Monthly Archives: January 2011

I Love My Wife

Well it was back to work for me today, much like yesterday. But I didn’t write yesterday and it felt like a day off creatively. Woke up this morning to a temperature outside of 6°.

Yesterday was better than Saturday. No Calvin in the house, just the Bradley who wasn’t brain dead yesterday and Sean.

And it was a fun day, not so bad at all. It went by rather quickly. I had lunch with Bill and Margaret. Margaret is an old friend of Bill’s and could have been the woman Bill married if Bill wasn’t gay. She’s a reverend doctor who lives in Atlanta with her husband Laurent.

Bill and I attended their wedding in 2005. While I waited for Bill and Margaret it felt like back in the day when I would wait for my brother Frank to show up and pick me up so we could go to Maxwells together.

Frank is always terribly late and I always would give him the benefit of the doubt, thinking that perhaps that night would be the night that he would be on time. But he wouldn’t be on time and I would wait getting stressed out and tied up in knots.

Bill and Margaret weren’t as late as Frank would be, but still I would have a flashback to that familiar anxiety of 29 years ago. The three of us, Bill, Margaret and I went to the Moon Rock diner, which is now officially my favorite diner, at least in midtown.

Not for the ambience or the cuisine, it’s basic diner fare but because it’s never crowded when I go and I can sit in a booth and do some reading as I wait for my food. And it was a nice time, catching up under the watchful eye of the clock. The Bradley and Sean were cool if I was a little late in returning to the cigar shop.

I’m almost always on time anyhow, so perhaps a grace period of 30 minutes would make up for all the times that I wasn’t late. The rest of the day went smoothly. The Bradley and I started at the same time and to decide when to close I thought we would use a coin toss and when I asked the Bradley if he wanted to close, he said we should toss a coin.

I had the coin, he called heads and it came up tails. That meant I was able to leave about 10 minutes before he did. I made it home and Bill greeted me at the door with slices of pizza from Grimaldi’s. The Jets/Steelers game was on and Bill was into it. Me, not so much.

I did have a new wireless antenna for the old Rand-enstein computer. And of course I couldn’t work it out by myself, I needed Bill’s expertise in putting it all together. And he did after a while, while I sulked about reading and chatting on the phone.

Bill figured it out after an hour and sadly for Bill, the Jets lost the game. I didn’t provide much support or solace. I sort of mocked the whole scenario which in hindsight was cruel. I apologized for it today and Bill said it didn’t matter, asking me to imagine how he would he would be if the Jets won.

He had a point. He would have been bouncing off the walls. So perhaps it’s better this way. Plus there’s always next year. Or the year after that.

I’m off tomorrow and an interview is scheduled for the morning. Any good thoughts and vibrations are welcome and would certainly be appreciated not just by me but by Bill as well.




I Like to Lead When I Dance

Today was a day from hell. Not THE day from hell, but hellish nonetheless. It started out with me in bed, around 8:00 wondering why Bill was still in bed. Wasn’t he supposed to be at work? I nudged him and asked him why he was still here and he responded that it was Saturday.

This is how my life is. I have no idea what day it is most of the time. When people tell me to have a good weekend it takes a lot of strength not to pop them in the mouth no matter how good their intentions may be.

I made arrangements to meet up with Rand in the 20 degree chill to hand off a Netgear adapter. He lent it to me a while back and the one he had is broken, so he needed his back. That was no problem and Rand offered to wait with me for the 10:30 bus which as usual would arrive after the 10:50 bus.

Every fucking Saturday this happens. I know if I got to the bus stop after 10:30, the 10:30 bus would show up and I would miss it. Rand was kind enough to stay long enough before I sent him off just in time for him to suggest that he was going to take off anyway.

And of course since the bus was late or missing there were more people, standing room only after a few stops. I sat on a 2 person bench, made enough room for someone to sit next to me, but they wouldn’t. So I made the most of it and spread out while people stood all around me. I made the effort, they refused it, and so I got comfortable.

Got to the cigar shop a bit late, but I phoned ahead letting them know that I would be late. Brain dead answered the phone trying to be clever and passed along the word that I would be late and in by noon. And thanks to the careless planning, there were 3 full timers and Sean.

Me, Brain dead and Calvin. Calvin took off on Tuesday to see Prince and since he didn’t want to miss a day of work, made himself useless. Instead of a laid back day if laid back is the proper phrase, it was generally uptight.

No need to have a boss around today, but there he was. Things didn’t go well at all. I wanted to take lunch at 4:00 but Sean who agreed to take lunch at 3:00 decided to take lunch at 4:00 since Calvin figured it might get very busy. It wasn’t busy at all.

Jeez I can’t stand working there. Had a brief chat with Annemarie, the usual chat of how I hate working where I am working. She’s doing fine by the way, all things considered like her car being broken into the other morning.

Brain dead left at 7:30 and Calvin should have left as well but a customer came in with homemade wine and Calvin couldn’t resist, plus Calvin planned on staying later and having a cigar before heading home to wife and kid. One of the customers asked if he could play his iPod and so it was listening to someone else’s music most of the day.

Dreadful for me, good for the customer and ignored by most everyone else. It made a slow afternoon even slower. Music can help things go faster and smoother at least for me and when its music I am not particularly in the mood for, I am in hell.

Don’t get me started about jazz since I generally abhor it. Maybe if it’s performed live I might enjoy it, but generally it’s a bore. And guess what’s usually played at the store?

I also got some bitter news from Harpy but I won’t write about it here but my thoughts are in his generally direction, not for him but for his lady love.

And I neglected to mention that I heard from Casey Chasm yesterday. He’s doing OK, Madam Chasm is pregnant with their second child and Casey will be in Afghanistan later this year.

Love and good wishes to all concerned and especially Bill who greeted me with open arms when I came home like he said he was going to do.

This was written last night but I could not post due to server problems in Bala Cynwyd.

and since today is Sunday, I will not be posting later.