4.8.00 - 00:24:00
Yow. April 8th already. I can't believe a week has gone by and I haven't been here once. The world of Pinch has been a tremendously busy place as of late.
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Monday evening was our second discussion group. I've found I enjoy having people over very much. Not once did I feel compelled to shout obscenities for no earthly reason, and I haven't yet made a terrible social blunder. At least no one's mentioned that I have. Ignorance is bliss (and in my case, peace of mind).
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Tuesday evening I worked until midnight because our PM never got us our intern. I spent six mind-numbing hours in front of Access punching in data. And I don't mean mind-numbing in the good, Demerol sort of sense. I mean it in the I'm going go insane soon sense. I did this on Sunday too, but only for four mind-numbing hours. Lord, it's mind-numbing just to read about it, eh?
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Wednesday evening was spent recouping from data entry overload. The thought of being in close proximity to a computer was abhorrent and I read (and drank beer) most of the night. I'm fairly convinced we are on the edge of a new breed of Generation-X British writers. Alex Garland (don't see the Dicaprio movie--read his effing books), Richard Mason (not so good, but has potential in a Graham Greenish sense), Helen Fielding (hilarious), Nick Hornby (read it, then see the movie), Dave Eggers (okay, not British), and others. I used to wonder what it must have been like at the end of WWI when all this terrific poetry was coming out of Britain and if anyone realized at the time something special was happening. I'm no literary expert, but I sense something going on. Remember, if you're studying these folks and the genre in 50 years, you heard it here first.
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Got home late on Thursday, but just in time for ER with Hula Pet. While I can't stand this show, I love watching it with him. The stuffed monkey does the ER dance during the opening credits (usually he has a seizure, does a karate chop or humps something at the crucial point during the musical denouement) and we mock the writing relentlessly. Sometimes we get a pizza and eat it in bed, but always regret it when they do a bloody emergency-type procedure. Dorky? Yes. Banal? Yes? Too much information for you? Yes. Great fun? Absofuckinlutley.
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Friday we went with some friends to a moronic New Orleans' style restaurant. It's very cliché and has a lot of "mamou", "voodoo", "ya ya", and "fais do do" listed after the entries on the menu, which is generally a good indication that the food sucks. But it's crawfish season and according to Hula, it's the only place to get decent crawfish outside the deep south. Personally, I happen to like this particular restaurant because the food is actually pretty good . Plus, as most theme restaurants go, they have the requisite gift shop, but this one's stocked with things I can't find here. Café Du Monde Chicory coffee AND Community Coffee (most only carry Café Du Monde), Hot Nuts, Zapp's potato chips (Cajun Crawtator style), a wide variety of Tony Chachere's seasonings, not to mention authentic genuine voodoo dolls and a piles of other silly trinkets. (This is the place prizes for my contest were purchased for all you lucky winners! There's still time to enter! Don't Delay! Act now! Limited Quantities!)
I'd say the worst thing about this place (aside from its cheekiness) is its name. I hate telling people where I'm going simply because I'm too embarrassed to say it. Kind of like when I was a kid and the Good Humor truck would come by. I always wanted that Popsicle that came in three colors and looked like a rocket ship, but the evil dispenser of ice creamy treats was never in an actual good humor and NEVER let me get away with just pointing and saying, "I want that one." I was daily forced and subsequently humiliated to say I wanted the "Jet Star 2000". Similarly, I'm humiliated today by saying we went to "Crawdaddy Bayou". Yeeesh.
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Spent Saturday (now that it's actually Sunday I can say that) doing a little shopping for my mother's birthday (but ended up mostly buying presents for me), potting some geraniums, reading a little, napping for most of the afternoon and visiting my favorite mother in law. I really love her. She's the only person who can make this time in my life seem less frightening. (The time in my life where I don't go out every Saturday night and do something reckless or get loaded, but rather spend it enjoying dinner, playing monopoly and gorging on pie. A few years ago, this would have sounded atrocious to me, but she makes it something to look forward to. Whoever made up that stuff about evil mother in laws didn't know mine. And no, she doesn't read this, and I don't "have" to say it.)
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So that's it. That's the week in Pinch. It had its ups and downs, its highs and lows, beer was drunk, pie and crawfish were consumed, books were read, TV was watched, comparisons between Euripides and Dallas were made, hot nuts were purchased. Nothing dramatic or exciting happened, I didn't win a million dollars, I received no honors or recognition (only one reader noticed I was gone), I didn't cure AIDS, I had no effect on foreign affairs, and Dave Letterman didn't call me up once to tell me he couldn't live without me, but right now I'm thinking, so what.
SO WHAT!
I liked this week. I liked it a lot.
