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.

Two Portions of Day

The first portion of my day is getting a little too frequent. After delivering a Mattress in Napa, I discovered my pocket contained more empty space than I'm comfortable with. Sure enough, sitting next to my book, in the little bin between the front seats of my van, were my keys. Unfortunately, this van has much smaller spaces between the ceiling and the metal screen. I guess I'm challenging myself.

I learn from my mistakes (ok, not enough to keep track of my keys) so I tried the same thing I tried last time: Hook a bungee cord around the door handle and pull. It was much harder this time, being as I could only fit up to my forearm through the screen space, but I did it. I hooked, and I pulled, and the door stayed locked. I guess Astros don't unlock that way.

A new plan was in order. This time I took my small metal-tipped bungee cord and bent one hook out a little. Then I hooked the other end around my full-sized, plastic-ended bungee. I pushed this setup, half my palm, and all of my fingers through the space in the middle of the screen, right over the bin. It took quite a bit of casting, which is hard when you can only use your fingers, but I finally hooked my keys and pulled them up through the crack.

I NEVER lock my keys in my car, and I've locked them in my van twice in a month. I may reach my innovation limit soon and resort to calling AAA.

The second portion of interest was tonight at 8:30 when my sister called. Apparently she's going to be a backup singer for Lyle Lovett when he comes to Eugene, which is my sister's city of residence. I mean, it's Lyle Lovett, but on the other hand, it's Lyle Lovett. Hmm, typing doesn't convey the sentiment. I'm not a big Lyle fan, but he's definitely famous and he married Julia Roberts. When you weigh both sides, it comes out pretty cool.

P.S. My previous post was post #69. Kinky.

Here's $20 for Love

I did it. I took the plunge and signed up for Yahoo Personals for a month. I was getting a lot of Icebreakers, Yahoo's free note system. I think I have 9 so far, but only 1 from anyone I'd like to email, and now I've emailed her. We'll see how it goes.

I have gotten some weird ones though. I'm 25, extremely non-religious, a non-smoker, 5'10", and 25 years old. In my personal I list that I would like someone who is shorter than me, between the ages of 21 and 26, a non-smoker, and not too religious. My two most recent Icebreakers were from a 30 year old Evangelical Christian woman, and from a freakishly tall, 18 year old, frequent smoker. I'm not sure that anyone is actually reading my ad. They may just be drawn in by my ravishing good looks. Actually, it's probably my metal cows. They're pretty cute.

I'll let you know if I get any replies, or if they were just after my cows. I mean, why take the guy if you can get the cows for free?

A Day at the Beach

On Saturday a bunch of us went to a clothing optional beach. We chose the clothing optional kind not because of any need on our part to get naked, but because it would be less crowded. In fact, there were three of us who didn't even take off our shirts, although one was a girl. None the less, she didn't swimsuit up either.

When guys picture nude beaches, they think of a coastline covered with hot naked ladies, all tan and lying on their backs. But for the most part, nude beaches are actually full of aging and portly men. Balls-to-the-beach, sandy-assed naked dudes. Well, not totally naked. Most were wearing hats and sunglasses. There was also one guy wearing only a sweatshirt. The hat is odd, but the sweatshirt makes no sense at all.

On the bright side, there were some attractive topless women at the beach as well, some with friends, some with their boyfriends. There were two such couples that were taking a few too many liberties with the nakedness. The two couples were separated by probably two hours, but both did the same thing: Namely making out and feeling each other up in front of dog and everybody.

Turns out, the dog wasn't going to take it. We brought with us George, a friend's dog. George took it upon himself to be the Love Police, and when he saw a couple lying on top of one-another we would walk up to them and lick whomever was on top's forehead. Having your forehead licked by a strange dog must really kill the mood, because it cooled things off for a good 15-20 minutes.

The Roof is On Fire

Ok people. If you want to fill your lungs with tar, work up a nice case of emphysema, and reduce the resale value of your car by smoking, go right ahead. If it doesn't effect me, I don't care. However, today it was effecting me.

Cars, because they are designed with cancer in mind, come with ashtrays. Ashtrays are where cigarettes go to die. They are not supposed to go out the window on 80E near Dixon, nor on 113N near Davis. Especially when it's exceptionally windy. Especially when it is bone-ass dry. Especially when the freeway is surrounded on all sides, and divided by long dry grass. Lets try to suppress the retardedness.

On my way to Davis I was held up in traffic by a brush fire on 80E in the center divide. Traffic was slow for a bit, but it looked like it only burned 20 feet or so of shrubbery. (Knee!) However, when I got to Davis, then tried to leave again, I couldn't because the freeway exits were all closed due to the huge clouds of billowing smoke and sparks sent shooting across the street by the 25mph winds. So far at least 1 building has burned down. I hope they get it put out soon.

I feel safe living in San Francisco where there are no plants.

Won't You Be My Neighbor

I have new neighbors upstairs, and I hate them already. Granted, they are MUCH better than Gonzo and Bitch were, but then again, both Piranha Man and Spanky are/were better than the dreaded G&B.

(I was trying to figure out if I've ever mentioned Spanky here, but I seem to have no way of searching my past entries. At the risk of redundancy, I shall explain who he was: Spanky was a house DJ who lived directly above me. Part of my problem with him was that I would be trying to sleep but couldn't, because of the constant thump, thump, thump of his house beats coming through my ceiling. While irritating, it didn't earn him the name Spanky. What did was the summer evening when all of us fire escape neighbors had our windows open. I was trying to sleep and Spanky was upstairs getting busy. I heard the headboard up against the wall, whack, whack, whack, whack, and Spanky making happy Spanky noises. Then silence. Then the sound of hand on ass: smack, smack, smack. A female's voice, "Ow! Gently!" From that point on he was known as Spanky.)

The new neighbors, who shall remain nicknameless for the time being, are irritating in a new and creative way. It's two women and two very small dogs, all of whom have shrill but loud voices. The woman whose room is nearest the fire escape likes to call the dogs to her, then yell at them to get off the bed. She can do this for nearly an hour before the dog pees on the bed, no doubt in protest of the stupidity of the game. She doesn't like having her bed peed on, so she yells at the dog some more and shuts him out of the room. At this point she starts to sing. (This is the stage she is in now.) Her voice falls into that special range of not being bad enough to be funny, ala Piranha Man, but not quite good enough to want to listen to.

So Singy McDog Urine (I'll come up with something better eventually) has taken over the role of most annoying neighbor. After G&B left, it was re-occupied by Piranha Man with his falling asleep in front of the TV and snoring. I tried to solve the TV portion by climbing in his window one day after I was sure he was not home, and trying to program my bed-side universal remote to turn off his TV. Alas, my remote wasn't compatible. (I ask you, who buys a Portland brand TV?) So I instead solved all my evening sound problems by aiming a fan at my head before going to sleep. Low for quite noises, Medium for singing, and Hi for techno.

One day I will own a house with twice the normal insulation and A/C, at least in my bedroom. Or perhaps I can find the Cone of Silence from Get Smart on eBay and sleep in that. Whatever works.

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.]

Missing Link

I caught a glimpse of my posture today in the window of Anthropology (How fitting), and discovered that I don't walk to my full evolutionary potential. My neck cranes out from my shoulders. I've know about this, and I don't think I can fix it. It's just the way my neck works. However, today my shoulders were hunched forward, and my neck was craned out to the limit. My walking posture is straight out of the Mesolithic era.

I don't know was the cause is. Self esteem? Lack of exercise? Am I Cro-Magnon? I'm good with computers and my brow ridge is only slightly pronounced, so I'm guessing it's a combination of choices 1 and 2. Ugh.

Go See It

I just went to see Control Room. It's a documentary following people from Al Jazeera from March to May (or thereabouts) at CentCom during the Iraq War. (Or at least during the part before we declared victory.)

Until hearing about the movie I didn't really have any way to rebut the notion that Al Jazeera is a mouthpiece for Osama Bin Laden. After seeing the movie I gained a huge respect for the people that work there and for their point of view. You really see that they are just journalists with a point of view, not really an agenda.

Whether you were for or against the war, it's a good movie to see. It really brings out a different perspective. Go see it.

Baby Wipes are Awesome

I've had this disgusting tar stuff on the front of my car since I went to LA two or so months ago. I tried to clean it off with several different things including a car wash, soap and water, and my fingernail. Today, before going to Kragen to ask what I could get tar off with, I decided to try the ever present in my trunk baby wipes. They worked great. They aren't even the fancy ones, the wipes I used were Safeway Select. So rock on baby wipes, rock on.

Profiles and Interviews

I like these profile things that people seem to have on their blogs. I didn't want to change the format on mine, because I didn't want to figure out how to put comments and tracking back in. So I just stuck a link to my profile in the corner there under my picture. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

I've changed my mind on the interviewing thing. It's actually more like being interviewed by the phone company. They give you a big window during which you have to wait at home, and then they don't call. I sent an email and I guess I'm getting called today. We'll see.

I also did a little IT work today. I was referred to a transmission repair shop by a pervious client. So I popped down there, ran an antivirus program and an anti-spyware program, and went home. It's nice to make money by sitting around watching programs run. I didn't fix a thing, but since the virus scan didn't find any viruses, the transmission guy was a happy camper.

If my phone interview goes well, assuming it goes at all, I'll consider today an overall success.

We'll Call You

I have a phone interview today to be a webcast technician. I got an email Friday saying that they would call me sometime between 12pm and 4pm. It's like I'm being interviewed by a cable company.

Three Sheets to the Wind

I finally changed my sheets tonight. That sounds kind of gross, which is accurate. I don't wash my sheets very often. However, tonight I mean that I swapped my flannel sheets for some regular cotton ones.

It was hot here today, and remains both hot and smoky in my room. (The smoke is from Piranha Man, his open window, and the fact that the wind blows from his apartment into mine.) Being as hot as it was, I decided that since I was washing my sheets anyway, maybe I should try the cotton ones on my bed. I guess I survived 4 years at Davis with flannel sheets, and people there regularly burst into flame in the summer time. Then again, why just survive when there's the option of luxuriating in the cool crisp cotton sheets of summer. And that is what I'm going to do. So there. Try and stop me.

(Some reading this may know that I suck something fierce at spelling. To those, it is interesting to note that I managed to spell luxuriating correctly without the aid of my trusty spell check. However my flannel sheets contained just one N.)

Awake

It's Saturday, and I've been awake since 9am. To a lot of people that's normal, but I've been known to sleep until noon and beyond. And It's not like I went to bed early. I went to sleep at around 3am.

The problem is that I keep having Kristin related dreams. Some with her in them, some with someone like her. Some are good, some are bad. Either way I wake up feeling depressed about it.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what my subconscious is telling me. I've had dreams where Puddy from Seinfeld tells me that "these guns are fuzzy like underwear. If these are the only weapons we have to work with, we're in for trouble." Who knows what that means? I think in this case it's pretty straight forward: I miss her.

Driving a Van

I remember saying a while back, when I had just lost my first (and best) metalworking job, that perhaps one can't have a job, band, and girlfriend all at the same time. I went along not having a job but having a girlfriend from January until this month. And now all of a sudden, no girlfriend and the jobs start rolling in. I had a phone interview today, and I should have a real interview by the end of the week, or perhaps by the beginning of next. So I'll either get this job, or start dating someone. I'm always up for a date, but the job will give me insurance. So if I get a choice, I'll choose the job.

The job is driving medical equipment around the Bay Area. I guess I get various equipment, put it in the van, and hang out until they want some of it someplace. So I drive there, tell them how to use it, and then hang out some more until someone wants something else, or until someone wants me to pick something up. If I get low on equipment or full of used equipment, I drive back to the office and swap stuff out. I think it will work out well. I like driving, I don't mind traffic, and I want both money and benefits. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Bike of Death

Today I decided I would try to take my bike for a ride. I was sort of surprised I was able to get the locks off, since I hadn't unlocked the thing for probably 2 years.

I think it needs some repairs. Both the front and rear wheels aren't very true. I know what happened to the front wheel: I ran head-on into an idiot who wasn't looking where he was going and swerved in front of me. We ran into each other front wheel to front wheel. Being roughly the same mass and traveling and roughly the same speed, we both went over our handlebars, and collided helmet to helmet in the air, then crashed down into a big heap on our bikes. I was late for a math test, so I wobbled off toward class and the other guy wobbled off toward the dorms. Ever since then, my front wheel has a noticeable side-to-side wobble.

So the front wheel was maimed in 1999. I have no idea what happened to the back wheel, but it doesn't ago around well either. It's as if it's partially flat on one side, and then has the side-to-side wobble as well. Front and back wobbles make stopping exciting, because when the wobbly bit gets to the brake pads, the brakes grab extra hard. In addition, the back wheel is made of steel, and is therefore all rusty and makes a terrible honking noise when I try to stop. With the front wobble, the back wobble, and the rust-on-brake pad noise, it sounds like I'm tying to ride a tortured, but oddly rhythmic, dying goose.

I also don't have a helmet. I wonder how much it would cost for a helmet and goose-to-bike conversion.

Better Days

Today was a much better day. I didn't have to deal with work. (Apart from a sparse 10 minutes where I just pointed out the locations of the various software CDs.) I also had band practice, which is always fun. (We are sounding much better, and our new drummer is learning the songs well. Maybe one day we'll have a show.) And the coup de gras, I found a beagle in my garage.

I went down to the garage to see if my bike was a huge pile of rust, and if spraying WD-40 over everything but the brakes would fix it, and I heard howling. I opened the door and a little beagle came trotting over to me howling away in her harness, sans leash. I hadn't previously seen a beagle in my building, so I took her up to my apartment and fashioned a leash out of a belt and carabineer so I could walk her up the street and see if anyone recognized her. No one did. So then I asked around in my building. Also no luck. At this point I did what I should have done in the first place, which is look at her collar and call the chip-tag phone number. I did, and the owner promptly came and got her. She was fun while she lasted.

I do enjoy fuzzy things in my apartment. I miss having a pet. I miss Babe the Beagle.

Totally Week You Guys

What a terrible week. There's the relationship thing, and then there's the work thing. Since I already explained the relationship thing, in this post I'll explain how and why I started and ended a job this week.

My first issue was with some computers I built. I feel comfortable saying that I'm pretty good with computers. I guess the four computers I was working with weren't comfortable with me saying that. They hated me and refused to cooperate. When I finally got them to (mostly) cooperate, I had to move each computer to several different locations, set it up, shut it down, and move it again. I wonder if I was on candid camera.

My next issue was the boss-employee relations. The boss is aggressive, intimidating, and very matter of fact. He makes me feel uncomfortable, unintelligent, and his constant indoor smoking gives me a headache. He likes to give job assignments like cleaning up the desk when the desk is covered with his personal paperwork. I don't know where any of that stuff goes.

Then there was the lamp. I hate this lamp. It's cursed, or maybe I'm cursed. It's this fluorescent desk lamp with a magnifying glass in the middle. It didn't turn on when he set me to fixing it, and it doesn't turn on now that it's my last day. There are only so many pieces in a lamp, and I replaced and/or tested all of them. It just refuses to function. But apparently it's not going in trash because the boss once pulled a steel splinter out of somebody's eye with it. He’s sentimental.

The final straw was the alarm. Today I went to lunch, and when I got back I was to continue painting my desk white. On my way to lunch, boss man said that we would be out getting some stuff, and that I was to unlock the door and turn off the alarm with the code: 45 45 45. So when I came back from lunch, I opened the door, and typed in 45 45 45. Keeps beeping. 45 45 45. Still beeping. Why isn't it stopping? 45! 45! 45! Now the siren is going off. Sirens are LOUD. PAINFULLY LOUD! 45454545454545!!!! Cancel. Motion off. None of these buttons do anything! So I sat in my car, outside and away from the siren, until the landlord came by, and tried to turn off the alarm. He couldn't do it either. So I sat in my car some more, until the boss came back, and told me the code was 45 45. He punches in the code. Nothing happens. Again, nothing happens. So he rips the siren off the wall. Ah, why did I think of that? Why wouldn't it turn off when he typed in the right code? Why did he tell me an extra 45?

Most importantly, why did all this happen this week? I wonder if my arm will fall off or my car will explode tomorrow. I think this week needs a capper. Maybe I'll get a steel splinter in my eye.

Haibreakupkus

I often become
just a friend. But not after
six months of dating.

I’m not so sure that
I will become her pal now.
I don’t feel friendly.

No Sleep. Bum. 'Till Breakfast. Bum Bum.

I hate getting broken up with. Not that I’ve had that much experience. Ok, this is the first time it's ever happened. But with my new found experience I can safely say that I hate being broken up with.

The first stage is worrying that something is wrong. Why isn't she being affectionate? Why does she say that she wants to be "alone" but still hangs out with her friends? Where did the I-love-you's go?

Stage two is worrying that something is up. “I think she may break up with me. That would explain the weirdness. I think I won't sleep for two days.”

Stage three sucks. Stage three is when I get an email that says the relationship is being reassessed, and I get it at work so I have to just think about it for 8 hours: no escape or outlet for my worries. The email ends with an "I want to talk to you when you get off work." - never a good sign.

Stage four sucks worse than stage three. It's waiting for the call. It's calling to see what happened to the call. It’s being called back because she's too busy to break up with me right now, she's hanging out with friends.

Two hours later stage 5 hits. It's pretty simple: a phone call break up.

Stage 6: Move all x-girlfriend related paraphernalia into a box in the closet.

Stage 7: More not sleeping. Being sad. Lots of sad insomnia.

I hate being broken up with.

Boom!

Yesterday was a cold, cloudy, and windy 4th of July. This is not to say that it wasn't fun, it's just to say that it was cold and not very fireworky.

A bunch of us went down to the Marina to sit on the grass and watch the fireworks, which were to be launched about a mile down the shore. Our first problem was that we got there at 7:30ish, and the fireworks started at 9ish. We had food, drink, and things to talk about, but it was a tad cloudy and the wind was picking up. So by the time 9ish came, we were all pretty cold.

When the fireworks did start, it actually took 5 or so minutes of discussion to figure out if they had actually started. It had gotten so cloudy, that the fireworks would shoot up into the air and disappear. Then sparks would come down from the clouds a few seconds later. So while I imagine people right near the launch site saw up, boom, and down, we only saw up and down. Although sometimes a big one would go up and the clouds would glow various colors.

We were not, however, totally without the boom portion of festivities. People brought some really nice high-flying big-booming fireworks from home, which they let off over the field. So those were nice, if not a little sparse. I don’t know where people got such nice fireworks, and why the 9,000,000 cops didn’t do anything about the people lighting them off.

The quote of the evening was as follows:

"Hey look! It's a pregnant guy."
"No, I think he's just Indian."

[The first part was commenting on the otherwise fairly skinny man's very protruding potbelly. The second part was someone thinking the first part was about the man's native garb, which did look slightly like maternity wear when combined with the belly.]

Job?

I may have gotten a job. It may be in a metal shop, and I may be the only employee.

I met this guy via the Mom Network - "the most aggressive job hunting network in the history of the world." Kristin's Mom was talking to this guy on a plane who had a metal shop in San Francisco. She said she knew me, and that I was looking for work and used to work in a metal shop. So on Tuesday I'm going to start a 2 week trial period employment thinger. It's just the owner working there now, so I will be the only employee. We have to see if we like each other, and if we do, then I will have more permanent employment.

If it works out, I will probably go to New York with him to install this door. That would be really cool, as I've never been there. However, I did get very used to reading and watching TV while the government paid me to lackadaisically look for work. I guess in the back of my mind, I knew it had to end some time. Oh well.