Yes, I know this is similar to the title I used when I wrote about the hardwood stump borers I find every now and then. But these bugs are just as damn scary, and this time they are inside the house.
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Never, in my entire life, has it felt so good to quit a job. I just put in my two week’s notice where I was contracting. I am going to work for a company here in town, but even without a place to jump I probably would have left after today anyway.

I had a dream last night that I told my boss to shut up during a conference call. It almost came true today.

“DrFaulken,” she said in her extra-loud voice, “why didn’t you review the Web site I sent you and evaluate it for this wireframe [that I had built]?”

What the fuck was she talking about? I began to sweat.

Everyone else on the call was silent.

I am a paranoid dude by nature. I’m the guy with over two thousand rounds of rifle ammunition, for fuck’s sake. But working for this woman the last three months has taken my ass-covery to a whole new level. I flipped back through my notes, a trickle of sweat rolling down my left side.

“On March 24th you specifically told me not to evaluate that site as it was using a new technology and it would generate more questions than answers.”

The line was silent again, and then she continued on without missing another beat, talking about why she loved this other site so much and how we should redo all of our work to replicate it.

She apologized to me in private after the call was over.

I feel badly about leaving some good people behind and not trying to be part of the solution, but simply ducking away from the problem. However, I would become accustomed to my boss’s behavior, and come to accept it as business as usual, and not the gross lack of professionalism that it was.

Please keep discussion of the business or people involved anonymous, Gibberish gets spidered by search engines and I don’t want this popping up somewhere when people search for “pissed off employees of XYZ.”

Whew.

When Bond showed me his 2004 MINI Cooper S I liked it so much I bought one for myself. While I’m on car four since then, he’s kept his Coop in great shape.

That is, until a deer decided to jump in front of his car on the interstate last weekend.
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Almost a year ago I wrote about giant mutant beetles (okay okay, they’re Hardwood Stump borers) that had surfaced in our yard. I killed another one of them this year already, so I know they’re around. At the time, we figured as long as they stayed outside they were harmless. It turns out that their incursions may have resulted in one of our oaks contracting slime flux.
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I went out to see my friend Bond, and our mutual friends yesterday evening. We met at Arby’s, a somewhat fast food joint that we all like. The weather was cool and there was a breeze, so we sat outside. I ordered some roast beef sandwiches. I squirted some Arby’s Sauce on the bun — Arby’s Sauce is sort of spicy, vinegar-y, er … condiment. A couple of bites out of my sandwich and wanted more Arby’s Sauce. I up-ended the bottle, and out came a big chunk of spices. Or not.

It was a dead bee, that had crawled into the open nozzle of the Arby’s Sauce dispenser and died. I asked my friend’s wife to look away, and then spat out the large bite of sammich that was in my mouth. Bond took the bee-bottle inside and got me another. I ate the remaining three sandwiches without incident (or anaphalyactic shock).

Oh well, at least I get to use my “mutant insects” tag again.

Lady Jaye was out on the back deck today when she noticed the dogs were playing with something. Thinking it was another baby bird that they’d captured, she called them over. Imagine her horror when they dropped this little monstrosity:

It was still alive, even though half of its back was torn off by our curious pups. The thing’s mandibles opened and closed frantically, looking for any small child it could in order to regenerate, or perhaps relink itself to the demon realm. Or maybe it was just scared. I sure as hell was.

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