Monday, August 4, 2008

I Am So Boring, but I Guess that is the First Step Toward Recovery

Monday, August 04, 2008

This is more or less a “What I did this weekend” note. On Friday evening I attending a going away party for a person I work with. Here for about 2 years she has made a great deal of difference in how my section of the office works. Very good with the customers I see, Petitioners is the nomenclature we use here, she makes the intake process flow. In greeting these folks, handling their paperwork (often scrawled in barely legible pencil on dirty party) and generally maintaining order she has been a godsend.

As celebrations go this departure party was low key. A group of folks, very nice people actually, gathered at one of the areas more rowdy beer and a bump bars. The problem with going to places such as this is that with my job I was almost certainly guaranteed to run into a disgruntled patron or two. 999 out of 1000 times they will not say anything to may face but boy will they stare. As I walked into the washroom there was one guy coming out who judging by his expression appeared to be reacting the same way he would have upon coming face to face with the grim reaper or maybe old Scratch himself. There was at least one other guy who was burning holes in me from across the bar. So it goes. People told filthy jokes, laughed too loud and drank too much. It was wonderful. If my life were a John Mayles novel we would have been eating escargot and drinking great local wines in a place call Le Chateau. My life is not the material for A Year in Provence and so we were drinking black and tans at the Green Door Lounge feasting on very, very salty popcorn.

A point came however when I had to leave. My thinking is that I really disappointed my two observers/stalkers when I departed. Most assuredly after the two and ½ beers I had consumed they were ready to drop a dime on me when I entered a vehicle. Nope, they were to be denied. Instead of hopping into a car and roaring off I went out the front door, walked across the street and took a bus into East Lansing to get some healthy low fat food. Almost certainly my admirers didn’t see that one coming.

After that came the trip to IKEA that was deferred due to a kidney stone now passed/past. (Heh, heh-passed/past). Then came dinner in Ann Arbor of pistachio encrusted Lake Superior Whitefish severed over steamed veggies. Then there came another day of sorting out flood damaged good and toys grown too juvenile for my lads. And finally there came a trip to the sushi place for Francie’s birthday dinner. All in all a good weekend was had.

On the normal rants side I started reading a biography of Kant. Yeah, that will wait for another posting.

3 comments:

John and Vicki Boyd said...

WHO LEFT???? AND WHY?????? WHAT'S GOING ON BACK THERE?????

John and Vicki Boyd said...

I ask again........who went away?? And why???

Sue Schimmel Ward said...

Boring? You say your life is boring? Andy and I went to the beach on Saturday. Than, I left at 3:30 in order to stand in front of Food Lion in a plastic yellow&red vest with the tagline "Help the Intellectually Challenged" from the local Knights of Columbus: with a can in one hand and the obligatory Tootsie Rolls in the other - pleading with the folks from NJ and PA and OH who were busting out of the lines of traffic at their Beach, and rolling their eyes at the poor girl with the candy.

Then on Sunday, we went to the beach, again. Tell yourself how boring you are now.

PS: we DID go to a housewarming party, and saw the coolest thunderstorm out over the ocean Saturday night, though. I think no matter how boring your life is, God throws in something like that just so you can't really say "nothing happens".