I re-published the posts that Sarah asked me to take down last year. At the time I thought that we would eventually get back together and as I did while we were together, I wanted to do things that I thought would make her happier with me.
A year later and I no longer have any such hope. I've stopped talking to her and am doing my best to stick to that.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Monday, June 22, 2009
on the darkest mornings
I wake a little early, just to reach over and feel that you're still
there. To feel like there's someone on my side in all of this, to
feel like I'm not alone.
Even if you're not facing me, even if you're turned away and still
sleeping, just feeling the warmth of your body makes me feel better.
On the darkest mornings, I can't do these things. I am alone, and the
bed is cold. I can't rub my feet against yours or kiss your forehead.
On the darkest mornings, I wish that I could. I wish that you knew
how much I want it — on the darkest mornings.
(This was something I wrote Sarah last November. Doesn't seem to matter now, but I kinda liked it, and these are definitely the darkest mornings.)
there. To feel like there's someone on my side in all of this, to
feel like I'm not alone.
Even if you're not facing me, even if you're turned away and still
sleeping, just feeling the warmth of your body makes me feel better.
On the darkest mornings, I can't do these things. I am alone, and the
bed is cold. I can't rub my feet against yours or kiss your forehead.
On the darkest mornings, I wish that I could. I wish that you knew
how much I want it — on the darkest mornings.
(This was something I wrote Sarah last November. Doesn't seem to matter now, but I kinda liked it, and these are definitely the darkest mornings.)
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Closing Time
My girlfriend of twelve (12) years, Sarah, broke up with me two weeks ago.
We had what she termed an "adult conversation" about our relationship during which she aired a bunch of her grievances, and I mostly acceded to their validity. They weren't (for the most part) things that were wrong with me; they were things that were wrong with how we interact. We met when we were 19, and because we met so young, we had a lot of built-in childish behaviors that we'd never really resolved. Beyond the behaviors, she felt that she couldn't really trust me. All of the time spent telling her that I loved her and showing her that I was always thinking of her and showing her that I didn't want to be anywhere else hadn't counted for anything. She still didn't trust me or my feelings for her.
When we had this conversation, I really thought that it was just her venting and that she'd feel better about things in a few hours or maybe a day. A couple days went by and we were still there and we were still acting mostly like a couple, so I didn't know whether it was real or not. I offered to move out to a friend's house and she was ok with that, so I did. I continued to escalate the stakes, each time thinking that she would say "stop!" I started packing, I told her we needed to stop talking (though we haven't been so good about that), and finally it was real: we were broken up.
I hadn't really intended to be broken up, so I immediately started to try to get her to see that things weren't so bad, that we could work things out. Poems, emails, texts, nothing seemed to do the trick. I kept thinking that all she really needed was to remember; to remember what our relationship meant to her and how she felt (and to large degree) still feels about me. But it was not to be.
She kept on reaching out to me, though. She loves me and is worried about me, so she kept IMing and texting and calling. Every time she did, my heart leaped, for I thought it meant that she had reconsidered, that she wanted to try to work on things. But what she said when we talked made it clear that it was not her intent to try to reconcile. She may have thought she was trying to be nice to me by reaching out to me, but in the end, she was just cruel.
I knew things were serious on two Fridays ago, June 12. I went to the house to work from home, and we IMed while I was there. She was willing to change her Facebook relationship status (it seems like a little thing, but there wasn't anywhere else where it was even semi-official that we were together as a couple), and she made it clear that we had probably passed the point of no return. I cried a little bit, but I was still in denial about everything that was going on, so it just didn't seem real.
That night, I was alone at the house where I'm staying, and I felt really lonely and like I just needed to talk to her to get her to know that it would be ok if we just worked on things. This was an ill-conceived plan to be sure. I drove past the house and realized that I shouldn't just stop in, so I parked elsewhere in the neighborhood and called her and asked if I could come by. If nothing else, I could have used some time with the dogs. I knew they still love me. She said that it was ok, she would go out; if I wanted to meet, she wanted to meet in a public place. That just made me feel like a total creep. I had never been physically abusive to her, that she felt she couldn't be alone with me hurts more than almost anything else in this breakup. She wasn't feeling well, so I told her it was ok, I would wait until the next day. We had scheduled for me to have some time in the house alone.
Saturday, June 13, I texted her and asked to talk at home, so I went over to the house to talk to her. It had been a few days since we had seen each other, and I really thought that when she saw me, she'd remember. But she saw me, and it was still over. I cried all day. I hadn't really cried since sometime in high school, and now that I've started again, for the time being I can't seem to really stop. While I was there, she kept on dancing around the issue of whether it was really over; she didn't seem to want to say the words. I told her that I just wanted her honesty, and finally she said, "I think it's over."
She went out for a few hours and I packed up some stuff and threw out some stuff. I took one of the desks from my office out to the patio and took my baseball bat to it. Just as stress relief, and I needed to take it apart anyway, since I didn't plan on moving it. At some point in the afternoon while I was crying I just wanted to feel some physical pain, so I punched the bathroom door, leaving a hole in it and a cut in my hand. Sarah has subsequently felt freaked out by this behavior, but I really don't think it's freaky behavior (feel free to comment though).
I packed up some of my books to go to goodwill; I was thinking at the time that I was going to get rid of as much stuff as possible. Now that it's a week later, maybe I'll just keep them for the time being and see if I want to put them on a bookcase once I've moved into a place of my own. I packed up some other stuff, and as I was dealing with some stuff in my office, I found the letters Sarah wrote to me in the first two years of our relationship. I started reading through all of them, and it just made me sad to think that what we felt for each other then hadn't stayed.
I walked the dogs and waited for her to come home. I texted her about talking some more and she again suggested meeting at a public place. It may be a good thing to do just to make sure neither person gets too upset, but the way she did it really suggested some fear of physical harm. Again she made me feel like a creep; I wondered if she had ever really loved me or trusted me, that she felt she had to say that. I wanted to talk to her because I realized that I wanted to ask her if she was still in love with me, a question that she had asked me numerous times. When she had asked me, it had offended me, because I felt that I showed her constantly how I felt about her. I told her, I showed her, in some ways I'm not sure what else I could have done. But when she asked me and I was hurt that she felt a need to ask me, I mostly said no. So I waited for her to come home, and I asked her. And she said no. For the first time ever, I knew that she didn't really love me anymore.
I cried some more and we both knew I needed to leave. I took a few of the bags that I had packed and put them in the back of my car. I came back in the house and she told me that I really needed to leave. I went out to my car, started it, and started crying. I waited there for a minute, turned off the car and went back up to the house. I just wanted to beg her to let me stay, not to make me leave, that we could make things better again. She repeatedly told me to leave, basically walking me back to my car. She tried to give back the ring that I had given her in 1998, the ring with the blue topaz that I had bought in 8th grade. It wasn't an expensive ring, but it was a sign that we were together; it was a sign that she was mine. Now she wasn't, and she was kicking me off my lawn.
I went back to where I've been staying, my friend's house. He doesn't live here anymore, he stays with his girlfriend since she has cats. Ironically, he got engaged as all of this stuff with me was going down. Just me in this 3 bedroom house doesn't make me feel like I have much of a home.
I kept crying throughout the night, getting less than 2 hours of actual sleep. I had a work trip to Boston on Sunday, so I was up fairly early to leave for that. I wrote her a long letter on the plane, thinking that I may not give it to her, but wanting so badly to give it to her. Giving her yet another affection that would not be received.
As I got to the hotel in Boston, she called me to make sure I had gotten in ok. She asked me where I had stayed the night before, and I told her that it was the same place I had been staying. She asked where my car had been, and I told her that I had parked it across the street, in the direction that I would need to travel to go to the airport. "You did a drive by?" I asked her. She said that she had gone to a friend's house, and driving past was just a coincidence because of that. When we hung up, she said "You know I still love you right?" I told her yes, and that I still loved her too.
After this conversation, I had a pretty good evening. I called some friends to discuss what had happened, and I IMed with some people, too. The conversation seemed to me to be a real sign that she was relenting a little bit; she had thought about it some more in my absence and had reconsidered her position.
I typed up and sent her the letter I had written her, for she had said on the phone that she was reading everything I sent her. She started IMing me later in the evening, and what she said made her actions moot. She hadn't reconsidered at all. She may have been trying to care for me, but all she did was hurt me by sending me mixed messages about her intentions. I kept telling her that if she didn't want to reconcile, we didn't have much to talk about for the moment. Like moths to a flame, though, we kept wanting to talk to each other. On some level, we're still best friends (because no one has supplanted the other in that capacity yet), and the desire to reach for each other because of that continues.
We talked a bunch on Monday again, and every time we talked, I was looking for the magic combination of words that would make her reconsider. Words that would make her remember, words that would make her know that what we had was real and we didn't have to give up on it. We just needed to work harder and go to counseling. I never found that combination.
Monday evening I realized that I hadn't really told co-workers because I was trying to deny that it had happened. If no one knew, maybe Sarah's position would soften, because then no one would know that she had come back to our relationship. I think in some ways some of her resolve was just to prove to herself she could be tough with me and not back down. After I started to tell co-workers, I really started to feel better. Trying to move past the denial and bargaining stages was a good thing; I needed to move to acceptance and start to put together a plan for myself, a plan that would carry me through the next few difficult weeks.
After going through the steps of doing this, I started to feel much better about things. I let Sarah know that I was telling people at work so that she wouldn't be caught off-guard when someone else knew. She was upset that I had told a certain person whom she considered to be her friend (though I have also talked with her a lot). I also told her that I wanted to talk to her Dad one last time. I had always liked him and wanted to make sure that he knew I appreciated that they'd made me one of the family when I was at his house. She was upset by this, too, and asked me to wait, and that we'd talk on Thursday, when I was scheduled to get back from Boston.
Most of Tuesday passed without contact. It wasn't until that evening when I was at the Red Sox game that I got a text from her: "Spit on a sawx player for me." A vile thought and a totally unnecessary text to me. Again, hopes buoyed. Maybe now that I had told co-workers and I wanted to talk to her dad it was sinking in what it meant for us to be apart. Maybe she was starting to realize that we should try a little more.
We IMed later that evening, and again, my hopes broke apart on her ramparts. Talking to me had meant nothing.
I flew back to SFO on Wednesday on the 6am flight, showered, and went to work. I didn't know what else to do. Living in someone else's house isn't 100% comfortable for me, so working from home didn't hold much appeal. We both work in the same office, which is an open office. We sit about 40 feet from one another, so we saw each other a few times without talking. After she had a long lunch, I IMed her and asked if she had brought any of the utility bills in. We needed to transfer them to her name; everything had been in mine.
We went into a conference room to do it; I told her that I didn't want to talk, and that I just wanted to get it over with. I didn't even want to look at her, because that still broke my heart.
She couldn't just get it over with, though. She had to talk to me some more. She had to ask me again whether I knew she still loves me. Of course I do. I don't remember what else she said, but it wasn't a bad conversation, and we laughed a few times. She reached over to touch me a few times, too, which I didn't really want, because that really sent me mixed signals. At one point I told her that I still really wanted to reconcile and she said, "Me too." I was confounded by this. I guess she just won't let herself, even if she wants to. We completed the transfers with a minimal of crying and went about the rest of our day. I'm sure we talked that night on IM or something, but it was still killing me to do so.
Thursday I did work from home just to try to give her some space. I didn't want to be the overbearing ex-boyfriend trying desperately to convince her that things weren't so bad. I know that's what I've been, but that doesn't mean that it's what I want to be. We chatted later in the day, and I told her I was looking for a place to rent, a place that would allow me to have a dog, so that Spot can live with me. I told her that I'd like her to bring me the reference letters we had gotten 6 years ago when we left North Carolina.
I went for a bike ride, and when I got back, I started talking with someone about the situation, and their take was: why are you moving out when she wants to break up? Your life is 10x worse right now than hers, and it's all her doing. Maybe it's the lack of sleep or the adrenaline of the bike ride (or living alone in someone else's house), but this was really making sense. I showered and decided to go back home. I packed two bags of stuff, and drove over. When I got there, she wasn't home, so I went and found the information about the landlord and I called her to let her know that I would be renewing the lease by myself (which is up at the end of the month). I watched some TV and ate one of the yogurts I had left in the fridge.
The house was in squalid condition. The dishes hadn't been washed since I left (the sink wasn't overflowing or anything, but the dishes I had washed before I left were still in the rack), and none of the couch cushions had their covers on (Lilu has become incontinent...the medication apparently has made it ok, but that doesn't mean that there weren't some casualties first). There was a distinct mildew smell in the air, the fetid smell of the unused sink.
I had parked my car around the corner so that she wouldn't see it; I wanted her to see me first, to know that I wasn't threatening her in any way. Which didn't end up working, but it was nice in theory. When she got back to the house, I heard her come to the door, so I opened it for her and said, "Hi babe! Hi doggies!" and started to give the dogs some love. Sarah had been on the phone, so she hung up and said, "What are you doing here?"
I told her that I wanted to stay in the house that was our home together. I told her that it was still her home and would continue to be her home until she chose to leave, but that I wasn't leaving her or our home. Big mistake. She flipped out and become totally hysterical. She called our friends to come over to mediate, and she just ranted for 20 minutes until they arrived. Because this plan made sense to me and seemed fair to me, I was calm the whole time. I wanted a plan on Sarah relinquishing the house. After they arrived, they decided that nothing was going to be resolved that night, one of us should go with them. After a few more cycles of hysterics and calm, I finally gave in and said I'd go for the night. I felt kind of awkward to have them in the middle in the first place; I didn't want to make it contentious.
The next morning, I woke up with the realization that I was exactly where I was the day before, before I forced the issue. I was still living elsewhere, and I had no firm plan on when I could be back in the house. So I forced the issue again, except via email. I wanted her to know that I was planning on moving back into the house immediately. This was again probably a mistake; she got really pissed and replied to my email, saying that she needed a couple of days to get some stuff out of the house. She came over to me at work and asked, very pissily, if I had gotten the email and if it was ok. I said yes, and she stormed off.
I caught up to her walking down the hall, and asked if we could talk in the collaborative workspace at work (just an open area with some tables and chairs and whiteboards and stuff). We went over and sat down and she started crying, saying that the whole experience was scary, intimindating, manipulative, and hurtful. I apologized and told her that I didn't mean to make it any of those things. I pointed out that it had a vague romantic edge to it, even if the execution wasn't so good. She thought that was barely true.
About 10 minutes after telling me that I was being manipulative, she started crying and asking me why, if I love her, would I ask her to leave a house where she feels safe, where people in the neighborhood know her, and where she knows people keep an eye on her? A few minutes of this and my heart, as always, melted for her. Without prompting, I took my keys out of my pocket and took the house and garage keys off the ring and gave them to her.
Overall, it was a good talk, though, and I think I undid a lot of the damage from the night before. She said that she was glad that those feelings weren't the last thing that she was going to remember about me.
I left work soon after the conversation, and I felt like shit the rest of the day. The only contact I've had since then was a request to bring something to work for me. As much as I long for her company and contact, I hope that is the last contact we have for a few days.
We had what she termed an "adult conversation" about our relationship during which she aired a bunch of her grievances, and I mostly acceded to their validity. They weren't (for the most part) things that were wrong with me; they were things that were wrong with how we interact. We met when we were 19, and because we met so young, we had a lot of built-in childish behaviors that we'd never really resolved. Beyond the behaviors, she felt that she couldn't really trust me. All of the time spent telling her that I loved her and showing her that I was always thinking of her and showing her that I didn't want to be anywhere else hadn't counted for anything. She still didn't trust me or my feelings for her.
When we had this conversation, I really thought that it was just her venting and that she'd feel better about things in a few hours or maybe a day. A couple days went by and we were still there and we were still acting mostly like a couple, so I didn't know whether it was real or not. I offered to move out to a friend's house and she was ok with that, so I did. I continued to escalate the stakes, each time thinking that she would say "stop!" I started packing, I told her we needed to stop talking (though we haven't been so good about that), and finally it was real: we were broken up.
I hadn't really intended to be broken up, so I immediately started to try to get her to see that things weren't so bad, that we could work things out. Poems, emails, texts, nothing seemed to do the trick. I kept thinking that all she really needed was to remember; to remember what our relationship meant to her and how she felt (and to large degree) still feels about me. But it was not to be.
She kept on reaching out to me, though. She loves me and is worried about me, so she kept IMing and texting and calling. Every time she did, my heart leaped, for I thought it meant that she had reconsidered, that she wanted to try to work on things. But what she said when we talked made it clear that it was not her intent to try to reconcile. She may have thought she was trying to be nice to me by reaching out to me, but in the end, she was just cruel.
I knew things were serious on two Fridays ago, June 12. I went to the house to work from home, and we IMed while I was there. She was willing to change her Facebook relationship status (it seems like a little thing, but there wasn't anywhere else where it was even semi-official that we were together as a couple), and she made it clear that we had probably passed the point of no return. I cried a little bit, but I was still in denial about everything that was going on, so it just didn't seem real.
That night, I was alone at the house where I'm staying, and I felt really lonely and like I just needed to talk to her to get her to know that it would be ok if we just worked on things. This was an ill-conceived plan to be sure. I drove past the house and realized that I shouldn't just stop in, so I parked elsewhere in the neighborhood and called her and asked if I could come by. If nothing else, I could have used some time with the dogs. I knew they still love me. She said that it was ok, she would go out; if I wanted to meet, she wanted to meet in a public place. That just made me feel like a total creep. I had never been physically abusive to her, that she felt she couldn't be alone with me hurts more than almost anything else in this breakup. She wasn't feeling well, so I told her it was ok, I would wait until the next day. We had scheduled for me to have some time in the house alone.
Saturday, June 13, I texted her and asked to talk at home, so I went over to the house to talk to her. It had been a few days since we had seen each other, and I really thought that when she saw me, she'd remember. But she saw me, and it was still over. I cried all day. I hadn't really cried since sometime in high school, and now that I've started again, for the time being I can't seem to really stop. While I was there, she kept on dancing around the issue of whether it was really over; she didn't seem to want to say the words. I told her that I just wanted her honesty, and finally she said, "I think it's over."
She went out for a few hours and I packed up some stuff and threw out some stuff. I took one of the desks from my office out to the patio and took my baseball bat to it. Just as stress relief, and I needed to take it apart anyway, since I didn't plan on moving it. At some point in the afternoon while I was crying I just wanted to feel some physical pain, so I punched the bathroom door, leaving a hole in it and a cut in my hand. Sarah has subsequently felt freaked out by this behavior, but I really don't think it's freaky behavior (feel free to comment though).
I packed up some of my books to go to goodwill; I was thinking at the time that I was going to get rid of as much stuff as possible. Now that it's a week later, maybe I'll just keep them for the time being and see if I want to put them on a bookcase once I've moved into a place of my own. I packed up some other stuff, and as I was dealing with some stuff in my office, I found the letters Sarah wrote to me in the first two years of our relationship. I started reading through all of them, and it just made me sad to think that what we felt for each other then hadn't stayed.
I walked the dogs and waited for her to come home. I texted her about talking some more and she again suggested meeting at a public place. It may be a good thing to do just to make sure neither person gets too upset, but the way she did it really suggested some fear of physical harm. Again she made me feel like a creep; I wondered if she had ever really loved me or trusted me, that she felt she had to say that. I wanted to talk to her because I realized that I wanted to ask her if she was still in love with me, a question that she had asked me numerous times. When she had asked me, it had offended me, because I felt that I showed her constantly how I felt about her. I told her, I showed her, in some ways I'm not sure what else I could have done. But when she asked me and I was hurt that she felt a need to ask me, I mostly said no. So I waited for her to come home, and I asked her. And she said no. For the first time ever, I knew that she didn't really love me anymore.
I cried some more and we both knew I needed to leave. I took a few of the bags that I had packed and put them in the back of my car. I came back in the house and she told me that I really needed to leave. I went out to my car, started it, and started crying. I waited there for a minute, turned off the car and went back up to the house. I just wanted to beg her to let me stay, not to make me leave, that we could make things better again. She repeatedly told me to leave, basically walking me back to my car. She tried to give back the ring that I had given her in 1998, the ring with the blue topaz that I had bought in 8th grade. It wasn't an expensive ring, but it was a sign that we were together; it was a sign that she was mine. Now she wasn't, and she was kicking me off my lawn.
I went back to where I've been staying, my friend's house. He doesn't live here anymore, he stays with his girlfriend since she has cats. Ironically, he got engaged as all of this stuff with me was going down. Just me in this 3 bedroom house doesn't make me feel like I have much of a home.
I kept crying throughout the night, getting less than 2 hours of actual sleep. I had a work trip to Boston on Sunday, so I was up fairly early to leave for that. I wrote her a long letter on the plane, thinking that I may not give it to her, but wanting so badly to give it to her. Giving her yet another affection that would not be received.
As I got to the hotel in Boston, she called me to make sure I had gotten in ok. She asked me where I had stayed the night before, and I told her that it was the same place I had been staying. She asked where my car had been, and I told her that I had parked it across the street, in the direction that I would need to travel to go to the airport. "You did a drive by?" I asked her. She said that she had gone to a friend's house, and driving past was just a coincidence because of that. When we hung up, she said "You know I still love you right?" I told her yes, and that I still loved her too.
After this conversation, I had a pretty good evening. I called some friends to discuss what had happened, and I IMed with some people, too. The conversation seemed to me to be a real sign that she was relenting a little bit; she had thought about it some more in my absence and had reconsidered her position.
I typed up and sent her the letter I had written her, for she had said on the phone that she was reading everything I sent her. She started IMing me later in the evening, and what she said made her actions moot. She hadn't reconsidered at all. She may have been trying to care for me, but all she did was hurt me by sending me mixed messages about her intentions. I kept telling her that if she didn't want to reconcile, we didn't have much to talk about for the moment. Like moths to a flame, though, we kept wanting to talk to each other. On some level, we're still best friends (because no one has supplanted the other in that capacity yet), and the desire to reach for each other because of that continues.
We talked a bunch on Monday again, and every time we talked, I was looking for the magic combination of words that would make her reconsider. Words that would make her remember, words that would make her know that what we had was real and we didn't have to give up on it. We just needed to work harder and go to counseling. I never found that combination.
Monday evening I realized that I hadn't really told co-workers because I was trying to deny that it had happened. If no one knew, maybe Sarah's position would soften, because then no one would know that she had come back to our relationship. I think in some ways some of her resolve was just to prove to herself she could be tough with me and not back down. After I started to tell co-workers, I really started to feel better. Trying to move past the denial and bargaining stages was a good thing; I needed to move to acceptance and start to put together a plan for myself, a plan that would carry me through the next few difficult weeks.
After going through the steps of doing this, I started to feel much better about things. I let Sarah know that I was telling people at work so that she wouldn't be caught off-guard when someone else knew. She was upset that I had told a certain person whom she considered to be her friend (though I have also talked with her a lot). I also told her that I wanted to talk to her Dad one last time. I had always liked him and wanted to make sure that he knew I appreciated that they'd made me one of the family when I was at his house. She was upset by this, too, and asked me to wait, and that we'd talk on Thursday, when I was scheduled to get back from Boston.
Most of Tuesday passed without contact. It wasn't until that evening when I was at the Red Sox game that I got a text from her: "Spit on a sawx player for me." A vile thought and a totally unnecessary text to me. Again, hopes buoyed. Maybe now that I had told co-workers and I wanted to talk to her dad it was sinking in what it meant for us to be apart. Maybe she was starting to realize that we should try a little more.
We IMed later that evening, and again, my hopes broke apart on her ramparts. Talking to me had meant nothing.
I flew back to SFO on Wednesday on the 6am flight, showered, and went to work. I didn't know what else to do. Living in someone else's house isn't 100% comfortable for me, so working from home didn't hold much appeal. We both work in the same office, which is an open office. We sit about 40 feet from one another, so we saw each other a few times without talking. After she had a long lunch, I IMed her and asked if she had brought any of the utility bills in. We needed to transfer them to her name; everything had been in mine.
We went into a conference room to do it; I told her that I didn't want to talk, and that I just wanted to get it over with. I didn't even want to look at her, because that still broke my heart.
She couldn't just get it over with, though. She had to talk to me some more. She had to ask me again whether I knew she still loves me. Of course I do. I don't remember what else she said, but it wasn't a bad conversation, and we laughed a few times. She reached over to touch me a few times, too, which I didn't really want, because that really sent me mixed signals. At one point I told her that I still really wanted to reconcile and she said, "Me too." I was confounded by this. I guess she just won't let herself, even if she wants to. We completed the transfers with a minimal of crying and went about the rest of our day. I'm sure we talked that night on IM or something, but it was still killing me to do so.
Thursday I did work from home just to try to give her some space. I didn't want to be the overbearing ex-boyfriend trying desperately to convince her that things weren't so bad. I know that's what I've been, but that doesn't mean that it's what I want to be. We chatted later in the day, and I told her I was looking for a place to rent, a place that would allow me to have a dog, so that Spot can live with me. I told her that I'd like her to bring me the reference letters we had gotten 6 years ago when we left North Carolina.
I went for a bike ride, and when I got back, I started talking with someone about the situation, and their take was: why are you moving out when she wants to break up? Your life is 10x worse right now than hers, and it's all her doing. Maybe it's the lack of sleep or the adrenaline of the bike ride (or living alone in someone else's house), but this was really making sense. I showered and decided to go back home. I packed two bags of stuff, and drove over. When I got there, she wasn't home, so I went and found the information about the landlord and I called her to let her know that I would be renewing the lease by myself (which is up at the end of the month). I watched some TV and ate one of the yogurts I had left in the fridge.
The house was in squalid condition. The dishes hadn't been washed since I left (the sink wasn't overflowing or anything, but the dishes I had washed before I left were still in the rack), and none of the couch cushions had their covers on (Lilu has become incontinent...the medication apparently has made it ok, but that doesn't mean that there weren't some casualties first). There was a distinct mildew smell in the air, the fetid smell of the unused sink.
I had parked my car around the corner so that she wouldn't see it; I wanted her to see me first, to know that I wasn't threatening her in any way. Which didn't end up working, but it was nice in theory. When she got back to the house, I heard her come to the door, so I opened it for her and said, "Hi babe! Hi doggies!" and started to give the dogs some love. Sarah had been on the phone, so she hung up and said, "What are you doing here?"
I told her that I wanted to stay in the house that was our home together. I told her that it was still her home and would continue to be her home until she chose to leave, but that I wasn't leaving her or our home. Big mistake. She flipped out and become totally hysterical. She called our friends to come over to mediate, and she just ranted for 20 minutes until they arrived. Because this plan made sense to me and seemed fair to me, I was calm the whole time. I wanted a plan on Sarah relinquishing the house. After they arrived, they decided that nothing was going to be resolved that night, one of us should go with them. After a few more cycles of hysterics and calm, I finally gave in and said I'd go for the night. I felt kind of awkward to have them in the middle in the first place; I didn't want to make it contentious.
The next morning, I woke up with the realization that I was exactly where I was the day before, before I forced the issue. I was still living elsewhere, and I had no firm plan on when I could be back in the house. So I forced the issue again, except via email. I wanted her to know that I was planning on moving back into the house immediately. This was again probably a mistake; she got really pissed and replied to my email, saying that she needed a couple of days to get some stuff out of the house. She came over to me at work and asked, very pissily, if I had gotten the email and if it was ok. I said yes, and she stormed off.
I caught up to her walking down the hall, and asked if we could talk in the collaborative workspace at work (just an open area with some tables and chairs and whiteboards and stuff). We went over and sat down and she started crying, saying that the whole experience was scary, intimindating, manipulative, and hurtful. I apologized and told her that I didn't mean to make it any of those things. I pointed out that it had a vague romantic edge to it, even if the execution wasn't so good. She thought that was barely true.
About 10 minutes after telling me that I was being manipulative, she started crying and asking me why, if I love her, would I ask her to leave a house where she feels safe, where people in the neighborhood know her, and where she knows people keep an eye on her? A few minutes of this and my heart, as always, melted for her. Without prompting, I took my keys out of my pocket and took the house and garage keys off the ring and gave them to her.
Overall, it was a good talk, though, and I think I undid a lot of the damage from the night before. She said that she was glad that those feelings weren't the last thing that she was going to remember about me.
I left work soon after the conversation, and I felt like shit the rest of the day. The only contact I've had since then was a request to bring something to work for me. As much as I long for her company and contact, I hope that is the last contact we have for a few days.
Friday, April 11, 2008
I can't quite go home
When I lived in Austin, I used to travel for Learning Tree quite a bit. As a result, I flew out of Austin all the time, and when I arrived back in Austin, the smell of the airport is what welcomed me home. The Austin airport is all one terminal, so all of the restaurants smells mingled with whatever other smells there were (it was a new airport at the time, too, so maybe that had something to do with it) to form this smell that I knew of as "arriving home."
When I've visited in the past, I've always noticed that the smell was still the same, and it gave me that same "arriving home" feeling as it did when I lived here. It was actually something that I looked forward to when I got off the jetway.
I'm in Austin this weekend, and when I arrived the other night, I noted that the airport no longer smelled exactly the same way as it had; it was similar, like a variation on a theme, but definitely not the same. While I don't live here and may never live here again, it makes me a little bit sad that there's one fewer place that reminds me of "home."
When I've visited in the past, I've always noticed that the smell was still the same, and it gave me that same "arriving home" feeling as it did when I lived here. It was actually something that I looked forward to when I got off the jetway.
I'm in Austin this weekend, and when I arrived the other night, I noted that the airport no longer smelled exactly the same way as it had; it was similar, like a variation on a theme, but definitely not the same. While I don't live here and may never live here again, it makes me a little bit sad that there's one fewer place that reminds me of "home."
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Breakfast of champions
This week is the bar. That means that on top of all of the anxiety, stress, and self-doubt I have about the exam itself manifests in crazy ways, including a practical nervous breakdown now (day 2 of 3) because I feel terrible about how today's exam went.
With the stress and anxiety, my stomach's been turning over and about...so my breakfast both days has been:
With the stress and anxiety, my stomach's been turning over and about...so my breakfast both days has been:
- Lipton Iced Tea - Peach
- Nature Valley - Oats 'N Honey Granola bars
- Swig of Pepto Bismol on my way down to the test
Friday, August 11, 2006
The QA Dilemma
Now that I'm working again, I have come to certain realizations.
The first of which is that I made some mistakes when looking for jobs this past spring. I was more interested in finding a job than in finding the right job. Granted, having a job with income is going to be better for me than the semi-employment of teaching computer programming classes. But it wasn't the path to long-term success. I really should have looked for a job that I wanted rather than taking the best offer that I received before leaving school.
This has led me to wonder whether I wouldn't have been better off just staying in Pittsburgh, where the cost of living was relatively low, and the expectations are likewise low for the people there. Doing a few classes a year probably would have gotten me by, and I could have had the same low-key semi-unhappy lifestyle that I had before, but at least I would have had a lot of free time.
So the mistake here was taking a QA job. QA people tend to have an inferiority complex, and I'm no exception. There is a lot of angst about QAers about whether they are good enough to be developers, and the general consensus seems to be that we're not. If we had been good enough to be developers, we would have been hired as developers instead of just QA. The attitude of most developers reflects this perceived inferiority, in that they rarely care what QA thinks, and definitely do little development with QA in mind. QA will always take longer than development, and yet it's given the shortest shrift in the development cycle. All of this leads to relatively unhappy and burnt-out QA people. Plus one.
The second realization is that this is a problem not limited to me. This is a general QA person complex. It also leads to a few general issues with QA departments. One is that it tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy: QA people feel they must not be good enough for development, they become unproductive, and their work suffers (QA quality or development quality is irrelevant). Another is that QA people become less aggressive with the developers over time because the developers essentially "teach" them that the developers are not going to be that helpful to the QA people.
The third realization is that in general, of course it's going to be harder to get good QA people, too, because most of the people are who would be good QA people would rather be developers, and people who are confident about their abilities are not going to take the QA job unless they're really into QA. Which, I don't think, most QA people are (really into QA, I mean). And I don't mean to say that there aren't really good QA people who really like QA.
I don't really know what all this ends up meaning at the end of the day, other than I gotta figure out how to get out of here.
The first of which is that I made some mistakes when looking for jobs this past spring. I was more interested in finding a job than in finding the right job. Granted, having a job with income is going to be better for me than the semi-employment of teaching computer programming classes. But it wasn't the path to long-term success. I really should have looked for a job that I wanted rather than taking the best offer that I received before leaving school.
This has led me to wonder whether I wouldn't have been better off just staying in Pittsburgh, where the cost of living was relatively low, and the expectations are likewise low for the people there. Doing a few classes a year probably would have gotten me by, and I could have had the same low-key semi-unhappy lifestyle that I had before, but at least I would have had a lot of free time.
So the mistake here was taking a QA job. QA people tend to have an inferiority complex, and I'm no exception. There is a lot of angst about QAers about whether they are good enough to be developers, and the general consensus seems to be that we're not. If we had been good enough to be developers, we would have been hired as developers instead of just QA. The attitude of most developers reflects this perceived inferiority, in that they rarely care what QA thinks, and definitely do little development with QA in mind. QA will always take longer than development, and yet it's given the shortest shrift in the development cycle. All of this leads to relatively unhappy and burnt-out QA people. Plus one.
The second realization is that this is a problem not limited to me. This is a general QA person complex. It also leads to a few general issues with QA departments. One is that it tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy: QA people feel they must not be good enough for development, they become unproductive, and their work suffers (QA quality or development quality is irrelevant). Another is that QA people become less aggressive with the developers over time because the developers essentially "teach" them that the developers are not going to be that helpful to the QA people.
The third realization is that in general, of course it's going to be harder to get good QA people, too, because most of the people are who would be good QA people would rather be developers, and people who are confident about their abilities are not going to take the QA job unless they're really into QA. Which, I don't think, most QA people are (really into QA, I mean). And I don't mean to say that there aren't really good QA people who really like QA.
I don't really know what all this ends up meaning at the end of the day, other than I gotta figure out how to get out of here.
Friday, June 02, 2006
I blog, therefore I am.
Yes, I am still alive. I'd like to blame my lack of posting on being too busy for it, but we all know that's not entirely true.
But to keep you up to date, I have moved to California and started a tech job out here 3 weeks ago. So much for putting my law degree to work. I did buy patent bar review materials, so I do plan to take the patent bar. I should probably get to work on that a little bit.
I bought a car and drove out here 4 weeks ago. Work is interesting, and I like the people I work with (and there aren't many who read this, so I'm not lying).
There's a woman at work who told me a great story the other day which I thought I'd share. She recently bought a house, and when she went to sign the mortgage paperwork, the banker told her, "Here's a payment coupon for your first month's payment." She said, "Sweet! A coupon...and I was thinking that it was just going to be like 20% or something, but it was for the whole amount!" Then of course, she realized that it was not a coupon in the supermarket sense of the word, but in the remittance sense. Pretty funny stuff.
I could probably put some stuff here bitching about having a roommate again, but there's really no point. Up until a few days ago, he worked at Best Buy full time. He went to college to be a computer animator, but has yet to get a job doing that. But last week he got an offer to do a "test" for a company in Seattle, which essentially means that they sent him some work for him to do for free to see if they should hire him. He submitted the first part of the test, then they gave him some more work. So I guess he's working on that, but I'm not really sure. I thought I didn't like coming home when he wasn't here all the time...now it's even worse.
It's interesting to me that I still know a fair number of people who have roommates (and that number has only increased since getting to the uber-expensive Bay Area) years after college is over. Financially I can understand it, but on an emotional level, I can't. Other than Sarah, I really haven't had a roommate since 1998, and I can't imagine going back to having a roommate full-time. This 2 month period is gonna kill me, as I'm only 3 weeks in and I hate it so much already. Have I just grown out of it, or have I become spoiled? Even if Sarah were not going to move out here in July, I think I would have to rent a place on my own, just to feel independent again. Silly, maybe.
Ok, I'm rambling, I'm too tired to write more, time for bed.
But to keep you up to date, I have moved to California and started a tech job out here 3 weeks ago. So much for putting my law degree to work. I did buy patent bar review materials, so I do plan to take the patent bar. I should probably get to work on that a little bit.
I bought a car and drove out here 4 weeks ago. Work is interesting, and I like the people I work with (and there aren't many who read this, so I'm not lying).
There's a woman at work who told me a great story the other day which I thought I'd share. She recently bought a house, and when she went to sign the mortgage paperwork, the banker told her, "Here's a payment coupon for your first month's payment." She said, "Sweet! A coupon...and I was thinking that it was just going to be like 20% or something, but it was for the whole amount!" Then of course, she realized that it was not a coupon in the supermarket sense of the word, but in the remittance sense. Pretty funny stuff.
I could probably put some stuff here bitching about having a roommate again, but there's really no point. Up until a few days ago, he worked at Best Buy full time. He went to college to be a computer animator, but has yet to get a job doing that. But last week he got an offer to do a "test" for a company in Seattle, which essentially means that they sent him some work for him to do for free to see if they should hire him. He submitted the first part of the test, then they gave him some more work. So I guess he's working on that, but I'm not really sure. I thought I didn't like coming home when he wasn't here all the time...now it's even worse.
It's interesting to me that I still know a fair number of people who have roommates (and that number has only increased since getting to the uber-expensive Bay Area) years after college is over. Financially I can understand it, but on an emotional level, I can't. Other than Sarah, I really haven't had a roommate since 1998, and I can't imagine going back to having a roommate full-time. This 2 month period is gonna kill me, as I'm only 3 weeks in and I hate it so much already. Have I just grown out of it, or have I become spoiled? Even if Sarah were not going to move out here in July, I think I would have to rent a place on my own, just to feel independent again. Silly, maybe.
Ok, I'm rambling, I'm too tired to write more, time for bed.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
I'm a litterbug
On Friday, I littered for what I consider to the be the first time. I say that I consider that to be the first time because I can't recall every having littered anything other than bubble gum or other organics (banana peels, apple cores, etc). I don't count the organics because they end up getting eaten by other things and aren't something that someone will be able to pick up in 2 weeks during a trash sweep.
Sarah got some lotion, manufactured for Kohl's, from someone at school (I think). It was some sort of Ginseng & Soy Protein thing, but whenever she put it on, it made me sneeze like crazy. She usually puts it on while driving to school, so it stays in the car.
Friday I drove her to school, and she put some of this lotion on her legs. This used a rather larger portion than normal of the lotion, and made me sneeze correspondingly more. Not only did I sneeze in the car, but I sneezed and had a runny nose all morning. Obviously I'm allergic to something in the lotion. So after my final and errands over on campus, I got back in the car, and whatever diminishment had occurred over the course of the morning, the lotion had its full effect when I returned to the car.
So while driving past the cemetary on my way home, I made the decision that this lotion needed to be thrown away. Immediately. It needed to be thrown away so that it could never come back. If I were to throw it away at home, she could dig through the trash to retrieve it. Or worse, make me dig through the trash to retrieve it. Yes, she likes (liked) the lotion enough to do this. So out the window it went.
She wasn't that upset when I told her it was gone, though she was surprised at the manner of disposal. I told her I would buy any other lotion she likes to make up ofr it.
What a great way to celebrate the day before Earth Day.
Sarah got some lotion, manufactured for Kohl's, from someone at school (I think). It was some sort of Ginseng & Soy Protein thing, but whenever she put it on, it made me sneeze like crazy. She usually puts it on while driving to school, so it stays in the car.
Friday I drove her to school, and she put some of this lotion on her legs. This used a rather larger portion than normal of the lotion, and made me sneeze correspondingly more. Not only did I sneeze in the car, but I sneezed and had a runny nose all morning. Obviously I'm allergic to something in the lotion. So after my final and errands over on campus, I got back in the car, and whatever diminishment had occurred over the course of the morning, the lotion had its full effect when I returned to the car.
So while driving past the cemetary on my way home, I made the decision that this lotion needed to be thrown away. Immediately. It needed to be thrown away so that it could never come back. If I were to throw it away at home, she could dig through the trash to retrieve it. Or worse, make me dig through the trash to retrieve it. Yes, she likes (liked) the lotion enough to do this. So out the window it went.
She wasn't that upset when I told her it was gone, though she was surprised at the manner of disposal. I told her I would buy any other lotion she likes to make up ofr it.
What a great way to celebrate the day before Earth Day.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
8:34
I'm sure I'm not the only person who still thinks he's (or she's) 17. I have to think about it for a second to realize that I'm 28 years old and that my siblings have also aged and are no longer little kids.
I called my brother tonight, most likely the last time I will talk to him for at least a year in a form other than email. He flies out tomorrow for the sunny skies and green (poppy) fields of Afghanistan. I've known that this will happen for a while. Initially it was to be Iraq, and eventually it was changed to Afghanistan.
He's excited about going; he wants his first confirmed kill. The last few years have all been foreplay to his big trip east, his trip to "The Show". He's not a grunt, he's some form of lieutenant, he'll be the only one with his job at the base where he will be stationed. This should keep him safe, though he is still on some level expendable.
I called my brother tonight and told him to come back safely; not to do anything that's likely to get his ass shot off. I don't know what else to tell him. The sum of my experiences is not likely to help him in whatever encounters he has over there. I can only tell him to come back alive and hope that it's not the last time that I talk to him.
I called my brother to tell him that I'm sorry for beating him up as a kid—there are some fights that I'm really not proud of, where I was far too violent with him. I called him to let him know that whatever happened earlier in our lives, though we're not terribly close, I'm still here for him.
But alas, we're both Lees. We don't voice feelings to others in our family. They don't know how to receive it, and we don't know how to say it. So the long phone call where we talk about everything—isn't.
Instead, it lasts just 8 minutes, 34 seconds.
I called my brother tonight, most likely the last time I will talk to him for at least a year in a form other than email. He flies out tomorrow for the sunny skies and green (poppy) fields of Afghanistan. I've known that this will happen for a while. Initially it was to be Iraq, and eventually it was changed to Afghanistan.
He's excited about going; he wants his first confirmed kill. The last few years have all been foreplay to his big trip east, his trip to "The Show". He's not a grunt, he's some form of lieutenant, he'll be the only one with his job at the base where he will be stationed. This should keep him safe, though he is still on some level expendable.
I called my brother tonight and told him to come back safely; not to do anything that's likely to get his ass shot off. I don't know what else to tell him. The sum of my experiences is not likely to help him in whatever encounters he has over there. I can only tell him to come back alive and hope that it's not the last time that I talk to him.
I called my brother to tell him that I'm sorry for beating him up as a kid—there are some fights that I'm really not proud of, where I was far too violent with him. I called him to let him know that whatever happened earlier in our lives, though we're not terribly close, I'm still here for him.
But alas, we're both Lees. We don't voice feelings to others in our family. They don't know how to receive it, and we don't know how to say it. So the long phone call where we talk about everything—isn't.
Instead, it lasts just 8 minutes, 34 seconds.
Monday, December 05, 2005
test
Well, apparently blogger got so restless that I haven't posted, it's refusing to show the page. Maybe this will fix it.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
FOLR, continued
I can't tell if it's just because my friends are law students that I'm the friend of last resort, or whether I've always been that way. I know it's been that way for a good majority of my "friendships", but has law school exacerbated the problem?
Case in point. This evening, I got invited out to dinner, "but it has to be something quick. I have other things to do tonight." Alluding to school work or something, you might think. That's fine, you have school work, let's do something quick for dinner. As it turned out, this also involved this friend picking up at least two more people to go to dinner. Our dinner plans fell through, but the question I'm left with is, if you wanted to do something quick, why are you picking other people up (who are way out of the way, for that matter)?
The obvious answer is that "I have other things to do tonight" refers not to actual things to do, but other people to see, parties to go to, what-have-you. And you've graced me with an invitation to spend some of my time in the radiance of your presence. Gee, thanks. If I'm not really part of your plans, what are you doing inviting me out for anything? I didn't go out of my way to call you to see about dinner, you called me. You called me so that I could go out to dinner with you, and then you could go out to do other things with other people, never really making me a part of your group.
I don't need to be part of the group. I'm not asking that you invite me out to those other events, or get others to invite me to other events. But why invite me to anything? You like me, but only enough for dinner. More than that and I'm tiresome. Which, again, is ok if you feel that way, but don't invite me to dinner to be some sort of half-friend.
It's better to know I'm an outsider while at home than to see that I'm an outsider while I'm out to dinner.
Case in point. This evening, I got invited out to dinner, "but it has to be something quick. I have other things to do tonight." Alluding to school work or something, you might think. That's fine, you have school work, let's do something quick for dinner. As it turned out, this also involved this friend picking up at least two more people to go to dinner. Our dinner plans fell through, but the question I'm left with is, if you wanted to do something quick, why are you picking other people up (who are way out of the way, for that matter)?
The obvious answer is that "I have other things to do tonight" refers not to actual things to do, but other people to see, parties to go to, what-have-you. And you've graced me with an invitation to spend some of my time in the radiance of your presence. Gee, thanks. If I'm not really part of your plans, what are you doing inviting me out for anything? I didn't go out of my way to call you to see about dinner, you called me. You called me so that I could go out to dinner with you, and then you could go out to do other things with other people, never really making me a part of your group.
I don't need to be part of the group. I'm not asking that you invite me out to those other events, or get others to invite me to other events. But why invite me to anything? You like me, but only enough for dinner. More than that and I'm tiresome. Which, again, is ok if you feel that way, but don't invite me to dinner to be some sort of half-friend.
It's better to know I'm an outsider while at home than to see that I'm an outsider while I'm out to dinner.
Monday, September 05, 2005
friend of last resort
Hi, I'm probably at the bottom of your I-need-to-call list. I'm the person you call when you're really bored, or you really can't find someone else to do something with. You let my calls go to voicemail, you go out and party, and in your down moments, in those times when you don't have money to go out and drink, that's when you call me.
Sure, you'll come over to my house and eat my food. You don't call me to extend any sort of invitation to me; no, no, this is a one-way street. I reach out to you, and in those times of benevolence, pity, or boredom, you choose to make plans with me.
We spend time in bunches together. Your close friends go away for a few days, so you've got time to kill with me. I'm your B-list friend. I get the part for a short run, and then the budget runs out. An A-list friend becomes available and is instead cast in the role that I had.
I can't put my finger on it. It doesn't seem to be my personality, since you like me just fine when we spend time together. Is it what I like to do? Or don't like to do? I don't want to go out and drink, and therefore I'm made to be the de facto pariah?
You're still here? Don't you have your A-list friend's blog to read instead?
Sure, you'll come over to my house and eat my food. You don't call me to extend any sort of invitation to me; no, no, this is a one-way street. I reach out to you, and in those times of benevolence, pity, or boredom, you choose to make plans with me.
We spend time in bunches together. Your close friends go away for a few days, so you've got time to kill with me. I'm your B-list friend. I get the part for a short run, and then the budget runs out. An A-list friend becomes available and is instead cast in the role that I had.
I can't put my finger on it. It doesn't seem to be my personality, since you like me just fine when we spend time together. Is it what I like to do? Or don't like to do? I don't want to go out and drink, and therefore I'm made to be the de facto pariah?
You're still here? Don't you have your A-list friend's blog to read instead?
Saturday, August 27, 2005
I love the smell of the O in the morning.
School starts again on Monday, and I spent the last couple mornings at school, for various reasons. On Friday, it was Rebecca's birthday, I wasn't going to make her bar-party, so I took her out to lunch instead. We went to Primanti Bros. (for those of you who aren't familiar, this is a Pittsburgh place where they put french freedom fries and slaw on their sammiches), a cash-only establishment, as many Pittsburgh places are.
We had our lunch, and she had to leave before I finished due to work. So I finished my lunch, and when the dude behind the bar went to ring me up, I motioned that I was covering for both lunches (she had already gone, but she left her plastic salad box behind to signify that she had not paid). I put a $20 on the bar, and threw our stuff away (trash can was right behind where we were sitting).
He gave me back my change, which apparently was $13.xx. I noticed this as I walked out of the place, and realized that he had made a mistake in ringing up our lunch. Each lunch should have been around $7.
Moral dilemma time.
I needed to go over to the bookstore, so I went and did that while I pondered what I should do about it. Did he think that Rebecca had walked out without paying? He shouldn't have, I made the little back and forth signal with my hand, indicating that I was paying for hers. Was it just unfamiliarity with the cash register and the inability to add? Occam's razor and all, this is what I should have assumed it was.
But no, I have to be a good guy and go back and tell him that he made a mistake ringing up the meal, as he gave me $13 back. He doesn't believe me at first, and then with some reluctance, he rings up Rebecca's lunch. But. Not without saying, "Well, did I just give you back $10 too much?"
WTF.
Here I am, bringing this dude FREE FUCKING MONEY, and he has the audacity to call my integrity into question. This is an all-cash establishment with no computerized ordering system. No one would have known that he made a mistake, and no one would have been able to track me, either. What's the reason for making an establishment all-cash? Avoiding taxes. And somehow I'm the crook here.
I then explained how addition works and with each lunch being $7, he would have had to have given me $16, not $13, in change for him to have given me $10 too much. (Ok, I wasn't that much of an asshole, I didn't explain addition, but I did repeat that he gave me back $13, not $16).
So the end result is that I feel like an asshole for being an honest person and even going back. Their food really isn't that great to begin with, and now, I'm not going back again. Hopefully I'll remember this time, I keep going back there, even though I don't particularly like the food.
We had our lunch, and she had to leave before I finished due to work. So I finished my lunch, and when the dude behind the bar went to ring me up, I motioned that I was covering for both lunches (she had already gone, but she left her plastic salad box behind to signify that she had not paid). I put a $20 on the bar, and threw our stuff away (trash can was right behind where we were sitting).
He gave me back my change, which apparently was $13.xx. I noticed this as I walked out of the place, and realized that he had made a mistake in ringing up our lunch. Each lunch should have been around $7.
Moral dilemma time.
I needed to go over to the bookstore, so I went and did that while I pondered what I should do about it. Did he think that Rebecca had walked out without paying? He shouldn't have, I made the little back and forth signal with my hand, indicating that I was paying for hers. Was it just unfamiliarity with the cash register and the inability to add? Occam's razor and all, this is what I should have assumed it was.
But no, I have to be a good guy and go back and tell him that he made a mistake ringing up the meal, as he gave me $13 back. He doesn't believe me at first, and then with some reluctance, he rings up Rebecca's lunch. But. Not without saying, "Well, did I just give you back $10 too much?"
WTF.
Here I am, bringing this dude FREE FUCKING MONEY, and he has the audacity to call my integrity into question. This is an all-cash establishment with no computerized ordering system. No one would have known that he made a mistake, and no one would have been able to track me, either. What's the reason for making an establishment all-cash? Avoiding taxes. And somehow I'm the crook here.
I then explained how addition works and with each lunch being $7, he would have had to have given me $16, not $13, in change for him to have given me $10 too much. (Ok, I wasn't that much of an asshole, I didn't explain addition, but I did repeat that he gave me back $13, not $16).
So the end result is that I feel like an asshole for being an honest person and even going back. Their food really isn't that great to begin with, and now, I'm not going back again. Hopefully I'll remember this time, I keep going back there, even though I don't particularly like the food.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
New look
Well, I finally got around to switching to a different Blogger template, and after doing soem minor fiddling, it's close enough that I'm going to go do something else for the evening. Maybe I'll post again soon. Then again, maybe not.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
bits and pieces
So I noticed the other day that Blogger has now blocked the use of etenation for comments. When I started the blog, Blogger did not have a comment feature, so I was forced to use an external site for that. And now they've turned it off, so that our comments are essentially lost. When I find some time, I need to overhaul pretty much everything about the template of this blog so that I utilize the blogger comments. But that will not be today.
I'm teaching another class in two weeks, in Chicago, and in the meantime, I have a ton of stuff that I should be doing. I'm working for a prof at school, I have a programming project, and I just can't get focused on anything.
Well, just not anything work related. I've been fantastically involved in board games, of course. When I was in London, I went to a guy's house to play board games, a guy I didn't know at all. He, his wife and I played a game that I've been obsessing about for the last month. It finally arrives today. Yesterday I must have tracked the package 100 times on the fedex website, just to make sure that it arrives today. It's like hitting the "UP" button for an elevator over and over...it arrives faster the more you hit it, right? I invited people over to play it tonight, so I definitely need it to be here. The Fedex tracking web servers will be glad to have that package delivered.
I'm teaching another class in two weeks, in Chicago, and in the meantime, I have a ton of stuff that I should be doing. I'm working for a prof at school, I have a programming project, and I just can't get focused on anything.
Well, just not anything work related. I've been fantastically involved in board games, of course. When I was in London, I went to a guy's house to play board games, a guy I didn't know at all. He, his wife and I played a game that I've been obsessing about for the last month. It finally arrives today. Yesterday I must have tracked the package 100 times on the fedex website, just to make sure that it arrives today. It's like hitting the "UP" button for an elevator over and over...it arrives faster the more you hit it, right? I invited people over to play it tonight, so I definitely need it to be here. The Fedex tracking web servers will be glad to have that package delivered.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Lightweight Heavyweight
I'm still in London. Friday night, I came back to the building where I taught my class this week, primarily to check email. I was going to dinner immediately afterwards, and once I left, I realized I had left a book that I had wanted to read at dinner. So I turned around, went back in to see if I left the book at the internet terminal. It wasn't there, so I walked back out to go to dinner, no book to read. As it turned out, it was just as well.
Now, next to the building was a pub that I walked by on my way back to the hotel. I had gotten about 200 ft past the pub when I realized the whistling and yelling behind me was one of the technical support guys trying to get my attention. I turned around, he caught up to me and chastised me for making him run after me when he was in the middle of having a drink. He said I needed to come back to the pub to have a proper English pint. Who was I to say no.
So I went into the pub, and three of the support guys were there. Brad, Esteban (the one who ran after me), and Andy. I'm not entirely certain what all three of them do, but Brad is the head of tech support here, Esteban does some sort of tech support function (I think it's product development related), and I have no idea what Andy does, though I think he might manage the ed center. (Hell, I hope I got the names right, getting the jobs right would be a bonus.) Andy asked me what I wanted, I said a lager of some sort, and I ended up with a Kronenburg 1667 (something like that), which they told me was a French beer. Halfway through this first pint, I was already feeling pretty tipsy. It had been 6 hours since I had eaten anything, and I don't drink all that often, either (last time was at the baseball game).
Talk about lightweight. They ordered a second round, which I realized I really shouldn't be having, as I was plenty buzzed off the first beer, which had been consumed in about 10 minutes. Just as I realized Esteban was ordering a third round, I told him that I was done, but he had actually ordered the third round a few minutes before, and the drinks were already there. So I felt obligated to drink the third beer.
Now, I normally have a hard time hearing people in bars in the first place. The background noise drowns out everything, at least to my ears. Add to this problem heavy accents, and I'm lucky to be understanding 30% of what they're saying, though it's all in English. Or at least, I'm assuming it was.
I did manage to stop at the third beer, but I was plenty drunk by this point. I was thinking about the chinese restaurant I had been planning to go to, and how if they were still open, I was probably a little too tipsy to go in there anyway. So I just stayed at the pub.
A word on English urinals. English urinals are of a different design than American urinals. American urinals are generally very upright, and due to flanges on the sides, provide you with a little bit of "cover," shall we say? Not so the English urinals. English urinals are of the low "slingback" variety, providing zero cover. So when using them, I tend to get probably a little closer than I do with American urinals. On top of the design being different, they also don't have any flushing mechanisms. Randomly, somewhere the water is released and flushes the urinal, but it's not on a one person, one flush basis.
Well, I was drunk enough at this point that when I went to the loo, I wasn't 100% awake. I snuggled up to the urinal, and the urinal started to flush. Before I realized it was happening, the urinal overflowed, right onto my jeans. Yum. I didn't get much on me, probably just a couple tablespoons, but it was more than enough.
Eventually, around 10:30 PM, I had made enough comments about eating something that Andy and Esteban (Brad had left about 20 minutes after I got there) agreed to go get some food. So we went to this dive Chinese place around the corner (not the Chinese restaurant I had intended to go to), where I got pork dumplings that were pretty undercooked (the pork was, anyway, they managed to overdo the outside of them), and lemon chicken. Neither was that great, which was fortunate for me, since by the time we sat down, I realized I was pretty full from all the beer.
I ate about half the food that I had ordered, we left, they walked me back to the hotel and we said goodbye in the lobby. I showered and washed my jeans in the shower with me. Not bad for my first English pub experience.
Other than the urinal overflowing onto my jeans, of course.
Now, next to the building was a pub that I walked by on my way back to the hotel. I had gotten about 200 ft past the pub when I realized the whistling and yelling behind me was one of the technical support guys trying to get my attention. I turned around, he caught up to me and chastised me for making him run after me when he was in the middle of having a drink. He said I needed to come back to the pub to have a proper English pint. Who was I to say no.
So I went into the pub, and three of the support guys were there. Brad, Esteban (the one who ran after me), and Andy. I'm not entirely certain what all three of them do, but Brad is the head of tech support here, Esteban does some sort of tech support function (I think it's product development related), and I have no idea what Andy does, though I think he might manage the ed center. (Hell, I hope I got the names right, getting the jobs right would be a bonus.) Andy asked me what I wanted, I said a lager of some sort, and I ended up with a Kronenburg 1667 (something like that), which they told me was a French beer. Halfway through this first pint, I was already feeling pretty tipsy. It had been 6 hours since I had eaten anything, and I don't drink all that often, either (last time was at the baseball game).
Talk about lightweight. They ordered a second round, which I realized I really shouldn't be having, as I was plenty buzzed off the first beer, which had been consumed in about 10 minutes. Just as I realized Esteban was ordering a third round, I told him that I was done, but he had actually ordered the third round a few minutes before, and the drinks were already there. So I felt obligated to drink the third beer.
Now, I normally have a hard time hearing people in bars in the first place. The background noise drowns out everything, at least to my ears. Add to this problem heavy accents, and I'm lucky to be understanding 30% of what they're saying, though it's all in English. Or at least, I'm assuming it was.
I did manage to stop at the third beer, but I was plenty drunk by this point. I was thinking about the chinese restaurant I had been planning to go to, and how if they were still open, I was probably a little too tipsy to go in there anyway. So I just stayed at the pub.
A word on English urinals. English urinals are of a different design than American urinals. American urinals are generally very upright, and due to flanges on the sides, provide you with a little bit of "cover," shall we say? Not so the English urinals. English urinals are of the low "slingback" variety, providing zero cover. So when using them, I tend to get probably a little closer than I do with American urinals. On top of the design being different, they also don't have any flushing mechanisms. Randomly, somewhere the water is released and flushes the urinal, but it's not on a one person, one flush basis.
Well, I was drunk enough at this point that when I went to the loo, I wasn't 100% awake. I snuggled up to the urinal, and the urinal started to flush. Before I realized it was happening, the urinal overflowed, right onto my jeans. Yum. I didn't get much on me, probably just a couple tablespoons, but it was more than enough.
Eventually, around 10:30 PM, I had made enough comments about eating something that Andy and Esteban (Brad had left about 20 minutes after I got there) agreed to go get some food. So we went to this dive Chinese place around the corner (not the Chinese restaurant I had intended to go to), where I got pork dumplings that were pretty undercooked (the pork was, anyway, they managed to overdo the outside of them), and lemon chicken. Neither was that great, which was fortunate for me, since by the time we sat down, I realized I was pretty full from all the beer.
I ate about half the food that I had ordered, we left, they walked me back to the hotel and we said goodbye in the lobby. I showered and washed my jeans in the shower with me. Not bad for my first English pub experience.
Other than the urinal overflowing onto my jeans, of course.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
baseball game fun
So with some difficulty, S and I went to the Pirates game on Saturday night. A whole bunch of law students and their friends went to the game, 21 in total.
My friend A was in town for Carnival at CMU, we had independently decided to go to the game, but once we discovered the coincidence, we decided to sit together. Along with this, we had decided to meet before the game for a drink. The game started at 705pm, we were planning on meeting at 615pm. There are several bars across the street from the stadium, so proximity of alcohol was not an issue. However, lateness was. We ended up not meeting up until 645pm (the fault of both parties), and by the time we got a drink (or two) and headed over to the game, it was probably 745pm or so.
As soon as we found our seats, I went to find food and beverages. And a bathroom. The line for beer was long (and of course, I'm picky, and this was the only place I could get the kind I wanted). The line for food wasn't so long. But all in all, it probably took me 30 minutes to acquire the necessary sustenance.
Once I got back to the seats, I realized that yet another bathroom trip was in order. I decided to wait until I had eaten, so I had a burger, and then headed back out to the bathroom.
Back in the game, it was now like th 5th inning, and I was just sitting down to watch some baseball. In the middle of the 5th inning, they held the pierogie race, and I lost my voice screaming at Sauerkraut Sal, who of course threw the race. It's Wednesday now, and I still don't have it back.
Before I knew it, the game was over, I had seen about 2 innings of it (due to yet another beer and bathroom run), and I realized I needed yet another bathroom run. Since it was the end of the game, though, I figured the bathroom would be mobbed, and I wanted to get the hell out of there. So we just left instead.
Saying goodbye to A took about 15 minutes, getting to the car took another 5, and by the time we were getting to the car, I had an urgent need for a bathroom again. And, lucky me, the parking garage was gridlocked. As in, not moving at all. I contemplated using a stray Aquafina bottle we had in the car, but Sarah suggested that I just go back to one of the bars and use their bathroom.
So 5 minutes later, I'm back at the bar we were at before the game, only this time, there's a $5 cover charge. I'm thinking, "Fuck that, I'll go to the bathroom right here before I pay you $5 to utilize your bathroom." Now there are other bars there, but I didn't even bother, thinking that if one has a cover charge after the game, they all have a cover charge after the game.
Luckily, there is a Marriott hotel across the street. So I went in there, hotels usually have a bathroom you can use in the lobby. This one did. Except for the slight problem of needing a keycard to get into it. If I had a keycard, I would go up to my room and use the truly private bathroom up there! Frustration was definitely setting in at this point, on top of the oh-please-god-get-me-to-a-bathroom feeling.
So I tried to con the woman at the front desk.
"Hi, I'm waiting for a friend, he's not here yet, and I need to use the restroom. Can you please give me a card?"
"Is your friend a guest here?"
"Yes"
"What's his last name?"
At this point, watch me as I turn and walk out of the hotel lobby, not saying a word further. I head back to the parking garage and get back into the car. It's now 20 minutes later, we're still in the parking garage, and I still haven't found a bathroom. We just left, and I ended up using the bathroom at home, 20 minutes after that.
It truly is the simple things in life that can make you feel good.
My friend A was in town for Carnival at CMU, we had independently decided to go to the game, but once we discovered the coincidence, we decided to sit together. Along with this, we had decided to meet before the game for a drink. The game started at 705pm, we were planning on meeting at 615pm. There are several bars across the street from the stadium, so proximity of alcohol was not an issue. However, lateness was. We ended up not meeting up until 645pm (the fault of both parties), and by the time we got a drink (or two) and headed over to the game, it was probably 745pm or so.
As soon as we found our seats, I went to find food and beverages. And a bathroom. The line for beer was long (and of course, I'm picky, and this was the only place I could get the kind I wanted). The line for food wasn't so long. But all in all, it probably took me 30 minutes to acquire the necessary sustenance.
Once I got back to the seats, I realized that yet another bathroom trip was in order. I decided to wait until I had eaten, so I had a burger, and then headed back out to the bathroom.
Back in the game, it was now like th 5th inning, and I was just sitting down to watch some baseball. In the middle of the 5th inning, they held the pierogie race, and I lost my voice screaming at Sauerkraut Sal, who of course threw the race. It's Wednesday now, and I still don't have it back.
Before I knew it, the game was over, I had seen about 2 innings of it (due to yet another beer and bathroom run), and I realized I needed yet another bathroom run. Since it was the end of the game, though, I figured the bathroom would be mobbed, and I wanted to get the hell out of there. So we just left instead.
Saying goodbye to A took about 15 minutes, getting to the car took another 5, and by the time we were getting to the car, I had an urgent need for a bathroom again. And, lucky me, the parking garage was gridlocked. As in, not moving at all. I contemplated using a stray Aquafina bottle we had in the car, but Sarah suggested that I just go back to one of the bars and use their bathroom.
So 5 minutes later, I'm back at the bar we were at before the game, only this time, there's a $5 cover charge. I'm thinking, "Fuck that, I'll go to the bathroom right here before I pay you $5 to utilize your bathroom." Now there are other bars there, but I didn't even bother, thinking that if one has a cover charge after the game, they all have a cover charge after the game.
Luckily, there is a Marriott hotel across the street. So I went in there, hotels usually have a bathroom you can use in the lobby. This one did. Except for the slight problem of needing a keycard to get into it. If I had a keycard, I would go up to my room and use the truly private bathroom up there! Frustration was definitely setting in at this point, on top of the oh-please-god-get-me-to-a-bathroom feeling.
So I tried to con the woman at the front desk.
"Hi, I'm waiting for a friend, he's not here yet, and I need to use the restroom. Can you please give me a card?"
"Is your friend a guest here?"
"Yes"
"What's his last name?"
At this point, watch me as I turn and walk out of the hotel lobby, not saying a word further. I head back to the parking garage and get back into the car. It's now 20 minutes later, we're still in the parking garage, and I still haven't found a bathroom. We just left, and I ended up using the bathroom at home, 20 minutes after that.
It truly is the simple things in life that can make you feel good.
Friday, February 18, 2005
sex == late
Sex has a lot of "late"s about it. There is the obvious and most dangerous "Oh God, she's late." That's not what I want to write about, though.
The more interesting late is the "I know I have to go to class in 5 minutes. Let's have sex now anyway." Followed by the "Oh shit, I'm 30 minutes late. Eh, it was worth it though." This was the typical thing that happened in college. I was late to classes all the time and I was even late to a few finals. Maybe it's just the extra element of excitement in throwing other responsibilities out the window that made it worthwhile, I don't know. This type of sex lateness is something I'm sure we've all encountered at one time or another.
Then there's the guy lateness. "Shit, why did I have to masturbate this morning? I should have just jumped in the shower." I'm sure every guy out there has experienced this one (and undoubtedly some women too). You just have to get it out of the way before getting on with your day, and you can't find time for it. But you do it anyway.
There's a lot of stuff guys don't particularly like to talk about when it comes to masturbation. With the rise of the internet, we've been opened up to a whole world of sexual perversion that was never accessible before. We don't want to let our girlfriend/wives into this world. It doesn't really involve them. They can only think less of us if they know what we look at. What makes it worse is that what we look at may or may not correlate to what we actually want to have happen in our lives. We think less of ourselves for looking at porn, how can they not think less of us?
Every guy has "his" kind of porn he likes to look at. Some have several types. Mine's text. I like text, things can be as sexy as I want them to be. Disturbingly, in picturing the scenes in people's houses, I picture a friend from elementary school's house. But anyway. We amass vast quantities of porn, because when it gets old, we have to move on to something new. But we can't let go of the old. "That's a really good [movie|story|whatever], I may want to see that again some day."
But that doesn't mean that we don't realize that we have too much porn. And that we've looked at too much of it. I have amassed about 30 MB of porn text, probably more space than the complete text of the oxford english dictionary takes up. That doesn't disturb me so much. What does disturb me is when I realize I've read a 30-part story over the course of a few weeks' worth of masturbation. Or that I can recall some of the stories and exactly what goes on and in what order. Or that I can remember the first time I read the story. At least I haven't written any text myself. Yet.
In answer to your question, yes, I was late to work today.
Let's take a poll, leave a comment telling what was the worst thing you were ever late for (due to sex of one kind or another, of course). I was definitely late to my Chemistry final at CMU.
The more interesting late is the "I know I have to go to class in 5 minutes. Let's have sex now anyway." Followed by the "Oh shit, I'm 30 minutes late. Eh, it was worth it though." This was the typical thing that happened in college. I was late to classes all the time and I was even late to a few finals. Maybe it's just the extra element of excitement in throwing other responsibilities out the window that made it worthwhile, I don't know. This type of sex lateness is something I'm sure we've all encountered at one time or another.
Then there's the guy lateness. "Shit, why did I have to masturbate this morning? I should have just jumped in the shower." I'm sure every guy out there has experienced this one (and undoubtedly some women too). You just have to get it out of the way before getting on with your day, and you can't find time for it. But you do it anyway.
There's a lot of stuff guys don't particularly like to talk about when it comes to masturbation. With the rise of the internet, we've been opened up to a whole world of sexual perversion that was never accessible before. We don't want to let our girlfriend/wives into this world. It doesn't really involve them. They can only think less of us if they know what we look at. What makes it worse is that what we look at may or may not correlate to what we actually want to have happen in our lives. We think less of ourselves for looking at porn, how can they not think less of us?
Every guy has "his" kind of porn he likes to look at. Some have several types. Mine's text. I like text, things can be as sexy as I want them to be. Disturbingly, in picturing the scenes in people's houses, I picture a friend from elementary school's house. But anyway. We amass vast quantities of porn, because when it gets old, we have to move on to something new. But we can't let go of the old. "That's a really good [movie|story|whatever], I may want to see that again some day."
But that doesn't mean that we don't realize that we have too much porn. And that we've looked at too much of it. I have amassed about 30 MB of porn text, probably more space than the complete text of the oxford english dictionary takes up. That doesn't disturb me so much. What does disturb me is when I realize I've read a 30-part story over the course of a few weeks' worth of masturbation. Or that I can recall some of the stories and exactly what goes on and in what order. Or that I can remember the first time I read the story. At least I haven't written any text myself. Yet.
In answer to your question, yes, I was late to work today.
Let's take a poll, leave a comment telling what was the worst thing you were ever late for (due to sex of one kind or another, of course). I was definitely late to my Chemistry final at CMU.
Keeping a resolution or two
Yesterday I ordered the CD for the month. I've actually bought a couple of CDs in the past month, they're Mark O'Connor CDs, and frankly, I've been disappointed with them. There's a track of his on Yo-Yo Ma's "Classic Yo-Yo" CD that is unbelievably good, and the CDs I've bought of his have been pedestrian. The CD I bought yesterday is "Cello x 16" by Zoe Keating. She's been playing with Rasputina.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Why oh why
Do I love board games so? I can't even get people to get together on a regular basis to play. And yet my addiction goes on. Late in 2003, I somehow got onto this site, FunAgain, and I spent like $125 on board games. The trend continued a couple months ago when I bought another $150 in board games, this time from Card Haus and TimeWellSpent. Then, last week, I spent another $110 at TimeWellSpent on even more games. I'm out of control, maybe it's time for gamblers anonymous?
Maybe all of it is my way of avoiding thinking about all of the work I need to do for school. Since 9pm tonight, I've been ready for bed, and sadly, this is hardly the only night. My IP Seminar's 150 pages a week really needs to stop if I'm to get any research done for my paper for the class. I don't like writing patent claims.
Time for some masochism (aka law school reading).
Maybe all of it is my way of avoiding thinking about all of the work I need to do for school. Since 9pm tonight, I've been ready for bed, and sadly, this is hardly the only night. My IP Seminar's 150 pages a week really needs to stop if I'm to get any research done for my paper for the class. I don't like writing patent claims.
Time for some masochism (aka law school reading).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)