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August 19, 2000 |
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I didn't actually wake up until about 1pm, which is still relatively little
sleep. If you consider that I went to sleep at 9am, this only gives me
about four hours of sleep, but who's counting. I was woken up by the
phone. It's Pam. She tells me that she's made a
deal for a car lease and wanted to go in and sign the paperwork; she had
even test driven the vehicle. She also wanted to stop by her new place and
sign the lease. I'm dazed. Holding up the phone to my ear, half-asleep
and half-dead. I wander out of bed and into the shower. Ugh! I really
need more sleep.
I do have a message on my answering machine. It was from Pam. It was from earlier today… about 11am. She had
installed Roller Coaster Tycoon. It would appear her Ferris wheel had
broken down and the maintenance person wasn't getting there quickly enough.
She had managed to build a burger joint, but apparently she built it in a
bad location and the people were hungry and couldn't find it. Oh, and it
rained, which she couldn't do anything about.
Like I said before, there's a game for everyone, it's simply a matter of
finding it.
I picked her up at her place. We only stayed there for a few minutes since we had so a full day. We did however, put a few bags in my car so we could drop the off at her new apartment. Dishes, crystal, fragile stuff, you get the picture.
We went to the Toyota dealer where she had made the deal, ironically it was the same place where she had dropped off her old lease. She would've extended the lease, but apparently there's some quirkiness when renewing the lease across states. It's never easy is it? It must've been about 3pm now. We quietly wondered to ourselves how long it would take to do the paperwork since we still had to go to her new apartment complex.
She filled out all the paperwork, and they went to the back to start to crunch the numbers. It's been twenty minutes so far. Then the salesman comes back with a troubled look on his face… it would seem they miscalculated. And they were off about fifty dollars per month. After chatting with them for a few more minutes, we came to the realization that they were not going to come even close to the original price. We left.
The drive across the lake was uneventful, save for the assorted collection of SUV's that seemed to have this one obsession to drive in front of me. Arggh!
The office at the new apartment complex closed at 6pm; we arrived around 5pm. We spoke to yet another person in the management office, we have been there probably about half a dozen times, and he have seen at least five different people working there. Is there something about the apartment management business that we should know about? Does it have a high turnover ratio?
Pam wanted to take one last look at the apartment. Okay, technically she's also taking a first look at the place, since this apartment wasn't vacant when she first put down her deposit. They had shown her many units with similar floor plans, but not precisely this one. She went through the place and everything seemed to be okay. We went back to the office so she could finish up the paperwork. I went to the lounge, and had a complimentary Dr. Pepper, which they had in their fridge. I also wanted to check the baseball scores. They had a projection television set, which was very nice. I came to find that the remote control for the television needed new batteries, which was not so nice. I'm not against the idea of tuning a TV by hand, but this is one of those sets that have about forty different functions and four buttons on the actual television to control them. [Sigh!] I'll get the scores later.
She got about half a dozen keys, a garage door opener, and a stack of papers. There's nothing like signing your life away, but she would be significantly closer to me. I certainly wasn't going to complain about that. We moved some of the things that we had brought with us… mostly dishes since they're such a hassle to pack in conventional boxes.
Since neither of us had lunch, she had a bagel and I had breakfast… before I went to sleep. We were both pretty hungry. She said she would treat me for dinner for all the running around. What a sweetheart! We roamed a couple of blocks from her place to this one Italian place. I suppose that we should've looked at the menu before we sat down.
We got a table right by the window. Strangely enough, the table was set up so that you had to turn your back to the room; it was a corner table pushed flush against the corner. I've never liked turning my back to the room, I've been fending off about half a dozen stalkers and I really needed to watch my back…
Okay, I didn't figure you would fall for that one. I like observing people, and you can't do that very well if your back is against the wall. I also don't like people sneaking up on me, although this is simply remnants from my time spent in the mob. As for observing people, it didn't really matter, since the place was empty. [Uhmm… Oh-oh]
Pam has an aversion to empty (or near-empty) restaurants. Apparently, she gets the impression that if a restaurant is not populated, it implies that the food is bad. I don't necessarily agree with that, logic dictates that a restaurant is empty at some point, and if everyone used this metric, no restaurant would ever get business. However, I didn't find anything all that appealing in the menu, so we did end up leaving.
We discussed where we wanted to eat. She came up with her usual metric… "somewhere I can get a lemon drop" We just started driving down the street. We eventually decided on Tony Romas which does make a good lemon drop. I tried to park there, but there were too many idiots double parked in their lot. I ended up parking a about half a block away.
We got a couple of drinks soon after we sat down. I just had a coke; she got a lemon drop. We ordered appetizers first, and waited a few minutes to order dinner. There's a bit of a strange phenomenon whenever we here, where we never get our appetizers on time. For some reason known only to the diety of food service (and Tony Romas, of course), they always forget our appetizers and end up bringing them during dinner. So we waited until we got our appetizers this time.
Otherwise, our dinner was good. I tried a new side dish, some baked potato concoction with bacon. It was pretty good. The ribs were good too. I think they boil their ribs a little to get them to fall off the bone easily, which is a good way to keep them tender, I suppose. Ribs is one of the dishes which I have shunned from cooking. Takes too long and it's too messy. You can't microwave ribs.
During dinner, I thought about maybe catching a movie, so I checked out the times on my Pocket PC. Isn't technology wonderful? As it turns out, Autumn in New York is playing at the Galleria, the theater just down the streets and in about thirty minutes. The timing was perfect. So we went to a movie.
We did get to the movie just in time, they were playing the previews. We just had dinner, we had no immediate need for popcorn or soda. We chose to sit towards the back of the theater. After a little fidgeting, we found out that we could move the armrests; they tilt up between the chair backs, much the way they do in airplane seats. We took advantage of this and sat a bit closer.
As for the movie, the premise of Winona Ryder and Richard Gere as a couple is a bit disturbing. Not simply because the vastly different characters, but also because his character dated her character's mother. Although they did establish early on that she was not, in fact, his daughter, the whole thing had this twinge of incest flavor to the whole thing.
Hollywood does not disappoint in that they came up with an ending that was both tragic and happy. I'll have to admit that I was tear stricken for parts of it. Gere's character goes through changes during the film and this is really what the film centers around. I suppose that maybe I would've found it a bit refreshing if, for once, they portray characters the way most people would behave. Couple get together; couple breaks up in bad terms; they both die lonely, alone, and bitter. No growth. No relevations.
I suppose that wouldn't make for good entertainment. Although that probably depends on the way you happen to package it. For instance, in the movie, Forrest Gump there is no real plot. There is no conflict, not really. There is no real substance to this film, still it is quite popular. There's no clear beginning; we don't start at his birth. There's also no clear end. The movie is basically taking a few chapters in someone's life and reading them. I mean, think about it… what really happened during the movie?
Then again, I'm just writing about my days now, and you seem to be entertained, so who can say?
Oh, and Pam did not fall asleep through this one. I was fairly impressed.
August 19, 2000