Good Restroom Bad Restroom

Restroom at work. I feel bad.



On the other hand, I went to a soccer game the other day and they had these trailers that were fancy restrooms. I mean, they were the most comfortable thing about the evening (Blistering hot day, and we had the worst seats in the place). I probably could have gotten beaten up for taking photographs in the men's room, but hey, I had to show you how awesome the place was. It smelled good, I could see my face in the polished granite.

Lab Technicians can suck

SO. Here is excuse #6. My technician.

Here's the story. I had been a little overworked (I told you), and eventually the dark circles under my eyes must've come to the attention of my boss. Either that or the many empty bottles of 7-hour energy drinks. (They are magic, I tell you. Magic.)

So he calls me in one day and says: "Hey Yogi, do you need some help?"

Yogi: Help? You mean a shrink?
Boss: No. Unless you think you need one. Do you?
Yogi: Uh.
Boss: You aren't going to come in and shoot the place up, are you?
Yogi: No.
Boss: You're fine then.
Yogi: Wha--?
Boss: So, do you need help? As in a technician?
Yogi: Yes. That and a raise would be nice.
Boss: Well, you can either get a tech and no raise, or no tech and no job.
Yogi: I'll take the tech.
Boss: Good.

(Yogi to himself: Hot young chick. Please, baby Jesus. Hot. Young. Chick.)

And then Boss introduces me to, um, we're going to call him Boris.

Boris is old. 60 years old.
Boris is morbidly obese.
Boris has never worked in a research environment.
Oh, also, Boris is an east European Jew who doesn't speak English.

I think I'm going to have a small series on Boris the Belarussian...

Holy Shit, I'm finally back

Wow. April to August. Nothing.

WOW.

I mean, I knew I was super busy, but still. OK, excuses time:

1. I got adult onset chicken pox. I mean, do you know how painful that is? Apart from my beautiful visage being cratered for life, I also had lesions in my throat. Couldn't swallow. Or talk (probably worse). And the fatigue...

2. I almost got knifed in Puerto Rico. This is a LONG story, which I will get to when I carpal-tunneled wrists feel up to it.

3. Work. This would have been lame, except that it isn't. Work has indeed been tight.

4. I moved. Away from the boondocks, closer to civilization, which means I look more like a loser when I sit alone at home and blog.

5. The world cup (which the Germans should have won). I think I saw EVERY group stage match.

Winters make me fat

After the previous post regarding MLK, I probably should leave the rest of the day post-less just out of respect. But my body is hurting bad, so I thought I should just write about how badly out of shape I am.

See, yogi, as his name suggests, does yoga every once in a while. I also play when the weather is good. Which means that I o pretty much nothing when the weather gets a little chilly. I mean, pushups and pullups, all 8 of them (twice a week), probably help me not turn into Jabba the Hutt, but they don't do very much else in terms of keeping me actually fit.

This last fact was brought painfully into focus at the first Ultimate Frisbee game of the year this last Friday. I mean, everybody was rusty, so the quality of play sucked anyway, but, wow, I was in BAD shape. Here's how I could tell, as always, in list form:

1. I had my hands on my knees and was dry heaving FIVE MINUTES into the game.

2. They made me defend the weakest person on the team (happened to be a first-timer), and I still got beat consistently. And handily.

3. I subbed out four times, three times of which I got the distinct impression I was being nudged out.
3a. I didn't mind. I took it gladly.

4. The last game was to 5. I pleaded for it to be a game to 3.
4a. I was overjoyed when we got our asses handed to us. 5-1.

5. I can't move today.

42 years today.

Martin Luther King Jr was shot dead.

Seeing this video, no matter how many times I do it, sends chills down my spine.

42 years ago.

Just 42 years.

Trains at a Station

Speaking of which, I took this with my cell phone. The bright light you see at the end of the tunnel is a waiting train. The train in the foreground switched tracks just past the station, but still, for a bit, it looked like one train headed directly for another. Wish I had a better camera though.

I speak Russian. You speak Russian?

I was waiting for the train today, and there was this dude walking around in this weird way, somewhat agitated yet strangely trance-like. All he said over and over and over was:

I speak Russian. you speak Russian?

Except that
a. He had this thick Russian (surprise) accent, and
b. he didn't really stop to give any one a chance to answer.
He'd keep moving from person to person, look at them right in the face (as they tried hard to avoid eye contact) and would fire off his question. Apparently either no one knew Russian (I don't, which is a pity) or they were too weirded out by this dude, so all I heard until the train came was:

ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?

Crazy.

Women's aisles are Men's Kryptonite (well, they weaken yogi)

Just the other day I was told (gently of course. By a friend that cared) that the pores on my nose looked like craters. Fortunately, they make this nose strip thing for exactly this, and so I decided to go buy myself a nose strip from the local Target. Now, I must clarify that Yogi is by and large a very clean person and all that, but beauty products don't appear very high on his shopping list. And when they did make an occasional appearance, there was the obliging lady-friend who would take care of it. God bless these women. I mean, I'm sure they did it partly out of self-interest - no one wants to be seen with the Indian guy with meteorite craters on his nose. But still, that meant that beyond knowing that these nose strips were somewhere in the ladies aisle, I didn't know much else. And being single and all that, it meant that I had to wade into uncharted territory.

See, this is where men and women are different: women would have no problems going into the men's area. In fact, some of them insist on choosing our underwear (I think the pink ones with winnie the pooh are SO awesome honey; I think you'll look great in them); these women have no problems digging through piles of men's wear until they see something that they approve of us wearing.

We're a little different. First of all, I really don't care if you buy read or black underwear. Or pink or fuchsia or teal or indigo. Buy whatever makes you happy. Just don't drag me along. I start sweating when I'm surrounded by bras of various sizes and shapes; I feel like a giant perv, and the inquisitive/critical glances that I get from matronly woman who are trying on their giant beige undies make me feel all the more so.

This is also true for the cosmetic section. I will gladly admit, I am not one of those metrosexual types. I have never had a pedicure and never will. I stick to one set of body washes and one shampoo/conditioner combo thing. I know there are specific washes and lotions for various body parts, but really, I don't want to bust 17.99 just so the undersides of eyes look the exact same tone as my ears and smell of musky daffodils. Perhaps this makes me less attractive, but so be it. What that means is that I feel discombobulated in that area of the (already discombobulating) superstore.

So when I needed to cure the craters, I swallowed my unease and headed over to those aisles. Sure enough, by the time I reached, my stomach was already in knots. I flew by the aisle so quickly the first time that my eyeballs barely registered anything more than a pastely blur.

"Well, perhaps they just thought I was walking past on the way to another more appropriate aisle", I thought, and so I took a deep breath, swept back my wet hair, and gave it another go. This time I took the "I'm just perusing the aisle for something that my lady friend may need" approach. I walked slower this time, but then midway I made eye contact with a middle-aged overweight woman who was comparing hair removal creams. She had headmistress written all over her. I think I gave her an uneasy smile and she glared at me. I hightailed it out of there is two seconds flat.

But I wasn't going to give up, so I went up to the second floor, looked at some sports goods (to make sure the lady moved on, and also to surround myself with happy images of baseballs and cheap golf clubs), and then sauntered back down. This time I decided to give it the harried "man, I know what I'm looking for, but I only have three minutes, so I better focus and be quick" fly-by. This was more of a deliberate walk down the aisle, eyes focused on the various products, with more than the occasional shrug (as if to say I don't know whether this nose strip is for my skin-type) and the head shake (this Target is crazy - why don't they have my specific nose strip brand?).

No luck. Worse, the damn woman was still there, now looking at elbow cream or something.

So I went and finally looked for help. Turned out that there were three dudes emptying out shelves in the very next aisle. Great, I thought. Dudes who are comfortable with this shit. They can help me! And so I walked up to them and opened my dry mouth to ask them where this thing is, except I realized I didn't know what it was called (I know now, but I had forgotten then). I stuttered about for a bit - I think I came up with nose-hole medicine amongst other things - but then after some wild gesticulation they figured out what I needed. Except THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHERE THE HELL TO FIND IT EITHER OR WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE.

So it was myself and three equally embarrassed Target employees carefully strolling down the same aisle, carefully, in formation (lest we get separated from each other). This time we looked up and down with military precision. We weren't exactly sure what we were looking for but I vaguely remembered it was a small pastel green cardboard box, and we all agreed that it would have the words nose strip on it.

By this time, I was becoming a regular at that aisle. I was the regular perv who had no business there. I mean all the women had seen me before, and they all sighed and shook their heads before turning their attention back to their eye-lash elongators or nose-hair tweezers. Except this time I had come with reinforcements and so I felt better about the whole deal. I was Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator. My three new friends however, not unlike the guys that get capped by the predator in the movie, were way worse off than me. In three seconds, their shirts were plastered to their back because of their perspiration. Their breathing was heavy and labored, and they didn't look above the bottom three shelves for fear of making eye contact with the ladies in the aisle.

I think one of them finally bumped into hair-removal lady and muttered an embarrassed apology. I think that finally did it. The woman turned to us and asked me: "CAN I HELP YOU, YOUNG MAN?" All four of us cowered. My brothers crept behind me and pointed in my direction wordlessly. This was exactly like 4th grade when all of us were in the cricket match where a window got broken, but it was me that actually did the breaking, a fact that was quickly pointed out when we got hauled to the Principal's office. I gulped.

"Uh, nose strip things. We were looking for them"

"Was that what you were looking for?"

"Yes, ma'am"

She turned around, took a pastel green cardboard box from her shopping cart and thrust it into my hand. "This is what you need. It was the last one they had."

I nearly hugged her in a teary embrace of relief and gratitude. An angel had descended that day and had touched me. I turned around and saw my comrades crying on each other's shoulders. The band of 4 brothers patted each other on the back and shook hands; we all had a story for our grandchildren, we said. We had survived.

And I ran out and kissed the oil-stained floor of the parking garage and wept.

Browning 12-gauge vs. yogi shoulder

Winner: Browning 12-guage. Barely. I know, I know, it's a sissy bruise, barely one at all. But if you've got good form, all you should've seen in the pic would be yogi's rippling and unblemished deltoids.

See, this is the problem when you go shooting with friends - everyone's talking, there are pretty women around, you want to impress them with your form, and then, just for the one round, you lose your focus just a bit and loosen up. And of course, since it's a 12-gauge, that means that when you fire, there's a skull-rattling recoil and your shoulder and cheekbone let you know for the next three hours that they were somewhat displeased by the turn of events.

But still, just because it's a matter of pride, I have to include a little factoid that you don't really need to know, but do now that I have told you - I still beat out the kids from Utah to win our little competition. Take that, Hansens.

Why blog, yogi?

... just got a disapproving comment (that will stay unpublished) asking me about how I can write the way I do, being the person I am. (These people know yogi in real life, and yogi in real life is more normal). If you know me, perhaps you have thought this too. To them, and to you, I say this:

Perhaps my blog is a projection of the parts of me that DOES look at my world as one squalid messed up place. Maybe that is who yogi is - me at my funniest, narcissistic, misogynistic, drunken, outrageous best. Or worst. Perhaps as yogi I look at myself and choose to be whatever part of me I want to be at that point in time, knowing that writing about that me at that time is pure, beautiful and unadulterated joy. No more, no less. No agenda, no planning, no forethought, no afterthought. Just happiness.

That's all there is to it.

Post meeting crash

I had a big, BIG meeting just yesterday. The kind that you spend sleepless nights ahead of, so you don't end up looking like a complete jack-ass in front of some very smart people.

So what do you do after you blow them away?

You crash. That's what you do. It's amazing how the brain just stops working. Your body does too; your sleep schedule and appetite are all out of whack, but it's the cobwebs in the brain that are really awesome. I mean, I don't really understand it. You are functioning just fine, it wasn't like I was walking into stuff or blathering like a fool (this I usually do, but that's beside the point. I don't usually feel like my head is full of cobwebs). But my brain was just dead. I tried doing some thinking, but it would shut off after a little bit.

I really wonder what it could be. "Fatigue" doesn't cut it. No, what is it that makes the brain like it's had enough and needs time to recuperate after a bit of stress? It's not like lactic acid buildup in muscles, can't be oxygen deprivation... hm. Wonder what.

4 days of drinking, 1 frog leg, and 1 sixteen-hour throw up session

Ah... Yogi turns older by a year today.

Celebrations with multiple friends' circles = mucho alcohol and food + being surrounded by good friends. It's nice to know a bunch of people like you and care about you. It's a soft and mushy feeling even for a hardened cynic like me. I just couldn't do five days straight (plus I had to go in for a solid 9-hour day of work today).

Bet you thought the chundering had something to do with the drinking. Wrong. It had all to do with frog legs.

See, last weekend, I agreed to go to a play on a whim, and decided to meet the rest of the group at a bar. I was under the impression that the "friend from work" that my friends were bringing was a dude. In retrospect, I have no idea why I would have had that impression, because my friends certainly didn't tell me their friend from work was a dude.

Because the friend from work was one cute asian chick.

Unfortunately, they were late getting to the bar (may have something to with the fact that it was three women. Just saying, just saying...) by which time I had already run through three beers and was on my fourth. So by this time I was already feeling pretty good about myself, and the world was pink and rosy, and this woman suddenly seemed very very cute. So I'm thinking "Yogi, this is awesome. You should go make an impression" and so I open with this:

"HEEEYYY. Burp. How goooes iiiit... I'm yogi."

- " uh... hey (polite handshake). I'm Gina."

"Oh Gina? You mean like VAGINA? Hahahahaaa..."

This was a mistake on multiple counts:
1. This was the first time I was meeting Gina. You do not attempt to rhyme people's names with body parts when you meet them for the first time.
2. Her name is pronounced Jeena. Vagina of course, does not rhyme with Jeena.
3. This was the immediate death of any chance I had with Gina. Or Vagina. or Geena's Vagina.

Of course, I did not know this, and I interpreted the frozen mask of horror on our mutual friends as a look of pride (at my awesome ability to break the ice) and merriment (at my stellar sense of humor). Still, given Gina's sudden glum silence, I thought I should make another attempt at bonding. So when we sat down to eat and got our food, I looked around and saw that Ms Gina had gotten herself frog legs. The legs were deep fried in some sort of tempura and came arranged in a circle around a little bowl with some asian hot sauce. (It was one of those somewhat fancy restaurants where they think itsy bits of grub artistically arranged fills your belly). Feeling somewhat emasculated by my own choice of green salad with tofu and raspberry vinaigrette, I decided to take Gina up when she offered me some frog leg (while not making eye contact). I thought this was Asian demureness at the time, which I found quite alluring.

But anyway, I ate one. It must have been a big frog because it had a big-ass leg. I think it tasted like chicken, but more amphibious. Anyway, I washed it down with more beer, and didn't think any more of it; we had a play to go see, and we needed to hurry.

The play was uneventful and so was most of the pitstop afterward. We were midway through another round of beer and chips when I got a sudden spasm in my midriff. "Ah, well, yogi, you're getting old", I thought to myself, and I stretched a bit. No problemo. I downed a bunch of water and then we left for the night.

The second spasm hit when I was peeing at home. "Hm. Come now, yogi. Surely, you didn't drink THAT much, did you? You must be a little dehydrated, plus all that sitting through the play..." but still, I didn't think much of it and went to sleep.

Well, it turns out that I have a checkpoint in my gut, around where the stomach gives way to the small intestine. I call it Checkpoint Charlie, like in Berlin. It's sort of like immigration check. Unsavory characters get held up for a bit, and then if you're brown and have a beard, you're in for an extra check, lubed up baton and all. And then if you happen to have crummy papers, you're out. You and your belongings do a U-turn and head back to wherever you came from.

So around 2 am the frog legs got a thumbs-down from Checkpoint Charlie. Which is when they packed their bags and trudged back up. But see, by then they had already dispersed out a lot and were swimming in a sea of beer, and because Checkpoint Charlie sends out bad guys bit by bit, it makes for a long drawn out process. This was when I started feeling really bad, and I was pretty sure what was coming. The thing about the process is
a. Once the U-turn is made, there's no stopping it
b. The exodus is forceful
c. It is also extremely thorough

So I parked myself near the toilet and let it start. And it did start. It was good. It was spectacular, even. I think I should spare you the details, but I was done by the end of it, which was midway through the next morning. Done. I couldn't move, my head was killing me, my body was killing me, my abs were killing me, I had a fever, but surprisingly, the bottom half of my GI tract was absolutely fine. It was like the West Germans that were milling around in Berlin and had just not noticed a bunch of East Germans being given the finger.

So yeah, even though I lost a solid five pounds and my abs look sculpted, it was less than a pleasant way to start the birthday week. Anyway that's the story I thought I should tell you on this beautiful day. Makes the second half of the week feel even better. It also adds one item to the (short) list of things I think I should avoid in the future.

Happy Birthday, me.

KR Sridhar and the BloomBox - must see video!

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Can this really be true? The "beach sand" is obviously SiO2, but I wonder what's in the green and black paints... at $3000/box, he is right, this will revolutionize the way we produce energy. Can't wait to read more on this. And a desi geek to boot! Yay!!!

Shaun White can board.

Damn! Well, OK, I'm not a big fan of the winter olympics; I watch it mostly to catch the wipe-outs, like this poor lady who crossed the finish line in the air, facing skyward, head first, at the end of the alpine. I laughed mercilessly as she picked her bruised body (and ego) up and trudged off to cry on her coach's shoulder. Well, OK, I chuckled a bit, and then felt bad. Anyway, my point is that I'm not much of a connoisseur.

But then I just saw Shaun White (not a big fan of him either) pull off a RIDICULOUS two runs on the half pipe. I mean, it was unreal. Un. Real. I have rarely seen such a separation between the top two athletes in any sport (barring Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps obviously) as I did today, when he thulped the competition into the ground. Bigger air, cleaner technique and great tricks. And then on his victory lap (he was already assured a gold after his first run), he executes a ridiculous I don't know what. Three and a half turns, double flip and oh I don't know, I think he made a bird's nest out of his hair at the end before he landed. Clean.

You could hear the announcers gush over it like 12 year old girls ad try to one-up each other trying to figure out what it was called. Thanks NBC for fucking it up for me. But except that, it was awesome.

Funny Home Video - Hilarious FAIL by roommate

Aw, jeez... So you know the whole of the Northeast has been blanketed by snow. Well, we got a solid two and a half feet, and so a couple days back my roomies tried to go up to the roof and clean the snow off, just in case it caved in or something. Well, you know what's coming.

Slippery roof + Uncoordinated roommate = Unintended (but perfectly foreseeable) Hilarity. Glad I had the presence of mind to shoot. (ah, yogi's powers of intuition...)

Song Lyrics I got all wrong

I've been the butt of many, many jokes because of my complete inability to get song lyrics right - I just can't help it. And these aren't your 120 mile an hour RATM lyrics (which no one gets, come on now, be honest. "Since 1516 minds attacked and overseen"? Really?), these are lyrics that many others might get, but I just don't. I've thought about it, and I think that the cause is fourfold:
One, my hearing is bad;
two, my native tongue is not English;
three, I don't really care what they're crooning/yelling/grunting, and
four, it makes more sense with my lyrics. Some times.

But still all I plead is this: put yourself in my shoes with these handicaps, and then listen to these songs. You'll find that I wasn't that far off...

The marginal ones: There are always the marginal ones, like Penny Lane -Beatles; I always thought it was
"Penny Lane, within my ears and in my eyes..."
turns out it's
"Penny Lane, IS IN my ears and in my eyes..."
Big deal. Same idea. I know what you're saying, Lennon, but your crap Brit accent (and poor 60s recording) is throwing me off a bit.

The logical ones: Some of my lyrics were nonsensical in the context of the song, but made reasonable logical sense as independent phrases. Michael Jackson Man in the Mirror:
"... I'm asking him to change his ways/And no message could have been any clearer..."
became
"... and no Mustang was a Benz and a Clipper..."
I mean, why would a dude be comparing automobiles in the middle of a song I wouldn't know, but it is true that a Mustang is neither a Benz nor a Clipper.

The ones born out of ignorance: So you know how in the song With Teeth from the album of the same name, Trent Reznor goes
"Withthhe TEEEEEEETTHTHTHTH-UHHH..."
Well, if I had known that the name of the song was with teeth, I may have gotten what he was saying. But what with Trent stretching a two syllabic phrase to sound like it had seventeen, I thought he was saying
"To entertain LUUUUVVE..."
(This one almost got me beat up)

Confusion about message of the song: You know the song Weak and Powerless - Perfect Circle? Well, when Maynard sings
"Desperaaaaaate, and ravenous...
so weeeeeaaak and powerleesss...",
I thought it was more of a gung-ho pick-me-up song, and so, naturally, my brain sings
"Desperaaaaaate, and loneleyyyy.... (yes it DOES sound like lonely)
So weeeee can power thiiiissss..."
You know, like a "hey buddy, I know you're feeling low, but we can power this shit. Listen to my song and then go do it man!" See? Plain ol' confusion.

Top three for longevity. Plus for some reason I have a soft spot for these three that I completely messed up. Why, I don't know, but here they are:

3. Sad but true - Metallica. I thought it was "self control" for the longest time. I mean, if you're singing about how I'm your dreams mind astray, I'm your eyes when you're awake and all that, I thought you were defining my self control.

2. Living on a prayer: I thought it went "...take my hand and we'll make it elsewhere..." you know, because Bon Jovi always has a back-up option. Because he's from Jersey.

1. Clocks - ColdPlay. This one really messed me up, and continues to do so every time I hear it. You know how Chris Martin croons
"And noooothing else compaaaaarrresss...."?
I thought it was
"and Iiii feel a stomachaaaaaache..." (more like stumcaaaaake)
I swear. No kidding. Well, he did sound like he was having digestive difficulties, but still, I KNEW that wasn't what he was singing. I mean, ColdPlay just doesn't write shit like that. they're all about love and angst and women and stuff. But it totally got me.

So there it is - feel free to comment and let me know of your favorite lyrics that you butchered. Because really, I'm going to be waiting with bated breath.

Rachel Maddow - unfortunate headline

I love Rachel and her show, and I think she's the best around, but given how she rolls, I think this was a somewhat unfortunate headline on HuffPo...

Why India SUCKS at athletics

...well, not just Indians, but also Pakistanis and Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis and Nepalis and Bhutanese. And whoever the hell participates in the South Asian Games. In this particular case, the giant snafu was in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where I hope heads roll for this, but this gives you an idea of the amount South Asians care for athletics.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/events-tournaments/south-asian-games/South-Asian-Games-Marathon-ends-7-kms-short-of-official-distance/articleshow/5553100.cms

THEY CAN'T MEASURE THE DAMN DISTANCE REQUIRED FOR A MARATHON.

Oh, and the Indians were far better, check this out: they missed the entire closing ceremony because of a traffic jam.


At first it's funny, and then it's really, really sad. Don't give me this b.s. of "oh we're a poor nation, we're just developing, there aren't any funds." If you can't make it to the ceremony of the games where you won some 90 gold medals, you suck. That's it.

Best ad of the superbowl hands down

Things I didn't do in 2009

Things I didn't do in 2009 (again, an egocentric list that I put together because I felt like it. And the mulled wine in my belly on this superbowl night makes me want to type). For no particular reason, the order is mostly reverse-chronological:

1. Didn't go to Turkey. Because my friends hate me and went without me.
2. Didn't go to Peru. Because the same friends also wimped out.
3. Didn't insist on going to a better cabin in upstate NY. Regretted that one, though it made for a good story.
4. Didn't cut back on the alcohol, coffee and hot sauce even though I knew hops, caffeine and habaneros give me the shits
5. Didn't go to South Africa, even though everything was already arranged.
6. Didn't murder my boss for having pulled the rug from under my feet re. SA trip. Came close though.
7. Didn't do as much endurance working out as I would have liked. This includes marathon sex sessions, which were non-existent in 2009, sadly.
8. Didn't help my friend when he wiped out badly in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country - laughed uproariously instead and cramped. Which I feel bad about now, but he did OK eventually.
9. Didn't move out, because I thought the vermin we caught in our crawl space in the summer was an isolated incident. This again turned out to be a mistaken assumption.
10. Didn't buy a house because the bankers are gigantic wankers. But I think I dodged a bullet on this one...
11. Didn't correct my barber when he thought I was a surgeon. He continues to think I am, so I hope he doesn't expect me work a miracle if his wife collapses at the shop.
12. Didn't call tattoo woman back. If you know the story, you know why. If you don't, it means I have a fragile ego. Just take my word for it.
13. Speaking of which, continued to have an abysmal track record of falling for unavailable women while ignoring perfectly fine single ones.
13. Didn't do my usual quota of NASCAR or NFL games. TV and living in the boonies took care of that.
14. Didn't get pubs even though I seemed to be working quite a bit.

Hm. That's about it - '09 was so quiet I didn't even feel that there was a bunch of stuff I missed out on. There you go. Here's a photo (taken in the basement of a building at work) that seems somewhat appropriate. I think it sums up my 2009.