Here's the Dish ;-)

Argh!  :-)  I overslept and missed PHC locally, and so I am listening to it online.  I have to admit, when I do cave and get satellite radio, one of the deciding factors is going to be getting PHC.  So I guess that means Sirius, but XM has other shows I like.  Pfft.  I guess I have time to figure it out.  :-)

This morning, I got up and re-heated pizza for breakfast, and Meg barricaded herself in my spare bathroom for over an hour and then made Cheerios for herself…and Squooshable.  Yes, Squoosh likes Cheerios.  Go figure.  He likes them dry or with milk.  :-)  

Last weekend, I started getting a bunch of calls on my cell from a number I did not recognise.  I don’t ignore unknown callers, but I also will not drop everything if I am in the middle of something to pick up and talk to them because when I have in the past, a few times it has been sales calls and other annoying things.  What is doubly-irritating is that it is always places like my bank (wanting to sell me additional financial services crap), or my automotive insurance company (wanting to sell their additional tag-on services)—it is never some sleazeball wanting to sell me a timeshare condo, or anything I can easily identify and hang up on, it is some place that I have a relationship with, so it takes even longer to wade through what they are saying to determine that they are just calling to sell me shit.  

Butsoanyway.

When I get around to checking my voice mail (I do not rush on that either, if I do not know who you are), it was this guy I will call Cleve, calling from his cell phone (which is why I did not recognise the number).  Cleve is a little bit of a weirdo, albeit a highly intelligent weirdo; he has a few…issues, particularly in the social realm.  He started off as a former school cohort of Meg’s (when she first met him, he was obsessively stalking a girl-friend of Meg’s), then went into a type of financial advising, and Meg pushed me over to him when I had to set up some things like a Roth and stuff.  I appreciated it, and he is tons of help in that area, but then Cleve decided that we were friends, I guess…not that I (or Meg) knew anything about it.  He really has issues to where this is par for Cleve.  We have been over to his place quite a few times, in theory for (I assume) me to befriend his wife when he first got her, which sorta-kinda happened; then he started phoning me, and the first few times that it wasn’t wife-or-business-related, I figured that it was because my cell number is an easy one to remember (it seems to stick in one’s brain, I think; I get many people who phone me to get in touch with others just because they remembered my number without having to look—or worse, phone me to ask if *I* have another person’s number so that they don’t have to look); if Meg was with me when he called, I handed the phone to her; if she wasn’t, I would tell him that I would have her call him back.  

After a while, I finally figured out that he wanted to talk to me.  I am ok with that, ‘cos (1) it’s my cell; I can be doing other things and talk at the same time; (2) other people phone me when they are bored also, most notably my lawn guy; (3) Cleve is married (weirdly) and so I know that there is no ulterior motive.  

I say weirdly (and this is deserving of some explanation) because Cleve’s wife is an intentionally-acquired F.S.U. girl, and I am not saying that she is a Seminole.  Got it?  

Okay, then.  Let’s proceed.

So I accidentally answered on (I think) Tuesday, and it turns out that Cleve wants Meg, Me, and another couple whom I have not ever mentioned to join him and his wife Lyudmila at a New Year’s Eve party.  Meg was with me, so I handed her the phone; she knows the other couple better, anyway.  She said that the couple could not make it, ‘cos they were out of state for NYE, but the two of us might possibly be interested…until we heard the price of this party:  $100 (+ tax) ticket, $10 to park, and so on, and so on.  

Forget it.  I am just too cheap!  And so is Meg, thank god.  We said no.  Plus, I just made a large purchase that I hadn’t mentioned to Meg (or anyone) which was a totally self-indulgent thing, and by the time you factor in all of the expenses related to Cleve’s party-thing, that was just too much to up and decide to do.  Meg would rather save her money to blow it on gambling, and if I am going to do something like that, I am *not* going to do it at the spur of the moment; I am going to plan it out, look forward to it, and get the most out of it.  Plus, I could have gone to a few private-home parties for free that I declined.  So no.  

Plus, I do not think that I could take Cleve for that long.  He has a very sound financial/mathematical mind, but he yells when he talks (this has become *such* a pet peeve of mine!), and when he gets excited about something it comes off more as maniacal zeal, which is hard to take for more than an hour or so.  He is just very socially inept.  I don’t know how Lyudmila does it.  

Well, yes I do, but that is a story for another day.  

So we begged off, and then Saturday he phones Meg (not me, for once!) to ask if she will drive over to this party place and purchase two tickets for another couple he is bringing in from out of town (he does not live here), because La Place has stopped pre-selling tickets over the phone or online.  Then Meg or I can meet him when he gets into town, and give him the tickets and he will pay her back.

Well, good lord.  Sure.  Fine.  Fine.  So Meg drives out there and pays around $250 for the two tickets (with taxes and parking fees) and I go run some errands, visit some people, and feed some cats (Mehitabel).  :-)  Oh—and meet Son-Friend to determine that the Siamese he had caught in the trap was not Baby, a Siamese he acquired (allegedly) for me that he decided to keep and then let run off a year ago.  Son-Friend thinks that all Siamese look alike, I guess.  It wasn’t Baby, though.  

I am trying to pare down the details, ‘cos it has recently occurred to me that I could write a book on just about every person I know.  Plus PHC is over, and I have to get ready to go eat NYD chilli with Amelia.

Most of my shit accomplished, I meet up with Meg again and she is steaming.  She is pissed off over the money she was asked to spend, and she is incensed that Cleve would call her to be a step-n-fetchit, but seems to prefer to phone me over Meg for idle chat, which to her mind only emphasises a slight from another friend (who is a newer mother, and I think is starting to feel Baby Isolation and is grumpily resentful about it, but that is yet another story).  Plus, Cleve only mentioned about fifty-seven times to Meg (per Meg) that he was very sad that I wasn’t going, then when Meg offered to meet him for lunch later in the week, he accepted, but only if *I* would come.  And in the middle of emotion-dumping upon me, Meg roars, “I just wanted to ask him, ‘what—do you have some fucking crush on my sister, or something?!?’”

Ai yi yi…  And she has to mention this AS WE ARE DRIVING TO GIVE THEM THE TICKETS!  Augh.  

I asked Meg if she would just let me off around the corner from where we were meeting for the ticket hand-off, ‘cos now I was feeling really uncomfortable.  I am thick as a brick about a lot of things (this sort of thing being one of them), but now I have to admit that Meg’s is one possible explanation that would explain an awful lot, and it really leaves me…feeling weird.  To say the least.  One thing that is certainly explains is why I am getting called so much now that Lyudmila has sort-of moved out (this is SUCH a long story; it is ostensibly because she cannot find her normal employment in their city, but seeing as how it is occurring at a very…ironic time in the course of a relationship such as this, I am not sure that I buy that story completely, which is another reason why Lyudmila’s not numbered amongst my semi-friends, ‘cos I predicted this to Meg years ago, and do not want any part of it).  But Meg wouldn’t drop me off because we were practically there already and she would have had to turn around to drop me off unseen, and so we pulled in and I just decided to stay in the car.  Sigh.  

Since the other couple they were with was waiting also, we only had about thirty seconds of pleasantry-exchange then we all left.  And I did not get out and do the huggy-thing, ‘cos I would have been feeling too self-conscious.  Even though it was only a few minutes, it seemed like *ages*.  Lyudmila seemed happy to see me, and I her as well, and I wished her a Happy New Year (and Cleve—I wasn’t not talking to him, or anything), but I would not get out of the car to go hug Cleve.  Erm…not right now.  Perhaps later.  

Meg and I got to talk about it more fully as we left; I told her that I am so *very* predicting that Cleve is going to end up doing what the husband of one of Lyudmila’s friends has done; Lyudmila’s friend Irina is the *third* non-Seminole wife this dork has had.  Yes—I said THIRD.  And he is very old, and Irina is around 28-31, same age range as Lyudmila.  And Irina has a kid that she left over there.  Augh.  All this drama…not on NYE!!  Nooooo!

Meg didn’t know about Irina’s whole story (which Lyudmila told me but not Meg, I guess), so I filled her in (I think she has a hard time understanding Lyudmila; maybe Lyudmila *did* tell her).  She does not agree with me with respect to Cleve, but I would bet money on it.  

So that was mostly my New Years Eve day.  And with PHC over (and now TAL also), I have to go to Amelia’s for chilli.  Amelia has been eager to try out some recipe, and wants company on NYD.  Plus she has a new kitten who I want to meet.  :-)  At least Amelia is drama-free.  

Happy 2006!