Chopstork

So in a post I wrote a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was headed to vegas. I went this past weekend, just for a few days. My parents got me a room in the same hotel as them, a bit off the strip — but that was nice, because I mostly wanted to relax. I finally got to see a cirque du soleil show (Mystere), and I liked it. The first 30 minutes were pretty boring, but once it got to all the stupid human tricks, it was awesome. And thankfully, no contortionists. I have a hard time dealing with freakishly bendy people. I’d suggest locking them up, but they’d probably slither out somehow. We went out to a few good dinners too, and after one particular meal decided to do some gambling. My P’s had previously played a game called Sic Bo that they liked a lot, so I checked that out. It was fun and mindless, but not quite the excitement I was looking for. M&D decided to make it an early night, so my dad gave me $20 and told me to have a little more fun. I took that money (the last I was prepared to lose) over to the craps table, and admitted to the people running the table that I had no idea how to play. I asked if they could sort of help me learn as I go… there were only two other gamblers at the table at that time, so they were cool with it. They suggested I start by just betting the pass line. I blindly agreed. Then the gave me the dice. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be rolling at any given time, but judging by the amount of happy gamblers that soon surrounded the table, I assume I did pretty well. Two guys about my age were next to me. The first one didn’t roll very well; the second one had a longer streak then I did. Throughout the 30 minutes of dice rolling, we were talking, flirting, betting, cheering… I continued to only bet the pass line, since I didn’t know what I was doing, and wound up making $150. The guys were betting on numbers, and made significantly more. Anyway, they invited me to meet up with their other friends at Ghostbar, and I happily accepted. Winning money puts me in a good mood, and I’m not one to turn down a chance to hang with 5 dudes.

Later that night, as we stood in line waiting for a cab, the two I met at the craps table admitted something that startled me — they thought I might have been a hooker. A what?!? Me?! First off, I had come from dinner with my parents — my very Catholic parents — so it wasn’t like I was dressed all slutty. I was wearing a skirt that I bought in the girls’ section of Target (shut up, I’m small boned), and a white tank top. Not very scandalous. Secondly, I had on no makeup whatsoever. I’ve watched enough TV to know that hookers wear tons of it. TV doesn’t lie. And lastly, I am just so not a hooker. Jeez. I asked what their reasoning was behind the assumption. They said that since I was out gambling alone, being all outgoing and flirty with the table, then I was probably aiming to work for some of their money. Clearly, I do not understand Vegas at all. In this age of feminism, I suppose I should have been somewhat offended that they labeled me a potential prostitute, weary of any way I might trick them into becoming an actual trick. But lately, I feel as though I can’t even GIVE it away, so I was mildly flattered that they think people would be willing to pay for it. I like them.

Toothbrush cam! I’m such a retard.

I originally thought it would be funny if the toothbrush was on a tripod and I had to shake my head to brush, turn upside to get the bottom teeth, etc. Except I tried a few seconds of it and it looked like I was giving the the toothbrush a blow job.

Had to reduce the quality to get jumpcut to upload the stupid thing. Maybe I should have shaved first.

They say beautiful people have a symmetric face. That makes me the most beautiful person there can be.

After a flurry of emails, here’s the plan:

Meet at 8:15 am Sunday, at the corner of 4th Street and Howard Street in SOMA. If you show up after 9 or so and we’re not there anymore, follow your nose to the sweet aroma of hamburgers and booze in the morning.

Bring drinks and snacks, but leave extra stuff behind or wear a backpack—the carts will probably be too full with food and drinks to fit anything else. Don’t bring glass bottles. Luke had a good idea to bring walkie talkies if you have any. We’ve never managed to stay together; maybe they’ll help.

The Red Strawberry has graciously donated her and Nick’s place to get the carts ready. We’ll be prepping Friday night and Saturday. She’s up for getting things started Wednesday or Thursday too. Either way, call someone if you don’t know where they live. Anything you can add to the carts is welcome—come help build and decorate.

After months of looking, Laura and I are now the proud owners of a big bank note. Oh, and a house to go with it. “The yellow house” is now our yellow house. This is the house we’ve wanted since November. Long story—we saw it, I didn’t have a job yet, we moved, I got a job, we put an offer in, we negotiated, the house had renters, we didn’t want renters, seller took it off the market, we saw a bunch of other houses, we liked The McIntire House, someone else offered more for it, we looked some more, considered The Avon House, still liked The Yellow House, decided renters were fine, offered again, paid lots of money to borrow even more money, got the house. Which means we are landlords for the first time too. Weird. Which in turn means we can’t move in till August. Sucks. Oh well.

Closing on a house is very anticlimactic. I felt like there should be more ceremony. Nope, it’s just sign here, sign here, initial here, sign, initial, initial, initial, sign, date, initial, sign, date, initial … stare at closing attorney … that’s it? We own a house now? Moving in will be much more exciting.

My new workplace has cubicles, of course. But they are the newer cubicles where the walls hold up the desks. When I started a few months ago, I asked if I could rearrange them so that I face the door. They said no; that they do it purposefully this way so they can see your monitors. Which is fine. But I do find it ridiculous that every time someone needs to talk to me, they have to knock to get my attention because, of course, I can’t see them. And they can’t just knock—they have to knock on the strip of metal that is the frame of the cube wall because the cube wall itself is a not-quite-green not-quite-blue human-dander-absorbing cloth. Plus half the time I’m listening to music and can’t hear the knock anyway.

So I put a doorbell on my cube. The $10 wireless kind from Lowe’s. We’ll see if people notice.

so this might be a terrible idea, but since we always have some sort of “drink dispenser” on our B2B treks, and making a soda fountain would take some serious time and money, what about buying one of these costumes: adult shake costume and putting it over a keg of beer… so we’re dressing up beer as a McD’s milkshake… and wheeling it around in a shopping cart… what size keg fits in a shopping cart? we can always get a child-size shake costume and put it over a pony keg. I think it would be kind of cute. child milkshake costume What do you guys think?

Remember that Mitsubishi commercial with that girl in a pink burret pop-and-locking in the passenger seat to Days Go By? There was a whole series of those Mitsubishi commercials, but it turns out most of them weren’t new songs like that one. Oh well, here they are anyway.

It’s that time of the year again, kids! The fantastic Bay to Breakers “race” across the beautiful city of San Francisco. And holy shmoley it’s only two weeks away. The usual spiel: get those McMaster-Carr orders in, find some shopping carts, start making costumes, start getting ready.

In case you haven’t heard already, our theme this year is:

Be a fast food mascot or anything related to fast food chains and the like. Ronald McDonald, Hamburglar, Grimmace, all those other McDonalds characters, Wendy, Dave Thomas, Two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun (a multi-person costume perhaps, with the Voltron effect??!), the Arby’s oven mitt, Creepy (BK) King, Dan Cortese, milkshakes, soda, high fructose corn syrup, CORN (Big Bird?), fry girls … you get the idea.

Who wants to build carts? You do! You do! Who has ideas for carts? I’m thinking one of them (or both) needs big Golden Arches spinning up high on a PVC pipe so we can find our carts in the crowd. Turning one of them into a drive through has been brought up. One of them could also be a “soda” fountain a la lots-of-tubes-coming-out-of-big-buckets style. Old Man and Luke have graciously donated their garage(?) for cart-building. Well, now they have. I don’t know…call them or something…I live 3000 miles away, so don’t call me.

Discuss.

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