Why does my office smell like body odor?

Yes, I know the obvious answer.

But why just at my office? Why not in my home or in my car? Why do I smell myself when I finish a physically strenuous exercise but not when I'm sedentary - like at my office. Most importantly, why did I start finding the funk immediately upon returning from a vacation I took in November, along with a half-drunk cup of half milk, half coffee (I never take milk) at my desk.

I'll tell you why. Someone else sat at my desk and left the beast. And there is no recourse.


No one else seems to notice, or they are simply too polite to say anything. My boss was gracious enough to wipe down all the surfaces, but that didn't work. I lit a match. Nothing. I've even thought about trading offices at this point, but the only trading power I have is a window and I'm not sure what's worse - drywall or or some stranger's secretions seeping into my nervous system every m-f.

Oooh, look at the concrete building outside.


Ed. note: I realize all this banter comes in the immediate wake of my dog dying and that I should be mourning, not writing about 4 month-old body odor, but this is how I grieve. Leave me alone.

I can totally beat your 5-year-old down

26

I have to kill my dog today

It's sad, but setting that date has definitely been the worst part of it.

Yeah, I'll miss her. She's been the one single constant for me in the last 15 years. But let's be frank, I can buy rugs now. Nice rugs. Rugs I won’t have to scrub the feces out of – dab, don’t scrub! - within 6.5 hours of purchase.

And I'll get 20 minutes of my morning back everyday.

And I won't have to deal with what to do with her every time we travel.

I hate to be crass - well, not "hate" so much as, I know it's inappropriate to be crass - but there are parts of my dog's passing that I'm really friggin' psyched about.

No, the worst part of this experience, by far, is consciously making the decision to end the life of a friend, another living thing w - (ed note. I just had to get up from typing this to pick her up and carry her out side) - ith a real personality. And with just a single phone call to the neighborhood vet, that is exactly what I did.

Here’s how it will go:
• I called the vet last week and we worked out a convenient time to kill my dog, that fits both his schedule and mine.
• The vet will come into my home at approximately 4:47 pm on March 25.
• I’ll let him in the front door and point him toward Lula.
• He’ll take out his syringe of murder juice and stick it in my dog.
• Once she goes limp, the vet will take the body out of my home and back to his clinic (probably in the trunk) and cremate her (I can have her ashes/evidence if I want it).

People have been very supportive. They say things like, “this is the right thing to do” and “it’s her time.” But no one really knows. I mean, she definitely isn't loving life these days, but she also doesn't get to weigh in on her own demise.

I just hope, when it comes time to put me down, no one has to negotiate with the doctor whether or not it works for them to stop and do it on their way home from the office.

The clip below references the ol' girl's namesake - the polish subtitles are just a bonus.

Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

I was just informed in a comment from the last post that my blog has now "Jumped the Shark."

I didn't know what that meant, until about five minutes ago. But it was followed by "Step it up" so even I, could easily infer the slight.

According to Wikipedia, "Jumping the Shark" is used "to denote the point at which the characters or plot of a tv series veer into a ridiculous, out-of-the-ordinary storyline." Which I always thought was the whole point of this silly exercise. In fact, I'm almost tempted to rename this blog "Jumping the Shark."

I am only disappointed in myself for not knowing the source of this expression - my boyhood hero, Arthur Herbert "Fonzi" Fonzarelli.

Please enjoy this colloquialism-defining TV moment.

I love me a good couple's fight

Especially over really petty shit, like forgetting to pick up the milk or clogging the drain with hair. Or making your partner attend "disgusting sex clubs." It makes me feel so much better about my own dysfunctional relationship. I found some examples on youtube and I think you'll agree - it's very watchable stuff.



But I draw the line when the fight breaks out right in front of a house I just poured my life-savings into. I have a property value to protect here. So when you classy couples pull your white Chevy Malibu not quite over to the side of the road, leaving the passenger door swinging wide and have at each other like some Jerry Springer stalwarts in full view of my home, well, that's when I step in.

Such was the scene I rode up to upon returning home from work yesterday. There was no, "gee, I wish you could respect my feelings..." It was more, "I hope your testicles rot with cancer you motherfucker!"

I needed to choose my words wisely, maybe even suggest a decent couples counselor before they go and do something stupid like split up. So I decided to pass the adorable little love birds and park my bike in the garage while I thought this through. But just as I returned to the sidewalk, it seemed my services were no longer required - the man was walking away from the woman while she shouted out after him, "I was never into your disgusting sex clubs, either! You're totally gonna get STDs. If you don't already have them!" (Wouldn't she have them, too?)

And off she went, screeching away in her Chevy Malibu way, while her disgraced man shook his head at the entire scene.

I hope they can refrain from choosing our street to air out their dirties in the future. But if anyone does see this couple going at it again, please let me know where. I'll bring the Raisinets.

My roommate slept with this guy's friend so he pissed in my closet (Part 2)

So now a little context before I continue onto part deux.

The man pictured below (Part 1), who shall remain nameless even though all five of my readers know that his name rhymes with "Randy Loopen," came to a large party at my house, sophomore year in college. I didn't know this Loopen at the time. He came with a friend. The same friend who my roommate slept with and who I wanted to sleep with but was never given the chance.

So it turns out, this friend was unhappy with the way my roommate was treating her at this party (after having slept with him) and she told her friend (Loopen) as much. He decided the best way to deal with the situation was to pee in my closet and not tell anyone. Now this was our sophomore year in college so what might smell like human urine coming from a closet to most people, just smelled like home to us, and said urine went undiscovered throughout the remainder of the year. We moved out and the urine stayed behind.

In the course of the next year, I'd become good friends with Loopen - through another friend all together - and enjoyed hearing about the frequent pranks he would pull of this nature. So when we were having a laugh at another friends party one night during our junior year, he felt a certain obligation to come clean with me - he peed in my closet.

And you know what? I didn't care. I thought it was pretty funny actually and our friendship endured.

Cut to senior year. I was living in yet another house, which surely had someone's urine on it somewhere unbeknownst to us, and coincidentally was directly across the street from the house with the peed-in closet. Another roommate of mine decided to order himself a delicious sub sandwich from Madison's favorite, Big Mikes (sadly, Big Mike's is now defunct and no logo was readily available to post here). He placed the order at around 11 pm and hoped it would arrive soon so that he wouldn't be eating it past midnight. No such luck. In fact, this roommate began calling Big Mike himself at around 12:30 am, demanding a sandwich to be delivered immediately.

At around that time, I had the urge to urinate and headed toward where people usually go to do that sort of thing. But this roommate of mine was so incensed, (he even had me a little fired up), that together, we decided I should hold my pee and release it into the Big Mike's delivery driver's car. The plan was that I would wait by the back door, while another roommate stood watch on the balcony overlooking the street. When the driver pulled up to the front of the house, I would run around to the car, relieve myself and run back to the rear entry with the driver being none the wiser.

The car finally pulled up shortly before one, at which point my bladder had my urethra in a headlock. I walked out the back door and listened patiently for the driver to walk up our front steps. That noise didn't come like it should have. And in listening for that recognizable sound of winter boots on a wood porch, I missed the sound of winter boots crunching ground along the side of the house. I looked up and the driver was about two feet in front of me asking if I knew where 508 W. Washington was. I replied no, and ran back into the house to pee. Of course, he eventually figured it out and noticed that I was inside the very address of which I claimed not to know the whereabouts. The plan was foiled and what was going to be a very exciting story, quickly turned very anti-climatic with the flush of a toilet.

About three months after this event took place, we hosted another party and one of our guests happened to be the aforementioned Loopen. We had a few drinks and I started to recount the Big Mikes story, thinking I would really impress him. But as I started to near the end of the story, I realized there was nothing impressive about what I had done. I just pissed in a toilet like everyone else. So I did what anyone with a few drinks and a captive audience would do. I ended the story with, "so the guy went up to the door... and I pissed in the back seat of his car!"

Just as those words were uttered, and my audience was howling with delight, the roommate who was supposed to keep watch that night from the balcony walked by and called me out. "No you didn't," he said and kept walking.

"You're right - I just totally lied." I was busted. For pissing into my toilet and not some dude's car.

And you know what? The guy who pissed in my closet liked me even better for lying to him.

My roomate slept with this guy's friend so he pissed in my closet (Part 1)