And Seven Whisky Sours Later...

So I'm breaking a rule, and writing from work. I don't normally do this, but I really don't want to talk about this with Susan around.

Doesn't sound good, does it? Well, it goes with the headache I had yesterday. Here's what happened:

Saturday night, Susan and I went out with her old college friend, Kara, and her husband, Craig. I don't know why I agreed to it. Maybe because Susan was driving. She and Kara stayed sober. Me and Craig each drank alone. It was quite the group dynamic.

Now, I don't like either Kara or Craig, and the combination of the two is even worse. I understand why Susan wants to stand by her friend (they've known each other for 5 years), but honestly, I have never in my life seen two people less suited for each other.

You see, Kara's not too bright. She's married to the guy who knocked her up in her senior of college, and she's working at a low-level phone call center job with lousy pay and no future, and her husband treats her like a piece of meat. About two years ago, they bought a house, and then he went out of state to a graduate program. Leaving her with a toddler and new house, and all of the daycare bills. I will grant that he did take care of the mortgage for her.

But still, those two are painful to watch, and it's even more painful to watch Susan banter with her about all the fun things they did in college, and to see how poor Kara has nothing left in her life but stories of the glory days. And Susan just feeds into it.

That lasted through my first 3 whisky sours, and then we left the bar to go to dinner. We went to a seafood place that's not my favorite, but they have a good bar, and we ordered dinner. And then the night got seriously bad.

After watching Craig knock down every one of Kara's jokes, and remind her how he'd gotten a post-grad degree just to get the promotion at his work (he's in finance; I don't know the details), and then remind her how the house decisions are his, my sixth whisky sour took advantage of his bathroom trip to ask Kara why she stays with him.

I have never seen Susan look quite so angry. Kara just stared at her plate. When Craig came back, there wasn't much conversation. "Whisky sour number seven, please, and no, I'm not driving. I might be walking home."

When Susan and I got home, there was a conversation. I won't go into the details, but I slept on the couch that night. And last night.

So, did I insult Kara, and Susan, as badly as she says I did? Is it insulting to speak the truth? Or is this just another of those cases where the truth is in the eye of the beholder?

Something Funny

I love good parodies. I was websurfing the other day, and found something I wanted to share. It's a site full of good movie parodies, called How it Should have Ended.

Of course, most of their videos are available on YouTube (really, what isn't?), so I'll post my favorite: The common sense, alternate ending to Star Wars:



And that's all. Doesn't it just fit the characters, though?

I'm outta here now. Susan and I have a double date with an old friend of hers, and I might need a few extra whisky sours to get through it. I can't stand this particular friend, but sometimes that doesn't matter, and you just have to put up with people you don't like.

I think that our ability to hold off on strangling those who definitely deserve it is the glue that holds society together.

Cheap Dating 101

So over the weekend, Susan and I went out on a cheap date. This is something we try to do regularly, just because. We're lucky that we have a good income, and can afford flashy restaurants and expensive nightclubs, but we also like to see how much fun we can have without actually spending much money, too.

So we went to Ann Arbor, to the U of M Exhibit Museum of Natural History. It's a small museum, but I think it's a good one, if you like fossils, geology, and taxidermy. You don't see too many large wildlife collections stuffed and mounted anymore, like the Exhibit Museum has. It's a display style that went out with the 19th Century.

The Hall of Evolution has some spectacular dinosaurs, including a velociraptor. They also have quite a few mastodon skeletons and trackways. Those last were found in Michigan, so let's here it for the home team!

All in all, it was a fun day. We drove out together, wandered through the museum hand in hand, and then went out to dinner. "Cheap dating" comes in because the museum doesn't charge admission. Rather, they have a donation bin in the front entryway, although they have been increasing their "suggested donation" over the years....

Dinner was at Seva, a vegetarian restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor. I had a humungous burrito. Susan had a squash. Everything was delicious. We decided not to count dinner as part of the Cheap Date, because we wanted to acutally keep it a cheap date.

And that was that. I wanted to include maps of where these places are, but Blogger isn't letting me post pictures. Blah. Maybe later.

The New Job

I haven't gotten online in a while (how's that for obvious!), but I'm back. Mostly, I just haven't had the time to blog; the new job has taken a big chunk out of my schedule, and, honestly, Susan takes most of what's left. Fortunately, I like them both.

I'm working at an ad agency now, as the head of the copywriting department. Most of our clients are in the auto industry or the computer industry, and I get to write and edit (or read and edit what my two junior colleagues have written) press releases, newspaper clippings, industry white papers, magazine "special advertising secion" inserts, and sometimes even radio scripts. I actually leave the radio commercials to Leah, since I suck at that sort of thing. I tend to take the white papers and ad inserts for myself.

I've never been a department head before, and it's sort of fun, having flunkies. I don't call 'em that, and they've both been at the company longer than me, although I freelanced for the firm over the last couple of years, and watched both of them arrive. They're good at what they do, and I respect them. Mostly I just divvy up the work load, hand out assignments, and spend a lot of time editing. Or in meetings, like the rest of the department heads.

Anyway, this lil blog isn't about my work, it's about my life, mostly. So....

What to say? I get up, I go to work, I come home. Evenings, Susan and I complain about our work, weekends we go out on cheap dates around town. It's getting colder, so we're starting to stay in more. Our apartment has a fireplace, and we both like hot chocolate. At the end of the month, we're going cross-state for a few days, to visit one of my old college friends and her husband, but we're not sure exactly when. It'll depend on when their baby comes. It should be a good weekend.

And what else.... Susan's mom keeps bugging us to get married. She doesn't say much to me (one of the few things that she and I agree on is our deep, intense, and mutual dislike), but Susan tells me about their ... conversations on the subject. It isn't pretty. Good thing I chose Susan, and not her mother, hey?

I once thought about spending a lot of time blogging news, but really, the news is just depressing. My life might not be that exciting, but at least it's real, and it doesn't get you crying in your coffee when read about it. Still, there is a story I saw that I want to mention:

I don't know if you (what you? I don't even know if I get that many readers!) follow anything about the Arab-Israeli issues, but Susan is Jewish, and so it's become sort of important to me. I never really looked into this too closely before I met her, but I always felt that the Palestinians got a raw deal all around, from everyone. That, and the Israelis didn't really look like they were ever trying to get out of the Palestinians' lives.

I'm starting to change my mind about things.

In the last few years, we saw the Palestinians reject an offer from Israel to help them build a state, and launch what can only be called a terrorist war. They elected more terrorists to run their internal affairs, and when Israel pulled its army and people out of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians increased the terrorism from that territory. Now the USA is trying to get both sides to conference next month.

I'm not sure I see the point to it, because of this:

First, you can read here about Syria refusing to attend the conference:

Syrian President Bashar Assad all but ruled out his country's participation in a U.S.-sponsored international peace conference on the Middle East, suggesting in an interview published Thursday that the meeting has no chance for success. [my emphasis]

And, you can read here about the Iranians calling on all Muslims not simply boycott the conference:

Iran's supreme leader called on Muslim countries to boycott a U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace conference, saying Saturday that the international meeting would hurt the Palestinians.

Now, maybe I'm naive, but it seems to me that having someone around to mediate between parties who can't even talk to each other would only be a good thing.... And that peace, or at least a cessation of violence, would benefit the Palestinians.... And that Syria is blind, since negotiations between Israel, and Egypt and Jordan produced viable peace agreements....

So is it just me, or is the Syrian action looking like an excuse for continued conflict, and the Iranian action looking like a religious provocation?

Well, on that note, I'm going to leave you now. It's something to think about, though, isn't it?

And one more thing: If you read this, and you're an Arab, or an Israeli, or a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Zionist, or a Palestinian, let me know what you think. That's what comments are for, right?