Good Feeling

I'll try to keep this brief, since I'm very anxious to get out here as quickly as possible.

I'm off to visit JohnnyB for the weekend, mainly to get a crash course in PhotoShop. After the scanning fiasco at Zappagirl's this past week, I decided it would be just as easy for me to drive to the Small Northeastern College Town to use JohnnyB's scanner and PC under his tutelage. Plus it's a excuse for me to visit with him and catch up, which is a major bonus.

It's been rather difficult having one of my best friends living four hours away from me. I'd gotten used to seeing him on a regular basis (usually once a week), and although he's visited as much as he can I miss having someone to discuss the latest plot twist on Buffy with. I spend most Tuesday nights after 10:00 focusing on the phone, mentally willing him to call me. (My bills are atrocious enough; long distance calls are generally brief if I make them.)

He's a bigger procrastinator than I am, so email correspondance has been difficult. It's not that he doesn't care; he just gets wrapped up in other projects and forgets to keep in touch with his friends. Sometimes it hurts my feelings a bit, and I have a tendency to take things a bit personally, usually resulting in an acid-tinged email bitching about his lack of reply. The next day I'll receive an email in which he apologizes and reminds me that he's not the best at returning phone calls and emails, and that I should know this after all these years, so I just need to get over myself.

So yeah, sometimes he ticks me off, but whenever I get a chance to talk to him, all is forgiven and we're fighting to get a word in edgewise while we chat about everything and nothing.

I'm leaving straight from work, and I've been in a good mood all day. I'm trying not to let any of the everyday on-the-job stresses spoil it. Last minute requests from pushy brokers? Whatever. An assistant telling me an out-and-out lie over the phone to cover her ass? Irritating, but expected. So what? I left the book I'm currently engrossed in at Zappagirl's house last night? Oh well.

The only thing that could throw a wrench in my plans for a fun-filled weekend is my sister's looming due date. She's due on the 13th (Mother's Day - how apropos!), but you know how things go. It could be any time, but I know if I sit at home waiting for her to go to the hospital this weekend that it won't happen. Unless she has one of those super-short deliveries where she has one labor pain and the baby comes flying out like a bullet train, I should be fine. It's only four hours away, and she has my cel number as well as JohnnyB's number. The only time she might have a problem getting ahold of me will be when we go to see The Mummy Returns sometime this weekend. (I try to be a conscientious cel phone user and turn my phone off whenever I go to the movies.)

I'm all packed and ready to go. Road music has been selected (mostly techno and dance-y stuff; after the trip I made in January I've since learned that pretty acoustic stuff is sleep-inducing). I've been clockwatching all day. I'm anxious to get on the road. It's not a tough drive and I think my little car knows the way pretty well. (Actually, JohnnyB just called me to confirm that I had directions, and it's official. I know how to get there without looking at a map.) The only thing that could make it easier is if the city of Columbus disappeared. Way too many stupid lanes changes up there. OK, I-71 is the left lane! Now the right lane! Move! Now! Pay that Mack truck no mind!

I might check in over the weekend, but don't hold your breath. He's got to recap his entire San Francisco sojourn to me, and we've got three weeks of power packed vampire TV shows to dissect. And he's bought some new Playstation games that he wants me to try out. And I'll need to play with the family dog and watch entirely too much cable and do the experimental cooking thing and...

Visiting with JohnnyB is always like a mini-vacation. I'll be lucky if I get any work done this weekend.

Cults and Karaoke

(side note to Crew: I will never use the word "kewl." Because it's not.)

Yeah, I know it's been been a few days since I've posted anything. I wish I could say it's because I've been too busy doing exciting stuff. Actually I can sum up what I've been up to with a single lyric by the Artist Formerly Known As a Stupid Little Glyph: "Seems that I was busy doin' somethin' close to nothin'..."

Not much is going on here, and a lot of the time I spend staring at a blank screen, trying to think of something to write about that will be interesting for more than three sentences.

Here's a quick recap of the week so far:

On Sunday, I went to lunch with Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Diamond Doug at Kaldi's. Afterwards I went back to Zappagirl's in hopes of scanning in photos and old handbills for the Full Contact Poetry website. (My personal site is on the back burner, since I'm desparately trying to get the FCP site up and running before the show so we have a web address to put on the flyers.) It wasn't pretty. I'm not very proficient with the Mac, and I know zilch about scanning and formatting photos. Zappagirl gave me a basic tutorial and went to bed, leaving me to quietly berate myself everytime I messed up a photo crop.

On Monday, we discovered that the Mac had saved everything as HUGE files rather than jpegs. We fiddled around with the settings for hours and finally gave up to go watch VH-1. Folks, VH-1 is video crack. We spent two hours watching a countdown of the greatest hair metal bands of all time. Names of bands that I had taken years blocking out of my memory came back with a vengeance. (Dokken, anyone? Winger? Sheesh.) And I don't even want to start on Behind the Music. If I had cable, I'd never leave the house again.

Tuesday night was, of course, Buffy/Angel night. (Dear Joss Whedon: Thank you for finally making this year's villain scary instead of a twit, but please stop with the angst. You killed off Buffy's mom, you let Glory kick the snot out of Spike, and now you've let the hellgod of bad perms suck out Tara's sanity. Please stop hurting characters I've become attached to; I'm running really low on Kleenex. Oh, but keep focusing on the demon karaoke host on Angel - he's made a really bad running plot device entertaining as hell. Your fan, Myopic) I was so depressed about the ending of Buffy (and the freaking Dateline I watched about conjoined twins - don't watch these shows when anyone you know is pregnant, kids) that I plunged headfirst into a tub of Caramel Caribou ice cream in hopes of killing off my melancholia. Or at least giving it a nasty ice cream headache.

Yesterday was an icky day at work (the company I work for just completed a merger with a smaller company, and yesterday was the first day of dealing with our new clients), so I went over to Zappagirl's to watch Bring It On (yes, again...she started it this time). We stopped at the local Creamy Whip on the way from Kroger's (to buy coffee - what else?). Ahhh. Nothing says spring like messy soft serve ice cream dripping down your hand and making everything sticky. My ice cream dexterity apparently hasn't improved since I was eight; I had it all over my face and half expected my mother to appear out of nowhere to clean off my face with a Kleenex doused in mom spit. (Yes, gross. But everyone's mom did it at least once, right?)

So we're caught up. Was it as good for you as it was for me?

Today is a big to-do at work. I work for a brokerage division of a big humongous local bank (we're towards the top of the Barron's 500) that is slowly but surely taking over every little bank in the Midwest. I won't mention the name, but today's date is a big hint. But anyways, today is the official bank-wide celebration day. It's kind of like...oh hell, I don't know what purpose this day actually serves. It's kind of like a "thank you" day for the employees, but it's not all that big a deal. They gave us coupons for free donuts and bagels at Dunkin' Donuts, brought in a sandwich tray for the department, and we had a pot luck (and of course, I left my contribution sitting on the kitchen table, where I'd put it the night before so I wouldn't forget it in the morning). And of course, the company encouraged us to wear our "spirit wear" (the various articles of clothing bearing our logo that the company encourages us to buy all year).

Now this is where I start thinking it's funny. Every bank in the downtown area gives its employees little gold lapel pins with the bank logo, so during lunch on Fountain Square all you see are people in suits and these silly little pins. They give you these pins during orientation, and they expect you to wear them regularly. (In my department, they're only sticklers about it when we're having a division meeting or if someone important is coming up to the floor.) Why do they want you to wear the pins? Because it makes the CEO happy.

Folks, I work for a cult. Wear the pin! Buy the T-shirt! Wear the T-shirt! Give out the referral cards to all your friends, and we'll reward you monetarily if we hire them! We will pay your benefits in stock for our company, profit sharing through our trust department, and FREE CHECKING! (Actually, I'm not knocking the benefits. They rock.) Let the world know what a great company we are! Soon the entire Midwest will be ours! Soon the entire WORLD WILL BE OURS! Mwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

If the festivities at work aren't too overwhelming, Zappagirl and I are planning to go to Longworth's tonight to do karaoke. I've been a couple of times with Nash and actually worked up the courage to sing once. (The beer helped, too. I sang "A Common Disaster" by the Cowboy Junkies, if you're interested.) Most of the other nights I flip through the song list, looking for a song that I could hypothetically sing while I snicker at the drunk guy on stage mutilating some Creed song. (Creed, in my opinion, is painful enough to listen to. Creed being sung by a guy who's had a few too many Jagermeisters and can't read the lyrics on the screen...there should be therapy provided afterwards for the audience.)

Zappagirl has never done karaoke, and is a bit apprehensive. I personally don't think she has anything to worry about. I think I have a passable voice and don't really hesitate when singing along with the radio when there's someone else in the car, but Zappagirl was a music major, for crying out loud. My sad little alto pales in comparison to her singing voice. But then again, I do understand the fear factor, because it's there for me as well. It 's one thing to sing in the shower or in the car, but on stage in front of a microphone in a crowded yuppie bar is another thing altogther.

Who knows. We may both wimp out and spend the evening laughing at the drunk sorority girls who try to sing "Oops! I Did it Again!" worse than Britney does.