Wednesday, February 08, 2006

The Times They Are A Little Bit Less Than The Same As They Were Before …

As evidenced by the title, I know I have some Bob Dylan in me and now you do too. That’s just the way I do things around here, I give a lot and expect nothing in return.

Things are definitely a lot different than the last time I wrote, which is about two weeks ago. For one thing, it’s no longer January … it’s, GASP!, February! I’m not living at my old place in Brookline anymore, I’m at a new place. Next Friday, I won’t be working in Marblehead, I’ll be in Needham. And I haven’t done a strip in awhile either. Let’s go through this stuff in chronological order, shall we?

First off, Aly and I bought a condo in Brookline a few weeks ago. About two days after my last entry, we moved into it. We’re still not completely unpacked. Our place is not extremely large, but we’ve had a busy few weeks. All I want to do is sleep. Unfortunately, I can’t.

As you probably remember, I hate moving. Absolutely hate it. I think it stinks and it sucks and it stinks and it sucks. You know what I hate more than moving? Painting. That’s what I did for the first three days in our new place. From morning until night, I was in the house with a roller in one hand and a can of paint in the other. The reason? The idiots that sold are house were color blind so we painted every single room a weird and wacky color. Sometimes two stupid colors.

This meant that we had to put on two to three coats of primer followed by a couple of coats of paint. The first day wasn’t too bad because my parents and brother came over and helped us out and we got a big chunk out of the way. The second day sucked. Aly was there at 8:30 (I had an appointment … more on that later) and joined her at 11:00. We stayed in our place painting until 10:30 that night. My dad came over to help, and he did a bunch, but it was brutal.

Saturday was a little bit better as both of our families and some of Aly’s friends came over to help. We knocked the rest of the rooms out in about seven hours. We still have to do touch up, but that won’t be too bad of a job.

Sunday was moving day. Let me tell you guys something, being a pack rat sucks. If you are one, get rid of your stuff because if you move as much as I do (eight moves in ten years), it’s going to come back and bite you in the ass. Hard. As sucky as it was to move last year, this year was almost as bad. The only good thing about it was all of the stuff was in one location.

My brother in law, Bob and Skaus helped out. Ryan was going to, but Quinn was sick and had to go to the hospital. He’s doing ok, but any time a kid is in the hospital, that’s a good excuse for not helping move. BTW, I was named Quinn’s Godfather last week which was pretty freaking cool. I was real happy to do that for Rye, Kris and Quinn.

We got everything moved in in about six hours or so and then the unpacking begins. Ever unpack 60 boxes? Not fun. Not fun at all. Like I said, we’re still unpacking and making sure things fit where they’re supposed to go. The sucky part about moving isn’t the actual moving day … it’s the days following that when you’re looking for a hat or clothes or other crap and you can’t find anything. That’s the sucky part.

Another fun thing that happened that night was I got a call from work while I was hanging up curtains. The wrong sized signs were sent to Washington DC (not my fault, nor anyone else’s really) and they needed new signs for the show. I was dead. Absolutely dead tired, but I had to truck all the way into Marblehead, meet my boss, call FedEx and ship the stuff overnight to DC. By the time I got home (around 9:30) I couldn’t move. I slept the sleep of the dead that night.

That little work story goes well into my next topic, I gave my notice at HCPro on Monday. That’s right, starting two weeks from today I’m going to be working at Tech Target in Needham as a conference marketer. I’m really excited about the job and the fact that it’s only about six miles from my place.

I wasn’t upset with HCPro. Far from it. I enjoyed what I did and I liked the people that I worked with and I liked my routine, but the fact is the commute was killing me. Not so much in the morning, it took me about 45 minutes, but the evening commute was a killer. There were some days where it would take me 50 minutes to get home and others it would take an hour and a half. There was no rhyme or reason to the traffic patterns (outside of a Sox game) and it was tiring to figure out whether I could go home on Storrow Drive or through Somerville.

The thing is, I thought that I’d be excited about quitting. Everybody has the fantasy of walking into the boss’ office and saying, “That’s it, I’m done here.” However, I didn’t feel like that. I actually feel pretty sad that I’m quitting. I think it’s the combination of the facts that I’ve worked here for five years and the people are pretty cool. Another reason is the unknown, I’m pretty adverse to change and knowing what I’m going to be doing for the next six months to a year is reassuring and safe. Two weeks from right now, I’ll be in a completely new situation and won’t know what to do or anyone.

That’s scary.

But I’m ready for the change. I’m looking forward to the new challenges and the new company … some of the perks are awesome and everyone that I met there on the two interviews that I was on were beyond cool. We’ll have to see how things turn out, but I imagine that everything will work out fine.

The third thing is my strip. With the move and the new job, I’ve been busy. With my website due on Monday, I’ve been fucking swamped. Every second of spare time, and there hasn’t been a lot has been thrown to the Boston Braves site. I’m just about done with it too. There are a couple of tweaks that I have to make, but it’s about ready to go.

Next week, I will link to it and you can let me know what you think.

What does that mean for the strip? I doubt that I’ll have another strip next week, but what I plan to do is post some reruns of my favorite strips in the next couple of days. They will change as I write more Blogs (which I plan on doing more of) and with some new exposure; check out three new links: Live From Augusta, Mook Stuff in Manhattan and Sheriff Sully now is really not the best time to be slacking on the cartoon thing.

I promise that after this very short sabbatical, there will be new strips and possibly a brand new redesigned site. I have a couple of really cool ideas that I’m working on and you guys are definitely going to dig it.

Ok, I have to go … more later.