Busted at the buffet!

As anyone who knows me is well aware, I don't cook. It's just something I was never really good at - or interested in - doing. Oh sure, I can boil pasta with the best of them, and I'm a self-proclaimed mac-n-cheese gourmet, but mostly I eat out. Not the best thing for a broke person with a weight problem, but whatever. I'm lazy.

So one day last week I got hungry around dinnertime, and I started thinking of what I wanted to eat. I was sick of pizza and Mighty Taco, and not at all in the mood for fast food, in fact. I decided just to get in my car and drive around until something struck my fancy. As I drove, I passed two grocery stores and thought about just breaking down and buying some actual groceries to cook myself something cheap and nutritious. That thought passed quickly, however, and I kept driving. I thought about going for Indian food, but again - not in the mood. I was hungry, and my stomach was screaming at me to feed it like Audrey II to Seymour Krelborn. But I just couldn't figure out what I wanted. All sorts of stuff sounded alternately good and awful, and then finally it came to me. The answer to my dilemma - the buffet.

Now, buffets depress me. Even the really swank casino buffets bum me out. Something about all that food and all those people shoveling it into their fat faces (myself included) just really makes me cringe at the level of gluttony. I also have this really weird hangup about eating in front of people (which is why I eat out alone most of the time), and an almost paralyzing fear of tripping and dropping my plate. Alas I went, by myself, and as I usually do, I started with a salad. No sooner had I speared the first leaf of romaine with my fork and brought it up to my gaping maw when I heard a familiar voice, "Hey, what's this lady doing here all by herself at the buffet?"

Good God. It was my coworker. I should have known, given the fact that I have this uncanny knack for running into people I know no matter where I go, that the odds were with me that I would see someone I knew. I'd actually had a fleeting thought to turn around on my way there, because something in my gut told me this would happen, but my hunger pangs were stronger, so I forged ahead. And look what happened. I was mortified.

So as I sat there stuffing my face, I tried to think of all sorts of clever ways to hide what was on my plate, or create diversions so that this coworker and her family would not see how many trips I made (I think it was three...four if you count the cup of horrid coffee). Mostly I prayed that she wouldn't go to work that night and announce to everyone that she'd seen me there. Because they wouldn't understand.

Note to self: next time, just go to the fucking grocery store.

Not-quite midlife crisis...in ink.

Behold my homage to the great Henry Rollins, plastered (painfully, I might add) on my back:



(Here's the original, on the man himself):


Lots of people have asked, "why?" I can't say I blame them. I mean, who gets tattoos of band logos on their backs, not to mention the logo of a hardcore band typically displayed with "Search and Destroy" above it? Certainly not 35-year-old women! Well, call it another phase in my not-quite-midlife crisis, but it definitely was not a whim. Like all my other tattoos, it was a well-thought-out decision and was years in the making before finally happening. And, for the record, my first one was the Urban Blight logo on my shoulder...so band logos are not anything new to this bod.

I've tried to explain it every which way I can. Rollins Band is my favorite. Henry Rollins is my hero. The album which sports the logo on its cover, The End of Silence, is one of my favorite RB albums (Come in and Burn is my favorite and means even more to me, but the razor skull x-ray just wasn't as appealing...) and is deeply significant to me. The details of the significance are personal, private, and profound. But you know what? At the end of the day, I needn't have to explain it to anyone.

As Henry himself said, "It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself."

So there. Search and destroy, indeed.

Death of a Memory

This past Wednesday morning I was reading through the paper, and I stopped to read the obituaries, as I normally do. Call it a morbid obsession, but I read them every day as part of my daily paper-reading. Anyway, I spotted the name of a childhood pal and thought, "no, that can't be the same guy." Sure enough, it was. It didn't say how he died, only that he'd passed away in the hospital on Tuesday.

Donnie was 25 days older than me, and we were in every class together from kindergarten on up through 6th grade. We grew up together, lived just a couple blocks from each other, and were constant buddies. Kids will be kids, of course, and we were teased for being friends (nyah, nyah, ... sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S....blah blah blah), but of all the friendships that came and went throughout the school years, ours was one of the few that endured and remained constant. We did hook up on and off during junior high, but it was more a matter of convenience than actual attraction. We were just really good friends.

So high school came around, and I went off to my hoity-toity private school, and then I moved to a different town, and I lost track of most of my old friends. I tried looking Donnie up a few times after I moved back here three years ago, but never really got around to calling him. It was more a "hey I wonder what ever became of him" sort of thing than a real desire to rekindle the friendship.

The wake was yesterday. I went. The waxy, pasty embalming process notwithstanding, he looked exactly as I'd remembered him from 20 years ago, only with shorter hair and a fuller beard. I stopped at the casket, said "Hey Donnie" and signed the guestbook before mustering the courage to go talk to his brother. Apparently Donnie had had quite a drinking problem and basically died of cirrhosis. At 35 years old, his liver just couldn't take it anymore and shut down. Fucked up.

The weird part was how I was like, "oh wow, that's sad and it sucks" but in a sort of "disconnect" mode while I was at the funeral home...and then halfway home I just burst into tears over it. As I shed my tears, I realized I wasn't necessarily crying for him, per se, because it's not like my life is affected directly by his absence in it. It was like it suddenly hit me that this kid I grew up with, was good friends with, played with, fought with, laughed with, partied with, and I'm sure talked about our futures during all of this...it's all gone for him. And he was just so goddamned young. I keep moaning and groaning about how I'm "so old" but man, it's not time to die yet.

Rest in Peace, Donnie Roehling: 1971-2006. Don't give Miss Sinnot too much trouble up there, okay?