What’s The Score Now?!

I’ve been playing soccer once a week for the last month. Most of the people I play with work at Univ. of Pitt. I knew some of them when I worked there a few years ago. Some of them work in labs and some of them are computer geeks. One of the guys is the fed ex deliveryman for our buildings. We have a large range of skill levels. We have a couple of people that are really good, like the fed ex guy. He played semi-pro in Scotland before he came to the US for School. But he has bad knees so he couldn’t keep playing at that level. We have a few of us that played in high school. I fall into that category. We are skilled and can make some plays and when we can’t we just push each other over. Then we have the people that basically never played before. When the ball comes near them, they pretty much kick it as hard as they can in what ever direction they are facing. Some of them tend to hurt everyone else. I’ve had a bruise on my knee all week because some girl kept kneeing me. I know it’s not cause she likes me because she was kneeing anybody that came near her when the ball was near by. I don’t remember how many goals had been scored when we finished but it was 3 crotches to 4 faces when we finally quit. As one of the crotches I can say with authority that we didn’t win.

I didn’t score any goals. Here’s why:


The girls club Frisbee team was stretching/practicing behind the goal I was shooting at. A little distracting to say the least.

Below are some more pictures from soccer. They are all from water break because I was too busy getting kneed and hit in other areas of the body during play to take pictures.

I do have to mention that I’m writing this while I’m at Pete’s Night of Crafty-ness. It’s the knitting ring that I started a few years back. I’ll write more about that later…

What Up Chris!!

Don’t Hate Me Cause My Pictures Are Beautiful

You have to read that like Fabio. I don't know if that came across well.

Well, I finally entered the 20th century. I bought a digital camera. I don’t want to say where I bought it because a certain friend of mine doesn’t like the company. But I can probably tell you because India is blocking blogspot for some ridiculous reason. It’s probably because of Dave’s blog. It has all his crazy talk about HIV and peace and c%$#%#ms. So, I can tell you that I bought the camera at Best Buy. She doesn’t like Best Buy because she tried to buy a camera there while signing up for a Credit Card with them. But the screwed it all up and I think it did something to her credit. I learned her lesson and skipped getting the credit card with them. It’s a Sony and it takes pictures and videos. I took some pictures around the house and they looked good. I haven’t done any videos yet. I’m going to take it to soccer tomorrow and take some pictures and maybe video and see how it comes out. With this camera I can take tons of pictures and show them to everyone, posting them on the internet for all to see. I just have to remember to bring it with me.

That'll Piss You Off

I’ve gotten my security deposit back, more or less in it’s entirety. My landlord kept $25 saying that he had to fix the dings I left in the walls. $25 isn’t that much so I just let it go but he’s so full of it. Lor, did we leave any dings in the wall? We were pretty careful. Anyway, now that I have it back I figured I’d compile a list of things that would defiantly piss Eric off if he knew about them; things that would probably have created more of a problem with the security deposit.

1. I used to take drinks and snacks to my room every night. He always said that he didn’t want us eating in our rooms. He was very protective of his house. He kicked one guy out because he was too messy. I never ate dinner in my room. However chips or ice cream and tea or hot chocolate or pop were regular visitors to my room.

2. I adjusted the temperature in the house. He told me once that I wasn’t to touch the thermostat. He liked to think of himself of as the house dictator but really he was the house dic… Anyway, cold days got more heat and hot days got more AC.

3. When the furnace was broken I used the oven to heat the kitchen. He would have spazzed out if he had known the gas wasted in the use of the oven as a space heater.

4. Along those lines, I had a space heater in my room. Even if I turned up the thermostat my room was still cold. So I just got a heater. Though with the heater I didn’t need to adjust the thermostat anymore. He would have liked that.
5. I did way more laundry than he thinks I did. I had to wash my work clothes in a few loads every week. He thought that washing clothes in the washing machine was bad for it. I wasn’t wasteful. I wasn’t just washing one sock at a time.

I think that’s it. Only 5. I thought there would be more. Well anyway, I’m happy not to live there anymore. I did like the other roommates there. I just couldn’t stand Eric.

Nightmare on Romine Ave.

Not as good a title as the real movie title. I wonder if the movie started out with a different title. I wonder if they would have made so many movies if they had used a different street name.

So I’ve been having some weird dreams lately. Like last night I dreamt that Lori had 10 new posts on her blog that I hadn’t read. That’s weird because that usually happens with Dave’s blog. Though Dave’s posts are usually short and cryptic. I’ve also recently had dreams about waiting tables. They tend to be ones where all of my tables fill up in the first 30 seconds of opening and the first table I go to can’t even order drinks. They take forever deciding and then try to order their food at the same time without having even looked at the menu. I remember Dr Turner talking about Nightmares about Organic. I never had dreams about Organic Chemistry but this must be what it’s like.

I’m starting to despair. I know it’s only been a week since I sent in the remainder of my medical packet to the Peace Corp. But I haven’t heard anything. June is approaching quickly. I’m worried that I won’t be assigned to this project. Not so much because I don’t like anything else that they have (I don’t really know that much about the project at hand), mostly I just don’t know what I’ll do between now and the next project’s leave date. I better not think too much about it. I’ll probably just get more nightmares.

"Yes it was all very exciting. Tomorrow we'll go to the zoo."

Well, Lori is back in India now. Actually I just assume that she made it. I haven’t heard from her. Her flight was on Saturday. I miss her already. I’m bored now; I don’t have anybody to do anything with me. Last week was so nice and busy. We went to the zoo last Tuesday. I hadn’t been for well over 10 years. It was much smaller than I remember. We also didn’t bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like my family did in the old days. But it was fun none the less. We saw these really cool sea dragons. They were pretty funky. The brown bear was playing in the pool but most of the rest of the animals were sleeping. The petting zoo was a little disappointing. We got to pet a deer but the kangaroos all huddled in a corner and could only be reached from outside their fenced in area. We skipped the goat and sheep pen. The weather was turning bad at that point. The rain did hold off till we were on the way out.

We also went shopping for wedding dresses. Our friend is getting married in October and both of us are hoping to make it back to the country for it. Lori is going to be one of the bride’s maids. So she was trying on a dress. I was just along for “the fun”. The woman at the shop wasn’t very nice or helpful. She couldn’t be bothered to tell Lori about how long it would take to do alterations on the dress. She couldn’t even tell her what size she should get. I’ve walked into Kaufmann’s and had the guy know what size pants I would take. Seems to me this woman should have had some insite or thoughts about weather she should go to the next size or not. We were looking spending a couple hundred dollars for the dress and alterations. One would expect to have some help from the staff. The dress and colors have now been chosen. I’m sure the decision was made largely due to my input on color schemes and dress designs. The rest of the afternoon we went to various shops getting things that Lori wanted to take to India.

But now she’s gone and I’m bored and lonely. I’ll probably have to get a job while I wait to hear from the peace corp. Last week I did what should have been the last medical test for my incompetent Doctor, whom I will never go to again. Of course I’ll probably have to call them everyday for the rest of the week to make sure that they mail in the forms; using the pre-address, postage paid envelope. Also the Dentist took the last X-rays last week. So now I just have to wait and see if I got it all done in time to go in June. Though for me to be able to go I have to find my passport. I’m not sure where it is since the move. That has me a little worried, as it will expire before I’m supposed to return. I want to renew it before I leave. Plus not finding it will only make it more difficult to get a visa for whatever country I end up going to.

Elephants

Where'd he go!?!

mmm, Loriiiii

The deer liked lori's hand. She must have smelled like hamburger from lunch.

Sea Dragons

These were pretty cool. I'm disappointed with the picture quality though.

What do you say to a Giraffe?

The Cheeta, or Lepord, or...

People would walk up to pens and name the wrong animal. I wasn't sure if I should correct them in front of their own children.

Nobody Asked Me!!

I just want to take a second to tell you all that Cingular sucks. They have been doing this ad campaign where they claim that they have the least dropped calls. They definitely didn’t ask me about dropped calls. I don’t think I’ve had a phone conversation in the last month that went more than a minute where I didn’t lose all signal and then drop a call. I’m not even talking about when I’m in the basement or driving through mountains. I mean when I’m sitting on the front steps of my house and I have 3 bars and then the next minute I have no signal. I’m also a little bitter about the whole “more bars in more places” thing. That’s not really happening either. Verizon should defiantly call me. I’d be happy to do an advertisement for them about how bad Cingular is. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to plan it out because my phone would drop the call before we got anywhere with the concept.

Moving Ill!!

I’m now back in Pittsburgh. I moved on Saturday. The move went about as close to plan as one could expect (“I love it when a plan comes together”). We left only 1.5 hours later than I wanted to. We were actually done packing the truck by, 10 like I had wanted, but then it took time to get everything cleaned up and the last few things into the car. All cleaned up and $100 of gas later ($75 for the U-haul and $25 for my car) we were on the road. The drive up was pretty un-eventful. We arrived in Pittsburgh at a good time. The rain didn’t catch up to us before we got everything unloaded. It did start to rain in DC just as we were getting the last boxes in the truck but really only Mark got wet. I had plenty of great help. Thank you to Mark, Lori, Doug, Ryan, Jen (J-Diddy) and my parents for helping in DC. Thanks to Lori, Mark, Melissa, Dave, Jenn (J Lo), Mom and Dad for help in Pittsburgh.

The night before the move was great. My parents and Lori arrived during the after noon. I showed them around the house that I lived in for the last year. Then we went to get the Uhaul truck and then met Jen, my twin sister-in-law, for dinner. We went to an Afghan Kabob place. The food there is really good. It’s in Springfield, VA. You should go if you are in the area. Then Lori and I went back to my place to meet up with a friend of ours from college and his brother. We sent them to the liquor store while we stopped at the grocery store for juice to mix with the alcohol they bought. We were up till about 130 playing cards and catching up with which of our friends are getting married and who doesn’t like whom. We laughed a lot. I was a great night; it reminded me of our late night card sessions from college, except for the drinking.

Mark was in usual form having plenty of quotes to make us laugh. The best I added to my quote board to the right.

DONE!!

I no longer work at the Fish Market! I’m very excited and happy. Sunday was my last day. It was a glorious day. The sun was shining, the birds singing and I had a song in my heart (I think it was See My Vest from Simpsons). We had few customers. I thought it would be a late start since everybody was a church. But I thought that after the terrible chore of church for the second time in a year (Christmas) that it would get busy. But, thankfully, it never did. It was hard to say goodbye to many of the people. It was a good ending though.

Dinner with the Thai people is tonight. It was just Janna at first. But now it’s going to be a few others too. I’m looking forward to it.

In Peace Corp news: things are pretty frustrating. I needed dental x-rays but they made me gag every time they put it in my mouth. So my dentist wrote very clearly that it was not possible. They sent back my dental packet saying that they need the x-rays that my dentist said couldn’t be done. Plus my doctor in Pittsburgh seems incapable of even simple tasks like faxing requests for medical records. I have had to call them so many times to find out if they got the information or not. They never did any follow up with the VA to see why they didn’t get the information they requested. Today I’m going to the VA to get a few more lab tests done. This time I’m going to see if I can have the results sent directly to me so that I can just take them right to the doctor myself. This doctor is really pissing me off. I just want to go and take my Peace Corp forms back from them and get someone else to take care of it all. Well I better stop now or else I’ll just get angry again at the ineptitude of my doctor.

Wireless-less

I’m at Panera Bread where they have free internet access. Exept for today when it’s not working. I just called the help desk and she said yes, we are aware that it’s down and I can’t say when it will be fixed. How annoying is that?!? I may have to go to another store or (shutter) the library(where I’m pretty sure they have wireless). So hopefully it won’t take too long to post this. If all else fails I’ll do it when I get home.

Not too much has happened in the last week. Pretty much everybody at work knows that I’m leaving on Sunday. It’s hard to explain to some of them what I’m doing/where I’m going. Especially since I don’t know. But I just tell them vague things and that seems to do. They keep asking me if I like Asian girls and if that’s why I’m going. Well, I do like Asian girls but that’s not really why I’m going. Though, I usually just say yes, that’s why I’m going. These last few days at work have been pretty bad. We are really busy now because the weather here is nice now. When the weather is nice our sections get bigger because we have extra tables outside but no extra people to help out. So it’s been kind of crazy because I haven’t gotten a good rhythm down for handling all the tables. Plus yesterday I worked with a bartender lazier than I am and a server that’s not much better. Usually I can get some help from the other servers if I need but not so much from these two. One of my first tables got me all screwed up because he ordered the wrong thing and then complained when I told him that I would make the change and it would take just a few minuets to fix it (who do they think I am, Bullwinkle?!? Hey Rocky, watch me pull a crab cake out of my hat!). But in the time that took I had 2 other tables come in and then I just kept getting behind and couldn’t catch up. I was pretty unhappy the rest of the day. Today was better. I was training a new guy today. I like doing that. It’s fun and if the person is good then they do like half the work for you. It was easier to keep up with everything today. 3 more days of working at the Fish Market. That’s a good feeling.

Next week one of the other servers is taking me out for lunch or dinner at a Thai place. She is Thai: well half Thai, her mom is American. I’m really looking forward to it, except for one thing. I want to get her a gift but I don’t know what to get her. I should point out that she is married. So this isn’t a romantic encounter kind of thing. I wouldn’t say that we are really close but I do have a fondness for her and I will miss her. So I have to think of a good gift before Wednesday. I’m taking suggestions, if anybody has some. Something that will remind her of me. Maybe I’ll just go to the mall tomorrow and see if I can find something I like for her. That’s usually how I shop for people, I just walk around the mall and see if I can get inspired. That’s not always an easy process as Dave and Lori and attest to from Hawaii and Dili Haat. But usually I’m pretty happy with what I come up with. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

FREEZE (SUCKER!)

As I stated in my last posting I went to Pittsburgh last week. It was an AWESOME week. If for no other reason, I wasn’t waiting tables at the Fish Market. There were, however, many other reasons it was great. But I’ll stick with the restaurant reason for the minuet. This break came at a particularly good time. I was yet again at the point where I hated everybody that came into the restaurant. Pretty much for no reason other than they came into the restaurant. My one friend laughs at this saying that they come to give me money. My answer to that is, No they don’t. They come in to try to get free food and leave crappy tips. I can’t believe how many people come in and want to just try a few shrimps or scallops. Do I look like I own the place? Do you think there is a big tub of shrimps in the back where I can just take a hand full and give them to you and nobody will notice? I should take a moment to point out that not all customers are idiots. But apparently, there’s a high correlation with my tables. One of the other servers noticed that I don’t have much patients for people. So it was good that I got a break.

There are other better reasons that this weekend was so good. The main one being that I got to see my friend Lori 3 days in a row. I spent most of Thursday with her at her parent’s house. We mostly sat around and talked about life and her reasons for staying in India for another year. The chief reason seems to be simply that she’s not ready to come back yet. I’m happy for her that she can stay. She had trouble working out her work situation but it seems like she was able to get everything all set up. I’m also glad that she’s staying because the Peace Corp might station somewhere near her. How fun would that be for vacation?!? I can pick Dave up on the way to visit Lori. Or we can just meet in like Thailand or Greece if Pam will come. Friday we went to Phipps Conservatory (Professor Plum did it), and the Carnegie Museum. Neither of us had been since school field trips. Then we went for some irreverent fun at the Church Brew Works. It’s a restaurant that was built in an old church. They brew their own beer. They say they do it there but I don’t believe it. There isn’t room there for the output they would need. The beer was good, no matter where they brew it. Then on Saturday we went to see Ice Age 2: The Melt Down. It was funny and not too crowded with mall rats. Then we went to Houlihan’s and tried some special beer they had. Not that great: don’t remember the name of it though. But the conversation was good.

I was also pretty successful with the doctor and the dentist. I wasn’t able to get the x-rays that I needed at the dentist. He didn’t have the panoramic machine and the other ones kept making me gag. I gag really easily. So I have to see if I can get one done here in DC without it costing too much. I’m also waiting to get my lab results from the VA sent to my doctor. I think I might have to go down and just get them and fax them myself. I have tomorrow off so that might be how I fill my day tomorrow.

I also got to see my parents and some other friends in Pittsburgh. It was my parent’s anniversary. My dad got my mom a Mylar balloon that when you hit it sings, “Still the one” (we’re still having fun, and you’re still the one). Very cute and totally a gift that my dad would get.

So that was my week. Lori told me that I should blog about my trip to the VA hospital. So I might have to see if I can do that.

Another Month

Wow! It’s been a month since I last posted. That’s weird because a lot of things have happened over the last month. I had my interview for the Peace Corp. It went really well and they are ready to send me away for 2 years. It looks like I’ll be posted to Central Asia, Something-stan, as Dave and I have come to call it. I’ll know more when I’m medically cleared. The basic description I was given of the project was educating health care workers about AIDS safety. If I can get all the medical stuff done then I would go on this project as soon as June. If not then I might not go till November. I really don’t want to wait that long. So I’m in Pittsburgh right now trying to get it all done. I tried to do it in DC but when I went to the VA the PA I saw just gave me attitude. She was all upset about me not having a folder with my complete medical history. Next time I fill out a questionnaire on my health I’m just clicking all the no boxes. They don’t need to know about my knee surgery, do they? So I came up to Pittsburgh for 5 days. I saw the family doctor that I saw in high school and college. I haven’t been there since ’99. She didn’t seem happy about that but I’ve only been to the doctor once since then and I didn’t go there because I didn’t have insurance at the time. She was also upset that I had so many forms to fill out. She didn’t think there would be so many. This is a government program, what did she expect? Tomorrow I’m going to see the Dentist. He is a guy from my church here in Pittsburgh. I called to make an appointment and left a message on the office voice-mail because I kept calling and they didn’t answer. So the dentist called my parents and said that they didn’t have an opening but would work through lunch for me. I wonder if I can have pizza delivered to the office as a thank you. They shouldn’t be too upset with me; until they find out that I haven’t been to see a dentist in probably 3 years. But I’ll try to say that with pizza in my mouth and maybe they won’t hear me that well.

So after I make the dentist upset, I’ll get to the third and biggest reason I came to Pittsburgh, my friend Lori. She’s back for a little vacation, from India. She just finished her first year in India and is going back for another. It was pretty clear from phone conversations and her blog that she was coming back for good and then all the sudden she announces that she’s staying back for another year. So I’m interested to hear the story. I’m going to have dinner with her tomorrow. I’ll get the truth serum ready so I can find out all about the husband that she has found (see my blog description).

The other thing that has happened is that Dave is back in India. That’s good for 2 reasons. Now when I’m in Something-stan in a few months I’ll be able to visit Dave and Lori for a vacation. Also I can call India pretty cheaply. So during my time left in the US I can call him and annoy him for much less money.

I can’t wait to not have to work at The Fish Market any more. I’ll miss most of the servers I’ve been working with but I won’t miss ANY of the customers. I’m moving back to Pittsburgh at the end of April. Back to live with my parents for a few months till I can leave with the Peace Corp.

That’s pretty much the major happenings of the last month.