I
recently attended a play entitled
Songs in the Key of Caffeine whose setting was the town I live in right
now in the neighborhood I buy my orange soda, skateboards concert tickets and
deodorant. A supporting character's job was a "Dumpster Diver", basically a person
who picks through trash to find things that can later be sold. This character
was a white rastafarian hippy guy (very stereotypical) who had a friend that talked,
walked and dressed exactly like Mork from Mork and Mindy, (very weird) the show
itself was set a few blocks away and you can go and check it out.
The play itself wasn't that memorable, perhaps since I didn't really care about
a play set in this weird town, but I remembered it again walking home after meeting
Kelly Y. I visited Kelly after work in the School Armory - a large building with
a rocky exterior and small windows, right outside the main campus. It was turned
into this sort of Digital Media classroom wiz bang thing and Kelly was there working
on a project for a class she wasn't even in.
It's not really a place that's open to the public, the room is on loan or
something, I shouldn't even have been there. The room itself was a computer lab,
but it was filled with the craziest computers. The normal computer lab in the
Fine Arts is filled with two year old Macs that have seen quite a bit of usage
and are starting to show the wear. These computers in the room were almost new
and had attached to them $4,000 flat panel Studio Displays, something you think
would be cool to have, but could never justify the cost that would cover eating
for a year, or buying a used car, or a grand tour of Europe. There were 30 Macs
with 30 of these 22" displays. Please do the math on that one.
Kelly invited me as I came and offered me fortune cookies she bought from a small, Chinese store in Denver. She had a large bag full, so I kept some for later, I did receive this fortune, after a few dud cookies that didn't have any fortune at all
I helped Kelly as much as I could on her project for a few hours and then had
to go home and be suburban; walk the dogs, do the dishes, clean the house, do
the laundry - not much to write about, but I am now, aren't I? I walked through
campus, munching on fortune cookie after fortune cookie, telling me about my financial
rewards soon to become reality, ahh if only.
I followed a small path to the East side of campus and passed a large dumpster
right near a dorm, I passed it and then stopped, looked back and then walked back
to sneak a peak inside. A ha! what is this? Shoes! Do they fit... only one way
to find out... they do! I took them out and wrangled the small backpack they were
in onto my shoulder and smiled at my find. Leather shoes are a weird thing to
find in the garbage, even funnier are four pairs, I took two of them home and
two small backpacks as well.
Went to the coffee shop to buy some coffee, as I am addicted fully, fetched the free day old stuff and snuck them into my pockets, with the fortune cookies. I got home and sat around watching TV, eating old pastries and petted the dogs. There wasn't much food left in the house or money in my pocket and this was a nice treat.
The Friday before Dhalia took me out for Sushi, as she was leaving for a week to vacation in Mexico. The Sushi Place was packed so we ate at a bakery. The bakers being bakers, fouled up her drink order and this baker being baked with Boulder buds offered her an entire box of whatever they sold. She filled that box up to the top and overflowed it with cupcakes, yuppie bread and bagels, all for me as I sat at home alone with her dogs.
I've been pretty bored ... and boring this week and these were highlights. A few things needed to be done this week, by me. One was to clean the house as people should be touring to examine the house, to see if they want to rent it and such. No one came and the house got half cleaned. The other was to fix Dhalia's bike after it (with me) got ran over. I took the bent front wheel, the only part that needed total replacing to every bike shop near my work, no one had the correct size.
The look on some people while I carried this mangled front rim was unexpected.
I think a few people thought I just did this to my tire and was walking
around trying to fix it so I could go home, apparently far far away. I got more
people saying witty things about that rim than I do about my blue hair. One of
these days, I'm going to carry random objects, just to see what people will say.
Show people something slightly out of the ordinary and they give a response. (Note
to self, things to carry around - flaming juggling torches - bottle of lighter
fluid - big box of band aids, , riot helmet, paint buckets of Flourecent colors,
broken TV/computer, huge stuffed animal...)
I gave up looking for a rim and got lunch at the Falafel King. A Falafel is pretty much massed chick Peas that are deep fried, put in a pita with lettuce. get stuff, very Mediteranean/Middle Eastern. I was alone in the line and the biggest, worst English speaking worker saw my bent rim (as everyone did) and told me in broken words, that he had a rim for me and proceeded to get it. I order my falafel and he brought out the rim and went back to finish my order. No one knew what to do, but I walked out with my lunch, my broken rim and a new front tire.
Dhalia should be coming home tomorrow night. I plan to buy her flowers and
ravage her the minute she walks in. I didn't realize how much I missed her until
I slowly stopped making jokes about her personal quirkiness at work and felt mushy
watching two people kiss in a movie on Comedy Central of all places. I am pathetic
as all men are.
For the end of March, its been raining and snowing with slight amounts of sunshine. I've been feeling tired in the mourning, and haven't been able to get up early to go skate and do something constructive. way too much coffee, way too little sleep.
It's nineteen days until I turn twenty and walk into a new decade of my existence. I'm not quite done with the one I'm in at the moment and still have the wonderings and doubts about myself and my future as I did in highschool. I have a really strong urge to travel, but many ties to where I am now, mostly because of money issues. I want to hitchhike to California this summer to visit my brother in Ventura or backpack through Europe - but both these goals seem very far off and idealized for someone that's living off free bagels and fortune cookies and paying rent and loans every month. I'm beginning to write more, which is good, but finding things to write about is difficult. Writing entries (like this one) about normal life seems to be boring for the reader and makes me look very plain and tawdry.
