It’s due time

Late last night I made an executive decision: effective immediately and until Kelly’s party Friday night, I’m on sabbatical from human interaction. I make an exception for work, store clerks, and talking to Nathan about South Park. I must say, the call was long, long overdue.

See, I’m exhausted, and it’s your fault. Maybe not you exactly, but people like you without a doubt.

No, nothing horrible has happened – nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. I just sat down the other day and calculated that, in the last two weeks, I’ve been awake and alone less than twelve hours. For the math-phobic, this means that my social contact has taken breaks essentially only so that I can sleep. Those of you who know me well can attest to the fact that I needs my alone time. I needs it bad. Unlike certain of my friends who gain energy by being around people, being social often takes all my will power.

Notice that I haven’t posted to this site in almost a week. I haven’t had a spare moment, literally. Let’s count the minutes:

Thursday, Naomi convinced me to skip almost six hours of work with a deadly amalgam of puppy dog eyes, free movie tickets, and candy. We saw Garden State with Zach Braff and Natalie Portman, which Naomi maintains is the best movie ever made and I will allow is “very good”, then went to Bryan’s for dinner and some Street Fighter II. I have more than a little to say about that game, incidentally, but it will have to wait.

Friday I hung out with Dillon, Jared, and company on their porch drinking the champagne of beers until Nathan arrived around 11, at which point we headed to Bryan’s once more for a repeat of the previous night’s embarrassingly easy video game victories. Nathan is still making excuses.

Nathan and I woke up at 9:15 on Saturday morning – a time which we weren’t even certain existed, never having witnessed it in person – to help our upstairs neighbor move. For the next six hours, we were solidly occupied with lifting things and then setting them down again. Sometimes we lifted the things twice. Sometimes we put several things into a box or bag, then lifted that box or bag and set it down somewhere else. Besides making us both thick with weariness, the day convinced me of one thing: I am never, ever moving. I will live in this apartment until the day I die. We did get pizza and beer out of the deal, though.

Saturday night, my ex-girlfriend Kjelene and her twin sister Meryl invited me to a party in Ballard. They acted suspiciously when giving the invitation, so I immediately suspected them of duplicity. They’ve been trying for a good two years to get me to attend various family functions at their aunts’ house, and I’ve always turned them down because, obviously, family functions are lame. I asked them point blank if they were trying to get me to come to another aunt-party, and they said no, but in the end I was exactly right. Duplicity is the wrong word – chicanery is more apt.

Little commercial break there – I just spent an hour on the phone with two different people. This is what I’m talking about.

Back to the main narrative thrust… I invited Bryan along for the ride, and he and I had a surprisingly good time hanging out with the twins’ aunts, singing karaoke, playing guitar, drinking cosmos, and pointing out the twins’ character flaws. A surprising amount of debate was dedicated to who was the evil twin, but I claimed (and continue to) that the point is moot – it’s like asking who, out of Jim Belushi or John Candy, I’d most like to see in a Speedo. I realize they’re both dead, but I think the point stands.

Sunday Marta, Nathan and I spent most of the day gawking at the crowd at Hempfest. We heard quite a few aging hippies who were clearly completely baked give furunculous anti-Bush speeches. One woman said, the gange slurring her voice, “If you vote for Bush, shame on you! He is a liar! A big, fat liar!” She had a valid point, but it was hard to take her seriously when it sounded from her voice like she’d just paused from bong hits long enough to address the crowd – although we couldn’t really see the stage, so for all we know she was taking rips mid-diatribe. Nathan asked me at one point what percentage of the crowd I thought was stoned, and I answered around 70%. In retrospect, I stand by that number.

The highlight of the weekend – and I say this without a smidge of shame – was my freestyle bake-off (“bake” not in the connotation of the above paragraph). Nathan and I often bake pies and cakes, domestic as we are, but last night we were fresh out of Snackin’ Cake and didn’t know where to turn. We had a streusel kit in the pantry, but it called for all kinds of ingredients we didn’t have. What’s worse, I messed up in its preparation, blending the mix into a doughy consistency, rather than leaving it crumbly as the directions on the box dictated. We found a can of pineapple chunks and one of Bing cherries in the pantry that we’re pretty sure have been there since we moved in over two years ago, so I made my first executive decision of the night and decided to make them into a pie, somehow. I was basically adding ingredients according only to my own ridiculous whims, but the results surprised everyone except me. I shouldn’t have to tell you, by this point, that it turned out delicious.

It’s been fun, really it has. But it’s been too much. I’ll see you in about a week.