So here in Atlantic City I'm still waiting for that first flake of snow. Kind of hard to have Snowmaggeden when it's 43° outside. I know I know it's coming tonight. I'm hunkered down. My parents called from Ohio to tell me to stay in. I called my brother to make sure he had plenty of supplies to ride old Juno out in - Florida. Happy Birthday bro.
One thing that these weather "events" do that few other things can is make us stop. Just stop. Meetings got canceled, so did school, people have late starts for work, and people went right home from work tonight. I think that is great. People who have the world a mouse click away, who will actually take a coffee urn into a restaurant to fill and take home (I've seen this), and who are constantly on the go often forget about the hearth at home. It's neat to be bundled up with all the folks you love. Isn't it?
I made slight strategy misstep myself by putting on Abduction starring Taylor Lautner. Hey, I needed some background noise while I was writing this. Don't judge me. I'm on team Jacob! I'm a woman who runs with the wolves (see my blog from 01/05 http://www.michelletomko.com/blog/women-water-circle. Granted there are more holes in the script than a piece of very handsome Swiss cheese. But the big mystery is why in the hell is the movie called Abduction when nobody is abducted, or kidnapped, or even delayed in traffic? No wonder it was hard to follow. The writers didn't even know what it was about. The formula for that movie was simply Twilight + cute boy + teens = $$$. Shame on you Sigourney Weaver. You were in Annie Hall for christ's sake. I mean calling a movie Abduction when there is no abduction is like calling weather Snowmaggedden when it's raining. And that would be ridicu…oh.
Good night and good luck.
So I am here in South Jersey preparing for yet another, and I quote every major news outlet around here, "weather event." Huh? What the hell is a weather event? I know what the weather is - rain, sun, snow. I know what an event is - the Super Bowl, Bette Midler in concert, the birth of a child. But when did the weather get so dramatic? It is winter on the East Coast. It snows here. It does every year. What is the big deal? Winter Storm Juno? Nor'easter?
This weekend The Weather Channel tried to scare we in this area with another Nor'easter. What happened? It rained. It rained kind of a lot. I'm from Cleveland. I tricker-treated in worse weather than that. Sheesh. Come on people. Put your big girl mittens on!
Guy walks into a bar with a sandwich. He says "Two pints please. One for me and one for the sandwich." Bartender replies "Sorry man. We don't serve food here."
What in the hell is America's obsession with going out to eat and getting a sandwich? I don't understand. The reason I go out to eat is because I don't feel like staying at home and making a sandwich. When I go out to lunch, and I get to choose the restaurant, I'm picking an ethnic place and getting something I don't know how to make. I've got bread and mayo at home. What I don't have is an 800° tandoori oven, or sushi grade tuna, or those cute little baby corn on the cobs. You know the ones.
But you hear people all the time talking about "Oh my god. That place is so good. They make the best sandwiches in town! It's so delicious." What the hell is the big mystery? How about the delis themselves? "Best subs in town." Every block another storefront says "Best this or that in town." Do you know why they can say that? Because they all taste the freaking same! The only thing that makes a good sandwich good and a bad one bad is how fresh the bread is. And the delis don't even make the bread!
And they need to quit giving pretentious names to the things too. You don't go into a Chinese restaurant and order a Bruce Lee or an Indian restaurant and order a Slumdog Millionaire do you? So knock it off Deli Lamas with the Woody Allens and the Jerry Seinfeld's. Because...
It's bread people, bread, with shit straight out of the refrigerator stuffed between it! And the side dish is chips! Right out of the bag. You are paying restaurant premiums to go out and eat cold food with a side of food right out of the bag. Ahh. Ahhhhh! (Imagine if you will the late Sam Kinison screaming those preceding lines. Trust me. That is what the author intended.)
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"I like it when people ask me how I'm doing. I have a ton of people who are really interested in my career. I have them convinced that it's going really well too. But when the people who's basement I live in ask, well that's just rude."
I always chuckle at the poker table when someone gets up from a cash game to go into a tournament. (Now if you don't play poker you should know most tournaments take at least five hours to finish in the money. There are some that even take days to complete.) So when these same players return to the cash game twenty minutes later and someone asks "How did you do in the tournament?" I clearly question their sincerity. Obviously the tournament player suffered some horrible bad beat early and are knuckling down to win their buy-in back. Asking them that only embarrasses them and begs for a bitter, old bad-beat story to be told to the table. Yuck.
Most of us have come to the understanding that when people ask the ubiquitous question "How you doing?" they really don't care about the answer. They are expecting you to say, whether or not you have just won the lottery or you are gasping for air with a collapsed lung one word and one word only - "fine." So why do we ask?
I don't really know most of the time. But what I do know is that I have a community of people that want more words in my answer. I get phone calls of encouragement all the time. I get condolences and "atta boys" all the time. So much so that I am making an effort to only ask this question when I have the time, attention and energy to get a real answer. I no longer shout it from across the street. I don't block crowded grocery store aisles to ask it with a long, lost neighbor whose name I don't remember. And I don't ask it when someone is grieving a lost loved one or has just been diagnosed with something awful. Because that is just as dumb and insensitive as "Liking" it when they post it on Facebook. "My dad died." And 127 people like that. People! Think!
I invite you to join my movement. Who's in? If you join up or not know in your heart "I am fine."
I had one of those days today. The universe just couldn’t stop telling me “no”. I woke up and attempted to do one of those Staples EASY rebates and found out somebody on Decatur, Georgia beat me to it and stole my rebate. After 45 minutes of being vectored around Staples customer unservice I gave up and just took the damn paper shredder back. Again with the irony (see Monday’s post). I got hacked while putting my information out there buying a 14-page, crosscutting paper shredder! Ahhhhhhhh.
Then I got a big "no" from a college conference I was applying to. So no Mr. President. I disagree with your plan to give free community college to people. Of course with no gigs at the college campuses I won’t have any taxes to pay and won’t have to chip in for tuition anyway. So I guess the point is moot. But still. AAAARG.
Finally after several stinky men and near fiscal mishaps I decided to cash out my poker chips in Atlantic City and head out to tell you folks about my day. Because it’s a lot of responsibility writing for tens of people. I was at the cashier after pocketing my modest win when the overhead comes on and the floorperson announces “Ladies and Gentlmen the Bad Beat Jackpot has just hit.” I missed getting my share by five minutes. ARGHHH$^$%@!!
Just when I thought things were on an upswing in my life I crash into a brick wall. It is hard not to go down with each unlucky brick. “Screw you THE SECRET! I AM thinking positive!”
But one of my Gurus introduced me to new-thought author Wallace Wattles who wrote a book in 1910 entitled The Science of Gettting Rich. In it he states that “<span "font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"helvetica",sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family:="" "times="" roman";color:#141823;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"="" style="color: rgb(132, 133, 133); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">To think according to appearance is easy; to think truth regardless of appearances is laborious, and requires the expenditure of more power than any other work man is called upon to perform.<span "font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"helvetica",sans-serif;="" mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" roman";color:#141823"="" style="color: rgb(132, 133, 133); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"> There is no labor from which most people shrink as they do from that of sustained and consecutive thought; it is the hardest work in the world.”
<span "font-size:10.5pt;font-family:="" "helvetica",sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" roman";color:#141823;="" mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"="" style="color: rgb(132, 133, 133); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">What he means is you have to keep thinking positive with your vision for the future intact regardless of what you see around you. When you are having a bad day doing this really sucks balls. But I’m trying. Maybe old Wally was right. However he subjected his family to extreme poverty while enduring his countless schemes and failed runs for political office and died untimely at 51 a year after he wrote the damn book. So who knows.
<span "font-size:10.5pt;font-family:="" "helvetica",sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" roman";color:#141823;="" mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"="" style="color: rgb(132, 133, 133); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">But his daughter Florence is quoted as saying that in his last years, "He wrote almost constantly. It was then that he formed his mental picture. He saw himself as a successful writer, a personality of power, an advancing man, and he began to work toward the realization of this vision. He lived every page. His life was truly the powerful life."
And that’s one to grow on.
