Wow. This week just flew by. Too much shit going on to actually blog, which I know makes most of you happy (or at least Leslie since she’s tired of reading these, assuming she didn’t just give up in October, which is what I expected).

Anyway, long seven days. We got back last night from North Carolina, driving the 7 1/2 hours and getting home a little before midnight. It was pretty uneventful other than laughing our asses off listening to the Oklahoma radio guys. They were pretty terrible, to be honest. I like the play-by-play guy and have tons of respect for him, but overall, the broadcast wasn’t much to listen to as an outsider. Loyal Sooner fans may disagree, but we’ll have to leave it there because they’ll never get me to change my mind about last night’s game.

I wish the Husker hoops game was actually on Sirius instead. The Skers were down 20 and rallied for a win over USC. Not terrible. And any comeback win like that, even against a mediocre team, is pretty fun listening to.

So now, I spent today doing some notes and updating stuff for the NCAA volleyball selections. Love it when I have work to do and the Internet goes out. And I have to run to Starbucks just to turn in work. Ugh.

Speaking of work, the real job started pretty well last week. I worked two days and did so well, they gave me Wednesday off. Seriously. My boss told me before we left Tuesday that no one would be there on Wednesday and no reason to come in, so just take the day off and leave for Virginia early. Sweet. I have a feeling that’s going to be a limited part of the equation, however.

I have orientation Monday to learn about the company. I already have my ID badge, laptop and my code-generator for logging onto the network. Seriously, it generates a code every few minutes that I have to use to log in. Might be kinda cool working for a communications company.

And there will be other cool things. Like, when my new boss took me from his area (he currently is managing editor of NASCAR.com and is moving over to manage us in NCAA.com) down to my cubicle, the first cubicle that I saw on the way there was: you guessed it, Craig Sager. Okay, you probably didn’t guess it, but it was pretty funny.

We’re on the seventh floor and kicking some people out of Cartoon Network so we can take over their spaces. One cool thing about our area is that we overlook the Georgia Tech campus and sports complex, so we can actually watch Yellow Jacket baseball games from the lounge area by our offices. Not that we’ll have time for that with all the work we do. No seriously. Okay, yeah. I know.

It was kinda funny starting the whole new job-thing. It was like going to school for the first time at a new school. I had plenty of opportunities getting used to that at Olson Park, North Park, Rock Cut, Marshall, Harlem South and Harlem North. It was a lot like going to Marshall, although I didn’t get an in-school suspension in the first week for coordinating (with another person, and I swear it was more Rodney’s fault than mine) to get the whole bus to flip off the bus driver, who actually was a mean bitch the first two days of school.

When I first got to work last week, I had to check in with the secretary to get a temporary ID (like a my hall pass) and wait for someone to come escort me to my area (a new classroom). Her name was Edith Quansah, and other than being black, she was pretty much everything Dwin’s mom was at school. Other things that were like going to school for the first time: getting to wear jeans to work; I had to try pretty hard to watch my swearing (I only said “fuck” like maybe once on the second day, and none on the first day; that’s big on my part); I don’t have much of an indoor voice, so talking low was a problem for me; checking out the hot chicks; having holidays off; my boss uses his dry erase board a lot like a teacher’s chalkboard; and I can never remember new people’s names for shit.

So it was pretty funny sitting there and thinking about how weird it was to start over again after being at NU for 10 years and finally knowing a lot of stuff and people. But at least I had that background to work with from childhood.

I won’t have every holiday off as once we get going for real my hours will be pretty odd from time to time as we cover sports year round. But it was good to get away this time.

And it’s always good to be thankful for what you’ve got, so here’s my list of things to be thankful for this holiday season:

1) Sugar-mama. She lured me away from the best job I’ll ever have, but that was only because I knew it would work out good in the long run. And it has. She’s definitely upgraded our situation. And I’m just glad I’ve got her to go through this world with and that she’ll deal with all my bullshit.

2) DirecTV. It is so awesome, I might actually seriously consider getting a TV for the bathroom. I mean, I have one in the living room and one in the bedroom. Where else do I spent any significant time and could watch this awesomeness?

3) Bacon. Those pigs know where it’s at. Enough said.

4) Fantasy Football. I lost again today–even after scoring a pretty huge 63 points–and I’ll probably see my team implode one more time next week and miss the playoffs for only like the second time in six years or so. But fuck, it’s so fun I don’t know what I’d do with all the time I could have saved over the past 20 years without it. And I don’t even want to try to think about it.

5) Disk 1 of ‘Joe Dirt Car’ by the BoDeans. This may be the most underappreciated live recording in the history of music. I was driving to Virginia on Wednesday and went to throw it in, but instead, in a pleasant surprise even, Phish was in the CD player. So I listened to that and then the best of B.B. King and finally got around to disk 1. Damn. I could listen to that CD over and over again. It just rocks. And ‘Idaho’ could be the best unknown-by-the-populace song of the ’90s.

6) Twix. This is the candy that could potentially be the appetizer for my final meal if I was on Death Row. Obviously, I’d have a cookie for desert, but there couldn’t be much better way to start it out than this chewy, carmely chocolate goodness.

7) Warrior Dash. Looking forward to something can make you thankful. I’m doing this with 14 (or more if the pussies will sign up) buddies next year in the Upper Midwest on Sept. 17 and I’m thankful for the chance to make a fool of myself in public, enjoy the hell out of it and then get drunk. And you should always be thankful to get drunk, because it means you’re still alive. So there’s that.

There you have it. I’m thankful for all of that. Oh, and for any of you idiots still reading this. And you too, Leslie.