Excuse Me!!!

Saturday morning, I went to the bakery to pick up coffee and treats for Carrie and myself. If you've ever been to Columbia City Bakery, you'll know that after 9 or so on the weekends the place is packed. The line for coffee and treats was almost going out the door, and all of the tables were full.


So, you would think that people, being cognizant of the fact that space was at a premium, would behave accordingly and not expect the sea of people to automagically part at their merest approach, wouldn't you?


Into the pictrure comes stereotypical passive-aggressive bearded slacker Seattle guy. He's taking his order of coffee and scones to the high-top where his generously smiling girlfriend is waiting for him. He is about to pass in front of the couple who are in line ahead of me. Does he utter those magical words that have served as the sociospatial lubricant for generations - "Excuse me"? NO! He simply waves his food in the general direction of the table, and, not even looking at the people that he's pushing his way past, proceeds to - push his way past the people whose mere existence he can't be bothered to acknowledge.


Time passes. The couple ahead of me is served. My order is taken. I stand to the side to wait for coffee. Meanwhile, Mr.Stereotypical passive-aggressive bearded slacker Seattle guy, along with his girlfriend, Ms. I'm obviously the better socially adjusted of the two of us, finish their meal. He, avoiding my gaze, pushes his way past me and seems genuinely puzzled as to both why he is tripping over my unmoving size 13 foot and why he needs to exert something other than a cursory amount of force to make his way past my mostly unyielding elbow. She, for her part, smiles as if to say “Yes, I am with him, please don’t hold it too much against me”, gives me a quick and quiet “Excuse me” as she works her way by, and I gladly stand back to accommodate her passing. He glares at me, as if mad that I dare to accede to her spoken request whilst not doing the same for his unspoken one.


So - they leave. But if you think that’s the end of the story- fear not! For here comes Ms. Stereotypical passive-aggressive I live in a trendy gentrified neighborhood and you are just a visitor here Seattle older woman! C’mon – didn’t you know that there’s a table open, and this gal has to eat? Sure, I may be 6’0 and 230 pounds, but be sure that she will make sure that all 5’6, 140 lbs of her will somehow find a way to attempt to violate the first law of physics with your self before she even thinks about giving you a dirty look.


*Sigh*


Since when did saying “Excuse me” become passé? Is it because saying those two little words could be considered being tantamount to admitting that you are not in total control of the space around you,? Or have people just become that damn lazy and inconsiderate? Okay, okay – I’ll not tar all of humanity with the same brush – it just seemed to me, on that day in Columbia City, that certain individuals were going out of their way to be rude.


At least that didn’t color my entire weekend. Since Carrie wanted to clean the house in preparation for my parents’ visit, I elected to take los Gemelos out for a ride. When I came back two hours later, the house was sparkling clean, and the mama was beaming, happy with her progress. Sunday, I went for a run around Green Lake (2.8 miles in 27 minutes 6 seconds), and then, meeting a friend for the Top Pot 5k, walked for 3.1 miles around the same body of water. I came home, tired, but feeling otherwise pretty good, and spent the rest of the day as a pretty quiet day with Carrie and the kids.


Two more days to go!

Yesterday...

Yesterday was one hell of a day.

I stayed at home so that I could watch over the kids for part of the night (allowing Carrie to get more than 4 hours of straight sleep), and had planned on working from home the rest of the day after a brief nap. So, as planned, I took over Gaboli duty (Gaboli being the portmanteau that Carrie and I came up with to refer to the twins collectively) at three in the morning, and proceeded to stay up with them until around five, at which point they calmed down enough so that I could get a couple more hours of sleep. When I woke up around seven, they were stirring a bit, so I took them to Carrie so that she could feed them.

At this point, I had planned on taking a quick nap for a few hours, and then getting up so that I could do some work. So, I crawled into bed and was about to doze off when I received a call from Sarah’s (my ex wife) stepfather, Sonny. It seems that she had opened an account at a credit union and listed me as a co-owner. When she had passed away, full control had reverted to me. So as not to disturb Carrie and the kids, I took the call outside of the bedroom. While I was talking to Sonny, I decided to pull up the bank accounts on my Mac and confirm that I had primary control. Seeing that I did, I then went about talking to both Sonny and the bank to see what needed to be done so that Sarah’s husband could get the money out of the account.

Upon hanging up, I noticed that my computer was acting strangely. Despite clicking around the desktop, I was unable to access any applications, and there was no response to my keystrokes. With a sinking feeling – I had seen this before – I hard-rebooted my computer, only to get the dreaded Mac OSX Question Mark of Death.

For the second time since I had bought the machine, my hard drive had crashed. Damn.

Luckily, I had my work computer with me, so I was still able to get some work done and make an appointment at the Apple store in Tukwila so that I could get my computer fixed. But replacing the internal hard drive on a Macintosh is not an inexpensive proposition – I ballparked the estimate at $300. But it had to be done. Needless to say, the culmination of events left me more than a little upset. I had to jump through some hoops to help Sarah’s husband get the money that he was rightfully due, my hard drive had crashed, I would have to drive twenty miles to get it fixed, I would have to spend money, and a good deal of my music and photographs were gone. 

So, I did what any self-respecting man would do to deal with all of this.I went for a run. 

I ended up doing two miles in slightly under twenty minutes, and I found myself at my favorite spot nearby, Columbia City Bakery. I treated myself to my usual quad shot of espresso, chilled for a bit in the cool, sunny outside area, and walked back home, having gained a bit of perspective.

The rest of the day went pretty well. I got some work done, helped out with the kids, and took my computer in to get fixed. Pleasant surprise: since there have been so many issues with the hard drives on Macbooks, they replaced mine free of charge. Even better surprise: since the smallest hard drive they had on hand was a 160Gig model, they slapped that one in there for me. Sweet!