Sober October
There has been little playing outside lately, or playing of any sort. I am in the thick of a Sober October, no booze until the Day of the Dead, although I have written in a birthday clause for the 22nd.
Hard to believe that the original "Sober September" was nine years ago. It was 1997, and I had recently moved to Maui, partially to live a healthier lifestyle, and get away from binge drinking and pot smoking with people back home that I didn't even like that much. After a summer in Hawaii, I found myself binge drinking and pot smoking with a new bunch of people I didn't like all that much. I realized that, since college began, I had never gone more than a week without getting significantly altered, and that that might be a pattern worth breaking. So, I marked out a calendar for the month, and checked off day by day of clean living, writing a positive note of some good clean fun I had had that day:
"Scored three times in ultimate."
"Read 'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'"
"Saw 'Austin Powers' Again"
"Played foosball with Scooter"
Such innocent times. Sober September didn't lead to a sober life (Thank Higher Power), but it did lead a higher percentage of fun times that I could actually remember the next day.
Sober October 2006 is really more of a weight loss program. It's been over a year, and I haven't been able to shed the 25 pounds I put on during pregnancy. I'm serious. You could call it sympathetic weight gain, or you could tell the truth and say I am just a pig. Darcy was eating for three for quite some time, and I started eating right along with her. With babies, life has gotten a lot more sedentary, busy, and stressful. When Darcy had lost most of her weight and I hadn't, something extreme had to be done. So no booze. Gulp. I mean it.
Then, last week, while getting some information related to an article on America's obesity epidemic for a writing class I'm teaching, I came across a BMI (Body Mass Index) chart and found that my numbers (6'1", 245) are the numbers of an thoroughly obese person. I'm not even on the cusp. That word, "obese", hit me like a Tyson uppercut. I can't think of too many words I'd want to be less than "obese". Impotent? Useless? Chickenshit? I think I'd rather be all of those things than obese.
So now I am going to remain sober beyond October, until I am no longer obese. My goal, for now, is to be merely overweight. Normal would be 188 pounds or so, and that just ain't happening. I wouldn't be me anymore, I'd lose major big-guy charisma points, like Al Roker after the stomach stapling.
So, since I'm sober, working too much and not playing outside, I thought I'd revisit some old business:
1. Game Boy
Brit, mentioned in the first and last entries, is still playing games. The latest, which I'll call "Panic Bathroom", is, as one might expect from a Southerner, quite simple. When a friend excuses himself from the table at a bar or restaurant to use the bathroom, Brit stalks behind, waits for the flush, then turns himself into a human doorstop. The victim pushes and pushes against the door until Brit gets tired or starts to sober up and decides to have mercy.
Is this funny? Well, it was the other week. Brit and his buddies were at a taco bar (score one for the South here on the taco bar concept), and, not surprisingly, Mike (who intoduced Brit to "The Game Of Life") needed to evacuate. A perfectly placed wall across from the bathroom allowed Brit to become the human doorstop he'd always dreamed of becoming. Immovable. A Hoover Dam.
Mike pushed and pushed, and knowing what he was up against, pushed some more, but the door wasn't budging. The pushing stopped for awhile, and then, Blaine-like, Mike appeared on Brit's side of the door, calmly sipping a beer while Brit remained wedged in between door and wall.
"What are you doing there Brit?"
"I'm locking you in."
Time went by fast enough on the weekend shifts, when I could wander around trying to find stuff with the customers, which is usually how I spend half my weekend anyway. But the weeknight shifts, often after I worked on a roof all day, were vicious. An hour fronting and facing cleaning supplies and insecticides with the overhead loop of Matchbox 20 and Pink songs felt like a week.
Then there were the bosses. It wasn't just Inci and Cathi, to a woman they were all jowly and fat-assed. I have nothing against women (I married one), or obese people (I am one), or even dumb people, but when you stuff all three into a 280 pound package, then put that package in charge of telling me what to do, well, that I can't abide.
Finally, it was the Garden Department. It sounds lush, but it is mostly chemicals, fertilizer and bug killer, plus the cleaning supplies. Healthwise, it was like spending 8 hours in a janitor's closet.
Solar work picked up not long after I got my apron. An evening shift after a day of working on a roof was intolerable. One Friday, I got home from solar around 5:30, sat down for a few minutes before going off to a 6-12 HD shift, and never got up. I skipped my Fri, Sat, and Sunday shifts, against the advice of my wife, mother, and mother-in-law. I never went back. Some bridges are better off burned.
5. Lothar
Lothar of the Hill People is back amongst us soap users. He summited Mt. Katahdin with time to spare, and is now staying in his parent's house on Long Island planning his next move. He was spotted (by my wife) at Chris' son's birthday party last weekend. I wasn't there, but I did recently see the scene near the end of Castaway where Tom Hanks is at a party and is kind of psyched about the spread but freaked out by all those groomed people chatting. I was kind of glad I wasn't there since I was a little hard on him in the blog, and I have some blog guilt. But he finished, and he finished strong, and he is no longer obese like me. You go Lothar! There, I feel better.
Hard to believe that the original "Sober September" was nine years ago. It was 1997, and I had recently moved to Maui, partially to live a healthier lifestyle, and get away from binge drinking and pot smoking with people back home that I didn't even like that much. After a summer in Hawaii, I found myself binge drinking and pot smoking with a new bunch of people I didn't like all that much. I realized that, since college began, I had never gone more than a week without getting significantly altered, and that that might be a pattern worth breaking. So, I marked out a calendar for the month, and checked off day by day of clean living, writing a positive note of some good clean fun I had had that day:
"Scored three times in ultimate."
"Read 'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'"
"Saw 'Austin Powers' Again"
"Played foosball with Scooter"
Such innocent times. Sober September didn't lead to a sober life (Thank Higher Power), but it did lead a higher percentage of fun times that I could actually remember the next day.
Sober October 2006 is really more of a weight loss program. It's been over a year, and I haven't been able to shed the 25 pounds I put on during pregnancy. I'm serious. You could call it sympathetic weight gain, or you could tell the truth and say I am just a pig. Darcy was eating for three for quite some time, and I started eating right along with her. With babies, life has gotten a lot more sedentary, busy, and stressful. When Darcy had lost most of her weight and I hadn't, something extreme had to be done. So no booze. Gulp. I mean it.
Then, last week, while getting some information related to an article on America's obesity epidemic for a writing class I'm teaching, I came across a BMI (Body Mass Index) chart and found that my numbers (6'1", 245) are the numbers of an thoroughly obese person. I'm not even on the cusp. That word, "obese", hit me like a Tyson uppercut. I can't think of too many words I'd want to be less than "obese". Impotent? Useless? Chickenshit? I think I'd rather be all of those things than obese.
So now I am going to remain sober beyond October, until I am no longer obese. My goal, for now, is to be merely overweight. Normal would be 188 pounds or so, and that just ain't happening. I wouldn't be me anymore, I'd lose major big-guy charisma points, like Al Roker after the stomach stapling.
So, since I'm sober, working too much and not playing outside, I thought I'd revisit some old business:
1. Game Boy
Brit, mentioned in the first and last entries, is still playing games. The latest, which I'll call "Panic Bathroom", is, as one might expect from a Southerner, quite simple. When a friend excuses himself from the table at a bar or restaurant to use the bathroom, Brit stalks behind, waits for the flush, then turns himself into a human doorstop. The victim pushes and pushes against the door until Brit gets tired or starts to sober up and decides to have mercy.
Is this funny? Well, it was the other week. Brit and his buddies were at a taco bar (score one for the South here on the taco bar concept), and, not surprisingly, Mike (who intoduced Brit to "The Game Of Life") needed to evacuate. A perfectly placed wall across from the bathroom allowed Brit to become the human doorstop he'd always dreamed of becoming. Immovable. A Hoover Dam.
Mike pushed and pushed, and knowing what he was up against, pushed some more, but the door wasn't budging. The pushing stopped for awhile, and then, Blaine-like, Mike appeared on Brit's side of the door, calmly sipping a beer while Brit remained wedged in between door and wall.
"What are you doing there Brit?"
"I'm locking you in."
Turns out Mike had been forced to use the ladies room. So, who was that in the men's room? If you know Brit, you know it had to be a 6'8" black guy wearing a Lamar Odom jersey.
Like an enemy combatant at Guantanamo found guilty of no crime, Lamar had to be released at some point. This time Brit was asked what the hell he was doing.
"You were supposed to be him," he explained. And somehow, according to Brit, Lamar ended up buying Brit a beer.
A few days later, he was not so lucky when he tried a stunt with a neighbor (not a friend...a neighbor). The neighbor left his car running unattended, and Brit thought it would be funny to hop in and drive it down the block a bit. Thinking he'd just got jacked, the guy went running after him. Brit stopped after a bit and let him in on the joke, but by that time the neighbor had had a minor cardiac episode. I believe Brit said he had an "infarction", but I always downgrade for some exaggeration with Brit's yarns. (Lamar Odom, for instance, was probably a 5'6" Asian kid wearing a Steve Nash jersey.)
2. Yankee Hater --> Met Love
I carried around a lot less anti-Yankee bitterness in my heart this summer because I had a heart full of love for my Mets, who are now tied 2-2 in the NLCS with the Cardinals and in good position to make it to the World Series.
Like an enemy combatant at Guantanamo found guilty of no crime, Lamar had to be released at some point. This time Brit was asked what the hell he was doing.
"You were supposed to be him," he explained. And somehow, according to Brit, Lamar ended up buying Brit a beer.
A few days later, he was not so lucky when he tried a stunt with a neighbor (not a friend...a neighbor). The neighbor left his car running unattended, and Brit thought it would be funny to hop in and drive it down the block a bit. Thinking he'd just got jacked, the guy went running after him. Brit stopped after a bit and let him in on the joke, but by that time the neighbor had had a minor cardiac episode. I believe Brit said he had an "infarction", but I always downgrade for some exaggeration with Brit's yarns. (Lamar Odom, for instance, was probably a 5'6" Asian kid wearing a Steve Nash jersey.)
2. Yankee Hater --> Met Love
I carried around a lot less anti-Yankee bitterness in my heart this summer because I had a heart full of love for my Mets, who are now tied 2-2 in the NLCS with the Cardinals and in good position to make it to the World Series.
Don't get me wrong though, I still rooted against the Yankees every chance I got, and when they got knocked out of the playoffs earlier this evening by the upstart Detroit Tigers, it made my Fall. Anything the Mets accomplish is just icing on the cake. Every day in October when the Mets still have a shot and the Yankees have a 20 foot putt for bogey is a good day.
My gripe, now more than ever, is that I just want the Yankees to play fair. I want them to start fielding teams with at least a few players that no one has ever heard of, guys that make six figure salaries and not seven. If the league won't stop them from spending at least twice as much as everyone else, maybe their own postseason ineptitude will. All-Star teams don't win playoff games, teams with heart, magic, and an intangible mix of veteran leaders (Delgado/LoDuca), rising stars (Wright/Reyes), and role players (Chavez/Heilman) do. (The Tigers have the same such mix, and it could well be their year.) The Yankees can make money by stacking their lineup, but they might not be able to win championships, and hopefully that will be impetus enough for George to change his ways. Or they can keep losing playoff series, it's better that way for me, actually.
3. Smarty
Smarty's hole has filled in and her hair has grown back. She is still allowed outside, partially because she has turned into a mole killing machine. I had hoped for this. No mole ridges in the lawn, no chemicals necessary. But Smarty has developed an addiction to mole blood and she can't be stopped. She has brought live moles into our bedroom in the middle of the night, which I had to hunt down in a corner, trap and release. When we locked her out she left them on the roof outside our window. Now Darcy finds a mole carcass in the basement every day. Tails are chewed off. Chests have been ripped open and the hearts eaten out. The bottom half of the animals have been missing. There are signs of extensive torture before the killings. Smarty prefers moles, but has even branched off into other species, decorating the basement with a sprinkling of feathers. In short, Darcy is now grossed out by the little tabby monster that she once couldn't snuggle enough with. Petting her is like canoodling with Jeffrey Dahmer. But no moles. For me, it's worth it.
4. Home Depot
My stint at Home Depot was short lived. After the lobotomizing orientation week with Cathy, there was an equally stultifying 30 hour computer training session. I could have learned more watching a "Road Rules" marathon. Finally I got to don the orange apron and patrol the Garden department.
My gripe, now more than ever, is that I just want the Yankees to play fair. I want them to start fielding teams with at least a few players that no one has ever heard of, guys that make six figure salaries and not seven. If the league won't stop them from spending at least twice as much as everyone else, maybe their own postseason ineptitude will. All-Star teams don't win playoff games, teams with heart, magic, and an intangible mix of veteran leaders (Delgado/LoDuca), rising stars (Wright/Reyes), and role players (Chavez/Heilman) do. (The Tigers have the same such mix, and it could well be their year.) The Yankees can make money by stacking their lineup, but they might not be able to win championships, and hopefully that will be impetus enough for George to change his ways. Or they can keep losing playoff series, it's better that way for me, actually.
3. Smarty
Smarty's hole has filled in and her hair has grown back. She is still allowed outside, partially because she has turned into a mole killing machine. I had hoped for this. No mole ridges in the lawn, no chemicals necessary. But Smarty has developed an addiction to mole blood and she can't be stopped. She has brought live moles into our bedroom in the middle of the night, which I had to hunt down in a corner, trap and release. When we locked her out she left them on the roof outside our window. Now Darcy finds a mole carcass in the basement every day. Tails are chewed off. Chests have been ripped open and the hearts eaten out. The bottom half of the animals have been missing. There are signs of extensive torture before the killings. Smarty prefers moles, but has even branched off into other species, decorating the basement with a sprinkling of feathers. In short, Darcy is now grossed out by the little tabby monster that she once couldn't snuggle enough with. Petting her is like canoodling with Jeffrey Dahmer. But no moles. For me, it's worth it.
4. Home Depot
My stint at Home Depot was short lived. After the lobotomizing orientation week with Cathy, there was an equally stultifying 30 hour computer training session. I could have learned more watching a "Road Rules" marathon. Finally I got to don the orange apron and patrol the Garden department.
Time went by fast enough on the weekend shifts, when I could wander around trying to find stuff with the customers, which is usually how I spend half my weekend anyway. But the weeknight shifts, often after I worked on a roof all day, were vicious. An hour fronting and facing cleaning supplies and insecticides with the overhead loop of Matchbox 20 and Pink songs felt like a week.
Then there were the bosses. It wasn't just Inci and Cathi, to a woman they were all jowly and fat-assed. I have nothing against women (I married one), or obese people (I am one), or even dumb people, but when you stuff all three into a 280 pound package, then put that package in charge of telling me what to do, well, that I can't abide.
Finally, it was the Garden Department. It sounds lush, but it is mostly chemicals, fertilizer and bug killer, plus the cleaning supplies. Healthwise, it was like spending 8 hours in a janitor's closet.
Solar work picked up not long after I got my apron. An evening shift after a day of working on a roof was intolerable. One Friday, I got home from solar around 5:30, sat down for a few minutes before going off to a 6-12 HD shift, and never got up. I skipped my Fri, Sat, and Sunday shifts, against the advice of my wife, mother, and mother-in-law. I never went back. Some bridges are better off burned.
5. Lothar
Lothar of the Hill People is back amongst us soap users. He summited Mt. Katahdin with time to spare, and is now staying in his parent's house on Long Island planning his next move. He was spotted (by my wife) at Chris' son's birthday party last weekend. I wasn't there, but I did recently see the scene near the end of Castaway where Tom Hanks is at a party and is kind of psyched about the spread but freaked out by all those groomed people chatting. I was kind of glad I wasn't there since I was a little hard on him in the blog, and I have some blog guilt. But he finished, and he finished strong, and he is no longer obese like me. You go Lothar! There, I feel better.
I was told it is your way to bring a gift for the child?
6. Zidane
Months after the incident, Zidane said that Materazzi had insulted his mother and sister, but wouldn't go into details.
Materazzi said that after he grabbed Zidane's shirt, Zidane sarcastically offered it to him, and Materazzi said he would rather have his sister. That sounds about right.
My question is: What language did all this happen in? "You can have my jersey after the game." and "I would prefer your sister" are fairly advanced grammatical forms including modals and the subjunctive. Does Zidane speak Italian? Does Materazzie speak French? Is their a universal language of shit-talking for soccer players like French at the U.N.? Or do players brush up on their insults in their opposition's language before a game?
7. Insulation
The schoolhouse I insulated is finally finished. In the mad rush to tie loose ends before opening day, Neal called me and asked if I could help him out over there on a Saturday.
Wary after the insulation incident, and with plenty to do at home, I asked him what he wanted me to do.
"I need someone to clean the windows and mop all the bathrooms."
"You're kidding, right?" Neal is such a kidder.
He wasn't kidding. I said I would prefer not to.
posted by D&d at 5:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home