Blog-
You may have noticed I messed with the format a bit. I wanted to create an index, so that people could find posts on a particular topic. I started to go back through the posts and categorize them last week, but I ran out of time. I do hope I can finish that project though. It has the added benefit of allowing me to quickly find out if I have written about something before. Things tend to run together in my mind, and the drinking doesn't help. To that end-
Drinking-
My god, I was trashed on Friday at happy hour. I have recently shown this blog to some of my co-workers (welcome)- a group of people I regularly go to happy your with. We had a happy hour scheduled for Friday, but I woke up that morning with an incredibly sore back. It happens to me sometimes. I'm not sure if it's a complication from my car accident a few years ago, or a recurrence of the herniated disk I got as a result, or even the surgery I had to fix the disk. But whatever it is, it hurts like hell every few months or so. And there isn't a whole lot I can do except whine and take drugs for it. So I loaded up on Vicodin all day on Friday (at work- good times), then we went out drinking. Could you guys tell? I can't believe I found my way home.
Housekeeper-
And speaking of home, our housekeeper is batshit crazy. I know what you're thinking- "A housekeeper, how decadent!" You couldn't be more right, and you can suck it, bitches. I don't have a big fancy TV, and I don't own a car, but I don't clean my fucking toilet, either, and that means I'm living on easy street. I don't need a lot of material possessions. I'd trade them all for never having to even know where we keep the broom anymore. Normally I'd probably feel bad about having someone else clean my house, like I'm too good to do it. But we pay her a king's ransom for it, and she's nothing less than an artist. She cleans things we didn't even know were dirty. I actually admire her for the absolute dedication she has to her craft. You can tell she is one of these people who just can't handle things being dirty, and she has channeled into a crusade against eliminating dirt. She is a treasure, except for this one little problem.
She is not so into the black people. She's Brazilian, and old (sixty one!), so maybe that excuses it somehow? I don't know. But on maybe her third or fourth visit to our house, she was explaining to us how happy she was to have found another client (she was recommended to us by blog readers K+N, you racist bastards). In her broken English, she told us how relieved she was when she came by to give us the estimate and saw we weren't black. Baby and I were honestly dumbstruck. What do you even say? In our housekeeper's bizarre little mind, there is a fundamental difference between cleaning up after black people and white people. We've tried to wrap our minds around this, to come up with some way in which that's an objective statement to make. But it's impossible. She's a racist, and that is wrong wrong wrong. But my god, can this woman clean! So we sold out and kept her, I'm ashamed to say. And thankfully it didn't come up again, until...
This morning, she was gossiping with us about K+N's new house. She was telling us that she needed to clean it before they moved in, and it was a bastard because, of course, black people had lived there before. She said it so matter of factly- "Because, you know, it is black people." Baby and I just squirmed. Should I feel so guilty about this? Because I really do. Of course, I'll feel much better when I come home to a sparkling clean apartment.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Embracing Failure
Well, I should have seen that coming.
I had this giant test last week, to test my project management acumen. It's a made up discipline (sort of like business school), where they assign incredibly specific definitions to everyday words that make no sense in the context in which the words are normally used. For example, here's the definition of Activity Attributes:
"Multiple attributes associated with each schedule activity that can be included within the activity list."
Got that? And no, I'm not citing my sources. Go ahead, lock me up.
Like any of the management theories, it's 10% useful and 90% crap. People at a place called the Project Management Institute don't want to get real jobs, so they've made up an entire discipline and several credentials, and they've convinced people that these credentials are important. So important, in fact, that you have to pass a test to get them! Ignoring the convenient fact that there is a shit ton of money to be made in the credentialing process. You're charged to join the Project Management Institute society (I'm not making that up), you're charged to take the test itself, and you're charged to buy the study guides and books and classes to help take the test. An entire industry created around something that is completely made up. Fucking brilliant. And your Government is spending money hand over fist to pay its employees and contractors to get the credentials.
But I'm buying into the process, because I want to get ahead. The getting leukemia in my twenties thing really fucked up my whole Alex P. Keaton career track, and I need to catch up. I've decided to take the process seriously, to use the buzzwords religiously, to demonstrate that I'm the very embodiment of the project management discipline. I am drinking the Kool Aid.
I've decided to apply for the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) credential. The goal would be the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential, but I don't have enough experience to qualify for that one yet. Actually, that's not entirely true. I could demonstrate work experience that would more than qualify me, but it would require me to get into contact with bosses at old jobs and do tons of paperwork. They seem to audit almost everyone who applies for these credentials, and I just can't be bothered with dealing with all of that. The CAPM is treated like a lite version of the PMP, with less stringent experience requirements. Plus the test is easier. Bonus. I figure next year (when I have enough continuous experience at the firm I'm at) I'll upgrade to the PMP. You don't care, do you?
I signed up to take a three day seminar in August, on the company dime (cost: $1,500). It was grueling- classes ran from 8am to 5pm, covering the most boring material imaginable. But I was committed to taking it seriously and learning the concepts. The course was offered from a third party, but it came with the usual guarantees about passing the exam and learning the discipline. It seemed like a good idea, and I did very well on all of the practice exams in the classes. I consistently scored in the 80's, when I only needed a 60 on the pass/fail actual exam to receive the credential. I left the class feeling good, like I was prepared for the real exam.
Getting registered was a nightmare. It took forever to join the society (cost: $129), then get cleared for the exam (cost: $225). I ended up being audited, so I had to document that I was qualified to take the test. Weeks passed before I was finally able to schedule, and I chose last Friday to allow myself ample time to study.
I hit the books hard. I made flash cards, I took and re-took the practice exams. My class had an optional online component with additional practice exams, and I took all of those as well. By the time I finished studying, I was consistently scoring near 90%. I never had to apply myself in college or grad school, because I'm one of those people who excels at taking tests. And the practice exams were full of easy questions, the kind where common sense is usually all you need. Hypothetical example:
You are a project manager in charge of evaluating several sales proposals. On the eve of the day you're scheduled to make your decision, a sales manager from one of the bidding firms calls you to offer front row seats to the Super Bowl, and use of the corporate jet. You should:
A) Take the bribe. Football is awesome!
B) Take the bribe, but murder the sales manager to cover your tracks. The perfect crime!
C) Take the bribe, but have the sales manager give the tickets to your wife so as to not arouse suspicion. You clever bastard!
D) Do not accept the bribe. Integrity is awesome!
I'm not a rocket scientist, and my IQ is only 147, but I figured I had a pretty good chance of passing the test.
I got to the testing center, and they sat me down in front of the computer. I took the tutorial that taught me how to use a mouse (seriously), and clicked through for my first question:
您是项目负责人负责评估几个销售提案。在天的前夕您预定做出您的决定, 一个销售主任从出价的企业的当中一个叫对公司喷气机的您为超级杯提供前排位子, 和用途。您应该:
A) 采取贿款。橄榄球是令人敬畏的!
B) 采取贿款, 但谋杀销售主任盖您的轨道。完善的罪行!
C) 采取贿款, 但让销售主任给到您的妻子的票以便不激起怀疑。您聪明的坏蛋!
D) 不要收受贿赂。正直是令人敬畏的!
Okay not really, but close enough. I had no fucking idea what I was doing. For several minutes I thought I was taking the wrong test. But there were enough vaguely familiar terms that I realized I was, in fact, just screwed. I fumbled my way through 150 questions, feeling dumber than I've ever felt in my life. I guessed wildly, but I knew I was getting at least some right. The math questions, at the very least, were like the ones in my book. The rest, however, were full of terms and concepts I had never seen before. My class and study guide were completely useless. I was on my own. But hey, I only needed to get 90 out of 150 right, right? This just might work...
No chance, I failed. I walked out of the test center with my tail between my legs. The test is divided into 14 "Knowledge Areas" and each area gets a random number of questions. The test results don't tell you how many questions you actually got right or wrong, but they do give you a percentage correct for each area. In the places with the equations, I got scores as high as 92%. In places with the unfamiliar terms, I got scores as low as 40%. To add insult to injury, if you take the average score of my percentages and weight them evenly, I would have passed with a 66%. But, of course, the exam was randomly weighted toward the shit I didn't know, and I failed. Wonderful. Did I mention it was raining when I left the test center? Of course it was, for the first time in months.
为什么坏事总发生在我身上?
I had this giant test last week, to test my project management acumen. It's a made up discipline (sort of like business school), where they assign incredibly specific definitions to everyday words that make no sense in the context in which the words are normally used. For example, here's the definition of Activity Attributes:
"Multiple attributes associated with each schedule activity that can be included within the activity list."
Got that? And no, I'm not citing my sources. Go ahead, lock me up.
Like any of the management theories, it's 10% useful and 90% crap. People at a place called the Project Management Institute don't want to get real jobs, so they've made up an entire discipline and several credentials, and they've convinced people that these credentials are important. So important, in fact, that you have to pass a test to get them! Ignoring the convenient fact that there is a shit ton of money to be made in the credentialing process. You're charged to join the Project Management Institute society (I'm not making that up), you're charged to take the test itself, and you're charged to buy the study guides and books and classes to help take the test. An entire industry created around something that is completely made up. Fucking brilliant. And your Government is spending money hand over fist to pay its employees and contractors to get the credentials.
But I'm buying into the process, because I want to get ahead. The getting leukemia in my twenties thing really fucked up my whole Alex P. Keaton career track, and I need to catch up. I've decided to take the process seriously, to use the buzzwords religiously, to demonstrate that I'm the very embodiment of the project management discipline. I am drinking the Kool Aid.
I've decided to apply for the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) credential. The goal would be the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential, but I don't have enough experience to qualify for that one yet. Actually, that's not entirely true. I could demonstrate work experience that would more than qualify me, but it would require me to get into contact with bosses at old jobs and do tons of paperwork. They seem to audit almost everyone who applies for these credentials, and I just can't be bothered with dealing with all of that. The CAPM is treated like a lite version of the PMP, with less stringent experience requirements. Plus the test is easier. Bonus. I figure next year (when I have enough continuous experience at the firm I'm at) I'll upgrade to the PMP. You don't care, do you?
I signed up to take a three day seminar in August, on the company dime (cost: $1,500). It was grueling- classes ran from 8am to 5pm, covering the most boring material imaginable. But I was committed to taking it seriously and learning the concepts. The course was offered from a third party, but it came with the usual guarantees about passing the exam and learning the discipline. It seemed like a good idea, and I did very well on all of the practice exams in the classes. I consistently scored in the 80's, when I only needed a 60 on the pass/fail actual exam to receive the credential. I left the class feeling good, like I was prepared for the real exam.
Getting registered was a nightmare. It took forever to join the society (cost: $129), then get cleared for the exam (cost: $225). I ended up being audited, so I had to document that I was qualified to take the test. Weeks passed before I was finally able to schedule, and I chose last Friday to allow myself ample time to study.
I hit the books hard. I made flash cards, I took and re-took the practice exams. My class had an optional online component with additional practice exams, and I took all of those as well. By the time I finished studying, I was consistently scoring near 90%. I never had to apply myself in college or grad school, because I'm one of those people who excels at taking tests. And the practice exams were full of easy questions, the kind where common sense is usually all you need. Hypothetical example:
You are a project manager in charge of evaluating several sales proposals. On the eve of the day you're scheduled to make your decision, a sales manager from one of the bidding firms calls you to offer front row seats to the Super Bowl, and use of the corporate jet. You should:
A) Take the bribe. Football is awesome!
B) Take the bribe, but murder the sales manager to cover your tracks. The perfect crime!
C) Take the bribe, but have the sales manager give the tickets to your wife so as to not arouse suspicion. You clever bastard!
D) Do not accept the bribe. Integrity is awesome!
I'm not a rocket scientist, and my IQ is only 147, but I figured I had a pretty good chance of passing the test.
I got to the testing center, and they sat me down in front of the computer. I took the tutorial that taught me how to use a mouse (seriously), and clicked through for my first question:
您是项目负责人负责评估几个销售提案。在天的前夕您预定做出您的决定, 一个销售主任从出价的企业的当中一个叫对公司喷气机的您为超级杯提供前排位子, 和用途。您应该:
A) 采取贿款。橄榄球是令人敬畏的!
B) 采取贿款, 但谋杀销售主任盖您的轨道。完善的罪行!
C) 采取贿款, 但让销售主任给到您的妻子的票以便不激起怀疑。您聪明的坏蛋!
D) 不要收受贿赂。正直是令人敬畏的!
Okay not really, but close enough. I had no fucking idea what I was doing. For several minutes I thought I was taking the wrong test. But there were enough vaguely familiar terms that I realized I was, in fact, just screwed. I fumbled my way through 150 questions, feeling dumber than I've ever felt in my life. I guessed wildly, but I knew I was getting at least some right. The math questions, at the very least, were like the ones in my book. The rest, however, were full of terms and concepts I had never seen before. My class and study guide were completely useless. I was on my own. But hey, I only needed to get 90 out of 150 right, right? This just might work...
No chance, I failed. I walked out of the test center with my tail between my legs. The test is divided into 14 "Knowledge Areas" and each area gets a random number of questions. The test results don't tell you how many questions you actually got right or wrong, but they do give you a percentage correct for each area. In the places with the equations, I got scores as high as 92%. In places with the unfamiliar terms, I got scores as low as 40%. To add insult to injury, if you take the average score of my percentages and weight them evenly, I would have passed with a 66%. But, of course, the exam was randomly weighted toward the shit I didn't know, and I failed. Wonderful. Did I mention it was raining when I left the test center? Of course it was, for the first time in months.
为什么坏事总发生在我身上?
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Live Strong, Die Like A Pussy
For years I wore one of those yellow, LIVESTRONG cancer bracelets that you think went out of fashion in 2005. Not because I look good in yellow, and not because I want to draw attention to my freakishly small wrists. No, I wore it despite your snickers, Johnny Fashion Ass, because I've got a case of the cancer, and I was too afraid I'd die if I took it off. If you live your life at the mercy of symbolism, there are certain commitments you just don't want to break.
The details of how I received the bracelet are inconsequential. Well, I'm making them inconsequential. Because if I told the story about the girl who gave it to me, and how we used to be friends, except one night we all got really drunk at Townhouse Tavern, and they pulled some kid out of one of those terrible clubs next door on a stretcher, and my friend and I were laughing at the pathetic thought of the kid ODing on some horrible club drug at one of the most horrible dance clubs in the city, and the girl who gave me the bracelet started giving me shit, and I explained that we were just kidding, but she was drunk and she wouldn't let it go, because that's what she does- she gets drunk and doesn't let it go, and I just couldn't stand it anymore, so I shouted "Becky, shut up you fucking cunt!" in front of all of our friends, all of the onlookers watching shirtless club boy getting put in the stretcher, the paramedics, and half of the Dupont Circle neighborhood, and that pretty much ended our friendship- if I told that story, I'd look like a real asshole. So instead, let's just say I got it from a friend.
Because I'm a slave to both superstition and symbolism, I never wanted to take it off. Unfortunately, I'm also occasionally batshit crazy about germs, too, so there were times when I did actually have to take it off. The bright yellow would fade to a sort of fake butter color, the little engraved letters would fill in with some class of schmutz. If you play videogames (and of course you fucking do, you're reading this), I'm talking precisely about the kind of shit that gathers in the nooks and crannies of a controller. I would ignore it until I couldn't stand it anymore, and I would dunk it in bleach for a few hours. Problem solved. But other than that, I never took it off.
Only a couple of weeks ago, I was playing with it while I was talking on the phone at work, sort of stretching it out while it was still on my wrist, when the damn thing snapped. It didn't go easily- there was a loud crack and it flew across my office. It scared the life out of me, but I quickly realized I had much bigger problems at hand. The signs were clear, and the end was nigh. I IM'd Baby to break the bad news, and she had some ridiculous story about how it was actually a good sign, because that meant I'd survived long enough to outlive the bracelet, or some such nonsense. Whatever, I told her she'd be sorry when I actually did die. She said, "lol." Women.
But it's actually happening! First, I was afflicted with the Dreaded Handpox. Then just this weekend I received the Curse of 1,000 Unpleasantly Urgent Trips to the Bathroom. That one is particularly ironic, because I've recently cut all caffeine and almost all chocolate and saturated fat from my diet because I think it's been upsetting my stomach (that and, you know, 32 years of rampant anxiety and a daily handful of god knows what in the medicine that I hope is keeping my leukemia at bay). I had actually been feeling pretty good, like maybe I was onto something with this whole healthy food crazy fucking person thing, when this gastrointestinal disaster struck. We went out on Friday night, had a few beers, and spent Saturday laying around. I felt progressively worse all day Saturday, managed to fall asleep around midnight, and then woke up around 3am and immediately ejected every morsel of food I'd eaten in the last 48 hours, along with what looked like considerable portions of a lot of really important looking internal organs. I was in hell. I dropped at least five and probably ten pounds in the next two days. I became a human sieve. It wasn't awesome.
(Two additional things I learned that proved women make no sense: 1) For some reason, they don't like it when you call them into the bedroom to demonstrate how much weight you've lost, and how loose your clothes that used to be tight now fit with room to spare. 2) When the man is lying in bed, dying from some disgusting parasite thing, the woman is actually hoping she will catch whatever it is, so she can loose weight. Seriously.)
There you have it. Two horrible plagues unmistakeably brought about by the broken pact I made with LUCAMIA. At this point I'm just waiting for the bout of whatever that horrible staph infection thing (do you think I'm dumb enough to actually read those articles?) that's in the news today to finish me off.
The details of how I received the bracelet are inconsequential. Well, I'm making them inconsequential. Because if I told the story about the girl who gave it to me, and how we used to be friends, except one night we all got really drunk at Townhouse Tavern, and they pulled some kid out of one of those terrible clubs next door on a stretcher, and my friend and I were laughing at the pathetic thought of the kid ODing on some horrible club drug at one of the most horrible dance clubs in the city, and the girl who gave me the bracelet started giving me shit, and I explained that we were just kidding, but she was drunk and she wouldn't let it go, because that's what she does- she gets drunk and doesn't let it go, and I just couldn't stand it anymore, so I shouted "Becky, shut up you fucking cunt!" in front of all of our friends, all of the onlookers watching shirtless club boy getting put in the stretcher, the paramedics, and half of the Dupont Circle neighborhood, and that pretty much ended our friendship- if I told that story, I'd look like a real asshole. So instead, let's just say I got it from a friend.
Because I'm a slave to both superstition and symbolism, I never wanted to take it off. Unfortunately, I'm also occasionally batshit crazy about germs, too, so there were times when I did actually have to take it off. The bright yellow would fade to a sort of fake butter color, the little engraved letters would fill in with some class of schmutz. If you play videogames (and of course you fucking do, you're reading this), I'm talking precisely about the kind of shit that gathers in the nooks and crannies of a controller. I would ignore it until I couldn't stand it anymore, and I would dunk it in bleach for a few hours. Problem solved. But other than that, I never took it off.
Only a couple of weeks ago, I was playing with it while I was talking on the phone at work, sort of stretching it out while it was still on my wrist, when the damn thing snapped. It didn't go easily- there was a loud crack and it flew across my office. It scared the life out of me, but I quickly realized I had much bigger problems at hand. The signs were clear, and the end was nigh. I IM'd Baby to break the bad news, and she had some ridiculous story about how it was actually a good sign, because that meant I'd survived long enough to outlive the bracelet, or some such nonsense. Whatever, I told her she'd be sorry when I actually did die. She said, "lol." Women.
But it's actually happening! First, I was afflicted with the Dreaded Handpox. Then just this weekend I received the Curse of 1,000 Unpleasantly Urgent Trips to the Bathroom. That one is particularly ironic, because I've recently cut all caffeine and almost all chocolate and saturated fat from my diet because I think it's been upsetting my stomach (that and, you know, 32 years of rampant anxiety and a daily handful of god knows what in the medicine that I hope is keeping my leukemia at bay). I had actually been feeling pretty good, like maybe I was onto something with this whole healthy food crazy fucking person thing, when this gastrointestinal disaster struck. We went out on Friday night, had a few beers, and spent Saturday laying around. I felt progressively worse all day Saturday, managed to fall asleep around midnight, and then woke up around 3am and immediately ejected every morsel of food I'd eaten in the last 48 hours, along with what looked like considerable portions of a lot of really important looking internal organs. I was in hell. I dropped at least five and probably ten pounds in the next two days. I became a human sieve. It wasn't awesome.
(Two additional things I learned that proved women make no sense: 1) For some reason, they don't like it when you call them into the bedroom to demonstrate how much weight you've lost, and how loose your clothes that used to be tight now fit with room to spare. 2) When the man is lying in bed, dying from some disgusting parasite thing, the woman is actually hoping she will catch whatever it is, so she can loose weight. Seriously.)
There you have it. Two horrible plagues unmistakeably brought about by the broken pact I made with LUCAMIA. At this point I'm just waiting for the bout of whatever that horrible staph infection thing (do you think I'm dumb enough to actually read those articles?) that's in the news today to finish me off.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
This Time I Might Mean It
I'll try, really I will.
It makes me very happy to hear that people read this blog and enjoy it. I've come to grips with the fact that you're not going to leave many comments though. I'm not sure if that's because I attract shadowy, lurking figures to my blog, or if maybe it's just so awkward and uncomfortable that nobody really knows what to say after reading it.
I hate nearly all of the blogs on the internets. I would say categorically that I hate each one, but I can't accurately make that statement because I don't have the patience to slog through them to find out if they're bad or not. I'm willing to bet they're sucky, though.
And because I hate blogs (and myself, frankly), I have this fear of my own blog becoming lame and boring. So I sit down to try to write in it, and I get five paragraphs in and hit delete. Or I come up with something I think is halfway decent and show some poor sap over IM, and they explain to me that, after all these years, I should probably just stop fucking bitching about Osama bin Megan already. Point taken.
I want this to be funny. And I absolutely don't want this to become a journal where I thrill you with the details of everything I watched on TV, read in the paper, and viewed on the internet in the past few hours. My life is actually extraordinarily boring. Lately it involves playing the same videogame on two different computers at the same time for hours and hours each day. The only quality time I spend with Baby is when she sits on the couch next to me and flails about with the Wii remote. Do you really want to read about that? Of course not. Although, if I put that shit on youtube it would be a smash. And why god why can't girls keep their mouth closed when they're playing videogames, anyway?
So yeah, I'll try harder. And does anyone know of any fancy technology where people could receive updates whenever I post? I looked around a bit, but all I saw were subscription things where you had to use your email address. I'm sure some of you would have no problem with that, but you lurkers would probably never use it. Isn't that right, Osama?
It makes me very happy to hear that people read this blog and enjoy it. I've come to grips with the fact that you're not going to leave many comments though. I'm not sure if that's because I attract shadowy, lurking figures to my blog, or if maybe it's just so awkward and uncomfortable that nobody really knows what to say after reading it.
I hate nearly all of the blogs on the internets. I would say categorically that I hate each one, but I can't accurately make that statement because I don't have the patience to slog through them to find out if they're bad or not. I'm willing to bet they're sucky, though.
And because I hate blogs (and myself, frankly), I have this fear of my own blog becoming lame and boring. So I sit down to try to write in it, and I get five paragraphs in and hit delete. Or I come up with something I think is halfway decent and show some poor sap over IM, and they explain to me that, after all these years, I should probably just stop fucking bitching about Osama bin Megan already. Point taken.
I want this to be funny. And I absolutely don't want this to become a journal where I thrill you with the details of everything I watched on TV, read in the paper, and viewed on the internet in the past few hours. My life is actually extraordinarily boring. Lately it involves playing the same videogame on two different computers at the same time for hours and hours each day. The only quality time I spend with Baby is when she sits on the couch next to me and flails about with the Wii remote. Do you really want to read about that? Of course not. Although, if I put that shit on youtube it would be a smash. And why god why can't girls keep their mouth closed when they're playing videogames, anyway?
So yeah, I'll try harder. And does anyone know of any fancy technology where people could receive updates whenever I post? I looked around a bit, but all I saw were subscription things where you had to use your email address. I'm sure some of you would have no problem with that, but you lurkers would probably never use it. Isn't that right, Osama?
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
A Pox On Both Your Hands
I went out drinking with an old work buddy (well, he's young and I'm old, as he reminded me) on Friday night, and I had a good time. But I made sure I came home early, because I had important, civic-minded things to do. Baby and I were planning to participate in the AIDS Walk bright and early on Saturday morning, and I felt it very important that I only get somewhat drunk so as not to be too hungover. We also had a long trip out to the distant suburbs on Saturday afternoon for my brother's wife's (sister-in-law still seems weird) baby shower. I knew I'd be seeing a lot of family, so I didn't want to look like the disheveled wreck they usually see when I happen to visit with them. So, see? I was trying to be good.
We got up early, only a little bit hungover, and met the rest of our 'team' (made up of co-workers) for the walk. We were short on time with our long drive ahead of us, but we stuck it out and walked the whole thing, hangover and all, because we wanted to show solidarity and all that good stuff. Plus we felt like we needed to earn our tshirts, which are scratchy and way too big. Make a mental note about the tshirts, they may or may not be important later.
On our way home we stopped by the new Au Bon Pain on the corner. We're thrilled that it's there, because most of downtown DC becomes a ghost town on the weekends. It's a blessing to be able to get my sausage croissant on since Sparky's closed to make way for the wine bar (omfg rite?!) and Breakwell's nearly burned down. So we ate there for the first time, and it was marvelous. (make another mental note, this time about the food)
After lunch we took showers, and started packing up the Zipcar. We went to the beach a couple of weeks ago, and we borrowed things like beach chairs and towels from my mother that we planned to give back to her at the baby shower. The chairs were all sandy from the beach, and they were crappy to begin with, so I left them on our back patio in the alley. Miraculously, no one had stolen them, or used them for illicit sex acts. As I was carrying them into the house to set them by the front door, a prehistorically large bug flew out of one, whizzed by our heads, and out the open back door. It was so big my first instinct was to take cover, so I didn't really see what happened. Baby was visibly shaken, but she assured me that whatever it was (dragonfly from the beach? pigeon? pterosaur?), it was certainly gone. We were relieved. (Mental note: soap; shampoo; used items; alley in large, downtown American city used almost exclusively to exchange sex for money; potentially disease-ridden predator)
We were checking all the stuff we had to return, to make sure we remembered everything, and I noticed my right hand was itching, just below my thumb. And I mean really itching. So I put some Cortisone on it, because of course I'm the guy who has that kind of thing in his medicine cabinet. (Mental note: first onset of symptoms)
The drive sucked. We love Zipcars, but this one had a problem with the air conditioning. Air was coming out of the vents, but it wasn't cooled at all. And since it's 90 degrees in the fall in DC these days, that was problematic. The traffic was miserable as well. It was 1pm on a Saturday, and it took an hour to drive 30 miles on the highway, with stop and go traffic almost the whole time. Where the fuck are all of you people going? And do you really need a giant SUV to get there? When we finally arrived at our destination, beautiful Prince William County, Virginia (motto: latinos are the new poor/gay/black people) I was literally stunned. I can remember when Fairfax was the distant suburbs to DC, and anything beyond that was straight up country. And that wasn't that long ago. But by the time we finally pulled into the cul-de-sac (directions: it's the 209,328,916th McMansion on the left-hand side, can't miss it), I felt like the fucking Lorax. As an aside, I hate all of you people. You laugh at me when I explain how great living in the city is, and you tell me how you feel so much safer living in the suburbs where your kids can go outside and play. I buy that, because I was raised in the suburbs and practically lived outdoors. But each time I drive to one of these neighborhoods, there is never a kid in sight. They've got mile-wide streets, impossibly green lawns and skateparks, (SKATEPARKS!) in the suburbs these days, and the kids are either wiped out from their exhaustive schedule of playdates, or glued to their PS3's in the den. (Mental notes: poor air quality (suspicious airborne car bacteria?); road rage; SUVs; racism; deforestation; Dr. Seuss; hypocrisy; conservation; fat children; suburbs)
The baby shower was fine. It was good to see my family, and easy to ignore the people we didn't know. We'd bought cheesy but cute tshirts for my nieces at the beach, and they even seemed happy when we gave them to them. I drank a beer and thought about getting something to eat. As I'm reaching for a "quesadilla," someone mentions how delicious the "shrimp quesadillas" are. Alarm bells. Shellfish are poisonous, and they make me die. What kind of sadistic bastard puts shellfish in quesadillas? Remind me to give peanut-and-milk lollipops to the pasty, allergic to everything children my unborn nephew will undoubtedly have to have playdates with. In a rage, I go outside and call my brother. He was boycotting the baby shower because "they're like, I don't know, fucking gay and stuff," so I was gonna stop by his house and check it out. He just bought a townhouse out there, and you wouldn't believe the place. It's beautiful inside, of course. Gigantic, really, when you consider what small people he and his wife are. He showed me his enormous new TV, and we played some videogames. He told me about his neighborhood, and it sounds like typical Prince William County: he bought his place for 20% less than the places across the street were selling for a year ago; several of the houses on the street are in various stages of foreclosure; the builder has closed up shop, either bankrupt or close to it, and much of the neighborhood is unfinished, including the roads; the commute is a bastard, but hey he's got hardwood floors and marble countertops, right?; and the neighbors are okay, well, except for maybe that guy with the Confederate flag in the back window of his pickup truck. Sounds grand. (Mental notes: presence of unidentified strangers; close proximity to small children; genuine pleasure; beer; POISON!; misplaced rage; ridiculous logic; mini-McMansions; diminutive siblings; television envy; videogames as a viable hobby for thirtysomethings; falling property values; did you really think you could afford a half million dollar house on your Applebees salary?; unsound business practices; commuting; superfluous luxury; neighbors; rednecks)
My dad calls eight times, begging us to come back to the shower. He's the only man there (besides my sister's husband, whose own parents and children don't even consider a man), and he's getting antsy. I convince my brother to come with me. It's about 4 o'clock by now, and he's on his way to his wife's baby shower, full of her friends and our families. He has not showered, nor shaved, and he's wearing sweatpants. (Mental notes: nagging dad; pathetic brother-in-law; clueless brother) (Note to self: more posts about brother, untapped comic gold)
In the car on the way home, my hands are starting to itch. And by itch, I mean ITCH. I'm sweaty because the air conditioning doesn't work, and I'm starting to feel funny. We get out of the car, and I take a good look at my hands. They're swollen, and they've covered in dozens if not hundreds of tiny, hard, red bumps. Fucking everywhere. Not good. Thank God I don't tend to overreact about these things, especially the ones involving my health and the uncertain status but obviously bleak outlook of it. And phew, wouldn't it be terrible if I was one of those people who has those things, what are they called again? Oh yeah, FUCKING PANIC FUCKING ATTACKS FUCKING I'VE FUCKING GOT FUCKING TO FUCKING GET FUCKING OUT FUCKING OF FUCKING HERE. (Mental note: itching; POX! POX! POX!; Caps Lock is cruise control for cool)
I run inside and grab Baby. I say maybe two words to my family, and bolt for the door. She knows the crazed "How the fuck have you NOT NOTICED that the goddamn SKY IS FALLING!?" look in my eye, and she does not ask questions. She knows that to show concern is to validate, no verify, my worst fears. She pretends that all of this is very normal, and she tells me about the baby shower. She knows I'm not listening, knows that all I need right now is for everyone to not notice that I'm losing it. She pretends not to notice. She's the most amazing woman I have ever known. She should win an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize. She goes on and on, but finally she breaks character. "Does this mean we're going to miss Chick-Fil-A?"
Baby is a connoisseur of fast food, and she understands that Chick-Fil-A is a delicacy. They do not have any franchises in DC, so she only gets to eat it once or twice a year. She will put up with this maniac of a future-husband, his alcoholic white trash family and a gorgeous 95% humidity, 90 degree October day in the suburbs, just so long as she can get her chicken sandwich with extra mayonnaise and pickles, please. How can I say no to that? We go through the drive through, and she feeds me waffle fries all the way home while I drive. My hands are a wreck, but who cares? Have you fucking seen this woman sitting next to me?
I still don't know what brought on the mysterious handpox though. I took a shower and a handful of Benadryl when I got home, and it didn't do a thing. They finally started to subside a few days later, but even today the skin is still a bit rough and bumpy. Now that I think about it, I may have encountered a few things during the day that could trigger some kind of allergy. Probably shouldn't have much trouble singling out the actual cause.
We got up early, only a little bit hungover, and met the rest of our 'team' (made up of co-workers) for the walk. We were short on time with our long drive ahead of us, but we stuck it out and walked the whole thing, hangover and all, because we wanted to show solidarity and all that good stuff. Plus we felt like we needed to earn our tshirts, which are scratchy and way too big. Make a mental note about the tshirts, they may or may not be important later.
On our way home we stopped by the new Au Bon Pain on the corner. We're thrilled that it's there, because most of downtown DC becomes a ghost town on the weekends. It's a blessing to be able to get my sausage croissant on since Sparky's closed to make way for the wine bar (omfg rite?!) and Breakwell's nearly burned down. So we ate there for the first time, and it was marvelous. (make another mental note, this time about the food)
After lunch we took showers, and started packing up the Zipcar. We went to the beach a couple of weeks ago, and we borrowed things like beach chairs and towels from my mother that we planned to give back to her at the baby shower. The chairs were all sandy from the beach, and they were crappy to begin with, so I left them on our back patio in the alley. Miraculously, no one had stolen them, or used them for illicit sex acts. As I was carrying them into the house to set them by the front door, a prehistorically large bug flew out of one, whizzed by our heads, and out the open back door. It was so big my first instinct was to take cover, so I didn't really see what happened. Baby was visibly shaken, but she assured me that whatever it was (dragonfly from the beach? pigeon? pterosaur?), it was certainly gone. We were relieved. (Mental note: soap; shampoo; used items; alley in large, downtown American city used almost exclusively to exchange sex for money; potentially disease-ridden predator)
We were checking all the stuff we had to return, to make sure we remembered everything, and I noticed my right hand was itching, just below my thumb. And I mean really itching. So I put some Cortisone on it, because of course I'm the guy who has that kind of thing in his medicine cabinet. (Mental note: first onset of symptoms)
The drive sucked. We love Zipcars, but this one had a problem with the air conditioning. Air was coming out of the vents, but it wasn't cooled at all. And since it's 90 degrees in the fall in DC these days, that was problematic. The traffic was miserable as well. It was 1pm on a Saturday, and it took an hour to drive 30 miles on the highway, with stop and go traffic almost the whole time. Where the fuck are all of you people going? And do you really need a giant SUV to get there? When we finally arrived at our destination, beautiful Prince William County, Virginia (motto: latinos are the new poor/gay/black people) I was literally stunned. I can remember when Fairfax was the distant suburbs to DC, and anything beyond that was straight up country. And that wasn't that long ago. But by the time we finally pulled into the cul-de-sac (directions: it's the 209,328,916th McMansion on the left-hand side, can't miss it), I felt like the fucking Lorax. As an aside, I hate all of you people. You laugh at me when I explain how great living in the city is, and you tell me how you feel so much safer living in the suburbs where your kids can go outside and play. I buy that, because I was raised in the suburbs and practically lived outdoors. But each time I drive to one of these neighborhoods, there is never a kid in sight. They've got mile-wide streets, impossibly green lawns and skateparks, (SKATEPARKS!) in the suburbs these days, and the kids are either wiped out from their exhaustive schedule of playdates, or glued to their PS3's in the den. (Mental notes: poor air quality (suspicious airborne car bacteria?); road rage; SUVs; racism; deforestation; Dr. Seuss; hypocrisy; conservation; fat children; suburbs)
The baby shower was fine. It was good to see my family, and easy to ignore the people we didn't know. We'd bought cheesy but cute tshirts for my nieces at the beach, and they even seemed happy when we gave them to them. I drank a beer and thought about getting something to eat. As I'm reaching for a "quesadilla," someone mentions how delicious the "shrimp quesadillas" are. Alarm bells. Shellfish are poisonous, and they make me die. What kind of sadistic bastard puts shellfish in quesadillas? Remind me to give peanut-and-milk lollipops to the pasty, allergic to everything children my unborn nephew will undoubtedly have to have playdates with. In a rage, I go outside and call my brother. He was boycotting the baby shower because "they're like, I don't know, fucking gay and stuff," so I was gonna stop by his house and check it out. He just bought a townhouse out there, and you wouldn't believe the place. It's beautiful inside, of course. Gigantic, really, when you consider what small people he and his wife are. He showed me his enormous new TV, and we played some videogames. He told me about his neighborhood, and it sounds like typical Prince William County: he bought his place for 20% less than the places across the street were selling for a year ago; several of the houses on the street are in various stages of foreclosure; the builder has closed up shop, either bankrupt or close to it, and much of the neighborhood is unfinished, including the roads; the commute is a bastard, but hey he's got hardwood floors and marble countertops, right?; and the neighbors are okay, well, except for maybe that guy with the Confederate flag in the back window of his pickup truck. Sounds grand. (Mental notes: presence of unidentified strangers; close proximity to small children; genuine pleasure; beer; POISON!; misplaced rage; ridiculous logic; mini-McMansions; diminutive siblings; television envy; videogames as a viable hobby for thirtysomethings; falling property values; did you really think you could afford a half million dollar house on your Applebees salary?; unsound business practices; commuting; superfluous luxury; neighbors; rednecks)
My dad calls eight times, begging us to come back to the shower. He's the only man there (besides my sister's husband, whose own parents and children don't even consider a man), and he's getting antsy. I convince my brother to come with me. It's about 4 o'clock by now, and he's on his way to his wife's baby shower, full of her friends and our families. He has not showered, nor shaved, and he's wearing sweatpants. (Mental notes: nagging dad; pathetic brother-in-law; clueless brother) (Note to self: more posts about brother, untapped comic gold)
In the car on the way home, my hands are starting to itch. And by itch, I mean ITCH. I'm sweaty because the air conditioning doesn't work, and I'm starting to feel funny. We get out of the car, and I take a good look at my hands. They're swollen, and they've covered in dozens if not hundreds of tiny, hard, red bumps. Fucking everywhere. Not good. Thank God I don't tend to overreact about these things, especially the ones involving my health and the uncertain status but obviously bleak outlook of it. And phew, wouldn't it be terrible if I was one of those people who has those things, what are they called again? Oh yeah, FUCKING PANIC FUCKING ATTACKS FUCKING I'VE FUCKING GOT FUCKING TO FUCKING GET FUCKING OUT FUCKING OF FUCKING HERE. (Mental note: itching; POX! POX! POX!; Caps Lock is cruise control for cool)
I run inside and grab Baby. I say maybe two words to my family, and bolt for the door. She knows the crazed "How the fuck have you NOT NOTICED that the goddamn SKY IS FALLING!?" look in my eye, and she does not ask questions. She knows that to show concern is to validate, no verify, my worst fears. She pretends that all of this is very normal, and she tells me about the baby shower. She knows I'm not listening, knows that all I need right now is for everyone to not notice that I'm losing it. She pretends not to notice. She's the most amazing woman I have ever known. She should win an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize. She goes on and on, but finally she breaks character. "Does this mean we're going to miss Chick-Fil-A?"
Baby is a connoisseur of fast food, and she understands that Chick-Fil-A is a delicacy. They do not have any franchises in DC, so she only gets to eat it once or twice a year. She will put up with this maniac of a future-husband, his alcoholic white trash family and a gorgeous 95% humidity, 90 degree October day in the suburbs, just so long as she can get her chicken sandwich with extra mayonnaise and pickles, please. How can I say no to that? We go through the drive through, and she feeds me waffle fries all the way home while I drive. My hands are a wreck, but who cares? Have you fucking seen this woman sitting next to me?
I still don't know what brought on the mysterious handpox though. I took a shower and a handful of Benadryl when I got home, and it didn't do a thing. They finally started to subside a few days later, but even today the skin is still a bit rough and bumpy. Now that I think about it, I may have encountered a few things during the day that could trigger some kind of allergy. Probably shouldn't have much trouble singling out the actual cause.
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