Archive for June, 2007

i done good

Published
by
alison
on June 24, 2007
in bluishorange and television
. Closed

i was watching the astros game and surfing the web on saturday afternoon when someone knocked on the door.  when i looked through the peephole, i saw a guy holding a clipboard.  ooh, maybe i got a package! i thought.  i opened the door.

“hi, i’m phil from time warner cable,” the guy said.  damn.  “we’re checking all our lines today and making sure everything’s working, and we also want to offer you a deal on an upgrade to your service.”

“okay…” i said.

“currently you’re paying $30.00 for cable modem service, is that correct?”

“yes.”

“we’d like to offer you an upgrade to cable modem plus digital cable for just thirteen dollars more per month, for one year with no contract and no installation fee for a total of $43.00 per month.”

“hmm,” i said.  he waited for me to say something else.  “hmm,” i said again.

“you should know that this is a really good deal, and it probably won’t come along again,” he said.

“hmm.”  if i got digital cable i could watch almost every. single. astros game.  i could watch the daily show.  south park.  thousands and thousands of scrubs reruns.

i could watch craig biggio get his 3000th career hit.

“hmm.”  but if i got digital cable, i’d never do anything else, would i?  i already don’t do anything else, but with cable i’d sit down in front of the tv when i got home from work, and i’d never get up again, even if there was nothing good on.  if there was a baseball game on, i’d have to watch it.  if there was a years-old rerun of a gilmore girls episode i’ve seen a hundred times, i’d have to watch it.

if i got digital cable, i could continue my cycle of self-loathing and television watching forever.

“it’s a hard offer to refuse, isn’t it?” he said.

“yeah, but you know what?  i’m gonna.”

“really?”

“yeah.  i watch too much tv already.”

“with just your antenna?” he said, looking as shocked as i’ve ever seen a cable salesman look.

“my antenna and dvds, yeah.”

“like, you have something else you gotta do instead?”

“yeah.  i do.”

“well, okay,” he said, looking at me like i’d just grown a third arm out of my neck.

“thanks anyway.”

after i closed the door, i thought about it for one more second. i could look at the contract to see if i could cancel it after the 3000th hit.  it’s not too late, he can’t have gotten very far.  but i didn’t open the door again.

after that thought passed, i began to be proud of my refusal.  i felt good about it, like a caffeine addict saying no to a second cup of coffee.  when i crawled into bed with a book that night (which i might not have done had there been bad reruns to watch on digital cable), i thought about the day i’d spent watching the astros and my simpsons dvds, and i said to myself, “you’re better than that.”

if i can say no to digital cable for thirteen dollars a month, it really must be true.

(listen, i don’t want to become one of those people who thinks that all television is bad.  absolutes like that and others are at best annoying and at worst fairly dangerous.  besides, when the office premieres in the fall, i’m going to be on the edge of my seat.  but i want to get to a point where i can watch the office and then turn the tv off, and i can’t do that with sixty-one channels.)

dog office

Published
by
alison
on June 19, 2007
in bluishorange
. Closed

it’s only been a little over a year since i last started a new job, but i’ve still forgotten what it’s like.  i forgot the logistics of it, the “i don’t know where the printer is,” the “i can fix that file but i can’t find the network,” the “i’d write down what you said if i had any paper yet.”  i forgot what it’s like to have a sea of people paraded in front of you, each one with a different name and title and department, to be forgotten as soon as they walk away.  “i know you told me your name and what you do and where your office is, but, where’s your office again?”

i have an office, but until some things get ironed out i’m working on borrowed computers which rest on furniture borrowed from other rooms.  sometimes people come into my office to introduce themselves, and i don’t know how to act.  i’ve never had an office, and this one doesn’t feel like mine yet, so what do i do when people come in?  do i stand up and shake their hands?  do i stay seated at my table?  i leave my door open all day so i don’t have to deal with the knocking thing.  i know why people knock, but it feels weird when i’m just sitting there at a table.

i think a lot about what my sad little office might look like eventually.  what stuff should i bring in from home?  how should i decorate?  at my other jobs i haven’t required much more than a computer, a cup, and some headphones.  should i be looking into what types of plants are good for offices?

my office has a window, so i keep the blinds open and leave the fluorescent lights off.  today someone who came in for introductions said, “well, nice to meet you!  hopefully you won’t be sitting in the dark for too long.”

“oh, i’m in the dark on purpose,” i said.

“oh.”

i don’t really know how to talk to people in an office setting.

they’re not sure what to make of me, either.  i meet people and they shake my hand and then they look at my arm warmers.  they never ask, and i can see why they don’t (i wouldn’t), but i can tell they wonder.  at my last job, the subject of arm warmers eventually came up during lunch.

“so how come you wear those all the time?” someone asked me.

“oh,” i said, glad to get the chance to explain it, “my hands get really cold when i type, especially with all the air conditioning in the summer, and the arm warmers keep my fingers from getting all stiff.”

“i thought they were casts at first,” they said.

“i thought they were just part of your outfit,” someone else said.

i find consolation in the fact that, while my new coworkers think i’m sort of strange now, they’ll all be making extra trips to my sad little office when i come to work with a chihuahua.

girly about baseball

Published
by
alison
on June 13, 2007
in bluishorange and lists
. Closed

things that are happening:

1. i got a full-time web design job.  as full-time web design jobs go, this is a good one.  i’ll have health insurance and i’ll get to bring maude to work sometimes and i’ll make enough money to start improving my credit score (boring! necessary!).  the biggest bonus, though, is that i’ll be making websites that convey helpful information instead of coding emails to sell crap.  and i’m really tired of using my web design skills to sell crap.

2. i’m house- and dogsitting again, for the same people as last year.  the house is great, the dogs are great, the cable television is great.  the only thing that isn’t great is that they have a lot of cheese and candy in their house.  so until my new job starts on monday i am sitting around watching cable television and eating cheese and candy.  if i don’t stop soon, i’ll have to sew myself a whole new, slightly bigger wardrobe.

3. the cable television in this house gives me daily access to houston astros baseball games.  it may surprise some of you to learn that i really love astros baseball.  i don’t care about any other sports or any other baseball teams, just the astros.  my love of astros baseball comes from when i was afraid of thunderstorms as a kid.  thunderstorms in texas are like chicken-fried steak in texas: they come from out of nowhere all huge and in-your-face, they rattle up your insides, and they disappear as quickly as they came.  my dad would use astros games to distract me from all the thunder and lightning; i’d lay on the couch and watch the games while he explained the intricacies of the infield fly rule and the ground-rule double.

my favorite astros as a child were mike scott, ken caminiti, and craig biggio.  mike scott i liked because he was a really good pitcher, ken caminiti and craig biggio i liked because i thought they were cute.  in 2004 when i heard that ken caminiti had died, the first thing i did was call my friend chris.  he’d been an astros fan at the same time i had, so i knew he would know how i felt.  “hey chris, it’s alison,” i said to his machine.  “ken caminiti died today.  i just thought you’d want to know.”

craig biggio still plays for the astros, and has for nearly twenty years.  he’s my favorite baseball player, and my favorite astro, not just because i think he’s cute (though he is), but because he plays a good game, seems like a genuinely nice guy in interviews and on the field, and really, where else do you find that kind of team loyalty in baseball?  i’m always disappointed when i watch an astros game for the first time in a long while and find that half the players i liked have moved on to other teams.  sure, sometimes they get traded for other players so it’s not their fault, but how am i supposed to be a fan of a baseball team when it’s never comprised of any of the same people?  who do i root for?

after i got over thunderstorms, i didn’t watch much baseball until i was living with ryan and we got cable in 2005.  then, of course, we watched the playoffs religiously.  the astros had never been to the world series before, so when they won the national league title against the cardinals, the first thing i did was jump up and down yelling, “we’re going to the world series!”  then i called my dad.

“dad! dad!” i said, “we’re going to the world series!”

“we are?” he said.  “who’s we?”  apparently my astros fandom had surpassed his.

this is a story i tell often, and i can’t tell it without welling up a bit: the first game of the 2005 world series (astros vs. white sox) was held in chicago.  since the home team always bats last, the astros were first at bat.  craig biggio was first in the batting order, so he was the first person to bat in the first game of the first world series the astros ever had.  it was biggio’s first world series, too, since he’d never played for any team but the astros in his seventeen years as a major-league baseball player.  when he stepped up to the plate to take that first at-bat, he stopped for a second and took a good look around the field, wearing the biggest grin i’ve ever seen in baseball.

i cried.

no, really, i did.  i cried with happiness for a guy i’ve never even met, a guy who makes millions of dollars to hit a little ball with a stick and run around some bases.  i, a girl with abject hatred for most professional sports and their fan culture and money and corporate sponsorships, cried.

i guess that’s what being a fan of one guy for seventeen years will do to you.

(of course the astros lost that world series.  as ryan said at the time, “to be a houston sports fan is to have your heart broken again and again.”)

(p.s. in searching my own website for the word “astros,” i came across the book of alison’s garbage.  andrew and i talked about it when i was in chicago, but i’d forgotten most of what i put in it.  an oldie but a goodie.)

my albatross has an aspect ratio of 4:3

Published
by
alison
on June 6, 2007
in bluishorange, childhood and television
. Closed

my sister megan and i watched a lot of television when we were kids.  when we got home from school in the afternoons, we turned it on immediately to make sure we didn’t miss the growing pains reruns.  then we left it on to watch whatever came on after that, and whatever came on after that.  during the summer, when we didn’t have anything else to do, we watched talk shows and old partridge family reruns and movies we’d taped on vhs.  we were very upset if doogie howser was on when my dad called us to the table for dinner.

our parents would get fed up.  my dad would come home from work and, seeing me slumped in the recliner in front of yet another sitcom, would put his hand on the top of my head.  “feel that?” he would say.  “that’s your brain turning into jell-o.”

“hmm,” i’d say, annoyed because i’d missed a line of dialogue while he was talking.

mom and dad imposed limits on our tv-watching sometimes.  we could only watch an hour of tv a day, they said.  so we’d watch our hour a day, whether anything good was on or not.  then, after everyone went to bed, i’d plug my headphones into the television upstairs, sit as far away as the short cord would allow, and watch reruns or talk shows or saturday night live.  the headphone cord was only two feet long, so the image of danny devito in his joey buttafuoco pants is still burned into my brain.

megan stopped watching so much television when she hit high school and her honors classes and hobbies didn’t allow her much free time.  me, i kept going without her.  i kept watching television through high school and my first years of college.  i kept watching when i dropped out of college and worked as a web designer.  i stopped when i went back to college to finish my degree, but once that was done it was right back to the tv for me.

on any given weeknight during the television season, i’d estimate there are two or three shows i make sure to watch.  when those aren’t on i watch reruns.  on the weekends, i put on dvds of my favorite shows while i clean or sew or make jewelry.  and i hate myself for it.

i hate myself every time i neglect my hobbies and interests in favor of a simpsons rerun.  i hate myself when i choose my buffy dvds over writing.  i hate myself every time i sit down on the couch to watch things other people created instead of creating something of my own.  after all, the people who write and produce and act in television didn’t get there by watching it all the time, at least not as much as i do.

(this is why i can’t watch the blooper reels on my dvds.  blooper reels are of successful people who like their jobs, and that’s really depressing.)

and i know why i do it.  i watch tv because it’s easy.  it’s easier to watch someone else’s (fictional) life than it is to deal with mine.  it’s easier to let the lights and sound alleviate my loneliness than it is to go out and meet new people.  it’s easier to watch someone else’s creation than it is to make my own.

on my roadtrip, i hardly watched any television at all.  i didn’t have time.  there were too many things to do and see and places to go and people to talk to.  i didn’t even miss it.  when staying at my friends’ houses, i noticed a definite correlation between how successful and happy they were and how little tv they watched.  many of my friends didn’t have televisions at all, and the ones who did didn’t have it on all day like i do.

since i’ve been back from my trip, people have told me how proud they are of me.  they’re proud that i went through with it, they’re proud that i finished it and did it safely.  and i guess i’m proud of myself, too, but you know what?  it was easy.  on my roadtrip i didn’t watch the office or lost or gilmore girls or veronica mars or house or bones or 30 rock or scrubs or anything, really, and it was easy.

what’s not easy is waking up in my apartment every morning and trying to fight the nagging thought in the back of my head that i should turn on the television. it’s too quiet in here.  i can’t stop thinking.  i’m only halfway through my season six buffy dvds.  it’s okay if i watch them right now and do other things later.  but it’s not okay.  it’s really not.

when she knows she has a lot of work to do, my sister megan rips the cable out of the back of her tv and stores it in her locker at school so she won’t be distracted.  maybe i should put my antenna there, too.

schwag

Published
by
alison
on June 4, 2007
in bluishorange
. Closed

there’s a guy who lives in my apartment complex.  i see him around a lot, usually walking back and forth between his little sports car and his apartment.  he’s almost always singing to himself when he does this, but he seems normal when he says hi to me in passing, so i guess the singing just means he likes singing.  and he helped me spatula the ice off my car that one time, which, as apartment neighbors go, makes him downright spectacular.  spatulacular.  spatulastic?

tonight he was outside when i took maude out.

“hey, how’s it going?” he said.

“i’m okay, how are you?” i said.

“not too bad.  what are you up to tonight?”

“i just got done doing some work.”

“you work a lot, huh?”

“eh, i guess.”

“you smoke or drink or anything?”

i assumed he was talking about pot.  “well, i guess i drink sometimes, but i don’t really smoke.  it always just made me kind of tired.”

“yeah.  wait, pot?”

“yes.  i always get sleepy when i try it, so i figure that the perfectly good weed i could smoke is better used by someone who might actually enjoy it.”

“you were smoking schwag?”

“sometimes.  sometimes it was good stuff but it still never worked.”

“yeah, that happens.  i don’t really smoke that much.  well, i work at a pipe store.  so i’m around smokers all the time.”

“i guess you would be, yeah.”

“but i try not to spend too much time with them.  i mean, i smoke sometimes, but i try not to hang out that often.  are you seeing anyone?”

i always want to lie about this but i can never get up the nerve.  “uh, no.”

“how long have you been single?”

“oh, awhile.  but that’s sort of on purpose, since i don’t really want to live in austin anymore.”

“yeah, i want to move to san marcos.”

“really?”

“yeah, it seems like a cool town, quiet, lot of cool kids and bars.  car accidents.”

“car accidents?”

“yeah, but they have those here too.”

“i think they have those everywhere.”

“yeah.  well, we should hang out sometime.”

“uh, maybe.  come on, maude, let’s go inside!”

why do all my neighbors in this apartment complex want me to do drugs with them?  it doesn’t upset me when people offer, since presumably they’re just being friendly (and maybe a little flirtatious?), but it sure does make for uncomfortable conversations.