What's this? Good news?

Hey, thanks to everyone who wished me well and offered support and an ear yesterday. It was a long, strange, stressful day, and it helped to know that people were there to let me talk it all out. Anyway, I got a call from Geico this morning, and it looks like a dodged a bullet. The car is not going to be totaled, even though the estimate is a hearty $2,500. They didn't say whether or not that included my exhaust system problem, but I'm holding out mischevous hope that they'll assume it was caused by the accident and will go ahead and fix it on Geico's dime. Wink wink. In the meantime, the Cobalt is probably mine until next Friday; obviously it wouldn't break my heart if they go ahead and keep at it until the next Monday. I don't plan on taking many liberties with this rented vehicle, but it would make for a much smoother ride to the Eastern Shore. So anyway, my financial ruin isn't imminent just yet. But I'd still be willing to sell some organs, if anyone is game.

Since yesterday's post was a heady read, let's take a trip into the Wayback Machine, just in time for my *gulp* 5-year reunion next month. Wanna do some blow?

1. What high school did you go to? Archbishop Curley High

2. What year did you graduate? In the year 2000

3. What were your favorite band(s) or artist(s): Pearl Jam, woo!

4. What was your favorite outfit? well, we had a dress code that I stretched to its very limits. I was fond of my short sleeved button-down shirt that was BRIGHT ORANGE. Oh, and the buttons were metallic. Wear that with one of my trademark ties (Dali's Persistence of Memory, Joe Cool, or the orange tie with little white flowers) and either my light blue or olive green corduroys, and you can see why I didn't date much.

5. What was up with your hair? Eesh. Freshman year I started getting the Caesar cut every time I got tired of my generally shaggy mop. Soph. year I tried parting down the middle with disastrous results. Junior year I started off with remnants of a blond dye job, and spent most of the year gelling it. By senior year I settled into the buzz cut you all know and love.

6. Who were your best friend(s)? Joe, Will, Ryan, Dillon, Goat, Geoff, and Johnny D

7. What did you do after school? track, cross country, lacrosse (one year - HA!), Blackfriars' Theatre, The Curley Chronicle newspaper. I also dabbled in Visions Lit Magazine and the CORD Yearbook.

8. Where did you work? Ech, I never worked during the year. But I spent one magical summer manning the snack bar at Bengies Drive In Theatre, one of two drive-ins still open in Maryland

9. Did you take the bus? There was no bus for the good Catholic boys. I carpooled in the mornings and my parents picked me up in the afternoon

10. Who did you have a crush on? Haha, I actually used to have a list. There were at least a dozen. The one that did the most damage was Emily. If you really want that story, it'll cost you.

11. Who did you date? Let's see, there was Cindy freshman year (4'9" - funny visual), a whole lotta nothin', then Erica and Kim senior year.

12. Did you fight with your parents? Oh yeah...my dad and I went at it all the time. Fire indeed hot.

13. Did you ever get detention? Like four times total. Always dress code violations - dark socks on gym day, facial hair, that kind of stuff.

14. Favorite subject? Spanish, English with Mr. Keller

15. Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on? This one is humiliating. Jennifer Love Hewitt. I will now set myself on fire.

16. My grades were... Damn good, with occasional horror stories like Pre-Calc thrown in for flavor

17. Did you smoke cigarettes? A drag here or there

18. Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack all day? ugh, usually not. Have you ever seen one of those giant square Literature anthologies?

19. Did you have a clique? mostly I hung with the other oddball smart kids, and then of course the drama kids

20. Where was your Senior Prom? The Belvedere in downtown Baltimore. It was nice enough, but the class of '99 had their prom at the Marriott in Times Square. You can see why we were a bit disappointed, no?

21. Did you have a Max like "Saved by the Bell"? My friends and I always hit up the Double T Diner in Rosedale

22. Admit it, were you popular? No - I even had a few mortal enemies (in that really ridiculous name-calling and shoving macho all-boys high school way), and then a decent sized group of people who liked me for who I was

23. Who did you want to be just like? Joe always seemed like nothing ever really got to him, that he didn't sweat things. But I know now that there's a downside to that.

24. What did you want to be when you grew up? A writer, on the creative side of things

25. What was the color of your yearbook? There was a navy blue one, a nasty light-blue marble one, a fruity rainbow one, and a neat greenish one.

26. What were the colors of your school? Black and white, with red as an "accent color". Dude, I'm not lying. It says that in the handbook.

27. What was your school mascot? The FRIARS! RRRRGGGHHHHHH!

Current Music: Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues

Big bang baby, it's a crash crash crash.

As I try to emerge from the stupor of a day-long Quantum Leap marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel, I am going to play good news-bad news with you crazy kids. The good news is that I am currently in possession of a shiny new black Chevy Cobalt. It has only 7500 miles on it, and it handles so smoothly, I couldn't even tell it was running when I first hopped into it. So what's the bad news?

The car is a rental from Enterprise...because I wrecked my Camry. I feel so stupid. I hopped into the car at 7:20 this morning, and of course it was miserable and gray and rainy, because that's how Maryland rolls this week. At any rate, I was rushing to get out of my development, and I pulled out into the road without really checking the left side of the road. I didn't hear the guy honk his horn, but I saw him a second or two before the impact. I froze up and heard the crunch, that muffled, exterior sound that comes with a collision. I started sliding, and didn't stop even after I thought I had control of the wheel and brakes. I finally settled to a stop in the road, right in front of the sidewalk. The impact caused me to bang my head on the door, but thankfully, I'm not hurt. Neither was the other guy, who all things considered, was pretty calm. I've never dealt with anything like this. It scared the hell out of me. The paramedics showed up, but left as soon as we assured them there were no injuries. Then a police officer came, but didn't file a report because we weren't hurt. When I tried to drive off, the car was handling very oddly, so the cop flagged me down and said that the axel on my side was badly bent and I wouldn't be able to go anywhere. So I thanked him, pulled back into the development, and came inside. That was that.

So what can you do? I called US News and left a message for my boss saying that I wouldn't be in today. It was gross out, and I was cold from being out there for a half hour or whatever, so I changed into pajamas, and just sat until I got my wits about me enough to call my mom. Then I laid out on the couch, fell asleep for a bit, and called Geico. They handled everything for me, which calmed me down a bit. From the questions they asked, I got the idea that I'm not in as deep shit as I could be. I had my seat belt on, there were no passengers or injuries, and the police didn't give me a citation. So they know I wasn't drunk at 7 AM, haha. But they called a tow truck, and arranged to have my mess schlepped off to a body shop in Ellicott City. I decided that it would be good to have a way to go about my daily life, so I also got Geico to set me up with Enterprise. After negotiating with the Enterprise agent for a car that would be covered for the $25 a day coverage under my insurance, I wound up with the nifty little Cobalt. The first thing they tried to give me was an SUV...my ass. At one of the slightly over $25 tiers was a Dodge Stratus; I have to admit I was sorely tempted. "I DRIVE A DODGE STRATUS! I'M A DIVISION MANAGER! PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF ME!!!" It probably would've been too distracting. At least I didn't wind up in a Ford, or as the old saying goes, Found On the Road Dead.

So in the long run, what does this mean? After the initial freak-out this morning, I've been trying not to think about it. I was already worried about money before I had this brain fart. The best case scenario is that my car can be fixed. In that case, it costs me a $250 deductible and whatever monthly rate hike they charge me for insurance. That's the BEST case. Worst case? My car is totaled. It's highly possible. This car is ten years old, 219,000 miles gone, and it now has a mangled front fender with a bashed headlight. The body damage is such that I can't open the driver's side door all the way. The big deal, of course, is the axel, which is bent at a 60 degree angle, at least. If my car were in great shape, it would be worth $6000 blue book. It's not quite that good, as it stands. If it's totaled, I need a new car. Either I get a cheap used car, and probably pay god knows what else in repairs at undetermined intervals. More likely I get the cheapest new car that I can, and try to get a longer payment plan so that I can actually squeeze it into my monthly budget. Wheeeeeee.

The real world is fun, ain't it?

Current Music: Led Zeppelin - Babe I'm Gonna Leave You

Dove Girl, I hardly knew ye.

In my daily perusal of my friends' Live Journals, I came across a haiku generator. It seemed like a fun waste of thirty seconds of my life, so I entered my username, clicked the button, and got the most depressing haiku it could've given me. To top it off, the syllables were all out of whack!

washington d.c twice
a day there's no story
there that's pretty much

So yesterday something finally happened that I had been dreading for a long time. They changed the advertisements on the four-sided column in Union Station, the one that I pass every day to get from the train to the Metro, and back again. For at least the past three months, those ad spaces had been inhabited by the Dove Girls. For the uninitiated, Dove launched an ad campaign revolving around what their skin care products could do for "real women", as opposed to those spooky, glowering scarecrow coke-heads that some call "supermodels". If you know anything about me, chances are that you are aware of my personal preference for softer, curvier women. Angular, sallow cheeks and jawbones and protruding rib cages aren't my thing; call me crazy. So yeah, these spokes-models were pretty cute, and not gargantuan by any means; just a little fleshier, a little more proportional than you would be used to seeing. There was a leggy blond that especially appealed to me. She had this adorable bob hairstyle, and very delicate-looking fair skin. She was photographed in a playful, hands-on-hips pose with an open-mouthed grin of delight and surprise. I made it a special point to walk by the column on the side facing her ad. I was apprehensive with the changing of each month, aware that some day she would be gone...and it finally happened. They replaced her with an ad for the latest derivative Nora Roberts dime-store romance novel. Talk about adding insult to injury; at least the black girl with the heart tattoo was replaced by carrots. But I'll carry on somehow; the important thing here is that I have my memories of the good times with the blond Dove girl, and no one can take that away from me.

Yes, I'm a lonely, lonely, strange little man. What of it?

Current Music: Fountains of Wayne - Hey Julie

I laugh in the face of danger. Ha!

Yeowch, I fell asleep on this one. It was originally posted to my Live Journal on Friday afternoon:

I've been in a surprisingly upbeat mood today. It's not exactly like I'm the Bluebird of Unhappiness on a regular basis, but between the job/money situation and my personal life, those nasty little voices nag at me consistently enough that it is truly refreshing to find myself on an even keel in the (gasp) morning, on my way to (double gasp) work. I've gotten bored with the random shuffle mode on my DJ, so as I waited for the train this morning I started scrolling through the list of artists and cobbled together a brief playlist that suited my needs quite nicely. I stopped in the middle of the 'D's, which ensured that I got my fill of Bad Company, Collective Soul, even a little Cheap Trick. It was mostly light enough for me to sleep through on the train, and I even included Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" to fit the day's weather forecast. I think some of the best playlists are the spontaneous ones.

However, I had an unsettling moment while riding the Metro out of Union Station. I was reading the Express article about the warnings of a terrorist attack on New York's transit system, and it dawned on me that I was riding on the subway in the Nation's Capital. Yeah, I know, I've been doing just that five days a week for six months now. Mostly, I don't let myself think about it. But in this moment, I felt a real apprehension, even fear. I was in danger, I could be an innocent victim, a target. I didn't linger too long, though. We have a president who has preyed on those types of fears for four years. He has used them to rob us of our civil liberties and our economic well-being, and for 1,944 American soldiers, their lives. So if those are the consequences of being afraid, I think I'll pass. I heard somewhere that nobody lives forever, so if they get me today, so be it. What am I going to do? Walk clear across Washington D.C. twice a day? Carry a blast shield with me? Refuse to go to work? I'll take my chances, because the odds of NOT getting blown up are very much in my favor.

Speaking of political type dealies, I stumbled upon Moby's online journal yesterday. Yes, that Moby. It is truly a delight. He quite often weighs in with his own take on the issues that affect us as a people (you may be shocked to learn that he is a liberal), his experiences in traveling the world, and even an occasional "top ten" list. He even posted a fantastic joke that I will take the liberty of reprinting here:

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing.He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed.""OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!"His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands.Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"

Ba-dum-bump. Anyway, go check it out here!

That's all I've got. Most of my entries lately haven't been very fun, so I'll scurry back this weekend with a wacky meme or an anecdote or something. Or maybe we'll all have cookies and ice cream! Hooray!

Current Music: Chris Cornell - Seasons

Yeah, it's been great and all, but you have got to go.

Oh crap, is it time to find another job already? I am afraid so. Let me count the ways. The commute absolutely, positively crushes my soul. Somehow an eight-hour workday seems longer when you're traveling three hours back and forth to the place of business. Also, you would think that by October, all of the back-to-school-and-no-more-vacations crowd would be back in full force, but somehow every means of transit just gets more and more congested every day. Especially that infernal Metro. There is nothing so demoralizing as being squeezed, shoved, brushed aside, poked, and just generally treated like a piece of meat because the prick with a giant unwieldy briefcase thinks that he's more important than anyone else and he has to get there first, dammit. It amazes me to think that I pay to be treated this way, but that's America for you. And the job itself? It's mindless busy work, and it gets more mindless and more busy all the time. You may remember something about Mikey getting a chance to quit working alongside me and start teaching, right? Well, they haven't hired anyone to replace him, and they don't plan to do so. Which essentially means that tasks which were previously divided among five people (and six people at one time) will now be split four ways. For the math-handy among you, that's 25% more work. So do you think they're going to show their appreciation by handing out some of the $27,000 they no longer have to pay Mikey? Even a simple cost of living increase? Hoho, oh, no. In fact, my boss forwarded an email detailing the surprising news that a senior political writer at the magazine had just been laid off, with "more likely". So, as always in the working world, the people who make it happen take the fall to protect the bottom line for the Big Boys. Incidentally, I don't know how much longer I can live on my salary as it is. Sure, I'm making it right now, but the always-lovely Unexpected Surprises keep blowing holes in my checking account. The estimate on a new muffler, which I will be getting this weekend, is $200 - UNLESS I need a whole new exhaust system, in which case we're looking at 500 or 600 dollars. To top that off, I have a fairly pressing need for a home computer that doesn't freeze up 30% of the time I log on-line...every time I log off...every time I try to open another program while on-line...you get the idea. So that's at least another 500, even without any bells or whistles. My car is a ticking time bomb, I spend more money on gas than I do on food (I guess we all do)...ugh. $27,000 and I worry about making ends meet. Is it any wonder I'm pissed off at the people running this country?

Well, back to the drawing board. Time to shine up that resume and bark like a dog.

Current Music: Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone

I change by not changing at all.

It is cold in this office, ridiculously so. It is the beginning of October. I wore shorts all day yesterday with no problem. Today I am wearing a long sleeved shirt and khakis, and there is no reason why I should be sitting with my arms hunched at my sides for warmth and shaking involuntarily. I am convinced that it is all a massive plot to freeze my brain and keep me from having independent thoughts. If you stay here longer for a year, it probably works. That's why the creepy little guy at the other end of the row of cubicles has been here for five years. That, and he has to keep a low profile to avoid being discovered as an alien in disguise. Did I mention it is cold in here?

Gordon's Vodka and I may be enduring a trial separation for the foreseeable future. Saturday night was the first cast party that I could call my own in quite some time, so I figured I would finish off the bottle of Gordon's that Carrie and I shared last weekend. After all, there was only a quarter of a one liter bottle left, that couldn't be any more than 5 to 7 shots, right? Oh ho. Naturally, I didn't take into consideration the eight months or so that it took me to finish my last bottle of Gordon's, the 1.75 liter special. Neither did it occur to me that I hadn't eaten for six hours by the time I started drinking. So, how does the rest of the story go? I wish I remembered. I was already cruising by the time I had run out of orange juice to mix, so I took a few straight shots and then started carrying around the bottle and swigging from it. No chasers or anything, mind you. So I drank for 4-5 hours solid and then had an adventurous walk home with my escorts, Boothe, Molly, and Carrie. Needless to say, I couldn't walk straight; on the contrary, I stopped dead in the middle of the street and stood there for several moments until I was nudged along to continue. Having made it back to campus, I settled down on the parapet near the library and laid down. When Molly offered me her coat for a pillow, I declined because the concrete "felt good". Only when I started feeling dizzy did I get up and resume the return trip to Middle Hall. Once there, I hunkered down on the porch with Boothe and Molly and acquiesced to their attempts to rehydrate me...sort of. I spilled just as much water as I consumed, some of it deliberately, in the belief that none-too-subtly tossing water over my shoulder was amusing. I also sent an offending broom tumbling to the ground below for no good reason. Through no small effort, I made it to the futon by 5:30 for a good morning's sleep. But for the last day and a half, I have paid dearly. The ache in the back of my head and the pressure at my temples are so persistent that what I have cannot possibly be described as a hangover. I think we've graduated to full-fledged tumor status. Best of all, THE VODKA IS NOT GONE. It currently sits in my cabinet at home, mocking me along with the tiny bottle of Smirnoff I bought "just in case". Curse you, Gordon's.

Hurrah for the Corpse Bride, and sucks to Route 301. The next time I go to Chestertown, I'll be taking the day off, I assure you of that.

Current Music: New Radicals - Someday We'll Know