So-So Day

Today started off poorly. Yesterday I did a delivery for a Medicare patient which required 20 odd pages of forms to be filled out and signed. I did this delivery on my way home, so I didn't give the paperwork to my boss until this morning, at which point I noticed the stack was only 3 pages high. Not good. So I took a new packet with me so I could make arrangements to meet with the family again so they could sign the missing pages.

Off to Sacramento. On my way there a dragonfly got stuck on my windshield wiper, and his tail exploded on my windshield. I don't know how many people have had dragonfly goo on their windows, but let me tell you, there's a lot of it. I mean, the portion of fly flapping around on the wiper blade was the size of a hummingbird, and there was still enough left to make it hard to see until I ran the window squirter.

Visibility taken care of, I went to pick up a large and heavy hospital bed. I found the bed, chose a door and exited. Unfortunately, I have no sense of direction inside buildings, and I chose the back door, not the front door, near which my van was parked. So I had to herd a rather ornery bed on casters for about a block, at one point only barely avoiding a collision with an SUV.

With the bed strapped safely into the van, I went to get my Medicare packet signed. The signing went smoothly, but when I got back to the van, I noticed my keys were on the dashboard and the doors were locked. What to do? Luckily, the back doors were unlocked. Unluckily, there is a perforated metal divider between the front seats and the rear of the van. But it turns out that I can just barely fit one arm and my head through the space between the divider and the door post. Attempt #1 to pull the handle and unlock the door was a failure. My arm wasn't long enough to reach. And, to add misery to defeat, there was a brief moment when I though I'd gotten my head stuck. After pushing back the panic, I moved my body a little higher and freed my head. Attempt #2 was a success, and involved my arm and head back through the space, but this time aided by a bungee cord in the role of handle hook.

All that brings us to 1pm, so I was understandably worried about the next 4-7 hours. (I'm never sure when I'll get off.) Thankfully the rest of the day was fine, and I type this unscathed but tired.

Sights and Sounds

I've seen and heard some interesting things this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If I were a better writer I would convey them with in concise paragraphs, elegantly connected with smooth and motivating transitions. But I'm not, so I'm going to make a list.

1) Too many noises: There are two people out there making their own sound effects. Sort of. I'll explain. The first was a girl I was sitting across from at a Korean barbeque place. She REALLY liked the food. Some people say "mmm, this is good," for the benefit of the chef or for their fellow eaters. Very few do the same thing repeatedly over the entire course of the dinner. "Mmm, this beef is good. MMmm. mmMMM. Oh, mmm, yummy. Ummmimmm." No one was mmming back. She was simply making yum noises for her own benefit.

The other person was a guy that entered the men's room the same time I did today. "Oooh oooh oooh," as he enters the bathroom. "Errr oh," as he tries to get his pants unziped. "Aaaaaahhhhhhh," as he empties his bladder. Then while he was washing his hands he made an impressive and wide ranging display of throat clearing noises. Then, splashing some water on his face, he left the bathroom with a conclusive, "yeeeaaaaahhhhh."

2) Camouflage: These was a man driving a Saturn on 80E who was wearing a blue and white Hawaiian print shirt. His seats were also wearing blue and white Hawaiian print. I could see his arms, legs, and head, but his torso blended perfectly with the seats.

3) Day care: In what should have been a display window of one of the House-O-Crap stores on Mission street, there was a mostly blocked off and fairly well hidden play room. Inside was a small child, probably 6 or 7, watching the smallest TV I've ever seen, and working on a puzzle on a little red plastic table, and sitting on a little blue plastic chair. He was hidden from the street by fabric which had been hung inside the windows, and hidden from the interior of the store by some fabric hung from the ceiling and a display of shoes (which included the ever popular Air Jumper brand.) I guess it's as good a place as any to leave your child if you need to be minding the store, making sure nobody walks off with a luminous, rotating colorful spiral-backed, wall-hanging of Jesus. ($9.99)

4) Last and probably least, I was driving on 80W behind a Little Caesar’s box truck. I haven't seen a Little Caesar’s Pizza in probably 10 years. If there are indeed Little Caesar’s locations in business, their numbers are probably low enough that they could easily be supplied by a guy on a moped.

Panel of Experts

I feel like I need a panel of experts with me at all times to help me get back into the dating pool. Not that I was ever a confidant social swimmer, but I really feel like I should be asking people advice this time. I'm still dependant on my relationship water-wings.

For instance, there's the whole personals thing. Should I spend $20 to send out an email? Is it a waste of money to send someone an email whose pictures indicate a level of gothness I might not be able to deal with? (But which I also find masochistically attractive.) Should I just stick to the free, but for some reason (at least it seems to me) more risky craigslist.org personals? Should I try to meet real people face to face like a normal human being?

Also, there's this girl who works at the Subway near the depot, out of which my mattress delivering is based. We kind of smiled at each other the first week. Never said anything more than what I wanted on my sandwich, and I ate there every day. (Not actually because of her, just because I like subway and am boring.) So week number 2 rolls around, and I go in for my daily sandwich, and she has her hair all done up and she's wearing waaaay too much makeup, and she keeps walking out from behind the counter to do things like put 4 ice cubes in an otherwise empty cup, and smiling at me. What does this mean? Does she want me to ask for her number? Does it mean she has a photo shoot after work and is working on a recipe that requires exactly 4 frozen blocks of water?

I also need someone to help me not say stupid stuff, and to compliment more effectively and often. When I first started going out with Kristin, I regaled her with a tale about me throwing up with such force in the toilet that a little bit got in my eye. That's not a good story to tell a prospective girlfriend. It's a wonder she stuck it out as long as she did. And saying things like, "Hey cute pants" don't convey that I think the person is cute. It conveys that I think their pants are cute, which generally I don't. I don't know cute pants from non-cute pants, I just know that someone looks nice. What I need to say is, "you look nice." But phrases like that are much to advanced and sensible for me.

All this is to say that I don't want to keep my cycle of 2-3 years between girlfriends. It's not a good cycle, and I refuse to continue it. Unless I can't help it, in which I case I'll just deal.

TGINWTGWCTTMFLA

Thank goodness I'm not with the guy who came to train me from LA right now.

I've been driving around with this guy all week under the auspice that he's going to teach me how to deliver medicinal inflatable mattresses. I've pretty much got it down, and had it down before he got here, and I'm glad he's gone home. It wasn't that he was a bad guy, but he got to be a little much by the end of the week. For some reason he decided it would be funny to insinuate that I'm gay several times a minute for the entire time we were together. For the most part I'm not offended by that kind of thing, with the caveat that it isn't constant and never ending. I mean, if someone called you a garbanzo every 15 seconds for a week, I think I would start to get offended by the end.

With that said, last weekend my roommate and I were trying to guess how many people thought we were gay. He took me to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate my newly minted job, just the two of us. The wait was 55 to 75 minutes, so we went across the street to shop for shoes for him. He tried some on, and we discussed their pros and cons: heel size, shininess, pointiness. Then we went back to the restaurant, ate our dinners, and shared a piece of cheesecake. We live in San Francisco. We were building quite a case.

The case against: I was wearing cheap, non-stylish, baggy jeans. My hair was un-styled and fluffy. My roommate was dressed equally un-stylishly and had a little tiara of cowlick hair from having his sunglasses on his head all day. We both checked out the waitresses. (I think the Cheesecake Factory's hiring policy has an attractiveness minimum.)

Next week I can happily go back to questioning my sexuality insofar as it relates to my fear of dating and meeting people. I am perhaps an anti-people-I-don't-know-sexual. Speaking of which, what's consensus on online personals? Do they work? Are they worth $20?

Bathroom Music

I've discovered that my electric shaver doesn't carry a tune nearly as well as my electric toothbrush does. It's fun to hum REM's King of Birds in harmony to bushing my teeth. But when I tried the same thing with the shaver, it just didn't sound good. I guess some grooming implements are just more musically inclined than others.

You see what happens when I don't have much of a band left?

Weight Watchers

A lot of people seem to be on the South Beach Diet of late. I've even been asked to be a SB diet partner, but the other person was kind of drunk. Also, I hadn't necessarily mentioned that I wanted to lose weight, so the proposition could have been seen as insulting.

That's not to say I don't want to lose weight. I do. I just don't want to eat well or exercise. I'm trying the power of positive thought. Once in while you read about somebody curing their cancer by thinking "leave now, tumor!" I've been thinking "be gone, fat!" It doesn't seem to be working, it's still huddled around my middle.

Which is, I guess, a fairly good place for fat to be. I don't have a round face and my ankles don't spill out over my shoes. For the most part, my fat is kept out of my head by gravity, and out of my legs by the fact that my boxer shorts are too small. This makes for a nice, hidable, centralized fat - a readily stashable love handles, boobs, and gut.

"Move it along, fat! You are not wanted around these parts."

Seriously People

Our bassist left tonight. SpiralKid is now a very small band. A band that has still never played as show. It's a good thing I have a job driving mattresses around. Without it, I don't know how I would maintain my sunny disposition.

This is SpiralKid

I'm probably the only person on Earth who hasn't seen This is Spinaltap all the way through. Be that as it may, I have seen enough of it via clips and references that I know Spinaltap had trouble keeping drummers. My band seems to have the same problem, except with both drummers and bassists, and ours don’t explode.

To tell you the truth, our bassist is fairly stable, and we've had him for quite a while. It's just that we went through probably 8 bassists before we found him, all in quick succession. Our drummers last longer, but still leave. Drummer #1 got a job with the SETI project with NASA, and went to go do that in the mountains someplace. Drummer #2 has just left because he had 2 other projects and is looking for a job. Out of a 4 person band, the lead guitarist and I are the only original members.

Every time somebody leaves, we have to relearn the songs with the replacement player. Ergo, we will NEVER play a show. So all those who would like to see SpiralKid songs performed, please come to my living room. Doors open after work and a shower, admission is free (price does not include shower). 18 and over please, and it wouldn't hurt if you were hot and female (with a great personality to match.)

No Fly Zone
(DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!)

It's a little hot today, so I opened my sliding glass door. While it's nice to have the breeze, the Mission District has all these smaller-than-house flies, but larger-than-fruit flies that come in and fly in little circles around my face. Because I'm bored, lonely, and a little strange, I tried to figure out some way to kill them.

Plan A: I have neither a fly swatter, bug spray, nor one of those cool tennis racquet shaped bug zapper things. What I do have though, are batteries, wire, and a lot of capacitors. So I tried to build a swingable bug zapper. After about an hour of tinkering, I figured out how to get some good amperage at 9V, but I only had enough wire to spread it across 1" X 1' strip. It's hard to hit a small nimble fly with something so small, and in my case something so opaque. (I strung the wires across a cardboard box lid with the middle cut out. So there was enough cardboard around the edge that it was hard to see through the middle and keep my eye on the fly.) That didn't work, on to Plan B.

Plan B: Fly-sized flame thrower. It's a little hard to aim, but very effective. When a fly takes a fireball to the face, the fly goes down. The idea is this: Hold a lighter in one hand, flame-on. In the other hand, aim a can of Binaca over the flame and away from yourself. When I fly comes in range, give it a blast of breath-freshening fire. At first I tried following them around, shooting flames hither and yon while they darted out of the way. Eventually I found it more effective to sit on the couch and wait for a fly to come circle in front of me. It took a little practice, but eventually I shot them all down.

Success: My apartment is insect free, and my living room has minty-fresh breath.

Stupid Companies

I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, and I did fairly well in a class where we designed and simulated a basic computer processor in VHDL. All this, and yet I can't seem to get a job where I use a computer. The closest I've come is having a job selling computers. Not the same thing.

The news I alluded to a few posts ago was that I had one job offer, and one job lead that I was hoping would turn into an offer. The company who had extended me the offer had even delayed my start date so I could go on a second interview for this better job. The better job told me they would get back to me by the end of this week. What they meant was that they would get back to me at the very last little tiny smidgen of week. They called me today at 5:55pm to tell me that they had gone with another candidate. So ends a 3 day bout of intense stress over where I would be working on Monday.

On the bright side, I do have a job which will give me medical benefits, so I'll be able to go to have a check-up for the first time in many, many years. On the down side, this job doesn't have a whole lot of room for advancement. But we'll see. Who knows, maybe delivering inflatable mattresses to hospice patients will turn out to be a dream come true. One can only hope.

Also, perhaps this blog will be less about posture and large cups, and more about morbid experiences with the terminally ill. I wish I was making this up.

Elvis Rides the Bus

There is an interesting guy who rides the 27 bus from time to time. He looks like an old, puffy, and slightly ill Elvis impersonator. He has huge dyed-black, bushy mutton chop side burns, and terrible hair. The hair is also dyed black, but it's a wig. A really bad, possibly home-made Elvis inspired pompadour, which doesn't quite match the texture of the mutton chops. His wig looks like it's only living on his head temporarily until it can find someplace better to be. It isn't getting along with his sideburns, and some one is going to have to leave.

His other interesting aspect is his use of the bus. He uses a walker, so it takes him a good 2 or 3 minutes to get on the bus and get himself settled into a seat. When he gets off, it takes him another 2 or 3 minutes to unwedge himself from the seat, and hobble down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. Seeing as it takes him so long to get on and off the bus, and how much trouble he has with the stairs, why does he only ride the bus 2 blocks? I've seen him twice in the past week, and he's gone the same distance from the same stops both times.

Cuppa

Some fast food places have larger cup sizes than others. For instance, the largest Subway cup is not nearly as big as the largest MacDonald's cup. So when I went to In & Out today, I couldn't remember where their cups fall in the thimble-to-bucket continuum. I guessed, incorrectly, that they had some of the smaller cups in the business. So I ordered an extra large 7-Up with no ice, and a double double with cheese. They gave me my burger in a small box, and my 7-Up in a paper vat. It was much too big to fit all the way into my cup holder. Luckily I could cram the bottom half inch of the cup far enough into the holder that it didn't jump onto the floor on my way home.

A vat of pop wouldn't have been a bad thing back when I was drinking (literally) a gallon of Coke a day. But I've cut down considerably since then, and it took me a good 3 hours to finish my 7-Up. By the end it was a tad warm and tasted a bit cuppy. It's a good thing I'm disgusting and don't care what temperature my drink is.

[Some may think this is an awfully lame post with which to break a week's worth of silence. And those people would think right. I may have actual news soon, and then I write it out here. But until then, you'll just have to make do with boring babblings on my posture and adventures with abnormally large drink containers.]