A day for the ages!

Attention everyone!

I forgot to mention the other day that I was very appreciative of the birthday wishes the coolest of you bestowed upon me via Facebook.

Birthdays are a bit of a mixed blessing these days. One the one hand, it's always great to receive the well-wishes of such fine and upstanding people.

On the other hand… is the finger of the doctor, which goes in my butt during my annual exam around this time of year (and is it just me, or does your doctor seem to search with more and more diligence each year. I mean, you'd think I was trying to smuggle a smartphone into Ft. Leavenworth fer crissakes).

It's just the consequence of me failing to live the rock-n-roll lifestyle and dying in a helicopter crash while OD'd on smack and Jack.

I figure I'm like most people: After (and before) a certain point birthday's seem to lose their luster.

When you get past the point of "wishing" for "gifts" (I just buy myself whatever I need these days) and being surprised by "parties" (like most people, I've become anti-social in by dotage), it really comes down to spending a few hours hanging out with the family and hitting up Joe's for some ribs and beer. That really is as good as it gets... and it pretty damn good if you ask me.

Butt on the hole (sic), we take the good with the extremely uncomfortable. I've always said getting older really sucks, but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative (well, full disclosure here, I haven't always said that... its only been for the last 20 years or so I guess.)

So thanks again, everyone! Happy birthday to all you sinners out there. 

Awkward Pie: Lunchtime casualty

I really felt bad about it. I hadn't meant to shoot the guy in the back. He didn't even seem to notice the thick, red, coagulating liquid that was oozing slowly down the back of his shirt.

It was identical to the liquid strewn across my own face and neck, like a slash wound from a sweet-tangy scimitar.

As I apologized to the gentleman, a spry fellow of some 80 years or so who was probably a regular customer at this particular IHOP, I myself was trying to recover from the tragedy, reliving the previous few moments which in hindsight seemed to happen in slow motion.

It all started when the IHOP waitress delivered our lunch, part of which was our 6-year-old's cheeseburger with fries. Me being the Awesome dad I am, I grabbed the ketchup bottle to dispense a blob for the kid's dipping pleasure.

And like every experienced ketchup pourer, I take the usual precaution of shaking the ketchup bottle to mix in that watery ketchup juice that always perks it's way up to the top of the bottle (a substance I call "ketchup tea" and it's just as disgusting as it sounds).

This is were it all goes badly awry. Someone, some diabolical joker or lazy loser, had left the cap of the ketchup sitting on top of the bottle, but unscrewed.

The upshot: When I gave the bottle a couple of vigorous shakes, the lid flew off, followed by ketchup spewing across the table, across my face and neck, and across the back of the gentleman sitting behind me.

As I apologized profusely to the guy, I realized he wasn't upset at all. In fact, as patrons at other tables observed in shocked entertainment, the fellow actually wanted to have a conversation about the event.

He seemed like the kind of guy who would get a lot of mileage out of this story with his friends at the coffee shop, the barber shop and everywhere else he hangs out with his geriatric homies.

But as much as I was sorry for the ketchup massacre, I still had lunch to eat and I was getting grossed out standing there with ketchup all over my face, neck and shirt.

I cut the old guy off in mid-reminisce and made my way though the lunchtime crowd to the restroom where I took off my shirt (luckily I was wearing a t-shirt underneath) and used a healthy helping of paper towels and soapy water to wash the rapidly ripening ketchup from my head and neck.

We finished our lunch in relative calm. As we left, I shot the guy a final apologetic look.

He winked and said "At least it wasn't mustard."

tagged: family, food, dining, ketchup, awkward, IHOP

Awkward Pie: The long walk

When you work in an office like mine, there's plenty of opportunity for awkward situations when you venture outside the three and a half walls of you cube.

Here's one that comes up often. In the building where I work, there's a corridor running long and straight (yeah, yeah, The D. I know. "That's what she said.") between blocks of cubes (or, as I call them, cell blocks).

Anyway, several times a week I'm faced with the situation of seeing a coworker coming down the corridor toward me. Maybe I'm on my way to the break room, or heading to a meeting room or whatever. But I'm walking one way and the coworker, who is probably someone I only marginally like it I even know their name, is walking toward me.

No remember, this is a very long corridor. Maybe fifty yards or even longer. So depending on where we both entered the corridor, we could be walking toward each other for a very long time.

That's where the awkwardness enters the equation. At some point, I like to at lease acknowledge the other person (whom I probably don't like, but I'm a nice guy, see), usually with a fake-friendly wave or a head nod. If they get close enough, I'll offer a polite "Good day, sir."

The problem is, if I wave too soon I've got another 30-seconds or more of walking toward the person. It's an awkward window of time because it's too short to strike up a superficial conversation, but it's too long to just stare at each other as you approach.

Anyway, I've come up with a couple of strategies for dealing with this phenomenon.

If it's in the morning and I'm just arriving, I usually have my computer bag in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. With my hands thus occupied, I don't have to wave. Then to fill the awkward window, I usually take a drink of coffee, pretend it's too hot and blow the cup to cool it off. Do that a couple of times until my coworker either turns out of the aisle or we pass each other.

But my preferred method is to use my cell phone as a prop. I have one of those so-called smart phones, so when I see someone open the corridor I can pick it up and pretend to be busy checking my email and text messages.

Depending on how long I'll be walking toward the oncoming person, I can also fake-check my voice mail messages. Usually I throw in a frustrated head shake, like someone just left a message with a really unreasonable request that is going waste a lot of my time today, you know, just to be convincing.

Then when I get up even with the oncoming coworker I can give one of those "What're you gonna do?" shoulder shrugs.

What do you guys do in this situation?

tagged: office, cubicle, awkward, corridor

Awkward Pie: Hookers and blow

A few weeks ago someone sent me a meme, one of the questions of which was "how often do you embarrass yourself" (my answer? Continually).

Anyway, it got me thinking about all the most embarrassing and awkward moments, which I thought might make a nice regular feature here. Please feel free to share your deepest embarrassments in the comments so that I'll know I'm not alone in being a complete jackass all of the time.

Anyway, here's one of the episodes that came to mind:

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A few months ago, I was at a casual business dinner with some of my colleagues at some fancy restaurant on the Plaza. There were about 15 of us at a long table. I was sitting near one end with two East-coasters and a West-coaster.

The evening started off on a light note. We all know each other and have worked with each other for quite some time, though we don't often meet in person so there were some conversational niceties to be taken care of.

We order drinks and appetizers and commence the conversation. After a few glasses of wine and food, we got to joking around, and conversational topics turned from industry news and the weather to more personal issues.

At some point, the discussion turned to our various personal foibles.

Specifically, the young woman (the other three of us were d00ds), confessed that she has an addiction to lip balm -- Carmex actually, the kind in a tube, not a jar. It's bad enough, she said, that if she doesn't have some with her when she leaves her house in the morning she will compulsively go miles out of her way to buy a new tube.

Then one of the other guys admitted his pathological dependence on hand lotion. Seems he feels compelled to smear the stuff on his hands twice a day to avoid the not-so-moist feeling.

I myself admitted that I dare not come within the event horizon of a package of strawberry Twizzlers, as doing so would mean the certain destruction of the entire package of said Twizzlers by me in my digestive system.

Anyway, we're all having a great time cracking wise on each others' personal flaws, becoming more raucous as the night wears on and we drink more glasses of wine. Yes, it was all good until I decided to kick it up a notch and quipped...

"Actually, I really don't have any vices... Well, I mean other than my addictions to porn and heroin."

Except when I said the words "my addictions to porn and heroin," for some reason, a split second before the words left my mouth, the entire table, the entire room, went dead silent.

Dead. Silent.

It was as if someone had said "My broker is E.F. Hutton. And E.F. Hutton says..."

Everyone in our party immediately looks toward my end of the table. I can see by the looks on their faces that they're trying to piece together the parts of the conversation that they missed. Only, it seemed like they were taking a really long time to do it.

So, ignoring the sage advice that when you've dug yourself into a hole, you should stop digging, I tried to recover with another unwise crack...

"But I'm feeling much better now."

There was a smattering of nervous, forced laughter, followed by low murmuring as the conversational engine began to rev back up. After a few moments, the awkwardness had passed as people resumed their dinner conversations.

Eventually the evening came to an end and we all got up to leave for home. As I walked out the door, a colleague who had been sitting at the other end of the table was leaving in front of me.

"It was good seeing you again," he said. "You guys doing anything exciting this weekend?"

"No," I replied. "Just the usual."

"Ah yes," he said. "Hookers and blow."

tagged: Awkward, business, porn, heroin, addiction, blow, hookers, embarrassing