It’s funny how life occasionally brings us classic moments. I sit in my New Orleans hotel room after a long day on my feet (it was a long day on the rest of me, too!), and I am compelled by an incident that happened to me here in this city back in 2002 to share a story that begs to be told.
As part of my job, I had to capture video footage of New Orleans's most popular tourist attraction, Bourbon Street. The stupid part of it was that I was sent out in the afternoon to do it. My producer — who I usually refer to here as Producer, so as to avoid any confusion — went along with me to “help.”
We had worked a long morning, and we were both pretty hungry, so Producer suggested we stop for a bite to eat before we hit the strip. As is his usual, he’ll say something like that, and then say, “So what do you want?”
To which I usually reply, “I don’t care, whatever you want is fine with me.”
And he usually replies, “I don’t care, either…you pick.”
And usually, after I suppress the urge to kick him in the groin, I’ll make a suggestion, which he will reject because of any number of reasons: the place looks dirty (have you ever been to New Orleans before?!); it looks like they only serve seafood; he heard somebody say they didn’t care for their salad… you name it, he’ll find a reason not to go in there.
Out of necessity, we fairly quickly decided on a place on Convention Center Rd., called Mulate’s. As I recall, they seemed to specialize in Po’ Boy sandwiches, and, being fairly new to the New Orleans kitsch, I decided I would try me a shrimp Po’ Boy.
I don’t recall that the sandwich was anything to write about, but the food had come quickly enough. After the meal we scuttled back across the street to our designated edit room in the convention center and grabbed the camera. We hailed a cab and directed the driver to take us to the point where Bourbon Street Begins…or ends, depending on which side of your binge you’re on….
About twenty to thirty minutes into getting the various shots of anything interesting that we could shoot on a Sunday afternoon, I started getting bad abdominal cramps. I’ll never be certain if there was something wrong with the food we had at lunch or if the unseasonably warm temperatures caused my stomach upset, but after one of the shots I told Producer, “I’m gonna have to hit a bathroom soon.” We were about halfway down the “interesting” part of Bourbon Street.
With each establishment that we passed, Producer asked me if I wanted to go in there. I was holding off pretty well because I wasn’t too keen on using the facilities at any of the places along Bourbon Street (have you ever been to New Orleans before?!), but as we got to the end of the bars and souvenir shops, I said, “Okay, I cant wait any longer." We were steps away from the wide open doors of a bar, and we stepped inside. The air conditioning was on, and there were ceiling fans moving the cooled air around nicely. Producer took the camera from me, said he was dying for a beer, and asked me if I wanted something to drink. I said, “Coke,” and headed off toward the bathroom. On my way, I glanced up at the TV over the bar and noticed that it must have been tuned to HBO or some other movie channel, because a Julie Andrews musical number from the film Victor, Victoria was playing.
I stepped into the men’s room and was immediately dismayed that none of the toilet stalls had doors on them. If I have a true mental hang-up, it’s the absence of a door on any toilet stall I need to use. It stems from all the way back in kindergarten, when, at our school in which the bathroom toilet stalls did not have doors on them, two kids, Matt and Mark, used to torment me in the bathroom because, at age five, I still sat on the toilet to pee. That is the stuff that hang-ups are made of. You can imagine the hell that Air force basic training was for me…. but I digress.
There was no decision to make, as I was about to soil my underwear. I simply stepped to the nearest stall and went about my business. Sitting there after the first wave of “joy” passed, I saw a man enter the bathroom. He walked slowly and turned his head slightly in my direction, but turned left, away from me. Just before he turned to enter the side of the men’s room where the urinals were, he turned his head full-on and looked at me. HELLO! Do you mind? I'm poopin', here!
That was weird.
After the second wave passed, I noticed that the sound from the TV had changed, and Victor, Victoria had now been replaced with the goofy little musical number in the scene in Mrs. Doubtfire where Harvey Fierstein is giving make-up pointers to Robin Williams. Little things started falling into place in my head. The door-less toilet stalls; the lingering look from the guy who entered the bathroom after I had gotten down to business; two movies with cross-dressing as their major themes…. “Is this a gay bar?” I heard the voice in my head ask me. “Nah, must just be a coincidence,” the other voice answered. “Kill all of your co-workers,” said the third voice, but I’m usually able to tune that one out….
Meanwhile, out in the bar, Producer was sipping at his ice-cold bottle of beer, and he was just as perplexed when the Mrs. Doubtfire clip started up. Then he looked around and noticed that most of the bar patrons were men, and they all seemed to be paired off with each other, as were the only two women in the place. The other thing he noticed was that, to a person, everyone in the establishment was staring at him.
The weird guy in the bathroom (other than I) finished his business and stepped back around into my view. As he stepped toward the doorway out to the bar he gave me another lingering look. I had already instinctively covered up my privates, but in that moment, two thoughts formed very clearly in my head: I wish I had a third hand to help cover me; and this MUST be a gay bar!
Such a suspicion causes most straight men to pucker down below, and whether I felt I was finished or not, any further voiding was impossible. I quickly cleaned up, put myself back together, washed up and headed back out into the bar. Producer — who rarely carries anything for me — stood at the end of the bar holding my camera and a to-go cup of my Coke. A guy who really likes to savor his beer, Producer had already set his bottle on the bar, empty and still glistening with condensation. “Ready?” he asked me with odd strain in his voice.
“Yes!” I said, I’m certain with as much strain in mine.
I took the cup and the camera from his hands, and we both headed out the door. No more than five steps past the place, I said confidentially to Producer out of the corner of my mouth, “Was that a gay bar?”
With nervous exasperation, Producer said, “Yes!”
About five steps later we were both so doubled over in laughter and practically rolling in the gutter that passers-by must have thought we were still reveling from the night before…or starting early for the night to come! Talk about a couple of fish out of water!
°
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Thematic Photgraphic 33-Surprise
Carmi’s theme this week over at Written, Inc., is surprise. He challenges us to post a photo of something that wasn’t the intended subject, or something that turned up in the photo we hadn’t noticed was there.
It was the end of December, 2004, and we were on the trip to Maui that the owner of the company I work for had surprised the staff with for New Year’s. The ex-Mrs. Farrago and I went on a whale watching tour, and the whales weren’t in much of a mood to be watched. We had seen a couple of tail flukes and a couple of spouts up close, but no full breaches.
I manned the video camera while xMrs. Farrago wielded the trusty Nikon D70 we had purchased just a few months earlier. The boat captain tried several different viewing sites, but we were witnessing lethargic whales.
Then a whale near the boat broke the surface, first with a spout, and then with a roll of its massive body at the surface. It was really the same as all the others, just offering us a glimpse of its black body slipping along the surface. At the sound of the spout I had spun the video camera around and had barely caught the glimpse of the whale’s body as it slid barely into view. Just as I was pressing the record button to stop recording, I saw in the viewfinder, in the distance beyond the whale-bit that was still peeking above the water’s surface, a full breach by another whale! Everyone else on the boat who saw it let out a cheer at having seen it. I said to xMrs. Farrago, “Did you see that?”
She said, “Yeah, I saw it…and I think I captured it!!”
She didn’t know how to view the shot, so I helped her scroll back to it in the camera's playback mode. She had been shooting multiple exposure bursts, so there were a few shots to go through to get to it.
She had indeed captured the breach! Because the lens is a fairly wide-angle, 18-70mm zoom, the breaching whale is very tiny in the shot. When we got back to the hotel room, xMrs. Farrago enlarged the shot and, thanks to the good resolution of the Nikon D70, even enlarged, the shot looks pretty good! Click either photo to see it whale-sized.
Take a gander over at Written, Inc., and follow the links to his other readers.
And thanks for spending some time here.
°
It was the end of December, 2004, and we were on the trip to Maui that the owner of the company I work for had surprised the staff with for New Year’s. The ex-Mrs. Farrago and I went on a whale watching tour, and the whales weren’t in much of a mood to be watched. We had seen a couple of tail flukes and a couple of spouts up close, but no full breaches.
I manned the video camera while xMrs. Farrago wielded the trusty Nikon D70 we had purchased just a few months earlier. The boat captain tried several different viewing sites, but we were witnessing lethargic whales.
Then a whale near the boat broke the surface, first with a spout, and then with a roll of its massive body at the surface. It was really the same as all the others, just offering us a glimpse of its black body slipping along the surface. At the sound of the spout I had spun the video camera around and had barely caught the glimpse of the whale’s body as it slid barely into view. Just as I was pressing the record button to stop recording, I saw in the viewfinder, in the distance beyond the whale-bit that was still peeking above the water’s surface, a full breach by another whale! Everyone else on the boat who saw it let out a cheer at having seen it. I said to xMrs. Farrago, “Did you see that?”
She said, “Yeah, I saw it…and I think I captured it!!”
She didn’t know how to view the shot, so I helped her scroll back to it in the camera's playback mode. She had been shooting multiple exposure bursts, so there were a few shots to go through to get to it.
She had indeed captured the breach! Because the lens is a fairly wide-angle, 18-70mm zoom, the breaching whale is very tiny in the shot. When we got back to the hotel room, xMrs. Farrago enlarged the shot and, thanks to the good resolution of the Nikon D70, even enlarged, the shot looks pretty good! Click either photo to see it whale-sized.
Take a gander over at Written, Inc., and follow the links to his other readers.
And thanks for spending some time here.
°
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
BUI
I had a couple of glasses of wine this evening while watching a couple installments of America's Funniest Home Videos that I had on TiVo™, and I made a few observations:
• While I like America's Funniest Home Videos just fine, that show is freakin DAMN funny when I'm drinking wine.
• When I'm drinking wine and watching America's Funniest Home Videos, I will laugh so hard that I'll almost wet myself. In another 25 years or so, I'll probably be able to achieve wetness…maybe even without laughing.
• In the run-up to Thanksgiving, did anyone else grow tired of the media's and advertisers' use of the term "Black Friday?" It was driving me bananas! I first heard the term used about 10 years ago to describe how most retailers operate in the red all year until the busiest shopping day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving, when they finally see a profit. They go from the red to the black, hence the name the media coined: Black Friday. Isn't it wrong for a retailer to basically say to the customer, "In the next month, you're going to spend so much on Christmas gifts for your family and friends that we're finally gonna start making money off your ass?" Is it wronger that we do it anyway? Even moreso that advertisers have hijacked the word and made it into a marketing catch-phrase?
• Jessica Simpson: Would someone tell me how it's possible that I can simultaneously despise the very core of the woman, and yet lust so hotfully after her?
• If any of my readers has a "6 Degrees To Jessica Simpson" thing going on, could you please stroke your network and see to it that she somehow stumbles across my blog? …And this post…?
• I leave Thursday for New Orleans. Hasn't that city been there for like a couple dozen hundred years? Hasn't the "new" worn off by now?
• It's strange how you can doze off and sleep for what feels like hours, and it turns out only to be minutes, and how you can be out for two hours and your wine-induced dream of Jessica Simpson wearing a black leather jumpsuit unzipped down to there and straddling a huge, steamy, couch-sized Ball Park® frank, with the wind blowing through her hair while she's whispering your name through glistening, ruby red lips, lasts mere seconds.
• Anybody know how to get purple-tinted drool out of a computer keyboard?
• It's probably best not to write down your wine-induced observations while still on your wine-induced buzz.
°
• While I like America's Funniest Home Videos just fine, that show is freakin DAMN funny when I'm drinking wine.
• When I'm drinking wine and watching America's Funniest Home Videos, I will laugh so hard that I'll almost wet myself. In another 25 years or so, I'll probably be able to achieve wetness…maybe even without laughing.
• In the run-up to Thanksgiving, did anyone else grow tired of the media's and advertisers' use of the term "Black Friday?" It was driving me bananas! I first heard the term used about 10 years ago to describe how most retailers operate in the red all year until the busiest shopping day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving, when they finally see a profit. They go from the red to the black, hence the name the media coined: Black Friday. Isn't it wrong for a retailer to basically say to the customer, "In the next month, you're going to spend so much on Christmas gifts for your family and friends that we're finally gonna start making money off your ass?" Is it wronger that we do it anyway? Even moreso that advertisers have hijacked the word and made it into a marketing catch-phrase?
• Jessica Simpson: Would someone tell me how it's possible that I can simultaneously despise the very core of the woman, and yet lust so hotfully after her?
• If any of my readers has a "6 Degrees To Jessica Simpson" thing going on, could you please stroke your network and see to it that she somehow stumbles across my blog? …And this post…?
• I leave Thursday for New Orleans. Hasn't that city been there for like a couple dozen hundred years? Hasn't the "new" worn off by now?
• It's strange how you can doze off and sleep for what feels like hours, and it turns out only to be minutes, and how you can be out for two hours and your wine-induced dream of Jessica Simpson wearing a black leather jumpsuit unzipped down to there and straddling a huge, steamy, couch-sized Ball Park® frank, with the wind blowing through her hair while she's whispering your name through glistening, ruby red lips, lasts mere seconds.
• Anybody know how to get purple-tinted drool out of a computer keyboard?
• It's probably best not to write down your wine-induced observations while still on your wine-induced buzz.
°
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Exhale To The Chief
Many people, some of them the owners of "Better Blogs Than Mine," have weighed in today with their thoughts and feelings about the inauguration of our new president. Having read several accounts and, therefore, believing my thoughts influenced by them, I feel I am incapable of giving spontaneous, original breath to the telling of my experience.
I did watch, however, the live CNN stream from the comfort of my desk at work, shooting the stink-eye back at my former supervisor (who was kicked upstairs and still has weight to throw around the office) when he shot me the stink-eye for sitting at my desk doing nothing. Everybody else was gaping at the inauguration, so why can't I?
But I digress… I watched. I teared up. I was moved by President Barack Obama's words and by the almost audible sound of the shifting weight of American History. But, strangely, the President's words didn't fill me with the urge to cheer.
Instead, my heartbeat steadily increased as CNN dragged out the heavily inflected "drama" of the day with a nearly turn-by-turn account of the former president's departure from the White House. My emotions reached their zenith when the commentators finally shut their yaps for nearly a full minute while a solitary TV camera captured the lonely image of the helicopter, its rotor spinning, its blades invisible, as Marine One's pilot throttled up the engine and cranked the collective, beating the air firmly into submission, and the helicopter lifted off, carrying Mr. Bush away to the rest of his life.
As the aircraft grew smaller in the grey Washington, D.C., sky, very few words could express my emotions:
Good. Fucking. Riddance.
°
I did watch, however, the live CNN stream from the comfort of my desk at work, shooting the stink-eye back at my former supervisor (who was kicked upstairs and still has weight to throw around the office) when he shot me the stink-eye for sitting at my desk doing nothing. Everybody else was gaping at the inauguration, so why can't I?
But I digress… I watched. I teared up. I was moved by President Barack Obama's words and by the almost audible sound of the shifting weight of American History. But, strangely, the President's words didn't fill me with the urge to cheer.
Instead, my heartbeat steadily increased as CNN dragged out the heavily inflected "drama" of the day with a nearly turn-by-turn account of the former president's departure from the White House. My emotions reached their zenith when the commentators finally shut their yaps for nearly a full minute while a solitary TV camera captured the lonely image of the helicopter, its rotor spinning, its blades invisible, as Marine One's pilot throttled up the engine and cranked the collective, beating the air firmly into submission, and the helicopter lifted off, carrying Mr. Bush away to the rest of his life.
As the aircraft grew smaller in the grey Washington, D.C., sky, very few words could express my emotions:
Good. Fucking. Riddance.
°
Monday, January 19, 2009
Whimper
Well, despite best efforts, Lisa and I are no more…again. We went at the second wind with an eye toward allowing each other a little more space and toward not trying to spend every last minute together. With most of the weekend left to ourselves, we had made plans to have dinner Sunday evening, but then, by Sunday afternoon, Lisa was unreachable.
She had accidentally washed her phone with the laundry, and had apparently spent much of the day getting her old phone back on the grid. During that time I called several times, but she wasn't even able to get the messages.
On Friday she had gotten back some test results from blood work done as part of a routine exam. Her family has a history of heart trouble, as both her father and grandfather died in their sleep relatively young. As one can imagine, this is cause for Lisa's great concern, as she already has high cholesterol thanks to her heredity. The news from her doctor was not good: she is at a heightened risk for a heart attack, and he instructed her immediately to take some baby aspirin and to begin taking a prescription medication.
So, all of this information, plus the prior week of our breakup and subsequent reconciliation, and her concerns for the future, weighed on her mind all weekend, according to what she told me this afternoon.
She got her old phone working again and, despite my voice- and text messages, did not call me. Unable to reach her by phone, I had gone to her apartment in the late Sunday afternoon, assuming that we were still on for dinner, but she was not home. I didn't want her to think I had forgotten about our plans, so I stopped by her place several more times, finally giving up on her around 7:30 when she still had not gotten home.
Late Sunday evening I sent her an e-mail (she has no computer at home, so she has sent me e-mails from her work computer) and let her know that I was a little pissed off that she had forgotten about our plans for the evening, upset that I couldn't reach her, and worried that I hadn't heard anything from her all evening.
By 2:00 Monday afternoon I still had not heard back from her. Certain that the prolonged silence between us didn't bode well for our relationship, I tried calling her once again. She answered and, after some small-talk, told me that with all that's going on, she didn't think she should be in a relationship with anyone until she got her shit together.
Despite harboring a suspicion that she was getting revenge for my dumping her and leaving her at that party last weekend, and that she was "not one to be dumped" but rather preferred to do the dumping, and therefore made up with me just so she could dump me, I accepted her explanation. She said she wants to remain friends with me.
Well, as anyone who has read my most recent posts may surmise, this has been one fairly tumultuous month — even tumuluouser (yeah, I know) over the past two weeks! I had had just about all the tumult I could stomach, so, alone with my thoughts all throughout Sunday's communication blackout, I had actually prepared for this as one potential (and the most likely) outcome. I had anticipated it being more adversarial, but, fortunately, it was merely somewhat cold.
And so, I belly-flop back into the dating pool with only a few regrets: I really enjoyed Lisa's company for the greater majority of our time together, and so will truly miss that; we had blue-skyed about all sorts of things we thought we would like to do together in the future, but those things probably will never happen. And I doubt, despite our presumably continuing friendship, that we'll have any more sex.
She had accidentally washed her phone with the laundry, and had apparently spent much of the day getting her old phone back on the grid. During that time I called several times, but she wasn't even able to get the messages.
On Friday she had gotten back some test results from blood work done as part of a routine exam. Her family has a history of heart trouble, as both her father and grandfather died in their sleep relatively young. As one can imagine, this is cause for Lisa's great concern, as she already has high cholesterol thanks to her heredity. The news from her doctor was not good: she is at a heightened risk for a heart attack, and he instructed her immediately to take some baby aspirin and to begin taking a prescription medication.
So, all of this information, plus the prior week of our breakup and subsequent reconciliation, and her concerns for the future, weighed on her mind all weekend, according to what she told me this afternoon.
She got her old phone working again and, despite my voice- and text messages, did not call me. Unable to reach her by phone, I had gone to her apartment in the late Sunday afternoon, assuming that we were still on for dinner, but she was not home. I didn't want her to think I had forgotten about our plans, so I stopped by her place several more times, finally giving up on her around 7:30 when she still had not gotten home.
Late Sunday evening I sent her an e-mail (she has no computer at home, so she has sent me e-mails from her work computer) and let her know that I was a little pissed off that she had forgotten about our plans for the evening, upset that I couldn't reach her, and worried that I hadn't heard anything from her all evening.
By 2:00 Monday afternoon I still had not heard back from her. Certain that the prolonged silence between us didn't bode well for our relationship, I tried calling her once again. She answered and, after some small-talk, told me that with all that's going on, she didn't think she should be in a relationship with anyone until she got her shit together.
Despite harboring a suspicion that she was getting revenge for my dumping her and leaving her at that party last weekend, and that she was "not one to be dumped" but rather preferred to do the dumping, and therefore made up with me just so she could dump me, I accepted her explanation. She said she wants to remain friends with me.
Well, as anyone who has read my most recent posts may surmise, this has been one fairly tumultuous month — even tumuluouser (yeah, I know) over the past two weeks! I had had just about all the tumult I could stomach, so, alone with my thoughts all throughout Sunday's communication blackout, I had actually prepared for this as one potential (and the most likely) outcome. I had anticipated it being more adversarial, but, fortunately, it was merely somewhat cold.
And so, I belly-flop back into the dating pool with only a few regrets: I really enjoyed Lisa's company for the greater majority of our time together, and so will truly miss that; we had blue-skyed about all sorts of things we thought we would like to do together in the future, but those things probably will never happen. And I doubt, despite our presumably continuing friendship, that we'll have any more sex.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Call Me What You Will
Call Me Crazy…
Lisa and I are back together. On Monday, after the weekend of the breakup, I e-mailed her to make sure she was okay, and to let her know that I didn't hate her and didn't want to be her enemy. There were a few hard words back and forth, her disbelief that I had treated her that way, my anger at being accused of fooling around and then being dismissed when I tried to proclaim my innocence.
But, through it all she was generally contrite, laying the blame — rightfully so — on her own shoulders. She admitted that she has a problem and, promising to keep it in check, asked me for another chance. I used the opportunity to suggest that she needed help, and to suggest that she get help. And I told her that if it happened, then I would be willing to try again. Over a matter of a couple days, she convinced me, first, that she was willing to get help, and then that she had contacted an office within her company that would help her find a counselor who can help her sort out the reasons for her insecurity. She told me she's holding out for a Ph.D., as she doesn't want to mess around with social workers.
So she seems to be serious about it. I made her a promise with one serious condition. She's meeting that condition, so we're tentatively back together, and we're taking things a little more slowly.
Call Me Lonely…
It bothered me through the week that my relationship with Lisa could be over because of only one negative aspect, but I was fully aware that the one aspect was a major issue by which I could not abide, not in the dosages she was handing it out. In the short time we were together, we did share some fun times. She has a great sense of humor and a cute, sexy laugh and, best of all, she laughs at my often dry humor. She's very affectionate and loves to talk, so there is always something for us to talk about, or at least for me to listen to. And she likes to go out and do things with her many friends. Granted, that seems to be the feeding ground for some of her irritation and insecurity, but hopefully she'll be able to get that sorted out.
So it's not like she's a one-dimensional person that was easy for me to simply toss from my life. I had seen potential with her for a long-term, loving relationship that would be fun and exciting and deep. I found myself truly missing those aspects of her in those days after I told her it wasn't in the cards for us. I didn't seek to get back with her, but I wanted to let her know that it wasn't just about sex with me, that I do care about her well-being and that I found real traits about her that I enjoyed exploring. That she's getting help for her deep insecurity issues tells me that she really wants me in her life, and is willing to make fundamental changes to a learned negative behavior in order to keep me there.
Call Me Horny…
Forgive me the kiss-and-tell, but she's pretty damn good in the bedroom (and the living room, and the kitchen…) and, despite the whole "taking things a little more slowly," we consummated our reconciliation Thursday with a spirited little romp!
Yeah. Go ahead. Call me a slut, too…
If anything, my eyes are wide open in this relationship. They opened with that first jealous flare-up and have remained open. I will hold her to the counseling and will ensure that she sees it through. While during that time I will tolerate other jealous flare-ups, they will not go unnoticed or un-noted or undiscussed. She needs to fix this problem, or — and she is very aware of this — our time together will be brief.
Lisa and I are back together. On Monday, after the weekend of the breakup, I e-mailed her to make sure she was okay, and to let her know that I didn't hate her and didn't want to be her enemy. There were a few hard words back and forth, her disbelief that I had treated her that way, my anger at being accused of fooling around and then being dismissed when I tried to proclaim my innocence.
But, through it all she was generally contrite, laying the blame — rightfully so — on her own shoulders. She admitted that she has a problem and, promising to keep it in check, asked me for another chance. I used the opportunity to suggest that she needed help, and to suggest that she get help. And I told her that if it happened, then I would be willing to try again. Over a matter of a couple days, she convinced me, first, that she was willing to get help, and then that she had contacted an office within her company that would help her find a counselor who can help her sort out the reasons for her insecurity. She told me she's holding out for a Ph.D., as she doesn't want to mess around with social workers.
So she seems to be serious about it. I made her a promise with one serious condition. She's meeting that condition, so we're tentatively back together, and we're taking things a little more slowly.
Call Me Lonely…
It bothered me through the week that my relationship with Lisa could be over because of only one negative aspect, but I was fully aware that the one aspect was a major issue by which I could not abide, not in the dosages she was handing it out. In the short time we were together, we did share some fun times. She has a great sense of humor and a cute, sexy laugh and, best of all, she laughs at my often dry humor. She's very affectionate and loves to talk, so there is always something for us to talk about, or at least for me to listen to. And she likes to go out and do things with her many friends. Granted, that seems to be the feeding ground for some of her irritation and insecurity, but hopefully she'll be able to get that sorted out.
So it's not like she's a one-dimensional person that was easy for me to simply toss from my life. I had seen potential with her for a long-term, loving relationship that would be fun and exciting and deep. I found myself truly missing those aspects of her in those days after I told her it wasn't in the cards for us. I didn't seek to get back with her, but I wanted to let her know that it wasn't just about sex with me, that I do care about her well-being and that I found real traits about her that I enjoyed exploring. That she's getting help for her deep insecurity issues tells me that she really wants me in her life, and is willing to make fundamental changes to a learned negative behavior in order to keep me there.
Call Me Horny…
Forgive me the kiss-and-tell, but she's pretty damn good in the bedroom (and the living room, and the kitchen…) and, despite the whole "taking things a little more slowly," we consummated our reconciliation Thursday with a spirited little romp!
Yeah. Go ahead. Call me a slut, too…
If anything, my eyes are wide open in this relationship. They opened with that first jealous flare-up and have remained open. I will hold her to the counseling and will ensure that she sees it through. While during that time I will tolerate other jealous flare-ups, they will not go unnoticed or un-noted or undiscussed. She needs to fix this problem, or — and she is very aware of this — our time together will be brief.
Monday, January 12, 2009
A Farm Owl, Darkly
While I was enjoying the peaks and valleys of my recent fling, I was quite aware of my absence from these here interwebz. During that time I discovered that a great friend of mine has started a blog. Upon this discovery I paid a visit to him, electronically (there had been plans to do so in person, but that fell through), and I promised him that I would shill… er… ahm… tell everyone what a great personality, sharp wit and wonderful writer that he is.
So may I introduce to you the one and only Dark Farm Owl! As of this writing he has only one post under his belt, but don't let that lead you into the false impression that he can't write. I've been corresponding with him for years, and he has been responsible for more than a few sprays of the beverage-of-choice-of-the-moment all over my computer screen, or my dear, departed dog, or my ex. He hails from the British Midlands of Great … ehrm… Britain, somewhere near Birmingham. As a matter of fact, just prior to the maiden post of this blog (Farrago if you had forgotten already), I did visit him in his homeland! He has a great love of his country, the countryside, his sweet, beautiful wife, and their recently adopted greyhounds, but especially of his daughters and one grandson. Did I mention that DFO is only 28? Been that way for about 20 years.
Please drop by over at his blog. He says it's his online journal to track his progress getting in shape for, and the execution of a big hike he's planning in the late summer, but if he gets enough people over to check him out and encourage him to write some more, I'm certain he'll find other stuff to talk about, like cigars and wine…or cigars with wine…or cigars in wine (depends on how much wine he's had…).
And be sure to give him a proper welcome to this electronic wasteland we've all come to call …um… this.
Oh, and be sure to tell him who sent you. (It's Farrago, by the way...)
So may I introduce to you the one and only Dark Farm Owl! As of this writing he has only one post under his belt, but don't let that lead you into the false impression that he can't write. I've been corresponding with him for years, and he has been responsible for more than a few sprays of the beverage-of-choice-of-the-moment all over my computer screen, or my dear, departed dog, or my ex. He hails from the British Midlands of Great … ehrm… Britain, somewhere near Birmingham. As a matter of fact, just prior to the maiden post of this blog (Farrago if you had forgotten already), I did visit him in his homeland! He has a great love of his country, the countryside, his sweet, beautiful wife, and their recently adopted greyhounds, but especially of his daughters and one grandson. Did I mention that DFO is only 28? Been that way for about 20 years.
Please drop by over at his blog. He says it's his online journal to track his progress getting in shape for, and the execution of a big hike he's planning in the late summer, but if he gets enough people over to check him out and encourage him to write some more, I'm certain he'll find other stuff to talk about, like cigars and wine…or cigars with wine…or cigars in wine (depends on how much wine he's had…).
And be sure to give him a proper welcome to this electronic wasteland we've all come to call …um… this.
Oh, and be sure to tell him who sent you. (It's Farrago, by the way...)
Sunday, January 11, 2009
A Dodgy Oaf Forced Rings
Please play this clip and listen to it (don't watch!) while reading, if you are able. And thank you for reading!
Despite the fact that I wound up going alone when, just the night before, I had a sure date for the event, I spent Sunday late afternoon at the Chicago Symphony.
Way back more than a year ago I bought season tickets to the "Sunday A Series" of subscription concerts. I described in this blog the events around and including the first concert of the series, and when I glanced earlier this week at the slate of pieces selected for Sunday's performance, I felt my breath whisked away: there was to be a performance of Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings!
This adagio has become my favorite orchestral piece, which has been used in several films in the past few years. If you're listening to it as you read, and as I suggested, you no doubt instantly recognized it. It truly is a beautiful piece of music and, in my opinion, perhaps the most beautiful piece of music ever written or performed. It seldom fails to bring tears to my eyes, and today was no exception.
An added treat was most unexpected, however. Not being too savvy about the world of symphonic music, I am largely unfamiliar with the names of the genre's contemporary notables. Sunday introduced me to one of them. The guest conductor for today's performances was a surprisingly young man (age 28 this month) named Gustavo Dudamel. With his unruly mop of hair and wildly expressive face, Dudamel was entertainment all on his own. My season's seat is in the terrace, above and behind the orchestra, so I had an unfettered view of Dudamel's countenance for nearly two hours.
During Adagio For Strings he conducted without a score in front of him, demonstrating a knowledge of the piece so intimate that he knows every note and nuance as if he had written it himself. He slowly raised and lowered his arms as if to coax the emotions of the players out through their instruments, and he accentuated the subtle notes and chord changes throughout the languorous piece with little pulsing motions of his hands.
After the piece reaches a crescendo, screeching to a halt, it finishes with a mellowing return to the original theme and quietly, gently falls to its end. Dudamel closed the last note with his fingers and then stood quietly for nearly a full minute with his eyes closed and his hands clasped at his waist. I have always thought Barber's Adagio an incredibly powerful piece, but to see and hear it performed live, and with Dudamel at the helm, was truly magical. When he finally relaxed his arms and opened his eyes, a cheer went up in the house that seemed to exceed the rules of concert decorum.
Next on the program was a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K 467. I didn't know I was familiar with this piece until the second movement, when a theme presented itself that I've heard many times before, undoubtedly in films or on television. As Mozart's music is usually lighter-hearted and more melodic than that of his peers, Dudamel was equally light-hearted, as he bounced his shoulders and smiled at his players while pointing at them when it was their turn to shine. The pianist, Stephen Hough, was amazingly dexterous, playing without one unintended note that I could detect.
After the intermission was a performance of Brahms Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73. I was completely unfamiliar with this piece, and I found it fairly uninteresting at first. As usual, I am most impressed with the orchestra players' abilities whenever the music becomes fast or incredibly intricate, and as this piece moves forward, the music becomes more frenetic. The final movement is loud and boisterous and almost violent. Watching Dudamel's face during this movement brought a laugh to me several times. When the score brought little, flitting flute passages, Dudamel flipped his head to the side, sending his hair bouncing, and he made goofy faces as if to accentuate the whimsy of the notes. The movement ends with a frenzied flourish and a big, loud, long blast of notes, which was followed by more uproarious applause. Even though I had never heard this symphony before, I was moved to tears as it ended.
I wish I could share the sounds of Sunday's performances with you, as it was a most incredible day. If you'll bear with me, below are a couple more clips, one of them perhaps my favorite version of Adagio For Strings, arranged for a choir.
In the other clip is a taste of the visual wonder of Gustavo Dudamel at work, conducting the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in the Shostakovich Symphony 10, second movement. To watch Dudamel, it almost seems as if he's operating a machine, pulling out of it and being the source of every sound you hear. He looks as though he feels every last note within him, and it must come out!
I have never been a fan of an orchestra conductor before. But I am now a fan of Gustavo Dudamel!
I hope you took time to enjoy this partial recreation of my day. Even if you don't appreciate the music, at least you know some more of the things that make me tick.
Despite the fact that I wound up going alone when, just the night before, I had a sure date for the event, I spent Sunday late afternoon at the Chicago Symphony.
Way back more than a year ago I bought season tickets to the "Sunday A Series" of subscription concerts. I described in this blog the events around and including the first concert of the series, and when I glanced earlier this week at the slate of pieces selected for Sunday's performance, I felt my breath whisked away: there was to be a performance of Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings!
This adagio has become my favorite orchestral piece, which has been used in several films in the past few years. If you're listening to it as you read, and as I suggested, you no doubt instantly recognized it. It truly is a beautiful piece of music and, in my opinion, perhaps the most beautiful piece of music ever written or performed. It seldom fails to bring tears to my eyes, and today was no exception.
An added treat was most unexpected, however. Not being too savvy about the world of symphonic music, I am largely unfamiliar with the names of the genre's contemporary notables. Sunday introduced me to one of them. The guest conductor for today's performances was a surprisingly young man (age 28 this month) named Gustavo Dudamel. With his unruly mop of hair and wildly expressive face, Dudamel was entertainment all on his own. My season's seat is in the terrace, above and behind the orchestra, so I had an unfettered view of Dudamel's countenance for nearly two hours.
During Adagio For Strings he conducted without a score in front of him, demonstrating a knowledge of the piece so intimate that he knows every note and nuance as if he had written it himself. He slowly raised and lowered his arms as if to coax the emotions of the players out through their instruments, and he accentuated the subtle notes and chord changes throughout the languorous piece with little pulsing motions of his hands.
After the piece reaches a crescendo, screeching to a halt, it finishes with a mellowing return to the original theme and quietly, gently falls to its end. Dudamel closed the last note with his fingers and then stood quietly for nearly a full minute with his eyes closed and his hands clasped at his waist. I have always thought Barber's Adagio an incredibly powerful piece, but to see and hear it performed live, and with Dudamel at the helm, was truly magical. When he finally relaxed his arms and opened his eyes, a cheer went up in the house that seemed to exceed the rules of concert decorum.
Next on the program was a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K 467. I didn't know I was familiar with this piece until the second movement, when a theme presented itself that I've heard many times before, undoubtedly in films or on television. As Mozart's music is usually lighter-hearted and more melodic than that of his peers, Dudamel was equally light-hearted, as he bounced his shoulders and smiled at his players while pointing at them when it was their turn to shine. The pianist, Stephen Hough, was amazingly dexterous, playing without one unintended note that I could detect.
After the intermission was a performance of Brahms Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73. I was completely unfamiliar with this piece, and I found it fairly uninteresting at first. As usual, I am most impressed with the orchestra players' abilities whenever the music becomes fast or incredibly intricate, and as this piece moves forward, the music becomes more frenetic. The final movement is loud and boisterous and almost violent. Watching Dudamel's face during this movement brought a laugh to me several times. When the score brought little, flitting flute passages, Dudamel flipped his head to the side, sending his hair bouncing, and he made goofy faces as if to accentuate the whimsy of the notes. The movement ends with a frenzied flourish and a big, loud, long blast of notes, which was followed by more uproarious applause. Even though I had never heard this symphony before, I was moved to tears as it ended.
I wish I could share the sounds of Sunday's performances with you, as it was a most incredible day. If you'll bear with me, below are a couple more clips, one of them perhaps my favorite version of Adagio For Strings, arranged for a choir.
In the other clip is a taste of the visual wonder of Gustavo Dudamel at work, conducting the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in the Shostakovich Symphony 10, second movement. To watch Dudamel, it almost seems as if he's operating a machine, pulling out of it and being the source of every sound you hear. He looks as though he feels every last note within him, and it must come out!
I have never been a fan of an orchestra conductor before. But I am now a fan of Gustavo Dudamel!
I hope you took time to enjoy this partial recreation of my day. Even if you don't appreciate the music, at least you know some more of the things that make me tick.
Crash and Burn
Or: Fling, Ain't No Thing!
OR: Wow! That Was Fast! part deux
Lisa, it turns out, is beyond jealous. It's a fucking neurosis with her.
Last week we had a fight over my looking at the ass of a woman who Lisa had, prior to our ever meeting, determined was a slut, a woman who sat across the table from us and had attempted to engage us in small talk like everyone else around us. To Lisa, this woman was hitting on me. Never mind all the other men around the table that she talked to, but when she talked to me, I was the next target for her lustful machinations.
Still, with all this happening in Lisa's head alone, I nonchalantly looked at the woman's ass when she got up from the table to go to the bathroom. Hence the fight, and Lisa's statement that, if I'd rather be with the other woman, then I should just go with her.
??!
We made up, at which point Lisa seemed to accept that the hanky-panky was going on only in her head and said that it would "never happen again." I nursed tender wounds to my psyche for a few days, but it had seemed like a breakthrough in our understanding of each other, and I was confident that she finally believed that I wasn't using her until something better came along.
Fast forward to Saturday night. It was Lisa's birthday, and the organizer of the Wine meetup group had invited us over to his place for a few celebratory drinks before the scheduled group Wine Crawl. We all had a buzz on by the time we got to the first place, a wine shop with a small party room. There, among many people — many of them men who gave Lisa hugs and kisses hello, and then hugs and kisses for her birthday — I was introduced to an interracial couple.
(It is here that I have to interject with an aside: Several times in the early days of our relationship, Lisa had mentioned certain co-workers of hers, past and present, who are African-American. The ones she didn't like she referred to as "nigs." She justified this by telling me that, due to her own slightly darker complexion in comparison to her Cuban and Spanish family, her relatives affectionately call her negrita, or "little black one." Regardless, her use of the term "nig" never sat right with me.)
The woman in this couple is black, and is very outgoing and gregarious, and she and Lisa hugged like long, lost sisters when they saw each other. After the introductions I immediately fell into comfortable conversation with both in the couple. They seem to be really neat people.
The crawl moved on to a Tapas restaurant. Lisa and I shared a shrimp dish and wine, and lots of kisses. The interracial couple stopped by our table for a few minutes and the woman and Lisa were hugging and seemed to be having a great time. So, using Lisa's camera, I took a bunch of photos. When the couple left, Lisa leaned in to me and said, "You like the black chickies, don't you?"
I replied, "Not as a 'thing,' but she seems pretty cool."
After an hour and a half or so at the tapas place we moved on to a bar that was way too overcrowded, so the organizer moved the festivities back to his condo. After another glass of wine — and another shot or two of tequila for Lisa — I walked up to Lisa and the black woman where they were talking. I put my arm around Lisa and joined the conversation. After a few minutes the black woman left, and Lisa said to me, "She came here with her man. She don't need to be hanging around getting in our business."
I said, "I don't think she was getting into anybody's business. She's just engaging in conversation."
Lisa said, "You don't know her like I do. She's bisexual. Believe me. I know what she's up to."
??!
Finally, one of the women that Lisa counts as her friend, — also single, also unattached, though apparently in a friends-with-benefits relationship with her younger male roommate — had a little too much to drink throughout the evening, and had made a dash for the bathroom to puke. Later on she was passed out or semi-passed out on the host's couch. The organizer-host had tuned his cable TV to the salsa music station, and Lisa was dancing up a storm in front of the TV. After a few songs' worth of dancing solo, dancing with me (if you can call what I was doing dancing), and dancing with a couple of the other women, Lisa ducked into the bathroom. A little concerned, I sat in the armchair next to the couch where Lisa's friend was passed out. I read the little information blurbs at the bottom of the stationary graphic screens on the TV until the bathroom door opened. I jumped up to see if Lisa was okay.
"Were you over there making sure [passed-out friend] is okay?" she asked me. She had that familiar suspicious look in her eyes.
I replied, "No, I was reading the stuff on the TV."
Lisa then placed her hands on my chest and gently pushed me. "Go back to her if you want to be with her."
I said. "I wasn't even looking at her! She's asleep. I was reading the stuff on TV."
Lisa said, "If you weren't talking to her, then why are you being all defensive?"
I lost it. I grabbed Lisa by the waist and yelled, "I was watching TV. She's passed out on the couch. I couldn't even talk to her if I wanted to."
Lisa then said "What-ever," dismissing me and stepping away from me. I grabbed her again and shouted, "Do you want to go home alone tonight?"
She replied, "That's fine. I'll call a cab, or someone will take me home."
So I went and started putting on my snowboots. She came up to me and said, "Are you leaving?"
"Yes."
At first she started to gather her things, but then the group organizer-host came up wanting to know what was going on. I tried to explain all of the above in a breath, and then Lisa was saying, "Let him go, I'll make it home somehow."
And I left. I was one minute down the road when Lisa called me and asked if I would drive her home. Being the nice guy that I am, and her ride to the event, I turned around and said that I would. Just as I got to the door of the organizer-host's building, my phone rang. When I answered it, I heard Lisa talking to someone near her. "…no, if he doesn't want to be with me then…"
"Hello?" I said.
"Never mind," she said to me. "Someone will give me a ride home."
Shortly after I got to my apartment I received a text message from Lisa, presumably at her apartment: "Wow. I can't believe how you over reacted in front of my friends on my bday."
After much thought, I texted her back: "You pushed me away and said, go back to her. You believed a whole scenario that didn't even happen. I don't need that kind of drama every time we r in a room where there r other single women u feel threatened by. It was u who overreacted. I simply got angry. And fed up. Sorry u chose your own bday 2 screw up a good thing."
That was followed up with "When r u coming 2 get ur stuff?"
Sunday morning I drove to her place to pick up my things. I had spent the night there Friday and had brought extra clothes because we had planned to go to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Sunday afternoon performance, and my backpack with my laptop computer was there as well.
She buzzed me in to her apartment building, and when I got to her door she was putting my things out in the hallway. We exchanged hellos and I asked a question to make sure everything was there (some clothes had been folded and not put in my bag the day before). Then she kissed her fingers and waved to me. And I left.
I was through with the relationship when I left her at the party. After the first blowup over her belief that I wanted to fuck someone else she asked my forgiveness, and I gave it. It was a mistake she said would never happen again. The second time established a pattern. That she was drunk changes nothing. Being so removes any filters; you say what's really on your mind. The suspicion, the neurotic belief that I was talking up her friend, on her birthday, while she was in the room, is only proof that no amount of talking about it, no amount of proving my trustworthiness, no application to my eyes of the biggest fucking pair of blinders on the planet, is going to make her believe that I don't want to fuck every woman she mistrusts or dislikes, or that every woman she mistrusts or dislikes doesn't want me.
But she asked me first when I was coming for my stuff. So I don't know if she just figured I had dumped her, or if she feels she dumped me. But all day Sunday I was in the dumps.
Well, either way, it's bye-bye Lisa.
--------------------------
I thought it had been clear that it was over, but this evening, as I was composing this post, I received a text message from Lisa: "I miss u."
It took a lot of thinking, a lot of fighting the desire to keep it going because it would be the easier — that is, less unpleasant — path to take. But finally I called her and told her that I wasn't going to play this game. I will not accept her pathological jealousy. She kept saying that I overreacted and embarrassed her in front of her friends. And maybe I did overreact, but when someone repeatedly accuses me of doing something I didn't do, and then dismisses me as I try to defend myself, well, I get a little upset. Apparently some of the others there saw it as it really happened, and one of Lisa's friends told her that I "didn't even do anything" at the party to deserve Lisa's suspicion. She even admitted that she has a problem with the jealousy issue.
Despite Lisa's contrition, and my super-nice-guy urge to pick up where we left off, I definitively broke it off. I told her that I enjoyed spending time with her, even with our clothes on, but I will not put up with her constant suspicion that I'd rather be with someone else. I told her that if she deals with this problem and still wants to be with me, then we can try again later, but as for now, we'll just be friends.
S I G H !
OR: Wow! That Was Fast! part deux
Lisa, it turns out, is beyond jealous. It's a fucking neurosis with her.
Last week we had a fight over my looking at the ass of a woman who Lisa had, prior to our ever meeting, determined was a slut, a woman who sat across the table from us and had attempted to engage us in small talk like everyone else around us. To Lisa, this woman was hitting on me. Never mind all the other men around the table that she talked to, but when she talked to me, I was the next target for her lustful machinations.
Still, with all this happening in Lisa's head alone, I nonchalantly looked at the woman's ass when she got up from the table to go to the bathroom. Hence the fight, and Lisa's statement that, if I'd rather be with the other woman, then I should just go with her.
??!
We made up, at which point Lisa seemed to accept that the hanky-panky was going on only in her head and said that it would "never happen again." I nursed tender wounds to my psyche for a few days, but it had seemed like a breakthrough in our understanding of each other, and I was confident that she finally believed that I wasn't using her until something better came along.
Fast forward to Saturday night. It was Lisa's birthday, and the organizer of the Wine meetup group had invited us over to his place for a few celebratory drinks before the scheduled group Wine Crawl. We all had a buzz on by the time we got to the first place, a wine shop with a small party room. There, among many people — many of them men who gave Lisa hugs and kisses hello, and then hugs and kisses for her birthday — I was introduced to an interracial couple.
(It is here that I have to interject with an aside: Several times in the early days of our relationship, Lisa had mentioned certain co-workers of hers, past and present, who are African-American. The ones she didn't like she referred to as "nigs." She justified this by telling me that, due to her own slightly darker complexion in comparison to her Cuban and Spanish family, her relatives affectionately call her negrita, or "little black one." Regardless, her use of the term "nig" never sat right with me.)
The woman in this couple is black, and is very outgoing and gregarious, and she and Lisa hugged like long, lost sisters when they saw each other. After the introductions I immediately fell into comfortable conversation with both in the couple. They seem to be really neat people.
The crawl moved on to a Tapas restaurant. Lisa and I shared a shrimp dish and wine, and lots of kisses. The interracial couple stopped by our table for a few minutes and the woman and Lisa were hugging and seemed to be having a great time. So, using Lisa's camera, I took a bunch of photos. When the couple left, Lisa leaned in to me and said, "You like the black chickies, don't you?"
I replied, "Not as a 'thing,' but she seems pretty cool."
After an hour and a half or so at the tapas place we moved on to a bar that was way too overcrowded, so the organizer moved the festivities back to his condo. After another glass of wine — and another shot or two of tequila for Lisa — I walked up to Lisa and the black woman where they were talking. I put my arm around Lisa and joined the conversation. After a few minutes the black woman left, and Lisa said to me, "She came here with her man. She don't need to be hanging around getting in our business."
I said, "I don't think she was getting into anybody's business. She's just engaging in conversation."
Lisa said, "You don't know her like I do. She's bisexual. Believe me. I know what she's up to."
??!
Finally, one of the women that Lisa counts as her friend, — also single, also unattached, though apparently in a friends-with-benefits relationship with her younger male roommate — had a little too much to drink throughout the evening, and had made a dash for the bathroom to puke. Later on she was passed out or semi-passed out on the host's couch. The organizer-host had tuned his cable TV to the salsa music station, and Lisa was dancing up a storm in front of the TV. After a few songs' worth of dancing solo, dancing with me (if you can call what I was doing dancing), and dancing with a couple of the other women, Lisa ducked into the bathroom. A little concerned, I sat in the armchair next to the couch where Lisa's friend was passed out. I read the little information blurbs at the bottom of the stationary graphic screens on the TV until the bathroom door opened. I jumped up to see if Lisa was okay.
"Were you over there making sure [passed-out friend] is okay?" she asked me. She had that familiar suspicious look in her eyes.
I replied, "No, I was reading the stuff on the TV."
Lisa then placed her hands on my chest and gently pushed me. "Go back to her if you want to be with her."
I said. "I wasn't even looking at her! She's asleep. I was reading the stuff on TV."
Lisa said, "If you weren't talking to her, then why are you being all defensive?"
I lost it. I grabbed Lisa by the waist and yelled, "I was watching TV. She's passed out on the couch. I couldn't even talk to her if I wanted to."
Lisa then said "What-ever," dismissing me and stepping away from me. I grabbed her again and shouted, "Do you want to go home alone tonight?"
She replied, "That's fine. I'll call a cab, or someone will take me home."
So I went and started putting on my snowboots. She came up to me and said, "Are you leaving?"
"Yes."
At first she started to gather her things, but then the group organizer-host came up wanting to know what was going on. I tried to explain all of the above in a breath, and then Lisa was saying, "Let him go, I'll make it home somehow."
And I left. I was one minute down the road when Lisa called me and asked if I would drive her home. Being the nice guy that I am, and her ride to the event, I turned around and said that I would. Just as I got to the door of the organizer-host's building, my phone rang. When I answered it, I heard Lisa talking to someone near her. "…no, if he doesn't want to be with me then…"
"Hello?" I said.
"Never mind," she said to me. "Someone will give me a ride home."
Shortly after I got to my apartment I received a text message from Lisa, presumably at her apartment: "Wow. I can't believe how you over reacted in front of my friends on my bday."
After much thought, I texted her back: "You pushed me away and said, go back to her. You believed a whole scenario that didn't even happen. I don't need that kind of drama every time we r in a room where there r other single women u feel threatened by. It was u who overreacted. I simply got angry. And fed up. Sorry u chose your own bday 2 screw up a good thing."
That was followed up with "When r u coming 2 get ur stuff?"
Sunday morning I drove to her place to pick up my things. I had spent the night there Friday and had brought extra clothes because we had planned to go to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Sunday afternoon performance, and my backpack with my laptop computer was there as well.
She buzzed me in to her apartment building, and when I got to her door she was putting my things out in the hallway. We exchanged hellos and I asked a question to make sure everything was there (some clothes had been folded and not put in my bag the day before). Then she kissed her fingers and waved to me. And I left.
I was through with the relationship when I left her at the party. After the first blowup over her belief that I wanted to fuck someone else she asked my forgiveness, and I gave it. It was a mistake she said would never happen again. The second time established a pattern. That she was drunk changes nothing. Being so removes any filters; you say what's really on your mind. The suspicion, the neurotic belief that I was talking up her friend, on her birthday, while she was in the room, is only proof that no amount of talking about it, no amount of proving my trustworthiness, no application to my eyes of the biggest fucking pair of blinders on the planet, is going to make her believe that I don't want to fuck every woman she mistrusts or dislikes, or that every woman she mistrusts or dislikes doesn't want me.
But she asked me first when I was coming for my stuff. So I don't know if she just figured I had dumped her, or if she feels she dumped me. But all day Sunday I was in the dumps.
Well, either way, it's bye-bye Lisa.
--------------------------
I thought it had been clear that it was over, but this evening, as I was composing this post, I received a text message from Lisa: "I miss u."
It took a lot of thinking, a lot of fighting the desire to keep it going because it would be the easier — that is, less unpleasant — path to take. But finally I called her and told her that I wasn't going to play this game. I will not accept her pathological jealousy. She kept saying that I overreacted and embarrassed her in front of her friends. And maybe I did overreact, but when someone repeatedly accuses me of doing something I didn't do, and then dismisses me as I try to defend myself, well, I get a little upset. Apparently some of the others there saw it as it really happened, and one of Lisa's friends told her that I "didn't even do anything" at the party to deserve Lisa's suspicion. She even admitted that she has a problem with the jealousy issue.
Despite Lisa's contrition, and my super-nice-guy urge to pick up where we left off, I definitively broke it off. I told her that I enjoyed spending time with her, even with our clothes on, but I will not put up with her constant suspicion that I'd rather be with someone else. I told her that if she deals with this problem and still wants to be with me, then we can try again later, but as for now, we'll just be friends.
S I G H !
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Unresolved
I blew my New Year's resolution pretty much as the words came out of my mouth. I resolved not to make any New Year's resolutions.
Oops.
Oops.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
2009 - A Banner Year Already
I know… four days into the new year and I've not posted a thang. There hasn't been much to write about lately. Christmas was fine, fun, and spent with family. Lisa was with me, as she originally had to work Friday, the day after Christmas, and was unable to get home to her family in Michigan. She liked my family, and they her, so all was swell.
New Years Eve was spent at a Meetup event, a New Year's Eve dinner-dance with 350 of my closest friends. That was swell, too.
I've been dealing with my own fears regarding a serious relationship — my first since the breakup of my marriage — especially one that took off like a rocket bound for Neptune, and working at knocking down those barriers. But the fantasy is over. Reality stepped in.
I looked at another woman's ass.
Actually, I looked where another woman's ass would be were it not covered up by her heavy winter coat. I didn't even find her attractive. It's just that she has an ass, and I have eyes, and the two are inevitably going to meet. But that matters not, as we are early enough into a relationship that a woman admittedly prone to jealousy was willing to end.
Yes. We had a fight. And make-up sex.
And now I'm struggling with feelings about whether or not I'm willing to put up with that kind of roller-coaster experience every time I absently demonstrate that I am merely human.
And how has your year been?
New Years Eve was spent at a Meetup event, a New Year's Eve dinner-dance with 350 of my closest friends. That was swell, too.
I've been dealing with my own fears regarding a serious relationship — my first since the breakup of my marriage — especially one that took off like a rocket bound for Neptune, and working at knocking down those barriers. But the fantasy is over. Reality stepped in.
I looked at another woman's ass.
Actually, I looked where another woman's ass would be were it not covered up by her heavy winter coat. I didn't even find her attractive. It's just that she has an ass, and I have eyes, and the two are inevitably going to meet. But that matters not, as we are early enough into a relationship that a woman admittedly prone to jealousy was willing to end.
Yes. We had a fight. And make-up sex.
And now I'm struggling with feelings about whether or not I'm willing to put up with that kind of roller-coaster experience every time I absently demonstrate that I am merely human.
And how has your year been?
Sunday, December 21, 2008
A Date Which Will Live in Infamy
WARNING! The following, somewhat hilarious, post contains graphic details of an unpleasant, however somewhat hilarious, nature. Read at your own risk.
Wednesday morning at 5:15, Producer and I left our hotel in Overland Park, Kansas for the Kansas City, Missouri, airport. There didn't appear to be a decent restaurant within sight of our gate, so we broke fast on Cinnabon and coffee. (Um… yuck!) Save for a minor delay, the flight was uneventful. Knowing that I had plans for the evening with Lisa, and how we both seemed to click quickly, I was eager to see her again. The more I thought about her, the more nervous and excited I got. I actually had butterflies in my tummy!
Since it was so early, Producer and I went back to our office. I planned to get out of there at 1:30, seeing as how I would have already worked an eight-hour day by that point. At first it didn't seem likely that I would succeed; the boss wanted me to do a shoot in our studio mid-day. Fortunately it was only about a half-hour, and after I packed up the gear I had little else to do, so I left. I hadn't eaten anything substantial all day except sugar and bread (in that order!), so on my way home I stopped at McDonald's and brought home a Big Mac combo for a quick meal.
Lisa gets out of work at 3:30, so we planned on meeting at her place for a glass of wine before heading off to Big Bowl for a nice dinner. Since I had eaten so little all day, I didn't think the Mickey D's would fill me up too much and spoil my appetite by the time we were heading out for dinner, which I would have guessed would be around 6:00. However, I felt awfully darn full for quite a while after eating and, on top of the butterflies, I felt uncomfortable and was struggling to burp out the insistent gas. I feared an embarrassing date.
On the drive over to Lisa's apartment the discomfort only got worse with the increased anticipation of seeing her again. My hope was that when I did see her, my nerves would calm and I would feel better. She let me in, we kissed and she poured me a glass of wine. Maybe it was the kissing, but her apartment seemed awfully warm, so I took off my sweater. She expressed to me that she was experiencing the butterflies sensation, too, so I felt a little less self-conscious about that, but I didn't feel any better.
After several minutes of small talk, and her concern about how I was feeling, I felt a burp coming on, but then it didn't exactly feel like a burp. I suppressed it, but a few minutes later I felt the same sensation coming on. I feared I was going to vomit, so I got up to head for the bathroom. Suddenly my mouth filled from behind and I dashed to the kitchen sink. I will go into no further detail about that, but suffice it to say that I spent the next several minutes with my face hovering over the drain… Also… you know how when that happens, sometimes something comes out the other end? Well, yeah, that happened too.
After that wave passed I excused myself to the bathroom where I removed the bottom half of my clothing, rinsed my underpants under the bathtub faucet and cleaned myself up down there. Lisa gave me a plastic grocery bag in which to store my undies, I put my pants back on and I went back into the living room, commando-style. My hope was that the butterflies had gotten the better of me, but that it was all over and downhill from there.
It was not.
We decided that Big Bowl was most definitely out of the question for the evening, and we decided to just relax at her place. After about a half-hour of feeling just dandy, I started feeling overly warm once more. When I thought I was definitely going to hurl again, I excused myself to the bathroom where I took off my pants! Sure enough, moments later I found myself on all fours filling Lisa's toilet from one end, and from the other christening her floor and wall in a most disgusting manner!
I cleaned everything up (after which, I'm sure, Lisa pressure-washed and acid-scrubbed!), and we both determined that it was indeed not butterflies that were my undoing, but more likely a peculiarly timed bout of food poisoning.
So I donned my coat and hat, collected my defiled, wet undies and left. I hit the cold winter air outside and was consumed with a case of the chills so severe I thought I would rattle my teeth loose, and I thought I was going to have to stop before I got home to hurl on the side of the road (imagine that scene: bottomless man beside the road, puking and shitting in counter-directional streams!). But I arrived home feeling critically embarrassed and physically miserable, but mostly embarrassed. I undressed and climbed into bed and awaited the worst.
I didn't barf again after the last time Wednesday night at Lisa's, but I was up every hour through the night doing the other thing. I took the day off from work and spent the morning watching my new Blu-Ray disc copy of Bullitt, as well as the three hours of other features on the disc!
I had plans to go to a Dining Out meetup Thursday evening, as did Lisa, so, trooper that she is, we agreed to try again. I felt somewhat human again by the afternoon, so I picked her up at her apartment and we went to the restaurant. My appetite was non-existent (though I didn't find out until the steak arrived), but I still felt better. We had a nice time and said good-bye to our friends, and we headed back to her place.
Despite the unpropitious start to our young relationship, Lisa seems totally unfazed by Wednesday's events. I won't go into any details as to why I feel that way, nor will I divulge where I woke up Friday morning.
But it's all good.
Wednesday morning at 5:15, Producer and I left our hotel in Overland Park, Kansas for the Kansas City, Missouri, airport. There didn't appear to be a decent restaurant within sight of our gate, so we broke fast on Cinnabon and coffee. (Um… yuck!) Save for a minor delay, the flight was uneventful. Knowing that I had plans for the evening with Lisa, and how we both seemed to click quickly, I was eager to see her again. The more I thought about her, the more nervous and excited I got. I actually had butterflies in my tummy!
Since it was so early, Producer and I went back to our office. I planned to get out of there at 1:30, seeing as how I would have already worked an eight-hour day by that point. At first it didn't seem likely that I would succeed; the boss wanted me to do a shoot in our studio mid-day. Fortunately it was only about a half-hour, and after I packed up the gear I had little else to do, so I left. I hadn't eaten anything substantial all day except sugar and bread (in that order!), so on my way home I stopped at McDonald's and brought home a Big Mac combo for a quick meal.
Lisa gets out of work at 3:30, so we planned on meeting at her place for a glass of wine before heading off to Big Bowl for a nice dinner. Since I had eaten so little all day, I didn't think the Mickey D's would fill me up too much and spoil my appetite by the time we were heading out for dinner, which I would have guessed would be around 6:00. However, I felt awfully darn full for quite a while after eating and, on top of the butterflies, I felt uncomfortable and was struggling to burp out the insistent gas. I feared an embarrassing date.
On the drive over to Lisa's apartment the discomfort only got worse with the increased anticipation of seeing her again. My hope was that when I did see her, my nerves would calm and I would feel better. She let me in, we kissed and she poured me a glass of wine. Maybe it was the kissing, but her apartment seemed awfully warm, so I took off my sweater. She expressed to me that she was experiencing the butterflies sensation, too, so I felt a little less self-conscious about that, but I didn't feel any better.
After several minutes of small talk, and her concern about how I was feeling, I felt a burp coming on, but then it didn't exactly feel like a burp. I suppressed it, but a few minutes later I felt the same sensation coming on. I feared I was going to vomit, so I got up to head for the bathroom. Suddenly my mouth filled from behind and I dashed to the kitchen sink. I will go into no further detail about that, but suffice it to say that I spent the next several minutes with my face hovering over the drain… Also… you know how when that happens, sometimes something comes out the other end? Well, yeah, that happened too.
After that wave passed I excused myself to the bathroom where I removed the bottom half of my clothing, rinsed my underpants under the bathtub faucet and cleaned myself up down there. Lisa gave me a plastic grocery bag in which to store my undies, I put my pants back on and I went back into the living room, commando-style. My hope was that the butterflies had gotten the better of me, but that it was all over and downhill from there.
It was not.
We decided that Big Bowl was most definitely out of the question for the evening, and we decided to just relax at her place. After about a half-hour of feeling just dandy, I started feeling overly warm once more. When I thought I was definitely going to hurl again, I excused myself to the bathroom where I took off my pants! Sure enough, moments later I found myself on all fours filling Lisa's toilet from one end, and from the other christening her floor and wall in a most disgusting manner!
I cleaned everything up (after which, I'm sure, Lisa pressure-washed and acid-scrubbed!), and we both determined that it was indeed not butterflies that were my undoing, but more likely a peculiarly timed bout of food poisoning.
So I donned my coat and hat, collected my defiled, wet undies and left. I hit the cold winter air outside and was consumed with a case of the chills so severe I thought I would rattle my teeth loose, and I thought I was going to have to stop before I got home to hurl on the side of the road (imagine that scene: bottomless man beside the road, puking and shitting in counter-directional streams!). But I arrived home feeling critically embarrassed and physically miserable, but mostly embarrassed. I undressed and climbed into bed and awaited the worst.
I didn't barf again after the last time Wednesday night at Lisa's, but I was up every hour through the night doing the other thing. I took the day off from work and spent the morning watching my new Blu-Ray disc copy of Bullitt, as well as the three hours of other features on the disc!
I had plans to go to a Dining Out meetup Thursday evening, as did Lisa, so, trooper that she is, we agreed to try again. I felt somewhat human again by the afternoon, so I picked her up at her apartment and we went to the restaurant. My appetite was non-existent (though I didn't find out until the steak arrived), but I still felt better. We had a nice time and said good-bye to our friends, and we headed back to her place.
Despite the unpropitious start to our young relationship, Lisa seems totally unfazed by Wednesday's events. I won't go into any details as to why I feel that way, nor will I divulge where I woke up Friday morning.
But it's all good.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Fling or Thing?
Or: WOW! That Was Fast!
As I highlighted in my prior post, I recently joined a bunch of groups at Meetup.com. My screen name there is “Tone.” So last Wednesday I went to a Sushi meetup and met Jason, the group’s organizer. He told me that I should join his other groups, the local Dining Out group and the Wine group. I did.
Saturday I showed up at the local Wine Cellar shop for the tasting that the Wine group participated in. I arrived a little bit late, so things were already under way. Shortly after I arrived Jason came in from the next room and greeted me. We chatted for a few minutes and he introduced me to a couple people from the group. Then this woman came up to him and not quite whispered “Is that Tone?”
Jason said, “Yeah. That’s him.”
She said, “You were right.”
Naturally, I was a little confused. She was short, with dark hair, attractive, with a sexy, somewhat dusty voice. She introduced herself to me as Lisa.
And for the rest of the day she hardly left my side. She told me that Jason had tried to get her to come out to the Sushi meetup, but she didn’t want to go. Afterward, he had e-mailed her and told her that she missed meeting the new guy (me), and that I was somebody she would probably like. He then told her my screen name, and she looked up my profile. My photo there is from the spring, when I still had my chin whiskers, and I was experimenting with growing them as long as I could stand it. Lisa wasn’t impressed with my photo.
“He shaved,” Jason had told her. “He looks a lot better.”
That explained their conversation upon my arrival at the wine tasting. And it drove home the point that people seemed to really hate that look I sported!
After that wine tasting we left for another wine store for… another wine tasting…but that place had beer-tasting, too! And after that we all headed over to a restaurant a couple blocks away for dinner. I wasn’t sure where exactly it was, so Lisa offered to let me follow her there. When we got there, Lisa and I, and two other women from the group, were the first of about 12 people to arrive. We four all sat at one end of the tables that had been pushed together. Throughout the dinner Lisa and I chatted, and she often patted my knee or my thigh. I didn’t know what to think of this woman. Was she coming on to me? Was she just touchy-feely friendly? I was attracted to her, but what should I do? I didn’t want to assume she was into me, but I didn’t want to assume she wasn’t. So I just let her pat my knee as we talked. Then when we decided to share a dessert, I saw my chance to try to figure it out. I didn’t care which dessert we got, so I asked her which one she wanted. As I did so I patted her knee. And she grasped my hand and held it the rest of the evening!
Ask me anything you want to know about the moon, because I’ve been there since Saturday night!
After dinner Lisa told me she wanted to give me her phone number, but she didn’t have a pen. I walked her to her car and was going to give her my business card that has my mobile number on it. But then she suggested I get in her car.
There we chatted for a while, and she dictated her phone number to me, which I entered into my phone’s address book. Then I called her so my number would show up on her phone, and she could record it. We hugged each other good-night, and I floated home.
Sunday morning I texted her and told her that I was thinking about her. That touched off a flurry of texts, and then I called her and we chatted for about a half hour. I had another meetup Sunday evening that I had to get ready for, a dinner that I had prepaid, and I couldn’t change my plans that late without forfeiting the money. The Dining Out group was gathering at a place near me, and Lisa was going. After earlier declining attendance at that gathering, I changed my mind at Lisa’s request that I join her there. I got dressed for my dinner meeetup, but I stopped by at the brew-pub where Lisa was with the others from the group. I could only stay about an hour and a half before I had to leave. I sat next to Lisa again, and soon we were holding hands! Needless to say, I didn’t want to go, but I felt obligated to the other group…and to my $28!
So I bid my farewell to the group, and I got up to go. Lisa got up with me and told the others that she would be right back. At the entry door of the brew-pub she stood before me and said she was sad that I was leaving her. And we hugged. And then we kissed! I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed that!
And I can’t figure out how this all happened so fast!
When I got to the area of the dinner meetup I found a little wine shop and bought a bottle. During the early part of dinner I texted Lisa and asked her if I could come over later…I would bring wine. That’s the boldest thing I’ve done in quite a while!
She said, “Maybe.” But it was not to be, as I left the dinner around 8:30, and she felt it was too late (and too soon!), and that we should wait until Wednesday, when we have plans to go out, the two of us alone, together, to get to know each other better. (I’m in Kansas City Monday and Tuesday nights.)
I don’t know yet if this is a fling or if it’s a thing, but either way, I’m going to enjoy this high for all its worth!
As I highlighted in my prior post, I recently joined a bunch of groups at Meetup.com. My screen name there is “Tone.” So last Wednesday I went to a Sushi meetup and met Jason, the group’s organizer. He told me that I should join his other groups, the local Dining Out group and the Wine group. I did.
Saturday I showed up at the local Wine Cellar shop for the tasting that the Wine group participated in. I arrived a little bit late, so things were already under way. Shortly after I arrived Jason came in from the next room and greeted me. We chatted for a few minutes and he introduced me to a couple people from the group. Then this woman came up to him and not quite whispered “Is that Tone?”
Jason said, “Yeah. That’s him.”
She said, “You were right.”
Naturally, I was a little confused. She was short, with dark hair, attractive, with a sexy, somewhat dusty voice. She introduced herself to me as Lisa.
And for the rest of the day she hardly left my side. She told me that Jason had tried to get her to come out to the Sushi meetup, but she didn’t want to go. Afterward, he had e-mailed her and told her that she missed meeting the new guy (me), and that I was somebody she would probably like. He then told her my screen name, and she looked up my profile. My photo there is from the spring, when I still had my chin whiskers, and I was experimenting with growing them as long as I could stand it. Lisa wasn’t impressed with my photo.
“He shaved,” Jason had told her. “He looks a lot better.”
That explained their conversation upon my arrival at the wine tasting. And it drove home the point that people seemed to really hate that look I sported!
After that wine tasting we left for another wine store for… another wine tasting…but that place had beer-tasting, too! And after that we all headed over to a restaurant a couple blocks away for dinner. I wasn’t sure where exactly it was, so Lisa offered to let me follow her there. When we got there, Lisa and I, and two other women from the group, were the first of about 12 people to arrive. We four all sat at one end of the tables that had been pushed together. Throughout the dinner Lisa and I chatted, and she often patted my knee or my thigh. I didn’t know what to think of this woman. Was she coming on to me? Was she just touchy-feely friendly? I was attracted to her, but what should I do? I didn’t want to assume she was into me, but I didn’t want to assume she wasn’t. So I just let her pat my knee as we talked. Then when we decided to share a dessert, I saw my chance to try to figure it out. I didn’t care which dessert we got, so I asked her which one she wanted. As I did so I patted her knee. And she grasped my hand and held it the rest of the evening!
Ask me anything you want to know about the moon, because I’ve been there since Saturday night!
After dinner Lisa told me she wanted to give me her phone number, but she didn’t have a pen. I walked her to her car and was going to give her my business card that has my mobile number on it. But then she suggested I get in her car.
There we chatted for a while, and she dictated her phone number to me, which I entered into my phone’s address book. Then I called her so my number would show up on her phone, and she could record it. We hugged each other good-night, and I floated home.
Sunday morning I texted her and told her that I was thinking about her. That touched off a flurry of texts, and then I called her and we chatted for about a half hour. I had another meetup Sunday evening that I had to get ready for, a dinner that I had prepaid, and I couldn’t change my plans that late without forfeiting the money. The Dining Out group was gathering at a place near me, and Lisa was going. After earlier declining attendance at that gathering, I changed my mind at Lisa’s request that I join her there. I got dressed for my dinner meeetup, but I stopped by at the brew-pub where Lisa was with the others from the group. I could only stay about an hour and a half before I had to leave. I sat next to Lisa again, and soon we were holding hands! Needless to say, I didn’t want to go, but I felt obligated to the other group…and to my $28!
So I bid my farewell to the group, and I got up to go. Lisa got up with me and told the others that she would be right back. At the entry door of the brew-pub she stood before me and said she was sad that I was leaving her. And we hugged. And then we kissed! I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed that!
And I can’t figure out how this all happened so fast!
When I got to the area of the dinner meetup I found a little wine shop and bought a bottle. During the early part of dinner I texted Lisa and asked her if I could come over later…I would bring wine. That’s the boldest thing I’ve done in quite a while!
She said, “Maybe.” But it was not to be, as I left the dinner around 8:30, and she felt it was too late (and too soon!), and that we should wait until Wednesday, when we have plans to go out, the two of us alone, together, to get to know each other better. (I’m in Kansas City Monday and Tuesday nights.)
I don’t know yet if this is a fling or if it’s a thing, but either way, I’m going to enjoy this high for all its worth!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
It's A Wonderful Leaf
In the office today we had some people who will be speaking at one of our bigger clients' meeting in March. The purpose was for them to rehearse their speeches and receive critique from my boss and from the association brass, and my purpose was to record them and give them a DVD of their rehearsal performance.
One of the guys who practiced today is an old veteran of the insurance business as well as an old veteran of speaking in front of large groups of people. These older guys usually know how to pack a punch for their audience of peers, but occasionally someone will reach out with a fairly universal message, and the old fart today really got to me.
As a wrap-up to his speech he told the true story of two young men who were insurance agents in his office a few years back, in a particularly bad month for him, personally as well as professionally.
He touted his open-door policy and commented that his door was never closed unless someone came in to see him and closed it himself. On this one particular day a young agent he identified as Jeff came in and closed the door. He told the boss that he didn't want him to be upset, that Jeff would be just fine. Then Jeff went on to tell his boss that he had been dealing with some liver problems, and the doctors had just found a small cancer there. He was to undergo all the batteries of tests and treatments, and he was confident that he would pull through. He continued to work, seeing his clients and writing insurance applications, and maintaining a positive attitude despite the huge question mark that he faced every day.
A few days later another agent, Bob, came into the boss's office. He closed the door and sat down. And then he broke down into tears and sobbing so severe that the boss couldn't decipher what the man was saying. Finally Bob calmed down enough to tell the boss that he had been diagnosed as HIV positive. He could barely compose himself at all, and within a few days turned all of his clients over to other agents, went on disability, and basically gave up.
Jeff lived two more years after his diagnosis. He lived every day of those two years to their fullest, going out to sporting events, taking his family out and enjoying everything life had to give him, but he eventually succumbed to his liver cancer.
Bob, on the other hand, wallowed in self-pity, stopped shaving or grooming, stopped caring for himself or about himself, and went into a downward spiral and became a desperate wreck.
This old general agent drove home a point about Jeff. He lived. He didn't merely exist; he lived until he died. He daily faced down the thing that was killing him, and he extracted as much joy out of every day that he could and experienced every wrinkle of every event until there were no more wrinkles to experience. And when he died, family and friends gathered to celebrate the wonderful life he had made for himself.
Bob, on the other hand, is dead. But he didn't die. He gave up on himself over a situation that is no longer necessarily a death sentence. He's alive, but he's not living.
Test Driving a New Life
I wrote recently of how I set myself up for a random meeting with a woman I had never met before, offering up a spare ticket I had to a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert. Though it seems nothing has or will come of that meeting with a very intelligent, vibrant, interesting woman, I walked away from the experience feeling invigorated.
I won't go so far as to say that I've been wallowing in self-pity for the last year, but I have spent quite a few evenings going alone to movies and spending quiet evenings home alone watching TV or DVDs or writing. But I have been dead for the past year or so since moving out of the house. Hell, looking all the way back, my ex-wife and I have been dead for the last four or five years. During that afternoon out, sitting next to that beautiful woman for a couple hours, talking over dinner in a conversation that, it turns out, apparently bored her to tears, I felt alive!
Since the concert I have wanted to experience that feeling again. I've never been that great at dating, certainly never been a serial dater, but that little, whimsical idea to put the spare ticket up for grabs on CraigsList was the spark that lit a flame under me. Over the past week I have been on Meetup.com joining local groups that indulge some of my interests: meetups for Sushi, Wine, Writing, Dating, Secular Singles, Over-40 Singles, Over-30 Singles, Desperate To Get Laid Singles…whatever! Just last night I went out for sushi at a place out here in the northwest suburbs and met with a very welcoming and friendly group of mostly regulars to the meetup, but there were a couple other newbies aside from myself. I joined the Chicago Karaoke Underground Meetup, and signed up for their New Year's Eve party. I don't know quite what to expect, but I already paid for it, so now I have to go!
I hadn't thought much about my recent pastime, other than the excited feeling of anticipation I experienced when thinking about upcoming events. But that old, veteran general agent, who has written several books and is apparently quite wealthy, sort of kicked me in the head this morning. He made me realize everything I've said up there: I've been dead, just waiting for each day to go by, looking forward to bedtime, waking up to dread the coming day. But I've been quietly taking baby steps to turn it around, and now I'm on the threshold of a wonderful new life….
Okay, I wanted to make an analogy to my favorite film, It's A Wonderful Life, here, but it would certainly seem a reach, and a rather cheesy one, at that. But there's a great scene near the end of that film where George Bailey finally gets it and realizes that things ain't so bad, after all, and begs to have his life back just as it was when he had decided he had enough. I guess, in a way, I have been in a negative spiral, and everything I've done in the past to pull out of it has left me feeling worse. But I'm tired of feeling that way, and have been taking those baby steps to get out there and just meet people! And that old insurance guy this morning kicked me in the brain and told me I'm doing the right thing. I want to live again!
(If you've never seen this movie, I mean, really. watched. this. movie…SOBER I highly recommend you sit down in a nice, dark, quiet room and watch it all the way through. It's not what you think.)
One of the guys who practiced today is an old veteran of the insurance business as well as an old veteran of speaking in front of large groups of people. These older guys usually know how to pack a punch for their audience of peers, but occasionally someone will reach out with a fairly universal message, and the old fart today really got to me.
As a wrap-up to his speech he told the true story of two young men who were insurance agents in his office a few years back, in a particularly bad month for him, personally as well as professionally.
He touted his open-door policy and commented that his door was never closed unless someone came in to see him and closed it himself. On this one particular day a young agent he identified as Jeff came in and closed the door. He told the boss that he didn't want him to be upset, that Jeff would be just fine. Then Jeff went on to tell his boss that he had been dealing with some liver problems, and the doctors had just found a small cancer there. He was to undergo all the batteries of tests and treatments, and he was confident that he would pull through. He continued to work, seeing his clients and writing insurance applications, and maintaining a positive attitude despite the huge question mark that he faced every day.
A few days later another agent, Bob, came into the boss's office. He closed the door and sat down. And then he broke down into tears and sobbing so severe that the boss couldn't decipher what the man was saying. Finally Bob calmed down enough to tell the boss that he had been diagnosed as HIV positive. He could barely compose himself at all, and within a few days turned all of his clients over to other agents, went on disability, and basically gave up.
Jeff lived two more years after his diagnosis. He lived every day of those two years to their fullest, going out to sporting events, taking his family out and enjoying everything life had to give him, but he eventually succumbed to his liver cancer.
Bob, on the other hand, wallowed in self-pity, stopped shaving or grooming, stopped caring for himself or about himself, and went into a downward spiral and became a desperate wreck.
This old general agent drove home a point about Jeff. He lived. He didn't merely exist; he lived until he died. He daily faced down the thing that was killing him, and he extracted as much joy out of every day that he could and experienced every wrinkle of every event until there were no more wrinkles to experience. And when he died, family and friends gathered to celebrate the wonderful life he had made for himself.
Bob, on the other hand, is dead. But he didn't die. He gave up on himself over a situation that is no longer necessarily a death sentence. He's alive, but he's not living.
Test Driving a New Life
I wrote recently of how I set myself up for a random meeting with a woman I had never met before, offering up a spare ticket I had to a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert. Though it seems nothing has or will come of that meeting with a very intelligent, vibrant, interesting woman, I walked away from the experience feeling invigorated.
I won't go so far as to say that I've been wallowing in self-pity for the last year, but I have spent quite a few evenings going alone to movies and spending quiet evenings home alone watching TV or DVDs or writing. But I have been dead for the past year or so since moving out of the house. Hell, looking all the way back, my ex-wife and I have been dead for the last four or five years. During that afternoon out, sitting next to that beautiful woman for a couple hours, talking over dinner in a conversation that, it turns out, apparently bored her to tears, I felt alive!
Since the concert I have wanted to experience that feeling again. I've never been that great at dating, certainly never been a serial dater, but that little, whimsical idea to put the spare ticket up for grabs on CraigsList was the spark that lit a flame under me. Over the past week I have been on Meetup.com joining local groups that indulge some of my interests: meetups for Sushi, Wine, Writing, Dating, Secular Singles, Over-40 Singles, Over-30 Singles, Desperate To Get Laid Singles…whatever! Just last night I went out for sushi at a place out here in the northwest suburbs and met with a very welcoming and friendly group of mostly regulars to the meetup, but there were a couple other newbies aside from myself. I joined the Chicago Karaoke Underground Meetup, and signed up for their New Year's Eve party. I don't know quite what to expect, but I already paid for it, so now I have to go!
I hadn't thought much about my recent pastime, other than the excited feeling of anticipation I experienced when thinking about upcoming events. But that old, veteran general agent, who has written several books and is apparently quite wealthy, sort of kicked me in the head this morning. He made me realize everything I've said up there: I've been dead, just waiting for each day to go by, looking forward to bedtime, waking up to dread the coming day. But I've been quietly taking baby steps to turn it around, and now I'm on the threshold of a wonderful new life….
Okay, I wanted to make an analogy to my favorite film, It's A Wonderful Life, here, but it would certainly seem a reach, and a rather cheesy one, at that. But there's a great scene near the end of that film where George Bailey finally gets it and realizes that things ain't so bad, after all, and begs to have his life back just as it was when he had decided he had enough. I guess, in a way, I have been in a negative spiral, and everything I've done in the past to pull out of it has left me feeling worse. But I'm tired of feeling that way, and have been taking those baby steps to get out there and just meet people! And that old insurance guy this morning kicked me in the brain and told me I'm doing the right thing. I want to live again!
(If you've never seen this movie, I mean, really. watched. this. movie…SOBER I highly recommend you sit down in a nice, dark, quiet room and watch it all the way through. It's not what you think.)
Sunday, December 07, 2008
I Have Seen Hell, And It Is Michigan In Winter
I work with fame every day. Well, okay… the child of fame. That is, my co-worker, to whom I refer as "Producer."
Those among my readers who are older (willfully avoiding the stern gaze of kenju) may recall a musical duo who hailed from the south, whose heyday was in the 1950s and '60s. They mostly did parodies of popular songs — usually Country & Western, but they parodied some pop hits as well. They won a Grammy award in 1959 for their song "The Battle of Kookamunga," their spoof of Johnny Horton's "The Battle of New Orleans."
They were Homer & Jethro.
Producer is the son of Henry "Homer" Haynes. He's fairly humble about it, but he is intensely proud of his father and loves to talk about him. Wouldn't you?
Son of Homer (sometimes Son of Something Else, but I never knew his mother and I shouldn't talk about her like that) has been working for over ten years on a documentary about his father and the duo, and with no budget, he has relied on others' willingness and their belief in the project in order to get things done toward its completion. For the past four years I have been his cameraman for the interviews of famous people whose stars are waning or have faded outright, and who have something to say about Homer & Jethro. In this endeavor I have met and videotaped Les Paul, Tommy Smothers, Roy Clark and Jimmy Dean, who were deeply influenced by Homer & Jethro (Smothers), or who knew them personally (the others).
This past weekend we interviewed another celebrity, someone who wasn't necessarily influenced by them, and didn't know them at all, though he met them once. He is Ernie Harwell, the Voice of the Detroit Tigers and, for a period of his life, an aspiring songwriter. Through a chance meeting, Homer & Jethro were bestowed with the honor of seeing a Tigers game from the broadcast booth where Atlanta-born Harwell, a country music fan, was eager to meet these celebrities. He told them he was a songwriter and, skeptical, Homer & Jethro took a look at his stuff. They took a couple songs and about a year later Harwell received an album in the mail with a note attached to the cover that expressed congratulations for one of his songs making it onto their recording. It was Harwell's first break into the music business.
Now retired from broadcasting, Ernie Harwell still lives in the Detroit area. And since Son of Homer has zero budget, that meant that we had to drive to Detroit to get this interview. SOH asked me if we could take my car because his is decrepit and might not make it. I was agreeable after he said he would pay for the gas and food. And because I didn't want to sit through 10 hours of his driving.
Though it had been crisp and clear all day, Friday night I took a look at The Weather Channel's website just to see what kind of weather we would be looking at on Saturday. It showed some light snow in the Chicago area with up to an inch of accumulation. I let out an uneasy groan at the news.
As anybody from the Chicago area knows, as anyone from the Great Lakes region knows, there's this little phenomenon in this area of the continent known as "The Lake Effect." In butchered scientific terms, "The Lake Effect" means that any ol' winter storm system rolling eastward over the cold hard northern Illinois ground and sprinkling its moisture onto the earth in little dusty ice crystals will eventually roll over Lake Michigan. There, the relatively warmer water evaporates and that moisture is sucked up into the li'l ol' winter storm system and that li'l ol' storm becomes a raging bastard. The effect is that a storm that dusts Chicago with two inches of snow can intensify over Lake Michigan and can then dump 12 inches on western and central Michigan!
So I looked upon the anticipated light accumulation in the Chicago area as a bad omen. When I woke up Saturday morning at 4:30, there was already new blanket of snow two inches deep on everything.
I went to the office and loaded up my Xterra, and SOH met me at the agreed upon time: 5:50am. In the interest of fuel economy, I did not engage the 4-wheel drive system. Traffic was heavier, dammit, than it should have been at 6:00 on a Saturday morning, so it was slower going than I had hoped. About an hour into the trip we were in northwest Indiana and saw a harbinger of the mood of our trip: on both sides of a short stretch of Interstate 80 traffic slowed to a crawl and several cars were strewn about in the emergency lanes, with emergency vehicles in attendance. Just as I surmised that the road surfaces must have been slick in this area I saw in my rear-view mirror, about four or five car lengths behind me, a light blue sedan sliding sideways into the left-hand emergency lane! I don't know if it hit anything. The further we went toward our destination, the worse the weather got.
All along the way there were stretches of Interstate highway speckled with the flashing lights of emergency vehicles signaling the presence of ice…and stranded vehicles which had spun out and slid off the road into the side ditches and the median. Throughout the entire round trip we saw no fewer than five tractor-trailer rigs jackknifed and helplessly immobile in the soft grass underneath the snow beside the pavement. One of the trucks was on its side.
On more than one occasion I felt the rear end of my SUV starting to kick out on a patch of "black ice," a condition where the road appears normal and dry, but there's a thin, transparent coating of ice that will rob your tires of their traction before you can even react. The first time was when everything appeared dry, but for the blowing snow across the roadway. I had the cruise-control on. We were on a slight curve to the right, and I felt the rear of the vehicle sliding. As a reflex, I tapped the brake pedal quickly to disengage the cruise-control, and the Xterra settled down. Another time was right after we passed an area where there had been more spin-outs and cars in the ditch. I was accelerating gingerly, but that was still too much. The rear end got squirrelly, but I let off the accelerator and we stayed on the road.
Once we got past Kalamazoo-what-a-gal! the weather started to lighten up, as I hoped it would when we escaped what I thought would be the extent of the lake effect area. Due to the weather, and to the fact that both SOH and I forgot to factor in the time change to Eastern Standard Time from Illinois to Michigan, we were two hours behind our estimated arrival time. But, since I am The World's Best Driver (oh, yes I am!), I got us there in one piece.
Ernie Harwell's lawyer/manger, who had been skeptical of SOH's true identity and intentions, spoke with him over the phone during the ride up, and, finally satisfied we didn't intend Harwell any ill will, became really cool and flexible with us and our tardiness.
We rolled into town, a suburb of Detroit, and grabbed a quick lunch. Around 2:00 we were setting up our lights. We rolled tape about 3:00. At 91, Harwell is fit, spry and sharp as a tack! And by 3:15 the interview was finished. We drove six hours THROUGH HELL, and we had six more ahead of us, for a fucking 15-minute interview!
Well, what's life without a little adventure, right? The drive back wasn't as bad, but we did drive through some thick squalls in near white-out conditions, we saw more sprawled and stranded cars and trucks in treacherous areas we had to crawl through, and we stopped for dinner on the way, so the return trip took every bit as long.
Having left at 5:15am and driving to the other side of Michigan and back, I stepped back into my apartment again at 11:30pm.
And Sunday? Crisp and clear. Another act in this divine comedy.
Those among my readers who are older (willfully avoiding the stern gaze of kenju) may recall a musical duo who hailed from the south, whose heyday was in the 1950s and '60s. They mostly did parodies of popular songs — usually Country & Western, but they parodied some pop hits as well. They won a Grammy award in 1959 for their song "The Battle of Kookamunga," their spoof of Johnny Horton's "The Battle of New Orleans."
They were Homer & Jethro.
Producer is the son of Henry "Homer" Haynes. He's fairly humble about it, but he is intensely proud of his father and loves to talk about him. Wouldn't you?
Son of Homer (sometimes Son of Something Else, but I never knew his mother and I shouldn't talk about her like that) has been working for over ten years on a documentary about his father and the duo, and with no budget, he has relied on others' willingness and their belief in the project in order to get things done toward its completion. For the past four years I have been his cameraman for the interviews of famous people whose stars are waning or have faded outright, and who have something to say about Homer & Jethro. In this endeavor I have met and videotaped Les Paul, Tommy Smothers, Roy Clark and Jimmy Dean, who were deeply influenced by Homer & Jethro (Smothers), or who knew them personally (the others).
This past weekend we interviewed another celebrity, someone who wasn't necessarily influenced by them, and didn't know them at all, though he met them once. He is Ernie Harwell, the Voice of the Detroit Tigers and, for a period of his life, an aspiring songwriter. Through a chance meeting, Homer & Jethro were bestowed with the honor of seeing a Tigers game from the broadcast booth where Atlanta-born Harwell, a country music fan, was eager to meet these celebrities. He told them he was a songwriter and, skeptical, Homer & Jethro took a look at his stuff. They took a couple songs and about a year later Harwell received an album in the mail with a note attached to the cover that expressed congratulations for one of his songs making it onto their recording. It was Harwell's first break into the music business.
Now retired from broadcasting, Ernie Harwell still lives in the Detroit area. And since Son of Homer has zero budget, that meant that we had to drive to Detroit to get this interview. SOH asked me if we could take my car because his is decrepit and might not make it. I was agreeable after he said he would pay for the gas and food. And because I didn't want to sit through 10 hours of his driving.
Though it had been crisp and clear all day, Friday night I took a look at The Weather Channel's website just to see what kind of weather we would be looking at on Saturday. It showed some light snow in the Chicago area with up to an inch of accumulation. I let out an uneasy groan at the news.
As anybody from the Chicago area knows, as anyone from the Great Lakes region knows, there's this little phenomenon in this area of the continent known as "The Lake Effect." In butchered scientific terms, "The Lake Effect" means that any ol' winter storm system rolling eastward over the cold hard northern Illinois ground and sprinkling its moisture onto the earth in little dusty ice crystals will eventually roll over Lake Michigan. There, the relatively warmer water evaporates and that moisture is sucked up into the li'l ol' winter storm system and that li'l ol' storm becomes a raging bastard. The effect is that a storm that dusts Chicago with two inches of snow can intensify over Lake Michigan and can then dump 12 inches on western and central Michigan!
So I looked upon the anticipated light accumulation in the Chicago area as a bad omen. When I woke up Saturday morning at 4:30, there was already new blanket of snow two inches deep on everything.
I went to the office and loaded up my Xterra, and SOH met me at the agreed upon time: 5:50am. In the interest of fuel economy, I did not engage the 4-wheel drive system. Traffic was heavier, dammit, than it should have been at 6:00 on a Saturday morning, so it was slower going than I had hoped. About an hour into the trip we were in northwest Indiana and saw a harbinger of the mood of our trip: on both sides of a short stretch of Interstate 80 traffic slowed to a crawl and several cars were strewn about in the emergency lanes, with emergency vehicles in attendance. Just as I surmised that the road surfaces must have been slick in this area I saw in my rear-view mirror, about four or five car lengths behind me, a light blue sedan sliding sideways into the left-hand emergency lane! I don't know if it hit anything. The further we went toward our destination, the worse the weather got.
All along the way there were stretches of Interstate highway speckled with the flashing lights of emergency vehicles signaling the presence of ice…and stranded vehicles which had spun out and slid off the road into the side ditches and the median. Throughout the entire round trip we saw no fewer than five tractor-trailer rigs jackknifed and helplessly immobile in the soft grass underneath the snow beside the pavement. One of the trucks was on its side.
On more than one occasion I felt the rear end of my SUV starting to kick out on a patch of "black ice," a condition where the road appears normal and dry, but there's a thin, transparent coating of ice that will rob your tires of their traction before you can even react. The first time was when everything appeared dry, but for the blowing snow across the roadway. I had the cruise-control on. We were on a slight curve to the right, and I felt the rear of the vehicle sliding. As a reflex, I tapped the brake pedal quickly to disengage the cruise-control, and the Xterra settled down. Another time was right after we passed an area where there had been more spin-outs and cars in the ditch. I was accelerating gingerly, but that was still too much. The rear end got squirrelly, but I let off the accelerator and we stayed on the road.
Once we got past Kalamazoo-what-a-gal! the weather started to lighten up, as I hoped it would when we escaped what I thought would be the extent of the lake effect area. Due to the weather, and to the fact that both SOH and I forgot to factor in the time change to Eastern Standard Time from Illinois to Michigan, we were two hours behind our estimated arrival time. But, since I am The World's Best Driver (oh, yes I am!), I got us there in one piece.
Ernie Harwell's lawyer/manger, who had been skeptical of SOH's true identity and intentions, spoke with him over the phone during the ride up, and, finally satisfied we didn't intend Harwell any ill will, became really cool and flexible with us and our tardiness.
We rolled into town, a suburb of Detroit, and grabbed a quick lunch. Around 2:00 we were setting up our lights. We rolled tape about 3:00. At 91, Harwell is fit, spry and sharp as a tack! And by 3:15 the interview was finished. We drove six hours THROUGH HELL, and we had six more ahead of us, for a fucking 15-minute interview!
Well, what's life without a little adventure, right? The drive back wasn't as bad, but we did drive through some thick squalls in near white-out conditions, we saw more sprawled and stranded cars and trucks in treacherous areas we had to crawl through, and we stopped for dinner on the way, so the return trip took every bit as long.
Having left at 5:15am and driving to the other side of Michigan and back, I stepped back into my apartment again at 11:30pm.
And Sunday? Crisp and clear. Another act in this divine comedy.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Life IBM*
It's been a dull creep since Marlo Thomas turned 71. At least half my readership (that's one reader, yo) have been scanning Chicago area obits to see if I croaked.
Nope. Just life *in boring mode.
Iowa: It's a Lot Like Iowa
Next year's chairman of our largest client association lives in an Illinois suburb of Clinton, Iowa. We do a video on the incoming chairman of this association every year, and this year's was within a couple hours' driving distance of Chicago.
Not much worth saying here other than Clinton, Iowa, is a tragically boring place. It was one of the towns along the Mississippi River that flooded last summer, but to the people who live there, that's kinda what life in Clinton is all about. When you live by a river chances are if it can't kill you when you're out for a summer dip, then someday it's going to reach over its banks and try to kill you at your house.
The subject of our video seems a very nice man, around age 60 or 65, I'm guessing. He bears a striking resemblance to my ex-father-in-law. It's not an unfavorable resemblance. I like my ex-father-in-law. Was it wrong to tell the incoming chairman of the resemblance? Our client and Producer thought so.
We interviewed the mayor of Clinton. His glasses fogged up right in the middle of it. I've never seen anything like that, just fogging up in the middle of the council chamber with no change of room temperature. I think he got nervous.
Then we left a clamp there. It's one of those things that costs about $30, but, depending on the shoot, can be one of the most important pieces of equipment you could ever need.
Amazin' Amazon and the Blu-Rage
Sunday night, the first night in Iowa (we were there two nights), I finally pulled the trigger on a large electronics purchase I've been wanting to make. I had shopped it on Amazon.com already, and decided to do it before I talked myself out of it. Again. So I ordered a Samsung HT-AS720ST Surround-Sound Home Theater receiver, a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-Ray disc player and a pair of chunky snow boots (the brown ones). No, they're not electronic. I just needed some boots.
Upon completing the order and requesting the Super-Saver free shipping, Amazon informed me that the order would be delivered in five to nine business days. Well, being the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I had no confidence that by Thursday evening I'd be sleeping off the tryptophan coma while basking in the Blu-Ray light and 5.1 walls of sound pumped out by "The Christmas Story."
We shot Monday and Tuesday, and drove home Tuesday evening. On Wednesday one of my co-workers, Bill, asked me "what the hell" the stuff was I had ordered that was sitting in the warehouse.
"What stuff?"
He told me a couple of boxes had arrived the day before. I followed him back to the warehouse, and sure as shit, there sat my complete Amazon.com order! It had arrived on Tuesday! Bill was really curious what I had ordered because, to him, the Amazon "smile" logo looked more like the underside of a penis,
and he thought he had busted me ordering some sort of sex toys!
But those were delivered in plain brown packages a week before.
Thanksgiving morning I actually went in to the office and spent a few hours putting together an awards presentation video as a favor for a guy who attended one of our client shows. Since it's a personal favor, I can't occupy an edit suite when real projects need to get done, so I chose a day I knew no one else would be around to bother me. It went more smoothly than even I had imagined it could, and by 12:30 I was on my way to my sister's house for Thanksgiving.
The only noteworthy and different tale to tell here would be if I had not stuffed myself to the point of near-unconsciousness, but what kind of Thanksgiving would that be? The only other item worth mentioning is we all got to meet my 25 y.o. nephew's new girlfriend.
I hate him.
Friday I spent the afternoon putting together my new surround-sound stereo system and hooking up my new Blu-Ray disc player. Aside from realizing that the manufacturer-supplied speaker wire was not long enough to go around my living room to reach the two rear speakers, it all worked just marvelously! In order to test the surround-sound, I pulled out one of the movies I own, Saving Private Ryan (no, not "Shaving Ryan's Privates!" I'll never make that mistake again!) for I knew its opening battle scene just had to be a veritable workout for a surround-sound system! I popped the disc in, it loaded up, and it sounded AWESOME! I had a Netflix movie I wanted to watch, so I put away Saving Private Ryan. I spent the next half hour cleaning up the mess left over from emptying boxes and opening little plastic bags that held the essential little goodies, and I nuked up some burritos to enjoy while watching the beginning of Crash.
I got everything ready, pulled the disc out of its Netflix sleeve, and I pressed the "tray open/close" button on the Blu-Ray player.
Nothing.
I pressed the "tray open/close" button on the remote.
Bupkis.
My brand-new Blu-Ray player, which had worked for 15 minutes only a half-hour earlier, was now an oversized paper-weight. I tried getting it to work by various methods, from unplugging it and replugging it, to swearing at it in Latin (try finding that in the inturwebz!), to praying to a god I know ain't there, but to no avail. The player was dead.
Con Share Toe
Back shortly after my marriage came to a shrieking halt, I received a phone call from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, begging for money. The ex-Mrs. Farrago and I had spoken several times of going to see Orchestra performances, but we only ever got around to seeing one. Feeling just a little reckless, I agreed to buy some tickets, and at $560 for ten season-tickets (five shows), I felt pretty damn reckless when I hung up the phone! Even worse, the first show was still a whole year off! At least, I figured, the divorce would be final by then, and I'd have some dating prospects.
HAH! At least I was half right.
The only real prospect was the woman who had asked me out in August. We had gone out once, but there was no chemistry after we beat to death the topic of our failed marriages. I did ask her to the first concert, but she has filled her schedule with a second job that she works when her ex-husband has the kids, and she won't schedule social life when she has the kids.
So, November 30 was upon me, and I still had no date. Saturday morning I had a brainstorm: How about putting an ad up on Craigslist and see if anyone wants a free seat at the concert!
I put it up in "Strictly Platonic," and said that it wasn't a date, and that there were no strings attached other than the person had to sit next to me, and had to behave and dress in a manner appropriate for a Symphony concert.
The first respondent was a woman named Marva. We agreed to meet the next day about 15 minutes before the program was scheduled to start. Where, by the sound of her voice, I anticipated a gray-haired woman of about 60, Marva turned out to be a very attractive African-American woman. I have a notoriously difficult time guessing the age of people of African heritage, as, in middle- and elder age it seems they are usually about ten to fifteen years older than they look. If I were to guess, I'd say Marva was 40 to 45 years old. By my sliding scale, then it must mean she's 60!
After the show Marva insisted on treating me to dinner at "Rhapsody Café," right next-door to the Symphony Center. I really enjoyed her company, and we had a great conversation, so, as our dinner ended and I had to break away for the airport, I asked her if I could call her again, and she said "Yes!"
Amazin', Part 2 and Cruisin' June!
Tuesday, after a flight-delayed Sunday evening ordeal which got me into my Washington, D.C. hotel at 2:15am Monday morning, and a Monday shoot where I spent more time waiting around than I did shooting, I filled out the online forms at Amazon.com to exchange the faulty Blu-Ray player. Upon completion, Amazon informed me that the anticipated delivery date of the replacement item was December 9. Ugh! A whole week without my Blu-Ray! …which I never even got to use…
I got an e-mail from our sister company in Columbus, Ohio. One of their clients, for which I and my coworker, Bill, had worked a couple times in the past few years, has requested that Bill and I work for them again to produce their highlights videos on their upcoming summer shows.
This is cool for a couple of reasons. First, this company's meeting planner, who had been hired away from another company, had for a couple of years been trying to dump our sister company for one she had been working with at her prior employer. Meeting planners are loyal that way. She had all but succeeded when she came into conflict with company policy and was fired. Whoever was put in her place to pick up the pieces remembers us, Bill and I, and made sure not simply to request that our company do their highlights video, but requested Bill and me, specifically. That's a good feeling!
The second reason this is cool is that the June show is 8 days on a cruise ship! We know not where, yet, but IT'S A CRUISE! And the July show is 8 days in Cancun! We don't know yet if our boss will let us go (he probably will…if we both still have jobs here in June), but at least now there's June to look forward to!
Hot DOG! And my replacement Blu-Ray player came today!
But I tried to call Marva yesterday evening. She didn't pick up. I left a message. She has not yet returned my call. Do you think she was just humoring me at dinner?
And with this post I have 100 on the year!
WOO HOO!
Nope. Just life *in boring mode.
Iowa: It's a Lot Like Iowa
Next year's chairman of our largest client association lives in an Illinois suburb of Clinton, Iowa. We do a video on the incoming chairman of this association every year, and this year's was within a couple hours' driving distance of Chicago.
Not much worth saying here other than Clinton, Iowa, is a tragically boring place. It was one of the towns along the Mississippi River that flooded last summer, but to the people who live there, that's kinda what life in Clinton is all about. When you live by a river chances are if it can't kill you when you're out for a summer dip, then someday it's going to reach over its banks and try to kill you at your house.
The subject of our video seems a very nice man, around age 60 or 65, I'm guessing. He bears a striking resemblance to my ex-father-in-law. It's not an unfavorable resemblance. I like my ex-father-in-law. Was it wrong to tell the incoming chairman of the resemblance? Our client and Producer thought so.
We interviewed the mayor of Clinton. His glasses fogged up right in the middle of it. I've never seen anything like that, just fogging up in the middle of the council chamber with no change of room temperature. I think he got nervous.
Then we left a clamp there. It's one of those things that costs about $30, but, depending on the shoot, can be one of the most important pieces of equipment you could ever need.
Amazin' Amazon and the Blu-Rage
Sunday night, the first night in Iowa (we were there two nights), I finally pulled the trigger on a large electronics purchase I've been wanting to make. I had shopped it on Amazon.com already, and decided to do it before I talked myself out of it. Again. So I ordered a Samsung HT-AS720ST Surround-Sound Home Theater receiver, a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-Ray disc player and a pair of chunky snow boots (the brown ones). No, they're not electronic. I just needed some boots.
Upon completing the order and requesting the Super-Saver free shipping, Amazon informed me that the order would be delivered in five to nine business days. Well, being the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I had no confidence that by Thursday evening I'd be sleeping off the tryptophan coma while basking in the Blu-Ray light and 5.1 walls of sound pumped out by "The Christmas Story."
We shot Monday and Tuesday, and drove home Tuesday evening. On Wednesday one of my co-workers, Bill, asked me "what the hell" the stuff was I had ordered that was sitting in the warehouse.
"What stuff?"
He told me a couple of boxes had arrived the day before. I followed him back to the warehouse, and sure as shit, there sat my complete Amazon.com order! It had arrived on Tuesday! Bill was really curious what I had ordered because, to him, the Amazon "smile" logo looked more like the underside of a penis,
and he thought he had busted me ordering some sort of sex toys!
But those were delivered in plain brown packages a week before.
Thanksgiving morning I actually went in to the office and spent a few hours putting together an awards presentation video as a favor for a guy who attended one of our client shows. Since it's a personal favor, I can't occupy an edit suite when real projects need to get done, so I chose a day I knew no one else would be around to bother me. It went more smoothly than even I had imagined it could, and by 12:30 I was on my way to my sister's house for Thanksgiving.
The only noteworthy and different tale to tell here would be if I had not stuffed myself to the point of near-unconsciousness, but what kind of Thanksgiving would that be? The only other item worth mentioning is we all got to meet my 25 y.o. nephew's new girlfriend.
I hate him.
Friday I spent the afternoon putting together my new surround-sound stereo system and hooking up my new Blu-Ray disc player. Aside from realizing that the manufacturer-supplied speaker wire was not long enough to go around my living room to reach the two rear speakers, it all worked just marvelously! In order to test the surround-sound, I pulled out one of the movies I own, Saving Private Ryan (no, not "Shaving Ryan's Privates!" I'll never make that mistake again!) for I knew its opening battle scene just had to be a veritable workout for a surround-sound system! I popped the disc in, it loaded up, and it sounded AWESOME! I had a Netflix movie I wanted to watch, so I put away Saving Private Ryan. I spent the next half hour cleaning up the mess left over from emptying boxes and opening little plastic bags that held the essential little goodies, and I nuked up some burritos to enjoy while watching the beginning of Crash.
I got everything ready, pulled the disc out of its Netflix sleeve, and I pressed the "tray open/close" button on the Blu-Ray player.
Nothing.
I pressed the "tray open/close" button on the remote.
Bupkis.
My brand-new Blu-Ray player, which had worked for 15 minutes only a half-hour earlier, was now an oversized paper-weight. I tried getting it to work by various methods, from unplugging it and replugging it, to swearing at it in Latin (try finding that in the inturwebz!), to praying to a god I know ain't there, but to no avail. The player was dead.
Con Share Toe
Back shortly after my marriage came to a shrieking halt, I received a phone call from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, begging for money. The ex-Mrs. Farrago and I had spoken several times of going to see Orchestra performances, but we only ever got around to seeing one. Feeling just a little reckless, I agreed to buy some tickets, and at $560 for ten season-tickets (five shows), I felt pretty damn reckless when I hung up the phone! Even worse, the first show was still a whole year off! At least, I figured, the divorce would be final by then, and I'd have some dating prospects.
HAH! At least I was half right.
The only real prospect was the woman who had asked me out in August. We had gone out once, but there was no chemistry after we beat to death the topic of our failed marriages. I did ask her to the first concert, but she has filled her schedule with a second job that she works when her ex-husband has the kids, and she won't schedule social life when she has the kids.
So, November 30 was upon me, and I still had no date. Saturday morning I had a brainstorm: How about putting an ad up on Craigslist and see if anyone wants a free seat at the concert!
I put it up in "Strictly Platonic," and said that it wasn't a date, and that there were no strings attached other than the person had to sit next to me, and had to behave and dress in a manner appropriate for a Symphony concert.
The first respondent was a woman named Marva. We agreed to meet the next day about 15 minutes before the program was scheduled to start. Where, by the sound of her voice, I anticipated a gray-haired woman of about 60, Marva turned out to be a very attractive African-American woman. I have a notoriously difficult time guessing the age of people of African heritage, as, in middle- and elder age it seems they are usually about ten to fifteen years older than they look. If I were to guess, I'd say Marva was 40 to 45 years old. By my sliding scale, then it must mean she's 60!
After the show Marva insisted on treating me to dinner at "Rhapsody Café," right next-door to the Symphony Center. I really enjoyed her company, and we had a great conversation, so, as our dinner ended and I had to break away for the airport, I asked her if I could call her again, and she said "Yes!"
Amazin', Part 2 and Cruisin' June!
Tuesday, after a flight-delayed Sunday evening ordeal which got me into my Washington, D.C. hotel at 2:15am Monday morning, and a Monday shoot where I spent more time waiting around than I did shooting, I filled out the online forms at Amazon.com to exchange the faulty Blu-Ray player. Upon completion, Amazon informed me that the anticipated delivery date of the replacement item was December 9. Ugh! A whole week without my Blu-Ray! …which I never even got to use…
I got an e-mail from our sister company in Columbus, Ohio. One of their clients, for which I and my coworker, Bill, had worked a couple times in the past few years, has requested that Bill and I work for them again to produce their highlights videos on their upcoming summer shows.
This is cool for a couple of reasons. First, this company's meeting planner, who had been hired away from another company, had for a couple of years been trying to dump our sister company for one she had been working with at her prior employer. Meeting planners are loyal that way. She had all but succeeded when she came into conflict with company policy and was fired. Whoever was put in her place to pick up the pieces remembers us, Bill and I, and made sure not simply to request that our company do their highlights video, but requested Bill and me, specifically. That's a good feeling!
The second reason this is cool is that the June show is 8 days on a cruise ship! We know not where, yet, but IT'S A CRUISE! And the July show is 8 days in Cancun! We don't know yet if our boss will let us go (he probably will…if we both still have jobs here in June), but at least now there's June to look forward to!
Hot DOG! And my replacement Blu-Ray player came today!
But I tried to call Marva yesterday evening. She didn't pick up. I left a message. She has not yet returned my call. Do you think she was just humoring me at dinner?
And with this post I have 100 on the year!
WOO HOO!
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Thematic Photographic #27: Shadow
Sun Tree Snow Shadow
Hoffman Estates, Illinois
27 January 2008
This one was taken while familiarizing myself with the new camera I had purchased for our office, a Canon EOS 5D, with a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, at a focal length of 25mm, f/4.5, 1/6400 shutter speed. The ISO is unknown, but was probably 100.
If you want to participate in Thematic Photographic, Carmi sets a new theme at his blog every Wednesday. Head over there and see what he and some others have posted, and then read the rules about how you can participate also, too, as well. Even.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Guaranteed to Bring a Tear...Or At Least a Lump In Your Throat (In A Good Way!)
At a client's upcoming convention in New Orleans in January, there's an act scheduled to perform — I'm guessing — to open the whole show. I've heard the name of the act bandied about, and every time I've heard it, I've felt a groan emanate from my girth. The name of the act is "The Cactus Cuties," and you can imagine my sense of apprehension as I imagined an act consisting of little girls dressed in little cowgirl costumes or something, no doubt related to one of the executives on the board of directors or the like.
Then, tonight, farting around on YouTube, I stumbled across a Cactus Cuties video — apparently the original video that put them on the map — and played it.
As I have waxed poetic about "The Star-Spangled Banner" in this blog before, I won't go into it too much. Suffice it to say that I am a sucker for that song, and if I let myself think about its story while it's playing — or even worse, while I'm singing it — I get all choked up.
Well, for the last ten minutes prior to composing this post I've been in tears listening to these little kids crank out "The Star-Spangled Banner" at various events around the country.
If the song itself doesn't tug a tear out of your face, then their crisp, almost flawless harmony will.
And there's not just one song. There are videos of some of the other songs they perform, and I guess they now have a studio album out.
Below is their performance on Independence Day this year on the *gag* 700 Club. I posted that here because it's the best quality video I saw.
(Just pause it and move on right after they say their names and ages, because right after that the witch lady gets all preachy.)
Next is the video that got them noticed, a performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a Texas Tech basketball game.
Bear with me here... The next is another performance of their rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," this time at a San Antonio Spurs basketball playoff game. Listen to the crowd, as it gives lackluster welcoming applause upon the group's introduction, and is then won over entirely halfway through the song!
Wait... let me get the tissues....
Then, tonight, farting around on YouTube, I stumbled across a Cactus Cuties video — apparently the original video that put them on the map — and played it.
As I have waxed poetic about "The Star-Spangled Banner" in this blog before, I won't go into it too much. Suffice it to say that I am a sucker for that song, and if I let myself think about its story while it's playing — or even worse, while I'm singing it — I get all choked up.
Well, for the last ten minutes prior to composing this post I've been in tears listening to these little kids crank out "The Star-Spangled Banner" at various events around the country.
If the song itself doesn't tug a tear out of your face, then their crisp, almost flawless harmony will.
And there's not just one song. There are videos of some of the other songs they perform, and I guess they now have a studio album out.
Below is their performance on Independence Day this year on the *gag* 700 Club. I posted that here because it's the best quality video I saw.
(Just pause it and move on right after they say their names and ages, because right after that the witch lady gets all preachy.)
Next is the video that got them noticed, a performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a Texas Tech basketball game.
Bear with me here... The next is another performance of their rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," this time at a San Antonio Spurs basketball playoff game. Listen to the crowd, as it gives lackluster welcoming applause upon the group's introduction, and is then won over entirely halfway through the song!
Wait... let me get the tissues....
Friday, November 21, 2008
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