mercury…mer…mer…mercury’s…

…in retrograde!

….this is not the time…the time to start a new love. this is not the time…the time to sign a lease!

(baby, no bullshit!…lyrics from the song mercury from bloc party, for all curious)

in layman’s terms, “mercury in retrograde” is a time when mercury (the planet that rules communications, if you believe in such things…one loyal reader bets his livelihood on you doing so – literally) appears to go backwards, and so communications get all sorts of fucked up. when i was with alex, this would happen. when i was with the non-girlfriend, this would happen. never seems to effect communication with ME, or with shane, so i guess if you’re on really footing you end up okay, i suppose (others near and dear to me aS well, but I woN’t mention names).

so this is my question – has the communication end of your world been all fucked up lately? just in this last week (runs till may 15th, if you’re wondering) i’ve had three pretty major comm fuckups, some had side notes of decency, some didn’t…so to show a bit of balance the sixer will be split into two three’rs…

(make sense? i feel like i’ve almost confused myself here)

the bad

6. tuesday – i had to make my traditional every other tuesday bank run. some of you know what i mean. i could have done this in kyle, or buda, or south austin…mere minutes from the house. but i went all the way up to round rock. why? the sprint store (which ended up getting knocked out the day before – see later in the count), reptile food (still need that, actually), and to have lunch with my bud from dell. get there, asked if it’s just me, or what’s the count, so i text him to see only to be messaged back he had spaced the fact we were even supposed to meet. plans had been made less than twenty-four hours before…

5. wednesday – after tuesday’s bullshit i almost didn’t wanna go into town wednesday, but an old friend who has a salad joint downtown had been promised my old iSub at our high school reunion (last june). we also have an artist at the burnet shop that lives south, is vegan, and is short on friends (he claims). so, i bartered the deal where i would two big ass salads for the speaker, one for me, one for vegan boy. on the way to meet v.b. i buy a weed-eater only to discover it’s corded so it had to go back, and then v.b. pulls a no call no show and i have to head downtown to eat alone and trade said speaker for a single salad…all be it a huge one with three or four meats in it (most of which were pork, which given the fact my boy jon is jewish, that adds some comedy to the mix).

4. thursday – i almost didn’t write about this, ’cause i’ve been to the joint enough times to know this is THE EXCEPTION, and not THE RULE. but it was still bullshit, and with the whole “mercury” thing we’ll try and chalk it up to that. yesterday (this is being written on friday afternoon, i should add) shane and i went and caught the losers. i loved it, he was indifferent. but after wards we wanted a drink, so we headed to sean pat’s strictly because they have cheap guinness and a patio where he can smoke…the latter of which seems to be where we erred. he had a table by the time i walked in, and was already smoking. we sat and waited for a waitress. and waited. and waited. while we waited, no less than TWO other tables of guys came in, sat themselves on the patio, and were greeted within seconds, given menus, and had drink orders taken.

we just sat.

after about fifteen minutes i decided this was bullshit, i ran to the bar, and got our first round, paying in cash. when the bartender (who was managing that day, i later found out) came up, greeted me by name, and asked what i was up to i replied with, “just getting ignored on your patio…you?” – within earshot of one of the waitresses that was ignoring us. we finished that round and STILL had no service, menus, nothing. so shane ran to the bar and got us a second round, paying in cash. at the forty-five minute mark (still with no speaking from the staff save for the bar runs) i went and got two car bombs to seal off the day and asked for the manager.

THEN we got a waitress…but too late, we were done. again, the exception, not the rule…and i’ll chalk it up to a mixture of mercury and retarded college girl waitstaff.

(by the length of that rant you can tell that wound is still fresh with me, eh?)

the good

3. tuesday, part ii – after di pulled his bullshit, i ended up calling another dell bud that no longer works for dell. if some of you remember when i thought i’d get the job with that canadian company only to have them close up shop and not only NOT give me work, but also lay off the guy who was trying to get me the job in the first place, this is THAT guy. we ended up having a nice afternoon downing smithwick’s and smoking monte cristo’s on his back patio and enjoying the nice weather…AFTER we had lunch together at logan’s. so that one actually balanced out nicely, even though i got home so late i didn’t have time to do much around the house like i planned.

2. wednesday, part ii – turns out my aforementioned old friend who owns the salad joint actually, as of that day, OWNED (past tense) the salad joint. he got it up, got it running, and decided he wanted to do something else. wednesday (i was trying to go thursday but he insisted i do wednesday) was his last day on the job…period. as of thursday he headed off to vegas for a few weeks, then is taking three months off the work thing till he figures out the next venture (post salad, pre-vegas, he did at least email me and let me know the iSub worked, which as i hadn’t fired it up in at least four years was good to know). i’ll be curious to see what he does next. plus, i was gonna have to run vegan boy to work by 2:00, but since he bailed i was home by 2:00, just in time for…

1. sprint rocks! (no…seriously!) – so, remember back on #6 when i mentioned the sprint thing had been handled. yeah, i wanted to upgrade my phone. the one i wanted came out on valentine’s day, but i couldn’t swing it till now…and actually even now didn’t think i could. but it turns out that the phone that’s been $150 ($99 after $50 mail in rebate) since it’s introduction suddenly dropped to $29.99…and for some reason i can now upgrade online (when i had a second line for either alex or ME i couldn’t) and so i was able to upgrade my phone for $30 to the one i really wanted (i’d already bought the clip holster for it) and then was able to activate it online, my phonebook transferred online, and i never had to go into a store. as long as my plan didn’t get fucked up somehow this was my most seamless phone transition ever…knocking on my wooden table as…i…type…this. and i got home from the speaker/salad swap wednesday only to have UPS show up within three minutes of me getting home. nice!

(you’ll noticed there’s no “thursday, part ii” as NOTHING good came of that unfortunate pub run…but i trust the next one will be better, or there WON’T be a next one for me)

so – how goes communcations in y’all’s world?