What I've been up to ...

To borrow a phrase from Onion correspondent Jim Anchower, "It's been a long time since I rapped at you, but I've been busier than a one-armed wall paper hanger."

Sort of.

I'm at work, trying to kill some time, so this may be a short entry ... or not. I don't know. It all depends on the quickness of my fingers.

This weekend Aly and I went to visit her friends in White Plains, Danna and Rick. I've talked about them before, cool people, even if they are Yankee fans. It was fucking snowing on Friday night, which didn't make for the best commute, but we made it to their place in about three hours. Not too shabby.

Usually when we get there, we start boozing and talking until 3:00 am. Didn't happen this time, Danna is pregnant. No one knows about it, so don't say anything. It was great news and we were their first friends that they told, which really meant a lot to Aly.

Saturday we just hung around and waited for Rick's 35th birthday party. It was pretty cool, more people were coming up to congratulate me about the Red Sox winning the Series than on my up coming nuptuals. I thought that was pretty funny. Aside from one or two people, everyone was really cool. There was one guy though who was more ignorant than annoying. He was trying to convince everyone that Steinbrenner threw the middle three games of the series in order to pad his pockets. He said that Steinbrenner was getting $1,000 per bleacher seat.

I had to put an end to his bullshit. When I called him on it, he got pissed and said, that he heard it on WFAN and that he was just going with "what he heard" Michael Kay say. Dude, shut the fuck up. You're a moron.

Sunday we did nothing but drive home ... the commute was much better.

While at the gym on Monday I was bitten by the inspiration bug. My comic now has a name, two main characters, and 13 stories. Thirteen fucking stories, I am more than pumped about that. Bruce Beattie, the comic strip guy I've been talking to, says that the art is the easy part, it's the writing that takes the most time. And he's correct. The one thing that I'm really excited about is that I also found the tone, it's a lot like the early Peanut strips that are sort of subtle and world-weary.

I don't want to have a hacky, pun-filled strip ... I mean, it might come to that, but I'd like to start out pretty high brow.

Yesterday the bomb dropped. Aly got laid off. She called the office at about 10 am, bawling. I pretty much dropped everything and went to her house. Apparently, there has been some scandal going on at Putnam and they've been laying people off left and right. She just happened to get caught in the thrashed. And the layoffs aren't going to stop ... there is expected to be another round soon. And it's going to be bigger.

The one good thing is that Aly was given a very generous severance package. She's going to land a job pretty quickly I think, and honestly, we may be able to make out pretty good in this deal if she does. I just feel bad for her because she's taking it pretty hard. It's not her fault, but she has inklings that it is.

Corporate America fucking sucks. Some shit head higher up gets his hand caught in the cookie jar and the little guy has to pay? Real good system we have. Of course no one gets pissed, and if they do, they're called a "Michael Moore".