It’s funny what goes thru your mind when you’re cooking dinner…

First off, you might be asking, why am I making dinner at 1:48 in the afternoon… good question!

My schedule is basically killed from when the kids get off the bus (3pm) until past 7pm – today, yesterday – we didn’t get home until after 8:30pm… so tonight is a bit easy.

I usually am running right down the wire for dinner, because I have to run (usually Lizzy) to some kind of practice… right now, she has: Lacrosse on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, Soccer on Tuesday and Thursday and AAU Basketball on Wednesday and Friday… usually starting around 5pm — and that doesn’t include any of James’ or Juila’s activities!

In an effort to make my life easier, I decided to start dinner this early, so that when it comes time to wolf something down before practice tonight, I’m not a raving lunatic.

Now that’s all set – but what was I thinking when I was cooking?   That’s another whole story!

I was really happy that Eileen had called and put the thought in my head to get dinner started… then, I started thinking about my cousin and her woes with her new work computer.   Some thoughts started creeping in about when I used to work at the Travelers in Hartford – because there’s a guy (who shall remain nameless) that works at Mastercam that I used to work with.

That was about 13 years ago, and I still have not-so-fond memories of it.   I’ve never worked in a more cut-throat environment in my life!   It didn’t matter how hard I worked, I just couldn’t get ahead.   My theory is that it was because I was an “outsider” and the core group of cronies were “holding me down” – or it could be that they were just threatened by me because I knew my stuff and they couldn’t keep up… ya, I’m thinking it was the latter.

Funny, after a good many years, I bumped into the guy who shall remain nameless, and ya know what?   He was just as warm and accepting as he was when I left… of course, I’m being completely facetious – because when I met him in the parking lot, he couldn’t have made a faster bee-line to his car and sped off with just about as much as a “hi”… eh, who was I kidding that he’d give half a shit about what’s going on in my life or that I might give a shit about his…

It was kind of the same reception that I got about eight years ago when I was living in temporary living in Downtown Hartford (that’s another story for another day)… but I bumped into a few people that I worked with in the old department – they, at least, made me feel somewhat like they even cared about what I had to say, but the fact that they were still there spoke volumes.

Not only did   I bump into a few co-workers – I bumped into my old boss, who basically scraped me off his shoe and never spoke to me again because I wanted a promotion that he was never going to give me and took a job in another department.     It was like getting punched in the stomach all over again – he actually had the balls to tell me that “oh, I got some ex-stay-at-home dads working for me at the help desk, trying to get their skill set back, you should try that” or some crap like that… NOTE TO ED: Kiss My Ass.

Am I bitter after all these years? I thought I wasn’t, but I guess I still am… what a bunch of pricks.

I was also thinking that I’d rather be making dinner for my family then doing a break/fix, programming a website (although I do that), or working on an Exchange server – it doesn’t pay as well, but I’m a lot happier.   Oh yeah, for the record, I also played my bass for two hours today and dinked around with a couple of Linux desktop versions, just for FUN.

All that was going thru my head as I was cooking up my Chicken Francaise and Baby Portobello mushrooms – the whole conversation in my head almost made me have to EAT everything that I made… but I was a good boy and only had one cutlet and a taste of the ‘schrooms.

I will say, if you read this cuz, whatever agita you can cause your IT department, DO IT… nothing would give me more pleasure!   Even if you don’t, pretend that you did so I can have that warm feeling of satisfaction :).

I think I’ll bake up some potatoes….