Two Truths and a Lie

Isn't it odd when you go by one of your favorite restaurants at dinner time and it's closed? It's a Tuesday evening and all signs point to some Mexican food being a good option after a long, obnoxious day at work. You hop into your car and go slightly out of the way on your drive home to order some take-out.

The out of the way part is going to be worth it for the food.

Then you get there and see that the doors are shut, the mail is in the slot, and the lights are all turned off. All of the lights except the stupid multi-colored christmas lights that still adorn the edge of the roof.

It's inappropriate that the lights are still up and that the restaurant is closed.

This time you don't get out of your car because you think that you can see enough through the tinted windows to feel assured that the place really is closed. But why would it be closed? It's a Tuesday! Is it because they ave finally gone out of business? The last time you were there there were quite a few patrons happily eating. Did the health department close them down? Eek! You sure hope not as you turn your car around to take off. Did they get taken away like the end of times and you were left? Too many cars still remaining for that to be the answer, you think.

Why then is the placed closed on a Tuesday?

You will go back to try again on Thursday to see if any of the above is the reason the doors were closed and seemingly locked.

Today I woke up early enough to be able to go on a short run before getting gussied up for church. Everything would have been alright, but I ran slower than I expected, so I was in a huge rush as I prepared for church.

After speeding down the highway, I made it to church.

5 minutes late.

It wasn't too much of a problem because everyone was still standing and the music was still playing. I think that I missed one or two songs, but I didn't miss anything with the sermon. Also, I wasn't a nuisance. However, there were a lot of people looking at me as I passed down the aisle. I had to go to the front because most of the seats were taken. It seemed like everyone was looking.

No problem though, because I was looking pretty nice. I was calmed down after the drive. Much to my chagrin, I noticed when I was leaving the church that I wasn't looking as nice as I had thought. The shirt wasn't tucked in very well and I forgot a belt. Guys cannot get away with the no belt thing like girls can.

Sigh.

Ok, I haven't done one of these for awhile because I'm not getting many comments. I heard though that people are often just not wanting to make a guess on the comments, but they are still interested in knowing whether it is true or not.

The post about the office girl Dawn who is like the person from The Office was not exactly true.

At my office the paralegals and attorneys have little direct contact. The way that immigration law works might be different than other areas because they are allowed to do quite a bit of work. They handle a lot of the client relations while the attorneys prepare stuff for the courts. The only way we typically communicate is by saying hi when we walk by them and leaving messages in the case history for them.

Therefore, Dawn from work doesn't ever come by with any sort of flirty intentions. She smiles and says hi when I walk by her cubicle and then has left me a couple messages in a case history.

Also, unlike Tim in The Office, I don't care that there isn't much interaction.

Yesterday I made my cat go into her little carrier, and packed her into my truck to take her to the vet. It's been almost one year since I have owned her, so I figured it was time for the yearly shots.

When we got to the vet she started to shake in her crate. She heard all the puppies barking and whimpering and birds chirping and started to get scared. They took us into the waiting room, so I let her out of the crate. Of course, like any good cat she started to slink around to check things out. She found a little cabinet that had an opening on the top of it. She tried to climb through the hole and the cabinet doors came opening up. She fell down into it then! It would have been funny if she had not been so scared in the room. She wouldn't even eat a treat.

They came and took her temperature and the vet came in. The vet said it was too high. She wanted to keep Sophia for the day so that they could see if she calmed down the temp might go down. Otherwise she might be sick.

I told them she couldn't stay because I had to work and then go out for dinner right after work. They said that I could bring her today, which I did. They just called me to say that her temp was at 101 point something, and this is just the temperature that she needs.

Sophia is ok! They are going to just give her some shots and then I will go and get her in a couple hours.

Drink a few green beers for me!

Somehow I ended up winning the playwriting competition. I don't get a shiny metal, a new trophy, a nice pen, or even a gift certificate. However, I get to go back home with my pride.

I'm back at home for a few days at the start of my spring break to visit family a little, see a couple friends, and write. Apparently there is an annual playwright invitational. I’m not sure how it will all be judged in the end, but I think they give you a burger king crown or something if you are the best.

It's fun.

They invite a number of playwrights until they have five who agree to do this. They all convene on this mid-sized city and are given spaces to write, rehearse, and produce a play over the weekend.

There is a pool of actors (most of the college students and a few professional) who are there to help along with directors, stage managers, and other technical support artists.

On Friday night the playwrights are able to get the packet that has a sheet of paper saying about 30 things that have to be in the play. This one has things like "a white picket fence" and "a one legged chicken." From these things each playwright can craft whatever it is that they want. Most of the playwrights spend the first night writing.

I slept. Actually, I slept in the city of my law school and didn't wake up until 9am when I drove back home. That means that I got here in the mid-afternoon when most of the playwrights were putting final touches on their plays.

Oh well.

I spent about 6 hours today writing until I came up with about 90 pages of a very workable script. I just finished selecting my cast and found a director who I think understands how odd this play is and is willing to work with me on it. It's strange indeed.

I've got a pretty cool space to work on this. Right now there are three actors who are busy memorizing lines. They have to have all of it ready by Monday afternoon. Tomorrow I'll work a lot with the director on blocking, fixing problems in the script, and trying to help coach the actors in motivations, histories, etc of the characters.

There is one playwright who is of decent repute doing it this year. The other three are unknown to me. I shouldn't be too worried about being harsh as a female playwright (who I don't know) mentioned to me that she had seen something I wrote and thought it came from the mind of an idiot savant.

Personally I prefer dolt.

Does everyone else out there go to the same restaurants and fast food places to eat each week? I've found about five or six places that I really like, and I often go to one or two of those more than the others.

With work and school it makes it really difficult for me to have enough time to cook my own food. Plus I'm not a good cook, so I often find food to eat at restaurants that I like. This means that I will stop by places that are convenient after work. Like I said, this usually comes down to two or three places.

I'm also a bit of a creature of habit, so I've fallen into various schedules of where I go on different days. Not through any sort of planning, but just because I don't like to go to the same place twice in a row. The problem is that this habit has allowed employees at the restaurants to catch onto my game.

My selection of food is usually the same. I like to go to Chipotle and get a bol or the chicken crispy tacos with the same choices of toppings. I get hot salsa, cheese, and lettuce. No sour cream or guacamole for me, thanks.

If I go to Potbelly Sandwiches then I will usually get a turkey and swiss sandwich. This will be with mustard and lettuce. However, I can throw them off sometimes by ordering it with some hot peppers. The other thing that really gets them is the rare meatball sandwich that I will order in which I top it with hot peppers and italian seasoning.

Sometimes I stop at a Mexican food resturant and order cheese enchiladas. Sometimes I stop at Chick-fi-la and get a southwest chicken salad.

Well, today my game came crashing down when the guy at Potbelly asked me something about if I order the same thing each time. Oh, and at Chipotle the manager girl knows my name.

It came to my attention that I am basically the Tim of my workplace.
I go in there and mind my own business at my desk only to be bothered
by pesky coworkers.  I will say something that is vaguely aggressive
but just underhand enough to make me laugh to myself.

This would be enough to make things alright but it only gets worse.
There is a Dawn.  Specifically, there is a girl who is a blonde
girl who sort of looks like a cuter Dawn.  At some point I developed a
bit of a crush on her, which then resulted in my asking around about
her.

I found out that she's living with her boyfriend.  However, I still
talk to her and she comes around sometimes with little flirty
intentions.

Yes, I plan on breaking up Dawn and the boy just like Tim.  My office
does have a Christmas party every year.

I ran in a 10K this morning. It was a great morning for a race here. The weather was around 55 to 60 degrees for the run, the sky was clear, and the humidity wasn't bad at all. That drew a pretty large group of runners out. This run is a through a particularly hilly area, which is one of the ways I excel when I run. Going up and down hills doesn't wind me too bad and they keep me from getting bored.

This race had a 25 to 29 age category that I ran in. I started somewhere in the middle of the pack and had to do all the jossling to get around some of the more casual runners. This run lets you have a device that won't start your individual time until you pass the start line, which is very cool. It was probably 3 or 4 minutes after the gun that I finally made it to the starting line, so it would have adversely affected me otherwise.

All in all, I came in 4th for my age group with a time of 43:39.0 which ends up as a pace of 7:02. The winner in my age group finished with a time of 37:13 and the overall winner had a time of 36:01 (which is less than a six minute mile pace).

What this tells me is that good racing whether has positives and negatives. I got my ass handed to me by a couple of runners.

About a month ago the campus doctor diagnosed me with having a hernia. In fact, he said that it was on that should be treated with surgery. I went ahead and got an apointment with the doctor who would be able to do my surgery.

Today was the day that I went in to talk to the doctor. I was actually supposed to go yesterday. I called a little before to verify that I actually had the appointment. They told me the doctor was in the middle of an emergency surgery and wouldn't be able to meet with me. They did a good job about getting me set up with an appointment today. At least I didn't have to go in to the office and wait, and wait, and wait.

After all this anticipation the doctor came in and did the little turn your head and cough test. It's the test that I hate. It's actually the test that everyone should hate. Cough, cough. Then he said to cough some more. Cough, cough. MORE. Cough, cough. MORE! More!!! Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough.

That was all. He told me to sit down and gave me the good news. You don't have a hernia but you have a little impusle. What is an impulse? I am not sure. No hernia is definitely good news.

The bad news was that he wanted to talk to me awhile about proper hernia prevention. Everything from wearing whitey tighteys to showing me the mesh. Then he showed me a hernia guard that I could buy at any 24-hour drug store. You would think this would be the end of the consult, but no. He then said that they used to do it differently on the ranch. He then showed me some weird leather contraption that was like a homemade resolution to hernias.

It was time to get out of there.

Today I had to run by the mall to get my ring size measured. I felt a little bad going into a jewelry store to have my finger measured without any intention of buying a ring, but I think the girl working there looked pretty bored.

After getting all of that done, I decided to go shopping. Actually, I needed to go shopping because my favorite pair of jeans just developed a couple little holes. I can't believe it but it's true. Don't you hate it when you lose your favorite pair of jeans?

I walked around in the Banana Republic, but I decided that spending 70 dollars on a pair of jeans was a little over doing it. Maybe not. Maybe they would be great jeans that would make my legs all the happier, but I decided to skip it.

Instead I walked to the lower quality place and stopped by the Gap. Normally I shop at Old Navy or even Target (yeah, the sweater type thing that I bought there was messed up within a year) or the sale rack at Banana Republic, but I decided that I should step up to the regular priced rack at The Gap. I bought a pair of jeans there for about 40 bucks. That's about 10 to 15 dollars more than Old Navy. It's about 15 to 20 dollars less than at Banana Republic.

Does anybody know if there is any real difference in quality of look? I believe that these jeans look better fitting than my others but it might be psychological. Anyhow that is about it besides the weird looking mannequins. They pinned the shirts in the back so that they were pulled really tight. It was odd.