Now My Car May Be On Its Last Legs -- No, Seriously

I took advantage of my unemployment to work on the car.  Maybe I'm getting obsessed over it, but as long as I have (well, had, since I started a new job Friday) time, I need to make sure I have transportation, have freedom.  I am nothing without it.

So I bring it over to the mechanic My Father trusts.  I went to see him so he could check out the Check Engine light, and I finally have time to bring it during the workweek.  I have become more and more concerned with my driver's-side door falling apart, but first things first, I needed to make sure the inside of the car is good.

Unfortunately, it was a waste of time because they can't check the Check Engine light.  It did come on after he drove it a bit, but he realized that the plug he needed was something he didn't have.  He said that each manufacturer had its own plug until the government mandated the same plug starting in 1996.  He said he threw away all the old ones, and I should go to AutoZone because they apparently have it.  Besides the fact I had the time to go into the buildings at the University of Minnesota and tear away any of the experiments I could have done, this was a waste of time.

(Aside number one: I got there around 10, which is when they said they were open.  I got there a quarter after 10.  I see their sign says they're open at 9.  So now that's wrong?  Meanwhile, no one was there.  I waited a few minutes because I didn't want to lose the Check Engine light that turned on while I drove down there, but I was wasting too much gas, so after five minutes I turned it off.  Still no one there.  Finally, after a half-hour of waiting, I slipped the keys under their door and left.  I voicemailed them saying that it's my car blocking their door, please get to my situation when you can.  They came ... well, the guy called me a half-hour after I left my car.  Is it too much to ask to not only drop off my car when I said I was going to drop off my car, but also to be open when you say you're going to be open?)

(Aside number two: There was another mechanic, in Uptown, which I thought did a very good job.  But last year, or maybe two years ago, when I wanted to bring my car in, they said they would not service it because it's too old.  I remember him specifically telling me that their cutoff for working on cars is 1996 -- which is the year the government apparently mandated the same Check Engine plug.  Coincidence?)

So at the end of that day, instead of going to AutoZone, I went to yet another mechanic.  This one is the mechanic just down the street from the Mechanic Around The Corner, the one I will no longer go to because I no longer trust them.  On the other hand, these guys found the nail in my front driver's-side tire that was the cause of all the slow loss of pressure in it, something The Mechanic Around The Corner disregarded.

I dropped the car off overnight.  However, the next day (the day where I got double-teamed, by the way) they not only said they could not get the Check Engine light to turn on, they would not be able to check on the reason for it because, like the car shop My Father trusts, they don't have the right plug for a car as old as mine.  So that too was a waste.  At least neither place charged me.

I told them as soon as I got the keys back that the light was going to turn on as soon as I drive out of there.  And it did, thus continuing my love-hate relationship with my car.  I know the light gets a bit persnickety; it came on when I drove downtown to start work, but it hasn't come on driving around the neighborhood today.  But I don't know if it coming on only intermittently means it's safe.  I really think there's something wrong with the engine.  That's why I wanted to get that taken care of first.  Now that I have work and don't have time to bring it, this is going to come on and it's going to drive me crazy because I think it's going to finally lead to a very serious breakdown of my car.

---

Then again, these are bad times for my car.  There are several things wrong with it, any one of which I am convinced will mean the death of my car, or at least will finally convince me to put it out to pasture for good.

It's become summer in Minnesota.  With that I hear different things coming out of my car.  For the past several years, for example, there is the "second sound" that comes on whenever it's hot out and I turn on the air conditioning.

There's something else I've noticed this year, however.  This sound makes this noise, this "wobble," whenever I drive the car up to, I think, third gear, which is around 30 and 45 m.p.h.  It's as if the transmission is having a difficult time switching gears.  Which leads me to another big problem. ...

... which is the transmission itself.  I have felt this hesitation whenever I try to accelerate, for some time, but it's gotten even more difficult, from time to time, over the past winter.  I thought the polar vortex we went through beat up my car pretty good, but since the weather has started to warm this problem still remains.  This is something I think is different from the time I got the car back from The Mechanic Around The Corner and I couldn't accelerate beyond 10 m.p.h. -- this is at a different speed, but the resistance, the feeling that my car is rearing back just as I am trying to push the car to a greater speed, is still there.  I felt that (along with the "second sound" "wobbling") today.

Told the mechanic My Father trusts and he says he thinks the transmission's slipping.  Shit.  This new mechanic, on the other hand, says that nothing's wrong ... well, besides the fact that the transmission's overfull.  Did I do that?  I don't think I did, but I don't remember.  So I'm hearing one thing from one mechanic and the exact opposite from the other.  Just great.

Interestingly enough, the one thing they both agree on is that if I try to flush the transmission (which is something I believe I had done last year, but for some fucking reason I don't have the record for it -- where in the goddamn hell is that fucking receipt?  I swear I had it done last year), there's a chance that I might make the situation worse.  In fact, both said that flushing the transmission might destroy the transmission.  How the fuck does that happen?

So I'm stuck.  One doesn't think there's a problem; both say that if I try to do something about what I think is a problem, I might make the problem worse.  Fuck my life.

---

Oh yeah -- now the rattling from my door is getting even worse.  I can hear it now; it used to rattle just a bit, but now it's rattling longer, a lot longer.  I think another of the clips that these doors attach to came loose.  I don't know if my door's hanging on by a thread, but it wouldn't surprise me.

It's gotten to the point where, if I'm stepping out of my car, I don't close the door like normal people.  No, I have to bend down and push the door shut at the place where the exterior part of the door is separating from my car.  I wonder if it makes me look weird, but I think I'm doing that in order to save my car.  Nevertheless I can't do that if I'm stepping into my car.  I used to try and close the door as gently as possible, but it's so separated that anything I do will result in a "bringgggggggggg" sound that makes me shudder.

So if no one can check the Check Engine light, and if I can't do anything about what I believe is a slipping transmission, this door is now the next problem I have to fix.  Unfortunately I don't know when I'll have the time.  Well, I should say this: I have been told by my supervisor at this new job that the work week is flexible.  As long as I work 40 hours a week, and I am consistent with my work week as much as possible, I can take time off for, for example, bringing my car in.  That's good.  Too bad that two weeks from now I plan on switching my schedule around to see if I can catch the first game of the World Cup on Thursday, June 12.  And next week I don't plan on taking advantage of this schedule flexibility because it's only my first week and I want to make a good impression on her.  So I have two weeks, at least, where I have to deal with a door that may or may not be falling apart.  I swear I'll hop into my car one morning, slam the door shut, and hear this loud clang, and when I step out I'll see my entire door rattling around the driveway.

Once again, fuck my life.

---

Oh yeah, one other thing.  The taillight warning light has come back on.  It was on right after I got my car back from The Mechanic Around The Corner, but then it stayed off.  But yesterday, after I got off work, it came on, and it's been on since.

Before all that I noticed that the left taillight assembly had this accumulation of moisture inside it.  I wanted to take today to wipe it off, but I forgot/failed to realize that the outside is blocked by all the housing for the lights.  I did notice that the rubber weatherstripping has slipped on one end of the assembly, and the rain probably is getting in through there.  For a minute I thought about asking the car parts store (where I was going to wipe down the taillight assembly; I use their tools, liberally) for some adhesive, but then I realized I'm too lazy to do such a thing.

By the way, one of the taillights is off.  It's one of the ones I tried to fix, one of the ones The Mechanic Around The Corner said he fixed.  The bulb is new, so either the socket is bad, the wiring is bad or the moisture that's coming in is shorting it out.  Whatever the case I will not do anything about it because I have neither the energy nor the skill set to fix it.

Finally, one more time: Fuck my life.

All Too Much

The pressure and drive to get everything done before I had to pick up my parents tonight basically broke me.  I was imagining, in my most heavenly dreams, that I would have everything I needed done before Thursday evening and so I could relax and even take a nap before I went to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Division).  But that was not to be.

I found work today.  For the first time in about a year, I think, I was a guinea pig in the University of Minnesota's MRI building.  Hadn't been sent into the tube in a long time.  Unfortunately it was that damn sadist looking at my kidneys again, so I had to endure more than three hours of this heavy curved plate weighing down my hips.  It took me a long time to breathe myself back into three dimensions.

I may have made a mistake in going to Taco Bell afterward.  I knew I had the rest of Mother's very good spaghetti to eat, as well as the leftover haystack of french fries I got when I went to Annie's Parlour in Dinkytown on Monday.  But I wanted to try Taco Bell's "Happier Hour," where a bunch of items are only a buck between 2 and 5 in the afternoon.  Although I only saw three of those Loaded Grillers being sold, there actually is a fourth one, a special one, that I ordered when I said "one of each."  Then, the weirdest thing: The guy ordering behind me, who kind of gave me the creeps because he was speaking very slowly when he ordered, asked the entire restaurant if they wanted the Loaded Griller who wasn't going to eat.  Not one to waste any food, or Taco Bell, I said yes, although I did later regret it because, hey, he might be crazy and he might have injected some, like, rat poison into it.  I inspected the Griller for holes or any tears to see if he may have opened it up to put something in it, but I didn't see anything.  And since I'm writing this overnight, I have yet to die from it.

Oh yeah -- spending 45 minutes here was 45 minutes not going home to water Mother's tomato plants (and not enduring mosquito bites, at least until I got to the backyard) or washing the dishes or folding the laundry.  (Set aside the fact that, to ensure that Mother wasn't upset that I didn't eat all of the food she prepared for me before going back to Las Vegas, I still had to eat the rest of the spaghetti, and to also ensure that Father didn't get upset I was wasting money on outside food, I had to eat all the fries before I picked them up tonight.)  In retrospect I could have used the time more wisely.  But hey, the last afternoon of freedom to me is being able to do something without their presence, and eating Taco Bell just before dinnertime counts.

Nevertheless I didn't quite get completely done with everything.  I had to rush through cleaning the dishes, but even then I didn't put them all away.  I got done with washing all my clothes, but right now the last two loads I did are unfolded in my hamper.  Finally, I failed to go through the papers and clean out my bedroom.  In fact, the only thing I was able to do was toss together newspapers and shit into two bags, then drive them out to storage.  Probably still isn't going to make a dent in the amount of debris still in my room, but I had to clear something out.

Some time this evening I felt my energy give way, replaced by a soul-sucking fatigue.  I thought I was going to be able to catch up on my sleep while in the MRI tube, but I think I passed out for only five minutes or so.  I really, really wanted to take a nap tonight, but I still had dishes to wash and laundry to take out of the dryer and newspapers I had to send to storage.  I powered through, but if you know me, when I get tired, I get irritable.  Very irritable.

So why am I staying up so late?  Because I have to plan for this new job I start in several hours.  A new job?  Yes!  I guess it's a saving grace; only a week of unemployment between the death of my test scoring position and the start of this new one, albeit temporary.  It's downtown, so parking's going to be a bitch, but in the end I will be coming out with some much-needed income.

One of my biggest worries was needing to explain why I don't get up so early in the day anymore.  I was still wrestling with that because I knew I still didn't have a good answer for that.  Now I don't have to worry about that because I actually have something to do.  Plus, the fact that this job starts the day after my folks come home is too coincidental not to take as a sign.  I had to do take this job.

Nevertheless I need to get some sleep in, lest I feel even more overwhelmed.  Good night.

Got Double-Teamed For A Third Time ... But Then They Half-Assed The Cleaning Job!

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The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Twins (Last Week: 0).  Swept the Padres in San Diego (even though it's only two games), got swept in San Francisco, which has the best record in Major League Baseball (I think), then began their home Memorial Weekend series with Texas with a loss followed by a win where Joakim Soria, the Rangers' closer, bobbled a nubber with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.

I don't have anything else.

This week: They finish their series with the Rangers, then immediately go back on the road (they're home only for the four games with Texas) where they play their final series at the Yankees with Derek Jeter still wearing pinstripes, oh boo-hoo!, then begin a special four-game interleague series with Milwaukee by playing the first two in Miller Park Monday and Tuesday.

With all University of Minnesota sports done and the Lynx exempt this year because they're defending national champions, expect a lot of short surveys, thank Buddha.

#-2: Timberwolves (Re-Entry!).  I forgot to put this team in last week's WMNSS, and it would have been more appropriate too, because I think I would have been able to put the Woofie Dogs in rock bottom.  That is where they should be after they find themselves as the embarrassment of the National Basketball Association once again.

It was leaked through the media before the NBA Lottery that Kevin Love has made it known to General Manager Flip Saunders and the rest of the Woofs that he will opt out of his contract after next year and test free agency.  When a superstar who has led his team to no playoff appearances for his entire career, you can bet he's not dipping his toe in the water.  The most cynical views we have of Love are coming true: He doesn't want to play here, never did want to play here, and is going to get the fuck out of Dodge even if he has to play for the minimum.

First of all, let's look back and blame David Kahn for this.  (And by the way, note that we were all up in arms that Kevin McHale, Kahn's predecessor, traded our third pick overall, O.J. Mayo, for Love in the dead of night.  Even with all the bullshit surrounding K. Love now, we won that deal, and McHale was right for pulling the trigger.)  He failed to find the right supporting cast to complement Love's preternatural rebounding and scoring skills with role players who would defend.

Beyond that Kahn made two fatal mistakes.  First was the draft where the Timbewolves had back-to-back picks.  Kahn did get Ricky Rubio, which was good.  But he could have also drafted a Guard with out-of-this-world skills, Stephen Curry, and instead picked Jonny fucking Flynn, a Syracuse guy who blew up after one season and is not out of the league.  Kahn was afraid that Rubio's and Curry's skills duplicated each other.  I say that with two guys with this much unreplicatable (is that a word?) talent, you draft both and worry about that later.  Curry now may be the sweetest shooter in NBA history.  And he's leading the Golden State Warriors.

The other mistake was signing Rubio to the max contract extension and not Love.  I don't totally blame Kahn for this.  At their best, a Point Guard who can pass in ways no one else on the court can see is a much more unique and powerful X-power than rebounding the ball.  Also, it is smarter these days to sign players to long-term contracts when they're young because they will be cheaper that way.  Finally, no one saw that Rubio would have a short ceiling, let alone have a hell of a hard time scoring and being aggressive with the ball on offense, until he signed that contract.

But before Kahn signed Rubio to that max deal he gave Love only a four-year contract, not the maximum of five.  That sent a clear, brutal message to him: Ricky Rubio is the Timberwolves' #1 guy, not you.  And then he has played great (though he doesn't play defense) while Rubio has stumbled.  And now that it's clear that the Woofie Dogs have hitched their wagon to the wrong horse, they now have to make the right choice as to which assets they'll acquire in order to get rid of Love -- all on top of the kind of embarrassing treatment at the hands of Love's representation.  They were the ones who leaked this news, and without any outright denials from Love or his people, it sounds like the truth, and now the organization has to dance to his tune.

And don't forget the coaching situation.  I'm starting to sour on Rick Adelman.  He has been a very professional coach, but he never did take the team to the playoffs.  With him gone, Saunders now has to find a replacement.  Trouble is, no one wants to commit to the job because they don't know if they'll have Love or not.

This week they were the stooge for another debacle, this one being the courting of Memphis Grizzlies Head Coach Dave Joerger.  He came out of nowhere to interview with the club, not once but twice.  The Grizzlies front office has been in disarray mostly because their new owner is trying to become a dick just like Daniel Snyder.  They don't have a CEO, and the Owner fired the General Manager, who has since come back, not on a full-time basis but just to help out with the Draft.  The Wolves had one in with Joerger: He is One Of Us, a native of Staples, Minn.  And it looked like the squad was going to get some good news.

But then Joerger came back and signed an extension with The Bastard Vancouver Grizzlies.  Apparently the Owner and he patched things up.  Yeah, right.  What I believe instead happened was that Joerger came face-to-face with a team more dysfunctional than the Grizzlies, saw that the club was going to suck, and decided that the grass was not greener on the other side.  So the Woofs are back to Square One, and have to decide between former Timberwolf and coach in Toronto, Sam Mitchell (which wouldn't be a bad choice, I don't think) and Saunders himself.  And we really don't know if they're going to make a decision until they ship out Love, which, if I had my way, would happen at next season's trade deadline, so they can get maximum value out of him.  In the meantime they continue to be a fucking laughingstock.

#-Infinity (tie): Gopher baseball and Gopher softball (Last Week: -1 and Positive Numbers, respectively).  Maybe it's about time I lump these similar spring-played sports together.  I don't know; I still don't know much about softball to regularly talk about it, but if the Gopher softball team can capitalize on their momentous run with another good season next year, I might have no choice but to cover it.

But let's start with the U. baseball team, because I just put them down first and I don't want to edit what I just typed.  These Goofs, who finished fourth in the Big Ten, went meekly in the tournament, losing 3-2 to Michigan Wednesday on one three-run home run, then on the next day was eliminated by Iowa 2-1.  And since this is the B1G and not some Southern school, they had no slack when it came to at-large consideration and was therefore shut out of the NCAA baseball tournament when it was announced Memorial Day.

When Head Coach John Anderson made comments in the newspaper and on the radio of the difficulty of playing your first 20 games on the road, I thought he was setting fans up to lowered expectations.  Well, they certainly met those.  Therefore, we aren't too bent out of shape that they missed the NCAAs for another year.  There probably were two series that put their season in the coffin: The sweep at home to tournament-bound Nebraska in mid-April, and the Hail Mary sweep the first weekend in May at overall tournament #2 seed Florida St., a game where they lost two of them by just a run.  Win, say, three of them and they may have a chance?  How about two?  Hypotheticals, to be sure.

As for the softball team, well ... they were facing the #1 overall seed in Oregon in Eugene, Ore.  And they did play to seed, meaning they were ranked in their Regional and managed to win it (and in dramatic fashion, no less), so it was a success in that respect.  But they lost Game to the Ducks 10-2 in six innings.  In case you don't know, there is a thing called the "run rule" where, after five innings, if one team leads the other by eight runs or more, you stop the game.  It used to be known as the "mercy" rule ... and to be honest, I think that's what it should be called again.  But euphemisms and hard feeling dictate that you use the term "run rule."  Whatever: The Gophers were mercied in Game 1.  They managed to go the whole distance (which in softball is seven innings, not nine) but got swept out of the Super Regional with a 6-2 defeat in Game 2.  I guess I can't be too mad, but as I always say, a season short of winning a championship is a failed season, so by that mark, this is a season of failure.

Came Three Times Today

Wow, I guess I was so bored and/or so did not want to do any of things that I should do that I masturbated thrice, the first time I've done that in as long as I can remember.  All Internet porn, all three times.  What's more remarkable is that the third time probably as good as the first time, maybe even better.  Maybe it was all the "priming of the pump," so to speak.  And given that I didn't wake up until 11 and the last time I touched myself was around 8 in the evening, being able to pump out three loads (with a little pain, but it's all good) over nine hours makes me feel strong, like I was as virile as I was in my college days.  Ah, those were the days!

White Trash Lawn? Ghetto Lawn?

Oh, I know what I can write about -- the front lawn!

It's a haphazard fucking mess.  The late, long winter delayed all of us from trimming our lawns till this month.  Then I remained busy while my parents were away.  Finally, about a couple weeks ago, the grass got so long even I couldn't ignore it, so it was time for me to take out an afternoon to cut it.  But on a day before she left, probably a couple weeks ago, Mother told me she just put grass seed down on the front lawn.  You're not supposed to cut the grass with the seeds on the grass for a few weeks so they can take root and get stronger.  So either I say fuck it and cut the grass, seedlings be damned, or I wait until the seeds turn into blades of grass while the rest of the lawn grows a foot long.  I still don't know why in the hell Mother decided to do this.  Stupid.

At the end, I decided to split the difference and thus succeed in neither getting all the grass cut nor saving the grass seeds.  The forecast called for rain starting on Sunday (although as I write this I have not seen a drop lately) and the grass was at least a foot tall, as tall as I have ever seen the lawn (although the back lawn was a lot shorter).  Plus I knew that the lawnmower was going to have a hell of a hard time cutting it, but waiting would not make it any easier.  So I had to cut it on Saturday.

Well, I kind of cut it.  The mower truly had a difficult time.  Not only was the grass long, it captured all the moisture from the days it rained, so the clippings regularly clogged the side chute that I use on the mower.  I had to idle the mower about a dozen times and get a branch and stick it in that chute to force all the slimy green crap out of it so it could cut and not, I don't know, jam and explode in front of me.  It gets clogged, but never before have I had to clear that thing 12 times.

And it really didn't work, because when I stopped the mower when I thought I was finally done with the front lawn, I looked behind and to the side of me and saw that there were skinny lines of long grass still standing tall in the wind.  They're everywhere, probably survivors of the lawnmower blade when it got too clogged with clippings and wasn't able to swing through.  I should have restarted the mower and took care of it, but I already had to look forward to bringing the gas can in because it was totally empty, plus I had the rear lawn to take care of, plus, well, I was lazy and tired.  I figured I'd go through the entire lawn a second time in a few days -- maybe Wednesday, when ***e* comes over and cleans the house, and me.

But between now and then I have this eyesore of what looks like the workings of a drunk guy who mowed his yard.  What do you call it, white trash or ghetto?  Probably neither; I'm certain poor white and black folks would be smart and aware enough to completely mow the lawn, no matter how tall the grass is.  I, on the other hand, do not care, at least not right now.  So I'll deal with any supposed looks from guys driving or biking or walking their dog past our house and thinking, "What the hell kind of a mow job is that?"

Oh, and I probably blew away all the grass seeds while mowing.  No new grass, old grass not entirely mowed yet -- yeah, that's my life right now.

Wasting Time Today

Well, if you need an example of how to waste your Memorial Weekend, look no further than me.  Especially today.

In anticipation of not having anything I wanted to do (and please don't get that mixed up with not having anything to do), I thought today would be a fantastic day to visit my junior prom date (have I talked about her yet?  I should in a blog post) and Grandmother at the cemeteries.  Yeah, it's Memorial Day, a time where the nation honors its fallen heroes, but frankly, I have not been touched that way.  (That may be fortunate, that may be very unfortunate.)  But it would be a good time to see them, especially since I have a long weekend.

But when I went to the florist where I usually get my flowers whenever I visit them, they were closed.  For the Memorial Day Weekend holiday?  If they were open, they'd make a ton!  But I walked over there from the Arby's nearby and saw that they are closed on Sundays.  I swear I bought flowers from them on a Sunday.  Regardless, I decided my plans of seeing those two at their graves had to be delayed.  No flowers, no visit.  I mean, if you can't come with flowers, why come at all?  My family usually brings flowers when we visit Grandmother, and I don't want to be disrespectful if I don't have any.  I'll go another time, I thought to myself.  And, yes, I thought I was a selfish dick all the way to the mall closest to me, to Target where I got another bottle of nasal allergy spray, and home, where I set the TV in the living room to a volume quiet enough where I could hear the end of the Indianapolis 500 but could fall asleep if my body was too tired ... and then fell asleep because my body was too tired.

---

I need to pick up the papers and clothes that are on the floor of my bedroom.  But I'm not.  They are still there, and I know I'll just throw them out of sight, somewhere, before the 'Rents come back.

I brought a bag of papers from storage.  Some of them are sports even programs I want to put aside, and there are some that are papers from newspapers years ago that I want to read.  I have done neither, and right now I don't even know if I have the time to even put that bag back into storage.

I am slowly going through the laundry -- my way.  That means separating whites from darks, gentle cycle from normal.  Yesterday I went through a load of one white t-shirt that had to be washed delicately.  I wouldn't be able to pull off that shit with my parents at home, but they're not at home, so I'm doing it like this.

One of the few chores I'm keeping up on is watering my parents' plants.  But I don't even know how much water I'm supposed to put in there.  I think it might be too much and I'll ruin them.  Then again I was told by them I watered too little and they died as well.  Fuck plants.

Shit, I'm not working and I've even delayed blogging till the afternoon.  I really didn't know what I was going to write about because I have all these shitty things I haven't done that I could talk about.

The thing that spurs me into action, in fact, is using this free ticket at an AMC theater tonight.  If I have something (fun) to do this evening, I might as well get going.  So I finally decided to lump all the stupid shit in my life into one big blog post about "my day."  After this I have to water my parents' outside plants and try to clean up the driveway again.

And the rest of this shit can wait.  Because I am a lazy loser.

Expenses Without Receipt

Starting from Friday, May 23:

• Hit My Favorite Stripclub (Cover Version) on this day.  Thought about returning soon enough where the transfer I got from boarding the bus to get there would still be good, but instead I was going to go through with my hope that I could cum twice; maybe more on that later.  So I paid fares going to and fro: $3.50.
• The club -- drink, tips, and a pair of VIPs, which, suffice it to say, I can't ever do again.  Shit, only one other time have I ever spent this much money, and this was in East St. Louis at least half a decade ago: $246.
• After I got back home I fell asleep, naked, from 3:30 to 7.  Meant to watch the evening news and water the plants in the late afternoon, but it was not to bed.  Ah, the ability to take a nap in the late afternoon!  Since the community center was going to be closed for Memorial Weekend, I watered Mother's tomato plants real quick, then stepped to it to get my exercise in.  There is one woman there who always lets me work out for free, including tonight and Sunday the 18th.  Buddha bless her!  I then went home because I wanted to go to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition), but I needed some money.  Fortunately, this week I had to go to this restaurant to shake them down and get back some of the money they owe my parents.  I shouldn't be using it, but I'll restore their money before they return from vacation.  Got just $100 for the night, but I pocketed another $100 after I got back for my Saturday trip to the stripclub out of town.  An Infusion, therefore, of: $200.
• My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Division) -- just coffee and tips.  Decided not to wait for this last chick to come onstage because I wanted to go to Caffetto and get on the Internet, so I bugged out 15 minutes early: $7.
• Caffetto -- because it was a relatively warm night, an iced mocha.  Plus tip equals: $5.
• To Thursday, May 22 ... I thought I would get out of work (permanently) earlier in the day than usual.  Either way, I was going to try this place called Doc Popcorn, a place I've seen at the Mall of America and really didn't want to try because, hey, it's just popcorn, but after seeing it at the mall closest to work, I figure I should give it a shot.  I would have rather eaten it straight-up as lunch, but by the time I left work (which was actually a little later than when we decided to leave early Wednesday afternoon), I figured I would have been in the teeth of traffic, so I decided to wait it out for a bit.  (By the way, it was a bad idea to leave the mall at 5:45 instead of 6 or 6:15; the traffic was just as shitty.)  Anyway, I walked around the mall for a bit after eating Doc Popcorn, which was ... well, it was popcorn.  It's cheaper than at the movies, but at least I would have been entertained at the movies.  I'm glad I tried it once, though.  With tip: $5.
• I then celebrated completing the project by working out: $3.
• I then followed that up by going to My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place for a big plate of spaghetti.  With tip: $12.50.
• Then, after I got home, I fortified my wallet with my parents' shake-down money, just to make sure I didn't bolt out the door the next morning forgetting I needed money to get my fuck on.  An Infusion of: $100.
• On Wednesday the 21st I also helped myself to my folks' stash, but that was in case I needed money to spend on things after work Thursday.  An Infusion of: $100.
• Tuesday, May 20 ... that was the day Mother told me to get money from the restaurant that owes Father and her money.  I also wanted to get home in time to catch the finale of Dancing With The Stars (and BTW, even though he's a dick, Maks's dancing with Meryl Davis, especially on Monday's show, was simply fantastic), but I had to get home as soon as I could Monday and I almost fell asleep on the hour-long drive back, so I said fuck it, I'll catch a movie instead and do all this shit with the restaurant when the traffic's done with, and if I'm late for DWTS, fine.  So I saw Neighbors at Eden Prairie Center.  Very good movie: A-.  Rose Byrne may be the most versatile actress in Hollywood today.  And Zac Efron did a more than capable job as the villain-turned-tragic-figure.  His epiphany scene with David Franco at the end was genuine, was played as genuine, and turned this from a comedy to something much, much deeper.  Anyway, I didn't have enough money, so I charged the popcorn and pop to my credit card.  I was going to use cash for that because I had a movie coupon I had bought from the University of Minnesota a long, long time ago that I was going to use, but the guy said I could save more money if I saw a flick on a weekend evening.  Good man, smart man; I will do that, maybe as soon as Memorial Sunday night.  So I paid cash for the ticket: $5.
• Afterward I went to the restaurant and got my folks' money, and then some.  Thank you!  Thank you for giving me money I'm using right now!  I then went to Glam Doll Donuts because, hey, they're great!  Two donuts plus tip: $5.
• Sunday the 18th was a dynamic day for me.  First I went to the U. softball tournament match against Auburn, a game where I left with the Gophers trailing 2-0.  They would eventually come back to tie, only to lose to the Tigers in extra innings.  (That necessitated a second, winner-take-all game, and Minnesota fell behind in that game as well, but they came back to win the game and thus the regional, and I know I said all of this on WAF already.)  Ticket for that abbreviated game: $10.
• Then went to the Lynx game, where I had to with some bojanglin' slapdick.  By the way, my friend was an usher at the game, and after the game he told me some woman gave him three tickets to give away.  I didn't have to deal with that guy, or any scalper, and give him $20.  Oh, well.  Ticket, hot dog and souvenir-sized Coke: $33.25.
• I then exercised (for free because of the nice lady), then went to My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place.  With tip: $10.25.
• Oh ... I found change that day.  I think I might have picked up a penny too, maybe not on that day but on another, but I'm just going to lump it here.  An Infusion of: 12 cents.
• And I stored four new, good-looking quarters: $1.
• Saturday the 17th was the day Mother went back to Vegas.  I said I had to work the U. softball game, however, and here I ate a hot dog and got a Coke as well as spent another double-digit expense on a ticket.  With the program the total becomes: $23.75.
• I cooled my heels at the Megamall after dropping Mother off at the airport, just in case her plane was postponed.  I had the most devilish time trying to convince myself of not only getting Cold Stone Creamery but also going to Hooters.  That was my original plan, but after eating at the softball game as well as having dinner with Mother, and with a possibility that I would want to eat out late, I finally decided that it was just too much for my stomach.  So, even though I wanted to stay for a little bit, I had no reason to.  I got Cold Stone Creamery, then left shortly thereafter.  With tip: $5.
• I then went to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Division) for coffee and tips: $9.
• In retrospect, not having wings at Hooters was a smart move.  I really did want to veg out at My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place, even if it was just for a salad and water.  With tip: $6.25.
• Friday the 16th ... Party at ********a's place.  Only two girls were there.  The host had to call a third girl to come in and work the last 90 minutes.  I should talk about the guys who were there, hoo, boy!  Cover and dances with ********a and *****a, who may be cool with my dick coming out: $50.
• My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place after this.  Hope people don't remember that I was wearing my camouflage pajama bottoms.  That's because I was wearing nothing underneath it.  With tip: $8.50.
• Thursday, May 15 ... Mother was visiting my brother and sister-in-law before leaving town.  That gave me the evening to search for some new porno pants.  I went to the Mall of America to wait for the traffic to subside, then I got lost around St. Paul (damn directions -- thanks, Google Maps) before finding this karate accessories place.  Unfortunately I didn't find it.  Thankfully, there is an ice cream shop in the same complex, so I drowned my sorrows there.  I am upset that I don't remember how much money I spent there, so I'm making a guess: $5.25.
• To Wednesday, May 14: This was the last day of a play featuring one of the test scorers in the project.  We allow people to hawk and shill for their side projects during break time.  Seems kind of odd, now that I think about it, but whatever.  I went because 1) it's close by, 2) I like theater but haven't caught something in some time, and 3) the temp worker at the project is pretty hot.  I was prepared to pay $10, but luckily this performance was a Pay As Much As You Can night.  The person dispensing the ticket was on the phone and just charged me: $5.

I hope I got everything.  Good through Friday, May 23.

Time To Get My Fuck On

Today was my last day.  And with nothing down the pipe, May 22 ends a (barring the occasional vacation and surgery) streak of full-time work that began, I think, September 9.  I knew that I would regret complaining about the hard work test scoring as soon as it's over, and I think I will.

But right now I am only looking forward to fucking spend money on strippers like it's about to suffer 100% inflation.

It's probably due to the fact that my parents aren't here, and maybe also that they will come back next week.  But I don't remember the last time I have gone hardcore stripclubbin' on a holiday weekend.  Before, when my parents had The Store but decided to go to Las Vegas for holidays, such as Memorial Weekend, I would make sure I go to as many strip clubs as I can.  I get to revisit those fun times now, and I am so looking forward to it.  And that I have Friday free helps a lot.  That means I can go downtown and visit My Favorite Stripclub (Cover Division) and finally cash on the handjob from *******a that I couldn't come to the last time I got my dick wanked from her because it was the day after I got this rubber band stuck up my ass.

---

This might be weird to say, but here goes nothing: While winding down this project, I was looking more and more forward to this particular weekend.  I keep complaining about how my checking account continues to shrink despite all my days working, but I have no qualms pissing it all away on strippers till next week.  And I have to admit I was daydreaming about strippers, and this upcoming weekend, while at work.  Then I would catch myself and I have to focus again.

That's when I realized something: Regardless of how productive I feel, and no matter how good I was at work (and I think I did a good job, and my co-workers agree, and I really do appreciate their support), that is not me at my happiest.  What I'm about to do this weekend is me at my happiest.  If I could work as a guy who whips out his dick in the hopes a naked woman will jerk at it until I ejaculate, I would be the happiest guy on planet Earth.  And if I have to pay my way around the world in order to do that every day instead?  OK, sounds fine to me.

That is the real me, if that makes any sense.  Not this socially awkward, sort-of nice, very weird guy I was at work, or over the phone.  I am an unmitigated, unapologetic, antisocial pervert, and I am pretty goddamn proud of it (assuming I remain anonymous).  And I will luxuriate at finally being who I really am until my family comes home and the money runs out.  It will be at that point where Superman puts back on his civilian clothes and walks through life as Clark Kent once again.

Where I Act Like A Fool In Front Of People

So it was the employees' last day of work, and even though I've been promoted, I decided to go back to stick to a tradition of sorts and give everyone in the room chocolates.  Today was bittersweet.  A few blog posts ago I was bitching about how busy I was, yet I knew that with a snap of my fingers all of this will be gone and I will regret complaining because I would not have any work nor any job prospects for the future.  That happens at the end of this project every year, so I get these chocolates as a celebration/memorial.

Just when I should present them to the room Wednesday, however, became an issue.  First of all I didn't even know if anybody would be around to eat them.  Last week I ordered them to come when I came home from work Tuesday in order to give to the room the next day.  But on Friday I was told that they were on a pace to get done early Wednesday, if not Tuesday.  I know all of us like chocolate, but only seven us eating 70 pieces of chocolate was not going to happen.

Then, on Monday afternoon, the minions wised up and, apparently, decided to slow down, almost to the point where my boss was afraid that not only were we going to work Wednesday, we might not even get done Wednesday.  She was livid, but at least my decision to stick with my guns and not cancel the order was correct.  At least those things were going to get eaten.

So, to Wednesday, the Big Day.  They decided to pick up the pace after a stern talking-to Monday, so even though they may have been here a few hours later than initially expected, we knew fairly early into the day Tuesday that Wednesday would be the last day.  My first thought, then, was that everybody comes back from morning break, they'll settle down and get back to work, and that's when I'll quietly march out onto the snack table with them, and they'll discover them, slowly, and it'd be nice.  I thought I did something like that the previous years, and if it ain't broke, why fix it?

After coming back from break my boss, who sits next to me, asked, "So, did you bring out the chocolates yet?"

"No.  My thought is that I'd wait till about 15 minutes after break, let them settle down, then surreptitiously bring them out."

"Well, I figure that they'll make a commotion once they realize there's chocolates, and that'll be very noisy," she said.  She's been very, uh, upset with how people have been coming back from break late and making more noise than she felt was necessary.  I thought it was a tad overblown, but I can see over these past weeks how she has felt the room has been generally, um, unruly.  Anyway, I took that as a cue that she wanted me to take them out now.

Generally, as a way of calming down the rule and getting them back to work, she makes a quick announcement, usually talking about how far along we are on projects and/or issues that have come up.  The people have gotten, for lack of a better word, trained to dick around until she says something, then they all quiet down after announcements.  I didn't actually know, however, if she was going to do it this time around.  I just got up and took the chocolates out to the table.  In the back of my mind I was afraid they would see them and, instead of getting ready to go back to work, they decide to extend the break and gorge on the chocolates.  That's the noisiness my boss wanted to avoid, which is why I thought not saying anything and taking them out 15 minutes later (when people are concentrating on their work) would have been quieter and ultimately better, but whatever.

My boss, though, followed me out of our desks, and while I was opening up the box and making sure the group message from us to them would be displayed for all of them to see, she started to go into her announcements, ending with, "And Unforgivable Wetness (of course she didn't say that, but I sure as hell am not going to reveal my name) has a special treat for us!"

And that was my cue.  To say ... something.  I was not prepared for that.  Shoot, my original plan did not require me to say anything.  So as I was finishing this display of chocolate I turn around and look at my boss, who looked at me back.

I don't know if this came off as defiant.  I hope it didn't.  I was just, you know, unprepared.  But I know what I said next made me sound like an idiot.  I stammered a little bit, of course, and then I said -- and I think I said this but I think my mind has already tried to blot this out of my memory permanently -- "... uh, maybe this should be self-explanatory?  I think this is self-explanatory?"  The questions marks should be there, by the way.  I was up-talking when I said this.

Guess my boss felt she needed to cover for me.  I don't know, maybe she thought I was undermining her.  But she had her thoughts together; as I got done with this display of chocolate, she chimed back in, "He got us all gourmet chocolates."  And you should have heard the "Oooohhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!" that swept through the room.  It was like a trained studio audience in an infomercial.  They then clapped, to which I took a quick bow, which probably made me look like a self-absorbed jackass, but this just shows how bad I am at thinking on my feet.

Anyway, they came up to grab some chocolates -- well, several.  It wasn't a stampede, but there was some commotion as those that wanted the first piece got it.  (By the way, I took the first piece; while I was making the presentation one of the chocolates stuck to the top of the paper divider.  So I helped myself to it.)  Some thanked me, one (who was on my team) effusively so.  I'll take it.  Hey, I don't know if they respect me as a supervisor, and I guess I proved I'm an inarticulate boob, but I'm A-OK bribing them with chocolate.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

Positive Numbers: Gopher softball (First Time Ever!).  I have never warmed up to softball.  I had a friend from USC do softball up in Fresno for a season, and my comments to him basically remain today: That all you really need are a pitcher and a catcher because it seems as if there the pitcher is able to strike out 20 batters per game.  And if you strike out 15, you probably lost because chances are the opposing pitcher struck out 20.  Softball seems way too skewed towards pitching, let alone being one-dimensional, to be considered a competitive "sport."

Well, after seeing the Minneapolis Regional at Jane Sage Cowles Stadium in the heart of the sports complex at the U., maybe that assessment is a bit harsh.  I still have many reservations with the portions of two games I saw.  There are way too many strikeouts for my liking, even though seeing Sara Groenewegen mow down the first eights she faced in relief in Saturday afternoon's eventual victory over North Dakota St. in ten innings was pretty fucking awesome.  And the shrunken field (at least shrunken compared to baseball dimensions) means that a fast batter could reach first on a slow grounder and, like, five strides, tipping the game way too much towards situational ball, such as bunt-and-gos.  But I did see the need for all nine players on the field, for the ball was hit to all parts of the stadium.  Even better, the games (at least the parts I saw before I had to leave, to have dinner with Mother Saturday and to catch the Lynx game Sunday) were good and competitive.  In particular, Sunday evening's winner-take-all contest featured five lead changes, the last of which came in the bottom of the sixth where Gophers Infielder Sam Macken launched a three-run homer to right-center to put Minnesota ahead for good.  Best of all, the Gopher won both games I was present to watch, even though they were tied with the Bison when I left Saturday and they trailed Auburn 2-0 when I left Sunday afternoon's game.  I don't know if I would volunteer myself a convert if the Gophers lost.

Regardless, congratulations to Minnesota.  They followed up only their second time hosting a Regional (the first one was in 2002) and their first time in the NCAA Tournament since 2003 by advancing to their first Super Regional since Super Regionals began.  They face the overall number-one seed in the tourney, Oregon, in a best-of-three series this Memorial Weekend.  So they might get drubbed.  So what?  Reaching this point already makes this program's season a success.  Now, I don't know if I know enough about U. softball to put them into the WMNSS on the regular, but I have to respect the standing-room-only crowd (me being one of those standing) of the albeit "cozy" Cowles Stadium as evidence that there are a lot of people who love softball.  That's an impressive point to consider with regard to begin following them.

#0: Twins (Last Week: -2).  With their late Tuesday evening win over San Diego at Petco by a score of 5-3, they finish this screening week with a 4-1 record and a 22-21 record overall.  (Why only five games?  Last week's survey was filed after their loss Wednesday night and Monday was an off day.)  When was the last time they were above .500 this far into the season?  That's encouraging.

What's not encouraging?  Haven't heard much from Joe Mauer lately.  Brian Dozier has been the best hitter in the lineup.  On the bump, Phil Hughes has been the Twins' best starting pitcher, but his numbers (compared to those when he was playing for the Yankees and playing against the American League East) may be skewed because of the, um, prairie-like dimensions of Target Field.  He may not be as good as his numbers say, is what I'm saying.  But hey, at least they're not totally awful this season, at least so far.  They finish the back half of their annual weirdo two-game mid-week series against the Padres, then begin a weekend trio in San Francisco before coming back home for a four-game series against the Texas Rangers starting Memorial Day.

#-1: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -1).  Well, at least they didn't get swept.  It took ten innings, but they took the first game of their three-game series at Indiana, the class of the B1G, 2-1 on Thursday.  Sure, they bombed out to the Hoosiers by 7-3 and 8-0 scores to lose the series, but they made the conference tournament.

And so did a lot of others.  I have to correct what I kind of wrote last week: For the longest time only the top six teams in the conference could play in the tourney.  But for some reason, this year they allowed eight teams in.  It remains double-elimination, however.  It's a format that leads to quick eliminations, which I don't like because I think it's kind of cruel to have two teams that lost their first game to face each other in a loser-goes-home situation.  But the main drawback to this particular format is the eight teams.  To try and crown a tournament champeen in five days, they are going to try and cram in four games each day.  The first game on Wednesday and Thursday (and, if circumstances warrant, Saturday, even though that day may not see four games and may see only two) will begin at 10 a.m. Central Time, which to me is way too early in the morning to play a game.

At least it's not the Gophers doing this.  They actually get the late game; the fourth-seeded Gophs play five-seed Michigan in a game scheduled for 10 p.m. (wow, 10 at night???  Another reason why an eight-team double-elim tournament may not be a good idea) Wednesday night.  The rest of their journey through the tourney depends on whether they win or lose that opening game versus the Wolverines.

They Don't Respect Me!

So I'm training these guys on this questions, a really tough, abstract one.  Unfortunately due to how fast and slow the separate teams are going, I'm not training this question to my people, the ones who know me and, I guess, like me.

Instead, I had to train in one of the faster and I believe better groups in the room.  They're whipsmart, a combination of both fast and accurate.  Already I was intimidated because I didn't know how or even if these new people would warm up to me and the way I train -- or not train, to be honest.  That I'm introducing them to a weird question like the one I picked won't help.

I thought it was good.  They were laughing at my jokes, and hopefully they weren't laughing at me when I was telling them.  But I finally got pushback when I was going through the examples.  These are real papers that me and my boss, using the rules we were given, gave a certain score point.  I tried to explain to the room why we decided to give them the grade we gave them, and ... let's just say their esteem for me didn't seem to rise.  (Maybe being self-deprecating wasn't the best thing to do because it invited them to regard me even less, but that's another story.)  I tried my best to explain my reasoning to those who disagreed with me, I then said it was me and my boss deciding this, and then I was honest and said that we are making our best educated guesses using the rules and our experience doing this, but their mileage may vary.

I don't think that appeased them.  One of the members of this new team pointed out things I didn't even fucking notice, like how this one tiny phrase in this one paper was taken from a question that had nothing to do with the story.  Good eye, but how the hell am I supposed to pick up on that?  But what's worse is that, when my co-worker volunteered to pass out a sheet trying to map out what specifically they should look for (something I didn't do, partly because I wouldn't know where to start, partly because I didn't see the point of quantifying things for a question that is not quantifiable), I distinctly remember another of the team members shooting me a look.  I've seen that often from her, a really smart woman, but one who probably is mean.  That look I would describe as ... incredulousness, like she was saying, "How in the hell did this guy get this job?"

They don't respect me.  I could see it in their eyes and hear it in their tone.  They haven't even asked me any more questions.  Probably because they don't respect me.  Well, fuck.

Why am I giving these guys chocolates tomorrow?

You're Nothing More Than A Fucking Scalper, You Asshole

Oh my God, I have to talk about this.

So I ditched the NCAA softball regional game Sunday afternoon early (Minnesota fell behind Auburn and I thought, well, they're screwed; they actually came back before falling to the Tigers in extra innings; that forced a winner-take-all second game that evening, and even though the Gophers fell behind in that game, Freshman Infielder [and One Of Us, although she's from Rochester] Sam Macken launched a three-run homer to right-center field in the sixth that proved to be the game-winner; the Gophers go to their first-ever Super Regional with an 8-6 victory ... and they may have found a new fan of the sport in me) to attend the Lynx home-opener and hopefully get in in time to see them unfurl their championship banner.  I say hopefully because I decided to not use my AAA discount to get tickets, instead thinking I could get them cheaper on the street, assuming that it would not be sold out.

I get there around 3:30.  The game's at 4, but the ceremony starts at 3:30, but I decide to play the field, see what happens.  So I make my customary loop on both sides of First Avenue, from the Target Center side to the Block E side.  And since I would rather try and wait these scalpers out than go in to see the ceremony (which will be late, by the way), I take this loop a few times.

Let me say this: Although they deal with an unregulated, even "shady" side of business, second-hand ticket buying and selling, I think most of these guys aren't assholes.  I know one guy who I see a lot at the Xcel Energy Center and around the U. whom I buy tickets from almost exclusively, even if I don't think I'm getting a good deal; I like the guy, and even though I want to get in at a good price, I'll admit that haggling isn't something I'm good at.  On the other hand, the only really bad interactions with scalpers have come from two dickheads, ironically both at the same event, which I think was an NCAA hockey tournament game at Mariucci Arena.  One guy in a bike told me to fuck off.  Whatever, Puck from The Real World.

So I make another loop and this black dude with a white shirt and baggy jean shorts and a backwards blue cap on is thrusting out Lynx tickets to cars on First Ave. and passers-by.  (By the way, scalping was made legal here about a decade ago.)  Without breaking stride I thrust out my index finger, which is the scalper's universal language for, "Need one."

"I got one for ya."

"How much?"

"30."

"No.  Too expensive.  10, maybe 15."

And then he launches guy decides to stick his head up his ass and have a problem with my offer.  "Hey, tell me something," this asshole asks me while I'm slowly walking away from him.  "Can you go into the box office and get a ticket for $15?"

Well, I didn't know what to say.  But I did know that this guy was going to be an asshole.  It's times like these where I always know the right comeback after I think about it, or sometimes when I sleep on it.  But at that moment I didn't know what to say.  Should I be honest?  Should I be a smartass like he is?

But I froze.  In the meantime this slapdick scalper has a point he's trying to make, so he repeats himself: "Can you go into the box office and get a ticket for $15?"

I needed to get away from this fuck.  So, my slow mind could only think of one response, the truth: "Uh, I don't know."

"NO YOU CAN'T.  SO WHY SHOULD I GIVE YOU THIS TICKET FOR LESS THAN TWENTY BUCKS?!" and he walks away, disgusted.  No, the disgust's all with me, pally.

You know, now that I think about it, I should've just walked away with a shrug.  Or, I should have answered with, "Because you got those tickets for five bucks!!"  Or I should have walked back to him and gotten off on my own rant: "I'm just trying to get into the game, and you think you can give me a lesson in economics?!  Well, thanks for the free education, professor!  I didn't know you were better than me ... wait, you're not, YOU FUCKING SCALP TICKETS ON A STREET CORNER!!!"

Seriously, where does he get off telling me how the business is supposed to work??  Fucking Christ, we choose to dance in the shithole of exchanging money for sports tickets in what is the most unseemly forums of monetary transactions this side of prostitution.  And he gets bent out of shape because I throw out a number???  Fuck this fucking douche, sheesh.

Anyway, I did finally get in for twenty dollars, a little more than I wanted to spend, but at least I didn't give my money to that piece of shit.  I gave it instead to a guy I just ran into.  I think he just bought the ticket from someone who was going to the game.  If I hadn't run into him, I would have gone back to this particular corner and offered him $20 to split up his pair.  Unlike him, he was just minding his own business and trying to make some money.  I like guys like him, the quiet type.  Hopefully that guy doesn't feel too burned about me approaching him and deciding to give money to a guy I just met instead.  Oh, well, he probably didn't want to split up the pair anyway.

And besides, I saw one hell of a game.  The Lynx were down by as many as 16 against Connecticut, but somehow they battled back, and Seimone Augustus tied the game on a jumper.  And in overtime, Lindsay Whalen carried the team on her back as she fearlessly went to the paint time and time again.  Eventually, they outlasted the Sun in OT, 90-87.  At least I got my money's worth.

I Have All These Things That Are Up In The Air, Then Poof! It's Gone!

So this is the eve of what will be the last week of my current testing project.  It's been almost six weeks since I started this.  It's been a part of my life.  I've come back after doing it the first time four years ago because of how deep you get into it, and, and I hope this doesn't come off as hokey, the camaraderie you develop with the people you work with week after week.

This time, in my promoted role, has been different.  There are a lot of things I need to do, all of them a lot different than what I've had to do before, and those tasks seem to change from week to week.  But, as we make the final turn toward home, I have realized something: I don't really have anything to do, at least right now.  All the preparations -- well, at least most of them -- are over.  I certainly could be wrong, but right now I'm looking at post-game assessments and ... well, I don't know.  All this running around I did, especially last week, and now I think I'll just be sitting around and shit.

That doesn't mean I don't have anything to do.  Well, I should be more specific: There's a lot of stuff that I'm worried about.  Most importantly, I had ordered chocolates for the room.  I get it Tuesday after work, so I could present it Wednesday.  But much to my surprise, we are going through these answers so quickly that, my supervisor's predictions aside, there is a chance that we'll get done by Tuesday.  If that's the case, I would have bought chocolates, up to 75 pieces, for no one.  I don't know if I can cancel it at this date; I'm busy during work hours, of course, and that's the only time their customer service department's open, and they were closed on the weekend.  But, I don't know if I should cancel and it turns out that we will be around on Wednesday.  What's at risk is either giving away a goodbye present or wasting $83.

Another thing that I thought up last (Saturday) night: If we get done early enough, is it possible I can get surgery to get this seton out of my ass removed?  It's usually done on Thursdays, and there is very little chance that we get to Thursday.  I don't know if I can do it on such short notice, but I have to remember to call them in case they can.  And if I really am done before Thursday.  Again, with this new job, I have no idea when my job runs out.

Finally, I have to worry about unemployment.  I have nothing lined up after this (which means I should call the temp agencies to let them know I'm free) and if I can't scrounge up something for something starting the day after Memorial Day, this will end a streak of steady work that started early-to-mid September.  Now, I don't mind not working because that means I can catch up on all the stuff I haven't had time to do.  But I like working and the money that goes along with it.  Without that, I have to go back on the dole, and even though it's not the worst thing in the world -- God Bless the safety net! -- I want to work.  The only saving grace to all this is I have about three days to either find work, go back to college (no, I'm really thinking about it, really!), or get my story straight by the time my parents come home.  Can't believe how I would deal with the sudden change in my hours if they were here this week.

See, all of things I could do and/or need to do is up in the air.  All of this depends on timing, but once I know the timing all these things have to come together very quickly.  I am either able to do things or I'm not, and then I lose my job and I have to worry about finding work.  My life, guys.

What, No One Likes My Post?

In thinking about what to blog about, I go to my list of posts.  There, I see how many people have read -- well, clicked onto -- each blog post.  I don't have a huge following, but I'm proud that every blog post has had at least one click.

Till now.  I just saw that my previous blog post, the one about being grateful that the weatherstripping on the passenger-side front door no longer flaps around while I drive because I stuck gorilla tape on them.  Well, as of press time it's been more than 12 hours, half a day, since I published that blog post, and no one has seen it, yet.

You know, I had noticed that, beyond the most popular posts (and by the way, my most popular post is my rant of the-then new format of the Sirius XM online radio player; it's at over 3,900 hits), my posts, every single one, have almost reached double digits ... until lately, maybe the start of the new year.  Ever since my pageviews have dropped.  I'm lucky to get two per post, although, as I have said, I get at least one.  I think those now-inflated numbers were a result of spammers or guys trying to hack into my accounts by looking through my posts for personal information.  Well, if that's going to be the reason they want to look at Wailing And Failing, I'd rather have no one looking at my blog.

But like I said I've had at least one guy on planet Earth looking at WAF.  So not having one pageview for a post despite it being live for more than half a day worries me.  What did I do wrong?  The only thing I can think of is that that blog post has only one label because it was really short and dealt with only one thing, cars.  Most of my posts have a bunch of labels.  Maybe it's the labels that get me more than one look.  But there's only one category it falls under.

So what I'm going to do is link to the blog post here.  I know it's only the one before this.  This is totally a ploy, a way I hope I get someone in the world to at least click on it.  But I really hope it works, because I don't want that poor blog post to not have a friend. :-(

Oh, And Another Good Thing About The Car ...

Remember the weatherstripping I have spoken about in the past, the one on the underside of the passenger-side front door that has started to peel off and flap at driving speeds?  Well, I put some gorilla tape on the back side of it, and even though it didn't work for the driver's-side years ago, so far it's actually sticking!  No more flapping!!

Now, the first time I bring it into the car wash, the tape might fall off, but so far, so good!!!

Goodbye, Porno Pants

My favorite pair of porno pants, the cotton drawstring pants with the snap-button fly I wear to stripclubs and house parties so I can prance around with my fly open so my penis can "accidentally" come out, is permanently broken.  A lot of wear and tear caused it to rip right around the crotch area -- not too bad, but it was too small for me to poke my little man through.  Then ****a writhed around on top of it during one of the latest parties I attended, causing the rip to become a huge, almost-foot-long gash up and down my inside right thigh.  I had to limp my way out, grasping both sides of the tear all the way to my car for fear someone seeing my deal.

Wednesday after work I drove to the shopping mall closest to home to see the tailor.  They've patched up tears and added on pockets to a bunch of my old clothes.  But they couldn't fix this one; too big and not up against a seam.  Throw it away and buy a new pair, he said.  Better said than done, dude.

I had two of them.  This one I'm talking about, a perfect shade of green, I bought from the Gap, which don't make these kinds of pants anymore, goddammit.  I think I bought because them because they appeared so silky to wear.  My dick-showing capabilities I was not aware of when I had the urge to prance around with my wang out at a stripclub, I think, and those were the perfect pants to unbutton and orient my penis under for maximum jack-in-the-box surprise when the stripper grinds on me just so.  I bought a back-up pair -- brown, not as silky to the touch, but had that snap-button fly all the same -- from Banana Republic, I think.  This time I was just browsing, had in mind me and my dick hanging out at a dark and dingy strip club, and when I came across a pair of pants with the perfect combination of fly and material, I bought it for the still-outrageous price of, I'm guessing, $45.  That was the first to tear as a result of stripper grindage, general use and probably the steady erosion due to constant contact with my semen.  I noticed that it was ripped apart at Dollie's Playhouse a couple years ago.  I gave them to ***e* to sew up, and she lost it.

But now I don't have any, and since neither Gap nor Banana Republic make these God-given pants, I thought about the next best thing: karate/kung fu pants.  They have folded flies where you can just reach and yank it out, don't you?  I took taekwondo lessons a long time ago, and I thought that's how it worked.  I am so desperate to find such a pants that I looked up karate clothes stores online and, after work Thursday, drove about an hour into St. Paul to go to a shop that might have what I was looking for.  The only pants that fit my criteria didn't fit me; it was way too big and tall for me.  Those pants that did fit didn't have an open fly; I would have to take down those pants to expose myself.

It was weird going to the karate uniform store.  It's a small shop and there is one guy there.  He was really helpful, but I was afraid he would see me reach for the crotches of all these pants and wonder what the hell is wrong with me.  I wanted him to leave me alone, but the only way I could do that was to try on a pair of pants which didn't fit the criteria.  He then asked what I was looking for.  Well, I certainly couldn't say, "A snap-button fly so I can take out my penis and show it strippers."  So I said instead, um, "A pocket."  The one that was several sizes too big for me was the only one that had a pocket; the rest don't.  In fact, the guy said that kung fu and karate pants usually don't come with pockets.  D'oh!  Should have come up with a better lie.  Oh well, he shook my hand after I told him I wasn't satisfied.  At least I saved myself 35 bucks.

So now I'm in a quandary.  I have not one but two parties to go to this weekend -- how am I going to whip it out?  I don't have time to do any more shopping around, so I have decided that I am going to wear pajama bottoms to these places.  They are thin and obviously look like pjs, but they have pockets to put my wallet and keys in and, more importantly, they have open flies which make dick-taking out opportunities really easy.  It's the best I can do until I can locate some real porno pants.

Till then, I lament the best pair of pants I've ever loved.

My Vote For 2013 Playboy Playmate Of The Year

I thought their luncheon was going to be held tomorrow (Friday) afternoon, but I guess it was this (Thursday) afternoon, because looking for a splash page of a list of all of last year's Playmates, I saw that the background behind revealed who the winner is: Kennedy Summers, aka Miss December.

I can tell you right now that there are a lot of Playboy aficionados who are absolutely pissed off over this decision -- and by the way, please disabuse yourself of the notion that this is a fan vote.  They are invited to vote, somewhere, but ultimately this is the decision of Hugh Hefner and, assuming that he is in a seriously debilitated mental state, his minders at Playboy.  Your vote means shit if Hef & co. decide otherwise.

They did.  They voted for Ms. Summers, and there is a handy ulterior motive you can serve up lickety-split: I swear I heard she is currently dating Cooper Hefner, Hugh Hefner's son (with Playmate Kimberly Conrad) and currently-groomed successor to his old man's empire.  Something similar kind of happened with Crystal Harris, like Summers a Miss December, only this time she was actually dating Hugh Hefner (they were engaged to be married, she broke it off, then became re-engaged after she changed her mind, and now they're married).  But I kind of thought that being an item with a Hefner would enough -- that that is the trade-off for not being named PMOY, so as to avoid any conflict of interest.  Well, guess not, if the rumors are true, and I swear that they are.

So, who is my pick?  Let's first eliminate all the others.  There is a paradox for 2013: Many of the PMs, in particular the last four of the year of Bryiana Noelle, Carly Lauren, Gemma Lee Farell and Summers, are instantly forgettable (at least beyond the fact that Farell, Miss November, is British).  And yet there are more than a few magazine followers who say this has been the best year in a long time for strong centerfold photos.  The themes have gone back to their thought-out eighties heyday.  Lauren, Miss October, had a circus theme, where she was dressed up (well, besides showing her tits and twat) as an emcee.  Miss January had a ski lodge theme, and the pictorial for Miss February, Shawn Dillon, was set nearly entirely at sea.  Unfortunately, those settings had to make up for what I thought were pretty, but not memorable, Playmates.

Going back-and-forth between here and the splash page, I'm trying to remember the spreads for Miss March, Ashley Doris, and Miss May, Kristen Nicole.  But I can't, so I'll have to lump them into the forgettable pile.  Same thing with Audrey Aleen Allen, Miss June, although I want to give her some slack because she was born in the Twin Cities suburb of Edina, Minn. before moving away at a young age.

I want to favor those Playmates active on social media.  Surprisingly, none of the dozen stand out.  The that I think is (actually was) most active of the 2013 Playmates is Jaslyn Ome, Miss April.  I remember that she posted occasional pictures of her and her roommate, which happens to be Miss August, Val Keil.  And I also that one photo showing her body in a bikini with the paraphrased caption, "Trying to get my body in beach shape."  She was totally fucking hot; I know that if she stepped onto the beach while she was that "fat," all the guys (including the gay ones) would sprout wood right in front of her.  Alas, she hasn't posted anything I remember in months, and Keil not at all.

So that leaves one Playmate: Miss July, Alyssa Arce.  She is my choice for Playmate of the Year.  Moreover, she is the hands-down favorite of most of the people I know online who follow Playboy.  In fact, I would say that she and her centerfold pictorial are the strongest in a long, long time for the magazine.

You have to see her spread.  It's a racing theme, and she's posing in various states of undress in and out of cars and shit.  There is something about her, first of all; she's like a sexed-up version of Anna Kendrick, who's pretty goddamn sexy in her own right.  And moreso than any of the other Playmates, she wears clothing that pops out her tits, or is moved just so so we can peek at her pussy.  This is a perverted pictorial, one where the clothes aren't draped around the female body parts so much as pulled to expose them, like Arce isn't supposed to be naked but she wants to show you her naughty bits while no one else is looking.  Finally, many of the photos of her show her with sunglasses on, and I have to say that that makes her even sexier because it ... I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way ... de-humanizes her.  When you can't see her eyes, it makes it a lot easier to just see her ample bosom and beautiful hips and glistening cunt.  You don't see a woman in those photographs; you see a sex object.  And Arce seemed more than willing to play that role in horny men's eyes, which is a daring revelation I haven't seen in many years in Playboy.

So it should've been Arce.  Alas, it is not.  Oh well, congratulations to Kennedy Summers, 2014 Playmate of the Year and aspiring doctor.

And, say it with me, class: Of course, I'd fuck all of them.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -3).  Good thing I decided not to wait around for the resumption of Saturday night's game; even though it seemed like the rain stopped late in the night at one point, officials and representatives for both the Gophers and the Purdue Boilermakers decided to postpone the game until the following afternoon with two outs in the bottom of the eighth.  Glad I decided to get my daily blog post in instead of milling about Siebert Field, even though it means I could not finish my first-ever use of the scorecard I bought at Oshman's Sports Store about two decades ago.

Unfortunately, when the game resumed at around 11 (?) in the following day, I missed one hell of an ending.  In the top of the ninth inning, Purdue's Sean McHugh hit a three-run homer to give the Makers B a 5-3 lead.  But in the bottom of the ninth, Tony Skjefte hit a two-run dong to tie the game.  Minnesota's Bobby Juan led off the bottom half of the tenth by ending it, sending a ball over the wall to end the game, 6-5.

The actual game scheduled for Sunday might have been stranger.  Purdue got out to a 3-0 lead, but no surprise to the team that is dead last in the Big Ten, the Boilermakers failed to hold the lead.  In the bottom of the ninth, Connor Schaefbauer hit an infield single with the bases loaded to tie the game, then Dan Olinger may have -- may have -- been hit in the sleeve to bring in the winning run with a Hit By Pitch.  And don't forget Friday's 5-4 win, where Purdue, just like on Sunday, scored all its run first and then proceeded to choke it away.  No game-ending heroics in the first game of the series, however; Matt Fielder brought home the go-ahead run in the eighth inning, not the ninth.

I believe that with their 12-9 record, the Gophers have secured a spot in next week's Big Ten Baseball Tournament in Omaha, Neb.  In the meantime they finish the regular season this Thursday through Saturday with a series at conference-leading, Top 10-in-the-nation Indiana in Bloomington, Ind.

#-2: Twins (Last Week: -2).  A 3-4 screening week.  It started off with two more losses in Cleveland, resulting in a sweep.  But over the weekend they took two of three at division-leading Detroit.  They beat Boston Tuesday at Target Field on a game-ending (I hate saying walk-off; I don't know why, it describes it perfectly, but I always thought coining the term "walk-off" was unnecessary since I have been able to say "game-ending" to describe game-ending plays for as long as I could remember) home run by Chris Parmalee, but Kevin Correia got shelled Wednesday evening and lost to the BoSox 9-4, thus depriving the Twinks a chance to get to .500, kind of like how the Timberwolves never were able to stay at .500 this past NBA season.

They finish up their series against the defending champions Thursday afternoon, then play three at The Bullseye against Robinson Cano and the Seattle Mariners.  One day off, then they begin the annual two-game mid-week series, this time in San Diego.

#-Infinity: Wild (Last Week: -1).  Apparently my body needed to catch up on its sleep, because I decided to stop computering and lie down in my bed while listening to the first period of the Wild-Chicago Blackhawks Game 6 Tuesday night, with Chicago up 1-0.  That was around 8:30.  I woke up around 3:30, then tried to go to sleep (and did) until my real wake-up time of 6:45.

I woke up one other time; amazingly (even though I seem to wake up at the most opportune times) I woke up just as Wild radio play-by-play man Bob Kurtz say, "... and the Wild's season comes to an end."  I thought to myself, Well, shit, then reached out to turn the radio off, go back to sleep, and forget.

I still think that any season that ends short of a championship is a failure.  By that measure, the Mild failed.  But from what I hear about the weird set of circumstances that led up to Patrick Kane's game-winning, season-ending score for the Blackhawks almost midway through overtime in Game 6 (still can't bear to watch it), it was fucking weird.  Brent Seabrook was just dumping it in so Chicago could get a line change, the puck hit off a stanchion and so it bounced in a way none of the players, especially the Wild, expected, and Kane retrieved the puck, which wound up in front of Wild Goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, and backhanded it behind him.  A lucky bounce, as I read it.

Saying that, I guess I can't be too unhappy with how they lost, even though they lost at home for the first time in six postseason games and, unfortunately, that particular defeat ended their season.  And the ovation they got from the Xcel Energy Center faithful was genuine and well-earned.  This is a team, after all, which battled back from a 2-games-to-none deficit and four one-goal deficits in the seventh and deciding game (on the road, no less) to beat the Central-Division champion Colorado Avalanche in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  And they were a much better team than the one that wimped out quickly against Chicago in the first round of last year's playoffs.  Things are improving with this club.  Zach Parise and Ryan Suter remain studs, but I'm more heartened by the maturity and growth of Mikael Granlund, Erik Haula, Jonas Brodin and Charlie Coyle.  Those are the young players that form the core of what could be -- could; can't say they have the combined talent level of Chicago yet -- a Stanley Cup contender.  Add more defense and a big-time Goalie, and that level of contention could be next year.

Yes, Tuesday night was a disappointment.  And you never know what could come next season.  But I cannot deny that the future looks bright.  All of a sudden, the Wild is the best professional sports team in Minnesota.

Oh, We're Not Gonna Turn Into This, Are We?

OK, so we've moved into the next (and I guess final) phase of our project, and I'm groping in the dark.  For the real questions whose answers we have to grade, we have guides to how they are scored.  For this new phase, we do not; we are the ones who set the guidelines, and therefore we are the ones who say this gets full credit and that gets no credit.  But it's hard.  Not only do we not have any markers from which to draw the parameters, we have new standards radically different from what we're used to.  We are making our own scoring decisions.  Sure, in the long run it doesn't matter because it's the teachers who will have the final say.  But that isn't an excuse for what we have to do over the next couple days.

Add to that I'm still very new to this, and Monday afternoon was a struggle.  I was reading paper after paper thinking, "Should this be a 4?  I think it's a 4, but what if I'm wrong?"  I tried putting all the answers I printed out in some kind of order, but now that I think about it, they're probably all wrong and I'll have to go change them when I come into work in the morning.  Beyond that, I have to set up examples and sets and rules, and I have to know what I'm going to say to my team.  And then I'll have to do that for three more questions, two of which need to be done by Tuesday end of day.

It got so muddied that, after I kept looking and looking at the same response, pacing back-and-forth across our now-empty room, I emphatically rapped at the printout of this response, momentarily forgetting that I was talking to myself while other people were around, looking at me.  Just then I turned my head and locked eyes with one of them, who said, "That's not helping."

Whoops.  That sucked me back into reality, and I quickly stammered out a, "Sorry."  But now that I've had time to think about it, I should not have apologized in a situation where I too often do just that.  What's not helping?  Me trying to figure out what score to give this response?  That's how I sort things out, by acting out.  Oh, do you mean it's not helping your concentration?  At one point in the afternoon she put earplugs on.  This normally gregarious woman all of a sudden decided she wanted peace and quiet, and I did not have the mental telepathy to know this until I distracted her.  My fault.

You know, she probably is the lieutenant of the room, but she can also be the problem child.  Usually she's fine -- gregarious, nice, fair, and totally can communicate the rules of the scoring.  But sometimes she gets all ... well, for lack of a better word, uptight.  Last week she got into a fight with another of our co-workers, who've fought before.  They act like brother and sister; they're now all chummy.  But it's the about-face that I still don't get.  She was just fine last week, and she was, well, aloof but not bitchy Monday morning.  But now that she has to focus on something while I react to doing the same thing with some demonstration, she doesn't like it.

Well, I don't like her, at least her when she's acting that way.  I will not bend how I act, especially if I don't know how to do something, in order to allow her to concentrate.  I don't know how she'll act in the morning, nor how she'll react with me.  But I know this will happen again, and I'll have to deal with her attitude.

Expenses Without Receipt (Scheduled Post)

Starting from Sunday, May 11:

• Went to the gym to finally lose some pounds.  Gained it all back with all the shit I ate afterward, but, oh, well: $3.
• To Saturday the 10th ... Although I didn't think I had the time, I needed to get off my feet as soon as I got done with walking through the Matisse exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  Man, I'm getting old, but I think it's the allergies that caused the joints in my hips and knees to inflame to the point where I tried sitting down as many times I could find a bench.  OK, if it wasn't allergies it was how I slept the night before.  I thought about grabbing something to eat on the way back home (so I could take a nap) but I decided to try the new restaurant at MIA, Grain Stack.  The cheapest thing there was the soup, which du jour was curry lentil.  And you know what?  It wasn't bad!  That's why I won't think the price is a ripoff.  With tip: $7.
• Went to the Gopher baseball game, even with the threat of rain.  Both teams played as if they had planes to catch, even though they play one more time Sunday afternoon.  We got through almost eight innings (seven outs left to go) before the umpire called the teams off the field because he felt it was going to rain hard, which it did.  That was around 8.  At a little after 9 the public address announcer said that play would resume around a quarter to 10, maybe 9:50.  And like a little bitch, I decided to leave.  Honestly, if I had blogged that day, I would have stuck it out, but I hadn't yet, and the free wi-fi at Siebert Field sucks, so I decided to take off.  Hot dog, souvenir-sized Coke (the weather right now is fucking me up; it was raining when I started my walk to Siebert, then the sun came out and I felt extremely hot, then the clouds started to roll in so I zipped up my sweater, then it started to rain and I felt really cold ... I thought I was going to be really thirsty for the souvenir-sized Coke) and program: $10.75.
• Afterwards, Caffetto.  I think I pissed off the guy when he was taken an exorbitant amount of time getting the whip cream dispenser to work.  I think he thinks I'm an asshole.  Shit, do I have to find another coffeeshop?  Hot chocolate with tip comes out to: $2.75.
• I then finished my night off with a trip to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition).  Coffee and tips came out to: $10.
• Friday, May 9 -- Mother texted me before my drive home from work.  The contractor guy who redid the house was hired to fix a busted pipe, and Mother needed to know when I was coming home so she could leave.  But the contractor's huge truck took up essentially two of the three spots on the driveway.  I parked behind my parents' minivan, but as soon as I drove up Mother came out the door to tell me I needed to park on the street so she could leave.  Well, if I'm going to have to move my car later in the evening from the street, I might as well make a night of it.  So after dinner I went to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Division) for coffee and tips.  Found a dollar bill on the floor.  Was very slow and highly conspicuous as I slowly lifted up the buck for all to see before putting it in my wallet.  With that savings I ended up paying only: $10.
• And then afterward (I stayed partially because I wanted to see the Wild close out the 4-2 Game 4 win over Chicago) I went to Caffetto.  Was all coffeed out, so I decided to have one of their unique bottles of soft drinks.  There's such a thing as Route 66 Root Beer.  I love all things Route 66 -- I hope to drive it one day -- so I got that, as well as, finally, a chocolate-dipped orange shortbread cookie.  With tip it came out to: $5.
• Have to go all the way back to Monday the 5th, when I got double-teamed.  The girls are fighting now.  Hoo-boy, maybe having ***e* come over to clean the house was a mistake.  I might talk about it later: $130.
• Sunday, May 4 ... Did some gym time: $3.
• Decided to go to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition).  I don't want to be responsible anymore, I want to escape and I want to forget.  Screw that it's Sunday night.  Sasha asked me for a dance and I had to say yes.  She's great and so was the dance, but if I hadn't looked her way when she looked my way, I would've saved twenty bucks.  Nevertheless, I didn't.  That, stage tips and Sprite with tip (I have to go one day without coffee): $31.
• Extended my night further at My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place.  Just a salad; water, not even Coke.  With tip: $4.25.
• Saturday the 3rd ... Decided at work to go to the Kentucky Derby after work.  I bet $18 on four bets, and it's the fourth and final bet, one that I gave little thought to until I reached the track, that I won on: Commanding Curve, which finished second, I bet three bucks for it to Show.  I should have bet five bucks on it like the other three wagers I made; probably would've made around twenty dollars if I did, but I got only $23.10 from that win, and since I made $18 worth of bets, I made an Infusion of only: $5.10.
• I then remembered watching the Channel 4 news Thursday.  Every Thursday a reporter reports on the "Best of Minnesota" in a bunch of categories.  This week it was Best Taco, and the one restaurant they showed (which is voted on by fans through social media) was in Shakopee, the same city as Canterbury Park.  So I took the five-minute drive and waited a half-hour to see if these guys were up to snuff.  Man, the place was packed and the guy who was helping me at the cash register (one of the brothers featured in the piece) looked harried and unhappy.  But the authentic carnitas flour soft shell tacos were very good.  With dollar tip: $10.55.
• After eating all day (starting with the Glam Doll Donuts I bought Thursday and the Twix ice cream sandwich at work), I really wanted to get my body jump-started and finally got to the gym to work out, if only for an hour.  Admission: $3.
• Then I went to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Version).  The place was so busy that the waitress did not see me and therefore did not get me coffee.  Also, one of the four strippers scheduled did not make it, so instead of four girls rotating on stage every 15 minutes, it was only three every 20 minutes.  No matter; there were so many guys there that I'm guess all three of them made a lot of dollars.  And I gave a couple to each of the three: $6.
• Finally finished my long, fun night at My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place.  Hope I don't regret eating the expensive pizza I get like once a year.  With tip: $16.50.
• Oh, and this place was offering cupcakes and cookies for a donation.  This place has been so good that I figured I'd get a cupcake for: $1.
• On Friday the 2nd, after I waited around the area around work so traffic would die down, then went to another mechanic to finally find the leak (it was a nail, embedded deeply somewhere in the tire), I decided to treat myself with a trip to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Division).  Stage tips for four hot babes and coffee: $11.
• ETA on 1:04 a.m. on May 18 stuff I apparently paid for with cash on Wednesday, April 30.  After work I had a bunch of shit I needed to do, for each of my parents.  For My Fucking Father, it was sending him his sleeping pills.  For Mother, it was shaking down this restaurant for money.  It is on Nicollet Avenue, also known as Eat Street, where there are a lot of ethnic restaurants, many of them well-regarded.  There is also a McDonald's, and I remembered just in time that I had a coupon where I could get a small fries and drink if I bought either a Bacon Clubhouse Burger or Chicken Sandwich.  But the last day to use the coupon was April 30.  So, even though I wasn't really hankering for a full fast food meal, I really wanted to cash on this deal.  The bad thing, however, is that I thought this really dingy McDonald's gave me a coupon, and going through all my receipts I can't find it.  So even though, again, I wasn't hungry, on Saturday, May 17 I went there for lunch (before going to the University of Minnesota NCAA softball tournament game) to order the Bacon Clubhouse Burger, which I think was the one I ordered on April 30, in order to listen again as to how much the burger by itself cost me on April 30.  And the weird thing is, I got a receipt for my visit on May 17.  Shouldn't a McDonald's be more consistent with this?  Oh, the total: $5.05.
• ET also A this, starting on May 18 at 1:04 a.m.: Back to the well-regarded restaurants on Eat Street.  The one that may be the most lauded right now, and the one that most attracts me, isn't really a restaurant because it concentrates on donuts.  Glam Doll Donuts is the Twin Cities' entry into the exotic donuts movement that has taken ahold of the nation.  But after some reticence (and continued reluctance to try their donuts with bacon -- come on, I love bacon and I love donuts, but I don't love bacon on my donuts.  Look, if bacon was supposed to be on donuts, God would have made it so) I have grown to like them, even though their donuts are obscenely expensive.  But I was around the area, so I'm going to get a couple.  And I thought that on this visit I got a receipt, but again, I can't find it.  For some reason, though, I have this amount, encompassing the two donuts I got plus tip, in my head.  And there really isn't any way I can check this, so I'm going to go with this total: $6.50.
• In a very busy week, with many things I needed to after work, I at least have documentation for the many items (mostly food) I bought.  So I go back to Tuesday, April 29, where I detoxified my mind by watching Draft Day.  The ticket, food and Coke: $9.25.