Category: Dad Blogs

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Dad Blogs Life in these United States

Those oh-so generic Toyota Camrys

The Toyota Camry. You see them every day. They’ve been around for years, changing little more than the hood on the front and the trunk and taillights on the back. But despite their never-changing look, people continue to buy them. These people are all alike. They drive the same. They are the bane of my morning commute. Here’s what we know about the Toyota Camry:

  • Camrys continue to make the Top 10 Most Stolen Vehicle List
  • The Camry was the first non-domestic car to compete in NASCAR in recent years
  • It is THE most popular car in America

Now, here’s what I suspect about the Toyota Camry based on my own informal research study:

  • The most popular color is Gold
  • Drivers of Camrys really like their bumper stickers, vanity plates, and license plate frames
  • They all drive a two-lane stretch of road near me between the minutes of 6:48-6:54 a.m.
  • They all drive at least 5 mph less than the speed limit

There is a 4 mile stretch of 2-lane road that I travel on each morning going to work. The speed limit is 35MPH the entire way, and the middle of it includes a very steep valley, which, if you don’t build up enough speed, requires you to hit your passing gear to climb out of if you’re not going fast enough already. Each morning, despite varying my departure time by a few minutes in either direction, I inevitably get behind a Gold Toyota Camry. I have identified at least three different ones. My method of differentiation determination is as follows:

  • They appear at various stretches of the road. Two at the very beginning, on about 1/3 of the way through
  • They all have a different tag number (satisified?)

The interesting thing is, that despite their differences, they share some staggering driving similarities, mainly that of driving VERY slowly, and completely ignoring the rather large-grilled pickup truck on their tail urging them onward. And it’s not like they see me there and I upset them to the point that they obstinately refuse to speed up…they just don’t care. When I do inevitably pass them at the traffic light, they are middle-aged working women staring blankly off into space pondering Lord-knows-what–that hair appt. they need to make; what to put in the Crock-Pot tomorrow before leaving for work–I don’t know!

I’ve tried to avoid them, but I think they have hacked into the Sirius satellite orbiting the planet and have triangulated my location through my sattelite radio receiver and act accordingly in order to foil my attempts at a frustration-free drive in the morning.

Or…I could be just completely unlucky (and paranoid). YOU make the call!

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Dad Blogs

Emoticons – Is that What You Really Mean?

In the age of the computer, no college “Communications” class would be complete without a lesson in e-mail etiquette. Here, youngsters learn things like:

  • Don’t type IN ALL CAPS unless you want the reader to think you are yelling
  • Be concise, because nobody wants to read your rambling comments
  • Don’t over-use the high-priority flag
  • Only Reply-to-all when it’s really relevant
  • Tone can easily be misunderstood in e-mail, so be sure and make your intentions known

The list goes on. For the most part, etiquette is followed by those that live and die by the Inbox, but there’s one area of e-mail etiquette that is less covered, despite being possibly the most pernicious.

Emoticons – Those seemingly innocent little text-to-character symbols that one can use to display a variety of emotions. Emoticons are strings of characters, usually from 2 to 5, one can use to create pictures. In fact, one popular e-mail client can interpret several emoticon characters and display an actual picture.

Some popular emoticons include:

  • the wink: 😉
  • brite-eyes *¿*
  • very sad :<
  • kissing :-*

You get the picture (pun intended). The use of 99% of emoticons is relatively innocuous; you get the actual intent of the writer. However, arguably the most popular emoticon–the smiley face–is being used more and more as a way of “softening” the blow of something someone said.

Recently, in a perfectly innocent e-mail to a counterpart in a certain frozen pseudo-United States country to the north, I made reference to another person’s job. In her reply, my original recipient rambled on and in her last sentence, left the following barb:

“Oh and by the way, it’s MY job to castrate new employees. :)”

OK, that’s not really what she said, but it’s very close and she followed with a little happy face. If I were one to jump to conclusions (and I am), I would read that to say,

“Look a**hole, don’t say that’s her job when it’s really mine! Just because we
acquired your little company doesn’t mean you get to continue running your
little show down there.”

…which of course pissed me off! Granted, there are situations where the usage of the smiley is obvious, as in:

  • that mini you have on today really makes your ankles look nice 🙂
    and
  • I got a raise 🙂

There’s no mistaking the intent here.

So I got to thinking about the inclusion of the happy face and how she used it as a way to “make nice” without really changing the underlying vitriol in her message, and I wondered what it would be like in real-life, face-to-face situations to be able to use a smiley. Upon reflection, I realized that it already happens!

  • “No sir Mr. Smith, vasectomies don’t hurt at all. In a day or two, you’ll be riding your motorcycle through the countryside” (BIG SMILE)
  • “Don’t look at this as a demotion. We’ve really just changed the focus of your responsibilities to more closely align with our business goals.” (BIG GRIN)

In summation, e-mail is just following real-life. But that doesn’t mean you don’t still want to just reach out and smack that stupid grin off their face…

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Accept your neurosis…and just move on

Despite having more than 20 nieces and nephews, I’ll never be that “fun uncle” that we all hope to be to our brother’s and sister’s kids. I suppose that is because whenever I’m around them, there are so many of them that I get overwhelmed and revert to my usual, “quiet Uncle Chris who gets crabby if he gets pushed” self. This is what becomes of only children when forced to play with the entire class.

So anyway, we have one of my wife’s brother’s daughters here for two weeks helping us take care of our youngest son during the day. Back home, she’s one of 8 kids who are all home-schooled by mom. They have quite a machine there where the older kids help care for the younger kids, ranging from age 15 down to 3 months. I can only assume, each share in the household chores as well.

You can imagine my surprise then, when I came home yesterday to find her holding my son, still in his hot pajamas, and the house a mess. Dishes on the counter, crumbs all over the table, and the floor littered with grass clippings. Honestly, in a day, the three of us don’t make that kind of mess.

However, I’m inclined to cut the kid (she’s about to turn 15) some slack given that this is probably like some great big vacation for her and since she didn’t get to our house till late Sunday night only to have to suddenly get up and start caring for the baby the next morning.

While I’m grateful for her help, I have my reservations, such as:

  • She stayed downstairs watching TV till midnight last night, so as I got up to feed the baby at 11:30, I had to clothe my usually half-naked self in order to go downstairs
  • How long do I let it go before I say, “Look, we’re paying you more money in a week than you’ve ever held in your hand at any one time, the least you can do is clean up when the baby is asleep!”
  • Oh, and since she stayed up till midnight last night, my wife had to wake her up at 7:30 this morning so she could go to work.

Really people, I know it probably doesn’t come off as such, but I’m really a nice guy. Anal, demanding, a bit of a perfectionist, but all in all, a REALLY nice guy.
I think…

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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

My Wife was Eminently Qualified; Still No Dice!

Like many men I know, I am married to a working woman. Society has made great strides towards ensuring that women aren’t “wasting” their time raising children, and are instead, in the workplace where they can put their significant talents to work making money driving this grand economy. I personally feel that we can thank today’s real-estate prices on the dual-income family, but that’s another topic for another day.

At any rate, my wife has been very successful in the workplace. She’s educated, having gotten her Master’s degree and then after college, when we got married, she went to work for a fairly small pharmaceutical company and has been there ever since.

The company is really close to where we work, which for Atlanta, is a God-send. That’s also been a bit of a curse, since, despite it being a huge “good ol boys club”, the location makes up for a lot of downsides. However, in her 7 years there, she’s gotten 3 promotions, which, if you compare that to how many in-company promotions I’ve gotten (zero baby!) is pretty darn good.

Other nice things about where she works:

  • no cubicles. Even as a newbie, she shared an office. Now has one of her own. I, on the other hand, have always had a cubicle and it looks like I always will
  • close to our daycare so she can drop off/pick up kids at will
  • they throw a decent Christmas party every year
  • yearly bonuses

So, all in all we can’t complain.

While my wife was on maternity leave, a position came open as Prod. Manager of a new drug they are coming out with. She was fully qualified and decided to go out for it. So, she went back to work two weeks early, prepared a full launch plan for this new drug (took a week), interviewed yesterday and didn’t get the job. The person who did get the job is, not surprisingly, a District Manager whose job is getting eliminated AND did I mention he plays golf with the VP? Yeah…

But here’s the deal…she really wanted this job even though it would have meant a good deal more travel, which is strange cuz she’s always going on about wanting to be here for the kids. Now personally, I’m a bit relieved she didn’t get it. Yet ANOTHER promotion aside, I wasn’t looking forward to schlepping the kids 8 miles (one way) to daycare on the days that she’s traveling. So, part of me feels bad that I don’t feel bad for her, but part of me is pretty thrilled.

Unfortunately, the excuse they gave her, if you choose to believe it, is because she never worked in the field as a lowly Sales Rep and he did. However, she has an MBA and significant marketing experience launching another product (Androgel), neither of which this guy has. So the question that she posed to the hiring manager is, “So, you’re telling me that in the future, if I want to go for a promotion, and anyone with field experience also goes up against it, I won’t get the job?” The answer was pretty much “yes.” So basically, she’s done at this company, unless they come back later and admit it was a bullshit reason for not giving her the job and they really just wanted to keep their golfing buddy eating at the family trough.

Could it be the end of the good locale job? We’ll see…