![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tspencer227<i>So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange
a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,
year after year,
running over the same old ground. What have we found?
The same old fears,
wish you were here.</i>
-"Wish You Were Here"- Pink Floyd
That song perfectly sums up how I've been feeling for the last couple of months about the decision I made to leave the Reagan and go recruiting.
Thanksgiving weekend this past weekend was pretty good... except for having to work Friday until around 9 at night, Saturday until around 8 at night, and Sunday (yes, they even took my God- given day of rest away) until about 8 again. Went out with Billy and Jason Wednesday night to Open Bar and Aussie Pub; both places were total sausage fests, so we grabbed a table and shared a great conversation about race relations, epithets, etc. After several more rounds of beer, our topic of conversation somehow came upon the Michael Richards Incident, and as the alcohol took affect, Jason's tongue got much looser (as it usually tends to do). Personally, I had a lot of fun watching the reactions of other people around the bar every time he dropped the 'N'- word in reference to the conversation- usually, people would start looking around with a panicked look on their face, then see that it was a black guy that said it. At that point, the look of panic turned to one of relief, and they'd go back to their drinks. We closed down the bar, and much more enlightened (and inebriated), stumbled back up PB Drive to the house.
Thanksgiving we cooked up one hell of a feast- Jason woke up first, and started getting busy in the kitchen before I'd even finished recovering from the aftershocks of the night before. Before noon, the turkey was in the oven, the home-made dressing was on the stove, and sweet potato and green bean casseroles were waiting their turn to use the oven. Meanwhile, I ran out and got the prerequisite beer for the football games and all the supplies I'd need to make my dad's grits casserole- lo and behold! Von's in Pacific Beach might carry hummus in 9 different flavors, but they don't carry grits, or even anything that could be considered even remotely CLOSE to grits. PB, you don't know what you're missing out on. Finally, an hour and 3 panicked phone calls home later, I found the last 2 bags of Polenta at the Von's in Murphy Canyon...yeah, that makes sense- homesick southerners living in the Navy housing out there probably demanded it. Came home, and started my cooking- just in time to clear the way for Billy's part. For some strange reason, he'd developed a wild hair up his ass and decided a couple of days before that he wanted to try his hand and home-made lasagne and meatballs for Thanksgiving. Not my first choice, but hey, to each his own. They came out wonderfully- not bad for an Irish/ German boy from Philly. :)
We dined, we drank, we watched football, and Jason and I went to see the Tenacious D movie, The Pick of Destiny. It was funny, but not nearly as much so as I expected from the genious minds of Jack Black and Kyle Gass. My advice- wait for it to come out on DVD, then either get drunk, or if you're into that sort of thing, pass around a spliff or two- might make it funnier. That, and I'm kinda wondering if I'd be able to do one of those Wizard of Oz/ Dark Side of the Moon type things with the first D Album. I'll try that out when the movie comes out on DVD...
Friday, of course, was work. out of the 4 appointments I'd set for that day after being informed that we would indeed be working, only one showed up- the last guy (who was supposed to show up at 6) called me at 7 to tell me he wouldn't be able to make it until at least 7:30, and my boss told me to wait for him. Then promptly went home. I got home around 10:30, and even though I was invited to go out with friends, realized that I had to be up for work the next morning, and turned in shortly after I got home.
Saturday was a lot more of the same- of the 3 appointments I scheduled the day before Thanksgiving for Saturday morning, none of them showed up. Instead, I spent the majority of the day helping tutor one of our guys scheduled to go down tomorrow, then cold-called kids from one of my high schools until about 7 at night. The responses I got were pretty evenly split between answering machine messages and parents cursing me out for calling over a holiday weekend and trying to sign their kid up to "go off and die", and Amy's mom put it so delicately this past summer. Dashed back home since I had decided that I was NOT going to let Navy Recruiting completely ruin my weekend, getting a call from my friend Sarah on the way inviting me out to Typhoon Saloon with her and a couple of her single friends. Showered, choked down a piece of leftover lasagne, and met up with them inside the club- I tried dragging Billy along, but he decided he wasn't feeling up to going out, and nobody else was reachable on such short notice.
That night was a lot of fun- I haven't been to Typhoon in literally months- and I was almost immediately reminded of why when I got there. I was talking to Sarah and her VERY cute, VERY single friends Shellie and Staci at one of the tables near the entrance when Staci started laughing hysterically and pointed over my shoulder. Of course, we all turned to look, and couldn't help but burst into laughter as well. There was a girl, facing away from us, wearing a short, tight midriff shirt, hip-rider jeans, and 3-inch strappy stiletto heels. As we all watched, she took a long, calculating look around the bar, then reached into both sides of her jeans and pulled out the straps of her bright pink thong so they were sitting on her hips a good inch above the waistline of her jeans, Lewinsky- style. For future reference, if I'm EVER so desperate as to go home with a girl like that, somebody PLEASE hit me....
Thanksgiving we cooked up one hell of a feast- Jason woke up first, and started getting busy in the kitchen before I'd even finished recovering from the aftershocks of the night before. Before noon, the turkey was in the oven, the home-made dressing was on the stove, and sweet potato and green bean casseroles were waiting their turn to use the oven. Meanwhile, I ran out and got the prerequisite beer for the football games and all the supplies I'd need to make my dad's grits casserole- lo and behold! Von's in Pacific Beach might carry hummus in 9 different flavors, but they don't carry grits, or even anything that could be considered even remotely CLOSE to grits. PB, you don't know what you're missing out on. Finally, an hour and 3 panicked phone calls home later, I found the last 2 bags of Polenta at the Von's in Murphy Canyon...yeah, that makes sense- homesick southerners living in the Navy housing out there probably demanded it. Came home, and started my cooking- just in time to clear the way for Billy's part. For some strange reason, he'd developed a wild hair up his ass and decided a couple of days before that he wanted to try his hand and home-made lasagne and meatballs for Thanksgiving. Not my first choice, but hey, to each his own. They came out wonderfully- not bad for an Irish/ German boy from Philly. :)
We dined, we drank, we watched football, and Jason and I went to see the Tenacious D movie, The Pick of Destiny. It was funny, but not nearly as much so as I expected from the genious minds of Jack Black and Kyle Gass. My advice- wait for it to come out on DVD, then either get drunk, or if you're into that sort of thing, pass around a spliff or two- might make it funnier. That, and I'm kinda wondering if I'd be able to do one of those Wizard of Oz/ Dark Side of the Moon type things with the first D Album. I'll try that out when the movie comes out on DVD...
Friday, of course, was work. out of the 4 appointments I'd set for that day after being informed that we would indeed be working, only one showed up- the last guy (who was supposed to show up at 6) called me at 7 to tell me he wouldn't be able to make it until at least 7:30, and my boss told me to wait for him. Then promptly went home. I got home around 10:30, and even though I was invited to go out with friends, realized that I had to be up for work the next morning, and turned in shortly after I got home.
Saturday was a lot more of the same- of the 3 appointments I scheduled the day before Thanksgiving for Saturday morning, none of them showed up. Instead, I spent the majority of the day helping tutor one of our guys scheduled to go down tomorrow, then cold-called kids from one of my high schools until about 7 at night. The responses I got were pretty evenly split between answering machine messages and parents cursing me out for calling over a holiday weekend and trying to sign their kid up to "go off and die", and Amy's mom put it so delicately this past summer. Dashed back home since I had decided that I was NOT going to let Navy Recruiting completely ruin my weekend, getting a call from my friend Sarah on the way inviting me out to Typhoon Saloon with her and a couple of her single friends. Showered, choked down a piece of leftover lasagne, and met up with them inside the club- I tried dragging Billy along, but he decided he wasn't feeling up to going out, and nobody else was reachable on such short notice.
That night was a lot of fun- I haven't been to Typhoon in literally months- and I was almost immediately reminded of why when I got there. I was talking to Sarah and her VERY cute, VERY single friends Shellie and Staci at one of the tables near the entrance when Staci started laughing hysterically and pointed over my shoulder. Of course, we all turned to look, and couldn't help but burst into laughter as well. There was a girl, facing away from us, wearing a short, tight midriff shirt, hip-rider jeans, and 3-inch strappy stiletto heels. As we all watched, she took a long, calculating look around the bar, then reached into both sides of her jeans and pulled out the straps of her bright pink thong so they were sitting on her hips a good inch above the waistline of her jeans, Lewinsky- style. For future reference, if I'm EVER so desperate as to go home with a girl like that, somebody PLEASE hit me....
The rest of the night at the club was a lot of fun- Shellie and I hit it off pretty well and spent most of the rest of the night flirting and dancing (she's the one dancing with the pole in the new pics I put up on Webshots), and she made me promise I'd meet up with her the next day at PB Bar and Grill to watch the Chargers game. We left around 1, before everybody else started leaving, grabbed the obligatory burritos from Ramon's across the street, and went our separate ways home that night. I got home a little before 2, stopping at Noah's place to say hi and grab a beer (and to let him know that I was trying to convince the girls to come out to the hot tub with us- unsuccessfully), and lo and behold, when I went to check my email before I fell asleep, guess who'd already sent me a friend request on Myspace? Personally, I think one can call that a pretty good sign, wouldn't you agree?
Sunday was supposed to be a very short day of work- pick up paperwork for kid leaving for boot camp and government car, pick up kid, drop off at hotel, come home. Simple trip, right? I called Shellie on my way out of town to find out what time everybody was going where, and told her I'd be there around 4 in the afternoon. I arrived at the station in Santa Ana around 1:30, ready to get this thing done- but couldn't, because my boss had the keys to the car, and had neglected to sign 3 or 4 items of paperwork the previous morning when I'd put them on his desk. Called him, waited about an hour for him to get over to the office and finish everything up, and headed down to Irvine to get Daniel. Then waited while he and his mom searched for his diploma.
And waited.
And waited.
We finally got on the road for San Diego around 3:30, knowing that my plans were now being shot to hell for the afternoon, and as soon as we got close to the hotel, we hit the beginnings of the post- Chargers game traffic in Mission Valley. Seriously, it seemed like combined populations of Oakland and San Diego were jamming up the 8, the 15, and even Friars Road. Finally got him dropped off around 6:30, then fought my way back across town to PB. Showered, changed, called Shellie I was heading her way, and made my way to Garnet Avenue. My friend Colin met up with me, and we found that there were only a handful of people at PB Bar and Grill, so we headed next door to Moondoggies- after all, that's the place to be on Sunday nights for $2 you- call- its, and everybody in PB knows it. Chilled for a couple of hours with no sign of Shellie and her friends, and the only possible lead being a strawberry blond of similar height and build making out with some dude the entire time we were there, but I didn't particularly want to get close enough to check...gotta respect a guy's privacy, after all. We split around 10:30, and I came home, finished my laundry, and called it a night. Besides, I figured, she'd probably gone home after the game ended and was probably in bed already.
When I got to work the next morning there was a new comment from her in my Myspace inbox (which is still up), apologizing about the night before. I sent her a note asking what happened, and she repeated pretty much the same thing she'd posted as a comment. Dropped her another text asking if she'd like to go out to dinner Friday night, didn't get a reply, and didn't think anything more of it, since it was during the normal workday for both of us now.
The next morning, as I was going through paperwork I got a text from her asking me to stop calling her so much. Strange- last time I'd called her that I remembered (and that my phone log showed) was Sunday evening after I left the hotel to tell her I was on the the way out to the beach. Hopped on Myspace and dropped her a note telling her that she had the wrong guy, and she replied shortly after that saying that her phone had been blowing up with 15 missed call notifications from my number. Hmmm..... is it that easy to hack into a cell phone or forward calls to make it look like they came from somebody else's number? Replied back with a joke about it not being my style, then casually asked her if she'd gotten my message about Friday night. No response.
Haven't bothered calling or anything today, nor will I unless she talks to me first. So what happened? My window of opportunity closed sometime between arriving at the Station Sunday afternoon, and fighting my way through Mission Valley traffic that evening. I've tried not to think about the whole thing too much, but given the context of our last few communications, I'm thinking more and more that it was her that I saw at Moondoggies with that one dude. And, if I hadn't had to work Sunday, who knows? That could've been me... Oh well, chalk it up to another possible casualty in my personal life thanks to Navy Recruiting.
That's not the first time something like that has happened in the last few months- more like the 4th or 5th. Being single in San Diego is supposed to be a good thing, a time for a guy to really look inward, develop friendships that might have been strained because of a bitchy, elitist ex-girlfriend, and get out and mingle. The sad reality is, most days during the week by the time I get home from work I'm too emotionally and physically drained to do anything more than grab something to eat, check my email quick, and collapse into bed, facing the stark reality that I'm going to get up in the morning and do it all over again. The weekends aren't much better, either- Friday is basically shot by the time I get home, especially since I work more Saturdays than I don't (this coming weekend will bring the streak to 13 straight), and by the time I do get home in the evenings on Saturday, it comes down to a choice of going out, or staying in and getting stuff done around the house (laundry, cleaning, bills, etc). Everything I don't finish Saturday night I have to catch up with on Sunday, so I can't afford to waste precious hours that I might not get back when I've got things that need to get done.
As for rebuilding friendships, I never have time to hang out with anybody as a result of the above- mentioned, and I've turned down so many invitations to go out and do things, or missed so many calls about things because I was working, that most of my old crew doesn't even bother calling any more, or return my calls when I do have time to hang out or go out with people.
At this point in time, the idea of dating is really quite pointless too- I'm slowly turning into a hermit, and that thought really depresses me. Yes, I have cute neighbor girls that live upstairs, but by the time I get home, they're either already asleep or out doing stuff. And by the way Megan, that one 'incident' that I told you about... yeah, long story there, but needless to say neither one of us talks about it. Bad joo-joo. I don't mind working hard, but dammit, I'm usually a very social guy- I don't like being too tired, too drained, too pissed off, and too stressed out (not to mention overworked) to go out and have a good time.
So my final question is this: where do the single, intelligent young working professionals who work 70-90 hours a week hang out to meet up with similar, like-minded young professionals?
When I got to work the next morning there was a new comment from her in my Myspace inbox (which is still up), apologizing about the night before. I sent her a note asking what happened, and she repeated pretty much the same thing she'd posted as a comment. Dropped her another text asking if she'd like to go out to dinner Friday night, didn't get a reply, and didn't think anything more of it, since it was during the normal workday for both of us now.
The next morning, as I was going through paperwork I got a text from her asking me to stop calling her so much. Strange- last time I'd called her that I remembered (and that my phone log showed) was Sunday evening after I left the hotel to tell her I was on the the way out to the beach. Hopped on Myspace and dropped her a note telling her that she had the wrong guy, and she replied shortly after that saying that her phone had been blowing up with 15 missed call notifications from my number. Hmmm..... is it that easy to hack into a cell phone or forward calls to make it look like they came from somebody else's number? Replied back with a joke about it not being my style, then casually asked her if she'd gotten my message about Friday night. No response.
Haven't bothered calling or anything today, nor will I unless she talks to me first. So what happened? My window of opportunity closed sometime between arriving at the Station Sunday afternoon, and fighting my way through Mission Valley traffic that evening. I've tried not to think about the whole thing too much, but given the context of our last few communications, I'm thinking more and more that it was her that I saw at Moondoggies with that one dude. And, if I hadn't had to work Sunday, who knows? That could've been me... Oh well, chalk it up to another possible casualty in my personal life thanks to Navy Recruiting.
That's not the first time something like that has happened in the last few months- more like the 4th or 5th. Being single in San Diego is supposed to be a good thing, a time for a guy to really look inward, develop friendships that might have been strained because of a bitchy, elitist ex-girlfriend, and get out and mingle. The sad reality is, most days during the week by the time I get home from work I'm too emotionally and physically drained to do anything more than grab something to eat, check my email quick, and collapse into bed, facing the stark reality that I'm going to get up in the morning and do it all over again. The weekends aren't much better, either- Friday is basically shot by the time I get home, especially since I work more Saturdays than I don't (this coming weekend will bring the streak to 13 straight), and by the time I do get home in the evenings on Saturday, it comes down to a choice of going out, or staying in and getting stuff done around the house (laundry, cleaning, bills, etc). Everything I don't finish Saturday night I have to catch up with on Sunday, so I can't afford to waste precious hours that I might not get back when I've got things that need to get done.
As for rebuilding friendships, I never have time to hang out with anybody as a result of the above- mentioned, and I've turned down so many invitations to go out and do things, or missed so many calls about things because I was working, that most of my old crew doesn't even bother calling any more, or return my calls when I do have time to hang out or go out with people.
At this point in time, the idea of dating is really quite pointless too- I'm slowly turning into a hermit, and that thought really depresses me. Yes, I have cute neighbor girls that live upstairs, but by the time I get home, they're either already asleep or out doing stuff. And by the way Megan, that one 'incident' that I told you about... yeah, long story there, but needless to say neither one of us talks about it. Bad joo-joo. I don't mind working hard, but dammit, I'm usually a very social guy- I don't like being too tired, too drained, too pissed off, and too stressed out (not to mention overworked) to go out and have a good time.
So my final question is this: where do the single, intelligent young working professionals who work 70-90 hours a week hang out to meet up with similar, like-minded young professionals?
