Sadly, Jane Wyatt passed from this mortal coil. But, damn, at 96 years, she sure had a long run.

I tip my hat to the woman who knew best, in that way women know better than their kindly well-meaning mates. Maybe with Donna Reed and Barbara Billingsley, aka Mrs. Cleaver, she was the seminal perfect woman. (Get it, huh, get it? I said “seminal” for like chicks.)

The construct was simple. They knew the inside skinny and every now and again the man would piss them the fuck off. Then, there would be some moral, metaphorical kind of doghouse. And, hangdog hubby would sit out the storm.

In the end, roses, candy maybe, a cheek smooch and some kind of santized grabass, and life was back on an even plain in a rainbow-studded horizon.

So, guess who spent a chunk of the weekend in the doghouse?

We’ve discovered the deeper, anxiety-ridden, ultimately Type A version of M. He got hired away by the major competitive force in the chosen area of his curren open source fanaticism, embedded technology. Everywhere there’s a chip and goddamnit someone needs to sell the OS and/or software that’s firing them chips into action.

In between his last gig, and the new, sweet promises of milk and honey from the real deal corporation, post-start up and with a current workable business plan, like money baby, bling, bling, he’s taken a couple of weeks. Turns out, he’s more neurotic than I am and that just fucking ain’t a ray of sunshine living. He’s grumpily unemployed and uncertain, despite knowing perfectly well what’s coming next. (OK, to be fair, new place, new people, new office, new rituals, all can stress you out like a motherfucker.)

Lot’s of sitcom variety bickering and if we had a stuffed closet, no doubt Fibber McGee would send it’s contents rattling to the floor.

Lots of fighting energy wasted. Perhaps the darkest hour being the ugly Madonna as African Mother “discussion.”

Formula being formula, by the end of a weekend, which to be fair had it’s high points, like a night out in SF and checking out a house for sale just a left turn and a couple of blocks away from the ghetto, I was pouting, he was doghouse living. (Of course, apart from his stress, there’s the added joy of my job. This week is kind of a test of my sense of humor and any shred of patience extraordinaire. I’d write more, but you know recividism in weblog land is pure boneheadedness.)

One thing about work, I’m learning my own version of a humble Buddhist existence with a dollop of twelve-steppiness. It takes a lot for me to sit by and just watch stupid unfold in it’s slow, creeping path and inevitable, inexhorable progress. To just nod and smile internally is surely a lesson and opportunity for growth.

Angry woman + embattled spousal equivalent = That which I had successfully dodged for over 42 years. Namely, the dozen long stems delivered to the desk.

The receptionists came up to my desk, beautiful vaseload of blooms in hand. I actually told him, “There must be a mistake, those aren’t for me.” He showed me the card.

D’oh. Mortification doesn’t really do justice for my peculiar sense of embarassed shyness while the chicks in the office took note. Inward pleasure I can do, but I’m downright Amish and looking for something “plain” on the showy side. Yup, that’s my secret freakishness.

The card said only, “By M.,” because he helped design the arrangement. (Try ‘splaining the M. appellation to people who cannot know the M. weblog chronicles even exist.)

I took some massively crappy photos. But, one’s kind of cool thanks to a little Photoshop doctoring and a gray background.

I wrote shit. I broke shit. I fixed shit.

Fuck me. Fuck the fact it’s late. Fuck the fact I can’t right about the stressful week I’m planning at the 9-5 salt mine.

Fuck it, I’m becoming an aging prostitute, rich from the niche market of white, middle-aged and chubby. I’m tired of office politics is all.

By my photos might be working. Click left, click above, click below on the cute thumbnail. Just don’t click anything in my face or I’ll just half to hear the clicks of smashing metatarsals.

Yep. I’m cranky. Fuck everything.

What’s better than reading books about oil resources, war and destruction? What uplifts your intellect? What makes you better understand the world in which we live?

40 Awesomely Bad Love Songs

Yeah, I could be reading. I could be writing. I’m behind in all such activities. But fuck it.

I’ve also, I think maybe possibly, got all my photos back online. There’s this gallery here, which has just about everything in no particular order.

You can look at the same shit here. It’s the same damn thing, but it’s all fancily blended into this page. Meaning, you get a dee-rob banner. Whee and whoop-de-do.

Which reminds me, isn’t this AWESOME?

I have been too fucking lazy by a long fucking shot to write up to fabulous episodes in my thoroughly uninteresting life.

One involves skinning my knees and getting caught on the work surveillance system. (I just lobbed a softball for dvae to write something obvious and crazily sexual about being on my knees at work.)

The other involves the best-dressed, most disarming, strangest encounter with a self-described “beggar.”

Soon. Exciting stories. Thrilling anecdotes. Humor. Comedy. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll wet yourself in some manner in your nether regions.

For now, here’s the more boring reality. I signed up for a continuing ed class called something like “Mixed Blessings: Oil and War in Developing Countries” at a university called something like “Stanford.” It’s interesting and underlines what I already felt in my loins — The world is a fucked up place, and we’re hellward bound.

It was my floating effort to determine if I should maybe sign up for a Master’s program in the evening, which they have an OK program that caters to working grown ups. Here’s the thing, though, I’m already fucking behind in my reading, and I actually find this shit interesting. So fuck that edumacation bullshit, too hard.

Seriously, what’s not to love about learning the data to make slamdunk arguments against our currently fucked up foreign policy? I mean, in the unlikely circumstance that I end up at a cocktail party with true-blue Bush believers, I’ll be able to thrust and parry like a motherfucker. You know, party banter.

At least I know what the books I should be reading look like. I’ll start a new intellectual trend, just describing the outside cover for people to judge for themselves. It’s kind of like Fox news “We report, you decide.” One book is all swirly, oily black and has “paradox” in the title. I bet it’s interesting if challenging to read.

But, I did take the day-long getting yourself published workshop. My favorite part was hearing all of the shit people are working on in their little home offices and whatnot. Some guy just likes presidents and is gonna write about the six best. A chick married a geek who likes machines with gears and buttons and doohickies, but no computer chips. They’re going to make something with words and pictures.

Damn, I wish I were that nice and that devoted if I were to marry a geek. I’d just make fun of him.

A couple of guys with brainiac sounding jobs and no doubt some federal contracts in their pasts, our getting their Clancy on and writing some kind of espionage, world collapse kind of thrilling prose.

And, me, I’m planning on writing self-indulgent drek that is worthless than the gears, buttons, doohickies AND computer chips I’ll be using to express it.