This is your morning wakeup call...

Good morning everyone!

I say that because it's morning now, when I'm starting this blog. But it may not be the a.m. when you're reading. In which case, buenos tardes or good evening or why the heck are you reading this at three in the morning - go to bed you insomniac!

I just want to discuss a rather embarassing event in the Life of Mike. It actually wouldn't be embarrassing,if I weren't sharing it with you, Dear Reader, because no one was there to
witness it. But I am posting it here because, let's he honest, self-deprication is what the Internet is all about.

(side note: who decided that the Internet deserves the same respect as God. Auto-type always capitalizes that "I." Did Al Gore mandate this? Is it Bill Gates' way of subtlely deifying himself? I need to know...)

Back to our hero...

I gave myself a "hot oven" this morning.

For those of you not familiar with the term, it does not denote a deviant form of furious masturbation with a microwaved pop tart. Rather, it's the name given to a practical joke where two people are sharing a bed and are underneath the (preferably heavy) blankets. The joker rips a fart and simultaneously pulls up the blankets over the jokee's head. The result of this action is that the jokee becomes trapped in a "hot oven" of odorous, flammable and sometimes even visible flatulant.

It is the highest of high comedy.

However, there was nothing funny about the situation this morning when I awoke to find that I was both the joker and the jokee. It is only humorous when two or more are gathered to share in the hilarity. Trust me on that.

My alarm went off at 6:30. I was snuggled deep under the covers, where a cave of warmth was keeping the December cold at bay. I'm always a slow riser (not E.D., you perv!), so the noxious fumes that greeted me slipped slowly into by consciousness, until...

OH My GOD, WHAT CRAWLED UNDER MY BED AND DIED?!

"Pungent" doesn't begin to describe it.
"Palatable" gets closer.
"Perverse" probably sums it up best.

I had, apparently, been repeatedly ripping off juicy farts for at least a half hour and, upon waking, found out I'd burned away all my nose hair and had an oddly acrid taste on my tongue. I mean that stuff stank. You could practically see a green haze floating below the ceiling.

It had nowhere to go. My door was shut, my windows are covered in plastic (that's right, ladies, my boudoir is decorated like an 80-year-old woman's) and there was no fresh air to be found.

I crawled to the doorway, retching, trying despretly not to breathe and managed to get the door open without moving my head more than six inches from the floor. The effort and the stink caused me to pass out right then and there, but thankfully I'd reached some untainted air and my life was spared. Otherwise, my blogging days would be over.

When I came to, I lit one of those idustrial-sized Yankee Candles. After an hour, my room still smelled like poo, but at least it was mingled with the scent of Banana Bread Housewarmer. I plan to burn my sheets tomorrow, you know, like the did back in the days of the Plague.

Oh, and I'm never again eating meatballs for dinner without cracking a window.

----------
Note: this is my first mobile post. Sorry for any typos. How's it look?

Wait for it... wait for it... wait for it...

It's 11 o'clock and I'm going to bed. Before I go, however, I want to point out that I have had the above screen up on my computer for 13 hours today.

Today is the first day Red Sox tickets go on sale for the 2008 season. Unlike most teams, the Sox don't release their entire season at one time - that would not only crash the MLB server, but probably start blackouts on the Northeast's power grid, leading to rampant rioting in and around Boston and definite destruction of anything with the words "New York" in it north of Connecticut.

So, at 10 a.m. this morning, nine "Sox Packs" (tickets to four different games interspersed throughout the season) and a half-dozen April/May series individual games went on sale. Unlike Ticketmaster, which is run on a first-come, first-serve basis, the Sox choose to make use of a virtual waiting room. That above-pictured page reloads every 30 seconds. Each time, a user is randomly selected from the room to purchase tickets.

I had six computers at work loading the page. When I left at six, I went straight home and started up two more computers.

Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

I've got nothin'... and now, the message on the bottom of the page says that all the packs have sold out and that there is extremely limited availability for the remaining games. This may not be happening this time around.

I love the Sox, don't get me wrong. But it's disappointing, sometimes, to not be able to see them live. And when you do, you have to pay the scalpers twice the face-value of the tickets (which are MLB's most expensive, as it is). Walk-up tickets are a thing of imagination in Beantown, just like the tooth fair and Jeter's heterosexuality.

There is something to be said about the simple joy of being able to say, "Hey, let's catch a game tonight. The home team's in town," and being able to go see a ballgame that night. This summer, I was on a business trip to Dallas and some of us decided to see a Rangers game. We bought $20 tickets, had great seats in the 2nd deck and sat right in front of a bar that served $5 beers.

Sox fans would kill just for the opportunity to have one of those things.

Then again, Red Sox Nation is the most devoted fanbase in this country. They've proved it by selling out Fenway for hundreds of games in a row and ensuring that I won't have the chance to buy tickets for this coming season.

Stubhub, here I come!

I [miss?] NY...

For those of you that don't know, I lived in New York City for just over a year (June '04-August '05). While I wasn't there for the longest of times, my life did confirm to me that I really don't ever need or want to live there again.

Anyone even remotely familiar with the City knows that there are a ton of things to dislike about it:
- it's enormously overwhelming, and that never changes
- living expenses are so wildly out of proportion to the rest of the country
- the abundant bouquet of smells: from the rotting essence of the East River to the garbage-juice squelch streaming down back alleys to the piss-smell of the subways to the fried, over-cooked oil burn of street vendors to the unmistakable and overpowering cologne of a Guido all dolled up for date rape
- paying $12 for a Corona, repeatedly
- the thousands of mustachioed Yankee fans
- JAPs
- massive crowds blocking sidewalks, taking pictures of buildings, hideously-decorated Christmas trees and the dark Today Show studio in Rockefeller Center, thereby causing your commute time to double during the months of October-January
- the way the wind whips up and down the Avenues, turning the city grid into one giant wind tunnel
- people. Everywhere. All the time.
- Times Square

I could go on, but you get my point. New York is a rough town to make it in. I think if I had stayed, I could've gotten used to a lot of that, but, quite frankly, I didn't want to. I was comfortable being an outsider and I never wanted to become a "true New Yorker." Now, I know enough to take visitors around to the main sights, go to a few out-of-the-way places and have favorite restaurants, coffee shops and bars. That's all I really need.

Every now and then, though, I do start to miss life in the Big Apple. These feelings are fleeting and they're never accompanied by a desire to pack up my cheaper, bigger and better-located apartment in Boston and head south, but they do happen from time to time.

For example, I was walking through Copley Square here in Beantown the other night and saw the image above. It's pretty and full of holiday cheer, but that's not what grabbed me. What got to me were how the lights from the tall buildings sparkled against a clear, cold night sky. Looking up, I was able to ignore the few people around me and enjoyed a brief, sparkling moment of Zen.
(Either that or the burrito I had for lunch was acting up.)

Sometimes, when I lived in the City, I'd have those same moments. Most often, they would come on a Sunday night, after I left my church. Morningstar New York is located in midtown, in an old, renovated theater. Some nights, when the snow fell softly over the city, I'd decide to talk the long way to the subway. Instead of catching the N train around the corner from the church, I'd bundle up, wrap my scarf around my face and walk a mile north to 63rd and Lex.

It was like stepping into a photograph. Nine p.m. on a Sunday night, after the shops close and taxis look elsewhere for business, the east side died down. I could walk for blocks and not see another person out-of-doors. The snow would crunch softly under my feet as I picked my way across the concrete sidewalk slabs. The big, white flakes drifted down and the skyscrapers loomed above me, lit up and stretching toward the sky. It was as if I was walking inside of a giant snow globe.

Invariably, I'd switch to listening to Death Cab of on my iPod... the mournful sounds of Transatlanticism filling my ears...

I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer

At times like those, completely alone in a city of millions, I'd find a peace unlike any I've felt before or since. It was the sort of mournful solace that only comes from a solitude multiplied against the masses.

I felt a touch of that here in Boston the other night and, just for a brief instant, I missed New York.


------
Thanks to Jessa Barder for the photo. I stole it from her facebook page, not having the wherewithal to take the picture when I was actually there.

Stress...

This is a photo of what my room looked like this morning, right before I ran out the door for work. Observe...

Kind of messy, right? (The bed has been made, though, so I get extra credit for that.)

The image got my brain working, algebraically, and I thought up this equation: S=FM2

Normally, I'm allergic to math and I've avoided taking anything even resembling a math class this century, but it was an Einstein lightbulb moment. Sparks flew, angels sang and a 80-watt cartoon bulb popped up over my cranium.

With four, no five, characters I had clearly illustrated a corresponding relationship in the Life of Mike. I could prove to my faithful readers (both of you), that the state of my mind (S) is equal (=) to the state of the floor mess squared (FM2).

As you can see, my floor's a little messy. For me, that's about as bad as it gets. I cannot stand clutter, hate wrinkled clothing and can't function in a dirty environment, so I'm usually pretty OCD about my things (just ask my sister/roommate). The only time I allow clutter to build up is when I don't have enough time to clean it up. A buildup like the one pictured takes about a week to accumulate. I can break it down day-by-day:

1) The stack of books are from my Non-Fiction Lit class, which meets on Mondays.
2) And some other books are from my Publicity class, which meets on Tuesday.
3) Wednesday I didn't do much besides go to work, but I didn't clean, either. Natch.
4) That white shape in the bottom, left-hand corner is an inflatable mattress. Jen had a friend over Thursday night.
5) Friday, I went to the gym before work, hence the schoolkid's backpack.
6) I worked late in the office on Saturday, coming home, dropped my blue Puma bag on the floor and cracked open a beer and one of the books to do homework. Par-taaaay!
7) Sunday and Monday, I went up to NH to see my girlfriend and do work, hence the black, skull-and-bones dop kit and the Target bag of laundry.

I don't remember when I wore the jeans or the scarf, but it was in there somewhere.

By now, you're probably wondering... "Why is Mike boring me with this?" and "Man, that was a long explanation, I should probably pretend to do five minutes of work since I'm in the office and all."

Basically, I'm apologizing for not posting. I've been stressed and busy. Last week, each day consisted of going to the office, working non-stop (I had two new people to train) and then coming home to immediately start homework.

It wasn't a good week.

I know I'm getting stressed out when my body starts to hurt (in addition to floor clutter buildup). I clench my teeth, so my jaw gets sore (when I wake up with a sore jaw, stress levels go from threat-level orange to red). My head hurts because I don't take water breaks at work and get dehydrated. My butt hurts because I get constipated from the lack of water and my sphincter becomes tighter than a balloon knot. My shoulders and back hurt because I don't take the time to remind myself to correct my terrible posture. And my eyes hurt because I have to stare at a computer monitor for 90% of my waking day.

Let's just say that now my teeth are flat, I'm chewing aspirin, we're out of toilet paper but I haven't noticed, I pee dust and I've developed a hump.

But, enough with the excuses... I'll get back to posting this week. Scout's honor. I can't let you down, right? I mean, you may actually have to be productive in your office environment and I simply cannot allow that to happen.

iCamera

In case any of you are wondering what I do in my free time or, better yet, how good the camera on the iPhone is, I present to you my hot-off-the-press, just updated Flickr site.

Check it out. I had a few minutes to kill, so I uploaded about 20 random shots taken from my iPhone over the past couple months.

Enjoy!

Holiday Lovin'....

The holidays are upon us. I think they snuck up while we sleeping off the diabetic coma of Halloween or something. But they're here! The Christmas music arrived for our work sound system (not that I'll be playing it. Ever.) and Turkey Day has come and gone.

Prepare to overeat. Prepare to overspend. Prepare to overindulge. Holiday Season '07 only comes once every 100 years! No, really, it does... I did the math and everything.

This is a special year for me, personally. Since I was the number-one, card-carrying, woman-denying, hyphen-over-using commitment-phobe on the planet before being snatched up by a lovely (and forgiving) young lady, I have never celebrated a holiday with anyone else.

My relationship history prior to meeting Sonja went sort of like this:
Boy meets girl.
Boy kisses girl.
Boy keeps on kissing girl until she decides to have "the talk."
Boy freaks.
Boy meets another girl.
And so on...

There was never any reason to spend the holidays with someone else because there really hasn't been a "someone else" for years. And there's the fact that my family are isolationists of a Pat Buchanan-level (political joke there... primaries are in two months... I'll stop now).

Basically, spending the Thanksgiving meal at Sonja's house with 20 of her relatives was a big deal for me. I never really get nervous about anything, with the possible exception of my sort-of-annual physical, but it was kind of nerve-wracking.

I was a definite outsider. Everyone else there had either sprung from the loins of her dad (good mental picture there), married into the family or was pretty much in a common-law marriage type relationship. So, I stuck out there. All the guys (she has five brothers and one dad) are much bigger than I am, which always makes me feel a little uncomfortable. You'd think I'd be used to this, since I haven't grown since 8th grade, but I havne't yet. This is one reason, I think, that the few guys I consider to be good friends can be described as "bookish." The menfolk are also all hard-working, salt-of-the-earth types who ride Harleys and know stuff about machinery. I drive a Camry and the most manly thing I've done in the last week is get the lid off a jar of spaghetti sauce for my sister. Needless to say, I wound up spending more time in the kitchen slicing veggies and learning how cheesecloth can be used to marinate a turkey (fascinating stuff).

You know what, though? Our differences didn't matter. Once everyone sat down at the table, appetite, dinnertime conversation and a general spirit of thankfulness took over. We took turns complementing the half-dozen chefs that contributed, we talked about the different places we live, I even tried out a couple Grizzly Adams jokes on Sonja's brother Greg, who sports mane of hair and 4-inch goatee. He laughed and didn't give me a noogie, so that worked out all around.

The holidays are about family coming together. And now that I have "someone else" in my life, my definition of family is expanding. I wound up having a great first Thanksgiving at her house with her wonderful relatives. They made me feel welcome, accepted and overstuffed. And for that I am thankful.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Will work for money...

Some of you out there in internet-land know that I'm about to quit my job. Well, I'm "taking a leave of absence," which means I don't have the balls to all-out quit and really would like to keep the door open to fall back on instead of winding up homeless, addicted to crack and singing for change outside of CVS.

The reality of it is two-fold.

One, I just really need a break. Since I got out of college (2004 - almost four freakin' years ago, incredibly enough), I've either worked a 70+-hours per week job or been employed while going to grad school full-time. It's more than a little taxing and I think it's sort of caught up with me.

Secondly, and probably most important, I have a thesis to write. It's the culmination of three years of grad school, $60,000 dollars of loans and, to be honest, a mostly useless MFA piece of paper to hang on my wall. While it may not be the smartest thing to leave my only source of income right before I have to start repaying loans, I really want to make sure I focus on the thesis project and get the most out of my experience and the crapload of money I'm spending.

As of January 3rd, 2008, Mike Nagel will no longer be gainfully employed. After almost seven years of higher education and four of working (including management experience!), I will be jobless. I wonder if I can get on welfare?

I do have some savings and I'm expecting a rather large tax return, since I can claim a student credit (if anyone else is in grad school and you haven't done this, DO IT - you basically get all your taxes back). I'll be living off that for a while.

But I'm also going to try to supplement that by working, when I can. The plan is to become a "freelance writer," which is really just a fancy way of saying, "I have no money and no job, but my spelling is swell!" I actually do have some opportunities on the horizon, but I won't discuss them here because I don't want to jinx anything.

However, that income while great, needed and a nice morale/ego booster, won't go too far towards paying for the lifestyle I've become accustomed to. Yes, that lifestyle consists of stealing WiFi, washing my underwear in the bathtub using dish detergent, preferring to wear three sweatshirts instead of turning the heat on in my apartment and testing the limits of Trader Joe's free-sample policy. But, dang it, it's still a lifestyle!

I have been preliminarily researching some job opportunities, though, and I thought I'd share a couple of the more interesting ones I've found.

1) Ordained minister

You'd think that becoming a man of the cloth would take deep religious devotion, years of prayer and research in a seminary and an attuned sense of the spiritual, right? Actually, no. All it takes is five minutes and internet access, thanks to the Universal Life Church and the Spiritual Humanists.

I stumbled across their sites while flipping through a copy of The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Weddings (not for me, I mailed a copy to my friend, Jenny, who just set August 3rd as her wedding day. Congrats!). Apparently, if the minister shows up, you can ordain a friend to perform the ceremony for you.

I thought that I could take the ordination test/form thing and then offer my services for a small fee. I don' t know what real ministers cost, but I bet I could charge half that and still make a killing. Of course, that would probably come at the expense of my eternal soul twice over, but, hey, a dude's gotta eat...

2) Drug dealer

I have no background in this field, except that I'm good at sales. And, actually, I really enjoy selling.

The problem is, I've never done drugs. The only injections I've ever had were for my allergies (way cool, Mike, way cool) and the hardest thing I've ever smoked were cloves. I still get a high off cigarettes for goodness sake. So, I don't think I could be convincing as a dealer, seeing as I don't even know how a bong works, much less how much a gram costs.

Then, there's also the possibility that I could be gunned down one day while walking to the T because I crossed paths with the wrong person. That would suck. I bet it would pretty much spoil my week.

But, I guess if I didn't die from the shooting, Medicade or Medicare (I don't know the difference) would probably pay out my medical bills and I could live on disability for the rest of my life. I mean, look at 50 Cent, he got shot a bunch of times and it totally made his career.

3) Prostitution

I thought about this for about three seconds, but I know even less about sex than I do drugs. And it's already way too cold to be standing out on the street at night in fishnets. So, moving right along...

4) I've got nothing

That's it for ideas. If I think of something else, maybe I can fall back on that... Otherwise, I may become the next over-educated, underpaid barista at a Starbucks near you.

I sure hope the food kitchen doesn't shut down because of e-coli or something.