i got back to my desk and told someone over IM that i was tired of him getting a free pass to be a dumbass. if he had a meeting Friday that he needed information from me for, that’s fine, but tell me instead of telling our manager that i’m not helping you. he totally sold me out for no apparent reason. it’s not as if we’re the same level and he needs to look better than me. he seems to have a Napoleonic complex where he wants to be in total control, so by holding back information from me, he kept control.

so today i was able to finish what WS was going to need, and then found out that the Friday meeting agenda was changed and he wouldn’t be talking his part. i did not find this out from him (OF COURSE) but by someone else. i went and confirmed it though and he didn’t even apologize for not keeping me in the loop. i don’t like working with him because of stuff like this. incidentally, the part i’m working on for him, i came up with pretty much everything. so not only do i have to work with him just to get my part of the story done, i’m also wanting to make sure he doesn’t screw up what i’ve already done.

and i’m not sure if this was because of the economy, but now 2 of the 8 total jobs i had applied for have been cancelled. i got an email about one of the Birmingham jobs i applied for that they are not going to fill the position. no other explanation than that. hopefully that won’t be happening with the other job apps i have left.

on Fridays i get there earlier than the other two days i go because i’m either off work early or because i don’t have work. so it’s almost unavoidable to see CGG on Fridays. two Fridays ago, i had gone and pretty much almost finished my entire workout before having probably the creepiest yet. i had seen him walking around, but of course just kept to myself. i had finished my three sets and only had one burnout set to do. (incidentally, the burnout set idea was from when Matt the intern would workout with Andy, Chad, and I and it’s basically one set of one exercise with a lower weight, which you do until you ‘burnout’). i had gotten some water and i thought i had avoided CGG, but when i turn the corner to go back to the weight room, BAM, there he is. i had to shake his hand or something like a “hey, what’s up?” deal, and i THOUGHT that was all. i walk into the weight room, i had my hand on the bar and he comes up to me. the conversation went something like this:

CGG: “hey scott, what kind of engineer are you at [Company Awesome]?”
me: “mechanical”
CGG: “oh yeah? and you do drawing like on the computer?”
me: “yeah”
CGG: “cool, so could you draw stuff like gym equipment?”
me: “not really. most of what i do is airplane stuff”
[i thought at the time how i wanted to go "UNLESS IT IS GETTING LAUNCHED INTO SPACE, I CAN'T DRAW IT!", but i guess me being nice helped me hold my tongue]
CGG: “oh okay”
me: “couldn’t you draw it like on paper or something?”
CGG: “oh no, my brother owns the place (and i thought “i’ll never get him fired!”) and i’m an MD but i’ve been out of practice for 4 years (i thought “i can tell you why!”) and we can’t draw anything”
me: “well, i guess you could go to a sports therapist and see where they get drawings for stuff, i have no idea”
CGG: “oh, okay, well, have a good weekend”

WTF? i could see where he was going with his questions. he was going to see if i could draw it for him, and there was no way ever that i would do that. i don’t get it. i was talking to a friend at dinner tonight, and he knows a guy who used to be a trainer at the gym i go to, who is now a trainer at a gym closer to my house. if the other gym is around the same price, i might be switching. i deal with enough ridiculous creepy stuff at work, like BO Guy’s trip to Colombia coming up in a couple of weeks (wait till i post about that!) that i would like to minimize the creepy/weird stuff as much as possible. i mean, yes, i am awesome, but at least my eye doctor only calls my cell phone for about a week after i go once a year. he doesn’t ask me about drawing new eye care equipment.

back to the home shop manager, she told me about maybe why one of the jobs i bid for got turned down so quickly (because apparently the people in Denver aren’t very open to hiring non-Denver people). she also told me that i probably wouldn’t hear much until after the new year starts. yuck. this means i will probably have to start up taking grad school classes again. i’m not really excited about that. hopefully i’ll just find one class i can take which won’t cause me to lose my mind. i am DEFINITELY not going to schedule two classes ever again, one is bad enough.

so probably a month or so ago i noticed the Reba McEntire/Kelly Clarkson tour was going to be hitting Biloxi. i didn’t really know who to ask, because all the people who i went with to see KC two summers ago live far away. last Sunday in Sunday School, i brought up the show, and as soon as the words left my lips two girls went “OMG! FOR REAL?” newly listed last week was a 4 pack of tickets that lowered the per ticket price from $47 and $57 to $25, take that TM! (of course after the fees they were $35 each)

i knew the show would not be as cool as the last time i saw KC. that weekend will go down as one of the greatest weekends ever. nothing was going to come close to my friend Mike and i wearing American flag bandanas, nothing was going to be as great as jumping and flailing about during the show. sure, The Reeb would be there but really, would all of the fun?

i met the girls i was going with at the carpool meetup spot and we set off for the coliseum. immediately upon getting there we were stuck in traffic. the people directing traffic were not professionals and that getting out would be a nightmare. i parked on the last row of the parking lot, avoiding being blocked in. i’m not sure who suggested it (not me) that to kill time after, we could go wait by the tour buses. i figured that would be fine, since it would be either that or sit in the car for 30 minutes.

when we got inside we walked up to our seats, and saw it wasn’t really that crowded. we watched the opening act, who was the girl who played Barbara Jean on Reba’s show doing a comedy act. it was alright, but most of what she said was how cool Reba was, which got old after a while. the lights went down and Reba and Kelly took the stage! after the 2nd song (Why Haven’t I Heard From You?) we moved down to seats opposite the stage, so we had a great view of the video screen and everything. after we moved down there, i saw plenty of other people move. why sit in the $25 seats when you could move down to the seats twice as expensive?

the show was a lot of fun, and they both went through their major hits and some covers. KC only did two songs off her newest album, which was kind of surprising. she of course did the big hits off Breakaway, and i noticed Reba learned the words to a few songs this time since i saw her with KC on Crossroads. i only knew 5 or so Reba songs before the show and she did all of those. they also did some older Reba songs which probably made the older people in the crowd happy. you could tell Reba was really good at telling stories between songs, but Kelly wasn’t. there were a lot of old ladies in the crowd, so when Kelly would say something that she probably thought was funny, it would feel awkward because the older people wouldn’t really cheer.

they finished the main set having not sung “Since U Been Gone” or “Fancy”. you knew they HAD to do both of them. so the crowd’s cheering, and the arena is dark, and then the bands come on stage and start playing music that ended up being SUBG. Reba and Kelly emerged back to back from a riser at the top of the stairs. OMG! they sang it and everyone’s going crazy, and then they started Fancy. the entire crowd is up on their feet screaming and yelling and singing. the lights on the stage are at their peak, and then they finished. it was amazing!

after the show, we sat in our seats as the crowd was leaving. there were so many hair and fashion disasters, it was almost hard to believe. i went past the merch booth on the way out and while there saw a guy with a Reba tour shirt and i think it said either 1991 or 1998 (is either okay?). he was telling the girl he was with, which shirts he saw that he already had. it was kind of scary. he kind of looked like the brother from Napoleon Dynamite. after we walked outside, we saw the insane amount of traffic, so we walked around to find the tour buses. there were probably 30-40 other people back there, including one group of ladies who i think were intentionally trying to channel Reba. they all had sequin type shirts on and that mid to late 90s Reba haircut. i almost asked to get a picture with one of them, but i didn’t. the security guards were kind of jerks and made up stories to get everyone to leave. i felt bad, because most of the people back there seemed to be normal people who just wanted to catch a glimpse of their heroine (Reba). by the time the tour bus drama ended, the traffic had cleared out, so we hopped in the car and headed home.

i wore a red shirt to work on Tuesday. it was not random, i wore it for a reason. nobody said anything to me at work, but i knew, and that’s all that mattered really. the carpool was down to two on Tuesday, and yes, it has turned somewhat awkward. i’m making it through though. i had mentioned to thomas about maybe leaving early, so later in the afternoon he asked if i wanted to leave an hour early. i took him up on the offer, and we left early to go vote, anticipating long lines. our site manager (three or four levels ABOVE me) had encouraged us the day before in a meeting that voting was important and if we had to take off early to do it we should. work should never be an excuse for not voting, which i’m in agreement with.

anyway, so i show up at the mall to vote, and my precinct has the longest line. there were probably 40 or maybe 50 people in front of me. the other two precincts voting at the same place either had no one in line, or 5 people. i had read Kari’s Capra-esque election day experience earlier in the day on Tuesday and wanted the place i voted to have stickers. they didn’t even have to have the Presidential seal on them. while in line i talked with the people around me and was proud i had read and written down my decisions on the 7 state constitutional amendments on a post-it note. the people in front of me were busily reading a printed out webpage explaining what they were, the same one i had read earlier.

i waited in line about 40 minutes until i got to the table where three people were in charge of finding your name on the roster and then writing it down. the guy who actually had the book was probably in his 50s. the two people on either side of him probably were in their 80s. the guy at the right side of the table was a little old man who only moved his head to hear the name being called out, then he would turn back to his sheet and write the name in cursive. the lady on the left side of the table couldn’t hear very well, so the guy in the middle turned to tell her the name. once they finished, i went to a booth. voting took me maybe 1 minute. i had the big races and the amendments, and already having my post-it note with FOR and AGAINST on it, i was good to go rather quickly. i checked my votes to make sure i didn’t hit any incorrect buttons, then hit ‘CAST VOTE’ making sure my choice for President did not change or anything. there was a rumor some of the machines were changing the President vote, but i think that was probably user error or something. i came out of the machine, and went to leave. there was no one handing out stickers! however, i did get to for the President for the 4th time in my life, on the big election day, with the rest of America, and that is the most important thing. i just wish i could have gotten a sticker!

i haven’t been back to the school for a football game in a long time. i may have gone with my friend Ryan (who’s now in NC) but i don’t think so. for last night’s game, i emailed the young adult group at my church to see if anyone wanted to go. i had a couple of takers, so we were all going to meet at the school. the parking was INSANE! i made it in and walked up to the bleachers just as they kicked off. my friend Ehren was the first one there, and as we walked up to the bleachers, i told her i used to hate walking in front of everyone in the bleachers when i was in HS. i don’t know why, but i was. last night, we walked in front of everyone looking for a seat. we found one about the 35 yard line.

the only bad part of our seats were this lady in front of us who brought confetti to the game. CONFETTI! everytime Northshore did something good, she’d throw it, all over, which meant it got all over the people in front of her, and around her. i’ve heard of air horns at games, and signs, but confetti? i don’t recommend bringing it to a game unless you’re surrounded by a good sized radius of people who are cool with it.

the game was fantastic! of course, it had it’s sloppy moments with a lot of fumbles and penalties, but for a high school game i thought they looked decent. both QBs played really well i thought. apparently the NHS QB went 20-32 for 327 yards! they don’t give you stats during a HS game, and there’s always that announcer who’s RIGHT IN YOUR EAR it seems giving you a sort of play by play using the nicknames of the players. my old AP Am History teacher made an XP at halftime and apparently won a year’s supply of Chick Fil A sandwiches. the 2nd half was a lot more exciting, esp the 4th quarter. Northshore scored with 7 minutes to play, then Slidell scored with 3:27 to play, then Northshore got the winning TD with 46 seconds to play! the D finally rose up and stopped Slidell on the final drive, and then pandemonium ensued. it was great. i don’t know exactly how many times Northshore’s won this game since i graduated, but i felt very proud.

i basically watched football and rested during the day, because i was going to the Hornets’ home opener with my dad that night. welcome to another year of basketball pictures from the upper deck! (below: LeBron surveying the court)

the game was great, and it was good to be going to a game again. it’s felt like forever since the infamous game 7. it was fun sitting in the crowd, making jokes about players, complaining home team players didn’t at least act like they were taking a charge, and high fiving strangers. the game was a lot closer than last year’s Cavs game, which made it more interesting. i’m going again on Wednesday and then next week to the Lakers game. i can’t wait! i didn’t renew my season tickets because of the high possibility i’d be moving, but man, i sure was kicking myself for not renewing. i’m still thinking about it, especially after my cousin said he’d buy my remaining tickets if i moved.

the party was great. there were a lot of people, and we all stood outside at one time or another to watch all the kids come up to my aunt for candy. we encouraged the kids to put their masks on if they didn’t have them on. it doesn’t count as Darth Vader if there’s no mask. with no mask it’s just a black robe with some buttons on the front.

a couple of my uncles put together a ‘haunted house’ in the garage, but some of the music didn’t really fit the mood. the Ghostbusters theme song didn’t really make you scared of anything. when the music was changed to the more ominous Halloween themed music, then everything worked out better. the battery powered bat my uncle had bought was a hit with some of the kids, who walked right underneath it to watch it fly around. the bat was too fast to capture in the picture, but trust me, it was there.

the only people dressed up at the party were me, and then my cousin and his g/f. they dressed as the Flintstones, with my cousin wearing plastic feet with only three toes.

we saw plenty of kids dressed up last night with no one costume leading all others. we saw Batman, Iron Man, Darth Vader, random skeletons, Snow White, but i think the best costume was the girl dressed up as Dorothy, complete with a Toto. also, some of the adults who were taking their kids around were also dressed up. did you know Velma smoked and drank? the one i saw last night did.

there were a lot of older kids out there, which wasn’t nearly as odd as the lady who came up with a couple of kids, but then had her own bag. she said that bag was for the baby at home who was sick. alright, babies can’t eat candy, and really, the baby was at home sick? who’s going to be eating that candy? we reluctantly gave her candy anyway, then laughed and speculated she made up the whole thing so she could get candy for herself.

the new Ryan Adams album, Cardinology, came out today. i have been listening to the album via the stream from facebook a lot since it debuted last week. i love these songs. i haven’t really loved an album so fast before. hearing the songs live just flipped my anticipation for the album into overdrive. i emailed friends during the day at work to talk about it or sat listening to the stream and IMing friends about how good the songs were and gushing about the lyrics. it got a bit ridiculous.

finally today, i was able to go buy the cd (the vinyl is on order and won’t be here for a few more days). i didn’t have any issues getting it at best buy this afternoon, which was nice. i’ve had issues before trying to get new releases because most of the time the workers at BB suck at music. i went running tonight, and ate dinner when i got back. now i’m relaxing with some hot chocolate (it’s getting down to 35 tonight!) before bed listening to the album. what a great way to end the day.

so the morning of the ATL show, i drove up to Birmingham to meet up with my friend Susan and then drive to ATL. in order to waste time, i ate at a Subway near her house (have y’all tried the chicken pizzalorio [pizaloria, pizzaiola?] yet? it’s a $5 foot long and worth every penny). then i sat in my car, read my Bible, sent texts, then called someone to gush about the show the previous night. i could not stop thinking about the new songs. Susan called me to let me know she finally got home, i met her at the house, and we left, with what we thought was PLENTY of time to get to Atlanta. little did we know how things would change.

i drove her car so that she could catch up on sleep, and everything’s going fine. traffic is moving well, i was on my way to another Ryan Adams show, what could go wrong? i’ll tell you what could go wrong! traffic came to a stand still somewhere around Anniston, and for the next hour, we were basically stopped. STOPPED! i must say on my drive from home up to Tuscaloosa the previous day i saw two 18 wheeler wrecks, one in which the truck had flipped off into the trees in the median, and another where the truck had turned over spilling what looked to be bags of rice. both of these accidents were on a sunny day, last Friday was kind of dreary. i figured with the traffic stopped, there must be something major. after an hour, we finally got moving, and the way the interstate was set up, the three lanes merged to two for construction. normally this is not a major deal until there is an older man in a white minivan who is stalled in the right lane. STALLED IN THE RIGHT LANE IN A CONSTRUCTION AREA! this man appeared to not know the rules of trying to move your car off of the roadway when we passed. i blew the horn at him. Susan called the stalled vehicle in to the highway patrol so they could maybe GET HIM OFF THE ROAD! as we went further down the road we saw a massive accident of i think two 18 wheelers which was pulled off into the median. the traffic going the other way was at a crawl, but eastbound I-20 was moving smoothly. we deserved it!

because of the traffic mishap, we had to skip stopping at Jeff and Adriene’s and went straight to the venue. we stopped for Chick-Fil-A at the same exit we were getting off at, and got to the parking lot at 8:20 (or something like that). we made our way inside, and i stopped at the merch booth to get my poster. while in line i was able to weigh in on a conversation about the new songs with the people in front of me. i thought they were cool, until the couple in front of me decided to buy 2 shirts, and have to check sizes on each, and then kind of also think about getting a poster, but then not, then rethink if one of the shirts they got was the right size OMG JUST BUY YOUR STUFF AND MOVE! it was 8:32 by this point, i was trying to play it cool and not freak out, but these people, seriously were pushing on my nerves. the guy behind me had been making comments to me about if i was going to be able to buy my stuff and move ASAP when i got to the front, and i told him i was ready. i also bought a shirt, and i knew the size when i got to the front. also, the guy asked me if i was on the Archive, which i told him i was. we exchanged user names, but i honestly forgot his. his g/f (i guess?) kind of rolled her eyes at us. i thought meeting people from the internet was not considered weird anymore? i made my way to my seat with about a minute to spare.

the show started and the band sounded spectacular. the venue was an open air ampitheatre which seemed to have been built recently, so the acoustics were great.

they started with Born Into A Light and kept rolling with a fantastic Cobwebs. when i first had heard that song, i didn’t really know what to think, but after seeing it live i really started to love it. the show kept building though, Bartering Lines was insane. Wonderwall was AMAZING! i was a little distracted in Tuscaloosa for this song, because ‘that’ girl got up twice DURING the song, but in ATL, all the people around me were staying in their seats. it was awesome. after they did Off Broadway, Ryan said something about his voice going out, and he was sorry, but they were going to do their best. this was the last show of the US headlining tour, i was hoping they were going to play extra long, so the voice thing didn’t sound too good. the weird thing was, then they played The Sun Also Sets, which is a hard song to sing the way he does live. i didn’t understand, but i appreciated the effort to give us the full experience. between songs Ryan mentioned the voice thing, which after being repeated, i started to feel the show was going to be cut short. after Shakedown, he finally apologized for what seemed like the 20th time, and said he felt humiliated, but he was not going to be able to go on. i felt bad for him, because he kept apologizing, and his posture was just one of defeat. when he said that was it, the band kind of looked at him puzzled, and reluctantly followed his lead and left the stage.

Susan and i figured maybe he’d go drink some tea with honey, or the band would convince him to come back on and sing quieter songs that wouldn’t be so taxing on his voice. he had sung the regular songs without changing the setlist in spite of his voice issues, which made me wonder why he did that. people started booing. and then it got louder. we were going to wait until they started taking everything apart though, which they hadn’t yet. i figure it was about 10 minutes or so before the houselights came on. the roses on the backdrop were still lit though, and we figured once they turned those off that would be the end for real. the people booing kept saying things like they wanted a refund, or that they should have known this would happen. i was more sad about what could have happened than what should have happened. they had sounded so great, i was disappointed for it to end like that. about 15 minutes after the band left the stage, they turned the roses off, which signaled our time to leave.