It's Official...

... Summer is here in Seattle. After 3 days of torrential rain and some hail and thunderstorms, the sun's finally out! Warm breezes and 80-degree weather, but that's not the true measure of the season... it's the fact that the neighbors mowed their lawn (or had it mowed), making mine look like a jungle. So I fired up the lawnmower right after getting home from work and proceeded to uncover steaming piles of dog-doo and get my workout dodging agitated wasps. When's Winter coming back?

... I'm a fat-ass! It wasn't long ago that I was working downtown and walking 6 blocks from the bus-stop to the office. I had time to play volleyball at the rec center and take some martial arts classes over the weekend. But for the last year and a half, I've worked near the airport and I sit in traffic for an hour on the way there, just so I can continue to sit on my butt, either in front of the computer or in the seat of the forklift. I've never been uncomfortable in my jeans, but they were digging into my new-found gut so badly today I had to unbutton them for the drive home.

... My coworker is resigning. Every where I've worked, there's always been someone who got pregnant (not by me!), went on maternity leave, came back for a month or two, and then quit. I knew it was coming with this one too. And the higher-ups haven't given me a clear answer as to what's going to happen once she's officially off the payroll. I guess I've been doing such a stellar job in covering her portion of the paperwork, they haven't really been on the search for a replacement. Great. More work, same pay. Damn my parents for passing on their workaholic-ness to me!

... My cousin is a Marine. He finished Bootcamp and was promoted to PFC at his graduation last week. He came back through Seattle to visit with his mom before he returns to SoCal for two more months of training and then off to where ever they require him. For his sake, and for the sake of all our boys and girls, I really hope the stupidness in Iraq is over or at least calms down very soon.

... I'm a corruptor of our youth. I took the above-mentioned cousin and my brother, who was in town to visit him, to their first strip-club and paid to pop their lapdance cherry. I guess Seattle has a ban on new strip clubs, so the stripper density is always high, even on a Monday night. The boys enjoyed the stage show, but at first weren't too excited about the private dances, thinking were just a little more close-up ass-shaking. They were pleasantly surprised when they found out lapdances were literally in-your-lap, and they definitely enjoyed the touching and squeezing that they got to do.

I couldn't help but think of Pauly and his Existentialist Conversations with Strippers(tm) when Sophie plopped herself down beside me and introduced herself. I told her I was just taking my newly anointed Marine of a cousin out for some fun, and she started going on about the military and the choices people make to join and that she could never do it because her will to live was too strong but that those who are in must have a stronger will... I really wasn't sure what she was talking about as I was in awe of some of the pole moves being performed on-stage to Gwen Stefani's new cheerleading son. And before I could turn to Sophie and ask her about her thoughts on Nietzsche, she popped me the question. :)

As for poker, not so good. Besides contributing to my already overly-sedentary lifestyle, the last few casino trips have netted the exact same result as the outing to the strip club: less cash and more frustration....