Warrior Dash

So, Chris and I are doing this thing.

It is called the Warrior Dash.

I am woefully out of shape.

That's really all I have to say about that.




(Except that it's a competition, Chris and Payson against myself and Payson's wife.  My only hope is that they are less prepared than us.  Which is a possibility- although I can't discount sheer determination on their part, either.)

Monster Truck Rally

Last night, Chris and I were relaxing in the living room, watching an episode of House.  At one point in the episode, Dr. House has the team meet him in the parking lot of the hospital.  The following scene takes place:

House has driven Colossus, a bright yellow-and-blue monster truck, right into his handicapped parking spot (and several others). He's got to lower a rope ladder from the window just so the team can climb in, which they all do.

As House and his team are careening around the city, discussing medical diagnoses in the giant monster truck, Chris turns to me.

"You know," Chris says, "that's not how you get into a monster truck."

ME: Hunh?

CHRIS:  You don't lower a rope ladder and climb in through the window.  You get in from underneath.

(Pause)

CHRIS:  And also, you can't fit that many people in the cab.  There is no backseat in a monster truck.

Uh-oh, somebody call FOX.  The screenwriters need to brush up on their redneck.

I'd like to file a complaint...

Things have been a little quiet around here lately, I'll be the first to admit it.  Work has been absolutely insane, 12 hour work days six days a week.  There are days when the weather is beautiful and I've accomplished so much and I love my job, and then there are days when I have to go home and cry for an hour on my lunch break.  You know, the usual highs and lows.

And not that there isn't a lot to talk about.  But it's all work.  In fact, a co-worker and I were just commenting on how we could write a book about all the crazy stuff that happens in our jobs.

But I don't talk about work on here, namely because there are a lot of very sensitive issues that we deal with that involve lawyers and the government and blah blah blah.

In other words, you know your job might be a bit high profile if a bomb scare means that Homeland Security comes out to pay you a visit.  In fact, your job might be high profile if it gets a bomb scare.  (Don't worry, it wasn't a bomb.)

But this one thing is almost too funny to be real.  And since I don't have much else to talk about...

In the course of what we do, we sometimes have to employ road flaggers to divert traffic around our operations.  This can cause some delays to the normal traffic flow, which of course we minimize as much as possible, but still it results in some unavoidable traffic stops.  We occasionally get complaints from members of the public who are affected by our work.  

This is an actual complaint.

A gentlemen called to tell us that he had eaten at one of the local restaurants that day.  Unfortunately, his meal didn't sit too well with him.  He was driving back to his house, but it took him longer than usual because of the traffic delays from our flaggers.  And, well, he didn't make it home in time.  And he had an accident.... in his pants.

Oh  yes, you read that right.  He called to complain that we made him crap his pants.

Sexy Pizza Cops

Let's just take a minute to appreciate how much I love pizza.

Although, ironically, I didn't like pizza so much when I was growing up.  This is ironic because when I was growing up, my father owned a pizza restaurant.

When I was about 8 or 9, my parents hauled myself and my younger brother out to this small university town in Kansas.  My father was going to open a pizza place.  He bought a space from another pizza place that was going out of business.  The place was located across the street from campus, and the previous owners had hoped to cash in on all the hungry college students.  The problem was, they didn't offer delivery.  They didn't think this would be a problem, seeing as how one of the main campus dorms was right across the street.  Newsflash: college students are lazy.  Why would you walk across the street when you can pick up the phone?  A-duh.


Here are the three elements for a successful pizza restaurant in a college town:
1) Be cheap
2) Be open late
3) Offer delivery

My father opened a business that offered cheap, tasty pizza, and on the weekends you could even get delivery as late as 2am.

Also there was an often played radio advertisement involving the phone number that was so catchy, pretty much everyone in town had the phone number memorized.

(Oh yeah, if you know what song I'm talking about I bet you're singing it in your head right now.)

And there you have it.  Ten years later, and I was that college student, living in the dorm across the street and calling in my order for delivery.  You see, sometime between 8 and 18 I had fostered a serious fondness for pizza.

After my brother and I had both graduated from high school and my parents became empty-nesters, my father sold the business to a long-time employee and my parents moved to Michigan.

The business is still there, and although competition has diminished its popularity from what it once was, it's still selling pizzas to college students, living on in moderate obscurity.

That is, until Web Soup got a hold of one of their super cheesy (no pun intended) television commercials:



Ah, pizza of my childhood.  May you live on in infamy.

Part 3: Dinner and an (improv) show

Maybe you remember that last year we forgot to make reservations until February 13.  And the year before that we didn’t have reservations and ended up with a three hour wait at Claim Jumper in which I was so hungry by the time we got our food I ended up with a migraine, so this year I was determined to make Valentine’s Day reservations early.

I booked us a romantic dinner cruise.  Basically, we get dressed up fancy and eat aboard a cruise ship while it does hot laps around the harbor for three hours.

If you’re not one for Valentine’s Day mushy stuff, I will admit that it’s pretty nauseating.  All these couples playing lovey-dovey and scooting their chairs so they’re sitting on the same side of the table right next to each other and there’s some Barry Manilow playing in the background and rose petals on your table and they greet you with a glass of sparkling champagne when you board.

As you can see, there's even pink napkins and chocolates and candles and such.

One thing we didn’t know when we booked is that the champagne is unlimited.  This turned out to be more of a bonus than we had ever imagined.  And not because we were the ones drinking it.

Our server was very pleasant, but a bit new.  Chris and I chose a bottle of white wine to share.  I told the waiter its name, and he had to look at the menu to figure out which one we had ordered (and it was not some fancy French name, it was a pretty simple American vineyard).  He takes the menu and he’s looking, and he’s looking, and it’s getting a bit awkward because my god, man, you only have 4 options for white wine on the menu how hard can it be to pick out one of four?!

The cruise was just supposed to be dinner and dancing while the lights of the harbor dazzled you from the windows, but it turns out we got an extra bonus:

Seated somewhat near us was a younger couple.  Early on in the night, Chris nudged me.

“See that couple?  They’ve really been knocking back the champagne.  I guarantee they are going to be completely wasted by the end of the night.”

And thus, the show began.  The rest of our night revolved around the Drunk Couple.  And making fun of the Drunk Couple.

So, after about an hour it because obvious that Chris was right and this couple was definitely on their way to being completely smashed.  The woman’s voice became gradually louder and louder, and her hand motions more and more animated.

Then they must have gotten into a fight, because the next thing we know the guy is completely turned away from her, staring out the window at nothing.  And she has her head resting drunkenly in her hands while she is texting her friends on her cell phone.

Chris and I decide to head to the dance floor to dance to a slow song and the next thing we know, Drunk Couple is on the dance floor, making out.  I guess they made up.

After a nice romantic dance, Chris and I return to our seats.  About two songs later, the Drunk Couple returns.

Only they don’t remember where their table is.  

They try a couple empty tables before they realize which one is theirs.  Then the girl spies an unopened bottle of champagne on the table that they sat down at (before realizing it wasn’t their table).  She looks around to see if anyone is paying attention and grabs the bottle off the table.  “SHHHHHH” she says, quite loudly, as she giggles drunkenly.

After a couple attempts, her date manages to coordinate himself just enough to make it into his chair.  They are seated for about 0.2 seconds before she wants to get up and go dancing again.

He doesn’t want to dance.  He wants to leave.  He stands up and puts on his jacket.

Chris looks at me.  “Where does he think he’s going to go?  Jump off the boat and swim back to the harbor?”

Drunk Girl looks up at Drunk Guy.

“You are not leaving!” she screeches.  “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

“Fine, then I’m going to the pisser.” He says.

He disappears for what seems like a really long time.  While he’s gone, she opens up the champagne bottle.  The “pop” sounds really loud in the room, and she looks over at the sweet older couple sitting at the table next to theirs.  “Would you like some?” she offers.  “We’ve had plenty, really.”

They try to defer gracefully but before anyone can blink she’s up out of her seat and chatting their ear off, completely spoiling their tender romantic moment.  Finally her date comes back and the two of them walk back to their table.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!” she slurs at him for like the fifth time.  “Now sit your ass down and then drink this champagne and then we’re going to dance to a romantic song.”

He sits but starts staring out the window again.  She pours him a glass of champagne.  She forces him into a toast but after a half a sip she is ready to go dance.  He wants to sit and stare out the window.

“Fine,” she says, “I’m going to dance by myself.”  She makes a beeline for the dance floor.  He gets up and starts to stumble after her.

“Whore!” he yells after her.

I look at Chris.  Chris looks at me.  “Did he just call her a whore?”

“Yes,” Chris says, “I believe he did.”

Right then Drunk Guy realizes that he was standing in front of the older couple’s table as he was yelling obscenities at his date.  He glances at them and offers a sheepish, “sorry.”

So he heads to the dance floor and we can only assume they are dancing.

That is, until right in the middle of some sappy romantic song, we hear a commotion on the dance floor and see a flash of someone falling down.  And in case there was any doubt, we hear Drunk Girl’s voice wail, “I fell!” and then start giggling.

Chris looks at me.  “This was the best Valentine’s Day ever, honey.  I’m glad we could take this moment to reflect on our love for each other.  And make fun of other people.  But mostly I enjoyed making fun of the Drunk Couple.”

Finally, the cruise came to an end.  Chris and I gathered up our things and got ready to head off the ship and to our car.  But not, of course, before I opened my purse and deftly scooted all the chocolate candies right off our table and into my bag.  I may not have had room to eat them just then, but I certainly could save them for later.

Valentine’s Day, PART 2

The one that all the food servers will appreciate.

Part 3 of this story, “Dinner and an improv show,” is really the best part.  I will give you a little bit of foreshadowing when I say that our dinner cruise involved unlimited champagne and some people have no self-censorship when it comes to free booze.

So based on some free-champagne antics of our dining neighbors, one of the waitresses told us this story.

“You know, people do crazy things.  This one time I had a couple, and I kept noticing throughout the night that their wine glasses were always full.  I thought, ‘that’s a little weird, but they must be getting their drinks at the bar.’  However, every single time I approached their table, the glasses were full.  And I saw them drinking out of them.

Well, finally I noticed that they had brought in several bottles of wine and hidden them under the table.  They were pouring themselves wine from under the table when they didn’t think I was looking.

So, I decided to play a little trick on them.

I went and found the biggest, meanest-looking bouncer that we had (he’s actually a big sweetheart).  And I had him approach their table and tell them that we caught them on security camera (we don’t have cameras).  And he told them that if they didn’t pay the corkage fee, we would call the coast guard and have them arrested.  A group of us were hiding in the kitchen and watching this exchange through the window.  You should’ve seen their faces.  It was fantastic.

And they paid the corkage fee.

P.S. Apparently I need to retrain myself on how to use a staple gun

So to make a long story short, I was attempting to staple some things to some stuff and in the middle of attaching a laminated piece of paper to some corrugated plastic I hear, "pffffft".

I paused, perplexed for a minute.  Then....

Ohcrapohcrapohcrap.

I just stapled into a can of spray paint.

I lift up the corrugated plastic and underneath is a can of spray paint, rapidly exploding paint out of its side.  It's spraying everywhere and I panic and I don't know what to do so I throw the spray paint in the tool box but then it is still leaking paint everywhere and I scramble to put it in a plastic bag and finally get it in the bag but now I've got paint all over my hands.

Bonus: I managed not to get black spray paint all over my clothes.

Bummer:  I did get black spray paint all over my hands.  So much for having a pretty manicure at my fancy dinner tonight.

And so ends Part I.  Stay tuned for Part II...