Friday, August 15, 2003

Mom

So who's coming to my Assumption party? We can... you know... do Assumption.... things.

August 15th is a Holy Day of Obligation, which means I had to get my ass to Mass, Friday or not. So I hauled to a 12:10 service on my lunch hour for a fantastic liturgial experience, marred only by the presence of an old person with an I'm Old So Make Way complex. This bitch TOOK MY PARKING SPACE. I don't care if she's old; I don't care if she's a fellow Catholic; I don't care if she's the Virgin Mary herself: She TOOK MY PARKING SPACE. She maneuvered her bigass wagon in right in front of me after I had been patiently sitting in traffic with my blinker on, aimed purposfully at said space. I KNOW she saw me. But this being a Mass Expedition, and all, I refrained from bringing on the Horn-Honk of Anger, downgrading her offense worthy of only the Both-Hands-In-The-Air Gesture of General Disapproval. This was rewarded by a 10-minute trip around the block in search of another space. When I finally fought my way back to the parking meters, lo: behold, for a space had opened up that was even closer to the door than the one she stole from me.

And things very soon got even BETTER: It was pouring down rain when church let out. Ohhhhhhhhh! And Grandma forgot her rainbonnet!

See, the Big Mama Upstairs, she's my homegirl. She works wit' me. Happy feast day, babe.

Thursday, August 14, 2003

Thanks, Masters degree!

I have, for the past thirty minutes, been typing sentences such as this:

"The raw labor total multiplyer is 2.57 verses the actual raw labor cost and includes all elements of overhead and operating margin."

Please, PLEASE let the apocalypse happen today.

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

What a great way to end the day.

So I'm listening to Sean Hannity on the drive home yesterday, and I'm thinking, "Who is that weird woman on the phone?" And then Sean said, "We'll be right back with Gary Coleman." Oh God. All I could think about was the eight or nine Very Special "Differn't Strokes" (or however the hell they spelled it) episodes in which various family members are kidnapped and/or nearly molested. (In one of said episodes, an extremely creepy guy used space exploration footage to lure the children into his extremely creepy apartment. As a former employee of the Kennedy Space Center, I hereby object on NASA's behalf. Bait for the jail bait, one thing; association with Gary Coleman, quite another.)
According to a partial replay of the conversation later on in the broadcast, I missed the best exchange of the phone call, which went something like this:

SEAN: Do you know who the Vice-President of the United States is?

GARY: Sure. Of course I do.

SEAN: Who is it?

GARY: I know who the Vice-President is, Sean.

SEAN: A name, give me a name.

GARY: I can't give you a name right now.

SEAN: YOU ARE POSITIONING YOURSELF TO RUN THE SIXTH-LARGEST ECONOMY ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND YOU DON'T KNOW WHO THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS?!!?

Gary: I'm not thinking about that right now. My head's not there now.

(Much later in the conversation)

Sean: --and you don't even know who the Vice-President is--

Gary: The Vice-President is Dick Cheney, of course.

Sean: Who told you?

For perhaps the first time in a year and a half, I was relieved to be a Floridian.

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