Happy Birthday, Sidney Crosby

A little meander from our regularly- scheduled summer programming, since I forgot to turn off my Kberry alarm and I have been up since 5:30 -- ON A SATURDAY.

I could have rolled over and gone back to sleep, which was my intention, but since the Mad Kitty doesn't know from weekends, and the alarm woke her, too, all hope of two more hours until the sun in my eyes forced me out of bed was abandoned. (It's a good thing I never had kids, because ACS would have been a regular visitor due to my tendency to shove little animals aside, saying fretfully, "Get the fuck. OFF!")

Anyhoo -- perusing the usual round of hockey news to see the latest on the New Jersey Devils' "Yeah, we totally think Ilya Kovalchuk will be playing until he's 60" drama, er, contract negotiations, I was reminded that today is Sidney Crosby's birthday.

Yes, my favorite NHL capitaine has reached the ripe and gooey old age of 23.

Let's see, when I was 23, what had I accomplished? I had just moved to New York City, I was working for that horrible Austrian woman in that office full of horrible Germans, but I was on the verge of launching my illustrious advertising-magazine publishing-advertising-internet-environmental printing-advertising career. I was living in that "Bosom Buddy" women's residence over on the West Side and was about to make a whopping $22K a year, which for entry-level advertising in 1988 was a LOT.

And at 23, just what has this little skate-wearing pisher done? Well, let's see: one of the most-watched young players from the time he was about 13 (out on youtube there's a CBC profile of him from when he was 14 -- same boring and phlegmatic Sid, just with a higher voice and probably no pubic hair), first-round draft pick by a team owned by one of the legends of hockey, an $8 million a year contract with said team, the youngest team captain to ever lift the Stanley Cup (at age 21). And then scored the Gold Medal-winning goal for his country, IN his country 8 months later.  Nahh, he's not so hot.

Well, okay, he's fucking awesome. I'll give him that.

Yeah, I'd say we're just about on the same trajectory.

So happy birthday, Sid!

Hockey fact to make you feel smart: Born on 8/7/87, wears number 87. Duh. Oh, and 18,087 seats in the new, LEED-approved Consol Center, aka The House That Sidney (and Mario) Built.

And I made it all the way to the end of this post without once mentioning... those lips. It just didn't seem right to talk about those lips in the same paragraph as a 14-year-old, though I did of course talk about pubic hair.

The Countdown Continues

62 Days till hockey season.  That's our franchise, right there, folks.

Portland! I'm In Portland!

The weather here is so perfect that it reminds me of Colorado, and I again ask myself, "You left Breckenridge WHY?"

We came back from lunch and a trip to the International Rose Test Garden (so tranquil and beautiful), and as I dropped my handbag in the client lounge, we heard a loud bang, everything dimmed for a second, and then all we heard was machinery cycling down -- air conditioning units, and printing presses, and the power went out in parts of the plant.

It's so strange to be in a printing plant that is totally silent; usually you aren't aware of the constant, almost subterranean rumble of large pieces of machinery running. Printing presses are hungry things. Inactive presses do nothing but sit there depreciating and losing money.

So we were dead in the water for about three hours, during which my rep drove me around different parts of Portland.  Everyone has rose bushes in their yards, leading me to marvel, "Gosh, everyone has rose bushes in their yards. They should call this the City of Roses."  Long pause.  "Ummmm, they DO."  Okay, so maybe I'm not so bright sometimes.

I like Portland. I could see myself living here, actually, working some okay job to keep body and soul together and bicycling to work and doing artistic and outdoorsy things.

I'll post pics of the funny hotel room, with its mishmash of patterns and leopard and zebra robes, another time.

You know, this morning while I was subjugating myself to the terrorism of the patriarchy, er, I mean being victimized by the beauty industrial complex, er, I mean plucking my eyebrows in that super-magnifying mirror that hotels have in the bathroom (and I always pluck my eyebrows in hotels, because that mirror lets you see all those ghosty little hairs you just don't catch at home), I noticed that there was a phone next to the toilet.

I ask you, does anyone need a telephone next to the toilet?  Is there a fear that if someone calls you might  miss something important?  Is it an ego thing, in which people have to feel, "I am so important that I need to talk to someone while I am taking a dump?" Why would someone want to subject anyone else, even telephonically, to the indignity of splashes and other sounds that would accompany them being on the toilet? And even if they don't hear you actually evacuating your bowels or bladder, they will still hear you flush, and don't you think they would think, ew, that person was talking to me while they were on the toilet? Are there people who actually have telephones next to their toilets in their homes?

Has anyone ever actually used the telephone next to the toilet, or is it something that some random hotel planner long ago got kickbacks for from the phone company and suddenly everyone decided they should do it?

Honestly.

Can Someone Please Tell Me Where I Am?

Clearly I am not cut out for Ryan Bingham's life...

New York to LA to New York to Chicago to Portland to New York in 8 business days.

I am feeling rootless and a little confused.  Well, more confused than usual, anyway.

Car service driver totally flaked on me this morning, so I had to call another car service at 4:30 to get me to LaGarbage. I wasn't happy to begin my day this way.

Getting ready to bolt Chicago and head off to Portland now...never been there, so I'm excited to check it out.  I'm meeting Roni's old friend Curtis, (brilliant blues-harp player, inspiration for the Blues Brothers, sang with Santana) for a coffee when I get there. Maybe sitting with a musician for a little bit will align my time zones and circadians  and chakras and all that fun stuff.

I just checked my work email to find that the Heir Apparent has scheduled a mandatory 8:30 meeting for Thursday morning, the day after I get back.

I may just kill myself.

That ... Asshole

This photo has nothing to do with anything I've written in this post. I just thought it looked kind of trippy, and yes, I was pretty wasted when I took it.  Sort of a Vegas palm tree on acid thing happening here.

You know,  from a mental health perspective, I think it represents real progress when you go from making excuses for someone and thinking of him as "The Man Who Broke My Heart (tm)," to remembering, "Oh, yeah, dude treated me like shit," and thinking of him as, "That Scared Peepants Pissant Little Asshole."  Though TSPPLA makes quite an Eastern-European mouthful of an acronym, doesn't it?

I was just thinking about That....Asshole's last, blowhard-ey email to me and what goes through my mind now is, wow, good riddance to bad rubbish.  Whereas I 'm sure he hit the "send" button and said to himself, as people of his ilk are wont to do, "There! I really showed HER."  Woooo, big tough guy emailer.  Stupid ineffectual putz fucker.  May his dick dry up and drop off from non-use during the rest of his sad, shitty, sexless marriage.

So, let's not call him anything any more, except maybe the pile of warm, runny, bullshit I stepped into in April and May and spent the month of June hosing off the bottom of my good shoes.

Besides, he was short, and he walked funny.