Hopefully my Tuesday night training will get me somewhere this time!
I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!
This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.
Registration code: 7861445
Last Monday night, I was walking along 14th Street when I bumped into some friends on the street on their way in to dinner at a nearby restaurant. I was carrying a small Whole Foods bag.
An exchange of pleasantries ensued, and a friend commented on my bag, suggesting that I had my dinner with me.
"No," I sheepishly replied, "this bag has a travel Scrabble board and dictionary. I'm on my way to meet some people to play Scrabble."
And with this, I once again emerged from my Scrabble closet.
A small group gathers at my local coffee shop on a regular basis to play Scrabble. We're pretty hardcore geeks about it; we have the little cheat sheets listing all the two- and three-letter words and we are genuinely excited about bingos and other cool plays (like being able to play a "Z" on a triple letter score that counts twice).
Wow, I am a geek.
***
The very next day, I was at my weekly poker tournament in the 'burbs. As I've mentioned before (I'm too lazy to look up the link), it's generally a very straight affair with a group of people that I've seen around enough that I consider them (and me) to be regulars. And I've never had occasion to discuss my sexuality with them. (Well, I kinda have, but chose not to -- it would have felt forced.) (Again, too lazy to look up that link.)
So after the cheap beer specials ended, I asked our server (female) for my check. She provided it in the obligatory leather sleeve, and I pulled a $10 bill out of my wallet and slipped it in, with an edge of the bill protruding through the top. In due course, she took the sleeve and returned with my change.
Meanwhile, one of my fellow players (who had already been eliminated from the tournament and was watching away from the table) decided to announce, rather loudly, that I had clearly given my number to our server. "Did you see that?" he practically yelled. "This guy gave his number to the waitress? There was writing on that bill! Seriously!"
I just kinda smiled to myself, because I knew what writing he was referring to.
On the edge of the bill I had left was a handwritten notation: "www.wheresgeorge.com".
Where's George? is a site where you can log in your currency, then spend it normally. When other people find the bills, they re-enter the number into the system. This way, one can track particular bills as they venture around the country. It's kinda fascinating.
In a geeky sort of way.
I've started making it a point to enter all my bills into the system. And I try not to spend bills I get back as change until I've had a chance to enter them in. And if I see bills that have the mark on them, I'll try to acquire them so I can re-enter the bill myself.
Because I'm a big geek.
Dear Sen. Craig:
I understand you're trying to withdraw the guilty plea that you entered in Minneapolis. You know, the one wherein you admitted that you had inappropriately moved your foot under the partition of the guy sitting next to you (more than once, I might add). I understand that you think you should be able to take your case to trial, because, hey, the guilty plea was somehow legally defective.
Okay, I'm no lawyer, but --
Oh wait, I am a lawyer.
First things first: Withdrawing a guilty plea is very very difficult. If the trial judge is worth anything at all, he walked you through a big long colloquy in open court wherein he asked you a very very long series of questions designed to elicit whether you were absolutely, positively, super-de-duper sure that you were okay with waiving the large numbers of constitutional guarantees our criminal justice system offers. You were probably asked, possibly more than once, whether you knew you had a right to a trial by jury, that you had a right to confront witnesses against you, to have counsel appointed for you, etc. etc. You were then asked whether you were ready to waive all those rights. You were asked whether you knowingly and voluntarily and of your own free will waived those rights. And you affirmed each and every time that you knew you had those rights, and that you were willing to waive them.
Dude, judges usually have a script in front of them for when they accept guilty pleas. Judges don't frequently mess up guilty pleas for this very reason.
So, uh, good luck with that.
But I'm more curious about the next step after that. You want to withdraw your guilty plea. If -- if -- you succeed, what do you think will be the next step for you? I'm sure you've thought this through, or if not, your lawyer has told you this: the next step would be that you get to go to trial before a jury of your peers.
It's unlikely that you can get the charges reinstated for the purpose of legally challenging the sting in the first instance, or that you were read your Miranda rights.
The sting was clean: even if you think it wasn't, it's unlikely that the judge will be able to conclude on his own that it was dirty. It would be a swearing contest between you and the cop; that means sitting in front of a jury who will decide just what the facts surrounding your arrest were.
And the Miranda issue? First of all, there's a tape recording of the arresting officer reading you your Miranda rights. But even if you wanted to try to claim you were not told your rights again later, what harm would that entail? It would mean any statements you made during the non-Miranda interview session would be inadmissible. But don't look now, your first post-arrest interview contains some pretty damaging admissions standing all on its own.
So, where does that get us: you'll end up in front of a jury of your peers. You're going to ask a jury of your peers to decide whether or not you were engaged in inappropriate conduct. When you ran your hand under the partition. When you scooted your foot over toward that of your stall-neighbor.
Let me tell you this: no man who has ever used a public restroom will ever buy that you just have a "wide stance." We all know that's not appropriate. We all know it's kind of icky. And once the officer testifies that tapping your foot is what people who want stall sex do... well, you're toast.
So seriously, dude... what are you thinking?
Uh, good luck.
Sincerely,
Dennis!
I just wanted a reason to post this pic. HOT!
Okay, so I saw High School Musical this weekend. Entertaining, to be sure. Who doesn't love a good song-and-dance routine (though the very first number, "Get Your Head in the Game," was a little lame). Even better when there are cute boys involved.
But of course, as I am wont to do, I have some stupid issues about this movie. I overthink things, and here's what I came up with after watching this movie.
Quick synopsis if you haven't seen the movie: Troy is a basketball star, and his friends laugh at him because he found out that he can sing. The same is true for Gabriella, except that she's not an athlete, she's academically talented. (Who would have thought the nerds could be mean to each other like that?) Troy and Gabriella together endure ribbing and taunts to try out for the high school musical. Along the way, they have to beat out brother-and-sister team Sharpay and Ryan Evans (by the way, how much crack do you have to be smoking to name your child Sharpei?), who have dominated (and, somehow, terrorized) the drama club for a long time.
The movie is, of course, set up to make Troy and Gabriella the heroes. You're supposed to want them to try out despite their other commitments and be the musical leads. Sharpay (tee hee!) and Ryan are talented, but their personalities are awful and you're supposed to want terribly to dislike them.
But although I don't like them, I still kinda feel sorry for them. Truly.
Here's my thought: Sharpay and Ryan had nothing going for them besides their stage talents. True, they let it go to their heads in an awful way, but at least they had something to be proud of. It's what they're good at. I suppose, up to that point, they had no reason to expect that anyone else would ever challenge them for the position of on-stage talent.
But then here Troy and Gabriella. Both already have their superstar talents. Troy is universally loved anyway, just because he's the basketball king. Gabriella is clearly academically talented and will probably graduate at the top of her class. (And, inexplicably, this is actually something to be proud of at the school they attend.) They don't need the extra attention and love.
But Sharpay and Ryan kind of do. As I said, that was destined to be the pinnacle of their high school career, the point when everyone watches them and thinks just how great they are. But this moment of glory was taken away from them. Worse yet, it was taken away from them by two people who already had the world on their oyster shells. Troy and Gabriella get to walk away from this not just stars, but now they're well-rounded super-duper-uber stars. Meanwhile, Sharpay and Ryan no longer have anything. Troy gets basketball and dramatic lead on his college applications (an admissions officer's wet dream, I tell ya); Gabriella gets to boast of top academics and dramatic lead; Sharpay and Ryan no longer have that "dramatic lead" line to brag about.
Really, if I were Sharpay and Ryan, I'd hate them too.
... And Zac Efron is hot.
Larry Craig is a fool and a hypocrite.
Wow, that was fast.
Not so fast. I've got more to share.
***
I'm reading a fascinating exchange on a legal ethics listserve to which I belong. Various experts in the legal field (and I do mean experts -- big names in legal ethics circles) are debating whether there's such a thing as a public-private dichotomy when it comes to legal ethics. Question: does how one acts in private life necessarily mean they are unfit for their (more public) job? If Larry Craig engages in sexual liaisons in bathrooms, does that make him per se unfit as a legislator?
Some say no; that a whole constellation of reasons could exist for the foot bumping and the finger-reaching. (Oh, and the guilty plea.) These are reasons we don't know, the argument goes, and as such, we can't necessarily judge the whole of the person based upon this once incident that may very well be a huge (HUGE!) misunderstanding.
I can't buy it. Not because I necessarily disagree with the principle that one act does not necessarily condemn the entire person, but because I have given some though to what constellation of events may have caused Senator Craig to "accidentally" bump his foot against the foot of the guy next to him (twice!, I think) and to reach under the stall, and I come up empty.
According to the cop, there was no paper on the floor for him to pick up, and if there were, who picks that shit up? Unless it was a piece of legislation that you were reviewing while on the can, or even a newspaper, most people just leave it. (Early reports were that he claimed there was a piece of toilet paper on the floor. Really now, who makes the effort to reach down a pick up a piece of errant toilet tissue in a public bathroom?)
He doesn't deny tapping the cop's foot, he just claims a takes a "wide stance" when taking a crap. Uh, please. Every American male who has ever used a public restroom knows the rules of public toilets: unless absolutely necessary, never stand at a urinal that's right next an occupied one; never talk to anyone; and always look straight ahead while urinating. And never, ever, invade another man's space, for any reason. Memo to Sen. Craig: This generally includes not letting your leg drift into the next guy's stall, no matter how "wide" your "stance." It just doesn't happen. Unless you want to initiate some chicka chicka bow bow. And let's face it, Sen. Craig knew those rules. And he knew the rules on who to solicit sex in a public restroom.
Oh, when you're in a stall an realize there's no toilet tissue there? I would vote for a stage whisper to the guy next to you along the lines of "Hey dude, I seem to be out of paper here. Could you pass me some?" Oh, and doing that before running your hand under the bottom of the stall.
***
In the aftermath (though I suppose it's still continuing, WaPo ran an article about Mike Rogers entitled "The Most Feared Man on the Hill?". Mr. Rogers is the gay activist who spends a good chunk of his time identifying and outing anti-gay lawmakers (those whose legislative activities are homophobic -- including not just voting records, but also campaign-related issues). Sen. Craig was on his list.
I mention this article because there's a wonderful quote in there which needs to be called out. It's on the third web page of the article.
Context: Rogers outed Dan Gurley, a national field director at the Republican National Committee, whom Rogers believed signed off on a flier sent to conservative voting districts which played upon those voters' base fears about gay marriage. Gurley eventually lost his job and moved to North Carolina. But here's his money quote:
[Gurley] adds: "Who does Rogers think he is? God? What gives him the right to bully people around and tell us what to think or how to conduct our lives?"
In an ongoing (painfully slow) process of trying to de-clutter my life and thereby get my apartment a little cleaner, I advertised on freecycle.org recently to give away a hair dryer.
My ad was very honest: I gave the model number for the dryer, and described it as being from my college days (though I didn't mention specifically just how many years I've been out of college). Also, immediately afterward I posted an ad giving away law books, which also could conceivably tip my hand as to my age and, thus, the age of the hair dryer.
I got a response very quickly and handed it off that night. Very handy.
One woman who responded asked: "Does this hair dryer have hair comb attachments?"
Lady, do you really think a 19-year-old male really cared about comb attachments?
***
It's wonderful the kind of things you can give away on the internet nowadays. I had to get rid of my old desktop computer (same ongoing painfully slow effort) and, again, was incredibly blunt about it. I described it as:
- old
- running a slow processor
- possessing an old memory card
I also mentioned that it's slow. As a final straw, I told my audience that because I don't have shredding software, I was simply going to remove the hard drive too, so really the machine was going to come without a hard drive or operating system either. Who wants it?
I managed to give it away the next day to a woman whose son's PC had recently blew up. She intended to use the shell and transfer necessary components to my machine. It was quite a fortuitous matchup.
***
Somehow I have failed to give small random assortment of shot glasses that I have on one of my shelves. I just don't want them anymore. Not that no one showed any interest; at least seven people emailed to say they wanted to pick them up. But none of them followed through, and now I still have the damn glasses. Grrrr. I'll report that ad soon.
***
I'm looking around my apartment, trying desperately to decide what else I could give away or sell. At some point I'll also need to place a bunch of old clothes in a bag and give those away too. I have far too many.
My spam filter at work sucks.
My gmail filter is remarkably good. It captures spam wonderfully, and lets through all kinds of non-spam. On this account in particular, I get tons of spam. And I know I don't expect much mail here. Even on my other gmail account, I rarely get spam, and when I do, it's in the Spam filter.
At work, however, my spam filter sucks.
At the beginning of each day, I open Outlook, which then downloads all the mail that's accumulated through the night. Not usually a big event, except that usually there are at least 50 items of junk email in there along with the legitimate stuff. Heck, I'm even being generous by defining email from vendors who legitimately have my address as "not spam."
Then my spam filter kicks in, and tells me it's "working." It tells me it's scanning new mail for spam. And at the end, it brags to me that it's quarantined 5 spam messages!
Except that there are like 45 more spam messages still in my inbox.
How many unnamed persons have to send me e-postcards before this damn filter system will recognize that to be spam? I've had friends, and family members, and neighbours [sic], and school mates, and acquaintances, and business associates, and even worshippers send me e-postcards. Poor dears will never get in touch with me at this rate.
The stupidest thing is, when I click on those emails and then hit "Is Spam," the software is supposed to, somehow, learn what spam looks like and start blocking these things on their own for a while. Indeed, the damn software will hold up my computer for a while with a damn window that says "Learning... Please wait." as if it could figure out cues about what is spam. As these postcards show, though, clearly it isn't working. The word "postcard", by the way, has never shown up in a legitimate email of mine yet. At least not in my work email.
Technology. Gotta love it.
I am notorious among my friends for overpopulating the "Missed Connections" section of Craigslist. My friends all know this, and one, in particular, now takes delight in trying to spot which ones are mine.
Recently, he sent me this one, which I am reproducing here because CL posts can expire:
mens bathroom kramers - m4m
Reply to: pers-402262572@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-08-21, 10:51AM EDT
I saw you popping a squat. You stole my heart with the sounds you were making, I know that you could never clog a toilet. Lets meet for some lunch!!!
So I bought a new shredder the other day. Just for my personal home use. Cute little model, comes with a basket, does a diamond shred of up to eight pages at a time. Good enough for what I need it for.
I brought it home and plugged it in, anxious to start using it. I had managed to accumulate a huge stack of bills and other documents that needed to be shredded before discard so I wanted to go ahead and get started.
Okay, so before I go on, here's a snapshot of the top of the shredder:
You see there's a slot for the paper. Under it is a special slot for credit cards. Look closely and you can see where you can feed CDs too, in the event you should want to shred a CD.
I call special attention to the part of the shredder beneath the feed slots. Here's a closer view:
That little red button is marked "Emergency Stop." Notice the light next to it; you can tell it's green, but it's not lit up.
And there are indicators above the red button.
I plugged my machine in, ready to get started with my shredding, when I noticed the little green light was not on. So I thought perhaps it's one of those machines that starts working automatically upon the introduction of paper, but putting paper into the slot didn't start it either.
Repeatedly pushing the red button -- the only thing I could think of to do -- didn't get the machine to start either.
Great, I thought, I bought a defective machine.
There's a toll free number on the machine you can call for tech support, so I did. After holding for a bit, I finally got an operator on the phone.
"Hi, I bought this shredder, model number XXXXX, and, well, it just doesn't seem to work."
Her response made me feel like the biggest idiot of all time: "See that red button? Okay, yeah, why don't you push it all the way over to the right and see what happens...."
The freaking red button is the power switch. The green light turned on once I pushed it over and my paper then came out in a gazillion little diamond-shaped pieces.
I burst out laughing with the tech support lady. "Oh my goodness, I feel so completely retarded now!"
"Well," she very politely reassured me, "from what I can tell the instructions aren't that well written."
"I'll say," I told her, "the damn instructions don't even tell me how to turn the damn machine on!" (Really. They don't. They talk about shredder maintenance and shredder safety, but not how to operate your shredder.)
We laughed together for a while -- I really was laughing so hysterically at how stupid I felt that I suppose it was a little contagious -- and I thanked her and hung up.
Then I filled up two large kitchen bags with shredded paper and discarded a large part of my past.
Okay, so the more I reminisce about my wonderful trip to Provincetown, the more I think I just need to shut up about it. I mean, really, I had a great time while I was there, but the more I analyze it, the more I realize things may not have been as great as I presently remember.
Remember this post? I'll give you a chance to go back and read it if you need to.
You back?
Some of my friends are exceedingly good-looking. I didn't choose them because they're good-looking. It's just the way they are. And only "some" of them are very attractive. Others are pretty average, kinda like me (I guess).
I'm getting sick of having good-looking friends.
I'm getting sick of having friends who get hit on at the drop of a hat.
I'm getting sick of being invisible when I'm standing next to my friends. I'm sick of having random guys walk right past me to hit on my friends.
I want someone to notice me once in a while, dammit!
I'm realizing that my Provincetown trip last week just highlights this fact for me. My friend Brian got hit on left and right. I am not exaggerating. All he had to do was look at one guy on the boat and suddenly he showed up near us and randomly introduced himself. (This guy later on hung out with at the clubs.) I hit on guys left and right, and got nothing. (I secretly think these guys excused themselves and ran off to the bathroom to puke after I hit on them.) Didn't even get any numbers or anything out of the deal. No one wants a piece of this. I think the guys I did hang out with stayed with me because it was a way of getting closer to Brian.
All of us who went up there hung out a lot and met a bunch of people. And all that was fun. But now that I'm back, I'm realizing this: I haven't managed to keep in touch with many of them since we split up. Everyone else seems to have exchanged numbers and emails and are corresponding with people. No one seems to care to return my emails.
Am I really that completely forgettable?
One night during our trip, we invited a couple over to our place for a cookout dinner. The couple is from DC too, so we figured we'd see them again back in town. Keith suggested that he and his friends put together a happy hour once a month and that he'd invite us. True to his word, he did that, by sending an email to one of the seven of us in the house. And his email -- I am not exaggerating -- said, "Here's the info. Please pass it along to (names five other people in our house) -- did I miss anyone?" The one person in the house he missed was me! I thought I was pretty friendly, at that dinner and when we hung out at the bars... but apparently when naming off the seven people who shared my house last week, I was the one who was forgettable.
It kind of hurts in a stupid way to be so completely and totally overlooked.
So... how the hell do I find uglier friends?
Never in my life have I been this depressed upon returning from vacation. This trip to Provincetown has been probably the most relaxing vacation I've ever experienced.
In that way, this trip was substantially different from any other trip I've taken just because it was so relaxing. Usually I'm running off to places where you have to see things: Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Rome. When you shell out the bucks to go to places like that, it's absolutely stupid to sleep in, relax, read, and not occupy as much of your waking time as possible to seeing the sights and, well, being a tourist.
But in Provincetown, it really truly was all about letting the world go by without you for a while. Sleeping in is a perfectly acceptable way to spend your day. Doing absolutely nothing productive while lying on the beach (perpetratin' a tan) is not only acceptable, it's encouraged. Shopping for hours on end -- even if you don't spend anything -- is great. Unabashedly people-watching. Drinking. Eating nasty pizza. Drinking still more. It's all good.
I spent the entire week drifting in and out of sobriety. I don't think I've spent that many consecutive nights out drinking and dancing since I was 25. I don't think I've awakened to that many hangovers in one week before either.
But it was all worth it.
We met some fun people, many of whom I will probably never see again.
One thing I do know for sure, though: We are definitely going back next year. Maybe even for two weeks!
I'm still alive.
It's so beautiful here it's easy to let shit roll off your back, and that's the most important part of any vacation. Well, it's easy to let a lot of stuff roll off your back -- I won't say everything.
One of my housemates is posing something of a challenge; it's somewhat annoying me. I'm trying not to let it bug me too much, but for God's sake. Details later.
I've met several fun and interesting people here. Of course, one meets people here at bars and fast food places. There's not too much room for substantive conversation sometimes. I'm trying to get phone numbers and, well, some action, but so far I haven't sealed any deals. This disappoints me, but then again it shouldn't seeing as I really shouldn't have expected myself to magically become more attractive just because I'm five hours away.
Anyway, I'm on someone else's computer so I'm going to bounce off now. (He just sat down next to me.) Later, gators.
I'm taking a week in Provincetown, Cape Cod. This is the gayest vacation I have ever taken.
I and five gay friends have taken a house in the city. This trip is a welcome and refreshing change from the many times I've been to "Rehoboth" in the past. I put "Rehoboth" in quotes because the last many times I've been to Rehoboth, it's been with straight girlfriends and we end up in Dewey Beach amongst the frat boys and their bustily gifted counterparts. For once I am at a "gay beach" area where I can happily go out to gay bars and meet gay boys and even, if everything goes well, exchange numbers or something. I have not been given any opportunity to meet a gay person in Rehoboth in years.
It's beautiful up here. More posting later.
I ordered DVR service recently. Yay! It's on some kind of promotion, so paradoxically, this upgrade is actually going to cost me less for the next year than the service I previously had.
After an aborted attempt to meet with the technician on Friday, I rescheduled her to meet me in my apartment today. Just now, in fact. She just left.
She was a trip. And my apartment is, as I have said before, absolutely inexcusable.
"Come in," I told her, holding the door open for her. "Pardon the mess."
"No problem," she says as she makes her way to the living room. She was an affable, polite woman, friendly and just the right amount of gregarious.
Eventually, it apparently got to her. "What happened here?" She glanced around at the random piles of dust and crap scattered variously across the floor. Thankfully she noticed neither the rat traps laid out by the central air grate (that's a whole separate blog post right there) nor the gay porn lying around near my television.
"Uh... you know what, I can't even explain it."
"What, your girlfriend move out or something?" She smiled.
I laughed, the same way I always do when someone mistakens me for being straight. Then I started stammering. "Moved... it's... let's just say things in the apartment have not been going well for a little while now."
"Men, I tell ya," she throws out. I laugh again.
After having set up my DVR, she tells me she's also taking my cable modem and replacing it with a wireless cable modem. (I hadn't even realized that this was part of the upgrade plan I purchased. I really just wanted the DVR.) I am typing this from a wireless connection now -- yay for me, because somehow I could never get a wireless to work when I had the actual cable modem. That woman performed miracles. Now I can surf from my bedroom!
"So," I ask her, "it's secure, right?"
"Yes," she tells me. "Your password is XXXXXXXXX."
"But I don't need to type in that password every time I log in, right? I just have to turn on the machine and it'll find the connection, right?"
"Yep," she says again. "Now if you're girlfriend were to come over though..."
"No girlfriend is going to come over..." I start.
"If your girlfriend is coming over," she repeats with a sly smile on her face, "she'll need your password to connect to the wireless."
I let it slide again. "Thanks."
I debated the thought of coming out to her ("No girlfriend will ever come over, but maybe a boyfriend or two") but didn't think it was really going to worth the effort. So I just let it go, and let her believe that at some point a girlfriend may come over and try to connect to my wireless internet.
On her way out, she asked just how I slept (the bedroom's a mess too). "Very badly," I told her. I presume she thinks it's because I'm lonely without my girlfriend next to me anymore.
So my birthday was a few weeks ago. Usually I don't make a big deal of it, as I don't really care for being the center of attention, and I feel this strange sense of modesty from receiving gifts. So usually I just let it subtly slip by, people don't give me anything or usually remember my birthday, then I silently sulk in my personal self-created prison that no one remembered. Usually small sets of friends do remember, though, and that's sweet and kind of good enough for me.
This morning, some friends took me out for brunch as a belated birthday treat, seeing as we were all quite busy around the time of my real birthday. They also presented me with quite a handsome gift, too -- a rather nice leather briefcase from Kenneth Cole Reaction. (Retail price, $200, though I'm certain they got it on some kind of sale.) I thanked everyone for the gift once I opened it, then we proceeded to dine, then eventually got back (gift in tow) and relaxed for the afternoon.
Just now, I got the following text message:
"Uh, thanks for the thank you email for your birthday gift."
Wow. I think I was kind of floored. I've never actually been called out for failing to send out a thank-you email before. Especially less than TWO HOURS after receiving the gift itself.
So I tried to feign stupidity, by responding:
"Huh?"
I really don't know what I expected to result from that particular response, but here's what I actually did get:
"Send Joe and Bob a thank you email for gift."
At least, I suppose, the sender didn't demand a thank-you note for himself. (The three of them chipped in for the item.) But I was still flabbergasted. I truthfully responded:
"Uh, does it have to be an email? Because I was planning on writing out a note-note tomorrow."
Okay, see what I intended? Pretty much I intended to convey the message that I know enough to thank people when they give me a gift, and (hopefully) that the subtext of the message would have included that it's fucking rude to call someone out for not sending out a thank-you.
He responded:
"Perfect."
Uh, what a bitch.
I'm tempted to respond with the following which references a factually accurate circumstance:
"So, uh, when can I expect a thank-you note for the gift I got you for your birthday three weeks ago?"
Would that be bitchy? Unfortunately, I suppose Miss Manners would frown on that particular response.
Oh my God, this little girl is just too freaking adorable for words. I know I posted "The Landlord" before, but she's back!
An open letter.
Dear Random Tourist Guy:
I know you're visiting our fair city, and I'm glad for it. Really, I'm trying really hard to like tourists, because I recognize how much you non-residents contribute to the economy in this city. And it's necessary that way. And, well, this is the nation's capital, so it does attract a fair number of people for nice little visits.
I do, however, only have one question for you. You look pretty young, so I don't think you even know what it used to feel like when the only option you had for photography on vacations was large and clunky. My parents had this really big Nikon when I was growing up. It had 35 mm film. It was huge. The only way to carry it around if you wanted to sightsee and take photographs was to pop a strap on it (hehehe -- I said "strap on") and wear it around you neck.
This is not the guy I'm referring to. At least he has a big... camera.
You, however, are young. You're (comparatively) hip (I suppose). You have a digital camera. And your digital camera is something like 4" x 3" x 1.5" or something like that. It's tiny.
So why the hell would you wear something that small around your neck?
Dude, it's that small so you can shove the damn thing in your pocket. You look like a fucking moron.
Thank you.
I thought I'd share the following funny conversation I had with a friend of mine tonight.
Backdrop: I was visiting my friend and wanted to hop on to his computer, a laptop, for a bit. I kept hitting the power button, but it would only do a half-boot before sputtering and dying on me.
Me: Dude, I think your computer needs to be plugged in. Like, it needs a charge.
Him: Just hit the space bar. It'll start up.
Me: [hits the space bar, knowing full well it won't start up] Uh, no.
Him: Then press the power button. It's probably off.
Me: Uh, I've hit the power button twice now. It starts the startup process but then goes poof halfway through.
Him: Oh. Then I guess it needs to be plugged in.
Me: Uh, just where did this conversation begin again?
Yeah, some of my friends are complete idiots.
It's my birthday today.
I should have taken the day off from work. It's a dreary day in the office already. Couple that with the fact that it's quite pretty outside, and my thoughts are not with me here in the office. On my birthday.
My birthday kind of stinks because it always falls two days before a major national holiday -- a major national holiday on which most of the rest of the country (or at least my friends nearby) usually decides to take off and hit the beach. So either no one remembers, or no one is around to hang out with me. Over the years, I've really come to not really care about my birthday that way anyway.
So instead, I spent a bit of time reflecting on the past 365 days. Unfortunately, my memory isn't that good, so really only the huge highlights pop up. I realize that I have an amazing corps of friends now, possibly better than any set of friends I've had before in my life, even though I've only known some of these people for less than a year. I know my older group of friends is still a great bunch, even if they have their substantial annoying quirks about them. And I've come to a still greater self-realization me in the context of a dating life.
I'm proud to say that I've passed my "early 30s" and have hit my "mid 30s" and I am in no way ashamed of the number. Every single year that passes grants me more wisdom and life experience which I would trade for no other.
I'm living a great life. I'm embracing it. I'm embracing me.
I'm getting ridiculously self-helpy so I'll stop now.
Happy birthday to me!
