Sorry, sorry, sorry...

  Yes, I know I haven't posted anything since the Kenny Loggins story back in January.  Life has been in-freaking-SANE, including a lot of stuff I can't talk about here.  Suffice to say it all falls under the category of "long story".  I have a couple different stories for here though, at least one of which I know I said I'd tell here, and since I'm home alone and bored and no one wants to go to Tony Roma's (I would fucking SHANK someone for ribs right now) I'll put a couple stories up here for you guys.

  The first one, I know I mentioned I would tell here sometime,  the story of how it came to be raining in my bathroom, and the surreal moments that followed.


  Let's go back in time to a hot summer Friday night that started out with me having no plans, as per usual (see  "Getting out of my chair avoidance") when I started texting back and forth with my friend Tara.  Turned out she had lost her job for a really, REALLY stupid reason, and was understandably upset about it.  I told her that instead of just hopping some random Greyhound and leaving town out of sheer frustration (she's crazy neurotic and I totally wouldn't put it past her to do this) I told her to just come over, we'd get drunk and do whatever drunk people do.  Usually something stupid.  Also keep in mind that, at this point, I had not been home long enough to eat anything, and it was like 30 degrees Celcius outside. 

  So, she comes over, we walk to the liquor store (or as she would say, the licker store) and get our booze and go back to my apartment.  I was drinking vodka that I was mixing with lemonade, which was probably my first mistake.  I find lemonade to be both tasty and very thirst-quenching, and because of the heat, I was drinking a lot of it, totally not stopping to consider that I had mixed alcohol with this particular lemonade and should probably slow down.  I was thirsty as hell and obviously not thinking.  So I got much drunker than I normally do, since I'm actually not much of a drinker, in a big hurry.  It's worth reiterating that at this point, I also had not eaten since around noon.  Then I made what was probably my second mistake.  I got stoned.

  Okay, as an aside here.  I've been a pot smoker for...uhh...I don't know...probably about nine years now.  Mostly, I smoke weed because if I don't, I don't sleep.  I have a really hard time mentally shutting down enough to relax and fall asleep, and even if I can get that far, I am a light sleeper and wake easily.  I will not get a prescription for any kind of sleep aid like Ambien, because people die from that.  Nytol doesn't work anymore unless I take literally SIX TIMES the recommended maximum dose, and there's no possible way that's even remotely healthy for me.  If you still disapprove of my smoking weed to sleep, come talk to me about it again after you've gone a week without sleeping and you're hearing and seeing shit that isn't really there.  Smoking weed around other people, and for simple recreational purposes, is actually pretty unusual for me.  Back to the story.

  So, at this point, I'm stoned, I'm drunk, my friend is drunk and probably partially stoned just from the haze I generated (I do not mess around when it comes to weed.  The stuff I get through my room mate would probably put a lightweight in a coma) when my miniature pinscher, Dog (yes, that was her name) comes skittering into the living room.  That in itself was nothing unusual, but the weird thing was that she was all wet.  Dog HATED water, and I couldn't think of anywhere she could have been in the apartment where she would have gotten wet, other than maybe falling into the water bowl.  So I got up and sort of swayed my way down the hall Dog had come from to see what the hell was going on.

  Have you ever seen it rain indoors?  I have, actually more than once.  It's a weird experience when you're sober, at the best of times, never mind when you're crosseyed drunk and stoned to boot.  I was bewildered and reacting very slowly.  I'm pretty sure it was Tara who suggested we go upstairs and see if the apartment above me was also having water issues.  She also had the presence of mind to call my landlord, using the phone number that was on a notice I had stuck to my fridge, probably for that exact reason.  So, we go upstairs and I knock on the door.  There's no answer right at first, then Tara heard the sounds of a little kid.  So we reasoned that either my neighbours were indeed home, or they had simply abandoned their child in a flooding apartment.  Either way, louder knocking was in order.  So I knocked again, much louder, and finally the female half of the couple answers the door.  They're Asian, and do not speak much English.  I ask her if they have water running, or pipes leaking, or anything that could be causing my bathroom-monsoon.  She tries a couple times to explain, but the language barrier is just too much to overcome, so she gestures for me to come inside.

  Their apartment was laid out exactly the same as mine, so when I came around the corner away from the front door, I was fully aware that the bath tub's manual shutoffs were behind a panel in the wall to my right.  I was totally expecting to see that.  What I was NOT expecting to see, however, was the sight of the male half of this couple, up to his elbows in the panel, water spraying everywhere while he was wearing nothing but tighty-whities.  Or, ginch, if you prefer.  Yes, I know that was an unnecessary clarification.  I just like the word "ginch".  Also, "gonch".

  It such a surreal moment; maybe you had to be there.  Water was spraying everywhere, my weird neighbour was in his gonch, (haha, gonch)  it was raining in my bathroom, the world was swaying back and forth, and both halves of Neighbour Couple were talking to each other in a language I couldn't even remotely hope to understand.  I knew that if I did not get out of that apartment ASAP, I was going to go into a fit of hysterical laughter, because for some reason, that's often how I handle tension.  Plus, I was still pretty stoned, and in that state, EVERYTHING is hilarious.

  The whole cause of this was my neighbour thinking he could fix something to do with the shutoffs, and he damaged the valve inside somehow so that it would no longer close.  The pressure made the pipe break somewhere and because he had already wrecked the valve, there was no way for him to shut the water off.  Now, I'm a reasonably intelligent person, and fairly capable of fixing small things.  I can install weather stripping, change a light bulb, wire speakers, prep a room for painting then paint it, install drywall,  and fix computers and cars with a fair degree of competence, thanks to my parents (my father in particular) for making sure I could do simple fixes on my own.  Even if it's something I've never done before, I can usually figure things out.  However, that being said, the two things I NEVER mess with are electrical and plumbing.  My room mate is a plumber and I've learned a lot just from watching him, but I still wouldn't take on anything more complicated than plungering a toilet, because I don't know what the shit I'm doing and when plumbing (or electrical) goes wrong, it goes wrong BADLY.  If my neighbour had had even a modicum of common sense, he would have either called a plumber or the landlord.  But no.  Instead he created a rain storm in my bathroom.

And let me tell you, the image of him in his soaking wet ginch (hehehe, ginch) was burned into my retinas for a long, LONG time.  The only really sad part about it came along a couple years later, when he tweaked out and murdered his wife.  I'm now really, REALLY glad I didn't point and laugh when I saw his undies.

Do Not Take His Name In Vain!

Before I can properly tell this story, I need to refer you to this post:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/12/year-kenny-loggins-ruined-christmas.html

from one of my favourite blogs, Allie Brosh's  Hyperbole and A Half.  I honestly almost peed myself the first time I read it, and I passed it along to several friends, one of whom was my cousin Rae, who thought it was just as hilarious as I did.

Fast forward to Christmas day and the family dinner at my parents' house.  I had had a LOT of wine, and since I rarely drink, it hit me hard.  Also, since I don't drive, I was forced to hitch a ride back into the city (my parents live in an outlying suburb of the city I live in) with Rae and her husband in his giant pedo-van, which thankfully was big enough to carry all the stuff I'd gotten for Christmas.  To make things easier to carry, and so we could do it all in one trip, I had stuck several smaller gifts into a large gift back that had come holding the talking plushy bacon that Rae had given me for Christmas.  Maybe someday I'll post pics of my substantial collection of bacon-related things.  Anyway, I digress.

We loaded the large gift bag, a big box containing large standing heater, a box holding an electric blanket and one other thing into the back of the van.  The drive home was uneventful, but when we got there and Rae and I started unloading my stuff, things started to come undone, so to speak.

One of the handles on the gift bag I was carrying tore off, so I resorted to dragging it through the snow and up to the sidewalk.  Meanwhile, several paces ahead of me, Rae was having her own difficulties as the handle on the heater box ripped and she nearly dropped it.  I managed to drag the gift bag a few more steps before it got caught on something and I kind of lurched, nearly falling over it.  Did I mention I had had a lot to drink?  Yeah.  Rae was stone cold sober, since she had other plans for later in the evening, but you'd have never known it by the way we were both acting.  Even I'd have bet we were both shitfaced.

When I nearly fell, instead of cursing or saying pretty much anything that a normal person would have said in such circumstances, I decided instead to call upon Allie's God of Ruined Christmases.  "KENNY LOGGINS!!" I hollered furiously up to the sky, rather like Steve Carell screaming, "KELLY CLARKSON!!" when he was getting his chest waxed in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin".  Then Rae and I both collapsed into hysterical laughter.

We just sat on the sidewalk, surrounded by my stuff, laughing and laughing and unable to get up.  Just as I started to pull myself together, I imagined my neighbours inside the apartment building, doing their own peaceful Christmas night things, when all of a sudden the name "Kenny Loggins" bellowed into the air rent the still, winter night air.  For some stupid drunken reason, this struck me as even more funny and I only managed to make it a few steps closer to Rae and the door before I started cracking up again.  I can only imagine what my neighbours must have thought.

We managed to make it into the vestibule, where we sat for awhile, catching our breath and trying to pull ourselves together before tackling the last massive challenge before us:  stairs.  Somehow we made it, and I kept snickering and giggling to myself the whole way wondering what Rae's husband must have thought, sitting in the van in the middle of my unplowed, starlit street watching his wife and her insane cousin sitting on the sidewalk, laughing like loons after screaming something unintelligible about Kenny Loggins.

Ahh, Christmas.