I’ve been working pretty hard on the latest revision for our company web site. At the same time, I’m getting some good experience learning about ASP.NET web applications, security, etc., so while it’s taking longer than I thought, it’s a good (though arduous) experience. Hopefully I’ve got everything set up now so that it’ll be easy to extend and make global changes to.

So I’m sitting at my desk yesterday, exhausted from fighting with several problems with an app I’m working on, and it’s lunch time, so I pull out my book… and promptly start to snooze. No big, right? It’s lunch, after all.

My boss comes in, sees my snoozage, and says, “You know, you’ve been working pretty hard and it looks like you could use the afternoon off. Get outta here.”

I’m not one to question that, so I packed up and got the hell out.

By the time I got home I had a raring headache and my equilibrium was pretty much shot. I decided it was naptime.

Three hours of nap later, I got up, went shopping/ran errands, and came home.

10:00p, went to bed. Up this morning at 6:15a. I’m feeling great!

So, I thought about this - taking a good long afternoon nap in addition to my regular sleep hours not only refreshes me, but puts me in a good mood. So I think I need to propose a new work schedule.

First, I’m going to be in training roughly every-other-week for the next month or two. Being in training is sort of like a vacation because the stress of work isn’t there even though your brain is still working. I love that break, so I think I need to keep that in the proposed schedule.

The new schedule would look like this:

• Every other week - training (or vacation)
• I’m not really fond of Mondays, and Fridays everyone should have off, so only Tuesdays through Thursdays
• Half days on work days so I can get my nap in

I think that’s pretty good. I could probably work that schedule without complaint. Or, well, with less complaint.

You know how some people say, “If I win the lottery, I’m still going to come to work?” Fuck that. If I win the lottery, I’m fucking quitting. I need a prolonged state of vacation.

While getting ready to go, I was talking with a co-worker here and a conversation not unlike any other conversation I’ve had ensued:

Mike: I’m outta here. You leaving? Travis: In a few minutes. I have stuff to finish up. Mike: It’ll be here next week when you come back. Travis: Yeah, but I’m in training Monday through Wednesday, so it will still be here, but accompanied by more work than when I left.

Pretty cut and dried, right? Well, this got me thinking. Work is a commodity that accumulates faster than you’d like it to, and regardless of the amount you do, there’s always more. Work “interest” accumulates faster than any interest on any bank account I can imagine.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could invest in the amount of work that piles up?

So, like, you could go out to NASDAQ and invest in Work Futures, or more likely in a stock “WORK.” Then, based on the amount of work that gets done during the day versus the amount of new work you get, your WORK value goes up or down. Unemployed? Sorry, you’d best sell off your shares of WORK because you ain’t doin’ nothin’.

You could also attribute sort of a “popularity” or “work value” factor to the value of your WORK stock. Kind of like the idea of whuffie, but based on how much people value the work you do.

I figure if I bought 100 shares of WORK at $1 in the morning, I’d be a millionaire by 5:00p.

Then again, I could name you off a few people who’d be dead broke, too. Ah, the economy of WORK.

People seem to be pretty wowed and disgusted at the whole poop knife thing. But if it’s as common as all that, then maybe there’s a market for them. I mean, you go to the local supermarket, hit the housewares section, and pick yourself up a PoopKnife^TM or three. Give them as gifts! Be the hit of the next bridal shower you go to.

Speaking of showers…

Jenn went to a baby shower this weekend, and since she’s broke, guess who got to buy the gift.

This got me to thinking, and what I’ve arrived at is this:

Anything called a shower that doesn’t involve bathing is a scam.

I mean, think about it. Starting with marriage, you’ve got your bridal shower, where you get the bride a gift. Then you’ve got the wedding proper, where you get… another gift. After that you’ve got your housewarming, where it requires the purchase of more gifts, then the baby shower (sometimes both pre-and-post-birth) - more gifts - and finally the baby gets born and you’re supposed to get more goddamn gifts.

Look at that! And I’m sure I’m missing some sort of fucking shower of some nature in there, but if you tally it up, that’s a few more gift-requiring opportunities than is really necessary.

I think maybe I should have a shower the next time I buy any home electronics. Like have a Playstation 3 shower (when that comes out). Then people can come over and bring me gifts that I can use with my Playstation 3. And it won’t even have to be my birthday! I almost wish I’d thought of this earlier, I’d have had a Game Boy Advance shower, and maybe a Brand New DVD Player shower, too.

Here’s how it works in Travis World: You get married, you get a gift. You have a baby, maybe you get a gift. It’s your birthday? Here’s a gift. Christmas? Gift-o-rama. But that’s pretty much it. I’m all over the Spirit of Giving, and sure, sometimes there will be a fun little gift for no reason. But these planned scam attempts at gift retrieval known as “showers” are not on the “accepted reasons for getting gifts” list.

Anyone else having a shower is just getting a PoopKnife^TM.

I had planned a nice evening at home last night but instead got sucked into going to Denny’s to eat with Jenn and her Job’s Daughters group. I can’t say it was a complete loss, though. I’m never one to scorn cheese fries.

Plus, Brittany, the Laura San Giacomo look-alike, was there, which was cool ‘cuz she’s hot. Not that anything’s going on there, but she’s a good looking girl and that never hurts. So there’s that.

While we were sitting there I realized that all of my good party stories are not family-appropriate. That is, I could tell them, but they’re sort of anti-climactic and unfunny if I don’t throw a “shit” or a “fuck” in there. Drew Carey’s mentioned a similar issue regarding jokes in his book. Which meant I was unnaturally quiet and way less entertaining than normal. Maybe I should learn some clean jokes. (Except that they’re usually not funny.)

Yesterday was Jenn’s last day of working for free at the VA Hospital, which means I got to sleep in until 6:15a this morning. That extra half hour does make a difference, believe it or not.

Oh, and I also got my copy of the Buffy Season 4 DVD set from Amazon, but the case was sort of munched due to poor packaging and the second disc was “floating” (not attached to the spindle in the case, just sliding around), which resulted in some minor abrasions on the surface. I downloaded a utility to verify it can still be read properly, and it seems to check out okay, so I guess I’ll call it good. I’m really not ready to watch six hours of TV just to check.

Looks like the poop knife thing isn’t uncommon. That’s messed up. I wonder why people think that’s necessary.

I just got an email from my mom regarding a story my sister was telling her. This is just too much.

A little background: My sister is currently rooming with a friend of hers, a girl with Down Syndrome, and a girl who is taking care of the girl with Down Syndrome (that’s a total of four girls). Part of the deal my sister and her friend get is that they take part in helping out with the Down Syndrome girl.

An example of one of the things they’ve dealt with: The girl with Down Syndrome has four ice cube trays in the freezer, laid out side-by-side. My sister’s friend moved them to make room for food in the freezer, and Down Syndrome girl went berzerk because you can’t stack the ice trays. That problem has since been solved.

Now I get word there’s a new problem to deal with.

My sister’s friend went into the bathroom and on the back of the toilet sits a basket. In the basket she noticed there was a table knife. She took the knife out of the basket and put it in the dishwasher, thinking nothing of it. Nobody really knew why it was there or said anything about it. Regardless, the knife went to the dishwasher. (The dishwasher wasn’t full, though, so it wasn’t run.)

Then a while later (a day or two?), the Down Syndrome girl comes out and asks, “Where is my POOP KNIFE?”

Yeah. You’re thinking the same thing right about now that I was when I heard this story.

Apparently, the Down Syndrome girl cuts her poop before she flushes so it will go down easier. She’s been doing this forever, and normally she puts the knife in the dishwasher but this time she forgot.

Oh. My. God.

My sister and her friend have been spreading butter on their toast with a poop knife for a couple of months now.

I’m taking my own silverware if I ever visit.