Working for the Weekend

Now that I am living fat and happy courtesy of my monthly disability check, I figure that this is the opportune time to show you all my resume of the various jobs that I have done over my adult lifetime.  I will list the company name, the tasks for which I was responsible, and my reason for leaving.

Micro Bio-Medics: I was a warehouse boy for two consecutive summers after my senior year in high school.  Besides picking and packing orders, I got to experience the Pavlovian Response to the horn of my first ever Roach Coach. I was a asked not to return the next summer due to my propensity to get my fellow co-workers to play war with our medical supplies. Care to elaborate, Dan?

Census Enumerator: My job was to walk around the neighborhood knocking on people’s doors who had not yet sent in their forms.  After having one too many front doors slammed in my face I decided to hang up my clipboard.

Roadway Packing Systems: In a job procured by my fraternity brother it was my happy task each day during this summer to empty a garage full of UPS-style vans of their boxes and load them onto a  trailer.  When that was done I got to clean the bathrooms.  Why did I leave?   Hot trucks, toilets, and the summer heat of Sacramento, wouldn’t you quit?

Hotel El Rancho: I went from a banquet waiter with no experience to one of four head banquet waiters in about three months.  I loved this job especially the time that I dropped the last steak in the house on the floor of the holding kitchen.  The general manager of the hotel picked it up and the head chef  wiped it off and told me to serve it. I retired my apron in order to spend more time with my new girlfriend.  Sorry, Fehmeen.

The Davis Enterprise: In this job I was responsible for making sure that all of our newspaper carriers got paid each month.  My boss was a major Deadhead and we went to about a dozen shows together.  I left that job and that town because I graduated.

Healthsouth: My first post-college employment opportunity, I was a patient account rep at a physical therapy clinic.  My boss was Stan Conti (the trainer for the Giants and now with the Dodgers) and I got to meet several high profile athletes. The coolest was the time I came back from lunch with a pack of baseball cards and Indian’s catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. looked at them with me and told me some funny stories about each guy.  I got fired the day before Thanksgiving because I was slacking on collecting a tall stack of uncollected account balances.

Continental Glass: Hired as a lowly phone boy, I climbed the “corporate”  step-stool (it was a family business) to become the company’s bookkeeper.  It was the seven years I spent here where I developed a strong work ethic.  I gave my two month notice in order to focus on my next career move.

Math Teacher at La Entrada: From my first day in room 9 with eleven of Ms. Campbell’s “finest” where I told them that I was going to treat them like adults and then spent the next three months trying to regain control to hugging every one of my graduating eighth graders after my last commencement ceremony in June 2008, this was THE job that I was born to do.

Blogger/ALS Boy: The pay most definitely sucks but I get to make my own hours and I get to work with the coolest peeps in the whole wide world.

pecked by The Hen

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A Brief Clarification

One of the first things that Fehmeen taught Emma to say — with my total support and most likely my prompting — was this conversational showstopper: Whenever anyone would ask Emma why she was so smart she would answer, “Genetics!” Before too long Emma would provide that exact same response when someone asked, “Why are you so cute?”

Now that you are aware of that particular set of facts, isn’t the ending of my previous post just that much cooler?

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Buggin’ Out

Fehmeen and I have a somewhat spotty history when it comes to dealing with insects. As previously chronicled in this very blog, we have a tendency to allow an irrational fear of our eight-legged friends to influence our occasional interactions with them. Does anyone remember the Sunnyvale Cockroach Incident when I fell flat on my ass from absolute terror? You can look it up in the archives if you want a laugh. Or how about the San Carlos Mosquito Episode when Fehmeen had to yell for my Italian Man Servant to exterminate a teeming swarm of invading bloodsuckers? That one is on the record in the archives too.

As far as Emma is concerned, she talks a convincing game. She has this book about bugs and she enjoys asking everyone she sees if they like ladybugs or worms or ants or spiders. She is able to identify them in her book by sight and even professes to love them herself.

Well my dear Emma, that is fine in theory, but not so fine in practice.

The other morning when Lhito was getting me dressed, I spied an Incy-Wincy Spider climbing up the wall. She was cool with it from a distance, but she was a little less enthusiastic about an up-close and personal meeting.  Emma high-tailed it out of there in order to get her Gama who returned armed with the Dust-Bust.  Not five hours later as she frolicked about outside in our backyard, she had her second close encounter of the day. As she sat to rest upon a cement step, she happened to glance down to the ground below. Emma began to howl like a banshee who had just seen a ghost. Crawling up the gray concrete block was the world’s most monstrous slug. Poor Emma was paralyzed with fear. Fehmeen swooped in to rescue her from any immediate and pressing danger while the IMS (Italian Man Servant) relocated the encroaching critter.

In light of this tale, the next time someone asks Emma where she gets her fear of bugs she will no doubt answer with a one word quote: “Genetics.”

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Be Vewy Vewy Quiet

Can you lean in a little closer? Yes, you in the velour track suit and you over there rocking that stylish ascot. C’mere, I’ve got something to tell ya.

You know how all those months ago I asked you to send me postcards in order to motivate me to write my memoir? Well, you did send them and I was motivated. I managed to complete ten pages and then the physical act of typing became more trouble than it was worth so I bailed on the whole project until help could arrive.

Now that help has most definitely arrived in the form of some hifalutin technological voodoo from some company named Dynavox , I am about to remedy that temporary situation.

This entry is my official notice to the world that work on my memoir is back on. Considering the outline is done, all that’s left to do is fill in a few blanks and expand on several small details. That’s it. No problem. I’ll have it done by the end of

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A Peek Behind the Curtain

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Unless that man is writing a blog with his Eye Max machine. If that’s the case then perhaps you should take a look at these never-before-seen photos:

More than an accessory to look sexy for the ladies, the neck brace helps hold my head steady so I can do my thing with my eyes.

As the Eye Max hangs from its stand, all I have to do is stare and blink.

This is where all the magic happens: the alphacore screen. I can choose either letters or words and in the blink of an eye I can select it.

I am sorry for the blurry pictures. I must have done something weird when I downloaded them from my email. Poor Lhito had to not only type this piece but he had to get creative with the photos as well.

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Master of My Domain

I am the Master of My Domain.

No, I didn’t win the Fabled Contest of Seinfeldian lore and legend. In fact, I would be the odds on favorite due almost entirely to the fact that my hand and arm muscles are practically non-functional.

So if that is not the domain to which I am referring, then what is it? Well, allow me to give you one hint: Look up.

No, not that high, silly, look at your URL bar. Please notice that my web address no longer has a wordpress in between the alsboy and the dot-com. I am now the oh-so-proud owner of alsboy.com.

There is nothing that you have to do any different other than to tell everyone you know who is not already here about our new address.

Thanks for your support. See you tomorrow.

Typed in a thousand and one blinks of my eyes

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