On the limits of my principles

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

I’ve mentioned that my wife broke her foot the other day. She does most virtually all of the grocery shopping. While I am perfectly capable and willing to step in and handle that job, the simple fact that I don’t do it means that it will likely take me twice as long to get the job done because I don’t know where everything is, and I’ve discussed my (getting better) issues with panic attacks while wearing masks a couple of times as well. So as soon as we discovered that we could do curbside pickup for our groceries for just $5 extra plus the tip, we decided that at least for right now that’s how we were going to handle things.

Now, they allow you to set general rules for what to do if something you want isn’t in stock. I’m not sure what the options are (she did the ordering) but basically it boils down to they pick substitutes or they don’t. Our son has some allergy issues so she decided that the best move was just to go with no substitutes, and if for some reason we’re denied something that we feel like we need I can always make a run tomorrow for a couple of things.

You may recall also that I wrote a Comprehensive List of Things I am Currently Boycotting a couple of weeks ago. One of my friends mentioned Papa John’s in the comments. Papa John’s is another sort of edge case for me; I generally avoid eating there but that’s as much because my aging digestive system can no longer handle their garlic sauce (which is absolutely essential to the Papa John’s experience; do not insult me by suggesting that I can eat their pizza without drenching it in garlic sauce) than it is because of their politics.

That said, I’ve been craving the damn place ever since reading that comment. It’s a terrible idea, so we haven’t caved, but it’s been lurking there in the back of my head.

We decided on the way home from getting groceries that we’d have pizza for dinner, as there were supposed to be two pizzas in our order. Then we got home and discovered that one of them wasn’t there, presumably because they were out of stock on that specific kind of pizza.

Damn. We briefly discuss other options, and Papa’s comes up, and I shoot it down, because it’s a terrible idea. And then I interrupt the conversation to go use the bathroom, and while I’m in the bathroom I hear my son yell for my wife from our other bathroom. And when I come out, she tells me that I have something I need to deal with in the other bathroom.

And, well, a minute or two later, after seeing what I had been summoned for, I sent this text:

If you’re thinking “Okay, this sounds like that happened, but the size of a baseball? It has to be something else.” No, it doesn’t. That’s what happened.

I have about an hour to get my affairs finished off for the evening before I begin paying for dinner.

8:45 PM, Friday May 8: 1,283,846 confirmed cases and 77,178 American deaths.

Thursday thought

Luther M. Siler6 Comments

I think I’ll have an entire frozen pizza for dinner.

How was your day?

God I’m glad I did guest posts

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

The view out my hotel window is unimpressive and it is dark and rainy.  This is the pizza the hotel Italian restaurant just served me, because I am insanely tired and the thought of going out and finding somewhere else to eat was more than I could bear:

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While getting to the con was ridiculous– I forgot my banners and had to turn around after half an hour and go back, damn near ran out of gas, and wasn’t allowed to check into my room when I arrived, and the aggravation combined with the stress of gaslessness and a very serious need to poop compromised my ability to think clearly and I just made them hold my bags all day rather than going back to my car and putting them in there.  Then when I finally did check into my room after the dealer’s room closed at 7, neither of the keys worked and I had to haul all of my shit back downstairs because I’m here alone and I couldn’t exactly just leave it in the damn hallway.

But: pizza.  Good pizza.

The con itself is going quite well.  I sold a book in the first five minutes the dealers’ room was open.  That’s awesome.  I’m not setting sales records, but I’m damn close to paying for my table already.  Considering I sold zero the first day at InConJunction I’m gonna call it a win.

Weird thing about this convention, though: I can sell books to people, but hell if I can get anyone to take a free bookmark.  Free!  Take a fucking bookmark, people!

Okay.  It’s 8:15 and I say that makes it okay to go to sleep now.  Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to do a thing connected to the con once the dealers’ room closes; I can’t bear the thought of spending another second on my feet right now.

Fresh and delicious!

Luther M. Siler4 Comments

858538_10152181192573926_812358830_o“Raw and wriggling” is exactly how I like my breadsticks, Little Caesar’s.

On venturing into public

Luther M. Siler

My belly is full of pizza and my brain is full of nonsense. At the moment I prefer the contents of my belly; ultimately the pizza will cost me less. That said, it’s been a very long time since I was getting any kind of exercise regularly– and, despite my near-permanent status as a professional fat dude, I actually enjoy exercise. I got a weird little thrill when my wife pointed out that the current bathroom mirror (which is six feet wide and about four high, with no borders– just a big piece of mirrored glass) ought to go down into the basement as part of our as-yet nonexistent home gym. I was actually angry with myself that I hadn’t thought of it on my own.

I ran into three different families’ worth of students during the ten minutes that I was buying pizza, by the way, which makes me think maybe living in more or less the same neighborhood as my school isn’t that much of an advantage.

One of them asked me what I was doing there, which tells you the caliber of kids I’m dealing with. (Yes, this is an unfair thing to say. No student anywhere thinks his teachers are real people, and running into us in public, thus confirming the unwelcome truth that we exist outside of our classrooms, is always an occasion for wonder and mystery. But it’s still funny.)

“I’m here for pizza,” I told her.

“Really?” she asked.

I leaned forward.

“I actually live here,” I whispered, and pointed under one of the chairs by the door. “I slept there last night. Don’t tell anybody.”

Her eyes tripled in size. Her mother got their pizza (I was waiting for a Deep Dish pizza, which takes longer even though it’s more of a Deep Ish pizza) and shot me a weird look as they left.

By the time the third family said hello and left, I think the employees thought I was some sort of rock star.

The pudgy, bald, talentless kind, of course.

I tried to spend part of last night applying for a field trip grant through Target. Have I mentioned the DC trip yet? I take a group of seventh and eighth graders to Washington, D.C. every two years, and this year is a travel year. The trip is hella expensive so we’re trying to find a good way to pay for it that doesn’t involve me having to run a fundraiser. First it took twenty minutes and two changes of my password to log into the site, which is justweird, and then after taking three thousand or so characters to say I want to take my kids to DC so they can lern history gud, it lost my entire application except for the biographical part at the beginning. Frustrated, I tried to flip to the last section of the application, which asks me to break the trip cost down in ways that are frankly impossible (it costs, roughly, $800 per kid, but that’s a flat fee– they don’t break it down by transportation or food or lodging or whatever. It’s just $800. Target wants everything broken down specifically– I can’t even realistically estimate those numbers– and I doubt they’ll like it very much if I just put $32,000 HOLY FUCKING HELL ARE WE SERIOUSLY PAYING THEM THIRTY-TWO GRAND into one of the boxes.

Holy shit. How the hell are they making thirty-two thousand dollars off of us? That’s fucking insane. Mental note: redouble plans to become a DC tour guide once I decide I can’t teach any longer.

Jesus.