Big Loop Little Loop
I know I’m really in no position to say this, and that it will come off as childish whining because it isn’t as if I don’t have the time or the freedom, and really, it’s just because I’ve been lazy and moving around in this odd fog for so many months, but…
I miss writing.
I miss the excitement of a new idea. The puzzle of placing the right words in the right order. The search of the precise adjective that doesn’t sound too flowery or too pretentious.
And since I do most (not that there’s been much of it lately) of my writing on computers these days…
I miss the pen in my hand. The loops and dashes of my cursive that I painstakingly worked at as an adolescent. The smudges of ink remaining on my hands and fingers because I am left-handed.
You know, I used to practice different types of handwriting. I would experiment with g’s and f’s. The capital Z will always be the ugliest cursive letter to me. Even when I didn’t use cursive, I would practice the sizing of my letters, writing a’s like they are here in this blog, or the lazy way, just a loop with a tail. I wanted my letters to be perfect because the highest praise to me was always, “Your handwriting is beautiful! I can’t believe you’re left-handed!”
What an odd goal. To fool the world with my handwriting. Or to prove that lefties aren’t gimped. Both I suppose.
Before the Morning Coffee
Or perhaps it should be “After the Mdinight Coffee.” I need to stop drinking that stuff so late. It’s really messing up my sleep schedule!
And so it is that I am now awake at 5:45AM, a mere five hours after I went to bed, typing blindly (didn’t bother to put on my glasses) in the dark (the den light is visible from our bedroom) because of this absurd dream I had which was no doubt a result of too much coffee (and a glazed donut) too late in the evening.
Ahhhh… thank goodness for the zoom feature on browsers. At 200% I can now see my words. Never mind that my glasses are only about 25 paces away. Besides, I’m not planning on staying up. To get my glasses would somehow imply that I’m awake and alert. And that, I assure you, I am not. If this were pen and paper, you’d see how often I have pressed the backspace. I even just added the “you” after “assure” because I had forgotten it on first go. Not that this is some sort of second draft. I don’t edit my blog that conscientously (okay, for certain, that’s spelled wrong, but I can’t see and am a little wonky), only as I write. See, I’m not even going to bother correcting conscientiously. Still wrong? Eh, whatever.
Anyway, so my dream was about a bunch of friends going to this exclusive party. One of the people who worked at this club was a spouse of one of our friends, and wasn’t privy to the fact that a party was being thrown until we all showed up. She wasn’t happy about working the front door while the rest of us got in, but gave a good show of it. While we were milling about, waiting for our host to make his little welcome speech, an odd homage video played on the stage for us. There was a subtle joke made at the expense of our friend’s spouse (the one working) and another friend leaned over and said, “Didn’t you have beef with her?” I noticed the girl in question standing nearby and didn’t want to cause any drama so I merely shook my head no and returned to watching the video.
Lunchtime came around, and I decided to pop back to the apartment because I felt my t-shirt and jeans weren’t sexy enough for the club. I asked my roommate if she wanted me to pick anything up for her, and she told me to look for her bottle of warm liquor in her room.
I began jogging back to the apartment and was snubbed by a humvee filled with army men that I had tried to flag down. It’s hot running in jeans! And the apartment was only a block away! But they didn’t care.
Two businessmen who had raced by me in their white luxury cars were suddenly standing beside me. They held cards in their hands, one side green and one side red. The one who had green upturned won the burger. The other man, far more gracious, said, “Maybe tomorrow.” The winner smiled smugly and walked around the corner before the loser turned to me and raised his eyebrows. I was standing at the winner’s car, and his door was unlocked, and there on the passenger seat sat the burger (in a white paper baggie). The loser gave me a wicked smile, and I happily reached in and grabbed the bag. We made a dash for my apartment, just around the corner where the winner had gone, and were in the lobby before the winner realized what had happened and stormed in, asking “Is that mine!?” The loser tried to appease him by giving him another identical bag, but the winner wouldn’t be swayed.
I scrambled into the elevator, trying to remember where I lived and getting off on the wrong floor. In the meantime, the loser was fending off the winner, and I finally found my room on the seventh floor. 714, if it’s of any interest to you. I slammed the door just as the winner reached me. His hand clawed under my door and I kept screaming at him, “I’m going to call security!”
And I did.
I began to scream, “Security! Security! Get this Asian man!” (He was Asian.)
And the loser had caught up and was grappling with him outside the door and said in a muffled voice, “Not this Asian man!” (He was Asian too.)
And I screamed, “Not the one in the white button down shirt!”
Well, somehow, security must have come and hauled the winner away because I opened the door and stepped outside to find the loser beaming at me.
He began to praise me in a just-drank-a-love-potion-and-is-obsessed kind of way, and suddenly the entire fiasco became a Sunday comic strip with the punchline being, “It never ends! Even Marx couldn’t escape, how can you!”
So, what do you think? Should I brew up some coffee and think more on this?
The Good Old Days
T and I just got back from a weekend in Vegas, one of many that we’ve had in the past gazillion years that we’ve been together (and I say that with the utmost love and contentment). But this year, one of the purposes was to attend Evo 2009, a yearly video game tournament showcasing fighting games like Street Fighter, Tekken, and Soul Calibur (organized and run by many of our old friends). It was really wonderful seeing friends from nearly a decade ago, and re-experiencing some of the camraderie of those days when none of us worked or had responsibilities and spent all our time drinking, playing video games, and just generally f’ing around. Evo itself was fun, at least as far as the finals, since we only attended the last day. The collective excitement of 1,000 gamers in a huge convention hall is absolutely contagious, and even non-players of Street Fighter like me can get wrapped up in it.
T and I still play video games. Hell, he works in video games! But nothing can replace the days of the arcade. The friends we made from IRC and hanging out at shady arcades back then are irreplaceable. The stories we have are many and still make us laugh after all this time. Now that I’m so much older, it’s amazing to me to look back and see how all that idle craziness has gotten us so far. I nearly failed out of college because of IRC and video games, but now look? I married one of those guys, I still play too much, and now our friends are legends among the video game community and organizing huge events every year for devoted and new fans of the games!
I am glad we experienced the internet and video games at the age we did. I feel old among the new kids, but I don’t think they’ll ever have the great time that we did. It’s the difference between planting your own seeds and eating the fruits of your labor and going to a fine restaurant and ordering off a menu.
On another note, I forced T to go to XS at Encore with me and his brother and his brother’s fiancee. I haven’t officially gone to a club since my college days, and it was another thing to reminisce about. It was fun, we blew a lot of money on alcohol, my feet HURT, I got a few ego boosts from drunk and awkward guys trying to pick us girls up, and I managed to stay up past 2AM. Having gotten that out of my system, our next Vegas trip will be all about lounging by the pool in the day and taking bubble baths at night.
