TOO MUCH EXCITEMENT FOR JUST ONE DAY

You know ... yesterday had more stories packed into it than I've ever had before.

I could write about yesterday for an entire week. However ... by Friday you would be bored to tears reading about some of it, so I'll just skim over the highlights and let you absorb as much as possible before your frontal lobe begins to throb from too much information.

First off, my company has finally hired another writer to help me write all of these books that I had to write.

The guy's name is Kody. A young chap, he's eager and is hungry for this job. He's excited to be writing since his former (and still part-time) job is working as a bouncer at our local young adult dance club.

Which gives us something in common because I used to be a bouncer at our local young adult dance club which went out of business ten years ago. I just wasn't fortunate like Cody to slide into a cushy job like writing coffee table books after my days of bouncing. Nope. I became a vacuum cleaner salesman selling Kirbys.

Which goes to show you ... when you don't spend every waking moment of your college life scraping resin out of a bong in order to smoke it again and achieve some sort of faux chemical high, there's a possibility you might actually do something with your life.

So anyway, I spent most of yesterday morning with he and our evil boss Wendigo, trying to scare the crap out of him by carefully explaining the whirlwind life of a coffee table book writer.

I mean...it may sound like the most boring job in the universe. But baby...IT AIN'T!

You have to deal with people who won't return your calls! IT'S HECTIC!

You have to schedule interviews once they do return your calls! IT'S UNPREDICTABLE!!

You have to sit down and write 1,600 word profiles about architecture companies or come up with photo captions for pictures of bluejays! IT'S FAST-PACED!!!

So ... you know ... we're talking major commitment here.

Anyway, after drilling him with information, he decided to stay on because it sure beats baby-sitting drunken horny assholes for a living.

The only thing I don't like about the guy is his full head of hair. Damn, that boy's got some hair. I think at one point, his hair was mocking my hair and smirking at my lack of follicular activity. I wanted to jump out of my chair and smack his hair, but I quickly realized that the situation would sound like a bad Dr. Seuss book, so I didn't.

"Uncle Bob leapt from his chair. And attacked Kody's hair. And stood in a square and said 'Please let's be fair'."

So that's your Kody update.

I got boxes.

Oh Lord...do I have boxes.

Between Susie and I, we brought home about 50 boxes to box our clutter up last night.

The biggest problem we seem to be having is that we're trying to box up clutter, but at the same time, we're boxing up stuff for a yard sale.

At first, we decided that we would have a yard sale in May here at our current location.

Now I'm leaning towards having a yard sale in our new home during the community-wide Yard Sale in September.

The only problem with that is, we don't know the exact date of the community yard sale, nor do we know the exact date that we're moving in. We know both are in September, but which comes first?

Thus, our dilemma.

There's your box story. See? You could have read about my box situation all week and never been bored, huh?

Heh.

Went to the dentist yesterday and made several observations, none of which I have the time to go into today.

But I'm really starting to dislike my dental assistant.

She does the entire teeth cleaning process on her own. So she's been cleaning my teeth for about 15 years now.

She's TOO sweet. That's not a compliment ... that's a distraction. She makes conversation and everything is "great".

A normal conversation with her goes like this...

ANNE: "How's the baby?"

ME: "He's teething."

ANNE: "That's wonderful!"

ME: "No, it sucks. He's in a lot of pain."

ANNE: "That's what I meant. It sucks. Is he sleeping at night?"

ME: "Most nights yeah. But lately he's been up crying for several hours."

ANNE: "That's great!"

ME: "No, it sucks. We don't get any sleep."

ANNE: "That's what I meant. But babies are wonderful, aren't they?"

ME: "Yeah, he's great most of the time. He's getting to an age where he's curious and keeps running toward the street whenever he's outside."

ANNE: "That's terrific!"

ME: "No, that sucks. He could get killed in the street."

ANNE: "That's what I meant. But it's nice to know that he likes the streets."

ME: "Anne, are you retarded or something?"

ANNE: "I just had a nitrous oxide cocktail. You want one?"

I seriously think she hits the gas between customers. She's too damned chipper.

The other thing that really irritates me is how quickly she says "Uh huh."

She asks you a question. A question that requires a lengthy answer. Then she interupts you constantly to say "Uh huh", signifying that she understands what you're saying.

For instance, she'll ask me to explain the physical meaning of geometrical propositions in Einstein's Theory of relativity. So I'll try to explain it to her thusly:

ME: "Geometry sets out from certain conceptions such as "plane," "point," and "straight line,"...

ANNE: "Uh huh"

ME:"... with which we are able to associate more or less definite ideas..."

ANNE: "Uh huh"

ME: "... and from certain simple propositions or axioms which, in virtue of these ideas, we are inclined to accept as true..."

ANNE: "Yeah. Yeah. Okay."

ME: "Then, on the basis of a logical process..."

ANNE: "Yeah. Uh huh. Sure."

ME: "...the justification of which we feel ourselves compelled to admit..."

ANNE:"I see. Yeah. Okay."

ME: "... all remaining propositions are shown to follow from those axioms, i.e. they are proven."

ANNE: "Yeah. Alright. Uh huh."

ME: "So a proposition is then correct when it has been derived in the recognized manner from the axioms.

ANNE: "I see. Uh huh. Alright."

ME: "The question of the truth of the individual geometrical propositions is thus reduced to one of the truth of the axioms.

ANNE: "Yeah. Uh huh. I see."

ME: "Fuck it. You're not even listening to me, are you?"

ANNE: "Yeah. Okay. I get it now."

Then...the most THRILLING part of yesterday...

I was a first hand witness to a police chase!!

I left the dentist and was driving back to work on our busy bypass. In the distance up ahead, I could see a police car's lights going off. As it got closer, I could see a tan car out running the cops. Both cars were weaving in and out of traffic and the bad guys drove into the median of the bypass, bottoming out briefly, with tire rims flying off the car.

Then, the cars headed down the wrong way of the bypass.

In other words, they were travelling north in the southbound lanes.

There's two turning lanes that were empty and that's what they were speeding down.

Because the thug had bottomed out in the median, the car was smoking pretty bad and he had lost something from underneath the car in the median.

So I saw his car smoking and coming my way.

I swear to you...my adrenaline was pumping. I HATE thugs. Hate 'em. I hate anybody who breaks the law by stealing or robbing or shooting other people.

I seriously thought about taking my vehicle and blocking the turning lanes so that the thugs would have no place to go. So they couldn't get past me.

At the moment, I wasn't thinking straight. It just seemed logical to block their path so that they either crashed into my van, or had to get out of their car and give themselves up.

In just a few seconds of thought, I decided that might be a bad idea.

As the bad guys slowly came to a halt, they came to a halt RIGHT THE HELL NEXT TO MY VAN.

Meanwhile, the police car is trying to weave in and out of traffic to catch up to them.

Once again, with adrenaline pumping, it seemed natural to me to hop out of the van and tackle the gang members as they jumped out of their car and headed for a nearby restaurant.

I rolled down my window and stared straight at them with my freshly cleaned teeth.

I reached for the door handle.

Then I thought ... "There's two of them and chances are high that it won't be a fair fight between us."

So I just stared at them.

They had trouble getting out of their car for some reason. They both slid out the driver's door and ran around the back of my van, into a median and up towards a shopping center.

One of the cops jumped out of his car and went chasing after them as the cop car turned around and tried to get to the entrance of the shopping center.

The last I saw, the running cop was almost caught up to them. There wasn't a heckuva lot of places for the punks to hide as they were running into a parking lot with one wearing a bright blue football jersey with the number 11 on it.

All of a sudden, there were cop cars EVERYWHERE. Traffic sat still as we watched the cop cars surround the shopping center.

Then the light changed and we all kept going on with our lives.

I felt bad that I didn't do anything to be a hero and stop these guys.

But then I remembered that you're not SUPPOSED to do such things. That's the policeman's job. We're supposed to stay in our cars and let them do their jobs.

Still...they were right there. Two morons who were running from the cops pulled up right next to me and left their car right next to mine.

I bet they had some good drugs in there.

Maybe a bagful of money, stolen from somewhere.

But they just left their car going the wrong way on a one way bypass with the door wide open.

I bet their car got towed.

I just bet it did.

And it never dawned on me that they might have guns. When these thoughts of "saving the day" were running through my head, a gun was the furthest thing from my mind.

I just wanted to stop them and know that I did my part to get two more fucking assholes off the streets of this town.

The flipside to that though is that I'm alive today to tell the tale.

Much to your chagrin.