Wife is home, finally!!

You know why my wife is the best?

She went on vacation with her mom to Seattle. While she was there, she stopped by the Pike Place Fish Market, where they fling the fish around:

Most wives would bring home a hat, or a keychain, or a T-shirt. Not my wife. She brings me home a whole Dungeness crab in a giant box. Less than 48 hours ago it was crawling around in the Pike Place Fish Market. Now it is IN MY BELLY!!!!!

Yep, my wife fucking rocks!

Did I mention that I hate "feminism"?

I do. I really do. REALLY REALLY. Mostly because I think much of it is an excuse for misandry. For the record, the built-in spell check doesn't recognize "misandry" as a real word, as though hatred of maleness is something made up... symptomatic of the problem.

Yeah, it sucks to be a chick. We all know, we've had our heads beaten with the knowledge. It sucks to be a guy too. Frankly, it sucks to be anyone in a modern society which has decided what roles we are supposed to play, and attacks us when we fail to live up to those artificial standards. It isn't just women getting the shaft (no pun intended), and all the male/female animosity that gets drummed up seems to me to be an easy way for the really powerful folks to keep us divided. That way, we're too busy beating each other up to ever unite and challenge the folks who exploit all of us for their own gain. As long as women in the lower 98% of incomes are busy kicking men in the same boat, and men are being defensive and aggressive towards women in the same bracket, none of them are working towards greater equality and opportunity for EVERYONE.

Plus, I think tons of feminism is just the spoiled whining of rich white chicks with nothing better to do. The whole "glass ceiling" issue is a perfect case in point. Guess what, chicky? I don't have a bit of fucking sympathy for the bitching and moaning of some chick who makes an income in the top 1% of all households in America, because it is easier for men to become obscenely wealthy than it is for women. A real women's issue is minimum wage, since the single moms get screwed into the lower income brackets. Raising minimum wage and basic working conditions for EVERYONE would do a lot more to help women than the stupid whining that women aren't sufficiently represented in fields that only contain a few hundred or thousand people. Helping the richest 1% of women cross into the richest 0.1% of people doesn't sound like a useful use of anyone's energy.

There's more, but I'm not feeling so great. I could be wrong... but I'm not. :)

Crazy horrible Sunday... let's talk entertainment!!!

My wife doesn't get home from her vacation until tomorrow night, so in the meanwhile I'm sitting here at home, sort of suffering. I've had a 4-day hangover from not that much drinking four days ago, and I STILL don't feel any better. I wonder if it isn't caffeine withdrawal... I normally don't drink anything caffeinated, and I had three Mountain Dews on Friday.

On the video game front, I'm playing Splinter Cell: Conviction. It is a "Tom Clancy" game, meaning that it is attached to a formerly super-hot writer, but for whatever reason these games are actually really damned good. This series of games are mainly stealth-based: you have to be patient and sometimes sneak past enemies. If you run into a room with guns blazing you'll be dead in about 3 seconds, just like in real life. On the other hand, if you sneak onto a ledge, shoot one guy and toss in a grenade, and then get off of the ledge, you can run through the door while the rest of the bad guys are looking out the window. It is challenging for me, because I have zero patience.

I'm also playing Plants Vs. Zombies on and off on PC. If you like games of any sort but haven't played it, you should give it a shot. It is very simple to start playing, but also has a deceptive level of depth to it. Also in zombie news, I bought the first volume of The Walking Dead, a black and white graphic novel that is being turned into a TV show for A&E. So far, so good... it is really a pretty good read, and not at all cheesy or stupid.

Also a good read is the latest Joe Hill novel, Horns. Like father, like son: Hill's dad is Stephen King. Unlike his father, who tends to wield his writing talent like a huge sledgehammer, Joe Hill has a lightness of touch and narrowness of focus that make his books touching and terrible in a completely different way from King. Hill's novels are also shorter and come out less frequently. Not because Hill writes more slowly than King, but because instead of publishing three books covering the same themes, Hill wrote three completely different novels around the same idea and only published the last of them. He's apparently got two more novels in a closet somewhere that are completely different than Horns except in the central conceit.

In TV news, I've watched this weeks Stargate Universe, Fringe, and... well, I guess that's it. I'm waiting for my wife to come home to watch Doctor Who. Not that she's a huge fan, but I enjoy it more when she's home to watch it with me. Lost is taking a week off this week (I think) so there's not much else on. We used to be all about the TV, but a lot of our shows got cancelled, are on hiatus, or just started to suck real bad. I've compared watching Heroes to being a battered wife in an abusive relationship: you keep wanting to give up and get out, and you keep getting sucked in by apologies and promises of an end to the abuse. Eventually you hit bottom and swear "never again!"

Oh, and because my wife is away there is a pretty much constant meowing from the other side of my office door. I have to do all of the dog walking, litter box cleaning, feeding and watering, and attention giving stuff. When I got up to pee last night, I had three cats and a dog in bed with me. Weird times...

Here we go again...

So, after my wife's two weeks off for hernia surgery, she's taking another week off to go on vacation with her mom. That's a vacation without me, for those of you keeping track at home.

While she's touristing and seeing-of-the-sights, I'll be cleaning litter boxes and walking the dog and doing laundry and dishes and schoolwork and decidedly NOT being on vacation.

Normally, these little times away from my wife are opportunities to drink a whole hell of a lot of interesting intoxicants. One time in particular, I learned the valuable lesson that apple martinis should be served in little martini glasses, and not chugged from 14-oz drinking glasses. Silly me, right? Another time I got seriously smashed on rusty nails. I've gotta tell you that while I enjoyed the taste, I didn't enjoy the bill for the fine-ass-hell Scotch.

This time, I'm trying to come up with things to do that don't involve as much alcohol (although I don't rule out drinking entirely.) I might go bowling, or catch a movie, but I don't have anyone to go with. The disadvantage of being a full-time student at my age is that the teachers are closer to your age than your fellow students, and your social life becomes non-existent. Oh well...

Other plans include possibly buying a professional-quality microphone and actually recording some of the guitar stuffs... or buying some new pedals and keeping the happy noise for myself. :) I also get to cook and eat things my wife doesn't enjoy, like takeout Chinese food and homemade chili a la Joe. We'll see what happens between now and Monday when I have to pick my wife up at the airport. I hope I can find something to keep me occupied.

Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll be drunk, half-naked and running down the street with a katana. Either/or.

Something smells like soup...

No, really. I'm sitting here in my office, and I smell soup. Not just generic soup either. Chicken soup, not enough salt, heavy on the dark meat, and way too much celery.

So my wife isn't dead...

... it is "just" a hernia, and she's having surgery on Monday. How exciting for all of us.

I'm glad to see the complete lack of outpouring of sympathy (quiet, Chili!!!). Satan help folks if they have to type something decent for twenty seconds. I'm guessing this blog is about done.

Bad moon rising

Terrible news: my wife is back in the hospital, yet again. She's got a bowel obstruction, and surgery is almost 100% guaranteed. And, because the hospital is a cell phone dead zone, I'll most likely have to wait for her to be admitted and in a room before she can call me.

Yeah, that's right. She's in the hospital and I'm home.

I'm good in a crisis. If you lose a finger, go into labor, or have a sucking chest wound, I'm your guy. My pulse stays below 100 beats a minute, I know first aid, and I make good decisions quickly. On the other hand if there's a bunch of waiting involved, I'm the worst person on earth to have around. My heart-rate stays just under 100 beats a minute, I start drumming my feet and pacing the halls, and have a strong desire to grab random people and shout "make something happen NOW!!!!!"

So, my wife has sort of subtly banned me from the hospital if at all possible. She's more comfortable if she doesn't have to be distracted by me, and can just lose herself in her Kindle and Pandora Radio on her phone. And I'm home trying not to call every half hour and allow her to relax and lose herself in her distractions.

It isn't great... our dog Ginger is pacing around the house, jumping up every time she hears a car drive past and hoping it is Mommy coming home. And, frankly? So am I.

It begins again...

It is summer in Florida already, which means I get to once again fire up the push mower and drag it across my scrub lawn. It takes about an hour and sucks EVERY SINGLE TIME. You can't mow in the early morning, because the dew on the ground makes the clippings clump up in the blade. It is already nasty hot and humid before the grass is dry enough to mow.

So once a week, I'm out there. If I wait two weeks, the grass grows so much that it takes twice as long to cut and leaves the driveway covered in mulch. Just a nightmare from start to finish. Hell, I was lucky this year to get to Zombie Jesus Weekend before having to start mowing. Last year I started in March if I remember correctly.

Anyhoo, yeah. Good times folks, good effing times!