My Poor, Neglected Blog…

Hey, at least it hasn’t even been two full weeks since my last post, so get off my back. I’ve been busy. Actually, that’s a lie, but I have been busier. I’m counting that as a valid excuse. Busier at work (as in I’m actually doing some), and busier when not at work (no, still no girlfriend, so stop asking). Some people have gone from being a part of my every day life to virtually nonexistent and vice versa over the past few weeks. This is not entirely surprising, since it’s a cycle my life follows every few months.

I guess this is just a roundabout way of saying I need to write another blog, or certain people will become um… disgruntled. (Hey, you should appreciate the tact involved in using that word as opposed to the first few things I was going to put there.) And since I don’t have a great topic, you just get to read a few stories. Actually, make that suffer through a few stories, since I’m a terrible story teller. Deal. With. It.

So I recently discovered that there is an actual attractive girl in my corporation… within my division, even, who is around my age. Of course she works like 70 miles away from me, because no one works at my plant aside from me and dinosaurs. (They’re still frightened by computers and “technology”. One even tried to show me their iPhone to try and prove that she was “hip” (her words, not mine). Needless to say, I was not impressed.) Anyway, I met her because she was doing basic Six Sigma training, and my facility hosted an event for the class that divided them into small groups and teamed them with a Black Belt (which is what I pretend to be when I’m actually working. And no, it has nothing to do with karate). Naturally, my boss picked the teams, and since he thinks I’m awesome (or at least pretends to think so, I am the reason they all came here instead of to another plant), she was in my group.

Well, she was pretty quiet the whole time. She asked some questions, since we were on the manufacturing floor and she was just in HR, so she knew pretty much nothing about what she was looking at. Whatever, the point is she showed some promise. And then she was discussing what kind of project she was going to do, and dropped this line:

I want to do a project in HR, because if I did a project anywhere else, it would require me learning about it. And I’m really really slow at learning things.

She might as well have been wearing a dunce cap. Anyway, it virtually killed my attraction to her. I say “virtually” because attractive girls are still attractive, but I’m not one to waste my time on pretty girls that are lacking in substance (…anymore). The more she talked, the more obvious it became that she was the kind of cute girl you loathe in the corporate world: the one surrounded by a ton of guys (usually way older) and more than willing to have “friendly” discussions with all of them because she knows it gets her ahead. Damn her. It almost makes me wish these businesses were run by women, but then I realize I’d have to deal with hormonal rage on top of incompetency (before you feminists get on me, I’m implying that the current men controlling the business world are incompetent as well, so it’s not some exclusive thing to a gender), and it just wouldn’t be worth the switch. Plus most of the women would be old, and we all know it’s a proven scientific fact that old people are gross.

A little over a week ago I stopped at my parents’ for dinner and to visit. You know, because they obviously miss their favorite and best son. Unfortunately this amounted to watching the American Idol where the Milwaukee guy got kicked off the show. My dad used to play the “your mother makes me watch it” card, but recently he has switched to defending watching it because they’re all “amazing” singers. And apparently they even voted multiple times for this elimination show. Ugh. I’d like to blame it on the fact that the house is completely 2/3 of the year due to my two brothers in college and me out on my own, but I’m fairly certain my parents would’ve done this kind of thing anyway, since they wanted anyone but “the gay one” to win. From the one episode I half paid attention to, I couldn’t blame them for that judgment, since he did appear to be the most annoying of the bunch. (Don’t get me wrong, anyone who makes it this far on American Idol is bound to be annoying on some level… he just exceeded what the others typically reach. The last thing we need is another Clay Aiken in the news.)

Somehow this all evolved into a conversation about intelligence with my dad (my mom was out of the room when it started). He was insistent he was smarter than I was, because he has a lot of common sense and a great business sense (this part is true, but in true intelligence, he stopped being able to help me with my math homework by the time I was 12). But at the same time, he’ll never be the kind of guy that would blow you away with some deep philosophical or psychological statement or discussion. This led to the following exchange:

Me: So you think you’re more intelligent than me? Do you think you’d beat me on an IQ test?

Dad: Of course I could.

Me: Dad, it’s based on pattern recognition and spatial reasoning… how in the hell are you going to top me at that?

Dad: No it’s not, it’s based on common sense. And I have way more of that than you.

At this point my mom came back into the room, and I told her “Dad claims he can beat me on an IQ test because he believes it’s based on common sense.” She just looked at him like he was crazy and shook her head. Then my dad, being who he is, refused to let this go:

Dad: I wouldn’t score a 180 or anything like that, but probably a 140 or so.

Me: Dad, you do realize that would still put you at near-genius level, right?

Dad: I have more common sense than anyone you’ve ever known, so that makes sense.

Me: For the last time, what does that have to do with IQ? Do you even know what is on an IQ test?

Dad: No, but I could use common sense to figure it out. In fact, we should both go take one just so I can prove myself right.

I agreed to do so if he was going to set it up, but I think my mom talked him out of it after I left. Either that or he conveniently forgot. And before you ask: Yes, my father is always this bullheaded about something he believes is true. It leads to quite a few “interesting” conversations.

I almost miss living at home. Almost…

~ by whittydiatribes on May 20, 2009.