The Great Apartment Hunt

It seems as though I'm always on the hunt for something, doesn't it?

Sorry it's been so long since I've written anything of any substance, but it's been a very busy month for me. I'm finally going to school (college, that is), and I've been preoccupied with jumping through hoops and filling out paperwork. I also got a (very) part-time job driving a (very) large truck. Yes, I've been busy.

Now, it's time for the final thing on my list of things to do: Find a place to live.

And I thought job hunting was hard. Finding a decent apartment at a decent price is impossible. Most property management companies require you to have three times the income as the price of rent and utilites. That means that between my job and my student loans, I can afford a $300/month apartment. Unfortunately, those do not exist. Ok...let's try option two.

A room for rent. Sounds easy enough. Unless, of course, you have a two year old son that's going to be staying with you a few nights a week. I live in a college town. Everyone that's seeking a roommate wants to party hard. I'm sorry, but I never really liked Andrew W.K. I'm sure there has to be an older couple somewhere in this town with a room for rent, but unfortunately they haven't figured out how to use Craigslist yet.

One last thought: If you have a room for rent, and have a preference on the sex of your roommate (which is totally legal, as long as it's shared living space), you should put that in the ad. You could at least tell me when I come over to view the room, or when I'm filling out the application. I'm baffled by why you decided to waste both your time and mine. I guess it's for the better, because I'd rather live in a cardboard box than live with an idiot.

When Are You Going To Learn?

I know that there are a lot of tech-heads out there that will agree with me on this one.

The new Apple iPhone 4 has major issues. This is me being shocked.

A word of advice to everyone out there. Never, never, never buy first generation electronics. Ever. I guess that's more than one word, but you know what I mean. Every company sets a release date for their product, and for some reason they think that meeting that deadline is the most important thing. Screw the bugs, we've gotta get this thing on the shelves.

Most of the bugs in these products aren't even discovered until they're available to the general public, like things not being used properly and exploding (anybody remember plasma screen TVs?).

There is absolutely no reason not to wait at least six months to purchase new electronics, except if you need to be the coolest person ever. Let's look at it this way. You paid $400 for your awesome, state-of-the-art iPhone. I paid $10 for my Samsung "dumbphone" that came with my plan. Mine works, yours doesn't.

Who's the idiot?

Frontal Phlebotomy

Today, I had an appointment to get some blood drawn. When I arrived at the hospital, there was already a very long line waiting to be checked in. After standing in line for fifteen minutes, I got checked in and took my seat in the waiting room. I watched as all of the people ahead of me in line had their names called, anticipating that my name would be next. Seven people later, it was my turn. That's right. Hospitals really will make you wait longer if you don't have insurance.

Finally, it was my turn. At first, I thought I was rather fortunate, because my phlebotomist was a young and fairly attractive woman. I followed her back to the creepy little room and had a seat in the torture chair. She sat at her desk and asked me several questions, inputing my answers into a computer. After thumbing through my paperwork one final time, she slapped on a pair of gloves and said she was ready.

"No you're not," I replied. She never washed her hands! After years of working in the food service industry, I know that a pair of latex gloves is NOT a subsititute for washing your hands. I thought maybe the standards in the medical field would be a little more stringent, but maybe I'm wrong.

I wish you could have seen the look she shot me when I asked her to take off her gloves, wash her hands, and put on a new pair of gloves. It was somewhere between pure hatred and who-the-hell-is-this-guy-telling-me-how-to-do-my-job. "I don't need to wash my hands," she told me. "I just put on clean gloves."

"Did the gloves magically jump out of the box and land on your hands? If not, whatever was on your hands is now on the gloves. It doesn't take a scientist to figure that one out." I wanted to tell her this, but I didn't think it was a good idea to upset her any further. After all, she was about to suck out my life-force with a needle.

Well, she washed her hands, took my blood, and left me a little emptier inside (literally). I don't know where she went to school, but I'd really like to find out. Maybe she failed Handwashing 101 at DeVry.

I have just invented a new genre of music...

It's called nerdgrass. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like.

It started off simply enough. I was playing my acoustic guitar, and I "accidentally" wrote a song about Chewbacca. When I realized that I was playing in G, I had an idea. "You know what goes great in G?" I asked myself. That's right, a banjo.

So, nerdgrass was born.

Ideas were coming to me left and right. A song about Captain Jean-Luc Picard with a sweet mandolin solo! A 3/4 song about Drizzt and Guenhwyvar (I had to get a book to see how to spell that). Of course, there would be the obligatory minor song (Em, of course), probably about Boba Fett or Sauron.

I thought I was brilliant, until I realized that there probably aren't a lot of hillbilly nerds out there. There's probably not a lot of Deliverance kids with access to iTunes.

I think I need to record this stuff, if for no other reason than personal amusement.

Author's Note:
According to my spellcheck, Chewbacca is misspelled, but Drizzt is not. Strange.

Ah...High School

With my ten year reunion coming up, I've been reminiscing a lot about my high school days. I honestly don't have very many good memories of school, mostly because I was a nerd. I never got stuffed in a garbage can or got my head shoved in a toilet, but the emotional trauma was far worse.

Kids are mean, especially in high school. When I was in school, not a day went by when I didn't get called a "fag" or "homo." I was unaware that there is a direct correlation between a love of Star Wars and a love of men.

I never understood why I was loathed by the "jocks." I knew that I couldn't talk to them about the things that I loved, so I tried to center any conversations on things that they enjoyed. "Did you see the game last night?" I would ask. "You're a nerd, you don't like sports" would be the response. Let me explain what is wrong with this statement.

The main aspect of any sport is physics, whether you realize it or not. What nerd doesn't love a good physics problem? Also, just because I'm not an athletic person doesn't mean I don't enjoy watching sports. Side note: The biggest D&D nerd and the biggest football jock I know happen to be the same person. Chew on that one for awhile!

Needless to say, I will not be attending my high school reunion. I am still in contact with most of my high school friends, and I don't feel the need for everyone else to tell me how much better they are than me. I'm happy with where I am in life, and I don't need others to convince me otherwise.

The Hunt Continues...

I still don't have a job, and it's not for lack of trying. When I first started looking for work, I applied only for things I have experience in, thinking that that was important. Apparently, ten years of food service experience is too much to get a job at a restaurant. I'm overqualified for the only thing I have experience in.

So, now I've moved on to applying for jobs in which I have no experience. Guess what? I don't have enough experience for those. I'm still unsure why I need six months of experience to stock grocery store shelves or to mow lawns. Seriously, I've been mowing lawns since I was 12, but since I didn't get paid for it, it doesn't count as experience.

I recently applied for a job at my son's daycare. I thought I would get this job in a heartbeat, for several reasons. First, I've been a stay-at-home dad for nine months. Anyone who spends time with my son tells me that he's very well-behaved and a perfect little angel. That doesn't happen by accident, you know.

Second, I'm a musician, which I believe would make a welcome addition to any childcare team. Do you know any children who don't like to sing and dance? I don't.

Third, the owner of the daycare would pay me to do my job, and I would immediately pay her a large portion of my wages for child care services. In theory, she would be paying me about two dollars per hour.

Alas, I didn't get the job. Instead, it went to a seventeen year old girl with enough eyeliner to cover the members of Green Day and Good Charlotte combined. Now my son has a horrible case of diaper rash, being that he sat in a wet diaper for at least four hours. His "caregiver" was too busy reading a magazine to be bothered.

I have since reworded my resume. It is now only two sentences:

Please give me a job! I am willing to work my ass off and utterly humiliate myself for a steady paycheck.

Aging As Gracefully As Possible

I've recently been trying to come to terms with the fact that I'm no longer young. I am by no means an old man, but I've been doing and thinking a lot of things that say otherwise.

"I remember when..." is how I begin most of my sentences. I constantly find myself complaining about how much things cost.

I remember when cigarettes were between one and two dollars per pack. In the great state of Montana, taxes alone for a single pack of cigarettes is $2.71 ($1.70 state tax, $1.01 federal). On a related note, you should thank the next person you see smoking. Your taxes would be much, much higher if people didn't smoke.

The last time I was at the store, I seriously considered buying a nose-hair trimmer. Nothing makes you feel like an old man quite like the need for accessories to keep unwanted body hair under control.

I have also recently done some things that are very stereotypically "old-manish." I actually yelled at the neighborhood hooligans to "stay off my lawn." I don't know what's worse, the fact that I yelled at them or that I refer to them as hooligans.

My only question is, if I feel like this now, how am I going to feel in 40 years? Hopefully by then, I'll be completely senile, and that sort of behavior will be expected of me. For now, though, I guess I'll just have to deal with the fact that young people are stupid and things cost more than they used to.