A budding citizen journalist browsing Flickr for pictures of gamers stumbled upon a picture of me looking fat and holding a copy of Gears of War that was taken for my now-failed 365 Project.
I imagine my bloated visage just screamed “representative gamer” and thus she chose to include me in her article on the Chinese government’s restriction on online gambling.
I’m famous!
Where I Am: In my finally-finished kitchen
What I’m Doing: Assuming the camera is pointing somewhere it isn’t, looking like a hunched-over douche as a result
Well, the kitchen is finished. For now. That’s the new sink I’m posing next to.
We’ve got the appliances and cookware from the bridal shower (which happened back in…April? May?) out of the closet and on the counter or stored away. The only things left to do is install a backsplash and buy new appliances, both of which are a long way off. I feel like I’ve typed this before. If I ran out of things to talk about in a month, I should just quit.
Where I Am: In my Living Room
What I’m Doing: Standing in front of a television show so unfamiliar it’s bordering on disturbing
It’s been a month since I started this project and I haven’t learned all that many lessons for all the mistakes I’ve made. You would think I would take several photos over the course of a day to prevent a true depiction of my fatness being forced upon the world.
It’s not just the camera though. I’ve gone from cheating on my diet to completely neglecting it. I could give a million excuses, some of them valid (I had a non-functioning kitchen for a month), some of them flights of fancy (for every pound I lose, an angel dies) but it really just boils down to this: food is delicious.
This Friday I’m heading to Walt Disney World and returning again the following weekend. This is the event that Lisa and I have been pointing to as the last hurrah of our porky indulgence.
We’ll see.
Where I Am: My Office
What I’m Doing: Living in a world of filth
That patch of filth has been on my office wall for as long as I can remember. It’s never really bothered me until I took a picture of it. I mean, I’m looking at it as I type this. It’s just a couple of scuff marks where someone leaned on the wall and put their shoe against it. It’s really nothing.
Look at the photo, though. It’s so distracting. It looks as if I’m just surrounded by filth and squallor. Which isn’t really that much of an exaggeration, it’s just more uncomfortable when put into words and photographed.
Where I Am: Driving god knows where
What I’m Doing: Driving god knows where
A third of any given work day finds me driving. Maybe more. Some days it’s very definitely more, as this day found me all over Westchester.
It was fairly uneventful, otherwise.
I guess there will be a few of these.
Where I Am: In my living room, on my couch
What I’m Doing: Suffering a puppy headbutt
The fact that I get my hair cut specifically to be spiked up in the front does not lend itself well to those days when I fail to spike it. Bowser rightfully attacks me for daring to pose for a photo with him while sporting an ill-defined spitcurl.
Saturday counted as Lisa’s day. Since our goals for the weekend are incredibly disparate (mine: relax and enjoy myself, hers: work interminably toward ill-defined goals that can never be achieved) we divide the days up, one each. On each person’s day the other person is supposed to do whatever the other person wants. This never works. On Lisa’s days, I cannot muster the unbridled enthusiasm for painting the unseen underside of cabinets that she demands (although, to be fair, I do paint the underside of the cabinets under protest). On my days, Lisa goes out of her way to do everything she can to make me miserable. If I want to watch a movie, there will be complaints about the movie, followed by a request that she start every noisy appliance in the house. If she protests the movie so much that she refuses to watch it (which is strictly against the rules of the day division policy) she will march around the house noisily, turning on lights and walking in front of the screen barking that her reasons for doing so are so vital that the world’s fate hangs in the balance. This goes doubly so if I decide to play a videogame on my day, since she will want to discuss all manners of things concerning the earth and the heavens. This is usually complimented by the exclamation "We never get to do what *I* want on *my* day!" a statement so ironic that irony is currently under consideration for a redefinition by the International Forum on Irony meeting in Oslo.
This particular Lisa’s Day the task at hand was reorganizationo of the kitchen. The thing is virtually complete with the exception of the purchasing and installation of new appliances and the installation of our new faucet. There’s a couple of projects, such as a new tile backsplash, that will be done in the future, but for some reason have not been ascribed the apocalyptic immediacy of the other kitchen projects. The apocalyptic immediacy was reserved for the task at hand. Suggesting that the project may take two days was enough to incite domestic violence. That the project actually did take two days was no grounds for an apology or at least an admission of wrongdoing.
Lisa insists that the above makes her look unjustifiably crazy. I explained that she is unjustifiably crazy, but I love her despite that.
She does not accept that answer.
Where I Am: In my car, by the Botanical Gardens in the Bronx
What I’m Doing: Trying out new fat person myspace poses
I was mistaken.
I believe that this is the first appearance of my cool rockin’ sunglasses. There they are.
The day after my mother’s surgery was marked by a scramble to supply her with comforts she will never take advantage of. I bought her a DVD player along with a bunch of DVDs: The Office Season 1, Fawlty Towers, the complete Blackadder, Red Dwarf I-IV, the complete Bottom, The Wire season 1, The Bourne Identity, Oldboy, Kill Bill Vol. 1 and quite a few others that I can’t remember.
They watched two episodes of Bottom, hated them, and haven’t watched anything since. I’d rather they had the option to ignore them than nothing to ignore.
Where I Am: In the Post Anaesthesia Care Unit
What I’m Doing: Annoying my freshly-operated-upon Mother
My mother’s surgery went flawlessly. The only hitches throughout the day were due to the insane internal logic of hospitals:
1) There will always be more patients than beds. There will always be more beds than rooms.
This is nothing new. No matter what the situation, there has always been a minimum one-to-two hour wait to be admitted and get your bed. Once you’ve got your bed and they’re done poking and prodding you, there’s a minimum of a four hour wait to get a room.
2) Time is so relative it’s useless.
My mother was scheduled to go in at 9 am and come out at 12 pm. She went in at 10 am (not bad) and we got out first update as to what had gone on at 2:15 pm. We got to see her at 3:30 and were told she would have a room by 4:30 pm. She got her room at 8:30 pm. All this on top of the fact her doctor told her she would be out of the hospital within three hours of her operation. They told her when she was checked in she’d be staying over at least one night, possibly two.
3) Nothing is ever, simple ever and/or They should’ve caught this sooner.
My mother is 53 years old. She’s had several operations over the years. They noticed this time, for the first time, that she has a heart murmur. Seven of her 13 siblings have heart murmurs, so presumably this has been checked for in her lifetime (this is almost a certainty as when it was announced that she had one, my grandmother told them it was impossible as she was one of the ones that didn’t, and proceeded to list the ones that did as proof).
4) Is this unpleasant enough?
For some insane reason, the televisions (which are in every room, ready and waiting) are a pay service. The phones I understand, it does cost the hospital money each time you use them. The televisions do not. In order to get the television to work, the onscreen instructions say you’ve got to call extension 8200. Extension 8200 just rings until you give up. The operator says that the system does this a lot and you just have to keep trying. Trying until you give up. The nurse says that I shouldn’t be calling extension 8200, I should be getting a prepaid card from a machine down the hall in the room that smells like pee. I do. In order to use that card, I have to call extension 8200. My mom decided to read instead.
I imagine that hospitals like this one run entirely on the fact that if people turn out alright, they’re just happy it’s over with and if they don’t, they’re dead so they got away with it.
Where I Am: In my newly-countered kitchen
What I’m Doing: Pretending the fact I haven’t showered yet won’t show in the picture
The kitchen is near completion. The new Corian (a composite material coveted more than diamond by my wife) countertops have been installed. There’s a few pics up in the 365 Side Pics group.
This leaves the installation of the new faucet, the purchasing of new appliances and the reorganization of everything in the cabinets. It didn’t seem daunting until I typed it out like that.
That raised piece is the matching cutting board they gave us. I wonder how sanitary its usage is.
I installed a new light fixture. I’m absolutely terrified of working with electricity so it took me a good 45 minutes to do. Everything I touched was handled with the care usually reserved for surgery on premature newborns. I kept imagining myself lying dead on the floor with burnt fingertips and pants full of excrement.
More pics of the Kitchen after the jump.
Where I Am: Zanarro’s
What I’m Doing: Dining out with the family before my mother’s surgery, Taking yet another crappy photograph without noticing
On Thursday, my mother’s going to have her insides removed. Since she’ll be unable to eat all Wednesday, we decided to take her out to dinner. That’s my grandmother behind my head, my mother behind her, with my father and sister Patti on the right. Lisa’s behind my giant head and Mikey and Joey are just out of frame. My sister Lizzie couldn’t make it because of “homework” and her boyfriend Rory didn’t go because it would make her look worse. Patti’s boyfriend Steve didn’t come because he was too busy researching ways to look more emo.
At the back of the room there’s a vault. There’s no reason for there to be a vault, as this building was built fairly recently and this restaurant was its first occupant. I can only imagine this was thought to add to the decor and some backstory that was going to be on the menu about the Zanarro family secret recipe for pomodoro sauce being sought after by unsavory types and kept behind lock and key.
In the vault was a couple doing it. I think perhaps they believed that their table inside the vault offered some measure of privacy beyond that of us commoners outside it. The fact that the vault door was wide open and they were visible to all, even more than those out in the open because they were sitting in a stupid vault, did not seem to bother them in the least as they went about their copulation. More power to them.
