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.

This morning I woke up early and met my dad to go run the Turkey Day Race in NOLA. We got there in plenty of time to get our shirts. Personally, I hate having to get shirts ahead of time, because I have to walk back to my car to drop it off. I much rather races where we get the shirts and stuff after the race. Anyway, I was hoping to beat my time from last year, which was 48:16, with an unofficial goal of 45 minutes. I didn’t think I’d be able to keep a sub 9 min pace up for 5 miles, but I would try to get something close. The cool thing was it wasn’t as cold as I thought it would be, so I was able to forgo wearing a hat to run with.

The race started and I hit the first mile at 8:30 on the race clock, and I knew I had started about 15 or 20 seconds after that clock started. I felt pretty good, but knew it was only the first mile and to keep it up over the next 4 miles was going to be tough. I’ve been running pretty fast times during the week lately, but with my iPod sensor not really accurate, I had no idea how fast. It was off today too, which was frustrating, so basically my iPod was good for keeping time. I made it to the start of the 5th mile, and some guy was calling out times, and I heard him call out 35 or 36 minutes. I was flabbergasted. I might actually get 45 minutes! I almost tripped in a pothole, but saved it and kept going. The little bridges in City Park are a blessing and a curse. I hate running up them because they always seemed to be positioned at the end of races, but they are great to run down because you get a burst. I had a burst over one bridge during the last mile and it kind of propelled me the rest of the way. I saw some kid slow down to walk about half a mile from the finish and wanted to tell him “dude, it’s only half a mile, don’t give up!”, but then I thought maybe he was hurting or something. We finished inside the stadium, so when we broke out onto the track, I saw the clock counting just over 44 minutes. I found energy and bolted for the finish line, which was about 200m from where we entered. I passed a few people and stopped the iPod. 43:55. New personal best for 5 miles, crushed last year’s time, averaged 8:47 a mile! CRAZY! Of course, after the race things bottle-necked because they only had one person handing out timing slips. They really need to work on doing that better.

I walked over and grabbed some free beer and waited for my dad. While waiting I saw Megan finish! Yay running friend! BTW, the beer was Abita Amber. Way better than the Mic Ultra they had after the HALF MARATHON. My dad eventually finished, and we walked around and got a couple of the bananas being handed out. I don’t usually like post race bananas, because they are almost always not ripe enough, but this morning they were handing out fancy organic bananas. They looked like they’d taste really raw, but they actually tasted really good. I’ll have to scope those out next time I’m in the store.

After I got home, I sat in ice again. It worked again, so that was good. I took a shower and then set about making the salad to bring to Thanksgiving. With the coffee cake done, the salad was a snap to throw together. It was so nice to have the hard part already out of the way. I had bought two heads of Romaine, and I only needed one, so now I have an extra. I’ll have to eat more salad this week or something.

I got to my aunt’s just in time to see the turkey carved and then we sat around and talked and ate and watched football and traded stories. One of my aunt’s decided not to come this year, which was weird. I’m not sure anyone knew why. It sounds like she was sad about something, which caused her to not want to come, I don’t know. She’s a big Saints fan, so I said “The Saints are 10-0, no matter what else is going on in life, she can cling to that, and everything will be okay.” It was strange not seeing her, but I should be seeing her at Christmas. I stayed to talk to my aunts and uncles after most people left and learned some casino tips. I came home with a little less than a 1/4 of the cake left and one serving of salad. For the small gathering we had this year, I say it was a good day.

On my way home I saw 10-15 people sitting outside Best Buy at 7 pm. Apparently they wanted to stake out their spot for tomorrow and the super crazy deals. It’s going to get down to 31 here tonight, so I hope that cheap laptop or whatever they’re going for is worth the hassle and frostbite.

Things I’m thankful for this year: God, Jesus, family, friends, running, Yoplait yogurt, granny smith apples, being able to see the important things and not worry about the rest.

Sometimes at work the way things happen I feel like I’m in a cartoon. Things that happen would make a great comic strip. The other day was one of those times. Useful story acronyms: In The Room That I Was In (ITRTIWI), Lady Running The Meeting (LRTM).

Tuesday at work I had to go to a training class. I will have to go to the same training class again because of what happened. About 2 pm, I went down to the conference room for the meeting. It was going to be a teleconference with video, so basically a lady was going to be showing a video on her computer that we could all see. Everyone starts tying into the telecon and there are so many people talking at once. I was in a room of probably 50 or 60 people, but the commotion on the phone was crazy. The LRTM was taking roll of people who were online, so someone ITRTIWI told her “we have attendance sheets we can send you”. Other people are saying their name and spelling them out for her. One guy had two R’s in his name, so he says “Larry, L-A-R-R-Y.” The way he said the R’s sounded like a pirate. Some coworkers and I started laughing at the pirate tied in to the telecon. Then someone asks him to repeat it, so he does it again. More hilarity ensues. Then after all this has played out, the LRTM then drops this bomb, “oh, I can’t get the meeting software working, so everyone will just have to listen to the audio from the video.” WHAT? Then someone ITRTIWI figured out how to access the video. I think the LRTM had emailed them a link or something. THE VIDEO WAS ON A WEBSITE! It was a 60 Minutes video on cbsnews.com! So instead of just telling everyone “hey, everyone load up this webpage and we’ll all hit play at the same time”, there was mass confusion and people couldn’t figure out how to get the meeting software to work. Next thing I know, someone leading the meeting ITRTIWI says “why doesn’t everyone connect to us, and we can broadcast the video?” Great idea, so everyone tries to connect to us. I tried to suggest telling everyone the web address, but I was drowned in the cacophony of the moment. There is still a lot of talking on the telecon, people asking where they’re from and stuff. One lady was from Palo Alto. WHY? Then just when you think things will finally get rolling and we’ll watch this video on cyber crime or something, someone trips over the power cord and shuts the computer down, which shut the online meeting down, which threw EVERYONE online into panic. It was decided that the meeting would have to be rescheduled for another day when things did not go so horribly wrong. I’m not sure about the people on the telecon. At least I signed the attendance sheet.

Check it, so I’ve been reading about some new phones coming out, which made me realize I have a backlog of pictures on my phone that I needed to unload. So I emailed a couple to myself today and figured I could post them here, because I figure it’s better than not writing anything for 3 weeks.

Alright, this one was taken on the first day half of the new Twin Span bridge opened in July. The original Twin Span was 2 lanes each way, and was destroyed by Katrina. The new one is higher off the water and 3 lanes. When they finish it I would assume we’ll be able to fly across it like we did the old one. Anyway, the first day it was open I drove across it on the way home from work, and it was kind of exciting. I was one of the first people to cross over on the new bridge! I’ve been watching the progress of the bridge obviously since it started, so it was cool to finally get to drive across.

I went to the LSU/ULL game a couple of weeks ago and snapped a few pictures. If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen a couple. This one I didn’t show, but it doesn’t make it any less weird. This guy was standing around Mike’s habitat, and when I saw the name he had chosen for his customized LSU baseball fashion jersey, I laughed and took the picture. IT IS MISTER DAZZLING!

That wasn’t the only picture I took where I thought “Some LSU fans are hard to accept”, like the lady who had two big poodles and decided to shave LSU into their coats. Seriously. I have photographic proof and will show you when I get around to uploading them.

So I’ve been sitting next to KCOG for a month or so now and it’s been about what I expected. The old man sweater wearing, the simple questions about things he should know by now, the people coming by his desk to just talk, but what I didn’t plan on were the random conversation starters. The way we sit has our cube openings facing each other, so I can see him out of the corner of my eye and vice versa. Recently he has started to turn to me and just randomly say a statement like “I told them I didn’t want to go to that meeting” or “I was in an online conversation with someone from the bank and they kept asking me my name”. He does this so I have to turn and acknowledge him, and then he’ll continue the story. I always turn, because I’d feel bad otherwise, but the whole time I’m looking at him I’m thinking “I don’t care about any of this”. I’ve been able to avoid the random backrubs that I heard KCOG likes to give, so I figure I’m doing okay.

More recently, someone came to his desk and KCOG let him in on a little secret. Apparently KCOG knows about an investment opportunity and really wants to get “Guy who came by” in on it. KCOG was telling GWCB to talk to ‘the boss’ (ie wife) and if she’s cool with it, GWCB will just have to give KCOG his account number, routing number, and some other banking number. I thought “that sounds like a plan with disaster written all over it”.

BTW, I bookmarked a few news stories that I found interesting, here they are:

This lady was late on a couple of credit card payments, the bank jacked up her interest rate because she doesn’t have a full-time job and made late payments. To fight the higher rate, she made a youtube video telling the bank they were being terrible people. The bank eventually had some VP guy call her and lower her rate. Who started this fiasco? The lady getting the lowered interest rate. More of that great “it’s not my problem, someone fix it for me” attitude.

Two teenagers working at Domino’s managed to get everyone at their store fired by being complete morons. They’re being charged with food tampering, but I think they should be more afraid of their former co-workers kicking their ass.

If you ever wanted to track sex offenders on your iPhone, there’s an app for that.

This morning I woke up at 5:30 am and then went for a run at 6:20 am. I might be a little crazy. It was really nice though, to go out running just before sunrise.

Ok, so I read the news everyday and usually find articles where I want to tell people about it. I email myself the links so I can blog later about it, but usually I forget to. Not today. It’s not exactly my adventure late Sunday and early Monday making baklava (I have pictures and all that), but at least it’s something to read for today. It’s not exactly my blog friend Mandy’s ‘Dispatches’, but hopefully you’ll like it.

First up, we have the article my friend Chad sent me yesterday about how a guy in Mississippi who was beaten to the brink of death by someone he had kidnapped. Apparently he picked the wrong couple to mess with since the guy was ex-military. He literally broke the rifle’s stock over the guy’s head. I told Chad I am not sure I’d have left him alive.

Second, infamous governor of SC Mark Sanford laments about living alone in the Governor’s Mansion. Poor him, now he doesn’t have his chick in Argentina and his wife moved back to Charleston with the kids. I guess that’s the price you pay for cheating on multiple continents. BTW, from personal experience, Charleston is light years better than Columbia.

Next I read an article about people that have gotten heart transplants competing in Ironman competitions. How cool is that? I especially was fascinated when the doctor described that post transplant, it’s takes longer to get the heart pumping fast because it needs adrenaline to get going, and not the brain. Who feels lazy now?

Apparently a teenager in Orlando thought setting himself on fire would be cool because of a video he saw on Youtube. The mother actually partially blamed Youtube. Of course, because lighting himself on fire must be too completely stupid for her son to do. That shot at Harvard is looking bleaker by the minute.

Finally, NASA might not get enough funding to track asteroids in space like they were directed to do. Apparently in 2005 Congress wanted NASA to be able to track 90% of all large asteroids by 2020, but now they don’t appear to be wanting to provide the additional funding required. What happened to all that stimulus money? Maybe they think Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck can save the day, but I can tell you, there’s no way NASA can prep two shuttles that fast to launch at the same time.

Also, I was playing around on iTunes last night and downloaded the Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me podcast. My friend Kari has typed about this show before, but I honestly don’t listen to the radio that much, and I don’t really know what station NPR is in NOLA. The podcast was free though, so I subscribed and listened to the 8/8 show yesterday morning on my way to work. It was really great. I enjoyed the jokes involving current events. I even knew a lot of the answers to the trivia. I think one of my favorite parts was when the host described how Bill Clinton was pretty much Superman and stepped off the plane from NK with a knife between his teeth and a female reporter on each arm. What’s he going to do next???

(The whole idea of blogging kind of got put on hold the past week or so because all I could think about was how some people just shouldn’t be parents. There was a local story here that was on my mind almost every time I thought of blogging, but it’s so frustrating and sad, that I didn’t want to put any of that on here.)

On Monday afternoon I had an appointment with my eye doctor, the same doctor who has in the past called me to just hang out. Allow me to explain…

He was recommended to me by my old eye doctor when I realized that doctor was not on my insurance. Anyway, my current doctor is cool, and I think about 3 or 4 years ago we were making small talk at some point and he told me he was a volunteer fireman. The next year when I saw him, I asked him how that was going. We talk about it every time I go now, which is not awkward itself. He’s tried to recruit me too, but I’ve turned him down. The problem is the calls after I leave the office, to numbers that are in my file that I did not actually give him when I saw him. Two years ago he called my cell phone and left a couple of voice mails. I wasn’t screening my calls, just not able to answer the phone. He was calling to see if I wanted to meet up with him and his fellow firemen for karaoke at a local bar. Last year he called me on my work phone to see if I needed my contacts polished, and also if I wanted to go hang out. I had been out of town, so when I got back I listened to my messages. The first voice mail was about how he could polish my contacts if I needed them polished, the 2nd was the same thing, but he was leaving at a certain time, the 3rd was that I could come later if I wanted because he was staying longer than he thought. I don’t find this anywhere near as creepy as the run-ins with CGG, but it’s odd. He’s a pretty decent guy, just looking for another guy friend to go hang out with (he has pictures of his grandkids in his office), and I guess he sees me as awesome, and wants to hang out with me. I guess I feel like I want to keep our relationship professional, so I’ve never called him back. I did see him in the local bar doing karaoke one night when I had gone out with a couple of work friends, but that was totally accidental.

So Monday was my yearly checkup. It was a little weird because I was the only patient under 70 it seemed like. The nurse did her pre doctor visit thing and then the doctor came in. The conversation wasn’t too awkward, although he did tell me about a fireman who was getting fired and how his friend he used to go sing karaoke with had moved or something. On the way out, he told me how his wife was now changing shifts so he was going to need something to do on Friday nights or something. I told him good luck. I know he was fishing, but I was not biting. I haven’t gotten any phone calls since either….another win.

The main thing about the visit was that my prescription isn’t changing (go gas permeable contacts!) so I won’t have to buy new contacts or glasses. I like my new glasses, so I was glad I won’t have to worry about updating them. They even said I’m seeing at 20/15!

I walked out with my eyes still a little dialated and made it to the grocery store to pick up some bread. While there I managed to find what must be the last sixer of Abita Strawberry for 2009. I had not seen any in stores since the beginning of summer! I found it inside the walk in cooler for the beer. That particular store has the walk in cooler where they keep some of the higher end stuff, and I walk in there mostly just to look around and see if there’s anything interesting. Monday I saw the Abita Strawberry sitting on a shelf and couldn’t believe my luck. I quickly picked it up and brought it home. It is THE BEST ABITA THEY MAKE and I’m sure my friends will be happy when we have our Saints party in a couple of weeks.