Poodle block....

Occasionally, I'll sit back and take a look at my life and try to figure out how I got to where I'm at. Not that I'm unhappy with any aspect of my life, outside of my job, but I like to look at some of the decisions that I've made and see where they've led me. So, I'm going to go back through a few moments of the past 10 to 15 years of my life in a game that I call.... Good call, Bad Call.

1. Let's start out old school, no pun intended, and take a look at my Senior year of High School. Somewhere within the first few months of the 1st semester I found out that I had hit all of my requirements to graduate and could quit school after the first semester. It sounded like a good plan. I was planning on picking up a job to save up some scratch for my first year of college, and thought it would be great to not have to go to school anymore.

Well, as it all worked out, the job fell through and most of my friends ignored me for the last 4 or 5 months of what should have been the remainder of my senior year.

Result? Bad call.

I passed up quite a few good party chances (even though I wasn't drinking at the time) and gave up 4 months of prime screw around time just so I could sleep in every day.

2. After I dropped out of college in January of 1994, I took a job working for the Department of Revenue for the State of Wisconsin. The job was an LTE (Limited Term Employment) position, so I had 6 months to find a new job before I would be gainfully unemployed yet again. After pissing away the first 5 months of that job, I finally had an interview with a local insurance company, and was offered a job in their customer service department and I accepted the position. Later that day, one of my friends (Trevor) called me and told me that he knew someone that was looking for help at a small consulting firm in our home town. I had an interview with the owner, Harry, later that day and he offered me a job making the amazing sum of $6.50 an hour. I took the job and called the insurance company and told them not to expect me to show up on Monday.

Result? Good and Bad Call.

Good call - Due to that job, I got my first computer of my own and got my first experience with computer networks.
Good call - 5 months later, I met Sarah in an AOL chat room.
Bad call - I couldn't work with my boss, at all. Some supervisors are from the "My way or the Highway" school. He was from the "My way... period" school.

3. Three months after meeting Sarah, I decided to call in sick and go up to see Sarah in North Dakota. Within 2 hours of calling in sick, Harry was calling my house to find out where I was. About 1 hour into the drive, I was pulled over for having hanging clothes covering one of my windows. I should have known at this point, that things could be going wrong for this weekend. I got up to Grand Forks later that Friday and had a great couple days with Sarah.

I planned on leaving around 12 or 1 in the afternoon on Sunday, as it was a 11 hour drive back home. Well, I got a much later start than I intended to and didn't end up leaving until 2 or 3. Add to this that North Dakota and Minnesota were hit with a massive ice storm right around the time that I left. I was stuck driving on the interstate at roughly 30 to 40 miles an hour all the way from Grand Forks to the Wisconsin border. If you've ever driven through that part of the country before, boring doesn't describe it. Did I mention that I was driving a Geo Metro with only an AM radio, and that most of western Minnesota doesn't get AM radio? Yeah... it was that kind of trip.

I hit Wisconsin around 3 or 4 in the morning and was in serious need of some caffeine. I stopped and purchased some NoDoz and Orange Juice. To this day, I don't know if it was the combination of the Orange Juice and the mega dosage of caffeine or whether I was just allergic to NoDoz, but I got the shakes something fierce.

Within an hour of taking the pills, I had to pull over because I was shaking so badly that I was scaring myself. I stopped at a rest stop and called into the office to let them know that I was not going to be making it in to work that morning. Little did I know that a primitive version of *69 existed at that point and my boss found out where I made the call from.

I woke up an hour after falling asleep in my car and found myself feeling much, much better. I proceeded to drive into the office and actually make it there by the time the office opened. I was actually on time for work. Of course I was sent home while my boss decided what to do. I was glad to go home and get the rest.

I was woken up later that day with a call from him letting me know that I was being fired and that we could meet up later in the week and I could get my things then.

Result? Much better than a good call... a Great call.

Being fired from working with Harry was one of the best things that I can remember happening in my life. Shortly after I was fired, I drove back up north and spent a week or two with Sarah. Not that our relationship wasn't already off the ground, but it really took off from there. Also, a few months after that, I was hired to work at Best Buy, where I met a good deal of my closest and dearest friends in the world.

I really like this game.

I'll do a few more of these in the future.