Bosses' Day

I thought every day was Bosses’ Day…

Well, I finished looking over my PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow and I think it looks jolly. It only has to be a ten to fifteen minute deal, where before I thought it had to be a half-hour. So I’ve got seven slides, I’ve got animation, and I’ve even got two pieces of clip-art. One of the Iwo Jima Memorial and one of a little cartoony grandmother. It took me just about all weekend to write (we’ll get to that later) and it only took me about an hour to cut/paste everything into the program.

Meanwhile, my back is seriously killing me. So are my knees. More on that later too.

So this was to be our anniversary weekend. Since it actually fell mid-week and we really didn't do anything on our own back on Wednesday or whatever, this was suppose to be where we did our own thing and maybe try to look at each other flirtingly, maybe hold hands, maybe do the whole romantic thing. That's what was suppose to happen, I guess. See, 'cause for the next few weekends she and I are gonna be pretty busy. We have guests coming in, we have a party coming up, and I have something due for my class every Tuesday from here until the end of November. Yeah, so 2004 has really kicked into gear at this point.

Friday night ended up being ours. Well, I say that, but in all honesty it ended up being ours and a few dozens of our closest Carabas-attending strangers. I can cast the first stone, it was my idea to go there. Friday night...right around seven o'clock...what the hell was I thinking? Actually, scratch that. It wasn't as deplorable as I make it sound, I just wish she and I could've had an actual conversation without having to yell to be heard. We got our beeper thingy after being told it would be an hour-long wait, and we stood in line to get a seat at the bar. When one was available, I pulled it out for Annie to sit in...and suddenly we picked up these two old vulture-like human-sized annoyances. The older man at least stood a little ways away, looking around the place while swishing his Scott 'n soda. The older woman, on the other hand, needed to step the fuck off! She probably wasn't, but it just felt like she was eyeing us the entire time. Waiting for for us to move so she could take Annie's seat, like...right lady...we got here after you two!

But that was about it. Dorrie (who got us a wonderful anniversary gift in the form of a small cake, replica of our wedding cake actually) didn't have to work that night so the three of us watched the last Cowboy Bebop "session", the last four episodes. (Thanks go out to Joyce and Gordon on that free-Netflix-for-a-month offer. We got to watch the whole series without paying a dime.) Then on Saturday she ran her errands and I tried to concentrate on the aforementioned presentation, re-reading some of the chapter and making notes and whatnot. Saturday night had the three of us go out to Wild Mags' Octoberfest thingy. And while they made plans to go to some haunted house spectacle that I wasn't interested in, I asked them to drop me off at Jason's. Sunday found us, once again, in our own little corners of the world: me woking on the presentation, getting things written on at least Word because of my previous failed attempts to download PowerPoint; she working on crafts for the party and going to meditation. So, as far as anniversary weekends go, we spent a lot of time away from each other.

Cowboy Bebop remains the only anime I actually watch for any length of time before getting overly annoyed with the translated dialogue. Perhaps there are other anime nuggets out there I would enjoy, but I don't see myself beating a trail to uncover them. I'll wait to get it trickled back to me word-of-mouth-wise. I thought the first episodes were stronger than the last few, I'm specifically talking about disks 1-3 of the 6 disk series. Some of the later episodes were rather hit-or-miss, like the one about feng shui and the one that had the Challenger space shuttle and the follow-up one to Faye's background. Those were all kinda misses in my book. But the mushroom episode and the finale were right on.

I had about five or six pints at Wild Mags. Good Octoberfest brews, Spaten's and Sam Adam's. We sat through a cover band with a girl singer; unfortunately, she had slipped and hurt her back the previous night so she probably didn't give us her all. They played "Ramble On" pretty well, I wish they had just played more Zepplin. In fact I yelled that out a few times before Annie and Dorrie shot me a "shut the hell up" glare. Then an acoustic guy came up and did some stand-alone covers. He played one jokey song about the Red Sox, I think that was the only original we heard that night. I had some bratwurst and warm sourcraught (sp.?). Overall, I had another pretty good time at a Wild Mag's event...just not as good as the last one.

We just sorta dropped in on Jason without warning again, I think he's getting used to it. He and I threw more fire onto our continued political discussion, which was pretty fun. I nursed a beer or two. SNL was on...funny thing, it always seems to be on when we go over there. And when the girls returned to pick me up because the haunted house thing was closed, we stuck around a little bit longer before trucking on home. I hadn't seen Brandon's iguana in for-like-ever. Wow...that thing belongs on a Star Wars set.

I slept awfully last night. My back feels like I was Charlie Brown going for a kick-off but instead landed on a pointed rock. And no matter how many times I crack my knees, nothing is making them ache. I can't sit in this chair without fidgeting for comfort. Knowing what I know now about the mind/body, maybe these pains are just my previously mentioned stresses (guests, party, classwork, etc.) finding new places to flail around and annoy me. I should've gone to meditation last night...