Addendum To: On Money -- When I Spend It And When I Complain About Spending It

OK, so this is what I did on Sunday.

I was still feeling the pull of the Megamall.  Moreover, I was feeling the pull of Grand Casino Arena, which was staging both Semifinals of the World Juniors.  I stay pretty late after Vikings Games to make sure the traffic thins out, but I could move it up and still leave without getting stuck.  So I formulated a plan to go down to the Mall Of America, buy some stuff at the pop-up store, eat at Popeye's (I had this digital coupon of three tenders for a buck), then drive to downtown St. Paul.  If I could find parking close enough to the arena (parking meters aren't enforced in St. Paul on Sundays, so yay for me), I would park, buy a ticket, then see the second Semi at 7:30.

That last bit was buoyed in part by the prices I saw at scalper sites.  I checked after Friday night's Quarterfinals, which included the United States losing to Finland in Overtime.  I thought the prices would crater because the host U. S. was no longer in it, but prices were too high for me to entertain.  In fact, I think StubHub told me there were no tickets to sell.  But I checked again Saturday, and not only were there many tickets, prices were falling like a stone.  SeatGeek's cheapest ticket Friday night was $93; it became about $50 Saturday, and while at work, I checked again and it fell to $39.  That's it, man; even though I was tired as hell and I would be driving all around the Twin Cities, I decided to do all this.

Well, first of all, me eating so much after the Game that I had to shit really bad threw the Popeye's deal out the window.  I felt this push out of my asshole while I was driving down to MOA, and if you know that feeling, it feels like you're about to fucking shit your pants so bad everyone will see and point at you and laugh.  Scariest feeling in the world, am I right?

But I made it to the public men's room next to the doors at MOA, aka the last place I would want to evacuate my bowels, but of course, I had no choice.  This diarrhea attack made me second-guess if I should even try and go to the Game.  Good thing, then, that I didn't plan on buying a ticket unless I found a space to park in St. Paul.

Systems back to normal, I went to the pop-up.  That orange quarter-zip that probably was going to be the thing I buy?  Well, it went from one or two of those to six or seven.  Unfortunately, the only sizes available were small and extra-large.  This was something I saw with several popular items while I was browsing for World Juniors clothing.  I couldn't buy that, and nothing else there interested me.  So I didn't buy anything there, like I thought I would.  Yeah, it was kind of a waste driving down there.  But I had to know.

Didn't feel the urge to crap after that excretory meltdown when I cashed in the winning Powerball tickets I bought (oh yeah, I did that, too) on my way out to the car, so I felt good going to the arena.  And maybe I shouldn't be surprised considering the half-empty crowds at Mariucci Arena for group and Quarterfinal Games, but I found a spot easy-peasy.  And so I turned off the car, leaned my seat back, and looked at SeatGeek and StubHub for a ticket to that 7:30 Game.  And I was surprised, and disappointed, that somehow prices for that Game went back up.  It can't be demand; these scalper sites are running fucking algorithms to maximize prices.  Makes me so goddamn frustrated.  But hey, I got there, and I wanted to go, so I bought a ticket for Canada-Czechia for, hrmph, $50.

By the way, great Game.  Back and forth, but the Czechs got the upset (even though this is the third straight year the country eliminated the Canadians), 6-4.  (That Semifinal, by the way, was delayed from its scheduled start because the first Semi went past Overtime into a Shootout, where Sweden slipped past Finland, 4-3.)  I'm glad I went, and this is the World Juniors, so maybe I shouldn't bitch so much over the price of the ticket.  Anyway, I had plenty of time to check out the merchandise tables at the "Gicka."  You remember my obsession/fear about "exclusivity," buying items that I could only find at Mariucci or the pop-up store at the Mall Of America?  Well, that OCD blew up in my face.  That hoodie with the huge 2026 IIHF World Juniors logo right on the front that I bought at Mariucci?  Saw it there.  And I also saw the Paul Bunyan & Babe t-shirts I also bought at Mariucci, as well as the first pair of t-shirts I bought, the ones that had the flags on the hockey blades on the front I bought at the pop-up.  Oh, and the pin, too.

So, when it comes to buying things that appeared to be at only one place, I got the scarf that I bought down at MOA and the winter hat with the logo on a plate stitched on it at Mariucci.  All the other stuff I bought I could've bought at any of the three places.  And the scarf and hat, for all I know, were being sold at the other two places before they sold out.  I'll rest in the peace of my ignorance.  But I think I could've been more judicious about what I would've bought if I could've went to Grand Casino Arena for that Sunday group stage Game if not for the snowstorm that blew in that day.  I think I would've gone up to the merch tables, realize that most if not all the items were the same as that at Mariucci, realize that some of the things I saw down at the Megamall I didn't see there (and vice versa), and purchased accordingly.  But now I have a lot of things that, right now, I'm not cool with (see Title of blog post).

But hey, it was the World Juniors!

Nightmares, Of Which I Can Remember Only One

So, I drank coffee at Glam Doll, and I guess I needed to pee while I was sleeping, because in my nightmare I had to piss.  And I was in a crowded public area and I couldn't find a bathroom.  I went from ... I guess urinal to urinal and/or spot on which to pee to spot on which to pee (I don't really understand this part), but I finally decided, like a dog, to piss on, IIRC, on the shovel of a huge payloader.  (Please don't ask me how.)  It was blocked from view by something, like a human-length bollard, and so I had the privacy to pee standing up.  Makes sense, right?  (No, it doesn't.)

But I had to pee so bad that ... uh, it's a nightmare so things are fuzzy, but either my piss stream was so powerful that it either bounced off the loader shovel and arced many feet away, or (again, work with me here) I peed in an arc many feet away.  Regardless of the path, I was sending my urine across this busy room, OK?  And it bounced on, like, the floor or a table, and it splashed all over the people around that area of this busy room.  And in the part of this nightmare that makes the most sense, those people were both surprised and very, very angry.

And then I woke up.  And then I had to pee real bad.

Wish I remembered the other two nightmares I had.  They probably made more sense.

The Longest Day Of My Life

Almost forgot to blog post today.

Monday afternoon, just before the end of work, I was told that, I think for the second week in a row, there was overtime available after work that day and early next morning.  You see, Tuesday is our beginning of the week, and the samples of piss are backed up all weekend.  There are other forms that we deal with and that are also backlogged until we get crushed by them on Tuesday.  The information regarding the piss samples takes priority, but there are so many other forms that we get that day, and that need to be done in a timely manner, that we are asked to stay late and/or come in early in order to deal with them.

I need the money.  I always need money.  So, for the second week in a row, I volunteered.  Except that my boss added an extra incentive: To be able to get out of work 15 minutes early one day from now until the end of the year.  Oooooohhhhhhh.  But I only get that if I work at least two hours of OT.  I only worked one last week, but I could use those 15 minutes at some point in 2019, so I said I could do two.  However, it was my preference to do those two hours yesterday/Wednesday morning because I was filing Tuesday and I didn't feel it made any sense to switch to my computer in an entirely different department and work just for an hour.  Besides, I wanted to see the end of the USA-England Women's World Cup Semifinal, and I wouldn't have been able to do that if I was working OT.

So, this what I did.  I stayed up Tuesday night until 12:30.  I woke up at -- gulp -- 4.  Got to work at 5.  With the exception of a glorious and well-needed nap for lunch at around 11, I worked ten hours straight.  I was going to immediately change into my shorts at work after work (it's humid around here now), but the Netherlands-Sweden WWC Semifinal was going into Extra Time, so I decided to find a bar with a TV.  I drove to Surly because they said they would have a big TV, but I didn't see no big TV.  As I was headed back to my car, the Netherlands scored, and since it's soccer, there was no chance the Dutch were going to lose, so I went to my psychiatrist's office building and changed clothes at the public restroom there.

Went to Hallmark to buy a thank-you card for the hosts of our alumni club event.  Dinked around Barnes & Noble.  Drove to the library to try and take a nap.  Failed.  Drove to a side street for the United match.  (This is around where I felt most tired.  But watching the match pulled me through.  Great win, by the by.)  Went to three places because I was starving as hell, but Old Chicago was busy, and fast food restaurants (as well as Famous Dave's) was closing because it was 10.  So I decided to go through the drive-thru at Hardee's (where there were so many cars and such slow service that I almost asphyxiated on the CO of the exhaust) and ate their Garlic Bread Thickburger in my car.  Then I finished my day at My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition) because, hey, I didn't have to go to work tomorrow.

Got home, finally, at a quarter to midnight.  That's 19 3/4 hours of being up and out and about.  Helps, like I said, that I had time to sleep in today.  (For the record, I conked off at about, oh, 12:30 [like the night before] and got up at around 8:30 this morning.)  Also helps that at work I was shunted to a department where I was doing so much I had no time to be tired.

Still, if I have a Wednesday like that, I should decide on Tuesday not to do that.

No, Don't Need The Fucking Flu

For the record, the test scoring job wrapped up around 8 p.m. yesterday (Thursday) evening.  Thought it would last a little longer, but I'm not totally surprised.  We were once told that once we were done with this project we would go over to help finish off another project before the week was out, but last night we were told that they had enough people, so what we had was it.

After losing my job, I went to the Megamall, which was just across the street, to dink around, get some exercise, watch the Raptors-Bucks game and just figure out how to waste enough time so that I could get home at a time commensurate with the previous nights so my parents won't get suspicious.  Once I figured enough time had passed, I went to the bathroom before driving home.

While walking in I passed by a white guy wearing a suitcoat, a plaid shirt that was tucked in, and jeans.  Stereotypically I saw him as a smartly dressed man.  But as I was peeing, out of my peripheral vision, I saw that same guy sternly walk back in, go into a stall and, without shutting the door, loudly retch into the toilet.  And whatever was vomiting out of his mouth was voluminous, judging by the loud and expansive "plop" I heard as the, uh, contents hit the surface of the toilet water.

The fuck was that?  Why in the hell is this sharp-dressed man vomiting?  Does he have the flu?  That would be shitty if he did, because I have to walk on the same steps he did, and I'm scared as hell right now that I have breathed in his flu -- somehow, like it was on his natty suitcoat, or that he coughed (and I didn't hear it) and the germs remained airborne and I just inhaled it all.

I felt nauseous on the drive home.  Felt my throat swell up, too, which is a sure sign for me that my body is fighting something.  I feel fine now, but I could wake up and feeling as though I need to puke.  So just in case, I'm blog posting about it here.  To think that I could go from healthy to ill all because of some sick stranger who subverted my superficial judgement of him.  Damn that guy.

The Territorial Cough, And Other Musings About Excreting In A Workplace

This being my last day at this test scoring job I have to reflect on one of the annoying things about work: Taking a shit in peace.  It certainly isn't the reason I'm leaving, but the daily battle and anxiety over voiding your bowels is something I don't think I'll miss too badly.

There are four bathrooms in this building and, I think, seven stalls for those gentlemen who have to go #2.  I am one of those people who would prefer not to sit my ass in a public bathroom where other strangers' asses have gone, but I'm not so militant now where I would vow to hold it until I got home.  Can't do that anymore, especially when you gotta go.  Also, I have noticed that in the mornings I'm pretty gassy, hate to say it.  While I have to suppress my farts pretty much the whole day, I believe that my body processes, which slow while I'm sleeping, generates these pockets of gasses that need to be expelled as soon as I move up and around.  So especially in the morning hours, I feel the need to go to the bathroom just to fart, not necessarily to evacuate my feces.  Maybe something can be done about that.

Anyway, this means that daily until lunchtime I have subjected myself to this ritual of going to three of the four bathrooms (I don't know why I avoided the fourth, to be honest) so I can drop my pants and see what comes out of my rectum.  But I would rather be doing all of that alone.  That creates a bunch of problems that always seem to occur when you're working in a building with a lot of people but not a whole lot of bathrooms.

For example, two of the bathrooms have only one stall.  Those are the ones I go to first, because the third one have two side-to-side.  It's great that you have the stall all to yourself and you're not bothered by anyone who walks into the stall next to you (which I still think is an invasion of my privacy -- too close!) and then starts to emit sounds that you don't to hear.  Worse yet is knowing the identity of that person.  I live in mortal fear that someone I hear farting and crapping violently comes out of the bathroom stall before I'm done ... and that that someone is someone who works for me, or someone I know.  I have problems with very few people in that building, but dude, that's scatological knowledge I don't want to know about that guy, or anyone.  (This brings up another thought: I actually only go to two bathrooms.  One of the rooms has only one stall, but it's the one closest to the room I work in, so I avoid that because I assume everyone in that room uses that men's room.  Actually when I feel like I need to take a dump I go to the men's room furthest from my room.)

The problem is, as you might have guessed, that everybody else prefers a bathroom with only one stall because they don't want to hear any shitting noises by anyone next to them.  So, most mornings I make sure to crouch down to see underneath the stall door.  If I see feet, it's occupied and I have to move on to another one.  And I usually do see feet, thus prompting a shake of a fist from me as I walk out.

That prompts me to go to my Plan B, the one with two bathroom stalls.  If one of the two is being used right now, I just hold it.  Sorry, I don't care if they hear me fart in the room, I just won't use that open stall.  Too invasive.  But if they're both open I say a little prayer and use it.  More than half the time, unfortunately, I hear footsteps and the closing of the stall door next to me.  And I have to rush to either get my bowels out of me or to fart all the gasses out of me so I can get up and wash my hands and leave the bathroom before I discover the identity of the monster making those awful shitting noises next to me.  That's such a George Costanza thing to do, I know.

I won't miss any of that.  But I'm sure I'll run into that situation in my next position.

---

When you have a bunch of strangers (most of them weird), you start to meditate on the manners of finding out how a stall is occupied.  I'm astonished that more people don't use less invasive ways to see if a toilet is being used or not.  Because there were still some people who, instead of using their knees and bending down from a distance to see if they could see feet in front of a toilet, would use more, uh, direct means to finding out whether or not it's open.  And I have a mortal social dread over something like that, even though it hasn't happened yet this season.

I'm talking about the reliable "just go up to the door and jiggle the handle" method, and that terrifies me because those doors aren't the most secure, and they could easily unlock.  God, that makes me shudder.  I think some people have surreptitiously looked through the slot of the door to see if someone's in there, although I haven't caught anyone doing that, thank goodness.  But I was in the bathroom one day and I actually heard someone knock on a door.  That's right -- knock.  How in the hell is the guy in the bathroom supposed to respond in a way that won't be awkward for anyone involved?  Because saying "It's occupied!" doesn't make that situation the greatest one to get out of, if you know what I mean?  Privacy was breached as soon as that stupid m-fer knocked.

Honestly, if someone said that to me while I was in that stall, you know what I would say?  "Come in!"  Not because I want him to or because I want to be a dick, but because that's the natural thing for me to say in response to that.  Whenever you hear someone knock you usually say "Come in," right?  Don't knock on a door, for God's sake, that's just so stupid.

I thus have decided I need to give a subtle hint to anyone who even walks into the men's room that I am in here.  You think that the shuffling of feet or the unspooling of the toilet paper would be enough of an audio cue for strangers to go find another place to excrete.  I don't think so.  Therefore, whenever I hear that bathroom door swing open, I cough.  And you know, more than several times I hear feet, then nothing, then a noise akin to the twisting of said feet, and then steps getting quieter and quieter.  Phew!

But one time I got caught, sort of.  I hear a guy come in; I cough.  He either was using the urinal all along or he, well, decided to pee instead of shit.  After he began urinating he called out to me, "I like your territorial cough!" he said.  He was making light of a situation he's probably been in too.  Nevertheless what he said was also an invasion of my privacy.  So I don't think I said anything.  Hopefully I didn't.

I think I know the guy.  He works in my room.

Finally, the other day there was this guy who realized I was inside this one-stall bathroom ... and waited.  Waited!  How fucking creepy is that?!  Once I was in there for a couple minutes and heard sounds that sounded like a guy standing in line I had it.  I think I farted all I could fart and I bolted out of there.  And you know the worst thing about that?  This same guy did it to me again later that afternoon!!!  This second time I just dropped my pants and sat down (same bathroom) when this same fucking asshole came in.  Thirty seconds in I knew he was waiting for me.  I didn't know if I had shit in me I had to shit out, but at that point I was like, "Fuck you and fuck this!" and I got up and left.  He hasn't done it again, and as I left I heard some violently farting noises, so it appears as though he had to wait for it to open because he was suffering from diarrhea.  But man, this goes to show that doing your business in public is no fun at all.

The Most Gross Thing I've Seen In A Long Time

Was at the NCAA women's volleyball tournament at the Sports Pavilion.  Creighton swept Marquette in three tight sets decided by a total of seven points, then Minnesota swept Liberty, but not before the Lady Flames took the Golden Gophers to the edge in the third, 34-32.

But that's not what I want to talk about.  I want to talk about why I hate taking a shit in public, even if I have been resigned to taking a shit in public.  When you gotta go, you gotta go, you know?  But I always hate doing it because of the possibility that someone else would shit in the stall next to me.  I know it's natural, but I don't need to hear a stranger's scatological noises.

I took a dump at work today because I had a banana in the morning.  My mistake was going down to the ground floor bathroom.  I didn't want to use the bathroom up in the floor I work at because other guys at the place I work use it, and I might be in the very awkward position of hearing my supervisor or another guy at work grunting and shitting feces through his asshole.  No, thank you.  I might get so disgusted I would quit right then and there.

But I keep forgetting that other people who are entering the office building would use the ground floor bathroom.  And mere seconds after I went into the stall at a bit after 11, which I think is the beginning of lunch hour, what seemed like a group of people went into the bathroom to relieve themselves.  One guy took the second, other stall.  Thank goodness he wasn't loud.  In fact, I don't remember much beyond a couple forlorn farts.  But I swear that the guy following him (I don't know if he was with him or not) wanted to use my stall and saw my feet.  And then there were two other guys talking to each other at the urinals.  My God, it's like these men were congregating in the bathroom, even if they probably weren't together.

But anyway, onto the Sports Pavilion.  I had a pizza at the eatery on the ground floor at work before leaving for the Pav in time to catch the Bluejays-Golden Eagles game at 4:30.  But I thought I needed to shit.  Even though I guess I could have held it in, I decided that because I had arrived well before the first match was supposed to start and the crowd would be sparse because only fans of the two non-local teams would be there, I would just dook there.

I guess I thought in passing I would have complete quiet, but I didn't.  However, I don't think it would've been this hectic.  I took the middle of three stalls.  Someone used the one on the left, then someone used the one on the right.  And this asshole on the right, he kept farting and farting and farting.  Then I heard his belt buckle jingle, indicating to me that he was about to be done.

But then I heard no noise at all.  Then I heard some rubbing, like he took toilet paper and starting wiping his ass with it, but wouldn't stop and kept wiping and wiping and wiping his ass.  Except that what he was wiping didn't sound like his ass.  More like fabric or something.

That was the noise that creeped me out and got my blood boiling.  He sounded so gross in there that I was going to punch him if I saw him face-to-face and he did something weird towards me.

I bolted out the door and towards the sink.  Thank Buddha he didn't leave at the same time.  But he did exit while I was washing my hands.  It was an old guy, who had that time of hairstyle where he was bald at the top but had long hair around the sides and back of his head.  He had on these old sneakers that I saw underneath the divider between the stalls.  And he had this brown pleather jacket, very 70's-like.

He shuffles out of the stall ... then leaves the bathroom without either flushing the fucking toilet or washing his fucking hands.  Oh, are you fucking kidding me?!?!?!  The last time I saw something that fucking gross was when I was defecating at the Ridgedale library; some guy pushed the door of the stall next to me open, dropped his pants, quickly evacuated his wet bowels, and got up and left without flushing the toilet or even wiping his ass.  He was in and out in, like, five minutes.  This reminded me of that, and it just about made me throw up.  Now I was going to punch him if I saw him face-to-face because he already did something weird towards me.  I'm glad he wasn't the Seinfeld cook.

When I was done drying my hands I held up my coat so, when I walked past that dirty fucker's stall, it would be between me and ... that.  And I looked off to the other side, the right side, just to make sure.

The bathroom door was propped open for some reason.  Thankfully no one was in there while I was washing my hands.  But as I was leaving the bathroom some guy walked up to it, turned his head as if he finally found the men's bathroom, and passed me as he was going in.  Great -- now he's going to look at that fucking pile of shit in that goddamn toilet and forever think I did that.

The Evacuation Order Between Piss And Shit

So I was sent home with the plastic jug and ordered to collect all the urine I was going to eject from my body till I come in this morning. I either learned or was reminded of something on the way home: When you eat a lot, you have to take a dump real bad. And when you combine that with a long period of inactivity, there's a chance that dump becomes really liquid and really violent.

I wanted to hang out and work on my laptop a little more at a coffeeshop, but I forget that no mom-and-pop shops take American Express. (Mental note: Research why.) The one I go to -- or at least go to until, recently, maybe I'll blog about it -- let me stay and drink water. So generous, and I took them up on their offer. But after about a half-hour and realizing that I could still make it back home in time to watch the Kimmel monologue, I felt a rumbling in my bowels. It's one of those kinds of rumblings, if you know what I mean.

I hate taking a shit in a public restroom, so I did my best to tell myself, "You can do this, you can hold this in" as I briskly walked to my car and drove (around 65 so as not to incur a speeding ticket like I did in fuckin' St. Louis, thank you) back home. I was worried that Father would see me carrying in a big brown bag (in which I put the plastic bag in which the plastic jug was in so as not to arouse attention) and my pajamas in the house. He stayed downstairs on the Internet, so I burst upstairs.

I went to my bedroom before going to the bathroom, and that's when I realized my dilemma. I still need to collect my pee, but how in the hell am I going to do that when I have all this feces coming out of me? I can't do it staying up, of course. But how will I get the jug around my thing in the middle of my bowel movement? I pantomimed the scene of me on the toilet in my head, and it was awkward. But then there was another surge of pain in my gut, so I had to go to the bathroom, jug in hand.

What I did was sit up in the front of the toilet so my penis would hang on the edge of the seat. I would still shit into the water, thank God, but I would have to bring the jug in sideways in order to pee into it. And then I got all these bad images of the urine spilling onto me and the floor because I accidentally tipped the jar down and then peeing all over the floor because I recoiled from the pee from the jug -- the things in my head were just awful.

So what I had to do was tip over on one side. I was answering the call of nature on my right thigh as I hung my left thigh in the air. That gave me the downward hang I would need to make sure gravity would carry my piss out of my urethra and into the jug. That was the only way I felt secure enough to collect the sample without getting it all over me. But you should've seen the tableau: Me, in the middle of a violent bowel movement, at a 45-degree angle, trying to stick my dick through this plastic orange carton. Not proud.

I think I got most of it, but I was surprised that not a whole lot came out. It was coming out through my anus, that's for damn sure, but not through the front. I felt like it had to come out on both ends, but at the end I produced just a puddle of semen. Then I remembered I had thought this before, that you seem to piss or shit, but not at the same time. I have had bowel movements in the past where I'm waiting for the feces to come out of my rectum, and once it does, you start to pee. I imagine I could look inside my body, and then I imagine seeing my large intestine and rectum, and seeing my fecal matter inbetween pockets of piss.

And that's how I see the reason of shitting and pissing whenever I have an attack like this. I can only do one or the other because they both come through the large intestine, and obviously you can only eject one thing at a time. Of course, that's not how the body works: The shit comes out through the intestine but the piss goes through the kidney and bladder. I may still not be able to piss and shit simultaneously, but it's not because they come through the same body part. Maybe it's because the body can't take stuff coming out of it in two places at once.

---

I felt the same diarrhea attack this morning after having coffee after dropping off my first jug of pee (just over 650 mL overnight, in which I slept just soon after I got home at 12:30 or so, way more than the 525 mL I pissed out during my 12-hour stay at the hospital yesterday -- weird, I think). Once again I struggled to get my little man into the jug without tipping the whole thing over, and once again I pissed very, very little. But I got so tired of being on my thigh that I just sat there and eased my cock over the edge of the seat and into the mouth of the jug -- slowly, like a camel's nose into a tent. This is no way to collect a sample, but this morning I didn't care. This attack was so bad I almost shit my pants as I reached the bathroom.

I get to do this 11 more times. What I do in the name of science -- and employment.

I Wish This Day Wasn't So Annoying

• I'm still moping from my mom finding out I had a laptop because I was stupid and fucking forgot to put it away. I went to Taco Bell with a hat on, and when I sat down I threw it down on the seat I wasn't using. I remember saying to myself as I threw it down, "If I forget this hat like I did my laptop, I deserve to lose it." And sure enough, I walked out of Taco Bell without picking up my hat. Luckily I still had my receipt with the phone number on me, and when I called them they said they had it. Phew! It's when I'm feeling really sorry for myself -- times I think all hope is lost, so I do even more stupid things -- that some thing goes my way, and that's when I stop feeling sorry for myself. So, even though I've been found out by Mother, I'm not worried about it too much now. I mean, I could've lost my hat.
• I promised my "boss" at "work" at the U. that I wouldn't be late today because I was late last time. Because of my frantic phone call, which I did after I realized I forgot my hat, which was after I got out of my car, I was still late. She took in stride. She's sometimes late, too.
• I ate at Taco Bell, so naturally I had to take a shit. This may be the first time that not one but two guys took a dump in the stall next to me. For real, guys? Isn't anyone out there nervous about defecating so close to a stranger like I am?
• To top it off, the second guy was getting up so I had to bolt out of there for fear I'd see who the guy is and know that, for example, he works in the same room I do. I didn't completely dry my hands, but who cares. I get to the door; it's ajar. Oh no, I did shit next to one of the guys who work here. I quickly dart into my booth, and sure enough, a minute later in walks another guy. Ewwwww.....
• Parents didn't ambush me by asking me about my laptop. They're probably saving it for later.
• And finally, what I love to do late at night is get up off my computer and catch ABC's World News Now's "The Skinny" and "Morning Papers" segments. I try to get to my room in time to see the opening sequences for both. But sometimes I'm too late, like I was tonight, both times. The first time I was -- ahem -- looking at porn. The second time ... well, I was too busy typing this. So I guess I should end this post now.

So I'm Shitting In The Only Public Bathroom I Feel Comfortable Shitting In. ...

It's at the University of Minnesota, and I like it because it's relatively isolated and quiet -- especially so now because of winter break. I can shit in peace while thinking about ... stuff. And if the stuff I'm thinking about scares me, well, I'm on a shitter.

Still, the threat of other guys coming in and not only using the sink or urinal but using the only other stall in this bathroom. Thankfully, I think this has only happened once. But not on Wednesday.

So I was trying to take a dump in My Stall, thinking about my life and what's happened to make it go so wrong and rubbing my eyes as a result when I hear someone not just open but burst through the door, like he really needed to go bad. Oh no, I thought, just go pee, please. But no, he used the stall next to me ... but not before he went up to My Stall. He probably stopped after he saw me on the throne through the slit between the door and the thing attached to the door's hinges. Hey asshole, next time do what I do and stoop down to look if you see any feet in the stalls.

With this stranger next to me my sphincter puckered up. His seemed to do the same, because after he sat on his toilet there was a lot of seconds before I heard even a fart. He must've been thinking, "What the fuck is this guy next to me doing?" Waiting for you, perv, I ain't going to drop any fecal matter so long as you're there. But I waited him out and I succeeded; he may have shit a few rabbit droppings before leaving. I was on the crapper before him and I still was after. He must be wondering. Actually, thinking about it makes me laugh.