2004-07-26 - 1:04 p.m.
Better, Somehow (A Wonderful Distraction)
Probably the best weekend I’ve had in quite some time. Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Indiana. Hung out with Cher and Joey Ravioli on Saturday and with Joey on Sunday. It was great. Ate more on Saturday than I had in the past couple of weeks. (Lost six pounds in the past couple of weeks.)
Early Saturday afternoon, I gave Cher a mini-tour of my neighborhood. Showed her a place, known as the Grave, where we’d sometimes hang out as kids and where my all-too-short juvenile delinquency period began. It’s tough to be a juvenile delinquent in a neighborhood where everyone knows your parents or grandparents, so my juvenile delinquency period probably lasted a night or two.
The integration of nature and industrial decay is a beautiful thing—well...barring the many instances of cancer from all the pollution.
Rode bikes to Joey’s place where we sat and talked for a few and then went to the fest. It’s almost the end of July and people were wearing sweaters and jackets because the weather was so cool. Joey and I each saw people that we hadn’t seen in a while, something that he wasn’t looking forward to. Ate, drank, and talked some more and generally had a laid-back, good time. Good friends are a beautiful thing.
Cher had to get home, so we took her back to her car, gave her directions, and headed back for more. He was worried about Cher as she had to go through some not-so-nice areas to get to Lake Shore Drive. Hooked up with Joey’s girl and went back for more food. After we played a few games of Bingo (yeah, a bunch of thirty-somethings playing Bingo on a Saturday night...freaked me out too), Joey gave me a ride home and listened to me ramble on the way there.
Hooked up with Joey again on Sunday morning and hung out all day. Talked, shopped, ate and generally had a good time being away from the madness that my life has become. His father started fixing one of the bikes we’d left in his garage the day before. Met his mother and sister. Ate some ravioli that his ma made. Got to hear his parents speak Italian to each other. Later in the evening, hitched a ride with him and his girl to the north side.
Stopped by the home of my friends S and K, where they made chicken nuggets, and we discussed horrible power tool accidents. I mentioned to S that one of the guys from “This Old House” appears to be missing part of a finger. He told me about people he knows who sawed off parts of their fingers or slashed their arms in unfortunate accidents. He also told me about a guy who had part of his thumb smashed and how they fixed it.
“It looks like the foreskin of a penis,” he said. “Dey pulled the skin on his thumb forward. It just hangs dere now like this—bloooop. [He showed how it hangs.] After dat, da guys started calling him ‘Wiener finger’ ‘cause it looks like a dick.”
Received a very encouraging e-mail from one of my cousins who heard about my upcoming lay-off. He says,
“Congratulations on being given the opportunity of getting something better. If worse comes to worse, go into the government. It can provide a stable base from which to launch yourself into something better.”
This is a great way of looking at it. I hope he’s correct.
