Today's featured shit

We lost 5-1 yesterday. We actually had a legitimate rotation in terms of bench and substituting and all that. I discovered three things. I need to go after loose balls more quickly, I need to go after people before they get the ball (not after), and I need to be ready as soon as I step into the rink. Overall, I played OK. I was only a minus-1.

After the game, I played softball and went 1-for-2 as a designated player. They didn’t really need me after all, but because I was already there, they let me hit. My hit was a swinging bunt A-Rod single — it went about three feet. It didn’t even make it to the infield grass, but I beat it out.

I moved to second on a single. The next batter flied out. The next batter hit one into shallow left. The shortstop made a great catch, and I was hung out to dry. Inning over.

I led off another inning, as well. The most important thing about softball is not to let go of the bat until after you swing. Otherwise your departing hand will sting. You would think I would remember this because it rhymes, but no. I hit a comebacker that I almost beat out. Where this speed is when I play hockey is beyond me. That led the team to a 1-2-3 inning, and we ended up losing 15-3. The other team has good defenders at every position.

Today I am sore, which is good, but settling back into a post-East Coast groove isn’t appearing to be easy. My roommate is drinking again, which is bad if you’re an alcoholic. It never has a measurable direct effect on me, but you sort of wonder what comes next. Her lover was over last night, and sometime in the middle of the night she took his keys and moved his car somewhere. I know that sounds strange, but it’s the only logic that’s there. His keys were there when I got home, and they were gone when I woke up, along with his SUV. Honestly, I hate that he blocks the driveway, so part of me was really amused by this, plus he’s a real jerk anyway. (But a demon in the sack, I hear [literally, sometimes] so she has my empathy, but not my sympathy.)

I don’t know what the deal is with all that. I can easily just pretend it doesn’t exist, because honestly it’s none of my business and has not yet had any measurable effect on my life. She is smart enough to keep me out of it. I just wonder if all the things that have happened this year (disenfranchised with my job, car paid off, multiple excuses to move) should somehow be put together to come to a conclusion.

After yesterday’s hockey game, I was loading my shit into my car, when this woman, whose spouse obviously had bought her this SUV, because she had no clue how to maneuver one in a parking lot (not to mention being about 5’1″) ran over my stick. Twice! I don’t know whether it was the 24 hours in New York or the fact that I saw 8 Mile on the plane home, but I really tore into her. This is me talking here! How often does that shit happen? It doesn’t. I know. You’re concerned about the stick. It’s fine. She ran over the handle, which is a best-case scenario.

Coincidentally I am in the office four days this week (Expense report today for Orlando, bagels tomorrow, volleyball Wednesday and a meeting Thursday).

I’m eight weeks from Vegas now. I think I will just back into that trip, enroll in dealer school and maybe, just maybe, not come back.

Now would be the perfect time to meet someone new. It would be downright funny.

That’s enough angst for October. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

It was making headlines!

“Bleah! These pork ‘n’ beans have bacon in them!”

Just said it 10 minutes ago. Go me.

Cory Lidle was also not a member of the pilots union.

Where do Army dogs pee?

At the “laTREEne!”

I heard one of our events staff ask this to a client: Did you already pre-sign-up ahead of time?

So this is the place that has the Perrier and the Tazo Passion tea, the best cold beverage ever ever ever. I have already had four, and it’s only 9:08 a.m.

I am a reporting god. I have already covered the 15-minute welcome address and written a 363-word piece about it. And I’ve uploaded today’s episode. All this in an hour. This afternoon I am going to go with the photographer onto the floor and do a “man on the street” segment, which will take about 10 minutes. That’s all I am doing today. Why my coworkers don’t want to do this is beyond me.

It’s sort of mocking me to look at the clock on my laptop and have it say it is 6:09. I could change it to Eastern time, but it’s OK. Anyone that walks by can use it as a conversation piece, and I do need to pass the time somehow.

For a good time, go to the Orlando Craigslist casual encounters page. There are some Gartner analysts that want to give women discreet oil massages. Seriously. I am debating creating a gmail account and responding, just to see who they are. It would be funny if they used their gartner.com address for it. (You can’t tell by looking at the ad because it uses an anonymous address that auto-forwards to you.)

Delta has free Dish Network and a trivia game that you can play against the other passengers. I played two of the 17 rounds and won both of them. It also keeps an all-time high score list for the flight, and I won that, too. You don’t really win anything. It says what seat each score is sitting in, but no one came over to congratulate me.

The flight attendants (They were all women, so why can’t I call them stewardesses? “Stewardesses” is the longest word you can type [correctly] with one hand.) thought they were funny. It was the only problem with the flight. The team was Orlando-based, and when we landed, one of them did a HORRIBLE Mickey Mouse impression. It was so bad that I did not realize that that was what it was until she used the word “swell,” because who else would say “swell” besides Mickey Mouse?

The flight attendant from San Jose to LAX was some Filipino guy, and he was the best flight attendant ever. I tell ya. Filipinos are the best to play poker with, and they are the best flight attendants too.

The connection this year is so much faster than last year, and the wireless actually works, too. I uploaded today’s show at 200K. It’s about 80 at home, and when I tried to do it this morning in my hotel room, it was eight. “High-speed Internet” my ass.

I stayed up late to watch the football game. Yeah, the East Coast sucks. The game ended at nearly midnight. How can the East Coast have such rabid sports fans when the games end so late? Maybe the sleep deprivation is what makes them rabid.

The shuttle driver last night took the scenic route to get here from the airport. I saw eight all-you-can-eat buffets. Some intersections had two. Rival buffets! I also heard about CiCi’s pizza, although I did not see one. That the shuttle bus driver voluntarily brought it up with a passenger (you know… every bus has that person that talks to the driver) should tell you all you need to know about the popularity of the all-you-can-eat-buffet in Orlando. I also saw a Dunkin Donuts and a Waffle House. If it weren’t for the climate and the time zone, I would totally live here.

I really need to find something to download. It’s such a waste of bandwidth not to! Since my laptop’s reimage, I have been playing The Sims Online off of my external drive, which is at home. Maybe I will play it while I am here after all.

A man is walking down the street when he sees a sign in a deli window that says, Cheese Sandwich – $1.00, Ham Sandwich – $2.00, Hand Job – $10.00. The man walks in and approaches the incredibly attractive girl working the counter.

“Are you the one who gives the $10.00 hand job?” he asks, to which she replies, “Why, yes I am, how can I help you?”

“Go wash your hands, I want a ham sandwich.”

So the last three times I have taken my car to Saturn for an oil change they have done the same asinine thing. You know the sticker they put on the dashboard to remind you when the next time is that you should get your oil changed? Well, instead of putting the month, day and number of miles, they have been putting the month, year and number of miles.

This is a complete waste of space and a disservice. I know what year it will be in three months. Arguably, I even know what month I should bring my car in again. The most important thing is to know the date.

So after my service order is written up this morning, I tell the guy that if they don’t knock this shit off that I am going to go to a different Saturn dealership. I then said, “to be clear, the sticker ought to say,” and then I looked at a calendar to determine what it should say. Well three months from today is January 7, 2007, so whether they do it the right way or not, it is still going to say “01/07.” The service adviser is an all-white version of Lance, so he was sure to have a good laugh at my expense.

I told him that this will be a bigger deal in January, because I am definitely not going to bring my car in on January 7. I just won’t. I don’t care whether I get a coupon in the mail saying “free donuts and hookers on January 7 with oil change.” I am not coming in on January 7.

He told me the guy that worked on my car the last two times (and ostensibly made out the sticker — he said that they don’t do a bunch in advance and fill in the mileage only at the time, which I think would be a huge time saver if not completely impractical) no longer works for them, so we’ll see. As an aside, I looked at the sticker in the shuttle, and it said “12/06.” I suppose it could have been serviced on September 6, but I am not so confident in that.