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One of the side effects of marriage is having to share a bed with someone, which means my minor snoring problem has become a full-fledged nightmare to my beau. I don’t understand what the big deal–I sleep just fine. But The Girlfriend insists that my snoring problem is keeping her from having a productive night of sleep (she’s threatened to smother me: if we don’t resolve this problem soon, I fear I might wake up dead).
She tried earplugs at first–squishy little buggers that have no definite shape or form but were endorsed by airport personnel. Apparently my snoring rivals a 747 because even with the plugs in, The Girlfriend gets no sleep (and I hear about it in the morning).
The next step in this process was Breathe Right™ strips. I’m sure you know what it is–a little piece of plastic enclosed in an adhesive bandage-type strip one wears over their nose. The purpose of this strip is to pull your nostrils wipe open and widen the path air flows through the nose. I don’t know what sorta trademark or copyright restrictions these things have, but they are very much taking advantage of a monopoly. Millions of sleep-depraved spouses . . . . .
When life gets too busy or I have nothing to complain about, I just reach back and find something I wrote earlier but never posted (usually because it was uninteresting or poorly written…or maybe even both). This is one of those stories.
I don’t mean to be a troublemaker–things just sorta happen to me. I think the reason why is because I’m a fighter–I simply don’t lay down when unjust situations arise. I don’t wanna inflate my own ego here, but I believe strongly in my convictions and I’m never going to back down. Some might call it stubborn, but I prefer ‘determined’–it puts a positive spin on things.
The Girlfriend and I went to Jack in the Box because she was craving one of their fruit smoothies. “Should I buy the small one for $2.69 or the large for 3.39,” she asked after studying the menu.
“Go with the small,” I told her. She rarely finished drinks like that and it didn’t make sense to spend the extra 70 cents on something she wasn’t going to drink. We went through the drive-thru and ordered the smoothie. The cashier didn’t tell us a total–only to pull up to the window.
. . . . .
Things were different a hundred years ago. Blacks couldn’t vote (or run for president). Women couldn’t vote (or run for vice president). I don’t know what the price of gas was, but I’m sure it was cheaper than today. Even marriage was different. Back then, a wedding consisted of a guy, gal, her dad, and a shotgun. It was so much simpler. A modern wedding includes all of those things–plus numerous forms, fees, and other unnecessary bureaucracies.
The Girlfriend and I had to apply for a marriage license. Who needs a license to get married? Can that license get revoked? Why do we need the government’s permission to get married? It’s not like the state has any right to deny anyone marriage. Not anymore. Assuming were dealing with two human beings, everyone has the right to get married in California.
Applying for a marriage license isn’t that hard–the hardest part is come up with the 60 bucks required to get a license. Unfortunately, marriage licenses aren’t granted online or over the phone so we had to trek down to the courthouse to get our license. What a sight that was. You see it in television and movies all the time, . . . . .
I finally got around to seeing “The Dark Knight” this weekend and I noticed there was quite a lot of the dialogue I didn’t pick up. My initial fear is that I spent way too much time with headphones plugged into my ears and was now paying the price with a hearing loss (but I only listen to talk radio podcasts with the volume extremely low!). Immediately after the movie, The Girlfriend said how much she loved the movie. “The only thing I didn’t like was the score: it was too loud and it drummed out a lot of the dialogue.”
Thank goodness! I didn’t wanna say nothing at first because it would like admitting I’m starting to go deaf. But when she confirmed the same problem I had, it meant either we were losing our hearing or there was something seriously off with the audio ratios of the movie. Either way, I’m happy. If I’m gonna go deaf with someone, it might as well be the person I’m going to marry.
I was at the Wal-Mart recently when I heard a six-year old kid say to his mom “Can we buy it? It’s only $300.”
What kinda world is . . . . .
When The Girlfriend I went to San Diego last month, we stayed at a hotel that just open. And by just opened, I mean two days prior. The place was brand spanking new–so new that the address couldn’t be found on Mapquest.
There’s a difference between a national hotel chain opening up and a lavish grand opening on the Las Vegas strip. Instead of celebrities and glitzy, that San Diego hotel opened to empty rooms and hallways that reeked of glue. Las Vegas hotels work out all their kinks beforehand; smalltime San Diego hotels lock their guests outside at night because the door near the pool doesn’t work (thank goodness I managed to flag down an employee; otherwise, I would’ve had to spend the evening sleeping on a pool cot).
I’ve stayed at an Unidentified National Hotel Chain many times before and one of the reasons I do so is because the free breakfast they offer in the morning. I’m not talking a continental breakfast composed of generic cereal and day-old bagels. No, no–Unidentified National Hotel Chains have wonderful fresh, hot breakfasts. Eggs, waffles, bacon–a true, real breakfast with the quality of Denny’s–sans the smell of old people on the . . . . .
Everyone has a birthday and everyone deserves a special day on their birthday–that’s why I had no problem going all out for The Girlfriend’s birthday this year. When you meet the girl you’re going to marry you better damn well treat her like a queen…even if it means having to go see Kathy Griffin perform. I spent $70 a ticket–good money that could buy a lot of pizza and porn–and took The Girlfriend to see comic’s show. Not a lot of straight males buy Kathy Griffin tickets and I now fear I might end up on a gay watch list.
It turns out my fear was more substantial than I thought. In a crowd of a few thousand people, there were approximately three straight males. The gay quota was through the roof–including an obnoxious gay guy who sat directly in front of us. Normally I don’t have a problem with the gays–after all, I used to work at Disneyland. In fact, I’ve come to realize that I love gay dudes (there’s something about that statement that will probably worry my mother). Gay guys always seem to have an energy about them. They love life and are always jovial (maybe that’s . . . . .
When I was in high school, I used to bike pretty much everywhere. Soccer practice, friends’ houses, Music Warehouse–anywhere I had to be I got there by bicycle. My buddy and I had annual passes to Knott’s Berry Farm and we spent a lot of summer days there. A few times we went over to the beach…even though none of us liked to swim. I biked to Disneyland when I didn’t feel like driving just because I could (Disneyland, Knott’s, and the beach were all with in biking distance…yet somehow I was always bored). I think my radius was about ten miles.
A couple years after high school I abandoned my bicycling ways. Work ended up being too far to bike and it was awfully hard to pick up girls for dates on a Huffy. Like most things in life, it’s not like I stopped biking cold turkey: it sorta just phased its way out of my life.
But for years I’ve felt bad about it. I used to love biking. It was fun, easy, and fast (mainly ’cause I ignored every traffic law imaginable). When I went to college, it was easier to bike there because finding a parking . . . . .
I work for a television station. It’s a crappy television station–but it’s still a television station. Some folks are star-struck when they hear I work in TV (I used it to impress chiks when I single). But when someone gets a first-hand view of it, they realize it is a crappy television and nothing to be impressed with. People have this romantic view of television. They think of stations as big, well-executed, high-tech machines…which is about as far from the truth as possible at my job. The point is no one knows it’s a crappy television station until they see it.
Because we are a television station, any time there’s a job opening–no matter how mundane or small–we get a ton of applicants because people want “to get their foot in the door.” It doesn’t take long for folks to realize that door only leads to a closet–but like I said, no one knows until they’re there. I can’t tell you how many pretty young things with aspirations and dreams we hired…only to quietly disappear a few weeks later. Mailroom assistant, president’s assistant, even assistant’s assistant–all crappy jobs usually applied for by people who want bigger and better things.
Back . . . . .
I was at Disneyland with The Girlfriend trying to recuperate from the 451 degree temperature outside. We noticed a kid run by us, screaming with tears in his eyes. He was a tiny lad–The Girlfriend said he looked to be about three-years old but I’m never good at that sorta assessment. What I am good at is recognizing other people’s misery. The kid was bawling hysterically and my immediate assumption was the kid was lost. But then I saw a pack of 12-year old girls flock to his aid and figured one of them had to be his sister. The girls’ behavior struck me a particular. They kept their distance from the boy; trying to engage in conversation but were intentionally avoiding contact. A sister would pick up or hug her crying little brother. Something seemed amiss and that’s when I intervened.
“Is he lost,” I asked the girls.
They said yes and he started screaming “I want my mommy!”
“Where did you last see her?” He pointed in the direction he came from–completely far from where we were.
“We need to find a cast member.” With Disneyland routinely welcoming more than 40,000 guests a day, a lost child . . . . .
My girlfriend has ticks. There’s no pussyfooting around it. No funny intro; no catchy opening. How can there be when my girlfriend has ticks? There’s nothing amusing about that. I go away for a few days and she gets ticks. Shudder. I feel icky just thinking about it.
Thursday I went to her house and she told me she had a bug problem. According to her, the past few days she’s seen bugs on her couch. She led me over to the couch and quickly pointed out four of them.
“Those look like ticks,” I said. She insisted they couldn’t be. I put the four critters in a Zip-lock bag (alive) with the hope of identifying them on the internet.
It wasn’t that hard to do–I googled ‘ticks’ and found ’em on the first page I looked. I was kinda hoping I was wrong. When I lived at home, one of my brothers managed to get the house infested with ticks. Disgusting creatures. The ticks I found on The Girlfriend’s couch were nowhere near as big as the bloodsuckers we had–but they were definitely ticks. Thanks to the easily identifiable pattern on their back, I was able to determine The . . . . .
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