Blizzard Conditions

 
This is our house on the day after Christmas. Lindsey took this picture after she trudged up the driveway through the 3/8" drifts of snow.

I love it when a plan comes together

Happy Anniversary to us!

Lindz and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary today. We were expecting to go out to dinner, but things improved from my expectations:

1)Lindsey got a gift certificate at work.
Lindz's boss had received a $100 gift certificate to a local restaurant through some sort of business gift exchange. He gave it to Lindsey for our anniversary.

2)It turns out that this is a really good little restaurant.
We had a couple of lovely steaks, and the service was exemplary. Friendly, personalized, but not the least bit smothering. Carolina, our waitress, even brought us a dessert on the house. This restaurant is Vinnie's on Six Forks Road, here in North Raleigh, if anyone is interested. They know their business.

3)With this fine dinner, we drank the bottle of wine that we received from Lindsey's brother Bill.
Beringer 1999 Bancroft Ranch Howell Mountain Merlot Napa Valley, Christmas gift from Bill Rushing: Carolina opened and decanted this wine for us. Nose - Blackberries, bing cherries, a bit of leather, a bit of alcohol. Palate - Smooooooth, dry, velvety, cherries, mineral, leather, and a hint of spicy smoke. Finish - fairly lengthy, perfectly polished, elegant.
Su-fucking-perb. Thanks, Bill.

So we had a very nice dinner, and it matched our desires admirably. The check came out to thirteen cents, before tip. The receipt is amusing to look at.

Finches

We had many finches visit us at our house. 
This is what happens when a regular finch collides with an identical finch which happens to be made of pure antimatter. 

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

 
I just pulled this out of the oven. It's classic American sandwich bread, slightly modified. King Arthur bread flour, of course.
The dainty swirl is but a hint of the cinnamon goodness that lies within.....

Alright, Alright, I have no special right to bitch

I'm sure it all started with excessively high expectations when I started. But I will say this in my defense-

-At most of my shitty jobs, at least I knew exactly how to do my job, or I could look it up somewhere.

-I had a job I liked for a little while, in San Diego. That seems to have screwed things up inside my head. I was able to concentrate on my job, not deal with the public at all, and I wrote my own job description. I never realized what an amazingly uncommon situation I was in. Unfortunately, San Diego is exorbitantly expensive, and that company was bought out eventually.

-I am a bit disheartened by how I sometimes feel exactly the same here as when I was at Starbucks or UPS. I foolishly hoped for some "more expensive and fancy" kind of stress. Pretty naive, now that I think of it.

Maquilladora

(Drinking Boxing Roo Shiraz 2002 and listening to "Main Vein" by Jamiroquai)

Really now. How do I explain my uncanny ability to get shitty jobs? Granted, this one has qualities about it that are less shitty than others, but I hate it. I dread going to work, I have no sense of satisfaction when I leave work, and I still live paycheck to paycheck. It's the same damned thing as shoveling lattés at Starbucks or spraining my lumbar loading trucks at UPS. The only differences are:
-I use bigger words (cryoglobulinemia, granuloma annulare, or pleural effusion, for example)
-People, after asking what company I work for, don't find themselves forced to find charitable things to say
-I have more numerous and ominous-sounding opportunities to fuck up now

("Caridad Amaro" by Chucho Valdes)

I'm perpetually swamped with work, I seem to have less and less of a clear idea of how to do my job, and other people are making bushels of money. I'm part of an inconceivably vast system of bullshit. The pharmaceutical industry is such a monster. Greed, fear, red tape, hypocrisy, litigiousness, crushing inertia, it has it all. It's drudgery. I'm annoyed. I want to not hate going to work. I've seen it happen in my life, but only occasionally. I should make this a fair and balanced rant, though. Better things than a year or so ago:
-I'm not working at UPS
-I'm not waiting tables at a lame-ass Mexican Restaurant in Yuppie Hell (Cary), NC
-I'm happily married to the woman I crossed the continent to be with
-I live in a house

("Break Away" by John Mayer)

There are always things to be thankful for. However, the recurring need to talk myself out of quitting is troubling to me. I don't want to sedate myself and stop caring about my work. I've tried it before; it doesn't really work. I simply need to rectify the fact that I've landed in a Medical Communications Sweatshop. The knowledge I disseminate to doctors helps people beat cancer. I have to force myself to remember that it's different from hunching over a sewing machine in China. It is, right?

The Awful Rowing Toward Payday

I haven't written anything in weeks.
My wife is cooking spinach enchiladas, and the house is perfumed by the cumin she crushed in our 8" mortar and pestle.
I've worked my way through most of a bottle of Pete's Wicked Ale with little difficulty.
My job is a drag. I'm disappointed. Pharmaceutical sales reps are assholes (some of them are very nice however), and I don't feel much different than when I worked at Starbucks or UPS. The pay and benefits are a bit better, but I'm still curiously impecunious. I provide information that ultimately helps people get well, and probably prolongs quite a few lives. But before that happens, some impatient, rude asswipe of a sales rep gets a bigger paycheck than I do. I have to explain to these people what the FDA considers an Adverse Event, and, by extension, what they are supposed to do when some doctor's patient gets a rash when they're taking one of our drugs. I'm an English Major working in the Medical Communications Department, and I'm forced to be the role model of clinical rigor. Where the fuck is my raise?

Ahh. That's a little better.

Good things:
-My wife
-My beer
-My 401k, which I'm finally able to start building. Sounds materialistic, but I'm beginning to have long term thoughts.
-My health
-The books I'm reading currently:Moby-Dick, The Iliad, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and the occasional cookbook perusal

dinner time.