Manic Oppressive

&I have this problem with spiders dropping down on me in the bathroom. It’s pretty bad. Now, years ago right after I saw Arachnophobia; which terrified me.

For years I had to look around the ceiling of any bathroom I wandered into. And if, god forbid, I actually saw one I would soil myself and run out of the room. But I got over it.

Mostly.

A while back, I had decided that they did more good than harm when they stayed in my room, eating flies and what not. They don’t, however, clean up after themselves very well, so I started evicting them.

Except for when they come from above, in which case I kill them mercilessly. I don’t know what they’re thinking when they do it, “Let’s drop in on Dylan and Die! Yeah!”.

For example, I was cleaning the bathroom a few weeks ago, and when I wiped the vent of the fart-fan, a spider the size of my fist dropped out of it. He scurried around a bit and then I dropped my boot up it’s ass, so to speak.

That particular episode reminded me of a time when I was taking a shower at my parents house, and a spider the size of my head dropped down. I screamed a bit, because it’s the last place that I would really expect to see anything alive. Then, while I was still a little shocked, it smiled and waved as it fell down the drain.

When I emerged a few days later, my mother asked me exactly why I had screamed.

“A spider,” I said. “But it never told me it’s name and I can’t shower with something that doesn’t tell me it’s name.”

“Ahh.” She says. “I would have fled the bathroom.” This is probably true, although she wouldn’t have used the door, instead opting for flying through the wall, if history can be of any use of predicting hypothetical situations.

She claims to be terrified of spiders, and does a pretty good job of convincing the rest of us that this is the case. I’m not sure about this though, because a tremendous number of spiders have died in not-so-mysterious circumstances while she has been around, but honestly I’ve never seen a spider so much as threaten her.

So I’ve been crazy swamped at work. A Huge project is approaching the end of things, so the stress level is increasing. Dramatically.

I’ve got some stuff saved up though, and will be posting regularly in the future. But the magical overhaul of this site won’t happen for a while.

I’m at a friends place, where he just moved in. He says, “Hey, this is weird. Come check the closet out” and leads me out onto his deck.

He wants to put his kendo armor in this closet that’s actually a little bit bit bigger than my wallet. But there’s a problem; a plastic table top already occupies the entire closet. Well, most of it at least. Err, I guess that’s not actually the problem.

It turns out that the table is wider than the closet door, so it’s impossible to get it through. My theory is that they built the apartment around that table top. His theory is that the previous tenants were drunk. I like mine better.

He wanted it out. I told him he was nuts. I then mentioned that there was probably no way to get it without sustaining some sort of mild injury. I was joking, of course.

That said, we were determined to get that table out. And we did… it took us the better part of 15 minutes, but we did eventually get it. I lost both arms and sprained my right foot, so I had to limp around for the rest of the evening. Some dude sewed the arms back on for a nominal fee, and things were ok again.

Since I quit the whole smoking thing, I discovered that I have boundless energy and strange youthful candor.

Or something.

So I bought a bicycle. A “less expensive hybrid”, specifically, given that it’s been a couple of years since I rode more than once a year and the fact that the hills around here are steeper than a Guantanamo Bay prison sentence.

By “less expensive”, I really mean, “less than my car”. I spent over $300 on the cheapest bike they had. This was my targeted price range, but I still had expected some stuff you know, underneath it.

For instance, my last bike was a Huffy, which is widely recognized as a toy. Well, at least the sprockets didn’t get worn down after a month and I never had problems with the dérailleur.

This one is mostly problems. I find this kind of strange… If a three hundred dollar bike has n crappiness, then how crappy is a thousand dollar bike? 3n?

It gets me around, I guess.

http://www.letstalkcolorado.com/relaxation.html.

Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of Colorado stuff in weird places. Good for them.

So there are some of us that think that David of the bridal place was a hack, and only trying to make money off of his flawed cycle of divorces. Then he got rich.

Well, other people have given him some competition with toilet paper, glue, and tape.

I just kind of hope that there aren’t any entries from Greece.

So I went out again Friday night. Just to, you know, mingle. Actually, that’s a lie. I was searching for the perfect woman.

So I went to a place where they play live music, and most of the crowd is “good people”. And I started talking to this girl.

It was perfect; she’s an artist, speaks French, sharp, and really quite pretty; so we’re having a rather engaged conversation. She had only moved to Seattle recently, and only knew a few people. Well, I don’t get out much, but I was able to introduce her to a handful of other folk, and we started flirting.

“Wee!”, I started to think.

Then she starts talking about her husband’s brother, so I backed off a bit and started to wonder what’s going on with kids these days.

Later inspection revealed she was wearing a ring, so I guess I should’ve known better.

Anyway, when I did back off, she ended up leaving, and blew me a kiss. And again, I’m wondering what this world is coming to.

My parents said that bars were a bad place to meet people, and it wasn’t until Friday that I realized just how right they were.

It had been a late day at work.

Another programmer invited me for scotch and basketball at the bar across the street. It seemed like a good idea at the time…

When I got there, I ordered some Macallan 12 year-old scotch. The Good Stuff.

Well, normally when one orders scotch, especially the Good Stuff, one expects two fingers. Maybe three on a lucky day. This bartender? She gave me a fist-full. I mean, I had less gratuitous pours of milk as a child.

And being the dedicated epicurean ass I am, I drank it. There was a wager that I would not be able to finish. Ah Ha! Showed them.

At the point where I was finished, I think I may have been too drunk to say, ride the bus. So I opted to stay at work and get stuff done (and maybe release some code, you know). And I ran into my director, which must have made for an interesting conversation:

Yesshhh. I stinks we sshhould be building. Rockets. Today. But you’re a good bossh. Truley. Best bossh I’ve had in Days.

What fun.

Not that anyone cares, but I’ve had three dental cleanings in the past three days, with one more “sometime soon”.

The deal is that I went to a dentist to finish up some stuff I started back in fourth grade, and while I’m at it get things looking pretty. So they did a “normal cleaning,” and told me it wasn’t quite good enough; they had to do a “Deep Cleaning”. They said this in an ominous voice, and the clouds shifted and the vultures started crying.

Each session is 1 hour, and covers 1/4 of the mouth. They use machine guns and jack-hammers to do the tricky stuff, so out comes the novocane*. The first Deep Cleaning session I had was actually two sessions, so about two hours.

So, needless to say, I feel like I’ve been gnawing on concrete all afternoon. 3/4 of my teesh are sparkling, though.

* Or whatever it is that they use these days.

So I was just outside my apartment, when I heard a squeal of brakes, a swerve, and then the crashing sound of someone running over a parking sign. I look over horrified, and see a car on the curb with lots of smoke and whatnot.

Now, most normal, sane, and rational people would get out of their car at this point. They would wander around, see if there was any damage, move the sign, stagger off to a liquor store, etc. Not this one. He rocked his car back and forth a bit, got it back on the road, and sped off.

So I took his plate number (707-SZM, if you’re curious) and quietly went up to my apartment to call the police. I figured that since the “crime” had already happened, I could get away with calling the non-emergency number instead of the heavy-hammer-like 911. (I still haven’t called 911 in Seattle, so I’m trying to keep my record clean).

So I called it.

This is the Seattle Police Department… If you have an emergency, or if you need medical assistance, hang up and dial 911…

Please listen carefully to the following options …

If you are police or law enforcement and are calling regarding an alarm, press 1.

If you need something that we don’t really understand, feel free to press 2.

For all other options, press 3 or stay on the line

I pressed “3″.

Please listen carefully to the following 9 options.

If you are calling about the whereabouts of a recovered stolen car, press 1

If you would like to report on a car that was impounded, press 2

If you think you may know about a car that will be impounded, press 3

If you are calling to report an Alien Invasion, please press 4

If you are calling to report an Alien Invasion, please press 5

Instead of listening to the other options, why don’t you press 6?

If you would like to report an emergency in Seattle from outside the city limits, or you are calling to report some other odd-ball situation that would be better handled by e911 with trained workers, please press 7.

If you would like to report a non-emergency crime in progress, or report on a crime in progress, or report the evidence of a crime that will require an officer’s presence, or would like to do something else that really doesn’t make a lot of sense but will take us bloody forever to describe on this automated menu thingy, please press 8

So I pressed 8, and got an operator.

Dude, people. What the hell? Put “Non Emergency Crime in Progress” as #1 on the menu. Or better yet, get rid of the menu. Denver doesn’t need one, why do you? And why on earth would I call a non-emergency number to report an emergency in another city?

Grr.

Anyway, I have an accident that I should go clean up before rush-hour.