CafeChatNoir

I am a creature of habit. In less complimentary terms it has also been described as “predictable,” “pleasantly boring,” as well as “so ridiculously set in her ways she will never find a man that will put up with her.”

But I’m OK with it. I once asked a bartender if my consistency in ordering made me predictable or pathetic. She said, “It makes you a good customer.” She really knew how to earn her tips.

There is the rare occasion where I deviate from the norm. Not often, but it does happen. And it worries people…

This afternoon I submitted my final paper and put the lid on another class. I then picked up a non-textbook and went outside and sat in the sun and read and dreamed of world travels. It was a good, hot, sunny day and this put the idea of margaritas into my head. Had I actually had the ingredients to make a pitcher here at the house, I would have, but I didn’t, so I kept reading and drinking Gatorade for the course of the afternoon.

Hoofed it up to the pub for some “it’s Friday night/my class is done/my brain can rot for a month” socialization and libations. This is where it went a tad sideways, and eventually I got ratted out to the manager…

I still had margaritas on the brain and near had to jump the bar to keep the bartender from hitting the Guinness tap (she’s a very good bartender) to ask for a margarita.

Her answer? “NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (With a look on her face that said I asked for Red Bull and rat poison.)

But she came through for me and the margs hit the spot head on. Then I asked for a Corona as a chaser. Because you can’t follow a margarita with a Guinness. (They simply do *not* blend well.) This is when the bartender turned to the manager and said, “Cindy’s messing us up!!!!!!!!!” This particular manager, not knowing my habits like the back of his hand, looked at her and said, “Corona is good, what’s the problem?”

My brother nailed it quite well when asked why I was going off the rails as far as my usual consistency goes. “I think she’s in beach mode.” (He’s quite smart.)

Hot sunny day, the beach is a mere two weeks away, I can let my brain rot for a little bit? Yes, I suspect I am in beach mode, which is sunshine, fruity drinks, and Coronas.

It’s not a bad mode to be in, even if it does upend the bartender occasionally.

Not that I’m anti-thinkng, just more pro-not-having-to-actively-think. Basically I’ve just used up all my critical thinking skills for a while. Another class knocked out in my quest to be 10 years down the road with multiple degrees and waiting tables because I still don’t know what I really want to do. :)

The paper is done, hurrah. And I think it’s a bit of crap. Not that I didn’t do the research, the piles of printouts scattered about with notes scrawled in the margins and circles and arrows and exclamation points all over them prove otherwise. It’s decently written and all that, but there’s just no way you can *really* explore any subject particularly well with a 6 page limit. I really don’t like writing down to expectations.

During this paper, I discovered that apparently I’m a freak. It seems that writing papers in longhand isn’t as common as I would have thought. Guess I’m doing my part to keep PaperMate and Mead in business. All the online resources are great, but I still print everything out and take it, plus a notebook and pen and go somewhere else to actually read and write. Transcribe it into Word every now and again to keep track of how much I’ve actually written and don’t end up with a 20 page masterpiece when the absolute limit is 10 pages. Once I’ve gotten enough thoughts out of my head to satisfy the requirements and prove whatever point I want to prove, it all gets printed out, 1 paragraph to a page. Then I again retreat to somewhere else with pen in hand and the editing carnage begins. Strike, rewrite, add, rearrange. If I used a red pen it would looks like an axe murder had taken place. Add the changes to the paper, print it out again, and repeat. And repeat. I kill a lot of trees.

Best discovery during the course of the paper - the robin that lives in the porch swing has hatched her second set of babies! (And doesn’t care that the dog likes to sleep in the shade under the swing. Thank God it’s not a mockingbird, or the dog would be traumatized for life.)

So let’s just do this and I’ll get back to killing you with beer. (And Irish Coffees.)

But, we have to submit 2000 words by Friday at midnight for our class.

I know you don’t react well without a deadline, which is why I’ve not really poked at you up until now. We’ve got the sources and the vast bulk of the writing is already bouncing about, so it’s not like we’ve procrastinated THAT badly. (We also know how quickly we can get words to paper when needed.) It’s much easier to write when you at least have the words crashing about somewhere in your subconscious.

I couldn’t help but take notice of the fact that you did recognize the impending deadline and I appreciate the 450 words you allowed to come tumbling out this evening. However, in the future if you could hold off on a page and a half of insight until I am **out** of my car, it would be greatly appreciated. (And given the impending “no texting while driving law” showing up in a week, it’s not like I can Twitter myself my thoughts while at a red light.)

However, tomorrow we have to go balls to the wall. Or, temporal and frontal lobes to the wall. We still have to churn out another 1550 words or so. It’s not going to be God’s gift to research and analysis, but given the 2K word limit, it wasn’t going to be that in the first place.

Brain, I know you’re still seriously cranky over the fact that our super-awesome-spectacular initial outline was rejected because it would end up being “too long”, but I beseech you to get over it. Now it’s just about charming the pants of the professor with our arguments, despite the fact that we are the Rainbow Brite Leftist Liberal of the class. (Which is actually quite fun, but can be an impediment to an “A” in the class.)

Tomorrow, we’ll be outside in gorgeous weather with paper and pen and no distractions other than the birds. (And the dog when he gets pissy that I’m not playing with him. He’ll get over it.) But, we both know that this is when the best writing happens. And Brain, I’m not above taking the Hemingway route to finish this paper if required. However, I don’t have any Bloody Mary mix in the house, but I do have the Grey Goose, so we may be drinking martinis at 11AM. But, I do have olives, so they’ll at least be proper dirty martinis.

Brain, if you come through for me on this one, I promise you won’t have to think again until the beginning of August at the soonest.

Deal?

Walked into the pool hall this evening and things seemed to be perfectly on par with any other night, until a gentleman at the end of the bar said, “I’d like to buy you a beer on my friend’s tab.”

There appeared to be no intimation of further discussion or any other activties, just the simple offer of a beer to a fellow pub-goer.

I shrugged and said, “Well, um, OK.”

In return I got the Obama Terrorist Fist Bump and, “That’s just how we roll.”

I can deal with that. (I did apologize for my beer of choice being an import vs. a domestic.) They also purchased my next adult beverage with no expectations of conversation or well, anything. At the end of the night, the first gentleman did say it would be great if I could “smack [his friend] on the ass and say thanks” - except his friend was then waylaid, so I offered to smack him on the backside and say thanks and call it even. He was completely OK with that, and I had no issues with it. (It’s been a while since I had someone say it was OK for me to smack them…*)

So, I easily caved and gave him a whack on the ass with a sincere thanks for the beer and all went off with silly giggles.

I then realized that I had quite possibly prostituted myself out to someone with a mild spanking fetish for two beers. Not sure what it says about me that it really didn’t bother me that much… Cause it’s not like there appeared to be any expectation of anything else.

Perhaps it’s time to rethink what my next move in life is.

* And I could only do it in exchange for money for the soda machine. But it was great to have a coworker that you could say, “I need to hit someone… I’ll buy you a Coke for it!”

Like many people in the world, I hit happy hour more than a few times a week. The only difference is that my happy hour starts at 2330 hours rather than 1730. I simply run on a different time loop than about 90% of the DC Metro area.

Now, when one takes the late shift, there is a better than good chance that you’re going to run into someone that started their happy hour at 1730 and is still going at it full bore at 0100 hours. Can’t really judge on that one either - it is what it is. We all have bad days. However, this has given me a few insights. One of them being that most of these folks seem to be from the defense contracting sector of the beltway world. (Perhaps just a inevitable issue of living where I live…but it tends to not happen with non-govt-contractors, so I cannot help but sense a trend. Possibly a weird coincidence, but I think not.)

That all being said, I can remain quite unfazed when someone walks up and says, “I’m quite inebriated, but…” Because I could tell you were six sheets (yes, twice the traditional three sheets) to the wind even before you opened your mouth. I will certainly not be offended by the fact that alcohol may have helped you walk up to someone you don’t even know and say something complimentary. Let’s face it, alcohol is essentially liquid Xanax when consumed in sufficient amounts. (And a hell of lot easier to wean yourself off when you don’t need it anymore.)

However, there comes a point where you’ve just had one Vodka Xanax too many. And you’re describing in Cinemax-worthy detail of the ways in which you would be a GREAT boyfriend. (Or the ways in which you *think* you’d be a great boyfriend.) That is when you’ve crossed the line from “courage to talk to a stranger” to “courage to be a total freaking idiot in front of a complete stranger”… This is the point I will create an invisible super-awesome boyfriend out of whole cloth if needed. (And oh yes, I will do that if I have to. I am not above that kind of deception when required.) Or an invisible boyfriend based on a real person who I know will go along with the story if needed*… And trust me, said invisible boyfriend will be all that and a bag of chips, far and away beyond anything you think you can offer. If you’re lucky this is the point where your spectaculary more sober friend will come up and distract you with something shiny before you embarass yourself any further. (And apologize profusely for your behavior. And 5 minutes later will say, “Crap, I lost him again!”)

I will not argue that alcohol can be an excellent social lubricant. There have been countless social and pseudo-social events I have attended over the years that have been made exceptionally more tolerable with a dirty goose martini to kick things off. But really guys, you need to know where that line is - and stay on the right side of it. Or at least have friends that will keep you from speaking to any strangers when you go careening sideways over said line.

Just sayin’…

*Thank you, twas a lifesaver.
Black 47: The Reels

But damned if I know what it is. I can say with a fair amount of confidence that Timmy isn’t stuck in a well anywhere, so that’s something.

However, given the wide range of “sitting up with paws folded” cuteness posistions can mean, I really have no idea. It can mean any of the following:

Let’s go play ball!! It’s the middle of the night and the light-up balls have disappeared in the backyard.
I’m hungry! Except that he’s gotten multiple treats since I got home.
Rub my tummy! Did that and it made no difference.
Just sit on the floor with me! Did that, too. Still getting the ‘dog imitating a meerkat’ routine.

Sat down and cuddled with him one more time, and he just gave up. He’s now on his blankie on his side of the couch looking decidedly annoyed with my ability to read his mind.

Note to self: Find the light up balls so we can play catch at night…

So, I’ve had a head/chest/ear thing going on this week, with a lovely cough, the cough really being the most annoying of it all.  I try to avoid cough/cold medicine, not because I am organic or any of that stuff, it’s because whatever they put into it that makes it work turns me into a cranky bitch.

So, I started with hot tea and lemon and honey and cough drops.  Worked semi-decently.  Not great, but better than nothing.

Then I decided I would beat the cough into submission with beer.  This worked surprisngly well.  Which makes sense when you think about it - alcohol does have mild anesthetic properties, and hence, less coughing.  The only problem with this is it’s not a practical 24/7 solution - mainly due to my own shortcomings - I’ve not been a member of the beer for breakfast club for years.  Also, there is the issue of your liver deciding to drunk dial your inner ear and make you walk into a wall.  No solution is foolproof.

This morning I gave up and went to the store to buy cough syrup.  Dammit.  I get pissed when I can’t intimidate my own body into doing what I want and I have to bring in Vicks products.  Of course, it’s been at least a year since I needed to get cough syrup and of course, all the formulations have changed.  So I’m literally sitting on the floor in the CVS with half a dozen bottles of medication trying to find something that doesn’t have Phenylephrine or Pseudoephedrine in it, cause I have figured out that’s what makes me a very angry little person.  Success!  Dextromethorphan only.

This stuff doesn’t work for crap.  It could be the fact that I can’t actually down an entire dose of it at once, thanks to the wonderful “berry blitz” flavor.  You can’t tell me with all the scientific advances we’ve made over the years, we can’t do better than cough syrup that tastes like a wild cherry life saver that has been under the couch cushions for three months.  Maybe it’s because it doesn’t have the “make me psycho” ingredients.  All I know is that this stuff definitely no longer has any benefit whatsoever for me.

Not only did the beer work better, it also had the added bonus of making everyone around me more attractive.

I’m back to the hot tea and honey and cough drops.  And I’ll just tell my inner ear to ignore any prank calls from my liver later tonight.

And yet, not 100% because I am quite shallow.

This afternoon I spied a cell phone in the grass between the sidewalk and street while I was out running.  While I did think about leaving it so the owner could backtrack to it, that was outweighed by the scattered rainstorms and the potential for kids deciding to play street hockey with it.  So, I picked it up and took it home.

Tried to call the phone to leave a voice mail for the owner, thinking they might be checking it remotely.  Great idea except that the voice mail wasn’t activated.  No “Home” or “Mom” or “ICE” in the contact list.  Put a found posting on Craigslist and a note at the bus stop where I found it.  Sent a text message to a female contact in the recent calls list.  (Dunno, just didn’t want to send a text to one of his potenially whackjob friends - mainly because I know how many whackjobs I have in my own contact list.)  And waited.

The phone rang and I answered - the owner calling from a friend’s phone!  He apparently parks his car right near the bus stop and dropped/kicked it out of the car.  Got the address for the drop off - he said, “You can drop it off at any hour, someone will be up.”  AKA, we have a house of half office workers, half restaurant industry. :)  I was on my way out, no big deal to make a 1/4 block detour to drop it off.

And this is where shallow comes in.  The voice was of a 6′2″ Tennessse farm boy between the ages of 22 to 35.  When I dropped off the phone, I was met by a lovely Indian lady at the door (wife/girlfriend/landlady/roommate) who seemed to be aware of the situation and happily accepted the phone (or had no idea and thought, “Hey, free cell phone!”)

So the phone was returned.  (Hopefully to the right address.)  But dammit, I wanted to see the face that went with the voice!!

But the phone is back with it’s rightful owner (in theory) and that has to be good enough.  And I can live with that.

***Warning to all gentlemen who may think I am dateable - this may very well change your mind***

I don’t know about anyone else out there, but if I don’t dream, I don’t have a good night’s sleep.  When things are going even marginally well, I dream nearly every night.  (And it doesn’t matter how long I sleep, as long as I dream.  12 hours with no dreams is worse than 6 hours with dreams.)  My dreams are exceptionally vivid, and about 3/4 of the time I remember the details.  (Mainly if I happen to wake up near the end of the dream and make a mental note of it.)  Otherwise, I do at least remember the fact that I had some kind of whacked out dream.

I’ll admit it - my subconscious mind is much smarter than my conscious mind.  I lost count of how many seriously screwed up help desk tickets I figured out because my subconscious mind took over and when I woke up, I had the answer.  Or, when my subconscious mind told me it was time to move on from a job that I kept hanging on to.

Such as the dream I had about physically putting out fires around the office in one job I had.  Mind you, I did have practical experience with it when my boss set his trash can on fire, but still - it was a sign that things simply were not right.

There was the dream about picking up a neighbor’s key after the electrician had come and calling said neighbor to let him know I had the key.  I actually had to call my neighbor the next day and ask if I’d called him in the middle of the night about the key.  (This is also compounded by the fact that I have had people call me in the middle of the night and I was in such a deep sleep that I didn’t remember the conversation.)  Like I said, exceptionally vivid dreams.

So dreams = good sleep.  Unless they’re nightmares of some sort.  And for the last 6 months or so, I’ve either not dreamed at all (which is bad) or had nightmares (not ‘getting shot and killed’ nightmares but just as disturbing in their own way and resulting in no real sleep.)  They have been one of two:  Either I can’t get the damn phone to stop ringing (my grandmother calling every freaking 5 minutes) or, my Mom, Dad, and/or my Grandfather showing up (all deceased) and getting into LARGE arguments about why they aren’t here to take my grandmother onto wherever ones goes when they shuffle off this mortal coil.  Neither one is conducive to a decent night’s sleep, whether it’s 3 hours or 12.  (I stopped asking my brother if I had ignored an early phone calls after a while - I realized he’d ask why I didn’t answer if she’d actually been calling - but that’s how stupidly real they were.)

After this last trip to Phoenix, I knew I’d be seriously wound up for a while (which I was) and adding Mother’s Day and then my parent’s birthdays into the mix (yes, same day, same year, and yes, May is slightly rough, why do you ask?) my poor little brain apparently couldn’t even begin to come up with some good action-adventure stories for me.  So I haven’t even been dreaming at all.  Which sucks.

It sucks on levels beyond just the fact that no dreams = crappy sleep.  When my mind is allowed to really wander, I have some seriously whacked out dreams.  Not scary, just off the wall and entertaining as hell.  Some folks do dinner and a movie - I do sleep and a movie.  I love my whacked out dreams - especially because I also tend to have lucid dreams, which makes it even more fun.  You *know* you’re dreaming, so you’re ten feet tall and bulletproof and can fly and breathe underwater and any number of cool-assed things can happen.

And as I said, it’s been a good 6 months plus since I had that kind of fun at night all by myself.  (And drinks/no drinks doesn’t matter.  I do know if I take anything stronger than Advil before bed to kill a sleep-preventing headache/backache/whatever, I will not dream.  So, I don’t self-medicate to sleep.  I will just stay awake until I think I can sleep.)

When I went to Phoenix, Sharyn* assured me many times over that things weren’t as bad as I thought (I only get the bitchy negative calls from my grandmother, so I know I don’t get the whole picture) and I did get to see how my grandmother instantaneously became calmer (and nicer!) when Sharyn was around.  It just didn’t really sink into the recesses of my mind until the past few days - and I *know* it has sunk in.  Not only am I dreaming again, they are the really fun, cool, whacked out dreams that have nothing to do with family.  (Unless someone randomly enters stage left for no reason - and if they get killed by a ninja, it’s their own damn fault for showing up.)

A quick sample from the past couple nights where it’s back to “sleep and a movie” rather than “sleep at your own risk”:

– I’m in Miami and protecting a 5 year old from a hail of gunfire and explosions.  Sounds like a nightmare, but no - I had kickass ninja skills and we both emerged unscathed.  (I probably should stop watching CSI: Miami, but hey, we escaped the bad guys!  That and a lot of my dreams key off what I’ve seen on TV.  3 seasons of The West Wing in 4 days - I had dreams about working in the White House for 3 weeks.)

– I’m working at my old help desk job and they are cutting people left and right.  Suddenly, Gabriel Byrne shows up as the employee advocate!  (Oh if we’d only had a union and him as our rep back when I actually did tha for a living.)  Telling management that if they force us to stay as pitifully understaffed as we were, we still needed more support and that we needed to have at LEAST one “wizard” on staff for us to all consult.  (Not like a Harry Potter wizard, more like Apple’s “geniuses” - I’m not *that* much of a geek.)  Of course, also a sad note on how my mind works, when I should have been seriously hitting on Mr. Byrne, I was back at the tech manager’s desk offering him a dollar for the soda machine in exchange for my being allowed to punch him.  (Which we actually did when I worked there.)  But, damn, GABRIEL BYRNE advocating for us help desk punks!!  If that’s not a dream, I’m not sure what is.

– I’m sitting in front of a stack of papers, not sure if it’s work or classwork, but get a call from someone I am quite interested in.
“Hey, would you like to do something tonight?”
*Looking at random papers in front of me*
“I’d love to, but I have all this work I need to take care of.”
“Oh, OK.”
Hang up the phone, pause a moment.  I DID NOT JUST DO THAT, DID I????  (I actually double checked my phone in the morning.  I have had phone conversations that I did not remember because they were in the middle of a deep sleep.  Apparently I did NOT turn anyone down by accident at 3AM.)

– I am the stunt double or some close extra for Emily Deschanel in Bones.  I spent the whole time running around shooting things with David Borneaz, and he wanted to go for drinks after the shoot.  Not so bad!  If I can figure out how to get a repeat on that one - I may never wake up again.

So, haven taken a few minutes to analyze my subconscious for the past couple days, I see why I’m far and away more relaxed and less strung out than I was even this time last week.

Let’s all go have some fun and whacked out dreams.

*The freaking angel sent from heaven or Minnesota who looks in on my grandmother every day and keeps her on an even keel.  Something I could never manage in my entire life.

So, last night summer was officially kicked off (at least for me) by heading up into the city and meeting Plaidy and Liss and going to see Carbon Leaf at the 9:30 club.

Now, it’s been forever and a day since I’ve done a girls night out, so I was really looking forward to this.  98% of my social interactions are with guys, which is great, cause I can spit and scratch and swear around them, but we don’t really talk about a lot of girl stuff.

In short, we had a blast - can’t remember a night where I have laughed as long and hard as I did last night.  Carbon Leaf was great, Nellie’s has really good empanadas, and Duffy’s can pour a good pint.  Or three.

Some of the more memorable utterances of the evening…

“Do I go towards 11th or 15th street?  I just managed to walk in a circle.  But I know where Ben’s Chili Bowl is now.”

“How about Nellie’s?”
“Sure.”
“It’s a gay bar.”
“Switching teams may be an improvement.”

“The entire Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue is sitting at that table.”

“It’s just like the sports pub at home.  I’m not getting laid there either.”

“I’m a straight single girl sitting in a gay bar - the fact that my martini doesn’t qualify for happy hour pricing is the least of my problems.”

“The ‘nice’ filter in my brain has been switched off.”

“Twenty Two??!?!”
“I thought he was older!”

“And he was missing an arm.”

“I’m 5′11, I should be able to find guys that aren’t short.”

“I just need to find one.  The harem was too hard to deal with.”

“Grab his ass.  He’ll move.”
“Umm.”
“You’re straight, he’s not, he won’t take it the wrong way.”

“If it’s the 9:30 club, why do the hand stamps say 8:15?”

“The opening act went on early?  This is rock and roll, it’s supposed to run late!”

“See the guy in the hat?  Do you think that’s his girlfriend there?”
“I think the hat is doing very bad things for his nose.”

“I’m pretty sure the guy standing next to me is a serial killer.”
“Do you want to switch places?”
“No, it’s more an observation.  If you hear about 20 hookers being slashed in 10 days, this is the guy.”

“I’m sorry, but the kitchen is closed for the evening.”
“No problem, we’re here for the ‘and pub’ aspect.”

So, it would seem that the bar has been set extremely high for the rest of the summer.