Even Further Tales of Stupidity

Two short stories for you, just in case you had any thoughts about challenging my title of Reigning Champ of the Clumsy:

This was a couple of weeks ago now, back during that winter storm that hit Dallas for 3 really boring (and cold) days. So I'm out at a restaurant with some friends. We're finishing up dinner, settling the bill and whatnot. The place isn't too crowded, even though it's a Friday night, mostly because it's (at max) 25 degrees outside with a super cold wind blowing. It feels pretty full though, because all the tables and booths are placed really close together and they've put everyone in one section of the building. The restaurant's pretty big so I don't understand why they've got everyone crammed into the one small portion of the floor, but who am I to judge? (This is a rationalization for what occurs later. This whole incident obviously was not my fault. It was the restaurant's lack of spatial planning sense.)

I down the final bit of my drink and we get our checks back. Using my mad math skills, I calculate a tip and sum the total up in record time. We pour out of our booth and start getting ready to brave the crazy cold. I'm already mostly ready to go, I've got three layers going even indoors, so all I need to do is apply my jacket and scarf and I'll be good.

Unfortunately I don't properly scope out my surroundings before attempting to get my arm in the jacket sleeve. There were several things that I did not take into account:

• Our waitress is pretty shy, and very quiet. In fact, she's downright near silent when walking between the tables.
• All those aforementioned tables are very, very close together leaving not much room for a single person to maneuver, let alone two people.
• My layers are already so thick that in order to get my jacket on I must fully extend my arm out behind me before I can begin the process of shimmying the rest of the way in.

Yeah, with one quick extension of my arm I manage to basically full-on punch our waitress in the shoulder. Who happens to be carrying a tray of empty glasses by our table at the time. They fall, ice flies everywhere, and suddenly I have become the domestic abuser of friendly waitstaff who wear cute horn rimmed glasses.

But really, why does she have to be walking so quiet-like? And shouldn't one really expect that a patron who is getting ready to leave might suddenly and for no reason shoot his arm out into your path? And as such, shouldn't you plan for that kind of event accordingly?

Yeah, I got nothing.

I apologized profusely, turned very red, and endured many angry glares from the other non-waitress-punching restaurant goers, and then amended my tip as generously as possible without sending my bank account into the red.

Good times.

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Yesterday I was in a crazy hurry to get home from work. I was meeting someone approximately half an hour after I got out and had at least 5 different tasks that needed to be completed beforehand. I decided on the trip home to try and consolidate as many of those errands as possible into a smaller number of super-errands in order to up the likelihood of being on-time with my bad self.

I decided that the easiest of the consolidations would be to go ahead and get the inside of the Truck of Malfunction cleaned while I was driving home, saving valuable seconds in my apartment parking lot that otherwise would have been wasted throwing empty fast food wrappers into a plastic bag. Thus at each stoplight on the way home I did just that - lurched around the cab of the truck grabbing every reachable piece of trash and throwing them into the grocery bag that I tend to use as my lunch container. While at the same time winding up all the various cell phone/miscellaneous car adapter cords that had accumulated over the months and storing in my glove compartment.

This seems like a foolproof plan, no? It worked quite well, at first.

Until at the busiest intersection on my trip home. This light tends to run excessively long, so I figured I had plenty of time to reach over to the far side of the passenger's seat and get at all the difficult trash that has fallen outside of my field of view. I rummage around back there and toss everything I can touch up to the front of the cab for easy disposal into the trash bag. Step One: Success.

However, when I pull up to start transferring all the trash into the bag (Step Two), it turns out that the trash that I wasn't able to see was all very dusty. Enough so that when I grabbed the next piece, a huge cloud representing 6 months of car foot-traffic debris billowed up into the air.

This sent me into a horrible sneezing fit, which occurred while I was still reaching across the length of the car. And just so you know, when I sneeze, my body gets into it. Enough so that of the four uncontrollable sneezes that wracked my body, two of them shook me so violently that my head and shoulder bounced off the steering column hard enough to honk the horn (so conveniently placed right in the middle of the wheel).

Just stop and imagine for a moment that you are sitting at the bus stop at this particular intersection through all of this. What do you see?

Some guy pulls up at the stoplight. He begins to root around in his truck, throwing huge amounts of receipts, empty fast food wrappers, and sundry other pieces of crap into the air towards the front of his car. He finally stops this after some time and begins digging through the junk he has just unearthed, only to pause for 5 long seconds with a decidedly unattractive look on his face, and then suddenly starts rapidly jerking his head forward. In the process ramming his body 4 times into the steering wheel, honking twice.

The light then turns green and he speeds away, while turning a most violent shade of red.

Yeaaah. Awesome.

The Great Flood And Other Hyperbole

So over the weekend the radiator exploded in the apartment next to mine. Since that apartment is the model unit (oh, the actual irony!) that they show to potential renters, no one noticed this fact until Frank realized that half our apartment was under water. (I was back home visiting family at the time, but I probably wouldn't have noticed anyways. I'm oblivious like that.)

Incidentally, the call from Frank informing me of this fact was brilliantly dramatic:

Jason: Hello?
Frank: Jason?
Jason: Hey, what's up?
Frank: Disasters and tragedy!
Jason: Uhh, what happened?
Frank: There! Is water! All over the kitchen!
Jason: That accounts for disaster and tragedy?
Frank: Well it's other places too! Doom!

You can't fault the boy's ability to ratchet up the drama in any given situation.

I tracked down a number for him and Frank got a call in to the emergency maintenance people. Who at least got the water to stop flowing like a river into our house, but their overall solution to the problem was just to rip up all the carpet in Frank's room and the hallway. And then leave, with a vague promise to come back. At some point, maybe in the future. This was not comforting to me, especially after it took them 3 full months to replace the garbage disposal in the kitchen last year. We could live with that at the time, but we sort of need that room.

Because suddenly I had a displaced Frank in the living room and roughly half of our usual floorspace to work with. I don't know if I've mentioned it lately, but I own a lot of stuff. Consolidating all that crap into 1/2 the normal amount of space basically left us climbing over mountains of debris anytime we wanted to walk between two rooms in the house. The only saving grace is that Frank owns basically no furniture (a bed and a TV) so we didn't completely collapse in on ourselves. Still, by midweek it was like we were living in one of those pack rat homes that Oprah sometimes goes to, with the trash and old newspapers piled to the ceilings. We are not built for small locations. Or cleaning, for that matter.

And oh yeah, the smell. Dear God. Water is gross. Standing water that has festered under some carpet is horrible and leaves your apartment smelling like low tide on the Gulf Coast. Frank Febreezed every available surface in the house, I coated the entire building with air deodorizer, and you would still choke when you walked in the door. We spent the entirety of Tuesday night with all the doors and windows in the place wide open, just in case any robbers/vagrants/hippies from down the street felt like wandering in for a quick chat and/or theft of our lovely property.

Because it wasn't until Wednesday afternoon that they finally got around to actually repairing the carpet, and even that was done poorly. (Probably because I left them this horribly bitchy message on Tuesday after they failed for the second time to do what they goddamn said they would do and fix the crap they started.) They knocked over everything that was anywhere near the area they had to work on, didn't vacuum after they were done, and left tons of debris and excess carpet stuff all over Frank's room.

And the place still goddamn reeks.

Incidentally, we're moving in two months, the second my lease expires.

Anyone know of a nice house for rent?

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Y'all know that I hated my job, right? Well with the advent of this thing called the Internet, I have been able to apply for other jobs with surprising ease, although I've had very little overall success at getting chances to escape from my current hell.

That was until about a week ago, when I got an offer from a new place. New job, new title, new location, more money, and less chance that I would need to pick up someone's fur coat from storage as part of my college-degree-requiring job. I was ready to bolt like a ninja and told my boss so, to my utter delight. Getting a chance to finally tell off your boss is akin to winning the lottery in my mind. Luckily, I held off from going nuts right away, since she then immediately asked exactly how much money it would take to get me to stay on board, horrors be damned.

I worked it over in my mind and ran the figures to put a dollar value on exactly how much I disliked my current job, and came up with the amount of money I would need to make that feelings of hatred melt away in the face of wads of cash. The final figure I came up with was (only mildly) ludicrous, and I was pretty sure there was no way in hell they would be willing to throw enough money at me to make me stay, despite my total awesomeness at my job.

And then she matched it without blinking.

So yeah, hi. I'm staying where I am. And suddenly I have a way better outlook on employment.

Also soon: Richer than Astronauts!

Frozen Hearts

Oh look, it's Valentine's Day again. How lovely. (Note: This is a false statement.)

I have written at length, several times, on the subject of my distaste for this so-called "holiday," but that's not going to slow me down now (except for the time it takes to note that I used to be a way better writer than I am now. I have fallen out of practice, apparently).

So I walk into my office this morning, bitter and cold and partially frozen (it is 27 degrees outside with 20 mph wind gusts) and all I want is a cup of coffee and some peace and quiet. Instead, I am subjected to standing in line in the break room to reach the coffee machine. Someone has brought in brownies for the whole office, and these people are wild for free foodstuffs. Seriously, you would think they have been scavenging in the wilderness for days the way they are tearing into these things.

Also, the sounds. Good Lord, the sounds. Usually I am a big proponent of moaning about a particularly good piece of food, but they are taking it way too far. If even I - the guy who puts the flamboy in flamboyant - am thinking that you need to tone it down a bit, there is something seriously wrong with your behavior right now.

After finally inching my way through the teeming masses to the coffee pot, I find that not only is it empty (the jackals, they love their coffee) but we're out of grounds to make a new pot. Granted, there was decaf available, but why not just let the office pack kick me in the head repeatedly, instead. Decaf is the work of the devil.

Then, not only did I get no coffee, I had to spend another 5 minutes trying to escape without having a brownie physically shoved into my mouth. I don't understand why people refuse to believe me when I say that I don't eat in the mornings. Seriously and truly, it is really bad for my stomach. I think I would know, as I am somewhat familiar with the subject. Hard evidence and whatnot. But that does not stop these people, no sir. They are relentless. With the way they are swarming all over these things, one would assume they want them all to themselves, but no. I must share in their sugar-and-chocolate-fueled blood lust.

Finally I just took one with me back to my office to get them (almost literally) off of my back.

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I make it into my office with the hope that I can finally enjoy some peace and quiet, and work on the 3 files that I need to get out of the office before noon. I manage exactly two minutes and 45 seconds of silence before the phone rings and I am ordered out into the cold once again. This time, to wait for a bouquet of flowers that are being delivered to my office. This was supposed to take approximately 5 minutes, as the driver with the flowers assured me that he was less than 2 minutes from my office and could just speed through the delivery area without having to find parking and all that jazz.

Yeah, no. Minute upon minute pass, as I waited in the freezing cold and the icy blasts of wind that managed to foil even the super effectiveness of my stylish faux-denim corduroy jacket (usually so perfect for all cold weather occasions). And then I waited some more. And then a little while longer. And then, completely frozen to the core, I gave up. Or more specifically, I gave up when a wind gust came through that was so cold and so huge that it literally unwound the scarf from around my neck and sent me running through the parking lot after it, jumping and flailing my arms in a wild attempt to capture it. All the while looking a lot like one of those rhythmic gymnasts with the ribbons, according to the elevator attendant who happened to be watching from a nearby window. Awesome. (Note: Also false).

I went back up to my office and found a message from the delivery guy: "Yeah, so I totally got the wrong address. I'll be over there in, like, 20 minutes. Hope you didn't already go down there."

Haaaate.

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And now that the flowers are actually here and installed in the office, oh my god are they wreaking havoc on my allergies. The sneezing/not-sneezing ratio is so out of control right now, you have no idea.

In conclusion: I hate this holiday. I hate the commercialism. I hate the contrivance. I hate that I look really bad around the color pink. I hate the fact that I can't gorge myself on chocolate like usual because I'm trying to live healthy for once in my misbegotten life. I hate flowers that cause a deep abiding pain in my head. Hate hate hate, etc.

Bring on The President's Day, by God! I loves me some history.

Wired

Hi.
(Hi hi.)

How's it going?
(Right now)

Am I properly portraying my mental state through formatting?
(Englished!)

So I started taking some new allergy medication yesterday night, and then again this morning. I've been having some really bad allergy things happening lately, like bad headaches and the uncontrollable twitching of my right eyelid. Along with the normal sneezing, watery-eye, zombified Jason things that usually happen.

These new pills are actually old pills. They're part of that regimen that I was taking back during that really bad allergy attack in October. But I stopped taking everything when I realized that the nighttime pills were causing me to become wildly paranoid. Like "I think there's a monster in the bathroom carefully timing its breathing with mine so I won't be alerted to his presence" sort of paranoid.

But now I'm just taking half of the drugs (the daytime part), and the results are completely something else.

To wit: I'm wired.

No wait.

I'm Wired.
(In italics. Large-size. And Capitalized. You see?)

This results in quick speaking, super focused, hummingbird type darting around the office. I am one million times more productive than ever before, and also a little insane right now. My eyes feel very open. I finished about 4 days worth of work before lunch today. I'm afraid I have the crazy eyes going on, also, because of the wideness. I'm being really friendly too. I actually engaged some random person in the office in idle conversation, without being spoken to first. I think we were talking about the Mavericks. Maybe, I'm not sure. I don't remember that far back (3 hours).

This is why I don't like drugs. Why can't allergy medication just treat the symptoms without sending me off on some strange trip. Suddenly I'm some sort of bubbly, efficient, normally socialized human being? That's not me. Not me at all.

Stupid drugs.

(Whee! Wired!)

Did I mention that I'm having a really good hair day today? It's totally sweet. You should see it; I'm looking goooood.