Archive for March, 2005

I arrived home from work today (okay, actually I was at Happy Hour with my dad… Major’s actually… great time) to find that my recycling bin had been stolen. This is bad. I liked my recyling bin. It was big and blue and the nice lady at the Maple Grove City Offices gave it to me. I’m pissed. So now the question is this: do I steal a recycling bin back? There are loads and loads of them out there. Every Tuesday blue recycling bins line the streets around my house, just asking to be claimed and taken home. Do I do it? Do I become another link in the long chain of stolen recyling bins, or do I let it go? This is the question that I need to answer, indeed we all need to answer (okay right, just me).

I was on the fence.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-3_26_05_OSC.html

YVMV

The last week or so has been pretty interesting. At least, in terms of how interesting my weeks usually are it was pretty interesting. My friend David called me up a while ago and said he met this quality girl who he wanted me to call. Hmm…. quality? David is perhaps the most selective person I have ever met when it comes to women, so this was definitely an intriguing possibility. On the other hand, David is kinda crazy. I weighed these two thoughts and decided that a date, while completely foreign to the normal paths of my daily existence, wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I got her number (Surprising I know.)

More surprisingly… I called her. I’ll pause here to give you time to pick yourself off the floor where you were no doubt deposited quite abruptly after reading that completely absurd last sentence. There, better now? Good. So I called this girl. We talked for about 10 minutes or so and agreed it would be “cool” to go out the next week. I had a date planned, a blind-date to be sure, but nevertheless, a date. This doesn’t happen to me. I don’t go on “dates”; it’s just not something I “do.” My normal mode of operation is to go on quasi-dates where the “date” status is completely undetermined and I have no idea how to act. (You will see later that this turns out to be normal (the not knowing how to act) regardless if the date is quasi or not.

So anyway, it was Wednesday; my date was planned for Tuesday, six days later. A lot can happen in that time. First there was St. Patty’s Day, which was a blast, then there was the NCAA Tourney and all the TV watching that goes with it, and then there was last Saturday night. Hmm… Last Saturday night I ended up going downtown to meet Jason and Adam. Adam decided to bring his friend Stacy. Can you guess where I am going with this yet? I met up with Adam and Stacy and we proceeded to wait for Jason to show up. During this waiting period, I determined that Stacy was really cute, funny and nice… and most importantly, someone I’ve never met before. Of course my subconscious immediately decides that I must try to spend the remaining part of the evening talking to her. Lo and behold, my subconscious was successful and that’s what I did. (Now, if you remember, I had a “date” planned in a few short days. I believe this fact was directly related to my ability to actually talk to a pretty, funny and nice girl without making a complete ass out of myself (I think). I mean, where was the pressure? I already had a date planned!)

No pressure == a fun night. Stacy insisted on being a blind-date safeguard, if my date turned into a horrible mess I was to immediately txt her and she would come save the night by pretending to be a jealous ex, thereby removing me from the horrible situation. A good plan we all thought. I got her number.

It is an interesting feeling when you desperately want a date to go horribly wrong, don’t you think?

Sunday came and went and Monday showed up. I received a call Monday afternoon that I wasn’t expecting… it was the girl I was supposed to have my horrible… er… not horrible blind-date with. Our date wasn’t supposed to be until Tuesday so I was wondering what could possibly be up. I’m amazingly optimistic I guess because silly me, of course I should have known she would have gotten back together with her ex-boyfriend of three years over the weekend. Why didn’t I see that coming?

This sort of, well, sucked. Sort of. The first thought in my head was “crap, now I can’t have a horrible date!” The second though in my head was “Well, what is more horrible than a date that doesn’t happen?” Not exactly logical, but I went with it. Long story short (because I’m tired of writing) I managed to charm my way (pity was probably the determining factor actually) into convincing Stacy (remember her?) to go out with me instead of my now ex-blind-date.

Tuesday. I give Stacy a call in the afternoon to see if she’s still game for the night. We end up talking for about a half-hour or so and it is decided that I will pick her up in a couple hours. A couple hours later I show up at the door (of the house she was house-sitting at)… She opens the door and for some inexplicable reason my attention goes immediately to the two yapping dogs in the room. Why, for the life of me, was my attention focused on the dogs? There is a beautiful–yes, beautiful… I was mistaken before, not just pretty, beautiful–woman standing right there, but instead of paying attention to her, I am staring at one ugly-ass dog and one sorta-ugly-ass-dog, neither of which deserves a second of consideration. What the hell could I possibly be thinking?

Want to know what I was thinking? Quasi-date. It’s all I know. It’s all I do. Quasi-dates have all the set-up of honest-to-goodness real “dates”, but without the acknowledgement. This is my failsafe mode. My subconscious reverts to it instinctively. In quasi-date mode I become the incredible platonic-guy-friend. The motto of platonic-guy-friend is “Say nothing, do nothing and admit nothing that could possibly give away the fact that you have any interest in being anything other than platonic-guy-friend.”

Had a good night, talked a lot, laughed a lot, took her home. I had a date with a girl who was really fun and really laid-back (and absolutely gorgeous) and just someone who would be worth getting to know better… and I was platonic-guy-friend. Damn.

I don’t mean to give the impression that there were or could have been a lot of “sparks” or anything like that… prolly not. But the fact that I didn’t even venture out of quasi-date mode to explore the possibility just totally sucks.

I suppose it is prolly a good lesson for the future… if I can manage to override my failsafe and ditch platonic-guy-friend mode, then I might do okay… maybe. Prolly not actually, but at least I would prolly go down in a blaze of glory instead of failing to even attempt to take off… (I had to throw some sort of aircraft metaphor in here).

Of course… it is also possible that I’m being a little too hard on myself… nah, I would never do that.

…and that’s just about all I have to say…

Enough writing for you D?

So this morning I was driving into the post office (for a pretty idiotic reason which I won’t elaborate on), not paying attention, and I sort of ran into a curb… and popped a tire. I Found out about 10 minutes ago that it’s not repairable, so now I’ll have to buy two new tires… prolly costing me $300 or so. Don’t you love it when you realize that a split-second of idiotic non-attention costs you that new TV you were planning on getting! Dammit.

I have determined that my thoughts have the most clarity in the morning.
I have determined that my thoughts have the most clarity in the evening.

These thoughts are usually opposite.

I don’t know which to embrace.