This One Was Official

I'm catching a plane at noon, so that leaves little time for any promised recap. Instead, I will regale you with tales of the date I had last night with Sandra. And as the title would indicate, this one was official.

Before I begin, I should make mention of the fact that I'm a steak and potatoes kind of guy. I like buffalo wings and beer. I eat Cheerios out of the box. In short, I prefer "food" over "cuisine". I hate going to a restaurant and being served three ounces of food on a plate seventeen inches in diameter. But as they say, "I can play along."

We hit up this place called "Crush" on Madison. It looks like someone's house (I think it is someone's house). Honestly, you go in and it is like someone removed all of the stuff from your aunt's place and replaced it with restaurant furniture. It's pretty unique. We had both heard about it independently and both heard good things about it. We got there around seven.

Things started off rather amusingly when she asked what "Foie Gras" was. She had seen it on menus before but had never tried it. When I told her it was the liver of a goose that was basically force fed to fatten it, she didn't believe me. "You're making that up," Sandra said, and when the waitress came by to get our drink order, she confirmed it. "That's disgusting. Who would order that?" The waitress countered that a lot of people love it. Sandra was partly horrified, and partly in disbelief. I don't think I'll be telling her how Jell-O is made anytime soon.

She ended up ordering the seared scallops with risotto. I got the Alaskan halibut, which led to another failed food-based joke on my part, as I claimed I was ordering it "just for the halibut". Honestly, I thought that was much funnier than the Semifreddo joke, but she still didn't laugh. Are my jokes really that bad? Am I turning into my dad, whose jokes now evoke only groans?

Now, when it comes to relationships, I don't like playing games. I'm tired of that sort of crap... like Mikey at the end of "Swingers". If I want to talk to someone, I'm going to call them. I'm not going to wait the three days. So I moved the conversation along from small talk and halibut jokes to relationship talk. I didn't care that it was the first date. I asked her why, after spending a grand total of maybe eight hours with me, she decided to use me as a springboard for dumping her boyfriend, which resulted in a short-lived fistfight outside his house followed by a hasty exit from the scene. I put it in much better terms than that.

She explained that the fight was never meant to happen. The idea was to get him to break up with her, except that "it got all turned around". I asked why, if she didn't want to be with him, she didn't just break up with him. "I don't like to be single," she said, "and once I knew you were interested, that was the right time to move on." Clearly she subscribes to the Warm Body Theory, also known as "any port in a storm". At the same time, though, she doesn't seem needy or clingy. We only talked twice since the incident... once was a short getting-to-know-you session, and the other was planning the night out. It's clear to me that she's got issues, but I'm having trouble deciphering what those issues are.

Well, after dinner and drinks and some cheesecake (can someone explain once and for all how to pronounce mascarpone... does it rhyme with Al Capone or not?) we stopped in at Twilight Exit for a couple of drinks. Sandra was freaked out by the couches ("They look like something you'd try to give away on craigslist!"), but once we sat down at the Ms. Pac-Man machine, things brightened up.

"Get the strawberry! GET THE DAMNED STRAWBERRY!!"

"Where does she put the bow? It's not like she has any hair."

"No, the blue one is Inky! What do you mean, how do I know? It said it at the beginning. The pink one is Pinky! Yes, I know it's not very creative!"

Playing Ms. Pac-Man with a buzz on is a great experience. But alas, I had to travel the next day, so around midnight we headed back home. It's not for you to know or for me to write about extra-curriculars, but suffice it to say, she did not spend the night. I told her I'd call when I got back from Indochina.

Rewind

I have to disappear for a while, starting Friday, so I am trying to pump out as many posts as I can until then. I'm still on Columbus Day weekend, so bear with me. Let's blow through the week...

Monday.

I'm not sure the proper way to go about these things, but it seemed like a good idea to have a talk with Betty about dating her sister. I gave her a call, expecting to get her voicemail, but luckily she was around and receptive to grabbing lunch. I gave her the brief details of what transpired, and she was silent for a minute. Not a good thing.

"Do you want my honest opinion?" I said sure. "Don't date her."

I wasn't sure what that meant, so I suggested that if dating her would be awkward, I'd call it off. Betty immediately cut in.

"No, that's not it at all. I think you'd be great for her. But I think she'd be terrible for you. Look I love my sister, but this is the thing: you're new. She likes new and she likes exciting. Things will be great for a month, maybe two, and then she'll want to move on. But she won't do it herself... she'll just act really cold and distant, maybe cheat on you, who knows, until you break up with her. That way it's your fault."

I explained to her that Sandra had, in fact, broken up with Adam, not the other way around. And, as an aside, asked if he had ever hit her. She said if he did, it was news to her, and that her breaking up with a guy was a surprise, but not something that should be indicative of a change in behavior. "Personally, I'd much rather see you with Emily [her older sister], but she's practically engaged. I guess the advice I'd give is... go slow, and don't get too attached."

So it was a "thumbs up" all around for this girl. I mean, when a girl's sister warns you about her, isn't that a sign? But, because I'm an idiot, or rather, because I like breasts, I'm going to see where this goes. And I don't have to worry about taking it slow, because I'll be out of the country for the next who knows how long. But I haven't dated someone with this many issues in a long time... I'm wondering if I'm better equipped to handle it now. I guess we'll see.

Tuesday.

I fought with a guy at the Northgate Best Buy for fifteen minutes over the price of a plasma TV. Here's some logic for you: the TV I wanted (an LG 50" plasma) is normally priced at $4999, and was on sale for $3999. That's 20% off a brand new item, not inventory they're trying to get rid of. That says to me, "Not only can we sell this item for $1000 less than normal, we can do so and still make bank." When I tried to haggle with the kid about the price, he said he couldn't do anything about it, because the profit margins on these TVs was already "razor thin". I called him on that immediately. "How about this. You say that your profit margin on this TV is razor thin. So here's my deal: I will pay you the $3999 asking price for this TV or $500 more than the price you paid for the TV, whichever is less, providing you show me proof of your own cost. Deal?"

Well, he wasn't about to do that, telling me that he didn't know how much they paid the manufacturer anyway. "Well then," I asked, "how do you know your profit margins are razor thin?" Busted. "That's what they told me, OK." Right. For someone who doesn't even work on commission, the guy was certainly a company guy. What I need to do is find a local electronics store, where I can haggle with a professional. Art of the deal and all that. If anyone has a suggestion, let me know... the big box stores have put all the mom and pops out of business.

Thursday.

Here's where the fruit flies come in. I wanted to hit up this place I'd heard about, but Matty said the place had too many fruit flies. At first I thought "fruit flies" was a euphemism for something, like meatheads or fat chicks or something like that, but he was talking about actual fruit flies. "Every place has 'em. There's nothing you can do about it. But that place had a swarm the last time I was there." I'm still not sure about that, as we hit a place on Capitol Hill instead, and I saw no fruit flies. In any case, I won't mention the name of the place I wanted to go to, until I can verify the voracity of Matty's claims.

Sunday.

Seahawks game! Seahawks-Texans was the "Sunday Night" game on ESPN, which on the West Coast means the "Sunday Afternoon" game. And luckily the Texans are horrible, so the victory was almost guaranteed even with Matt Hasselbeck's questionable decision-making skills. If I coached that team, I'd do nothing but pound the ball with Shaun Alexander and maybe, occasionally, every so often throw a short pass to a receiver. It's not so much Hasselbeck's fault... his receivers suck. Well, Jackson isn't bad, but he's hurt now anyway, so he doesn't matter.

The Hawks were up 14-0 early, and it snowballed from there. We were pretty high up in the rafters at Qwest, so the action looked a little more like blimp footage than Madden '06, but the atmosphere was great. By the third quarter the whole section was openly laughing at every attempt the Texans made at playing football. The final was 42-10. The Hawks had something like 300 yards rushing. There's no way they can really be that bad, is there?

Anyway, that was two weeks ago. I'll try to recap last week tomorrow. Stay tuned.

As Promised, Meeting Etiquette

There's more to the Sandra story, but I thought I'd break it up a bit and get to some of the promised items.

There are two kinds of meetings. There are the productive ones, which you leave feeling like stuff got accomplished. Then there are the unproductive ones, which go on forever and you leave you feeling about meetings like you feel about a carton of bad milk: you don't ever want to experience one again. Unfortunately, the latter type is more prevalent to the former.

One of the best ways to ruin a meeting is to refuse to shut up. And there's a whole bunch of people that are guilty of it. Abby's a pain in the ass, because she asks question after question, and although she's trying to be thorough, it gets annoying when she asks the same question three or four times, wording it a slightly different way each time. Arrington's another bigtime offender, but it's mostly because he's a whiner. It should be noted that MacDougal, for all the crap I have given him herein, deserves a lot of credit for his meeting prowess. He doesn't talk unless he has something important to say, and whenever he asks a question, it's one that everyone else should have asked but didn't. He's some kind of meeting savant, I think.

Anyway, we had a meeting last week, and Abby started asking a question... her questions are always in twenty-seven parts with multiple subquestions... and I started saying over and over again in my head "Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking", trying to send some sort of telepathic message to her so that she'd shut her mouth.

It worked, but not quite the way I wanted to. Turns out that I wasn't so much saying it in my head as I was saying it out loud. All of sudden I zoned back in and everyone was looking at me. Wallace waited until he gets eye contact from me, then said, "A.J., is there something you want to add, or can Abby finish asking her question?" I looked over at Abby, who was rightfully pissed, apologized and slunk back in my seat.

Oops.

The Sandra Situation

One thing before I start... as an addendum to the Lenin statue debacle... Gruber printed out a petition to get rid of the Fremont Troll, and posted it outside his office. It now has 10 signatures. MacDougal's still has only three.

---

So... things advanced with Sandra... which was sort of what I expected. I don't have extreme powers of deduction, but I had a feeling something was up. My plans for Columbus Day Weekend included cleaning the house (once again), and shopping around for a new area rug and a plasma TV. These plans were shot all to hell when she called me late Friday night. She needed someone to talk to who was "detached" from the situation.

The situation is that she wants to break up with her boyfriend, but is either afraid of doing it, or trying to push the onus on him using passive-aggressive breakup strategies. She had three goals for Saturday: to vent her frustration about Adam, to get really really drunk, and get it on with me. Unfortunately, perhaps for both of us, I have a particularly chivalrous nature. As she made drunken advances on me late Saturday night, I explained to her that I wasn't going to take advantage of a drunk girl, nor was I going to sleep with someone who had a boyfriend. Sober up and dump the chump, however, and I'm all yours, I said. She cried for about fifteen minutes and then passed out in my arms.

Sunday morning she apologized, then went off to break up with the guy. Again I planned to buy a TV and a rug. Didn't happen. She went over to his house to break up with him, saying that she slept with someone else last night (which is technically true, though not in the way the euphemism is typically implied) and that she was happy that she did and that she didn't ever want to see him again, except that he had a bunch of her stuff and she wanted to get it. I'm sure there were other topics covered, but I wasn't there, so I'm just relating the gist of it. Well, he wanted to know who she slept with, and when she wouldn't tell him, he grabbed her cell phone, started looking through the calls, found my name as the last one on the list, and dialed me up. Of course it showed up as her, so I picked up. At this point, the story switches to present tense, because it's more exciting that way.

I am immediately challenged to a fist fight. Yeah, this guy's a real winner. But it gets better. After I figure out who he is and why he has the bug up his ass, I tell him that I'm not about to drive all the way over to Phinney to deliver a case of whoopass. He insults my manhood. I again decline. He puts her on the phone. She tells me that he won't let her leave the house, and she's worried he might hurt her if I don't come over and stop him.

Great.

I really have no interest in being a white knight here, and the fact that she somehow allowed herself to get involved with this chump is beginning to shake my faith in her severely. This dude is clearly an ass, but chances are that she's loco as well. But there's another issue at hand... unless this guy is somehow trained in self-defense, which I can almost guarantee he's not, I have to be very careful what I do. On the off chance that it gets to fighting, I can't fight on instinct, because if I do, I'll kill him very quickly and without very much thought.

Naturally, being an idiot, I drive over there. "Why didn't you just call the cops?" you ask. Because I am an idiot. Yes. Today, reader, we have replaced American Jones with a Folgers' Crystal Moron. Let's see if you notice the difference.

I get over to the place, which is actually a spectacularly nice place in a nice part of Phinney, and he's already waiting at the door. He sees me coming, smiles, and comes at me hard. I get about halfway through saying "Now hold on a second" before he throws a well-telegraphed right. His plan must have been to land that right and go from there, because when I dodge it, he's totally off balance. Amateur move. I knock him to the sidewalk with an open palm to the right side of the head, and shout "Stay down." Of course he doesn't, opting instead for some kind of shoulder block technique you'd see Ray Lewis use against a running back. It probably works well against tackling dummies, but this is because they don't have effective countermaneuvers. I drop him again, and once again recommend staying down.

Prick doesn't stay down. He pops up and starts bouncing around like Sonny Liston. His two signature moves didn't work, so now he's going to box me. He's throwing shadow punches in an attempt to intimidate me. I'm trying really hard not to laugh. "C'mon," he says, "let's go." I just sort of gesture in a "take your best shot" sort of way, and he comes at me with a left. Again, telegraphed it. Easy dodge. And this time I bury him with a fist. He's on all fours, groggy; my fist doesn't feel too well either. "Would you just stay the fuck down?" I plead with him. He starts to get up again, so I throw another one into his head. We're 30 seconds in and I've already had it with this guy. He makes one more attempt. I flatten him, and as if on cue, Sandra runs out of the house like I'm her hero.

I ask her if she's OK, and she wipes away some tears and nods, and I suggest that we both vacate the area. She wants to come home with me. I tell her that's not such a good idea, especially since I'm not too happy with what has transpired and what she insinuated that caused said events to transpire. She asks if she can call me later to talk things over, and I say sure. I help her load up some stuff she says is hers, and tell her to go home.

Meanwhile, the poor chump is still lying on the sidewalk. He's conscious... he just has little interest in moving. And the dude's neighbor, who was pruning bushes, watched the whole thing go down. So I go to my car and scribble down my contact info, and I explain to the guy that I'm not going to sit around and wait, but on the off chance the cops show up and need to talk to someone, this is how they can get in touch. Then I squat down beside the ex-boyfriend and explain some truths to him, which I will now paraphrase.

"Listen. I didn't have sex with your girlfriend. I didn't even kiss her. She told you that because she didn't want to be your girlfriend anymore. Think about that for a while. And while you're thinking about that, consider the ass kicking you just received, which was based solely on your own aggression and was totally avoidable, and imagine the similar asskicking you'll receive if it's discovered that you're even considering retribution on either of us. And one more thing... the Khmer Rouge ruled over Cambodia, not Thailand, you schmuck."

---

Now, aside from the quip I delivered at the end, which, if it's the last contact I have with this dude, will be an excellent parting shot... I'm not particularly proud of my actions. Did I stop Sandra from getting hurt? Possibly... I'm not sure what he would have done... he always struck me as an ass, but there's a very big difference between being an ass and being a domestic abuser. But I don't particularly relish the ass-kicking I delivered... I gave him several chances to get out of it. I hope he takes the warning seriously and doesn't come looking for it again. And I hope he doesn't file assault charges, because civilian lawyers and local law enforcement equals cash settlements and loads of paperwork and stern lectures.

That's it for this update. But there's a lot more to be written about the mundane domestic life of American Jones... and it looks like I might have an actual assignment soon. In the meantime, stay tuned for a discussion of plasma TVs, meeting etiquette, and fruit flies. Yeah, fruit flies.

The Lenin Statue Disgusts MacDougal

For those of you who don't know, there's a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Fremont. I don't know the whole story, but from what I know it was shipped over here from one of the Western European countries shortly after it fell. It is said to be the biggest statue of Lenin in the country, which, given the number of Lenin statues in the country, isn't really saying much. I never really gave too much though to the statue, until recently, for one reason.

MacDougal hates it. Enough that he came in the other day with a petition to have it removed. The petition has three signatures on it so far, most likely from people who just want to be left alone.

The statue "represents everything that is wrong with the world," and "goes against everything he fought for during the Cold War". He demanded that we sign the petition. I don't think any of us care one way or the other whether the statue is there or not, but we all argued with him anyway because he was acting like such a putz. When a child sees the statue and asks who it is, someone can explain to them what a great and terrible man Lenin was. MacDougal would rather them read a book. Perhaps there's some satisfaction that the crumbling of an Evil Empire resulted in public art for America? MacDougal thinks that if they want a statue so bad, they should melt it down and make a statue of one of our own leaders. The guy just will not be swayed.

As I excused myself to go back to work, I pleaded, "It's standing in front of a Taco Del Mar, for God's sake! The statue! Of Communism's champion! In front of a chain restaurant that sells mediocre faux Mexican food! If the irony is lost on you there, I don't know what else to say.". And without missing a beat he shouts back, "You know where that taco place is? Fremont! It's all hippie communists over there!"

---

Anyway, I have a bunch of other updates to make, I swear. I just haven't had time.

Go Hawks!

I will be at the Seahawks-Texans game this afternoon. I have many many updates to make, all of which will have to wait until tomorrow.

Tacos Guaymas

Question: why didn't anyone tell me about this place before? I am currently munching on the fattest, most delicious burrito on Earth.

Also, I took the day off. More later.

Arrested Development, Thoughts On The Season

I don't know why, but I love "Arrested Development". It's just consistently stupid-funny, which is the best kind of funny. I totally forgot about the show, since I typically can't watch television on a regular schedule, but I caught it last night, and I think I'm going to have to do that thing where I buy the DVDs and watch the whole season in one day.

Now, the Mariners. They ended the season 69-93, which is pretty damned terrible. Only the Devil Rays and Royals were worse. The offense was terrible. Ichiro had an off-year (if .304 and 200 hits could be considered an off year), the offense got even worse once they traded Winn, Beltre fell short of expectations, and they got next to nothing up the middle (take a look at the stats for anyone that played catcher, center, second, or short). Add to that the general incompetence that has surrounded the franchise since 2001, and things look bleak.

And yet, I am optimistic.

Next year the Mariners will have a clear #1 starter in Hernandez. If all goes well, he could become the next Johan Santana. And you have to figure that some of the injured guys will come back healthy... there were so many guys hurt, the law of averages says someone will make it back all the way. Maybe Foppert gets involved, too. If the pitching holds even the team will be competitive.

Now, the offense. Beltre, it is safe to say, has been a bust thus far... and what's odd is... that's exactly what I expected, because aside from last year's breakout performance, his stats this year have matched what he's done for his career. Add Safeco to that, and it's fair to expect the same from him next year as well. Maybe he'll be a little bit better after taking a season to adjust, and maybe Sexson will as well. But that's your 3-4 punch right there. Ichiro is your leadoff man. Ibanez is #5. But the rest of the team is still pretty bad. No pop. So you fashion the lineup like a National League team. Put Betancourt in the #2 hole... a contact hitter who can bunt and run. He and Ichiro get on base... and it means fastballs for the heart of the order. Of course, there needs to be upgrade from 6 through 9. Morse, Reed, Torrealba, Bloomquist, Dobbs, Lopez... these are all guys who are role players, and it's great to have one or two of them on the bench. But these guys got way too many at bats. Signings need to happen.

Hideki Matsui? Why not? The team clearly has a history with Japanese players. Maybe he's too expensive, but you know the guy's not going to get hurt. Brian Giles? Preston Wilson? I don't know. I guess I shouldn't worry about it until the playoffs are over and the hot stove starts to heat up. I just don't feel to bad about this team for next year. Probably not a playoff team, that's too much to ask, but a team that can compete such that watching them on a daily basis doesn't cause physical pain.