Where Go?

My daughter is a big fan of hiding her face. When she was younger she loved it when we played peek-a-boo and she would spend hours behind our curtains, pulling them aside with a flourish and cackling with delight.

Of late peek-a-boo has become a new game, a darker game. The games name is "Where Go?" and it seems to have no rules. No ending or beginning. You are always playing "Where Go?" and you don't always know what the object of the game is. 

At first, soon after she started playing with her Mickey and Minnie figurines, she came to me and said "Plu where go?" I didn't get it at first but my wife clarified, "She wants to know where Pluto is."

After a few moments of searching I found Pluto stuck into the corner of a bag we had packed for the next day. Not even twenty minutes later Pluto had found his way into the cracks of the couch, under the entertainment center, behind a book...and each time a distraught Toddler would come collect her father with pleas of, "Where Go?"

"Where Go?" is a fun game as far as watching her development is concerned. It's amazing to see how fast she learns and how creative she is. But it's also scary. I watched her hide Pluto under the Christmas Tree shirt and say nothing. We had breakfast, lunch, watched Frozen and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Not until that evening did she say, "Pluto where go?" This game has no rules. It is anarchy. 

The other day I was making her lunch and couldn't find her milk cup so I asked, "Baby, bring your milk! Want some milk?" To which she yelled back, "Where Go?"

Now there is nothing that I despise more then her milk cup. She leaves this thing overturned on the couch, rug, wood floor, dogs back, you name it. And every single time there's just enough milk to make a smelly mess. So you can imagine how disconcerting it was for her to have played "Where Go?" with a possibly still-full milk cup. Hours went buy, hours of distress and fear. A darkness swept over the room as my toddler continued to taunt me with those two hateful words. "Where Go, dada?" Where go?

Well, it went under the entertainment center, too far back for me to reach when I'd felt under it, and it caught on the bottom when I moved the whole damn thing. Instead, when I had finally given up hope, and collapsed onto the couch in shame, I saw a pink reflection on the wooden floor and army crawled my way to victory.

"Where Go?" hasn't slowed down. It's grown more complicated. We are constantly playing multiple games of "Where Go?" at once with a variety of toys. I don't know the current score of our ongoing struggle but I imagine she has a winning record. Especially considering that she'll hide a toy, lose it for real, find it a few days later and be excited to see it. The "self-pass" of "Where Go?" and honestly a cheap way to win, if you ask me.

I'm going to be sad when "Where Go?" becomes "Hide and Go Seek." Just like I'm going to be sad when book stops being "gook" and milk stops being "nook." There's an honesty to her development and a deep joy that I gain from watching it. It's a bittersweet moment whenever she loses some part of her babyhood and grows up. Its happening about as fast as I expected, which is to say, far too fast. I feel like one day soon I'll be looking at this grown woman, ready to take the World by storm and I'll be whispering "Where Go?" wistfully with her mother. 

Then again maybe our next child will be a boy. They never grow up.

Forgetful Coffee Break

Like many UCF graduates, I own a UCF mug. As a preface to this small post that mug has an all-black interior. 

I had just gotten home from the grocery store and hard jamming to Ke$ha and had begun unpacking my loot when I decided I would brew myself a cup of coffee, for an after chore reward. And I know what you're asking, "But Dave, didn't you have a Starbucks while you were out doing said chores?" Well, yes. But I digress.

I absentmindedly set the coffee station to brew a single cup and continued placing bananas in their spot and cheese in it's spot and so on. 

As my work came to its fitful close I pulled out some creamer from the fridge. I've decided not to buy anymore creamer and I'm working on killing the last delicious bottle of the stuff. I've been weening myself off of this sugary treat for awhile so I only place a small amount in the mug. 

The mug turned completely white. I stared in disbelief. When creamer goes bad does it overpower the coffee that strongly? I had seen that the coffee was near the top of the mug! 

I looked at the date on the creamer. Expires in April. 

I stirred the coffee. 

I stood there stirring the coffee and looking at the date and just being generally confused for a moment before deciding to scrub the whole thing and just have a glass of water.

So I go to pull out the filter from the coffee machine and...

I had never put any grounds in.

Oh...me. 

None of Us Really Know how to Save the Ornaments

Today I found myself disciplining my child over hoarding Christmas ornaments.

While I was cooking us lunch she decided that she wanted Minnie, C-3PO and a few other decorations to join her collection of toys. I, being the observant father that I am, didn't find out until I was picking up her purses and putting them back on their hangers, hours after lunch. I noticed Minnie, sitting in a pile of blocks, no longer with her hook, no longer on her branch.

As I found the other 10 or so ornaments she had hidden away, my daughter came into view. I pulled her up close to me and I pointed at her stash and said, "Baby, these are for decoration only. No touching."

To which she responded with her characteristic, "No touch, no touch."

So I put all the hooks back on the ornaments and turned back around to the tree to put them back on their branch pedestals just to see her casually removing my UCF candy cane with a mischievous grin.

Now I have a conundrum facing me. Do I applaud her choice of ornament or spank her for obvious insubordination? I mean some of these things are glass and we've already lost half a dozen to my clumsiness...I decided to go halfway and placed the black and gold plastic candy cane back on the tree and told her again, "No touch. Not for Emma."

I sat down on the couch and turned on a Christmas episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse I've already seen twenty times this week but she has infinite patience for. And wouldn't you know it, she's at the tree, grabbing down Winnie the Pooh and Friends.

So I take the ornament away from her, place it back on the tree and spank her hand lightly. "Emma, no touch."

Now, I don't know if you have children. I don't know what kind of children you do, will or would want to have. But my child is going to compete for an Oscar.

She opened up that mouth as far as it could go, squinted those baby blues and let out a soundless yell before beginning to choke out a wave of tears that would break your heart if you weren't laughing at the silliness of  the situation. She's obviously not hurt, she's just so sensitive to me raising my voice or being displeased that she can't contain the tears...

But she also really wants to play with the Christmas Tree and my opinion on the subject doesn't matter.

So here I am, holding my sobbing, calculatingly manipulative little girl, thinking--not for the first time, not for the last time--about what kind of parent I want to be.

We all ask ourselves these questions of personal philosophy and morality (about parenting and life in general) and I think we all fall somewhere on the line of "disciplined, but cool." Like, I'm going to spank her when a spanking is needed, but she's going to love me for it in the end. Or maybe, I'm going to be so intimidating at my worst, and so understanding, lovable and funny at my best, that I'll never need to physically discipline her. She'll just be awesome because I'm awesome. She'll be a perfect angel because I'm willing it to be so. But we never really know what works and what doesn't. We just take our best guess and swing for the fences. I'm pretty sure I've struck out with the ornaments and I'm resigned to losing a few more over the course of this Holiday Season. (Which, if I have my way, would last sometime until mid-March.)

I think I have to come to terms with the fact that my kid is going to be who she wants to be and my job is to keep her as close to whole and happy as possible.

If I can keep my ornament collection intact that's just a really sweet bonus.

A Letter to my Father

Dear Dad,

As it is often pointed out to you, to my great dismay, you are not my biological father. There was a time when my mom had to go it alone, and she did a kick ass job. But you stepped up and stepped in and I'm grateful every day for that. Because of you I know how to do things. Like all kinds of things. I don't, but that's not your fault. It's not like you taught me things and then said, "Son, it would be best if you never used any of these skills and just continued to play video games." Or as you put it, "killing terrorists." 

Let's get into examples. You taught me about the importance of expectations. You knew it would be difficult coming into a child's life and just being Dad. I'm sure you had yourself psyched up for the task. In your case it ended up being pretty easy because I had never known exactly what a Father was or what your job was, I was just excited about the process. It gave you room to screw around and have fun while mom was trying to kick ass and take names with my new-found siblings. But the idea behind the message is still there. Expectations are important. Go into something like you mean it. It may turn out to be easy, it may turn out to be hard, the people you work with or for might be the best, the worst or some odd in-between kind of deal like most Presidents. But if you go in with a goal in mind, a plan set and a positive attitude. Good things have a chance to happen.

You taught me about the importance of discipline. Specifically in regards to chocolate covered candies. As you know all too well, your wife is a woman of iron discipline and mental fortitude. She is a woman who can buy a massive bag of M&M's and put them in a glass jar (you know, the kind you can see through? So the M&M's are just sitting there, looking at you, whispering to you, calling your name lovingly...) and eat one. That's right one. My mother can eat one freaking M&M at a time like she's saving them for the upcoming famine. She eats them one at a time like she didn't buy six more bags because they were on sale for 5% off. You taught me that this was not a real thing, that my mother was obviously some kind of devout priest of some yet-to-be-unveiled Voodoo sect and that I could not live up to her insane standards. You taught me that M&M's, when bought in mass, are to be consumed with the use of a bowl and cupped hands. You taught me that buying M&M's is a really bad idea, and I probably shouldn't do it. Because you, like me, have financial discipline. It is very easy for me to go into a grocery store, walk past the candy isle, and buy nothing. It is impossible for me to have candy, that I know is mine, and not eat all of it immediately. We share in this. We know the struggle. 

You taught me doityourselfitiveness. That's a new word. See, I'm practicing the art as we go. I made up a word for something, all by myself. Could I have used a word like "self-sufficient" "handy" or "tool-capable?" Sure. But it wouldn't have fully encapsulated the idea that I'm trying to get at. When my Jeep broke down in a swirl of heat and steam and I had to push the thing three miles through a rainstorm with a tiny friend with no leg strength and another friend with no desire to help (he steered) you taught me that water pumps were freaking expensive, unless you bought it and installed it yourself. I'm sure you realized your mistake eight hours into pulling out random parts of a half-ton (or more) engine trying to get to a water pump that the book said was here, but clearly wasn't, so we better remove this and see if it's there. But we did it. Did you get a lot of sleep before work? Probably not. But dammit I knew how to replace a water pump. A skill that no longer exists in the computerized world of automobiles, but don't feel bad about it, Dad. The idea of doing something on my own unless it was cheaper to pay someone else to do it, or easier or faster, stuck. Now I look at something and say, "Well, I could do this on my own for $50, or I could pay this guy to do it for $300..." before I pay the guy three hundred bucks and feel really guilty about it. You gave me that guilt, Dad. Thanks for that. 

But, in reality, because of the many instances like the Water Pump Debacle of 2005, I am not a person that stresses out--to anyone but my wife, constantly, over and over again while she listens patiently but seethes on the inside. Over the years I spent with you (and my mother, of course) I learned that I really am a capable man, that things look worse and feel worse when they first happen, and that after sleeping it off you don't really know what you were worried about in the first place. I can handle this. A lot of that I got from you, and years of making me do it myself, but being there when I needed a hand, guidance, or, you know....money and a place to stay for to do things for myself. Millenial Wisdom: To do for ones-self, one must first have a place to do for ones-self. To have a place for ones-self, one must be able to do for ones-self. 

You taught me a lot about family, and not just that family photos are lame. You taught me that family matters, and that you have to put up with family photos no matter how lame they are because they make the people you love happy and that's worth it. But you also taught me that you should complain about the family photos pretty much constantly and make sure that everyone knows you hate photos so that they too know that you're only doing this because you love them. Very much. Now move in front of me, Erin, I want them to see as little of me as possible. Take the picture, dammit! No, I will not move to the side. Well, if I have to move, David has to move. Heh, suck it, David. Cheese. 

And with that you taught me about the Buddy System and how it never works. Whether it's a father betraying his 'buddy' by forcing him, his son, to also be visible in a family photo, or a best friend ignoring your pleas to go to the gym, or a husband not wanting to go to the grocery store with his wife...if you wait for your 'buddy,' you'll do a lot of waiting, and not a lot of doing. This lesson wasn't your call to arms to go friendless and partner-less throughout my life. No, it was a simple way of letting me know that I had two options. I could make plans, and do them, on my own, in a timely manner. Or I could talk about my plans constantly, wait for a partner to pop up, and just never do anything. It's a hard lesson, but a true and valid one. Most people have some level of codependency that they have to get over to be successful in life, it's just more crippling for some than others. You recognized my desire to be social and friend-reliant early, and tried to ingrain in me this idea of, "It's OK to do something on your own." Now I'm relatively anti-social but still extremely codependent. I'm just now realizing that I got the message but missed the core concept of your lesson. Shit. 

But here it is: Dad, you taught me that a father goes to his son's baseball games even though he doesn't really like baseball. You go to his shot-putting events even though shot-putting is probably the most boring event a person could watch. Ever seen a movie that had shot-putting it it that wasn't actually about a group of Greeks getting stabbed to death with spears? You taught me that a Dad is THERE. Not just physically, but in the moment on an emotional and mental level. There was never a time you weren't available to listen. To talk, when I let you. I'm kind of big on oration. I essentially want my conversation partners to nod and tell me they agree with everything I say and laugh at appropriate moments.

You taught me that the best kind of love is the kind that is shown through a smile, a laugh, maybe a fart joke or a mutual understanding that Mom is trying to undermine what's left of patriarchal society through her daughter. You taught me to watch out for thrown elbows, especially in the kitchen. Often near chicken wings and pizza.

You taught me about the Laws of the Jungle. No leftover is safe. Did you know that I still haven't had my food stolen out of a work refrigerator? Because it never goes there. Ever. That's right. I bought a pretty baller lunch box to make sure the Laws of the Jungle would only ever apply to others. 

You taught me about sports, about sports Greats and sports Legends, you taught me that I was the worst kind of human for not knowing who Jim Thorpe was.

You taught me how to grill, and how to deal with complaints. I will forever remember the Burnt King Burgers and 20 Questions.

You taught me that fatherhood is in the moments that you're with family. Fatherhood isn't always about being right, smart, funny, happy or sad. It's about being there and loving the people you're with. It's about your children knowing they can look to you with something that has hurt them or made them happy and know you'll be there, that you've been there, and that you are ready to listen.

You watched me play every sport I ever played. You've read everything I've ever written and listened to me complain about every job and most of the bosses I've ever had. You've watched me open gifts. You drove me to school, jobs, the doctors office, half the Universities in Florida. You drove me to my wedding. You told me that it would be a blur. I thought then that you just meant my wedding but I'm seeing more and more that you mean life.

I'm going to be a father. Yesterday, I was throwing a baseball in the street. I was pulling a water pump out of a jeep I don't even own anymore. I was starting high school, playing football, graduating high school and going into college. Yesterday, I was meeting Amanda. Falling in love with Amanda and marrying Amanda and now I'm going to be a father. And while I am a little nervous, a little preoccupied with the, "how" of it all. I am not scared.

Because all I have to do is love my kid, and be there as long as I can.  You taught me that. That most important thing. You taught me about being a dad, by being...Dad.

That's a pretty big deal. 

For my personal safety I'd like to write an addendum to this note: My mom is a really kick ass woman. Dad, you married a great one. She has taught me more and loved me harder than anyone. My mom is basically the best person on the planet, and I know that my wife will be that kind of mother to my child, and I'm extremely grateful for that. But, Mom, when you read this (which you will because you're the best mom ever) know that I wrote this towards Dad because I'm going to be a Dad but that I really mean that the two of you taught me how to be a family. Through thick and thin. You two have waded through the miles of bullshit together. Made lemonade out of lemons and grenades out of horseshoes and churned out some pretty OK children. If I don't say so myself. 

Thank you, both, so very much.

Searching for a House, the Online Edition

Alright fellow House Hunters and blog-readers, we talked a little bit about my 5 Must Haves earlier this week and I promised a conversation about the MLS. The MLS (or Multiple Listing System) is a tool that Realtor's use to list their client's homes, and search for homes for their buyers. If you're not a Realtor you would use various websites and services such as Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com. The danger of all of the sites is that they don't update regularly. They update about as often as your grandmother updates her facebook account. Or maybe as often as mine. You could have a very socially active grandmother, who am I to judge?

Zillow has, on multiple occasions, shown me a house for sale that I loved, only for me to find out that the listing was sold or withdrawn entire months before I even saw the home! I try to keep up with the various apps and services so that I can better understand what my potential clients are seeing, but sometimes I get sad.

Now, down to MLS. The wife and I decided to actually start taking one night a week to look at local listings. We have our "must haves" and we know where we would, optimally, like to live. We have a general idea what we want the bones of our home to be and that we don't want to have a crawlspace because snakes live down there. So when I went to input our search parameters I was relatively sure my search would be limited, with not a lot of options out there, right? Wrong. Even thought the current Real Estate landscape is definitely in the favor of the Seller, there are a lot of properties out there, they're just not all...perfect. Or you know...good.

I had to narrow and narrow my search, almost nitpicking the homes I didn't like. "Well, this one is facing north so, mildew might grow on it and there's a chance I could see Jesus' face growing in there and I don't want all the added attention... and this one is neon-purple in places it shouldn't be and who paints anymore?" I know, I know exactly what you're thinking, is there any place where neon-purple shouldn't be?

Didn't get enough club at the club? Well we brought the club to your room. Now you can club, even when you get home from the club.

You're welcome.

The reality is that the wife and I have been taught, through years of hard education, plopped down in front of DIY TV, specifically: Property Brothers and Rehab Addict...to look past the paint and current decoration or even layout. But at some point, you (the buyer) have to remember that, looking past the paint, the carpet, the kitchen, etc...it can get expensive surprisingly fast. If you find a home that's listed for 30K under what you're okay with spending then, yes, look past everything! If you have room to remodel and redesign then you should! Make your new home truly yours (well, if you have the time, desire and know how to actually do the work.)

But, let's say your price-ceiling is 200K and you find a home that you feel needs a lot of immediate work, listed for, let's say, 190K...unless you manage to get your lower offer accepted, you may end up living in a house you don't love...and a general fact of life is: if you don't do it (whatever it is) when you first think about it, then you probably won't. There's a good chance that if you buy a home with "plans to remodel in the future" that you'll just end up living in a house you don't like talking to your friends about how this kitchen is so getting redone next year.

So we've begun to narrow down our search even further. We're okay with purchasing a home that needs small amounts of work that I can actually do on my own, or is affordable to have done (say carpeting one or two rooms.) We're okay with problems that are mainly decor based, although after seeing pictures of about four homes with male, graphically, intensely-nude statues in the front yard and one home with what I'm pretty sure was a mounted jackalope on the wall, I understand why my clients sometimes have issues looking past what they see immediately.

Elmer Fudd's unicorn.

Since we aren't actively ready to buy quite yet, we also eliminated any houses that had just the one picture--of the front of the house. To me that says two things:

1) There is a good chance that this house isn't real, it's like Clint Eastwood real--a prop house that may or may not have been the background for a shootout or two. You know, the kind of place where you can walk in the front door, right into the backyard.

2) Or, entirely more likely: this is a horribly lazy Realtor (or the property is Bank Owned, or both.)

Many of the photos we saw on our first day of searching were like this:

Admittedly this would be fine for a hardware store, or a tile show, but this leaves out important information like...where is it? What does the rest of the bathroom (I hope it's a bathroom) look like?

Sweet! A curtain! Even if the Seller did decide to leave this precious gem behind for me to treasure forever, and possibly ever...I hope the Realtor knows that I can, in fact, buy a new shower curtain.

Buy the end of our first night of actually looking for a home I'd found as many ways to not be lazy as a Realtor or crazy as a home decorator as I had actual houses I was interested in. (And we found quite a few homes we were interested in.)

If you have any funny house hunting experiences or things you've seen that can't be unseen, hit me up in the comments below, or on facebook! 

The House Hunt is On

My wife and I decided awhile ago that our townhouse was no longer for us. Well, she bought into what I had been saying since the record breaking day where I knocked the same wall decoration off the same wall ten times via the exercise of moving from the hallway into the office/guest room. After about two months of this rinse-repeat process I had a really sore shoulder and our wall decoration became noticeably thinner.

Now, I'm not insinuating that we want to buy a home because I knock things off walls. This is simply an example of the problem. We have no work-space, where the Hell are we going to put our future little ones and I am most certainly not a dog-walker. One more night of me standing out in the rain/cold/heat/wind/humidity/mosquitoes staring angrily at my dogs as they smell one piece of grass so relentlessly, so deeply I think they might be trying to actually ingest it through their nostrils and I might break down into an outdoor rant about how much I hate walking my picky freakin' dogs. I want a yard so badly that when I look at my back porch I imagine adding chores like lawn mowing, gardening and building a fence with a smile. Something my parents would tell you I was not so quick to smile about in my youth.

So the time has come and we are on the house hunt. Conveniently I'm a Realtor, meaning I don't have to hire anyone, find anyone, vet anyone, or any other thing you do when person hunting for a house hunter.

The first step in house hunting as a couple, as those of you with some experience in this may know, is deciding what both of you actually like. In some relationships that would have been more difficult. Luckily for my wife she loves Jonathan from the Property Brothers and his sense of style and I was a clean slate with no opinions on anything involving what the inside of a house should look like. (Basically, we like mostly the same things.) So we put our 5 Must Haves together and discussed them.

Ours rounded out to something like this:

1) Must have yard.

2) Must have storage space.

3) Minimum of 3 bedrooms.

4) Must be in a reasonable price range. The modern economy has everyone in a bind, and typically I wouldn't recommend worrying too much about price, but rather worrying about your monthly bill. However, keeping track of interest rates and discount points is never a bad thing.

5) Must have good bones. I'm not afraid of work. I also happen to have a father-in-law who is very gung-ho about his daughter and would love to help us put the home we want together. The point here being, a lot of the times we have to look past the paint, the kitchen, and the general decorative arrangement and scheme of the house and see what we like about it. Room placement, room size, location (location, location) etc.


We can always adjust our "Must Haves" as the situation changes, but it's not a bad thing to put together. In fact, we've been trying to apply the idea to other things in our lives, such as Must Haves for our diet, exercise and general rules of our relationship. For example: she must be perfect in all things and I must be catered to relentlessly. Or did I get that backwards?

If you have any great "Must Haves" you think I should care about more, leave a comment, or even if you want to share your ideas. (Or good homes you know for sale in the area!)

Next we talk about the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) and why it's weird to browse with your spouse. (Mind you, if you're not a Realtor you'd probably be using Trulia, Zillow or Realtor.com, but the general idea is the same.)

5 Taboos of Public of Internet Use

1. Porn
I've actually seen someone do this in public before. It didn't end well for him. I've only ever seen one person physically thrown out of a bookstore before, and that man, sadly, was pitching a not-so-subtle tent and hurriedly folding his laptop into his case.

Internet Porn is one of the few sexual taboos that no one really cares about anymore. There are songs dedicated to it, it comes up in conversation. In my younger, unmarried days, on a first date with a girl  I never dated again, I was asked whom my favorite porn star was. I answered her. If you were betting on her not being my wife now, you'd be betting with the odds.

2. Openly Facebook Stalking People

It's funny when someone says it out loud. Someone knows just a little too much about you for your first time out, and you ask something like "Did I tell you that?"
And s/he says "Nah, I just stalk you on facebook."

Oh the laughs we've all had. Social Media you creepiness-inspiring bi-product of Gore and the 90's.

To me even opening up facebook, or any other social media site, at a cafe or public place seems weird. Facebook, to some degree, is what people use to let each other in on the private going-ons of their lives. It's Modern Society's way of saying "I want to know you better."

But for the dude two tables over to look at my screen and then turn and whisper to me "Bro, she's hot." And then consider that alright is most assuredly not alright.

3. The Portable Office

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against paying off a quick credit card, or checking a bank account. A few days ago I even went over a benefits package. That's fine. Laptops were made for people to be able to work freely. Hence the term "portable workstation." I'm all about getting out of the office to clear my head. I too love coffee.

But, presumably, you're getting out of the office for a reason. Bringing your desktop, monitor and a portable printer--along with enough paper work to make a Public School teacher flinch is a bit counter-intuitive. Seems like you could have just stayed in the office and saved yourself the hassle. I'm pretty sure it has a coffee pot. Or a Keurig--so good.

4. Play Video Games

Everyone's seen it. And the thing is, most of us play video games in one form another--Candy Crushers: you know who you are. Occasionally we even play the video game we see someone playing. That does not make it acceptable. Playing World of Warcraft in a cafe, with a headset on, and other people present, is a lot like saying "I don't ever want to have sex." Or maybe even "Friends are for other people."

Or ultimately "F*ck you and your books, bookstore. I'm here for the coffee and the internet." Which is probably why Borders went out of business and Barnes & Noble is doomed.


5. Watching YouTube Videos on Full Blast

Try watching Epic Meal Time without laughing or vomiting. The Whitest Kids U' Know have a skit about Abraham Lincoln that makes it functionally impossible for you to not curse out loud right along with them.

I know that in the moment, the most important thing in the entire universe is that your friend hear and see these things right freaking now. But it's also important to remember where you are. Sitting at a cafe, where people are utilizing their eyes for reading and their ears for not knowing you exist.

Feel free to add to the list in the comments section. 

General Rules to Test Proctoring

Things not to do while working as a proctor:

1) Reading
2) Browsing through a cell phone, book, iPad, or anything fun.
3) Close your eyes.
4) Sit down for extended periods of time (this may lead to closing your eyes, after all.)
5) Playing baseball. Or WordWithFriends, or Scramble...or Solitaire. You cannot play Solitaire. You will lose your job.

Essentially. If you want to keep a job as a proctor I only have two pieces of advice for you:

1) Be content in your own brain. Remember fun things. Think fun thoughts. If you cannot do this, do not Proctor more than once a week. It will, and I'm not kidding here, it will feel like torture.

2) Have a photographic memory and look at every page of multiple books. What your bosses don't know can't hurt them.

 Going along with this little message, I spent the morning proctoring an End of Course assessment test, I won't go into detail, mainly because it's illegal, but I was sufficiently bored. Occasionally I walk around the room to make sure I can't spot any cell phones or iPods or anything like talking or cheating that can invalidate a student's test.

Occasionally I'll see a question on a monitor and see if I know the answer. It's not something I do on purpose, it just happens as I walk around. I never talk about the questions I see, even with other proctors, what would be the point? But it is funny to see how the kids look at me:

Their eyes gets shifty, they hunch up over their papers as if that's where the answers even were. Then they block their monitors with their shoulder, just a little bit. Like I'm going to steal their work and ace this test off of what they are doing.

I just want to say to these kids: Dude, I wish I was taking the damn test. Instead, I'm watching you take the test. 

This is where I would like to say something like, "My mornings are interesting." And sign off, when all I can really say about my mornings is that they're drawn out and I sigh a lot.

A Conversation About Jobs

There is a morbidity that comes with taking a new job. It's not something we often think about because, hey, we just got offered a job, and we love money. But the cold, heartless reality of the majority of job offerings is that they come come as a direct result of someone else no longer having said job.

Say what you will, maybe he got promoted! Maybe she left for a better job somewhere else!

But, someone, somewhere got fired and now you have this job. Or maybe they died.

And more importantly, imaginary person who said "maybe she left for a better job somewhere else!" Do you really want to take the job that someone left for a better job? I want the better job in the first place.

In accordance with this subject I was having lunch with my colleagues (I say, pretending that I'm not an assistant who sits around and waits to see if anyone needs help all day--if I'm not proctoring, of course.)

As is the case with most lunches, we ate food. With our food came conversation, and the slight discomfort one gets when they know that they don't quite yet have gas, but it is most assuredly on the way...

So we had a conversation. It was a pretty good conversation. We talked about girls, until actual girls showed up, and then we talked about sports and students and why Chik-fil-A pissed us off or what we loved about it. (Sundays. Chicken.) The discussion finally turned to various projects and assignments we (sigh) had been giving our (siiiiigh) students. I told them some of my ideas on how to handle things and looked around to see if this would, indeed, be a good way to handle said things.

Everyone seemed impressed, as if they were all simultaneously (generously) thinking, "Hey, this guy might not be an idiot!" (But he probably is, so keep watching him.)

One of the teachers spoke up and said, "Why don't you talk to the Principal about taking his job." Emphasizing the "him" by jabbing her fork in another teacher's direction.

I immediately felt uncomfortable. Fears of gas and eating a little too much aside. That just seemed like a hurtful comment.

He (the teacher in question) looked slightly put out by this entire conversation.

She (the fork pointer) said, "He won't be with us next year, you could just take over for him!"

He (feeling forced by my look of curiosity and her fierce waving of cutlery) went on to tell me about his future Mission and how he'll be raising money to plant a new Church in Vancouver and see if it grows. He used this terminology exactly and I was only slightly bothered by the cascade of questions that rushed into my head.

You can plant a church? Do you add water or does the plumbing help? Do money trees actually exist? Is my mother, in fact, made of money? Will I ever know the meaning of GCB? (And no, I will not google it.)

It turned out he hadn't been put out by her lack of empathy towards his leaving, in fact, he was rather sure I would make a great replacement and the team of people he worked with already know and like me. How perfect.

No he was upset because he would have to find a summer job, and Canadian women and waving cutlery aside, that downright sucks.

Boring Jobs -- Does the Title go to "Test Proctor?"

I've been thinking a lot about jobs lately. I work as a tutor and test coach at a High School. It's a pretty enjoyable job--and a rewarding one. I get a chance to coach football as well, and I get a real opportunity to make a difference.

But then they make me proctor.

Being a test proctor is a lot like watching paint dry in a room full of televisions that only show baseball (and golf on Sundays.)

To proctor a test in Florida you have to have a certificate to be a teacher. So they can hold the certificate over your head if you do anything wrong.

"Oh, you thought that you would be able to look at your cell phone, crack open a book, or skim through a magazine after you do a walk through? Think again."

In a standard test, that is to say, one that lasts about an hour, it's no problem. You walk around, maybe offer some vague words of encouragement and make sure no one is cheating or taking pictures of their screens so they can sell test questions.

But in the retakes the kids get the entire day to take the test. From 7 am until 2:20 pm I am walking around in a room with maybe 10 kids in it. And I'm not allowed to do anything.

In honor of this torture, my sullen fate during the time that is owned by FCAT, I've begun a list of jobs I consider worse, more boring, or slower than this.

Feel free to add your own to my list.

1) Retail sales employee at a major company on a slow day. You're still expected to "work." So you basically walk around dusting and talking to your "friends." You get yelled at by your managers who are doing the exact same thing, but don't want to get in trouble with their bosses. Also at the average retail establishment you have more bosses that Cal Ripken Jr. has career hits.

2) Video Game Tester. I know it sounds fun, but (apparently) you mainly just end up playing the same level over and over again and looking for "bugs" in said level. Name a game you love. Now go into that game and play the same level over and over again for one hour. See if you still love that game. Even if that level is perfect, it's perfection will eventually get to you. Driving you mad.

3) Front counter at a slow hotel, or overnight shift. Yeah, you're the face of the hotel. You have to stand there and look pretty, or at least professional. Until the invention of the smart phone this was job probably seemed a little bit like the Chinese Water Torture of the Hospitality Industry. (Imagine if you didn't like reading.)

4) In that same vein of thinking, overnight shifts at grocery stores. After the third month you've done all your homework, written an unsuccessful novel and you know every damn thing about every damn celebrity. You haven't seen the sun in the past six weeks and your girlfriend left you and didn't bother to tell you. In the eyes of the World, you no longer exist.

5) Traffic cop (on an empty road.) Think about it. Traffic cop is the punishment that is handed down to the rebel cop by his stern, yet caring, Captain in every cop movie before rebel cop gets a break in his case and solves it off duty. Somehow making everything better rather than getting him fired and sued.

6) Substitute teacher once you've finished the reading material you've brought. This is why most subs bring movies along, God forbid the teacher actually has the class working when s/he is away.

7) Tech support. It's not that it's boring. In fact, I'm sure there's always something to do. But how many times can you run someone through a list of possible problems to find out that the machine isn't plugged in or that they were using the CD player as a cup holder or that the computer's built in fan wasn't keeping the room cool enough before you go just a little bit insane?

I'll come back to this later. Maybe throw a cartoon in. Just some thoughts.

Steve Jobs Thinking Pose: Outpacing the Mona Lisa in Most Views, One Click at a Time

This is the only picture of Steve Jobs you will ever see again.

And he isn't even holding an iPhone. For shame.

Frosted Flakes -- Supporting Irresponsible Parenting Everywhere

Fuck this guy. Who makes his kid field grounders all morning before eating breakfast? What type of father is Kellogg's supporting here? The Nazi Sports Dads?

There's one with them playing football before breakfast too. Freakin' Frosted Flakes.

A Ho-Hum Routine and the Tire Douche

I set my alarm each night for exactly one hour before I need to be at work the next morning. This leaves me exactly enough time to not get a complete breakfast, miss most of Sports Center, and make it to work with a little less than two minutes to spare.

This system allows me to do things like, but not limited to: complain about being tired or having low energy levels all day;need a lunch because I didn't have a good breakfast; not know anything that's going on in the sporting World until someone brings it up.

Yesterday began no different than any other day. Wake up at nine for work at ten. Eat a single cookie, hold on longingly to the second one before putting it back, all the while telling myself that this was the place the battle would be won, this cookie would be the first of many victories. (I feel you should know that I am currently eating an ice cream.) Get dressed, take one last wistful look at the clock. Leave.

A ho-hum morning to the tee. I threw myself into my little Oldsmobile with typical abandon, put on my music and morosely pulled out of the parking spot.

The differentiating factor this particular morning was the UPS driver--who I imagine had, much earlier than I, gone through his own ho-hum morning routine and was now in a mental state that fell somewhere between utter anguish and happy pink butterflies. The point of that metaphor? He was taking up both lanes.

Being the astute morning driver we all know me to be, I reacted about ten seconds too late and flung myself up and over a (maybe) six inch curb. Something that should of, at worst, made my car complain the rest of the drive to work. "Dick move, Dave. Dick move." Yeah, it would have been annoying. But I would have understood.

Instead, my tire exploded like an overripe watermelon. It would be safe to say that it handled the situation poorly.

So instead of getting to work two minutes early, I got to work fifteen minutes late. And then, as my shift came to it's seemingly unreachable conclusion, I had to call my roommate to come pick me up, who, like any good mother, was at the door waiting and waving as I left the building.

Florida seemed to know exactly when I'd been forced into an outdoor situation, and immediately reacted with what I'll loosely call a "fierce heat." As I've long associated mind-numbing with cold weather and boring people and hate the word "sweltering."

As with most flat tires, I had to replace this one. In so doing I had to locate a spare, locate the jack, get the car up on said jack, get the wheel off and the spare on, the only difference between this and any normal flat-tire situation? It was like a rookie league pit crew. I had about thirty minutes to get the car into the shop and get it fixed.

This undoubtedly doesn't sound like a problem to most of you, but for me, changing a spare without a book telling me exactly how is a lot like putting LEGO's together without a guide. Sure, it'll look the same, but I always end up with fourteen extra pieces and a building that tilts to the left the ten-percent of the time it isn't tilting to the right.

Inevitably, we (my roommate was there for the whole ordeal, because he cares) beat the clock with two minutes to spare, an appearing theme in my existence, and got to the tire shop exactly twenty minutes after my appointment. But an hour and a half before close.

The guy, who I will jokingly (not really) call the Tire Douche, "spit his game" at me, as it were, for the next ten minutes. Wasting time as, at this point, I would have bought whatever the Hell he told me to. Instead, he pulled a super exaggerated "Captain Morgan" pose. He managed to get his leg all the way up to a counter that was a little higher than my waist. As if he wanted to say. "Look bro, I'm taller than you. Also, my cock is in your face."

Good times.

About an hour later, I made my glorious return to the land where Tire Douche ruled as King and finished paying for my tires, alignment and subsequent soul harvesting. He spent about twenty minutes reassuring me that I had done the right thing in getting tires. He did this despite me, after minute one (more accurately, second ten) telling him, "Yeah, they were not in good shape."

To which Tire Douche responded, "Good shape? Dude, you should play the lottery, I'm freakin' honored to be in front of you right now, man. You should have died!"

Awesome. But, he was right. There were small pieces of asphalt stuck in the glaringly obvious fibers sticking out all over the damn place. In places the tread was so destroyed that you could count the layers the road had chewed through. My tires essentially looked like they had been made of felt rather than rubber. Like someone threw out a couch and I said, "Fuck yes, I want that on my car."

Maybe I just care about the roads comfort more than you.

Internet Table

Day Twenty-Five Without the Internet:

I've eaten the Cat5e cable. It was sinewy and tasted like dried up joy. I haven't seen Epic Meal Time in two weeks. Reading online cartoons seems like a fever dream I had once...years ago.

I can no longer pay my bills without calling and leaving a message, like some relic of a bygone age. I am a technology Neanderthal. I'm using my phone as a phone--watch as the children throw rocks and me and feed on my suffering.

I tried writing--to pass the time, until I remembered that I had thrown my keyboard against a wall earlier, cracking it open like a piggy bank in a classic cartoon. I had hoped the internet would fall out through the shattered keys and broken plastic and I would gather up its fluffy goodness in my arms like so much spilled Styrofoam packing on a long since forgotten Christmas morning.

Sadly, it did not. I still have no internet.

I'm in a local Ice Cream Store, Neighbors, owned by a friend of a friend of a roommate. I'm sitting here, considering squatting long term (in a bid for future ownership,) growling at passerby as they look enviously at my table. The table with the power chord. It is mine and you cannot have it.

This seat is where the Internet is and it is now mine.

I am the uncrowned King of Internet Table. Fear me.

Error There is no Error

I was trying to watch Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Ax earlier when this screen came up.

The "Error: There is no error" of cable television.

If you haven't had the joy of that particular computer related error it looks like this:

I would find this situation amusing if it happened to someone else.

Or during an episode of Jersey Shore.

How the Commercial Really Ends

Call me a cynic but these Cheezit commercials are bit ridiculous. I'm all about the personification of food, if your goal is to make the consumer base feel like cannibals and or murderers...did no one in the Ritz Marketing Department think about what the logical next step of this ad was? Well, I did. A lot.

Which brings me to Domino's Pizza. They're putting a survey on a box, and they think that will make years of bad tasting pizza and health risk chicken okay. A survey on the box? What the Hell good does that do the customer other than make the company look really good to the Lowest Common Denominator of Consumers?

Do you know what you do with boxes? You throw them away as soon as the food is no longer in them. In the trash. That's where these vaunted surveys go. How is this helping anyone? Least of all the company. Oh wait, it isn't. Because they don't care.

Domino's doesn't actually need to be a company that cares about what you (the consumer//customer) think. They need to be a company that is perceived as a company that cares what you think. If they really gave a shit about what we thought about their food they'd give away free pizza and ask opinions. Put the survey on coupons for a free pie, etc. Instead, they put it on a chicken box and make a big show of the "lead chicken chefs" pretending to be scared for their jobs because of the one 50-something mother of six who actually cares enough to fill out a used, grease filled box, and mail that f*cker back.