pillowpants go for it. Funny fact about the girl that I'm letting Pillowpants go after, she's a huge comic book geek. Her sister and she even go to Wizard World Chicago every year. Pillowpants seems to be unhealthily focusing on the fact that she like comics. But I keep sweeping him past that, telling him to pursue a date with her further. The daffy bastard.

Pillowpants was not doing well. He kept finding out stuff about his ex-wife that drove him deeper down in a black hole. Every time we go out all he does is points to a girl, and says is "damn, she'd never go out with me." I just keep verbally smacking the hell outta him, and tell him that he is good enough for any damn woman. They should be so damn lucky. Sure he makes obscene comments about what he'd do to minors, but it's all a joke. When he and I get together it's like we're trying to top one another to see how low on the depravity meter we can go. I've won a time or two, but Pillowpants is still the king. He was a bit toasty the other night, and mentioned that he was happy that we had remained friends so long. He and my buddy Barakas are probably two of my oldest and dearest friends. I have friends from high school that came and went, but Barakas and Pillowpants have stayed constant throughout the time since our college days. Pillowpants was a little harder to keep tight because he was held back by a tyrannical wife. Now we hang out at least a couple nights a week, and try to hook up on the weekends. Which is nice for the both of us. It's a chance to get the hell out of the house for a bit, and meet some interesting people. Boy have there been some doosies! But Pillowpants now has a woman, so I don't get to roll as much as we were earlier. Which is fine. I'm really glad he's found someone that makes him happy.

My grandmother was in the hospital a for a little bit. She's doing better now that she's moved to the nursing home / rehabilitation center. I know one thing for damn sure, Alzheimer's is an atrocious piece of shit disease. It hurts me to be around her because she's not as sharp as she once was. I don't want to forever remember her that way, but need to see her because I'm not sure how much time she has left.

For anyone that reads my Top Five Fridays, I hope to have them back on track shortly.

Anyone that has gotten this far feel free to pat yourself on the back, and take a shot of some strong whiskey.


Until next time:
"Let’s be honest. There’s not a business anywhere that is without problems. Business is complicated and imperfect. Every business everywhere is staffed with imperfect human beings and exists by providing a product or service to other imperfect human beings." - Bob Parsons

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