A Minor Smiting

Today is my brother Stuart’s birthday.
Coincidentally, it’s also his wife Shannon’s birthday (though her birthday came a few years after his).
While the simple fact that my brother and his wife share a birthday is mildly interesting, what makes things even more so is that my sister Kristy and her husband Ken also share a birthday (though their birthday isn’t until next month).
Sharted birthdays seem to be common among people I know, as besides my siblings and their spouses, my friends Joel and Kevin (who are first cousins) also share a birthday. Further, all three shared birthdays fall within a three-monh period (November, December, and January).
Unfortunately, that’s about as interesting as today gets.
I woke up tired art a bit after nine, sat around for a couple of hours not doing anything in particular, then went back to bed for about two hours. When I got up again I ate some leftover pizza and watched back to back episodes of “Mythbusters.”
(My cell phone just rang. The number that came up was totally unfamiliar, and when I answered it I was greeted with some kind of recording in Spanish.)Yesterday, for most of the day at least, was similarly uneventful, so it’s clear that I’ve made the best of my time off.
Still, when the evening rolled around I did actually venture out into the world for my realtor’s holiday party.
Kathleen’s friend – and massage therapist – Rebecca, who was accompanying us to the party, was supposed to show up at Kathleen’s at 7:30, meaning that they would likely get to the party around 8. So I did my best to just sit around and wait so that I wouldn’t arrive there well before them.
Though it nearly killed me to do so (I hate sitting at home waiting to go somewhere), I managed to hang on and was set to arrive at the party after 8, allowing for the extra five to ten minutes that you need to add to any estimate that Kathleen gives you as to when she’ll arrive.
Shortly before 8, however, as I was on the way, Kathleen called to let me know that Rebecca hadn’t arrived yet, and so they would be later than anticipated.
Initially it didn’t seem like too big a deal, as it took me a while to actually find the place (The directions on the invitation, which erroneously claimed to have a map on the back, only took you so far and then told you to follow the signs to the Landsdowne Resort. Unfortunately, pretty much everything in that area is named “Landsdowne” something, so when you’re driving along and you see a sign that has arrows pointing in five different directions telling you that there’s a Landsdowne something or other in each of those directions, said signs aren’t especially helpful.
Eventually I found the place.
Sort of. There was a big hotel-looking place with a parking lot that was filled beyond capacity. I drove past that down to another parking lot in front of something that looked a bit more like a country club, which is where the party was supposed to be, and thought that it must be the place.
However, the invitation – already not to be trusted thanks to the missing map – stated that the address was 44050, whereas this building had a big sign in front of it that said 44060.
I wandered up to the other building to see if it might be the place, figuring that somewhere along the line Kathleen would arrive and call me and we could figure out where we were supposed to be.
After a while that didn’t happen, so I tried calling her and got her voice mail.
Admittedly, I could have just tried going in to either of the places to see if it was where the party was, but I didn’t want to walk up to the wrong place and look like an idiot (much better to wander around out in the cold in a parking lot and look suspicious). Besides, I figured it would be better if the three of us arrived together.
I tried Kathleen again, got voice mail, and was sitting in my car swearing when I heard Kathleen call my name. Apparently she had left her cell phone at home, didn’t know my number, had asked Brian to call me and tell me that Kathleen didn’t have her cell phone and that she had seen me driving around in the parking lot and that I should just go inside.
(I’ll give Brian the benefit of the doubt here and assume that he did call and that for some reason I just didn’t get it.)
Apparently they’d been there for quite some time.
But no big deal; I was there, I was inside and warm, and we were in time for the game.
“The game” consisted of each of us getting a card with trivia questions on it, along with the name of a person who could give you a hint as to the answer. The first person to successfully answer all of the questions would win a 26” LCD TV. The second would win an iPod.
Most people who know me are aware that if there’s anything I’m good at it’s trivia.
These questions, however, were well beyond me.
Rebecca mentioned something about calling her sister, who would be near a computer and able to look things up for us, when it occurred to me to try something.
I broke out my PDA, turned on the WiFi and found that the country club, in fact, offered free WiFi access, and soon I was at Google seeking out the answers.
Of course, with only the stylus for input, and questions that were difficult to phrase so as to find results on a search engine, the process was slow-going.
Eventually I gave my brother Brad a call in the hopes that he would be able to answer the Navy-related question (he’s a Lt. Commander in the Navy), but while he was trying to think of the answer they announced that they had their winners.
From that point on the rest of the evening consisted of eating free food, watching people awkwardly dance – Kathleen and I were both especially amused by the thought of me going out on the dance floor and busting out some moves a la Napoleon Dynamite, though there was no way that would ever happen – and making fun of some old lady’s mullet.
There was some kind of silent auction for sports memorabilia going on, but though it was for a good cause (children’s hospital), I didn’t participate.
We did end up staying to the end, though not the bitter end, which was going to be taking place at some bar.
Once I got home I decided to turn the tables and give my friend Kevin a call in the middle of the night.
Pending the successful completion of his finals this week, he went through commencement yesterday, and now has two degree covers that will eventually hold his degrees in Computer Science and Business. With the start of the next semester he’ll be working on his Master’s in Business.
After talking for quite some time I eventually crashed, and that brings us up to date.
There was actually a magician performing at the party, though I didn’t really watch much of his act as I was busy eating and wasn’t seated in a good spot for watching. I did see him engage in some sword-swallowing, though, which made me think of a young woman named Heather Brooke who has some mad skills of her own in that area, though hers isn’t exactly a family-friendly act.
On that front, there actually were quite a few attractive women at the party in sexy little black dresses – several of them there with men old enough to be their fathers – so at least there was a little bit of eye candy.

Sometimes Being Right Is Overrated Department:
One of the biggest frustrations I have with many of my friends is that they often disagree with me.
Disagreeing with me in general isn’t a big deal. After all, I don’t really care enough about most things to get upset if someone disagrees with me.
However, there is a particular area of my life in which I do find disagreement irritating: my complete and utter lack of a love life.
This disagreement mostly consists of me asserting the pointlessness of my even trying to approach a woman and them responding with something like “you never know unless you try.”
This wouldn’t bother me so much if A. I weren’t absolutely certain that I’m correct or B. I were absolutely certain that their motivation for encouraging me to try wasn’t based on a sadistic desire to watch me humiliate myself.
In any case, last night I was talking to Kathleen about my theory about being overshadowed by my realtor in attempting to charm Daniela.
I found myself kind of wishing that she would have disagreed with me rather than saying, “Yeah, there’s pretty much no way for you to compete with him.”
It wouldn’t have hurt to have her disagree a little.

I took a break from writing this entry to walk over to the Chinese place across the street to get dinner.
On the way back, hurrying inside to keep my food from getting too cold in the wintry temperatures, I encountered two young men who wanted to talk to me about their beliefs.
Putting aside the fact that they were Mormons and that I have no interest in being hearing about their (or anyone else’s) beliefs and that I wanted to get inside and eat while my food was still warm, these guys had a couple of strikes against them that would prevent me from wanting to talk to them.
For one thing, they were people. For another, they were male people.
I’m pretty unlikely to invite strangers into my home in the first place, but when said strangers don’t have breasts it’s even less likely to happen.
I don’t care what they’re peddling; I’m not inviting two guys into my home. My work life is enough of a sausage fest without me having to put up with more guys in my personal life.
Honestly, the various evangelical religions might have better recruitment success if they sent hot chicks door to door rather than nerdy-looking guys. Just a thought.
Anyway, I didn’t really intend to be rude to them because I know just how shitty life can be when you’re on a mission and that they’re out doing what they think is right, but these two were a little more persistent than most, so I did brush them off a little more aggressively than I might otherwise have done.
Given the comedy of errors that my attempt to eat my Szechuan Beef became once I got inside, though, I found myself beginning to wonder if maybe those Mormons were practicing Voodoo on the side and had put a curse on me. Between the volcanic eruption that was my overflowing bottle of Sprite and the sudden case of the “dropsies” that I developed it seemed like I was suffering some kind of minor smiting.
I don’t know that I really deserved a smiting, though. After all, I wasn’t that rude, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to want to be able to eat my dinner in peace without someone trying to tell me what they believe and why I should believe it.
Besides, what more am I supposed to do to be righteous? I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble, I avoid caffeine, and I’m certainly not out there womanizing. Granted, I don’t exactly go out and engage in good works and charity, but while I’m not actively helping people I’m not actively hurting them either, and I spend most of my time in quiet contemplation.
I pretty much don’t have any vices.
Well, there is porn, but given the state of my romantic life that’s not so much a vice as a necessity.
Once I finished dinner I gave my friend “Zalfiro” a call, and that brings us, once again, up to date.
Tomorrow I have to call up the financing guy and start the process of finding out whether or not I need to back out of my contract before it actually becomes binding.
In any case, for such a largely uneventful day off this has been an extremely long entry, so I guess that will do it for now.