On Sunday, I went to my first live football game ever. I've watched football on tv plenty of times but I'd never seen it in person--going to sissy schools or girls schools can do that to you. The experience might have been a disaster, since it was cold, and Christmas, and rainy, but it turned out to be fabulous! I can't believe I'm writing this, but I actually kinda wanna go to another game.
My dad bought the tickets in October from a coworker who owns rights to the seats. I had wanted to go all along, but I didn't realize how excited I was until the night before the game, when I dreamed about it. (I dreamed that my dad procrastinated getting ready and we missed the game, and I was so angry at him in my dream that in the morning I was still upset.) Plus I got depressed when I woke up Sunday morning to the sound of rain hitting my window. Although the weatherman had predicted temperatures of around 50, it was actually much colder out, like 40 or maybe even 35.
Luckily walking to work during the strike had prepared me for dealing with prolonged exposure to the cold, and luckily it stopped raining about an hour before we left for the game. My dad and Javert both wore pajama bottoms under their pants, (because I'm rational and a good advance planner, I wore tights and long underwear that I'd brought from NY) and lots of sweaters. My dad also brought a huge bag filled with extra clothes and blankets, just in case, and I brought a book, also just in case.
We parked in a garage downtown and walked to the Ravens stadium, which is new and gigantic. To get in, men and women must line up separately to get searched. So I was separated from the boys, and since football attracts relatively few women, I got in a lot quicker than they did. Ten minutes later, I was still waiting around with all the other women, about to call Javert's cell phone, when I saw him. Apparently my dad's bag of extra clothes was too big to bring into the stadium (cause all bombs are big) and he had to go back to check it at a booth half a mile away.
Of course, since I had never been to a football game before (or probably even seen the start of one), I didn't care that we might miss the kickoff or whatever its called. My dad finally got back and we went to our seats, which were very close to the field and near the 40 yard line. I'm not sure if we missed anything or not, but it didn't seem to matter much.
Football is much more exciting in person than on tv (even sped-up tv). It's faster paced than baseball, which I'm used to seeing in person, and the fans are much more interesting. Even though I didn't really understand what was happening in the beginning, it didn't matter because the guys in back of us had a running commentary going the whole time. And who doesn't enjoy seeing fat men take their shirts off in 40 degree weather? (Actually this only happened near the end, and only involved really drunk people, so it ended up being entertaining anyway).
I felt kinda out of place, since unlike 99% of the people there, I wasn't wearing any Ravens paraphernalia and I wasn't drunk. Had my dad not been with us, and had beer not cost $7.50 a cup, things might have gone differently, but--alas--I had only the one obligatory beer to warm me up halfway through the game. I told Javert to get some food when I sent him for beer and he returned with french fries. Bravo, Javert! Also, my dad left at some point and returned with hot pretzels, which was fantastic. There's nothing like steaming hot food and cold beer to warm up a person who has been sitting outside for 4 hours on Christmas night.
Anyway, the Ravens won after a pretty exciting game that was tied for a long time. By the end, I could watch the game and understand what was happening, which impressed me. Apparently the game is less fun when the home team loses, but since their record was so bad this year I doubt it would have mattered too much had they lost. After the game we had to race back to the bag check tent, and then back to the garage which claimed to close at midnight. We got there with 4 minutes to spare.
I know all the excuses about how professional sports suck, and I generally agree with them. I hate that athletes make millions of dollars and that the game is geared more for television advertisers than in person fans. I hate that the recent transit strike paralyzed the city and directly affected livelihoods of millions of people, yet still attracted far less attention and far less passion than did the 1994 baseball strike. I hate how athletes are heros and teachers aren't, and I hate that Americans spend so much money on sports games and equipment.
But somehow I could ignore these feelings for the duration of the game. Maybe I bought into the sports hype? Maybe it was peer pressure from all the other fans? At the game, people seemed so happy, maybe because that morning they'd opened a bunch of presents, but maybe because they just had some way of taking a break from normal life and a way of becoming passionate about something, that in the end, they know doesn't really matter to anyone.
Note: I also got to see real live cheerleaders! Oh yeah!
Was it really worth it to get up at 8am on Saturday so that I could go to Wegmans? Yes, it was.
This store is amazing. Not only do they have a bazillion types of foods, but the people in there are SO nice--customers and employees alike. We left home so early that I didn't have time to have coffee, so that's the first thing I did at the store. I was fumbling with my cup and couldn't find the lids, and a man handed me one. Cheerfully, too. Then, the coffee urn ran out, and I turned around to find a store employee to fill it back up but he was already right behind me, with a new urn of fresh coffee. When Javert tried to strangle me (in jest, of course...or was it?) a Wegmans employee said "No strangling in Wegmans!" And a bakery employee insisted that we wait for her to go get some fresh french bread when we were discussing which kind to use for bruschetta. Then, due to a miscalculation on my mom's part, we lost our cart, but the bakery lady happily got us more bread even though we'd been idiots. Finally, in the parking lot, I asked a man where Walmart was, and he answered me like I'd just told him he'd won the lottery. Maybe I've been in New York too long, maybe it was the "Holiday" spirit, I don't know, but people were super nice.
Anyway, back to Wegmans. They have candy in bulk, like at candy shops and movie theaters. There's a toy train that goes around the whole store on a track near the ceiling, tooting its horn at intervals. There's two kinds of basil, and a cheese section that's probably bigger than my apartment, and get this---MINI MORNINGSTAR FARM CORN DOGS! It doesn't get any better than this!
We went to Wegman's to get last minute things for my grandmother's 85th birthday party which was that night. She's depressed about her age, so she just invited her next-door neighbor, her sister, and her best friend to my parents house for dinner. I made most of the food except the turkey (my mom made that): olive paste, bruschetta, turkey gravy, sweet potato casserole, asparagus and tomato salad, stuffing, spiced pecans, and apple pie. My dad made cranberry sauce and my great aunt made jello mold and something that vaguely resembled green bean casserole. The grocery store made a strawberry shortcake birthday cake that my mom ended up getting for free. It was all delicious, but conversation was rather lacking. The elderly folks sat close together at one end of the table, leaving the rest of us far enough away that we could hear them but they couldn't hear us (this isn't difficult, as they're all quite hard of hearing.) My grandmother has a hearing aid that makes a constant high-pitched beeping noise, which made for great entertainment, and my great aunt refuses to admit her hearing loss and therefore shouts everything she says, which is a lot. The elderly faction spent most of the night discussing the food options, Ambien, and Social Security (which, being lifelong Baltimoreans, they pronouce "SocSecurity"), and confusing the champagne with the sparkling apple cider (this was VERY amusing).
We bought a princess crown for my grandmother to wear, and a pin that said "Aged to Perfection." She put the crown on immediately, but she was afraid to put the pin on her blouse because she thought it might damage it. Instead she attached it to her glasses chain, where it hung all night.
For her birthday, we gave my grandmother a fleece-lined robe and a phone for people with hearing problems. My great-aunt gave her this purse, best described by a word I never use: "bling." This purse almost blinded me, it was so shiny. I'm sure it will be great fun when my grandmother forgets which of the 49 zippered compartments she put her keys in and freaks out, thinking she lost them.
More on my trip home later, including: my take on an NFL game and how I freaked out a Walmart employee.
I have been to Bed, Bath, and Beyond way more times than a person should in one week. I was there last Saturday to buy sheets and curtains, last Sunday to exchange one of said curtains since it was defective, on Tuesday to buy a humidifier, and on Saturday to return both curtains since they were two inches different in length (and neither was the 84 inches they each claimed to be). And I have to go back again to return the hooks for the defective curtains, since I didn't have them with me last time.
On our way to Bed, Bath, and Beyond this past Saturday, Javert and I stopped at Fairway Cafe, since we wanted to more fully participate in Upper West Side Living. We sat down and after our waitress took our orders for coffee, she said, "Uh, do you guys by any chance live on Our Street?" We were like "yeah..." and she said "I live in number Our Building Number." She lives two floors down from us. How weird is that? Javert now says he remembers her from a building party this fall, but I didn't recognize her. She's extremely pretty and I definitely think I would have remembered that someone that attractive lives 20 feet away.
Later on during our coffee in Fairway Cafe, we saw Ed Koch, the former mayor. We'd seen him on Thursday night on TV, standing behind Reptile Bloomberg during TRANSIT STRIKE WATCH 2005 (stay tuned for up-to-date info! Don't change the channel! PLEASE!) Koch looks much older in person.
Obviously I didn't recognize him in the cafe, since I NEVER recognize famous people. Lucky for me there were a few normal people there who managed to both notice Koch and then talk about it at a reasonable volume level loud enough for Javert (but not me) to hear, and then Javert told me.
A few minutes later my mother called from the mall, since we've been in nearly constant communication regarding what to buy my grandmother whose birthday is Saturday and who owns everything there is to own, ever. After discussing and rejecting the 499th birthday present idea my mom came up with, I couldn't resist telling her that Koch was sitting a few tables away. She asked "Is he with the former Miss America star?" (what is she talking about?) and I said "No, he seems to be with a family," at which point Javert forced me to leave the cafe.
These incidents raise interesting issues, like how do you relate to your server in a restaurant/neighbor if she also happens to live in your building/be your waitress? Or how come we get a little crazy when we see famous people? Or what exactly is the difference between what/who we see on tv and what/who we see in person? And most importantly, will I recognize the next famous person/neighbor I see?
Just now, my friend and co-worker Phil was at his desk and made a funny noise, so I turned around and asked what was wrong. Apparently, he was trying to peel a banana and the top wasn't coming off right. Afraid that if he continued trying to open it that way, it would get all mushy, Phil used his mouth to pry the top off, and the banana's outside skin tasted disgusting and felt rather reptilian, causing him to make that noise. Here I must point out that Phil has very strict standards as to the fruit he'll eat, which is why he was trying at all costs to avoid causing mushiness. In order for him to eat it, Phil's piece of fruit must have no blemishes and must be firm, which in my opinion causes him to reject many perfectly edible delectables.
I told him I'd never put my mouth on the outside of a banana since you didn't know where it had been. I mean, we're talking about bananas here. They come from halfway across the world, god knows who has touched them and done god knows what else with them. They're BANANAS. The same goes for zucchinis and cucumbers and any other vegetable or fruit with that shape. Phil said he was more concerned that they'd be poisoned by pesticides, but since his was organic that didn't matter. And furthermore, he added, his particular banana had come attached to a bunch of 3 or 4 other bananas. That made me feel slightly better about the situation and I'm no longer worried that Phil might have contracted mouth herpes from his banana.
Still, I find it strange that anyone--especially someone with such particular requirements for the fruit he eats--would be willing to put his mouth on the outside parts of said fruit, especially a fruit that is not customarily washed.Has anyone else ever thought about this?I hope you people aren't sitting at home reading this while chomping on unwashed banana peels or unscrubbed cucumber skins.
Blech!
And yes, clearly I have a 12 year-old's sense of humor.And the fears of a crazy person.
As you already have learned, Javert started working at a new job about two weeks ago. I've been forbidden from revealing the exact name of the company or even using the very clever alias I came up with, so I'll just call it Initech. (It's not like Initech, but so what?)
Initech had their Holiday Party on Friday. I was looking forward to this party for weeks (okay, for the one week that I knew about it) and even went shopping in The-Car-Seat-Lady's closet for something appropriate to wear (didn't find anything). Conveniently, my mother was coming to visit on the night of the party, and since we didn't think it would be right to bring her (Javert: Hello new Initech friends. This is my wife, Emil, and this is my mother-in-law) we had to do some arranging to keep her occupied during our absence. In the end, my brother ended up babysitting her.
Anyway, since my mom was at my apartment, she helped me get dressed for the party. After rejecting almost every item of clothing I own, she finally accepted a pair of brown and sparkly gold Old Navy pants (an old donation by The-Car-Seat-Lady) and a black sweater, coupled with a scarf I had made and pointy Bruno Magli shoes (yet another CSL donation). I worried that I'd be underdressed, but really didn't have anything else.
My mother also forced me to wear makeup. I wore concealer (or foundation? it came in a bottle) and rouge and eyeliner, plus chapstick. I have to admit that I did look good. But there's no way I'd spend 10 minutes doing that every morning.
Javert showed me the tickets he'd received for this party. They were laminated and said Initech's Winter Party 2005 on them and had a picture of a snowflake. My first thought: I spent all day trying to find money so that Holocaust survivors can afford to buy food, and here we are with a pair of laminated tickets to get us into a party. This company obviously has money to burn. Which I already knew, but I can't tell you why or you'd figure out what company it is. Anyway, this company has a reputation for being benevolent and friendly but very exclusive, so I didn't really know what to expect from their party. I guess I did expect a goody-bag, since my friend who crashed last year's Martha Stewart holiday party got stole one.
Initech's party was at a club/event space downtown. When we got to the door, Javert flashed the laminated tickets and the bouncer moved a red velvet rope aside so we could enter. Inside, we had to hand over the tickets, have our names checked off on a list (even my name was there, not just "guest") AND have our hands stamped. We checked our coats and walked into the party room.
I don't even know what to describe first. I guess I'll start with the ice sculpture in the middle of the bar area (well, one bar area, since there were like 29), which said INITECH. But it was a technologically advanced sculpture with hollowed out sections where bartenders would pour drinks in one side and catch them on the other. We both ordered gin and tonics, which turned out to be 99% gin. Hmm, I thought to myself, maybe Initech is okay... Then we found the people Javert knows, who were in line for food. Which was little tiny veggie burgers (think bite-sized), equally small pieces of pizza, french fries, and some other stuff I didn't eat.
By this time I had noticed that I could divide the people at the party into two groups based on their clothing. Group 1 men wore nice pants and button down shirts with ties, or shirts without ties, or sweaters. Group 1 women wore things similar to what I wore, or the skirt equivalent. Group 2 men wore full suits with pink or purple ties. Group 2 women wore fancy dresses. Based on this, I concluded that Group 1 were tech people, and Group 2 were marketing and MBA types. Meeting these people confirmed my assumption. Group 1's seemed nerdy and pretentious but mostly normal, meaning I could communicate with them. Group 2's seemed overly smarmy and pretentious and on a different social plane from me.
A Group 2 male and female were ahead of us in line for food, totally making out the entire time. While attempting to stare at anything else to avoid looking at them, I noticed that EVERYONE IN THE ROOM WAS UNDER 30! I'm not kidding here, there were probably 20 people out of the 300 or more at the party who were older than 30. Really!
When the dj started playing Madonna, I realized I was actually at a high school dance. Except this high school dance allowed alcohol (and LOTS of it) and had unkosher food and I only hated about 3/4 of the people there instead of 7/8.
Every girl I met, no matter what her Group designation was, told me how she'd heard the dj was famous and had been engaged to Nicole Richie. Too bad that a. I don't care and b. he sucked.
The most embarrassing incident at the party: I went to sit down with Javert and his friend, and my chair collapsed and I FELL OFF. I'd not even finished my first drink at this point, so it wasn't that I was wasted or anything. Of course both men jumped to help me, and then I made Javert sit in that chair, but still, super-embarrassing.
In the end, I had a good time, but mainly because Javert's friends are funny and nice (and older than me), and their spouses were there to moderate boring/pretentious job-related conversations, and because of the copious amounts of free alcohol and butter-cream frosted mini-cupcakes. Regarding the company, I came out with the same impression I had gone in with: its got way too much money for its own good, and pays its (immature) employees way too much. I guess I'd hoped the employees would be more like me, but if they were they wouldn't be working at Initech.*
Also, no goody-bags. What's up with that?
*Actually I have lots more to say on this company, but this post is too long already. I'm confident that I'll have plenty more opportunities to share my views.
If you decide to kill the rat, turn to page 49. If you decide to let it live, turn to page 59.
When I was little, I loved reading Choose Your Own Adventure books. I had a complicated way of reading them, though, because I had to read every possible ending. Probably there's some sort of math related calculation a person could do to most efficiently get through every story, but since I hated (and still hate) math, I went the liberal arts route and used paper clips and torn pieces of newspaper to mark the spots where I had "choices," so I could go back in an orderly fashion. Here are some endings I remember: you are eaten alive by red ants; you are raped; you run out of oxygen while scuba diving; you die of a high-pressure related brain problem while scuba diving. Probably these all didn't happen in the same book, although I suppose it is possible. I don't remember any of the happy endings.*
Last night, while lying awake (for hours) in my super-new, hole-less bed,** wondering if I was itching because of bedbugs or because of crappy $3 sheets, I thought about Choose Your Own Adventure and how I sometimes wish that I could live my life as if I was reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Its not that I'm dissatisfied with my life, but it would be really nice to go through all the possible outcomes before deciding which life I wanted. If I knew the outcome of certain decisions I've made, would I make them again? It's dangerous to start doing this, because every decision after becomes null. But then you can turn around and ask which decision is THE decision that made the others necessary or possible?
*I must add here that these scary endings only happened in the longer books. I also read the ones for "younger readers" but thought they were wimpy and stupid. Give me killer ants over happy endings any day!
**Not a good sign, people! Also, they delivered this bed at 10:45 last night. How sketchy is that?
After sleeping on his college futon for way too long, Javert and I finally bought a bed. We'd been talking about it for months, we'd gone mattress shopping at least twice, and on Saturday we finally found The Mattress. Because he had a delusion that we'd be able to negotiate the price based on comparison shopping, Javert did not agree to order The Mattress immediately. But of course we couldn't comparison shop, because each mattress store has its own brand names and there's no way to tell what compares to what.
Almost spontaneously, we ordered The Mattress yesterday morning and set delivery for a 6pm to 10pm window last night. We rushed home from work, rearranged the entire apartment to accomodate a huge futon in the living room, vacuumed, cleaned, and waited for delivery. They came at around 8, and carried the big boxspring up the stairs. That's when we noticed the big rip in the bottom of the boxspring. Now I'm pretty much a perfectionist, but because a boxspring is basically a box with fabric around it, and because we REALLY need a new mattress, I was willing to let it slide. I wasn't about to let slide the HUGE HOLE in the bottom of The Mattress, however. The delivery people swore the hole occurred at the warehouse (the result of some sort of forklift accident) and actually said "That mattress is no good" and called their manager for us. They will remove the damaged bed and deliver our new, hopefully hole-less mattress during the same time slot on Wednesday.
Now I need to talk about the new bed, which is HUGE. Seriously, its almost 3 feet high when placed on the bedframe. I am only a little over 5 feet tall. Paxwell was scared to jump on the bed and had to make several false starts before succeeding. Plus, it's basically about half the size of the bedroom. I started feeling like we'd made a mistake because it looked so huge....but then I laid down for a minute. Who cares what a bed looks like when its this comfortable?
After Javert convinced me that the floor is more supportive than 3 metal sticks, we removed the frame and now it's only 2 feet tall and looks more normal. But that pillow-top adds so much height that I wonder how we're going to find sheets that fit. We're using our "guest" sheets that I bought at the corner store for $3 each, and by morning they were already coming off. Also, my back hurts a little bit, but I'm hoping it's just surprised at the quality of the mattress and is coming back into shape, sort of like how braces hurt for the first few days because they are realligning your teeth.
Luckily, if we decide we don't like the mattress, we have two weeks (or more? I have to find out) to exchange it for free. But now I'm wondering what they do with all the rejected mattresses they must get back. I mean, ours has a hole and can't be used. At least I hope no one would accept it like that. But what about the 2 week guarrantee (or whatever it is)? Do these mattresses go back to the warehouse and then wind up in other people's bedrooms? Should I start worrying now about the bedbug epidemic currently plaguing New York?
This morning, standing in line to buy coffee at the coffee cart, I noticed that the man in front of me looked kinda sketchy. He was wearing a tan trench coat with the collar turned up, and then he turned around a little and I saw that half of his face was all scarred, like he'd had a skin graft. Clearly he was a spy! This was proved when he did some sort of trade-off with the coffee cart guy--seriously, he said "Hi, I'll have coffee and a glazed doughnut...and I have something for you," and then handed him something with his money. I hope this post doesn't blow his cover!
In real news, why was I even in line to get coffee at the coffee cart (as I am sure you asked yourself already). Because no one started the espresso maker this morning, that's why. The alarm went off at 7:18, I finally forced Javert to get up at 8:15, and he just didn't start the machine. This is because he got a new job, at a place that has free espresso at all times of day (No, it's not Starbucks. Nice try though.) Yesterday we woke up way too late to make coffee, so he had his espresso at work, and I guess he got used to it.
I said to him, "Why didn't you make the coffee?" And do you know what he said?? He said "Cause you woke me up so late."*
This is proof that I am indeed his mother (god help me) and that if I wish to proceed with my plan from my first post, which he now knows about, I'd still have no trouble at all.
*my response to this was What the Fuck, or something along those lines. It was a completely different sounding What the Fuck from the one I repeatedly recorded into my computer last night while testing its recording device.
I'd say it was more angry-sounding, as if someone just realized she'd have to wait 45 minutes to have any caffeine, and that said caffeine would come in the form of coffee. Which would, unlike the gentle soothes of espresso, wreak havoc on both her bladder and her bowels.
