Holy Snikies….

It dawned on me a couple of days ago it has been months since I have posted to the blog. I would like to say that I have been so busy in my life that I haven’t had the opportunity to post anything. Albeit, there is a measure of truth in that statement, it isn’t entirely accurate. Frankly, I haven’t really felt there was anything really exciting to report. In reality, there still isn’t anything interesting to report but I now at least have several months of random mundane stuff to talk about.

Let’s start with Professional…
My job has been great and I really am enjoying it. I found out this week that I received the APM of the year award again for my group. Now, this news comes with some mixed emotions. On the one hand, I am honored to receive this for the third year in a row. It is great that the sacrifices I make and the work I do is noticed and appreciated. On the other hand, my peers are just as capable, make as many sacrifices and work as hard (probably harder-after all, I am inherently lazy). They are equally deserving of this award. I guess I humbly accept the award on behalf of all our successes.

Most of the past three months I have dedicated my time to the newest building I support (and if you are counting, yes, I am up to 6 now – 5 official and 1 unofficial). It is our Central Fill Pharmacy in Houston, Texas. I have now been to Houston WAY more that I ever wanted. The traffic there is bad. I know, you’re thinking “can’t be THAT bad”. Oh yes, my friends, it is indeed THAT bad. I would say it is 10 times worse than Dallas (which is horrible). I have been in California stopped on one of their parking lots they coyly describe as a freeway. There is NO difference. One evening at 5 o’clock it took me 1 hour to go 8 miles on FM1960, which is about 20 miles north of the outer-outer belt. Now imagine what downtown is like. But I digress. The building is up and running (although still in testing). Once ISD has worked all the bugs from the code, we will go full board. The computer geeks will enjoy this, last week testing was scaled back because of an ISD issue. In their coding they failed to incorporate correct code for three (or two or even 1 digit) store numbers. They were only prepared for four digits. So when the first 3 digit store number came in, the system hacked off the leading zero and then couldn’t recognize it as a legitimate store. For all of you who know me well…I am thinking of monkeys and footballs. Anyways, it is smother now and starting to run like a normal building.

I have also been dealing with a large construction project in the Carrollton building. On one side of the building we are putting in a regional office for Dallas AND a divisional office for Texas. Now the regional office isn’t so bad, 1 VP and a few senior managers. But the divisional office will have 1 SVP with little VPs running around. We’ll have brass wall-to-wall going forward and all walking past our department everyday. Awesome!!!

For the most part, work is good and I am really enjoying it right now.

Now for personal…
As most of you are probably aware by now I have moved out of my apartment. I am now sharing rent with my friends (they are a couple – Anthony and Meriel) in a house on the north side of Dallas near the racetrack…err, I mean the North Tollway. The house is awesome and Ant/Mer are great housemates. Anthony’s Uncle owns the house and it is something like 3400 square feet. The left side of the house has the four bedrooms. Ant and Mer are in the master bedroom (they are the couple and seemed logical). They have a cute little Min-Pin who gets along great with Taco. They are like fric and frac. The next room is the “boys” room. Before you say it, yes a ten pound (or maybe a little closer to 11) Chihuahua and a 10 pound Min-Pin have an entire room they stay in when we are gone. No comments…you all already know I am a little unbalanced when it comes to Taco. Next is the guest bedroom. So if anyone wishes to visit, we have a place for you to stay now. Well, it doesn’t actually have a bed in it yet, but we are working on it. The final bedroom is the “hen house”. You’re probably thinking “what the…” Well, Anthony and I have our big screen TV’s in the living room next to each other. And on occasion we play video games online (yes, two TVs and Playstations. We play online games and are always on the same team. So, while everyone else is playing against or with other players across the world…Ant and I are literally sitting right next to each other. It’s a little sad and TOTALLY awesome!). Because of this, Meriel needed a room she could “escape” to. Which, Ant and I dubbed the “hen house”. Catchy, I know (the men are laughing now and the women are shaking their heads). My room is the only room that is upstairs and is located on the complete opposite side of the house as these rooms. My room was designed to by like a game room. It is pretty big and has its own fireplace, full bath, closet and wet bar. Now tell me that doesn’t sound like the bachelor pad from heaven.

Anthony and Meriel were great friends and this has only gotten better as housemates. We get along great and the arrangement has worked out for all. It still amazes me how life can take such drastic changes. At the time, you only think about the negative impact of that change and fail to realize the potential of positive impact. I keep thinking if it weren’t for all the things that happened a couple of years ago, I probably wouldn’t be in Texas, enjoying my job and have such wonderful friends (this includes Rebecca- we don’t see her as often since she is further away now).

Oh, I have to tell about my upcoming trip. Meriel’s family (mother side) is from Seattle. We all decided to go for a visit over the 4th of July Holiday (our trip is from the 1-5). I have never been and always wanted to go. We will stay with her family and have been talking about all the things we want to do (one of which is a “Duck” ride tour. It is one of those WWII amphibious crafts. The tour starts in downtown and literally finishes IN the water at a nearby lake). But the biggest joy I got so far for this trip was booking the flights. Now, most of you are saying “you’re kidding.” Nope, I am not. I have been flying so much I am now a Gold Elite member for American Airlines. And I have been racking up points like crazy (elite points to boot). I costs 25,000 miles for a domestic one-way flight. Since I have elite points, I was also able to get Business/First flights for 25,000 each. So, I used 50,000 points to book my flight out and back. After checking my seats…I’m in First Class baby. All those agonizing business trips finally paid off.

I now have a female interest. Albeit, the relationship is still in its infancy (we have only talked on the phone to this point). Her name is Gina and she is about my age (don’t know for sure, but am working on that). She is about a foot shorter than me (what am I saying…everyone is down here). She has blonde hair, dark eyes and a petite frame. AND, she is damn cute. I’ve known her for a little while; she worked at my unofficial building in Carrollton. Well, up until last week. She was part of the latest round of cuts and was laid off. I saw her in the building again last week and asked someone if she was single (my observation skills already determined there was no ring or outline of a ring). They stated they did not know. To my horror, they then proceeded straight back to her and said “hey, Mark was asking if you were single. I didn’t know!” When they told me that was what they did my thought was “Holy shit, you did WHAT? “ What came out of my mouth was “oh!” Thankfully, her response was to get a piece of paper to write her name, number and (in parenthesis) the word “single”. So, after getting the knot out of my throat and collecting my…well, let’s just use the word gumption…I called her the next day. I chose the next day to not seem desperate, which I hoped worked. We have a lot in common. She would rather go to an art festival than to a club (dancing- to which she stated she hates…at a girl) and prefers wine to beer. My kind of girl. She was married once and has a 13 year old girl. Not sure how to feel about that. I am glad she only has one child as apposed to four. But, I would have rather it been a boy. Obviously, with not having kids myself I have no experience. But, if it were a boy I at least have my childhood to pull from. Plus the experience from having two older brothers that tormented me as a youth. Brothers…I’m just kidding. Well, I mean sort of kidding. No, just playing…you all were great brothers. Now that I have had many years to forget the tormenting…lol. I crack myself up. But, I digress. The fact that it is a girl…well, I have no frame of reference. And quite frankly, that scares me. A little. Nevertheless, that will be a bridge I may or may not have to cross and will deal with it then. We have our first official date next Friday. I am starting to plan for it tomorrow. Lol. When we first talked over the phone she said “I didn’t think you even knew who I was or noticed me.” To which I responded that I had, in fact, noticed her (pushing down dirty thoughts) and always enjoyed our usually brief conversations in the past. Isn’t it amazing, that I am 39 years old and still don’t notice when women find me interesting. Before you say it, yes that is my keen investigation skills coming out. Boy, I can see right through a liar who is stealing from our company and turn their words on them. But let it be a woman in my personal life trying to let me know they are interested and I can’t see my hand for my face. She could have flashed me and I would have thought “hum that is weird!” Lord God!!!

I know this post is long and has turned into an exercise akin to reading The Art of War, but I have one more topic. Hang in there, I have faith in you.

I have one new hobby, which when you hear about it you are going to think “you have got to be kidding me.” I am not and if you think about it I am uniquely qualified for this role. It first started out as doing a little surveillance work for a different project. Coupled with the knowledge of what I went through with my Ex-wife, a friend at work approached me with a problem they are having in their marriage. You guessed it. He has been suspecting for sometime that his wife isn’t being faithful to their vows. Initially, he sought me out and began confiding information to me in hopes of getting advice from someone who has been through a spousal affair. Ironically, as he is telling me concerns I started to notice they were the same ones I experienced. Some included his wife pulling away from him, dressing different and more proactive (in his case she actually got new boobs) and being very secretive (especially with her text messages – HUGE red flag). She has been staying at a female friend’s house (under the story she needs help with her kids) and then comes home the next day hung over. So, I have been advising him as I would have wanted someone doing for me. First, we are going to put a “spy” program on their computer that will capture email, screen shots and has a Key Stroke Recorder. However, I don’t have hope this will revel much useful data but we have to check. The biggest problem is her text messaging. She is being very secretive about these and is up at all times at night texting. He finally inspected the phone last night only to see that EVERY single text (both sent and received) was deleted (Huge red flag- note to any potential cheaters…It is good to delete your evidence, but not every single text. This makes you look guiltier. Only delete the “bad” texts and leave the rest. This way it will look normal. She apparently is a member of the 80% from my theory). Now, unfortunately for her she has forgotten a critical piece of information. All of their phones are under one account and you guessed it…under HIS name. So, in the next couple of days he will be contacting his cell provider for transcripts of text messages for all of his phones under his account. In addition, there is an event that she is going to that she has made very clear to him that she doesn’t “need” him there. It would be a week long trip (sound familiar).

Now, I did some research and I have yet another reason to LOVE Texas. In this state, you can file for divorce for adultery. This is what he has asked me to help him prove. So, the next time she visits her “friend” for an overnight stay…there will be a lurker outside with a very large zoom lens. He is done, but they have one kid together. He wants to ensure he gets custody. For that to happen, he is going to need to prove adultery. If from all the bad I went through I can help just one person I will feel better. And who knows, maybe this is the beginning of a brand new business venture for me. God knows there are plenty of potential clients out there.

And this note is just for Mom and Dad…Yes; I will be very careful and won’t get hurt. I promise. Don’t worry. Lol

I do have a trip planned for Ohio (visit to my building there) in April from the 6th to the 9th. I would love to schedule a get together with everyone during if all schedules permit.

That is it for now. If I write anymore I will have to get this copyrighted. Lol

Take care…