I Protect Me and Mine

2 a.m., bar just closed. I was walking her to her car. We were deciding where to go eat.

That's when I heard voices escalate in an angry tone. I looked ahead and Brandon was faced up with a white guy, spiked blonde hair, a breath separating them.

I quickly stepped between them and pushed Brandon back.

"Stay out of this," the white guy said to me, and he put a hand on my chest. Instinctively, I drove my body weight into him to push him off.

He quickly started to recoil as if to charge at me, but I stepped back in a defensive stance, extending an arm as if to say, Wait. "Step the fuck off," I demanded.

He stopped, lowered in a kind of linebacker stance.

"I don't know what happened here. I don't know what was said. Frankly, I don't care. What I do know is that that's my boy. And I don't know you.

"Now, that being said, I am a grown ass fuckin' man. I don't got time to play. I don't squab no more, I don't scuffle no more, I don't rassle no more. I won't throw punches. I won't throw kicks. If you buck to me, I'm just gonna slit your fucking throat. Do you get what I'm saying to you?

"I'm gonna protect me and mine."

Could be Considered Career Suicide

Tuesday evening, The Company had its monthly hoo-rah meeting at its Midtown office. The obvious subjects were touched, with an expected longer-than-usual piece about the state of the economy.

After the meeting, folks stuck around to meet and greet, as consultants tend to do to broaden their network. I was approached by a Chinese fellow, seemingly in his late thirties or forties, with a leather jacket and diamond earrings. He introduced himself to me as my assigned career manager, whom I've exchanged e-mails with but had not yet met in person.

The introduction was brief; we told each other who we were, and he quickly invited me out for a drink.

-

I met with my career manager at an open deck bar a few blocks away from where the meeting was. We were joined by two other consultants, one of whom was a new team lead that recently joined my department at The Client.

The guys drank together routinely, and they wasted no time, splitting up immediately to open a tab, claim a table, and wax a shuffleboard table simultaneously.

Our first match teamed my career manager and myself against the other two. In a game of first-to-twenty-one, we blew out the opposing team by a hair. And as my career manager began openly taunting, I too joined in the jeering.

About an hour into the night, we were joined by the local unit bigwig. This is the guy that signs all the checks and makes all the decisions. I knew he was a boozebucket, but had never seen him outside of a formal environment.

He wasted even less time than the others and had a bucket on the table before I realized he had ever arrived. And before he even played a match, he was jawing at how terrible and amateur our shots were.

As the night got later and I got less sober, our taunting got cruder and my shots got lousier. Between the five of us, we drank probably as many buckets.

At the end of the night, the bigwig tried to have a somber discussion with me, welcoming me to The Company and emphasizing how much we needed to keep our customers happy. But he was sloshed out of his mind and kept stumbling and staggering about, and the rest of us had a tough time taking him seriously.

It was well past two in the morning before we called it a night. The new team lead said to me, "If you see me staggering in tomorrow, you'll know why."

And I replied, "I'll stagger in with you. And we'll both think the other is walking straight."

-

Next morning, I dragged myself into the office, head hung low, bloodshot eyes, and sat at my desk with a 32 oz. bottle of Gatorade. I peeped over, and the new team lead was wide-eyed and perky, carrying on business as normal.

And Then There Were Two

The Company converted my contract to a full-time position this week. My conversion was made official as of Monday.

In reality, negotiations had been going on for over a month. Their initial offer was, to say the least, insulting to me, and my morale had taken a pretty hard hit over the past month. My résumé had been updated and floating around job search Web sites since then.

Despite the economic climate, I gambled on the job a bit, turning down the conversion offer twice before finally reaching an agreement.

On day one, The Company sent me a brand new laptop, fresh with all the manufacturer stickers and protective transparent film still attached, top of the line specs and configurations -- an expensive machine that I'll probably never use because I'm on client-site all day. It's almost hard to imagine that eight percent of the nation is unemployed and fourteen percent of folks in my age demographic can't find a job right now.

I spent the entire first full-time day on conference calls, being introduced to the who's who of people you need to know when shit hits the fan. Most of the week was spent watching on-boarding training videos and taking relating tests. Apparently, The Company frowns on sexual harrassment in the workplace.

-

I met up with a couple of guys from The Ex-Company after work on Thursday for happy hour at a micro-brewery in The Village. There were four of us that met during our introductory training bootcamp at The Ex-Company, and we regularly come together every couple of months for drinks and shit-shooting despite my departure from the company.

One of the guys, a former University of Texas student, had left the company as well as of last week. He had told us he was game for a drink, but sold out and, instead, packed his stuff and left out of town. He was leaving the job to go to graduate school and was taking an internship before the Fall semester started.

Despite it being a Thursday night on the edge of a college campus on the first weekend back to school, the bars were dead. There were no rowdy crowds or drunk college girls. The three of us shot the shit amongst ourselves and played games of Erotic Photo Hunt.

Somewhere along the way, somehow, the conversation devolved to the subject of armpit fucking. The question was: if you met a smokin' hot girl, but she would not have vaginal or oral sex with you, but she was willing to fuck you with her armpit and it still felt good, would you be okay with it?

I decided that it couldn't be that much different from a handjob or titty-fucking, so why the hell not?

Then we asked: if fucking her armpit turned out to be the best sex ever in the entire universe, better than any blowjob or vaginal sex or anal sex or any other way to skeet in the entire universe, would you take her to be your wife -- with the caveat that her armpit will be the only part of her you ever get to fuck?

I decided that mediocre vaginal sex and blowjobs still had to trump any sort of armpit-fucking on any day of the week, so no.

And finally: if you were Muslim and could marry up to four wives, would you take armpit-fucker as one?

I decided yes.

-

Within my first forty-hour work week with the new position, I showed up to my desk with a hangover.

I, I Bring the Fire

Trinh threw an after-new year's gettogether at his place. Trashcan punch and some traditional Vietnamese finger foods: egg rolls, spring rolls, and some other stuff. And a pitcher of some nasty Mexican shit called Chalada, which is a mixture of Clamato and beer.

We watched Peyton choke and allow the Chargers to edge the Colts out of the playoffs. I quaffed a couple of cups of the trashcan punch, and Don and I bailed to head out to Midtown.

-

We met up with John, who was home from New York for the holidays, and some of his friends at a rooftop bar in Midtown. John hangs out with a lot of guys that went to high school with us, but I sleepwalked through too much of high school to know or remember any of them.

The place filled out, and I bumped into all sorts of familiar faces, both friendly and otherwise. After making a few rounds about the place, visiting with folks and pretending it was good to see them again, I sequestered myself off at a table, hanging out with John.

John had a friend swing by from the north side of town, a girl he went to school with in college. She was an average-to-cute looking Chinese girl, confident and social. She adorned awkward accessories -- a roomy beanie that looked like a wool showercap, colorful scarves, etc. -- the way people who spent four years living in a college town tend to dress.

She scored a seat on the couch next to me and we kicked off. We shared stories about how we knew John. It turns out she met John while they were taking salsa lessons, and I teased John a bit about taking dancing classes.

The girl had a monstrous zit on her forehead that night, which I'm sure she was aware of and self-conscious about, and I spent most of the time averting my eyes, trying not to take notice. She had a cute laughter, but a crooked smile that made creases in her nose. The nose-creasing smile was kind of unattractive, but being that she was the only girl in the place sitting on the couch and talking to me, I convinced myself that it was a nice smile.

At the end of the night, she was sober and so we did not exchange spit. The bar closed, and we parted ways. And because one of the first questions she asked me was, "So what do you do for a living?" we did not exchange contact information.

Sleet, Smoke, Snow

A freak ice storm swept through the nation over the past week. Wednesday night, it snowed and blanketed everything in a thin layer of white -- a rare occasion for these parts.

I met up with Don and a friend of his from California, who was visiting for the holidays, at an Irish pub along the side of the highway for a quick drink. While driving there, the snow came down at a rate I'd never seen before. That's not to say there was necessarily a lot of snow; I just don't ever actually see snowfall. Through the windshield, the drive resembled those old Windows space-travel screen savers with the white-dot stars flying toward the screen.

We shot the shit for a few hours, and when we left, the snow had stopped but our cars were covered in it.

-

Today, the city was still below freezing, though the sleet and snow had dissipated overnight. Foo, who was stateside and home for the holidays, joined Don and I at a wine bar near The Strip.

Wrapped in layers of probably all of our winter clothes, we huddled around an outdoors patio heater and enjoyed cigars, a bottle of wine, and couple of Blue Moons.

I'd never smoked cigars before but had always wanted to give it a try, so Foo picked out a couple of sticks and showed me the ropes. The cigars he picked out had a faint muddy flavor to it. It was dry and it felt like I was drawing mostly blank air while puffing, but I suspect that had more to do with how the cigars were stored than anything.

I don't enjoy the taste of cigarettes, and the tobacco served at hookah bars feels too light and tastes too fruity except when the hookahs are filled with alcohol. I think cigars are just the right taste and feel that once I find my right flavor, it could be something I enjoy.

We finished our cigars and a bottle of wine that Don picked out, kicked back for a short while, but ultimately buckled to the cold and went home, hoping that the night brings low enough temperatures to ice down the streets and shut down the workplace.

Turkey at Noon

The Company contracted another new guy about a week ago, a general applications developer to work on my team. He's an eccentric fellow in his early thirties, a college football fanatic, and unlike almost everybody else on the team short of myself, doesn't have a wife or kids.

The new guy and I discovered that he used to work with a guy who was the twin brother of another guy that I used to work with, somehow, and we kicked off a fairly smooth start. The plan, at least from what I've been hearing, is that he'd be taking over the SSIS development and that I would move forward with services-oriented development.

-

The Client sponsored a holiday luncheon for the local IT department at a fancy hotel in Town Center. The new guy and I hitched a ride with the chick consultant from San Francisco, and we convened with the rest of the team in a banquet room, tables draped in cloth with the napkins fanned out on our plates and three forks of varying sizes for each plate.

Lunch was a buffet table with two kinds of poultry, ham, leg of lamb, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, something with spinach in it, varying pastas and vegetable plates, and stromboli, the last of which seemed oddly out of place to me. Dessert was pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and key lime pie.

After the meal, the department bigwigs took over the microphone and went through their hoo-rahs, giving a run-down of status reports, praising some of the progress that had taken place through the year, and eventually trying to reassure everybody that despite the economic downturn, we were good and stable for the year ahead.

Following the speeches, most of the consultants hightailed their way back to the office. These are the folks that, you can tell, are addicted to their work -- the kind of people that have a hard time keeping a good work and life balance. I feel pretty bad for these folks, sometimes. Events like these are sponsored for by the big company dime. Even as a contractor, these hours are billable. I don't care if my work doesn't get finished on time; I like to kick back and enjoy the moments any chance I get.

-

A game of white elephant kicked off at the end of lunch for those who had signed up to participate. I did not, but I stuck around to see the presents.

Our team director, who had been sitting up front and center socializing with the bigwigs, scurried to the back to the table I had been sitting, giggling. He confided that he'd wrapped up the most inane gift for the game: a Chia Pet in the shape of Shrek's head.

Coincidentally, the gift ended up in the hands of one of our business analysts, a very timid girly girl who had not been apart of the conversation when the team director told about his gift. She sat down right next to him with the box and a pout, complaining about how ugly the head was. We laughed while he bit his tongue.

-

The infrastructures lead and I joked about playing hookie at the bar next door, but ultimately returned to the office to finish the workday.

Vroom Vroom!

I made my first big purchase last night: a brand new 2009 Civic EX, complete with leather trim.

I muled over the car I wanted for the past few months, prioritizing price and gas efficiency, as I think most Americans are doing these days. The plan was to make the purchase at the year-end to catch clearance deals, but small, gas efficient cars are in high demand and nobody's offering any deals worth waiting. And 2008 models are only going for a few hundred bucks cheaper than their 2009 counterparts.

I had my decisions narrowed down to the Honda Accord, Volkswagen Jetta, and the Honda Civic, in order of most to least desired. The Accord and Jetta topped my list really because they were competitively priced for their features and fuel efficiency and because they were sedans (the Civic comes in a sedan flavor too, but they are just really ugly with four doors). Ultimately, the cheaper pricetag on the Civic won over, and, really, nobody ever rides in my backseat anyway.

I went across town to get it because the particular dealer was the one that offered the model and color I wanted at the best price after shopping at half a dozen dealers.

The sales manager that assisted me was a Vietnamese cat seemingly in his mid-thirties that still sported a skin-close fade and spiked top. He spoke to me colloquially with vulgar language and slang, as if I were his friend, but we both knew all I wanted was a cheap car, and all he wanted was my money.

Most of my negotiations had been exchanged via e-mail -- I refused to speak over the phone or visit dealers in person without a solidified pricetag because I hate being placed on the spot by salespeople -- so the visit was pretty bullshit-free. I told him what I wanted and the price that had been presented to me, and we went straight to the paperwork.

Financing the car was a whole different ballpark.

The finance manager that worked with me was a Hispanic cat in a power suit with greased back hair like a modern-day Ricky Ricardo. He tried to sell me an atrocious rate of 9% and slapped all sorts of bullshit insurances and warranties onto the bottom line.

I negotiated with the guy for four hours and walked out of his office three times, ultimately telling him, "Nine percent, really? I'm hemorrhaging money at that rate! I'm sorry, but if this is how you make your money, you're going to have to wait for some shmuck who doesn't understand money to walk through these doors. I have a steady job, a great paycheck, zero debt, and zero obligations. I'm your perfect customer. I could walk into any bank right now and they would throw loans at me at fractions of what you're offering me. If you don't want my money, man, someone else will take it."

In the end, he succumbed to a more reasonable rate. To be honest, the rate almost felt like robbery in my favor, and I'd almost feel bad if these people weren't car dealers -- and if I weren't signing away a huge chunk of money. It was almost midnight by the time I drove off the lot, and that might've had something to do with it. That, or it's really true what they're saying about all these car dealers having trouble unloading inventory.

-

The morning after driving the new car home, my old car, as if in an act of jealousy, crapped out. The rear passenger tire blew out, and one of the spark plugs just suddenly went dud.