Its Saturday morning. I “volunteered” for a weekend on-call-duty and so I sit at work hitting the ‘F10′ key debugging the emailjobs process. I suppose its only natural then to get this story out since I am now at the scene of the crime.

Blog shimmers and fades dramatically in typical flashback fashion.

I turned into the parking lot at about 10 past 9 in the morning. I was a little late. I normally get in at right around 9 AM but took an extra ten minutes this morning as I was coming from Huggy’s place instead of my own. Yeah, yeah… unfortunately I hadn’t spent the night at Huggy’s for any “good” reasons. I stayed over her place the night before because I had a wicked stomach bug and couldn’t even sleep through the stomach cramps beseiging me (kudos to you women who can make it through a night of menstrual cramps… I would curl up and die every month).

As I walked through the double doors and into the company foyer a lady rushes by me in tears. I shrug and guessed she was having a bad day before continuing on, pausing only to whisk my ID badge out of my pocket so I could scan it at the secured door. Then it started.

“THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT!”

It came from Eric, another IT guy I would talk to while we worked out in the gym. He seemed a bit upset.

“Hey Eric. What’s going on man?” I asked casually, but really meaning “What the fuck?! You can’t scream out profanity like that here?!”

“Well they just let go 300 people in IT! Gary is gone… Dianne… Allison… Maybe me… I can’t deal with this man!”

Eric wasn’t one of those guys who played tactless, over-the-top practical jokes, but I still expected him to break into a smile and tell me he was just playing around. Instead he just shook his head, scanned his card and walked through the door. I was about to follow right behind him. Then I saw the security guards and my brain finally processed it: People were being fired. I might be one of them. Maybe my ID was no longer working. Maybe.

I scanned it and watched the familiar LED flash green. Well my badge was still working at least. That was a good sign. I walked to my cubicle ignoring the sullen looks from other IT members as I passed. A group of some of my teammates were huddled together. Others just sat quietly at their desk clearly pretending to work.

“So… should I even bother logging in?” I asked with a nervous smile on my face.

Chuck, the team lead, looked at me and shrugged.

“There’s no real warning. They’re just tapping people on the shoulder and escorting them out.”

Maybe I was safe. Or maybe they hadn’t gotten to my name on the list yet. Then my “worry free”, failsafe kicked in… so what if I got laid off. Thats just vacation time for me. Its not like I have to return to a war-stricken bosnia or anything. I would either get another job somewhere else or go back to Jamaica. No kids. No wife. No mortgage. It would be disappointing, but not the end of the world. I smiled and logged in already feeling better no matter the outcome.

The next hour or so was hard. Saying good byes to people I had worked with a long time. Giving them a hug or shaking their hands and wishing them well. Sometimes wishing it was me instead of them. A lay off would do me minimal harm… but some people had kids and families and mortgages and single income homes. You could see the weight of that burden suddenly show on their faces. Jason, one of my co-workers learned he was let go when his badge didn’t work. He came in to tell us bye and get his severance package.

“Its a wake up call… guess its just time to move on… not sure what I am going to do but I will get something… I will be all right.” He reassured us and himself. And as resourceful as I knew him to be I wasn’t worried at all.

But others weren’t so lucky. It was just coincedence that I had lunch with a guy who I had worked with sometime back in Cleveland the day before. He was here in Colorado to get training for his new position and had mentioned that the entire reason he was staying with the company was because it was so stable and he had to support a stay-at-home wife and kids. When I learned that he had been let go earlier in the morning my heart sank. Imagine being fired and not being able to even go home… maybe I jinxed him.

When it was all done my manager got us all together for some damage control and assured us the cuts were over with. He then scheduled times for our performance/salary evaluations later on in the day. Its a cruel irony that on the day 10% of IT got fired many of us also got promotions and/or raises. Talk about bitter sweet.

*sigh*

Its been awhile folks. I know. I can’t even summon up the energy right now to give you guys a full out update or blog. But I figured I owed you guys at least a quickie. So here is a chronological blogging summary of whats gone on so far… it may even explain my recent absences:

• Huggy gets more huggable… I have been spending more and more time with her. Suffice it to say I have been ‘dating’ no one else simultaneously… blogging days lost - 7
• Deadly deadlines on multiple projects all of which I am supposed to be putting 100% of my time to each. Thats 300% of time per week, amounting to approximately 120 hours a week. Yeah right. Blogging days lost - 14
• Washing machine broke… gave my old bedroom furniture to goodwill and got new bedroom furniture, only all the new stuff needs to be assembled. Needless to say I now sleep on the couch. Go figure. Blogging days lost - 4
• 10% of the staff in IT got laid off… good friends… co-workers. My first lay-off and I survived. Scary stuff… blogging days lost - 3 and counting.

So there you have it. Tons of going ons in this thing called life. The good news is I have tons of stuff to blog on. Stay tuned people!

Apparently Huggy is a big hit with a few of my readers and due to a couple emailed requests for more details on the woman behind the cuddly nickname I have decided to dedicate an entire blog post to her. An entire blog dedicated to a woman other than my mother. Well there’s a first time for everything.

Me and Huggy met under some truly strange circumstances I think. We met in the emergency room of the hospital at 3 AM. My goal keeper teammate for one of my indoor soccer teams had dislocated his shoulder and I was with him in one of the patient rooms waiting for a doctor when in walked Huggy.

Huggy was the nurse on shift that night and she was amazingly pleasant for someone working at 3 in the morning, and she even looked cute in her hospital green scrubs (quite a mean feat that seeing as how scrubs just look like pajamas to me). She was very attentive, offered us both a cup of coffee or water, and asked what we were doing playing soccer so late at night. I explained it was an after work league and we had the late game.

A sucker for flawless skin I thought Huggy was attractive and more my “type” physically than some of the women I had dated in the past. She was petite, had smooth, dark skin, one eye that seemed somewhat smaller than the other (its actually kind of cool in a weird way), and sharp dark features. But what really got my attention was her smile. The kind of smile that contrasted pearl white, pretty teeth with mahogany-hued skin. A smile that showed she had a mischievous side to her, revealed when she silently mouthed to me to hold my teammates hand while the doctor popped his shoulder back in socket. Being the manly, man that I am, I was not about to hold a grown mans hand in the hospital like that and I pretended to not understand what she was getting at. I shook my head, gave her a confused look, and mouthed back a silent “Whaaat?!” She smiled that zany, mischievous smile I have come to like so much that said “I know exactly why you won’t hold the poor guys hand… punk!” It wasn’t hard after that to finagle a phone number out of her while she filled out some release forms.

We didn’t meet again until two or three weeks after that. She was moving and had planned a trip to the Bahamas and California with some friends and was gone for the next two weeks. During that time, thinking she wasn’t interested enough, I kind of forgot about her until she sent a message to my MySpace page. She was apparently interested enough. We spoke on the phone for a little while. She talked. I listened. Then we met for dinner one day, a movie the next.

Initially our relationship never moved past the platonic. She had recently gotten out of a relationship and just wanted friends for the moment, which was fine with me. But there was a comfort level between us that I had not felt in a long time. Huggy would burp or fart or spit around me shamelessly and none of it disgusted me in the least bit as there was a femininity in the way she did even the most masculine things. Then she would just smile and look at me. The more I saw her the more comfortable I felt hanging out with her and the more she would surprise me each and every time with some unexpected action. Once she hugged me for what must have been close to an hour after dropping her home from one of our dates (which she always insisted were not dates). She just hugged me without saying a word. Another time she had me help her take her weave tracks out.

More recently Huggy has expressed that she does like me. And I like her too… but I am still a little wary. Not wary of Huggy, mind you, but more wary of myself. I have developed a tendency to “lose interest” in women not long after learning that they want more than a friendship. The residual effects of having been hurt in the past? Maybe. But for now I am satisfied with the relationship I do have with Huggy. No pressure. No commitment. Plenty of hugs.

The Feds held a press conference today in downtown Atlanta to display the collection of revolvers, automatic rifles, machine guns and pistols found in rapper T.I.’s home and car. Nothing unusual here: one would normally find guns like these in a collector’s home. The fact that the collector is a convicted felon and popular rapper who obtained the weapons by illegal means is what makes this a national news story.

~ As taken from the Coo Yah! section.

I was not so recently tagged by GC. I am not a big fan of the “tag” thing since it reminds me of those “get to know each other” forwards that my friends spam my inbox with. As if knowing whether I prefer chocolate or vanilla is insight into my soul. Anyways. Here are seven random things about me…

1. I have an eleven year old brother. Yup. A mammoth 19 year gap between us. When I left to go to school in the states he was only one. When I would call him to ask him about school and such he was so confused as to who I was he would often ask me how MY mother was doing. Lord knows how may times I had to explain to him that we shared the same mother.
2. I am afraid of needles. Not deathly afraid now… just too afraid to watch the needle go in when I have to get a shot. I also get queasy when I see my own blood.
3. I have only been in three committed relationships over the span of ten years. That would explain my whole inexperience with dating.
4. I have an inch long scar along my right temple that I got playing soccer and getting head butted. I have also broken both legs, two fingers, numerous toes, and got bitten by a dog. To say I am injury prone would be an understatement.
5. I tried smoking once: a rolled up joint made from newspaper and filled with random leaves from my mothers garden. After almost coughing my organs out in the toilet I never, ever tried to smoke anything again. Not a cigarette. Not a cigar. Not weed.
6. I was confirmed in an Anglican church but am no longer an advocate of religion. Now don’t get me wrong… I have faith in God, the Creator and Jesus Christ our Saviour… I just believe my faith is of the personal variety: between me and Him.
7. I am supposed to wear glasses. I wore tested lens since the age of eight and then just decided that I wasn’t wearing them anymore. My eyes have actually improved since.

There. Seven completely random facts about me.