For the past few weeks, months or years, it’s been one of those days for me. There I was at The Grind sitting at my computer that’s situated directly below a vent breeding mold faster than rabbits mating on speed.
Innocuous looking ceiling vent.
Fertile mold.
Mold shacking up over my head.
I was crunching numbers while thinking philosophical thoughts:
Me: I wonder if Trader Joe’s will have those brandy filled chocolate beans this year? Did I lock my door this morning? How soon before I’m as obsolete as a public pay phone?
Empty pay phone hole — metaphor for my future?
My loyal sidekick, Greg, shattered my deep thoughts.
Greg: Are you busy?
Me (thinking): Just going blind doing math before segueing into regretting the entire trajectory of my life.
Me (saying): What do you need?
He asked if I could go into Photoshop and add a simple date to a simple label for him. He was in a bit of a hurry and he wanted to simply complete one project before simply starting another. This request sounded reasonably simple to me:
Me: Sure, give me five minutes.
My computer had other ideas.
“No Photoshop for you simpleton!”
For ten agonizing minutes I am stuck in the intersection of Irritating and Annoying before I am granted access to Photoshop so I can fulfill this simple request. Just when I am going to print the label with the simple revision for Greg, my lord and master, Elsbeth, starts printing the equivalent of the phone book. Finally, I give Greg, who started working on another project in the intervening 45 minutes, his simple label that inhaled the better part of an hour of what remains of my simply depleting life.
A few weeks ago, Greg gave me the paperwork for a delivery of tile that we received. Another of my illustrious responsibilities as Minister of Tile that makes practical use of my fancy film school degree is to date stamp paperwork. I am the type that can never remember the date, so that’s why I wear a state-of-no-art Timex with date-telling capability. My timepiece is the consummate chick magnet to grandmother-types that wet dream about watch faces with numbers as big as eggplants:
Waiting a New York minute to learn the day’s date.
My boss has strong opinions about architecture. I asked Elsbeth:
Me: Hey boss, what do you think about the Hearst Tower?
Elsbeth: Which building is that?
Me: That one over on 57th and Eighth.
The address did not ring the gong in my superior’s head so I Google image searched it for her while accessing my inner NPR reporter.
Me: They finished the base in 1928, but due to the Depression, they held off building the tower until 70 years later. It opened in 2006.
Hearst Tower base completed in 1928. Architect: Joseph Urban.
Comedy and Tragedy with plenty to laugh and cry about.
Elsbeth looked at the resulting eyesore, liberally dropped words like hideous, ridiculous and awful accompanied by a few f-bombs with i-n-g endings.
Result: super modern glass and steel tower by architect Norman Foster that’s been jutting out of the base since it opened in 2006.
I agreed that time was not kind to this project or to quote my liege:
Elsbeth: What the fuck were they thinking?
Unamused muses at the base.
The crass guest that’s here to stay jutting out of the base.
This week Elsbeth highly amused my colleague, (not) Under Ling (anymore), when she revealed that the reason our shared drive runs slower than a pregnant snail carrying a boulder is because:
Elsbeth (exasperated): People are downloading all their personal crap on it, like pictures of their dog!
Not this dog waiting patiently for his master to throw him a bone.
Nor Thurber, my family’s dog, looking anxious in this picture my sister Dovima texted me as he’s about to leave for the kennel.
A month ago, (not) Under Ling (anymore) was feeling significantly less mirth when she burned her finger using a glue gun.
(not) Under Ling (anymore) giving me the index finger.
Now a message to my seven loyal readers, for the first time in 350 posts, before subjecting myself to the next 350 Lame Adventures, this site is going on hiatus until after the November election. Since I prefer the shiny, fresh and nubile, I’m not the type that republishes past posts, but if you crave a fix of Lame Adventures-style junk food for your mind, preferably while bored at work or in the process of getting dressed down by your main squeeze for forgetting to take out the trash, help yourself to reading any of the 349 others. Check out different years. You might even hit on a good one. If you need a nudge from me about where to go, my personal favorite is the one with the photographs.
Lame Adventures 