a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. i'm not sleeping there

match the expression of disgust to the person.

A. dammit	1. troy
B. oh hecks	2. marty
C. (loud, wet flatulence)	3. bella
D. oh suck	4. alex
E. darnit	5. anthony

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i believe everyone born into this world is given one gift. that is, one thing they can do better than the vast majority of folks with little to no effort.

i also believe everyone born into this world is given one neurosis. that is, one thing that plagues them in life and is hard for them to resist and overcome.

i also believe one's satisfaction with life greatly comes from their ability to identify these two traits and subsequently embrace and wrangle them accordingly.

2007 u-city photo contest
dad, you can't stay. you wouldn't even fit into the chairs.
category : u-city theme
awarded : fourth place

i also won first place for this and second place for this.

family-v,
two years ago i entered your home with trepidation. the only person i knew i hadn't seen in over fifteen years. the other four people i hadn't seen ever. by the end of our five day stay, i felt as though i were visiting my very own relatives. this year, from the moment i walked through the newly renovated entryway, i felt as though i was holidaying with family-proper. my only regret is that we aren't closer and cannot celebrate and survive life together more often.

i especially appreciate how you endure bookguy's company just so i get to spend time with you. since i've known him for ten years i recognize this is no minor sacrifice and just wanted you to know i'm thankful it's one you're willing to make.

and don't forget, you have an open-ended invitation to my home. it doesn't have to be this year or even next. it can be in five or ten. just know whenever you need it or want it, our door is open to you.

i miss sitting at your kitchen table, lazing on your super couch (watching the boys catapulting themselves into a concrete wall) and fumbling my way down your ski slopes. basically, i miss it all.

do good, love life and laugh hard.

your biggest fan,
troy (and bookguy)

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. smart, smart girl

on the first day of my second year at the new job my boss called me into his office. he congratulated me on the anniversary and presented me with a few gifts, totally insightful and peachy gifts. he then told me he was approving a request made for me to teach a class in the fall. year two seems to be off and running like the bulls and will be the year i teach my first university level course. so much for ditching this ridiculous smile.

today marks my one year anniversary at the new job. that means it was one year ago today that i walked to my new office with a broad, idiotic, unremovable grin across my face. you see, i'd set this goal approximately six years prior and now here i was cresting the hill. as the year progressed the sheen didn't fade. i'd find myself walking the hallways or sitting in my office just grinning, still idiotically. and while i remain enamored with the employer and the work and the colleagues, it is the little things no one would expect that really keep the situation special.

if you need something you ask for it and assuming it is not a prostate massager or the like, you get it. after one of the several mergers at my last place, our new ceo instituted a policy that this company, his company, would no longer supply pens and pencils to the staff. i mean sure, it's not like a financial institution would need something superfluous like writing instruments to function so i found the move quite insightful if not inspired. when asked what employees were meant to do should a need arise the response claimed there wasn't a person on staff who didn't have a junk drawer full of pens in their home. and i reckon his $37 million year-end bonus could swing at least two such drawers.

parties and celebrations are held at people's homes. sometimes catered, sometimes not. either way, the personality of these affairs warm me. i recall back in corporate-world such celebrations entailed a boss flying in from another city for the day and the staff assembling in a conference room with too few chairs where we'd stand around awkwardly and eat a grocery store hoagie off paper plates.

there is a switch on the wall that allows me to turn the light in my office on and off. back in the day i remember standing on my desk to unscrew the broad fluorescent tubes over my workspace, disabling them. at some point in the week an elf would come in the night and reverse my adjustment. the next morning, up i'd climb and thus went our dance of persistence. i'll let you guess where the switch on my new wall most often resides.

windows. glorious, tall, world-framing windows. and as if just having them wasn't enough, they open. there are few professional perks sweeter than plying your indoor trade in the natural light of the day and feeling a soft morning breeze usher a co-workers acerbic flatulence away from your nose.

here's to what is hopefully another year of bliss and appreciation.

thursday began wonderfully. the night before i launched the new and improved everyman making it to bed at a respectable 2:30am. in the morning, i woke up after marty's first nudge, showered and ate breakfast before anyone else had risen. i got bella awake with a negligible amount of effort, dressed her and had her sitting at the breakfast bar with time to spare. while she ate corn-pops and my vietnamese coffees brewed, i serenaded her with my very own version of tori amos' cornflake girl which began "bella was a corn-pop girl" to which she immediately stopped me and told me not to call her 'girl'. i improvised with "bella was a corn-pop kid." this was also shot down. as was child, lady, woman and scamp. i then ushered her to school came back grabbed my bag and after receiving a hearty push out the door from alex was on my way.

when i stepped off the curb into the alley behind my house i twisted my ankle. and by twisted i mean horrifically buckled it so far that the little bump on the outside of my ankle touched the cement. i might have said a couple of swears, like a really long and creative collection of them. there was an older chinese couple walking by when it happened and the guy laughed, like a for real belly-chortle. i gave him the benefit and assumed he was admiring my robust use of language. the pain was excruciating. i collected myself and tested the foot. even though my walking commute is under a half a mile i didn't think i'd make it. i hobbled back inside and collapsed on the foyer bench. marty came down to check on me. i felt like one of the kids sitting atop the bathroom radiator waiting for a spiderman bandaid. being the receiver of such tender focus was a nice change. in the end marty put a compression wrap on the foot and i was back out the door.

work went well. upon returning home i found marty in the kitchen. i asked how her day went. she stopped, leaned a hip on the counter and succinctly described it as 'pretty terrible'. she slipped coming down the stairs and jacked up her ankle (i know, kinda funny in a coincidental way). anthony was sick. bella had to be picked up early from school because of allergies. and alex was testing her at every bend and currently serving a really long time-out. i kissed her on the back of the neck and said i was sorry her day was not better and that i'd go wrangle children so she could have some time.

i went upstairs. the first child i found was alex in the bathroom. he was using the sink and when i looked around the corner saw that he was rotating a bar of soap between his lathered hands. i stepped behind him and told him he had enough soap. he put the bar down and i grabbed one of his hands between mine and started washing it. something about it felt wrong but i couldn't make it out. i lifted my hands to look at them. they were shiny. as i studied them he stepped back to face me holding his arms up towards me. coating his hands, his arms, some of his face and much of his shirt was a generous layer of Vaseline. i looked at my hands again. he had infected me too.

Vaseline has been my nemesis since childhood. you might know it as petroleum jelly which is possibly the worst name for anything meant for non-prescription use. bella for many years pronounced it as scasolene. i'm also pretty sure it is the goo they put on thermometers before sticking them into people's rectums in the hospital, which is also pretty much all i need to know about a product. i immediately turn the water on and the second my hand gripped the faucet i felt the murky grease bleed through my clenched fingers. double-duped. there was enough bottom-grease on that handle for 68 thermometers, so much in fact the silver knob had completely lost its shape. i pulled my hand back and stared at it again. i then looked at the source of this mess and he innocently held his arms straighter and with a shrug of his bony shoulders said, 'it won't come off'. at the conclusion of this matter-of-fact statement, i heard a thumb kill a running stopwatch in my head. marty's parental calvary made it exactly 89 seconds before being cast onto the heap of fallen care-givers.

i really need a sure wind to come and blow this dark cloud away from my home.

in 2001 i held a photo contest. there were 40 entrants. these were all people who had at one point or another sat at my dinner table. in 2004 the website hosting this same contest crested one million request in the month the photos were made public. last month, a dormant period for the everyman, the logs show requests nearing the one million mark. given the continued growth of this hobby-site i've had to change up how i handle the affair and today marks a major milestone for me and it; online submissions. it also marks the opening of the 2007 contest. check it out.

and, don't miss the happy, time-zapping image shuffler.

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WAKE UP DADDY! I WANT TO WATCH MY SPACE VIDEO. WAKE UP! WILL YOU WATCH IT WITH ME? WILL YOU? WILL YOU DADDY?

this is how i was brought out of my saturday night sleep, all four hours of it. usually i'd just push the child away but this day was special. friday marty had shown me a movie alex had checked out from the library; a 1998 training video about internet searching. he picked it because of the cover art. on the bottom of the cassette case was a computer monitor showing an archaic browser and above that was a broad expanse of open stars and space, hence, space video.

alex. i don't think that video is about space. it's about something else. something very dull and boring.

IT NOT BORING! I WANT TO WATCH MY SPACE VIDEO DADDY! I WANT TO WATCH IT NOW!

six minutes later i'm snuggled under a blanket with alex listening to a woman in a red leather jacket (which she was wearing indoors might i add) talk to a computer animated girl named cyber-jane. before the rise of the internet, the leather-jacket girl was surely manning a suburban mall cosmetics counter. as for cyber-jane, i'm afraid all her previous work was in animated porn.

about eleven minutes into the video, bella groggily entered the tv room and fell into an open spot on the futon by my feet. she took one look at the television and groaned, WHAT IS THIS? IT'S TERRIBLE. i telepathically said to her 'YEAH! NO SHIT! AT LEAST YOU WERE SPARED THE FIRST ELEVEN MINUTES.' when she didn't acknowledge my mental message, i verbally and politically said, 'not everyone likes all the shows you pick bella'.

spending my sunday morning on this cramped futon watching an instructional video on a pre-google internet made me think of the day before. driving the kids home from a country sleep-over with my parents i got stuck behind a car in the passing lane. after several minutes of telepathic messages to the car's driver, also unanswered, i noticed their vanity license plate read BALLRM. the realization of how screwed i was at that moment just about matched how i felt right now (alex has never stopped watching a show he has started). if i could have only had a transcript of our mind's glassy-eyed thoughts while we took in this experience. i think bella was architecting her retribution towards alex for squandering his morning show on such an obvious loser. i myself was woeful in how pathetic and unexciting these two women made the industry i am part of seem. and alex, well poor alex, he was just wondering where the hell all the stars and space got to.