Coming off of quite a stressful week at work, I was a bit on edge by the end of Friday. An 80-minute massage and a restful weekend certainly helped, but heading back to work Monday morning was rough. Curling up in bed and hitting snooze never felt so right.
On Monday evenings, my friend and I play racquetball. Due to the aforementioned stressful week (stressful month, really), I’d been unable to make it to the court for a while, and was really looking forward to playing. We have perpetual bad luck with the equipment room scheduling other events during our preferred time after work, and recently the racquetball club has arrived to force out all of the 5-6pm registration times. We could either reserve at 4:30 (directly after we’re out of work, and we’d be a half hour late while making our way to the gym anyway), or 5:30 (and who wants to wait around campus for an hour just to play racquetball? No thanks). We’ve opted for 4:30 and tried to make the best of it.
Monday was a bit of a storm, with my friend forgetting he had left his gym clothes at his desk on the other side of the river while already halfway along and having to turn back, to me getting transfixed by a baseball playoff game, so we were finally ready to go around 5:15. 15 minutes of reserved court time left? We could get in at least 1 solid game. Sadly, there were two men playing ball in the court when we got there. After they finished a volley, I knocked on the door and they came over.
“WHAT?” huffed the short, older man, while a younger boy (his son?) wavered around behind him. I said I was sorry, but we had the court reserved from 4:30 to 5:30 and were hoping to get in a game. “Well, you’re 45 minutes late, I think you’ve pretty much forfeited any right you had to this court. You wanna let us at least finish this game?”
I turned to my friend to see if he wanted to really play racquetball at all at this point, since we were so late. My glance must have been interpreted as some kind of hostile flare of feminine cunning, because the man completely lost his cool. “FINE, FINE, TAKE THE COURT. WE DON’T HAVE TO FINISH.” I yelled after him, “Hey man, we’re trying to figure out what to do here!” and he waved his hands in the air as he stormed away, still shouting, “NO NO! PLEASE! TAKE YOUR COURT BACK!” Ass! My rage did fuel me on to a racquetball victory, and I really hope I run into his puffing, ridiculous face again when we’re playing next week.
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Last night, while engaging in some knitting, I realized a hole had appeared in the scarf I was working on. Dropped stitch, damn. Not having a crochet hook, and not being sure about the best way to fix the thing, I resolved to zoom over to the nearest yarn store after my class and ask for help.
The store is in Cedar-Riverside, which is usually traffic hell, compounded by the fact that many people will cross the road at any given point or time, and stand in the middle of traffic in order to get where they’re going. When it’s dark and raining, this becomes even more exciting. I spotted a parking spot on the street in front of the store, and (after driving around for a few twisting blocks) came back around to find it still open. Score!
Check my mirrors, signal, and back into the spot. I go to open my door and find that another car has pulled up next to and in front of mine, and is going into reverse. He keeps reversing, and I beep the car horn to make sure he knows that there’s a car. He stops his car, but does not move it. I hop out, squeeze around his car, and he rolls down his window to yell, “LADY, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?”
Totally flabbergasted.
Me: “I’m parking my car. I have parked my car. What’s wrong?”
Him: “Move your car.”
Me: “No! I parked my car here. I’m going to the store.”
Him: “Move your car. This is my space.”
Me: “It’s not your space, it’s my space. I’m parking here for now.”
Him: “I saw this space and I drove around the block and now I will park in it.”
Me: “Nobody was attempting to park in this space when I parked here. I have parked here. Now I am going to the store.”
Him: “WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM, LADY? MY GOD!”
Me: “I DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM HERE, SINCE I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PARKED MY CAR AND AM GOING TO THE STORE.”
After this he made some kind of growling noise and drove away. The yarn store trip was not so successful, since the lady clearly did not want to help me with my dropped stitch and chided me for not knowing how to do it (“You know, someday you’ll need to learn to do this yourself.”) She determined that the dropped stitch was unfixable and sent me home. I went home, worked some internet magic, and fixed my knitting myself.
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After months of hiatus, I’m back on the blogging train. Watch out, the internet.
Oh, man, I picture that second exchange as a poorly dubbed Japanese movie and then laugh to myself.
People are especially grumpy of late. In the meantime, it’s good to have a crochet hook on hand. I can’t knit, not coordinated enough I guess. But I can crochet a darn decent afgan.
hah it’s like an episode of seinfeld!