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An enigma wrapped in a mystery served at happy hour
Friday, June 4, 2004
An ongoing dilemma for us (or at least me) is that I keep developing miniature crushes on the waitresses who end up serving us at the various places we go (read: the Four Peaks brewery in Tempe). The reason for this, aside from the innate attractive qualities of waitresses in general (they bring you food and are nice to you), is likely that waitresses are the only girls I meet that I have the balls to talk to. And that's only because it's necessary and clearly within the social boundaries of the situation. However, out of all this another problem arises - how do you ask a waitress out without being a total dick? Is it even possible? They must get hit on so much that you'd only be adding to the problem. Anyone with any information on this subject is invited (implored?) to email me.
Anyway, we did have a cool waitress tonight, who was from Long Island (what's up with waitresses in Tempe being from Long Island?), and she recommended another cool place we can go so we don't burn out on the Four Peaks completely. She even drew us a map. Cartography is clearly her way of hitting on me... next time we see her I'm going to bring in a globe or one of those textured topography maps or something.
And now for the requisite "I go to school with idiots" story... today during a break in class they were all watching some of the lovely motorcycle-wreck videos everyone's so fond of (that guy totally just died! awesome!), and there was, predictably, a motorcycle wreck. This prompted the following comment from a guy who sits across the room from me, "Yeah, and when these guys crash they get hurt even worse than NASCAR drivers!"
His disturbing enthusiasm when making this statement notwithstanding, wait a minute, you're telling me they get hurt worse than people who are encased in boxes of steel designed to protect them? NO FUCKING WAY!!! I DON'T BELIEVE IT!!! THAT'S AMAZING!!! Possibly the most asinine comment I've heard so far. Actually, I take that back, it's impossible to rank them at this point.
Phoenix. So hot right now. Phoenix
Thursday, June 3, 2004
110 today. I swear I'm not going to mention the temperature every day (I'm not going to want to think about it pretty soon), but damn. It's like there's a hair dryer outside the window, blowing inside the car.
And the heat is made worse, of course, the more time you have to spend out in it. So, when Sean realized he'd left his wallet on the roof of my car before coming to pick me up from work, it sucked doubly hard because we knew we had to make at least a cursory effort to go back and find it (with no success, of course). This is actually the second time in the last couple of months this has happened to Sean. Luckily this time it'll be a lot easier to replace the stuff that was in it... only a couple of bucks cash, a debit card (already canceled) and his AZ driver's license.
Next phase at school Sean and I both have the same automatic transmissions class. This will be the first time, after 23 year of being brothers, that we will have a class together in school. I think Dane has the third "hot rod" class... I dread those classes. Hot rod. Who gives a fuck? I just like to fix stuff; I don't care how fast it goes.
Tomorrow night we get out early (end phase friday), and are going to Scottsdale to a brewery. This is how pathetic we all are... at this point we are setting goals for each other to simply talk to girls we might meet there. I've never been any good at all at meeting women, but I've still clearly regressed to some degree. You can already tell we each know we're going to wuss out because guys are saying things like, "How many words do I have to say before it counts as talking to her?" I think it was me who said that, actually. Anyway, it's a proven fact that girls make everything about a thousand percent better, so talking to them would be a good start. Yep. Not gonna happen.
I may as well have smoked more pot
Wednesday, June 2, 2004
If only every week were four days long, ending with a short day at school, preceded by a three-day weekend including a visit from a dear friend, life in Phoenix would be a lot more tolerable. Pleasant, even. As it stands (6 day weeks, no friends), my plan of finishing 3 months early is making me more and more excited.
I'm actually trying to write this on Thursday, and I can't remember a damn thing that happened yesterday. I've noticed that my notoriously bad memory is getting worse. Lack of either sleep or nutrition is probably to blame.
For instance, I remember that I heard something on NPR that I thought I should write something about. And just while typing that sentence I forgot what I was going to write as the second example of something I'd forgotten.
But I do remember that last Friday at school an instructor from another class came in to ours unannounced and told a joke to the class. It involved a woman who was from another country and didn't speak English, resulting in several comical encounters with other characters in the joke. I didn't get what was going on until it was over. Why? Because at the beginning of the joke, the woman's homeland, where it was critical to the joke that English is not spoken, was given as London, England.
I've been there. They speak fucking English. England. English. Bloody hell.
Tuesday, June 1, 2004
OK, I swear I'm going to go back and make up the missed days high-school-science-class style, but for now I'm just going to do today, in the interest of not completely dropping the ball. Hopefully relatively soon, while it's still fresh in my mind. But anyway...
First of all, it was 106 degrees today. It's still hot out right now at 10pm. On the way home from school, Sean remarked that it's probably never going to get much cooler than it is right now until September. Wonderful. However, I do owe something of a debt of gratitude to the weather for waiting, almost down to the hour, to become ridiculously hot until after Vicky was safely back in New York. Which, of course, is not exactly ideal weather this time of year either. But anyway, it's fucking hot.
And speaking of New York, lately I've been debating more and more whether or not I should just bag this whole thing and head back to NYC right now. I go back and forth; there's sort of a lot of back and forth with both options. By and large I've been leaning towards staying here, for three main reasons: a) I'd like to finish what I've started, b) there's a lot more potential for money and stability in high-end auto repair than there is in video editing, and c) I don't want to abandon Sean and Dane. Still, a tough call. But anyway, the whole point of bringing this up is that I may have found somewhat of a compromise.
Our school lets you do what's called "double phasing," if you're so inclined. What this means is that you're basically taking two classes at the same time, one in the morning and one at night. It's thought of as a tough and masochistic thing to do, but it wouldn't be any tougher than the schedule I already have; the morning class would simply take the place of work. By continuing as normal until the end of August (assuming I don't die of sunstroke before then), then beginning to double phase, I'd finish up in early November, right behind Sean. Then I'd head off to STEP or whatever program I chose, and at the absolute latest I'd be done with everything by May of '05. I wouldn't even be 28. This sounds great to me, the only problem being I'd be without income for the three months I'd be double-phasing. So, if I can figure out a way to come up with around $4000 by then, this is what I'm going to do. It'll bring the light at the end of the tunnel so much closer.
And finally, I went to the store with Dane and bought a 12-pack of Coke. If you haven't seen the latest Coke promotion, check it out. It's hilarious. They're putting certain cans in 12-packs that actually have a GPS locator inside them. If you find one, when you open it it becomes active and Coke tracks you down to give you your prize. The slogan is, "You can win, but you can't hide!" This has got to be linked to Bush and Cheney in SOME fashion, right? GPS locators in our soda? So creepy and funny it deserves to be an Onion article.