Allusive.org

I hate it when there’s a ton going on that I don’t want to talk about. Which is why there hasn’t been a post. I know, I suck.

Took a trip to Tahoe with the crew a couple of weeks ago. Spent a day at Heavenly (yuck) and Kirkwood (sweet). Heavenly kind of sucked the day we went. Too much wind. The best part was parking at the peak on the Nevada side and seeing most of Johnson Lane and Carson City. The worst was the giant patch of ice I hit bombing downhill. The ice was so slick and the angle so steep when I fell I couldn’t stop sliding. Finally dragged myself to a halt by digging in the plastic hooks on my wrist guards. Lay sprawled there on the mountain for a bit like a dork. Eventually got myself up (very carefully) and slid (not boarded) the rest of the way down.

Day 2 at Kirkwood was 100% better. The weather was perfect, the hills were much wider, and there was no ice where I was. My only regret was not trying out the black run, but there’s always next year.

Day three was devoted to my family. Hitched a ride to Gardnerville and spend the day with my sister, her zoo, and the parental units. Watched my baby niece crawl everywhere. My oldest nephew is now taller than I am. My sister’s house is way more pimp than mine will ever be. Had a great time.

I’ve been to see a number of concerts. Saw Linkin Park, Bad Religion, and My Chemical Romance. I may be off to see another one Friday. Yes, I’ve gotten around to seeing all those concerts I meant to. Only took me until my 30s to get around to it.

And in what will be a classic entry exemplifying my weirdness, I gave Spot a bath last weekend. My cat has some very long hair, and it seems no matter how much I brush him it eventually becomes a tangled mass no brush can contend with. After a couple of knots appeared in his fur that I had to cut out, I gave in and tossed the poor guy into the bathtub. Luckily for me he’s been undergoing this torture since he was a kitten, so there’s no undue clawing or struggling. He just sits there and looks miserable. After I dried him off and brushed him forever, he returned to his former fluffy glory. With far less shedding.

Life lessons are few, but here’s a couple Things I Learned This Month:

The week you promise to get online and play games with your friends is the week you wind up working tons of overtime.

Your shower handle will break off at the most inconvenient time possible.

Vise-grip shower controls are ghetto fabulous.

There is absolutely no point in making cat shampoo with soy milk and honey. Really. Stop it.

It would seem my car has taken up the spotlight this week in my life. Let’s begin on Thursday morning, when your mild-mannered running-on-four-hours-sleep heroine is driving to work. As I’m nearing the spaghetti bowl from the west side of town, traffic starts to slow down. The culprit? Tons of carpet and padding all over the damn freeway. Fabulous. I carefully navigate the terrain in my Shiny Fast Car, and proceed onto the ramp to I-15. All clear, bright sunny skies ahead. I’m cruising along with the flow of traffic, not a slow down in sight, then all of the sudden: Oh Shit! Carpet! Big huge piece of carpet right there in the middle of the road. I can’t swerve out of the way! So I grit my teeth and aim for the lowest part of it. Thump. Wait…where was the other thump? Crap! So I pull over and investigate. Sure enough, it got tangled up in my wheel well. I try a few hard yanks (landing on my butt in the process), but to no avail. That damn carpet is stuck. I contemplate tears, then decide action is called for instead of waterworks. I call Don first, tell him I’m stuck on the freeway. He hasn’t left his house yet, so he promises to cruise by and check on me on his way in. After a call to roadside assistance and answering 20 questions on their automated system, I get a tow truck sent out. Wait time: 1 hour minimum. Beautiful.

I continue to wait. Eventually Don pulls up. Laughing his ass off, of course. He tries a couple of yanks on the carpet and pronounces it stuck. He then busts out the camera and takes a picture. So I tell him I’ll probably not be in until much later, either they are going to have to do the release without me or delay it. Don asks me what needs to be done, and I start rattling things off. His eyes kind of glaze over, and he says “I’ve got to get that carpet out.” Then in Superman-adrenaline-saving-babies mode, he gives the carpet a mighty tug and miracle of miracles, it budges. A few more tugs and the carpet is free. Don is truly awesome, and I’m on my way to work. (Hooray?)

Yeah, I had a good laugh about the whole thing. Frickin’ carpet tried to eat my car. That’s just wrong!

Then yesterday I decided to give the car a bath. I took my car to one of those do-it-yourself car washes. As I’m loading quarters into the washer control, the caretaker guy comes cruising over. He just starts talking to me. “You need help? That sprayer has a lot of water pressure, want me to do that for you? Here, let me get the dirt off of the sides of your car. I have some tire stuff to make the rims shiny. Here, have a shammy! This is a nice car. So, what do you do for a living?” He did not seem to hear my protestations that I was fine and could handle washing my car. Before I knew it, he pretty much washed my car for me. Unbelievable. I wasn’t the only person there, the entire place was busy. But for some reason, he needed to wash my car. I gave him a couple of bucks and some advice about his computer problems (he wanted to hire me to fix it for him. Said no. Scratch off “computers” as a vague answer regarding my occupation). I got back in my car after all that, looked in the mirror, saw the usual hell I am greeted with in the reflection, and figured he was nearsighted or really, really bored.

Yep, the car wins this week. I have no life lessons for you. Snow trip canceled due to ridiculous weather. I’m very sad. On a last note, I am finally (more or less) used to the contacts, but have decided against wearing them to work. My eyes get too dry. Better off wallowing in nerdness M-F. Contacts will be for the weekend and for those wonderful activities I like to do that are prone to destruction of my eye wear. Lake Mead, I’m looking at you.

I have had, for years, an Amazon wish list. I don’t keep it so people can buy me stuff. On the contrary, it’s a nice way to bookmark my impulsive “wants” without actually buying them until I’ve had a chance to think over. For the most part I wind up picking up the stuff somewhere else, but periodically purchase through Amazon for those “Must Haves”. After discovering my CD collection had been brutalized by stealing bastards, I started hitting it pretty hard, adding items and picking them up as they went on sale. Every couple of days a shiny new package arrives with CD replacements and whatever else I managed to reason myself into buying with excuses. But now I’ve hit the sad point: the list is nearly empty and Christmas every couple of days is over. I don’t usually spend so much money on music and CDs, so it was a nice change to actually spend money on frivolous things. Now I’ll probably take a step back into Miser Land and quit buying stuff. It was fun while it lasted.

Today I did come home to a small box package. OMG YES. Contact lenses are here! They are in my eyes as I type! Can’t focus that well yet. Everything looks funny. BUT. I can wear goggles when I board! I can wear regular sunglasses! I can go to concerts without worrying my glasses will get knocked off and trampled! There is a sad part to this story. I put them in and waited. And waited. And waited. And no guys came and randomly dry-humped me. Ah well, such is life. Screw you and your eyepatch idea, Wiseman. I have two eyes now!

The the Thing I learned This Week but will never be able to change:

Everything goes horribly, horribly wrong when you are left holding the reins. Sheesh.

Like everyone else in the universe, I have a MySpace page. Because my profile is public, I get random messages and friend requests from guys, generally saying “Hi, I’m Joe, you have a nice smile, write back!”. Well, they pretty much say that sans spelling, punctuation, and coherency. It doesn’t really bother me. I read, delete, move on. But there are messages from all ends of the spectrum. There was the long boring message from the guy who was absolutely positive I was the one for him, the messages from guys “coming into town next weekend” which is code for “Do you put out? How many drinks will it cost me?”, and the message from the 19 year old kid who probably didn’t realize I am 33 years old, not 23, and sent me his train wreck English email telling me how hot I am and we should hook up.

Yeah, typical MySpace stuff. But sometimes the messages just take a dive off the deep end, so here’s four of my personal favorites gathered from the last few months. I don’t intend on making this a series, as I’m not too keen on public mockery. But truly, these had to be shared.

A fetishist who rhymes:

Subject: such a look
Body: and being oh so petite I bet you have the cutest feet…… Love to talk with you.

Words fail me:

Subject: question
Body: have you ever hooked up with an EXTREMELY dominant, rough guy? if the question offends you, dont bother writing back to curse me out, i dont care.

WHOAH THERE BUDDY. Not so fast:

Subject: Hello! I’ll be your friend & make you laugh!
Body: Hi Sweetheart! You look very attractive to me. And your profile is very interesting. Please check my profile & let me know if you are interested. I am sincere guy hoping to find sincere friends, looking for a long term relationship & eventually marriage. [And it goes on…he even quoted “The Rules”]

Capslock what?

Subject: HELLO
Body: WOW U POCESS ALT OF NATURAL BEAUTY..I LOVE THE GLASSES ON U…A PRETTY SMILE 2 BOOT…PEACE AND LOVE 2 U

Yep, good times. At least I had a good chuckle out of it. And no, I’m not going to set my profile private, because I’ll miss out on all of this fun.

And an update: Total CD replacement cost to date has gone over $300. And my contacts aren’t here yet. Yeah. Instead of exploring these topics, I am opting leave you with a few Things I Learned This Week:

For every good thing that happens to change your life, there’s usually something messy you’ve got to straighten up before you move on to enjoy it.

Credit card companies have reached desperation when they start sending you offers in Spanish and English based on the ethnic ambiguity of your name.

Listening to your mp3 collection on random is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to a music fanatic.

Stifling the urge to smack somebody upside the head with a Dictionary is a good thing. I think.

So post-sister visit, I’ve probably ratcheted up the good old cleaning routine by at least 10%. Nothing seems to be clean enough. This is normal for me, but lately I’ve gone a bit overboard. Oh well, I suppose there are far worse things to obsess over. Like blue button down shirts, but I digress.

In honor of Valentine’s day, I decided to Candy Bomb the Dark Side. I deposited several boxes of candy hearts “From: Secret Admirer” (or variations thereof) and random packages of Skittles/Starburst on the desks of people I’ve grown to like over the course of the year I have worked there. Afterward, I sat back and let the reactions ensue. Only two people figured out it was me right away. Everybody else speculated, either aloud or to themselves. I was completely amused, and as I said to a friend the other day, I live for being amused. So for those of you left who never figured it out: it was me, and the candy hearts are safe for consumption.

I went snowboarding at Lee yesterday. Or to be more accurate, slushboarding. The temperatures were high and the snow was nearly slush in some places. On the advice of a couple of people, I switched my stance from regular to goofy, so the only good thing I have to say about the day was I got used to it pretty quick and found myself able to do much more with greater ease. I crashed quite a bit working on toe side, but my day was far more productive. I should have demanded a slush discount. Hopefully soon I will be able to take a trip out to Brian Head and ride down something that is longer than a blink. So end result: I’m currently vacillating between pleased I learned a lot and annoyed because of lameness. I also need smaller pants and a lighter jacket. And goggles, for the eventual day far far in the future that tech finishes making my contacts in the Goggle Basement.

Ah yes, the contacts. Still waiting on the left lenses. Coming up on a month now waiting. Yes, it’s retarded. My last call pretty much said the same as the previous: they are still making them. Boo.

I recently received my season 2 box set of Twin Peaks from Amazon. One of my all time favorite shows. I’ve been slowly working my way through them. Who killed Laura Palmer? Oh, I already know, but I like everything that happens before you find out. The story has some fantastic characters. ABC still sucks in my mind to this day for canceling it after the second season. The bastards.

The resolution success count is so-so. I’ve written off the dating one. I’m going to get another cat. Either that or give Spot a bath and pretend he’s new. The Real Vacation idea is at a standstill, but I keep promising myself I’ll fix that. Spending less time on my ass and much more on the board. I will be visiting my cousin sometime in the next couple of months, I hope. Trying really, really hard to be nicer. Not doing so well at that, but I guess it’s the effort that counts.

As I was writing this I was contemplating the Things I Learned This Week, and found them in somewhat short supply. Well, at least the lessons I am willing to share over the internet. The really good lessons wound up in The Journal. Yes, that one, the mental dumping ground. That pretty much leaves nothing for public consumption, so I guess we’ll all wait together for me to have a few train wrecks to write about.