Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Uhhhhhhhhhhh

Well, just when I thought it's impossible to be single AND busy at the same time, things got really busy. Rest assured, however, I am still single. I will be leaving on a long trip again this Thursday, so don't expect any updates for a week or two.

I did have an interesting run-in with the "Kinkos girl" today, however. She is short, skinny, blonde, no rings, broken nail polish .. and she helped me with my printing and copying needs. For the lack of a better word, she is "cute". I even made her laugh which is definatelly unusual for a girl I don't even know. The question is how (if it all) to take this further; this is definatelly something for me to ponder on my upcomming flight. I noticed during flights I'm "on the edge", for example last year I came up with a comprehensive and daring plan on how to ask a girl from my class out. More importantly I was syked enough to actually follow through with it. Can I do it again? We shall see.

Friday, June 03, 2005

Post-Collegenism: Chapter 3 - My Life, My Bus

I have taken the same bus for 4 years. I've taken it too school, to work, to dates, to graduations, to formals and social events. I've been in 2 accidents while on the bus. I've traveled the route in as fast as 23 minutes and as long as 3 hours (on a particularly bad day of traffic). I know where to seat so that I won't feel guilty about not giving up my seat to a woman. I came up with a "bus rules" set of rules that make bus riding more effecient (my now-ex is the only one who saw it; she thought I was nuts. I will publish it here some day). I know everything and anything about the bus. I AM THE BUS.

So an obvious question is: what is the value of the bus in finding a date? To an outsider the answer is clear - the passenger community is 70% women. However things are not so simple. Here is why:

1) The first rule of the bus is that you do not talk on the bus. It's not posted anywhere, but the bus ride is entirely silent except for the occasional cellphone call. Sometimes two passengers who know each other ralk, but talking to a stranger is unacceptable. A lot of people sleep, read, or listen to music (like me), further adding to the silence.

2) You don't want to become a bad customer. There are a few folks who do talk to stangers on the bus. Once is a mentally insane women. The other is a happy-go-lucky 70 year old grandma. Than there is the guy who tries to hit on women "across the isle". Nobody like these folks and does everything in their power to seat as far away from them as possible.

3) The odds are good but the goods are odd. Unfortunatelly I'm afraid most women on the bus may be 25 or older. OK, I'll be honest, some of them do look 21. Let me do a quick life of whom I ran into recently:

a) Strabery girl - she got on somewhere in the middle-end of the station sequence and sat next to me. There was a sit in front next to a nice grandma with definatelly more room than next to me, yet she shose to sit here. Throughout the ride she kept playing with her hair and putting on lip gloss that smelled like a strawbery. It was quite a turn on, actually.

b) Blondie - a lot of messed up blonde hair, a stupid blue sweater, dirty sneakers and a white skirt. I found that quite hot! She was reading some sort of a fantasy book, fell asleep on the bus, her hair got even more messed up. There is something that attracts me to people like that, I'm not sure what.

c) No-name girl from my stop - as the name implies she gets on at my stop. She is good looking, and also kind of tall. One thing she has going for her is that I get on at the same time as her every day. 2 days ago the bus was almost empty, yet she took the sit diretly behind me. Today I repeated the favor. We'll see where this goes. This is the type of communication that goes on on the bus. Nothing more, nothing less.

Oh, and one last thing, what all these girls have in common is - you guessed it - no rings!

Thursday, June 02, 2005

God is a prankster ... And he owes me $80.

If you are wondering how we dorks end up being so .. dorky, here is a nice example. Actually it's quite easy, we don't look for trouble, trouble finds us.

Today I had an important meeting. So important, in fact, that I decided to skip lunch for the fear of accidentally making a stain on my shirt. I get my Outlook reminder 15 minutes prior, pack up and go. It's a nice sunny day, nothing to worry about.

And then it happens. It's one of those things that happens so fast you only have time to think to yourself "OH SHIT". I was walking about 4 feet behind another guy, and as I looked down I saw a ketchup packet (the kind you get at McDonals). The next thing I saw was him stepping on the packet in just the right way, completely unaware of the impending disaster. And then the thing explodes in my face spraying me from head to toe with gooey red chunks of ketchup. The crotch area took the brunt of the ejecta; additionally there were at least 50 small (1/8") stains on my pants and about 10 stains on my shirt, including a nice blob on my right sleeve. All this happened in less than a second.

At first I wanted to scream "FUCK!!!" but instead I just burst out laughing. I ran back to work, cancelled the meeting, and went to the bathroom to wash off. Fortunatelly I didn't run into any coworkers and didn't have to explain what the heck happened. After some unsuccessful attempts to clean the stuff off I went to The Gap and bought a new set of panths and a shirt.

Could this have happened to anyone else but me? Absolutely not. Obviously I have become too serious and this was somebody's way of telling me to chill out, relax, and never, ever skip eating lunch because of work.