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April 2, 2000 |
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I hate daylight saving time. Of course, I would generally hate anything
that robs me of an hour's sleep. The time adjustment went relatively
smoothly. Normally, I wouldn't care. I go to sleep one night and wake up
the next day and there's one more or less hour. I had to drive Pam to the airport and had to get there pretty early. She
figured that we would have to leave her place about 5:15am. I intended to
get there about 5am, just to be safe.
I don't wake up in the mornings, but I stay up awfully late, so it would be
easier for me to stay up to drive her to the airport as opposed to trying
to wake up on time. I drove to her place and she was just about ready.
She only had a handful of other things to do. I just sat on the bed and
watched as she went about her business. I'm just glad that I was able to
help. We had a some time to spare and we had a "quickie or,
technically, I had the "quickie" and she … uhmm,
assisted. The trip to the airport was uneventful. We chatted a
little, although I think we were both suffering from lack of sleep, her
from getting very little, mine from not getting any yet. She seemed rather
touched that I dropped her off at the airport. We exchanged a number of
embraces and kisses before she finally went to the check-in counter.
Okay, that wasn't all. She said, "I love you."
Now, I'm not one of those guys who scares easily. I just didn't know what
to say. I hadn't really sorted out what I was feeling. There's a part of
me that truly believes that I won't know what I truly feel until the
infatuation phaze is over. I hesitate to say those words until then.
Still there's a part of me who wonders if she wanted to hear those words
from me… if she needed to hear those words from me. There's a part of
me who really wants to make her happy, who wanted to say them. I thought
about the damage these words might do if I wasn't ready to say them… so
I didn't. It hurt a little to just walk away.
I drove home and stayed up for a little while before getting to bed. She
called around 7am to tell me that her flight was cancelled. The airline
did reschedule a new flight to Atlanta, and she was only going to be
arriving an hour later. I was touched that she called me, but my find was
really fading by then and I was drifting off to sleep. This is typically
the way I get to sleep, my mind and body go fighting into the night trying
to desperately escape from the grasps of slumber, eventually surrendering.
Tonight (or this morning) was no different. I don't really know why I do
this.
Ring… Ring…
I get another call from Pam, she has made it safely to Atlanta. She was calling me from the hotel. With the possible exception of the cancellation of her flight, her trip seemed uneventful. To me, if the trip is uneventful, it is a good trip. When you have to start to enumerate things that went on with the trip, that is generally things that you don't want to happen.
I could tell you a bit more about what we talked about, but you know what?
I had to do a number of things today. First, I was running low on cat food and had to go to PetCo to get some. I normally get IAMS food for Magic. I hear that they sell this brand at Albersons, which is open 24 hours, but do I really need to resort to this instead of getting my whiny ass out of bed? Second, I had to do my workout at the gym today. It would be cardio and weights today.
I elect to not shower before going to PetCo. I would just feel really silly showering only minutes before and shortly after my workout, besides who am I going to offend? The animals? It's just to get cat food. I can deal, and so can they. I picked up two twenty-two pound bags of IAMS cat food, hefting them both onto my shoulder. As I walked out, I also picked up a fur brush for Magic, I just never seeem to be able to find the brushes when I need to brush him. Sometimes, I think he is just hiding them while I'm not looking, although with the current state of my place, I may not be surprised if it spontaneously started walking on its own. The cashier was a pleasant young man who seemed to have hindered mobility on one side. He was polite and very capable.
Shortly after getting the catfood, I got into my workout gear and went to the gym, which is right next door. I mean it is literally the next building. I have little excuses not to go. Today would be my thirty minute run on the treadmill and my routine with the free weights. Not bad, except that the run seemed harder than I remember, and my heart rate apparently agreed with me, since it was running a little higher than usual. As I was returning from the gym I noted that it was a beautiful day, particularly for Seattle; it was warm (low 60's) and sunny.
Immediately after getting back to my place, I call Len. Aside from making plans for Sunday Dinner with Len™, I also figured that we could conceivably do a car wash. That's right, if it's a beautiful day, we don't think about bike rides, or picnics or hikes or whatever… we think about car washes. At least we have our priorities straight. I thought about whether I wanted to shower before or after the car wash, but I figured I'd call Len since we always seem to wash our cars together as well. We end up deciding that I should shower first and call him back and then we'd start up with the car wash. I did precisely that. Also making sure that I cleaned my piercing carefully.
Now Len and I have a routine to doing our car wash as well. There's a faucet behind some hedges at the end of my building which often. This is the place where we always do our car washes. We don't even discuss where anymore. I get all the little accessories for the car wash and place them near the faucet and drive my car to the spot. I always start on my car first before he arrives. He arrives a few minutes later and brings two canisters of Gatorade, one for me (Punch flavored) and one for himself (whichever flavor he is in the mood for). Each one of us designates the order in which the sections get washed. After finishing my car, he takes a smoke break and I open up my Gatorade. We then switch cars and wash his. We hardly ever deviate from this routine when washing our cars.
I tell him about yesterday's events. From dinner with Jim to the little trip to The Lucky Devil. Of course, I didn't tell him precisely what kind of establishment it was; I had him go through the series of guesses. It took him a fairly long time to guess the nature of the establishment, enumerating quite the array of guesses (…but really a manicurist called The Lucky Devil?) Then he guessed the location of the piercing. It only took him a handful of tries, although there really aren't that many body parts to pierce.
Oh, I also gave him the item that I picked up for him yesterday at CompUsa.
We decided to go to Dead Robin for dinner. As we pulled out of my driveway, one of the newer mustangs drives by with a fairly attractive woman sitting in the passenger seat. He makes a comment and seems to take note… of the car! When I asked if he was commenting on the car or the woman, he didn't even seem to notice that there was a woman. I'm starting to worry about him.
Dinner at Dead Robin was its normal self. We had a waitress who was cute and upbeat and seemed entirely too happy. Not that I mind happy, but she just seemed to be freebasing caffeine or something. We ordered the quesadillas for appetizers. I ordered the seafood pasta and he ordered some sandwich without the tomatoes.
We talked some more about what we had done during the week and made some tentative plans go to CostCo on Wednesday. I might've gone tomorrow, except that I planned to go on a run to make up for the run I missed on Saturday. Otherwise, we talked about nothing in particular. No phisolophical arguments about the viability of warm fruit. [Although I should note that they make a good Bansai Burger with a warm slice of pineapple] No deep-seated discussion on the seasoning practice of our salads or the like. Just dinner with a friend.
I told him what Pam had said to me this morning and what I was feeling about it. He just listened while I talked about it… didn't really offer suggestions, just sympathetic ear. It was just what I needed.
During dinner, I also remembered that I told my friend Lisa (no, not this Lisa…), that I may call her today if I had the time. She lives in the east coast, so it would be tough to call her with the three hour difference. I guess it'll have to wait until another day.
When I get back from dinner, I hear a little whizzing noise from my kitchen. I'm not immediately worried since I have an electric range, so no immediate chance of explosion. I was just thinking to myself that it was a little strange, that's all.
It wasn't until some hours later that I realized that this whizzing was caused by a leak in the line that runs water into my refrigerator. It was pretty messy. At least it wasn't an ugly messy, just a wet messy. I pulled the refrigerator out of its alcove and sure enough water squirting in different directions. I turned off the little faucet that led the water into the line. I briefly looked for the tools to fix this but realized that I would need to get something from the store. All I could do tonight was to turn it off and control the damage. [Sigh!]
April 2, 2000