Things of note from the weekend.

This is going to be one of those disjointed brain flushing posts that just spew out a few random things and then ends.

You’ve been warned.

On February 28, 2006 my car’s odometer reached 100,000 miles. Saturday night while driving from the new place in Methuen to the old place in Salem my car reached 150,000 miles. 50,000 miles in 26 months. 1923 miles per month. That’s a little more than 62 miles per day. Despite the fact that I can’t seem to keep air in my friggin’ tires anymore, the car is really coming through for me. Please let it continue. You hear that car? I’m showing you love. Please keep coming through for me.

Change of Subject

Moving day is Saturday. However, since the place has been ours since the first of April we have been moving stuff from Salem and Tewksbury to Methuen at a pretty steady pace over the last two weeks. We’ve left the furniture for the movers though. On Saturday morning Verizon came and hooked us up with FiOS. Television, Internet, and Telephone. Everything is working (or at least it will be once we get a phone chord) so when we want to watch the tube or surf the net we go to Methuen. We just don’t have any chairs or tables or anything. I brought over a couple of little desks to put the PCs on, and a couple of folding chairs to use too. Last night however we were laying on the floor on top of a moving blanket while watching the Bruins on television when we got our first ever knock on our new front door. It was two young men dressed in shirts and ties wearing name takes with the title, “Elder.” They wanted very much to tell me about the Prophet and how we must live our lives by his teachings. You guessed it… Mormon Missionaries. Our first knock on our new door was Mormon Missionaries. And talk about persistent!

Me: I don’t think I’m interested today.
Elder Whatshisname: Well, will you be interested tomorrow?
Me: No.
Elder Whatshisname: Will you be interested the next day?
Me: No. (closing the door on them) I think I’m going to go back to bed, thanks.
Him: Bed? But I can hear the TV.
Me: Yes, I’m in bed in front of the TV. (as I close the door further)
Him: (trying to wedge his hand into the door) Well you should take this card that talks about how the Prophet tells us to live.
Me: (closing the door the rest of the way) Sorry to waste your time.

All the time I was talking to them I kept coming up with different, very insulting things that I could say to demonstrate just how passionate my lack of interest in the teachings of Joseph Smith really is. I wanted to tell them to fuck off. I wanted to tell them that I was a militant satanist and make some sort of quasi-biblical reference about the joys of being roasted in the eternal hell fire or some such crap. I wanted to tell them that Brigham Young University is a dump. I wanted to tell them that Big Love is the funniest show in television history. I wanted to tell them that the movie Orgasmo is really a documentary. Even worse, I could have started singing South Park’s Joseph Smith song (dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb). But in the end I just tried to tell them to piss off in the most polite way I could conjure up on the spot.

After I closed the door on them they started knocking on the neighbors’ door. When the neighbors didn’t answer they knocked again. And again. And again.

It must be a really shitty life being a Mormon missionary. Knocking on the doors of people who have no interest in speaking to you and then on the rare occasion some sap (like me) actually opens the door trying like hell (hehe religious pun very much intended) to keep them listening. No wonder the guy in that documentary called Orgasmo took that job in the porn industry.

Change of Subject

How about those Bruins! WOOHOO! I was 100% sure they would be swept out of the playoffs by Montreal and that the average margin of defeat would be about seven goals. Game one pretty much went by the script. They were losing 34 seconds into it. They hung in there for a good while, but ended up getting beaten badly. Game two was great! They score to tie it late in the third and it goes to overtime. I didn’t see the “tripping” call until the next day, and it looked like a pretty bad call to me. Just as bad as all the dives that weren’t called. So while it wasn’t a painful blow out, they still lost the game. Then last night… game three. Jen had gone to sleep on our moving blanket/bed substitute and I was sitting up on one of the folding chairs pretty much hanging on every play. Overtime again. This time the Bruins win! I was one heartbeat away from screaming at Wideman to shoot the damn puck when he dished it off to Savard who slammed it home for the win. I jumped out of the chair and yelled out “YES!” and woke Jen. I’m sorry I woke you sweetie, but I couldn’t help it. It is only one game, and they will still probably lose the next two and get eliminated… but some how avoiding a sweep feels like a moral victory. It felt damn good to see my team win a playoff game they probably had no business winning. Unfortunately I am now so pumped up that I expect them to win the next three games and advance to the second round. My brain knows there isn’t a chance for that to happen, but my heart is already expecting to play Pittsburgh in round two.

Change of Subject

I saw one of the most pathetic yet hysterically funny things I’ve ever seen on the road today. I hate people who talk on their phone while they drive. I know these days it’s often a necessity, and I do it pretty regularly myself. Worse than just talking though is the people who are using their phone as a sort of status symbol. They feel that by talking on the phone in the car they are displaying to we the onlookers just how important they are. Hold that thought for just a second though.

When Jen and I first started dating she had a Motorola Razr. One of these, to be precise:

Today I was stopped at a stop sign induced back up and I happened to look into my rear view mirror. What I saw almost made me piss my pants with laughter. There was a woman in the car behind me. Not elderly but getting close. She wore her hair in a manner that was very reminiscent of the 1980’s, complete with about 75 pounds of hair spray to hold it in place. I got the impression that she probably had a teen aged daughter around 1987 and tried to match her style in order to be the cool mom, and just dug it so much that she never gave it up.

But I digress…

She was holding a Razr and talking into it. She had the obvious air of one who was performing, showing those of us who were stuck at the stop sign just how much more important she was than the rest of us. The trouble was she was holding it upside down and backwards. She was speaking into the back of the ear piece. Now my girlfriend Jen is 100 times smarter than I am and she mentioned that it might have been on speaker phone. Good point Jen. (love ya!) But I don’t think that was the case for two reasons. First, as stated she was holding the thing up to her face and talking into the back side of the top half of the flipped open phone. If it were on speaker she’d still need to talk into the mic, wouldn’t she? Second, if it were on speaker why would it be in her hand held up to her head (backwards)? It just doesn’t make sense to me, and even if it was on speaker phone it would still be the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while.

That’s all for today I guess. But let me leave you with a little more Mormonism… South Park Style.