Insomnia & Delirium

Can't sleep. Can't sleep. Must sing and dance and write. Check e-mail every five minutes. Check other e-mail every ten minutes. What should I do? My mind is racing and I can't focus on one thing. I bought a book today. Once I finish a paragraph I have to go back and read it again because I can't stay focused long enough to retain the information.

I have tried writing several different posts and half way through I forgot what the point was or where I was going. I should have just posted several half finished ideas and waited for someone to react. My guess is that a lovely reader would directly say, What the hell is wrong with you? I would appreciate that.

I need a piano.

Or medication.

They are putting on a production of the musical Hair in Central Park right now. I HAVE to see it. One of my dreams in life is to perform in that show. Nude scene and all. I love everything about it. I have a phone alarm that goes off at the same time every night playing the song "I've Got Life" with Nina Simone singing. Every time Casey hears it he makes up the words. Not to be funny. He really doesn't know them. Anyway we both want to see the show but you can't buy tickets. The tickets are free. You just have to stand in line all day. Who has that kind of time? Turns out they recently created a virtual line. You put your name in like a lottery and then find out by 1pm the day of the show if you got them. I hope, hope, hope I'm in the park watching an amazing show tomorrow night. Cross your fingers for me. Or, do something actually productive. Whatever.

UPDATE: I did not receive free tickets in the lottery so I was pretty bummed but then, low and behold Casey calls and he GOT THEM! I can't wait!!!

Missed Connections

An odd thing happened on my way to work. I was running a little late, mostly because I dread coming here so much and I wanted to stay with Casey. But alas, I had to leave. As I sat on the train I noticed a guy that looked somewhat familiar so I scanned my brain trying to figure out how I would know him. School? No. Some show? No. Then it came to me.... I met him here. The guy I was trying not to stare at was someone I met on this very train and spoke to for all of one minute in 2004! You might be wondering how I could possibly remember that. Well, the story gets weirder. When we briefly met in 2004 we only spoke because we got in the same train car and he hit his head on the roof. I laughed at him openly because I am rude. Then he spoke to himself for a awhile. That was about it. Insanely tall and crazy is easy to remember and tends to catch ones attention. I found the event funny and kept it in mind for later.

Moving on to later. In 2004 I spent way too much time on Craigslist. Through that site I found two of my apartments and so many jobs I can't even count. I didn't have blogging and Myspace to eat up all my time. I used to make fake dating profiles to read the funny responses. I found endless amusement. At some point I wrote my first Missed Connection. I think I was trying to be amusing and used the situation on the train with the tall guy that hit his head. To my complete shock, he saw it! The guy is a comedian and he was going through Craigslist looking for material and found my post. I never, ever thought in a million that if I wrote something the person would find it.

So this guy responds with more details of the incident. We both had a laugh at finding each other. He gave me a link to his website and mentioned he was doing something on Comedy Central. I think I might have sent him a clip of it or something. I'm not sure. I don't remember. Anyway, I should mention that this was simply an amusing situation that happened. We never spoke of actually meeting. There was not any interest in knowing each other and I assumed I would never see or hear of this person again. He would forever remain the missed connection that caught me acting like an ass on Craigslist.

Then a year or two later I got a strange e-mail. Some girl was writing to ask what my relationship was with a name that I didn't recognize. She had found my e-mail address in her boyfriend's mail and wanted to know who I was. After doing a mail search I finally figured it out and assured her I didn't really know him. He wasn't trying to pick people up. Not to worry. She wrote back something very sad about being in some bad relationships and having trust issues. I felt bad for her because we have all known some jaded girl at some point in time who just can't trust in a good thing. Then after thinking about it I started feeling bad for the guy because his girlfriend is paranoid and going through his mail. For the record, that is never okay. Boundaries are a very important part of relationships. I digress.

That was my last run in with the missed connection guy. Until today. When it finally dawned on me who he was after several stops I thought, should I go up and ask him? That seemed very creepy and pointless. Plus, I don't want anybody to think I'm hitting on them. Instead I told the odd story to a co-worker and sang "It's a small world." in my head for an hour. Then unable to let it go I decided to blog. That means I have to research. So I looked the guy up on myspace and found that in his top friends he links another NY comedian that I watched perform in Damn Yankees last weekend and recently performed in a Parodivas show! The Parodivas are my real friends. Feel free to blog stalk Jason and Darla.

So the moral of the story is, don't post stupid shit on Craigslist because it will haunt you for life. Or maybe the moral is, don't cross me because I will find you! Most likely the moral is, this planet of ours is much smaller than we realize.

Nurse News

Congratulations Casey! As of today he is officially a RN!

Everyone was born in July!

I already gave a card to Dana. I mentioned my grandma Blanche's b-day in my last post. I have a few more congrats to give. Happy Birthday to my other grandma who celebrated on the 12th. My blog sis Ne was born July 10th. Farmer*sWife celebrated by having a day out with her daughter yesterday. My real life friend Darla celebrates today! (We will really celebrate with her this weekend!) Finally, my fantastic mother celebrates this Friday. I have to think of some clever way to scare her and pay her back for that boob picture text. Any ideas?
If I missed anyone I'm sorry. You can bitch about it in the comments. (Note: I apparently only know females born in July. Hmmm.)



Speaking of birth, I heard the Bush administration wants to make it harder to get birth control. Crazy bastards. Don't they realize most people should NOT be breeding? Take, for instance, the Bush family. Nah, I'm not going to get political.
I don't want people messing with my anti-baby meds damnit!

Blame My Bloodline

Long time readers and actual friends of mine may or may not have noticed that I'm a little odd. I blame my family.

My dad has been sending me links to a lot of videos this past week. Some how I inherited his very odd sense of humor. It says a lot about how I turned out this way. The two I received yesterday were:

Almost learn about the history of one of Washington's favorite slaves from a really drunk chick.

and

Awesome performance done by a guy that will "Never Get Ahead". The backup dancers are the best part.

That was my dad's contribution to my life in the last couple of days. My mother is out of town so I assume he hasn't put on pants and is drinking wine out of the bottle while he surfs the net and watches the Independent Film channel. My dad rocks.

My mom took my grandmother to see a show in Chicago for her birthday this weekend. My aunt flew in and my brother lives in Chicago so they are all having a big party without me. I called yesterday to wish my grandma a happy birthday and see what I was missing out on. It sounded like they were having a good time. They were drinking by 11am so I'm sure it was an interesting day. Around 10pm Chicago time I got a picture text from my mom. I thought it might be of my brother's dog or someone drinking something. Instead to my complete and utter shock I opened a photo of my grandmother ................topless! How much did they drink? Of course I immediately call my mom to ask why she would do such a cruel thing. She is cracking up when she answers the phone and honestly, so am I. I can hear grandma in the background, "I'm so damn tired I don't care if she posts it up at work."
So I did.
No, I didn't. That would be mean. I have to say though, she has nice boobs for a 74 year old. I'm glad I'm in that bloodline. *Sigh* I hate missing out on a good party. Happy birthday Grandma!

So as you can see, I'm crazy because my family made me that way.

Cooking Soup

I don't cook. I understand food and it's complexity. I love eating it. I just suck at making it. On occasion I feel the need to try making something because cooking a dinner can be fun and sometimes it works out great. I do this once, maybe twice a year. So I will state once again, I don't cook.

Last night I was at Casey's apartment with two friends. One is his roommate, the other is a weirdo we have both known and loved for years. I will call him Chad, because that is his name. So I bring over a couple ingredients for a gazpacho that Casey wants to try making. We are going to make this lovely soup, some scalloped potatoes from a box, and Chad brought 99cent bread from Traitor Joe's that we baked ourselves.

Things start off okay. We are chopping and mixing the ingredients like Bon Appetite told us to. I am stirring up the olive oil with what looks like butt-loads of tarragon but I'm following the recipe so I'm sure it is fine. Casey hands me all the crap I need to measure and mix including the salt and freshly ground pepper. I finish it up and I don't bother to taste it because it is a bowl full of oil and tarragon. Then Chad asks for the salt to add to the bread. When I try to hand it to him he rejects it and informs me by pointing to the large lettering that it is SUGAR. Crap. Oh well. Casey didn't read it either obviously but it does make me wonder how many times he has sugared his food and not realized it. This was just the beginning of our adventures.

Casey and Chad are both control freaks in the kitchen so I just stood there most of the time. That is the safest thing to do. I wasn't paying attention so I don't know how this happened but when it was time to strain the soup we discovered that what was supposedly enough for four servings made approximately one cup of soup. Hmmmm. I now have to assume one of the main problems was that I have no idea what 3 1/2 pounds of tomatoes would look like and I had to depend on the crappy scale at the grocery store which probably didn't work properly. Too late now. So what are we going to do? Instead of straining we will throw it all in a blender. But it still isn't a whole lot of soup and it's really thick. Adding water was denied. I suggested Vodka which was quickly denied. I still stand by that idea though. What could be better than Bloody Mary Soup? I opened the fridge and pointed at the spicy V8 in the door. We don't know how long it was in there but it was approved and added to the blender. The result? Deliciousness!

Sounds horrible right? Well, it was quite good. In the meantime the roommate had ordered a pizza and was finished by the time our meal was done. Chad forgot to oil the sheet before baking the bread pita style so that was a little torn up but for the record, 99cent bread from Traitor Joe's is very tasty. Hooray for cooking! Can't wait to try it again next year.

In completely unrelated news, Today is the birthday of Dana over at Amid Life's Crisis. Happy birthday Dana! I'm rolling out the tarp. Here is your card:



Unless you are into that sort of thing. Then may your birthday be a plethora of it.

People That Deserve a Kick - and Gay Rights and Heart Strings

Last night on my way home I had one hell of a headache thanks to demanding clients. I was extremely irritable. Some days I wonder when I will cross that line in my mind that is currently keeping me from kicking people that move too slow in the ass instead of constantly fantasizing about it. I took my three trains on my hour trip home from the office and when I emerged from underneath the city I saw a couple people blocking the sidewalk with clipboards in hand. Crap. I'm used to seeing people in my neighborhood trying to stop people for whatever the cause of the day is and usually I look so angry nobody says a word to me. I'm good at avoiding it. Somehow, this time, they got me. I think curiosity sold me out. I glanced up for just a second to see what the guy was holding. The second I lifted my head I heard. "Hi, Gotta second for Gay Rights?" Now normally whatever they say I usually just shake my head a little and keep walking but I surprised myself. Gay Rights? Sure I do! I'm sure that isn't what I said because I don't talk like that but I stopped. I spoke to the guy for a minute. He asked me if I was aware that in 31 states it is still legal to fire someone because they are gay. Uh, no. I did not know that. I'm still not sure if that number is accurate but it made me think regardless. We spoke about ENDA (The Employment Non-Discrimination Act) I read some stuff. You don't need all the details. I was given a little packet of info. They gave me a senate number and said one call counts as 1,000 votes. After I do a little more research I'll do another post with info and the phone number. If any of you care. I walked away feeling a little better. I don't know why, I didn't do anything. But the last place I expected to enjoy a conversation was right there right then. Who knew?

My co-worker just e-mailed this article to me. For those who don't feel like reading it here is the summary. Some guy in Orlando has paid to put up billboards with a picture of the burning Twin Towers from 9/11 and it reads "Please Don't Vote for a Democrat." I think this guy is a crazy bastard for posting images of the towers burning on a billboard regardless of your political standpoint. It gets worse. The billboard also has a web link to therepublicansong.com (notice I'm not linking that here). You know what you find on the site? This guy is trying to sell copies of the song he wrote about not voting for Democrats. WTF? Way to get your point across guy. Make it all about you.

Sorry for that rant.

I was tearing up a bit when I read the newest post from a recently recommended blogger. First I want to thank Cat for directing me to the blog after my last seizure post. The blog is Looky, Daddy! written by a stay at home dad with an eight year old and twin toddler daughters. I might have made up those ages. I don't really know. How old is a toddler? Anyway, he posts hilarious stories about the kids and delicious drink recipes which are not for kids. What moves me the most are the posts about his oldest daughter who was recently diagnosed with epilepsy. In todays post he wrote about how she is afraid to sleep because that is when she usually has the seizures. I think I have posted about that as well. Now I can't stop thinking about this poor little girl. If you care to read something that will not only tug on your heartstrings but quite possibly rip them out, head over there.