With great moustache, comes great responsibility.

Dale was franticly cutting pepperoni and an assortment of NY’s finest sharp cheddars as I strolled into the kitchen.

I tried to act coy, though I was not sure how to accomplish that…. Coy is an adjective that is rarely used to describe me. So I went with what I know, and acted like Peter Griffin when he is trying to be sexy.

“Hey Bud, whatcha doin”?

Dale – “I’m late… Wicked late actually” (Dale is going camping with his family, his best gal, and from what I hear around 14 or 15 dogs, it should make for an exciting weekend. Charlie freaks out sometimes when he is in the house and feels constrained, I’m sure he will take to sleeping in a tent like a fish to water)

Me – “Yeah??? You are late huh?? That’s too bad…. Can I help??? (Mind you all the while I am hanging off him like a drunk trying to pick up a chick at about 1:45)

Dale – “No I’m all set”

Me – “You sure… come on, what can I do”

Dale finally takes time to look up from his Julie Child act and see’s this staring back at him.

Then right back to chopping… “Just gotta finish this up, thanks though…”

MY GOD……

I continue to try to get his attention like a child showing off for a parent that is too busy to look up from their morning paper or tumbler of scotch…. Dale… look at me… look what I can do….

He looked back a few times, never once saying anything about why I was acting like I wanted to get a quick bang in before he took off, or that I had this on my face.

Finally I couldn’t take it

Me -“Seriously??”

Dale – “What”

Me – Questioning cocked head look suggesting “do you really not know what we are talking about ?”

Dale - ….. nothing

Me – “Do you like my new moustache?

Dale – “Oh Jesus!”

Me… “Wow…”

Kali seemed to like it, but I think that it was just because it assists with the fantasy that I am someone else, which goes a long way to keeping her happy. Jerm also noticed immediately, but that may have been because he was wearing this…

You see, the plant had a fully sanctioned beard gowning contest during the outage. You had to be clean shaven on day one, everyone put in $5, and the winner I think gets to give his money to charity. I don’t know what kind of charity would accept money that was raised in this way, especially because I think the flyer for the contest had a picture of not only “the most interesting man in the world” but also Osama Bin Laden on it. I was not officially in this contest, as I was worried that it may affect my eligibility to grow a beard in the NCAA. So I waited in the wings, and let others have their fun, all the while, growing a fantastic bushy masterpiece that put all others to shame.

Then one day last week, we all got the news that Macho Man had past, which lead to watching videos of him, which lead to everyone talking in the Macho Man voice the majority of the time… in meetings, on the phone, paging people over the PA system

“Dan Murphy, call 5433… OOOOHHHHHH YEEEEAAAAHHHHHH!”


And one thing turned into another until out of this popped the idea… Moustache Friday.

A lot of people talked about it, and talked about what kind of stache they would grow, with the same looks on their faces that people our age got when we were kids and looked at toy catalogs at Christmas time. Like anything was a possibility. Like there was no one there to tell you that your moustache was too bushy, or your handlebars too long.

Yet when it came down to it, only Ginger, Myself, and one other fellow actually had the nerve to actually come to work with a stache’.

Jon... dont let him baby sit your kids

A stache is an odd thing. I was remarking to Jerm before I left today, how odd it was that there was an outside chance that I would get reprimanded for my fantastic fantastic fu-man-chu. “How” he asked. I questioned whether it could be considered a distraction to others. Granted it is hard to distract a group of people talking in wrestler voices and publicly fouling the air to the point that entire cubical banks need to be evacuated, but the thought was still in my head.

How odd it is that two people could have the same attribute, yet on one person it seems perfectly normal, and on another it could be seen as a joke, or as mocking of the mustached community and get them dragged behind the stache comb shop and beaten mercilessly by a pack of Tom Selleck looking fellows. I have been pondering this all afternoon the way religious folk ponder the afterlife, and how twickers ponder how the DVD player works before they take it apart.

I have gotten several strange looks since I got to work. Jon (“other fellow” pictures above) said that he stopped to get a sub, and the dudes seemed to respect him more, and the chicks seemed to think that he was dangerous, but not in a “sexy bad boy” way, but in a “Silence of the Lambs “Buffalo Bill” kinda way. A moustache brings out a lot of different emotions, to say the least. But oddly enough, the people that seem to actually take offense to this;

are the guys who have not only a stache themselves, but have the SAME Hulk Hogan-ish foo that I do. Maybe they think that I am mocking them. Maybe I didn’t pay in my membership dues before joining the BMF club…

Not that I really care. Their tired old foo’s haven’t helped anyone in a long time. Mine on the other hand is a shining beacon of peace.

Just a few short hours ago, two gentlemen got into a rather heated discussion during a meeting. After 30 days of working 12+ hours on night shift with the same guys night after night, a simple disagreement has the possibility of escalating into a full blown thunder dome type event if not properly diffused. The difference of opinion turned into some loud voices, which turned into a couple of very angry and frustrated faces. At which point someone broke with awkward tense silence with “Will everyone please just calm down and look at Dan’s face…”

And disaster was averted, if but for one more night.

He Screamed "Caulk"!!!

I had a joke book when I was a child. I think that I got it at the “Book Fair” that would come to our school each year. That travelling group of literary carnies sure did make for a good week. Everyone loved the book fair. This is where all the kids stocked up on all of their “Garfield Treasures” and “Guinness Book of Records” needs. Along with posters of all of the fancy sports cars that we would never own as adults. Wouldn’t it have been great if they would have had posters of Civics and minivans? “OOhhhhh mom…. I need $5 to get a poster of the raddest Caravan that I have ever seen…. Good times. Take a look, it’s in a book… A Reading Rainbow!


So the possible “Book Fair” joke book had a joke in it that read, and I quote “How do you know if there is an elephant sleeping under your bed”… Stay tuned for the shocking answer, after these words…

My new joke is “how do you know if you have a hole in your air mattress?” answer – You wake put by your nose being slowly crushed by the weight of your gigantic head pushing it into the hard wood floor. Maybe that is a little too inside to gain any ground in the joke book world, but it you have a huge head like me, go ahead and use it.

I have no real aspirations that I will ever get out of the current plant that I work at, but my contract is never extended for more than a month or so at a time. So I am basically a lifetime temporary resident of Rochester. I do actually like it that way, for some reason it makes me feel closer to home when I don’t have a lot of long term type things in the town where I work – furniture, tooth brushes, ect.

This is an actual photo of my apartment from Boston where I lived for about a year. The only two things that I owned in this picture were the TV and the book, and I threw out the book.

I moved out in about 6 minutes

So this leads me to sleep on an air mattress. This was the source of very un-restful sleep for the past week or so. Not because it was uncomfortable, but because I was stressed that I was going to wake up on the equivalent of a dry slip and slide after about an hour.

When someone asks “do you like your bed hard or soft”, no one ever responds with “I like it as hard as I can get it right when I get in it, then I like it to get progressively softer for about 15 mins, and then get really REALLY hard until it wakes me up". That would be a hard setting to put on a sleep number…

My bed had a blowout. I am not sure what caused it, as I have lost a few pounds as of late, so I don’t think that my girth was the cause. Maybe it was not designed to be inflated and slept upon night after night for over a year. Whatever the cause, I had a hole about a ¼ of an inch long (giggidy).

Being the modern day MacGyver, and in dire need for a place to sleep after being up all night, I ran to the garage, and got the tube repair kit off my bike. Worked like a charm! I slept like a baby that was very proud at his resourcefulness.

The next night… not so much… I woke up in the morning (well my morning, about 1:30 pm) with my elbows and ass bone pressed against the floor.

That night at work I “borrowed” about a half a roll of Nuke grade duct tape. You know the douchey saying about fixing anything with duct tape… Whoever said that has not slept on a flat air mattress with me.

I taped over the patched hole, and then I laid me down to sleep. After less than a minute, I knew that I was leaking (so to speak). I pulled my sheet off, and found that there was another similar hole about 2’ away from the first one. I tried the duct tape but it did not work at all without the patch underneath, and I was out of patches.

When fixing something in duct tape, the rule is, if the issue isn’t solved, add more duct tape. I had the original patch area with about a 6” square of tape, and the new patch area with about 8” square of tape, then 10” then 14”…. Then I filled the bed up and laid in it, trying to think of my next course of action.

Mind you it was one of the first warm days of the year, it was about 8 in the morning after getting up the previous day at 2:00pm and working a 12hour shift overnight. So my disposition was somewhere south of cheery. The bed deflating beneath me was like the Jeopardy music playing. It seemed like I needed to come up with a solution before I hit the floor. Then it hit me… Caulk!

It’s not unusual to hear me happily yell CAULK! from my bedroom, but it was odd that I immediately ran out of the room afterword.

Looking back, this not my best idea. At the time, I was thinking that the chalk would fill the voids in the tape, and form a seal 10 times tighter than anything that Billy Maze ever sold.

So I pulled back one corner of the tape square, and squeezed an ample about of caulk underneath it (giggidy)… That didn’t work. So Itried to smooth it out with my finger, and like I do with all messy construction supplies, I immediately had it all over my clothes, hair, teeth… This is when I realized that I had made a huge error in judgment. It was kinda like that episode of Friends where Ross tries to use lotion and powder to get his leather paints back on.

(Now just a back story to give the rest of this one some reference. Charlie the dog has a habit of running at you as fast as he can when he first sees you. It is a combination of excitement, retard strength, and very poor depth perception. But when he first sees you, you need to make sure that you don’t have your feet planted, or he will blow your knee out with a Lawrence Taylor type chop block)

So there I am, on my hands and knees on my deflated air mattress, hot, extremely tired and frustrated, covered head to toe in caulking, and angry at myself for the chain of events in my life that have lead me to this exact moment in time.

I hear Shaun yell “Charlie!” just as my door is pushed open. I turn my head to have Chuck, while running as fast as a large hound dog can get running in 15’, drive his dog nose into my eye socket (while my eye was open) with all of his weight behind it.

There was a flurry of sensations. The wicked odd feeling of his cool slobbery nose touching my bare eyeball, coupled with blinding white agony, coupled with fear that my eyeball may have ruptured, coupled with palpable rage and the question of how long it would take Dale to notice of Charlie just wasn’t there when he woke up.

While he was there, I used his ears like shop towels and cleaned the chalking off my hands. Then pulled the duct tape off the bed and stuck it to the back of his neck, and then worked the hole in the mattress into a large opening, shoved Chuck inside, slung it over my shoulder like a sack of taters, and carried the whole works out to the curb. Came back in, crawled in bed with Dale, and tried to sleep it off…

Answer: You your nose is touching the ceiling.

Face it, you are never going to be president.

During break tonight (as I would never waste time during scheduled working hours), I took a look at the stats for the ole site.




Which by the way, I am going to start referring to as OOAFM. Not as in saying the letters out like NCAA, but as a word. “OOAFM”



“Hey, did you read that account of the events in Libya last night on OOAFM? It was spot on. Spot on I say!”



Earlier tonight I Googled “how to increase your blog traffic”. I would have entered it into yahoo answers, but in the 3 days that I have known that this site existed, I have become disliked by the community as a whole. Not that it really affects me that a group of people who get serious medical advice from complete strangers don’t care for my specific type of witty banter, but I am afraid that I would not get reliable advice back from them.”



The advice that I received from the Goog’s was very helpful.



- Find a topic that you are passionate about (I’m pretty passionate about OOAFM. As passionate as the next guy I guess)

- Stay on topic.. don’t jump around (ut oh)

- Don’t ramble (wait what? isn’t that the point? I don’t have anything earthshattering to say, rambling and hoping that something profound poops out is really all I got)

- Be positive (I now hate this advice site, and started looking for a place to leave comments)

- Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have that many followers. Some sites have 1million viewers, some only have a few 1000. (a few thousand???)



On average, 275 people read this rubbish regularly. (There was a sign in the bat cave that said “Do not throw rubbish down the toilet”, so tonight’s activity is to say “rubbish” whenever possible.)



I was pretty happy with 275. I only have like 180 Facebook friends I think, and in real life, there are only like maybe five or six people that can stand me for prolonged periods of time.



So I thought my number was a pretty good. Especially since when I post something new, even if it is rubbish, you all read it within about 4 hours.



So I’m going to lay it right out on the table. If I have any hope of becoming a multimillionaire from my quips on everyday living, I need you all to stop reading this alone in the dark, where no one can see you. When I haven’t written anything in a while, people will ask me why I stopped writing stuff, but they ask me like someone would ask a stranger to borrow preparation-H. “ummm. Hey…. Shhh… um.. when.. when are you going to post something on your blog again.. shhhhhh”.



I don’t know if it is because it is gay to read a blog? Or if maybe you are afraid that someday you will be sitting on the witness stand under cross examination and the attorney will try to discredit your testimony based on your patronage of OOAFM.



“Mr. Smith… do you know what this is?”






-“Yes”






“Can you describe what this is”






-“Uh…. Yes, it is a screenshot of the home page of OOAFM”






“And is that your name underneath the list of followers?”






-“Yes”






“No further questions you honor”



Or could it be that you think that someday during the vetting process when you are running for President, that it will come up, and your party will distance themselves from you and you will be forced to become a lobbyist for the maple syrup industry?



Whatever it may be that keeps you from officially following me, or commenting , or even clicking the little thing that says that you thought this was funny (or stupid for that matter) Im ok with that I guess, but can I humbly ask you that you just forward one of your favorite posts to one of your friends that has a slightly off sense of humor like you and I?



There is a fancy new button deal at the end of each post that will let you send it on ‘er way. If even half of those people think I that this is worth a peep on their iphones whilst taking a deuce, well it won’t be long before I can quit the normal 18:00-06:00 grind and sit back and judge others full time.



And let’s be honest, that’s what we all want for me isn’t it?



Share OOAFM with the world you piece of rubbish.

The time spent not being "The Guy"

A man once told me (I don’t know if he was wise, but he seemed to have his shit together), that the life of a Nuclear Reactor Operator is 99% boredom, and 1% shear blinding terror.




That is very analogous of the work schedule during a refueling outage. (Do you like the use of that word? I am trying to expand my vocabulary and have started using fancy words in everyday situations, much to the dismay of those around me). What I mean by that is; during an outage, you are either the one that everyone is waiting for, or you are waiting for someone else.



When it is your turn to get your work done, everyone who has ever even driven by the plant wants an update on your work, and wants to know why it isn’t being done faster. And somehow overnight, those around you become subject matter experts on what you are doing, and know a better way to do it.



Hi, this is Alice from the cafeteria, can you please tell me when you are going to be done with cable terminations?






We should be done by 23:00






That’s UNSAT, you need to be done in 6 minutes.






What? We are way ahead of schedule, and you charge me a different price for the same lunch nearly every day, why are you even asking me?






Who do you report to?



This is what one of my past co-workers used to call “being the guy”. Whenever your work came up on the schedule, you were “the guy”. No one wants to be “the guy”.



The flip side of this is when your project is not affecting anyone else. When this happens, you could walk around with a vuvuzela and a tambourine, and you would not be able to get anyone’s attention.



Hey Alice, I think that my grilled cheese sandwich is on fire, can you turn around and flip it






What part of “you aren’t on critical path, go fuck yourself” didn’t you understand?




What amplifies these two extremes is the speed at which you transition from one to another. There is no spring or fall. It’s like driving a sports car 140mph right into a brick wall. One day the plant manager knows your name and where you went to school, the next day your own supervisor is too busy to hold the door open for you



I luckily find little ways to entertain myself during the down time. Don’t get me wrong, I do all of the things I should do during my down time. I get all of my reports for what I have done so far in order and I get everything that I need for our next window ready. I even make half assed attempts at helping others



Hey it looks like you need a hand with that?



Yeah that would be great



Oh crap, hold on a second, my boss is calling, I will be back in like 2 hours…



But your phone didn’t ring…..



But in between all of stuff I should be doing, I also find little things to do around the plant to pass the time and break up the monotony, so I don’t snap out of stress or cabin fever. Here are the top ten things that have gotten me through the past 2 ½ weeks



1. Noticing when others have not locked their computers when they leave, and changing their wallpaper to glamor shots of Adam Lambert

2. Paging people to urgently call random extensions (This was Jerm’s idea)

3. Walking around extremely wide eyed, like you have just witnessed something life changing, not acknowledging anyone around you

4. Standing facing into the corner of the elevator in containment

5. Leaving sticky notes on peoples computer screens that say “Call extension 357 !!! Extremely Urgent!!!” (our extensions are 4 digits)

6. Making truck noises when I walk, especially squealing tire noises around corners

7. Emailing my own email, then responding back to myself over and over talking about a trivial issue, then forwarding the chain to someone to get their input

8. Leaving sketches and calculations on the white board in my office that have glaring mathematical errors

9. Standing in my door way, with my door cracked just an inch or two, and if anyone notices me, closing it door immediately

10. Going to ask the other night shift engineers questions by going into one of the cubicles adjacent to theirs and popping my head over the wall, then leaving and coming back 5 mins later and doing the same thing from the cubical on the opposite side… Repeat back and forth as needed to get them to acknowledge what I am doing.



Luckily there are only two weeks left…

My Name is Robert Paulson

So the Nuke plant that I am working at has just started (about a week ago) it’s refueling outage. So my gingerific officemate and I take turns manning our office around the clock. Jerm and I Native American leg wrestled, I lost, and got stuck with night shift.




For those of you that have not had the pleasure of being involved with a nuclear refueling outage, you really don’t know what you are missing. This little industrial marvel is when the plants flips off the light switch, throws all of the spent fuel into Niagara Falls, or jams it down “Ol Faithful, or whatever they do with it (this is not my department), and replaces or rearranges the remaining fuel. Also, they fix or update old equipment, or just for practice take out equipment that is perfectly ok and put it back in. All the while, Greenpeace gets to sit on the boarder of the site and burn fistfuls of the plants money until it comes back online.

As such, the plant has a strong desire to get everything done as fast and safely as possible. This creates a great influx of new workers. As Jerm overheard one guy say “Every fucking carnie north of the mason Dixon line is going to be here next week”. That is funny on its own, but no one north of the mason Dixon line uses that expression, so the irony gives it that little bit of extra fun.





Anyway…



So I have been drawing a lot of comparisons between this outage and the movie Fight Club. And what kind of a guy would I be if I didn’t share these thoughts with you. A bad one… I would be a bad kind of guy….



First off, there is the obvious sleep deprivation aspect. I am the type of guy that doesn’t feel right if I don’t get 14-16 hours of sleep a night. I’m not one of those hippy types that sleeps in until noon, I go to bed roughly the same time as the average 4th grader. So switching over to night shift was not an easy transformation for me.

The first night, I did ok until about 2:30, then the guys on my crew had to wheel me around on a hand cart like Hannibal Lector. The second night I made it strong all shift. Then I stopped at Wegman’s on the way home to get lots of meats and cheeses. I was on the phone with Kali as I shopped, tooting my own horn about how awake I was, how the carnies have taken to me and want me to be one of them, and other such ramblings. As I rounded the corner to the deli, it was like I got shot with a tranquilizer dart. I dropped my phone and ran for the door like Jim Carrie running from the tribesmen in Ace Venture 2, with my arms hanging limp by my sides… I got in the car, and drove immediately into a light pole, and slept for 5 hours.



I have somewhat adjusted. But with our opposite schedules, when Kali and I talk on the phone, nine times out of ten I am in some state of unconsciousness. I fear that she suspects that I have developed a drug problem. That and I am never quite sure what day it is. It is very odd when you come into work on one day, and it changes to the next day sometime during the time you are hiding from your superiors.



The other glaring similarity to Fight Club is the….



Wait… if you haven’t seen Fight Club, stop reading this, go write “I am not a real man” 100 times, and watch it… Don’t keep reading until you do, as I am about to ruin it for you.



OK you are back.. Good wasn’t it…

The other similarity is that Jerm and I are never together in the outside world at the same time. It’s like Jerm is Ed Norton, and I am Tyler Durdan (I’m actually more like Robert Paulson but this is my story, I can be who I want), and Dale and Shaun are Marla. Jerm goes to work, I come home an hour later, then in the afternoon I leave and Jerm shows back up. They never get to see us together, and I am beginning to fear that I am a figment of his imagination.



You would think that I would be better looking if I was an image that he conjured up in his head right? So I am pretty sure that I still exist, but who knows.



But just to complete the whole Fight Club thing, I am going to march into my bosses office later this morning, and kick the shit out of myself and demand a raise.



I have to wait until Jerm gets here first so I have a way to get home….