Today is a very exciting day at the thePatrick household. No, I didn't get a new job *crosses fingers*. No, our car isn't yet out of the shop, although they have started the repairs.

Today, C. is going to go and get her hair cut.

And for those of you who don't know, this is a momentous occasion in our lives. Not because she never cuts her hair. She does. But when she says haircut, she means style change. And it is a process. It all starts out by her deciding that she needs a haircut. Then, she has to spend anywhere from minutes to days perusing the interwebs to find the hairstyle that she likes so that she can print it off and bring it to the person cutting her hair.

But this time, there was a problem.

Both of our printers were out of ink. But the ever resourceful C. came up with a solution. She saved the pictures to her computer, then found a way for her to text them to herself, so that they can be on her phone and she can show the hairstylist that way.

But all this fuss got me to thinking about the last time I changed my hairstyle. The answer was easy. 1996. Other than when I went to basic training/Iraq and the first few months of my mission, I have had the same hairstyle since I was a freshman in high school. And I have a very simple explanation for that.

I'm a guy.

See, girls seem to always need to reinvent themselves, to find the next greatest hairstyle. That way they can show the world how awesome and trend setting they can be. Guys on the other hand, well, we find a hairstyle that works for us, and we stick with it. I've had the same style for over 13 years. My dad has had the same haircut for all 27 years that I've been around, and longer judging by pictures I've seen. In fact, there are only two reasons that I can think of that guys change their haircut, at least in general. They either a) grow it out and look shaggy or b) lose their hair and trim it short.

Ah, the Email Forward. Is there anything funnier? More hilarious? Well, yes. There's the people who send them. And I'm not talking about people who send one every once in a while. I'm talking about the people who send them religiously.

If you like I'm talking about you, I probably am.

Now, I enjoy fifty different pictures of cats wearing clothing every much the same as the next guy. I'm not even saying that people who forward stuff to me should stop completely. What I am saying it to take notice of what you send.

Use your brain.

For example. Hotmail, Yahoo, MSN, Friendster, AOL, Facebook, Tagged, and YouTube are not going to magically change their user agreement that you signed to shut down your account if you don't forward an email to 15/20/50 people. They won't do it. I promise.

Next point. As you may or may not know, I'm a veteren. Yes, that's what makes me a little off at times. So I'm all about you sending me some patriotic emails when you come across them. However, you shouldn't send me the same one over and over and over. Keep track of the emails of Real American Heros that you send. If you email me about the death of a Vietnam veteren who dies the same time as a Senator from Wyoming, you shouldn't email me a year later and tell me that he died again on the same day as Michael Jackson.

Might I make a quick suggestion.

Snopes.com. It's amazing. Don't send on garbage. However, maybe it's just that I'm so sceptical by nature. Maybe it's all the philosophy classes that I've taken, or the fact that I like the kind of people that rethink history and are hesitant to believe everything they're told. Maybe I just care about things that don't matter. Either way, you should look up what you are sending so that you don't send out a bunch of crap.

There. That's enough of a soap box for today. Now go back and watch all 40 of those Real Men of Genius commercials. It's worth it.

Today's post is going to be a venting post. But, to protect feelings of inadequacy in those who I may or may not be ranting about, I'm going to keep it pretty vague.

Now, I'm the type of person who likes to plan things out. I don't know why, but I like to know what is coming next. Remember, I don't graduate until December, but I've been looking into graduate schools for over a year. I've even been looking at what jobs are out there for after I finish my three year graduate program. I just like to know what's next.

So, obviously, one of the things that causes me little fits is when I think I know what is going to happen next and those plans get changed. Now my organized little brain is scrambling around trying to figure out what it can do to gain at least a little bit of control over a situation that in all actuality, it has absolutely none over.

My wife, and possibly others out there, think that I can just roll with the punches. And while it looks like I can, trust me, on the inside I'm freaking out.

One more thing. People need to take more responsibility for their own lives. This one, I guess, can be less vague. At work, I am in charge of the scheduling for the next week. It is not my job to find someone to work for people if they have requested time off. It is their responsibility to do that. However, just about every week, it seems like there is some time off requested and nobody to cover it, and I end up being the one to call around and get their shift filled.

Maybe I'm just fed up with it. Maybe I will not get it covered for them in the future and they can get written up for abandonment.

But more likely, I'll continue to be the nice guy and get their shifts covered.

Maybe I'm just a sucker like that...

I guess it had to happen sooner or later. I, like much of the interwebs, had to post about the most important news events of the day.

No, I'm not talking about the death of Ed McMahon/Farrah Fawcett/Michael Jackson/Billy Mays. No, I'm not talking about Mariano Rivera getting both his 500th career save and 1st RBI last night. No, I'm not talking about the Waxman-Markey bill (sorry Co-G). I'm not even talking about how the oldest living Medal of Honor reciepient just turned 100 (and apparently told death to stay off his lawn and stop making all that racket). This is potentially more important than all of those things.

Potentially. But only if you care about people.

A man in Preston, England got stuck in an elevator. Twice. He was trapped for about 30 minutes. He had a bicycle with him. End of news story. Really.

Now that is what I call concise reporting.

But at what point, after getting stuck in one elevator would you decide to ride the same elevator again. And now that he's been stuck twice, does he keep riding? These are all important questions that the general public demands answers to. So, Lancashire Evening Post, we demand follow up. Please, keep us posted. It's the right thing to do.

Hi. First of all, I want to thank the Subway people. I think employing two people to work during the dinner rush is a swell idea. Kudos to you. Because of the wait, I had to opportunity to sit behind you two love crazed baboons and your dates. Now, I'm not a girl, and I haven't been one for a while. And while I am married and feel as though I want to give you advice on what to say so that you can get a girl, it's really not my place to help you out there. But what I can do is offer you a few pointers on how not to sound like a couple of people so dense that cabbage feels smart when it hangs out with you.

1) If you look like you currently are on an LDS mission, you aren't going to convince anyone when you talk about how you "rock out hard to Metallica," or that you think "the more a band yells, the better their music is." No. Metallica sucks. There, I said it.
2) You are not convincing anyone of your technical prowess by explaining to your dates that you stream episodes of Monk from the USA website.
3) If you are trying to impress a girl about going to a concert and you don't even know the names of the bands you are going to go see, you probably should just leave it alone.
4) If a ticket to said concert costs $12, and the service charge is $4.95, that makes your ticket $16.95, not "over $20" like you claimed.
5) It's not cute when you ask the girl who is not your date if you can touch her toenails. That's just effing weird.
6) Also, no matter how cool you think it is, you should never brag to your dates that you down 2000 calories per meal on the weekends. Fat pigs are not equal to guys that get second dates.
7) Ditto point 6 when bragging about your epic Dungeons and Dragons battles that last "seriously like five and a half hours."

In summation, thank you for reminding me of yet another reason that I'm glad I'm married. I hope you all get fire cancer and die, or at the very least, choke to death on the three fistfulls of olives that you made the Subway girl put on your footlong. I have officially run out of words that express my disgust towards you.

An explination:
My wife and I don't have television. I'm distracted from homework enough as it is, if we had t.v., I would never get anything done, and then Grad school would be more of a dream than it is. So, last year (Giants-Patriots) we were able to go over to some friends. They DVR'd it, and we ate and watched the game at our leisure. At least until the last two minutes. You see, the game had gone long. They didn't DVR the next program on the station, so we never saw the final Giant's scoring drive. We didn't see the "helmet catch." We found out who won, but so did the rest of the world.
Fast forward to this year. Cardnals-Steelers. We still don't have t.v. I figured the game was a wash and I would simply be forced to work on a paper for my Civil Rights class that's due on Thursday. But, silly me, I found a site online that let me stream the game. For free. Complete with the commercials. I saw the ad where the flowers tell the girl that she's ugly. I saw the ad for the new Jack Black movie. And I watched the game. I saw Larry Fitzgerald's two touchdown catches. But then, disaser struck again. With 1:01 remaining in the fourth quarter, the connection froze. No good. Couldn't watch. Wouldn't stream. Took a big fat slap to the face from the internet gods. So, again, I know who won. But I didn't see the final scoring drive. I didn't see Warner's fumble. And what's worse, I didn't get to watch the office afterwards.
Dumb.
Sometimes, I guess that it's a good thing I like basketball more that football.