http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=2233665&cat=5330&type=5&dept=4171&path=0%3A4171%3A4191%3A4192%3A5330
…an acute sense of fashion…
I’ve never really been hip when it comes to fashion anyways, but it’s always irritated me when the industry takes perfectly functional clothing and converts it into something mainstream and trendy that will sell out in all the major markets, even at $79 a piece. Mechanic’s shirts with name and logo patches on the chest are for mechanics, just as painter’s pants were invented for those who spend thirteen hours a day painting houses and trucker’s hats for those who actually drive trucks for a living. I’m sure that, just like in the movies and on television and everywhere else today, it’s so much easier to recycle old ideas instead of coming up with new and different ones, but I think it’s an insult to blue collar workers around the world when rich kids are running around in freshly-pressed farmer’s overalls that will never see a single bale of hay or **shudder** manure. For the amount of money that Old Navy and Abercrombie & Fitch and The Gap are cranking in from these promotions, you’d think that they could create something original – quit mocking everyone else and make something new for a change…
A Different Point of View…
(photo courtesy of The City of Tampa)
Other than the beautiful skylines and non-frozen weather, not much for updates here. I’m afraid to admit it, but I am taking an odd liking to Judging Amy, however, possibly just because the UPN plays the show like thirty or forty times a day. Of course, I think they’re all reruns, so as far as I know, Amy could be a seventy-year-old retiree from the courts in the current season, but she’s still quite the looker now and that’s pretty much enough to hold my attention…
My “severance check” from my old job should post to my account tomorrow morning, so here’s to hoping that Jasmine and April from down the street don’t take Thursdays off! 😉
Frightening…
I came across this page on the Michigan DNR site while I was researching a column for next week’s paper – am I the only one who is a bit concerned about sending a blind man out into the woods with a gun?!
Laser-Sighted Devices for the Visually Impaired
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-10363_10913-31956–,00.html
More musings from the south…
It’s kind of a bummer that I can’t really get any work done for Just Laugh right now because not only is my main computer buried in the trunk of my car, but the monitor is still sitting up in Michigan. I also learned the hard way that my trunk wasn’t exactly packed very well as I attempted to retrieve my printer and ended up spilling a few dozen DVDs across the parking lot. I still haven’t gotten the printer, but at least I’ll know what I’m up against when I try again later…
In other news, my shoulders and neck have been aching for the past few days, which I was originally attributing to the long drive down here, but I’m coming to realize that this stiff as a board “bed” is actually the culprit. It tends to come and go, finally leaving just in time for me to go to sleep and usher the pain back into my world once again, to the point where I might actually consider sleeping on the floor tonight! Nonetheless, I’m going to meet with the leasing office of the #1 apartment complex on my list tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll be out of this place in a week anyways – if not, I might need to pick up another bottle of aspirin…
More Random Noticings About the Tampa Bay Area (and Florida in General…):
- The heat (at least right now) isn’t really so bad, as long as you don’t have your A/C on full blast all the time. I’ve found that just rolling the window down in the car is good enough and I actually woke up too cold this morning because I left the A/C on…
- There are several stadiums of all varieties in the area, but the one that really had me scratching my head was the New York Yankee’s Legends Field. You see, this confused me because the New York Yankees are from New York, yet this is anything but New York. Further research explained that Legends Field actually has the same dimensions as Yankee Stadiumin New York, primarily because this is where their spring training takes place. Apparently they can’t stand the cold, either – who’d’ve thought?!
- Silver, 4-cylinder cars, such as the Honda Civic, are very popular down here, just as was The Fast and the Furiousapparently. When are the children of today going to learn that four-bangers just aren’t muscle cars, no matter how big of a muffler you throw on them. It’s kind of like tricking out a Neon – it sounds horrible and frankly, just looks silly.
- There are presumably a lot of old people down here. I say presumably because although I’ve yet to encounter any of them in large groups, there’s a minimum of six to eighthandicapped spaces in front of every Wal-Mart, Publix, and Kash-n-Karry here. I had to pick-up some items at a Wal-Mart Supercenter the other day and not only did I end up parking in a secondary lot like a half a mile from the store, but I passed no less than a dozen handicapped spaces in a row on my way in – they were all full.
- Nobody really gives a damn what the speed limit is…the signs are still there, but pretty much for asthetic qualities only. Nonetheless, everyone’s still quite polite about the whole situation – if they want to pass you, they merely ride your ass until you pull into one of the farther right lanes instead of going around you and flipping you off in the process.
- I’m hearing that there’s a flood warning out right now, although I’ve yet to bear witness to more than fifteen minutes of rain in the last four days. Perhaps it’s veryhard rain???And lastly…
- Young or old, it seems that all of us enjoy mocking those who make announcements over the PA systems of supermarkets and superstores, but seriously, when we’re all interrupted with the message that “The time is now 9:00 PM and the customer service desk is now closed…”, who can resist?
NetZero sucks, maybe?
Well, it’s doing a little better than it was before, but dial-up just isn’t good enough for me. And just as Charter had upped our bandwidth to 2 mbps – figures!
Anywho, I’ve got 77 unread messages – unless you either pay me for my services or live within an hour of where I am right now, don’t expect a response for a few days. Yeah, I’m a jerk like that.
1438 miles later…
I made it, and wow – what a difference! It was raining and dreary when I left yesterday, maybe fifty degrees if you could find a bit of direct sunlight, but it’s something like seventy right now…at nearly midnight…I think I can get used to this!
About the Packing:
It didn’t take me long at all to realize that rental trucks, even at $1,500 per trip, aren’t nearly the ripoff that I had originally thought! I did cram an awful lot of stuff into my car (and I’m really surprised that my shocks made it the entire trip!), but taking everything out of the nice and neat boxes that they were in and shuffling to make more room was just a mistake. Plus, carrying it all up a flight of stairs in about four dozen trips wasn’t exactly a blast, either…
About the Driving:
The traffic wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be – traveling mid-week probably helped a bit. I did run into a bit of congestion around Cincinnati and again in Atlanta, but everything else was pretty smooth sailing. Of course, it’ll probably take my neck a few days to heal up from the excessive car time – 12 hrs. one day and 9 hrs. the next certainly didn’t help matters any, but now I’ll know to keep the aspirin a little more handy in the future!
My Fish Now Hate Me…:
Four of them died already – maybe within an hour of placing them in the hotel’s water, which kinda sucks! I’m sure the stress of living in a plastic bag for two days certainly didn’t help, either, so if the others survive, I’ll be quite surprised. Nonetheless, I can replace the whole lot and then some for thirty bucks at PetSmart and I’ll probably be over the loss by then, so oh well.
About the Shitty Hotel Room I Stayed in Last Night:
For less than thirty bucks, I know that I shouldn’t really expect much, but clocks, maybe?! Apparently the place has a huge problem with theft and ends up replacing about 2/3 of them every year as it is, but it’s tough to keep a schedule (or even checkout on time) when you don’t know what time it is. Their water also had a really odd tint to it and took a few minutes to stop running after I turned it off – needless to say, I won’t be staying there again any time soon!
And While We’re on the Subject, What’s with that Stench in Tennessee, Anyways?!:
I mean, seriously, I thought it was my fish there for a while, but when I rolled down the window, it was even worse! Are there a lot of factories or something that can’t be seen from the freeway? I really don’t see how anyone could stand it for any longer than it takes to get through the state…
So my initial reaction for this new and exciting venture? Very stoked – surprisingly ready to start the job search on Monday! I’d really like to see everything go perfectly and be moving back out of the hotel and into a new place by the end of the week, but that pretty much relies on getting hired either Monday or Tuesday…it could happen, though. Cross-a da fingers!
And to close out the evening:
Top Things I Like About the Area so Far…
- Mickey Mouse is within an hour’s drive now! Granted, I can’t afford to go visit him at the moment, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
- The city actually has a skyline– another new one to me. Gaylord’s skyline pretty much consists of a gigantic Glockenspiel atop the local grocery store, but I like this one better!
- It’s warm at night, yet still comfortable. I’m still wearing what I’d normally be wearing up north, except that I’m not freezing! ‘Nuff said.
- Strip clubs – you just gotta love ’em! I passed like a half a dozen of ’em on the street to my hotel alone. Any idea how many strip clubs Gaylord has??? None.
- Boulevarded Streets! I’m a guy, I don’t like asking for directions, and I tend to get lost a lot, so being able to turn around in the middle of the road is a big convenience for me…
- They seem to actually have traffic under control for a change. Even though I haven’t seen the busy hour yet, the infrastructure seems to be designed well for the size of the area. Of course, my hometown feared growth with a passion, keeping the roads smaller in hopes of keeping the numbers down, sometimes it felt like! Even with 200x the amount of people, it feels safer driving here!
- And they have an all 80’s radio station – how cool is that?! Back up north, it was one of the station’s gigs to play The Retro Zoneduring the lunch hour, but this is obviously so much better!That’s all I’ve got tonight – sleepy-time now because there’ll be a whole lotta cruisin’ going on tomorrow…
Enough with the ringing!!!
Also, I’ve had the constant ringing of my cell phone bouncing around the inside of my skull for the past three days and it’s really starting to get to me. Mind you, my cell phone is both turned off and in the other room at the time, but the ringing just keeps chirping over and over and over again…
This has actually happened to me once before a couple of years ago, to the point where I ended up leaving the ringer off completely until I could find a new tone that didn’t drive me insane. I think it has something to do with stress and the lack of phone calls that I actually do get on my cell – all of a sudden I’ll get a dozen calls in a short period and the ring works its way into my brain, after which I’m pretty well mush until I find something better.
Cell phones are evil.
Spitwads are not free speech…
Whew! What a weekend…
Ever have so much freakin’ stuff to do that it seems like you just can’t get a single lick of it done? Well that’s exactly how I’ve been feeling lately and I’m guessing it’s not going to subside until sometime Friday evening. I attempted to start packing up some more stuff last night, but I’ve just always been the kind of person to do everything at the last minute and I’m always afraid that I’ll put away something that I’ll end up needing fifteen minutes later. I did fill a couple boxes with some framed photos and my meek collection of pub glasses, but I can already tell that the most of it is going to have to wait until Wednesday when I can see first hand what kind of car space I’m actually dealing with here. Besides, with all of the big stuff that I’m taking down with me anyways, I’ve got a feeling that there will be quite a bit of shuffling throughout the loading process regardless, so I’m just better off doing other things right now!
I took Lori and Jordan down to Grand Rapids Saturday for their concert – boy was it loud! I didn’t get as much stuff done as I had been hoping to during the three-hour wait, but looking back at the surrounding environment, I guess I actually did pretty good. It was nice and quiet for about an hour or so, but then the evening crowd shuffled in (not unlike the Billy Joel song) and things just got out of hand. Kids were wrestling each other and dueling with the pool cues – it’s amazing what college can do for your level of maturity! Oh well, that’s exactly why I don’t hang out at those kinds of places anyways, but Lori and Jordan had a good time and that’s what I was going for…
Random Notes as Moving Day Approaches:
- Upon cleaning out my liquor cabinet, I’ve discovered that either I don’t drink nearly as much as I should or that I had truly horrible tastes in alcohol several years ago. I also found an extremely old bottle of Popov vodka standing next to a much more recent fifth of Skyy and wondered how in the hell we tolerated that cheap shit back in high school.
- I’m afraid that the death of my fish is inevitable. Although I have a fairly logical plan to transport them with me, I’ve been known to lose fish on the way home from the store, so 1500 miles might, in fact, be pushing my luck.
- The Simpsons 3rd season is currently at #2 on my list of best DVDs ever, second only to Sports Night. Did you know that in the season premiere, “Stark Raving Dad,” Michael Jackson actually sought out the cameo appearance himself, then later threw down the rules that they couldn’t actually feature him animated as himself or even list his name in the credits? Nonetheless, Michael is a huge fan and later decided to help Bart earn a #1 single – for double bonus points, what was the song???It’s raining like crazy here right now, but in two days none of that’s going to matter anymore… 😉
ouch!
And man, what I wouldn’t give for a woman that could give a decent neck massage right now!
Hell, I’d even settle for a mediocre one! It’s gonna be a long night…