Bringing the Drama

(this actually happened 3 weeks ago, so pardon the tense it was written in, i just never got around to publishing it)

so last night i stayed up way too late playing around on the internet. nothing special, but i got caught up watching videos on youtube and reading about soccer. about 1 am, i turned off the computer and was turning off all the lights to go to bed. i decided to have a look at the hibiscus along the sidewalk in front of my house. it is one of the remaining plants from the flower bed renovation of 2006, and i’ve noticed the past couple of days since the more recent renovation, that it is starting to look like it’ll bloom for the first time since the summer of 2006. it was late, and i thought i’d turn on the front light and have a look. so i turn on the light and look out the window by my front door and look at the hibiscus, then i looked up and noticed a car parked across the street with people just hanging out. i turned off the light and the rest of the lights, but i found ways to keep an eye on these people. they were parked across the street along the windowless side of the house directly across the street from my house.

my street’s relatively quiet at night, because it’s not along the main road in the neighborhood. it’s really nice actually, unless there’s a mysterious car parked on it. i went into the front bedroom of my house and peered out the holes in the blinds, because obviously they knew i was awake, or had been, and besides, i didn’t want them to KNOW i was watching them. i didn’t call the cops for the same reason, they’d know who called the cops because i turned on the freaking front light to look at my hibiscus. i was just making sure they weren’t doing anything illegal. it just seemed really really odd. after about 10 minutes, i got tired of watching and went and brushed my teeth. i heard the car drive off right before i went to bed. i have no idea what those 3 (who i could see) people were doing, but next time that happens i’m calling the cops….unless i turn on the front light to look at the hibiscus again.

1 – Clemson advanced to a Super Regional, while south carolina blew a 3 run lead in the 9th and lost in 10 innings
2 – saw a dancing drink cup outside Sonic
3 – rode my bike down to Sonic for the free root beer float
4 – sweet relief at work
5 – hang out time with the folks watching the LSU game
6 – slept late, watered the new plants, and grilled salmon, also watched the US beat Honduras
7 – mowed my lawn, relaxed the rest of the day
8 – bought sweet potato chips at the store
9 – set out to run 4 miles and made it
10 – made some good progress on something at work
11 – hang out time with the Taylors, and a Zephyrs game was going on in the background
12 – had a great salad for dinner at La Madeleine
13 – went to and from BR safely to take defensive driving class and the class went better than i expected; LSU won their first CWS game
14 – early church, breakfast with my mom, finally saw the cover for the new Mute Math album and LOVED IT
15 – LSU won their 2nd CWS game!
16 – dinner with my family for my mom’s birthday; RUM RAMSEYS!
17 – did two sets of exercises at the gym in less than 45 minutes!
18 – grilled salmon and broccoli….and beer
19 – grilled burgers and made sweet potato fries
20 – nice relaxing Saturday watching the US Open
21 – great Father’s Day lunch with my family
22 – Lucas Glover, fellow Clemson alum of ‘01, won the US Open, and I got to watch the last few holes
23 – fun dinner with my sister and aunt
24 – the USA beat Spain! LSU won the CWS!
25 – after a pretty terrible day all around, i got to have a long talk with a fellow counselor about youth group and church that pretty much made up for all the crappy stuff from before
26 – peach milkshake at CFA!
27 – figured out issue with something at work while being paid OT
28 – had parents over to watch the USA/Brazil game…..i think i may have converted them
29 – saw a Mastercard commercial that features a guy i’ve played poker with
30 – bought new sunglasses at Target on the way home (i was stopping there anyway)

so this afternoon, i loaded up the text updated webpage for the USA/Spain soccer game. the way the US had been playing the last few weeks, and the fact that Spain had not lost in 3 years, made me think the US would be lucky to only lose by 2 goals. following soccer like i have the last couple of years, i know the US is not on par with the BEST TEAM ON THE PLANET. i’m guessing the players watched the pregame speech clip from Miracle or something.

i started reading the feed about the 20 minute mark in the game, and when the score updated to 1-0 USA, i had to read it a few times and refresh the page. the USA scored? they scored FIRST? what? after the first goal, i loaded up the text updates from the BBC. i scrolled back to see what they were saying, and i saw this quote from before the game that i thought was awesome:

Having been on the periphery of success for so long, Spain are now THE dominant force in world football. They are Euro 2008 champions, ranked number one on earth, haven’t been beaten in 35 games and have won their last 15 in a row. The perennial dark horses, Espana are now the hot favourites for next year’s World Cup. Faced with all of that, do USA give themselves a prayer of pulling off an enormous upset tonight? Of course they do. They’re Americans.

that’s right, because there is ALWAYS A CHANCE! the game got to halftime and it was still 1-0. i got to doing some other work, and kept an eye on the text updates. when the score changed to 2-0, i pounded my desk in amazement. how is this possible? how come no one else at work follows soccer? 2-0 on freaking Spain? this is Miracle on Ice stuff here! when full time was called, it was amazing. the US pulled the biggest upset in modern US soccer history. sure, they’ve beaten Mexico in Mexico, but Spain? SPAIN? Spain, the team loaded with players considered the best at their positions in the world, who were about to set a world record for consecutive victories as a national team? the same US team who were embarrassed last week against Italy and Brazil? INCREDIBLE!

i had seen a poll earlier this morning before the game asking “how much would it matter if the US beat Spain today?” 28% of the people on ESPN.com said “not at all”. hopefully after today some of them have changed their mind.

and then i came home and watched LSU handle Texas and win the CWS. while great, it was not as big a deal, because i guess i was expecting it, plus i’ve seen it 5 times before.

I readily admit I don’t read as much as I should. I don’t normally get excited about a book that’s not even out yet, at least I don’t remember this happening. Today I checked out what my friend Alton Brown is doing, and saw he has a new book coming out in October. Not only a book, a book about my favorite show, that apparently is so massive it is going to be broken up into 3 volumes! It’s like a food Lord of the Rings!

I hope he does another book signing tour again, because I had a great time at the last one. Thanks to some people moving back to the south shore, I may not have to go it alone.

i don’t think it’s rained down in the NOLA area in like three weeks, maybe more. i’m having to wake up at 6 am to water the plants and the yard. it is crazy. where is the rain? i got in my car this afternoon to leave work and saw this:

ONE HUNDRED AND NINE! luckily my iPod didn’t melt in the car. i know this picture may work better as a twitpic or whatever people call them, but i’m not on Twitter. more about that another time. it’s too hot to think.

So last week I finally got around to getting the defensive driving class scheduled that had to be taken because of the ticket I had gotten in February. I was going to take the class more locally, but the added bonus of the class being $20 cheaper and 2 hours shorter, plus hopefully being able to see my uncle and grandfather made it an easy decision. Once I had figured all of this out, I called the BR Courthouse to get signed up for the class. The lady on the phone told me the next Saturday class was in July, so I told her that wouldn’t be good because I needed to have the class taken by the end of June. Then she said she’d be able to fit me in the class the next day (this past Saturday). Why didn’t she just do that the first time? I was finally signed up and the lady told me I had to be on time, because if I was late, they’d not let me in the room. I was fine with this rule, because you’re taking a class so the ticket doesn’t get reported to your insurance, so I’ll be there on time. She also told me I could not wear shorts, which I thought was strange.

I woke up early on Saturday morning and set off for BR at 6:15. I made it down to the courthouse and found a parking spot. There was a crowd outside the courthouse waiting for the doors to open about 7:45. I could tell a lot of the people in the crowd were courtroom regulars. I had to go back to my car to leave my cell phone since they weren’t even letting people bring them in the building. I found the courtroom where the class was going to be held through the help of a fellow classmate. The teacher called everyone’s name and we had to go up to the front to sign in. There were probably 40-60 people in the courtroom, and it wasn’t even full! The teacher basically read out of a binder and played videos, so he started reading out of the binder after everyone signed in. About 8:20 or so, two people came in late. One lady wasn’t in the right room, she was apparently wandering around looking for a certain class. The other lady was late, but the teacher let her sign in and join the class. What about the rule about being on time??? This kind of bothered me. Also bothering me was the lady who came in from a break late (the breaks were 15 minutes, and there was NOWHERE TO GO!) with a water bottle (the teacher said at the beginning don’t bring food or drinks into the courtroom). The teacher said “Ma’am, you can’t bring that water into the courtroom.” Her response was “Huh?” So then he said “You’re going to have to go outside and throw it away.” She did it begrudgingly, but really, is it that hard to follow a couple of rules for a few hours?

The class itself wasn’t that bad. The teacher was funny enough to keep boring driving rules interesting. The videos he showed were pretty good. Of course there were videos with people pretending to be horrible drivers not caring about seat belts, or easily driven to road rage. Stupid quotes about not having to wear seatbelts or whatever that were obviously supposed to be actors made you sad that there are actually people like that. The road rage video had some funny parts. The mention of a drivers’ ed teacher in NC who was with a student, ordered the student to chase down some guy that cut them off. And then the video where one guy driving a white Caravan got pulled out in front of by a Taurus. Instead of just dealing, he follows the guy and pulls up behind him in his driveway. He just happens to have an aluminum bat with him between the seats, so he pulls that out and approaches the Taurus. Unfortunately he didn’t see the guy in the Taurus was pulling out a gun. Oops! Also, the teacher told us when going over RR Crossing info that some lady in Louisiana had recently crashed into the 42nd car of a train. FORTY SECOND! The train was basically passing and she didn’t even stop. She survived though and told the officers at the scene “It just came out of nowhere.” (shakes head)

We all had to take a 20 question test at the end which was really easy. I told the guy next to me before we graded our neighbor’s that if anyone failed, they should have their license taken. You could miss 6 questions and still pass! Everyone passed and we got our certificates and I was out of there around 11:30. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see my uncle or my grandfather. I had called my uncle twice during the week and left VMs, but didn’t hear anything back. I called my grandfather as I was leaving the class in hopes I could talk to him, but had to leave a VM. I hope the non returned calls were just oversights, and I’m not on the “Never talk to again” list. I ended up driving home way earlier than I thought with a heavy heart.

you know how lately bands from the late 90s and early 00s have been going “hey, we’re tired of working at the Gap, let’s go out on tour! i don’t hate you anymore!”? No Doubt and blink-182 (WTF?) are the latest bands to have this happen. i think it mostly started with Rage Against The Machine’s ‘reunion’. oh what, no new record? they got back together so they could be needed? what a bunch of BS. ANYWAY…..today i was perusing any available concerts coming to NOLA. i did see The Donnas are coming, a few years late for me, but still. the show that obviously is going to be the concert of the year is Sugar Ray being supported by Fastball! OMG! is it the One or Two Hit Wonders United tour? it must be. i laughed when i thought they’re going to be up on stage with people yelling for the 3 songs they know total and the bands are going to be wanting to play the songs they’ve written on their hiatuses from civilization the past 10 years.

random dude: “PLAY I WANNA FLY! I WANNA FLY!”
lead singer of SR: “no see, we all got together over the holidays and wrote a bunch of new songs for you guys!”
entire crowd: “BOOOOOOOOOO!”

it could possibly be a glorious moment, but one i’m not willing to shell out $30 to go see.

also strange today in addition to the usual shenanigans from BO Guy, i got a very nice compliment about how i should quit engineering and become a model, because i’m so handsome. sounds great right? well, this lady has been sitting near me for a couple of weeks. i knew her from a while back, and she was always so nice. like i think she probably makes cookies on the weekends for neighborhood kids. anyway, since she’s been sitting near me, i’ve noticed how much she hates NOLA. i don’t know exactly where she’s from, but she’s not from here, and she’s quick to point that out if she can. last week she brought in a blueberry pie she had made and offered me a piece. i turned her down because i don’t like blueberries, but when i told her she said “that’s okay, i don’t like crawfish”. what? i know maybe people don’t like NOLA, i get that. i think it’s stupid how the mayor of NOLA is quarantined in China for the swine flu. (what the hell is he doing in China?) i don’t like people openly criticizing it over and over again, especially when they are not from here. if she hates it so bad, then why doesn’t she leave? anyway, all that kind of stuff made me kind of not like her, and today the model comment threw everything off. i don’t know how to feel about her now….but at least she thinks i’m really really really ridiculously good looking. let’s go grab some orange mocha frappacinos!

today at work was the big review that we’ve been working on for weeks. i was nervous about the slides i had done being presented by my manager. i will now attempt to explain why in terms of being an NSync fan. i like NSync, i know most of their songs, but i haven’t been a fan long enough to know details that would make my fandom impressive to other fans….at least i don’t think so. my friend Chad, he knows JC’s hometown and birthday, Fat One’s g/f’s name, he’s friends with Justin on Facebook, where the band was discovered, and what each of their singles are. basically he’s a hardcore know it all as far as NSync goes. so anyway, my NSync slides got presented today and didn’t garner many questions, which is what i wanted. you don’t want a lot of questions at the reviews, because that means what you have presented is not enough information. the slides were even old slides from before i emailed newer slides that had me staying at work till 7:40 the other night. so things went totally fine for everyone involved, and i’m glad it’s over.

one of the adventures today was accidentally not having the mute button on my phone working right. i “tied in” to the meeting at my desk after lunch so i could work on some other stuff. i called in to the number and hit the mute button on my phone. i put the phone down and i heard “does someone have an open mic?” the guy who sits next to me asks “is it on mute?” i looked at the phone and the mute button was lit, so i said “yeah, you can say whatever you want!” then we hear “can someone mute their phone because we can hear you.” i hit the mute button again and apparently it has to be blinking for the mute to be on. as you can probably figure out, i don’t use my phone on mute very often.

tonight Sonic gave away free root beer floats. there’s a Sonic down the street from my house, about a mile and a half away, that i can ride my bike to. since everyone i know with a bike has moved out of my general area, i’m made to pedal alone. i called up a couple of friends to see if they wanted to go, but was turned down. “i don’t like root beer floats”. WHAT?!? Root Beer Floats are synonymous with America. and on a night that they’re given an opportunity for a free one they turn it down? i may need to look for new friends.

i got home from the gym (i’ve doubled my ability for pull ups since i first started doing them) and turned on the USA/Costa Rica soccer game. someone forgot to tell the USA defense they were playing, because within the first 15 minutes it was 2-0. i made a tomato and cheese omelet (i’m getting good at those) and had dinner. i called up a friend one last time about Sonic, but got VM. sad. i rode my bike down to the Sonic and the clientele was sketchier than i remember. they had waitresses walking around with the floats, so i didn’t have to order or anything. i got my float, sat down, and enjoyed the evening. after i finished, i thought about getting one for the ride home but decided against it. it kind of would have seemed greedy since the same two waitresses were walking around. i rode home and got back in time to see the 2nd half of the soccer game, which ended up being a 3-1 defeat for the USA. yuck.

the root beer float night was a great idea. i hope Sonic makes it a yearly thing, though i’m kind of hoping they decide to make a night later this summer for a free slushie or jr banana split.

(side story, that summer (i think 2006?) when they had the 99 cent jr banana splits, i must have eaten 10 of them, they were awesome.)

since that fateful night with friends at the Greek Fest, i have been going non stop. work has been crazy lately with a big review coming up at the end of this week. that means we’ve been working on slides and reports lately. it’ll all be over once the review is over, and thanks to some forward thinking by one of my managers (i kind of have 5 different bosses/managers) we are done all the main stuff and this week are just tying up loose ends and checking details.

last weekend though, after working a few hours of OT, i went out with some friends in NOLA, hoping to meet up with a friend from Birmingham who was in town for a wedding. she didn’t show, but i still had a good time riding the street car and meeting friends of friends. btw, why does anyone order a beer if they don’t like beer? why order a beer and then only take a sip and be done with it? order a mixed drink or at least water! Sunday i met up with Jacob at the pub to watch some soccer. it was the first time all season we had gone to the pub together, which was a shame.

later in the evening, Whitney and i hit up Brandi Carlile. the show was much better than i thought it would be. i mean, i know my friend Brandi loves Brandi, but the past few months i had taken some of her songs off my iPod. she played a lot of new songs, and everything was acoustic. the new songs were great! and she covered Johnny Cash, the Beatles, and Radiohead. it was an excellent show. the crowd was unique as well, and some 60 something year old lady was trying to move me out of her way so she could move up. i stood my ground. i don’t care if she was only 5 feet tall, i was there first! also Whitney said her breath was horrible.

i’m going to yadda yadda work last week. amongst the highlights were walking past BO Guy on the way out one day and in the midst of saying “have a good night, see you tomorrow!” i took a big whiff of BO and almost suffocated at ’see you tomorrow’. things have been really weird with him lately. he’s been on the phone a lot with health food type people, and he asked some lady last week if avocados and tomatos were considered fresh vegetables. that’s not even the weirdest thing.

the other big things last week were the making of the homemade pasta sauce and the restoration of the front flower beds at my house. the restoration was a 3 day affair, but now i look like i have an actual landscaped front yard. here’s a picture my dad took Sunday afternoon:

actual mulch! hopefully the precautions we took with the weed screens will prevent the weeds from taking over again. also, i killed a few hundred ants in the process and that felt good.