one big barbecue

Hello! It's time for a life summary.

I am still slowly adjusting to life at the office, though it's not as soulless as some people tell me their office jobs are. I've now been doing my former boss's job for a full two months or so (they fired him and moved me up) and it was actually rather stressful at first, but it's cooling off a little bit in terms of need to come in on weekends and to be on call in the evening (in part due to my re-engineering of the systems in place, I would hope). In case I haven't mentioned it before, I'm basically in charge of managing raw data and charts for about 30 sleep studies a night for a large outpatient center in Pittsburgh called Lifeline. I work with interpreting doctors and respiratory therapists a lot. Oh, and I'm the only person in the office who has a fucking clue about computers, so I'm largely involved in IT work as well. We do have IT people, but they're a consulting group based in Philly, so getting stupid shit like broken printers and toasted hard drives fixed takes days and days if people don't just walk back to my office. True story: someone didn't know how to use the "Save As" option in Microsoft Word the other day when working on a document; she instead printed it out and scanned the piece of paper into the directory she wanted it to be in. WHAT THE FUCK

They did give me a Blackberry as a work phone. I have no clue how to use it, but I do like to walk around staring intensely at it, saying "Look at me, I'm Barack Obama!". Also, I sort of have a job title now instead of fifteen different jobs--the owner of a big outpatient center in Boston was visiting the other day and called me this while touring our office: Lab Coordinator. I like that. Would look good on a business card. It also looks and sounds better than "only man in the entire company". And, if I ever discover that I'm into boys I can call myself the Fab Coordinator. Or maybe I'll do that regardless.

Otherwise:

I'm cooking a lot at home. Tonight I seared a big piece of tuna, and made a cold salad with beets, potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. I made a vinaigrette out of jalapenos, chervil and balsamic with my boat motor. Good stuff. Good with a Budweiser. Cooking a lot with friends as well: there was a ridiculous Memorial Day barbecue last month that involved around six racks of spareribs, two chickens, four pork tenderloins, countless cases of beer and a shit lot of coleslaw.

I'm riding my bike as much as humanly possible but haven't been able to get far out of the city again due to work. Still riding the Schwinn (Alice). Haven't done much work on her in quite awhile aside from tires and tubes. Still using a BMX chain from about a year ago, it's the longest I've ever had one last. It goes without saying that the KMC Z is not meant for 4000+ total milage, but it seems to be working out well for me.

Seeing a girl now who's on a Pittsburgh roller derby team. She likes climbing on things and riding her red Schwinn bicycle. This is kind of a big deal for me.

Bought a banjo. Learning frailing style.

Shaved my head about a month ago. Now I've got a good half inch of blonde hair back and a pretty decent start to a beard. It's mostly just because I'm having trouble letting go of hockey season (I like getting drunk, eating nachos and yelling at the TV, I recently discovered), but it also doesn't look too bad somehow, and it keeps me from looking really young while my hair's short. I'll make a picture happen soon but my camera and computer aren't talking to each other for some reason right now.