Quick Hits From The Jobless

Donald Driver, Not a Traitor

I haven’t felt this good in a loooooong time.  The people I’m living with (and I certainly don’t mean to embarrass them should they ever read this) are being fantastic to me.  They bake all the time.  All.  The.  Time.  They’re also feeding me other kinds of good food, which food has nearly totally cleaned up the on-and-off intestinal problems I was having.  Sorry if that’s TMI.  Anyway, yesterday we had these awesome buffalo wings during the Packer game, and I told them that it was the greatest day of my life.  I was only 99% kidding.  They are great, their kids are almost always fun, and the whole situation has worked out far better than I could have ever dreamed.

But now it’s time to get a job.  It was probably time a couple of weeks ago, but apparently God had other ideas.  I really have tried, though, and I think this week is the week it happens.  It just has that feeling about it.  As sure as the geese that just landed in this river in Grafton are cute, I will acquire a job.

We’ve been going through old seasons of the American version of The Office.  The last episode we watched was the final one of Season 3, where Jim and Pam finally finish their awkward avoidance dance.  It was heartwarming.  Not as heartwarming as Dawn coming back to Tim with Yaz playing in the background at a Christmas party*, but still heartwarming.  Watching all the episodes in a row like that showed exactly how annoying the American version was with the whole Jim-Pam thing.  Did the length of the pain make the coming-together moment more meaningful?  Maybe.  But it was still annoying, for example, when Pam got back together with Roy for an episode.  It seemed like a penalty kill to me**.

I’m looking forward to Season 4 now, because I have fond memories of Dunder Mifflin Infinity and the extremely uncomfortable Dinner Party episode at Michael and Jan’s home.

Office HSO of the day:  Angela is the worst character on the show.  As weird as Creed is, even he is more realistic.  It seems like they started out wanting her to be a Christian prude, and ended up at oddly hypocritical psychopath who really likes cats.  It’s not that she’s not a funny character (see the time when she and Oscar fight over the “babies and saxophones” poster), it’s just that they developed her badly.

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In other news, it’s a beautiful day in Wisconsin.  This river I’m looking at is cleaner than any old river in Texas, because it’s real and doesn’t dry up every other year.  The sun is out, the trees are popping with reds and yellows, and I’m drinking “Jose.”  It’s a kind of coffee at Alterra, and it’s better than their regular coffee.  I picked “Jose” largely because he had hair, and the other choice, “Paco*****,” looked like Kojak.  So not even I am free from racism against us balds.

Oh, and like it really needs to be said:  The Pack is Back.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Pink Floyd is on and it’s time to write a book.  It’s going to be about monkeys, and it’s going to be awesome.

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* For this reference, please see the British version of The Office, which is probably still a little better, if only because it’s more concentrated.

** Because sometimes girls don’t know sports analogies***, Penalty Kill is a hockey term meaning the time when a shorthanded team just tries to run out the clock, and doesn’t try to score.  That doesn’t really explain it for the non-sportsy, but the important thing is that the team Killing the Penalty is trying to Kill Time, and not Play Hockey.  Thus, the Pam-Roy reconciliation was just there to fill up two episodes or so, as the Office was bound and determined to wait until the end of season three to finally put Jim and Pam together.  The only thing about Pam-Roy II that wasn’t a timewaste was the scene where Roy attacks Jim and Dwight pepper sprays him (which, if you think about it, could have been accomplished without any Pam-Roy dating activity).

***A la the Jan conference with the office ladies, leading to Kelly’s has her finest moment****.

**** Namely, the time when they were talking about sports analogies, and Kelly asked Jan what it means when people say that Jan and Michael got to second base, and then Kelly winks at the camera.  So now you see where I was going with all this.  Sheesh.

***** I don’t remember his real name, but I’d like to think it was Paco.  I’m too lazy to walk 20 feet and look.  Welcome to my world.