March 2008

QotD: What?! No Goodnight Kiss?

What is the worst date you've ever been on?

Ah, great memories.  I had just returned to PA from NY and was working alongside a friend bartending in a tiny restaurant that made me enough money to only work a couple days a week.  In walked TC*, a guy that was all the rage back in our high school days even though he was from another school. (If girls from another school are saying you're hot, then you must believe that you're hot.)  He was flirting with me(!) pretty hard core (but not vigilante hard core to the penis).  I was a little leary to deal with him, mainly because, well, just because.  BUT, Sparky, who was a friend of my family, said to give him a chance.  So I did.  I actually ended up giving him a lot of chances.  Sparky thought I would be 'good for him' and I might be able to 'help him get himself together'.  I'm such an enabler.

I digress.  We set a time and a day and TC came over to pick me up.  It went downhill from the door.  He wanted to go to a bar to get a drink, which I wasn't opposed to.  It just happened to be the particular bar he took me to that was ALL WRONG!  I lived in a little place called the Mon Valley.  Steelworking kinda place.  So that means some areas were nice, some areas were mediocre, and some areas, well, you just didn't go to hang out.  Guess where we went?

He took me to, literally, a hole in the wall bar where I was a little afraid to sit on the bar stools let alone drink out of anything that wasn't a bottle I opened myself.  He sat there drinking and talking to people in this dive and left me to play video games.  They did have a jukebox and so I went over to see what was on.  I'm pretty sure that I played "Silly Ho" by TLC and he took that as a personal affront.  Afraid to be left in this nightmare, I had to go over to the bar to make nice, and that's where I saw the kicker – the reason I didn't go slumming in this area.

There was a 'woman' sitting at the end of the bar who looked like she had had a hard day of physical labor.  She was drinking a 40 of Old English (in a can, in a brown paper bag), through a straw, that rested between her two front teeth.  I am not making this up.  That was the point where the 'date' was over for me and I said that it was time to go.  And yeah, he had the nerve to make a comment about me thinking I was too good to be there.  I can't believe I went out with him again.  My self-esteem musta really been in the shitter.

*Names have NOT been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

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Zumba and Bacalao

A few years back, I was taking these Zumba classes.  Apparently, I forgot exactly how taxing they were.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this class.  Enough so that I paid up for 8 classes at the gym that has it that doesn't make you join to take classes there. (I hate when gyms do that.)  I went to the first class last night.

I thought I was in decent shape.  I was dead wrong.  Okay, wait, I'm in decent physical shape, but I'm in terrible cardiovascular shape – think overweight smoker.  This class is vigilante hardcore to the penis! (Name that tune.)  Were it not for my competitive nature, and the cash I just dropped, I would have been out of there in the first 20 minutes.  I think we were about 10 minutes in when my chest started burning.  That's my own fault though because I wasn't breathing properly.  At 15 minutes, I was certain that I was heading for an early death.  At 20 minutes, some of the women around me (yeah, it was only chicks and the guy instructor) started "taking breaks" that they didn't return from.  That's when the competition gene kicks in.  There's no way that I'm gonna quit if there are people still going.  Especially not the lady with the super huge fake boobs that's probably giving herself black eyes.  So I stuck it out. 

About halfway through, I got my breathing down while still getting the moves.  Hooray!  The rest was a cake walk.  I'm actually excited to go back next week.

Oh yeah, bacalao.  Pronounced BACK-A-LOWWWWW (not like low, like l plus owwww, as in i hurt myself)

Really, it's just a funny word to say.  It's like salt-dried cod.  Big in the Cuban households.  I've never had it.  Don't think I want to try it.  I will still say it.  Loud and often.  BACALAO!

Now I'm wiped out.  Three posts in one day.

HEP! (More on HEP when I go back to the rig in April.)

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First shot

Hi all, this is my first post to the group.  I typically think I look crappy in pictures, but I figure if I take one once a week, I'll eventually either get over it or find one I like.  (This one isn't it.)

 

Hmmm, I don't seem to have an upper lip.

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Shyner’s Cancer Awareness Day

Today is March 6, 2008.  It would have been my father's 63rd birthday.  Instead, he was taken away from us in July of 1998 by lung cancer.

I beg you, plead with you, urge you, if you smoke cigarettes, please, for your own sake and the sake of those who love you, QUIT!  Get yourself checked out by a good doctor and not by the hacks in Southwestern PA who diagnosed him with pneumonia and by the time they figured out they were wrong, he was already Stage 4.

He was strong until the very end.  Death showed up for him and he looked it in the face and said, "No, I'm not ready to go yet."  My mother saw this.  She knew there was no one in the room and asked him who he was talking to.  He said something along the lines of the man in black standing in the hall.

He had his good times even in the worst of times.  One day, his friends were over visiting and they sat with him and joked and laughed and smoked weed and you would have never known there was anything wrong with him.  If you didn't know.

I hope that we did right by him.  The man loved to cook on our outdoor BBQ pit.  And on July 4, after his service, we came back to the house and had the biggest cookout possibly ever seen in that yard.  I know he was looking down on us with a smile.

Happy Birthday, Dad.  We miss you.

 

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Today’s typo

Comes to us courtesy of the good people at Generation Ink.  They do great stuff to help newbies get out and get some work in design type fields.  You can see their site here.

Welcome to GenInk!
We are a marketing company that prides itself in creating individualized resluts for each of our clients. We specialize in target marketing materials and web design.

That, my friends, is just plain awesome.  I prefer my sluts new, but I guess I'll take a reslut if I have to.

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