So, three jobs it is, and it starts now, not in the fall when Big Jeff gets deployed.

Why now?

Well, for one, I need time to learn this stuff. And the casino needs time to decide if they’ll like me. But mostly because Jeff double-booked himself with weddings for most of the summer and needs me to fill in behind him.

I went to the yuppie bar for redneck karaoke last night to see how it’s done. He didn’t have time to show me how to set up, but I got to see a little bit of how to operate it. The karaoke nights are the hardest; he’s not planning on making me do those, but I think I can handle the technical side of it.

That yuppie bar probably isn’t going to be in the picture for long anyway. There just aren’t that many people there; the ones interested in redneck karaoke are all down at the regular dive with the cheap beer. The fancy beer just doesn’t really appeal to our crowd.

The owner was picking our brains about it last night. He’s big on the microbrewery thing, since it is a brewpub and all, but expensive microbrews just aren’t what draws rednecks. Now, if he finishes fixing up that mechanical bull and actually does some advertising, he may start bringing them in. He seems to think that they’ll all happily convert over to his fancy beer once they try it. Dude, I’m pretty typical, and I tried it the last time I was there. I couldn’t finish it.

But the beer’s not why that’s not the bar of choice. Sure, they (grudgingly) sell what I do drink and they’ve sniped the best DJ in town, but the beer’s expensive. It’s not just that though. It’s the atmosphere. It’s a really nice place: clean and well-lit and roomy and with good food. But someone like me walks in, sees a bar full of yuppies, and just feels out of place. Maybe if we all descended at once, we’d feel like we belonged there, but the first thing I noticed the last time I went was the lack of cowboy hats. It’s more a place to take a first date for appetizers, or maybe your mom and dad for dinner than a redneck joint. I’m not exactly sure why the owner wants to remarket to rednecks anyway. He might do better just sticking with the 20-something and yuppie crowd; lord knows there are enough of them in this area.

Jeff came clean about why he wanted me to do this. He doesn’t care if I’m charismatic and outgoing; he wants someone he can count on. He told me that besides his mom, I was the only person in the world that he could rely on (and I’m guessing he probably doesn’t want his mom to DJ for him.) He said that he’ll try to find someone else too, so it’s not so hard on my schedule, but that even if I don’t like the DJ part, he’d like me to manage it. I’ll already be taking over the full water business work while he’s gone, but he’d like me to be his proxy on this too. I’ll pick up his mail and deposit his checks and things like that. Oh, and keep his dog, but that’s no big deal. Jeff’s such a busy guy that so far, it will take four of us to keep his life running while he’s gone.

So, this summer’s going to kick my ass. The hours are going to be hell, the driving will suck, especially at two in the morning, and I will have no time for a social life. He said, “Welcome to my world,” and I pointed out that he created this world himself. And I already gave my notice; as soon as he gets back, I quit.

But I will help my friend out. We single people have to stick together.

So, my self-publishing friends, if I were to switch over to maintaining my own domain, do y’all have any recommendations on hosts and publishing software? What about image hosting? It all needs to be fairly user-friendly, since I can barely struggle my way through HTML. I’d like the ability to have multiple posters too, since some girlfriends and I are contemplating starting a group blog.

What have you guys used, and what should I stay away from? What else do I need to know?

This might be my project over the next few weeks.

Thanks!

After the hangover/flu one-two punch the other week, I figured that this might be a good time to stop drinking. No, I don’t think I have a drinking problem, but soda hurts my stomach so I don’t drink it. Therefore I usually have a couple of beers with dinner at night, and a few more than that on the weekends. And that’s a whole lot of extra calories that I don’t really need. I’m substituting diet iced teas and lots of water.

I’d just about run out of other sources of empty calories to cut back on. I eat a lot of vegetables and not much processed or otherwise junky foods. I have to watch my portion control when I’m cooking for the kids, but when I’m on my own, I don’t eat much at all.

It’s not a moral decision, and I had a beer the other day when I was pressure washing the house. It tasted kind of funny after so long.

So between cutting back on the beer and forcing even more veggies down my hatch, I seem to be losing weight. I’ve been getting more than the usual amount of exercise prepping the house for painting, but when that’s done, I’ve promised myself to break out the Yoga tapes. That’s one of the rare forms of exercise that I’ve always enjoyed.

I don’t have a scale, but my pants are fitting loser and my watch has become downright annoying with the sliding around. I must be doing something right.

I mentioned that Big Jeff was probably getting deployed, right? Well, probably has turned into most definitely.

He’s understandably worried about keeping his businesses going while he’s gone. The water business is no problem; I can handle that, but his substitute DJ can only work every other week.

So he asked me to do it on the opposite weeks.

My first response was, “Are you out of your mind?” but then I got to thinking about it a little more. Hell, if I can announce a rodeo, how hard can playing a little music be? I picked the other guy’s brain too; he says karaoke night is the hardest, but Jeff says that’s not the night he wants me to work anyway.

I’m not the most outgoing person in the world, but I’m certainly not shy either. I’m definitely not what seems to attract these women to the bar (a hot guy) but what the hell. I’ll give it a shot at least. I may not have been his first choice for the job musically, but I’ll bet I was his most dependable option. I may not be very good at it, but by god, I’ll be there and on time, and he knows that about me.

If nothing else, I may be able to fill in for whoever else he can find to do it. The money’s good, but the hours sure suck, and I wouldn’t do a very good job if I had more than one or two beers while working. That’s one of the rare jobs where you can drink, but I don’t need to waste my whole weekends hung over.

So on Thursday night, I’m going down to the bar. Not to party, but for sort of a job interview. In this case, I’m interviewing him; watching to see how complicated it is and if it’s something that I think I can do. If not, he’ll need all the time he can get to line someone else up.

Should make for some interesting journal fodder if I do it though.

… home improvements, that is.

After getting up before dawn to do a job at a fast food place (what a pain) I faced a whole weekend of working my ass off.

See, my landlord’s been promising to paint this house since I moved in. Seven years ago.

It’s ugly and grey and peeling so the previous uglier red paint shows through. Nice, huh? I got my hopes up last year when he bought the paint, but that was just silly. He has to talk about things for a year or two before he actually does them.

But he promised that this would be the prep weekend, and if I wanted my house painted, I had to clear out things from around the outside.

Oh, crap.

The wood pile was still along the side of the house, seasoning until I can split it. And it wasn’t stacked neatly so we could get around it either. Oh no, I tossed it in there any old way.

So bright and early (which was somewhat after the crack of dawn) found me moving my wood pile.

What was this…

…is now all over the lawn, because there sure wasn’t any point to stacking it neatly this time.

But I got everything cleared, and Marv brought over his pressure washer.

I love the pressure washer. I want to marry the pressure washer. It’s huge and noisy and makes a terrible mess, but things get so fantastically clean with the pressure washer. I found myself getting sidetracked by cleaning the bricks on the outside of the chimney, or powering off the green scum in the puddle that broke my leg.

I discovered the MAN’s way of washing windows. Sadly, after I was done with that, I also discovered that the little vent holes at the bottom of the windows should probably be stopped up first, but it was so much fun that I haven’t even kicked myself for it yet. I just wish that I could bring that thing in the house to clean my shower with, but that would probably fall slightly on the overkill side of the spectrum.

The pressure washer was so satisfying. I do love to pick, and there’s nothing better than peeling long strips of paint off the garage door with gas-powered tools. Of course, my arms are completely rubber, I ended up with the world’s worst case of giant grey-blue dandruff, and my house now looks like it has advanced mange, but it’s clean!

Here’s Marv starting on the front of the house. The shutters will go back up minus the stupid little hearts. This isn’t the eighties, people!

My coworker, friend, landlord, hunting partner, and today, fellow giant dandruff sufferer. But Connie brought us pizza, which made at least an hour of it worthwhile.We’ll see if I’m still so enthused about the project tomorrow when I can’t reach my feet.

I just found out this morning that my business partner (Big Jeff) may be deployed to Iraq in a few months. While that’s mostly his story to tell, not mine, this will change my life in a few ways too.

Last time he was gone, it was only to Fresno, so while I took over the water duties, he was always there for a consult, and he still did all of the reporting and billing. He won’t be so accessible this time, so we’ll have to shift the contract over to my business. I’ll have to do all of the paperwork. It will be nice to make more money, but I don’t have a backup operator, so unless I find one, there will be no trips longer than a weekend for me for a while.

Oh, and I offered to take his dog again. Last time, I took Cheyenne. We’ve done the Border Collie thing together for years, and we had just bred her to Angus when he left. So instead of being a one-dog household, I was all of a sudden a nine-dog family. I had to do all of the puppy raising and selling, and since he wanted to keep one, I had three dogs for quite a while. Well, Cheyenne’s since died (damn, and he just told me that this morning too) but he’s got a male tri-color named Ringo. Now that Angus is neutered, I think I could keep two males, but we’ll have to see how it goes. Jeff’s mentioned getting Ringo neutered too, since he’s never successfully bred, and if he does that, we’ll be fine. It should keep the fighting to a minimum anyway, and Ringo’s not a very dominant dog.

I can’t do anything about his horses (one of whom used to be mine) but if he sends them down to JJ’s house, maybe I can ride them once in a while.

Poor Jeff. He’s all stressed about this. His day job is just starting to build a new treatment plant and as the manager, he really needs to be there. But all of the guys in his unit are in the same boat. They can’t technically be fired for being deployed, but you know damn well that it happens anyway. He’s going to have to arrange for someone else to cover his other side job too.

What I meant to write about this morning was this MySpace thing. The first time I tried it, I went into it from the online dating perspective. And yeah, it’s pretty creepy that way. Full of perverts and weirdos.

But as a social thing, I’m having more fun with it. Now I have real-life friends on it, and some people from my favorite message board. This part, I like. Sure, it’s a little junior high with the whole who’s friends with whom thing, and it’s way too easy to stalk people, especially since you can’t see who’s viewed your profile.

I do get the occasional odd contact from strange non-native English-speaking men. What do they want? I’m clearly not a model, and I’m no man’s sugar momma. I don’t care how good-looking he is, I’m not flying across the country to get laid. I just don’t see the point of men hitting on random women, I guess. Does the shotgun approach ever really work? Are some women so gullible as to believe that the generic email was sent to them alone? Probably the men get more of these emails from hot naked women (who are really strange lonely men in disguise.)

But anyway, if you have a page there, drop me a line. We’ll be friends! It will be junior high all over again! We’ll do lunch! OK, maybe not that one.

Man, this weather is crazy beautiful this week. It’s topping out at about 90°F, which is just perfect. Warm enough for shorts, but not so hot that I have to climb up on the roof and take the plastic off the swamp cooler yet. Well, I don’t do roofs, but I don’t have to nag my landlord to do it yet either.

Luckily, I have some backhoe work going on and don’t have to sit in the office all day, or I’d be going stir crazy.

Last night was my evening at the baseball concession booth while John went to Boy Scouts and Seamus went to practice with his dad. Two hours went by in a flash while the cash register kicked my ass and I regularly had to get rescued by the teenage girls who usually work in there. I haven’t had to work a cash register in almost 20 years, and back then, we did it the old-fashioned way, memorizing SKUs and shit. There were no fancy “hot dog” buttons. It was a little embarrassing, being beaten by a machine. I have a college degree, damnit! This thing shouldn’t be smarter than I am! But it kept freaking out when I’d insist on entering a decimal point when it knew good and well that it had already accounted for one. Approximately five minutes before my shift was over, I did it right. Once.

Too bad I was so preoccupied with the stupid machine, because the concessions booth is an ideal place to admire the various hot dads from other teams. The hot dad from our team was even there, even though it wasn’t our night to play, because he’s a coach for his other kid. I’m mentally terrible, but I never actually hit on any of them at least; I just admire from afar.

It was so nice out that I tried to talk Seamus into staying and watching his step-brother’s game, but he wanted to go home. Spoilsport!

I’m not exactly sure how I packed so much in a weekend that involved praying to the porcelain god, but at the tail end of it, it seems to have been a pretty busy one.

Of course, my time-sense must be skewed by starting the weekend on Thursday night. Honestly, I didn’t mean to do that, but after I’d sat at work for an hour on Friday and banged out a post, the world started seriously spinning. I had to go take care of one thing with a contractor (who may not have known why I was listing to one side, but I bet the truck driver did.) You’d think I’d have permanently learned the “don’t drink when you’re sick” lesson by now, but my memory, she is short and I have to relearn that one every five years or so. I wasn’t as over the flu as I’d hoped, and the hangover brought it back with a vengeance.

Fortunately, my ex owed me for the previous weekend, so he just kept the kids instead of exposing them to whatever bugs I may have had and the pathetic sight of their mom turning green. I missed Friday night’s game, which really chapped my hide, especially since they won.

I made it to Saturday’s game though. They played Seamus’ (undefeated) team from last year, and got beat again, but they gave it as good as they got for a few innings this time. Some other parents flaked on the snacks, so I volunteered and found myself surrounded by ten swarming children looking for ice cream at the snack bar. Fortunately, by then vertical was a possibility.

I’m getting so into this baseball thing that it’s a little ridiculous. I’m not quite turning into a Little League parent. I can’t put my time as a junior rodeo official behind me enough to hassle the umps (I yelled back at parents and I wouldn’t blame them if they did too.) But I know all of the kids’ names and I seem to be working the snack bar tomorrow evening after work. I’m going to miss it when the season is over. Hmm, I may have to look in to summer league. I hope he wants to play!

But then all of the quiet at home got to me, so I called up Eric. We’d left it at dating when possible, but not pursuing a relationship. He wanted company too, so I spent the night with him.

It was awfully nice to be able to go to someone that I like just because I was lonely, and it’s also nice to be able to put the pressure of finding someone new aside. I don’t need someone new; I’m seeing someone that I like. But if I do run across someone else that I’d like to go out with, I’m perfectly free to pursue that too. It’s kind of liberating, and I like it for now. I’d be unhappy if I wanted more time from him, but as it stands, this is good. If we stop being happy to see each other, then we move on; as simple as that.

So that left me with Sunday to fill, and with a whole stack of jobs that I should have started on last weekend. I got at least ten of them done before I started to get tired and make dumb mistakes, and only have three more to worry about next weekend. Of course, those three are restaurants, so I have to get up ridiculously early to catch them before they open, but that’s next week’s problem. For now, I’m caught up. One guy even paid me in cash, which sort of made up for his talking me down on my price.

So a three-day weekend for the price of two. Not bad, not bad.

Urff.

I may have just the smallest hangover.

I may have toasted “not having cancer” one or four times too many.

At least I did remember the lesson that whiskey hurts way less in the morning than the equivalent amount of beer. I could do with another two or seven hours of sleep, but the headache’s not all that bad really, compared to some of the hurling mornings-after that I remember from my wilder years. Well, wilder year (singular) really. 30 was a good one!

Anyway, since we were at a fancy-pants brew pub, I thought I give it a good college try and have a fancy-pants beer. Nope, still don’t like fancy beers. I’m doomed to be a cheap beer date for the rest of my life. I can live with that.

Our friend Mel didn’t come, so it was just me and Marci. (Hi Marci! *Waves*) We met Jeff and hung out with some of his regular entourage. He’s moved Redneck Karaoke night to this new place, which is nice and all and has a much higher tooth to person ratio but doesn’t seem to have the number of cowboy hats that I like in a bar. It wasn’t packed, but it was fun. I became my usual mellow grinning drunk. No, I did not sing. There doesn’t exist enough alcohol in the world to make me sing karaoke. I pass out long before that point.

I did learn that I’m not as anonymous as I’d like to think, driving around town. Someone said that he’d been waving to me for years, but apparently I’ve been my oblivious self that whole time. He even knew that I switched trucks. Hmm. Might be the giant antlers pasted on my windows. After all, I recognize other people’s logos, and that is what it’s there for. I should pay attention, I guess. The things you learn in bars.

All in all, a nice night. I needed that!

•••••

In the spirit of wrapping things up, I called Eric one last time last night.

And he answered, for a wonder.

Once he figured out how long it had been and that I really was sort of perturbed about it, he apologized all over himself. He had all sorts of excuses, but what it really boiled down to was that he’s too busy for a girlfriend and (unspoken) was obviously not into me enough to make the effort. Which is fine; I was wrapped up in my own stuff anyway.

I told him that this wasn’t worth pursuing a relationship out of, but I wouldn’t be adverse to a date now and then, although I wasn’t going to sit by the phone. I might or might not be available when he finds the time to go out. He is a nice guy, and someone that I could see casually dating now, but no more than that.

It was nice to be able to tell him what I felt. Usually I don’t get that chance with the ones that just walk away.

I don’t know if I’ll bother putting the ad back up for a while. I was so disillusioned on the whole internet dating thing that one sort-of success doesn’t quite make pimping myself worth it. I may change my mind (hell, I probably will) but for now, I’m just going to lay low. I’m not really in the mood for drama, even if it does make good journal-fodder.

And with that, it was all over.

No cancer; not even precancerous whatnot. What a relief!

Man, it’s been a long month. So tomorrow night, if I’m not hacking up a lung, my girlfriends and I plan to go out and hoist ourselves a few. I even have a new buddy to hang with. I like her enormously even though I haven’t yet met with her in person or even chatted online. But she’s M’s friend and sounds really just like us, which is a little frightening. I’m looking forward to hanging with her and swapping stories about ridiculous men and bad dates; between the three of us, we’ll have enough to talk all night. Not that that’s ever been a problem with the two of us.

So, in a word, whew.