Happy Birthday, Joseph!

Already one year old today...wow.

Random notes

* Anyone catch that Obamoid college student at the town hall meeting yesterday? He's been working in a McDonalds for the last four years and can't find a new job--so he says. He also asked if Obama was going to increase his benefits. They haven't changed in four years, so...

Oh yeah, and he's majoring in communications...

* Got my permanent (as opposed to my temporary) concealed carry permit today. The second news item I heard this morning was that Virginia gun dealers have a shortage of ammo.

Sigh...

* On the first news item I saw this morning, "Morning Joe," Sen. Boxer was blabbering about how the stimulus package will work and the Republicans are big meanies for threatening a filibuster. She said something like "And you, Joe, and the 'C...B...O...'," (she emphasized it with air quotes) "say it won't work..."

Joe Scarborough's look was priceless. I'm sure he was sorting through the things he could say on live TV, but he finally settled with "That's the Congressional Budget Office, Sen. Boxer," he said. I literally LOL'd. My own little Joe, who I was feeding graham crackers at the time, laughed along with me.

* Just got a call from Grace. She was working out in the living room with her exercise ball and a couple of 7lb barbells. She got up to get a drink of water or something, and when she came back one of the barbells was gone. She looked all over thinking Joe had rolled it under a couch or something.

It was nowhere, so she expanded the search to the bedroom, thinking he must have rolled it really far away. He did more than that, though--it was up on top of the hutch in the bedroom.

This is amazing, because that thing is almost half of his weight. He hefted that thing a good thirty feet away and lifted it to about his chest level. WHY he did it is anyone's guess, but here's my theory: I had to pry him off of me when I left this morning. As soon as he saw me getting my stuff together, he gave me the sad "bye-bye" wave. But when I actually picked up my laptop bag to leave, he velcroed himself to my leg. It took three tries and one book distraction to escape, but I joked on the way out "We'll put you to work in the company business soon enough, little man."

Joe, my little goal-oriented toddler, is already working out to meet the minimum company standards...

Good times...

God protect little Joseph

Because if the anxiety I feel leaving him with the babysitter is even 1/1000th of what tragedy would feel like, I wouldn't survive.

Yes, I think these things all the time now.

A midnight message to my wife

Thank you, honey, as you take another night shift to help our little enterprise stay afloat. Granted, we could have thought this through a little better, but I sincerely appreciate your work and sacrifice. Just know that tonight, when little Joseph stirs and begs to come to our bed, as he's kicking me in the face, I'm loving you.

Yours,
C.

Dispatch from the Fortress of Solitude

Is anyone there? Please, anyone? I need help. I've holed myself up in the bathroom while the Beast sleeps. My wife is sleeping because she took a job doing the midnight shift at the front desk of our apartment building. She does this on the weekends--Saturday and Sunday morning--and has to catch up on sleep for the rest of the day. That leaves me on babysitting duties the whole day, and I have work to do.

Please, somebody help me. He'll wake at any moment. Any sound could set him off. A dog has been barking in a nearby apartment since eight o'clock. Someone is playing hip-hop music. My situation is PRECARIOUS! I have dozens of e-mails to catch up on. I'm starving. I haven't showered. And this is the first time in 48 hours that I've been able to go to the bathroom. So, I'm multi-tasking.

He's sweet, I know. He's a very good boy. But he also likes to whack his head into things, and has a deadly affinity for light sockets. And even if the Boy doesn't kill me, the Mother will. While I merely try to keep our son alive, the house descends into a minefield of blocks, singing bear toys and Tupperware. If she wakes before I can clean it, she'll have my...hands.

Oh no! I heard a sound. Something down the hallway is stirring. Wait--is the bathroom door locked? Oh no! And my pants are still down! Help! No! You can't come in! Get out of that! Noooo!

When your enemies refuse to act like the caricatures you create...

...you make up your own reality. Left-wingers infiltrate a Sarah Palin fan site and act like a bunch of deranged racist yahoos. You know why they have to do that? Because the VAST MAJORITY, as in, probably 99 percent or more, are NOT deranged racist yahoos. The Left needs people to believe that we are, though. A spooky enough enemy will distract you from the fact that they promote truly monstrous policies.

Pathetic.

Happy New Year!

It's a good thing I didn't resolve to avoid procrastination, because my first substantial post of the new year shows up a week into it! Oy.

Quick recap of 2008:

The best thing: the birth of my son, Joseph Gordon. We were worried about a difficult pregnancy, but Grace sailed through relatively comfortably, and except for some inconvenient umbilical-cord-around-the-neck-necessitating-a-C-section stuff, he came out a healthy, happy little boy. After they wiped the slime off of him, of course. And after the goo they put INTO his eyes melted away.

As I write this, Joe is ten months old and scooting around the house like half a crab (4 legs). He's about to bypass walking and go right to running. His first word...pause here to relish the thought...was "Dada." Well, to be honest, it's actually "dadadadadada..." Close enough. He looks at me when he says it. Oh, and he can do a little sign language, too--he knows how to ask for milk.

His favorite music seems to be either classical, Gregorian chant or Joni Mitchell. That's my boy.

My business. This was a total surprise. I never set out to create an alternative "micro moving" business, but people seem to need it, and there's some real potential here. In late 2006 I put some ads on Craigslist for hauling and moving services, and I got a huge response. It's a bit dead right now (more on that later), however I expect that to change PDQ.

Two year wedding anniversary. When we got married in late '06, we both wondered if we had made the right decision. From my perspective, my wife must have had some princess in her background. She was annoyingly, claustrophobically neat, and couldn't stand my music. From her perspective, I was a slob, probably lazy, and an emotional flake. Two years and some months later, I'm neater, she's more laid-back, we like the same music, and we both appreciate the speed with which I cave on most matters. (Hey, it's just easier...)

;-)

Seriously though, life is good on that front. I had no idea I could love someone so much, and could give so much of myself. And that's a two-way street. I think it's often said that "marriage is 50-50." That's only half right. Marriage is 100-100. Grace and I give each other everything we have, and it makes life just right.

Getting laid off. This is, of course, related to the business. I want to say that getting laid off from my day job at the non-profit signaled the end of all my W-2 jobs, but we'll just see about that. If January doesn't see a significant rise in revenue, I'll have to finally get something to pay the bills, or at least half of them. (Health care would be nice too.) Nonetheless, I have yet to worry about the "unemployment" situation. I see nothing but opportunity here and I plan to exploit all of it.

Resolutions for 2009?

I've never been good about resolutions (or goals, for that matter). I'd usually forget what I resolved to do or not do within a week. Resolutions were wishes, at best. Goals? Lol. Goals were for losers.

Having now witnessed the ascension of a number of losers my age or younger to great success, I'm willing to reassess my impression. As it turns out, goals, especially when they're written down, tend to produce results. Who knew? Thank you, 2008, for kicking my ass and explaining "Life 101" to me.

So what are my resolutions and GOALS? Fresh from the top of my head, here are a few:

1. Prove the moving business concept.
Just before I got canned, I laid out a plan to expand nationally by May. That's not off the table, but my plan, while ambitious, was FANTASTICALLY optimistic. I might as well have thrown in a cure for AIDS and the development of the warp drive, too. There were numerous reasons for this, but the biggest problem was lack of clarity of the end product. What would these "Truck Buddies" be doing? Why would they stick with my company? My answer: because it would be a profitable, proven system. One problem: I hadn't proven the system yet.

Fortunately, getting laid off brought this into sharp focus. That's why I'm working my butt off to make this thing a relatively easy money making machine. It's within reach. I can see what that scenario looks like. I just need to make it happen. More on that in my next post, but right now that's my #1 short-term goal.

2. Replicate the concept nationally.
Whether this is a full-time career or just something I do on the side while toiling at some W-2 job, this business will have branches in every major urban area of the country by the end of 2009.

3. Establish a freelance career.
I've got the copywriting skills, even if I don't display them here. (I've never been able to settle into blog writing. I compose fast, edit...rarely...and often don't have a point other than to keep the blog alive. If I get feedback, I'm inspired for a bit, but basically I feel like I'm talking to a void about nothing. Heh.) I'm up to my eyeballs in copywriting and Internet marketing books, and as it turns out, I love it. If I can get paid a few thousand bucks or so per month for writing some sales pages, letters, e-mails or whatever, I'm set. It's not my DREAM, but why let the skillz go to waste?

4. Begin publishing fiction.
I'll probably start writing some fiction on my other blog in addition to sending it to a few of the other fiction-publishing blogs out there. I don't expect to get rich...ever...as a writer but it's necessary for some reason. As someone once said, "It's not like you don't have a choice--you either write or you die." For some reason I can't explain (some writer, I know), I simply must continue to think of writing as my vocation. People tell me to--people who write much better than me. So, there it is.

More soon. Until then, my handful of faithful readers, (Jimmy, Jim, Steph, honey), Happy New Year! As Steph said, (on her Facebook page, I think), 2009 is going to be my bitch. I've slept through 34 years of my life, I'm about to turn 35 (watch for drunken live-blogging on the 31st, as well as many more parenthetical statements), and I'm sick of it. Here I come, 2009. I'm cocked, locked, and ready to be adequate!

Still here

Stuff coming soon. I have a ton to write about. Just no time to do it. Who would have thought that unemployment could make a guy so busy?