If you know me; you know I have a deep-seated need to stir things up occasionally. I enjoy the odd wheeze, especially if a family member is the victim.
My sister married last weekend, the service was lovely and Dave (the new husbands) extended family were a joy to welcome to “The Bruce County Wardrops” LoL.
However, being a wedding and being one of those High-Stress occasions, the opportunity to torment my sister was ever elevated.
1) My daughter was the flower girl, her appearance and hair were super important.
2) I was the odd-jobber on the wedding, taking video and MC’ing providing music for the reception.
With that in mind, I used the phone to make the wedding march unforgettable.
About 8 weeks ago I called Kerry to talk about my Daughter’s bad day at school. She had gotten gum in her hair, Kerry commiserated about how bad that can be with long hair. I then went on about how they had tried ice and other remedies but that the gum was so close to her scalp… at this point Kerry took firm notice of what I was saying. I went on that they (the school) had to cut the gum loose and that the patch was so large that we had to clip my daughter’s hair to the scalp to match. Kerry was aghast, and became nearly ill over the matter, with only a couple of months until the wedding the flower girl would be sinead o’conner. I let the rope out for as long as I could stand it, admitting only when tears were flowing that it was all a wheeze.
Kerry will probably never forgive me for that; I know she won’t forgive me for what i did last Thursday.
At about 3PM on Thursday My mother called wondering when I would get to Kincardine, I was already there. I was sitting in an easy chair in my Parents living room, waiting for My mother and sister to return from the shops. Taking the opportunity I announced that I would not in fact be coming, having been roped into something important at the office. Two days before the wedding and I wouldn’t be able to come. Both my Mother and My Sister become hideously upset, how could this happen? Did they know what this would do to the wedding? You’re the DJ, we need you here! This went on for ages, I kept them on the line for a good 10 minutes alternating between indignation and anger. When I let slip that I was instead at the house and already in Kincardine you could almost feel the pair of them gear their shoulders up to smack me when they came home.
Oh, I know these are cruel, but what kind of big brother would I be if I let the opportunity pass?
What the hell is going on here?
Published by NiteMayr on March 15, 2010What else can this guy do?
I make it a point not to whine here on the blog about work; it slips out on the twitter feed here and there; but it’s taking a real heavy load of intestinal fortitude to keep from going all LiveJournal over some static at work.
When I was at my last employer it seemed every day that I was under the gun of probable unemployment; that feeling may have been engendered by my first manager telling his entire team in no uncertain terms that our jobs were about as solid as tech stocks in 2000. This was 1997, we had just fired 23 people from my team (23 of the 25 that where hired along with me oddly enough)
I saw people get dismissed over and over, whole sections of the firm vanishing in the name of keeping the business trim. I suppose at the upper levels; this was the way to do it. After what six major layoffs (rifs) and so on I never shook the “I’m next” feeling. It pervades my work even now.
Why don’t others feel this way? Shouldn’t we feel this way? This, THIS is what I fear, losing the chance to get back in there and doing stuff that I can do. Not unemployment, losing the ability to make it all work. Today I was spending some of my Sunday working out how to deploy Puppet to improve system configuration management; this is after working out some rescue functions, which leads down a rabbit hole that I don’t want to follow…
[Image credit to Jamie Mckelvie, from Phonogram Singles Club]