GAH!

The last time that Tony Pierce linked to me, I had just completed a post on my itchy crotch. It was, some would say, not my finest blogging hour. Others, specifically those who love stories about itchy crotches, disagreed. However, I vowed to myself that I'd have better material if he linked to me again.

That being said, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Must....be....entertaining......

So, without further ado, I present a story that doesn't embarrass me, but rather one that my wife truly abhors. Sorry, wifey, but I must sacrifice someone on the blogging altar. It's your turn.

About 13 years ago, Back when I was working for Hewlett Packard in Mountain View, California, I took a work-related class in something called "Inspections". This was a god-awful course that essentially taught us programmers how to review each other's code. I can assure you all, one of the most boring things you can do with a computer is read someone else's code. Significantly more boring than that, however, is sitting through a class learning how to read someone else's code.

I sat in the back of the classroom with my other "cool" programmer friends, rebelling against this imposition on our work day. We quietly made snide comments about the boorish instructor.

There was this one woman though. Let's call her Kiss-Ass. She waltzed into class the first day and plopped down in the front row. She asked questions all the freakin' time and seemed geniunely interested in what was obviously a topic made to be ridiculed. During breaks, she draped herself across her desk and chit-chatted with the holier-than-thou instructor.

I HATED Kiss-Ass. My friends and I mocked her. We couldn't quite tell what her angle was, but her geniune appreciation for the topic was a source of constant irritation to me. I never spoke to her (I mean, I was a programmer and she was a female. Obviously the forces of physics denied such events), but I spent a fair amount of time that week talking about her behind her back.

Class ended and life went on.

At that time I was living with my girlfriend. One day my girlfriend suggested that we spend an evening with a coworker of hers and his girlfriend. She assured me that these were fun folk. So, when we met this couple, I was surprised to discover that the girlfriend in question was Kiss-Ass. I was now forced to socialize with the object of my mockery.

As it turns out, she was edgy and fun, and we had a lovely evening. That didn't stop me from reporting back to my coworkers who had been in class with me, but I didn't mock Kiss-Ass with the same ferocity. My heart wasn't in it any more.

Then, as fate would have it, it eventually came out that my girlfriend was fooling around with her coworker. This left Kiss-Ass and I as the jilted lovers. We commiserated together and soon became fast friends. We spent a lot of time together and found much in common.

One day, when discussing word games, we each expressed that we were excellent at Boggle. The gauntlet had been thrown down. We played for about an hour, counted up all the points, and discovered that it was a dead-heat. We tied. Well, if that's not some sort of omen, then I don't know what is.

We were friends for a long time, then lovers, then roommates, and now Kiss-Ass is my sweet little wife and mother to my darling daughter. She taught me how to bingo in Scrabble (making a play using all 7 tiles), she's in charge of all the power tools in the house, and she makes a mean seafood quiche. Now, I kiss Kiss-Ass's ass.

So, I don't quite know whether to thank the horrible Inspections instructor, or my girlfriend who dumped me. Either way, things turned out well for me.

On a final note, I did get rid of that itchy crotch. Everything is ship-shape down there now.