Tales of Electical Fires, the Sport of Kings, Trying to Kill JP and Going Gray

Y'know it's funny, after about 2 and a half weeks without a post it starts. I start getting IM's "Hey where's the new post bastard?" "I've got a great idea for something you can talk about..." or "It's time for a new post. Ready? Set? Go!" I promise you I haven't been lacking for things to write about the last two weeks. In fact I've started some posts that I've been positivly giddy about but had to cut them short because something has inevitably come up at work or I've just been too tired to be coherent.

For example this last week I thought the fact that from Monday at 6am until Friday at 7:30am I would spend exactly half of my life (48 out of 96 hours) within the lovely confines of Friendship Hospital for Animals (thanks to the new computer system training we have to go through) was rather humorous. Until I did the math and I realized that I've only gotten about one hour of sleep for every 2 hours I've been here at work (22/48). I'm not complaining, the various reasons range from stupid computer training to having lunch with the delightful Leigh to a cleaning lady (don't ask) to the house nearly burning down (ok so that's really all of the reasons... moving on).

And yes you read that right, my house was in danger of burning down on Thursday. And I'm not talking about your "Oh my god Chris is cooking!" almost burned down, I mean "Holy electrical fire Batman! We're going to die!" It started somewhere around 12:30ish, I think, when Chris came knocking on my door to rouse me out of what had the potential to be the first day with more than 5hrs of uninterrupted sleep all week. Supressing my desire to kill him and then go on a murderous rampage for waking me up in the middle of the day for the second straight day, I manage to ask what he wants. "Umm yeah... we may have a bit of a problem. It ahh may become a major problem..." "What is it Chris?(I swear if this is about the internet being out or something else you could handle I'm going to rip your throat out)" "Umm I can't really describe it but you really need to come upstairs and take a look at this."

Muttering to myself a string of profanaties not even suitable for the Internet I throw on some shorts and a tshirt and I stumble my way upstairs. When I got there my nostirls were attacked by the one of the foulest odors I've smelled in a while (and I routinely clean up dog shit). He pointed to one of the electical sockets on the wall and it was black and brown (it's usually white) and from inside I could see a bright reddish/orange glow. Yup we're about half a step from an electical fire. I begurdingly admitted to Chris that this was an ok reason to wake me up in the middle of the day.

After figuring it out (and conferring with Farrow for a second) I ran downstairs to turn the circut breaker off only to find that they're not labeled so I have to plunge the house into darkness and then try to figure out which ones I can turn back on without burning down the house. In the middle of all of this I called our property manager and his first response was to tell me that he didn't know if he could make it out to our house today. I reiterated that there was the potential of the house burning down and he said that he'd be out in an hour or so.

He showed up needed to replace the outlet and the wire that brought power up to it saying that the wire had overheated (due surprisingly more to old age than overusage) and had started to melt. Oh and about a quarter of the outlet itself had been burned away... yeah needless to say I felt really safe, espeically since the only working firealarm in our house is IN THE BASEMENT!! Ok so the safety violation is mostly our fault... but still...

In other random electical fire related news (and skipping waaay ahead in the story)... Saturday night after getting in from a night out my dad IMs me saying "Hey, we've had some excitement tonight, the fire trucks just left, call home if you can." Now lemme tell you, there's nothing like an IM from your folks at 3:30 am where fire trucks are mentioned to scare out any reminents of alcohol that may still be in your system from a night out. It seems they were awoken by the firealarm in their house going off around 1am because the power outlet one of their computers was plugged into had started smoldering, and singed the floor and the desk it was under. The upstairs filled with smoke they cut power to the house, called 911 and scrambled the volunteer fire department. By the time the Firemen got there the power strip had stopped smoldering and there wasn't much for them to do except have the Fire Marshal verify that the house was ok. But they said that 3 fire trucks had been scrambled and there were 4 cop cars. The neighbors must now be wondering what kind of crazy people have moved in. And if you ask me, the gods of electicity and fire are doing their damndest to kill me and mine...

Anyway... I had a bunch of other good stories to share with you including ones that involved such great quotes as "Is she hot? No. Would I do her? Yeah." (Steve)"Well at this point we're almost at Archibald's..." (Female I'll refrain from naming)"Oh! Let's go there!" (and yes she was serious, and yes we did go, and yes she did put cash in a strippers' garder belt)(and yes it was awesome). "We may be driving to Krupins to pickup food, but that's not half as bad as the River Road girls paying a service to pick it up and deliver it around the block." "I'm gonna show him my Pete Orr Face, Orr! Orr! Orr!" (heh, despite what Olker said that still hasn't gotten old and it's been like 3 weeks.) And "Well boys, I think we're about to find out that we just kissed our sister." (and it turned out that proverbially we had). But now the stories happened so long ago I can't remember them or they're just not as funny anymore.

Ok well I feel I should elaborate on that last one. It was two weeks ago at the Inagural Kappa Rho Classic (the golf tournament the Kappa Rho Housing Corps threw to raise money for the undergrad housing fund). It was mostly Alumni (the usual suspects of George, James, Drob, Farrow, myself, ect) but we were allowed to bring family or close friends to play and I invited my dad. So he and my mom came down for the weekend (She spent Sunday at the O's game) and we played with Farrow and a NIB. It was a capitan's choice format tournament (where everyone tees off, you pick the best ball, everyone hits from there and so on) and we had a blast. I played decently for me, meaning that I actually contributed a few times and we ended the round at 2 under par. As we were walking off we tried to figure out what it would take to win and decided that a 3 under was probably the winner and my dad dropped the aforementioned quote and sure enough it was true. We came in second by one stroke to Will and a Sig from Mason playing with his dad.

Despite loosing Dad and I had alot of fun, he was driving the ball really well and I think he just loved being out on the course with me. The only thing he was disapointed in was not winning the longest drive conpitition (he shanked his drive on that hole into the woods and was still grumbling about two holes later). The only thing I was disapointed in was not putting on sunscreen. I got the shit burned out of my neck and arms and it didn't start looking better until this weekend. (Where as you'll read I F'ed it up again.)

This weekend was pretty awesome, I've noticed that I've had alot of these lately and it got me thinking that I really do have alot of fun. Work can sometimes wear me down and I can feel pretty tired and burned out, mostly due to my schedual not so much work itself, but like a kid my age should I play hard on the weekends and all in all I have a pretty good life, minus a piece or two, but again I'll get to that in a minute.

Friday was JP's birthday and a few of us took him out to Old Ebbot's Grille for dinner and then we hit up Cap Lounge afterwards for drinks. It was great, dinner was really good and a lot of fun of course but the bar afterwards was unbelievable. As you can see in the picture Holly (who is unforunatly not pictured) made tshirts for all of us that said "JP-Palooza" on the front and had a few different things on the back, including a picutre of JP fondling himself in a cocnut bra with the tagline "Ok... I'm ready... Get my Alf DVD" underneath it (as you can see). And yes the guy in the first picture who isn't JP or me is the bartender, how awesome is that? The only hiccup in the night was when JP's ex showed up, made out with her new marine "boyfriend" (that's in quotes because they've only been dating a week) right in front of us, ignored us for the rest of the evening and then she called JP later saying that she just heard she missed us and how sorry she was that she didn't say hi... We all thought it was more than a little suspect but decided that it was definatly not worth ruining an otherwise awesome night.



Part two of JP-Palooza entitled "You Gonna Die Boy" by the one and only Rob Farrow was held Saturday night at our favorite watering hold of late The 18th Amendment. By the time I got there Farrow was already well on his way to fufilling his mission. JP sure as hell was drunk and having a good time (there are some somewhat scandelous pictures of JP dancing that I'll be kind and not post, happy birthday buddy). I'm not sure if he popped or not but it was funny because he came out of the bathroom about 1ish with a blank look on his face and turned to Holly saying "It's time to go," and they went.

Even after he left most of us stayed and closed down the bar. I remember sitting there at one point just shaking my head, loving life. The boys were all hanging out watching Sports Center, drinking beer and BSing while the girls (led by Emily) were dancing at the end of the bar making fun of us trying (not always in vain, as shown) to get us to come dance with them, it really was just perfect. The only sad thing was it made me realize one or two pieces of my life that would have fit in perfectly that were missing.


Ok that was sappy enough, onto the least sappy thing I can think of... spending time with Farrow. Y'see Saturday he convinced me (ok he really didn't have to twist my arm, he just asked) to take him up to Pimlico for the Kentucky Derby. We went up for the day and he introduced me to betting on horses. Now I'm not really a gambling man, but I had alot of fun and I won money. Not much mind you, just enough to pay for the meal we had and a tank of gas (that I would have needed anyway) but I didn't loose money and that's the key. Granted I was the only one who won, but that's how the cookie crumbles. Not that I have any hopes of actually being successfull betting on horses longterm, infact I should probably just quit while I'm ahead but we all know Farrow's gonna drag me (again I'm sure he'll really have to blackmail me into going...).

The other highlight of this past weekend was playing golf with the boys on Sunday. I shot one of the best rounds of my (extremely) short golfing career, granted it was still the worst of the 4 of us but I'm getting better and having fun doing it. Heh, and even though I was once again a moron and forgot to put on sunscreen (you'd think I'd have learned by now) due to a bit of a base tan and the fact that it was really sunny out (it was a beautiful day, the sun just wasn't beating down on us like last Sunday) I didn't burn too much more.

While out there I realized how out of date my clubs were, I've had them since the summer after we moved back from Italy, and man are they getting a little worn down and banged up. So I called my folks and started telling my dad about the round and how much fun I was having playing golf in general. Before I could even broach the subject he said, "So I guess this means you want a new set of clubs huh?" So sure enough my Birthday/Christmas present this year is going to be new clubs and I can't tell you how geeked out I am about it. Of course this could just mean that I'm getting old and enjoying stuff like golf more, but I'm strangely ok with it.

One aspect of getting older that I'm decidely not ok with is getting gray hairs... Yup I got my first one last week. One of my co-workers, Lisa, was standing over me she looked down at the top of my head and said, "Oh god honey, you've got a gray hair!" I freaked out a bit, called Robert over and had him verify that I did indeed have one, hoping that it was some sick strange joke she was playing on me. So I had them pluck it out so I could see it and sure enough it was gray. (Of course it wasn't until afterwards that I rememberd what people say about, you pluck one and three more grow in it's place or the Sex and the City quote (that I'm paraphrazing here) "You pluck one gray hair and six come to it's funeral") The weird thing about it was that it was kind of striped, like it started out brown, then there was a gray strip more brown more gray then the end was brown.

So with any luck it was just because of stress and I'm not actually going gray... But my mom was gray in her very early 30's her mother was gray in her mid 20's and her father was gray too... so it's looking like that I just have to get used to the idea. Heh of course when I told her about it she had to recount the story of the time when I was 8 or so and asked her, "Mommy when's your hair going to be brown again?" She glared at me for half a second and said, "Tomorrow Brian, tomorrow." and she's been dying it ever since... But this ranks even ahead of my sister turning 21 and me hearing the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on 94.7 (DC's classic rock station) as shocking holy shit I'm getting old moments in my life that make me want to freak out.

Anyway, I should get going, it's starting to get late and I've still got a bunch of work to do before I leave. I'm sorry once again about the delays in getting this post out there... in my defense I did start it on the 21st of April but couldn't finish it until now. I hope you enjoyed it even though it is spectacularly long. I hope everything's well in your world, I'll talk at you soon.


-B


WILTN: Pearl Jam (I can't tell you how excited I am about the new album)