I'm Studying You

The hits, they keep a-comin'!

A happy Monday to you all, Studyees. Hello, and what is UP? I'll tell you what is UP! Uhhhh, sit down first though.

Saturday was my lil' bro's 20th birthday...kinda that 'tweener b-day in The 'Lo where it kinda sucks...at 16 you get your driving permit, 18 is "adulthood" (and I use quotes because some out there may feel as though I'm perpetually 17), 19 is the legal drinking age in Canada (which shares a border approximately 20 minutes from us), and 21 is the legal age for consumption of alcoholic beverages in the (over-taxed) state of New York. So what did he have to look forward to for turning 20, besides an iPhone from his girlfriend and her mom, and getting slowly settled into his new digs?

H1N1. Swine flu. Yup.

Was planning on visiting him Saturday to give him his card and a new handle for the screen door (he gets no gifts from me...he's getting all of my old stuff, remember?) and grab more of my stuff. Then I got a text from him around the same time I saw my stepmom's Facebook status..."Just got back from the ER with Mike...he's got swine flu." That's the gist of it, I remember. So all bets were off...I had plans to see my boy Dan and his wife Janet and their little one Saturday night, and that wasn't happening if I'd been exposed to Sickboy. I'd already promised Dan I'd try to get his HD set-up going with some surround sound speakers, in exchange for feeding us with pizza and wings during the Sabres game.

So I rescheduled with Mike for Sunday. After the Bills' game, Jess and I were going to look at a bigger apartment, and then we were gonna bring him and Leighanne some dinner...a birthday/housewarming/get-well-soon kinda offering. He was down with that; he was gonna run to his mom's house to use the internet but was gonna be home by the time we'd be ready, so cool. He'd been feeling a little better.

He'd mentioned having H1N1 as feeling "the worst sick that he's ever been" (and don't judge me grammatically on that statement...it sounds kinda cool, minus the actual content). Later he said it was weird; he'd start to feel better for awhile and all the sudden he'd be throwing up worse than ever before.

During the viewing of what will hopefully become our new edifice, I got a phone call from my stepmom (his mom), which as you all know, I promptly ignored (mainly cuz I was in the middle of something and preferred not to excuse myself). But since I figured either: 1) She wanted to discuss arrangements for travelling to Savannah, GA for my sis' wedding in April, or 2) She knew Mike was expecting us for dinner, I checked my voicemail (after the showing, of course). Well, that and I haven't talked to her in awhile. Nothing against her and her creepy d-bag of a boyfriend, but just haven't had much to say and been super-busy and stuff. Good thing...

"Hey, I hope you're not on your way to Mike's yet, I know yous guys were goin' over there for dinner and I hope you're not there yet...Mike and Leighanne were gettin' ready to leave and he just started throwing up really bad, so they're gonna stay here tonight. Call me if you want." Ugh. Not only is the kid sick as hell is hot and dark, but now Jess and I completely a clusterfuck in trying to figure out what we're gonna do for dinner for ourselves. We went from "buying a rotisserie chicken for 4 and some sides" to "What do you want? I don't know, what do you want. Well, I'm in the mood for this....Well, I could do this OR that..." and it turns into a 20-minute discussion about 2/3 places that are less than ten minutes away. Factor in J's thoughts about the apartment...it's big, cheap and pretty nice for an older place with updated stuff, and my stress-level had just shot up from "placid yet involved" to "bored, aggrivated, and starting not to give a shit". And that's just from typing that last sentence...I'm sure I was, and will get, a lot more aggrivated as she stresses over "Am I settling? Am I being to nit-picky" and "Well, we can do this once we get it" and "We can do that here if we get it" and...talk to me after Friday when we find out whether or not we get it, OK??? THEN we'll worry about it, rather than play "What If?" all week. Got it??

In lieu of raising my blood pressure, I'll just say that we settled on Taco Bell/KFC so she could have fried chicken and I could have tacos. But fair warning: SPOILER ALERT!! KFC is offering this "Value Menu" 99-cent Barbecue Chicken Melt Wrap thingey, and there's a picture of it on their board where it looks like some triangular flatbread kinda thing, cut in half, and the counterhelp said is was a tortilla with shredded barbecue chicken and three cheeses, grilled in their grill-press thingey. Looked good for a buck, so J and I decided to split one. Lemme tell ya, the taste was ok, but this thing looked like half a soft-shelled taco. If it was longer than four inches, I missed something in the pouch it came in. We barely got two bites each out of it. Not even cut in half either! Or grilled in their griller-thingey! So my advice to you lovely people is: Buyer beware at KFC/Taco Bell! And that's my word. (The other option- my preference, by the way, was Wegmans, a fantastic supermarket with a dining area that consists of: a coffee shop, a Chinese buffet, a sushi bar, a fantastic sub shop, a pizza/wing shop, a full salad bar, AND a deli section that offers $6 and $10 meals including one pre-cooked gourmet entree and 2 gourmet sides that you take home and heat up, which did I mention, is fantastic?)

So that's all I've got for ya tonight Stoggers. Gonna finish watchin' Monday Night Football while perusing some other endeavors on the interweb thingey, and try to get some rest for the second of four straight days working from 8am-9:30pm. With a manager at Borders who is severly sick and still working. She's just hacking stuff up with no voice. Wishing she had H1N1, so she can at least sleep and not be woken up by a horrible cough. Be careful what you wish for people...here in The Library, we live by one simple motto: "He who expects little is seldom disappointed." GOODNIGHT NOW!!