Maybe if they were holding the reunion at 'Ducci's

It’s nice having a job you like that makes you happy. When I come home now I feel things, emotional things, things other than “enraged” and “drunk”. It’s a nice change.

Speaking of drunk and ragey at places I used to work, I got a booklet for my ten year college reunion weekend today.

It opens with a photo of the new Alumni house, which my friends and I used to refer to as the Playmobil house when we were students.

It’s a great house, but it looks pretty plastic.

The next page is a welcome from the Alumni Association President. I don’t know him, but he wants me to reflect on what was special about my undergraduate experience. That’s a great idea, but I don’t think that bar is open any more.

There is absolutely nothing on the first page of the program that interests me. It lists a golf tournament (I don’t golf), a boat cruise (I don’t boat), a bunch of dinners for classes other than my own, and a happy hour for the class of 1992, which isn’t my year. I guess they figure 1992 is the only year young enough to still be interested in visiting a bar rather than munching on clams casino or the vegetable and cheese mirror at the country club.

Side note: Mirror? Does that mean it’s served on a mirror, or that there are two platters that mirror each other, or is it served in front of a mirror, or what? None of my cookbooks list a vegetable or a cheese mirror.

Saturday offers a lot of breakfasts and some amusing tours. First off there’s an open house in one of the buildings that was closed for renovation during the entire four years that I went to school there. No one from my class, unless they came back after graduation like I did, remembers this building as anything other than a fenced off darkened ruin. There’s a library tour, too. My senior year I knew a senior physical education major who had never been in the library in his entire college career. While his second senior year, after we graduated, was probably of great benefit to him, a tour of the library while he was still a student rather than an alumnus might also have been helpful.

In the same vein, the guided campus tour fills me with glee. When I came to campus, I was given a map and a schedule, not a tour, but now that I’m an alumnus and already spent four years and four summers figuring out where the building are, I can preregister for a campus tour. I guess my degree really has gotten me something. The day continues with luncheons, more tours, and then the weekend wraps up with farewell breakfasts.

Flipping through it, the one thing that really stands out to me other than the opportunities for scorn is that there is not a single event geared toward, sponsored by, or even named after my class. The classes of ’62, ’72, ’77, ’67, ’87, and ’92 all have at least one thing to do. The class of 1997 has a class picture at eight at night on Saturday.

Screw you, alumni weekend. I’ll think about showing up when someone bothers to make it look like they actually want my class there.

saucers and plates

Given the long weekend and all my shows going into summer reruns, I’ve spent most of the weekend with “Deep Space Nine” boxed sets running in the background. I missed the last two seasons of the show when they originally aired, so it’s not only new but also good, as the writing seems especially strong in season six.

One complaint, though. The episode “Sacrifice of Angels” opens with a battle sequence with lots of Federation ships, including Galaxy class starships (which the “Next Generation” Enterprise was) flying into battle with their saucer sections in place. It’s a minor nitpick, but in the pilot for “Next Gen”, they made a big deal about how the saucer section could detach before battles and be left behind somewhere, so that the civilians weren’t endangered. I read later, though, that they only showed it once or twice because the effect was so expensive.

Was it too expensive to take the models apart before they shot the “Deep Space Nine” sequence, though? Like I said, nitpicky of me, but the fan in me looked at that shot and immediately grumbled. The shot of a burning, crashed ship sinking into the ocean behind the crew on the beach that opened the second episode of the season more than makes up for it, though. That looked awesome.

In other news, I had to throw my superhero plates away today, because I finally gave up on keeping them clean. I had three plastic plates with DC Comics superheroes on them that I got at the Warner Brother’s store back when they still had those, and somewhere along the way, sitting in the sink waiting to go into the dishwasher, they got some sort of grease on them.

It didn’t come off in the dishwasher.

I presoaked, then dish washered again, and still had a greasy residue.

Presoaked, hand washed, greasy residue. Presoaked, hand washed, dish washered, greasy residue. Presoaked, dish washered, hand washed, back into the dishwasher, greasy residue. Today, I finally gave up and decided to throw the plates away without even scraping the apparently indestructible greasy residue off of the plates for resale to some chemical firm. Since the WB Stores all closed, I can never have another set.

I guess I shouldn’t have gotten grease on them.

really good feta

“You know, when I lived in Chicago, there were so many Greeks there, I used to get the best feta cheese. You could buy a giant wedge of it for three dollars and it was so delicious and so good.”

As opposed to the feta cheese I was buying at that moment, which, I guess, was not as delicious and not as good. The clerk at Food City was so busy telling me about the feta cheese he used to buy that he bagged mine with my warm groceries instead of with my cold groceries. Do they not give some sort of bagger-training, or was he too busy yammering about better groceries at other stores during that, too?

I didn’t go to the grocery store to get feta cheese. That was more of an impulsive, “Hey, look, feta cheese is on sale! You should buy it and make that dip you like!” purchase. I went to the grocery store to cash in my change vase:



It’s come a long way since it was a fishbowl:



Anyway, last time I cashed in my change I had a much bigger jug and six years’ worth, rather than ten months. Since there aren’t any quarters in the jar I figured it was probably about twenty dollars or so, maybe twenty-five at the most, but it turned out to be forty-seven. Not a bad haul.

On my way out of the store I looked at the plant display, and thought briefly about getting a hanging plant for the hook on my porch. I had a cactus out there last year, but it died, and I keep meaning to replace it, but then I look two porches down at Porch Pots Lady’s porch:



She’s got so many plants out there that they overtake the porch and spill down the steps. I can’t even begin to compete with that, and it’s best that I not try since my plant will just end up dying anyway.

no softball

This afternoon Jen and George asked if I wanted to go to the softball game with them. Our women’s softball team is playing the first of a three game series against Hawaii to decide who gets to go to Oklahoma (thanks, Reardon; no way in hell would I have known that on my own), and sometimes they have nachos at baseball and softball games, so I eagerly agreed to go.

Before the game we decided to hit the Old College Inn down on the strip for dinner. I’ve never been there, but George is a big fan of the Two Ticket Catfish. I had black bean quesadillas, and Jen and I split an order of mixed cheese bings. Does dinner ever get any better than tiny balls of fried cheese? I think not.

We decided to head to the game early, but were greeted with the terrible sight of fans walking away from the ticket booth:



Sold out.

We were also greeted with the terrible sight of stereotypical Southern big hair, but I didn’t get the camera out of my pocket in time. In the end, this is as close as we got to seeing the game before we got bored and went to the Marble Slab for overpriced ice cream:



The ice cream was good, but I really was hoping for nachos.

Thanks Dana!

Usually when I get a package I get a little slip in my mailbox, so of course my first thought when I got home and saw a box on my porch was:



“Bomb?”

Then I got closer and saw the Godiva label and realized, “It’s a bomb made of chocolate! A delicious, delicious chocolate bomb!” I also realized that it must be the present Dana told me he was sending me a couple days ago, so I took it inside and tore it open.



Delicious, delicious chocolate indeed.

The best part is that it came with these reusable Godiva freezer packs:



I immediately threw them in the freezer for reuse, because I can’t wait to lord them over my friends the next time we have to bring something somewhere in a cooler. I’ll carefully remove whatever I brought, making sure they get a casual glimpse of my high end icepacks while I stare dismissively at their coolers.

“Oh, plain old ice cubes in a bag. I guess if that’s the best you can do…”

Watch out for the Baldwins

Last night I dreamed that I helped create an army of Alec Baldwin clones to run a special academy for gifted children, but the clones were unstable and burning out and had to steal life force from others to survive.

Next time we should just hire teachers.

Also, in the dream I had hair.

packaging

My copy of “The Advocate” came today in the same opaque white wrapper it always comes in, and once again I feel annoyed. Why don’t they give you the option of ordering it in a clear bag? I know that there are people who subscribe who are closeted, and therefore hiding and not wanting the mailman (or mail person) to know they’re getting it, but what about the rest of us? I don’t care if the mail lady knows I’m gay, but that plastic baggy conveys a sense of shame to me, and I don’t like it.

mop and bucket

Today on my way home from work I stopped and bought a mop, bucket, and bottle of Pine Sol to get my kitchen and bathroom floors sparkling and clean. The mop is one of those things I keep intending to pick up and not getting around to, but after living here for ten months the linoleum is probably due for some attention.

The time I cleaned it with multisurface wipes on my hands and knees because I didn’t have a mop and bucket probably doesn’t count, since I couldn’t get the black streaks from my Sketchers off.

Anyway, when I got home I started putting my purchases away and discovered that my mop not only comes with instructions (woefully incomplete instructions; there are four steps telling me how to wet and wring the mop, but nothing directing me to actually touch it to the floor and engage in the act of mopping), but it has a warning: Keep Out of Reach of Children. Maybe if I had children this would make more sense (maybe I’d also fly to work on a magical unicorn that shoots rainbows out of its ass; both are equally likely), but right now all I can wonder is why I’d want to stop children from maybe cleaning something.

It’s not like I’m saying you should give them a Heather Chandler-style morning wake up cup of liquid drain opener (or Pine Sol, since that also has a number of warnings on it, too) but I cannot fathom any possible situation in which a mop is so dangerous it must be kept out of reach of children.

It’s extremely comforting to know that the bucket carries no such warning.

nightmare on mom street

I was watching the original “Nightmare on Elm Street” this afternoon, and a weird thought occurred to me: Nancy’s mom was a hot mess. She was drunk all the time, didn’t seem to work, never really seemed to go anywhere, yet still wandered the house with her hair done and fresh glossy lipstick at all times. What was going on there, exactly? Other than her being a horrible parent, I mean. You just know the other kids on the street all thought she was a MILF.

Most of the trouble is that the actress playing her somehow confused “drunk in every scene” with “continuously in the throes of really good sex”, so that even when she’s trying to be serious she’s still half-moaning her lines in a high pitched whimper with a sweaty face and half-lidded eyes.

“Nancy, your… unh…. father and I… *gasp*… burned up this… mmm…. child murderer… nnnuh…”

Who knew vigilante justice and hardcore alcoholism could be such a turn on?