The Dog House: The Spring
Cleaning Special Edition
Here's the latest scoop on Allan Grohe, aka, The Grodog,
as he continues to go count the minutes between the present and the next Star Wars prequel. I've also
reverted to a forward-moving chronology, tracking from March 18th into the present:
- Since around mid-March 1999, life's been rather good.
Surprisingly and astoundingly so. I'm really not quire sure what to make of
it, in truth. My friends have all commented upon my general cheeriness, and watched
in complete bafflement as it has continued, week-in-week-out, as it has turned into a span
of months . . . .
Some of my comrades, of a perhaps less-positive
persuasion, have been heard to state that I've finally snapped--that, in fact, I've built
up such a tolerance to the stress and inanity of life at the Helpdesk that I'm actually
completely bonkers and just haven't realized it yet.
Me, I'm not worrying about it. I'm just wandering
about in a daze--a happy daze, but a daze nonetheless :-)
- I had some fun the last week of March: Adventures
in Shipping with UPS. The next time
that EHP has books that need to be shipped
while everyone else is out of the office--that can, in fact, only be shipped while UPS'
Lawrence shipping center is open (3:30pm to 6pm, Monday through Friday only)--then the
books can in fact wait another week. (Actually it wasn't all that bad, except for
the running back and forth to the warehouse, to John's house, to UPS, to the warehouse, to
my house, to Target, to UPS, etc., etc., etc., etc.)
- In early April, I almost rented a house in Kansas City
with my friend Doug Hesse (of black dog imageworks)
for 18 to 24 months, but it didn't work out. Which is rather a bummer, as the house
would have been perfect for large, hedonistic gatherings (complete with a jacuzzi!).
Alas.
- Much of the rest of April passed in a haze: I hung
out with the Thursday Night TV crowd a few times, though that grew sporadic as their
finals began; I chatted with my sister Alison fairly regularly via Netscape's AOL Instant
Messenger (my screen name is iscladoc if you care to chat
sometime); I spent a week in training at Rockhurt St. Louis University, learning Project
Management for Sprint; also work-related, sometime in April (I think), our Helpdesk won
the Helpdesk Institute's Helpdesk of the
Year Award for Team Excellence (which was rather cool); I began to play Powerball with semi-regularity (I'm
buying $2 in tickets when I buy gas most of the time), though I've yet to get more than
one winning number on any ticket; April concluded on a high note, as I received a
phone call from out-of-the-blue-ish from the woman who inspired "Her Voice" . . . .
- May has already come and gone, it seems, and it was a
busy month: it seems to have revolved around writing, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,
Atlanta, job offers, and my intriguing muse:
- I continued to work on The
Tao of Shaolin (writing, and when I got sick of that, maps) and Welcome to Potter's Lake (editing with
manuscript critique).
I wish it was all
going quicker . . . .
- On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, at 12:01 am, I saw Star Wars: The Phantom Menace at Ward Parkway's AMC
Theatre complex.
I hadn't planned to see
the movie on opening night, but since EHP turned three years old on the
20th, we decided to celebrate!
- The next afternoon, I flew to Atlanta to visit Sprint's Private Line Service Center,
on business for the Helpdesk. The trip was fun, mostly because I wasn't sacrificed
upon any fiber-optic altars to strange, TRS-driven gods, and because I was able to remain
in Atlanta through the weekend after my business concluded.
I visited my cousin Denise and her husband Robert, my cousin
Kathleen and her son Jonathan, my Aunt Lee, my cousin Nancy's daughter Danielle, as well
as Robert's parents Sharon and Bob, his sister Courtney, and their Grandma Ford.
Everyone was in town for Denise's baby shower, and we had a blast. We visited Stone
Mountain, checked out the new house that Denise and Robert are buying in Buckhead, bought
a section of O-27 train track, watched the movie Beautiful Girls (in
which Natalie Portman--aka Queen Amidala--also starred), and ended our visit with
breakfast at The Flying Biscuit
on Sunday morning (I also bought a Robyn Hitchcock CD at Blue Moon Records, as we were
there long enough this time around for it to open before fleeing to the airport). A
fabulous visit!
- I have been applying for various new jobs within Sprint, and had been torn between two different
job offers. Alas, the RMS position didn't end up working out, so I'll be moving into
a Project Managemet position at the Helpdesk (yes, I'll still be there--you can all groan
at me later ;-)
I'm excited, and hope that
this will continue to shift my work-place into a less-stressful environment (for me, at
least . . . . ).
- Lastly, but certainly not least, I've been talking with a
very interesting woman who shall remain nameless, as I'm not quite sure how she'd react to
seeing herself in "print" on my web site. For the sake of argument, we'll
care her "Megan" (no, that's not her name, though it is the name of one of my
little brother's old girlfriends).
Anyway,
"Megan" is pretty cool, very sweet, and we've been talking a lot throughout the
month. We were finally able to meet for dinner at Tomfooleries on the Plaza toward
the end of the month. Our schedules had been rather busy (she's a law student and
was taking finals, my trip to Atlanta also delayed things a bit), but things seem to be
going well 8-)
The rest of the month was spent much like last month,
though I got some strange fever toward the end of the month that kept me bedridden the
last two days before Memorial Day weekend. The rest of my family vacationed in Ocean
City, New Jersey, where they swam, sailed, and otherwise had fun in the sun. I've
seen The Phantom Menace
three times now, once with EHP, once on my own,
and once again with my intriguing muse, on the 30th. All-in-all, things seem to be
going well!
That about concludes things for the nonce. You can
read my previous bio, older bio, still older bio,
and yet-older life notes for less-current info,
though I'm not really sure why you'd want to.
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