when i first started at my current job, a lot of the code i was working on was written by a company in india that we outsourced work to. it was awful, awful code. like, incredible, in a way, because they did things that were so stupid i didn’t even know they were possible. it’s slow, it’s buggy, it’s prone to failure, and that’s why the first few months were so freaking awful for me – every weekend was fixing this shitty code, this vavni (that was the company name) code that blew up at the slightest input that these indian asshats didn’t consider.

so their american contacts were actually in the office with us, which is why we started using them in the first place. and beyond the fact that their indian cohorts wrote terrible, terrible code, we knew them for their food – awful combinations of indian food that made the common hallway smell like a third-world country. we knew they all bought shitty tiffin lunches from cheap places near their homes because they were all single men who didn’t know how to cook like mom and now were at the mercy of some indian lady in a strip mall somewhere, but that didn’t change the fact that they stunk up the office and we hated it.

(a tiffin lunch is basically a complete indian meal – 4 dishes, roti, etc, in a metal tiffin container that is really f’n cheap. basically old indian women make them after they don’t have kids to feed in the house anymore but still want to make food as if they do, and guys who just moved from india and don’t have women to cook for them consume this stuff in droves. my parents have asked me to get tiffin meals a few times, but given all this, i have passed. it’s not that food isn’t good, though i’m sure it wouldn’t meet my standard of “did my mom make it?”, but instead it just seems too sad.)

they moved out a few months back. their sticker is off the door. we stopped working with them. their name is the equivalent of shit.

which is why, in the last 2 weeks, when the toilets became unusable, their name came up time and again. “someone vavni code’d the toilets”

which means they (in one example) apparently crouched above the toilet seat, put no cover on the seat (there are plenty of covers in these stalls) and sprayed diarrhea all over the seat, and then didn’t flush, or at least clogged the toilet so bad that it wouldn’t flush.

there are two sit down toilets and 2 urinals in the men’s room. they have killed the plumbing, whoever ‘they’ are, to the sit down toilets, and now the entire hallway, instead of smelling like a tiffin lunch, smells like shit, to the point where we miss the tiffin lunches.

i share this story not to make you all think of this disgusting situation in my office, but to state once, clearly, in the open, that no, it is not ok to do this to communal toilets, and if you have ever done anything like this to a communal toilet, the reason better not have been less than a medical emergency.

yesterday i bought new brown shoes. my new go-to, in between black shoes with a suit and sneakers with everything else. completely bland and un-newsworthy, except for the fact that these are the first new brown shoes i’ve bought in over 11 years.

these shoes replace the brown shoes i bought when i started 10th grade in cleveland.

i remember going to the mall with my dad to get the shoes these are replacing. i remember talking to the salesman who i had seen around before and i had seen help my dad before. i remember the way my dad looked at me when i shoved the shoes on without pulling out the back properly. i remember the way he sheepishly told the salesman “, kids” (that comma is no typo, friend). i remember the excitement of wearing brown shoes and starting private school and living in a new city where i knew no one. wait, not excitement, dread. terrifying dread.

and here we are, just over 11 years later, and i’m over a year into california and i work for the goddamn death star and i know only a few more people than i knew 11 years ago but i am going to marry one of them. and the year starts with a 2.

happy new year.

i haven’t had any red meat in a while.  but sunday, i had the perfect opportunity.

currently my red meat situation is thus: zach entered the pact with me at sundance, but he fell out a while ago and paid me $100 for the delight of not having to deal with it anymore.  however, right as zach failed, chad entered, mostly because i challenged that he couldn’t do it (rather than for the reasons i am doing it, which he found compelling but not quite compelling enough).  and since then, in april, chad has been going strong and i have as well.

sunday i decided to get a  sandwich.  i showered and got ready and drove over to the town and country shopping center at el camino and embarcadero.  that’s the thing about california, even the yuppie strip malls sound exotic.  i wanted to go to the village cheese house, but it was closed on sundays (dumb!).  so i went over to the mayfield bakery & cafe and i went to their bakery section and i asked for sandwiches.  jen and i had been before, and they had ‘run out’ of sandwiches in the bakery section and asked us to go sit for a full meal, so i asked them if they still had any sandwiches.  the word choice was weird, because the lady there informed me that they served to-go premade sandwiches at the bar in the cafe so i should go over there.  i left the bakery section, wondering what she thought about my choice of using the word ‘still’, and went over to the cafe’s bar.

on a sunday, around 1pm, the mayfield cafe’s bar was disappointingly busy

i asked the bartender what sandwiches they had.  he told me chicken salad, paused, turned and opened the mini-fridge behind him, peeked into a sandwich, and said “and also turkey”.  i thought for a second about how i always eat turkey sandwiches and chicken salad sounded exotic, like where i was, and that i don’t know if i’ve ever really had a chicken salad sandwich, and predictably proclaimed that “i’ll have the chicken salad”.

as i got into my car, i noticed a strange smell, familiar yet unexpected.  as i pulled out of the town and country parking lot and on to embarcadero road, i peered in to my sandwich.  as i waited for the red light to change so i could turn on to el camino, i realized that yes, those were giant chunks of bacon, thickly cut, on my chicken salad sandwich.

the thoughts that went through my mind are as follows (roughly): “fuck!  maybe it’s turkey.  i’m in california, why would they give bacon without telling you?  wait, this is clearly regular bacon.  it smells too good.  no way its turkey.  ok, no one is home.  no one knows what i’m eating.  i could just get away with this.  no, that is not right.  ok well i’m not going back to change it and i’m not going to waste this $8.  well, wasting $8 is way better than wasting $100.  maybe i can pick out the bacon?  cmon, picking out bacon, what have you turned into?  ok, what’s the right thing to do here.  pick out the bacon.  just eat it.  go get a burrito no that gave you really bad heartburn when you did that yesterday you idiot.  ok pick out the bacon.  ok just eat it no one will ever know”

so i get home, cursing to myself that i bothered to ask what kind of cheese was peeking out (brie) when i got the sandwich but didn’t bother to explore further for bacon.  and wondering if i could really deal with not telling chad that i had broken the diet, or even with telling chad and breaking the diet and paying him $100.  and i got in my kitchen and i opened up the sandwich and looked at the slice of bacon, almost whole, staring back at me.  and i thought

“i don’t really even want to eat this bacon enough for the trouble”

and i picked out the bacon.  and i put it in a trash bag.  and then i ate a middling chicken salad sandwich, or at least a sandwich that i hope was middling because otherwise chicken salad might really, really suck.

i was supposed to do a lot of things this summer.  i was supposed to start reading again and maybe play guitar from time to time.  i was supposed to code a lot and take photos.  maybe run a little bit.  i was supposed to try and turn into a person.

i kind of did this.  i didn’t code much of anything useful, but i took some photos.  i read a lot, but not books so much.  i started playing chess again, which has been a real revelation.

it’s frustrating, though.  there are so many things i want to do, and yet i never do them, and i have no good reason for why i don’t do them other than “well i’d rather eat dinner with jon and then watch the west wing” or “i’d rather play halo online for the 3000th time” or “man i was really tired today” or “i just didn’t want to get out of bed.”

these are not reasons not to live.

i’m also thoroughly displeased with my once plentiful but now constantly fleeting ability to speak plainly.  i’m wondering when exactly that transformation happened since junior year in college.  oh junior year in college.

i say this to make it clear some of the reasons why i may seem unhappy.  my lethargy pisses me off to no end, and yet i sit here and do nothing.  damnit.

also i haven’t seen jen in like a month and a half.