Things that I have accomplished since my last post, now, incredibly, more than a week ago (and, no, it’s not that incredible, and it’s really quite typical, but still notable):
1) I’ve slept soundly in my new bed, now seven straight nights. As I think about it, only four times have I actually been under the covers, owing once to drunkenness and twice to trying to fight through the fatigue and get through another page or so. I’m quite a trooper. I’d like to tell you that this is the last you’ll hear of my fantastic bed, but I can’t guarantee it.
2) This evening, with the weather at 20 degrees, I ran at The Ring Fingernail’s outdoor track with a coworker. His usual group of between four and ten mates was sliced to him, me, and a husband-and-wife couple that walk separately, so I didn’t get to meet any of the normal crew. But it was a pretty good run – we covered 3 ½ miles in pretty good time. And, yes, it was 20 degrees, and I was running outside for fun. I’m ill.
3) There’s this older guy I work with, and he’s one of the funnier people I’ve ever met, and I like to think we get along pretty well. He’s a creative type, and used to do standup, apparently, and does a fair amount of wandering and muttering – finding inspiration, I guess. Anyway, my eyes tend to wander and his legs tend to wander and, often, when this happens, we make eye contact. Sometimes it’s me with the joke, but usually it’s him. Last Tuesday, the day after I arrived to work with a clean shave and a short haircut, I looked, well, the opposite of what I had looked like before. And he was walking by with a fresh cup of coffee, and he turned, and stopped, and said, “Looking at you right now… all clean-cut and nice looking… it just makes me want to invest in a bond.” Uproarious, I thought.
4) On Friday night, I bought Ghostface Killah’s FishScale at my local Borders Books and Music. This is because the album was one of the best reviewed of 2006, and because the reviews made it sound like something that I could appreciate, and because I had a gift card and Rewards Card points to use. So, Why the hell not?, I thought. I had to special order the product, and I picked it up on Friday night and, on the way home, it was quite clear that something wasn’t quite right. And then I realized that, well, every fourth lyric was muted. And then I realized that, well, I had clearly gotten the edited version. Let me tell you, friends, rap records without the word ‘fuck’ are absolutely unlistenable. I was, thankfully, able to make the exchange on Saturday afternoon, though the clerk gave me the runaround before I explained that it wasn’t really my mistake. I’m hard, dude. I think Ghostface is probably too hard for me, even though he’s an oldie now.
5) I had one of the funniest conversations of my life on Friday night. My recounting of this conversation, however, has gotten considerably less sharp as time has passed. It elicited uproarious giggles through the weekend, solid laughter from my sister last night, and only silence from Gurs tonight. But I’ll blame that on his general petulance and fatigue, and not on my lack of conversation-recounting prowess.
6) I nailed a joke at the end of the workday on Monday. I’ve had a picture from my brother’s wedding on my desk since receiving it for Christmas. It’s a pretty great picture, really. So, we moved desks at the office at the end of the day Friday and, for some reason, several people asked who was in the picture on Monday. (Hardly anybody had noticed it at my previous location, it seems.)
The joke:
Coworker: Oh, who’s in that picture?
Me: Well, that’s me. And that’s my younger brother, and that’s my sister. And that’s my brother who got married, and that’s his wife, my sister-in-law, I guess. And that’s my dad. And that’s the whore he picked up on the way over.
All: Laugh uncontrollably.
(P.S. Mom, I love you a lot. Thanks for laughing.)
7) Gas is under two bucks here, which is awesome.
8) The Bears weren’t great, but they won a playoff game on Sunday. And now they’re just one win away from going to the Super Bowl, and two wins away from winning the Super Bowl. So that’s worth something.
9) I’m totally on myspace now. Sorry.
Speaking of the Super Bowl, kind of, I’ll be in New York to see my sister that weekend. In Friday morning, in the city on Friday, out to see her on Saturday, out to see her show on Saturday night, and back to the airport on Sunday morning. It’s pretty exciting.
We got in a conversation last night that wound up lasting closer to two hours than to one, which is probably a record between the two of us. It was pretty awesome. We got to talking about adult kind of things, and she listened to me like my opinions on life are worth something. She’s such a sucker, and I love her for it.
I’ve taken to half-seriously, half-jokingly declaring that I have two friends in the world. But, it turns out, I think I’ve got a lot more than that. The reason for this? Because I got three separate football-related phone calls within 15 minutes of Robbie Gould’s 49-yard game-winner on Sunday. A celebratory call from Nemo. Immediate. A celebratory call from Jenny. Slightly less immediate. A call of concession from Tina. Even less immediate, but still pretty timely. Pretty unreal, really.
The snow’s back, and will be for quite a while. I think that one of my favorite feelings is walking in falling snow in the dark. The sound of boots on fresh-fallen snow is about the best in the world, I think. Chilly enough to let you know you’re part of the world, but silent enough to be peaceful.
I don’t know. There’s not much really here, I guess, and I apologize for that. I’ll write when I’ve got something more interesting, but there aren’t any guarantees of that happening any time soon.
I think I'm going to try to make oatmeal raisin cookies over the weekend. Oatmeal, raisins, applesauce, and brown sugar are four of my favorite things, and I think I'll be able to competently combine them. I'll also watch football, I think.
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