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madness, stupidity and fatigue

December 21, 2004

ok, another gap in the blogging. but dammit, this was a wacky few days. allow me to walk you through it, here at 2:23am.

last thursday night, my team played in their championship tournament. we won our first game at 8:00pm in convincing fashion, playing well individually and as a unit. the second game began immediately after the first. yes, the other team was fresh, since the team they were to play at 7:00pm, the team with the really bad attitude and the rowdy crowd, had never paid their deposit, and therefore lost their chance to play. figures.

we had a really good team, that we had beaten last season for the championship, and that had lost only one game this season, against the ropes, frustrated in the first half. at first, my team played efficiently but beautifully, patiently but with passion, methodically but with purpose. they played valiantly throughout the game, but somewhere along the way, that effort was no longer focused by a system of playing together. frustration and mayhem followed, and we lost. i think it was the most disappointment and frustration we've felt in a long time. that's alright, though - there are immense lessons to be learned from it, and in january we'll start practicing weekly for the next season, which won't start until march.

friday i was stuck in settlement conferences at work. they ran over, and while i had planned to take the afternoon to get home and bake, i didn't get out until 3:00. an accident on the freeway turned a 20 minute commute into an hour. get home, start baking, i'm out of sugar. run to the store, and at 4:30, i finally began three solid hours of baking and decorating a pretty damned yummy fresh banana layer cake, with slices of bananas and strawberries between three layers, with a cream cheese icing. i put the last bit of icing on, then immediately hauled ass to shannon's birthday party.

dinner led into a trip to the canary hut, which i prefer to call the canary slut - a small neighborhood bar in a strip center, with bright yellow chairs and weird lighting. the oddest thing is that the air in the bar seems perpetually clear, yet the bar reeks of cigarette stench like none i have ever known.

we are usually able to rule the roost at the canary hut (sorry), but friday night, a pair of groups were hogging all the tables. about eight or nine of us sat in a small circle in the middle of the floors, clutching our drinks and peeling apart the stuck-together plastic pages of the karaoke songbooks, which contained mostly country songs and other things that i would not want to hear or acknowledge the existence of, much less sing.

about the time the big screen television, which had been tuned to more innocuous cinemax fare, started showing softcore porn, it was decided that we should leave. we went to brian and shannon's house.

shannon is my karaoke mentor. she is intelligent, with normally developed cognitive and social skills, yet she is a karaoke freak. she does not reside in a fantasy world, and doesn't dress up for or get too dramatically involved in the songs she sings, but she just likes singing stuff, and i support and admire that. accordingly she recently purchased a totally bad-ass karaoke machine - not one of those cheap boxes with the cd player, speaker, and tiny screen all built in, but a purposeful-looking stereo component of they type some of my korean kin have in their homes.

it took me a while to warm to singing without the cheers and adoration of a sginificantly large audience, but shannon's enthusiasm was infectious. eventually, i crawled out, and was in bed by 3:00am.

suddenly, it was 6:45am. i jammed my contacts back into my eyes, pulled on my high-tech running garb, and drove in a painful daze to my 7:30am, 12-mile run.

12 miles is a long freakin' way to run. it is not a distance i had ever contemplated covering on foot. it's a task i had always figured was taken on only by itinerant kung-fu masters and native americans being driven on death marches.

but with my small pack of three running buddies, janay, tiffany, and katy, it became doable. we stuck together, through the first six or so miles that was made so arduous by our shared need to find a restroom, up the daunting steep side of mount bonnell, and through the ordeal of consuming "gu", a space-age polymer that supposedly provides much-needed energy, while tasting and feeling like something excreted by an alien with dysentery, with just a hint of citrus and/or vanilla flavoring.

near the end, i think the runner's high kicked in for us, and either took the form of, or combined with, a mild delirium. the derisive term "ass lemon" was accidentally discovered, and the ensuing laughter slowed us for about a block.

after the run, i was unable to lure my running cohorts into breakfast, but diane, who's responsible for this nuttiness in the first place, and her boys, sal and julian, were down for it. rush home, shower, clean up the small gift left by one of my cats, who apparently almost but didn't quite make it into the litter box, rush back out to meet for brunch.

after that, the mall, where i found, but did not buy, just the casual shoes i've been looking for, in case anyone, say, in south carolina, is wondering... i wear some size between 11 and 12, but that's all i'm telling you.

i finally got home at about 5:00pm. i collapsed on the couch. things hurt, and i was damn tired. but, spurred by my public humiliation at the hands of cocky teenagers and a few socially disadvantaged adults at the halo 2 tournament the week before, i decided to brush up on my video game skills.

i tend to be a little obssessive, which is why i don't gamble, and which is also why i only turn on the xbox once every couple of months.

suddenly, it was 4:30am, and i still couldn't figure out how to kill the prophet in the temple. i went to bed.

suddenly, it was 7:30pm on sunday. what the hell happened? the cats were even wide awake, on either side of me in the bed, staring at me with mild disdain and entirely no concern at all.

some television. not having eaten in about 30 hours, a double meat-double cheese jalapeno burger and some tater tots sounded like a good idea. reenergized, i played halo 2 for about an hour and finally beat the hell out of that prophet guy. i know it sounds mean, but he's apparently went nuts, and is trying very effectively to wipe out humanity. he had it coming. plus, he talks a lot of trash.

more television - oh my, has anyone seen the "woodland critter christmas" on south park? brilliant...

while you were out started getting me drowsy. bed at 1:30am.

7:30 monday morning. no sir, this is not going to happen. back to sleep. up at 10:00am, and the day once more immediately began feeling like a scene from a guy ritchie film. run to kanton's to pick up a contract to look over, and info on two cases with insurance companies. cash check. get to work at noon. work, in between answering emails from friends and other people i'm doing work for. sneak out to deposit cash, buy socks for running, the thin cool-max kind i love, that are $6.00 and up at running stores, but $4.95 for two at target. all in 25 minutes.

leave work at 5:45. by 6:00, i'm running five miles, in the belief and fervent hope that not skipping the runs during the week will help me better recover from the hellish long saturday runs. down the hike and bike to congress, up to the capitol, then back, clutching my iPod the whole way. "hells bells", by ac/dc comes up on the shuffle play, and i kick into high gear on the last couple of miles, repeating the song several times, all the while imagining doing an epic, leather-pantsed karaoke rendition of it, to the applause of the canary slut's near-mullet male clientele and some of the cuter female patrons.

home by 7:10, shower, out the door by 7:30. driving to snag friend kammi to go to the mr. sinus christmas party, i'm digging through my briefcase, which kammi would later declare looks like a woman's purse, damn her, and my wallet's not there. must be at the office, left there when i changed into my running clothes at the end of the day, a mistake i've rarely made.

i'm right on time to get kammi at 8:00. we go to my office building, she hangs in the car. i don't have my badge. the security says he'll let me in, but i forgot my keys in the car. get keys. return. the guard, a short man with a lazy eye and a thick jamaican accent, says he can't let me in without a badge. for the next 10-15 minutes, all logic fails. he suggests repeatedly that i get someone who knows me that has a badge to identify me to him so i can come in. it's 8:25 now, and we don't have a fcuking night shift at my office. he declares that i was responsible for passing the law last week that prevents him from letting me in.

there was no time to explain the legislative process, or the fact that the legislature was not currently in session to to pass such a "law", or the difference between law, policy, and sheer idiocy. i walk away, without my wallet, with no money, and no faith in the future of humanity when so much rests on the decisions of small-minded people.

kammi hooks me up with some money, which i find embarassing. the party is cool, but it was mainly nice to get a chance to talk to kammi, cause we've never really had a chance to hang out. on the way home, we stop by the recycling center, where i dump off the huge bits of cardboard i've had in my car for two weeks. a homeless guy comes up and asks me for a quarter, and i have to laugh.

drop kammi off by 10, go to the store, buy a few ingredients and cash a check (luckily, my checkbook, with one check left, is in my car, in the girly man purse i've used as a briefcase for 12 years). get home, begin baking cinnamon apple cake for tomorrow's office holiday party, which we call an end of year party so as not to offend the jehovah's witnesses in the office, who still won't attend. cat is coming in the morning to use the computer, so while the cake's in the oven, it's laundry, dishes, cleaning the kitchen.

i pull together the clothes i need to go running tomorrow night. i stuff them in my gym bag, and there, nestled securely just where it should be, is my wallet.

Posted by Rob at December 21, 2004 01:03 AM

Comments

Posted by: Morgan at December 21, 2004 09:50 AM

Posted by: Eileenie Weenie at December 21, 2004 11:14 AM

Posted by: amy at December 22, 2004 04:30 PM

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