tales of a three-day weekend
:: FRIDAY EVENING ::
Having made it through the most difficult part of the weekend — choosing a paint color, I find myself at the paint counter at Lowe’s. I give the paint chip and two gallons of paint to one of the people wearing a red vest. As I wait for the paint to be mixed, another employee walks behind the counter and asks if I’m being helped.
“I am,” I say, “but I do have a question. What’s in the box marked ‘Feather Pickers’?” I point to a cardboard box behind him.
“I have no idea!” he says with a laugh.
He walks over and looks in the open box. “Caulk.”
“Oh. Right. Of course…” I say with mock understanding.
:: SATURDAY MORNING ::
I finally get my garden planted. I still think it’s a miracle that a seed + dirt + light + water = vegetables.
:: SATURDAY LUNCHTIME ::
A nearby church is hosting a community Fun Fair, so I stop by to get a pork BBQ sandwich for lunch. I approach the serving area, but can’t seem to figure out where I’m supposed to place my order and pay. A man wandering around near me appears to be struggling with the same thing. I ask someone behind the tables where the line begins (“Right here!” she says) and tell the enthusiastic woman that I’d like just the sandwich (i.e., not the full meal with coleslaw and whatever else).
The man behind me tells her that he would like just the sandwich too.
“That’s odd,” I think to myself. Usually the second person in line waits to place their order until after the first person has paid. I tell myself that he was probably just trying to be helpful so that the people serving could prepare two sandwiches at once and be more efficient.
“That’ll be seven dollars,” the woman with the moneybox says.
“Oh! We’re not together,” I say.
Next time this happens (which will be never), I won’t bother to correct the misunderstanding. Instead, I will put on my best “wow, I’m flattered by your generosity” face, say “thank you” to the person behind me, and move on down the line. If you’re a young, single man and you don’t want to pay for my lunch, then you shouldn’t place your order before I’ve paid for mine!
:: SATURDAY EVENING ::
After mowing my yard, I stand on the sidewalk and chat with my old/new neighbors. They have recently moved back to the area after living elsewhere for a few years. He tells me that they have bought his dad’s shoe repair business, which is one of two here in town. I express surprise that there is enough demand for shoe repair, and ask whether this is his sole occupation. He catches the pun before I do.
:: SUNDAY MORNING ::
I visit a church that I’ve never been to before. It’s more formal and, well, gray-haired than I expect. The first song we sing is a praise-and-worship song — accompanied with the organ and directed like a hymn. This oughta be good.
While the pastor preaches about the Pharisees, the image being projected onto the wall behind him suddenly switches to one of a cow in a grassy field. No one else appears to find this funny. A minute later, while I’m still trying not to smirk, he makes a reference to animals. Before long, the projected image is of a man standing on the edge of a cliff. The minor reference in the sermon doesn’t come ’til later. Just before the final prayer at the end of the service, we were treated to a picture of a cute puppy.
PowerPoint FAIL.
:: SUNDAY AFTERNOON ::
The woman sitting next to me at a dance recital thinks it is appropriate to talk during the performance. It is not. There is one empty chair between us, and I am not above giving withering looks, albeit in the mostly-dark auditorium. She also finds it necessary to get up and leave three times during the performance. Each time when she returns, she says, “Excuse me, sorry” at full volume. I regret choosing a seat near her.
:: MONDAY MORNING ::
While running errands and doing some shopping, I decide to stop in at Barnes & Noble to see if I can find an excuse to spend a gift card. I sit and page through some cookbooks while a man and his four(?)-year-old son browse the shelves and then also sit down to read. The adorable little boy wants his daddy to read to him. He makes this request four times in about 20 minutes and is refused each time. I miss my nephews and feel sorry for the bored kid, so I offer to read to him. I then realize that he is looking at a book from either the home improvement or creative arts section. Not so much a children’s story. The daddy takes the hint and decides that it’s time to go to the children’s section.
Quite a while later, I get up to leave. I see that the boy and his daddy are also walking towards the front of the store. The daddy isn’t wearing a wedding band. Was he wearing one before? Your guess is as good as mine.
I suddenly become very interested in the computer books I am walking past.
:: MONDAY NIGHT ::
Do I really have to go back to work tomorrow?
musical quotes
I’m keeping a delightfully steady pace with my progress on my New Year’s resolution to watch all 25 movies on the American Film Institute’s list of the top 25 musicals. I need to average two a month, and since it’s the middle of May, I’m right on track with 9 so far.
Here are a few memorable quotes I jotted down while watching several of the less popular musicals:
Jerry: That’s… quite a dress you almost have on.
Milo: Thanks.
Jerry: What holds it up?
Milo: Modesty.
Lise: It’s a pity you don’t have as much charm as you have persistence.
[Somebody]: Tell him you were wrong.
Fanny Brice: But I’m not!
[Somebody]: Oh.
Chip: Why do you have to chase after girls all the time?
Gabey: I’ll tell you when your voice changes.
Gabey: You know, somewhere in the world there’s a right girl for every boy. I guess I found the one for me before I even met you.
Dale (a female): I don’t know you from Adam.
Jerry: Maybe it’s the way I’m dressed.
Madge: Well if that’s your story, Horace, you stick to it.
only an expert would have known
“You’re the parentheses expert, right?”
“Yep!” I said without a moment of hesitation.
He laughed.
“I’m serious!” I insisted. “I’ve been doing some serious parenthesis work yesterday and today with some reports I’ve been creating.”
My boss laid a document on my desk that included references to various categories and asked whether I thought he should leave the parentheses in or take them out.
“Well, first of all, those are quotation marks.”
an open letter to the guy with the weedeater
Dear Guy With the Weedeater,
This evening when I was out for a walk, our paths crossed. You were carrying a weedeater and talking on a cell phone. As I passed you, I heard you tell your friend on the phone, “Dude, my old man was [angry], like… did you hear me?”
I wanted to turn around and say, “Unfortunately, I did.” But I decided not to be a jerk this evening, so I kept on walking. Before I was out of earshot, I heard two more four-letter words fly out of your mouth.
Your mama must be so proud of you.
Sincerely,
Someone Who’s Not a Fan of Verbal Pollution
why little girls don’t do math
“The reason I don’t do math is, I was taught to do math AND read at the same time. So you’re six years old, you’re reading Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. It becomes rapidly obvious that there are only two kinds of men in the world — dwarves and Prince Charmings. And the odds are seven to one against your finding the prince. That’s why little girls don’t do math; it’s too depressing.”
–comedian Emily Levine in her talk at TED
(Just for the record, I’ve always enjoyed math, I’ve never wanted to be a princess, and my super-well-developed sense of humor still allows me to think this joke is funny…)
other people’s cars
When I came home for lunch today, I discovered that a ton of identical signs had been posted on my street this morning, including this one in my front yard.
Apparently the Powers That Be have decided that it’s time for one of the shortest streets in town to get a makeover. This quiet little street is only one block long, so I’m not exactly sure why it’s on anyone’s priority list. I have an off-street parking spot, so the signs don’t mean much to me, but it certainly seems like the city ought to give a little more advance notice. May 12 is tomorrow. What if someone is out of town for a couple days and left one of their vehicles parked along the curb? Fortunately, that’s not my problem to solve.
However, when I returned home from work today at a few minutes after 5:00, I was stunned to see that two vehicles were already being loaded onto tow trucks. Both cars belonged to my next-door neighbors; one car was already loaded and the men were in the process of rigging up the other one. My neighbors were nowhere to be seen.
I was incapable of minding my own business, so within a matter of moments, I had decided on a course of action that was somewhere between running up to these men and demanding to know what they were doing… and quietly going into my house and ignoring the commotion on the street. I casually walked up to one of the men and inquired, “Does this have something to do with the paving tomorrow?”
“Yep, your car is next!” he said.
He had just seen me pull my car into my driveway, so I knew he was teasing. He went on to tell me that both cars had broken down, so they were towing them to the shop to be repaired. I’m pretty sure I don’t understand how one household can have two cars that suddenly die at the curb, but let’s hope my neighbors fare better than some friends of mine recently did. After completing work on my friends’ vehicle, the mechanic was backing the car out of the garage… and crashed right into the garage door. Apparently the door wasn’t all the way up, so it smashed the back window and crunched the roof of the car. The vehicle was totalled. Can you imagine?!
introducing a new friend of mine
I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to a new friend of mine.
Her name is Robin, and she’s actually going to be living here at my house for the next few weeks while she’s working on a project in this area. I’ve lived alone for the past eight years, and some of you have probably heard me say that the only “roommate” I’m looking for is someone who has first said “I do.” (Or maybe my sister, if I can convince her to leave Georgia and move here.)
So, why the exception in this case? Well, there are at least four reasons.
1. It’s only temporary. Robin isn’t going to be taking up permanent residence at my house, and she’s definitely planning to move out when the project ends.
2. She doesn’t have much stuff. Robin is definitely a minimalist.
3. The project she’s working on is incredibly cool (although I can’t tell you about it yet).
4. The jury is still out on whether this is a good thing, but from what I can tell, Robin is a lot like me. You know — talented, frugal, beautiful… ha!
But of course we’re not exactly alike.
I tend to be pretty neat, and I can already tell that this isn’t quite as much of a priority for her. When she was getting settled in, she left some clutter on the front porch that I eventually got rid of, which really wasn’t a big deal. But then the other day, I actually found some muddy footprints when I got home from work. I obviously wasn’t thrilled about that, but since it’s been raining so much recently, what else can you expect?
I obviously don’t know Robin very well yet, but I’ll probably be writing more about her during the next few weeks — and hopefully about her project too. Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see who I’m writing about, so here’s a picture I took of her this evening.
Oh, and did I mention that she’s living up in the corner of my porch?
excuse me while I have a crisis
As I was poking around Facebook this evening, I subconsciously saw the following ad:
Only the top half of the ad was visible, so I couldn’t see the picture that put the text in context. The only reason the ad got my full attention is that my peripheral vision totally ignored one of the letter U’s.
Last-minute crises? What a perfect excuse to get out of something I don’t want to do! I think I’ll stock up.
