A Chronicle of Moving

I just moved out of my parents’ house last week. My brother and I are now with our buddy, Andrew, and my parents are moving down the road to another house. During the move, I was reminded how much moving just…sucks. I was thinking about how many times I’ve moved since 2003. Let me count.

September 2003 – Moved to school
April 2004 – Moved back home
September 2004 – Moved back to school
April 2005 – Moved back home
August 2005 – Moved my parents into a new house – It was the hottest day of the year for extra misery
September 2005 – Moved back to school
April 2006 – Moved home (only 2 weeks)
May 2006 – Moved to sublet near school
August 2006 – Moved to an off campus apartment
August 2007 – Moved back into a dorm at school
December 2007 – Moved back home
October 2008 – Moved into new apartment/moved parents into new place

In the summer of 2006 I had to move my brother twice, and I had to help him quite a few other times. I also helped my girlfriend move a few weeks ago, and I’ve helped my friends when they’ve asked. I’m glad I was able to help, but for my sanity, please, nobody move for at least a year. Can we have a year long moving moratorium? It will be like when the Supreme Court ended the death penalty in the late 1970s, but only better.

Needless to say, I hope this is the last move I’ll have to make for a little while.

World of Warcraft

I hope some of you who read this are South Park fans. One of the most hilarious episodes satirizes what goes on in this computer game and stereotypes of the people who play them. For those of you who don’t know what World of Warcraft is, it is this computer game that you play on the internet with thousands and thousands of other people. YOu create a character in this virtual J.R.R. Tolkien-esque world. The characters can be gnomes, dwarves, elves, orcs, etc. It’s also very Dungeons and Dragons like too. This all sounds pretty nerdy.

Last year, I did a 10 day free trial because I wanted to see what this game was all about. I first thought it was kind of dumb, but I got hooked into it because there was so many people and places to interact with. Thank God it was only a 10 day trial. I wasn’t going to pay $15 a month to have my life sucked away.

Let’s flash forward to this year. A couple of weeks ago, Andrew told me that he started playing World of Warcraft. I groaned to myself.

I asked him, “Did you really sign up for that? You’re paying and everything?”

He said, “No dude, there are free servers to play it on.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

About half an hour later, he installed everything on my computer and I was playing. Andrew was the dealer, and I’m the user. The game is seriously like crack. An hour or two would pass before I even realized. My guitar was neglected for a few days.

I made a few characters. There is the Night-Elf, Delgore. Then there is the Blood-Elf, Serialius. Last of all, there is the Dwarf, Nostramo. I went on quests to kill weird goblins and rats. I ventured with Andrew into some cave where I got slaughtered by these weird ugly creatures. I spent a lot of time wandering around. Why do I have to wait until level 30 to get a damn horse?

Finally, a few nights ago, as I was traveling through the Searing Gorge as my Dwarf, I was killed by this giant monster thing. I decided to go on to this other part of the world. After traveling for about 45 minutes in the world to get to “Elwynn Forest”, I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing with this game? I just traveled miles in this fantasy game. What a waste! I’m not going to achieve anything meaningful playing this game.”

I logged off and deleted the game from my computer.

I feel much better now.

Embarassing Intervewing Moments

I had a lot of difficulty finding a job right after I graduated. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do, but I didn’t want to do anything related to criminal justice. I can look back now and say that I should have probably majored in something else. Luckily, I enrolled in a paralegal class and I think I’m going to be happy in this field. Before I enrolled in my paralegal course, I did score a few interviews.

Interviewing is not an activity I enjoy. It is often difficult for me to think quickly and answer questions. It was especially hard for me at that time because I was interviewing for jobs that I didn’t even want.

The worst interview was my interview with Progressive Insurance. I had to jump through major hoops to get through their interview process. The first step was to fill out an application on their website. Soon after, a representative called and scheduled me for a test. On the morning of the test, I was about 15 minutes from the house when they called and they said they had to reschedule because they lost power. Ok. Another week went by, and then I finally went into the office to take the test. I thought the test was pretty easy. It was simple math and english. An employee at the office said I passed the test, and that I was going to be going on to the next part of the interviewing process. The next step was the phone interview.

Nowadays, employers like to ask these “behavioral” questions. The format is usually, “given xyz, how did you identify the problem, what did you do, how did you do it, and what was the outcome”.

Let me tell you why these questions are such a problem to me. I feel like I “wasted” some of my time at college. Sure, I got great grades, but I wasn’t very fond of my major, my miserable time at my co-op job was still in my mind, and I didn’t even particularly want this job at Progressive. They asked so many questions that I knew I couldn’t be honest about, because that would have killed the interview on the spot. They asked questions about experiences I’ve never had, or if I did have those experiences, they were too lame to talk about. Who wants to relate all their experience to the 6 plus years of working at a supermarket?

The phone interview wasn’t bad. The interviewer liked me, she offered me some constructive criticism for the real interview. Finally, another week goes by and I’m ready to go into the final interview.

It was a disaster for me. I can’t remember many times when I’ve felt more embarassed.

There are certain emotions that I could hide, and I certainly felt much less pressure when interviewing on the phone. Without the safety net of the phone, I was left completely exposed. I stumbled on my words. I sometimes took 30 seconds to more than a minute to think of any example that I could remotely relate to the question.

Some examples:

“Tell us about a time when you had to make a tough decision. Tell us about the situation and why you made that decision”

I panicked during this question. The majority of the questions were less open ended and talked about a particular problem or type of experience that I could solidly relate to a work experience. Since the supermarket wasn’t rocket science, I tried to quickly think of an academic experience. I could only think of two options. The first option was for me to explain why I decided not to go to law school, and the second was why I stuck with majoring in criminal justice. Either way, I was going to be lying. I’m not a great liar. I don’t think they bought my answer that probably sounded something like this:

“There was a point during my sophomore year of college that I considered switching out of criminal justice. I didn’t want to be a cop anymore, and I didn’t want to continue Army ROTC, but I did enjoy law. I figured that majoring in criminal justice would be a good choice if I was to continue on to law school…It was a tough decision because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I think I made the right choice. But I don’t want to go to law school. I like investigative work, I think working in the insurance industry would be a good place to start.”

I probably incoherently rambled on a little more than that, but you get the idea.

At some point, I got this question:

“Tell me about a time you made an unpopular decision. How and why did you make this decision?”

Oh no. I couldn’t think of a single damn thing.

Then, I thought to myself:

Creative part of the brain: Wait, didn’t we just do the fantasy baseball draft? You were the commissioner and we had some infighting regarding which stats to include and which ones not to. Some of your decisions were unpopular among some of the teams.

Logical part of the brain: You can’t be serious, you’re not going to talk about fantasy baseball during an interview!

Creative: I can’t think of anything else for you! I’m sorry!

Logical: Come on, we can do better than this…the clock is ticking here.

Creative: Thinking….thinking….thinking…I’ve got nothing.

Logical: I can’t believe we’re going to do this.

Me: The best example I can think of is my fantasy baseball league…

I felt so embarrassed. The primary interviewer was an older woman who probably had no idea what I was talking about when I started talking about OPS, SLG, and OBS. The other interviewer was a younger guy and, luckily (if you can call it luck), he knew what I was talking about. I think they both felt embarassed for me.

I felt terrible, yet, relieved when I walked out.

Although I can laugh at this a bit now, this wasn’t like the other “ha ha, it’s ok to laugh at yourself moments”. I sincerely hope that no one has to go on a job interview like this. Embarrassing doesn’t do it justice. It was downright humiliating.

Driving Observations #2

Here is the 2nd entry in my driving observations series.

I was driving home from the other day. It was nice to be out early, but even though I was leaving One Stop Title early, I still had work to do for Jill. I pulled off the highway, traveled down the road that will not be named, and I was about to turn onto the unknown road to my street when I noticed a funny looking cement mixing truck. The truck had funky colors. It was white, blue, and orange. Right away, it hit me. I’ve seen these colors all together before.

The Smuggled Goods

That’s right! Drake’s cakes!

I like to think that the cement mixing truck was a covert operation to deter people from hijacking the Drake’s Cakes trucks, or at least stealing a few boxes. Wouldn’t you if you had the opportunity? But this theory wouldn’t work, because why would the big cylinder be turning if it was just boxes of Drake’s Cakes?

This goes to theory #2. I call this the super secret ingredient theory. Who really knows what in these things? I mean, even though Twinkies are not made by Drake’s, no one really knows what’s in them anyway. Twinkies have even been blamed for murders! Look it up, see Dan White, “Twinkie Defense.” This super secret ingredient must be stirred constantly…or it will explode.

There is one more theory.

The shadow cement company truck is pretending to be a Drake’s Cakes truck covertly to fool us all. What purpose? The evil company wants to fuck with you into thinking that Drake’s Cakes and other assorted pastries are so important, the trucks need to be disguised, but also give a little bit away in a James Bond villain sort of way, but then you’ll find out that the world is a cold bitter place…and Drake’s Cakes just come on regular old Mack trucks, not magical mystery cement trucks.

The Worst Date I Ever Had

Most of my stories about past relationships and dates have been relatively humorous at my expense. This time, I will tell you about a negative experience that occurred through no fault of my own.

First, I have to give you a little back story. When I was a sophomore, I decided to take Sign Language, ASL 101. A lot of my friends took sign language. My brother and mother did too. I figured, this could be a fun class.

I thoroughly believe that people can learn anything if they put their mind to it and really give it their best effort. Sign Language was something I just didn’t “get”. I did not give it my best effort either, but I had a “D” average and I was in danger of failing only a third of the way through the semester. I had to drop the course, which led to a lot of laughing from my friends.

Flash forward 2 years.

I started dating this girl who was an ASL major. Life throws a lot of curve balls.

I only dated this girl for a few months. One of the funnier moments was Valentine’s Day. We decided to cook a meal and eat in. She had to cook most of it and do all of the dishes because my right wrist was still in a cast from my bike accident. Hey, I couldn’t get the cast wet.

That last snippet wasn’t really part of the actual “worst date I ever had”, but I think it demonstrates why things didn’t really work out between us.

I think it was Valentine’s Day, or right around then when she asked me if I wanted to go to a deaf comedy show. I said, “Sure, that could be fun”. Here I am, the world’s worst practitioner of Sign Language, and I’m going to a deaf comedy show.

Everything seemed good and fine…until the show started (40 minutes late), and I found out it wasn’t interpreted. I had to sit for, I guess it was 2 hours +, and just stare at the stage blankly. Once in a while, she would explain to me what was going on. There was one skit that did Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?” routine, but that alone was the only bright spot. Another thing was that she was constantly on her “Sidekick”. You know, that cell phone that is shamelessly promoted by Snoop Dogg. Apparently, it’s pretty popular with the deaf community for obvious reasons. She apologized to me afterward. She said she didn’t know it wasn’t going to be interpreted.

We didn’t date too much longer after that.

Driving Observations #1

Hopefully, this will be the first of a long running series of weird things I see and/or things I’m inspired by when I’m driving.

This inaugural post will be kicked off by something I saw only a couple of weeks ago.

Two weeks ago, Lisa, Andy and I were going down to New York to see Lindsay’s play. I had not driven down to NYC in a long time, and this was the first time I’d be driving in Brooklyn was the first time Brooklyn was my destination. I drove down to New York a lot, back when Dan was on co-op at home on Long Island, and when I dated Lisa the first time. She was a student at Hofstra.

We were about halfway there, driving through Connecticut, talking about God knows what. I was in the left lane, blowing by everyone driving 60mph, and holding up the people behind me who were driving faster than 70mph. I look over to my right, and I saw a tow truck. That’s nothing out of the ordinary. But what caught my eye was that the tow truck was towing a tow truck.

I quickly interrupted Lisa and asked, “Is that a tow truck towing a tow truck?” She confirmed what I saw.

I said aloud, “I have always wanted to see that!” Truthfully, I have thought about that in the past. I thought it would be a funny thing to see, and finally, yes, I saw it.

Andy said something like, “Only you would think of something like that.”

I thought, “Probably…”

Human Physics

I was deep in thought last night, and I was thinking about the terrible day my girlfriend, Lisa, had yesterday. She’s the “venting” type. Me, not so much. As she was telling me about what happened to her yesterday, I got upset because she was having a bad day. This is a totally natural feeling. I was thinking about this relationship, about how frustration from one person transfers to the next. I started thinking of physics.

I’m sure everyone has heard of the Newton’s 3 laws of motion and of the conservation of energy. I’m going to explain some new laws. These are Matt’s laws of general human interaction.

Newton’s First Law – An object at rest tends to stay at rest; an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by a net external force.

Renamed to: Matt’s First Law of Laziness and Partying – A person who is lazy will tend to stay lazy; a person who is partying will tend to party unless acted upon by excessive alcohol.

What this means for us – I can be fairly lazy. When I’m at rest, I tend to stay at rest. I’ll lay around, watch TV, play guitar, drink some beer. It’s not until acted upon by some outside force that this will change. Heavy persuasion, parties, and other events are typical things that will put me in motion. After I’m in motion, beer, general sleepiness, and boring conversations act as the net external force to slow me back down.

Newton’s Second Law – F=MA, force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration.

Renamed to: Matt’s Second Law – F=BW

What this means for us – I am going to redefine this formula to F=BW. Fun is equal to the amount of beer consumed multiplied by the amount of women in your proximity. Let’s face it, many of us have been to real sausage parties, therefore, the fun factor is only equal to the amount of beer consumed. Add some chicks to the party, and the party is automatically better!

Newton’s Third Law – For every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction.

Renamed to: Matt’s Third Law – The regurgitation of Hammurabi’s code.

What this means for us – Does eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth sound familiar? This law as applied to humans and relationships is ancient. Examples are too numerous to count.

Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy

Renamed to: Matt’s Law of Conservation of Frustration and Anger

In all seriousness, this is what I was really thinking of when I started this whole topic. When Lisa was telling me about her bad day, she was obviously frustrated and angry. This anger and frustration cannot be destroyed, it can only be distributed and transferred, much like energy and matter cannot be destroyed. It is only transferred from one form and person to another. While it is friction in the form of heat that potential and kinetic engery eventually get converted to, it is time that acts as friction for the purose of this law. Needless to say, what Lisa told me obviously upset me, therefore, part of her frustration and anger transferred to me.

I think I’ve been looking at this a little too negatively. I’m a “glass is half empty” type. They say laughter is contagious. Overall, that probably sums up what I’m saying.

Somehow, explaining human interaction in terms of physics seems rather dry, and totally not sexy. According to Semisonic, “it’s all about chemistry”.

Or maybe calculus (you plus me equals us)?

I’m a Nina Fan!

No one really thought that I would actually have scored a date with a girl I never met on Facebook. Ha, I proved them all wrong!

The first date went pretty well. It wasn’t like we totally clicked, but we did have a lot in common and we had a good time. Unfortunately, the next few dates did not seem to match that first date. I was a little nervous. In the past, it seemed that many of my potential relationships were difficult to get off the ground because I was kind of “lazy.” So you know what I did this time, don’t you? Yeah, I played it too eager.

It was around the 4th or 5th time I saw her that the whole thing “broke”. I had her over my place, and we were going to go out and get a couple of drinks or something. Truthfully, I can’t remember what we did after this moment, but it doesn’t matter. Pete and Andy were around, but they weren’t doing too much either. As she walked in, we were watching the end of a Bruins game. We all were talking a little bit about hockey, and Andy said something kind of relevant to the conversation.

She asked Andy, “Are you a sports fan?”

Andy replies, “No, I’m a Nina fan.”

She had this puzzled look on her face.

I knew what Andy meant. Right around this time, we were watching Season 1 of 24, and Andy fell in love with the character, Nina.

I felt like such a goof trying to explain that to her, I knew, at that moment, that there was no recovering from this (it was already heading that way anyway, but this just expedited the whole thing).

I was also caught in an awkward position of just getting to know her, and Valentine’s Day coming around. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t do nothing, that would have been dumb. I couldn’t go overboard either, and scare her off. I got her some flowers, and when I gave them to her, it was SO awkward.

Sure enough, the next day, she politely said she didn’t think it was going to work out. I already knew this was coming, and I didn’t really know what else to say, so I kind of blurted, “Well, yeah, you know, whatever…” Needless to say, that became a catch phrase of sorts.

I was pretty much laughing about the situation the whole time, but still, I did feel a bit frustrated that it didn’t work out. I knew it wouldn’t have anyway…well, yeah, you know, whatever.

Bicycle Race

Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with Andy and Lisa. Lisa was talking about how one of her cousin’s children was riding his tricycle and was singing Queen’s “Bicycle Race” (which I find pretty hilariously cute in and of itself). The mother was laughing too, and said to Lisa, “Haha, if he only knew what that song was about!”

Lisa asked herself, “What is that song about?”

On the surface, there is no doubt that “Bicycle Race” could be one of the dumbest songs ever written. If you examine it a little closer, well, it’s still pretty dumb, but let’s think about it.

Lisa told me the story I just told, and then she asked me, “What do you think it means?”

I thought about it. During the verses, there are a lot of pop culture references and the lyrics state that the subject of the song (whom is probably Freddie Mercury himself) does not care about what’s going on in popular culture. Instead, he just wants to “ride his bicycle” all day long. I would think that the song talks about a simpler time and how we all sometimes long for that.

Lisa asked Andy the same question.

“Dude, it’s totally about him being a bisexual. He likes to ‘ride it wherever he likes’ and doesn’t care what everyone else thinks.”

I said, “Oh.”

DJs

Pete and I were driving up to Boston on Thursday. He was going to the Red Sox game, and I just wanted to go hang out Lisa, Andy, and Dan. We left around 4:30 and we hit some pretty bad traffic on 90. I decided to take 90 so I could drop Pete closer to Fenway Park, but it would have probably been faster to Route 9.

So, as we’re stuck in traffic on 90, we flipped on the radio because my iPod transmitter sucks balls (but thank you, Andy, for replacing it when mine was stolen from my car). We were listening to some evening show on WBCN, and they were slamming Sara Palin because “she can see Russia from her house” among other things. They were on this tirade for about 10 minutes before they went to “Times Like These” by the Foo Fighters.

As the song was playing, Pete and I were discussing Sara Palin and how we think she is a crazy conservative hockey mom, she is really dumb, and how John McCain is hiding her from the press. The Foo Fighters song ended and the DJs started taking callers. The caller asked, “When did it become ok, I mean you guys do it, but everyone does it too, but when did it become ok for DJs to just talk over the beginning of the song?”

There were about 15 seconds of complete silence.

One of the Djs said, “Dude, you totally just blew our minds.”