An Un-Filterd Stream of... Something

Everybody always wants to talk about the bad side of global warming but nobody wants to mention the good stuff… It was like 70 degrees here in our Nation’s Capitol yesterday, and today is supposed to be nicer. And tomorrow, more of the same!

Just last week Moe Greene and I had a conversation about how we were never going to complain about the heat again because the cold we were experiencing was way worse than being hot... We discussed topics like “what to do when it’s so cold your face hurts”, and “I’m thinking about stuffing a heat pack inside the lining of my coat…”

But now this morning I've found myself opening the window in my office to let in the warm air... I'm even thinking about taking the top off my Jeep for an afternoon drive…. So this global warming thing can’t be all bad. Right?

I’m trying to think of the negative aspects of Global Warming right now… A lot of people say that some ice caps might melt and the entire mid-Atlantic region could end up under water, and that would indeed suck… but the housing costs would probably drop then, right? Or maybe that would make it go up? You know, water front property and all… I’d probably have to move then. I hate moving… Although the last time we moved I didn’t really have to do much. My wife did most of the packing and unpacking. Aside from moving a couple of couches I was hardly even involved in the process… So I guess that might not be that bad either... But anyway, it’s nice outside and I’m feeling energized for 2008.

I had a very good Xmas/New Year and now my birthday is coming up later in the week... When I was little this was always my favorite time of year. I’d get all these gifts at Christmas and then just when the high from that was starting to wear off I’d get hit with my birthday gifts! It was almost too much joy for me to handle... But like I said, that was when I was a kid. I didn’t have to worry about buying gifts for other people. There was no pressure…

As an adult Christmas is a time of stress… What makes things worse, my wife has her birthday on Dec 12th… So I’ve got her birthday, then Christmas… I get a little break in January, but then February hits and I’ve got Valentines Day and our Anniversary a week or so after that!

Looking back on it now we should have gotten married on Valentines Day and that way I could take care of both days with one gift… The other issue with our Anniversary is that I can never remember the date. I always get it mixed up between the 22nd, and 23rd.

My wife used to ask me out of the blue what our Anniversary was just to test me, so as a joke I would always say “The 22nd” just to annoy her, because it’s actually the 23rd. Only now I can never get it straight which is the actually date and which is the one I would say to piss her off… The real date is engraved on the inside of my wedding ring, let me check.... It's the 23rd… I have to come up with some way to remember that… I can’t keep pulling off the ring to check.

I always forget Moe Greene’s birthday… or maybe not forget… I know the date is April 17th, but somehow when the actual day arrives I can never seem to remember... I’ll see the calendar and think "today is the 16th. I have to remember to tell him happy birthday tomorrow," but then the next day I forget to bring it up... We’ll talk on the phone two or three times that day but I won’t remember it was his birthday until later that night when I’m about to fall asleep... and of course by then it’s too late to call... I’m always afraid I’ll wake up one of his kids…

Whenever you call his house it sounds like he’s standing in the middle of a mob of children rioting at a Chuckie Cheese… I always imagine pizza and those little prize tickets flying up in the air while some kid swings his shirt around above his head screaming about a revolution... When I was little I always thought about what it would be like to take over a Chuckie Cheese... I'd eat a lot of pizza and play skeetball all night... But the point is, it makes it tough to have a phone conversation with a Chuckie Cheese riot going on in the background.

The guy in the office next to me is having a very loud personal phone conversation as I type this... It’s not loud because he’s angry or anything, he’s just always very loud on the phone. Usually in an office setting people have personal phone conversations in hushed tones because they don’t want anyone to know they’re not busy with work... He does not subscribe to this philosophy. He doesn’t care who hears him... I don’t normally like loud people, but I like him. He has a lot of great ex-wife stories. She was form Panama. He misses the food but he doesn’t miss her. From the stories he tells she was/is totally insane... Of course there are two sides to every story, but he won custody of the kids so there must be some truth to what he says… But I’d still like to hear her side…

I like hearing those kinds of stories… bitter divorce stories… They’re scary, but damn entertaining when you’re not one of the parties directly involved… My parents are going through a bitter divorce right now... They also went through a bitter separation when I was a kid... They shouldn’t have gotten back together then. I knew that at the time, and I was only 9 years old. I have a vivid memory of them sitting on a couch and them saying "Joel, we've decided to get back together." My immediate reaction was: "That's a mistake."

So how come I could see that, but they couldn’t? They’re both reasonably intelligent people.

I don’t understand people that get married two or three times… They have first hand knowledge of how bad it can be and yet they sign up for it again… Another guy I work with just got engaged. This will be his 3rd marriage... They’ve all been younger women who eventually realize they don’t want to be married to an older guy and then leave… Why do people do that? Marry a guy because he is one thing, and then leave him for that same reason?

I've known women who have a thing for police officers, so they marry one and then spend the next decade trying to talk then out of being a police officer... Do guys do that too? I’ve known a lot of guys who dated strippers but they didn’t want the woman to stop stripping, they wanted to leach off the money… I wonder if I could do that? Stay at home and let my wife support me… I doubt I could. Not because I couldn’t handle a woman providing for me, but because I’d be bored. If I have more than 3 or 4 days off I start itching to get back to work.

Well, maybe it would bug me to have my wife making more money than me… I think I would just worry about what other people think. If we could somehow keep it secret I’d be okay. Unless she kept bringing that shit up, that would probably get to me… I guess that’s sexist then… But at least I realize it’s sexist and that I’m wrong to feel that way. That should count for something right?

My wife is trying to learn English right now… She went to some classes a couple years back but we never really practiced at home and so she didn’t make much progress. I know that we should probably try to speak English more at home but deep down I’m afraid my Spanish would somehow regress. That’s pretty selfish of me, but at the same time whenever we do try to make an effort to do the English thing she gets frustrated and gives up pretty easily.

We have a company party on Saturday night. I know she’s going to say she doesn’t want to go. I won’t argue with her. It’s hard for me trying to translate at a social gathering. It’s hard for me to try and translate at anytime actually. I mean real translating. It's way harder than you think. You’re supposed to say everything the other person said word for word, as if you're the one actually saying it... I’d rather just convey the basic meaning... For example, I once had to translate a safety meeting at a construction site in front of a large group of Spanish speakers. The guy giving the talk rambled on and on about why the workers should always wear their hard hats and safety glasses; His little speech had a bunch of anecdotes and examples… he was really serious about safety…

Anyway, he wasn’t pausing to let me keep up with him as the speech went along. He wanted me to remember everything he said in his speech and then give an exact translation… Of course when it was time to do that I was nervous and had already forgotten half of what was said… I ended up giving a much abbreviated version that went something like: “This guy said you should always wear your hard hats, glasses, and all that other safety shit... and he really means it…”

All the workers could obviously tell that he had said a lot more than that and they all started cracking up with laughter... So of course the guy giving the speech thought I was making fun of him and it turned into this whole big ordeal. The fallout was basically that I was never asked to translate again, which is probably best…

I'm not really that hungry right now but I just caught myself thinking about lunch... That's probably why I'm fat... I remember a couple of years ago I made a New Year's Resolution about not adding food from the Dollar Menu to my meal's at McDonald's. I stuck to it for several months and that surprised me.

I guess it's a bad thing when you're pleasantly surprised that you were able to to follow through on a resolution for such a short amount of time... I don't think I really have any resolutions this year... I'd like to live like a homeless person for a while... I don't mean the type of homeless person that sleeps under an overpass and pushes around a little shopping cart, I mean someone that travels around living out of a van... I don't want to do it for any corny reasons like, "I just want to see what it's like to really suffer"... I've just always had this fantasy about sleeping in a van with a bunch of blankets... I read once that the upper classes of Tenochitlan didn't sleep on beds perse. They slept on large stacks of quilts that stood 3 or 4 feet high. When it got cold they would sleep under a couple of layers of the quilts... that sounds very comfortable...

In my van I would have 20 or 30 quilts and when it got really cold I would snuggle up comfortably in the middle of those quilts and sleep soundly for hours and hours. And of course if I was just wandering around in the van I could sleep in as late as I wanted. What would it matter? I'd be warm and comfortable wrapped in my quilts while the world outside my van had to wake up early and fight the cold on their way to work... But I guess that scenerio wouldn't really make too much sense today, after all it's 70 degrees right now!