daily life: October 2007 Archives

Halloween. There were Smurfs.  Santas.  Beer. Ghostbusters.  Animals.  Luchadores.  Beer.  Evil dark lords.  Beer.  Star Trek officers.  Baseball players.  Different animals.  Beer.  Croatian brothers.  Thriller dancing.  Square dancing.  Snacks.  Head wounds.  Beer.

I did end up recycling my stewardess outfit, although the preferred term of the evening for me was "sky waitress."  Greatest hits:

• Being greeted by a covey of animals when I got up to Matt's.  Matt = Zebra.  Chris = Pig.  Jodie = Fox.
• Watching the Critical Mass people congregating in the parking lot below Matt and Chris's balcony, and more specifically, watching the drunk Critical Mass people trying to find private places to urinate in the big open parking lot.
  
• Watching this "Shame, Shame, Shame" video and this "Shame, Shame, Shame" video and dancing in Chris's kitchen.
• Dancing the Thriller dance despite not knowing the Thriller dance.  At every possible moment.
  
• Going to a pub, and having to inexplicably wait in line to get in...despite there being no line until we got there.
• Meeting Smurfette, which honestly ranks almost evenly with the time I met Cinderella at Disneyland:
  
  
• Meeting a real-life flight attendant who showed me the right way to gesture towards the 6 emergency exits.
  
• Giving out snacks to people.  (Ironically, Santa refused.)
• Randomly accidentally saying "laku noć" which is Croatian for "good night" instead of "thank you" when the waiter brought me my drink, only to accidentally be sitting by someone who was Croatian!?  Why do I always seem to find the Croatians wherever I go?
• Things get fuzzy here...just go look at the damn pictures and craft your own stories about what you see.  (And frankly  if you can come up with a story explaining why a sky waitress would be hanging out with a zebra, pig, and fox, I'd love to hear it.)

Laku noć,

halee

Hi.  This evening, I am faced with a dilemma.  I thought I would be coming home after work today, at which point I had planned to do some much needed laundry.  But then...I got invited to have some beers with some new/old friends, one of whom was just in town for the night.  Then I started feeling guilty about my regular Thursday night friends, so I came back up to the northside to drink some beer with them, too. 

So I managed to drink 3 pints of lager, and finish 0 loads of laundry.  This is a problem.  More specifically: I am out of underwear.  What should I do?

1. Hand wash some underwear in the sink tonight and hope like fuck they're dry by morning
2. Wear dirty underwear
3. Wear swimsuit bottoms as underwear
4. Wear tennis bloomers as underwear

I know what you're thinking, and no, "no underwear" is not an option.  I'm not a fucking hippie.

It was the stupidest thing ever.  I got lost coming home yesterday...riding the same bus I ride almost every day.  I still don't entirely understand what happened.  I think part of the problem was I was reading a book I found last weekend at my parents': "Breakdancing: Mr. Fresh and the Supreme Rockers Show You How to Do It!" 


I remember buying this book at the book fair in 5th grade.  My opinion then, which I still agree with, is that is it impossible to learn how to break dance from a book, no matter how many cool silhouette diagrams it has, or how many times they tell you how fresh you're gonna look. 

So I was completely immersed in passages like...

"If you're really serious about this, then if you want to be fresh, you'll have to give yourself a Breakdance name.  Your name will come from something special different about you or your dancing, like: Supreme Rocker, King Tut, Mr. Fresh, Li'l Fresh, Lady Lust, Smash, Crash, Rubber Band, Crazylegs, Freakazoid, Mr. Nice, Kid Loose, Easy E, Crazy Spin, and Mr. Way.  When you give yourself a name, then you'll have something to put on your sweatshirt."

And...

"One more thing.  Gloves are fresh.  Breakdancers almost always wear one or two white gloves when they perform.  It shows off your hand moves, which otherwise might not be noticed.  There are dancers who wear black gloves, but you don't see Breakdancers wear colored gloves.  Next time you rock, try it with white gloves.  You'll amaze 'em."

And therefore I must have completely missed it when we passed my stop around 58th Street.  And when we passed the stop at 61st Street.  And 65th.  And 70th.  And 75th. Around 80th Street I looked up and realized I had no idea where I was, and it took me several blocks to see a street sign to realize I was about 20 blocks past where I was supposed to be!?  By that time I was at 85th Street...so I hopped off and crossed the street to catch a bus going back the other way.  But the next one wasn't coming for 10 minutes, so I decided that rather than stand there being cold, I would just walk down a few blocks/stops until the bus caught up with me.  I don't know if it the blocks are very short or the bus is very slow, but by the time I got down to about 65th it still hadn't caught up with me so I just walked the whole way home.

Moral of the story: When riding the bus, remember to look up from your breakdancing book occasionally so you don't miss your stop.

Yesterday I was walking around downtown, which consists of a lot of walk-walk-walk a block, stop, wait for the crosswalk light...walk-walk-walk a block, stop, wait for the crosswalk light...walk-walk-walk a block, stop, wait for the crosswalk light, and so forth.

At one crosswalk there was a mommy pushing her little toddler boy in one of those plastic fake car/motorcycle kid's toys, the kind with the long metal rod sticking out the back with the ergonomic handle.  You know, the one that makes the kid feel like he's really driving the car/riding the bike, only his mommy is really pushing him?

He was all decked out in his little coat and helmet, and as we were waiting for the sign to change to "WALK", he had his little hand in the air as if to authoritatively tell everyone behind him, "People, it is not safe to go.  Stand back."  It was cute and a few of us noted that to his mom.  She said, "Just wait.  When it turns, he will give the thumbs up sign."

He sat there looking at the crosswalk signal with great intensity, and the nanosecond it turned, his tiny little thumb popped up.  They went down towards the red "DON'T WALK" sign at the next intersection, where his hand shot up again.