the girlfriend post

well, here we are

the happy couple.

for some reason, this little girl sticks by me, even with all the grief i cause her.
there’s always the chance of me leaving, again; work as it is keeps me away half the year anyway.

but, we fit. we work at things, which more or less just equates to her understanding. this didn’t come so easy, and there are occastional relapses into petty arguments, which is ironic, because no arguments are petty, they’re just about petty things.

i miss her right now, she’s in minnesota; her brother’s a golfer and qualified for the national long drive championship–that means family trip, which to her means shopping trip. i’m loving that those are still on her dad’s dime and not mine.

this will probably be the only weekend post i’ll ever do–i usually only blog at work, so this kinda feels like work to me; plus, what the hell am i supposed to do at work on monday now?

but maybe, since i’ve taken precious time outta my sunday, she’ll get off my case about not talking about her more now that i’ve dedicated this whole post to her. hell, maybe she’ll actually comment instead just reading them. who knows, never can tell with this one.

love you madi.

chad, how was the “stag” party?…

chuck, where the hell were you friday?

a blog for blogging’s sake…

i committed myself to this thing, and dispite my

distractions,

i’m gonna be better about posting.

the problem is, i’m always worried about posting something of substance, or atleast being witty and not alarmingly sarcastic; as of late, i’m really struggling with this…

in this lady’s page, i couldn’t help but point out that Captain Collins

of the recent space shuttle mission had fantastically horrible hair, in the mist of this lady’s praise and admiration of her fellow woman’s accomplishment. And, included in all this brew-haha was her claims that it’s time for a woman President, the implication being that we men have screwed it up, and, the quick-fix remedy for all is that America needs ovaries, not balls to calm its woes.

Yes blogland, i’m gonna stop you right there, cause i know where you’re headed with that.

i am not oposed to a woman Commander in Chief…as long as it’s not

HillaryClinton,

she sucks.
she’s probably the worst thing ever to happen to the women’s rights movement. she’s a power-hungry, corupt, liar (see above links: i google searched “hillary clinton 911 families” and got 58,000 hits, of which, the first ten pages were calling her out for not attending funerals, etc…)

laura bush isn’t so great, and condelezza rice is just an affirmative action hire, who also happens to be embedded in the oil game.

i just think it’s time for a good President, forget about gender.

we need a decent foreign policy, some real world economics, (for instance, deciding if the jobs our consumerism create are for us or central america), and someone, male or female, to sit in the White House and not kill us for the sake of globalization and the securing of resources.

pitt, i know you got something to say about all this.

hey lookit, ben’s back.

the verbal tip

So,

the old lady and i have been together 8 months yesterday, August 1st,
(despite this little 3 week break we had in july; long story, but it starts and ends with a lot of i told you so’s) and it is our custom that on the 1st of each month we celebrate this accomplishment.

(accomplishment: someone putting up with me for whole months at a time.)

anyway…

we goto PF Chang’s without a reservation and are actually seated immediately. This comes as a big surprize to me, because i’m walking in the place with the expectation that, at the very least, we’re getting the typical 30min go-spend-money in the bar wait that seems to just be automatic anywhere i go these days. don’t get me wrong, i’m a booze hound, but even more than that i’m the guy that just can’t stand paying 7 bucks for vodka tonics or 4 and a half for a coors light. And before you say it, before anyone of you out there in blogland go into how much more expensive drinks are where you live, lemme just stop you there.

i don’t care.

this just means i’d have more to complain about if i lived where you do.
i guess you can thank the poor ole south for one thing…being poor; keeping the cost of living down–yes, booze is included in that.

this doesn’t mean i never have the $100 bar tabs and don’t get floored on margarita night at Senior Tequilla’s…my God, i certainly have, just ask Ben how much money we
individually spent when we first got back from Iraq. it’s shameful.

but no, we went right to a table. this pleased me.

And, in-between the lettuce wraps just not living up to their name (who wraps lettuce?…honestly) and incidents with the chopsticks and chicken eggplant (really, i’m fine today, there was just a short period of time when i wasn’t sure if i’d breathe again) it was a good time had by all.

what was more impressive than the instant seating was the service–i actually got a good waiter. never need a refill, etc…

i mentioned eariler that i’m a resident of the south, which, by no trick of the republican number system, is very poor. because of this, nobody tips well. therefore, nobody serves well. it’s nothing to goto a chili’s or friday’s on a weekday to very uncrowded restaurant and not get your food for atleast a half hour.

so, i just told this guy, “thanks man, you’ve been a great waiter” and he just gets this look on his face, like i just told him his cat died…(see cat story; tractor ciavarro)

i couldn’t figure it out. he walks off, carring the plates, forks, and those damn chop sticks…

and it hits me, like JT on Bernard Hopkins in the first round.

he thinks i gave him the verbal tip. you know the one. if you’ve ever served or have friends that do, they’ll tell you this is when an old man says “you’ve done a great job, son” and lets loose a shiny nickel when he gladhands you.

in the serving industry it’s the kiss of death.

about ten minutes later, he comes back (i think he was waiting for us to leave) to see if we need some more coffee, we didn’t, but i pay out with him and tell him to keep the change. he gets the most relieved look, and i say to him:

“you thought you got the verbal tip, didn’t you?”

he responded:

“yeah, i was really worried there for a minute”

we had a big laugh about it, and he went on to say that he had been in the back talking about to the rest of the waiting staff. apparently it had really happen to one of them over the weekend.

that just sucks.

this is something that i had to teach my dad as of late…

my dad is totally the guy that, on a 47.00 check, leaves only the change off a 50,
or even better,
uses the card and stratches out the tip line and drops a couple of singles on the table. Then, proceeds to look the guy right in the eye and asks him:

“could i have a to-go cup?”

unscrupulous.

but hey,

aleast he’s not getting radation headaches.
(see jeremy guest post; “banana box”)