Read my Latest Entry! Read all my entries! Hey, click here if you want more automated responses in your life! Email me and tell me what you REALLY think! :-)about me - read my profile!


2005-06-26

TX18366 loves you...just not like that.

Hey, kids...

Sorry it has taken me so long to update. I would say that a lot has happened in the previous week-and-three-days but that would be a partial lie. I have been trying to think of things to write about that I could encapsulate into single entries and, well, just enough stuff has happened that I'm going to have to write this as one long uber-entry. I'll try to trap a story within a horizontal line but I can't make any promises.



Friday, June 17

One of my lovely coworkers, FabulousAdmin, told me, "It's my birthday and you're taking me ice-skating, punk."

"Huh?," I protest.
"A bunch of us are going ice-skating and I want you to come along."
I sense an evil plot possibly involving Ashton Kutcher and Punk'd (Damn him and his insane laugh!) but then I realize belatedly that I'm not famous nor have I ever met the more immature half of Dashmi (Is that really they're cutesy couple nickname?!?) so I shouldn't have anything to worry about. I still think there's a chance that I'm being hosed so I ask FabulousAdmin,"Do I have to skate?"

She rolls her eyes all the way over to the coast of California and says, "Yes, and you will like it."

I groan at the prospect of flailing arms, my wussified ankles and cold, wet asses and try to politely beg off. She then does the bait and switch on me: "They have an arcade, you can play in the arcade while the rest of us cool kids ice skate." I gave her a thumbs-up and agreed to meet her and the rest of the cool kids out there to "hang out."

I show up and FabulousAdmin is there with one of our other coworkers, Cindy, and her kids. With the exception of Cindy and myself, everyone else has skates on. This is where the bait and switch happens, FabAdmin says that I better put on skates or she'll start throwing a tantrum...And believe me, you don't want a pouty 12 19-year-old on your hands in the middle of a bunch of soccer moms and their rugrats...














HA! I'm just kidding, she didn't threaten a tantrum but she did plead with me with puppy-dog eyes and reassurances that she hasn't skated in a long time and would probably do just as badly as I did. I get my skates on and manage to do approximately 4 loops around the rink, gripping the wall most of the time,(WITHOUT falling!) before my feet protested going that long without blood. I'm not saying anything but this is how I looked out there:


Totally accurate picture right there but here's a picture of me and FabulousAdmin posing for the camera (OK, so I wasn't on Punk'd but there were cameras there):


Now, you may look at my face and think, "He's trying to kiss the glass or something?" Honestly, the effect I was going for was the Derek Zoolander look ("Blue Steel") but I ended up looking like some kind of...well...honestly it might defy description...



Saturday, June 18

Its a warm day in Phoenix (asphalt is squishy but not slagging and running) and Fitz invited me over to hang out with him...OK, not exactly true, I asked Fitz what he was doing over the weekend and then managed to weasel myself into hanging out with him. I'm not a total leech though...I sweetened the pot by bringing over my 100+ DVD collection.

I show up at Fitz's house in South Phoenix where he thankfully doesn't greet me in his birthday suit (if you knew Fitz like I do, this might be considered a legitimate concern... ;-). We wander around his house (which he's renting until his new house is built) for a while...this takes a while because it seems the house he's renting has a hallway that is almost as long as a football field...I swear it took me 20 minutes and a search party with dogs to find the living room from the front door. He asks me what I want for dinner and I say,"Ohh, I'm cool with the whole hanging out and eating pizza routine."

He gives me this disdainful look and says,"How about some steaks?"

"Yeah, OK, like from Outback?"

"No, we can grill, I got this mack daddy grill and I'm a cooking mo-fo. We gotsta go to the sto' tho'." (I'm not particularily sure when Fitz decided to start talking Ebonics and that's really beside the point.)

We hope in my car and hightail it to the Fry's Food & Drug & Marketplace & Garden Centre & Tire Care Center.

---SIDEBAR---

The only times that I've been around Fitz has been A) at work and B) hanging out with Fitz at restaurants/bar. I've never done anything so entertaining as "Shopping with the Fitz." Just walking around the store was funny as we shopped for: steaks, rum, salads, beer, coca-cola, etc. We debated the specific merits of each type of rum: Malibu, Captain Morgan, etc. It was highlighted by the episode at the checkout line. Each of the regular checkouts were three to four customers deep. The 10 or less line was mostly empty. We survey our cart and conclude that using actual math, we were over the 10 or less limit by at least 10 more items. Deciding we didn't want to wait in the longer lines, Fitz scooted the car to the 10-or-less line and walked me through FitzMath: "OK, the three boxes of cokes equals 1, the salads equal one, the rum is one, the two steaks are one, and all other sundry items equal one...so that equals five items, we're cool."

I don't know who we drew for the cashier lady but she didn't seem to mind that we were over the limit and started scanning our items. Fitz uses this time to inform the cashier and the people behind us about his new math strategy. Very non-chalantly and totally dead-pan Fitz looks at the cashier and calmly explains,"I feel bad that I've used my FitzMath for my own gain but you look like you understand."

She, for her part, doesn't bat an eye and rings up the sale. For my part, I did feign a reach for the wallet to help pay for what I was about to consume when Fitz informed me that I had done my part by producing the very valuable discount card that "saved" us $20...and I drove.

---END SIDEBAR---

We get back to the house where Fitz starts fixing me Rum-and-Coke's...quite a few of them...

Then we grill the steaks. I start jabbering away with a constantly full rum & coke in my hand as he describes how to make the steaks that he's grilling. By the time we're eating, I'm full on completely buzzed (and probably drunk).

Then he says,"OK, Cory, we're gonna play Xbox and Halo 2."
"OK, man, whatever."
I don't own an Xbox and the last FPS I played was Medal of Honor. The last time I picked up an Xbox was controller was when I was at Best Buy and there wasn't a teenager in front of me (pretty much 99% of the time, the Xbox demo is being used). I don't worry myself about it but when it came time to play against Fitz and 7 of his "clan" on Halo, I purposely named my character "Newbie" so everybody would know that I needed to die right away. It was fun though, I'm so used to playing these games on keyboards that trying to do everthing with that controller was very tricky...I died alot...but I didn't care...because I felt good.

The next morning however was not fun. Not in a completely wasted hung-over kind of way but kind of like a semi-buzz floating head thing. I don't know but I didn't wake up with a tattoo that says "Fitz *hearts* Cory" on my ass-cheek.



That's pretty much the excitement portion of this entry. I've been getting really busy at work. We just kicked off a new project and it has consumed a good chunk of my time. Such that I spent a good majority of this weekend thinking and dreaming about stucco, metal studs, ceramic tile (and combinations thereof)among other things.

I'm excited though...My mom, dad, & brother are coming down to Phoenix this weekend so that MyBrother can play in a travelling tournament for golf here. Then, in the really cool department, my brother and I will hang out this weekend...by ourselves. Now MyBrother is only 15 but I was describing to Mom the kinds of things that I had in mind (though not necessarily in this order): Tattoo parlor, strip club, houses of ill-repute, keg-stands, skydiving, etc, spraypainting freeway overpasses.

It should be a good time!



One final thought. Here's a picture I took outside my apartment during sunset. I have the camera pointed in the general direction of the large forest fire that was in the Cave Creek area northeast of Phoenix. I really like this picture because of the wide-ranging color it shows:





You might be a redneck if:
-You've ever had to go to a highway sign with a paint roller and a ladder to protect your sister's reputation.

Good Night, kids!...TX18366 loves you...just not like that.



Show me some love:

|

PREVIOUS Entry | NEXT Entry