today The Company is having an "offsite for team building"...we are going to a country club that has miniature golfing, basketball, volleyball, and batting cages. it starts at 2 pm, but we don't get fed until 4 pm. there will be beer, and it all seems well and good until you realize that it is forty degrees outside, and columbus day, and there are pets to go home and cuddle with, like dogs who wear goggles (doggles) and cats who saunter up to the arm bar and ask for a drink, but get turned away because they don't have ID.
later this week, i will get reimbursed a long-awaited $140 reimbursement from The Company. i have another $85 in my paypal account from selling various items on ebay. and i'm certain that if i take my powerpuff girls tin to a coinstar machine, there's at least another $50 in there. and that, killoggians, means that xmx may get an ipod, only two years after they officially became trendy.
last night, i wanted to watch 'desperate housewives' but the battle of the beltway was on ESPN and simulcast on ABC. apparently housewives was on at midnight instead. but, i mean, BULLSHIT. so i read the uber-gimmicky know-it-all and went to bed. i've been sick.
sneezing is pretty fun, but not after the 60th time in one day.
i was talking to josh when the servers were down and he said i should update the killoggs as to my whereabouts, so here goes.
i'm living in a different virginny suburb now, more suburb than ever before, and working for a big, ugly, evil conglomerate of a media company. it's hellish and i've handed over my life in the shape of 14-hour days and always on-call evenings during which i just mostly get drunk to deal with the depression. it sucks, yes, but i also have money to afford sexy, sexy shoes, and you know, if you look at enough $600 pairs of prada, $50 for a yellow pair of sam and libbys is totally reasonable. or so it seems. it's an ugly paradox to compare your free time to gorgeous shoes, but i do it with gusto.
so. yeah. i wear very fun shoes now, if there's any real notable difference. i traded sneakers for stilettos and i can't really complain, as i have flabby calves.
luckily! i still drink! constantly!
the only other big thing is the poker, which is the main thing josh thought i should write about. i play poker all the time now, which makes sense as texas hold'em is pretty much everywhere. i grew up playing cards, my dad had taught me how to play poker before i could read, but he tends to be kind of a jackass as he deals from the bottom of the deck, counts cards, and in general cheats like a bastard. i'm not saying i don't do those things, i just try to pick my battles, and i try to be discreet about it, even when playing against family members.
right now, i'm saving up enough money ($10K) to enter the 2005 world series of poker. i have built up a somewhat decent reputation in this area, last week i was invited to play in a $3K tournament, but i chickened out. i had the starting cash, but if i lose i'd have to push back my world series entry to 2006, and i don't really want to do that. would anyone like to sponsor me? even finishing fourth in the wsop would be something like $60k. if i win anything, i'm going to open a shoe store slash bar, where we sell shoes until 2 a.m. to all the drunk girls. CLEARLY, this is gold. perhaps i can also sell the waterfall skirt. work on this, people.
i think that's it. i am drunkenly losing money in an online poker room at the moment, so now i will go pay attention to that.
Josh's Evil Friend [9:38 PM]: the only way to keep sane is to move around the company
xmx [9:38 PM]: anyday but wed or thu is good for me
xmx [9:38 PM]: let's plan on it
xmx [9:39 PM]: bonus: we can also make fun of josh during lunch!
Josh's Evil Friend [9:39 PM]: perfect!
Josh's Evil Friend [9:39 PM]: we can send him hate mail
xmx [9:39 PM]: yay
Josh's Evil Friend [9:39 PM]: and stab him!
last night i had a dream that i auditioned for american idol, and i had my hair done in waves and i looked like kate hudson but i was still me, and instead of singing i had prepared a speech talking about wil wheaton and all the hotels in las vegas were on fire.
i can directly correlate the origins of this dream to:
--american idol being on tv again and everyone seeming to care
--ads for that retarded how to lose a guy in 10 minutes movie being everywhere i look
--my lifelong obsession with wil wheaton
--trying to plan a return trip to vegas, but everything being too expensive
fiction becomes fact: a few nights ago, i had a dream that it was the night before brandon and i were going to get married, and i was searching out brianbibbly for some last-minute, last-ditch lovin'. brandon was doing the same so it was a mad dash to get there first. i won. bibbly had a normal body and a black and white killoggs head. brandon was pissed because i tagged that shit.
the personal e-mail address of a certain actor named robert redford has, by a bit of oversight, just been delivered to my e-mail.
(he uses AOL, which amuses me. a lot.)
now, the question is, what shall i do with it?
i'm leaning toward e-mailing him politely and asking him for 1. an autographed picture for my mother and 2. viggo mortensen's home phone number. i think that's pretty reasonable. and i'm sure he'll agree.
holiday travel still sucks: a certain killogger named brandon has been stuck at the new orleans airport for approximately 24 hours now.
he was supposed to leave yesterday at 5 p.m., but the flight was delayed until 9 p.m. then pushed back to 10 p.m. because of a mega-blizzard in chicago. then around 11 p.m., the flight was cancelled completely because one of the flight attendants walked off the job while they were gassing and deicing the plane. she was over her contractual workday limit, and just left. no wonder united is going out of business...no backups? i hope she gets fired.
a shuttle took him to a hotel. he went to sleep. the shuttle was supposed to pick him up in time to make the 10 a.m. flight he was re-booked on today. but the shuttle was late and he missed the 10 a.m. flight. there are 30 people in line to fly standby back to chicago; he's waiting and also booked on a ... you guessed it ... 5 p.m. flight.
hopefully it will stop snowing and he will *actually* get to leave today.
last night i went to a party with my roommates and i dropped my cell phone in the toilet [post flush].
because, see, i was washing my hands and listening to this message brandon had left me about it snowing in chicago, and i was wearing this leather jacket someone had lent me, and it slipped and bounced. off the counter, off the toilet seat and, plonk, into the toilet. while i stood there and watched.
i retrieved it, washed hands, washed phone [which in retrospect probably wasn't very smart]. the phone is dead. i took the battery out, when i put it back in the phone short circuits and blinks maniacally.
i guess i will go get a new phone later today. i am an idiot.
i suppose you could say the broken phone was karmic retribution [though pre-emptive] for what we did later in the night: my roommates and i also decided to become a group charlie's-angels-esque house thieves.
see, the last time we went to a party at this particular house [three years ago?] we stole this howling wolf cookie jar, as a prank [and then called the people and made the wolf howl all the time]. we gave it back eventually, sort of [ok fine they came to our house and stole it back].
last night we took innocuous things from the house, things no one actually needs, in some -drunken- idea that we were illustrating the needlessness of things.
you'd be amazed at how easy it is to steal things from parties where everyone is wasted and desperately trying to get laid. we tricked this guy rodney into helping us, by creating a distraction that involved lifting up our shirts.
on the way out, we stole the american flag off their front porch. people were on the porch. nobody noticed. i pulled the flag out of its post, tossed it ahead to b, who took off and threw it in the waiting getaway car.
but by far the best catch of the night was the ladybug teapot, which was our first take. it was in the kitchen. on the stove. the back burner. i admired it, moved it to the front burner. b and j stood in front of me. i started flicking the stove light off and on, since it was the only light on in the house, strobe effect. flick, off, on. "next time i turn the light off, you grab it," i whispered to b.
she nodded. i went to turn off the light and then i noticed that the teapot was already gone.
b is a fucking amazing thief. i mean, a second of blackness, it was gone.
i had to talk her out of stealing the toaster oven.
so, anyway, for the record, in retrospect this was pretty evil, i know. but remember, we're not planning on keeping any of this stuff; as soon as our friends call [they will know it was us, based on our previous transgressions at their house] we will return their things. maybe. the whole point was that it made a rather boring party immensely fun.
vegas was, um, interesting. i am supposed to tell the stories; but i am still feeling jetlagged and almost...hungover...though that isn't possible. too out of it to actually work. so here goes.
vegas got off to a bad start.
i was there for only three hours before i started to hate it. got in around eight. got the rental car. dropped my friend gerry off at the riveria. got completely lost. checked into my hotel. went back to the airport to find brandon. couldn't find brandon. his flight had arrived. he wasn't on it. the next flight arrived. he wasn't on it. and so on, until i'd been at the airport for three hours, not hearing the loudspeakers paging me. cell phones weren't ringing. i IMed josh a tearful "i hate vegas" but he was off to bed.
i gave up after three hours of waiting because a thought occurred to me: maybe brandon is waiting at the hotel because he couldn't find me! i hopped in the car and headed back, but then i realized....i didn't tell brandon the name of the hotel. no brandon at hotel.
i unpack. it is late. no brandon. still no brandon. then, as i'm about to give up -- thinking he had just decided not to come after the whole "dumping" thing -- the phone rings. brandon. from an electrical outlet at the airport on a broken cell phone. take a cab, i told him. a cab was taken. there was a hug and some tears, i couldn't help it. then we went for breakfast, which was devoured, near some hookers, and went to bed.
i don't remember what happened next.
we walked around, i think? bought razors at a neon cvs on the strip. went to the bellagio. i drooled, thinking brad pitt had been nearby. again, i couldn't help it. we played slots. nickels. cheap. i won twelve dollars on slots, which is a pretty big jackpot on nickel slots. we drove out toward the mountains. we ate dinner. i am forgetting stuff. brandon? help? oh, i had a game that night, at 11:30 p.m., i think. i was nervous...really, really nervous, but it wasn't so bad.
i had a feeling the girl-goal-equals-two-points rule was going to screw us, and we did. we lost the first game 9-5, but it was really 5-5. i gave up five goals, four to chicks. stupid, stupid rule. i played well. we drank some beer at the rink's bar as a team, and then went back to the hotel, with plans to go to this club on the strip.
i jumped in the shower and noticed brandon climbing into bed, and thought, "we're not going anywhere" and he was asleep when i got out of the shower. i finished reading middlesex, which i now need to review.
the next morning...saturday. right? ok. saturday we went to new york new york because all i wanted to do was ride the rollercoaster. i made fun of brandon because he wouldn't go on it with me, so instead i rode it with this little boy whose name was hunter. i made some sort of crack about fear and loathing being his parents favorite book and he just gave me a funny look to suggest i shut up. while i rode the ride, brandon played two quarters in a slot machine and won a bunch of money.
we walked further up the strip. we talked about renting a vespa, but it was my turn to be scared.....strip traffic on a vespa just didn't sound fun to me. then to the venetian and treasure island. we got beers at a hotel just to walk around outside on the street with open beer bottles. we took every porn flyer and trading card that came our way. in the venetian, a statue moved and touched some woman, who screamed, loudly. "i would have punched that statue in the fucking face," i told brandon. we went to denny's.
brandon gleefully exclaimed, 'porn bike' whenever just that rode by - an important part of the flyer/trading card exchange is the porn bike, which rides around to all the people handing out the goodies, and refills them. we had a conversation about which was the worse job: the porn bike guy, or the guys who ride the bikes with the buggies in back to give people jobs. definitely the latter....the porn bike job is essential.
"porn bike" became the official las vegas punchbuggy.
porn bike!
we went back to the rink for another game at 6 p.m., which we lost, badly, to a local team, which mercied us at 10-2. no need for that, if you ask me. if you pay to play three games, you should play three games. that said, there was drama.....losing two games put us right out of the tourney championship. so was the team we were scheduled to play against at 10 p.m. should we even bother to stay and play? we're already out of the running to win, why not just go out and get wasted? the majority of the team felt this way, but there were two who wanted to play - and the other team, the california team that loren's ex-girlfriend would've been on had she been there, wanted to play - so we played. in the meantime, i ate a hotdog. i think we might have gone swimming, but i'm not sure.
we came back, late, for the 10 p.m. game. no one wanted to play ... but there we were. while we may have lost all these games, i played well, and fuck, that's really all i care about. we were outclassed, the other teams had rehearsed and played together to take advantage of the stupid sexist rule. the last game we lost 9-6, in reality much less than that...the worst part that the other team, the guys at least, were completely wasted. the girls were, so i guess that's what mattered.
hockey was just an excuse to go to vegas.
game over, back to hotel to shower. makeup, lots of makeup. brandon refused to shower, and for some reason - this surprised me. the riveria to gamble. i played blackjack. won some. brandon got drunk and suspected he had lost his bankcard, i knew he hadn't but i played sympathetic anyway.
there was drinking, lots of drinking. i showed the porn cards to my teammate rachel, who was shocked that you could get a hooker for $25 an hour. we have plans for that, we told her.
we stayed at the riveria all night, until close to five a.m. and then headed back to the hotel. the slummy ugly dirty hotel.
at the hotel, we placed a telephone call and as promised within twenty five minutes vanessa was at our hotel room. vanessa, the $25 hooker. she was all we could afford, and since i'd won blackjack money who cares....to the hooker it went.
vegas money stays in vegas.
vanesa was not at all attractive, shorter than me, not really fat, but not really....attractive, i guess. she wanted her money up front, i gave it her, and she looked at us kind of suspiciously. i guess it's not too often that a hooker finds a man and a woman in a hotel room waiting for her, usually just one of the two.
we sat on the edge of the bed, all looking at each other. she asked what we wanted her to do, looking around for a clock. the motel came not with a blowdrier or a tv remote so a clock was out of the question.
brandon reached into his bag and pulled out a red book, "roman emperors" by michael grant, and handed it to vanessa. he got under the covers. she looked at me. i told her to read and annoyed, she started reading, trolling over words and names. she read and i watched her read, brandon fell asleep, just like he wanted until it was just me and vanessa. i told her to stop reading, with fifteen minutes left of the twenty five dollars, she looked at me, annoyed and asked now what.
i handed her five dollars.
"please go down to the convenience store - it's right next to the lobby - and get me a forty. then you can go." she nodded, and left, and didn't come back.
if she did, i was asleep too. it was nice having someone read to us, for once, not me.
it was probably seven a.m. by the time brandon and i were both asleep, but we dutifully got up around ten, knowing that he was leaving in a few hours.
we went to the spa since my muscles were aching. a man walked by with an ugly bulldog, which growled at brandon. we ate another breakfast. we watched cnn. we sat outside on the curb while the maid cleaned our room, all the powdered sugar from the carpet, and joked about her bitching out the gringos, wasting their blow.
brandon left.
the magic might be gone, gone, maybe, because i just dropped him off at departures. maybe not because i would've gone in, i just couldn't find short term parking.
he left, brandon left, and i went back to the hotel and slept for four or five hours. then dressed. then to an italian restaurant for dinner.
then to new york new york, where i cashed in at a poker table for forty dollars, and won that up to about one-eighty. went to play blackjack, took the prime seat and ran the table - a young couple from chicago with no idea what they were doing. it was easy. at one point the girl had a nine and a six; turns to everyone at the table and asked what she should do. dealer's showing fourteen.
"you should stay," i say loudly. the dealer, russ, nods his agreement.
she turns to her boyfriend. "you should take a hit," he says.
"i'm going to listen to him," she says, and hits. a jack. bust. the dealer and i laugh.
easy money.
the little naked ladies kept bringing me drinks. it was after three a.m. and my blackjack money was up to about three-hundred. i started pretending i was the hot chick that got written out of the script for ocean's eleven, and looking around for my imaginary movie boyfriend rusty ryan.
i thought i saw him, so i wandered through the hotel for a bit looking around for rusty. played some more poker.
i went back to my blackjack table and found that a new dealer had taken over, and an australian had taken my seat. i sat down anyway - though i see clearly through the haze of jetlag and alcohol, now, that this was the moment when i should have walked away, taken vegas' three hundred and cashed out - but i sat and played and i lost and lost and lost, but i didn't mind, because the australian kept talking, and the accent, well you know what the say about women and accents and it's all true.
it wasn't my money anyway, so when it was gone, it was almost airport time, so i left, i got the car, i checked out of the room, i picked up my friend, i went to the airport, i got on a plane, it came back to virginia, i got to my house, i unpacked, i took a shower, i fell asleep, i got up and came to work, i wrote this post, and i still don't feel quite back to normal.
vegas in approximately 24 hours. vegas is going to rock. vegas, i have never been before.
about eight people from my hockey league here are going. we are meeting a few other west-coast players there for this vegas-style coed tournament. it should be fun. our games are at 11 p.m. friday, 6 p.m. and 10:25 p.m. saturday. and the championship game is sunday at noon. it will be weird playing a game at 11 p.m., which will really be 2 a.m. to us...i wonder if the jetlag will affect us; i think sunday is also daylight savings, which could screw us up even more....
that boy brandon is coming too, he is going to hang out in the stands with the other wives [i plan to dump him before we leave on monday, no worries; and that said there will be no vegas wedding].
in the rest of our free time, brandon and i plan to:
--play nickel slots
--trash our hotel room like rock stars
--ride rollercoasters
--buy/do coke
--use high-powered rifle to kill several vegas residents
actually i haven't done all that much research into vegas and things to do there. supposedly there is a casino and a bar right in the rink. i have a vegas guidebook thingy that i'll look through on the plane tomorrow. regardless, i am sure that the whole trip will be fun. we're staying at the bellagio, which is supposed to be pretty nice...there is a restaurant in the hotel called picasso, i think we're eating there as a team one night. i also rented a car, a kia rio, which i had never heard of before, but i saw one for the first time this morning. i thought it was something like a sportage, but it's tiny. there is no way all my equipment is going to fit in that little car.
i'm a little bit nervous about the games themselves. i have been told that regardless of the score, whether we win or lose 15-14 or 8-0, i am to play with attitude at all times. i sort of thought i did already, but apparently not, as i was told at practice monday to be more snarly and cocksure. the rules are screwy and sexist; since it's coed, a girls' goal counts as two points while guys' are one point. i hate that rule already.
that's really about it. if you want a postcard while we're there, i suppose you still have time to e-mail me or brandon your address.
some reasons:
--poor hygiene: halitosis, dandruff
--latin = yawn
--sneaking suspicion he is using me to get to my cat
--birds = dirty
--chicago = cold
--sense of humor = lacking
--sneaking suspicion that my parents really like him
--sheets = dirty
--fingernails = uncut
--verbal ability = nonexistant
--the south = unrefined
--has yet to save me from the sniper
--sneaking suspicion that he is not real.
