Today, lets talk about etiquette. I’ve a pet-peeve about social etiquette and people behaving like they should when interacting with others; but, above all things, and since it’s such a common occurrence, the thing that gets my goat almost every time is checkout etiquette. It irritates me to no end when I’m checking out at the grocery store (or where ever) and the clerks are either non-responsive, rude, silent, or make you feel like you’re interrupting some unimaginably important conversation that they’re having with the box help or whoever.

So today, at my local Stater Brother’s, I’m queue for checking out when it comes to my turn. The entirety of the verbal interaction that I participated in was the initial “Is plastic okay?” from Checker B (who, for some reason, was doing the bagging), and a closing “Cash back?” from Checker A who didn’t even acknowledge my existence until then, the very end of the process. The rest of the time was occupied by Checker B telling Checker A about how her “baby’s daddy signed up their daughter for baseball on Sunday which is her day and he would be all pissed off if she signed her up for dancing or ballet or something on Saturday which is his day” blah blah blah. And these are grown ass women. I swear to God, I don’t need to hear about your white-trash, ghetto fabulous, redneck, beanerific gossip; not while I’m checking out, not ever.

Another one of my favorite, and more common scenarios is when it’s later at night and there are about 3-5 girls bagging up my food only to serves as an excuse for them not to have to end the conversation and grabassery they were all enjoying so well before I came along. I’m sorry for interrupting your conversation. Please continue to fuck off while I stand here feeling awkward. It’s one thing for a gaggle of high school girls to be empty-headed on their own time, but isn’t this supposed to be work?

I, at one time, worked in a grocery and we never had time for that sort of nonsense. It was always “hello, how are you” and “nice to see you again” to regulars. Hell, while I’m at it, waiters suck too. People don’t have any damn work ethic anymore.

I really should start to complain to the management . . . don’t they have those anymore?

On a lighter note, I had a fun elevator ride today! I got in on the ground floor. A middle-aged woman and man get in first and are riding in the back. After a group of mandarin-shouting girls get out on the second floor, these two resume the conversation that they were having before it became too loud to think.

Woman: “Ya, before you know it, one leg goes this way,” she gestures to the right, “and the other leg goes that way,” and she gestures to the left, aping the spread-eagle position with her arms.
Man: “Ya, that’s why I liked to stay lubed up,” . . . WHAT THE FUCK? “. . . being plenty drunk never hurts.”

Needless to say, those doors have never opened so slow and I was bitting my lip the whole way. It took me and Andrew about 5 minutes to regain our composure before we could go into class. Otherwise, we would have been giggling like a bunch of school girls in calc….and that just wouldn’t be appropriate.

Oh, also I noticed that I had some comments sitting in the moderation holding pattern for quite some time. Sorry about that, they’re very much welcomed and approved (now).

The more I experience and the more I see, the more I watch Zeitgeist, the more I am alert, the more I simply just open my mind . . . the more I realize that college is the inverse think-tank. They train you to jump through the hoops of bureaucracy, pointless and staggering amounts of self-confused red tape to prepare you for the rest of your life in a politics-based, greed-powered world. Conformity and non-confrontation is what’s taught, complacency exemplified, belly-up and mind-numbed preferred. Conspiracy! Conspiracy!

I was raised by my parents to do the right thing, to not quit, to love, to dream. I raised myself to love, to dream, to fight back, to protect. I will fulfill my name and what I understand as my meaning.

The good hands must take hold of the bad souls—careful not to let the demon touch them.

Commitment is not so much the allotting of time or resources, but the making room for, welcoming, and pursuit of love–from the first long stem to the room of standing wreaths.

. . . and her name is Sherelle Jasmine Salaver.

She knows this and now I confess it unto you: I have never had such happiness in my life and would trade it for naught. I just want to share that everyone.

I have come to learn many things from the experiences of past relationships, and I stress to all the importance of openness—frank but never curt—and always with the intent to divulge one’s self of obfuscations to make clear one’s intentions, needs, desires and goals.

So work has started up a blog now. They told me that I can’t whine, call people bitches (actually, that was implicit), or talk about my homemade concoctions. At least it has focus.

I had been considering augmenting this blogs from life+food to life+food+(tech theory, practices and code) but the FW blog will be reserved for that. I know you care about client-side inline/in-place editing with DOM and AJAX, so go check it out.

That sort of thing happens when you haven’t blogged in over a month. Actually, one month to be exact. At any rate, here we go in more-or-less chronological order.

So, mid-July found me packing and unpacking, loading and groaning as Andrew and I, with the help of three lovely ladies of varying degree, moved ourselves into Chez Booleangate a large-roomed San Bernardino apartment. Yes, that’s right: varying degree. More on that later. I would call it a bachelor pad except that 1) there are two of us and I believe the phrase is normally reserved for solitary living; and 2) we’re hardly here and when we are, there have, up to this point, normally been ladies about. It’s actually turning out better than I imagined because, well, I couldn’t have foreseen a certain chain of events that has made life even better than anticipated.

Life is good. Damn good. Andrew and I were having a little chat about this. Things are falling in to place in a serious way for the two of us (sound gayer, eh?) both on individual and collaborative levels. The apartment solves many problems for both he and I. It cuts down on my circulation of driving in what I have come to call the Triangle of Wasted Life (being Moreno Valley, Riverside, and San Bernardino) in which I would find myself in all three of the points at some point during any given day. It also provides Andrew and I a great feasibility for collaborating. Meeting? Roll thine ass to the living room. But the driving aspect is huge! Not only does it save me gas, it saves my sanity. I’m no longer sleeping on slouching dorm room couches or rushing from place to place just to get to another. I’ve a central base now, a very schnazy one at that, and I can regain some focus in my life and trim off all that superfluous, hectic moving about. Chi!

Work is also the place to be, and that’s no exaggeration by any means. Andrew attributes it to the Will of the Lord, but however you slice it, he now works there as well. Directly under me. As my assistant (he’ll hate me for that one). The implications of this, however, are vast and wide. Not only does it lift a tremendous burden from my shoulders by halving my work load, but has also given us a place to delve into the prospect of a special little project, code name, “Lois”, that the heads of FW are interested in joining in on and finding funding for. If the funding is achieve and the project works out as is possible and hoped for, then I may never have to work again. It’s that monumental. Makes you wish you were my boo, huh? Shut up, scrub.

Really, it’s all coming together.

So about that varying degree of lovely and the unforeseen chain of events. Sherelle, Cynthia, and Melissa, three, did lend their hands and company as we moved from point A to point B, and now it is that Sherelle is with me. What’s with the rhyming and crappy meter? *shrug* But you get the idea. Let me tell you about her.

I first met Sherelle roughly five years ago when Andrew and I rode over to Cynthia’s house after a bike ride. Sherelle was there, I was introduced, and then proceeded to do wheelie into Andrew’s crotch which impressed her so much . . . that I haven’t seen hide nor hare of her till about four weeks ago. We hit it off in a big way. Basically, I was “smooth as buttah” and did the following: Cynthia and Andrew invited Sherelle to join us for dinner at BJ’s since, I’m supposing, they were so glad that I was at long last done being emo and had finally moved on from my own emotional train-wreck unwillingness to believe reality (and boy, but when it set in was it beautiful). I already had ordered a hefeweizen by time she got there, so I ordered her “A drink like that.” A crazy name, I know, but it was rather good, so I ordered myself one as well after I finished my fine German beverage. It turns out that mine was ridiculously strong…so I had her drink it, and she hasn’t been able to stop flirting with me since.

Being the respectable gentleman that you all know me to be, I asked her on a date and we went to mecca, also known to you mortals as “Ikea.” Ya, that’s right: Ikea. That place is great. Somehow, and on a side note, I know, deep inside of me, that Ikea and the Apple store are on some sort of strange plane way above all other stores, but I’m not sure exactly how they relate… but that’s a whole different story. Anyway: bada-bing, bada-boom we’re official, and damn am I stupid for her. Some would call “rebound,” but I’m not really that sort. I go from one long relationship to an even longer one (as has been the trend anyway). Ahh! Commitment: scary.

She’s everything I wasn’t looking for. I love it. Not to worry, though, we’ve been on other dates to places like target Venice Beach, and the Getty. Man, that place is cool.

So, on to the single most awkward weekend of my life: Blizzcon ‘07. Cynthia, Andrew, and myself plus approximately 4000 socially inept people. If you want to know what happened and what was announced, go read one of the many blogs. If you want to know what was asked at the panels, I’ll tell you that much. There were only two questions:

1. Why does all of the ret. pally gear suck?
2. When are warlocks getting nerfed?

There were some other relevant, well-phrased questions, but for the most part this was asked at every panel, including those for Starcraft II. No joke. Okay, it’s a joke. Oh, and then there were the people who paid $100 plus food, gas, etc just to get on a microphone and tell the company whose games they cannot stop playing, and over whom they will obsess for the rest of their days more or less sucks. Ya, I don’t get it either.

Oh, we bought a TV from a fellow at work. It was discounted on the agreement that we watch seasons 1 and 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with which he is obsessed. We just get gayer and gayer.