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As I was getting out of my car to go into Barnes & Noble this past Saturday night, I gathered up some bits and pieces of paper that had accumulated in the car so I could throw them out in the trash can on the way into the store. When I had the van, I had ample room for a trash can, but with the car I was constantly having to shuffle it so people could sit in the backseat, so I took it out. I still keep the car fairly tidy, but sometimes there’s a straw wrapper or a newspaper section or something and it needs to be dealt with.

There were two girls walking through the parking lot as I made my way to the trashcan, and one of them called out, “You dropped it,” and pointed behind me. I don’t like to litter (and think that people who do it should have to work on a chain gang for a month), so I turned to look for whatever it was I had dropped. I couldn’t see anything, so I asked what I had dropped. “Your smile!” she replied.

I must have been in a receptive mood for whatever reason because I actually did smile at that point. I even said “Thanks for the reminder!” threw away my trash, and went in to get a hot chocolate. I mused over the exchange as I sipped my drink and browsed the store. I’m not a big fan of being talked to by strangers, but I had to admit it was a good reminder that people get an immediate impression of us based on what they see. I imagine that most people think I’m grouchy when they first see me since I don’t usually think to try to look pleasant. If I’m being introduced to someone I think I’m pretty good at being pleasant and agreeable, but my walking-around face defaults to “leave me alone” I’m pretty sure. I don’t know this for a fact since I don’t see myself walking around, but I’m guessing that’s how it is.

By the time I’d bought a book and a DVD, I was actually considering the experience a positive one and hoping I’d remember to smile more in public.

I headed back out to my car when I noticed the girl was still out there, wandering the sidewalk. When she saw me, she started to say something – most likely her “smile” line again – then she must have remembered me because she stopped and said, “Oh… never mind.” Then she took a step away, but then turned around and came back. “Hey…”

She engaged me in conversation as I headed to my car – “You seem nice, are you nice?”

“No, I’m super-creepy.”

She took a mock-step away, “Uh… see ya! Nah, just kidding. Are you this nice all the time.”

“I try to be.”

“Well, then, you want to help me?”

I, in my naiveté, had no idea what was going on. “Uh, with what?”

At that point she went into a sort of spiel that became more and more recognizable as she went on. “I’d like to send you postcard from [some country] when I win this trip I’m working towards because you were so nice. Let me get your name and address.”

“I’m not so much about giving my full name and address out to strangers in parking lots.”

“Oh, me neither. So how about helping me?“ She takes out a laminated card. “Do you read magazines?”

Ugh. It’s the old “I’m selling magazines to win a contest” bit. This one’s got a twist to it, though. See, normally I can find a magazine that I could buy to help someone out, but when I said I couldn’t this time (I really couldn’t), she said, “Oh, but see, if there’s nothing you want personally, the ones in pink you could buy and have sent to a children’s hospital.”

Wow. That’s really laying it on thick. Now if I don’t buy something, I’ve not only betrayed this pseudo-friendship she’s whipped up but I’m also letting down scores of sick children.

“I don’t have checks or cash on me.”

“There’s an ATM across the parking lot, and I’ll not only pay the fee, I’ll give you a piggyback ride over to it.”

Now who’s the super-creepy one?

“Uh… I don’t –“

At that point, my cell phone rang. I pulled the phone out of my pocket, saw that it was Brian, said “Hello? Really? Hang on…” Then, to her, “I’m sorry, I really need to take this.”

Utter contempt. The façade was gone. She ripped out the order sheet where she had ever-so-hopefully written my first name and scribbled it out. She turned and left, muttering curses at me, I’m sure. Her six-minute investment in me had gone belly-up – I should have warned her: only long-term investors need apply. There are too many highs and lows here to get your money’s worth in the short term.

As I drove off and tried to explain the situation to a very confused Brian, it struck me that she’d ruined everything. Her reminder to me to smile was still valid, but now it had the taint of salesmanship on it and I felt tricked. Even now as I write this that makes me want to scowl in rebellion.

Thanks a lot, random parking lot girl. 8 comments

When I was younger, it struck me that I might like to be a writer. I tried my hand at writing some poems, some songs, and some short stories. It is the conceit of the young that pouring oneself out on paper in paper means something, and I signed on to the program wholeheartedly. There was angst, there was joy, there was pain, there was more angst – pretty much the whole gamut of teenage emotion.

The older I got, the more I felt silly putting emotions rawly on paper. I still had the emotions, but it never felt like they got transferred to the page well enough. Somewhere along the line, I just stopped. Stopped writing, that is. My brain still had delusions of powering a writer and would occasionally still throw ideas at me – snippets of poetry, a line of a song, characters for a story. Once my brain even made me dream a whole movie plot while I was sleeping. I woke myself up and wrote it down and still have it somewhere, but that’s probably all the farther it will ever go.

Still… I just couldn’t get past that what I would write wouldn’t ever come out anything like what I imagined it should come out like. If I couldn’t do it right, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t know how to work at it, and there was no guarantee that I’d work at it even if I knew how to – I’m notoriously resistant to working on things, especially if it’s something to better myself. I couldn’t seem to give up on it completely, though. I’d still mull the plots and snippets over in my mind, I just wouldn’t put anything in writing.

One of the things I always heard that writers should do is carry a notepad around with them to write down ideas as they would strike. Writers, painters, poets, comedians, any creative sort – it was a practice they all held to. I’d tried it a time or two, but the notepads that were the right size all were spiral-bound, and they didn’t fit in a pocket very well. They’d constantly get caught on threads in the pocket and even tear holes at times. I gave up quickly any time I tried.

A while back I noticed these very nice notebooks at Barnes & Noble that were perfectly sized and not spiral bound. They were like mini-books, bound on the side with a heavier outer cover. They were called “Moleskine” and the packaging proclaimed they had a history. The website says

“Moleskine is the legendary notebook that the European artists and intellectuals who made twentieth-century culture used: from Henri Matisse to the turn-of-the-century Parisian “avant-garde, from Louis Férdinand Céline to Ernest Hemingway.”

Quite the pedigree.

I didn’t buy one right away. They cost enough to make it a bit more than an impulse purchase, and I wasn’t convinced that a better notepad would make a difference. After a couple of weeks, though, I decided to get one. Just as it proclaimed, it’s the perfect size. It doesn’t have a place for a writing utensil and I still don’t have enough pockets to comfortably carry it around, but it’s a first step. It’s a long journey from here to The Old Man and the Sea, but only time will tell.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, right? 4 comments

I was talking to the Media Specialist at work earlier today and the topic of the new teachers came up. Our school got about ten new teachers over the summer, some of whom were hired less than a week before the semester started. (That completely boggles my mind, by the way. I’ve been around a lot of teachers and I know how much work it is to prepare for class. I can’t imagine getting a new teaching job with so little preparation time.)

Many of the English teachers have a class that they take to the Media Center for research projects. They’ll do some projects to get the students familiar with the various resources in the Media Center so they are better prepared for researching for papers in the coming year.

The Media Specialist (who is a fantastic person, by the way) told me she was particularly impressed with one of the new English teachers because of something she said and did during her class’s foray into the Media Center this morning. Things weren’t going as planned and she said, “This isn’t working. I need to find a different way.” And she proceeded to do so, and it had better results.

“This isn’t working. I need to find a different way.” So simple. So brilliantly simple, yet so difficult for so many to grasp. So often we want to do our plan because we planned it and maybe having to change our plan means we made a mistake in our planning, and we don’t ever like to admit that. This new teacher, though, fresh out of college, wasn’t shackled by years of “This is how we do it” or “No point in worrying about it because not everyone’s going to get it anyway.” She tried something, it didn’t work, so she tried something else. I hope she keeps that attitude throughout her whole teaching career. If she does, her students will remember her long after they’ve graduated from her classes.

One of my favorite sayings of all time (even though it's trendy) says:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I see this so often with computer users. If a job sent to the printer doesn’t print, the most common response is to send the job again. And again. And again. I’ve had to clear out 20 print jobs of the same document because the printer wouldn’t print it the first time. Usually there is some sort of error message on the printer itself when something like that happens, too. We do what we know, though. “Maybe I didn’t hit the print button right.” “Maybe the print job got lost on its way to the printer.” We know that hitting the print button is what causes things to be printed, so we’ll try that again. We all have things we do like that, I’m just using computer users because it’s what I have the most experience with… and because I’m on the “I know better” side of that particular fence. I could just as easily talk about car-related things, or any mechanical thing, really, as I’m just as bad an offender in those areas. Car won’t start? Try turning the key again. Yeah, that’s me in a nutshell.

I’m a big one for doing things the same way every time, anyway, so this isn’t too big a stretch for me. Routine is comforting, and I like to feel secure. I always put my keys in the same exact place every night, I take the same route to work every day, the cats get fed at both 6:30s, and my DVD collection is alphabetized. It’s what I know, it’s what I like. Unfortunately, that puts my mind in a box when I’m confronted with new puzzles and problems. I find it difficult to come up with new ways to approach a problem, so if my standard plan of attack doesn’t work, I’m stymied. I often will become actually immobile, staring at the ground, tapping my fingers against my thumb, frozen in confusion. It’s usually coupled with a sense of helplessness which can lead to frustration. Suffice to say, if there’s some sort of emergency, I’m probably not your go-to guy, I am sad to admit. That doesn’t fit well with my desire to be helpful.

There’s this book named Who Moved My Cheese? that everybody says is so fantastic and has changed countless lives. I’d had it suggested to me on more than one occasion because of my preference for routine. All those people will be happy to know that I finally read it this summer. There are points in the computer upgrading process where you have to wait for the computer to be ready for more input, and these points are ideal times for doing a crossword or reading bits of books. It was during one of these upgrades that I had finished the crossword and I noticed the book on the teacher’s shelf. It was a quick read as it’s written on, oh, I’d say a fifth grade level. Sure, its very transparent points were good and all that, but the style of writing was head-shakingly simple and, really, I didn’t gain any new information. If the cheese is gone, you go find more cheese. Well, duh. It’s specifically written for businesses and workers, but there are endless testimonials of how people have used it in their daily lives and it revolutionized their thinking and yadda yadda yadda. Not me. Sorry, people who suggested the book to me. I think I was too bugged by its silly setup and the class reunion frame story to get past it.

But “This isn’t working. I need to find a different way.”? That gets right to it, and without making up some sort of world where mice and miniature people-creatures both eat off the same pile of cheese found in a hallway.

I’m notoriously resistant to self-help – it’s almost an immunity – so I wonder if this will help any. Besides, I already know that I need to try new things. Where I get stuck is not knowing a new thing to try.

Is there a book or a teacher saying for that? 4 comments

Not ten minutes ago I ran upstairs. With scissors. 5 comments

I’m not a Sports Guy. Sure, there’s some evidence to the contrary, like my having lettered in 3 ½ sports in high school and my occasional watching of a football game on TV, but I’m not anywhere near Sports Guy territory. I do not plan weekends around watching games, I’m not crushed when my team loses, and it ticks me off when Smallville gets preempted for baseball. I have been to an NBA game (a Chicago Bulls game, and Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman were playing, so that was cool) and an AHL game (that’s hockey, and it was a Milwaukee Admirals game) and that’s pretty much it.

With all of that said, I’m pretty excited about the weekend of September 17.

Some of you know that I’ve been a Dallas Cowboys fan since I was a kid. It’d be hard to pin down why I became one, but once you’ve got a team, that’s it. That’s your team. It’s okay to add other subordinate teams, but your team is your team. I went through a brief phase in high school when I liked the Minnesota Vikings, but when they played the Cowboys I was all about the Cowboys. Even now I’d consider myself a fair weather Indianapolis Colts fan – they’re in the state and they happen to be pretty good, so it works out. Plus, they’re in the AFC conference of the NFL (the Cowboys are in the NFC) so it’s nice to have a team in each conference.

On September 17 the Cowboys play the Washington Redskins at Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas. I have always wanted to see the Cowboys play in Texas Stadium where such greats as Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Troy Aikman, and Emmitt Smith have played and where Tom Landry coached for so long. My chances are fast slipping away because they’re planning to build a new stadium. Sure it doesn’t open until 2009, but that’s closer than it sounds. I’ve heard from first-hand accounts that Texas Stadium is kind of a dump (which might be expected of a 30+-year-old stadium), but I’ve always wanted to go. On September 17 I’m finally going to do it.

My friend Brian and I have talked about meeting up at a Cowboys-Redskins game for the last couple of years, but it hasn’t worked out. This year the game fell on a decent weekend and we decided to make it happen. Game and plane tickets have been purchased and we are go for launch! He and his wife are both going and we’re hoping to meet Mike (and Meags if she’s in country by then!) and maybe some other folk. It should be a ton of fun and we’re looking forward to it.

So watch the game on NBC that night and you might catch sight of me – I’ll be the shirtless body-painted dude with the blue and silver afro wig shouting “WOOOOOOOOO!!!!” on camera for every commercial break. I figure if I’m going to be a Sports Guy for a day, I’m going to go all out. 6 comments

I’m a movie buff. I’m not a movie elitist, though I am a DVD-elitist (or, a “DVDlitist,” if you prefer). I like all sorts of movies and all sorts of genres, and by “like” I mean I am on some sort of movie Prozac – I don’t have many highs or lows. There aren’t many movies I hate and there aren’t many movies I love. As of right now I’ve rated 2,221 movies on NetFlix, and discounting the “Not Interested” ratings, there are less than a hundred, I’d guess, that vary from the 3-star, middle-of-the-road rating of “I liked it.” Very, very few venture into “I loved it” or “I hated it” territory. The 2- and 4-star ratings get a fair smattering, but 3 wins buy a landslide.

This movie buffness is both a blessing and a curse. It lets me into the elitist crowd when I like the latest indie darling, but it also gets me thrown out forcefully from that same club when I like the latest popcorn flick. I’d give specific examples, but I’m about to embarrass myself anyway, so why not just wait for it?

Since today was Tuesday, today was a Best Buy Day. My friend Ryan and I used to hit Best Buy every week, but the summer schedule has kept us from that for a while. He needed to go today, though, because The Simpsons Season 8 came out. I knew there was nothing released today that I needed, but decided to go anyway. I had some Reward Zone coupons and there’s usually something I can get.

In fact, by the time I got there, I’d pretty much decided to get the Bruce Lee Ultimate Collection I’d had my eye on for a while. It’s got every Bruce Lee movie he ever made except Enter the Dragon, and I already had that one, of course. The set was a little more than I wanted to spend on something like that, but the coupons made it reasonable. So when we got there, we headed to the DVD section and picked up our sets. Then, as is our habit, we wandered around the store for a bit. We’d normally play some Guitar Hero, but Purdue University is almost back in session so the whole town’s crawling with college students, and some of them had infested the PlayStation demo station.

While wandering, I noticed that Steel Magnolias was on sale for $6 this week and half-jokingly said something about getting it. Ryan said something derogatory and we passed by. The more we wandered, though, the more I decided to get it. I’d been thinking about the movie lately and hadn’t seen it in a while, and the price was pretty near what a rental would be. So on one of our passes, I lagged a bit behind Ryan and grabbed a copy, deftly hiding it behind my Bruce Lee set.

Well, of course, when we got to the checkout, he saw it and started ribbing me. This apparently gave Cashier Boy free reign to also rib me, because he started in. I defended myself as best I could (“Hey, I’m getting FIVE Bruce Lee movies, too!”), and tried to hurry the paying process along.

At this point, the college girl who had meandered into our checkout line (after the previous ribbing, it should be noted) spoke up and said something to the effect of “Steel Magnolias and Bruce Lee movies?!” and something else which was drowned out in the approving catcalls from Ryan and Checkout Boy. She went on to say something about how she liked Steel Magnolias, but it was too little, too late. I’d now been heckled for my movie tastes by random strangers in Best Buy.

I asked Checkout Boy to give me a bag so I didn’t have to be humiliated further, and he offered to double-bag it so people couldn’t see through the semi-transparent bag. Smart aleck.

Ryan and I went our separate ways and, later on, I watched Steel Magnolias. And I teared up. So there.

And you know what? That’s not even the most embarrassing movie in my collection. That would have to be A Walk to Remember.

Laugh if you must, but it’s a solid 3-star movie. Just like 2001: A Space Odyssey. 9 comments

I realized a couple of things today that I wanted to pass along:

1) While doing the crossword at lunch and coming across the clue "Jerry's pal" I realized that "George," "Elaine," and "Kramer" all have the same amount of letters (6) in them. (It ended up being "Elaine.")

2) My school's parking lot lights go out some time before 1:00 a.m. I never realized how dark 1:00 a.m. can be. And since the battery on the unlocker on my keys is worn down, I couldn't even turn the lights on until I was three feet from the car. Empty schools are all kinds of freaky at night. In fact, here's a list of my top three freakiest places in the middle of the night:

a) Churches
b) Cemetaries
c) Schools

I don't know why darkened, empty churches are so incredibly scary at night, but, man, they are. 7 comments

I had a little mishap with my checking account last week and it scared me into taking drastic measures. “Mishap,” in this particular instance is defined as “apparently tried to use more money than I actually had.”

While this isn’t the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever revealed on this blog, it’s right up there. I balance my checkbook every month and generally keep a good eye on it. I haven’t been overdrawn in several years. That’s why this is particularly galling to me.

At this point I’d kind of like to rant about being charged an overdraft fee, but it detracts from my main intention. But, seriously – if a dude is out of money, how does charging him $32 help anything? Yes, yes, I know, that $32 covers the fact that the check was paid to whoever it was supposed to be paid to and saves you from all sorts of grief down the road, but the logic escapes me. “Well, Mr. Jones, we see you’re out of oxygen and have died. That’s going to cost you 14 cubed feet of oxygen.” Bah.

Anyway, I don’t want to get distracted from my main point, which is this: I’m reverting back to childhood in one more area.

See, from kindergarten through at least eighth grade (and probably into ninth or more, I don’t remember), I ate the same thing for lunch every day. With very few exceptions, I had a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on white bread for lunch for nine years. The side items varied from chips to applesauce to juice boxes and all manner of other things, but that sandwich was my staple. In fact, I can actually remember quite vividly a few of the times when I had something else for lunch. One time, for instance, I was allowed to get a slice of pizza from the school cafeteria. They microwaved or cooked it inside a plastic wrapper and the wrapper got burned and gave off a terrible smell, which affected the taste of the pizza for me. I can actually still recall the smell, even though I don’t remember what year of school in which that happened. There were a few other times when I got a different sandwich (bologna or braunschweiger), but I would guess that during my elementary years, I had something other than PB&J less than 20 times.

And I loved it. I never got sick of it. There’ve been foods since then that I’ve loved but have overdosed on and couldn’t have for a long time (Hostess Orange Cupcakes, for instance), but I never got sick of PB&Js.

So when I was going over my budget (which is more of a theoretical budget rather than a written-out statement of policy) to see what I could change, the first thing that popped up was food. I eat out a lot. Most meals of mine, in fact, are prepared by some sort of eating establishment. I’m confident that I could cook if I needed to, but the hassle of cooking for just myself combined with all the extra dirty dishes it produces makes it not worthwhile to me. Also, food prepared for me by someone else tastes better to me than food I’ve made myself, and this includes things like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I don’t know why this is, it just is.

When school is in session, I can get a school lunch for around $2.50. It’s usually pretty good, and $2.50 certainly beats $9 at a local restaurant, even if they DO have the best coconut cream pie I’ve ever had in my life. Right now, though, school isn’t in session. For some reason my brain spoke up and said,

“Hey, you could eat PB&Js. You always liked them and they’d be cheap.”
“But,” I answered, “I’ve always had a really hard time spreading jelly and I hate it when it’s clumped up in the sandwich.”
“So why not try these squeezable jellies they have now? No muss, no fuss.”
“I suppose I could, but this means I’ll have to wash a knife at work – you know, from the peanut butter.”
My brain lets out a sigh at this point. It’s had to deal with this kind of behavior its whole life. “Yes, I know. Unfortunately, you just might have to wash a knife at work.”

I decided to give it a try. I bought a loaf of white bread (but was sure to get the one that said “Only 30 calories per slice! Not as bad for you as other white breads!” – turns out it’s because the slices are half the size of other white breads), some Peter Pan creamy peanut butter (creamy is easier to spread), and some squeezable Smucker’s grape jelly, and took them to work.

Know what? It worked. I actually made a sandwich. No one’s surprise surpassed mine. And the really neat thing is that the squeezable jelly has a slit rather than a dot-type spout, so it lays the jelly down in strips. I don’t know why, but I thought that was really, really cool.

While I haven’t figured out exactly how much each sandwich is costing me, I know it’s saving me a lot of money. Like, a really lot. Plus it’s a daily reminder of a sense of security I had in childhood, so I’m getting full, I’m saving money, and I’m getting a sense of peace a few minutes out of each day.

Bonus. 4 comments

I made my weekly trip to Barnes & Noble for a hot chocolate and then to Best Buy yesterday. I poked around, drank my chocolate, bought a couple of things, and went home. I came up to my computer to check my email and other sites… and saw the 15% off member coupon I had for Barnes & Noble. And then I saw that the expiration date was that very day.

Dilemma.

Usually once I’m back in the house, I’m back in for good. I’ve made the trek, that’s it, I’m done.

But there that coupon sat, taunting me.

I started doing some math. For every ten dollars something cost, I’d get $1.50 off. There was CD there last time I looked that was a bit more expensive than I was willing to pay. The 15% off might make it worthwhile… but how could I know for sure? I asked a couple of people via IM and they all wanted to spout math at me. I knew, though, that math wasn’t the answer to this question. I knew that I would have to feel my way through this one, and that meant going into the store.

By this time it was a little after 10 p.m. I’d spent a good part of my day wondering about this. Barnes & Noble was only open until 11 and I had to work this morning. I didn’t even dress up to go in, just went in my shorts and my MadMup.com t-shirt which I rarely wear outside the house because I think maybe it’s a little weird to do that (weird for me, not for you!).

Barnes & Noble is usually more expensive for CDs and DVDs, but they have a more eclectic mix of stuff than Best Buy does. The CD I was particularly after was Red Dirt Girl by Emmylou Harris, on the recommendation of a friend. While I was there, though, I also checked on a few others I’ve had in mind:

• The Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack
• The Rushmore soundtrack
• City by Jane Siberry
• Silver and Gold by Neil Young

Then, for some weird reason, while I was there, it hit me to ask the fellow if they had any CDs by The Nylons, an a cappella group I hadn’t heard in years. Turns out they did.

Hmm.

Another dilemma.

See, I know the reason they give the discount coupons for one item is because they expect you to buy more than one thing while you’re in the store. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. At the same time, these two albums were ones I’d wanted a long time ago and never bought. But… they were cheaper than most other albums, so the discount coupon would almost be wasted on one of them.

I took a deep breath and did what any corporation’s plaything would do - I bought all three albums:

• Red Dirt Girl by Emmylou Harris
• The Nylons
• One Size Fits All by The Nylons

I could almost hear the cash register cackling at me.

Self-adhered chains are the hardest to free yourself from.

2 comments

"Never trust purring before feeding time." 1 comments

Two weeks ago some people I’ve never met came to Indianapolis and I decided to hang out with them. People I’ve never met coming to Indy happens all the time, I suppose, but I don’t normally decide to hang out with them. These people were slightly different because I at least sort of knew them from talking to them online. It was, in fact, the Official THorum Trip: 2006, and here is the day-to-day breakdown of what happened.

Thursday

The schedule of events was supposed to be Angela arrives at noonish, Brian arrives at 1ish, and Andelyn arrives at 2ish. What actually happened was I got text messages from everybody saying there were flight delays. Angela’s flight was delayed because of weather, Brian’s because of mechanical problems, and Andy’s because of weather, too. Even though Brian’s first flight was delayed, he actually made his connecting flight and arrived on time. We went to the mall and had lunch and went to the arcade while waiting to hear from the other travelers. Andy’s second flight was delayed but she got there only a couple of hours late. Angela… well, Angela just about gave up on the whole trip. She was supposed to leave around 7 a.m. and didn’t end up leaving until around 1 p.m. By the time she got to Chicago not only was her connecting flight long gone but there were no other flights to Indy for the next two days! There was only one solution: road trip!

Brian, Andy, and I headed to Chicago and only almost died a couple of times. A semi-truck right next to us had a tire explode – literally not more than 5 feet from Andy in the passenger’s seat. Fortunately it was an inside tire, so we weren’t shelled with shrapnel, but it very loud and it frightened us. Chicago was also very loud and frightened us, but we found Angela and turned right around to head to Lafayette. We were all hungry so we pulled off the freeway to find a place to eat. We saw an Applebee’s and sent Brian to check to see if they were still open. Sadly they closed at 11 and it was now 11:15 or so. It was only after we’d pulled out and headed down the road that we realized we were still in Illinois and therefore on Central Time where it was only 10:15. We had a good chuckle and then went back to eat there. After that we got donuts at the next-door Dunkin’ Donuts and hit the road again, headed to my place for what was left of the night. We got to Lafayette around 2 a.m., played Guitar Hero until somewhere around 3:30, and went to bed around 4.

Friday

The four of us had lunch with Kat and Matt, so each of them could meet these other people that I always talked about. Now they know that the other people aren’t just figments of my imagination, which I think is probably good. After lunch I took the THorumites to a tabletop gaming store we have (The Game Preserve) because Brian was looking for a game called “Zombies.” The store had it and Brian actually proclaimed it to be one of the best of that kind of store he’d ever seen, so that was cool. Angie bought a Rubik’s Snake puzzle and some little rubber snakes that ended up being “Snakes on a Whatever We Can Find” for the rest of the weekend. I think Andy bought something, but I’m not sure what.

From there we went to Culver’s so they could have the second-best frozen custard in the world – they loved it, as I knew they would. (For the record, the first-best frozen custard is at Kopp’s in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, area.) And then we headed to Indy so I could drop them off the hotel. I had an improv show that I had to MC, so I wasn’t able to hang out with them Friday night. Three other THorumites showed up, though – Michael, Harmony, and a completely different Mark – so they didn’t miss me much. The stories I heard had them playing Zombies and video games until early morning, so they had fun.

Saturday

I slept in and finally got to Indy mid-afternoon, where I met Michael and Harmony for the first time. Completely Different Mark had to leave the night before, but I’d met him before so it would have just been gravy to meet him again. I think we ate somewhere for lunch, but I don’t remember where. We went a movie that could have been so much better considering the setup (My Super Ex-Girlfriend) but really was only kind of “meh.” Then we played games in the arcade for a really long time and went to Olive Garden for dinner – most “official” THorumite meetings have to involve a meal at Olive Garden. That’s just how it is. Our waiter/waitress combo were a cute little couple that had been married one day short of a year and looked like they were about 18 years old. They were adorable in their interactions with each other and we wished them a happy anniversary many times over.

Then it was back to the hotel rooms for videogames and a round of Scrabble. It will come as no surprise to you that I was viewed as some sort of Scrabble Nazi because I like to play by the actual rules. I had fun and I hope they did, too, even with the atmosphere of fear I created.

Sunday

Lunch was pretty much the thing on the schedule for the day, and we ended up at a Steak ‘n Shake because there were some mockers in the group who had never heard of one and thought the food must be awful. Surprise! It isn’t.

After lunch, Michael and Harmony headed back to Ohio, I headed back to Lafayette, and everyone else headed to the airport. That was pretty much that – no one had any delayed flights on the way home or anything.

Here is a picture of us, widely accepted to be the best picture from the meet-up:


When I told people that I was meeting some “Internet friends” for the weekend, they all pretty much reacted the same way: gritted teeth with dropped lower lip, concerned eyes, and a verbalization that indicated “This is not a good idea. Everyone on the Internet wants to kidnap people and sell them into slavery or harvest their organs or sometimes both.” I tried to explain that to my Internet friends I was an Internet friend and they (the person I was talking to) knew I was a real person and hadn’t taken their organs, but it never made a difference. “Be careful,” I heard from more than one person. I wasn’t really sure how to do that, but I assured them I would try. It turns out I didn’t need to worry. They were all great people (which I already mostly knew) and we had a great time just hanging out and talking and playing games. I had met Angela last summer in Florida but everyone else was a new meet for me. I talk to Brian on the phone a couple of times a week normally, but it was good to finally meet him in person. He’s one of my best friends and you really ought to meet your best friends some time, I think. Andy is sweet (if distracted – and I’m not sure by what!) and Michael and Harmony didn’t stab me, nor did the universe implode when we shook hands (for those not in the know, I say those things because we’ve found ourselves on opposite sides of many an issue many a time, and I’m alluding to what’s hypothesized will happen when matter and antimatter are mixed), and we had a great time together.

I have now survived several meetings with Internet People. This goes in my “Accomplishments” column – I take my victories where I can get them.

Well met, friends!

Labels: Scrabble

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