The A3

K and I test drove an Audi A3 today. The A3 is a fun to drive and looks good too. K has grown tired of driving a pickup truck. He’s looking for something a little more sporty. I’ve decided not to buy a new car until I find another job next year. I didn’t think it was a wise decision to buy a new car knowing that my job will end in March. Besides I’ll be able to drive K’s car when he’s out of town.

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Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone has a safe and drama free Thanksgiving. K and I are going to Cindi’s house is Coal Creek Canyon. I wonder if Cindi’s ex-girlfriend will get along with Cindi’s boyfriend. It should be an interesting day.

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She Can Rot In Hell

First a little bit of history to set the stage. My sister, M, is two years older than me. We were close growing up but drifted apart as adults. M graduated with a journalism degree and moved to Evansville, IN. I moved to Dallas after graduating from college. My sister has never been married and never talks about dating anyone. Somehow she became a hypochondriac. She’s always complaining about an ailment and is always taking over the counter mediations. About ten years ago my mother was in the hospital. My sister and I were in town to visit. M had only been in town about a day and had complained about a multitude of illnesses – headache, tooth ache, cramps, constipation, sore back and list went on. We were sitting in my mother’s hospital room when my sister started complaining about having diarrhea. I snapped. I went off on her. I was feed up. How could a healthy person always have some minor health problem? I’m the one with a compromised immune system and I’m hardly ever sick. M got mad picked up her handbag and stormed out of the hospital room. Later that evening my father and I discovered she packed her bags and drove back to Indiana. I didn’t speak with M until about two years ago. She found an excuse not to be in town to meet K last year. I don’t feel close to M at all. M and I have talked on the phone about four times in recent history. I always initiate the call. We have not seen each other since the hospital incident. We have never discussed it either.

M was laid off about six months ago. While talking to my mother two weeks ago I found out that M has decided to become a grant writer. M is a very good writer. I decided to call M because I know people who write grants and I thought it would be good to hook them up. I told M about my friend, Sunny, who is grant writer for a non-profit school for special needs children. M said she would be interested in talking with Sunny. I called Sunny and she told me she would be happy to talk to M. I arranged for M to call Sunny on Monday or Tuesday of last week. M agreed to do so. On Wednesday I called M and find out she never called Sunny. She said she forgot. I ended the conversation without going off on her. I am pissed. This behavior is so typical of M. She will agree to do something and then will blow it off. I went out of my way to help M and she dropped the ball. I wonder why I even bothered in the first place. I feel like nothing has changed between us. I should have known better but I thought it would be beneficial for M to talk to Sunny. I was trying to help her and I ended up being disappointed and hurt. I don’t know why she behaves this way. Our relationship is in the crapper. I’ll think twice about ever helping her again.

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Furlough Again

I’m on furlough again this week. Almost the entire North American IT department is on furlough. The IT workers in other countries are watching over things. The international workers don’t have to take a furlough week because they are not paid as well and there are some legal issues abroad that were not explained to the domestic workers.

I slept in today, had breakfast, watched TV, read blogs, ate lunch, met with my financial advisor to sign tons of forms (it was almost as bad as closing on a house), went to the gym, cleaned the kitchen and now I writing this post (how’s that for a run on sentence?).

I have a relaxing evening of TV watching and paperwork filling to do after dinner. Somehow I amassed a six inch stack of billing statements, bank statements, brokerage account statements, pay stubs and other miscellaneous papers that need to be filed away. It drives K nuts to see my stack of papers. I have no excuse for letting things get out of hand. I’m just lazy.

Tomorrow I plan on more house cleaning, watching TV, reading blogs, doing cardio, and writing a post about why I’m pissed at my sister once again or a planned trip to Cabo.

That’s all for now.

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Precious

K and I went to see Precious today. It’s the first time I wanted a stiff drink after a movie. And I don’t drink on regular basis. Overall, I think it’s a great film but the events in the movie are appalling and left me with a gut wrenching sadness for people who have experienced similar abuse. Even though I’ve had some tough times nothing in my life can be compared to the events in the movie. It is one thing I have to be thankful for on Thanksgiving.

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16, 15, 13, 12, 10, 8

K, Cindi and I were planning a Thanksgiving dinner for sixteen people at our house. Cindi ordered a table, chairs and linens. K and I ordered a twenty-one pound organic turkey at Whole Foods. Then things started to fall apart. Lena’s friend, Dave, was the first to cancel. Then Cindi’s boyfriend’s two sons canceled. Patty called on Wednesday to cancel. Wednesday evening K’s parents called to inform us that they would not be coming to Denver since his father is having health problems. Finally, K’s cousin and her husband never returned K’s numerous calls inviting them to dinner so we crossed them off the list.

With the dinner reduced to eight people we decided to move the dinner to Cindi’s house since her parents will be in town. Amazingly, the boyfriend’s two sons now want to have dinner with us. I can’t help but wonder if they are homophobic and didn’t want to have dinner at our house because we’re gay. Cindi amended her order for the table, chairs and linens and K called Whole Foods to arrange for a smaller turkey. It’s going to be a fabulous meal with good company. Well, except for the boyfriend’s slacker stoner sons. I’m sure they will arrive stoned and will sequester themselves in the music studio playing video games all day.

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Overalls

Did anyone see the male makeovers on the Oprah show on Thursday? I could swear that all of those men worked in my office building. There are two guys here that wear overalls everyday. There’s also a woman who occasionally wears overalls to work. And they look pretty awful on both sexes.

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What Did You Say?

This morning my manager told me that she has been unable to find suitable candidates in India to replace the test team. The job add has been posted for a month and she is not getting many qualified applicants. She has interviewed several people but their English was so poor she could not understand their answers to her questions. She’s frustrated but is interviewing more candidates today. She thinks the company will have to keep at least one tester in Colorado. If that happens I have a one in four chance of being asked to stay. I’m not getting my hopes up because I’m the newest tester. I suspect they would ask my office mate to stay.

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What Did I Wear?

I received an email from a reader asking what I wore to the fashion show. Here’s a run down of our outfits. This is a rather silly post so feel free to skip it come back in a day or two.

I wore a pair of dark brown Zegna five pocket pants, Jhane Barnes dark burgundy shirt, zip front brown Massimo Dutto cashmere sweater (bought in Brussels), brown lace up cap toe dress boots and brown leather Marc Jacobs coat.

K wore Ted Baker dark wash jeans, white cotton Shanghai Tang shirt, a black dress jacket he bought in Taiwan and a black cashmere Shanghai Tang top coat.

Lori wore a charcoal grey above the knee tight pencil skirt, form fitting black sweater, black hose, black open toe platforms shoes with a five inch heel, black leather coat and black leather envelope clutch.

Cindi wore a black sweater with black pants and black suede riding boots (she doesn’t wear very high heels because she is 5’10”) and her road kill handbag (The bag looks like it will walk away if set it down. It’s made of several types of fur, leather and metal studs). I don’t remember what type of coat she wore.

I was the odd man out wearing brown but I knew everyone else would probably wear black and I wanted to break out of the mold. Head to toe black is too severe for me to wear. I end up looking washed out and mean.

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Fashion Fiasco

K and I ended up going to the fashion show with Cindi and Lori. It was snowing on Friday night and Judy didn’t want to drive her sports car back downtown from her house in the western suburbs where it was snowing more heavily.

We rushed to the charity fashion show after dinner since the show scheduled to start at 8:30 and we were still at the restaurant at 8:20. Most of the crowd was seated when we arrived and as Cindi expected the show was running late. It was a typical Denver fashionista crowd. Most of women were sporting fashionable outfits and four inch heels while most of men looked like they walked out of Goodwill. It looks odd to see a woman in an expensive dress with good jewelry and a pair of $700 Christian Louboutin heels while her date is wearing cargo pants with a t-shirt and hiking shoes. The fashion show didn’t start until 9:30. Our seats were a few rows back near the start of the runway. The first model came out and we watched in horror as the African American model proceeded down the runway in a strapless white dress that was too big. About of the third of the way down the C shaped runway the model has to pull her dress up. When she reached the end of runway and struck a pose for the photographer her dress slid down exposing her black bra. The model tried to keep her dress up to no avail. When she approached the curtain on way back she gave up and just let the dress fall down exposing her black bra once again. Most of models couldn’t give a decent runway walk to save their life. The majority of the dresses had not been altered to fit the models. Some of the models looked like they were playing dress up in their mother’s clothes. After a while it was just comical. I glad I didn’t pay $85 to see the show.

We hung around the after party for a while and decided not the hit the after after party at a club downtown. We drove back the Cindi’s office to drop off Cindi and Lori and headed home. Overall, it was an entertaining evening.

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