I've gotten a well-deserved reputation amongst my peers for being a pretty cranky guy with a cynical streak. Some days are worse than others, and today was a day where "I survive entirely on caffeine and hate" was pretty fucking apropos.
I went up to the roof to clean out the gutters, one of which had fouled with leaves.
The OPFOR Commander was looking to pull down cables, and said that the white cables coming out of the second floor belonged to "the FiOS box." Now that tells me pretty fucking unequivocally that the cables run to a service that we don't own. Thus, I took the pruning shears and I cut those fuckers.
Too bad they were actually connected to a cable box that connects the entire second floor of the house and they were attached to a box that said "Cox" on them, not "Verizon." So when CDROPFOR tells me the phone and internet went out, it makes perfect sense that I killed the connection to the internet, because it killed the connection to our router, which controls IP phone and internet. I was talking to a neighbor when she told me, and decorum precluded my bellowing out "jesus titty fucking christ" as is my custom.
So I ended up having to disconnect the router and cable modem and run
them from one place to another to try to reestablish some veneer of
network and phone.
I could be accused of unnecessarily flying off the handle, but when I do something based on incorrect information that was patently wrong, I get a white-hot motherfucking case of the
ass. I think part of this is my past as a jumpmaster, where there is ZERO tolerance for incorrect nomenclature because it'll get people fucking killed out of negligence. So I harp pretty hard on calling shit exactly what it is, without equivocation. It is one of my most notorious vices, but I have my reasons, so fuck off.
CDROPFOR accuses me of not getting bent out of shape when shit really goes bad, and flying off the handle for shit that's not that consequential. Maybe so. But when shit is really bad, intemperate rage is counterproductive. At that point, you have to execute or you are truly hosed. You can nurse the rage later after you are done. The other part is that she told me information that was patently flat out wrong, and preventably so. I could be accused of holding grudges, but I generally don't do forgiveness. I do a lot of wrath, though.
Years of heavy weapons fire and jumping out of planes also requires most people to sound off when they talk to me. I grow tired of telling people "I can't hear you," and after a while, I just think "fuck it."
After that, I had to go see my parents, who were understandably butthurt that I didn't call them when I said I was coming over. Part of this is my general lack of desire to tell my kids to ruck up, get dressed, put their asses in the car and fucking drive over. Part of it is the lengthy list of shit I have to get done because my inclination to do so after I come home from work is pretty much zero. I decided to get certain things done but I wasn't passing up a long run on Sunday morning. Since I have no rational reason to kill an hour on Sunday mornings dressed up, I do my own thing, and that long run was therapy as much as exercise. So I got to hear my parents tell me about all the things they wish I did since I was in the area, and at some point I had to tell my parents my philosophy on vacation, in that usually work is so exhausting that all I want to do on vacation is sit at home, read a book, watch TV, and drink a lot of beer. I left out the parts about scratching my nuts and reading porn. They also get a little butthurt when I describe my embrace of being a Necessary Evil. There is a certain divide between me and other members of my family, but I also find, in my advanced age, that if I don't care about something, I really don't give two flying shits. I also find that if I don't have much reason to talk to someone, then I don't have a goddamn thing to say to them. I could try to be ingratiating, but lately, I just don't give a fuck.
The trifecta is the obligation to put up x-moose shit on the house and some tree-like object inside the house. There is no small irony in the fact that I've been a diehard atheist for the last 25 years and yet it falls to me to put that shit up. That is backburner until this gets fixed.
The only bright side is that I got to Total Wine one minute before they closed and I scarfed a 12-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, a beer that I hadn't had in a while, but realized was pretty appropriate since its title precipitated one of the most colossal ass-chewings I've ever gotten in my life. Pretty good beer, too.
So yeah,
I survive entirely on caffeine and hate. At least today. And, in about 90 seconds, some Jameson's Special Reserve. I should probably reload on something less refined, like bourbon, but I haven't had occasion to get to the booze store to reload special munitions lately and those are segregated from conventional munitions in the State of Virginia.
