The Most Complicated Evil Plot I Have Yet Devised

I think I've figured out how to land myself a job interview next Friday.

This theory came to me as I was waiting for my Chinese food for an hour and 15 minutes. I really had to pee, but I just KNEW the guy was going to come while I was in the bathroom.

Sure enough, I said "Oh the hell with this, I'm not waiting any longer," and the guy came while I was in the bathroom.

This always happens to me: I wait and wait for what's supposed to happen to happen, and then when it doesn't, I start doing something else, and THEN what was supposed to happen happens.

Working from this trend, I've come up with a plan to have at the very least, a job interview by the end of next week.

My job finishes this Friday, and I had been planning (barring a sudden settlement with SAG) to try and leave town next Thursday for about a week and a half to visit my dad up in Idaho. I'll be driving, so I'll be stopping in Vegas on the way up next Thursday if all goes to plan.

I knew Dark Knight was coming out next Friday, and I really want to see it in IMAX, since they actually shot some of it in IMAX and I hear it's brain-meltingly awesome.

So of course, I got online to see if there are tickets to the midnight IMAX screening in Vegas (and I'd like to pause here to note that IMAX tickets in Vegas are cheaper than regular movie tickets here), and there were.

So now, my evil plot: I bought my ticket to that midnight Thursday showing in Vegas.

By purchasing that ticket, I have close to guaranteed that something will come up in L.A. and I won't be able to leave until Friday or Saturday, maybe not even at all.

Clearly, as I'm packing my shit into the car to leave on Thursday morning, I will get a phone call from someone who wants to interview me Friday morning, maybe even for a job that starts Monday.

And if my frustrating luck does not continue to hold...Well, I'll get to see the Dark Knight in IMAX on opening night then spend a week in Idaho with my dad. It's pretty much a win-win.

To Keep You Entertained While I Work Another Six Day Week

Please enjoy these photos of my father and stepmother's tour of the "Five 'Stans": Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.

Dad's still figuring out how Flickr works, so his captions (which contain a fair bit of historical context for what you're looking at) are actually posted as comments. Although some of the comments, like this one, are courtesy of Ray Ann.

Oh, Dad...

Total elapsed time from the beginning of my first conversation with my father about getting laid off to his first mention of how I should go to Law school: Under five minutes.

Total number of times I slowly and clearly repeated to him, "I am not going to Law school" during the same conversation: At least ten.

Embarassment

...is trying to explain to my 70 year old father why this sign in Sun Valley cracks me up.

Meet The Limpers

Meet George (70 years old). He managed to ski several runs despite a) a pinched nerve that causes chronic back and leg pain and b) falling once on his own, and c) getting plowed into by a snowboarder.

Because of b) and c), he was sore enough that he was not able to ski today. He, however, has good excuses.

Meet Ellen (25 years old), George's daughter. She skiied two runs yesterday and then came down because a six-month-old ankle injury was bothering her, and upon taking of her ski boot, had her ankle swell to approximately the size of a grapefruit.

She is still limping slightly, and will spend the remainder of her two-week ski vacation...not skiing. She is duly ashamed of being completely outpaced by her father, who, shall she remind you, is seventy goddamn years old.

---

Coming out of the third person for a moment, I would really not recommend giving yourself an avulsion fracture to anyone.

The orthopedist warned me it'd be at least six months before it was back to normal. Six months and two weeks apparently is not long enough. Bah.