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Long time no see I knew this would happen. I knew it months ago when I started getting letters in the mail telling me my gym had changed its name. There was a new sign outside. New machines in front of the windows upstairs. They even had a guy directing traffic in the parking lot. In fact, he directed me out of one of my favorite spots and told me to park in back of the building. When I walked inside, I saw it. A new barcode reader, the worst of my fears. I took out my keys, casually swiped my card and tried following another guy into the weight room. Then ... BEEEP BEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! "Hold up. Come here, let me see that," said the buff guy behind the counter. I was caught. Damn fitness nazis had caught me trying to break into their elite camp after months of inactivity and atrophy. I handed him my card. "Oh, you have one of the old ones," he said, typing something on the keyboard, shaking his head at whatever information was on the screen. "How long has it been?" he asked. "It's been a few months," I said with a bit of an attitude, as if I had some grand excuse. How does he know I haven't had a death in the family? Or several! How the hell does he know that I haven't been stuck underneath a 5-ton boulder since October? Huh, yeah, that's what I thought, buddy. Don't be passing judgment on me, you ignorant bastard. "We have a $10 membership now," he said, somewhat concerned. "Looks like you're still paying the old rate, over twice as much." Crap.  7:08 a.m. Just before my alarm clock went off, I was sitting on a large outdoor restaurant patio, waiting for my food. I think I had walked there from school, though it was dark out, and I sat with two girls I had never met before. It was summer, but the war was still going on. The fighter jets were making our conversation difficult, but we mostly ignored them, despite the explosion of nearby buildings. The sky was absolute chaos, multiple layers of explosions and firepower at different altitudes above our heads. At a pause in the conversation, I looked up to watch. Biker gangs on Harleys flew through the air, shooting each other with handguns. The bullets were bright red against the black space. Finally, one bullet hit its target, a lone rider who then fell off his bike and dropped to the ground. 7:09 a.m. Time to go to work. --- I should note that a few nights earlier, I was being chased by scud missiles in a different war altogether. I blame Tom Cruise for all this. And the war-crazed son who should have died in War of the Worlds. Beep beep'm beep beep yeah My girlfriend just bought this for me ...  Okay, not really. But she bought me a miniature model of it! It's the truck I've wanted for about two years -- the Ford F-150 FX4. Crewcab, please. Make it black. When I was living in Savannah, this truck became one of my best friends. For about a month, I visited him every Sunday afternoon at the dealer near my apartment. I'd stare inside the windows, marvel at the sleek interior and then I'd look at the sticker price and sigh. Someday, I reassured him. Someday. I called the dealer for a rough quote while I was at work one day. I laughed at the salesman, but he still called me almost every week until I left Savannah, each time forgetting that I had already told him I couldn't afford it. Then one day he must have been in a particularly bad mood because when I told him again that I couldn't afford it, he replied, "Well, we can't sell cars for zero dollars!" He repeated that line two more times before hanging up. At least now I won't have to go to a dealer to ogle at this beautiful beast of a vehicle. Only, I wish I could just put the model into some water and it would magically grow into its real-size counterpart so I could then drive it out of my apartment by smashing through the walls and then I'd tow something really, really heavy. Like a T-Rex. Best. Present. Ever. For Candor's Sake  New and Improved Out with Munchies for the Addiction. In with Lyrical Munchies. After nearly 3 years of blogging, I decided recently that the title of this space was a bit too ambiguous. So, I decided to stick with the domain name to make things less confusing, and with that, I felt a new design was in order. Say goodbye to the cheeseburger, hello to a vintage refrigerator filled with tons more tasty treats. Or, something like that. Next on the list: new Web space! Whoooo! Other news ... I'm a bit drugged by mac-n-cheese at the moment, and a bit drained from another fantastic weekend with Sarizzle, but my mind is just functional enough for this brief update: Life is good. Work - Busy. My Annual Review is coming up next month, which means, in addition to a stressful meeting with my two supervisors and the head of HR, I should (hopefully) be getting a raise and a fairly substantial bonus. Therefore, I'll be able to spend that on things like my ... Social Life - #1 priority for this week: finish my Christmas shopping! Sad, isn't it? I have one good friend in this area and I still haven't gotten her anything for Christmas. I am the worst friend ever. Various vacation plans are also in the works right now. If all goes well, I'll be headed down to Ocean City, Maryland, for the weekend before Valentine's Day. Not exactly the most ideal beach weather right now, but hey, that's why we have hot tubs. Other tentative plans: weeklong trip to Rockport, Massachusetts, this summer with Sara, and a possible mountain biking trip with my boss. He says India. I say, pay me more. In either case, I'm definitely going to have to improve my ... Physical Well-Being - Still hoping to start going to the gym again since it's been months since my last visit. Also, the weights in my apartment are collecting dust, and my body is desperately begging me to go to the doctor for a checkup. Actually, what it's really begging me for right now is some sleep, so I think I'll cut this update short and go pass out on my bed. Have I mentioned life is good? A New Year - Part 3 of 3 The Beginning Sara emailed her boss late Sunday night to tell him she wouldn't be coming in on Monday. Her reasons, omitted from the email: a chance to sleep late, go to the diner, watch Aliens and relax on the futon one last time before I'd have to make the trip back to Elizabethtown. It was another great day, the final one in an amazingly comfortable weekend surrounding the best -- and certainly the most memorable -- New Year's I've ever had. I wasn't looking forward to leaving, but there was still plenty to celebrate. The Escort, after all, had reached 95,000 miles as we pulled into the parking lot of Michael's Diner in Kingston. A momentous occasion for us all. Around 5 o'clock, I did a final search around her apartment for my clothes and other things I had managed to scatter everywhere in the four days since I had arrived. Outside, we hugged and kissed goodbye before I got in my car and headed back home. By the third time I went off course from my intended route back to PA, I was starting to think I was losing my mind. I was going east when I should have been going west. I was taking wrong exits. I was getting lost looking for a McDonald's that was 10 miles off the interstate. Call it distraction or a lack of concentration. Call it preoccupation. Whatever it was, the last thing on my mind was getting home. I was thinking about the entire weekend as if the whole thing had just snuck up out of nowhere and hit me in the face. What the hell just happened? In those four short days, about a million things had changed, all for the better, including nearly every part of my life directly or indirectly related to this two-week-old relationship. Unreasonable, too fast, I would say to anyone else in these shoes. But no one else could possibly understand all this, no matter how tight they tied the laces. So this is what it's like. My cell phone died as I was talking to Sara later on during the drive. "A lot of things changed this weekend," she later said. I reached Elizabethtown around 11:30 p.m. and realized the four and half hour drive had taken me six. Oh well, I thought. I unpacked my cell phone charger, got into bed, and started dialing. "It's only two more weeks," I said. A New Year - Part 2 of 3 A Resurrection Mike, the auto mechanic, called my cell phone at 3:30 on New Year's Eve. Rebuilt alternator: $242 Serpentine belt: $35 Labor: $85 Towing: $50 The Escort was alive. We drove two and a half hours through snow and stop-and-go traffic back to Mahwah. I was lucky, Mike said when we got there. The garage had already closed, but he had waited an extra hour for us on a Saturday night. Mike was a good guy. Sara and I followed each other out of New Jersey and back into New York. The snow had turned to rain, but there were still a few inches on the ground by the time we got back to Tivoli, another two hours later. It was around 9 when she unexpectedly pulled her Subaru to the side of road, about a mile from her apartment. It was a good idea, I thought immediately. We'd stop for dinner first. It was my third time at Osaka, the Japanese restaurant in town, the other two times now vague memories from my years at Bard. It was quiet and warm inside, instantly comforting as if we had just been playing in the snow for hours. There were six other people eating dinner as Sara and I shared our sushi. We talked for a while but left quickly for her apartment where a bottle of white wine and a really bad horror movie were waiting for us. At midnight we opened a bottle of champagne, ran outside to bang pots on her balcony, then scurried back in for a kiss and a toast to a New Year. We were a bit tipsy by the time we popped in another horror movie, drunk by the time it ended. I wasn't necessarily trying to be romantic when I decided to carry her into the bedroom. Mostly I was just testing my WWF wrestling moves with a body slam onto the mattress. Hours later I found the wine glass I had knocked over on the way, and the two-foot streak of champagne that had shot along her carpet when it happened. We stayed in bed till about 12:30 the next day, and afterwards Sara made breakfast: scrambled eggs, potatoes, linked sausage. By then, the thought had already crossed my mind several times. Something is happening here. A New Year - Part 1 of 3 First Clues I was making great time on my way to Tivoli, despite the rain, despite the evening rush-hour traffic. I had about an hour left to go when the ABS light turned on in the dash. It had happened before, so I wasn't worried. I was on the phone with Mara at the time, passing cars at about 80 miles an hour. Nothing crazy. She said, "You sound really excited, have you been drinking coffee?" A minute later, my air bag light turned on, then started to flash. "That's weird," I said. "My car is doing some interesting things." Then the radio shut off. The wipers came to a stop. The dash board went completely black. "Umm, yeah, I better go," I said. I made it to Exit 66 - Mahwah, New Jersey, before the car slowed to a complete stop on the off-ramp. None of my lights were working and the few cars that passed had to swerve. Each wished me luck with a friendly 3-second honk. I flipped the hood of my sweatshirt, went out in the rain and started dialing. Tried Information, tried Triple A. I waited on hold for about 15 minutes before I got back in my car, started it up, to my surprise, and drove another half-mile before it died again in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot. When I called Triple A again, they connected me to a closed office in Pennsylvania. When I called Information, asking for a towing service, they connected me to a locksmith. With some help from an angry convenience store clerk, I finally called a tow truck, and minutes later "Tony" arrived. "What's wrong with your car, man?" Tony said when he got there. When I started to explain, he interrupted, "Well, you can either pay now or pay later. The reason I'm giving you this option is because I like you." And suddenly things seemed shady. But Tony did like me. He towed my car. Told me stories. Even dropped me off with my bag at the 24-Hour State Line Diner in Mahwah. There, I ate a grilled-cheese sandwich with tomato before waiting in the vestibule for Sara to come get me, from 80 miles away. It wasn't exactly the scenario I had been looking forward to, two days before New Year's Eve, this being only our first meeting since deciding to see each other seriously two weeks earlier. And yet, little did either of us realize the evil forces present in Mahwah, New Jersey. Before the end of the night, Sara had driven over three hours, all because of one dead Ford Escort. We reached her apartment around 11:30, both of us exhausted and quick to plop onto the futon in her living room. It wasn't long, however, before she stood again to give me two Christmas presents, prefaced by a message inside the card that said, "A little something for us both." Cue the big bear hug and peck on the lips. Later, we changed into our pajamas and I stood awkwardly in the doorway of her bedroom before saying, "So, I'm just going to camp out on this couch out here." "What?" she said. "No." |
Late night snacks. Bite-sized ramblings. Old-fashioned eats, served fresh daily. Open 24-7.  Other blogs Fireballs and Tsunami JeffreyDavis.net Mismatched Parentheses NimbleSixpence One Tortured Soul Palpably Inadequate Picnic, Lightning Pony Legs, Temporarily Supernouveau Wander Lust In my DVD player Archives June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 Other stuff Homestarrunner One Slime DeepDiscountDVD Olde English Sketch Comedy Live Music Archive Copy Army Copywriting Service Love & Radio This One Time Email me mmjunior / at / hotmail   
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