Bringing the Drama

About two weeks ago I went and hung out with Running at the gym. It was too cold to run outside, so I went to the gym, then showered and all that. I came out and got in my car and sat there a couple of seconds, basically decompressing like “okay, I’m done and I’m going to drive home.” It was about 8 pm I think. I was parked over by the drug store since the parking spots around the gym fill up on weeknights. I’ve done it before, nothing out of the ordinary. Then as I’m sitting there in my few seconds of decompression, this lady walks along the sidewalk in front of my car and motions to me. I rolled down my window and she walks closer and starts talking to me in a “will fall apart into full on crying” voice. She tells me she’s from St Bernard (the parish) and she’s trying to get to the hospital to see her mom. She thought she was at Slidell Memorial, but she’s actually at St Tammany Parish Hospital and now she’s out of gas. I told her I wasn’t going that way (it was 25 miles away) She asked me if I could help her get some gas. I told her I didn’t have a gas can with me. I wasn’t going to drive her to go get any either. So I had $3 in my wallet, and gave it to her. She thanked me and walked off. I figured if she had a fuel efficient car, that would buy her a gallon of gas and she’d be able to drive the 20 or so miles to the other hospital. Besides, the only other bill I had was a $20.

I thought about her story though on my way home and it was such garbage. Did she tell me she was from St Bernard so I’d feel sorry for her? I have family in St Bernard, they wouldn’t leave their house with no money or credit cards with little or no gas. They would confirm what hospital to go to before showing up at the wrong one. They wouldn’t stop in a parking lot a few blocks away from the wrong hospital and beg for money. I surmised though, that I only gave her $3, so if she was going to do something like go buy a bottle of Jack, she’d have to find 8 other people like me.

Fast forward to last night. I stopped at Academy Sports to get a Saints NFC Championship shirt. It was about 8 pm. I walked out to my car and was about to open the door when THE SAME LADY comes up to me and says “excuse me, I’m trying to get to St Tammany Parish Hospital…” She was even using that stupid “about to cry” voice. I cut her off and said “that’s okay, I saw you a week ago.” She looked at me, and immediately turned and walked toward the IHOP nearby. I got home and after telling someone about it right when I got home, was encouraged to call the police to see if what the lady was doing was illegal. I called the sheriff’s office, and talked to a lady there, who said it was illegal to commit fraud, which this lady was surely doing. She laughed a little when I told her how I saw the same lady and she tried to use the same story on me in the exact same way. She took down a description and said she would call the local police about it since it was more a local police issue.

I hung up the phone and ate a leftover gameday burger and drank a High Life. The entire fiasco brightened up an otherwise gloomy evening. I hope the cops found her and gave her something to really cry about. Then I realized, I should have asked for my $3 back.

I started growing my beard out again the week of the HALF MARATHON. It started out innocently enough, I was just going to do a No Shave November, but then I remembered how I wanted to grow it out for the final two months or so of 2007 and couldn’t. So I was going to grow it out through the end of the year and then shave it. Then I started getting compliments about it. “that beard is epic” “your beard looks good” “it’s so thick!” People liked it, I kept getting unsolicited comments. So then I thought “okay, I can let it go a little while longer.”

I was talking to my friend Brandon at work last week, and told him I was leaning towards shaving it off. He told me I should wait, and I told him that now it’s gotten to the point where if I shave it off, it’s a little over two months’ work gone. Gladly, the beard is not tied to anything sports related, so I didn’t feel compelled to shave because of the Saints or Hornets. I had the beard in Nashville while watching the Cowboys game. [photo credit: Brandi]

Thursday I went to the gym to run since it has been too cold to run outside. I passed CGG as I was leaving, but looked away plus I had my beard and glasses on, and avoided eye contact. Friday I went back to work out, and he noticed me and called me by name. The beard lost it’s disguise factor. Also, I found out CGG is part of the cleaning crew, which makes me think he’s not really related to the owner. That’s another story.

Saturday night my friend Jacob and I were finally going to hang out after two postponements. I shaved my beard down to a mustache. I had just gotten tired of the beard, plus with the disguise factor going away and other factors, it had to go. I had gotten the mustache idea from when Jacob had done it a couple of years ago….to go out with a mustache. I ended up being late because the beard took so long to shave off. I thought the mustache came out pretty well.

Sunday before meeting up with family to go down to the WWII Museum, I shaved the mustache off. I’m clean shaven for the first time since late October. It’s a brave new world.

I woke up this morning and the morning talk radio guy was taking calls from people giving their predictions. I didn’t like the host doing that, because really, most people were just spouting off with homer type predictions. Some guy calls up and says “Saints 45, Patriots 14″. I laughed to myself and said “what an idiot”. I mean, I thought the Saints would win, but not by more than a couple of TDs at the most. I thought it’d be a close game, and in the back of my mind thought the Saints might lose.

Work today was rough. I kept thinking about the game. A couple of friends at work who were going to the game left early in the afternoon. I told them to yell loud enough for themselves and me. I on the other hand, was going to do exactly what I did the last MNF game, go to the gym, go to the store, and get home in time for kickoff. I’m a little superstitious about things if you don’t already know.

Sidebar: at the gym apparently now I can be looked at as a regular. This guy asked me in the locker room if I had been going to the gym for a while, and how did I like it. He was apparently shopping gyms. I told him I go to that particular gym because it’s conveniently located to where I used to carpool from, and I just kind of kept going. Then I found a way out of the conversation because I had a football game to watch.

The stop at the store nearly produced everything I went for but I did not find any mascarpone. I didn’t know if it’d be with the fancy cheeses (was going to take too long to look) or with stuff like cream cheese (I didn’t see it). Reason being I have found my next baking goal for this weekend, this Tiramisu cake. I might even make the Bobby Flay biscuits again to use up the buttermilk I bought to make the Coffee Cake.

I got home at 7:28 for a 7:30 kickoff. The game started off as expected, it was back and forth. On my way home I heard Reggie Bush and Jabari Greer were going to be inactive, which I was not excited about. I thought Reggie was going to play a huge part tonight, but I guess his knee is still bothering him. The Saints’ secondary has been banged up, and now we’re going to be relying on backups, including two guys who before two weeks ago were not even playing football. In this game though, those guys stepped up. My aunt’s favorite Saint was/is Mike McKenzie, who played for the Saints until last year. He was one of the guys just recently signed, in fact, signed last week. He made some HUGE plays including a game changing INT. Awesome. Then Drew Brees was just a surgeon out there, dissecting the Patriots at every turn. Did you see the ridiculously accurate throws? I mean, really, they were insane. I was pretty much in disbelief when it was 24-10 at halftime, and then when they answered the Patriots TD with one of their own to make it 31-17. Unbelievable.

Final score, Saints 38, Patriots 17. Maybe that dude who had called the radio station this morning knew something I didn’t. Or maybe he had more confidence than I did. Either way, the Saints are 11-0. WHO DAT!

So apparently while everyone was worried about the Saints and getting ready for Thanksgiving, there was a hurricane in the Gulf. Big deal right, it’s NOVEMBER! Just last week on the radio in the morning they were talking about how hurricane season was going to be able to be called early because there were no storms. Oops.

Ida I guess is technically still out in the Gulf as I write this, and will make landfall sometime in the next few hours. The way it came to shore has meant light rain and some wind, but nothing like when tropical storms have come directly over my house, or insane like Katrina. I was reading what I could on the incoming storm today and saw this official briefing from the city of Slidell.

The city spokeswoman’s quotes made me laugh. She actually said ‘hunker down’. Everyone says hunker down for some reason. My dad, my uncle, the weather guys, whenever there is a hurricane the instructions are ‘hunker down and be careful’. I definitely hunkered down once I got home from the gym and the store.

Speaking of those things, the gym usually is the most crowded on Monday nights. I guess everyone thinks “yeah, this week’s going to be different! I’m going to work out everyday this week starting tonight!” Tonight though the gym was pretty empty, most people must have been hunkered down! I’ve been going long enough that I recognize people, and the dude who drags his wife along was there, with the wife in tow. I felt bad for her. She was having to watch him and his workout buddies do something on the bench press while she did nothing. It’s always the same with them, and I don’t know whether or not he makes her go or she wants to spend time with him that she’ll do whatever. It just looks awkward.

As for my hunkering down tonight, I was able to set up Maggie II and also watch MNF. I won one of my fantasy football games thanks to a big night by a Denver WR. Unfortunately my work league game was a lost cause before tonight’s game even started. Did I mention I have a living iPod again? Awesome.