Shouzer

Uh huh. That’s right. I went to play laser tag last weekend, and it was awesome. I don’t think I’ve played since about junior high. I used to go to that place in the mall in Carbondale for you local kids. Then they shut it down, and I was pretty bummed. Luckily for me, I live in a big city…er suburb now, and they loads of cool stuff like that.

One of my meetup groups went last Saturday, and I kinda screwed it up. I bought three game. Everyone else bought 1 game of laser tag, 1 game of go karts, and 1 game of put-put golf. I considered switching, but honestly, the go karts looked incredibly lame. And who plays put-put golf? Boring. Some kinds souls switched their go karts and played the 2nd game with me, but the third game, I was all alone.

By all alone, I mean I was the only one from our group. There were 4-5 massive parties with loads of kids there. So yeah, I ended up playing the third game with a bunch of kids at birthday parties. There were a few adult supervisors in there, but wow, I felt creepy. I was running around this dark room with a bunch of little kids, and to make matters worse, I was wearing a long, black coat. It was cold outside, and there was no where to put it in the place. I had to keep it on. I actually had a really good time though. Once we started playing, I didn’t think about the creepiness, and it was all good. And since Barney did it, I think I can feel ok about myself.

You know you’ve missed these……

Last weekend, I went camping again with the outdoors meetup group. We went down to Hocking Hills Ohio to do a zip line tour and some hiking, and we stayed in a pretty sweet cabin. Once again, I didn’t know any of the 5 girls or 1 guy that were going. (Nice ratio btw).

The trip started out really well. I carpooled down to Ohio after work on Friday with two girls, and we had a pleasant conversation as well as a nice dinner at Chipotle. As a side note, I am loving the prevalence of higher class fast food places like Chipotle, Panera, Noodles and co., Zoup, etc. that they have around here. Those places dominate McDonalds in every way imaginable for like $2 more.

Saturday morning, the goodness continued. We went out to the zip line tour, which was sweet. It was basically just a series of zip lines through the trees. Zip lines are fun. We chatted as a group on the platforms between the zip lines, met a fun-loving couple who was also doing the zip lining that day, and I hit on the tour guide a little bit. Overall, a really nice morning.

But then, something bad happened. The other guy on the trip left. He had tickets to a show in Detroit and had to head home. I think it’s fair to say that anyone who knows me or reads this blog even a little bit knows that I did not handle this situation well. I kinda turned into the shy, quiet guy. I just didn’t know what to say for pretty much the rest of the trip.

A few of the girls joked that I was living the dream. I think that dream involves pajamas, pillow fights, a steamy trip to the hot tub, or some practice kissing. Instead, I got a conversation about menopause. I took that opportunity to take a long trip to the bathroom. Ladies, just for your reference, talking about woman’s issues is your version of sexual harassment. We just don’t want to hear that.

Honestly, I’ve played it up a little bit for comedic value. It wasn’t really that bad. I was pretty shy and quiet, but I didn’t feel that uncomfortable most of the time. We had a few really nice hikes, and I cooked a chicken pot pie for dinner on Saturday that was word-taking. It was so good that the chatter of 5 women was silenced for a few minutes while they savored the goodness. It wasn’t as fun as my first camping trip with this group, but I had a pretty good time.

On Saturday night, I woke up around 3am. There were some people coming back to the apartment complex, presumably from a night out partying. They weren’t really being that loud. It’s possible that I just woke up naturally.

At that same time, I heard some strange noises in my apartment. I have blinds that hang vertically on all of my windows, and all of the windows were open. It sounded like the wind was blowing the blinds downstairs, but there was no wind upstairs. That freaked me out a bit. I went down there, and the blinds were not moving. I couldn’t find what was making the noise. I went back to bed, figuring the noise had some association with the people coming back to the apartment.

This unexplainable noise honestly bothered me a fair bit. Enough so that it disturbed my dreams and sleep for the rest of the night. I wouldn’t say I was scared, but maybe that’s me just trying to sound manly.

The next morning, I woke up, and I moved my sleep train to the couch. I was lying there watching TV and dozing, when I heard the freaky noise again. I looked over, and I saw a squirrel on my porch, clawing at the screen door. He was trying to get into my apartment.

He ran around the porch for a while, generally looking pretty scared and frantic, and then he tried to claw his way in again, both the the glass door and the screen door. I thought he was stuck there. Maybe he had fallen off an overhanging branch, and he couldn’t get back down to the ground. After a few minutes though, he ran down the vertical column, escaping the imprisonment of my balcony. I was relieved because I didn’t want to call animal control over a menacing squirrel that gave me nightmares.

I went with my family to a Cardinals game tonight up in St. Louis. I’d say overall, it was a pretty good time even though the Mets won 11-1.

The game was rain delayed, so we stopped for dinner on the way, and showed up in the 2nd inning. When we got there, there was a lady in one of our seats. No big deal because she helped us clean the water off, and the seats on the other side were empty. She was down there to talk to her friends in the row behind. This became a problem for me.

She spent the next 5 inning turned around talking directly into my ear, and she was loud, very loud. I mean, she was almost shouting. I debated with myself on how to handle this situation. She was in one of our seats so it was within my rights to tell her to get out, but I’m non-confrontational. I’m scared to get into a fight with someone I don’t know.

As my previous stories here have demonstrated, I maintain a level of cool and social savvy in every imaginable situation. Never do I let things become awkward or uncomfortable. I am proud to say that I handled this with the same such grace and dignity. I turned to my sister and told her a story.

I went to a movie with mom and dad up in Detroit a few weeks ago. There was this couple sitting next to us that would not shut up through the entire movie. They were talking in their normal voices the whole time. Now, they weren’t doing anything as annoying as talking to their friends in the row behind us, but still, I had to tell them to shut up.

This didn’t really take care of things, so I pushed it a step further. I complained quite loudly that I was getting a headache from the ringing in my ears. That took care of it. The people behind us gathered that I was fed-up and suggested they switch seats with the other group in their party. I guess they had two sets of seats. It was a great day for the cause of passive aggressive, indirect confrontation. I’d like to say I’m proud of my accomplishment, but I’m actually a little ashamed of it. Mostly, because I still have no idea how I should have handled that situation.

My girlfriend and I decided to keep our relationship secret for quite a while. For me, I hate dealing with all the gossipy, stupid conversations like, “Ohhhhhh, you like . That’s so cute…” I just don’t like people prying into my personal life for the most part. To make matters worse, we didn’t know each other well when we started dating. I was worried things wouldn’t work out, and then I’d have to deal with the conversations about why it didn’t work. For her, there is a bit of a stigma for Thai women dating farangs (foreigners). Office romances in general just create awkwardness in general so it seemed like a good idea to keep it low key. Boy was I wrong.

About a month in, things were going pretty smoothly, and it didn’t matter too much to either of us if people found out. Her boss found out that she had a new boyfriend, but she wouldn’t tell him who. He wanted to meet this man so he promised to buy lunch for her, me, and the other girls in the finance department. I agreed to this. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.

As it happens, her boss won the lottery, and he wanted to use this money to purchase the lunch. Once again, it didn’t seem like a big deal. One of the girls from the HR department begged her way into the trip as well. So the girlfriend and the HR girl pick me up, and we head off to the restaurant.

When we walk into the restaurant, we are all equally shocked to find that her boss had invited a whole bunch of extra people. In addition to the finance department and the HR girl, he had also brought along another member of upper management and about half a dozen TTs. Two of these TTs taught with me regularly. Of these people, 1 girl from finance and the HR girl were the only people that knew I was the new boyfriend. I think most of the people there didn’t even realize that my new girlfriend was bringing a date to this lunch. Did I mention I was the only white person there, and more importantly, the only one who didn’t speak Thai? I think you can guess the language of the conversation.

To say that I drew attention is a bit of an understatement. The TTs spent most of the meal trying not to stare. I actually caught one of my regulars staring at me, completely slack-jawed. I never actually had someone stare at me with her jaw on the floor, and I’ll be honest, it was a bit disconcerting. My regular TTs did little to help me out. I was expecting one of them to throw me a life line and start up a conversation. Not so much.

To make matters worse for me, I never really became comfortable dining in a formal Thai setting. The rules are essentially the same, but I obsess over these things more than I really should. I spent a lot of meal worrying that I about etiquette.

I later confronted my TTs about their lack of conversation during the meal. They claimed that they were too shocked to speak. All four of my TTs ganged up on me the day after, and we had the aforementioned dreaded gossipy conversation. It wasn’t actually that bad since we’d already been dating for a month. So on the upside, I manage to avoid that awkwardness.

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to try going to a meetup group in an attempt to make some new friends in the Detroit area. I went to my first meetup last night in my movie lovers club. There were about 4 people RSVPed yes to go to this movie, and I figured if I couldn’t find them, I could just watch the movie.

I left a little late, and the drive took a bit longer than I expected. I was driving entirely too fast trying to make it there on time. I finally get to this theater, and I can’t find a parking spot. I found a parking garage, and I had to drive to the very top of it to get a spot. I ran down 5 flights of stairs, practically pushing over this woman carrying her baby girl. I get there about 5 minutes after the scheduled meeting time, and there is no one at the meeting spot. I ran into the theater, and it was completely empty. I thought that I was late and everyone was already in there. Yeah, turns out a rushed for nothing.

So I walked back out to the meeting spot, and I saw a guy moving towards it. I went up and introduced myself. He was from the meetup group, and he seemed like a nice guy. I made small talk, and he gradually came out of his shell a bit. The guy basically didn’t stop talking after that. I realized about 10 minutes later that no one else was coming, and I was essentially on a blind man date with a 40ish librarian that I met on the internet. I pretty much freaked out at this point and shut down. I wasn’t interested enough in what this guy was saying to ask follow up questions, and I tend to close down when I am uncomfortable. This only led to make the situation more uncomfortable.

I was pretty relieved when the movie started. It was a French movie which was sold as a thriller. It was not thrilling, but it was interesting. I would say I enjoyed it. I calmed down a bit during the movie. I chatted with the dude for a bit after the show, and then we took off. Yeah, that was weird.

I’m not really sure if I should give this thing another chance. The movie club is having a BBQ type thing at some guy’s house this weekend. I’m definitely not going to risk doing that at someone’s house. I am in another meetup group that goes out to eat at international restaurants. They had 19 people RSVPed for their last meetup. I think I might try going to one of those. Surely more than one person will show up. That doesn’t mean it won’t be really weird though….