Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Things I overheard #13

The following overheard conversation requires no introduction or conclusion. I think it speaks for itself.

Customer: "These shoes are great. I'll take this pair."

Customer's daughter: "Mom, can you buy me these shoes?"

Customer: "No. I've already bought you shoes."

Customer's daughter: "You suck!"

Customer: "Only your daddy."

Me: ......................

In which I borrow a heading style from a fellow blogger

Because I could not come up with a sufficiently pithy title for this particular post, I decided to take a page from my blogging buddy over at Badass Geek. So thank you, my good man.

The other day I actually locked myself out of the house.

I grabbed my things and made my way out to the car. But wait... where were my keys? Oh shit, I thought to myself. I checked my pockets several times as though the fifth pocket pat would reveal that familiar metallic jingling. But no. I had indeed left my keys inside the house.

As my luck would have it, this was also the one time I closed all the windows before exiting the house. I could not even ask the neighbors to let me go through their backyards so that i could climb in through a window. I called my work and let them know that I was standing on my driveway trying to figure out a way to get to my keys.

There I stood. Cursing the heavens and any name I could think of.

"Shit. Crap. Fuck. Damn. Bitch. Cock. Ass."

I was like a sailor with Tourette's.

The only people with keys where my parents, but they were merrily on their way to a 2-week vacation in Cancun. Figures. "Who else? Who else? " I kept repeating to myself. I vaguely remembered that an aunt and uncle had an extra key.

I called up my uncle. "No. Sorry. Don't have a copy of the key. Try your aunt."

"I'm sorry, honey. I don't have one either. I lent it to your uncle Pepe for some reason and never got it back."

There was no way in hell that I was going to call him. I would either pay an arm and a leg for a locksmith or try to break a window before I would ever call him. Why, you ask? The story surrounding this particular uncle is long and drama-filled.

Let me put it like this.... This uncle of mine and his venomous snake of a wife are the most greedy, egotistical, vindictive people I know. Their daughter is even worse. The girl is most likely to become a sociopath. I despise them. I would never ask them for the slightest bit of help because they would never let me live it down. They would have me be in their debt for the rest of my life. You are probably thinking that I am exaggerating, but I most certainly am not.

Like I said, calling that uncle was not an option.

Eventually it came to me. My neighbor. I think she was given a key in case of emergencies. Luckily, she was home. And she was given a key for emergencies. Turns out that she would be out golfing, but was waiting for a new toilet to arrive. Thank god for that toilet. I used her spare key to retrieve mine and even made it to work on time. Barely, but I made it.

So really this post should be titled thusly (and I'm still borrowing from Badass Geek on this one):

In which a toilet comes to my rescue.

Cheers,

- R

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Call me Lemming

I've succumbed to peer pressure. I just got myself a Blackberry.

It didn't really hit me until I was driving home. My god, what have I just done? I thought to myself. I can no longer judge others when I am now part of the crowd.

But let me explain. I switched to the crackberry out of need rather than desire. My life has been consumed by this job of mine. All I do is work, so I no longer have the time to just sit down at my computer. Moreover, this lack of time has resulted in my missing out on emails from editors. If I want to be a successful freelance journalist, then I need to be constantly connected.

That being said, I concluded that I needed to switch to a smart phone.

Let's just hope this is not the first step on the road to degradation. Pray that you won't find me wearing two polo shirts with the collars popped and sipping on iced tea while texting away on my Blackberry during dinner.

Cheers,

- R