Thursday night drunken rant

I called my mom this afternoon to get an update on my stepdad's progress with the credit companies. As it turns out, he called them and drmatically underbid their settlement offer. I expected him to try to underbid by a couple hundred dollars, but he went for a couple thousand. The thing you gatta understand is, financially I've always played defense because I've had very little ground to stand on. My stepdad has taken the ball and decided to play offense. Balls as big as church bells, this man. And since he's speaking on my behalf, I gotta run along side him. It's a frightening feeling, but it's also kind of a rush. I'm following his lead and it's gonna wind up turning me into Fritschie: Semi-Badass.

My stepdad rocks, period. When I first spoke to him about this whole thing, his attitude reminded me of the Devil Went Down to Georgia: Just sit right back in that chair right there and let me show you how it's done.

As far as work is concerned, things were kinda light, which is a welcome break from the busy busy busy of the past couple weeks. At my company, it tends to travel in waves. It may be busy as hell in the front office one week, but as that work travels through the rest of the company, there's a weird period as the front office is winding down, but the back of the shop is working on finishing what we had just passed on to them. I found myself doing nothing but answer the phones today as the rest of the front office went to the back to help out with the jobs needing to go out.

In most areas of my life (work, finances), I'm feeling the change. There's a felling of...what's the word I'm looking for...confidence? Yes, confidence, that's it. There's very little I can't do, and if I can't do it, there's a damn good reason why. The double-edged sword is that people are starting to recognize it, which makes them expect more out of me. To some extent, I'm willing to oblige, but there's another part of me that knows that the lower you keep people's expectations the easier your life will be...I learned that from Calvin and Hobbes.

Of course, Calvin is spending most of his time pissing on various logos and slogans, and Hobbes has kept a very low profile these past few years. I don't know which of them to listen to anymore. I've been burned before in these situations. I once thought Garfunkel would surpass Simon, I thought Futurama would one day replace the Simpsons, and I thought Brokeback Mountain would sweep the Oscars. To quote John Cusack from High Fidelity, "I always followed my gut. I realize now that my gut, has shit for brains."