Infinite Circle

Well it’s a Wednesday and it’s been a stressful Wednesday at that.

Not much fun today. Last night was no great shakes. I did watch True Blood and that was excellent. One or two sight gags that made me wonder what the acronym on the baseball hats meant.

With regards to work, I’m glad it’s behind me and tonight is a family visit which is fraught with nerves as well. No one seems to communicate and I fear that my family is at risk of turning into my father’s family.

A bunch of grudge holders that didn’t communicate that often. My ex-boss Robert used to say Communicate early and often. I used to make fun of Robert for that but since then I found his adage to be true.

If you communicate most problems can be solved or avoided. If you don’t communicate it all turns to shit.

I feel bad for my sister who has a stressful enough life, what with her husband having a bum ticker and is in pain quite often and a teenage son who behaves very much like a teenager, meaning he has an awesome capacity for being a pain in the ass.

Not that he’s a pain in the ass to me, but rather how a teenager behaves with his mother. We’ve all been there with one parent or another or even both parents.

But like when I wrote about my brother Brian’s travails, it’s not my story and it’s certainly not my place to write about it here. My role, it seems is to be a pillar of support for Annemarie and I hope I can be that.

On top of that, there is the stress of my unemployment and the stress of having to justify the collection of Susquehanna Investment Groups.

I was upset when I left the office this afternoon. Even though I strolled across midtown to the bus terminal, enjoying a cigar and listening to a collection of Simple Minds songs I couldn’t shake the chip on my shoulder.

On my way there was a guy, handsomely dressed and obviously ogling a woman talking on her cellphone. I noticed it and wound up staring at him like he was a piece of meat which made him feel greatly uncomfortable.

Whether or not he was able to figure out what was being done to him was what he was doing to that woman, I don’t know. But being handsomely dressed helped make it easier to stare directly at his crotch.

And then as I was waiting on line inside the gate with the other drones, one wanker carrying a big bouquet of flowers for perhaps his loved one, he bypasses the line and stands outside the gate just so he could be the first on the bus.

I could only hope the fragrance of the flowers were replaced by the fumes of diesel exhaust from the buses. He also received a hard look but it was nothing overt.

Then as the bus travels down Washington Street, the bus driver gets into a yelling match with some idiot who was double parked and refused to move his car.

Could it be the metropolitan area is under a cloud of stupidity, so much so that even I couldn’t help but take a big gulp of it?

Hi Hi Hi

It’s a Tuesday. Big deal, right? I know, it really isn’t that much of anything. I’m glad I made it through the day. Last night I was sitting on the stoop, having a cigar and reading The Last Gang in Town by Marcus Gray.

It’s an unauthorized biography of the Clash. So far I read about my buddy Mick Jones, Paul Simenon and just getting into Joe Strummer’s life which is the most interesting and conflicted. Nothing about Topper Headon or Terry Chimes yet.

As I sat, along comes Julio and Alexander from the park. It was fun to sit with the two of them and I was thrilled that Alexander is really recognizing me now. He loves it when I do a Chewbacca yell and he also loves to watch planes fly through the sky.

He really is an adorable boy and he really looks like Julio. I called him Julio’s Mini Me and Julio told me he had brought Alexander to work that day and that’s basically what everyone said.

We all went upstairs at the same time, stopping off on the third floor to chat with Stine and trying to figure out how we were all going to get to the new Mets stadium to see Paul McCartney on Friday night.

I recommended taking the 7 Train out to Flushing which really makes the most sense. I’m sure it will all be figured out by Friday night.

I came upstairs where Bill was watching a home run derby, part of the All Star festivities. I was hoping to watch True Blood but that wasn’t going to happen while the home run derby was on.

Bill did have to go to bed early so he could get up early and go to Brooklyn to take a drug test for the Hassidic bus company he’s trying to work for.

I started to watch a recording of True Blood but then Annemarie called midway through so I decided to watch the recording some other time.

I did watch Weeds which was good, set six months past the last episode with a bearded Andy. Nurse Jackie was even better. That just gets more and more interesting each week, Edie Falco is great as well as the rest of the cast.

The office was a little bit easier today. Came up with a new system for the conference rooms and I didn’t have to yell at anyone.

And the intern, who in real life has quite a similar name to Vivek is now named Viveka. They’re really taking advantage of her as well as taking advantage of me.

I keep thinking that I’ll be leaving the office around 1:00 or 2:00 but once again I stayed later than that, leaving the office at 3:30. Gotta collect those Sally at kinematics I suppose.

Just one more day this week, ending tomorrow on Wednesday. I hope to collect a note for the Susquehanna Investment Groups tomorrow and not have to go in on Thursday.

Guess I will have to ambush Vivek and not injure his ‘Sally’s T shirt shingles’ writing hand.