Treat Yourself

My life is very much about treats – treating myself for some accomplishment achieved, hurdle jumped or basically any other celebratory reason. Take for example yesterday when I treated myself to lunch and a beer at a local pub in honor of regaining DSL/internet access for the first time since returning from vacation. I had taken my second day off of work to wait on the service technician who would eventually end the negative effects a lack of internet access had been having on my blogging efforts. Not to mention my affected affect. Did those sentences contain the correct usages of "effect" and "affect"? Yet another one of those language issues I’m unsure of, bitch. Why am I swearing for the first time ever in my blog? Because one of my sisters always says that since you can’t end a sentence with a preposition, you simply add the word "bitch". Try it; it works. And it sounds better than rephrasing the sentence to make it proper, as in: "another one of those language issues of which I’m unsure". In any case, a celebration was certainly in order, bitch. Oh wait, I didn’t need to use the prepositional profanity there. Oh well, it was for affect, I mean effect. Once again, where is "Tenacious Teacher" when I need educational assistance?

Solving the computer problem was harder than you might think. Doc. B. made more telephone calls to our internet service provider than both Robert Downey, Jr. and George Michael, combined, have made attempts to stop using drugs. Or, if you’re one of my Michigan relatives, you might say that Doc. B. made more phone calls in the past 18 days than the number of times the Tigers have missed the playoffs in the past 18 years. But the Tigers have prevailed and so has Doc. B. I can’t speak for Robert Downey, Jr. or George Michael though. Also, I think Doc. B. now knows every employee by name at the customer service center in Omaha, Nebraska as well as the technical support office somewhere in India. Although at the latter location it’s easy to know everyone by name as it seems they’ve all selected "Alex" as their Americanized moniker, regardless of gender.

So once the capable, pleasant, somewhat attractive service technician left the bedroom (that’s where the computer is, you silly!), I bellied up to the bar at the Universal Joint with a quesadilla and a Sweetwater 420. At 1:30 on a Monday afternoon, bars aren’t too crowded. I had the place to myself for all of five minutes until a middle-aged woman joined me. She sat down a few barstools away from me with a copy of Alice Walker’s "Possessing the Secret of Joy" and ordered a pitcher of Sweetwater 469. The barkeep winked at me to indicate he knew what she meant and then he and I both glanced around to see if it looked like anyone would be helping her consume the brew. We saw no one, so he slid the pitcher, along with one frosty mug, onto the bar in front of her. She looked down into the glass with a frown and mumbled something about it being dirty. I saw her dilemma and suggested that if she wanted to go ahead and drink right out of the pitcher, I wouldn’t tell anyone. She laughed and said she’d do it if she didn’t think her father would frown down on that from up above. Meanwhile, I was thinking that my own father might frown at me for simply ordering an entire pitcher of beer all to myself. Well, no, he'd probably go get my mom to help me drink it (right, mom?!).

I asked her about her book and she smiled, reporting that it was the only Alice Walker book she had not yet read and that she had just started it. The bartender interrupted us to deliver the french fries she had ordered. She asked me to pass her the ketchup squirt bottle and when she went to squeeze it onto her plate, it made one of those embarrassing restroom noises. We just looked at each other and giggled like eight year old boys.

When I got up to leave, I told her "have a good week". She responded with "you’ve got a good spirit; thanks for blessing my day".

That’s what it’s all about – treating ourselves and while we’re at it, treating others – she made my day and it sounds like I made hers.