Calgrit9 has written his thank you notes for his birthday presents. One, in particular, is great:

Thank you for the amazing gift.

Thanks,
Calfgrit9

P.S. I really loved that money!

Bullgrit

There’s a snack vending machine on the 1st floor of my office building. There are six floors total in this building, (at least three different companies occupy the building), but just one snack machine. My office is on the 5th floor, so it’s a little excursion for me to hit the machine.

Whoever owns this vending machine restocks it only once every couple of months. And they stock it with a bunch of crap. I think they may stock it with crap so it doesn’t sell out quick so they don’t have to restock it often. Really.

I used to get a pack of chocolate M&Ms each day or so, but after it ran out the first time, they never put anymore back in. The slot for the M&Ms stayed empty for a couple months until they refilled it with some stupid cracker thing.

So I started with Oreos as my snack. Until it ran out the first time, and then they didn’t refill that slot with more Oreos. Hell, like with the M&Ms slot, they didn’t refill it at all for two or three months.

Over the year that I’ve been working in this building, I’ve had to change my snack of the day four or five times because they don’t refill the machine with the things that actually sell out. Yesterday, I went down to get something to chew on, and I found nothing in there I’ve bought from that machine before.

It looks like they refilled the machine over the Christmas holidays, but what isn’t all new stuff is stuff that never sold out. I mean, there’s a trailmix snack in that machine that has never even gotten close to selling out — I see the machine just about every day, so I’d see if people were buying the crap.

I was hungry yesterday for an afternoon treat, so I approached the machine with the same insane hope as I do nearly every day. Maybe, just maybe they’ve restocked it with something good.

Nope, nothing that I really like and buy a lot. Just more of the replacement scrubs that apparently no one else buys either. But I needed something to take the edge off my hunger, so I picked out some crackers that probably wouldn’t taste like dusty cardboard.

I put my dollar bill in, and got the “Please use exact change” message. Oh for christ’s sake! They had just restocked the damned machine and they didn’t bother putting in change? What kind of idiot runs this vending machine?

It’s like they don’t want to sell anything. They let the hot items sell out, then don’t restock them, but rather add in stuff that doesn’t move, and then they don’t have change for dollars?

And to make the whole thing more infuriating, instead of spitting out my dollar bill when I hit the money return button, it dropped out a dollar coin. <sigh>

A frickin’ dollar coin. They didn’t leave any quarters, dimes, or nickels in the damned machine for change, but they left dollar coins for returns?

Whoever runs that machine deserves a solid kick right in the junk. Idiot.

And I’m insane to have kept trying that machine over all these months. I won’t try again.

Bullgrit

Calfgrit8 turns Calfgrit9 today. Sadly, for him, he won’t get his birthday party till this coming Saturday (at Adventure Landing — laser tag for two hours).

Every day, this boy shows himself to be so much like his father. Strangely, this makes me happy and sad at the same time. He has my imagination and creativity and inquisitiveness. But he also has my introverted and self-centered personality.

He loves to play imaginatively by himself. He evens plays with some of my old Star Wars toys in the same ways that I did. Watching him play sometimes is like looking into the past at myself. As much as this makes my heart glow, seeing him as a reflection of myself, it also worries me that the personality traits he got from me will lead him to make the same mistakes become the same man that I am. I want him to become better than me.

But how do I bring out more and better traits in him when I don’t even know how to find them in me (if they even exist in me, at all)?

When he blows out his nine candles on his birthday cake, I’ll be making a wish, too. My wish is that he can rise above my genetics and personal example and become more and better than his old man.

Bullgrit

2009 was not a bad year. In fact, it had some really good parts. But 2010 is showing promise of being exceptionally good, all around.

We’re in our new home, with more room, and more potential.

My family is healthy and happy.

Here’s hoping your coming year has as much promise as I feel my new year does. (And here’s hoping the new year doesn’t turn out a surprise and suck hard.)

I apologize for the short post today, but staying up till midnight and then trying to think well enough to write is a struggle.

Bullgrit