Personal

I’ll Cry If I Want To

June 6, 2005 by krisis

I have assisted in the throwing of many parties, but I’ve only actually thrown three in my own living space that actually qualified as “parties” and not just gatherings or hangings out.

Of the first we dare not speak (not anymore, anyway). At the second, someone told me she loved me, and someone passed out in my stall shower (different someones; obviously a success). And, at the third I holed up in my room, jamming loudly with a rotating slate of collaborators, oblivious to the rest of the party (my ideal evening).

We are throwing my fourth party this Friday: a housewarming slash graduation slash after-party to The Last Ever (Really, This Time We Mean It) Live Performance by the 2004-05 TrebleMakers, at 7pm in Stein Auditorium.

Or, more accurately, Elise is throwing an after-party, and I am project managing the after-party.

Basically, this means I suck all the fun of party-planning out of party-planning by charting all food by meat and dairy content, calculating the low/mid/high number of total guests, using a spreadsheet to track all ingredient purchases, and creating a gantt chart to illustrate why we need to buy another slotted serving spoon.

My project management prowess seemed to be lost on the party-thrower.

Aside from the estimated twelve hours of cooking I have to do between now and Friday, in my capacity as project manager I am most concerned about how many people will show up. Though our house is spacious, it only is equipped with seating for six – seven if I bring in my lawn chair from outside.

In the depressing attendance basement of my low/mid/high equation (affirmed via PERT), only eight people are coming, which would make for a rousing game of musical chairs for the guests while Elise and I frantically proffered an alarming array of appetizers and 60+ servings of three possible main courses.

However, on the “our friends like us enough to park in South Philly just to eat food and be adults for three hours on a Friday night” side of the list (high), there are *fifty-four* people. Not exactly enough for the neighbors to call the cops, just enough to eat all of our food, and more-than-enough to pack our house like a sold out GA show.

As potentially alarming as the potential fifty-four guests are from a planning and entertainment standpoint, they are no where near as alarming as the potential eight. As a result, I have resorted to attempting to force my friends to confirm or deny their attendance (no maybes, damnit!) by sheer force of will. As that isn’t working out so well, I am in fact living minute to minute by the fickle whims of Evite. When two of our key couples declined the invite this morning due to prior plans I went into red alert.

“E,” my morning bulletin began, “M&S and G&W can no longer attend, and N&G converted to maybe. Lo/Med/Hi has taken an across the board hit due to variance from our presupposition of attendance.” The grim reality set forth in the stark light of Monday morning, I concluded with the real conundrum: “H’or Deurves situation may require re-eval; also, in danger of three-cheese chicken roll up overrun of half-dozen or more. Alter menu, or invite more guests? Pls advise, tx! – P”

And, I haven’t even started planning the music yet.

Space Invaders, and Other Causes of Insomnia

June 2, 2005 by krisis

There were a lot of reasons I hardly slept in high school. One was perhaps that I lived my entire life in my bedroom, so had trouble differentiating the living part from the sleeping part. The other were the dogs.

Back in SouthWest Philadelphia, the dogs would bark all night. I think all of the neighbors to the left of my bedroom had at least one chained in their yard (though to the right they had chickens, and rabbits, in that order).

Between my canine-based insomnia and my general feared of sharp-toothed animals, I was less than thrilled to find that our new neighbors (to the right, this time) kept a pair of frightening pit-bull/Cerberus blends who had just had a cute-but-still-threatening puppy.

The growls are inhuman. Actually, un-canine. They sound like nothing I’ve ever heard out of a dog before. They are low, vibrating my window fixtures. They are the kind of noise I’d expect a dog to make when cornered by a larger animal. They are, in fact, the sort of growls I would expect a dog to make when encountering something with an unfamiliar and threatening scent. They are a growl from science fiction, and every time I heard it I half expect the roof of my house to be ripped back like the top of a can to reveal giant whirring saucers in the sky, beaming harsh red lights down on houses and trees and people, and they would all spontaneously burst into flame.

Except, I have looked out into the yard, and there is nothing in the yard but the dogs. Merrily drinking from a bucket, running in circles, and growling growls that should be preceding an alien invasion.

Bless Me

June 1, 2005 by krisis

As i sneezed my eleventh consecutive sneeze on the 57 bus this morning, i wondered why i am so intent on suffering this allergic martyrdom.

Yes, there are a scant nine pills left in the same little orange bottle i’ve been refilling with allergy medication since 2000. One is a renegade percocet still in hiding after my tonsillectomy, so in actuality there are only four days of relief to be found beneath the cap, inscribed “push down and turn.”

Why there are only eight pills is the question. I have medical insurance, as i work for a company which excels at selling medical insurance. I have a long, well-documented history at sneezing at just about anything than can be found in the outside world. So, why no refill this year?

No refill because i haven’t actually used the medical insurance, which is costing me plenty per year to have its plastic calling card simply fill space in my wallet. I brought myself to go to the dentist, but the doctor… something just doesn’t sit right about it. Nothing’s wrong with me, other than the sneezing. But every attempted appointment, whether canceled by me or the mysterious “them” of every general practice i’ve tried calling, always has my the specter of my mother’s control looming over it – how she would have me go to a doctor only after she had seen him for something herself, and how she would come right into the room with me – right into the damn paper-gown room, because she was a nurse and it was all clinical and she needed to know what was going on.

Well, in my intense desire to not let her know what’s going on i have developed an altogether aversion to the doctors, any doctors, even doctors she has never met. And so in my futile quarter-life attempt to take back the meager amount of privacy and control i’ve never had until now, i’ve just doomed myself to sneezy commutes and snuffly workgroup meetings.

Ah, the price of independence, perceived and actual.

Mom would never let me go a day without allergy medication.