Every year on inventory day the IT department gets tapped to go pull inventory tags right about the time the systems start collapsing around our ears and people start running around the building looking for us as if their rumpuses were on fire. So, this year, Destro, the boss-monkey, told us during our weekly IT meeting, that he was going to bat for us and making sure we could fulfill our support duties and not be put on tag-pull or any other inventory specific task.

Yesterday inventory duty sheets were handed out. The entire IT department save for Destro himelf, is on tag-pulling and auditing duty. Interesting.

So, BB, Zippy and myself go to Destro's office and inquire, politely, what went wrong. His direct response, "Oh, sorry. I didn't have time to go ask the scheduler."

Again, interesting. Knowing the schedule guy for this year's inventory, and knowing that the discussion would have been two sentences long, and also knowing that Destro spent at least four hours in Paper-boy's office discussing how awesome their new blackberry devices are over the past week, I felt compelled to inquire further. BB and Zippy, sensing my politeness melting, pulled me out of Destro's office and back to my cube to cry in solitude.

What really bothers me about it is all it would have taken is Destro saying to the schedule guy, "I'd like to keep my boys on support duty instead of having them work on inventory." And the schedule guy would have said, "right, good." And that would have been that.

Ah well, I sense a three hour lunch coming on.

New Year's is almost here. OK, it's a few days off, but I'll be busy until then for the most part. So, here's my list of dos and don'ts.

Veggies - I have made the rule that vegetables, raw vegetables, will be kept in the house at all times and will be eaten, either raw and washed or prepared and cooked with the meal, with every evening meal. If we miss more than two days during the course of the week, we lose the trip to the local Mongolian place that weekend. It's the only punishment that my wife and I would both take seriously.

Busy Time - Mrs. NFB made the rule that teh seXX0rz will happen twice a week come hell or highwater. Being married for a while now, we've fallen into a rut of once a week and while that's still fun, we'd both prefer to get busy more often. However, being exceedingly stupid people, we've managed to make it a scheduling nightmare, and thus we've decided that we'll drop the pretenses, toss each other over whatever furniture is available every once in a while, and get on with it. We still each hold individual veto power over any moment where it wouldn't be appropriate, but standards of appropriateness will be lowered. Greatly. If we fail in making it at least twice in any given week, we lose the trip to the local Mongolian place. Methinks this will lead to many Saturday morning nookie sessions followed by Mongolian food. Both on the same day can't be all that bad.

We have already put that item into practice in the past week. And busted out old habits we haven't had since our first year of marriage. May the pets learn how to hide their eyes.

Personal - buying - stop stupid buying/spending. Already done over the past month and a half. In fact, I haven't spent money on anything but food and gifts for others since about October or so. Though some of the gifts for others may qualify for stupid. Mrs. NFB's iPod for example. She loves it, yet uses it infrequently at best and is scared to leave the house with it.

Personal - money strategy - tied in with the above, beating down those credit cards. I should be surprisingly close to dropping all but one of them after New Years. Quite possibly closer than I've been since being marriaged. Our combined debt should also drop to near non-existence in the next few months except for the mortgage, though we're further ahead on that than I would have thought possible at this time last year.

Personal - music - to celebrate my debt-removal, I will do something completely insane and, hopefully by the end of the year, buy a guitar that I can actually pay for outright instead of sticking it on a credit card. It's an insane hope, but one that I'd love to be able to achieve. If not, I'm willing to let it slide to the next fiscal year. Paid up-front, or not at all.

Personal - music 2 - In the past few weeks I've started practicing my musical instruments again, piano and guitar mostly. I wish to continue that trend of actual practice and learning new material/techniques instead of just playing the same old songs over and over again like I had for the past fifteen years or so. In that vein, I'd like to find a music instructor somewhere in this city that doesn't suck donkey balls. If not, perhaps the online music course will open up that doesn't depress me in the coming year. So long as I find a way to keep learning in the next year, I'll be happy.

Baby steps. Baby steps.

And there's the plan for me.

Dad's plans for himself seem a little more abrupt and over-the-top. Sounds like he's just a few weeks away from hitting the full-stop button again and going for divorce number two. I'm not shocked by this revelation, which he told me yesterday. What I am shocked by is how long this has all taken to play out from the moment the first inkling hit my wife and myself that there was trouble in paradise.

The problem with that is, wife #2 won't roll over and play dead like mom did. No, wife #2 will make sure she gets her half and then some. I wonder if she can figure out a way to claim child support for her daughter, who's in her early thirties, but considering leaving her husband. It's a long story, but suffice it to say she's a difficult princess and her husband is a teacher, which means he makes no money at all. But she likes to spend money. A lot.

So, all that said, it looks like dad's wife's daughter may leave her husband and move in with dad and wife #2 with her own daughter, who's about two-three years old. And dad may lose his mind if this comes to pass and kill the lot of them.

Basically, I'm bringing the video camera to the party at his house this Saturday because it sounds like that's where all of this is going to start going down. At least we'll have some good food to eat while we watch the brawl.

So, if I don't make it back before then, happy New Year.