It's amazing how much fun a day of unemployment can be when I don't sit around thinking about or working on getting a job. Yesterday, for instance, I spent most of the day shopping. We needed a new showerhead (ours came flying off the wall and hit me in the forehead yesterday -- my luck with plumbing lately is getting almost surreal) and other assorted items that you don't count on paying for when you have no income. But they must be purchased. Bad enough I'm holding off so long on buying new underwear.

Bright blue pants.

The logo close up.

Bon needed to get some bungee cords for tying stuff down while she's at dog agility trials, and the best place in the area for cheap bungee cords is Ocean State Job Lot in Marlboro. Like other similar "lot" stores like Job Lot Pushcart in New Jersey or Big Lots in Rochester NY (those are two I'm familiar with), the store is filled to the rafters with junk they buy in bulk at auctions. It's all detritus and cast-offs that won't sell. In the past, we've found all sorts of hidden gems here among the crapola -- Bon loves to get big ass cans of sardines here to feed to the dogs as part of their natural BARF diet. I can only assume the horrific stench would be equally as bad if they came from the local supermarket, too.

Yesterday at Job Lot we got to see the final fate of the Internet economy spelled out for us: An entire corner wall of this junk store was filled with jackets and snow pants and fleece pull-overs and more, all adorned with the logo of Kozmo.com. I never got to use the legendary delivery service -- they were only available in the most urban of jungles and Hudson, MA, doesn't even rate grocery delivery by Peapod.com yet, even though we've got a local Stop & Shop. But I certainly remember that Kozmo's flame out was among the brightest of the dead dotcoms. Now the site doesn't even come up at all. But I've got two pairs of their bright blue snow pants (see pictures at left) and bon got a rain jacket that won't feel quite so silly once she puts a patch over the logo.

My question is-- did they sell this stuff? Or were these the uniforms of the bicycle messengers and fulfillment people that helped smoke Kozmo and UrbanFetch into early graves?

Follow ups with potential employers do actually perform one important task: they get people to take down job postings off Web sites after the job has been filled. I wrote e-mails to two places today and one is doing exactly that... the other is changing the job description and said I should check back. And I will. I'm getting almost rabid about the follow up. Beware employers... ignore me at your peril! I only get more and more annoying (and as I'm fond of saying to anyone who'll listen, I never got a good job in my life without annoying someone to get it.)

Surfing around today, I found a blog where a woman has tried listing every single book she's ever read. This didn't immediately strike me as silly at all. While I haven't necessarily every considered that list (for one, it would be big and two, it would skew heavily toward sci fi/horror/serial killer novels and I don't want to appear like I've never read the classics. Though I really haven't, unless the Encyclopedia Brown books count.) I have always had swirling in my head a desire to list the names out of every single person I've ever met.

Not just a listing of my friends. I mean, everyone I've ever known. From school chums and bullies, to software vendors at tradeshows, to obscure relatives and even just people I sat next to on a plane. If I can remember their name, I figure they are worth remembering. I don't know why this keeps coming back to me, but now that I've mentioned it in print, maybe I've exorcised another demon from my head.

During the final days -- well, the final day, really -- of Access Internet Magazine, we sat about shell-shocked and cleaning out cubicles and muttering. Well, maybe I was the only one really muttering. Anyway, some of us gathered in the kitchen area and began to drown our sorrows in beer and vodka. I did a couple shots myself. I can't remember who said it, either Milk & Cheese (Dairy Products Gone Bad) or Homer J. Simpson, but sometimes it's true: "Sweet alcohol eases the pain."

It was there in that kitchen that the Bubble formed. The Bubble is, quite simply, the camaraderie of my fellow co-workers, all of whom were either shattered by the loss of our beloved publication or shattered by the much more dangerous lack of a regular paycheck. But staying in the Bubble, it was decided, the group could stick together and weather the storm of the furlough that was to follow (and soon become permanent).

Of course, people drifted apart, occasional invites or get-togethers couldn't be kept... such is the nature of moving on. Yet for a while the Bubble stayed strong despite many pops over the last three months. After all, Tom left for Chicago (and still hasn't posted to his Blog!), and last week Vikki went to Vermont. This week, Marce and Kelly and Pete are all leaving town as their leases end. Of the little core group from Access I hang out with semi-regularly (which is more of a social life than I've had in years!), very few are going to be left in the Boston area soon. I expect those who are left to announce plans to move at any moment, to be perfectly honest.

So. The Bubble may have finally reached the breaking point and burst. Not that I didn't see it coming, but it's so bittersweet when the last vestiges of something and some people so important in my life must go.

Yet old co-workers never exactly disappear. This weekend in the fine city of Florence MA there will be a gather of the former staffers of FamilyPC magazine (the REAL staff, the ones who worked in Northampton from '94 to '99! No NYC successors!). I've pledged to bring the buns.

I'm not sure who will show, and I'm already disappointed at some pre-announced no-shows, but I intend to enjoy a trip back in time to the city of radical liberalism and women with short-hair (you know who you are) and off-leash dogs and artsy movie theaters and great restaurants. I love and miss that burg called Noho (or sometimes Hamp, but I think that makes it sound 'damp'), even if I wasn't happy every second of my time there -- unlike Hudson, MA where I live now, and don't really think much of the town, but I've got to say I'm pretty damn happy most of the time. I'm looking forward to reliving the past a bit. It'll be a small bubble in time, but one so worth visiting.

More tweaking. I've added a search to the site powered by the fine folks at Atomz.com (see, the free Web isn't dead... I've got free Blog, free store, free guestbook, and now a free search. Next up, I'm hoping for free money. I'd settle for free corn nuts, however.)

The search is probably more for my use than anyone else. I was sitting here thinking about writing something about my grandmother, and I couldn't remember if I'd ever written about her before in the SFBlog. So I figured I'd add a search and see. Of course, now I see that Blogger.com has a search built in so I could have searched without having to make it public. Oh, well. Now you can check to see how often I curse.

Oh, alright, I'll check it for you. Get this: I've only used the ess-ach-double-hockeysticks word twice on this site. And one of those times it was unavoidable, since it was a direct quote. And I've apparently NEVER used the eff-word. Maybe this is a family-friendly Blog after all.

(Blog or blog? Copy editors, e-mail me.)

To go along with tweaking my blog and Web site, I love to play with new fun things on the Web, period. Case in point: I've got a store now. That's right, you can buy a wealth of apparel now featuring the Squished Frog Productions logo at the new Squished Frog Prod. Store! I was thinking about getting an Amazon Honor System setup so people could just give me free money, but when I discovered CafePress.com, so I figured, hell, why not let people get something in return for the money they send? I just give and give and give, I tell ya.

So, if you've been DYING to get a bucket hat with the SFP logo on it, now is the time. Also available: messenger bag, sweat shirts, baseball caps, and oh so much more.

Just guess what everyone in my family is getting for Christmas this year...

My hot water tank has not been replaced. Careful studies (my family asked everyone they know) seems to indicated that only the pressure relief valve on the side, where all the water was coming from anyway, might have been shot. So, I got a pipe wrench and a new valve and replaced it myself. So far, so good. Though I still live in constant fear of a flood like Tony Soprano had in his basement.

Blogging is like feeding a beast -- it craves more and more and more. But what's worse, it's such a cool tool that it can also stand up to constant futzing and tweaking. I've just had two hours of my life sucked away by setting up the blog to allow people to link to individual posts here. Of course, no one ever will link to any of my individual posts accept me. That's just, well, sad.

A while back I made a mention in the Blog that a GED was the test you take to go to grad school. Duh. It's the GRE. GED test is for your high school equivalency diploma. Apparently I need to take that one.

I also quoted my ol' buddy Leo Laporte when he said in his blog that he "rather likes having written" to describe the sheer agony of writing. But I've been thinking that he might not have come up with that... not that he's not capable, but it sounded very familiar. A Google search of the phrase "like having written" turned up quite a few instances of it. However, the gist of it still applies: writing is a bitch. Rewriting is only marginally better (some would say worse). Having written, that's still where it's at. Tho I'm also quite fond of thinking about writing and never quite getting around to it.

See, I even do corrections. Talk about full service personal journalism.

Since I'm taking off, I feel I should leave something good on the ol' Weblog to make it worth visiting while I'm gone. Of course, nothing springs to mind, so instead of something good, I'll share this story of my past, which for some reason has been on my mind a lot of late. Not sure why.

It was the summer of 1982. I was 12 years old.

My usual hang out then, and right up until I left for college six years later, was 13 Bennett Street, the home of my best friend, Mark. He and his dad lived there in a ramshackle house that had a front room filled to the ceiling with science fiction paperbacks, everyone one of which Mark's father had read. I only read the Star Trek books (this was all pre-Picard days, too). Mark's mom kind of lived there too, at least at lunch. But she usually slept at a friend's house across town because the noise level at night was too much.

Mark and I and the rest of my closest friends in the "Bennett Street Gang" caused the noise. That name stuck because one time the year before, as Mark and I and three other guys were walking through the halls of the Hornell Middle School, Mark said, "Hey, there's five of us. That makes us a legal gang."

While the legality is in question, the hilarity was not. Mark always had a gift for making himself the center of ridicule by saying or doing something stupid, always born out of his enthusiasm for life and a need to be the center of attention. It made him seem something of a sad clown, but he was a clown with teeth -- Mark and I always agreed he did his best "work" (that is, abrasive insulting) when under the pressure of other people's abrasive insulting. There were days when I felt the ridicule he got was earned, and I heaped it on like the rest. Despite what might sound like a doomed friendship, Mark also possesses to this day a miraculous ability to forgive -- far more than I had or have. I still consider him a friend. I wish I were there to help him more.

I'd only known Mark well for about a year, our last at the Middle School before being shipped to the scary high school, but we'd become close friends in that time. I'd commiserated with him as he pined for a girl (who would later be my high school sweetheart) and we'd shared secrets and stories and comics and movies and so much more. I introduced Mark to the X-men and showed him how to tell that his prized Star Wars comics were, in fact, not the expensive first printings he thought they were. He introduced me to the worlds of Tolkien and showed me my first Penthouse magazine and, yes, he introduced me to kissing.

I'm 12 years old and have never kissed a girl. That's not to say I haven't been in love. By my count, at that point I'd had at least one crush on a red-head, one heart-filled-to-bursting-with-love for a blond, and I was actively in the middle of developing an obsession on a brunette. Girls were all around me in school, they're getting taller while I'm seem to stay the same size, and I'm thinking about them all the time. I can't get them out of my head but I don't even understand why.

Mark, of course, knew all of this. We had no secrets. Despite any ribbing he took, his self-confidence and easy manner with people even at that age had already put him into a lip-lock. He knew exactly what I was missing.

We were hanging out on the porch of his house one evening and he saw his neighbor across the street. I am embarrassed to admit that, 18 years later, I can't remember her name. She was one year younger than us, a pretty girl with dark black hair and a sunburned nose and, well, lets just say she was an early bloomer for an 11 year old. Whether it was that fact that gave her a reputation as a slut (a sad thing, but true to the cruelty of kids) or whether she'd really earned that rep by such a tender age, I don't know.

Mark walked across the street to her house, leaving me to watch the cars in the brand new drive thru they'd built at the McDonald's on the corner. I was thinking about French fries as the wind carried the scent over.

A couple minutes later, Mark yelled my name and waved me over to her house. I didn't know her really, had only talked to her once or twice, why would I do more? I was convinced at that point that no girl would be interested. Even sluts could do better than a comic-reading geek. She had gone in her house by the time I arrived and Mark was waiting on her porch. I tried to saunter over coolly, but had a horrible feeling in my abdomen, like someone had made me swallow a very large, unchewed section of broken asphalt.

Mark broke it down for me quickly. "I talked to her, and she said she'd kiss you."

I might have swallowed. I might not. I don't recall if there was actually moisture available in my mouth to swallow at that point, which would also explain why I didn't say anything. I had a couple of choices of course. I could run. I was only about two and half miles across town to my house. I could hide. After many games of kick the can and the like on Bennett Street, I knew some good spots. Or I could get my little pocket knife out in time enough to commit seppuku on the spot.

The embarrassment was too much to contemplate. How could he do this? My friend? I'd stood beside him at dodge ball! We'd gone to see "Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone in 3D" with Molly Ringwald together! How could he do this to me? Wasn't it bad enough that no girl knew I was alive, no girl ever would, that I was doomed to celibacy and would be better off a priest, even though I wasn't even Catholic? Now he had to point out my invisibility to the fairer sex by bribing a girl into kissing me?

Time to split, my brain said, but my feet stayed planted. Her door began to open and she stuck her head out and look at me, then at Mark. Maybe she thought she was moving her head imperceptibly by giving it a short shake in my direction, with her eyes on Mark. What I saw was a vigorously back and forth head wagging that was screaming "No! No! Dear god in heaven, NO!!"

Mark said "Whaaaat?" like adolescent boys do when frustrated and stalked up the porch to her door. The two of them held a huddle for a moment, him outside, her half inside the door, both looking at me occasionally, whispering. He was cajoling as best he could. She shook her head again once. My humiliation was complete. I could now pass away knowing I'd experienced everything a 12-year-old should. I looked down the street and away, hoping I was not as obviously blushing crimson as my hot face felt.

Then they walked down the porch. Mark walked past me on to the sidewalk with a big grin on his face. He probably slapped me on the shoulder, but I don't remember feeling anything. The concrete in my stomach got heavier (was I going to wet myself? No, hold it in, Griffith!). I glanced at Mark, and then back to her.

She was standing on a step in front of me, putting her in closer to me than any girl since we did the Square Dancing unit in gym class. She was by no means as pretty as the red-head I'd had the crush on, or the blond I thought I'd loved, or the girl who I was slowing commencing to obsess about, but her breath smelled like gum (maybe Juicy Fruit) and her skin was faultless except for the sunburned nose, which up close actually made her look even better. I think she said "Hi" or maybe "Hey." If I spoke, I can't fathom what I said.

And then her lips were on my lips (Whoa. Soft. Warm.) and her lips were moving (were my lips moving? Were supposed to? My god, I had to pee!) and then it was wet and her mouth, my god, her mouth was open and my mouth was open and I felt her tongue, that's what was wet. What was I supposed to do with my tongue? What about my hands? I kept them to my side. I didn't want to be too forward after all. I think her hand touched my cheek. The sounds of the McDonald's drive-thru speaker and traffic drifted away. Actual thoughts stopped being processed. My head filled with abstractions. Wet. Soft. Lips. Soft. Soft.

I don't know what happened next. Obviously the kiss ended. She might have said "Okay," or maybe just reentered her house to get away in her own embarrassment. I must have walked back to Mark's house, and he probably asked how it was, and I probably told him. But I don't remember any of that. My next conscious thought was when my Dad, who'd come over to pick me up at Mark's house later that night to drive me home asked, "What did you do tonight?"

It was the summer of 1982. I was 12 years old. Of course I didn't tell him.

"Nothin' much," I said, but felt my breath catch on the lie. I turned away, and I rested my cheek against the hard, cold glass window and in my head felt the soft lips of the first girl I'd kissed.

You'll be happy to know that the price of hot water tanks is greatly exaggerated. I can get a 40 gallon GE tank at Home Depot for about $160 bucks. To install it, they charge $189, which is still a $150 saving over either of the plumbers I got estimates from. That's a helluva markup. Perhaps I should go to a plumbing school and make some real money. Then again, I can't imagine responding to an emergency call where I have to wade through another person's backed up sewage, feces up to my knees. No amount of money is worth that.

By the way, I called over 12 plumbers yesterday about this hot water tank problem. I talked to two and left messages at the rest and guess how many of them called back? Zero. Zilch. None. So, to the plumbing community of Hudson, MA, please, feel free to bite me.

My brother, Paul, is probably going to come out from Hornell with me after the weekend to help me install the tank himself, as he's very proficient at that kind of thing (with absolutely no training), while I'm a hopeless bumbler with any kind of mechanical stuff outside of PCs. For example, after I left my Dad's workshop construction fun last week, a couple of pieces had to be cut to fit as siding on the roof supports. My dad and my cousin-in-law, Bill, were actually lifting the wood to the rafters, trying to mark it and cut it. Paul walked in and "said what are you doing?" He made two measurements, put them on the board, made one cut, and it fit like a charm.

He's a bastard that way.

I'm also going into Hornell again this weekend because my friend Bill and his (count 'em!) five kids will be in town, and two of them I've never even met before, as he and his wife, Eileen, had them while he was stationed in Germany and now in Texas.

It should be stated right now, I'd much rather know people from Germany than Texas. But that's a presidential bias. (Good joke I heard Wednesday night: Gore's campaign slogan for 2004: "Re-Elect Gore for President.")

I've started to dream about blogging. The details of last night's trip into my subconscious are clear as mud now, but the gist was: someone showed me an article about being laid off or that mentioned my name or some such, and my immediate response was to post it to this blog.

I wish had written it all down this morning, but I got side tracked... when I got into the basement (that's where my home office is located), I found my hot water heater had again flooded into a puddle. Nothing destroyed this time, but I think this signals the end of the line for the nine-year old State Censible 510e 50-gallon gas water heater (it's amazing how intimate you become with the details of a thing when you need to replace it but such an action is completely out of your depth.) I've been calling plumbing and heating places all morning to get price estimates, and the only one I've go so far is about $625 to get a 40-gallon tank with a 10 year warranty. I didn't think that was bad (I was expecting a grand), but when I told Bonny, I thought she's soiled her knickers from the look on her face. None of my research has shown any thing better so far, however.

"It's a real real good column. I like it. I like to say things about stuff, and talk, you know, and use words and things. A lot of times I'll be thinking something, and I'll say, wow, I just blew my mind just then, I should have a place to keep thoughts and junk. So, that's a thing." -- A comedy quote about a fictional Web column from Comic Book Resources' You'll All Be Sorry! column which sums up this blog perfectly, don't you think?

From Leo Laporte's Leoville Weblog: ...writing is very painful, although I rather like having written.

I couldn't have said it better myself. And I'll I'm writing these days are stupid blog entries.

I've been away the last few days, helping build my dad's workshop at home (Hornell, NY, the town where I grew up) and then I made a stop in New Jersey to visit friendson the way back home to Massachusetts .

Things I did right this past week:

I spent today building. My dad's retirement gift to himself, a workshop attached to the two car garage, is going up quickly with my brother and he leading the charge, and me bumbling along side them, trying not to hit my self with hammer, or to to accidentally shot myself with the nail gun.

My brother Paul suggest I go into construction when I get home. What I suggest for him is not for public consumption.

I count among my friend some of the greatest people on earth. I'm not just saying that because they're my friends. Some of them were great before they met me. Some will probably be great long after I'm not in their lives. Probably.

One of those people is a gentleman named Bob Ryan. Bob was once my boss during the heady days of FamilyPC in Northampton, MA. Then while I was on staff at Access, Bob was a contributing editor (that translates to "glorified freelancer" in editor-speak), so, in a way, I was his boss for a time, sort of. Through it all I always considered him a friend first. Still do, always will.

Bob was sending me instant messages yesterday, checking to see how I'm doing with the whole job search and all. I've started to tell people that "it's not good, it's not bad... it just is." I've been told that's very Zen of me. He sent me some job advice that has stuck with me since it appeared on my screen:

"Enjoy this time. You've got a whole lifetime of employment ahead of you."

Damn, he's so right. Considering that I'll probably never be able to retire in 2044 (I'll be 74-years old then), let alone like my dad did at age 62 (in 2032), because of the destruction of Social Security not to mention the fact that I just cashed in part of my 401K, I'm sure I will be working well past normal retirement. I hope I'm doing something I like. (Of course, that's easy for Bob to say, he's working. The bastard...)

The other best advice I've ever received in my life, which I share with almost everyone I know because it really is great advice, is from my friend Laura Rush. My standard greeting for Laura is to call her "Loser," but she's far from it. After all, she's going to night school to be a doctor. A real MD. Just like on TV. I have to be nicer to her, because someday she'll probably be giving me prescriptions. Anyway, her dad is an executive recruiter, and he told her this once, and she shared it with me at a time when I thought I should look around for a new job, but didn't feel I should or could:

"Never turn down a job that hasn't been offered to you."

What does that mean? That means it never hurts to look. It never hurts to talk. All your options should be open for new career possibilities no matter the status of your current job (or lack thereof). More so, if you see something you think you can do, or something you want to do, apply. It doesn't matter if you don't meet the made up qualifications they have posted on the job site, or if you feel overwhelmed, or that the competition is tough, or if someone told you the company may go down the tubes. Because guess what, Chester? None of it matters until the offer is on the table. Until then, it's all guesswork and worry and you could be doing more important things with your time, like flossing your cat.

Since I'm on the topic of advice, I'll share one more piece of advice that I give to just about everyone I know at one point or another. It has nothing to do with jobs, but it has everything to do with saving money and sanity and friends and family. It boils down to one word:

"Elope."

Yesterday, a man who'd I'd met only five minutes before, actually said to me: "We're all friends here, so I can tell ya what I always say. There's nothing like having two flies fight over your own shit when it's still sticking out of ya."

No more blogs for a couple days, as I'm violating superstition #3 (below) to take a couple days on Cape Cod to decompress, courtesy of friends Lauren and Elaine, God bless 'em both. Bon will be working on something with Elaine there (they're writing an annual report...fun!) while Lauren and I will play mini-golf in the 100+ degree heat. Wish us well.

I used to be afraid of my car. It wasn't an old car, nor a lemon. But at the time, I couldn't afford to do much up-keep on it, so just getting out of the driveway with it was a welcome feat. It was during this time in my life that I started to realize that I'm more than a little superstitious. Because I would bad mouth the car with a steady stream of cuss words and nasty epithets that would make even my mom blush, and she swears like a lumberjack when the mood suits her.

But I would never curse the car while in its presence. The car might hear, you see. And then it would turn on me.

(It strikes me suddenly that anthropomorphosizing my car might not be the same as being superstitious, so perhaps as lead-ins go, this isn't really relevant. Well guess what? You're not paying to read this, so tough crap.)

Such bizarre actions on my part only go hand in hand with the normal superstitious stuff: I don't walk under ladders and, if I think about it, I try not to step on cracks. One is just plan good planning; the latter is just polite, especially if your mom has medical problems like mine. She just had surgery near her spine to free space for nerves that were getting pinched and making her arms go numb. Something else to look forward to in my inevitable genetic inheritance, much like the kidney stone Dad had forwarded to both my brother and I.

As I coast through my third month of not earning my keep in this world, I'm starting to develop an all new set of superstitious notions and actions that I feel are going to help me find a job. I thought I'd list them for you, just in case they might help you. (Of course, if I'm crazier than an outhouse rat, let me know.)

1. NEVER SHARE It seems that every time I've told my friends or family about a job I really want, it never comes through. So, from now on, all specifics on a job are secret. I might mention them in the blog, but that doesn't count, because I know no one reads it (that was always the secret of being okay with screwing up when I did radio on the #2 station in my home town in high school -- you just have to tell yourself you're not interesting enough for anyone to be listening or reading).

2. CHECK E-MAIL HOURLY The new millennium equivalent of sitting by the phone. If you don't check e-mail constantly, you'll be punished karmicly because the People Who Actually Hand Out The Jobs will some how know and won't write to you.

3. DON'T HAVE FUN Every time you laugh at a sitcom or go antiquing or, heaven forfend, take a vacation while unemployed, you'll incur double the wrath of the People Who Actually Hand Out the Jobs. (from now on, I'll call them PWAHOJ. That's pronounced "pwah-hoje").

4. PRINT YOUR ENVELOPES When the time occasionally comes that I have to send out a résumé by snail mail, I always look at the hand written addressed envelope with my return address in the upper left provided by a free sticker I got from the MSPCA and I think: Wow, the PWAHOJ are going to know that's from some one looking for work... and it will then go right into the ol' circular file. So, like any good junk mailer, I try to hide the fact that the contents are nothing but my cover letter and collateral material by running all envelopes through my printer so they look all official.

I never said these superstitions made sense. But I promise, if you also live by them, you'll think you're making headway even if you're not. Or your money back.

Flood!

Okay, it wasn't a flood, it was a puddle. That didn't make me feel any better when I found it. Apparently, my hot water tank has been "sweating" due to the extreme heat here in Massachusetts and the resulting quarter inch of H₂O on the cement floor of the basement spread far enough to attack a box of posters I've had since high school. Almost all were ruined -- the water climbed up each about three to five inches and mold and mildew was already forming on most of them.

I've got a few ready to trash, but I hung a few of those that weren't to obviously riddled with penicillin around the workshop area of the basement. I can always toss them when I move someday.

Well, the apocolypse is here. My wife, who's been working from home for going on seven years, has applied for a real job.

Granted it's only part time and close by and we don't even know if it'll pay more then minimum wage, but she applied. And that's a big step. I'd be thrilled if it meant I could stop looking, but, well, it doesn't.

What a difference three hours makes.

It seems that I have two times I generally roll out of bed in the morning while in this unemployment phase of my career. I'm either up at 7am (generally because the dogs always have us up between 5:30 and 6:00 demanding to be fed, after which time I can't get back to sleep) or sometime around 10am, on those days when I do fall back to sleep.

10am days fly by like the wind. Yesterday was a 10am day, and I barely felt like I'd done a thing before suddenly primetime television was staring me in the face. Yet I'd mowed the lawn, stacked the firewood that my parents helped me chop up last October, and even saw a movie in Boston (Ghost World-- good flick). By the time I got home, suddenly it was time for Fear Factor. But I always feel guilty when I sleep in that late, like I missed out on some great job possibility or something.

(Speaking of Fear Factor, Bon and I like to watch it and discuss what we feel we could or could not do. So far we've seen one stunt I'm physically incapable of -- pulling myself off a jet ski into a helicopter, though maybe I could do it if I grabbed up high enough -- and another that I'm psychologically incapable of -- being covered with rats. I could be covered with snakes and worms no problem, and for $50,000 I'd certainly eat sheep's eyes or boiled bull testicles or dung beetles. But rats? No way. I was glad to see one of the guys on the show also backed out, and he put it perfectly, though I'm paraphrasing since I can't remember his exact words: "Rats are a creature with no use on this earth." Bon felt she couldn't be dragged behind two running horses, but that looked pretty easy. It was through soft mud. How cushy! That's the Fear Factor equivalent of a desk job.)

Today's a 7am day, and my god, how it's dragging. This is consistently happening with my 7am days... I hit the computer by 7:15 at the latest, after I have my traditional three piece of buttered toast for breakfast (occasionally I have a banana and blueberry smoothie with soy power for protein, but I'm not religious about it), and manage to get though all my e-mail in record time. Then there's an hour of searching job boards. Lately I've been heading out to the post office to send out eBay stuff. Then I consider what to do with the rest of the day. And inevitably, there's nothing to do.

For instance, today I've done it all: walked dogs, been to the post office twice, had lunch, read the paper, did 3 hours of e-mail, and left countless voice mail messages for potential employers -- and now I'm back to square one. What do I do? I've got countless books to read, but none of them are singing out to me. I watched a DVD in the middle of the day Sunday and felt guilty about that, so I know I won't feel right doing it in the middle of a Tuesday. I could clean my office, but, well, nah, that'll never happen. I guess I'll just sit and stare.

I'm afraid to tell Bonny this, though, as she'll probably ask me to weed a flowerbed or something. I'd rather be bored.

I believe I've mentioned before that the follow-up part of applying for a job, that bizarre chasm one must cross between sending in a résumé and theoretically getting an interview, is the hardest part. The reason? No one likes rejection.

Whether it's because the jobs been filled, or they haven't got to you yet, or any of a hundred other reasons that may or may not include the simple fact that they don't like you as an applicant, who wants to be told "don't call us, we'll call you"?

Yet, despite that, today was and is follow-up day. I've called at least six places and ended up leaving voice mail messages about the freelance and full-time stuff I'm pursuing. I've marked all the same folks in Outlook for follow up again in about five days.

So if you've got a message from me, please call... I'll follow up with you folks until I've got something, so you all should just call me back right now! I'm a man on a mission. Even if you're going to tell me the job's been filled, or you don't have any freelancing at the moment due to budget cuts, or even that you think I look funny and can't spell. I can take it! Bring it on!

I might actually buy this:

IBM said its "artificial passenger" dashboard device might be on the market in three years, thus helping to make highways safe from dozing drivers by, among other things, shooting a stream of cold water into the driver's face. According to a July issue of New Scientist, when the device detects drowsiness, it launches into jokes and other conversation and automatically rolls down windows, sounds an alarm and changes radio stations, among other things. [New Scientist, 7-21-01] -- From News of the Weird .

This weblog entry involves math. You've been warned.

I was talking to Joe last night on the phone, discussing the ups and downs of his job and my lack thereof. Joe's got a 4 hour round trip commute every day form his place in New Jersey into Manhattan everyday. Combine his drive to the train station, paying for parking, paying for the monthly train pass, paying for the subway up town from Penn Station, and then doing it all in reverse at the end of the night, and you've got an expensive trip, somewhere near $400 a month. That's preposterous.

I've been there, kind of. When Bonny and I lived in Wappingers Falls, NY, just south of Poughkeepeesie, we drove each day to the Metro North train station (at least parking was free, though not plentiful). We spent 1 hour and 20 minutes to get in to the city on the 6:59am train to Grand Central (it was usually about 1 hour 40 minutes to get back at night). It was only a ten block walk down to One Park Avenue, where we worked, so no subway. No matter -- it was $180 per person per month just to take the train.

I hated the train. Mind you, it was better than the bus I used to take from New Jersey into Port Authority Terminal in Manhattan for the few months I lived in Jersey after graduation. The bus was worse than the train because at least the trains usually kept their schedule. In a bus on Route 3 in Jersey, you're at the mercy of traffic from the Lincoln Tunnel, people trying to get in and out of the Meadowlands Arena, all sorts of crap you can't control. What a nightmare. The only upside of a bus is the seat aren't vinyl.

On the MetroWest train, the seats are indeed vinyl, red and blue vinyl as I recall. Packed tight with people on a hot summer day while you stick to those seats, it's not fun to think you're paying for the privilege.

So, last night talking to Joe, I realized I'll probably have to start taking the train into Boston if I get a job there. I would need to drive about 10 or 15 miles to a train station (probably in South Acton for $145 a month or West Concord for $136 a month just for the train fare). I think parking is free. This line (the Fitchburg Line, named for the town at the end of the line) would dump me into North Station. Assuming I got a job at, oh, I dunno, say Emerson College, I would have to get on the T subway train to get downtown.

Other option: drive to Newton like I used to for Access, catch the train there to Back Bay Station. That's already downtown, probably a better walking distance. Then I'd just be paying for the gas, which I already did, plus $94 a month for the train.

Mind you, if I find out parking is free, I probably will drive, no matter where it is. Though of course, I just read this week they're hiking the tolls on the Mass Pike closest to Boston, so what used to cost two bucks round trip is going to be $4.00. Per day. So, figure about 22 workdays a month, I'd still have to pay $88 just to take the Pike, with no train involved at all. I could drive secondary roads into downtown Boston, but that would probably mean sitting in traffic so long that I'd eat the money in gas anyway.

I just can't stand the thought of taking mass transit, I really hate it. Especially when I consider my new commute could be just like Joe's in a lot of respects... his life is hell! I don't want that! I don't care if commuting is better for the environment or even if it saves me money in the long run. It. Will. Suck.

But I'd do it for a job.

I was surfing at various college Web sites today. Not that I plan to chuck this job search and go back to school... I have about as much desire to pay for further education as I have the desire to wax my legs. Nope, I was looking for a job, because, as my friend Bob (who went from working in publishing to a job at a college) always tells me, institutes of higher book learnin' are a lot less likely to have layoffs.

So I found an actual teaching job that I'm qualified for, if you go by job description. It's a part-time lecturing position in a journalism department. No Masters degree required, just 5 years in publishing. I got that! Chances are the is filled since the opening is almost two months old. But here's the cool coincidence part: one of my favorite professors from Ithaca College -- one of only three I remember with any fondness after four years in the IC Television/Radio program -- is the head of the department.

Of course, the chances this Prof. will remember me are about as likely as me remembering any of the people my mom always introduces me to when I'm home (When I'm out with her, she'll always run into someone at the supermarket that she knows. She has a 20 minute conversation while I stand around reading the packages in the bakery aisle. She'll finally say "oh, Eric, you remember so-an-so, right?" and I say yes, of course, sure. But I never do.). If nothing else, I'll apply for the job and maybe get a chance to talk to him, and tell him thank you. It was one of his courses that gave me enough desire to focus for the rest of my time at school after a year and a half of thinking I was only going to IC to work in food service.

Oh, and I put some more crap up on eBay. Go nutz spending your money there.

It's Saturday afternoon. I'm home alone with my pup, Siren, who's asleep right now on the floor of my basement office. And what am I doing while the wife's away? Am I writing the great American novel? Have I applied for job after job after job guaranteed to take me off the bread line and ensure domestic tranquility? Am I expanding my horizons, am I bettering my physique? Am I doing anything remotely worthwhile?

I'm watching a documentary on PBS all about how much people like hotdogs.

So you've read the review of my Blog from The Weblog Review site (below), and you're incensed and angry! You want a piece of that ChrisW guy so you can say to him "Hey, DUDE, what makes you think you know so much? Huh? HUH?? Were you ever the Webmaster for a national magazine? Have you been a publishing pro for a decade??"

Well, don't bother. He probably was both. It's not like there aren't a billion of us former Webmaster/journalists out there. Besides, I'm the one who put my site up for review. I expected more ridicule actually, but he said my blog had "interesting posts and commentary"! Who am I to argue? The way that site works, eventually other reviewers may join in to say something, thus giving me a higher or lower "Average Reviewers Rating." Notice the Users Average Rating is a full on 5 -- that's because I'm the only User who's voted so far.

But, I did check out the site of Christopher Walker, the English-man who wrote the review of my site, and first off, it turns out he's only been reviewing these Blogs for a week. But we all start somewhere. He's also got a degree in Physics, so maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead. Tho I can't say his layout of his page does any better at at harkening " back too much to the mid-nineties."

Besides, I loved the 1990s! Do you know how frickin' easy it was to get a job back then?

My blog got reviewed today at The Weblog Review:

Squished Frog is not nearly as offensive as you might think from the title. It is in fact the personal homepage of a man called Eric who has decided to share his opinions and stories with the people of the world.

Sounds like typical blog fare then. Which it is, but it is good blog fare, with some interesting posts and commentary, with some insight that is definitely worth reading.

The only facet of the site that is keeping it from a solid 3.0 is the design. The colour scheme, layout and overall feel of the page harks back too much to the mid-nineties. The main content is pretty featureless, and the yellow background around the sites doesn't provide enough contrast to really help the page flow.

Other than that, a good website with good content.
This site was reviewed by chrisw on 2001-08-02

Reviewers' Average Rating2.5
Users' Average Rating 5

I must be far more bored than I thought, because apparently I've set up a guestbook.

Even though I looked into it a while back and decided not to have one, I was surfing around last night checking other people's blogs and found out that the guestbook service from www.signmyguestbook.com is actually pretty easy to customize without having to know anything other than HTML. They host the page, but it looks like it's still part of my site. That's all I could ask for. And it's still free, unlike so much out on the Web.

So, you are now REQUIRED to go to the Squished Frog GuestBook (capital "B" or note? Copy editors, please let me know) whenever you come read the blog, especially if you're someone I don't know. Maybe I'll even start holding contests for people who post the most fascinating things. I've certainly got a basement full of crap I could give away as prizes.

Well, it appears I can't post this little missive to the masses because Blogger is down for the moment. So here's some more random thoughts...

I was checking my traffic stats again for SquishedFrog.com and there's a section of data on "top refers," meaning the top sites on the Web that have sent people to this site. Usually it's easy to see that probably 80% of the links to my site are me jumping from some site back to SquishedFrog.com... the server doesn't distinguish me from anyone else on the Web since I don't host the site.

But so many of them are a mystery. I go to the sites that I've never heard of and do searches for "squished" or "frog" but find nothing. Why are they listed as a refer? It's all very random. For example, "cgi.ebay.com" and "cgi.ebay.aol.com" come up a fea times, but these aren't even real sites. Anyone who knows there way around traffic stats (and how sad must that be) and wants to enlighten me, that would be appreciated.

What is nice about this exercise is stumbling across the occasional personal site that has made a link to me, probably after finding Squished Frog listed at Blogger.com. Last night I made a point of reading almost every page of gigglechick.com/erin/, written by a woman (named Erin, natch) who's both a Web designer (her site looks great) and a budding stand-up comedian. Fascinating. With her mom's cancer operation and her lists of what she ate to stay on Weight Watchers, it's like reading the Jersey Shore's version of Bridget Jones's Diary. Like any female posting to the Internet, she knows she's got stalkers, and I now count myself among them. I'd ask her to marry me right now, if I weren't already married and thus required by law to stalk my own wife (which isn't much of a challenge since she's right there in bed with me).

If you're curious what other blogs I'm checking on a regular basis, they tend to be people I know, which makes me think only people who know me are going to bother reading this blog. Here's my regular blog stops in no particular order:

Anyone who doesn't get the dialy comedy newsletters from the TopFive.com Web site don't know what they're missing. My favorite thing they do are the "Ruminations," which are all very much like "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy," the items they used to run on Saturday Night Live where the guy would do the voice over to the pastoral scene that always ended with something wacky/funny/offensive. Here's my latest favorite Rumination:

My wife is constantly nagging me. It's always "get a job" this, and "get out of your pajamas" that. Don't fence me in, woman! --(Jim Rosenberg)