Watched the last 3 episodes of Joan of Arcadia tonight. *sniffle* Shut up. It's my Tivo; I can cry if I want to. Although I'll admit I was mostly bewildered by the first 3/4 of the season finale... it got all weird and paranormal on me there, but they tied it together really well. My brother was over (more on that later) and I tried to explain to him the various plotlines and such as we watched. I then realized how wildly confusing the show had been throughout its run since last October. Everything would float along for four or five weeks, and then suddenly they'd have an episode where two or three people at once would have major changes in their storylines. Viewed as a whole, the show was actually pretty poorly written from a continuity standpoint. Yet, for some reason... I kept finding myself unable to delete it from my Record list.

Anyhow, I don't want to go too in-depth. Suffice it to say that until the 0:57 mark, I was worried that they weren't going to leave any loose ends untied for next season. Then Luke kissed Grace, which totally opens up a new avenue there. And then at the very, very end, a special someone walks into Joan's hospital room while she's asleep, which in itself reveals that she's not a hallucinating nutjob after all. Whew. Because for all the times I'd thought about getting rid of it, by the last minute of the season, I had decided I was really going to miss it if they didn't bring it back in five months.

(Editor's note: Funny. Reading over that last paragraph, I made the show sound a lot like a two-bit soap opera.)

I'm a The Shield devotee. (Yeah, juxtapose THAT with Joan of Arcadia.) During the show, they run incessant ads for the upcoming Season 2 of Nip/Tuck, of which I'd never even seen an episode of Season 1. Though I usually fast-forward through any commercials, I can still make out what they're advertising in most cases, and they run ads ALL the time for this show, seeing as how the two of them are FX's big guns. I was told that I ought to watch Nip/Tuck and see if I liked it, since I'm a fan of any good TV. Well, great. I'm hooked. I caught one rerun a couple of nights ago, and I was fighting down a lump in my throat by 40 minutes in, when one of the characters' romantic interests commits suicide by pills rather than wait out a death by cancer. I'm not sure exactly where in the season I jumped in, but I don't care. I'm in for the long haul now. There's probably four or five more reruns left before the new season starts, so I'll be readily acquainted with all of the storylines before the new episodes hit. I hereby duly give props...

PROPS: So, anyhow, thanks for getting me turned on to this show. It looks like a winner. (Furthermore, Tommy Boy and Black Sheep are NOT the same movie, in that Tommy Boy rulz and Black Sheep suxs. And that's all there is to say about that. "Speaking of no one's watching... zzzzip!" That's hi-freakin'-larious!)

My brother's asleep on the couch, since he still refuses to sleep on the guest bed THAT I PUT IN MY LIVING ROOM SPECIFICALLY FOR THE TIMES HE STAYS THE NIGHT since he's "afraid he'll roll out the window in his sleep." (If you've ever been in my apartment, you'll know why he fears this.) But, then again, it might actually be because the bed sucks. It's part of a two-bed set, a pair of twin beds I bought when I had a 2nd bedroom in Tucson. I never slept on either of them myself -- never had any reason to, I have my own bed, obviously -- but I never heard any complaints about them being uncomfortable whenever anyone stayed the night. Mark came down one time and spelled me at work for a whole week and never mentioned them being bad. Now, when I moved back up here, I went ahead and put one in that little alcove in my living room for whenever Zach wanted to crash at my place, and left one basically in storage at my parents' house, in what had been my sister's room. My dad took it to West Virginia with him for HIS 2nd bedroom in his trailer manufactured home, since I really had no need for it. Thus, I slept on it for seven or eight nights, and I mean to tell you, I've never been so sore after a night's sleep in my life. Seriously. I'll fall asleep on the couch often, and occasionally sleep there all night, and I'll wake up a little stiff and sore, but nothing that I don't walk out of in a few minutes. This bed was about like sleeping on a slab of marble. I even picked up a body pillow on the way back from Williamsburg after I'd spent one night in Wheeling and THAT didn't help either. Both shoulders, the back of my neck, and especially my hips... they'd be sore until noon every day. I had no idea all of my houseguests in Tucson had been sleeping on such a cursedly uncomfortable mattress.

So, anyhow, there that bed sits. But I may just leave it there after all. See, it's not technically IN my living room, according to the floor plan. As one-bedroom apartments go here in my complex, I could have one like mine, or I could have one with a patio and 50 sq.ft. less floor area. Let me stress indoor floor area... since we all know how much fun it is to sit outside in Phoenix at any point during any day between May 1st and Thanksgiving. *shrug* I guess if I were a smoker, or if I wanted to have a grill, I'd've had reason to consider it. But for me, the extra indoor room made more sense. They call it a "solarium", like I mentioned in the previous paragraph. It's about 12 feet long by 4 feet wide... probably 50 sq.ft. on the dot, if I measured it out. It's slightly offset from my living room, though there's no door or wall or anything, though there is a door to my bedroom. The washer and dryer are in a closet at one end behind the bedroom door, which for some reason has a big glass panel in it. Never been sure why to bother putting in a door if it's got a big window in it, but whatever. There's not a window in the other bedroom door.

Before my first dinner, I bought a king-size black sheet and artfully draped it over the bed, then lined up some pillows around the wall sides of the bed, and presto! It kinda resembled a couch, almost. I refer to it as "the nottabed" when it's dressed up as such. So I'll probably just leave it there, though it'll likely go unused. *shrug* Unless it's just me. I can't get my brother to sleep on it, and I'm leery of it after my bad experience at my dad's trailer house, so I have no idea if it sucks or not, to be honest.

The funny thing about my blog (aside from my lack of markers to let you know when I'm changing subjects) is that neither of the two things I've discussed so far were really what was on my mind. One of the big things is that my dad is in town for the next week-and-a-half. (*cough* Which is why Zach's over here tonight... and that's all I'll say about that.) Since he got here around noon today, that means he'll make a cameo appearance at the kennel in the morning, and I've oftentimes told of his propensity to come in there and find fault in everything we do, even if we tried extra-hard to make sure it was super-ship-shape before he got there. Last time he came, we thought we had our bases covered, but he deemed the compound "filthy" and set everyone to cleaning it in some aspect or another. That was when I'd finally had enough of his guff and confronted him the next morning about his management style, about how he NEVER praises us for things we do well and how we're forced to assume "no news is good news", in that if he's not bitching, everything must be all right. The only time we ever hear from him is if he finds something he doesn't like, and it seemed like the last time he came, despite our best efforts, he was on a mission to find something to holler at us about and flex his authority over us just to make himself feel better. (And yes, I actually worded it much like that. I've gotten better at expressing what I'm really feeling, consequences be damned.) For once, he seemed taken aback at what I was telling him. I'd complained before about his rough management style, how he only kept order by having everyone on constant fuck-up-and-get-fired notice, but he always dismissed me by saying, "You can't be their friend. You have to let them know who's in charge."

I finally managed to get him to understand my view on it: True, you can't be bosom buddies with them, but you can certainly try to work with them instead of lording over them with an iron fist. If somebody makes a first-time mistake, the proper response should be, "Okay, here's why we don't do this like that, and why we do it like this instead," rather than, "If that happens again, your ass is out the door!" I'm quite proud that we've gone since a year ago March since someone quit (and he couldn't handle the hours more than anything else, but didn't want to work for the paltry paycheck he received when I implemented the hours he asked for -- go figure), and since a year ago last February since I've had to fire someone, my sister's 15 minutes of unemployment six months ago notwithstanding. Even at that, the guy I terminated was back with the corporation in August in Wichita and has turned that franchise from red ink to black ink in 10 months. I never doubted his ability to manage a kennel; it was just that he wanted to be at the top of the corporate food chain here in Phoenix, and I wasn't planning on moving back to Tucson anytime soon. It got ugly, and public: He looked for a job with other kennels here in town for a little while and felt free to share the intimate details of our clashes. Thus, whenever people ask me, "Who's training for y'all in Wichita?" and I tell them, there's usually a blink, a blank stare, and then, "Ain't he the guy you run off back last year sometime?" and I affirm this, and my explanation is simple: "He's a good trainer, so long as we're 1,500 miles apart." :-)

So I got off topic a little. The boss'll undoubtedly be at the kennel tomorrow, and I just worry about what he's going to be looking to find. It's not like the place falls apart while he's gone -- it's just that if he's in a lousy mood, he will find something, ANYthing, to chide us about. Hopefully, however, he'll remember our (heated) discussion from two months ago, and try to focus on the larger picture at hand. Okay, sorry, we didn't sweep all the sand off of the cement slab where we park the truck. (That was his find-and-bitch last time.) But is there anything wrong with the dogs, how we're managing things, the consistency of our output? No. So instead of spouting off for 15 minutes about the dirty cement slab, using phrases like "This is terrible" and "This place would absolutely go to shit if I didn't pop in occasionally" (yes... quotes), perhaps he could say, "The place is in good shape overall. You guys are doing a find job. But could someone please sweep off the parking slab? I'd prefer it to be clean."

'Course, then I'll fly off the handle and ask him, "Why the hell does the place where we park the truck have to be swept clean of sand, which by the way is tracked onto the slab from, oh, I don't know, OUR DIRT DRIVEWAY?!" .... Actually, no, I wouldn't. But that's certainly what I was thinking two months ago.

So, you see, a little prodding, and it all tumbles out. I've just got things on my mind, but this is different from the Tucson-era "Everything Sucks" type of things on my mind. I'm approaching territory which I don't know my way around in, and it makes me nervous to no end that I'll end up making an inexcusable error and fall back to square one again. It's one of those things that makes me wish that when I'd turned 18, or 21, or wherever you want to place the road sign that says, "Welcome to Adulthood -- All trucks must exit at scales, 1/2 mile", somebody would've given me a manual entitled "The Rest Of Your Life: A Guide." Just something organized for quick reference, so I could have it on hand to say, "Oh, I'm at this point in this situation. Let's see... pages 37 and 62." To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time I've been 23. Were I to wake up one day and find myself suddenly 18 or 20, I could say, "Well, heck, we tried to handle that this way and it didn't work, so this time let's try this." Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon. One could make the argument that I could use those past experiences to influence how I should handle similar situations now, but some things just don't relate. I've got options open to me now that weren't available just two years ago, and I mean that in every aspect of my life, whether it be at work, or dating, or family responsibilities, or anything under "4) Other". Though back in school it seemed like there would be no end to the first-time-for-everythings, you thought once you passed that magical golden mile marker into Adulthood, you'd have it all figured out. And yet, here I am, nervous as I was when I was about to take my first scooter ride or bike ride or look-out-I'm-driving ride, or when I set foot at Supai or Coronado or ASU for the first time, or whatever else have you. I'm driving along the road of life slowly, trying to make sure I don't miss an off-ramp I was supposed to take, but I fear if I go too slowly, I'll get to the off-ramp and find it closed 5 minutes ago, much like 50% of the times I've tried to get on the 51.

Oh, man. It's 2:30 in the morning. You can tell when I'm starting to get groggy because my metaphors start flowing like water. I'd say "like a fine wine," but I don't want to give the impression that I'm drunk. I'm just locked into the zone. When I get a good flow going, it's hard to stop. I'll just go until I'm otherwise distracted or until I start dozing off in my chair. Like now.