Waiting In Line

Last Sunday I was in the Portland airport waiting for my flight back to Oakland. I flew into Oakland because I was on Southwest (Cattle Car Airlines). Our plane was delayed 40 minutes, so all us passengers were patiently sitting around waiting to board.

Now, anyone who has been on a Southwest flight, or has walked by a Southwest gate will know that they divide people into 3 boarding groups. There is some magical moment when people decide they need to get out of their seats and start lining up by the gates for groups A through C.

This moment came on Sunday, but in a different way. The person sitting in a chair right next to the entrance for group A put her bag down. Then the people next to her put their bags down behind hers. So I put my bag behind theirs and a guy put his bag down behind mine. People started doing this in group B as well. But after so many bags are in line, you aren't really sitting close enough to your bag to not worry someone is going to search it, so pretty soon people sat in line as well.

This whole unspoken but mutually agreed upon arrangement irked the couple next to me something fierce. (Due to his choice of footwear and her vocal attributes, I'll call them Marshmallow Feet and Queen Emphysema.)

MF: Look at these people put their bags in line. I can't believe this.
QE: Who started this nonsense?
MF: The people next to us.

Ok. I'M sitting next to you and I can hear you just fine, Ass.

MF: I mean, I'm competitive, but I don't have to be first for everything. When traveling, I like to go with the flow. Who needs all this stress?
QE: Yeah, who cares who gets on first?
[5 minutes pass]
MF: This bag in line stuff is really stupid. Your suitcase doesn't represent you, your body represents you. It's not right at all.
QE: Why is there a line at all? We're not even boarding for a half hour?
[5 minutes pass]
MF: [Mockingly] Could I put my sweatshirt in line? It represents who I am better that my suitcase does.
QE: Yes, it says Hoosiers on it. You went to school there.
[5 minutes pass]
MF: Could I put my book in line? Would that count? My book represents me better than a suit case.
QE: You could put your name in it.
MF: Yeah, and then if somebody asked if I was in line I could say, "Yeah. See? My name is in this book. It represents me."

Then they complained about the wheelchair helpers asking for a tip. ("Why should they get a tip? They just pushed a chair around." and "Those people don't looook handicapped") After that they complained about an announcement asking people to give up their tickets for a $200 travel voucher and the price of their ticket to go on a later flight. ("Why would anyone give up their ticket? It's only $200. I mean, you'd have to wait 2 HOURS.")

Then Southwest started boarding. And you know what? Marshmallow feet and Queen Emphysema CUT IN LINE!!!! They got up, and stepped right behind me in line IN FRONT OF THE GIRL WHO HAD WAITED WITH HER BODY IN LINE!!! They cut in front of somebody who was abiding by their own stupid rules.

I wished their plane would go down until I realized it was my plane too. So then I hoped their luggage would get lost. Yeah, payback is a bitch.

Chin Fuzz

I'm running my annual chin experiment.

Once in a while I like to see if my chin will grow anything resembling a goatee. I've sprouted hair on my upper lip, my chin, and the patch of skin between my chin and my throat. (What's that place called? My underhead?) But I have no whiskers to connect my lip fuzz and chin fuzz, and my cheeks are a hair wasteland except for a few mole outposts and 2 or 3 go-get-em follicles near my ear.

It's not that I want to grow chin hair ala the Anthrax guy or anything, but I feel that if I'm going to have to shave everyday to keep from looking trailer parky, then I should have the option to stop shaving and grow something respectable. But I can't. Yet. Hence the experiment.

On the bright side, I'm not going to gross anyone out with a hairy back or chest. I guess I'm just not a waist-up hairy person, though I'm not sure that is due to genes or gravity. I certainly have some respectable hair-pants.

TMI?

Freaky Phone Call of Tonight

[On my home phone]
Me: Hello?
Them: Hi. This is the [something or other government agency in charge of wildlife] calling with some questions.
Me: Ok.
Them : How many people in your household go fishing?
Me: Um. Zero.
Them : And how many people including you are in your household?
Me: Two.
Them : And you live in San Francisco County. Is that correct?
Me: Yes.
Them : That is all. Thank you. Goodbye.

What good is that survey doing? If I had told them I go fishing would they have told me to knock it off? Don't we have a budget deficit?

Service

If you happen to be running a restaurant in Marin County and some of your machinery breaks, I've found the perfect company to repair it for you. I've heard they are very service oriented.

More Poop

Mmmmmm. Poooop.

Freaky Phone Calls

FPC #1: [Calling at 2pm]
Me: Hi. I'm calling to schedule the pickup of our air mattress.
Them: Ok. What time are you coming?
Me: Would 6pm be ok?
Them: Oh sure. Anytime after 5pm would be fine. That's when the coroner is coming.

FPC #2: [The important background info to know about this call is that it happened on a TUESDAY]
Me: Hi. I'm calling to schedule the pickup or our air mattress.
Them: Oh. When did you want to come?
Me: We can be there within an hour, or if some other time would be more convenient, we can come then.
Them: Could you come on Thursday? We'd like to have a viewing.
[That is, at the very least, two and a half days of viewing time. Eww.]

FPC #3: [This one happened today]
Me: Hi. I'm calling to schedule the pickup or our air mattress.
Them: Oh, well, after my husband died this morning they put this house under quarantine, so no one can get in or out for at least a week. We'll have to let you know when this is all taken care of and you can come by.
Me: Ok, um, thanks.

While these phone calls are creepy, keep in mind what I did for the vast majority of my day: Drive around listening to an excellent book on tape. Can't beat that.

Idiots At Tollbooths

In the Bay Area we have tollbooths after many of our bridges. Tollbooths are slow and therefore they usually create lines. For people who don't like waiting or don't like to come up with $3 in cash after each crossing, we have an automated system called FasTrak. You get a little beeper you put behind your rearview mirror, and you can drive through the FasTrak only lanes without stopping. Or that's how it's supposed to work.

Twice in two weeks I've had the same thing happen to me. I'm happily aiming my van at the FasTrak-Only lane when somebody decides they don't like the line in which they are waiting waaaay over to one side, so they cross over 5 or six lanes to get in my lane. So first off, they've just cut me off, so I have to slam on my breaks. But whatever, I get cut off all the time, so I'm not honking.

They see how nice my lane is with its thick white stripes on either side, whith its sign above it that says FasTrak Only, with its blinking yellow light, with no cars waiting to get onto the bridge. They see that this lane in marking and signage looks like none of the other lanes. They see this and they decide this is the lane for them. But when they stop at the toll booth they are surprised to see that there's no one there to take their money. And now I've pulled up behind them and I'm wondering what the hell they're up to. So I honk.

This throws them into a tizzy and they put on a right turn signal, then a left turn signal, then reverse lights. I can't back up because people are building up behind us. So I honk again, and they zip through, toll unpaid.

Why do people do this? Have they never been across the bridge before? I've seen lots of people get right up to the end of the lane and then try to cut into another line. Those people are bastards, but at least I know what they're up to. The people who cut me off must think, "FasTrak? That sounds like me. I'm in a hurry and I would like to go fast. All those people waiting in line are fools. FOOLS!"

It's a wonder I still like driving, but I guess it's not a wonder that I don't like people.

Wrapping

Sometimes you have to tweak the wrapping accouterments on hand to make them fit the occasion.

Comment Comments

I've never seen anyone devote an entire post to commenting on comments from previous posts, so I hope it's not some important unwritten blogger convention that I'm flouting here.

In regard to all the people I'm not dating:

1) The consensus on this one seems to be that I should go for it and see what happens, but I'm just not shallow enough to make a move without having a little conversation first. And if it turns out she's happy that Bush got elected then neither moves nor conversation will get made.

2) Yeah, smoking bothers me that much. Even if she manages to smoke down wind of herself, then kissing sucks. Smoking makes your lungs smell for like 3 hours after your last puff. So even with the liberal application of toothpaste every exhale smells like an ashtray, and I'm very smell oriented. I smell everything. I smell cups before I fill them whatever beverage I'm about to drink. Clean cups. Cups which I've taken, still warm, out of the dish washer. Also, I think anyone who describes herself as a heavy smoker maybe isn't trying to quit.

3) While I was pretending not to be shallow for person number 1, I am. She, along with being 19, was also kind of an ugo. I really did feel bad about that though. She emailed me, which means she used at least part of her $20 monthly fee to send me a message and I ignored it. But what was I supposed to say? "Hi, thanks for emailing, but you are too young and a little funny looking. Have a nice day!"

4) Everyone but my roommate agrees to say no on the tranny. My roommate maintains that I should go on 1 date just for the story. There's only a tiny bit of merit to this. If I'd gone out on the date and she'd told me then that she was/is a he, then that makes for a good story. But if I go out with a tranny fully aware of her tranniness, then that just reflects badly on me. Thank you, no.

And so I remain single. Though there is one girl who (I think) is attractive that messaged me a while ago. All her pictures have her head leaning on one shoulder or another, so she may not have any neck muscles. But maybe I should work on that shallow thing and send her an email.

Mr. Popular

Incompatible people who have sent me messages on my Yahoo! Personals profile to date:

- A 30 year old conservative Christian. I did put that I'm an atheist and liberal in my description, but nobody reads those.
- A 22 year old Pacifica resident who is a heavy smoker. I do have a sentence in my profile that states, "I don't smoke anything, and would like the person I'm dating not to either." But I can see how that might be misconstrued.
- A 19 year old girl who goes to SF State. I'm thinking a 7 year difference at this point is a bit much. Plus, it's hard to go to shows in bars with somebody under 21.
- The most recent person who also wins the prize for most incompatible: A 24 year old Transsexual Filipina who typed her profile in all caps. I have a couple of problems with her/him. 1) She/he may have man parts. I'm not a big fan of man parts. 2) I hate when people type in all caps.

There are rules people. Typing in all caps indicates yelling. For normal things like personals, use your indoor voice.

I Got It!

I've finally got my hard drive enclosure. If you remember, I was trying to get one from an e-store, but when it arrived it didn't work and I had to spend half the purchase price to send it back. Then I tried EBay, but since I have no internet access at work I got sniped in the last minutes before the auction ended.

What was I thinking? I should have been using Craig’s List all along. I found a girl in Berkeley with an enclosure she was selling for $30. I offered her $25 and she accepted. It was a little hard to meet her because her English wasn't pristine and I couldn't tell what streets she was describing, but finally we met and she handed me the enclosure. She pointed out that it was missing most of the screws that hold it together. Luckily I had planned for just such an occasion by accidentally only having $23 with me. She said that was fine and we both went on our merry way.

My hard drive is sitting in an enclosure which is held together with zip ties, but I'm happy none the less. I have all my mp3s back.

As an extremely unrelated side note, you know those things that go on top of doors that make sure they close but don't slam? They have a little cylinder connected to an arm connected to the door. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Well, if you do then you can picture the one on the door in a convalescent home in Santa Rosa. It was Taco brand.

Taco brand slam suppressors, they're tasty.
Taco brand slam suppressors, you picture food, we picture softly closing doors.
Taco brand slam suppressors, don't eat them, they go on the door.

Festive

Ok, the holidays are officially here. (I realize Chanukah didn't wait for me to announce that.) I know they are here because my apartment is all decked out. Observe:



Note the decorations:
A) The Holliday Cactus, complete with its tinfoil Star of David, Christmas lights, and the new addition this year, foil Merry Christmases that came in
B) The assortment of Holliday cards. That's right, I've gotten 2!
C) The single present. It's below the cactus and is not pictured because a single present is too depressing.
D) The single stocking. Both C and D are odd because there are 2 of us living here, but my roommate gave me my Christmas present in October, (hence the single present) and Santa doesn't come to fill the stocking anyway. We have a gas fireplace which doesn't have a real chimney.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the rest of my apartment is as decorated as this little section. It just so happens that all the decorations fit together into a single picture.

There are actually 2 cacti in the pot, but the small and very nearly dead one neglected to show much more than a few spines. You can just barely see it here giving its last ounce of strength to hold up the foil Star of David.



From me: Happy Holidays

From the cactus:

Busy Days And Toilet Ways

First off, I'd just like to explain how envious I am of all you people who can blog at work. I guess if I set up some sort of email posting system I could blog at work too. But even so, I'd have to type with my thumbs, and doing so is dangerous while driving.

One of the many reasons I haven't posted anything since Thursday was that on Friday I worked for 13 hours and drove 450 miles. Pretty good, eh?

During the afore mentioned long-ass Friday, I was on my way to Sacramento (for the second time) and stopped off at a MacDonald’s in Davis. I walked into the bathroom to use the urinal, but noticed that the urinal was RIGHT next to the sink, and had no privacy divider/errant pee guard. This would have been fine had I been alone in the bathroom, but there was a guy washing his face in the sink just inches away from where I was planning to relieve myself.

The obvious plan B was to use the stall. It was big, taking up half the bathroom. How nice I thought, a spacious, handicapped stall. I opened the door and stepped inside only to be greeted by the sight of 2 toilets. 1 stall, 1 locking door, 2 toilets. This is for what? Pooping in stereo? Pooping with a friend? Poop races? Defecation oriented talk shows? (I suppose in that case one toilet would have been behind a desk festooned with coffee cups bearing the show's name, "Potty Talk.")

Maybe this is what lady's rooms look like. Do they just have a line of toilets, no dividers at all? Is that why you all go to the bathroom together, because there are no impediments to conversation? Or was MacDonald’s trying to foster a togetherness with the common man?

Whatever the point, I locked the door behind me so I could pee alone. Efficient as I like to be, I have my limits.

In The Way

I went to holiday party number 3 tonight. 4 is coming up next weekend. Tonight was another excellent example of seeing lots of people to hit on and not hitting on any of them. Mostly my role at this party was to be in the way.

When I walked in, and as I approached the coffee table full of cookies, someone on the couch on the opposite side of the table started talking to me. So in order to return the conversation, I was positioned between the corner of the table and the corner of the room. Anyone who wanted to go into the dining room, which was everybody, had to tell me to move. So then I tucked myself into a corner behind a lamp. That would have been fine except that the cookies were too far away to reach. So I moved to the corner of the kitchen.

At that point there were 3 people blocking the kitchen entrance/exit. But for some reason I appear to be the most door like. Not a single person tried to squeeze by anyone else. Just by me. I am the gateway to the rest of the party.

Despite me making a better door than a person, I had a pretty good time at the party. There were cookies and peach juice, which were good. Though one of the cookies was pretending to be full of chocolate chips, but was actually full of walnuts and cranberries. Damn the walnuts! And I didn't hit on any of the residents in the land of attractiveness. Damn you brain!

Brain? Helloooooo? Where Did You Go?

I never know when my brain is going to work and when it's just going to take up space in my sizable head.

As a for instance, at holiday party #1 this past weekend a group of us were talking to a girl. (My two friends were talking and I, mostly, wasn't.) She commented that many of her recent boyfriends liked to put their hands on the place where she was about to sit palm side up. She allowed as to how she had solved that problem by not dating anyone anymore. I suggested, with my first words to this person, that she could also get around this by dating guys with no hands. This an example of when my filter turns off, but my brain keeps going.

A good example of a complete shut down was at holiday party #2. For a while I was consuming cheese dip at a speed normally reserved for bilge pumps in tankers. I decided I should take a break and went to talk to my friends. When it came time to re-investigate the dip, I discovered that it was surrounded by two very attractive girls. To some this might be the perfect opportunity to both a) talk to two very attractive girls, and b) to eat some very attractive dip. But all I saw was two unapproachable but still very attractive dip guards. My solution? Take a piece of celery (the longest dip-able accoutrement within reach) and lean waaaay over the table so I could just barely stick it into the bowl. The celery and the cheese dip weren't really intended for each other, and attractive girl #3 noticed me eating dip that way and comment on it. I mumbled that it was good and promptly got a big glob of dip stuck to my lip, which then slid of onto the floor. Smmooooth.

The last and most recent example can hardly be counted as my fault. I played on open mic last night, and I had only just last week finished the second song I was about to sing. My lack of free time forced me to spend the hour before the open mic madly trying to memorize the words. When I got up to sing I was feeling pretty confident until I noticed that the girl sitting front and center was wearing a low cut satiny negligee shirt substitute over enough cleavage to kill an elephant. (It's actual cleavage and not the ivory trade which is wiping out large eared friends.) With all that distraction going on, I have no choice but to blame her for me starting out on the wrong note.

As an aside, I seem to be stuck without any good word for females in my age group. Girl sounds too young (though I use it anyway). Woman sounds 45. Lady is something New York cabbies yell at women in old movies. "You gotta be kiddin me, lady!" Female sounds too clinical. "I was observing two female subjects as they guarded the desired cheesy comestibles." Bird is too English. Chick makes me sound like I’m a frat boy from the 80s. What's a dude to do?

Things That Amaze Me

- Things I wanted to get done this weekend: write 5 emails, do my expense report, get tickets to visit my friend Jeremy, practice for an open mic tomorrow, exchange my shoes, and take pictures of some stuff for my job. That really isn't a long list of things, but I worked so much I didn't get 3 of them done. That's only 50% success rate.

- The smell of Highway 37 today. The first half smelled like someone had taken a wet dog and set it on fire. The second half smelled the dog had been there when he found out what was about to happen to him. Normally 37 doesn't smell like anything. In fact, as you near Vallejo, you cross a river on Richard "Fresh Air" Janson Bridge. According to the California Department of Transportation, "[The bridge was] named by Assembly Concurrent Resolution 68 in 1996. [The bridge's namesake,] Richard "Fresh Air Dick" Janson [,] is recognized as one of the premier decoy carvers in the American West. He worked on his ark near this bridge for most of his life. He died in 1951." (http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist4/trivia.htm)

- That people apparently lived on arks up until 1951. (Perhaps they meant art, but it's nice to think of him carving decoys to pass the time while he waited for the impedning biblical flood which never came.)

- The fact that people have professionally painted murals on their cars. I saw a black and green custom painted Ford Explorer with this scene on his tailgate: It's nighttime at the beach. We are looking out at the ocean from just inside the mouth of a cave. In the middle distance the Ford Explorer is driving along the sand, its headlights ablaze. Just beyond the SUV, Godzilla rises from the ocean shooting a burst of flame from his mouth. And behind it all, a full moon cuts through the night, reflecting off the waves as they gently break upon the shore. I tried to take a picture but he was going to fast and my exit was coming up. So I ended up neither getting a good picture nor getting off the freeway in time. Ah well Can't catch them all.

Probably Not A Good One To Read While Eating

Because I was reading the Snozzberries post about pooping, it got me thinking of my many pooping stories. Hence my post's title.

I have recently (within the last 6 months) stopped drinking Caffeine. At one point I was drinking literally a gallon of Coke/Pepsi a day. I was one of the very few people who didn't care if I were drinking Coke or Pepsi, just as long as I was drinking one of the two most of the time. (And it's not that I can't tell the difference between them. I can. I can actually SMELL the difference between them. I can also smell the difference between regular and diet.) Anyhow, I discovered much too late that caffeine and IBS don't go well together. Or. Um. They do go well together. Whatever. Either way, I have a lot of pooping stories.

Worst place to go: In a port-a-potty in a construction site in Geyserville in the summertime. Geyersville gets to be over 100 degrees in the summertime.

Worst time to go: Just after taking a prospective girlfriend home after your first official date. (I have to give her credit for seeing me more than once. On our first non-official date I told her a story about me throwing up so hard it hit me in the eye. I also tended to inadvertently insult her outfits.)

In school I would often have to find a bathroom on short notice, and having experience in this sort of thing, I discovered that buildings mostly full of offices have very nice, very clean bathrooms. Also, the higher the floor, the cleaner the bathroom. On one such occasion I picked an officey building and chose the top floor. I stepped out of the elevator, turned right, and was confronted with a door that read "Men's Room. Out of Order." So I got back in the elevator, went down one floor, turned right and went into that bathroom. I popped into the stall and sat down. I thought about what a good choice this building was. Nice clean bathroom.

Then I started to notice things. I don't remember seeing a urinal. There's a very small trash can in the stall with me. I've never a) seen a trash can that small and b) seen a trash can in a bathroom stall. My suspicions were confirmed when some high heels came in and used the stall next to me. I waited until she had left, washed my hands faster than I had ever previously done, and managed to make it back to the elevator undetected.

2 benefits of having small feet:
1) I can often try on the shoe samples in stores, so I don't have to wait for the shoe guy to bring out a pair in my size.
2) When I'm wearing my Adidas, and viewed only from the ankles down, it was very possible that I could have been an above averagely large footed and slightly manish girl, perfectly at home in the women's bathroom on the 7th floor of that particular building.

Stay Back At Least 100 Feet

Falcon Truck School
Instilling a healthy sense of fear into the community since 1896.
The hand painted sign means we care.

Because I Said I Would

I bought a USB drive enclosure from Dealsonic.com. For those of you who don't know what that is, it doesn't matter, that's not the point. The point is that Dealsonic.com sucks something fierce. My new $20 enclosure made funny noises when I moved it, and my computer wouldn't recognize it, so I sent it back. Dealsonic will refund my money, but may charge me a 30% restocking fee if they deem it necessary. They also won't refund the $8 I had to spent to ship the enclosure back. So really, I only get half my money back. So if you ever want anything from Dealsonic.com, don't buy it. And if anyone lives in Ontario California and would like to leave a flaming bag of dog leftovers on DS's doorstep, I would be much obliged.

I told the customer service I would write this if they didn't send me my money back. So I did. There. Done.

In further distressing news, the Taco Bells of Oregon have discontinued Mexi-Nuggets. For those of you who don't know what those are, then you have unknowingly experienced a terrible loss. Those of you in the know will undoubtedly share my pain. What Mexi-Nuggets may have lacked in having a cool name, they more than made up for in scrumptiousness. We shall miss you dearly Mexi-Nuggets.

Bits From Today

* I delivered a mattress to a house in Santa Rosa which had a couch, a hospital bed, and a regular bed. That was the extent of the furniture. A Mexican family lived there, and no one spoke very much English. I was having trouble communicating the fact that I couldn't lift the patient out of bed. Not my job. Not insured for that sort of thing. So the guy I was talking to lifts up the phone to call, I don't know, somebody, and just as he does 5 people walk through the door, one of whom spoke English. I explained, through her, the situation, and so all 6 of them piled into the bedroom and shut the door. 10 minutes later the door opens, the lady is in her wheelchair, and everyone piles out. How's that for team work?

* At Costco today I tried to talk on a cell phone while carrying a 24 pack of yoghurt, a box of toothbrushes, and a 24 pack of bar soap. I had to hang up. I guess it makes sense that they don't offer those little baskets at Costco. But being a guy, I never use a cart. What's the use? I'm only buying 3 things. The problem is that they are Costco sized things.

* In the next line over a woman frantically waved a gigantic package of tampons to get the attention of an errant family member. It worked, but at what cost?

* The man in front of me in line talked to everyone about everything. Subjects covered during the 5 minutes I stood near him:
- Whether the man in front of him was speaking Tagalog.
- Difficulty of learning Tagalog as compared with that of learning English.
- Languages which he has studies but never mastered.
- The flatness of flat screen TVs.
- Using the flat-bed Costco carts as apposed to the regular style carts.
- The placement of the check stand near a structural pillar.
- The benefits and usefulness of having a paypal account.
- The origin of paypal.
- How to use paypal.

I think there were more, but I started looking at a girl at the Photo counter.

Luckily none of this was directed at me. But the most painful part of it all was the fact that he would start each of these subjects with an intentionally off-handed comment designed to spark a conversation. And when each comment inevitably didn't spark the expected conversation, he would launch into it anyway in such a one-sided manner that it made me contemplate finding another line.

It seems that the 24 pack of soap is antibiotic, and that the 24 pack of yogurt has active cultures. I wonder if the yogurt is intimidated by the soap. Or maybe the soap is bolstered by the fact that it contains aloe. No one messes with aloe.

How to Take a Compliment

I'm not good at taking compliments. If somebody tells me I look nice, or have a nice voice, or whatever it may be, I tend to look at the ground and mumble thanks. I think I've even been known to shuffle my feet. I can be downright bashful when I have a mind to be, dangnabbit.

It stands to reason then, that I'd be worse at taking compliments which aren't really related to me and to which there are no obvious retorts. “Thanks” is an easy thing to say to those first examples up there, and I have trouble with that. So imagine my befuddlement when someone tells me that their recently departed loved one really enjoyed my company’s air mattress. Something along the lines of, "She really liked it. When we set her down on it she almost screamed for joy it was so soft." What do you say to that? All I could come up with was "I'm glad it worked out."

Others that came to mind but were not spoken:

1) "I'm glad she enjoyed it." That's not going to work because "enjoy" doesn't really describe what the average hospice patient does on our mattresses.

2) "Who screams for joy?" That's not really a response to a compliment, but definitely something that occurred to me to ask.

3) "We aim to please." That one doesn't seem appropriate when the coroner was there exactly an hour before I was there.

Then again, in those circumstances nothing seems appropriate. I should learn sign language and pretend I'm deaf. Or maybe say, "Please sign here. I don't speak English. I only know the phrase, 'please sign here' and this phrase explaining that I can't speak English and only know two phrases." (Family Guy reference, not rip off.)

Napa Eating

How's this for a creepy sign? Is it a steak house where one would take one's family to eat, or where one might go to eat a family of cows? The sign seems to indicate the latter.

An Untimely End

Clifford's large stature, unbridled enthusiasm for kids and learning, and being a deliriously happy shade of red couldn't save him from an untimely end in a lukewarm bathtub.

(I promise I didn't set up this picture. The actual explanation is that Clifford is being soaked in the tub to try to remove his copiously absorbed dog spit. He is the favorite toy of a soon to be very large puppy.)

What do I do?

It has been pointed out that perhaps I haven't fully explained what I do. And since there are at least 3 people who read this and who aren't related to me or see me on a regular basis, I should explain:

I work for a company that makes, rents, and sells all manner of healthcare equipment: Wheelchairs, commodes, walkers, dopplers, DVTs, ICTs, and mattresses. My particular depot deals mainly in bed frames and mattresses.

When people get old and/or sick they develop bed sores, otherwise known as pressure ulcers. To heal the ulcers, or to avoid them in the first place, they need our mattresses. I clean, deliver, setup (set up?), trouble shoot, fix, and pick up these mattresses and pumps. I'm also the resident fixer of things. Today I mounted two fire extinguishers while one of my co-workers looked on in awe. (Two nuts, two bolts. Not hard. But then again it was the same co-worker that sets off his car alarm EVERY time he gets in his car.)

These mattresses are made of plastic, rubber, and/or foam and most of them are inflatable. Some have alternating cells, some just blow up and don't move. (Kind of like a ridiculously expensive sleep number bed.)

We deliver all this stuff out of a depot in San Rafael. There are, including me, four delivery drivers who bring all these things to the sick and old people of northern California. I drove roughly 3500 miles last month, and I've been just south of Monterey and as far north as Yuba City. We go father south and farther north than that, and I hear we have some beds in Reno, NV. Luckily I like driving. As an added bonus, driving a delivery van all day makes my little 4 cylinder manual transmission Camry feel like a racecar.

To explain the Grim Reaper thing: A lot of the patients we deliver to, especially in the Napa Valley, are hospice patients. They could be on one of our mattresses for years or days. We never know. But when I deliver to them, for whatever reason it tends to be days. So my boss has started calling me the Grim Reaper of Napa Valley. I've had lots of deliveries on Friday that I've had to go pick up on Monday, but the record was a delivery I did one morning and the hospice called us to pick it up that afternoon. I guess that's why there's a minimum 2 week rental price.

Other jobs I've had, in order from earliest to most recent (starting all the back in high school): Pizza cook, Telemarketer (1.5 days), Bakery Department Clerk, Software Intern/Y2K Updater (in Visual Basic), Engineering Intern/Programming Intern, Temp Worker (fundraiser, filing clerk, mover), Gap Employee, Valet, Best Buy Employee (sales, computer technician), Metal Worker (twice, but one was only for 3 days), Freelance IT person, Handyman, and now Rental Technician. Oddly enough my current job is in my top 4 most enjoyable jobs, and is by the best paying. I always suspected I was destined for a job that most people wouldn't like.

I wonder how many jobs the average person has by the time they are 26, because that list seems kind of long.

Paintjob

I wonder what this truck hauls. It has quite the exquisite paintjob.

And yes, I know. But I'm a PROFESSIONAL driver.

Always Napa

I optimistically took a right onto Silverado Trail, which is big and fast and newly paved. Then I turned onto a street which was thin and curvy and full of holes. After winding around among the trees and rocks for 3 miles, I started to ascend a hill. About half way up I was engulfed in the thickest fog I've seen in quite a while. I could only see 10 or 15 feet in front of me. That's a little disconcerting when the edge of the road drops steeply off into a ditch. It's also disconcerting when the cars coming the other direction seem to be impervious to fog and feel plenty comfortable driving mach 4.

After coming down out of the fog I came to the end of the road where there were maybe 16 hand-carved signs pointing down a smaller dirt road. Each sign had a house number and name on it. The one I wanted pointed me down the road. Eventually after carefully trying not to knock any wheels off in the potholes/craters, I came to another hand carved sign pointing down an even less paved road. I drove through an open gate past a sign saying "No Trespassing!"

After heading a few feet down this last road I came to regular looking ranch style house. While the house was seemed normal, the yard was not. In front was a concrete octagonal patio, one edge of which was occupied by a guy huddling over a fully functional fire pit. On the side of the house was a huge pile of rocks. The pile was 15 or 20 feet in diameter and probably 7 feet tall. That's a lot of rocks.

When I got out of the car I looked over toward the fire pit and the huddling guy was gone. Ok, no problem. I knocked on the door, went in, and set up the mattress. The people inside were very nice and not very weird at all. We made pleasant small talk about the freaky "tooley fog."

When I came back out of the house the guy was huddled over the fire again, but by the time I had turned my van to nose slowly down the drive way he was gone.

My luck and past experience tells me I'm going to get to revisit the whole scene on Monday when they call to tell me to come pick up the mattress. I guess being The Grim Reaper of Napa Valley, I should get used to all the creepiness.

Stud

I went to Napa on Monday, and while I was waiting for the nurses to get a patient out of bed, a janitor came down the hall. He was about my height, skinny, and wore navy blue work pants and a brown work shirt. He was probably 60ish and had both white hair and a white mustache. He looked very janitorial apart from his 3-wide, studded, rock-star belt.

You're only as old as you feel. Or, maybe, you are three times as old as you dress? I'm not sure how that goes.

Air Mail

For the past week I've been lounging on the futon in my living room. (Not all week, just during my free time.) But I discovered last night that I don't get any reception over there, and since I'm on call, I need reception. For some reason the couch on the other side of my living room is a better place for receiving pages. So, after sitting on the couch for the first time this week, I noticed a package sitting out on my balcony and went outside to investigate. It was addressed to the people in 201, the apartment directly above mine on the third floor. It was marginally grimy, so I think it had probably been out there for 3 days give or take.

(I live on a busy street. Anything that stays outside for more than 30 seconds begins to turn grey with car schmutz. Hence the ability to estimate how long something has been sitting on my balcony via its grime factor.)

My best and only theory as to how the package got there is this: The DHL guy brings the package to my building. He rings the bell for 201 and no one answers. Assuming that my building makes sense, he figures 201 is probably the first balcony on the left and on the second floor. So he takes the package and throws it up on to my balcony. Of course my building doesn't make sense (or have heat) and he managed to deliver it to 101. It's a good think I'm honest (and don't need a messenger bag.)

Can anyone come up with a better theory? Remind me never to use DHL to ship my breakables.

Little Old Lady Train

My last delivery was called in at 4:45pm and was, as is so often the case, for Napa. I'm not sure what the deal is, but they don't like to have me drive out there until after I'm getting ready to go home. I would move to Napa but I'm sure if I did I'd get deliveries to San Francisco at 4:45pm.

While I was waiting for the nursing staff to get the patient out of bed so I could replace her mattress, some white haired old ladies came creeping down the hall in their wheelchairs. They were just inches from each other, and in a perfect single-file line. It looked like the world's slowest steam engine, their little white heads like puffs of smoke. As they tectonically passed I smiled and said hello to the lead lady. She cheerily returned my hello.

While I was setting up the mattress they collected at the end of the hallway around another lady who was taking a nap in her wheelchair. They got a little clogged down there and tensions started to rise as they tried to come back the way they came. One lady was trying to back her chair up but kept running into the sleeping lady, who had chosen the center of the hall as an ideal napping point.

The clinking of wheelchairs carried on while they tried to sort themselves out, and a little argument broke out.

Little Old Lady 1: You can't back up, Rose. You keep running in to Edith.
LOL 2: Well for heaven's sake. Whey doesn't she move.
LOL 1: Because she's asleep.
LOL 2: Ask that young man over there (I believe they were referring to me) to move her.
LOL 1: I'm not asking him to move her. He doesn't work here. Why don't you just turn around?
LOL 2: Why don't you shut up?
LOL 1: Why don't YOU shut up?
LOL 2: You shut your mouth!
LOL 1: Don't you say another word to me!

I did my best to pretend that I didn't hear any of this. My policy is to have as little contact with patients as I can, and I want any contact I have to be really superficial. Something along the lines of "sure is raining out there." I certainly don't want to go around breaking up little old lady wheelchair brawls.

While I went and got my paperwork signed, they must have sorted things out. They came back down the hall, slow as can be, and in the same single file line in which they arrived. As the lady in engine position passed me by, I smiled and said hello, and she cheerily said hello back. LOLWB successfully averted.

Old Faithful

Just recently our landlord put in a new toilet. Our old toilet had a number of problems, the most pressing of which was its lack of being attached to the floor. When leaning one way or the other, say to get a magazine or some far off roll of toilet paper, the toilet would lean with you. I was always expecting it to just fall over one day letting all the waters within spread out over our apartment.

The other problem with the toilet is that the seat is attached with 2 bolts but only 1 loosely fitted nylon nut. So if you lean too far, not only does the toilet lean in the same direction, but the seat comes slightly off the rim of the toilet in an attempted to toss you pantless to the floor.

Recently the landlord came by to put in a new toilet. We figured we would be getting several good things out of the deal: A clean toilet, a well anchored toilet, and a new and very attached seat. We got the first two, but the third one eluded us. The same old seat with the same old nutless bolt came over to the new toilet.

Unfortunately our new clean toilet has a thinner rim which makes the seat even more susceptible to sliding off the edge. After a slight tweak of my back during a surprise seat shift, I went the hardware store and spent the $5 it took to get new bolts and nylon nuts. Now the seat stays put.

So I thought I had this thing beat until last night when I managed to clog the toilet. We have what is admittedly a really terrible plunger. It's one of those cheap ones with only a stick and a half-circle of rubber, as apposed to the fancy ones which have the half circle attached to the fitting that slides into the drain hole. Part of the issue with this plunger is that it tends to turn itself inside out after a particularly forceful plunge. The other problem is that the new toilet has a little groove near the back of the bowl that doesn't allow for a good seal. What it does allow for a is an impressive toilet geyser after every plunge. How's that for being stuck between a rock and a hard place? A strong plunge shoots water up out of the bowl and onto the floor, and a weak plunge won't move the clog. I spent an irritating couple of minutes solving one problem and creating another, namely that even though I didn't actually make the toilet overflow, I did managed to get quite a lot of water on the bathroom floor.

I guess it's time to invest in a top-quality plunger. A plunger for life.

NPR and Slang

Yesterday Nina Totenberg used the word dissed. She used it in regard to bi-partisanship in the coming 4 years: "I think the Democrats will be willing to work with Republicans unless they [the Democrats] feel like they are being dissed."

I'm paraphrasing there, but she did use the worded dissed in reference to the legislative branch. I'm not sure dissed should be used outside of K-12 education and Best Buy.

An Otherwise Depressing Day

I started my day looking at the returns on the CNN and NBC News sites. Neither were great fun, and because I saw the beginnings of the returns last night, I didn't sleep that well. Then again, almost anything makes me sleep not so well. I'm not good at sleeping.

Next up was an employee training session. Imagine sitting in a smallish warehouse with the roll up door open at 9am. It's cold and I'm trying to pay attention to the intricacies of Medicare inspections as they relate to rental depots.

After that I'm off to deliver things. I usually listen to NPR, but it's being overrun with Bush's acceptance speech. I switched back and forth between that and Absolution, by Muse, thinking that I would much rather listen to Muse, but that this might be kind of an important news snippet.

My day ended with a delivery in Napa where a nursing home resident decided to regale me with the tales gathered wisdom of her life. She likes dogs. She lived in Egypt for 3 years. She assures me that Egyptians steal dogs, among other things, which they sell to the zoo. But they can't help it because they are poor.

Then she told me that it was coming up on her 79th wedding anniversary, except that her husband had died in the 80s. He worked on airplanes and loved his job. He wanted to make sure that everyone who got on one of his airplanes felt safe. Whenever she rode on one of his airplanes, she felt safe. She crossed the ocean so many times she lost count, and never felt afraid. Now, she says, she's afraid of everything. It's terrible to be afraid of everything all the time.

The only way to end a day like today is with a stiff drink. So I stopped by Jack and got a pumpkin pie milkshake. A little sweetness with which to end an otherwise depressing day.

Two Mysteries

The first is that yesterday morning I woke up with En Vogue, "My Lovin" stuck in my head. I have no idea where it came from. I don't listen to the radio at all, and I don’t even think I've heard that song in years.

The second, and far more flummoxing mystery is where my guitar stand came from. A couple of days ago UPS told me I had a package from Musician's Friend. I recently ordered something from there, but it has already arrived so I had no idea what it could be. When I finally got the package, the receipt lists my address as both the shipping and billing address. I called Musician's Friend and it looks to them like I ordered it for myself, but that don't have access to the credit card info. I emailed Amazon, but since the order isn't under my email address, they can't find it. No charges have shown up on any of my credit cards, and no cash has disappeared from my wallet.

Did anyone out there buy me a guitar stand? I distinctly remember not buying it.

Halloween Socializing

Usually, when I go out to bars, I stand or sit quietly off to one side. I try my best to have some halting conversation with anyone in my group that I happen to want to date, and then talk to my roommate. Mostly though I just sit and look at people and don't talk to anyone. I imagine this comes across as creepy. I'm working on changing my ways, (mostly through the haltingly painful conversations), but change is slow.

On Saturday a bunch of us went to a bar for a friend's birthday. Some of us went in costume, including me. My costume, as is illustrated below, was a grim reaper, aka Death, aka anyone from the intro of Dead Like Me. (Also, my nickname at work is The Grim Reaper of the Napa Valley, so it seemed fitting.) (I'm by myself in the picture because I'm not sure that my roommate wants his picture bandied about on the internet. However, that's his Zorro shadow next my death shadow.)

It was pointed out, both at the bar and at a Halloween party I went to last night, that my usual practice of standing in a corner not talking to anyone, but this time in a grim reaper costume, hugely magnifies the creepy, and yet, seemed kind of appropriate. I mean, Death wouldn't dance to Hey Ya.

Since the party was chocked full of attractive girls I wanted to talk to, it was kind of frustrating. I had 2 or 3 failed attempts at conversation where there would be some brief back and forth, followed by an uncomfortable silence, followed by a disturbing lack of eye contact on my part, followed by her retreat to find someone less creepy to talk with, followed by more standing quietly in a corner in my Death outfit. After a few hours of this, I decided I would go home at a none to respectable 10pm.

Which, upon consulting a properly set clock, became an even less respectable 9pm.

Mash Potatoes? No Thanks.

Whilst driving along in Napa, I saw a catering company van. They had, painted on the side, a large butter topped bowl of mashed potatoes. It was well painted, and looked extremely appetizing but for one small design flaw. On the edge of the mash potatoes, right before the edge of the bowl, was the gas cap cover. They had painted the gas cap cover too, and everything well matched, but there is a little space around the edge of the cover that they couldn't cover up. So the dark edge of the gas cap cover made it look like someone had dropped a pube in the mash potatoes. I might think twice about asking them to cater an event for me.

I Don't Like Feet

It's true. I don't. My range of foot attractiveness goes from the lowest rating - really disgusting, to the highest rating - not completely unattractive. I'm not sure why this is, I just don't like them. I had a roommate Junior year of college that would chase me around with her heel-callus sanding-block trying to get foot dust on me. I hope you weren't eating.

Usually feet safely incased in (non-open toed) shoes are ok. But this last week I saw some of the most ridiculous shoes I've ever seen. I saw two different people wearing what I've come to discover are called Z-CoiL pain relief footwear. They are regular looking tennis shoes apart from the separated heel, which is attached to the shoe via a big black spring. The two people I saw were wearing the Cloudwalker.

I've heard the old saying that looking good hurts, but I didn't know that feeling good meant looking like you were in an SNL sketch.

(Since I'm writing a bunch of posts right now, I'm going to pretend I wrote them over several days.)

Striving for Freedom

Shortly after I arrived at Napa Nursing, a patient in a wheelchair informed me that I was wasting my time walking everywhere, and that wheelchairs were the way to travel. I've always thought wheelchairs looked like fun. I do like both wheels and sitting, but I think I'd like the option of walking around from time to time. There are a number of situations where stairs would come between me and my goals.

During the hour I was setting up a bed at Napa Nursing, four patients tried to make their escape. Not together, but one by one. The first was escaping just as I arrived, two made a break for it while I was in the depths of the facility, and one tried to sneak out while I was leaving. Apparently they have little radio tags on everybody and then they get too close to the door, an alarm goes off.

It seems like it's going to be tough getting old. You can't move very well, you may or may not know what's going on, and when you find a door, sometimes an alarm goes off and scares the pants off you. (Which is kind of misleading as most of the patients I'm delivering beds to aren't wearing any pants.)

Broken in the Morning

I found him in the soft light of morning, crumpled and broken behind the barbeque he called home for low these many days. (Nearly a one-third of a fortnight.)

He left no note, but I'm sure his few days on this mortal coil were happy ones. His bright smile literally brought light to the living room during the cold evenings of last weekend. I fear foul play, but living at such a height, I have no proof nor theories of how such a thing could have been executed. (No pun intended. Well, maybe a little pun.)

One way or the other, he was a good GLOD and will be missed by many. Or at least by me.

Fry's

Fry's is a strange place. All the male workers are dressed in the required uniform of ill-fitting black pants with no belt and a white button-up shirt with no undershirt. (And yes, we can see your nipples.) The Fryettes wear reasonable, if not slightly out of style, business casual attire.

I was never clear on the difference between a nerd and a dork, but everyone who works at Fry's is whichever one of the two is less helpful. I would think the nerds would know about computer parts but have no fashion sense. That would make me a nerd, and make the Fry's guys dorks.

And yet, even with the vast expanses of guy-oriented products and the legions of nipple exposing dorks, Fry's is chocked full of attractive female shoppers. (Maybe not chocked full. They probably just stick next to all the dorks. Like seeing a unicorn at a retarded donkey show.) They aren't always there with boyfriends, in fact many of them come in groups. And I've never seen them buy anything, so I have no idea what their purpose is. Maybe there are organized tours of the way men spend money.

"On your left you'll see oscilloscopes. No one buys oscilloscopes, but guys like to look at them and pretend they know how to use them. Take for example this guy in the bright orange hat. Well, actually, he may have an EE Degree. Yes, he seems to know how to set the voltage scale."

"On your right we have candy. Computer nerds need candy to keep their energy up while they play their newly purchased First Person Shooters."

Luckily the workers at Fry's can't tell the difference between a "manufacturer defect" and a "Mike screwed up the system restore by installing XP professional." So with the money making it's way back to my card, my next try at a Pro Tools friendly computer will come from Costco, home of the 6 month return policy, more attractive shoppers, and food samples. Mmmm, food samples.

Struggling Through a Life of Privilege

For my birthday I asked for, and received, an MBox. For those of you who have no idea what that is, I shall briefly explain.

An MBox is a little box that hooks into a computer via the USB port. To the MBox, one can connect all manner of instruments and microphones. The MBox comes with Pro Tools LE, which is multi-track recording software. With the MBox and Pro Tools, I could, theoretically, produce and entire song with 2 guitar parts, bass, drums, vocals, and backup vocals all by myself. Theoretically.

When I got the MBox, I was understandably excited. Yay! Time to start recording. Unfortunately, I discovered that my poor old computer wasn't fast enough to run the software. It worked, but very poorly.

No problem. I'm employed. It's my birthday. I'll buy myself a new computer. I'm more than due. So I trekked down to Fry's and decided to buy a Compaq SR1250NX desktop. A better deal could not be found. Even building it myself would be more expensive.

Problem. I got the computer home, and Pro Tools decides to be an ass. I can record for roughly 15 seconds before it gives me an error. While I can't say I'm a verbose or prolific songwriter, I do require more than 15 seconds to get my ideas down.

Screw the MBox! I decided to send it back, but since my friend wanted to see it, I took it to his house first. I installed the software on his computer (which is half as fast as my new one, with LESS than the minimum ram requirement) and it worked beautifully. Screw Compaq!! I love the MBox. In 4 hours we recorded a very professional-sounding flamenco song. And let me tell you, it's hard to record an acoustic instrument and have it sound good. Plus there was some editing and splicing involved. It worked great. And now I want it to work for me.

So now the MBox is staying, and the computer is going back to Fry's. And I have to find a new, new computer. One which will let me play with my newly beloved MBox.

Generic Little Orange Dude (GLOD)

I'm guessing here, but I think the last time I carved a pumpkin was round about 1989 at my dad's old house. I'm not sure about that, but it's my only concrete memory of it, although that isn’t saying much. I just remember sitting on floor in the kitchen thinking, "the insides of this pumpkin are icky." It also seems to me I made a huge mess.

Not this time. I managed to keep all the pumpkin carnage to single piece of newspaper.

It's surprisingly hard to carve a pumpkin. Lack of control and dull knives make detailed contours almost impossible. My pumpkin was supposed to have eyeballs and a round mouth. When his eyeballs fell off, and his eyes got much bigger than anticipated, the round mouth starting looking strange. So now he's become your standard, run of the mill, generic pumpkin, except with a larger than average nose. GLOD face not withstanding, I did enjoy coming up with some pumpkin accessories:

1) Pumpkin hat: It's made of tin foil, and serves no purpose.

2) Hat lifter: As a result of the pumpkin hat, which is only stapled to the pumpkin lid, I had no way of getting the lid off to insert the candle. So I took a wire coat hanger and ran it up through the lid. You can just see it sticking out the top of the hat.

3) Candle carriage: Since my pumpkin is tall and skinny, and I don't have any lighters that will reach a pre-placed candle, I had to find a way of lighting the candle and then putting in the pumpkin. I twisted a circle in the bottom of the other (detached) half of the coat hanger and made a handle for the top. Light candle, place on carriage, and place candle safely in pumpkin. The other option would be to fill the pumpkin with butane and engulf in the insides in flame, but I though that might hurt the pumpkin. Maybe I’ll do that right before I throw it away.

Simba

For the last week I've been moving the same pile of stuff from my chair to my bed in the morning, and from my bed to my chair at night. I'm pretty sure it isn't what Rafiki meant, but even so, I've decided that it's my own personal circle of life.

Road Bits

Last week I saw two interesting license plates. I will try to illustrate the first with ASCII art: (Pardon the periods. I had some spacing issues.)
._________________
|There's something|
|-----------------|
|......G Zis......|
|_________________|
| about that name |
.-----------------
Hopefully you can tell which part is the plate and which part is the frame.

The second one said "Spyde32." It was a silver Jetta which was stuffed full of Spiderman stuff. Spiderman decals, two inflatable Spidermans (? Spidermen? Spell check doesn’t like either one.) on the rear windshield, and a rather large stuffed Spiderman riding up front with her. It was a little creepy.

On the way home tonight traffic was all backed up on 80W just before the bridge by a stalled ... tow truck. What is this world coming to when the solution becomes part of the problem?

Party Hat Democracy

On Saturday I have a hat party to go to.

In general, I'm not very good at participating in the party aspect of parties. But this party has a hat aspect, so I may be able to make a half-assed attempt to fit in instead of my usual assless attempt. (I don't think that's the right phrase.)

Below are my two hat choices. The orange one looks like it's been Photoshoped into glowing like that, but let me assure you that it's really that color. So bearing in mind that this party is indoors, so traffic safety isn't an issue, which hat should I wear? Please cast your vote in the comment section.

So Many Things

I have so many things to write about: The REM concert, the license plates I saw on Friday, my Birthday. But I think I'll discuss, while I wait for my laundry to dry, my ponderous ability to avoid human contact.

Yesterday, being my birthday, I saw lots of people, many of whom said happy birthday. This is a huggy group, but I somehow managed to only get 2 and a half hugs. 1 from my friend Yasmin, 1 from Matt, a friend but definitely someone I know much less well, and the half hug was from Matt's boyfriend, whom I've only met 3 or 4 times. It was one of those complicated-handshake-becomes-a-hug hugs. I was sort of expecting 2 or 3 more hugs.

I'm pretty sure it's something I'm doing to kill the hug. I like hugs, but I suck at initiating them. In fact, there were several times when I could see a hug about to happen, and then the moment passed. I'm not sure what I'm doing to sully the huggosity of the situation, but I'm certainly doing something. Belching before a kiss, announcing an obvious and bold-faced lie before telling someone you love them, kicking a kitten before holding trying to hold someone's hand - these are all ways to ruin a moment. I know this. I think I'm doing something much more subtle, but I can't be sure. I'm bad at reading situations.

As an illustration of this point, I give you one of my first blind dates. It was a double date with my friend David, his girlfriend Sara (I can't actually remember her name), and her friend Anne (her name escapes me as well.) Being in middle school and a hopeless romantics, we went to the mall. David and Sara were holding hands as we walked through Meyer and Frank, and I was walking next to Anne, furthering my lack of human contact, when her hand bumped mine. I muttered an apology and moved over 6 inches. Again, a hand bump. I started to worry about my ability to walk in a straight line. Another hand bump. Good lord I'm clumsy. Hang on. Could it be ... does she maybe want to hold ... my ... hand? If she bumps it again, I'll try to hold it. Bump. Hold. Ah ha.

That was in middle school, and over the years I've honed my obliviousness to a bluntness previously unimaginable. Hence my ability to kill hugs and to have no idea how a date went unless it ends in making out. I am neither Casanova nor Ms. Cleo. I am Man, hear me shrug.

A Dating Revelation

As I noted a couple of posts ago, I had no idea how it was going with my Yahoo! girl. But since my emails had gone unanswered, my confusion was congealing into the impression that she'd given up on me. Just when I was giving up hope, she emailed me today saying that Hotmail had relegated my message to the spam folder. The confusion is back and my distain for Hotmail lives on.

People have trouble hearing me on the phone. This is especially true if the phone boasts some sort of noise canceling system. Most noise canceling phones decide I'm noise, and cancel me out. The Hotmail issue cements my worry that I might ACTUALLY be noise.

Two Covers and an Underage Van

I'm sure this will get old, but I found more seat covers of note today. The first was in a Crown Victoria, favorite vehicle of the CHP, being driven by an older couple. They had black and white ala 1950's jail movie striped seats. I thought it was a good match of car model and seat fashion.

The second may or may not have been a seat cover. The girl driving the car had sandy blond hair that was either so long that it went through the headrest and down the back of her seat all the way to the floor of the car, or she had a sandy blond human-hair seat cover. I'm not sure which one to hope for.

Then while driving back to the Depot, I pulled up along side a van from Justin Sienna High School, or so it said on the side. It was chocked full of blond high school girls waving at me multi-fingeredly. Not the enthusiastic, fingers all together, whole hand wave, but a play seductive, tickle the ivories sort of wave. Either way, I seem to have overshot my age group again. Maybe if I carry just a little peanut brittle. What do the women my age like? Sushi? I'm not carrying sushi around in a hot van all day just to win the affections of a lady, so you can just forget it.

Partly Political Posting

Last night in the final Presidential Debate, Bush had a small gob of spit in the corner of his mouth. (His right side, our left.) It showed up 5 or 10 minutes in, and stuck around for about an hour. It was all I could look at. I couldn't hear the drivel over the dribble. After the spittle got taken care of, my attention switched to the fact that the Bush ears are both huge and lopsided. His left one really is noticeably bigger than his right.

Also in me news, this morning I woke up convinced it was Friday. My internal clock said it was Payday, the end of the week, but all my external clocks were telling me that Friday was tomorrow. I guess I'll have to go by them, as it seems no one else goes by my internal clock. It's probably for the best. I don't think I could get much done with everyone calling me all day asking me what time I think it is, and how it relates to their particular time zone.

Christianity and the Internet

I keep getting spam messages telling me where to meet "Quality Christian Singles." Problems with this include:

1) I don't wasn’t to meet Christian singles.
2) Even if I did want to meet Christian singles, I would probably want to meet bad ones. The quality ones are too Christian.
3) Isn't it somehow against the teachings of the bible to spam people? Thou shalt not flood the inboxes of the heathens. And the Lord said, "Let the incoming mail be something in which thou showest some interest."

Then again, I guess when the Christians walked over to my table in college and quizzing me on the "literature" they had left for me to read last time they found me, that was just a low tech version of spam. Christians of the future. Hooray.

A Long Day

Yesterday I was on call, which means if anyone needs a Saturday delivery, or has a mattress emergency, I'm the one to talk to. Being on call can be really nice, if you don't actually get a call. I got called.

I started out my day driving up to Carmichael and then up to Yuba City. Yuba City is a little, tiny city about 175 miles north east of San Francisco. By the time I got up there, it was just before lunch, so I stopped at "The Mall" to get something to eat. There was actually a sign in front with big letters that said: "The Mall."

Everything is cheaper there. I noticed the same Sbarro lunch I would have gotten at the mall in San Francisco cost be $3 less. So the upside of living in Yuba City is the cost of living, but the down side is that you are living in Yuba City.

When I was done setting up the Yuba city mattress, they guy thanked me and let me know that he wasn't expecting me until Monday. A fine example of information to give me when I called to set up an appointment.

My second to last Delivery of the day was to a 90 year old woman in Mill Valley. She was friendly and I think a little lonely, eager to tell me things that weren't really my business. For instance, she let me know her hobbling around with a walker was the result of an evening of too much wine and falling over. I did notice several empty boxes of Charles Shaw on the deck.

She also showed me a birthday card her kids made for her inviting people to her 90th birthday. It had a picture of her on the front, taken some 60 years earlier. It's amazing how people can change over so many years. I couldn't even see any resemblance.

As I was leaving, she offered me a cookie. Generally I'm not one to take food from strangers, especially after handling sheets that smell faintly of pee. (To be fair, I noticed some cat paraphernalia. So the pee smell may have been animal related.)

"You know, I'm just about to go home and have dinner. But thank you."
"You're going to have a cookie whether you like it or not."
"Well, ok then."

When I finally made it out the door, I told her,

"Have a good evening."
"I had a friend who, whenever someone would tell him to have a good evening, he would say, 'I've got other plans.'"
"Well, I hope you don't have other plans."

12 hours of work on a Saturday is too much, even when you factor in the cookie.

I Hate Dating

The Yahoo! Personals girl and I went to an open mic tonight. We got some french-fries. She and I had some water and sprite, respectively. We talked, we laughed, I took her home. We hugged, I took me home.

I have no idea how it went.

It's like taking important quarterly exams and never getting your grades back. I wish I could tell how interested she is, but I can't. I'm sure she's sending the biggest, most ridiculously obvious signals on way or the other, but I'm completely blind to that sort of thing.

There were some positives from tonight:

- Since I suck at initiating hugs, my hug tonight was my first real close personal contact since we hugged two and a half weeks ago (the last time I saw her). So I was about due.

- I drove both to and from the open mic, so she spent a lot of time in my car. As a result, it will smell nice next time I get in it.

- Before I picked her up, I made a Tom McRae CD for her on the off chance that she'll like it. If she does, maybe I won't end up going to see that particular concert alone.

- I now know what sweet potato fries taste like. And very appropriately, I have no idea if I like them. (Maybe not so appropriate. I know I like her, I just don't know if she likes me. Or, at least, "that way.")

As a side note: How do you spell mic? As in, two turn tables and a microphone. Spell check says I should say open mike. But I'm not that open. Maybe it needs a period. As in, where did I put the mic.?

Luck with the Ladies

Yesterday, while standing on the mezzanine of 1 South at the VA hospital, an old woman in a wheel chair waved to me. Being the friendly guy that I am, I waved back. She followed that up by blowing me a kiss.

I seem to be popular with the ladies, just not the ones in my age group. Or even those several age groups over. If I could figure out how to get the early to mid twenty group of ladies to like me, then I'd be all set. Could it be that my supply of peanut brittle is not attracting the right crowd?

Weekend of Wonder

I've just put my laundry in the drier and emptied the lint trap. I think the person before me used it to dry a sheep. I've never seen such a thick and heftily solid brick of white lint in my life.

Yesterday I went to Macy's to buy myself some sunglasses, as the little nose pads fell off of my old ones last week. I went into Macy's upstairs, and took the escalator down to the glasses department. When I was done, I took the escalator back upstairs to the vortex department. I walked all the way around the outside edge of the store without finding a single door. Then I walked around again, but in the opposite direction. Still no door. Then I tried exiting via the glasses department, and sure enough found the exit to the mall's lower level.

The thing is, I know you can get in from the top floor, and I know you can get in from the bottom floor, but from the looks of it, there isn't room for a windowless, doorless floor in between. Some magic mezzanine of terror. When I was little I wrote a story about a regular looking box that had an infinite amount of space inside. You could fit whales, houses, Rosanne, anything you wanted, and there would be room for more. Little did I know that the technology exists to make such a box possible, and it's been harnessed by Macy's.

The last, but most disturbing part of my Weekend of Wonder was a prank(?) call I got last night at about 1am. This guy called up and was either pretending to be stereotypically black, or actually was. I'll try to reconstruct the conversation.

Me: Hello?
Him: Amos? (Pronounced A-mose)
Me: No, he's not here. Can I take a message?
Him: Are you black?
Me: Um, noooo.
Him: Well, he's a black man, are you too?
Me: Oh, I see, (unenthusiastically) ha ha. (Amos's last name is Blackman.)
Him: What's up? Are you chilling on the flip side?
Me: Um. I'm not sure.
Him: What do you mean you aren't sure? Are you, or are you not chilling on the flip side?
Me: Well, that's just not in my lexicon. (Who says lexicon, really?)
Him: My buddy says you stole his spinners.
Me: Um, nope.
Him: He says you stole them. I'll put him on.
Guy 2: I hear you stole my spinners.
Me: Nope.
Guy 2: Yeah, someone told me you stole them, and are using them as a hat and to drink soup out of.
Me: Nope.
Guy 3: Black power.
Guy 2: Who's that? Are you fucking with me?
Guy 3: Black power, all the black men unite.
Guy 3: Who's that? Is that Amos?
Me: No, it's just me here.
Guy 3: Black power.
Guy 2: Who's saying that?
Me: Ok, well, it sounds like you guys have enough people to keep this conversation going. (I hang up.)

The really disturbing bit is that they knew the name and the number. It's possible that they were just flipping through the white pages and found us, but either way, I got prepared. I locked the door, called *69 and got some oldish sounding woman, and preparer the most terrible noise I could find to play through the phone if they called back. They didn't.

What a weird weekend.

Shaky Start

This morning seemed like a good morning. It's payday, and I had a date tomorrow. All good ways to start a day. But then the evil of email reared its ugly head.

On Monday we start a new system where we call a 1-800 number to clock in and out at work. So the person in charge of this sent a message to all us bazillion techs in the US that we should pick a pass code and send it to her so she can set up our accounts. So I did, and sent it back... or so I thought. What I actually did, was send my pass code to EVERYONE IN THE COMPANY. So, within 30 seconds of pressing send, I got the beginning of what was probably 50 messages: all variations of "you sent your pass code to everyone, stupid." I am currently not speaking to the "Reply to All" button on my pager. Unfortunately I don't have anything it wants, so I don't have a lot of sway over it. On the bright side, someone else did the same thing 6 hours later. So that made me happy.

To top off the morning, just before my first delivery, I got an email canceling my date. I hate when people flake. It drives me nuts. It's partially why I hate planning things: because people either don't respond or do respond and don't show up. I invited 15 people to go to a concert recently, and I got 2 responses. 2, and both said no. I complain that I don't have any friends, and people poo poo me. So what I should say, is that I do have friends, it's just that they don't want to hang out with me. There, that's better. I invited the same number of people to a free comedy show, for which I had 10 tickets. 15 people for only 10 tickets? Was I crazy? Now I understand why airlines overbook. I only managed to get 5 people to go to that, and 3 of them were invited by somebody else.

I think this is why, for my birthday, I'm going to see an 80s cover band/going dancing. I'm not a big fan of either of those things, but it does mean it will be my birthday, and there will be people I know hanging around me. Never mind that the two aren't really related.

Good parts of today:
* I got home at a reasonable hour.
* I went to Arby ' s for lunch, and had a jamoca shake.

And so, another depressing post draws to a close.

The Great Equalizer

A week and a day ago I went to see Muse at Freeborn Hall at U.C. Davis. I went with two friends from school, and a good time was had by all; especially the people frisking us concert-goers. It was of the utmost importance that we not bring in any ... cameras. I had a pocket knife on my keychain, and a little plastic baggie with earplugs in it. He didn't care about the pocket knife, and he didn't look to see what was in my baggie. But he made the guy before me go put his camera in his car.

Inside Freeborn was about half standing room and half stadium seating. Since I'll be 26 in 3 weeks, I chose the front row of stadium seating. Turns out it was a good place to be, because I could see the large, bright, yellow, and orange cable cover.

Since the mixing board is in the middle of the floor, they had to run all the cables halfway across the standing room section of the hall. Since they don't want people yanking them, nor tripping, they made a cover which was bright and shiny and easy to see, even in the dark. Unfortunately, nobody looks down. So EVERYBODY tripped on it. The goths, the nerds, the jocks, the hardcore people. Everybody.

Actually, I noticed that the tougher or cooler people were trying to look, the more likely it was that they would trip. Cool and tough people are looking at other people, not where they are going, which sometimes, is down.

Cars

I saw Speed Racer driving on 101S today. His car seems to have held up well, though it has been painted green. Unfortunately Speed himself is quite a lot older than he once was. He looked to be in his 60s, and sadly was driving in the slow lane. (Really. This car was just exactly the Speed Racer car in all its real world ridiculousness.)

Speaking of things getting old: One of my coworkers can't use his car alarm. More accurately, he knows how it works, but he can't do things in the right order. In the space of 3 hours he got into his car 5 times and all 5 times the alarm went off. For some reason he opens the door, the alarm goes off, he panics, then turns off the alarm. He gets what he was looking for, then shuts the door and arms the alarm. Next time he goes to the car, same thing. 3 times = Funny. 4 times = Are you serious? 5 times = ok, stop now. Luckily he doesn't usually have his car at work, as we are always driving the company vans. His broke down earlier this week, although at this point I'm suspicious that he was trying to drive first and start the car second. Operator error? We may never know.

Completely unrelated to cars, I stopped at a burger place for lunch. They had a chicken sandwich which included lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and ranck dressing. Anyone who knows me well, knows I don't ever catch spelling mistakes. But I caught this one, and to tell you the truth, was a little offended. Ranch dressing is the best dressing ever, and calling it rank even by accident is just atrocious. Humph!

Don't Let Me Near Your Loved Ones

Today my boss pointed out to me that every single person to whom I delivered a mattress on Friday, died over the weekend. That's 4 whole people who are no longer. Yikes.

If I would quit getting home so late I would write about the walking hazards at the Muse concert, or maybe my attempt to get an Uno shirt from the late 80s. But alas, I'm too tired when I get home to write anything but a very short and very morbid post.

To Tired to Write Something Interesting

I was going to post an entry
For everyone to read
But my want to go to sleep
Has become a need

Instead I'll just bang out
This crappy little poem
And hope to be more interesting
Next time that I am home

My meter could use some tink
ering to make it be okay
For I can never think
of things to fit my word-souffle

String of Oddities

I've been in a little vortex of weird the past few days.

It started on Sunday, when after a sunny and moderately windy day, I turned on the news to discover that Oakland had been battered by a respectable storm. Drains had backed up, onramps were flooded with 3 feet of water, signs had blown down, and yet 10 miles away, not an meteorological peep.

Then Monday I had a delivery to a Kaiser facility to put some extra mattresses in a storage room. I guess they are using the entire wing as storage, and it is the creepiest place I've ever been. It looks like a hospital, but there are no patients, there are holes in the walls, doors are hanging off their hinges, the carpet is ripped, there are toilets upside down in the bathrooms, and every hall is lined with empty hospital beds as far as the eye can see. All the rooms are filled with various hospital supplies: One room is filled with portable commodes, one stacked to the ceiling with little pillows. That's one place I wouldn't want to spend the night.

Finally, yesterday I noticed my rear-left tire was looking low. So I went to a gas station to pump it up, and on the way back I drove over a nail. Now my rear-right tire had a hole. You know you have a problem with your tire when you can hear it hissing from 10 feet away.

We'll see if it is indeed a vortex of weird, or if it expands to a week of weird.

Experimenting With My Pants

In my quest to never buy any new clothing (apart from t-shirts), some of my everyday clothing is starting to fray. For instance, my kaki work pants develop tassels every two weeks. I'm not a big fan of tassels.

Until recently I had some jeans that were quickly falling to pieces. There were holes in the knees, and I was developing a pretty good hole where my keys lived. Everything was becoming threadbare in the area except for a little spot upon which I'd spilled some pink paint. Of all the bits of my pants to stay put, the pink embarrassing bit was the one to stick around. Annoying as it was, it did give me an idea.

To try to keep my work pants going strong, today I cut off the tassels and sprayed the cuffs with clear flat lacquer. I'm hoping I'll remain tassel free and happy.

(Not that anyone wanted to know about painting my pants, but I guess people don't like the photo of a graffiti-penis being the headline anymore.)

Photographic Evidence

A cockandballs upon the street
By wayward, painting lads
Perhaps to represent the pain
Of driving on your nads

Who, Me?

The bad news is that my ice cream (which I SOOOO want to type as one word) date didn't happen tonight. The good news is that it has been moved to tomorrow night, and has become a movie date. Movie dates are nice because afterward you can talk about the movie, and during the movie you can not talk about anything; thereby relieving the stress on my conversational skills.

Speaking of which, in the post-date email wrap-up, I was described as being a good conversationalist. Don't be fooled by my eloquent blog, I don't talk nearly as well as I type; especially when my brain is in half power date mode. Perhaps she goes on a lot of dates and has me confused with somebody blessed with high verbal aptitude. I do get quite a few "you look like ..."'s from people. Maybe it's finally working to my advantage:

"Is he the guy who, in an interesting yet understandable way, explained the nuances of string theory, or the one who couldn't figure out how to open the door at Starbucks? They look so similar."

Three Things

The first thing is me freaking out about tomorrow. We tentatively scheduled an ice cream date, and I sent her an email, but I haven't heard anything back. Maybe Thursday was too soon. Maybe I smelled. Maybe I hugged badly. Maybe she's thinking, "I can't eat ice cream with anyone too dumb to figure out the doors at Starbucks." Should I have called instead of emailed? I guess I'll call her tomorrow and see what's up.

"Hi, Meg? This is Mike."
"I hate you. Don't call me."

Numba Two: I heard a story on NPR today about an intern being injured by a laser at Los Alamos National Laboratory. This strikes me as being much too funny for my own good. I think the morbidity of my job is encroaching.

Intern #1: Have you seen the laser?
Intern #2: No. Where is it?
Intern #1: It's right here. This is sooo cool, watch this.
laser: bzzzbpytpzzzz.
Intern #2: Aaaaaaahg!
Intern #1: Dude, that's a big hole.
Intern #2: -
Intern #1: Dude?

Last but certainly not least, I saw some graffiti today that took some guts. About half way between San Rafael and Mill Valley on 101S, there are 5 lanes including an off ramp. On the 3 middle lanes, somebody has spray painted the universal graffiti symbol for the male genitalia. I have to give them credit for the placement, but I'm not sure if a spray paint doodle of a penis and testicles are worth risking one's life. I'm going to see if I can get a picture tommorow.

Dates and Nipples

My date went fairly well. As good as a first date can go I guess. I wasn't comfortable per se, but I wasn't as uncomfortable as I can get, which is saying something. When I get too uncomfortable my brain shuts off. For instance ...

I saw her walking toward to door to Starbucks, so I got up to open the door for her. I pulled the left door. Locked! I pulled the right door. Locked! Oh no, did they close while I was waiting for her?! No, they didn't. Both doors say push in big letters right on the door handles. I think my intentions were clear.

All in all, it was a success. She was able to keep the conversation going, and she initiated the hug at the end. Honestly, if I didn't manage to find girls who like helping the emotionally handicapped, I would be seriously out of luck. We're going to get some ice cream or something on Thursday.

My other big event for the day was getting me new driver's license in the mail. I had to renew it because when one turns 26, it expires due to one's extreme old age. The DMV also requires that you wear your pants higher.

Along with my new license came my new organ donor card. To indicate one's donorness, there is a little pink round sticker that says donor in the middle. It is encompassed by a larger pink sticker that doesn't say anything and seems to serve no purpose other than to make me feel uncomfortable when peeling the middle part out. Like I'm taking apart a little paper nipple.

Ouch.

Brainwash

I went to Brainwash, a laundromat slash cafe slash venue, to see some music. There was a table by the door with 3 chairs occupied by 2 people. I asked if chair #3 was in use, and they said I could have it, so I did.

I didn't move it far from the table: just enough so it wasn't like I was sitting there. It turned out the whole section of tables was full of English people who had come to see the first band, who also happened to be English.

Eventually a 30sih woman came in and saw her friends who had just minutes before given me my chair. She walked over to them, stood in front of me, and started talking to them. But standing can be tiresome, so after a while she turned to me and asked if she could sit on my lap. I, being a normal human being, thought she was joking and said sure. She promptly took a seat on my lap and talked to her friends for another half hour until the band started playing, all the while saying nothing to me. For I was a chair, and people don't talk to chairs.

The last paragraph is untrue, but makes a good story. Then again, when going to things alone, there isn't anybody who's going to contradict me. Maybe if I make enough things up, people will start wanting to go places with me to see in person all the amazing things that happen to me. A plan! So if anyone asks you what I did tonight, tell them that I went to see some music and an English woman used me as a chair.

Child's Play

On they way home from a service call today I saw not one, but two inflatable bouncy castles. I hadn't seen one for more than a year, and I certainly had never seen one in the city.

The second one was just your average generic bouncy castle, but the first one was a top-of-the-line Rainbow Bright brand castle. I was really impressed, and I wish I had taken my camera with me.

You really have to plan ahead to get a bouncy castle in the city. Both were half on the sidewalk, and half in the street, but still contained within a parallel parking spot. It's a good thing those castles are enclosed, or there might be kids bouncing right out into traffic. That's quick way to ruin a birthday.

Don't let anyone tell you that raising a kid in the city will keep them from having a rich and full set of childhood experiences.

I HATE THAT COMPUTER!

I don't like the metal shop guy, and because I build for him a terrible possessed computer from the devil, he won't leave me alone! It's terrible! Go away metal shop guy! If only I had moved to Ohio. Sigh.

Observations on a Friday

First off, I seem to be attractive to VERY old women in nursing homes. A little old lady whose bed I was setting up asked me to help her look up a phone number. A nurse came in I handed the task off to her. When I started setting up the bed she realized I wasn't part of the nursing home staff and said, "I thought you were too good looking to work here." Creepy but nice.

Families of the recently deceased are surprisingly cheery. They seem tired, which is expected. But they are all smiles and small talk when I come get the mattress. I guess our mattresses are mostly used for people who have been sick for a while, so the family has had some time to prepare. Even so, I thought there would be more moping.

I'm not as un-photogenic nor as illiterate as I thought I was. Call me paranoid, but after two, 2!, full days of not hearing anything back from the two yahoo personal emails I sent, I was beginning to think I would go another 3 years with no girlfriend. (There is historical president for the 3 years dry spell.) That could still happen, but that time will at least be broken up by a date next Monday with the maybe-Goth* girl. Turns out she works for a Bio-Tech company and went to U.C. Davis, so she's probably not too Goth*. As long as I can manage to go an evening without saying anything too gross or stupid, it should go ok. Then again I've been exposed to a lot of dead people mattress jokes of late, and my filter has never worked that well.

Any gems of wisdom?

*My spellchecker insists that Goth* should be capitalized. Is Goth* a proper name? A forgotten but non-the-less important figure from history?

Screw Home Cooking

I have finally earned the title, "World's Worst Cook." I'd been working on it for quite some time, but hadn't ever reached it until today.

I can make maybe four dishes, and not all of them come out well. My chicken tends to be dry; My pork chops, reminiscent of hockey pucks. Oddly enough my Salmon comes out okay, but I've only made that once, so it may have been a fluke. (No pun intended.) And my Macaroni and Cheese tends to be undercooked.

Now undercooked is really just me not having enough patience. I'll dip my fork into the noodles and take out a Sponge Bob or a Patrick and invariable burn my tongue while testing their squishiness. They are never quite squishy. Today I decided that I would write an email while they boiled, thereby taking patience out of the game. Mac and Cheese 2, Me 0. I overcooked it.

Overcooked is perhaps an understatement. I boiled it to death. There was hardly even any water to drain out, and Bob and Patrick were enormous and disintegrating. Worst of all, some of the noodles were burned to the bottom of the pan. I hope soaking takes care of that. Otherwise I may have boiled the pan to death as well.

Very fitting is the sign that hangs over the doorway to my kitchen. My Grandmother cross-stitched it for me, and it reads: "Screw Home Cooking." Truer words have never been stitched.