Bringing the Drama

so i’m still going to the gym, and have had run-ins with CGG. this evening i was able to avoid him by the grace of God. he totally missed seeing me while i’m right out in the open doing some shoulder exercises. i have failed to tell you about what happened about a week and a half ago. i recounted this story at IHOP after the high school football game last week and will now document it for the internet.

on Fridays i get there earlier than the other two days i go because i’m either off work early or because i don’t have work. so it’s almost unavoidable to see CGG on Fridays. two Fridays ago, i had gone and pretty much almost finished my entire workout before having probably the creepiest yet. i had seen him walking around, but of course just kept to myself. i had finished my three sets and only had one burnout set to do. (incidentally, the burnout set idea was from when Matt the intern would workout with Andy, Chad, and I and it’s basically one set of one exercise with a lower weight, which you do until you ‘burnout’). i had gotten some water and i thought i had avoided CGG, but when i turn the corner to go back to the weight room, BAM, there he is. i had to shake his hand or something like a “hey, what’s up?” deal, and i THOUGHT that was all. i walk into the weight room, i had my hand on the bar and he comes up to me. the conversation went something like this:

CGG: “hey scott, what kind of engineer are you at [Company Awesome]?”
me: “mechanical”
CGG: “oh yeah? and you do drawing like on the computer?”
me: “yeah”
CGG: “cool, so could you draw stuff like gym equipment?”
me: “not really. most of what i do is airplane stuff”
[i thought at the time how i wanted to go "UNLESS IT IS GETTING LAUNCHED INTO SPACE, I CAN'T DRAW IT!", but i guess me being nice helped me hold my tongue]
CGG: “oh okay”
me: “couldn’t you draw it like on paper or something?”
CGG: “oh no, my brother owns the place (and i thought “i’ll never get him fired!”) and i’m an MD but i’ve been out of practice for 4 years (i thought “i can tell you why!”) and we can’t draw anything”
me: “well, i guess you could go to a sports therapist and see where they get drawings for stuff, i have no idea”
CGG: “oh, okay, well, have a good weekend”

WTF? i could see where he was going with his questions. he was going to see if i could draw it for him, and there was no way ever that i would do that. i don’t get it. i was talking to a friend at dinner tonight, and he knows a guy who used to be a trainer at the gym i go to, who is now a trainer at a gym closer to my house. if the other gym is around the same price, i might be switching. i deal with enough ridiculous creepy stuff at work, like BO Guy’s trip to Colombia coming up in a couple of weeks (wait till i post about that!) that i would like to minimize the creepy/weird stuff as much as possible. i mean, yes, i am awesome, but at least my eye doctor only calls my cell phone for about a week after i go once a year. he doesn’t ask me about drawing new eye care equipment.

on Thursday before i left work, i had a good talk with my home shop manager. a quick rundown, so in the program where i do rotations in different departments, i’m still badged to the department i was hired in, which is called ‘home shop’. anyway, so the manager who’s my home shop manager now is different from the one i originally worked for, and IMO much better. the past month or so, i’ve gone to talk to her a few times about my job and my job prospects. it’s awesome to have someone at work who’s higher up than me to go talk to about some of the frustrations with my current job and have them listen. she’s able to give me some advice, and i feel better about the current state of things….up to a point anyway. i went and talked to her about my current job hunt and filled her in on my meet up with a guy in town from ATL. one of my friends in ATL told me about her old boss coming down to NOLA and arranged me to meet him. i went and talked to him Thursday AM for probably an hour. he gave me some advice on job searching, and about what he was working on. why does almost every other job i hear about seem cooler than mine?

back to the home shop manager, she told me about maybe why one of the jobs i bid for got turned down so quickly (because apparently the people in Denver aren’t very open to hiring non-Denver people). she also told me that i probably wouldn’t hear much until after the new year starts. yuck. this means i will probably have to start up taking grad school classes again. i’m not really excited about that. hopefully i’ll just find one class i can take which won’t cause me to lose my mind. i am DEFINITELY not going to schedule two classes ever again, one is bad enough.

so probably a month or so ago i noticed the Reba McEntire/Kelly Clarkson tour was going to be hitting Biloxi. i didn’t really know who to ask, because all the people who i went with to see KC two summers ago live far away. last Sunday in Sunday School, i brought up the show, and as soon as the words left my lips two girls went “OMG! FOR REAL?” newly listed last week was a 4 pack of tickets that lowered the per ticket price from $47 and $57 to $25, take that TM! (of course after the fees they were $35 each)

i knew the show would not be as cool as the last time i saw KC. that weekend will go down as one of the greatest weekends ever. nothing was going to come close to my friend Mike and i wearing American flag bandanas, nothing was going to be as great as jumping and flailing about during the show. sure, The Reeb would be there but really, would all of the fun?

i met the girls i was going with at the carpool meetup spot and we set off for the coliseum. immediately upon getting there we were stuck in traffic. the people directing traffic were not professionals and that getting out would be a nightmare. i parked on the last row of the parking lot, avoiding being blocked in. i’m not sure who suggested it (not me) that to kill time after, we could go wait by the tour buses. i figured that would be fine, since it would be either that or sit in the car for 30 minutes.

when we got inside we walked up to our seats, and saw it wasn’t really that crowded. we watched the opening act, who was the girl who played Barbara Jean on Reba’s show doing a comedy act. it was alright, but most of what she said was how cool Reba was, which got old after a while. the lights went down and Reba and Kelly took the stage! after the 2nd song (Why Haven’t I Heard From You?) we moved down to seats opposite the stage, so we had a great view of the video screen and everything. after we moved down there, i saw plenty of other people move. why sit in the $25 seats when you could move down to the seats twice as expensive?

the show was a lot of fun, and they both went through their major hits and some covers. KC only did two songs off her newest album, which was kind of surprising. she of course did the big hits off Breakaway, and i noticed Reba learned the words to a few songs this time since i saw her with KC on Crossroads. i only knew 5 or so Reba songs before the show and she did all of those. they also did some older Reba songs which probably made the older people in the crowd happy. you could tell Reba was really good at telling stories between songs, but Kelly wasn’t. there were a lot of old ladies in the crowd, so when Kelly would say something that she probably thought was funny, it would feel awkward because the older people wouldn’t really cheer.

they finished the main set having not sung “Since U Been Gone” or “Fancy”. you knew they HAD to do both of them. so the crowd’s cheering, and the arena is dark, and then the bands come on stage and start playing music that ended up being SUBG. Reba and Kelly emerged back to back from a riser at the top of the stairs. OMG! they sang it and everyone’s going crazy, and then they started Fancy. the entire crowd is up on their feet screaming and yelling and singing. the lights on the stage are at their peak, and then they finished. it was amazing!

after the show, we sat in our seats as the crowd was leaving. there were so many hair and fashion disasters, it was almost hard to believe. i went past the merch booth on the way out and while there saw a guy with a Reba tour shirt and i think it said either 1991 or 1998 (is either okay?). he was telling the girl he was with, which shirts he saw that he already had. it was kind of scary. he kind of looked like the brother from Napoleon Dynamite. after we walked outside, we saw the insane amount of traffic, so we walked around to find the tour buses. there were probably 30-40 other people back there, including one group of ladies who i think were intentionally trying to channel Reba. they all had sequin type shirts on and that mid to late 90s Reba haircut. i almost asked to get a picture with one of them, but i didn’t. the security guards were kind of jerks and made up stories to get everyone to leave. i felt bad, because most of the people back there seemed to be normal people who just wanted to catch a glimpse of their heroine (Reba). by the time the tour bus drama ended, the traffic had cleared out, so we hopped in the car and headed home.

after the months of watching the campaign go from inspiring to annoying to maddening in what seemed like 10 years, we finally got to vote last Tuesday. my parents usually work at the polling places for elections, so they voted early. my dad kept bugging me about voting early, but i kept telling him and other people who were telling me to vote early that i wanted to wait until election day. i liked the feeling of community with the rest of America. besides, my precinct is basically my neighborhood, and for every other election i’ve voted in there’s never been a line. not even in 2004. i get to vote at the local “used to be cool, but now it’s awful” mall, and i think my entire time voting in the Presidential primary a few months ago was 3 minutes and most of that was taken up by the people finding my name in the roster book.

i wore a red shirt to work on Tuesday. it was not random, i wore it for a reason. nobody said anything to me at work, but i knew, and that’s all that mattered really. the carpool was down to two on Tuesday, and yes, it has turned somewhat awkward. i’m making it through though. i had mentioned to thomas about maybe leaving early, so later in the afternoon he asked if i wanted to leave an hour early. i took him up on the offer, and we left early to go vote, anticipating long lines. our site manager (three or four levels ABOVE me) had encouraged us the day before in a meeting that voting was important and if we had to take off early to do it we should. work should never be an excuse for not voting, which i’m in agreement with.

anyway, so i show up at the mall to vote, and my precinct has the longest line. there were probably 40 or maybe 50 people in front of me. the other two precincts voting at the same place either had no one in line, or 5 people. i had read Kari’s Capra-esque election day experience earlier in the day on Tuesday and wanted the place i voted to have stickers. they didn’t even have to have the Presidential seal on them. while in line i talked with the people around me and was proud i had read and written down my decisions on the 7 state constitutional amendments on a post-it note. the people in front of me were busily reading a printed out webpage explaining what they were, the same one i had read earlier.

i waited in line about 40 minutes until i got to the table where three people were in charge of finding your name on the roster and then writing it down. the guy who actually had the book was probably in his 50s. the two people on either side of him probably were in their 80s. the guy at the right side of the table was a little old man who only moved his head to hear the name being called out, then he would turn back to his sheet and write the name in cursive. the lady on the left side of the table couldn’t hear very well, so the guy in the middle turned to tell her the name. once they finished, i went to a booth. voting took me maybe 1 minute. i had the big races and the amendments, and already having my post-it note with FOR and AGAINST on it, i was good to go rather quickly. i checked my votes to make sure i didn’t hit any incorrect buttons, then hit ‘CAST VOTE’ making sure my choice for President did not change or anything. there was a rumor some of the machines were changing the President vote, but i think that was probably user error or something. i came out of the machine, and went to leave. there was no one handing out stickers! however, i did get to for the President for the 4th time in my life, on the big election day, with the rest of America, and that is the most important thing. i just wish i could have gotten a sticker!

as if i didn’t need anymore motivation for the football games to watch today, i went to my high school alma mater (Northshore) and watched them take on their main rival (Slidell). my senior year was the FIRST time Northshore ever beat Slidell. beating them was a BIG DEAL. it takes up at least a couple of pages in my senior book (yes, i felt compelled to make one of those, but it’s basically just pictures and newspaper clippings). i was a jerk about the rivalry the rest of the year to people in my youth group. it was kind of awesome.

i haven’t been back to the school for a football game in a long time. i may have gone with my friend Ryan (who’s now in NC) but i don’t think so. for last night’s game, i emailed the young adult group at my church to see if anyone wanted to go. i had a couple of takers, so we were all going to meet at the school. the parking was INSANE! i made it in and walked up to the bleachers just as they kicked off. my friend Ehren was the first one there, and as we walked up to the bleachers, i told her i used to hate walking in front of everyone in the bleachers when i was in HS. i don’t know why, but i was. last night, we walked in front of everyone looking for a seat. we found one about the 35 yard line.

the only bad part of our seats were this lady in front of us who brought confetti to the game. CONFETTI! everytime Northshore did something good, she’d throw it, all over, which meant it got all over the people in front of her, and around her. i’ve heard of air horns at games, and signs, but confetti? i don’t recommend bringing it to a game unless you’re surrounded by a good sized radius of people who are cool with it.

the game was fantastic! of course, it had it’s sloppy moments with a lot of fumbles and penalties, but for a high school game i thought they looked decent. both QBs played really well i thought. apparently the NHS QB went 20-32 for 327 yards! they don’t give you stats during a HS game, and there’s always that announcer who’s RIGHT IN YOUR EAR it seems giving you a sort of play by play using the nicknames of the players. my old AP Am History teacher made an XP at halftime and apparently won a year’s supply of Chick Fil A sandwiches. the 2nd half was a lot more exciting, esp the 4th quarter. Northshore scored with 7 minutes to play, then Slidell scored with 3:27 to play, then Northshore got the winning TD with 46 seconds to play! the D finally rose up and stopped Slidell on the final drive, and then pandemonium ensued. it was great. i don’t know exactly how many times Northshore’s won this game since i graduated, but i felt very proud.

so the morning after the awesome Halloween party, i went and ran in a 5k. it was the fall edition of the Crescent City Classic, and the people who would be able to run it in under 25 minutes would get a timing chip for the spring 10k. i’ve been running at least 4 miles multiple times a week for the last couple, so i figured i might have a shot at the 25 minute mark. i got to City Park without much time to spare, and was walking up to the start area as the race started. there weren’t very many other people running, and for some reason once those people started, they started taking all the start area stuff down! i didn’t even know where the start line was! some guy suggested i just run to catch up with the group, so that’s what i did. i passed a big group of walkers, and by about the first half mile, i was out running my own pace without having to jump the curb and avoid a big group of slower people. i had no idea my pace, i was too concentrated on keeping up a fast one. when i entered the stadium for the finish, i saw the clock was past 25 minutes, and i finished in 27:22. my ipod told me i only ran 2.89 miles, so i didn’t even run the full 5k according to it. i know i didn’t start that far ahead of wherever the start was, so i suspect the ipod was off. they had you write down your time, and then turn it in, so theoretically i could have written down a sub 25 minute time, but i decided to be truthful (stupid morals!). they had beer and jambalaya available, but it was 9 in the morning, and i had just run 3 miles, so i went with a banana and some gatorade. i got my race shirt, and headed home.

i basically watched football and rested during the day, because i was going to the Hornets’ home opener with my dad that night. welcome to another year of basketball pictures from the upper deck! (below: LeBron surveying the court)

the game was great, and it was good to be going to a game again. it’s felt like forever since the infamous game 7. it was fun sitting in the crowd, making jokes about players, complaining home team players didn’t at least act like they were taking a charge, and high fiving strangers. the game was a lot closer than last year’s Cavs game, which made it more interesting. i’m going again on Wednesday and then next week to the Lakers game. i can’t wait! i didn’t renew my season tickets because of the high possibility i’d be moving, but man, i sure was kicking myself for not renewing. i’m still thinking about it, especially after my cousin said he’d buy my remaining tickets if i moved.

i was invited to a Halloween party at my aunt and uncle’s in Chalmette last night. seeing as how i could stay home and face a ton of kids coming to my house, or go to a party where other people faced a ton of kids, i went to the party. i didn’t have anything planned to wear as a costume, but i had considered it. i had gone to a local party supply store, but some of their costumes were $50 and $60. i didn’t want to spend that much. i kind of wanted a Jedi robe, but they didn’t have that either. so i planned to go to the party and not dress up. then yesterday afternoon, i figured i could dress up like Jim from The Office. i called my superfan Office friends Alisa and Kari about what kind of things i’d have to put on to make sure i got the look right. Kari suggested a messenger bag (which i had!), then Alisa told me i should dress up like 3 hole punch Jim (which i could make!). unfortunately, only one person at the party knew what i was dressed as, everyone else was trying to figure out why i had 3 black circles on my shirt, even after i said it was from The Office. very few people at the party even watched The Office and some had never heard of it. (I KNOW!) the one guy who knew it immediately and i shared a fist bump. i felt validated at last!

the party was great. there were a lot of people, and we all stood outside at one time or another to watch all the kids come up to my aunt for candy. we encouraged the kids to put their masks on if they didn’t have them on. it doesn’t count as Darth Vader if there’s no mask. with no mask it’s just a black robe with some buttons on the front.

a couple of my uncles put together a ‘haunted house’ in the garage, but some of the music didn’t really fit the mood. the Ghostbusters theme song didn’t really make you scared of anything. when the music was changed to the more ominous Halloween themed music, then everything worked out better. the battery powered bat my uncle had bought was a hit with some of the kids, who walked right underneath it to watch it fly around. the bat was too fast to capture in the picture, but trust me, it was there.

the only people dressed up at the party were me, and then my cousin and his g/f. they dressed as the Flintstones, with my cousin wearing plastic feet with only three toes.

we saw plenty of kids dressed up last night with no one costume leading all others. we saw Batman, Iron Man, Darth Vader, random skeletons, Snow White, but i think the best costume was the girl dressed up as Dorothy, complete with a Toto. also, some of the adults who were taking their kids around were also dressed up. did you know Velma smoked and drank? the one i saw last night did.

there were a lot of older kids out there, which wasn’t nearly as odd as the lady who came up with a couple of kids, but then had her own bag. she said that bag was for the baby at home who was sick. alright, babies can’t eat candy, and really, the baby was at home sick? who’s going to be eating that candy? we reluctantly gave her candy anyway, then laughed and speculated she made up the whole thing so she could get candy for herself.

the new Ryan Adams album, Cardinology, came out today. i have been listening to the album via the stream from facebook a lot since it debuted last week. i love these songs. i haven’t really loved an album so fast before. hearing the songs live just flipped my anticipation for the album into overdrive. i emailed friends during the day at work to talk about it or sat listening to the stream and IMing friends about how good the songs were and gushing about the lyrics. it got a bit ridiculous.

finally today, i was able to go buy the cd (the vinyl is on order and won’t be here for a few more days). i didn’t have any issues getting it at best buy this afternoon, which was nice. i’ve had issues before trying to get new releases because most of the time the workers at BB suck at music. i went running tonight, and ate dinner when i got back. now i’m relaxing with some hot chocolate (it’s getting down to 35 tonight!) before bed listening to the album. what a great way to end the day.

this week, Rouses, the locally owned grocery chain, had redfish fillets advertised in their weekly ad. i love redfish. after work one day, i stopped by a store and bought a single fillet. i had grand dreams to prepare it, but ended up doing a hack job. my friend Andy had shown me a way to use the grill to make grilled/steamed catfish, and upon not finding any recipes for redfish where i already had the ingredients, i went with a variation on the grilling/steaming method. basically it’s making a foil compartment with the fish, the spices, the liquid seasoning(s), and throwing it on the grill. it comes out fantastic if you use the right amount of seasoning. unfortunately for me, i used way too much cayenne pepper. i used cayenne pepper, garlic powder, a splash of Dale’s, a splash of Worcestershire, and some butter. oh, and some of the local chain’s Vidalia onion and tomato dressing. i put it out on the grill, cooked up some steamed broccoli and some brown sugar oatmeal, then went and pulled the fish off. the broccoli came out fantastic, i’ve become good with the steaming. the oatmeal was okay. the fish was ridiculously hot. i scraped as much of the pepper off as i could, but it was not enough. i ate about half of it before throwing the rest out. next time i’ll cut back, if not completely cut out, the cayenne pepper. otherwise, the other seasonings were good, so they’ll be used again.

i had bought some peaches at walmart the other day. i know i know, i should go to the farmers’ market, but i’ve been busy on Saturdays and haven’t been able to go. who knows if the two little old ladies are still selling peaches? anyway, so i got these California peaches at walmart, and was letting them ripen on my counter. i went to eat one tonight, and two out of the four had already gone bad. they were not ripe enough yesterday, but today were so ripe they were bad. i don’t know how that happens. if that weren’t bad enough, one of the remaining peaches that i cut up had absolutely no flavor and was dry. you know how you can turn the color down on a tv until it’s all the way gone? that’s how eating this peach was, there was no flavor, no hint, no anything. i thought the white flesh peaches were bad because they didn’t have the flavor of traditional peaches, but tonight was just awful. it was very sad.

so i know i need to type about the Ryan Adams shows from last week, but today i went to the doctor for a followup to the MRI i had done Thursday. he looked through all the pictures and didn’t see a labrum tear, or at least not one bad enough to require full on surgery. he said he saw something that was a little suspect, and told me to keep doing therapy (at home and the gym, not going to PT) and if i still had pain after a month or so, to call him and he could do a quick outpatient scope and fix the damage. my shoulder has felt light years better than it did a month or so ago, so the PT and being smarter about how i move it have definitely worked.

btw, the MRI on Thursday was actually an arthrogram. because labrum tears are hard to see in a regular MRI, they injected a dye into my shoulder so any tears would show up better. i had to go an hour early for them to inject the dye. the radiologist deadened the area then put some blanket type things up over my face so i couldn’t see the needle (which was probably a good thing, because i think it was probably pretty big). it didn’t really hurt, giving blood probably hurts worse, and i don’t think it’s that big of a deal. i had to wait an hour after they injected the dye before the MRI could be done. after the hour passed, they walked me back to the truck where the machine was. they laid me down on the bed thing and put my shoulder in some kind of contraption to keep it still. one of the nurses gave me earplugs because she said the machine was loud (and it was, so i was really glad for the earplugs). they moved me back into the tube and started the test. i was supposed to keep as still as possible which wasn’t too hard, although i was keeping my eyes closed because there was about an inch or two from my face to the wall of the tube. i think i may have dozed off, i have no idea. i think it lasted about 30 minutes before they moved me out of it. the nurse said a couple of the pictures came out blurry, but she said everything else went fine, and the number of blurry ones was no big deal. she said she took about 120 images. after it was over, my shoulder felt pretty stiff and sore, but nothing too bad. i went home and packed, then headed up to Tuscaloosa. more on that tomorrow.

also, today at work i saw an article on a plugin Mini. kind of expensive at $850 a month now, but hopefully soon i can get a car that requires no gas and i can plug it in overnight to use in the morning. combine that with eventually having solar power to produce electricity, which would also charge the car, and you have a completely self sufficient system going. the road trip aspect of plugin cars needs some work though. a range of 150 miles wouldn’t have done me any good this past weekend. if they can get the range up to 500 or 600 miles, they’ll have something.