Happy Birthday Mark! (Five weeks late)

Mark and I have birthdays in December, just four days apart. So on my birthday Mark always makes me a special birthday dinner, and on Mark's birthday I take him out for his special dinner. I would make him a nice meal for his birthday, but Mark does not think hot dogs are "special" enough. Anyway, on Tuesday evening, just five weeks after his birthday, I took Mark out for his dinner. He chose an expensive French restaurant. I agreed to take him there without revealing even the slightest discomfort. You see, I hate eating in expensive restaurants. I just cannot enjoy my meal because the whole time I am adding up in my mind what it is costing me.

Oh, that last bite cost me fifteen dollars, and each sip of this wine is another three dollars on the bill. My god, that comes to six dollars per ounce. And why do they only put like three ounces in the glass? If they'd at least get me drunk I wouldn't care. Geez, each scallop in this appetizer costs ten dollars.

But it is Mark's birthday and I have an obligation to take him where he wants to go. So it is the expensive French place.

Obviously this was not an authentic French restaurant, because the staff at real French restaurants act as if they're doing you a favor, and god forbid you ask them to explain something on the menu. No, the staff here was extremely polite and accommodating. From the lady who greeted us and took our coats, to the waiter who made sure we understood the menu completely, to the fine looking young man who actually walked me to the men's room when I asked, "Where's the toilet?" We weren't rushed through dinner as if there was a meter attached to our asses getting ready to bounce us so they could turn over the table. No, it was quite leisurely. We were seated immediately, not forced to sit at a bar so that they could sell us a few watered down drinks while we waited, and when I got my initial cocktail at our table, it was quite hardy. Other than that, yes, everything was expensive. But here is the good thing about it, I didn't care. Because everything was delicious, it didn't matter that each bite was costing me more than the minimum wage. It didn't matter to me that I got a giant wine glass with about two ounces of wine in it. It was damn good wine. At the end of our two hours of eating I was satisfied, and what's a few hundred dollars if it can make me and Mark happy?...   especially Mark.

The Dork

There were four times in my life that I was aware of just how tall I am, or was. The first time was when I was a kid and I knew that I couldn't open the medicine cabinet without standing on the toilet. So every once in awhile I would stand on that toilet so I could reach into the cabinet, and get a handful of those tasty orange flavored pills my mom kept in there. It wasn't until later that I realized I was eating children's aspirin. My second awareness of how tall I was again involved the medicine cabinet, only this time it was the day I realized I didn't have to stand on the toilet anymore. I was now a big boy. Forward a few years to the age of sixteen, when I got my driver's license. One statistic on that new license was my height. I lied and put down six feet. I was very sure I would grow that last inch and make six feet. I never did. Finally, there was our trip to Germany. That was when I realized that I was short. Not by United States standards, but by German standards I was short. I remember walking down the street in Cologne and looking up at all the Germans, even the women. It felt very weird.

I recently came across a photo of me in eighth grade at the age of fourteen. It was a class photo with us all lined up in rows. I am surprised at how short we all were. In my mind we were of normal height, nearly as tall as our teachers, but no. We were still little guys with geeky bodies. Even more surprising is what we all looked like. In the photo we looked nothing like I remembered. For instance one kid, who I thought might actually be an adult, didn't look much taller than the rest of us. And the fat kid wasn't really fat, not when compared to today's kids. In fact, if the photo didn't have all the kids names listed I wouldn't have recognized most of them. They just don't look like I remember them. They look like little, dorky kids, and I never thought we were. Just like I'm sure I don't look like some dorky old man now.

Good Grooming

I had a terrible sneezing fit Saturday. It was like that scene in 'It's a Wonderful Life', where the bartender keeps ringing up the cash register over and over again.

"Hey look, I'm making angels.. Kaching, kaching, kaching, kaching."

That was me, "Kachew, Kachew, Kachew... " Except I like to curse as I sneeze, so it doesn't actually sound like that. Cursing while sneezing adds some entertainment value. Anyway, I took all the allergy medications in the house, and even had my friend Dennis come over with some kind of pill. Nothing worked. I continued to have fits of sneezing, spewing snot and germ laden spray everywhere. This went on for over twenty four hours before it dawned on me. I had forgotten about the nose hairs. When my nose hairs get out of hand, when the inside of my nose looks like an overgrown forest, that's when I start sneezing. The nose hairs do two things. They catch whatever dust and dander is floating in the air, and when they get super long, they tickle the other side of my nostril. So I got out the grooming paraphernalia and started whacking away. First I go in there with a small pair of scissors to chop down the giant hairs, which are the redwoods of the nostril. After getting the largest offenders, I take my motorized nose hair clippers and go to town. I get that thing up there as far as possible and cut those things down to a nub. There is something satisfying when you hear the clickty click of the hairs getting chopped down. which reminds me, I have some other grooming to do. I have a different clipper for that.

Plant Life

I have big plans. Well, for me they are big. I'm going to build two long planters for under the living room windows so that this spring I can put some flowers out there. I don't actually have plan, plans. I mean, no actual written down, drawn out plans. They're all in my head, which may be why I'm having a bit of a problem figuring this out. Now my dad fancied himself to be sort of a handyman also. He used to attempt all sorts of projects around our house. From the building of shelves in my sister's bedroom, to pushing the roof of our house out into a dormer. He did the dormer just fine, but those shelves did him in when he sat on a bag of nails. I can still see my mom picking them out of his ass cheeks and dabbing orange mercurochrome on each little nail wound. That is good for me, and bad, because I take after my dad in many ways. Dad was clumsy, dad was smart, dad felt that he could do anything that he tried, and dad could curse like it was his first language. So I am smart enough to know that I can do this planter thing, only I will probably have at least one bloody accident doing it and I will end up using every filthy curse word I have ever heard or thought of. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Noodles

In high school I had a girl friend who drove a Chevrolet Corvair, one of  those little square cars. Her favorite trick when driving, was to steer with her knees. It came in very handy while lighting cigarettes, eating White Castle hamburgers, and when digging through her purse. I was impressed, and to this day I occasionally steer with my knees, just like she taught me.

Yesterday Mark and I were on our way to Home Depot to be disappointed again, when we got behind another one of those damned Honda cars. It was moving so slowly that I managed to pass it and get in front of it at a stop light. As we went past the driver's side of the Honda, Mark looked out the window and saw a Chinese lady in the driver's seat eating a bowl of noodles. She was eating a goddamned bowl of noodles with both hands while driving! I thought South Florida drivers were insane. Something has happened in Chicago since I moved away in 1989. People have lost their minds. I do not remember Chicago drivers being so insane when I lived here before. Anyway, here is a list of things I don't want to see people doing while driving.

• Number one, Do not eat a bowl of noodles. Do not try to eat you dinner, lunch, or your breakfast while driving. Unless it fits in one hand, doesn't drip, and can be finished in one or two bites, don't do it.
• Number two, Put the goddamned phone down. The call is not that important, if it was you would have already taken care of it. I constantly see idiots on the phone talking, texting, and looking at the GPS map while driving, even though that is totally illegal in Illinois. At least every third car I pass has the phone out and is not paying any attention to the crazy man in the white Ford honking his horn and cursing at them.
• Number three, Your car is not just a room in your house. Mark and I passed a car yesterday where the man driving it was on the phone, the woman in the passenger seat was doing her makeup in the mirror, and the kids in the back seat were both on cell phones. Why the fuck do kids need cell phones? I lived through the nineteen fifties and sixties without a cell phone. Hell, I didn't even know how to use a coin pay phone until I was in high school and I turned out just fine.
• Number four, Don't live in your car. I have got behind quite a few cars that are stacked to the roof with crap. Crap across the rear window, crap in the passenger seat all the way up to the window line, and crap everywhere filling the car with only a small area for the driver to sit.
• And finally, just get the hell out of my way. I thought the tourists in Florida were slow. In Chicago everybody is slow. It is excruciating getting behind one of those assholes who think the speed limit means something. It does not. Just ask the morons who speed down my street every day.