Random Nothings

Disconnected
My modem at home conked out. It kept phasing in and out for a few weeks. All of sudden I wouldn't have Internet access and there would be a screen saying "you have a billing error". First, I yelled at Larry since he's in charge of this bill, but he proved it was being paid. So I would reboot and connect again.

Yesterday morning...nothing. Yesterday night...still nothing. So at 6:00 AM this morning, I called customer service (oxymoron) and after waiting 35 minutes, connected to a person who was able to tell me the problem. We tested everything including creating a new password. He actually wanted me to wake up Larry since "it is Verizon policy to only reveal the password to the primary account holder." I first explained that Larry doesn't even have his own log-in and could do nothing with a new password. Then I explained that I was Larry's partner.

"Partner in what?" he asked.

God help me.

"Partner like as in a wife, but I'm a man." Get it? (I almost said 'like a wife, but with a penis', however 35 minutes is a long time to wait for another tech person.)

"Oh.......I see," he responded.

After 25 minutes, he tells me that the modem is broken. "I can see that through our network."

I sighed heavily. "Ummm... if you can see that through your system, couldn't you be proactive and email or call me to let me know it was broken? Then you could just order me another one."

"No, sir. You'd have to order one through the billing department. Here's their number but they don't open until 9 AM."

Verizon, you could have a monopoly if you only had thinking people.


Moving Out
Our office moves tomorrow so as of Monday, I'll be in the same building I was back with Imagine. This time I'll actually have an office with a window, but I still feel like I need to do another exorcism. The last one I did was with Jennie and Penzy spices. This one might just kick off with bagels and orange juice.

This new building also has a fitness center. I'm going to definitely be hitting that....for at least the first week or so.


Getting the Boot
Melinda Doolittle voted off? Another reason why I'm glad I stopped watching American Idol this season. (OK, I did watch LaKisha's and Melinda's performances on YouTube the next day. Sue me.) I'm just getting tired of America being so stupid.


We Finally Meet
Due to the move, I'm only working a few hours tomorrow. And then... I have lunch with Sarah. It's like meeting a legend.


Don't look for much from me this weekend. With no modem or office, I'm destined to be at coffee shops or stealing wireless from the neighbors.

We Don't Need No Stinking Cheerios!

Anyone with a child shares in the horror of how gross public toilets are. I’m not the fussiest person about cleanliness, but there is no public bathroom that I’ve felt is great for kids. Nordstom’s is close, but no matter how good the restroom may be, hearing those dreadful words “Daddy, I have to potties” (usually followed by the loud “NOW”) gets a father look past how clean a bathroom is.

Corey likes to pee sitting down. Given the fact he waits until the bladder is about to explode, that gives me 35 seconds to find the bathroom, hit the stall, wipe down anything that looks nasty, try to put some sort of paper barrier down, and get down the trousers and some pair of Elmo underwear.

Non-parents, you have no idea how hard those things are to pull down in a hurry. Think about putting a condom on a watermelon and you have an idea of how tight they get in an emergency crisis.

A few months ago, Corey learned about privacy and now wants doors shut. Do you know how hard it is to cram two of you into a stall, maneuver the working of a dirty toilet and undo snaps on a four year olds pants? Plus, no matter how fast you are, the kid always has two free hands while you are pulling up the pants, and they always will touch the bowl or the seat or the tank.

And kids love to be the flusher. I’ve lived with the fact that he wants to touch everything. My challenge now is that I have him hold his hand up in the air until we hit the sink. That backfired one time when it conflicted with the “cover your mouth with you sneeze” rule. You don’t even want to know what he did that time.

Since Corey lives primarily with his moms, it’s been a struggle to get him to pee standing up. When he comes to our house, he is called in to watch us pee almost as much as he watches 101 Dalmatians. The other day, I almost yelled at Larry for peeing by himself until I realized Corey wasn’t at our house.

So today, as I took Corey to go pee, I repeated the standard line once again, “Let’s go pottie standing up.” He looked up and said, “Okay.”

And my 3½ year grabbed his thing and aimed. (Okay, not really aimed, but it was close.) Every bit went into the bowl.

I beamed down and said, “Corey that’s great. Now shake.”

He looked up, smiled and then jiggled his whole body up & down.

Lesson #2 comes next week, I guess.

Jenni, don't change your number

My friend Jenni is back staying with us again. Yeah, the same Jenni who believes there is a young female ghost who inhabits her apartment in Pittsburgh. The way I see it, someone might as well live there since she's always crashing at our place.

I sound bitter, but really that's just a natural state for me when I write. Sarcasm is my way of life. We've always opened our house to Jenni when she's passing through town. Between her & our friend Kate, they've nicknamed our house the R&R B&B. (R&R due to our dogs' names).

Anywho... Jenni comes stormin' into town on Tuesday after driving five hours from Pittsburgh. It was snowing most of her trip and Jenni kept calling until we finally stopped answering the phone. Seriously, like I care that you are passing by the Hagerstown Outlets and there is nothing good on the radio.

I decided that Jenni is like one of the boomerang college kids who never leaves the home. She signs an apartment lease and has moved her things out, but she eats our food and does laundry here. But we love her like our own, so this what parenting is all about.

She even functions like a real daughter. Within 24 hours of being at our place, she got into a car accident and broke our guest bathroom towel rack. She opted to call Larry since she thought I'd be much angrier about the towel rack. As Larry explained, "Well the car isn't ours, so the towel rack will probably have a bigger impact on Steve." I sent her to time out later that night.

Jenni laughed last night as we had dinner. "This is like that old TV show, My Two Dads."

I looked over at her. "Which one would I be?"

Without missing a beat, she said, "Dude, one of them is adventurous & rugged and the other is anal-rententive and neurotic. You figure it out."

I then explained what she could do with the rest of the broken towel rack.

The Exorcism of Christina

The first thing Jenni talked me about as she picked me up from the airport was Christina. She was irritated about the amount of noise she made and how much she walked around at night.

I was puzzled. “I didn’t think you had a roommate.”

“Oh, I don’t,” she said. “Christina is the ghost that lives in my apartment. You & Kate are going to help me get rid of her.”

Over dinner that first night, Kate & I discussed upping Jenni’s prescriptions.

Jenni was so convinced that Christina was among us that she had already looked into an exorcism ritual which we were going to do after Primanti’s sandwiches the next day.

I don’t think Jenni is a heavy sleeper. Every noise or creak had her shouting from her pillow, “Did you hear that?” On my 3 AM bathroom run, I was greeted with a “Steve, is that you?....

or is it you, Christina?”

Now we tried to explain to Jenni the next morning that her building was old; it most likely had pipes and boards that were adjusting in their old age. Buildings will settle into their foundations over time. Plus, most of the other tenants were right out of college and stayed up to all hours.

Jenni would have no part of this and reported the plan. “Tomorrow, we will buy the exorcism supplies and drive that bitch out.”

“What supplies are we getting?” I asked.

Jenni consulted her list. “Sage and Lemon Grass.”

“Umm, are we exorcising a demon or making stuffing?” Kate asked. For the record, I opted for stuffing.

Later that afternoon, we found ourselves in the Penzey’s spice store. If you don’t know already, Penzey’s has some of the best spices. We buy all our seasonings from there, for cooking and well, now exorcisms too.

“Can you please show me where the whole leaf sage is?” Jenni asked. For some reason, I had pictured this scene to take place in a dark alley of a backstreet market with some 80-year Asian woman helping us. Instead, we have Scott, clad in his green apron, walking us through carefully organized displays.

Jenni grabbed a large bag indicating that it would need a lot of rid ourselves of Christina. “I don’t know how fast it will burn and we have to go through each room with the burning leaves.” I begin formulating my story for the fire department.

As she checked out, I asked Jenni about the small bottle of lemon grass on the counter. She turned around and said quietly that the lemon grass is to welcome the good spirits. (And with 17 boxes of pharmaceutical supplies in your neighbor’s lobby, this is needed for good spirits.)

On a way out, Scott asked if we wanted a catalog. I looked back at him. “Probably not. Trust me when I say that these are not being used for you think they are.”

Scott looked around to make sure none of his colleagues were listening. “Dude, there are some bizarre people out there.”

If he only knew.

Dancing Waters

The Bellagio in Las Vegas has the most amazing display out front called the Dancing Waters. Hundreds of jet streams that shoot water into the air, all timed to music.

Far be it that the Bellagio corner the market on this technology. Station Square, in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh, has now entered the scene …on a much lesser scale.

For dinner, Jenni took Kate & I from her apartment, down the Duquesne Incline to Station Square. We wandered the shops and restaurants trying to find just the right place to sample the Pittsburgh cuisine when off in the distance, we heard a sound that made all three sets of ears perk up.

80’s hair band rock!

I’m not going to kid you; we’re all freaks when it comes to Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and Dokken. We know all the words and if we didn’t look so stupid in our concert tees, we’d be dressed in Poison’s finest garb.

We turned the corner and there was a slightly pathetic, but colorful display of lights and shooting water, all synced in time to Van Halen’s “Jump.”

“Is this Heaven,” I asked aloud.

Jenni looked over as if to answer the question made famous by Kevin Costner. “Seriously, you’re a butthead.”

The waters begin dancing to Livin’ On a Prayer and both girls sang the lyrics about Johnny working on the docks, while Gina toiled away in some crappy diner. (Amateurs! We all know Tommy was the dock man.)

The sign surrounding the fountains indicated that 8:00 – 8:30 was the 80’s Metal theme and the waters continued to dance as we screamed out lyrics…some of us more accurately than others.

At 8:25, we were exhausted and exhilarated. The final song filled the air and Jenni yelped in delight. Three morons, all in their late 30’s all began air-guitaring Welcome to the Jungle.

As we departed, I begged to return at 10:00 PM. Jenni turned and read the sign. She looked back at me in disgust.

“I don’t care how gay you are, we not coming back for the Celine Dion theme.”

And they say there is no culture in Pittsburgh.

The Window of Opportunity

Last weekend, my friend Kate & I went to Pittsburgh to visit our friend Jenni. The three of us have been friends for over 10 years and when we get together, well it’s pretty stupid and crazy, but a lot of fun. Our times together are a lot like that old TV Show “Sisters”… well, except there were four of them and I’m not a woman.

The main reason we were visiting was to help Jenni organize her new Melrose Place apartment. While Kate & I are poster children for the Container Store, Jenni is the complete opposite. Our job was to help organize furniture, hang pictures, toss crap and bring a better karma to the place.

Helping someone throw out junk takes a special talent. You can’t just look at someone and say, “What is the shit? Toss it.” Alright, maybe you can, but you can dump about one box before they get suspicious. So Kate and I crafted a distraction model to assist us.

“You tell her how beautiful those pumpkin gourd soup tureens are, while I throw out this box of half used candles.” Seemed like a good plan.

Midway through our day of unpacking, Jenni chimes in, “Hey, do you want to take the Barney tour?” Barney, it turns out, was the man who broke into her apartment the week before.

The previous Friday, Jenni was awakened at 3:30 in the morning by a loud noise coming from her bathroom. Having just bought and assembled a towel rack, she was convinced it had fallen over. In the dark, she nervously approached the door of the bathroom and meekly whispered, “Hello?”

“Hello,” A deep male voice answered.

Jenni responded with “AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

She flipped on the light switch and there was a man holding her shower curtain in front of him. Shampoo bottles were strewn across the room. The beautiful IKEA towel rack, however, remained intact.

Please notice that the window above the tub is a good 7 feet above the floor and only two feet square. Did I also mention that Jenni lives on the third floor?

With grace under pressure, Jenni looks at him and shouted, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“My friends used to live here,” he said.

Jenni screamed back, “FRIENDS TELL FRIENDS WHEN THEY MOVE!”

(Jenni, though completely disorganized when packing boxes, is amazingly gifted with words in a crisis.)

The intruder apologized, made his way to the front door and walked out into the hallway. Jenni locked the door behind him and just whimpered as she assessed the situation.

A scratch at the door.

“Mister, seriously… you have to go away.”

The scratching turned out to be Michelle, the pharmaceutical rep across the hall, whose many samples line the outer hallway like Halloween treats for adults. (I make a mental note to check for Percocet.)

Jenni let her in and Michelle comforted her as she relayed the evening’s activities. “Describe him for me,” she says.

After a few defining characteristics, Michelle said, “Hmm, I’ll bet it was Barney. Let me check.”

Michelle picked up the phone. “Hey Susan, have you seen Barney recently? Really, about two hours ago? Well, it would take him 45 minutes to make it Jake’s old place. He just climbed through the window of the new tenant. Cool, thanks.”

She hung up and looked at Jenni. “Yep, it was Barney.”

(Barney was a heroine addict who crashed in the apartment when the former tenants would go away.)

That evening continued with a police report, a mug shot review in which Jenni was convinced Ty Pennington was amongst the photos, and a review of Barney’s former crimes, including male prostitution.

Kate and I just looked back and forth in amazement as we realize we are spending the next two nights in Barney apartment.

Jenni tries to break our silence. “So that’s the tour. A lot like the Jack the Ripper tour, only shorter, no gift shop and I don’t wear a period piece costume.”