Small Stuff
A few years back (round about 1997 ish) there came a rash of books telling us not to sweat the small stuff authored by one Richard Carlson. Note that I do not link this guy to Amazon as I'm just not able to shill this stuff. I just want to use the reference. This is some arrogant nonsense written by someone who doesn't actually deal with the real world. It's the small stuff that will break you. Those petty minor irritations and annoyances are the straws break the camels back because like straw individually they are bearable, but they usually come in an abundance.
The Xbox was down again today with strange / vague error number 11. I must contact the xbox people between the hours of six am and 10 pm eastern. I tried around midnight. Then I tested the system later and it seemed to be working so I wonder is it all better. Is it going to die on me a slow, slow death crapping out mid game after shorter and shorter periods. How much will Microsoft rip me off to fix it or dare I open the box myself. If I opened the box would I really be able to fix anything?
So I spent more time today reading to the mother. Now I already find this distasteful but then dude kills off one of the main characters in a tear jerking sort of way. I got read this out loud and still maintain typical male machismo. It is not as easy as it sounds. The writer was pretty good at making me like the character. This was almost as hard to read aloud to the mother as reading graphic depictions of affection. (Which I don't really do as soon as anything approximating love making is being described I started going, " La de da. La la la." as I scan forward to the end of the depiction.) So my voice is getting scratchy ish and the author kills Bambie so to speak and I have hours to kill so I spent quite a bit of time uneasily reading to the mother aware that the moment my voice cracks or I betray sadness in any way I will be cast from the society of stoic males.
I had to give all the left over rice to the mother for the egg foo young as there was only really enough rice for one person so I ended up with no rice for mine. Then the mother got sick off the food (thinks it was the soy sauce that has been in the fridge for ever that I had advised her not to eat as the egg foo young was salty enough already but hey what do I know). She did not even eat all her rice or egg foo young. And I could not finish it because she covered it in tainted soy.
The old man sits on the computer for thirty minutes after the mother goes up checking email and what not. He is always flipping through the same unchanging sites. As if the world war II tanks would suddenly change over night or something. (OK maybe its possible the owner of the site might add new content but still Every night?)
Not ten minutes after I get settled into the computer and am just about to set about blogging for the night the mom comes down to be here in case she needs to be sick in the toilet. (which she never has to do).. Instead of sitting in the other room she has to be in here with me looking at the screen over my shoulder. Even though I know she has vision problems I'm not sure how much she can read over my shoulder and I'm she asks me all the time what I'm looking at when I'm browsing other blogs so I'm just about to give up when she finally decides to go back up stairs and give lying down another try. It was the sitting behind me the almost made me break.
I know I have a pretty sweet situation. Unemployed and still able to game and read but still the little things get to me bit by bit. This is why I have a very hard time in the working world. They petty little things that my coworkers do get to me. Like making popcorn and stinking up the place, or taking personal calls while I'm working. I've come very close to unleashing my vast vocabulary of explicatives and insults on people over the most minor of things only because they were the last in a long line of minor things that bothered my.
Don't sweat the small stuff my hind end. Nip that stuff in the bud.
More Laters
The Xbox was down again today with strange / vague error number 11. I must contact the xbox people between the hours of six am and 10 pm eastern. I tried around midnight. Then I tested the system later and it seemed to be working so I wonder is it all better. Is it going to die on me a slow, slow death crapping out mid game after shorter and shorter periods. How much will Microsoft rip me off to fix it or dare I open the box myself. If I opened the box would I really be able to fix anything?
So I spent more time today reading to the mother. Now I already find this distasteful but then dude kills off one of the main characters in a tear jerking sort of way. I got read this out loud and still maintain typical male machismo. It is not as easy as it sounds. The writer was pretty good at making me like the character. This was almost as hard to read aloud to the mother as reading graphic depictions of affection. (Which I don't really do as soon as anything approximating love making is being described I started going, " La de da. La la la." as I scan forward to the end of the depiction.) So my voice is getting scratchy ish and the author kills Bambie so to speak and I have hours to kill so I spent quite a bit of time uneasily reading to the mother aware that the moment my voice cracks or I betray sadness in any way I will be cast from the society of stoic males.
I had to give all the left over rice to the mother for the egg foo young as there was only really enough rice for one person so I ended up with no rice for mine. Then the mother got sick off the food (thinks it was the soy sauce that has been in the fridge for ever that I had advised her not to eat as the egg foo young was salty enough already but hey what do I know). She did not even eat all her rice or egg foo young. And I could not finish it because she covered it in tainted soy.
The old man sits on the computer for thirty minutes after the mother goes up checking email and what not. He is always flipping through the same unchanging sites. As if the world war II tanks would suddenly change over night or something. (OK maybe its possible the owner of the site might add new content but still Every night?)
Not ten minutes after I get settled into the computer and am just about to set about blogging for the night the mom comes down to be here in case she needs to be sick in the toilet. (which she never has to do).. Instead of sitting in the other room she has to be in here with me looking at the screen over my shoulder. Even though I know she has vision problems I'm not sure how much she can read over my shoulder and I'm she asks me all the time what I'm looking at when I'm browsing other blogs so I'm just about to give up when she finally decides to go back up stairs and give lying down another try. It was the sitting behind me the almost made me break.
I know I have a pretty sweet situation. Unemployed and still able to game and read but still the little things get to me bit by bit. This is why I have a very hard time in the working world. They petty little things that my coworkers do get to me. Like making popcorn and stinking up the place, or taking personal calls while I'm working. I've come very close to unleashing my vast vocabulary of explicatives and insults on people over the most minor of things only because they were the last in a long line of minor things that bothered my.
Don't sweat the small stuff my hind end. Nip that stuff in the bud.
More Laters
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 3:06 AM
3 Comments:
oh man, soy sauce goes bad? mine moved with me here from the last place i lived in and i've been here over two years now. i guess i wouldn't miss it much if i tossed it out. i think it's still half full....last time i saw it anyways......
as for finding out just how much mom can read, you
could modify Jim's trick of seeing if i'm still awake while we're watching a movie....
i have a habit of falling asleep when we're watching a movie in the bedroom but i'm not asleep enough to not hear him say "are you still awake". i usually manage to say "yeah, i'm awake" when i'm in that half-sleep mode...so to be sure, he'll pause the movie. when i don't notice, he knows i'm dozing....so read a sentence aloud to her while she's reading over your shoulder and see if she notices you're not really reading what the blog says?..or just not care that she reads what you wrote.
oh, and man, it must feel icky to read a touchy feely scene. i feel for you on that one.
just thought of something...if you wanted to be evil, you could remove the cases of you and your brothers xbox's and switch the insides so your xbox still looks like yours and his still looks like his.....that might be too evil though.....but funny for a day
Brother has a play station. I'm shipping it away to the land where they will "fix it" though the guy on the phone tells me i should copy my save games from my hard disk to a memory card. Hmm maybe they will just ship me a new one or a refurbished one and then fix mine at their leisure adn ship it out to a refurbished xbox distrbuter. That's my bet no way they are goign to actually open my machine and send it back.
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