Hankie ‘Codias

My mouth has *such* a history of getting me into trouble; it is why I try to stay silent.  And one of these days my hankie code jokes are going to end up with my being pummelled or arrested, or something.

I did not get to do a damn bit of shopping today; I was held up at Eviljob and finally had to leave when Mom kept pestering me to meet her.  We bought her laptop in record time (for Mummers, that is:  over two hours plus lunch), and by then I simply *had* to drive back home and take a nap, because I only slept for about an hour last night (I just could not fall asleep), and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open.  

So I came home—how I made it I do not know; I was *literally* falling asleep at the wheel—and fell asleep on my couch without even taking my shoes off.  I set the alarm on my phone to have enough time to spruce up before meeting The Horde, but I lapsed into a total coma (the kind where you wake up and you are freezing cold almost regardless of the temperature ‘cos your body temp dropped, or something) and slept through about forty-five minutes extra.  

So I had no time to shower or dress or anything; somehow something made it through to my brain and I awoke, jumped up, fed the cats, and bolted.

And then came right back home ten minutes later ‘cos I had forgotten presents.  Idiot.

I did not exchange presents with Son-Friend over the weekend ‘cos I was angry at him and really not up to seeing him.  But even though I could not meet up with Chrissy today to get a second trap, I gave Son-Friend the one I have, and *I* will use the second one from Chrissy.  And I grabbed his presents, G-F’s presents, He&She’s presents, and all of that.  

So I get to Ye Olde Tavern of Triv and sit.  And wait.  And wait some more.  After I had been there about twenty minutes, I phoned Son-Friend.  He is usually never late, and He&She are never EVER late.  

I dunno…maybe the nekkid people they usually deal with don’t like to wait, or something.  I can understand that; likely you get colder faster when you’re nekkid and waiting, and probably want things to get moving so you can put your robe and penguin slippers back on ASAP.

Son-Friend answers with a “Where in the hell *are* you?”  Crap.  On the drive over there, I *had* been going through a little debate as to whether or not we were meeting there, but I had been listening to something and had not wanted to turn it down to make a call.  Pfft.  We are still playing trivia, but we are playing *live* trivia across town, hosted by a couple who The Horde Plus Ancodia all played as a team under up until about a year and a half ago-ish.  If that was mentioned to me, I fricking forgot, or half-heard it, whichever.  Phoo.

Okay, so I floored it.  This is (I found out tonight, ‘cos She has kept in touch with a lot of our old group, including the hosts, where I haven’t) held regularly on a night that conflicts with *my* favourite bar game (Tuesdays), which is why I’d not known about it, or ever gone.  Way Back When, this couple (let’s call them Fred and Ginger) used to host it for money on Saturday nights.  When they disbanded that, I just changed my schedule and mostly forgot about it.  I like and am more accustomed to my regular bar trivia, anyway; I just wish I had time to play it more often.  

He does mostly the hosting, and she does mostly the score-keeping.  He runs a pretty good game, although he is a little bit of a peckerhead about certain points that I think are a bit more nebulous than he does, but hey…it’s not like I am volunteering to host, and rules have to be made somewhere.  Plus I love teasing Fred; he is very easy to fluster, and that is just damn fun.  

The place I am racing to is a restaurant that really wants with all its heart to be a tavern-cum-steakhouse.  But it isn’t; it is just a restaurant and to my taste, the food could be better and the seats more comfortable, but whatever.  Nearby there is a performing arts school-type-thing (No, Coco!  Don’t go with the bad man!), and I am truthfully figuring that if some of those people are there then our team is fairly screwed, ‘cos they generally seem to be heavy on the pop-culture savvy stuff, and Fred typically throws enough of that in that our team can potentially bite it.  I think the dork does it on purpose.  

Okay, okay…I know he does it to keep attention and appeal to those who do watch 200 times the television that I do, but…grr.    And of course, the place looks to have quite a few of the nearby school’s students.  Sigh.  We should have gone to play bar triv.  I just hope they don’t break out into “Hot Lunch”.  My nerves cannot take it.  

By the time I arrived, technically I was ten minutes late but that was ok because Fred and Ginger had not shown yet, so we ordered and traded prezzies.  Son-Friend actually gave me several very thoughtful things, the most thoughtful being a replacement brake light for my trunk; a few months ago, I FUBAR’d mine by trying to put Armour All and then Rain-X on it to keep some scratches I saw from getting worse.  I did not know at the time, but that makes it get all dried out and cracky and look like shit, and it has really been bugging the hell out of me for the past few months.  So Son-Friend gave a new one to me, and also bought yellow wax, or whatever it is you put on them to preserve them like I was trying to do with the Armour All and Rain-X.

Oh, as if I was born knowing these things.

And I also was given an *adorable* hematite necklace with a penguin.  :-)  And some other things.  Since our table was smallish, I, being a resourceful and non-image-conscious tech-type was cramming the wrapping paper into the back pocket of my jeans (unless it was too big) to have somewhere to put it.  Then Fred came over up to hand us our answer sheets, and in his little annoyingly annoying way pointed at my butt and asked, “And what’s that supposed to mean?”  

Now I believe he was leading up to making a joke about me having a cheat sheet or something; that is his style, but like I said—I love to one-up and fluster.  Well, at least certain types.  Probably it was all the deviate influences I had at the table, but I didn’t even mull it over for a second; “It means that I’m down for some presents,” I said, leering, “think you would like to get on top of that for me?”

And I tell you, the look on his face—even though I hadn’t expected him to get it—was priceless.  And I thought some of the people at our table were going to wet themselves, or something.  

Although She had to explain it to Son-Friend.  And he still didn’t get it.  She cracked me up when she finally dismissed him with the instructions to promise to not put anything in his back pocket so that he didn’t give the wrong impression.

Sigh.  There is just no helping some people.  

So, basking in the “ok, you got me; I cannot think of anything to come back at you with” look I was getting, I asked another question that was meant out of honest curiosity in a changing-the-subject sense, and I guess embarrassed him, or made him think I was coming on to him, or something.  We have a few people who are pretty famous for getting drunk and being, errr…noticed, but one of them is NOT me.  If anything, most people probably think I am the stand-offish one in the group.  So I then felt bad.  I know…I suck.  

And so the game began.  It actually was fun, even though I was responsible (at least somewhat) for us not winning.  If I had insisted on my Riddick Bowe answer, we would have been first.  Pfft.  But I actually do not know a damn thing about boxing, and was simply guessing.  Not that anyone else I was playing with knows anything about boxing, either, but I deferred to their answer (Myke Tyson) all the same, because when I am guessing, I am honest about the fact that I am guessing.  I also try to differentiate between educated guesses, and flat-out scientific wild-assed guesses.  My Riddick Bowe answer was somewhere in-between the two, so I did not insinuate that I knew for certain and no one liked it, so we went with Tyson.  Pfft.  This is why we suck as a team, and always shall.  

Well, that and because He&She moved.  

And because Coco, Bruno, and Leroy won’t come play at our table.  Bitches.

:-)