davejmike

Dude, where the heck have you been?  How come there haven't been any updates lately?  Where am I supposed to go to get my regular dose of things you thought were hilarious but no one else even understood?  I mean come on, most of the sites I check out have a theme and make sense and stuff.  I count on this site to provide me with meaningless commentary on national issues like how that G-Force gerbil movie causes warts, gets horrid gas mileage, is a sign of the apocalypse and is directly responsible for the banking crisis.

Don't try to give me some lame "I've been working" nonsense.  You still got your nights.  And definitely don't try to blame it on working on your company website  www.salesgeekconsulting.com since we all know Brendan did all the work.  Yes, I know you went to PA to see The World's Cutest Goddaughter but that should have led to pictures here!  Go get some already!

Just shape already and get back with the program before I gotta get all ugly.

Melody is at last healthy and tomorrow is past the isolation window and can be back among people.  I am not sure who will be happier with that--her or us.  We sure missed her while she was at camp but the flu time has made up for it.

Tonight's continuing Melody Moviecation brings us to Twister and Labyrinth.  Friday we went with Back to the Future.  All three went over well with her.

It's been a while, but I'm gonna try to get back in the swing of things.  The first client goes well and keeps me busy.  Melody went off for 12 days for a Summer Enrichment Camp at UVA.  She enjoyed it and I think it was a great thing for her to do.  However, she could not be satisfied with bringing back a UVA t-shirt so instead she brought back swine flu.  There was an outbreak of 8 kids at the camp including one of her suite mates.   We thought she was fine but Monday night she got a fever and we took her in Tuesday they confirmed it.  So it's been a few days of keeping her (and us) isolated to keep it from spreading more.  She feels better now but is starting to make me a little crazy as she gets stir crazy. :)

I'm gonna have to get back in to the swing of the blogging thing again. Getting started as SalesGeek Consulting with the first client last week has proven to be busier as far as start up items than expected. So for now I will leave you with my logo, which I got the final version of yesterday. I had it commissioned by a webcomic artist, Scott Johnson, that I like alot. You can see his stuff at www.myextralife.com. Here is the logo, hope you like it as much as I do--

Things got real busy, real quick on the employment front. I am now officially in the consulting business complete with local business license and everything. I start tomorrow with my first client.

Partly because of the work update, partly at Brenda's request and partly because it was itchy the beard is now gone. Here is the end picture of the beard experiment and some interim pics from the shaving process of different looks Melody wanted to see.

It's gotten to where it actually looks like a beard being grown and not just a slack approach to shaving. Now that I am this far along, guess I'll give it another few days to see if I go all the way.

Things are looking really good for lining up my first customer and getting started later this week or early next. Still got some details to work out for this one and then a whole lot of stuff to figure out for the long haul, but it all looks positive right now.

Come on--two in a row? Do you think you are the Cavs? Killing me...

And go Mountain Dew. :)

Full day today.  Took Brenda to her doctor's appointment and to the office this morning.  Then the usual job searching/resume sending for the afternoon.   Each day while I am at home Melody and I do one thing together when she gets home from school.  We've watched some Star Trek, read some books and today was "go for a walk with Levi" day.  Melody was not initially excited about this plan but like the part-hobbit we have discovered her to be, she was more than ready for an adventure when I informed her there could be snacks at the midway point.  So we opted for the big circle loop up Carondelet to Manassas Drive down to the 7-11 for her snickers bar then down Manassas to Digital and home.  The trip went well although the plan seemed questionable about halfway to 7-11 when we realized the rain clouds were not moving away from us as originally thought.  But we got back to the house with only some minor drops, successfully saving us from an evening of eau de wet pup.

We later picked Brenda up at the Metro with the intention of getting some dinner and going to see Up, but both gals were tired so we had dinner at Hard Times and made a quick stop at the Best Buy next door before heading home to call it a night.

Melody is always bugging me to grow a beard.  She usually wants  me to go with some kind of crazy goatee or something and I always say no.  But while I am off and waiting to get an interview setup, I've decided to give it a shot for now to make her happy.  So hear it is after 1.5 weeks.  Not exactly Grizzly Adams but hopefully I won't have time to go the full Santa.



Had a nice lunch with some old pals today.  Looks like it might lead to some consulting work so that would be cool.

Went down to Brenda's office to get some hands on training on a product they use which is made by a company I applied to.  Hope to get a little leg up if I get in for an interview.  Nice tool and I think it would be an interesting sales.

Also got an offer today through Careerbuilder for a company that outsources editing of documents from non native English writers into conversational English.  They did not identify why you are doing this but I looked them up and it turns out they are a Russian mail order bride service.  Hmm.  The pay rate and volume offered doesn't really work out to a good full time job, but I am thinking about trying to negotiate a better rate since I speak the language of their target customers:

"Hi, I'm Natasha.
I am looking for a big boned man who enjoys sitting on the couch eating pizza and drinking Mountain Dew while watching undubbed anime.
Must have level 80 WoW toon."

BOOM!  Deal Closed!

We'll see.

Long weekend is over so it is back to the aggressive hunt for a new gig.  I am hoping that things will pick up this week now that the holiday is over.  Brenda isn't feeling well so she is staying home too.  Hope she feels better soon!

What a busy holiday weekend this turned out to be.  Today we went over the DeHart's for a BBQ.  This is probably the most socializing we have done in a 3 day period in forever. :)

Family day today for Ronnies birthday.  We started out with breakfast at IHOP and then went down to Prince William Forest.  After a couple hours walking around and one minor map-left-in-the-car related delay on the trail, we had lunch and pizza at zpizza.  Mel got an invite to spend the night at a friend's house and now Brenda and I are catching up on some TiVo.

We had a nice day today starting with a trip to the Farmer's Market.  That was followed up with a trip to the new Merrifield Garden Center in Gainesville.  They have  a dog park there so Levi and Zoe ran around for a while then Brenda took an assortment of photos inside.  Now we are getting ready to head out to Stephens City with the DeHarts to see a double feature of Monsters vs Aliens and Hannah Montana at the drive in.

Today was a fairly basic kind of day.  Applied for a few jobs, did a little grocery shopping, continued the Melody Moviecation with Adventures in Babysitting.  No luck on settling the pool pass issue however.  Hopefully the landlord will have it all settled when the office opens Tuesday.

The weather has been nice this week and I can see the pool from the couch while I am working during the day so I am excited about the approaching opening this weekend.  Of course, there are some issues between our landlord and the HOA (he has no love for HOAs apparently) so we may not get the passs until next week.  Hopefully it will all get resolved tomorrow so we can use it over the holiday weekend.

 No job yet, but still sending out applications and connecting with my contacts to see what I can find. 

While I am not pleased that Adam did not win, I gotta say that the Adam/Kiss duet was probably the best one they've ever pulled off.  And add on Queen, Cyndi Lauper, Santana, Rod Stewart, etc etc and I believe their only option next year will be to bring back the reanimated zombie corpse of Frank Sinatra for the finale.

On a totally different note, I have been fascinated by Melody's place on the cutting edge with her fascination with hobos for the last year or so.  She constantly drops the word into conversation, mentions that her friends were discussing being a hobo and riding the rails in school etc  And all of the sudden you hear the word hobo all over TV in different shows.  It's been weird.  My favorite so far was tonight on Law and Order--a cop says "The guy was a hobo" or something like that and just as I am laughing about one more hobo sighting when the detective says "Hobo?  What is this--1939?"  and it became that much funnier.