I wish cowboy boots were back in style.

Once upon a time, back in the early 80's, cowboy boots were in style. I alternately loved and hated this, for a few reasons. Let me start by telling you that I wore cowboy boots pretty much exclusively from 7th grade until I was a senior in high school. For four long years, I took a lot of shit for wearing them, because nobody else did. I didn't tell anyone why, but they probably figured it out anyway. It was my answer to being short.

The cowboy boots gave you an extra two or three inches in height, and once platform shoes went out of style in the late 70's the western footwear was my only option that didn't involve me slow dancing with my face buried in my girlfriend's boobs. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, however it did make hugging her mom pretty awkward.

When the Urban Cowboy movie hit in 1980, suddenly everyone was wearing cowboy boots, and my days of artificial heightening were over. I was back to being short on the relative scale, but on the bright side, at least nobody was making fun of me for wearing cowboy boots anymore.

You're probably asking yourself why I'm telling you this. The answer: Socks. It all has to do with socks. Because I wore high cowboy boots for so long, I got used to wearing high socks. You can't wear short socks inside cowboy boots because it just feels weird. Eventually the entire sock will end up as a sweaty cotton lump crammed into the toe of your boot and this is obviously not comfortable. So I would buy those over-the-calf gym socks that went almost up to my knees because they never fell down.

So that brings us to today. I still wear high socks. Yes, I'm a geek. To be fair, I don't wear them to the gym, and I only wear them with long pants. I just cannot wear short socks. They drive me nuts. I can't stand the way they feel, like they're always bagging up on me and threatening to fall down. I swear, I should just get a pair of these:

As a result, my wife is always on the hunt for what they call "full length" gym socks instead of what they commonly refer to as "calf-length" which makes no fucking sense whatsoever, because, as far as I know, your calves normally go all the way up to your knees whereas these piece of shit socks do not. They should call them "half-calf socks that fall down every 30 seconds so you have to stop whatever you're doing and pull them up again" but then nobody would buy them.

She's come home with dozens of different brands over the years. Some start off with potential, but then they turn out to be a letdown. The elastic goes, they're just a bit too short, or something is wrong in the toe area. (She once brought home socks that had rectangular toes. They were basically tubes that were sewed straight across on one end.) Then these rejects sit in one of my drawers collecting (or is that making?) lint.

Sometimes when we need to do laundry, I'll be forced to dig into the drawer of hideous cast-offs because there are no other socks, and today was one of those days.

Today, I was reminded that not only has she come home with rejects that were too short, but also these, which I am wearing as I type this:

They are practically support hose. Ridiculous. I have to fold them in half just so I can bend my legs. They do make me feel kinda sexy though.

Also, this may be genius.

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I'm going to share this last item with you because it made me laugh. If my boss is reading this, it seriously took me about 60 seconds to do, so don't dock my pay. It turns out I'm practically Eminem.

I'm on a team at work that has the acronym of EME, or Electronic Messaging & Engineering. We currently use an old version of Lotus Notes, and are planning on upgrading soon. This morning, one of the guys on my team who is in charge of this upgrade wrote an e-mail message to everyone this morning because he was going to be a little late. It looked like this:

I am running late be in by 8.

I couldn't just let that go. So, obviously, I did what anyone would do and immediately sent him this reply:

Don't hate

Just because I deviate

from the arbitrary time

of Mr. Slate

The man

who pays my rate

while I create

the orderly state

of EME while my

peeps wait

for the date

they get Notes 8.

Word.

He didn't answer my email. I think it's because he's a lot younger than me and might not know who Mr. Slate is. At least that's my theory.

P.S. - Thank you to everyone who has bought the book so far. It's doing pretty well, considering I don't know what the hell I'm doing in regards to promotion. And thanks for the typo lists. I'll be fixing them in the print version in a week or so. The Kindle version should already be fixed.