2005-02-18
Life Lessons For Babz. Well, for this week anyway.
It's been a very educational week for me.
Things I've learned:
1. Everyone -- with the exception of 4 people -- in lower Michigan -- smokes Virginia Slims Menthol Lights. The other four smoke Marlboro Lights. I'm very picky about my cigarettes -- I figure if I'm going to kill myself slowly I'm going to do it with something I enjoy. Even though every clerk tries to tell me that Benson and Hedges Menthol Lights are EXACTLY the same. Yeah. Sure, just like Turning Leaf Chardonnay is exactly the same as Bernardus. Mmmmm-hmmmmmm.
One CVS NEVER has them -- NEVER -- and their excuse is that some lady comes in every Wednesday and buys ALL of their VSMLs. So, I think, huh. Well, if I was a cigarette supplier and I noticed that a particular brand runs out every. single. fucking. week, I might actually think to up the inventory. I'm just thinking here. Therefore, I'm forced to run all over hell's half acres to find them, eventually having to go to Abdul's Gas Station, Dry Cleaners, and flight school where inevitably the cigarettes are STALE. I hate stale cigarettes and skunk wine. Both make me very cranky. (At least you can send wine back and get better stuff -- in Michigan you cannot return cigarettes. This annoys me.)
2. Michigan in the winter has 4,765 shades of gray. Most of the time it's like living on that alien planet where Sigourney and her underlings were running around in weird looking Hummers trying to avoid having their faces attacked by crab-like creatures. Today it's actually sunny, and there are clouds. It's good to be back on planet earth.
3. If you have to bring a dish to pass for some lame going-away potluck lunch at work, DON'T volunteer to bring in soup. HB, the wonder husband, made this Rocking-Ass Potato-Leek-Kielbasa soup for me last night because I was out cavorting with MyStaff, and it was a nightmare trying to get it into work without it sloshing all over the place. In SPITE of the fact that I wedged it onthe passenger side floor, bringing the seat all the way up, using my briefcase as additional ballast, in SPITE of the fact that I drove like 12 mph to work and took turns like a little old lady, some stupid (female) driver did one of those "should I stop for the yellow light? should I? Oh damn... I just don't know" (slow down - SPEED UP - slow down...) and decided that she would, in fact, stop.
*TIP* goes the soup, sloshing 1/2 it's contents onto my floor mat.
me: FUCKING-A GODDAMIT!!!
I screamed it so loud I think she heard me. She CERTAINLY saw how annoyed I was after I uprighted the crockpot and assessed the damage because I gave my best menacing "If it weren't so cold I'd get out of my car and hurl kielbasa pieces at your window" looks into her rear view mirror. She was scared. I know it.
I had to stop at Abdul's place (again on the hunt for cigarettes) to dump my matt out, and lost about 30 wedges of delicious kelbasa in the process, and now my matt looks like somebody hurled on it -- all wet with little chunks of onions. At least it doesn't smell that way.
My staff are giving me shit because it looks like I brought in enough soup for about 3 people. Shut UP. So 3 people will get to enjoy HB's delicious soup. And maybe even get one piece of Kielbasa each. Fuckit. Next time I'm signing up for pop (why do boys always get to be assigned things like "pop" or "chips"?)
4. My boss took me and MyStaff out last night for a celebratory dinner for the big office reconfig we did this fall. It was fun -- good food -- and I got to use my french with a darling waiter from South Africa. I even had to explain to him that no, I really had not intended for him to THROW my 1/2 eaten dinner away, but instead had asked for a "puboir", which I thought meant doggy bag. Ah.... apparently it means "garbage". So he had the chef make me another 1/2 dinner -- either that or I got someone else's doggy bag who ate nearly the same thing I did. Somehow my roasted potatoes had become mashed, and my asparagus had morphed into green beans. I don't care. I'll eat it anyway, because I'm white trash like that.
After dinner, a couple of the gals and I went to play pool at a local Ann Arbor dive called The Blind Pig. It has cool cave-like bar with pool tables in the basement, and a dance/band club upstairs. It attracts the upper crust of weirdness in Ann Arbor, but I'm learning that the weirder someone looks -- we're talking dreadlocks and multiple layered outfits purchased from Value Village (on *purpose*, I mean, really) -- the nicer they are. We met a sweet young guy who clearly had some kind of issue -- either hearing impaired or just developmentally disabled. Sweet as can be, and could play pool like nobody's business. He taught me a lot, and I kind of made him my ward for the night. After assuring me he was 21 (as in JUST), I bought him a beer, and proceeded to put out for 4 games of pool with him. It was a cheap lesson. And hey -- he insisted on giving me his phone number. In case I wanted to play pool again. Too cute. I might take him up on it, become a pool expert, and become rich rich RICH.
The only other thing I learned this week is all of the words to "Jesus Walks" because I can't stop listening to it. Well, okay the chorus at least.
Because I'm a pimp-ass MamaJama playa like that.
Word.
Ghetto Fabulous xquzme Slither
(Get YOUR pimp name here !
xquzme at sometime today