Olberding

Bizarro times

2004-09-08T21:39:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting paitently for my old house to sell. Been on the market for about 2 months now and no luck. This weekend I went sofar as to bury a statue of St. Joseph in my yard face down. Apparently this and a little prayer for intercession can help. Anybody else ever heard of this? It was my Mom's idea.

Anyway, now my whole family (5 of us) have moved into my parent's house - since it is fairly close to my new job. Luckily - they are out of town for the next couple of weeks in Europe. My wife has been here two days and I can already feel her slipping into insanity.

When my folks get back it is going to get real crowded. Real quick.

St. Joseph, please pray for us. Pray for us all.

Another dream

2004-09-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

I've been missing my wife some. This much has become apparent. 4 day stints away, this I'm used to. Almost 3 weeks solid is not the same.

Sex dream again last night but this time it was more the usual - that is, vague and somewhat disturbing. Something about a shemale philipino prostitute in black linigerie waking up with me. In a room in my parents' house. And I'm hung over as hell and coming off a 2 or 3 day drunk. The other details in the story make no sense and they are grey and blurry enough that I can't write them.

Enough for now.

A really good (sex) dream

2004-08-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

As I get older, I hardly ever dream anymore. And when I do, I rarely dream in detail - usually just vague things that blend from one thing to another so fast they make no sense to anyone but me.

But not last night. I had a really vivid dream that put me in a good mood for almost the whole day. This one had incredible details - must've been the two glasses of wine I had last night. I never drink wine.

Picture the Sopranos. If you've never seen the show, this might not turn out to be the blog for you, but keep reading anyway. There's still sex.

Anyway, Carmela Soprano and a bunch of her friends, including some really hot younger italian girls are sitting around talking. I'm sitting close enough I can overhear their conversation. I can tell by the way a couple of them are looking over that I'm what they're talking about. In the dream, I'm a close non-italian friend of the Soprano family - picture Tom Hagan from the Godfather only younger with a lot better hair. Anyway, from what I can hear they're talking about the merits of sex with non-italians (they used some slang term for us in my dream - in high school they called us paisan's - maybe I'll blog about my high school experiences with the mafia brats someday). Carmela says something like "no way. You'd wind up with pasty faced kids...".

Some time after this, Meadow Soprano, who I hadn't noticed up until now, comes over and sits on my lap. Even in my dream, I'm surprised by this. Plus, since I'm all nice-guy friend of the family, this doesn't look good. Then it gets worse when she starts whispering all kinds of nasty shit into my ear. Obviously she has heard the women's consensus that I'm off limits so now she knows what she wants. So I, not wanting to get in immediate trouble, suggest we go someplace more private.

That's the great thing about my dreams. Scenes just change by my thinking about it. So now, I'm in Meadow's dorm room on a giant king sized bed with satin sheets that takes up almost the whole room. And we're naked. Sweating, Making out. Laughing. Wrestling. And she's shaved. And wet. She has cum twice already when the scene starts. And I make her cum with my hand again. But she'd tired of my hand. She says she wants to go get her diaphram. I try to talk her out of it - I'm not really eager to go much further. I'm a little afraid of getting killed by her family. She laughs this off. Then I laugh and ask her if she even has a diaphram. Nope. And I didn't bring anything either. Not good. It is becoming obvious I'm going to fuck her and knock her up. Then I'm gonna get whacked. That's where this dream is going.

Then we hear Carmela in the hall. Meadow is unfazed and continues to kiss on me as her mom knocks on the door. She has her own key. I wrestle on my underwear just in time as she opens the door. Somehow, Meadow is now fully dressed in pajamas. She convinces her mom that she and I just got drunk and I crashed out there so I didn't have to drive home. It would be a good story but the whole room smells like sex. I've never had smells in a dream before this one. I look up from my mock drunken stupor to see Carmela staring at me with a look that says "You know better...".

Then I'm in a mall. Some really nice store. Its almost Christmas. And Meadow is on my arm with a little catalog of stuff she wants me to pick out for her to buy to wear for me. Its all ultra expensive lingerie - no fabric to any of it. All leather straps and latex. As I look through the catalog, the dream ends.

Anyway, it was stuck in my head much of the day. Weird how something so little and random can improve your outlook.

Confession 2 (continued) - Conclusion

2004-08-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

So, to review, I was severely porn addicted, was continuing to get paid to "work" from home, and I had a new daughter and a wife who was home all the time.

I've been struggling with how to wrap the story up, since I have to fight my way through a lot of self loathing just to think about those 5 months. There's really nothing enlightening or surprising about the story. The only positive about it is that it is in the past, and I won't go through it again.

The job was the easy part. J-Lo eventually got tired of my not working and decided to "coach" me by giving me a formal 45 day notice to get my shit together or be fired. They call it "the plan". Most people who get "the plan" are on the way out the door. For me, it was probably J-Lo's only way of dealing with someone who didn't respect her authority and walked all over her. Truth be told, I didn't even blame her for doing it. But, being the male ego one-upsmanship-focused prick that I am, I had to have the last laugh. So I played along. I worked my ass off for the 45 days. Turned things around. She was happy as a clam when she had "coached" me back to being a productive citizen. Then a week after that, I quit. And that was it for the job.

The wife part wasn't near as easy. She knew things. She figured out the porn addiction - by intuition, spying, whatever. My wife just knows me. I can lie to her about specific things, but she reads my emotions easily and she could tell I wasn't working. When I told her the bullshit story about how they has asked me to travel at work and I had quit, she believed it, but she knew it wasn't the whole story. We had big problems between us then. This is when I learned that she honestly thought I never masturbated since we get married. I used to tell her this - tongue in cheek - not thinking she really believed it. I just thought it was something she'd rather not know anyway. At any rate, let's just say there was a huge gap between her perception of my sex life and the reality. Unfortunately, the "If you love me, why don't you just stop? Don't you see how much it upsets me?" line works great for dispatching guilt, which I had plenty of anyway, but it doesn't really work on me. Maybe it should, but it doesn't. I could keep writing a long time about how we worked things out, but this really wasn't even the worst part.

Eventually, A_ went back to work, and being jobless, I decided not to really get serious about looking for work until after the holidays. So I got a nice two months of upaid paternity leave tacked on to the end of my wife's real maternity leave. Situation as it was, I thought it would save us money to keep the my son (almost 3) and 3 month old daughter at home with me.
Sins of neglect are probably the worst that we can commit. During those 2 months I rode a constant rollercoaster of guilt, depression, neglect, and at times really great bonding time with my son and daughter. It is a taxing thing knowing the right thing to do each day and simply not choosing it again and again. In a lot of ways I failed them badly then, and I know it. I will never get that time back. I will always have the greatest respect for 'stay at home' moms (if I didn't already) since I tried to do it and basically couldn't.

Anyway, this is as far as I can take the story. An opportunity came up to do consulting work and I took it. It meant spending 3 nights a week away from home, but ironically, it turned out to be a healthy thing for everybody (I hope).

Confession 2 (continued) - Career suicide and Shangrila

2004-08-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

So, now I'm working from home, in a fairly small town, have no friends except first degree acquaintences of my wife, and no activities besides taking care of my kids. And depressed. Plus, I'm very, very tired of my job. To the point it nearly boils my blood just to read my email, much less work on anything. And I have an annoying little cheerleader boss who gives me shit projects to work on.

What would you do? Me, I committed career suicide. Remember in Office Space when the guy says to Jennifer Anniston "I don't like my job. I don't think I'm gonna go anymore"? It sorta went like that, only gradually. J-Lo was just like that Lumberg guy from office space -

She'd say "Got those TPS reports done?",
and I'd say "Nope, not yet...". Silly girl. After a couple of months she finally realized I was never going to do her damn TPS reports.

Plus, I did really bad things like joining conference calls from the swimming pool with my kids. For real. And when people asked what the noise in the background was, I'd just say I was at the swimming pool.

Then I found my Shangrila. Not figuratively. Literally.

Now, during this time, as my work decreased, some other activity had to take its place - that being porn. And eventually, a sick, intelligent, creative, and humble mind like my own will get bored with pictures, and every manner of perverted stories and websites, and DVD's. After awhile it all starts to look the same. And doing anything RL is just not my style. I think I had enough experiences before I was married to know that some things that are good in fantasy are sometimes *only* good in fantasy. Me, I went a different direction.

That was where Shangrila came in. It is not a chatroom, so much as a text based MUX (designed for role playing games) perverted for BDSM and every manner of sexual role play. For someone like me with a twisted mind and enough writing skills to get by, it can be a very cool place. I still get on there now and then, but it has run its course for the most part. The main trouble is, doing things there can be all-absorbing and *very* time consuming. For me, much more so than blogging.

So in other words, it was not quite bad enough to bother my conscience too much, but had greater capacity to fuck up my family and my life than just hiring a hooker and getting it over with.

Now, somewhere either in the beginnings or the middle of this downward spiral, my youngest daughter was born. My wife comes home after her c-section for three months of maternity leave. Do you think I'm an asshole yet? Hate me? If not, hang on and keep reading - you will get there soon.

Confession 2 (continued) - J-Lo

2004-08-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

I can't continue the story until I go into some detail about J-Lo. About a week or two before I moved to my wife's hometown, a reorg happened at my company, and J-Lo became my boss. This was an important twist.

Why do I call her J-Lo? Because that was her nickname. It probably stuck because that's really her initials, and she is hispanic (half Spanish), and in great shape - though she's shorter and curvier than the real J-Lo. Besides, its a lot nicer than her other nickname - 'Patch'. One of the girls on our team started it, and us guys loved it so it stuck too. 'Patch' came from the fact that J-Lo, like many of the young 24 year old attractive females in our office, used to wear skimpy little tops that didn't come all the way down to her waist. The problem was - well ... have you ever heard of a happy trail? J-Lo had sortof a reverse happy trail. She had a little hairy trail that went from her lower back down to her nether regions - thus the nickname 'Patch'. Nicer co-workers might have told her about the 'Patch' - but not our team. We just used the nickname behind her back because that's the kind of assholes we were.

Now, the moral of this entire confession, if it wasn't such a pointless ramble, could be "Never let a cheerleader have your promotion" (J-Lo used to be a college cheerleader). If J-Lo hadn't been my boss a lot of the stuff I'm leading up to might have never happened. You see, several months before, the leader of another team transferred, and we needed a team lead. I had seniority and was the obvious candidate for the job but I didn't want it. At the time, I was trying to get a little better 'work-life' balance and the last thing I wanted or needed was more responsiblity. I recommended J-Lo for the job. Most of the higher ups were against it, mainly because she was the youngest memeber of the team. Trouble was, J-Lo had just been passed over for a promotion on her own team and had transferred to ours. She didn't have much technical expertise yet, being new to the team, but she was sharp, super intelligent, a type-A personality, and an incredibly hard worker. And she was undoubtedly going to quit if she didn't get the promotion that I didn't want. In the end, J-Lo got the promotion because she worked her ass off, she deserved it, and (unbeknownst to her) because I was willing to smooth the path for it to happen.

And several months later, the reorg happened and J-Lo became my boss. Since I had already made plans to move and begin working from home, I was thinking the reorg would completely screw things up. So I had a meeting with J-Lo, explaining the arrangement I had with my old boss and that I was planning on leaving. She had to choose between keeping the most experienced, and best :) player on her team and letting him work remote, or losing me completely. So she made the fateful choice to keep me. Then the real fun started.

Confession 2 - On attempted career suicide and utter failure as a stay-at-home dad

2004-08-11T08:21:00.000-07:00

Time to quit fucking around and write what I need to write.

I've posted a lot of crap lately, mainly because I've been avoiding the real stuff that is very hard to put down. This might take a couple posts to get through because it needs a lot of details. It is a complicated story. Unlike the dog confession, nobody in my life really knows this whole story - not my wife, not my former boss, not anyone except you. If I tell the story right, you might be able to see the first glimpses of the underwater part of the rotting iceberg that is me.

I should start this story about two and a half years ago. I was sitting in a conference room at work, where our team would gather to use our collective brainpower to solve as many of our old clients' issues in a day as possible. Plus, having the group together was fun sometimes, even when we were working our asses off. Anyway, on that day at lunch time, one of my co-workers and I, I'll call her KL_, were sitting around talking - everybody else had left, and I got a phone call. I talked for a few minutes - didn't say much as I recall. After the phone call, KL_ and I continued talking but she could tell I was upset - or maybe just a little distracted - and asked about the call. It was my wife, I told her, telling me that she got a job offer back in her hometown. Which to KL_ didn't sound like such a big deal. Right away, I knew we would end up moving there. I always told my wife we would. I also knew there weren't really any logistical obstacles to it happening. So that day I knew my life, my career, would make a radical change. I wasn't opposed to the idea, but it took quite awhile to wrap my mind around it -- I was settled in, secure with my job though not entirely happy (I'll get back to that), had all the friends I needed or had time for, two kids and another on the way ... you get the idea. The moving thing was out-of-the-blue, but I'm a person who likes change (read escape) so after a little while and with very little convincing needed from A_ (my wife), the move was on.

Now, as the wheels of change began to turn, and as I correctly guessed, most of the obstacles to my moving back to A_'s hometown melted away fairly quickly. A_ was I think a little amazed at my willingness to go. But I am the world's greatest husband and I would do anything to make her happy. Yeah right. As is usually the case when I do nice things, I had an ulterior motive.

You see, my job had been a love/hate relationship for quite awhile. At the time, I had seniority, and was the technical guru in a very small area of expertise. Plus I was involved in the customer service side of things, so I dealt with the worst sorts of problems. Very high stress job, much job satisfaction when things went well. Very low lows when things were going badly. I'd been doing the same job for about 3 years. This was about twice as long as anyone else I knew lasted doing it without leaving one way or another. So ... when the opportunity came along to get away, I saw it as a good thing, and I siezed my ticket to a graceful exit. But then, something happened that surprised me. When I told my boss that I wanted to quit, he suggested I continue to work for him, but remotely. In other words, I could be stay-at-home dad. At the time, I couldn't believe my good fortune. This was going to be great. I move away, but keep contact with my old team (most of whom are/were good friends), I don't feel like I'm abandoning them, plus I get to spend more time with my two (soon to be 3) kids. All in all, it sounded like a win-win situation. Except the problem of me hating my job was never solved. At the time, I was too happy to consider this minor detail.

So ... after about a month, I'm living in a nice little rural town of about ten-thousand friendly people, in a great big house, working remotely from home, spending all the time I want with my kids. Making my own hours. My wife was working a job she liked and making pleny of money. Who could ask for a better set up?

I will miss this place

2004-08-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

I feel relatively happy at the moment, in the midst of being a little down for the last few weeks. I've been coming to Richmond, VA for 4 days a week for almost a year now. I just finished my last turnover meeting, which means for all intents and purposes, my work here is done. Actually, I don't have a freakin' thing to do. All the real friends I've made on this project left weeks ago, so I think that's why I've been in a funk. Tonight, I'll try and play some pickup ball at the Y and maybe work out. Maybe it will make me feel better.

Richmond, though it had a pretty bad reputation, has turned out to be a pretty good thing. I got to stay at the Jefferson. I walked to work downtown every day and never got shot at or mugged or anything. I found some places to eat I really liked. Mama Zu's for Italian. Hana Zushi for Japanese. Beyond that, I don't need much else. Plus the client folks have been good to me here, and that goes a long way. We've been through a lot and come through it pretty well.

Anyway, its probably stupid to miss a place I've been trying my best to get away from. I guess that's just how I'm wired up.

The famous email...

2004-08-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

This is a rant by the CEO of my old company that is still infamous in the corporate world as how NOT to use email to motivate people. I can only post a link because I'm paranoid. After the shitstorm that followed this getting out, there was a massive witch hunt to find out who leaked it. I know who it was (not me), but leaving the full text here probably still isn't the brightest idea.

I remember seeing my boss the day the email went out and he looked like someone had kicked him in the gut. Then he showed me and I felt about the same. Seems sorta stupid now, and from the outside, it looks really stupid. To understand why it was bad, keep in mind that the managers he's writing to are prone to gross overreactions to anything the CEO says. A lot of crazy things happened in the six months after, most of which required us techies to work more and more and more hours for free.

Part of me knows I'm stupid to go back. But another part of me is hungry for a challenge. I'm still a little pissed at myself for wussing out and leaving 2 years ago. But that's a story for another day.

Going back...

2004-08-03T18:11:00.000-07:00

After much procrastination, I've finally quit my highly profitable consulting gig. Now I go back to my old job in Kansas City. Where I liked it, then hated it, then loved it a lot before hating it so much I tried to commit career suicide. My smart friends who knew me well said I would never last there the first time. I'm not sure if 5 years counts as lasting or not. Now they say the same thing. At any rate, I'm coming off the road after two years and this makes me happy. People weren't made to never unpack their shaving kit for two years running and live in hotels 3 or 4 nights a week. Not even me.

Kid observation 1

2004-08-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

I've found that I learn a lot from my kids. Like last weekend. It was my youngest daughter's birthday - she turned two. What blew me away was my four year old son's reaction to it.

You see, a year ago, when she turned one, it nearly destroyed him. That is, to see his little sister be the center of attention, get the presents, the cake, the song ... all that for somebody else. Not good. I swear he cried harder that day than when he dislocated his elbow. Physical pain is nothing compared to pure unbridled jealosy.

But this year, he is four, and things are different. I can tell he still doesn't like it. But he helps her open the presents. He sings happy birthday. He lets her play with her new toys until she loses interest, then takes them when she looks the other way. Why? Mostly because his Mom and I are in the same room and he knows he can't get away with just taking her new toys away. This makes me think a little. We've taught him that he shouldn't act a certain way, but isn't he just as jealous as he was last year? I think so, he's just better at contolling himself and he has rules to follow now.

One thing I do know, and that is I'm still the 3 year old on some level. I think most people are. After 30 years I've gotten good, even better than my son at putting a lot of BS over it. But deep down, I think we all still wish we were the birthday boy/girl.

Why?

2004-07-29T12:27:00.001-07:00

I have not really decided why this blog is here, but I have some thoughts about where it might go. I started it inspired by NotCuredYet, - I have a lot of the same issues he does - married, sex addicted to the point of not being completely in control at times. Like NotCured, I've never cheated on my wife, but in her mind I cheat nearly continually. Our relationship is okay, but complicated - I'll get into that in later blogs I think.

I understand what my motivation is in writing blogs - at least for me it replaces an unhealthy compulsion, with one that is for the most part harmless. Anyway, when I spend 4 days a week living in hotels and my current project has slowed to the point the I have very little to do, it truly does feel like the devil's workshop. And trust me I've been a pretty diligent worker.

At any rate, I think this may serve as a confessional for me if it serves no other purpose. I encourage anybody to throw in opinions - a lot of the stuff I'll post is gonna be a lot like the dog post, I'm afraid. The dog thing only scratches the surface of the stuff I need to get out.

Procrastination and thoughts

2004-07-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

I need to make a phone call but I'm putting it off. I'm at the airport in Cincinnatti, on my way home for the week - which puts me in a good mood usually. But not today. The guy from my firm, J_ has called with 'good' news from Michigan - they've probably agreed to everything I wanted - down to less than 50% travel from 100% and a who knows how much more money. Then I'll have to explain to him why I won't take it - which he won't understand. Bottom line is, I'm quitting. I'm coming off the road completely and moving home - for less money - and that's that. It's complicated. And I need to get into a lot of other stuff before it would make sense to anyone. I could say I'm doing it for the family's sake and that would cover about 60% of the reason - and that's probably what I'm gonna tell J_, though that won't make much sense to him.

Maybe I'll talk to him tomorrow.

What's with the goofy profile pic?

2004-07-29T05:10:00.000-07:00

I made the quickie self-drawing last night from an old photo.

Mostly I am just happy that the pen for my Wacom tablet survived its trip through the washing machine, so I felt the need to do something with it. How it got mixed in with my clothes, I'm not quite sure. At any rate, it emerged from the washing machine much cleaner, but completely dead to the world as far as the Wacom tablet was concerned. On the bright side, at least it wasn't regular pen (this time) .

Anyway, last night I tried the ruined pen one last time, and now that it's dry inside, it is good as new.

BTW, if you have artistic kids old enough to use a computer, I highly recommend one of these - even an engineering geek like me who never took an art class past grade school can make some pretty cool stuff. In the hands of an artistic second grader, its downright dangerous.

Confession 1

2004-07-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

I killed my dog.

Yesterday, I was reading someone's blog yesterday who loved their dog. It seems they had a really good dog. It seems this dog never did most of the rotten things normal dogs do (pee on floors, chew up shoes, whatever).

I think it follows that if you can have a 'good' dog, that some dogs are just plain 'bad'. I know this because most of the time over the last nine years I've prefaced the word 'dog' with the word 'bad'. At least when referring to mine.

I don't think I can go into all the bad things he used to do in detail. There are loads of stories. Pretty much every bad thing you can imagine a dog doing, my dog did it. A lot. He never failed to annoy any and every guest we ever had (barking, biting, humping or excreting something on them or their belongings).

As you can see, I hated my dog and I had him executed. That's the short version of the story.

Really it is more complicated than that. I used to have a dog growing up - and I adored him. I begged my folks for years for a dog, and I loved him - smartest dog ever. He was a black on tan dauchsund mix. Again - lots of stories there but I can't digress.

Anyway, when my wife found a chocolate coloured mini-dachsund a year after we were married, I reluctantly agreed, and I loved this dog too. I always did. Now that he's gone, the good memories seem to be few. I remember one time I snuck out of work about an hour early on a nice day - didn't pick up the kids - but instead went home, bought some tennis balls, and just played with him for an hour. Man, that dog loved tennis balls. You couldn't really even have tennis balls around the house - because he would go berzerk for them. He could smell them no matter where you put them and the smell drove him nutso. I saw an Animal Planet special on how they choose and train dogs to do drug sniffing. They look for dogs with near obsessive/compulsive behavior and redirect their obession. Anyway, I think my dog missed his calling. I've never seen a 8 pound drug dog, but he could have been the first.

But I need to get back on subject. A few months ago, after weeks of the dog being on tranquilizers for his back pain, and continuing to up the dosage, and him not being able to control his bodily functions. He had ruined the baby's old play pen (which was okay), but then he wouldn't stay in it anymore. He would never tolerate his kennel cab - he just wen't nuts when you put him in it. My dog could make a scream like a tortured small animal - which was basically what he was when you put him in that thing. I remember him baring his teeth at me and biting me as I let him out of it. I don't think he knew who I was. At 2AM. After we had moved the thing to the opposite side of the house so we (and the kids) couldn't hear him scream (we still could). That was when I decided I would have him put him down the next day. A_ couldn't talk me out of it. She knew something needed to be done but ... well, she wasn't completely against the idea.

And when I held him, shaking on the table, then relaxed after the first shot from the vet, then feeling the life leave him after the second - I'm a little changed and not for the better. Unfeeling. I didn't feel like I deserved to be sad about it. No tears would come, though I felt like he certainly deserved better.

Anyway, when I think about dogs - all this flashes through my head. I will never have another dog ... I do know that much.

Olberding - what is that?

2004-07-27T07:02:00.000-07:00

Olberding refers to Mark Olberding. He played forward for the (then) Kansas City Kings in 1984-85. At the time, I was playing basketball as a freshman in high school and a few of the senior players christened me with the nickname, loosely translated to mean 'a slow, tall, thin, uncoorindated white kid'. Which, as it turned out, was an accurate enough description that the alias stayed with me to some extent throughout high school (eventually shortened to just Obie by some) , into years where there were no Kansas City Kings, and nobody even remembered where the nickname came from anymore.