Waiting for the UV, baby.  Miss you like nobody’s business.

Love to all. Even you, the jackass who called the 15-second rule on Maggie when the line was 20 people deep, and the clock was at less-than-20.

Instead of flaming off the excess anger I’m feeling at the moment… covering topics ranging from home/money to business/money to business to fatherhood to parenting to husbandhood to sobriety, I’ll just post this IM I just had. Basically, my main recruiter was talking with a very nice, very talented candidate who really talks for way too long. She had upwards-revised her salary requirements by 10k, after having discussed it with us in detail. Being in a bad mood, I decided to fuck with my recruiter by saying her inappropriate things.  She started laughing, and turned away from her screen.

I normally do NOT talk this way to her. I am on the right.

Love to all.  Even you, the Multi-Billion Dollar Ad Agency that hasn’t paid their bills in 110 days and counting.

Lord, please help me not elbow this lady in the face for crashing down into the seat next to me AND a sizable chunk of the seat I am in, bashing my laptop with her oversized purse TWICE (I have a teeny little MacBook… it’s well into my airspace), reading over my shoulder, and then carrying on a loud-ass conversation with her friend. Oh, and her fur coat is heating ME up, since she’s crammer her ass into a seat that, sadly, is too small for her.  In fact, Lord, I pray that you give her every happiness I’ve ever asked for myself.  Thy will not mine.  Argh.

Love to all.  Even you, lady.

Love to all. Even you, Sy.

Amanda got this from someone, and I got it from her.

76% Chris Dodd
74% Joe Biden
74% Barack Obama
72% Dennis Kucinich
71% Hillary Clinton
71% John Edwards
70% Mike Gravel
60% Bill Richardson
32% Rudy Giuliani
26% Tom Tancredo
24% Ron Paul
22% Mitt Romney
22% John McCain
15% Fred Thompson
14% Mike Huckabee

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Love to all. Even you, frightened one.

1. If you are the head of a mid-size publishing company, maybe you should think before you scream at a 26-year-old girl.
2. Actually, delete “If you are the head of a mid-size publishing company, maybe”.
3. My mother-in-law had a loud conversation with her brother bemoaning her situation, her aftercare, and staying at our house.  Right in front of Maggie, me, and my oldest.  I said nothing.
4. Maggie said something the next day.  Big time.
5. It’s like having a teenager in my house.  Sort of.
6. Work is insane, mostly in a good way.
7. Maggie is holding up very well with all of this.  She’s kind of a rock star to me right now.  I’m super-duper proud of her.
8. I wish I had more family to talk to about this stuff.

Love to all. Even you, the heroin-addict husband who lost his wife’s car last night.

[Note:  This was my post for Kaply, Inc's "Twelve Bloggers of Christmas."  It seems Tracy went blog AWOL for the last few days - How dare she have a LIFE! - so I thought I'd post it here.]

Jesus Christ first crept into my life sometime in 1993, when I met Maggie.   Sneaky, sneaky Jesus… taking the form of a super-hot Irish powerhouse-of-a-lass with absolutely perfect boobs.

Jesus knew my weak spots, apparently.

Jesus wanted me to be a better me.  He wanted me to stop feeding my character defects, to stop allowing myself to lock into the me-against-you, good or evil, black or white, nuance-free mindset with which I had been raised.

Jesus tried hard with me, but there were mixed results; largely because I was drinking between 8 and 20 drinks a day.  Over the first seven years of our marriage, I was fading away.  Less present, less solid, I was slowly becoming a colorless version of who I was meant to be.

In 2002, Jesus took a new tactic. The Holy Spirit came at me in the form of a fresh onslaught from my Borderline Personality Disorder-stricken father.  He sent me threatening letters.  He said that something was going to get us when we stepped out the front door of our house.  He told me that I’d been a terrible person since the day I was born.  The Spirit said that I had been trying to destroy my parents’ marriage since I was four years old.

In early  2003, after a year of terrible words, after a lifetime of being loved, rejected, loved, rejected, loved, and rejected, the Spirit finally taught me, at age 34, how to turn the other cheek.

And in doing that, the Holy Spirit suddenly entered my life.

I converted to Christianity in April of that year.

Five months later, on September 18, 2003, I quit drinking.

Now, four-plus years sober, I still kind of suck.  I have a temper.  I’m judgmental. I’m too quick to want to pick people apart.  But I’m a better person this year than I was last year, and if I can say that NEXT year, that’s pretty much all I can ask for.

I try to remind myself frequently that nobody is more imperfect than me, and that, as the imperfect person that I am, I need to try and put out more good vibes than bad.  As with most things that involve self-improvement, this is a hit-or-miss operation.  So I try to remind myself everyday, by ending my blog entries with variations on a very specific theme:

Love to all.  Even you.

One person told me that I was a lot like my friend Lisa. My friend Lisa, upon hearing this, said “Why, because you have a vagina?” This is the ensuing conversation. I am on the right.

Love to all. Even you, you feisty Eastern European.

• Adderall:  3.  Rapid weight-loss, major personality changes.
•  Wellbutrin:   n/a.  Accidental double-dosage-induced panic attack.  Experiment ended.
• Adderall XR:  6. WAY better than adderall, but Maggie still thought personality changes not worth it.
• Straterra: 0.  No effect whatsoever.
• Focalin XR:   We’ll see.  Just started today.

Love to all.  Even you, the ex-employee who threatened me with a court order over a single email I forgot to answer a few days ago.

My oldest got a little bit frustrated at his orchestra concert, as did the parents. The orchestra leader went on… and on… and on… about every. single. song. This made us crack up when we played back the tape.

Love to all. Even you, the saleslady at the mall who complained about all those damn Moms.