a tale of complete and glorious vindication

so, the college i work for is undergoing extensive remodeling. so they had me and my fellow grunts moving lots and lots of furniture of all different sizes and shapes from one big room outside to waiting boxcar containers. during our afternoon break i got on the radio and asked cynthia (all names have been changed to protect those involved) what she wanted us to start moving next. she told me specifically that we needed to move the stacks of cubicle walls. there was no misunderstanding. no stuttering. she was very clear. so i relayed this info to my coworkers and we set to moving the 500 pounds of walls for the next two hours. when i was rolling the last load of them up to the container, my boss was standing there wondering why we had moved all of that stuff in there...because it wasn't supposed to be moved. he wanted to know who's idea it was to do so and my coworkers pointed at me, as they should have because that much was true. cynthia, who was standing right there...said nothing. she let me take the fall in a big way. i was very, very angry but held my tounge. so today i did something above and beyond the call of grunt-dom and my boss made the comment "mcclain was right about something again!" i asked him what he meant and he told me that the cubicle walls did after all need to be moved.
so instead of looking stupid for something when it wasn't my fault, i ended up looking smart when i didn't deserve it!
life is good, pass this guy a brew.

barkin dogs, stick trimmers and sunburn

after some 8 weeks of being back here in wisconsin, 4 jobs, and about 10,000 job applications i finally have a solid job. i'm working at Northcentral Technical College (NTC) as a groundskeeper. it's certainly not pretty, but it's a guaranteed 40 a week. the people i work with/for are all very nice, the pay is good, and the work is honest. i'm not a big 1st shift guy, i much prefer showing up at 3 and working til 11 instead of working "normal people" hours. but hey, like i've said, it's a good job.
after sitting on my ass for 2 months, it feels really good to be sore at the end of the day. and it feels even better to crack open a beer, sit down in the garage/gentelmens lounge, and philosophise with my old man.
God is good and so are his many blessings.

an oldie but a goodie

Proof of Reality

if reality can only be proved by our senses, then there is no way to prove reality at all. just because i can see these words doesn't mean they exist. if i was blind, would they still be here? furthermore, being able to see them proves just as little. can i say for a fact that you see what i see when we look at the same thing? therefore, if the only things we are equipped with to monitor reality are completely worthless for proving it, how do we know if anything is real? we can't. the fact of the matter is that reailty isn't a matter of perception at all. it's a matter of choice. reality is what you choose to believe or choose not to believe.

God, space bubbles and sitcom stars

i just had an interesting dream. at an earlier point in the dream i was car shopping looking for vehicles to start up my own pizza delivery place. but after that was done me and a bunch of people i felt i knew at the time were on a sort of a space station on some planet. i realize now that i'm awake that none of these people were anyone i know. which makes me wonder if there are a dozen other people on this planet that had the same dream i did....anyway, they were telling me that God sometimes comes and takes people with Him to a certain place to start a new city. and sure enough, after some dream-time passed, He appeard in the form of a snapdragon flower. and there He was taking people one by one to a promised land of sorts. a spot on the planet with trees and grass (as opposed to the rocky desolate rest of the planet) and even though i saw it with my own eyes i didn't take it very seriously. so i went outside to jump around in low gravity and act silly. when i turned around to re-enter the space compound, my space-mates told me to turn around. when i did, i saw the giant flower form of God looking down at the spot i had just been. my space friends said "He came for you". i had a moment of doubt. only a very short one where i thought to myself "do i really want to go with him?" but then i ran as fast as my spacesuit would allow and leap towards Him and landing on the ground in front of Him. he said in an appropriatly booming God-voice "Hi". and he took me away to this new city of his. as i floated away, Danny Masterson from That 70s Show was standing there. i waved to him, he waved back and looked absolutly thrilled for me.

quality of life

erin is here with shirley jean in wausau for the week, as any reader of her blog will know. and lauren is headed out here on saturday. my heart is filled with so much happieness i almost started to tear up at dinner tonight. it has been years since i've gotten to even see any of these wonderful people, much less spend relaxed, quality time with them. i am so excited to have all 5 of us together again like this. i wish rich was able to be here, but he's busy with a reunion of his own.

the duffert house is once again brimming with life and there are signs of it everywhere. in true wisco-scotch fashion stomachs are full, hearts are happy and communication is exercised. there is nowhere in the world i would rather be than with these people.

the study of misunderstanding

why do we misunderstand one another? with the infinie possibilities of a moment multiplied by the infinite possible interpretations of each of those moments, you are forced to ask, how do we manage to understand each other at all? pile on top of that the decietful and self-loathing human heart, it's a wonder we bother trying to communicate in the first place. the desire to communicate stems from the fact that we are all alone in our own worlds, our minds; completely isolated from the rest of the world. if you stop taking the language for granted, you realize it's nothing more than a brave, desperate, and wholly inadequate attempt to bridge this gap between us. language is dead. feelings and emotions are alive. so if we use these dead words to describe our feelings, thoughts, and emotions. we're not really doing them justice. which is why you'll find the best of friends, the luckiest of people, and the most honest of communications within unspoken things. it comes back to our motivation to keep moving forward through time, that being this lack of truth, and our quests single greatest speedbump; ourselves. if the heart is deceitful above all things, then we are lying to ourselves all the time and are damn good at it. so the question ceases to be "are they wrong?" and becomes "am i?"

if memory is the culprit, then time is his boss.

moving companies, sexual harrassment and binoculars

so today was my first day working for graeble van lines, a moving company based here in wausau. we were out at U W Stevens Point moving offices across campus. yesterday everyone attended sexual harassment training. i missed it as i had a prior engagement, but i can only assume it was a solemn and productive experience for everybody involved. this much was apparent to me at lunch time when i walked outside to see the guys ogling a sunbathing co-ed with no less than a pair of binoculars i assume came from the inappropriate sexual activity tool box.

it's nice to see social etiquette training in action.
more than anything, this made me miss my frat brothers.