don’t check your calendar (a throwback)

tuesday is always “two-fer” day someplace. two for one enchilada dinners. two for one burgers. two for one lap dances (yeah, like if that last one was true i’d be home right now typing up a piece for you guys…i mean i love you (well, some of you) but come on…). i’ve always also been a big believer in life being a continuous educational process…and today came with two lessons; one in the morning, and one in the evening. the middle was filled with work, and a lesson i already know to well: some machines just HATE me; but never mind that now…

i started off the day at our downtown office doing some modem manipulation in our server room. i was having issues (that continued throughout the day) and had to verify a few things just to make sure i had all my charts straight at the office. this used to require a hike of eight feet from my work bench…now it takes ten miles through traffic. god bless progress.

after i was done, i figured SINCE i was downtown, and had no money, i would hit the bank; since, again, it’s RIGHT there compared to our old office; and the nearest branch is seven miles from our new one. don’t get me wrong, i LOVE our new office. more space, nicer people around us, and killer parking; all combined with a bad-ass view. but the location leaves a bit to be desired as far as conveniences go.

as i approached the intersection of ninth and congress (on foot…nobody DRIVES in downtown if it’s less than four blocks, and even then it’s a coin-toss) i saw an individual, by themselves, with NOBODY around, and they were mid-argument…cussing, gesturing, obviously in the midst of one HEATED debate. it gave me movie theater bathroom flash backs…

one time, when i had just left a movie, i made the traditional post-movie, post-64 oz. soda restroom stop…

and here’s what i saw:

a guy, at the urinal, pulling his “lil’ buddy” out, looking down at it, and as he was looking at it he says in a nice, conversational tone, “so, what do you wanna do later tonight, buddy?”

so i say, in a slightly LOUDER than conversational tone (my normal volume, for those who know me, but there was significant bathroom echo since we were the only two in there at the time):

“DUDE, are you talking to your DICK?!?!?”

he turns immediately, and i see what i COULDN’T see before….the phone clipped on his belt, on the RIGHT side (the side AWAY from me), the ear bud in his RIGHT ear, and the wire with in-line mic dangling down his RIGHT side. oops.

so, fearing a repeat of this incident, i don’t say anything….just kinda approach the guy screaming on the corner, keeping my distance in case the gesture range gets wider; but after a while i notice there IS no phone, no head set, no ear bud, no nothing. so i, calmly, yet somewhat loudly, say, “dude…who ARE you talking to?” to which he quietly and calmly replied, “what do you mean?” then the light changed and he very calmly walked across the street.

lesson learned? crack addiction can fuck with your soical skills. wouldn’t have known that having never done it before (despite the opinion of some of my more regular readers). but now i learned, and never had to fire up a pipe…

then it was off to work for the day, but AFTER work, i got lesson two. and my knees didn’t like that lesson (get your mind out of the gutter folks, we’re talking basketball here).

soon after we moved into our office, we noticed a parking garage down the hill has a basketball court on the top of it, and we always talked about playing…today we finally did. me and six other guys from the office hit the court, with me talking about how i was doing it for fun, and wouldn’t be that good ’cause i hadn’t played ball in about five years. rarely am i so accurate in knowing my limitations. my game was not without it’s weak points. okay, it was lacking in some fundamentals. okay, i sucked.

afterwards, i was trying to decide why i was so bad. then the math hit me…the last time i played a REAL game of basketball (not horse, or asshole, or something like that) was my sophomore year in college, when all my friends were on the track team (i was one of two white boys in a crew of about a dozen). now, that was my SOPHOMORE year, which was about three years before i graduated; and since i graduated SEVEN years ago, that would make it TEN years since i’ve hit the courts for real, not five…

FUCK, i’m old…

and you know that slight knee pain i mentioned a week or so ago? the one that was all cool with me leg pressing a quarter ton, doing four hundred pound calf raises, and hitting the elliptical machine for a half an hour straight but had issue with me getting out of the car? well those same parts of my knees have REAL issues now, which brings us to lesson number two fer the day…

basketball does NOT cure what ails you, especially knee pain…i really need to play ball more often, see if that will whip them into submission. and to think, wednesday is LEG DAY at the gym…

so that might have “SUCK” written all over it, huh?