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As these words are being written, it is the first day of spring. The skies are blue, the weather so warm that a fan is blowing in the office, my sleeves rolled up, sweaty fingers touching the keypad. It’s been awhile since walking around without a coat didn’t leave with me a chill or a day didn’t stay light beyond 5 p.m. Thank goodness for the end of that. The official end of winter could not have come soon enough.

Spring might be my favorite time of the year. I love the days that get progreesively longer, the weather that gets progressively warmer, and– as a guy, I can’t lie– the female attire that gets more scantily assembled. Everyone dresses like eskimos in the winter, amorphous, asexual blobs, and come about in March, at least in California where these words are being written, that kind of all goes out the window.

What are some of the other signs of spring? They are probably too numerous to mention here in their entirety but a few are as follows:

• New movies stop sucking. Blockbusters even start to show up in theaters.
• Baseball is underway, the football draft approaches, and basketball reaches playoff time. Hockey playoffs arrive too, supposedly (who watches hockey?), the Masters happens in golf, scores of NCAA sports begin to have their season-ending tournaments. March is not the only time for madness in the collegiate athletic world.
• Taxes are due. This probably isn’t the greatest reason for the season, though for some people, filing a return is a precursor to a nice refund.

There’s a classic episode of The Simpsons from 1996, “Homerpalooza,” where Homer flashes back on a scene from years before where he tells his dad Abe that he’ll always be with it, cool. Abe replies:

I used to be with it, but then they changed what *it* was. Now what I’m with isn’t *it*, and what’s *it* seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you…

Sage words, for sure. So what are the signs that you’re no longer cool?

1. You spot your haircut on an episode of Happy Days. Being made fun of by the Fonz.
2. You sing “Eye of the Tiger” during workouts and shout “Drago!” at random people in the park during your jogs. One way to get Tasered by police, it definitely is; cool, it definitely is not.
3. The lead singer of your favorite band shouts, “Are you ready to rock?!” and you reply with an enthusiastic, “Yes!”
4. You write fan letters to your favorite members of Congress.
5. You put out a rap freestyle album with the other members of your Bible study.
6. You seem invisible to people under the age of 30. This is especially bleak if you yourself are in that age range.
7. The highlight of your New Years Eve is watching the midnight countdown from an earlier timezone and going to bed at 11.
8. You wear a bright blue, double-breasted leisure suit to the prom. How you got invited to this prom, no one knows, but you’ll want to think of something for the judge.
9. You blow out your speakers on the way to  your office job blasting gangsta rap, hydraulics causing your Prius to bounce up and down all the while.
10. You can’t understand whatever it is that your children are obsessed with.

I begin to see the Tweets late last week, Friday maybe.

“Truck Day.”

“T-Ruck Day.”

I figured it was some kind of redneck holiday, a day to celebrate monster trucks or tractor trailers. I follow a wide array of people on Twitter, and there are conceivably some in Middle America who would take off work presented with the chance to engage in this kind of celebration.

Such a day might exist, but as it turns out, it wasn’t what my friends were Tweeting about. Truck Day marks the unofficial beginning of the year for the Boston Red Sox, when a large semi packed with baseball gear leaves Fenway Park for the trip down to the Red Sox spring training facilities in Florida.

A lot of my baseball friends hunker down on Twitter through the long winter, awaiting baseball, and for many, Truck Day is like a coming attraction. Here are some other signs baseball is coming:

• Pitchers and catchers will soon be reporting for spring training, the players who report earliest each year.
• Most major free agents have signed, with a few last minute deals and minor transactions to be decided.
• Everyone says they’re in the best shape of their life. This is a tried and true winter and spring training tradition. How often the statements actually hold weight, no one knows.
• Football has ended, basketball hasn’t yet gotten serious, and even college ball hasn’t heated up. This is the brief time of year where very little goes on in the sports world, the calm before the storm.

I’ve spent the last year and a half working as a delivery driver. It’s been good to have a steady means of income, while the economy has continued to languish, but the job is what it is. It doesn’t pay much, the drives can be stressful on rainy days, and I clash frequently with my boss.

I suppose my options are to accept the job for what it is or get out, and after delaying a decision as long as possible, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s finally time to look for something better. I know my next great job is out there.

Here were a few of the signs for me that the writing was on the wall at the driving job:

• Being questioned by customers about why I was still with my company: This, in retrospect, was a big red flag that I often ignored or minimized. My customers would ask if I went to college (I did, graduated too), shake their heads about the parade of drivers that came before me, and openly make cracks about my boss.
• Constant fatigue: Every day that I drive, I have to be at the shop at 7 a.m. Because I don’t own a car, this requires leaving my apartment at 6:30; being something of an evening person, this in turn means I don’t always get a lot of sleep. This element of the job isn’t changing, and if anything, my boss has spoken of having us come in earlier. It makes sense to look for a job with a better fit for my body clock.
• Angry, abusive behavior from my boss: I have a boss who’ll snap at me if I come in late. Heck, he once swore at me for not being five minutes early. Early. The man’s impulsive, not respective of boundaries, and a self-professed asshole. Some days, it’s like working for a crazy man, and in recent months, it feels like it’s gotten worse. I know I deserve to work for someone who’ll respect me enough to treat me well.

Here’s hoping my next job is better.

It’s a tough world these days, one rife with fraud, and one must always be on the lookout for impostors. Here are some signs:

• You are a movie ticket agent. That fellow dressed in the trench coat is swaying side to side, and while his face bears resemblance to Richard Nixon, it also appears to be made of plastic. More than likely, you are dealing with three children on each other’s shoulders with a coat and a popular Halloween mask. Save the Die Hard tickets for someone else.
• You are a Major League Baseball team, and your wrangler for cheap Dominican prospects presents would-be visa papers with ink and coffee stains and gibberish. More than likely, those papers are fake, and his hot prospect is probably a 33-year-old welder playing under an assumed name and fibbed lower age, common practice in Latin America. Your wrangler’s monthly Visa bill would stand a better chance of getting you 16-year-old phenom Arturo Sanchez.
• You are a boyfriend. Your girlfriend just told you she’s going mattress shopping. For the fifth straight night. Oh, she’ll be testing some mattresses out.
• You are a Twitter user. You’re being followed by a celebrity without Verified Account status. Or a dead person. Or some random beautiful woman with 1,100 followers, 13 follow backs, and links to some shady site. It happens all the time.
• You are a member of a small town. Your town just inherited $3 million, and now, some out-of-towner is offering to build you a Monorail. There was an episode of The Simpsons made about this.

Got myself into a flame war this past weekend. That sucked. For the uninitiated, a flame war is a fight over the Internet, typically conducted in online forums between dueling egos. As in war, there are no winners.

In the few days since the last cyber machine gun crackled and fighting ended, I’ve had a chance to lick my wounds and review the signs of a flame war.

Here they are:

• Criticisms against you have ceased being constructive or objective. The discourse is quickly devolving into a series of personal attacks.
• The length of each comment is astonishing, sounding like it was written by a stockbroker on coke. Psychiatrists wouldn’t offer you this level of analysis about your many failings as a human being, at least not free or on some damn random website anyway.
• The attacks are becoming one-sided or outright dishonest.
• Other people are jumping into this, either for you or against you. What’s being said isn’t getting anymore constructive.
• Profanity is starting to enter the equation. That and all caps and a crazy variety of symbols and exclamation points.
• Overall worths as human beings are getting publicly questioned.
• Hitler comparisons are starting to be tossed around. This is the end run. I talked to my good friend Chris as the war was wrapping up. He explained to me an old Internet axiom (old being an oxymoron, on a side note.) Apparently, every flame war invariably degenerates into each person calling the other Hitler. Truer words have never been spoken.

I ran into a woman I used to be involved with at a recent New Years party. The night went about as awkward as could be expected, with the lady and I barely talking and her ultimately leaving with some random bozo. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t angry and a little jealous after the party, with a little residual anger still evident a week later. All the same, the experience also made me grateful to now be in a healthy relationship with a kind, considerate woman.

Here are some signs you’re no longer in a toxic relationship:

• You’re not with someone who has a boyfriend and is nearing the end of a deeply unsatisfying relationship and testing ways to check out of it. I made this mistake. Won’t happen again.
• You don’t lose entire weeks being distracted by relationship troubles and hating life, wondering why you feel so useless at it. You also don’t lose jobs because of it.
• People no longer tell you that you could be doing better in the relationship department and that the person you’ve told them about is presumably crazy, a few cards short of a deck.
• You feel secure with the new person you’re with. You know she likes you for who you are and you feel the same about her.
• Your new partner doesn’t constantly make you doubt your worth or attractiveness. And you don’t feel guilty, wondering if there’s something wrong with you for who you’re attracted to.
• You don’t go through days wondering if your lady is hooking up with other guys.