Everyday I get depressed driving home when I see those guys dressed as the Statue of Liberty waving to cars outside of Liberty Tax Services (of which there are multiple branches around town.) First of all the Statue of Liberty gowns and foam crown look stupid - particularly with the layers of winter clothes these people wear underneath. Then of course it is the complete lack of enthusiasm with which they wave to all the cars passing by. I've driven by several of these Liberty Tax Services and every one of these "Statue of Liberty's" looks like they've hit rock bottom. It's just so damn depressing and of course the last thing it makes me think about is "hey, I should go to Liberty Tax Services to do my taxes."

Our company just moved into a new facility that has two single stall private bathrooms. Our sole female employee took it upon herself to go out and buy a "WOMENS" sign for one of the bathrooms. This of course means that the remaining 7-10 men have to share the other one. I personally don't see why she needs to have her own bathroom. I complained to some of the other guys however they don't see it as a problem. They refer to her need for privacy as "women's stuff." Am I in the wrong here? I've seen in other small companies where the bathrooms are unisex and there's no issue. If there were 2 or 3 women I could understand but one woman just doesn't make sense to me.

I've decided to start sneaking into the "WOMENS" bathroom to leave the toilet seat up.

I was at the new Circuit City in Brookfield today getting a satellite radio installed in a friend's vehicle. At the back door, which was locked, was a sign that said "Push button for service". Beneath it was written, presumably, the same thing in braille. The only catch was beneath the braille were several arrows pointing to the button on an adjacent wall and beneath the arrows was an alarm system keypad. So basically on the odd chance that a blind person should actually find and read the braille sign, they'll start pushing the alarm system keypad because there was no braille message indicating for them to follow the arrows which of course could not be seen by them anyway. It could be an awkward situation if it actually happened but what are those chances? I've never seen a blind person feeling around randomly on walls looking for braille signs. Have you?

I think I was in high school when the term mid-life crisis first entered our lexicon. At the time it happened to men around 40. With my generation I find the crisis seems to be happening a lot sooner. For me it's 32 and that seems to be close to the same for a fair number of my friends. It doesn't help that here I am at work, another 5 a.m. start, reading the travel journal of a friend of a friend who with his wife decided to quit their jobs and travel around the world for a year. What a pure, amazing adventure. I'm both envious and depressed not just for the two on the trip but it seems every person they've met on their journey leads a life of true purpose and fulfillment. I feel like I lead a life of grinding it out at my job and the prospect of doing this for another 30 years scares the hell out of me. I don't know where I went wrong. I remember I was a freshman in college and my dad told I better chose a major soon. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was working at Summerfest at the time and I asked a coworker what he was majoring in and he said film. It was like an epiphany, who doesn't like movies? So I too majored in film, graduated from Wisconsin, worked construction for 6 months to save up some money and then set off for L.A. For five years I worked at Universal Studios in script development. The movie business is pretty much everything everyone thinks it is. Then, after five years, I moved back to Milwaukee in search of what I thought was a "stable" life. There are times now when I wonder what I was thinking. Now I have that stable life and I'm in the market for my first home but I can't help but think... is this it? I have a longing for something unstable. Reading this travelogue doesn't help things but then I'm tempered by memories of my extended period of unemployment. Something like that will put a scare into anyone. I hope someday to be the guy in the travelogue, if not the traveller, then the guy they met up with who seemed to have life all figured out... but for now, it's just another 5 a.m. start at the office. Only 10 hours to go, then a trip to the library to return some movies, then (if I have the guts) a three mile run in the freezing cold, maybe I'll watch some of the Olympics, and then to bed alongside my beautiful wife. One more day of my life checked off the calendar.

Tonight I went out for my regular run and I passed the house of the guy who just doesn't get it. It's bad enough when you leave your Christmas lights up this far into February. It's even worse when you actually illuminate them with pride. C'mon, I love Christmas like the next guy but it's freaking February 20th. You're two holidays past due. Show some self-respect and retire those lights for the season. And the other guy on Cleveland Ave. who has had the POD stuck in his driveway for what seems like a lifetime, take that gigantic wreath down. It's freaking February 20th. This goon is single-handedly reducing property values in my area.

I don't really understand some of these Olympic sports. Wouldn't it make sense to pick sports that regular people actually do. How many bobsled tracks are there really in the world? And frankly, don't you think that 2-Man Bobsled, 4-Man Bobsled and Luge are enough. Do we really need a Skeleton competition. It's just Luge backwards. I remember a couple Olympics ago they had a sport that was some type of Artistic Skiing. Basically the competitors would ski around in a flat area and dance on their skiis using their poles to spin and plant off of. It was really stupid if you think about it. I don't think it lasted two Olympics. I wonder what the Gold medal winner says when people come over. "Wow that's an Olympic Gold Medal. What did you win it for?" "Artistic skiing." "oh."

I have to be honest, I'm starting to get a little tired how every time a black person does anything of even the minutest significance, it is blown up into this gigantic accomplishment for black people. Of course I'm talking about Shani Davis winning the Gold in speed skating. It's a great accomplishment as he should be proud of his win, but should he be made out to be the poster child for black achievement? Seriously, it's not 1966 anymore. Our local news went to a skating rink to interview black people inquiring if they were inspired to skate more now that a black person has won the Gold. It was the same thing a short while back when there were two black starting quarterbacks in an NFL playoff game. Wow, first time ever, two black starting quarterbacks... and this is the NFL which is dominated by black athletes. Then there was all the hype a couple years ago when Halle Berry and Denzel Washington both won Oscars. Frankly I found her speech embarrassing. Keep in mind she's only half-black but she played herself off as the champion for all black women. Really, I'd like to think she won the Oscar for great acting and not as a consolation prize. If I were black, I would start to get annoyed with all this condescending back patting that the media does for them whenever one achieves a level of success.

I don't think Snowboard Half-pipe should be an Olympic event and this is basically due to one reason - it's the only judged sport in all the Olympics in which the contender makes it up as they go along. Gymastics, figure skating, synchronized swimming, diving, ice dancing... in all these sports the competitors submit their programs and then are judged on how well they perform them. In ice skating you always here the announcer say... "and here comes that triple toe loop." In Snowboard Half-pipe there's none of that, they only comment after the fact. It just comes across to me as a real lazy way to compete.

How long has gas been over $2/gallon? Two years? I find it annoying that I still drive by gas stations that seem to have run out of 2's and instead flip a 5 upside down. How hard it is to order some more 2's? It's not like the price is going to drop below $2 any time soon. I also find it interesting that the upside down 5 is always with the higher priced premium gas.

Yesterday I went to a gas station that had the 3 gas grades listed on the pump in reverse order with the premium on the left, mid-grade in the middle and regular on the right. I had to think this was deliberate for people who aren't paying attention and are used to the standard low, mid, high left to right order. I keep telling myself I shouldn't go there anymore in protest but I'm too lazy to do that.

At work I listen to Yahoo's Launch Cast radio on my computer. After trying out a couple different stations, the only one I find to be consistently enjoyable is "Big Hits of the 80's". For over a year I've been listening to this station but lately I've been noticing a problem. It started out with "Gonna Make You Sweat" by C&C Music Factory and today it hit rock bottom with the forgettable one hit wonder band, Color Me Badd. C'mon, it's supposed to be Big Hits of the 80's, not crap songs from the 90's. Does anyone listen to Color Me Badd and think, "wow, those were some great days." Quite frankly, it's amazing to me how much music has taken a nosedive since 1989... and I don't think I'm alone on this. Maybe it's a generational thing but when I was growing up, top 40 music could be enjoyed by most everyone. Sure the kids nowadays will laugh at a guy like Huey Lewis but in the 80's he was universally listenable. I can't stand most of the radio play songs of today - and this is from just about every genre. In fact in the search to find new, great music I've turned to sampling tracks on amazon.com for hours at a time because I can no longer find this stuff on the radio. Whatever happened to all the great British bands? There are a couple that stand out now but not the total dominance as there was twenty years ago. I guess I'm just a guy who's getting older. It's just like every generation before me, "we had it better". Those who grew up in the 80's think the music was better than what is out there today, those who grew up in the 70's think that music was better than what was played in the 80's, those who grew up in the 60's think that music was superior to the music of the 70's and those who grew up in the 50's think the music of the 60's was hippie crap. As my grandpa told my dad about Bob Dylan, "he's just an angry young man."

I just read a story where the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, was touring a city facility when he noticed that an employee had a solitaire game on his computer screen. Bloomberg had the employee fired citing that only work should be done at work. No warning or anything, just fired. What an asshole. I'm 10 years out of college and from my observations, workaholics are ruining this country. Guys like Bloomberg are part of the problem, not the solution. I think back to the glory days of the 80's when workers had rights. Now the motto is grind, grind, grind or you'll be out of a job. I think back to that movie, 9 to 5. As I see it, they had nothing to complain about. They only worked 8 hours a day - how bad could it be. I put in 10 hours a day and will likely be working the next three saturdays. Why? Because my workaholic bosses work 12 hours a day and work seven days a week so to them my measely 50 hours a week is barely cutting it. I always love it how someone always wants to blame TV, music and movies for the problems of youth. The real problem is simple: two parents working ungodly hours in high stress environments where they could be fired at any time for any reason. There is no more loyalty to the employee. My boss thinks I'm from a lazy generation but I when I grew up in the 80's every parent in my neighborhood was home from work by 5:30 p.m. and every family ate dinner together. I'm sure it was the same in the 50's and 60's also. People took a job at 22 years old and worked there until 65 and when they retired, the company threw them a big party. I can't imagine going another 33 years at this pace. Anyone can be successful if success is measured by making a lot of money and working 70 hours a week. To me that isn't success, to me that is the mark of a complete failure. The catch is those people are bringing the rest of us down because we are expected to move up to their level of life-wasting.