it's good to be home...

...so the sister-in-law picks me up and the brother is in the passenger seat.

'well... hello.'
'hey, hon. i'm the only sober one, it would seem...' [glance at my brother]
'yeah, she's the only one.'
'mom?'
'she's on her way.'
'aah. well, it's probably best i don't drive, either, hahaha.'
'what is it with your family?'
'poor dear. spoken like a true designated grouch.'

it's good to be home...

so, i'm on a packed train...

...when i realize that i haven't added to this in an awfully long time. (sick week at the cube farm... monday and tuesday they kind of made me work), whilst wednesday and thursday i sat in the cube with my thumb up my ass. today was a combo of the two. and as i try to get warmed up and start writing, here in my little navy pleather seat, i realize that the lovely woman to my right-- who has since gotten up and left-- and who was looking at my desktop and looked away shockingly wasn't looking at the picture of my dogs. nope, she was looking at the icon of a cd i forgot i had in here: you know where this is going. yes, occasionally, i may, MAY look at 'naughty' pictures on the net. sometimes. and when the sometimes add up, and i have a lot of, um, souvenirs, i'll burn (the evidence, lol) onto a cd to make george run faster. so, there is a souvenir cd, if you will, in my laptop that's got a right-obvious name. so, to the lovely business woman in the knit suit (in this weather?) and leather briefcase and barbara bush pearl(like) choker, i'm sorry.

but i think it's kinda hot that i can get a 60-something woman to blush and move her seat.

where was i going with that...

oh yes, the bump. so it's HUGE. on the outer of my belly button. it's like the size of a pea (like i said, huge!), and i call him roberto. and roberto, that bitch, doesn't seem to be going away. but it's ok. thanks to dr. k., i have a lovely referral to a doc who's not terribly far from where i live. and d. c. has has given me his doc who he adores, so if i convulse and die, it's all my own fault.

this will end with either a wimper or a bang, it's too hard to tell at this point. at the best, he'll do whatever it is robertos do, and at the worst i get to cash in on big brother's disability insurance (sooo glad i opted for the optional short term!) so take THAT big brother! you can ban me from most websites. you can sit me in beige polyester. you can make me scan myself in and around the cube farm. you can banish me from the men's room. you can even 'quarantine' emails you deem 'offensive.' but there is one thing you can NOT do: you can NOT stop me from growing a tumor that will require a disability leave to remove, so who gets the last laugh NOW, buddy? yeah, i thought so.

my alien bump

so, i think i'm dying. ok, not necessarily dying, but something is going on. see, one day about two weeks ago, i noticed a bit of an ouchy. an ouchy that is kind of like when you're going to get a zit, but haven't even gotten red yet. nowhere near a head, you know the type. that, 'oh shit, this is going to be huge' but it only *barely* surfaces, and even then, the build up in your mind is so much bigger than the actual build-up of goo. that kind of ouchy. so, i've been waiting. and waiting. and no head. at first, it didn't hurt all that much, but now it really, really hurts. and if you recall the hypochondriac post of a few weeks back with the rusty nail... so of COURSE i have all of my coworkers feel my bump, my alien bump. but i didn't get the 'oh no! you're dying and we love and need you! you can't go' reception at work. (well, the cubefarm director would say, 'oh. you're dying. you can't go until you train your replacement.' but i digress.) instead, i got the, 'oh yeah, i have one of those, too! right here-- wanna feel?' no. i don't. medical ailments disturb me to nooo end. i actually passed out giving blood in college, believe it or not: there i am thinking i'm being a good guy and low and behold one minute i'm squeezing that thing that they give you that doesn't actually squeeze and the next i have a paper bag over my face and my legs are elevated over my head (and not in a hot way.) it was a proud moment: got some lovely oreos and not-diluted-well-from-frozen-concentrate orange juice. aah. and then we went out for drinks that night. anyone who gave blood knows that all it takes is a pint of blood and a pint of beer to send you into a broke college kid intoxicated bliss. those were the days.

if i were a muppet, i'd be grover.

ok, so maybe a 20-something guy shouldn't be starting a blog that way, but i'm going somewhere with this. try to remember grover. you could cheat and ask a niece or nephew, but modern-day grover has been replaced with a grating, third-party overused elmo. yes, elmo is all shades of squish and cute, but he's just, so, how you say, contrived. but grover, he was the real thing. and he's obsolete. and i love that about him.

grover travels. i LOVE to travel. grover likes to help people. me too. (maybe that's my frustration with the cube farmness: not plucking flyes out of anyones soup, if you catch my drift. but at least the public looks good (so they think ;) out in, well, public. but the greatest thing about grover is that he's just silly. and sings songs about being silly. 'i have two cute and furry blue feet. and you have two feet, too, but they are probably not furry like my feet.' exactly, man. but i am furry and blond this weekend. aah that grover. if i could have a beer with anyone in history, living or dead, real or not, it would be grover. he has the life i want.

and reminded me that i probably should get a haircut this weekend.

fine- i'm fine- just give me a second and i'll be ok

that is the theme of today.

off to have a lovely lunch hour (and a half) to run in the park and just as i get to harlem hill, at the point of no return, it rains like a motherfucker. not that it wasn't lovely, rather quite the opposite: i felt free, took the shirt off, and let the combo of heat and cool work with the rhythm of my body. quite nice, quite beautiful, actually. it was the. perfect. run. and just as i am getting nicely in peace with myself and my surroundings, putting the bullshit freakdom of work behind me-- the bullshit of my job that empowers me to go running or combust-- i realize that in addition to being inconvenient, not having my little ipod arm strappy-thing means that water nicely is pouring into the two unplugged orifices. so, i start to panic a bit, but then realize that if i just take my shirt and wrap it around the pod (daphne, by the way, like my computer is george, she's daphne) i'll be ok. i'm brilliant, despite the fact the shirt is a teeny bit wet itself... wouldn't it be awful if daphne, the one thing on which i rely to tune out my cube-farm neighbors, the one thing on which i rely to get me pumped through a run, the one thing on which i rely to make the commute more fun would electrocute me during a run? i mean, that's poetic justice, it really is. we all have our vices. and daphne is about the closest thing to a real woman in my life who touches me everyday and makes me feel special deep inside.

and tonight... head out to put dial-up behind me for the night and as i tap into a wifi connection, i notice it's slow, really really slow. realllllly slow. so i poke around my itunes to get some waiting music and see that tennisbearnyc had molested my itunes. tennisbearnyc? who the fuck is this? and this bear person must have like thousands of songs (hence the delay) BUT s/he had abba, so, well, just because i'm not the one who put it on my itunes doesn't mean i couldn't listen to it, right? but then i realize, that's just not normal for playlists to just appear on my computer, so i start to freak. it. won't. erase. try to call d., who got me into the alternative lifestyle o' mac, but my cel phone won't work in here. foiled! try to send an email, but it wouldn't let me. tried to log onto aim. NOTHING. i'm like a man possessed until i realize that you can solve 99% of all mac problems by restarting and changing public networks. and indeed: crisis averted. but, i don't have abba. maybe i should find this tennisbearnyc person... i mean, s/he had the podcast for both the am and fm npr stations, and a whole lotta sweet music... it could be beautiful... i'm the one in the purple gingham... are you there? tennisbearnyc? you and me, baby. we can make sweet music (by exchanging our itunes.) yeah you know you want my bjork...