A weekend in the toilet

I've had a busy couple of days, so I'll try to fill you in on the details.

Nothing really happened on Wednesday or Thursday, but Friday was a different story. Had to work, of course, but after that, I picked Aly and my mother at Ryan's parents' house for our trip to New York. We were staying at Danna and Rick's, while mom was going to Cousin Kathy's in Mt. Vernon. The ride out there sucked. My mother wanted to drive and she drove all right, slowly. It took us five hours to get there.

And then we got lost in Mt. Vernon in one of the worst slums I've ever seen. We almost get nailed by a white Escalade that was peeling away from a corner. We guessed it was a drug deal, and we were probably right. So, I haven't seen Kathy in a while, and she was really psyched to see me and was really pumped to meet Aly.

After we dropped mom off, we went to Danna and Rick's. We ended up drinking until 3:00 am. After five hours in a car, I needed more than one beer. They also busted out the champagne.

On Saturday, Aly and I went to have brunch with Mom and Kathy. We went to a diner in Mt. Vernon and Kathy gave us a really nice engagement gift. Way too generous. Aly and I were both speechless. After that we went to White Plains where I crashed hard, and fell asleep for like three and a half hours. When I woke up we went to Rye to a restaurant called Frankie and Johnnie's.

We had a nice steak dinner, and guess who we sat next to? Joe Torre. That's right, the Yankees' manager was at an arm's length from me the entire night. Seemed like a good guy, but didn't seem like a good conversationalist. I assume he was with his wife and all he talked was baseball. Which would've been cool to me, but I'm sure his wife was like, "Shut the fuck up." He talked about Sparky Lyle trying to become a manager and how he was soaking wet at last night's game.

The one thing I really felt bad about were the folks who just had to stop by and give Joe a pat on the back. He looked like, "Jesus, leave me alone I'm eating dinner with my wife and boring her with stories about shitty ballplayers." There was this one guy that took the cake; he was about 48 or 49 and he walked over to Torre and asked him for an autograph.

Give me a fucking break man, get a sack. Hey, I have to admit, I was a bit star srtuck, it was interesting eating next to a guy you've only seen on television, but let the guy eat his steak and drink his vino. But not this asshole, he had to get proof that he ate near a celebrity. The one thing that I wanted to do was turn around and go up to Torre with a camera in my hand and say, "I don't normally do this and I know you're done with eating. If you have a second can you ..."

At which point he'd say, "Fine, you can grab a picture." And then I would say, "Uhm actually I wanted you to get a picture of my fiance and our two friends." I wonder what he'd do? I bet he'd get a little pissed, but maybe he'd laugh. Who knows.

Rick was star struck. It was like sitting at a table with a jr. high girl.

Sunday we woke up early and went into the city to meet Grandma Connie because she wanted to see Aly's ring. We had a little breakfast and it was on to the Toilet, better known as Yankee stadium. There were a lot of Sox fans there, and all of us went home sad. The Sox got fucking hammered 11-1, which came on the heels of a 14-4 drubbing. The Sox also lost tonight to the Orioles, which means that they've lost three in a row for the first time in about six weeks.

They look terrible.

It took us about six hours to get home with all of the traffic and bullshit, so I am absoultey beat. A fun way to start the morning today, my chair was completely soaked. The cheapskates at work will not fix the roof, so whenever it rains my desk gets soaked. Nothing like sitting in a pair of wet jeans for half the day. This place is starting to get to me.

I went to Chili's tonight. It was supposed to be a big gathering, but Kim and Jamie didn't go (her computer crashed hardcore) and Colleen and Chris didn't show up. It was me, Sara, Skaus, Mi-shu and Nick. It was fun. The smaller Chili's gatherings are cool because you can actually talk to everyone and find out what is going on.

I finished, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them", by Al Franken. Franken does a great job of showing how conservatives are lying assholes, but at 382 pages, it sort of gets a bit repetitive. I never thought I'd say that, but whether it's conservatism or liberalism, dogmatic rhetoric for almost 400 pages gets sort of boring.

I also finished "Naked Olympics" last month, but I think I forgot to mention it. I've been on quite a reading roll lately. NO was cool, even though I hate the modern Olympic games. The author has done an awesome job with his research about how the Olympics used to be. Makes me want to go to Greece real bad and just hang out in Olympia, where they had the games every year.

BTW, speaking of the written word, I sent my sitcom in the other day to Bravo. It's not exactly what I wanted, but it's good. Jay seemed to really like it. Ok, I'm fucking tired, I'll write more tomorrow.