learn to swing, spell, drive
I wonder if I should take a break from competitive sports, or, competitive anything. I know, I know, I wrote an entry about this already, or something with a similar theme. This week I’ve pissed off at least three people at work, called 911 on a guy who tried to run me off the Woodside 280 on-ramp, and started screaming unsportsmanlike things at a woman at polo who hit my horse on the head with her mallet due to lack of any God-given athletic ability.
Polo is sort of the straw this week that broke the back of stoicism. I’ll admit when I first started playing, I made mistakes like riding into people’s swings that caused my horse to get hit. I’m pretty careful not to do that anymore. Tonight, I was at least ten feet to the right of wonder woman and her swing was so poor she reached clear out to where I was riding, ten feet to her right, and clocked my horse right between the eyes. Then she had the nerve to say I was in the way of her swing. Well lady, maybe if you weren’t flinging your mallet around the top of your head like you’re a cowboy roping a steer or an out of gas helicopter trying vainly to take off, you wouldn’t hit people who are riding within a 10 foot radius of you. “Learn to swing!” I screamed from the saddle. I continued the tauntings, but wonder woman is a wonder all right. She’s completely oblivious to anything anyone says, including the guys she’s supposedly paying all her hard earned cash to teach her how to play polo. When we dismounted after the chukker, she said to one of the other players, “Jessica plays ice hockey and is teaching me how to be aggressive.” I considered hitting her with my mallet right then and there, but in the interest of not speaking to the police twice in one week, I simply walked away.
It’s been that kind of week. My birthday week, no less. Earlier, let’s say Tuesday, I was driving down Woodside road and decided to cut into the long line of left turn traffic, just like I always do when headed to the barn. Mr. Lexus behind me was apparently infuriated by my tactic (I guess he’d been dumb enough to wait in the long line starting three miles back) and decided he’d just get in front of me at the wide part of the on-ramp and then run me off the road. Usually I’m faster than this, but in my complacency, I didn’t notice him coming up on the right and then suddenly swerving in front of me, then hitting the brakes in hopes that I’d rear end him. Well, I didn’t. Instead I nonchalantly pulled out my glasses and my cell phone, hit the gas till we were both going 90 mph down 280, dialed 911, and calmly read his license plate number to the dispatcher. “Yes, he tried to kill me,” I said. I then hung up the phone, took an exit, turned around, and headed to the barn, annoyed that I was late for my trail ride. Luckily, B totally understood when I got there and was not mad at all.
And then there’s work. While I know you should never write about work in your blog, I just can’t let this little gem escape without mention. Today A messaged me and wrote “No one in your organization can spell.” “I’m an excellent speller,” I answered. He said, “Ok, aside from you, no one can spell. Did you see the icon request returned by the graphic designer?” I reopened the HTML document to look at the set of icons he had delivered.
Top 10 high Pretoria icons for [insert misspelled co-worker's name here]
“At least be able to spell your co-workers’ names,” A wrote. “I saw that,” I said. “What I was really wondering is, what’s ‘Pretoria’?” “Priority?” A offered. “How in the world does that spell priority?” I asked. “I have no idea,” A said. I went and looked it up.
Main Entry: Pre·to·ria
Pronunciation: pri-’tOr-E-&, -’tor-
Variant(s): or Tshwa·ne /’chwä-nA/
Usage: geographical name
city, administrative capital of Republic of South Africa & formerly capital of Transvaal population 303,684
I’m still trying to figure out what the administrative capital of the Republic of South Africa has to do with database icons, or if the roughly three-hundred thousand residents of Pretoria share the same opinion as A about the stodginess of said icons.
It’s been the kind of week where I want to beat someone up, Ralphie Parker style, till my mother pulls me off and I burst into tears as she leads me away from the pulp of a person I’ve left behind in the snow. Superstar’s never witnessed such an event, but he predicts the oncoming of it with such accuracy that one can only conclude it’s instinctual self-preservation on his part. “Don’t miss your plane,” he had said to me in Montreal. “Otherwise I’ll get a call from you wailing boo-hoo I missed my plane what am I going to do -” “Yes,” I answered calmly, because that is exactly what would have happened, and it wouldn’t have been satisfactorily remedied until he got me on another flight and bought me an ice cream and hugged me and so on and so forth, so he knows by now it’s usually better if things just go the way they’re planned.
