Author Archives: Robert

Parker cat is warm and cozy on my lap.  Thanks to XM, Andy Williams is Most Wonderful Time of the Year-ing in the background.  Ray is on the other computer checking his email.  It’s dark outside.  Very, very dark.  We are at the zenith of the winter blues and thankfully, the solstice has come and gone.  The days will be getting longer now.

Thank God.

This is the time of year that I have to let go of the fact there is nothing I can do to make the days get longer or warmer–unless I move to the southern region of the planet.  The worst part of it all is during the daytime, I’m stuffed in a room with two (sometimes three) other people and eight banks of fluorescent lights on full blast (Actually, it’s seven banks.  The one over my head had the bulbs removed but it does no good because the other evil fluorescent lights spread their fake icky light everywhere).  The guy who sits next to me by the window closes the blinds and the other guy next to the other window has his blinds positioned so that the light just falls on his work area. 

Why, why, WHY do people do that?!?  I will never understand why they put people next to windows when they just close the blinds and shut out all the light.  Also, the idea of multiple people in one room with no windows is totally ridiculous unless you’re in a call center or part of some big noisy bullpen. 

The other fun thing on top of the lighting situation is the expectation for me to not make any noise whatsoever.  I got “talked to” when I first started here for having a conference call at my desk.  It seems my “noise” was disturbing.  It was suggested that I find an empty office to make those types of calls.  Those types of calls?  I have to talk to people all the time!  Why can’t they just put me in the empty office? 

I don’t mean to go off on a tangent,  we’ve had a particularly bad day month at work and today–Christmas friggin eve–was the end all be all whopper.  READ: Aside from a major thing that I don’t need to go into detail about, ’cause I had nothing to do with it, my cubemate was cursing under his breath, throwing things around on his desk, pounding the hell out of his keyboard, and sighing loudly a lot.  Meanwhile, I had to sit in florescent light hell trying to be as quiet as a church mouse. 

This just sums up the holidays for me.  Dead relatives, bad mojo in the office, driving to work in the dark, leaving work in the dark and all sorts of other crap that is taking this blog post into the downward spiral of holiday buzzkill.   I guess should be happy because it’s Christmas or the holidays or whatever PC term we’re calling it now.  Or should I?  We’re at war.  The economy is tanking.  The polar caps are melting.  All I see on the news about the holiday season is how the retail market is suffering because people aren’t buying enough.  That last sentence is the clincher.  Gift giving shouldn’t put you in debt!  I especially don’t want people to give me things because then I feel obligated to give in return and unless you can afford a Nikon D80 SLR 10.2 Megapixel Digital Camera to replace my other camera that died, I don’t want anything.  I certainly don’t need anything.

All I really want for Christmas is:

• World peace–really
• My mom’s knee to heal
• Ray’s mom to stay as healthy as a 91 year old woman can stay
• My dad’s cancers to go away
• A competent president
• Global unwarming
• A Britney free 2008 (this includes her up and coming trashy little sister)
• R&D funds for alternative energy
• Better guitar skills
• Success on my ginormous project at work
• Not being freaked out by my ginormous project at work
• Arizona to observe DST
• Improvement on my writing skills
• Success at the gym (Oh please Santa!)

This blog post is not very cheery.  It’s been a challenging few weeks and I’m mad at myself for neglecting my blog.  I apologize to the readers for the icky vibe but I’m still going to post this entry.  Sometimes you just have to keep moving forward even if it’s through some of the muck. 

Tell you what, I’ll push through the muck and you walk behind me through the clean path until we get to a better place.  How’s that sound?  I promise we’ll get there.  I know because Mr. Optimist is much bigger and stronger than Mr. Pessimist.

Mr. Pessimist just has to go now.

Merry friggin’ Christmas…bah humbug.

My Grandfather was Robert Cobban.  My uncle is, was, is Robert Cobban as well.  I too am Robert Cobban.  We all went by Bob.  I’m not sure if my grandfather did.  He died many, many years before I was born. 

My Uncle Bob quietly slipped away last night.  Almost left without anyone seeing.   Such a polite man. 

To be honest, I am physically too tired with the trainer and mentally too tired with other things to write some profound words for my uncle.  I’m sure he’ll (and you’ll) understand that my blog posts are kind of on hold for the holidays.  I will write about Uncle Bob in the future.  For now I will share this post from when we first found out he was ill. 

Arrangements.

Last night I had my first session with my new–new personal trainer.  I had one session a while back with a little Irish guy at the fru fru more expen$ive gym in Sierra Vista but found a cheaper gym closer to home and decided to try that.  The only drawback was the trainer they offered was a woman.  No offense to women but I really wanted a fit guy to help in my fitness goals.  The desire to have a fit, totally hot, male trainer was soon outweighed by the fact that this gym was closer, cheaper and the realization that it didn’t really matter who was training me as long as they know what they were doing. 

She knew what she was doing.

Boy howdy she did.  I worked muscles I didn’t know I had.  I liked her a lot too.  She has great energy.  The gym is kind of old and run down but that seemed to attract a more serious clientele of hot buff guys.  Now I get why some of my friends only like to work out in a gym.  Seeing all these guys is total eye candy plus inspiration to do that extra rep.  They all like Suzie too.  That’s my trainer.  There was this one big guy working out who had that gruff don’t-look-him-in-the-eye thing going on.  He had some of his stuff on a bench we needed to use.  The minute he saw us standing by the bench, he ran over apologizing while he collected his goods.  He was really nice and chatty to me.  I think I did about five sets of a thousand reps. 

I’m going to make an effort to go three times a week.  I say make an effort because I have so many other things going on for the next three months including a play in late March.  I play three characters.  Oy! 

I slept like a rock and feel like I totally worked out.  I’m putting my faith in Suzie.  I really think know she’s going to be able to help me out.

Just got back from Lost Angeles.  Ray and I went to see our moms again.  The worst part about going out there is the nine hour drive.  Normally, we stay in Phoenix over night on the way out.  This time Ray had to get to his mom’s early so I dropped him off at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport so he could fly ahead and I got a motel room in Quartsite. 

You haven’t lived until you spend a night in a motel in Quartsite.

My mother is doing surprisingly well since the knee operation and Ray’s mom is much better since the Thanksgiving episode.  All that aside, it was good to check in on them.  The only thing that really sucked was driving miles and miles (and miles) with eighteen wheelers being erratically driven by people on cell phones.  That freaks me out.  Then there’s the people who seem to forget that the left lane is for faster traffic–even if they are going the speed limit, they need to move the hell over.

I have been to both Chicago and LA three times this year, Philadelphia twice and San Francisco once.  I have to go to New Hampshire for a week in January and DC in February.  I think I’ll stay home for the holidays with my man and our kitty.  It may sound boring to some but for me, it’s a slice of heaven.

Homer had a lovely little holiday gathering at his home in Tucson on Saturday.  Ray and I made the 90 mile drive up there because, A) I really wanted to go to Homer’s party and B) There were several blogger peeps that I wanted to meet in person. 

(This is where I would have put a photo of everyone but for some reason my camera did not capture a very flattering picture so I opted out)

Before we went,  Ray and I made a huge batch of Thumbprint cookies to take with us.   It has become our holiday tradition to make these treats.  Ray calls them our “signature” cookies.  I call them easy to make and very tasty.

We had a really good time at the party.  Homer had little creative crafty stations set up around his house.  I started out with cookie decorating.  I figured that being a creative type; I would be churning out lavishly decorated edible works of art in no time.  I was wrong.  I was so focused on my shitty little cookie thinking I was doing a good job that I did not realize Sandy sitting across from me decorating a guitar shaped cookie with strings and frets.  My cookie ended up looking more like something Jackson Pollack would have done.  However, it was delicious.

After that, I moved on to the make-an-ornament-out-of-pipe-cleaners station.  I sat there working on a saguaro cactus shaped ornament thinking I was doing a great job when I looked up noticed Frank had made a three dimensional Santa stocking.  That’s when I decided to give up on the creative things and just chat with the other partygoers. 

I really liked meeting the other blogger peeps.  Brian was there.  He’s very, very sweet and much taller than I expected.  It’s nice to meet him in person because we email each other back and forth frequently.  Sandy was in town all the way from Australia.  I enjoyed chatting with him and hoped that his cookie decorating talent would somehow transfer to me via osmosis.  It didn’t.  Then there’s Frank, whom I have met once before.  Frank is younger than me and quite hunky.  At one point during the festivities, he picked me up in his arms for a photo.  I did not get a picture with my camera because I was, well, being picked up by a hunky man and cameras weren’t exactly running through my head at the moment and yes, I was giggling like a schoolgirl.

Ray and I also got to sit and chat with Victor and Scott, two very nice guys in Tucson that we hope to see more of.  Everyone was very pleasant.  We always have a nice time with Homer and his friends. 

Here are some photos of the party:

Sandy’s guitar cookie

Frank and his 3D pipecleaner ornament.

Kitty was not too happy about this.

The ever popular one armed blog pic.  Cobban, Frank & Sandy.

Ray and I figured since the festivities started at 6:00 PM and it was a Saturday, people would want to go out afterwards.  We planned on staying at a motel for the night.   By the time the party wrapped up, the let’s go out and party more vibe had diminished.  Ray and I thought we’d venture out on our own.  Yeah, right.  Once we got to the car, we both just decided that we are too old and too gay to chase the party vibe in Tucson at the Venture N.  It was chilly, we were tired and the thought of sleeping in my own bed outweighed the desire to be chatty and peripatetic in a tired old leather bar.

Homer hosted a holiday get together tonight.  I had a great time and plan to blog about it but but I can’t right now because we decided to drive home from Tucson instead of staying at a motel and I’m really tired and I had to reinstall the operating systems on both computers today so I don’t have anything (Picasa and Photoshop) to crop or edit photos yet…

 I will say one thing…You can tell a man by the company he keeps and Homer is a great guy.

 I’m going to bed.