...Getting to Know Me

THE WAY MY LIFE WORKS

- When I have a great tan, am dressed to the nines and have been religious about keeping up with my workout and diet regimen, I will not run into anyone that I know. When I’ve put on weight, am pale as a ghost and am wearing clothes that are years out of style, I will run into numerous people who I haven’t seen in years.

- My relationship with my stepchildren can be playful, loving and sweet 95% of the time, but if we have a knock-down, drag out, voices raised, tear-inducing fight, it will ALWAYS occur the night before they go to their dad’s for the weekend, making it their final memory of me before they come home.

- Sales that I’ve been desperately trying to close for weeks or months will inevitably come in when I’m on vacation, allowing one or more of my partners to take all the glory

- The plumbing in my house will fail around the same time the TV remote breaks and all of our cars are in need of repair

- If I have an important meeting with a client in the morning, I will spill coffee on myself on the way over. It the meeting is in the afternoon, I will be wearing my lunch.


BAD THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED TO ME

- In two separate long-term relationships I have been caught with porn in the VCR. That’s always a fun one to explain. I’m not a porn addict or anything, just very forgetful

- At a previous job I had one of those things occur that I always thought only happened on TV. I had just finished leaving a voicemail for one of the sales managers when I immediately proceeded to bitch and complain to my cubicle neighbors both about this woman herself and the team of losers that she managed. My neighbors freely joined in the conversation. Then I realized I hadn’t hung up the phone completely and all of our conversation had been left on the sales manager’s voicemail.

- I once let my then-girlfriend talk me into writing a nasty letter to my college fraternity because they had neglected to send me an invitation to the fraternity reunion (this was the year following my graduation). Turns out, nobody really got formal invitations, it was just kind of word of mouth. Anytime you write a nasty letter it’s probably best to throw it out as opposed to sending it. Even if you’re in the right, the chances of the recipient saying, “Boy, that’s a good point, I’ve been wrong all along” are pretty low. Nearly 10 years later, I still cringe when I think about having sent that letter.

DEEP DARK SECRETS

- I get a little upset when I think that anyone who I’m really close friends with makes more money than I do

- Related to the above, my wife and I have a bad habit of disparaging others good fortune. For example, a couple we are close friends with live in a beautiful home that is nearly twice the size of ours. We can never describe their house to others without saying something to the effect of, “Their house is great, IF you don’t mind living way out in the boonies”.

- I don’t think you ever truly get over someone who dumps you 100%. If I ever want to put myself in a bad mood, I think about my college sweetheart, who I dated for about 4 years, fucking other dudes

- Even though I co-own my business with 3 others, meaning their success is my success and vice-versa, I get a little jealous when one of them gets a really big sale

Little Gooch 

...Babies

We had one.

DOB: August 19, 2004, 7:28PM
8 pounds, 4 oz.
19 in long

We're going to keep him.

...On Hiatus

Think good thoughts.

Bye now.

The Gooch

...The Rest of the Story

Not in all ways, but in some ways, I’m a typical guy. I can think of no greater way to spend a Sunday than watching the 10 o’clock & 1 o’clock NFL games on CBS or FOX, followed by watching the 5 o’clock game on ESPN. I hate chick flicks. I love beer and professional wrestling. And when I’ve had a few drinks in me, I lower my standards in women.

People in my industry rarely, if ever, leave the industry completely. I think this is because it’s somewhat of a niche industry. After you’ve spent a reasonable amount of time gaining knowledge about a specific type of technology, it seems like a waste to enter an entirely different field where this information will be entirely useless. Once you meet someone in my industry you know you are going to see or at least hear about him or her again in the future. Maybe they’ll be working for a different company, maybe they’ll have a slightly different title, but you never completely lose track of anyone.

Tuesday, Sean, one of our vendors, took the four of us (me and three guys I own this company with) out to lunch. We had already gone through his product line at the office, so lunch was mainly spent gossiping about different people and different companies within our industry. In talking about one of the competitors to his product, Sean made the off-hand comment that, “Kelly seems to be real happy there”.

My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. Would Ryan and Kevin let the comment fly or would they feel compelled to tell the story? When Ryan started laughing uncontrollably, I knew the latter was going to be the case.

Five years ago, all four of us worked for a large, nationwide company that held the first of what would become an annual national sales meeting in Atlanta. Since the company was so big, the sales meeting also included an industry trade show held just for the employees of our company. Vendors traveled from all over the country to exhibit.

The CEO of our company was a 30-year-old wunderkind, who had merged several small-medium sized companies together to form a national powerhouse. The company eventually went bankrupt, he was forcibly removed as CEO and was named as a defendant in several financial impropriety lawsuits. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, despite his high-level position in the company, in many ways he was a typical young person in that he loved to party. And he loved for people to party with him. He kept an open tab at the hotel bar for all company employees and vendors who would be exhibiting at the show to take advantage of.

There is a level of drunkenness that reasonably responsible people try to avoid unless certain criteria are met. These criteria are:
A) Everything is free
B) You don’t have to drive home
C) You don’t have any major responsibilities the next day

Seeing as anything we wanted to drink was on the house (I lost count of how many $14 tequila shots I did), the only ride we needed to take to get “home” was the hotel elevator and the only thing we needed to do the next day was make a cursory appearance at the trade show, all of the above conditions were met. I know that, at least after college, it’s more pathetic than cool to brag about how wasted you got on such and such occasion, but I feel it is necessary to make my level of intoxication on this particular evening known just so the rest of the story is understandable. I had spent the early portion of the evening (at least several hours) bar hopping in Buckhead and upon returning to the hotel immediately made use of the free tab at the hotel bar. I was well beyond shitfaced.

At one point during the night, my friends and I found ourselves sitting on a couch with a woman named Kelly who worked for one of our vendors, Tronex (not their real name). Tronex was a major success story, having a virtual monopoly on selling the products that could best be described as the glue that connected various technologies together to form an integrated system. This was a huge, multimillion-dollar company. Their importance, power and influence in our industry cannot be overstated.

I don’t want to sound mean, but there is just no way that a person could describe Kelly as attractive in any way and maintain any sort of credibility. In both weight and appearance she looked more like something you’d see at a zoo than at a bar.

Nonetheless, when Ryan and Kevin went up to get more drinks, I must have made a move on her because we started getting pretty hot and heavy. We were making out, tongues deeply imbedded in each other’s throats, heavy groping of parts, etc. She was doing the typical “Oh, I shouldn’t be doing this” and then proceeding to do it some more thing. This went on for awhile. We didn’t seal the deal or anything; in my condition I’m not even sure that would have been possible.

At the trade show the next day, my friends made sure to spend an extra long time at the Tronex booth, while I gracefully hid behind a pole. They even went so far as to yell out, “Hey, Gooch, wasn’t there something you wanted to take a look at here?” That was the last I heard of Kelly until Tuesday.

As Ryan retold this story at lunch, a very shocked Sean (who used to work for Tronex at the same time as Kelly), turned to me and said, “THAT WAS YOU?!?!?!?!?!?!”

According to Sean, at the time, Kelly was in line for a huge promotion. When some of her superiors got word that she had embarrassed both herself and the company by her display in the hotel bar, her promotion was unceremoniously pulled from under her. Apparently, the problem wasn’t only with what she did, but that she refused to take responsibility for it, insisting that she didn’t drink at all the night in question, nor did she do anything inappropriate with an employee of the company they were exhibiting to. Maybe she was embarrassed. I guess she could have been beer-goggling me, too. This ultimately led to her quitting her position and joining the company that is now competition to Sean’s.

Following this controversy, Tronex instituted a strict company-wide policy, barring any company employee from consuming alcohol at any industry event where they were representing the company in any form.

I thought it would take running my own company to make a difference in this industry. Who knew I already had?

...Following the Crowd

The \\
Last Cigarette:	Christmas Day, 2003, the day I found out my wife was pregnant
Last Alcoholic Drink:	Coor Light, over the weekend. Lots of them.
Last Car Ride:	To work this morning
Last Kiss:	This morning, my wife.
Last Good Cry:	What kind of a guy do you think I am, a sissy?
Last Library Book:	Jeez, probably something during college. Time to get a new card, I guess.
Last book bought:	Dress Your Family in Courduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
Last Book Read:	A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe
Last Movie Seen in Theatres:	The Village
Last Movie Rented:	Eurotrip
Last Cuss Word Uttered:	Fuck
Last Beverage Drank:	Water
Last Food Consumed:	Taco Salad
Last Crush:	Reese Witherspoon - ongoing
Last Phone Call:	Last night - to my brother
Last TV Show Watched:	An episode of Nip/Tuck I finally got around to watching last night
Last Time Showered:	This morning
Last Shoes Worn:	Sneakers
Last CD Played:	A misc. mix CD I burned
Last Item Bought:	Ant spray
Last Download:	Don't Remember
Last Annoyance:	Traffic on the 15 Freeway
Last Disappointment:	Realizing I need to get my sprinklers fixed
Last Soda Drank:	Diet Coke, last night
Last Thing Written:	Diet Coke, last night
Last Key Used:	House key when I left for work this morning
Last Words Spoken:	"Is Paul still coming today?"
Last Sleep:	Last night/this morning
Last Ice Cream Eaten:	Fosters Freeze about a week ago
Last Chair Sat In:	My office chair, now
Last Webpage Visited:	randomaimee.blogspot.com, where I finally got this
CREATE YOUR OWN! - or - GET PAID TO TAKE SURVEYS!

...Advice to Husbands of Expectant Mothers

Hypothetically, let’s say you are the co-owner of a small technology integration firm. Let’s also say you have a wife who is due to give birth within the month.

One Wednesday afternoon, you find yourself in a meeting with two of your partners and a subcontractor to coordinate schedules and go over jobs that need to be completed before the end of the month. After all vital issues have been discussed, the subcontractor glances at his watch and mentions that it appears to be “Beer-thirty” and suggests a trip to the bar across the street where Happy Hour has just begun.

Just for the sake of argument, let’s also say you forgot your cell phone at home that morning. You consider borrowing one to call your wife to inform her you are out getting sloshed and will likely be home a little late. Then you tell yourself that she probably thinks you’re going to the gym after work anyway. No need to call her with your very minor change in plans.

Moral of the story: There is a reason grocery stores set up those flower aisles

...Wedding Etiquette

I don’t want to come across as a fuddy-duddy, but if you get married to someone, then get divorced from that someone and then decide to get married to that same someone for the second time, is it really appropriate to have a whole formal wedding ceremony with guests, presents and a party?

Funny story: They got divorced because every couple of years she’d catch him cheating on her with some hussy. This made her mad enough to finally go through with the divorce, but obviously not so angry that she quit having sex with him altogether. After becoming pregnant with his child, I guess going through the motions of having a baby together while still technically being divorced seemed kind of silly.

My wife and I aren’t going to the wedding, which is in two weeks. We’re going to be in San Diego enjoying our final romantic weekend getaway before the baby comes. That and we didn’t get invited.