reconnecting

A friend, Dana, whom I haven't seen in ages, is staying with us for a couple of days. It's so disturbing to think, "she looks exactly the same...As she did *10* years ago." holy shit. That made me feel old. We weren't ever super close, but we were in the same junior year abroad program in Sevilla, Spain and spent 4 days alone together in Morocco. We've been reminiscing about the trip and it's pretty hilarious how differently we remember things.

Our first real day in Tangier -- we got the hell out of there as fast as possible. We hopped on a train bound for Fez - about 7 hours south. We sat next to a slightly crazy looking western woman named Donna from New Zealand. She was gorgeous in a sad kind of way. Slightly too old to be girlfriend #1, she had frizzy red hair, an aging but great body and huge trapped eyes. She ate sunflower seeds obsessively. She'd been in Tangier - shopping I think with her boyfriend Abdul, and they were on their way back to Assilah, a town about an hour South. Long story short, we ended up getting off the train with them in Assilah. I remember them offering to show us around a "real" town and a "real" medina (open air market) and thinking - take a chance! - see a place you'd never otherwise see. Dana remembers that Donna offered to get us high and I leapt at the offer. Also totally possible.

We both remember the house, where poor Donna spent most of her time - cloistered. It was absolutely gorgeous - tiled floors, arched doorways and a wonderfully open plan that they certainly rarely used to entertain. They both wanted us to stay, and went out of their way to be welcoming - so much so, it was a little creepy. Abdul kept offering us the opportunity to shower...we were crazy high, which added to whatever paranoia we were entitled to be feeling under the circumstances. I think they just wanted Donna to have some company, but we clearly had nothing in common with her aside from skin color. All day we tried to be clear that we were going to have to go...must catch that train! Abdul sort of brushed us off for a while, but finally at around 4 put us in the car and dropped us at a patch of grass with no station, one track and a camel. Camel ass has never looked so good.

The train to Fez is something else we both remember. People would go to Spain and bring back goods that were otherwise unobtainable in Morocco to sell. There must have been some tarriff they were trying to avoid, because rather than bring the clothing back in bags - they would wear it. We were a little clueless at first, wondering why all of these morbidly obese people were on the train all at once, and how they seemed so spry despite being so heavy. It finally dawned on us that they were ordinary people wearing extraordinary amounts of clothing. It was unreal. We were sitting in small berths and to the sounds of police whistles and shouting, people on the train were stashing TVs over our heads and VCRs beneath our feet. As soon as someone cleared black market electronics from over our heads, smothering us with cotton flesh in the process, another would rush into the compartment with a massive suitcase. Twilight zone. A professorial type befriended us and offered to show us his village, but we demurred, having had enough excitement for one day.

Dana was saying that she remembers me getting stared at because (then) I had black hair and light eyes. I will admit to the rather dubious distinction of being irrisistable to lechers worldwide - and sadly for me, nearly exclusively to them. If guy is beating off on the subway - he's looking at me. If an old codger shuffles down the street and oogles a woman while holding his granddaughter's hand - I'm the ooglee. In Morocco I was propositioned in pidgin English, Spanglish, and French and was stared at brazenly countless other times. The truly ridiculous thing about all this is that Dana is 6 Ft tall, blond and unbelievably gorgeous. I guess I was just lucky. It's gotten better as I've gotten older. I guess that's supposed to depress me, but I really don't miss pick up lines like "fucki fucki."

Let's talk about integrated systems

Registering for classes yesterday was a painful reminder of how very much my life will be changing. First off, my soft office feet blistered about 12 seconds into the afternoon and I had to focus on chewing my gum and remaining expressionless. Secondly, I discovered that there's a secret language using real words in totally opposite ways. Those people are fucking insane. There were a lot of, "ok, i know what I mean by the word list, what does it mean here? moments. I'll be the first to admit that being a corporate drone has heightened my sensitivity for process failures and inefficiencies, but the fine folk at SCCC could use some serious training. Haven't they learned the lessons from Hell's Kitchen? We have to work together people, or we'll never get through a full night of service.

A few weeks ago I got a welcome packet with a parking pass and a registration slip. I was instructed to come for my S.T.A.R.S ("Sucking Time and Raising Stress") training which consisted of a presentation that was totally useless to me, and clearly designed for people pursuing an AA/AS. But I wanted to do the right things, the things I never fucking did the first time around, which might have something do with the fact that I'm now 30 and going to trade school. So I sat dutifully through the bad powerpoint (flying graphics are *not* interesting!) and waited for a meeting with the adviser. We spent about 9 seconds together before she asked me if Culinary had "said I was ok." I said I thought so, (what does 'ok' mean to you?) and she sighed and pointed me upstairs. Clearly, they've seen this kind of thing before. Not that they're about to fix it and spoil all the fun. So with the dread of rewatching a played out scene I entered Culinary to find that, of course, they had no record of me. At all. Despite numerous status-update phone calls, despite the fact that I'd sent transcripts, and taken a placement test, and then called to make sure "I was ok." Most confusing to me is that they have no record of me despite my having received a notification to register.

"Everyone gets that," the administrator tells me. The fact that this is not technically true, that I've never gotten a registration slip before, probably because I've never been a student there before is somewhat lost on her. "Have you quit your job?" This is not going well. The waiting list is 7 quarters long. I have visions of spending 2 years working retail. Fortunately, email, 7 years of being a bitch at work and an unusual name saved the day. Someone who worked in the office came over and remembered our email conversation. It seems that after I took my placement test I was supposed to hand carry the results upstairs. Despite the fact that I asked the person who gave me my results if I needed to do anything and was told no. Despite the fact that those results were in my profile on their computer system, 6 inches away. They looked at me as though I'd suggested eating some vomit when I asked if they could access my results from their computer. I'm only confident that I'm really "ok" (my definition) because I paid them. Nightmare. And classes are going to start at 7am. I must be crazy, because I'm still totally excited.

On another topic, I've been paying a lot of attention lately to the bunny. Despite the fact that I'm bunny to many, I have to give it up for this guy. I don't remember how I found his blog but I'm impressed with his honesty. He's a great writer with kind of a charming blend of self-effacment and paranoia. What's most interesting to me is how his style has changed since he's gotten more hits. It's obvious in some ways that he both likes and resents the pressure to write and to be funny. The bunny, like legions of men I've met has one fundamental problem - he dates the wrong women. If you read the his site, you'll see what an understatement that is, but I don't mean it the way he does. The women he dates are crazy and in talking about them, he worries that he may appear misogynistic. Of course, that's because he dates women who get jealous of the Sunmaid raisin girl...logic is not a primary attribute for these ladies. Anyway - I love the site, his stories and lists are always funny but the most compelling reason to read is that this guy is a brutally honest self-analyst. check it out.

know when to run

my friend patti is getting married next month, and i wanted to know if i should put together a ladies night for her. it's too soon for me to think about all of that personally, but i have three weddings in the next three months, so all things wedding are top of mind. it turns out that she doesn't want anything hen-ish. she and greg want to get everyone together, drunk, and losing money at a casino somewhere.

i love that idea. rob and i went to a casino for our 1 year dating anniversary. we had planned to follow it up with a visit to the olive garden, but were so caught up in the rod stewart impersonator, we missed last call for breadsticks. the shameless campiness of casinos makes me laugh. in the US, anyway, casinos are in the middle of nowhere you want to be, but they'll let you pretend that you just stepped into buckingham palace. they might have tarted up a concrete box with roccoco mirrors and chandeliers, but you're always going to be stuck with the carpet in blue, gold and red. it's a time-tested mask for vomit, grime and shame. they're hoping you aren't paying attention. just paying. that's fine with me. watching the shift between desperation and forgetting is entertaining enough. there's nothing like seeing a retiree in a chandal working three slots at once at 4am to remind me of what i have.

in the course of our conversation, patti wondered if a joint celebration was 'enough.' i know she didn't exactly mean enough for her, or greg or them both or her friends ... but, in a way of all of them and a little tiny bit for convention's sake. after all, she's been planning a wedding for 6 months. with so many things to get done and so many choices to make - it's easy to lose perspective when you're actually given a choice that's not turd sandwich or giant douche. (both of which, for the record, are what i consider a night with 8 drunk girls sipping champale from penises.) patti is not a conventional girl by any stretch, but she wants to make sure everyone's happy. if there's a luncheon of some sort she's expected to attend, then by gum she'll be there.

so i started thinking about other people's expectations and how sometimes they're a proxy for convention. people who claim to be above convention are total chickenshit liars, and i'm glad she's honest enough to admit that it matters to her, even a little, what other people think. of course, i'm also fervently glad she didn't want to be wrapped in toilet paper.

and then i got mad. why should patti or any of us have to fly in the face of convention when convention is moronic? who invited convention in anyway? someone should leave some sure! in it's locker, because convention smells bad.

what the hell kind of celebration dictates that men and women separate to the relative safety of their own gender camps to gird themselves for the battle of marriage? men are supposed to engage in some sort of warped sexual last rite liturgy, while women are left to play fantasy games. what is this, braveheart?

bachelor parties all seem to have one thing in common. tits. the most important thing about these parties is for the guy to get chock-full-o-tits. theoretically, these tits are better than the ones they're about to be looking at to the exclusion of all other tits forever. sounds sexy to me ... "please, put your hands together for...Candice!"

for women, it's not only pathetic but also boring. cake, cocktails, games, and gifts. bridal shower gifts always seem to involve underwear designed to make their tits as enticing as the newly forbidden tits their soon-to-be husbands are looking at right now ... it would almost be funny if it wasn't so pitiful.

it's enough to send a girl running straight to the black jack table. deal me in.