Let’s start where I left off: Christmas. For the most part it went well. My sister found out we bought her the iPod when my mom decided to check her voice mail messages over the speaker phone: “Uh yeah… I was calling to see if you still had that iPod for sale?”

I made the suggestion to my sister that maybe it wasn’t so wise to buy herself a $400 gift, which she put on her wish list, a week before Christmas. She pretty much reacted the way I expected she would. “What? How was I supposed to know? Don’t get mad at me!”

I tried explaining that I wasn’t mad at her; I was just disappointed that we didn’t have the chance to give her the gift. The real gift was in making her happy and the satisfaction that comes with doing something nice for someone you love. She responded, “I’m happy. I got it for myself. No big deal.”

I don’t know if my point was completely lost on her, but I’m over it now.

Anyway, I ended up staying at Mom’s the entire time my sister was in town. After the fourth straight day, however, I was ready to shoot myself, and more than ready to head home.

I got back to my apartment to find half of it pretty much submerged under water. I wondered if it had anything to do with the email I sent my landlord two weeks before about the sound of running water in the walls? Nah, that couldn’t be it.

Well, it turned out that a pipe had burst behind the wall and the water was coming back into the apartment from underneath the floor, flooding the bathroom, the water heater closet, the computer room and the kitchen. The wet carpet in the computer room smelled like every trace of pet piss, body odor, and cigarette smoke trapped in the fibers had been released. Luckily, the damage wasn’t bad enough to warrant new carpet. God forbid I come out ahead.

So, for the first week or so of the New Year, I had much of my apartment stacked up in my living room. I had plumbers and, water damage restoration guys, and dry wall repairmen coming in every day. They had to knock out huge holes in the walls, through the shower, and in the floor just to find the leak. They fixed leak and patched up all but 2 of the holes in the wall. I guess they wanted to keep a few open just in case any rats wanted to get in out of the cold this winter. That was nice of them. Oh… and just a few days ago, I got a phone call from the landlord responding to my email about the sound of running water behind the wall. Way to keep on top of things.

New subject:

I’m going to CA again next week to do another Real Estate seminar. It was supposed to be my first event as an actual Agent, but my replacement failed his Real Estate exam. Dumb ass! So I don’t officially stop doing my current job until he gets his license and can replace me. Oh well. For those of you who don’t keep up, I was promoted from Transaction Coordinator to Sales Agent.

By the way, if any of you fuckers want to invest in Commercial Real Estate let me know. I could like sell you some good shit, and you could like make lots of money n’ stuff. We specialize in four-plex residential rental property or something like that. I’ll hook you up, dogs!

That’s all I have for now. Apologies to those whom I have ignored these past few weeks. Between the flood, my extreme laziness, and my lack of concern… well I’m sure you understand.

Until next time.

I want you to close your eyes. I want you to imagine yourself at a Lobster Festival. What do you see? Do you see countless numbers of vendors offering up a cornucopia of delicious lobster recipes? Do you see yourself wanting to try just one more variety of lobster before declaring yourself officially stuffed? Can you feel yourself being overwhelmed by the sights and smells of great food and good music and people enjoying life? Now I want you to picture the opposite of all that. Welcome to the Tempe Lobster Festival.

Tempe Town Lake seems to be in a constant state of construction, so there was no convenient parking nearby. Instead they directed me over to a dirt lot nearly a mile away from the event, and charged me $5 to park. I then had to walk all the way back where they charged me an additional $10 to gain admission to the festival. As I passed through the entrance, I was corralled through a narrow, closed off labyrinth lined with carnival “games of skill” and various vendors where I was accosted by carnies and sales people all goading me step right up to shoot the basketball, knock down the pins, buy the timeshare, and sign up for the credit card.

After being forced to say “no thank you” repeatedly to a dozen or so persistent jackasses, I finally arrived at a wide open fairground, only to find out that there was one, yes ONLY ONE vendor selling lobster. One vendor, serving one lobster per person, one way. Boiled. They charged $18 for a small lobster and $40 for a large. If you didn’t intend on spending that much all at once on a lobster dinner or thought that you might browse around and steal some free samples, guess what? No lobster for you!

Sure I could have had a $6 cheese crisp on an 8″ tortilla, or even an $8 “Colossal” Hot Dog, which I could have garnished over by the condiment table which was completely surrounded by bees, but I wasn’t at the The Tempe Cheese Crisp and Hot Dog Festival. I was at the Lobster Festival, and I was going to eat some lobster God damn it!!!. I had been thinking about lobster all week and my brain and body were fully prepared to experience delicious lobsterrific bliss. No feelings of disappointment nor a $40 price tag was going to stop me from having it!

So, I made my way over to the lobster ticket booth and bought a voucher for the large lobster dinner. While I was waiting on line to get my food, I noticed a crowd of people all gathering around this one area. I left my place in line to check it out, and realized they had set up a lobster prep area, where, after you received your lobster, you could go and have some guys take the shell off for you. I also happened to noticed that there were flies everywhere. They were swarming all over the cutting boards, on the lobsters, around the garbage cans, and on the people waiting in line. Finally, I noticed one of the prep guys sweating heavily while he was working over a plate of lobster. Sweat was dripping off his face and onto the food and the cutting board. Although he was wearing gloves, he used his gloved hands to wipe the sweat from his brow and chin, and then went right back to touching the lobster.

I had seen enough.

I didn’t even bother getting back in line, and headed straight for the exit. I stopped a middle aged couple on my way out to give them my $40 lobster coupon. It took longer for me to convince them that I wasn’t trying to scam them or have a threesome with them than it did for me to get the ticket in the first place. Eventually, they reluctantly took the ticket. Bunch of ingrates!

The day wasn’t all bad. I ended up having a very nice lunch across the street at Monti’s La Casa Vieja, which, in Spanish, means Fuck the Lobster Festival.

After lunch, I hopped, skipped, and jumped over to Wells Fargo Arena to watch my beautiful Lady Sun Devils kick the uterus out of Missouri. They’re now 2-0 after beating #16 Vanderbilt the night before. Yes, I know!!! I’m very excited too!!!

So childrens… that’s all for me today. I hope you all had fun weekends. Until next time.

$284 for a brand new Sony DSC-P200! Out the door! Tax, title, and license! Beat THAT suckers!!!

(If you really do beat it, I don’t want to know. )

So after I went to the bank to clear up the camera mess, I stopped by my local gym and got a membership. I even signed up for a trainer (talk about sucker.) The good news is everyone there seemed pretty nice, although people always seem to be nice when you’re giving them your money. My trainer is this short, kinda wiry, very muscular black dude named Antonio. He seems to have a rather guarded, stoic, and even mean disposition, and doesn’t talk very much. When I told him I’d like to concentrate on losing fat, and getting toned he said, “Yeah you needs to get rid of dem man titties!”

HE’S PERFECT!!!

Antonio and I seem to have nothing in common so I don’t have to worry about feeling obligated to have idle chit chat about sports n’ shit while I’m working out PLUS he seems to be just as disgusted with my body as I am so I can probably count on him to work me hard. I start my training on Wednesday, and to celebrate I went out and bought some sausage and peppers for dinner and a banana cream pie and ice cream for dessert. Yummy!

For those of you who are less interested in my quest to get fit, don’t worry I won’t turn my blog into a complete “Look at me, I’m losing weight, I’m so great!” sort of thing. God knows there aren’t a lot of things more annoying than a chubby person going on and on about what they eat, and how they exercise. Chances are I’m going to give up, so it’ll just be less embarrassing if I don’t spend the next few months preaching the fitness gospel to you.

So silently, to yourselves, wish me luck and I’ll hit you with an update soon.

P.S. If any of you live in Mesa and you want to join a gym, go see Katherine at Fitness Works on McKellips. I get no kickback, she just took really good care of me today and I always appreciate good service.