Me and Janeane Garofalo

Can I make the uninteresting seem interesting? We shall see, as I recap a bit of my weekend...

I went to the mall Christmas shopping Friday. While in Dillards, there was just one girl and me in a particular section of the store, albeit on opposite sides. We were nowhere near each other, probably at least fifty feet apart. She had a little Janeane Garofalo thing going on. From that distance anyway. So a saleslady, who had sort of a Janet Reno thing going on, came out and asked Janeane if we needed help with anything. Janeane mumbled something back, prompting Janet to say, "Oh, I thought you two were together." That was a nice three seconds.

Then, while at the Hickory Farms stand just minutes later, the same thing happened again, with a different girl. She was at one end looking at cheese balls or spreads or something, and the clerk was trying to help her. Meanwhile, I was circling round and round the stand like it was the city of Jericho. Well, after a couple times around, he said something to her and then looked at me and said, "Oh I thought you were with him." So apparently, I look like I should be married. Or at least coupling. Or shopping with a girl. Or something.

Later that night, I stopped by a friend's to hang out for a bit. There are two entrances to his house, the front door and a side door in the garage. I always go to the front door. So he opened the wooden door and just sort of stood there staring at the screen door, finally saying, "I think the door is broken. You can try to open it if you want." I pressed the handle and pulled a couple of times. Nothing. It was stuck. So I told him I'd just go to the garage door. Well, I stood outside the garage, waiting to hear the familiar hum of an electric garage door opener. What I heard instead was some banging around on the other side of the door. Then what I saw was the garage door slowly opening with two hands underneath, manually pulling it up. Suddenly, I heard something catch and the door stopped, about 18 inches off the ground. Then I heard a voice say, "Can you get in under there?" By this time, I was laughing out loud. I was thinking, dude, I'm not crawling face-first on your garage floor to get into your house. I'll just come back later. We finally got it open, but he said he didn't think he'd be able to get it closed again. It's a fairly nice neighborhood, too. Or, was.

That was pretty much my Friday. And the story of my friend, the shut-in. Did more shopping Saturday and Sunday. It's coming so fast. Still have to write and send my Christmas cards and send out evites to my Festivus party. I did finally put my tree up Sunday. It has lights, but no balls. Yet.

"What brings a man to his knees is often brought on by himself. If a second chance were offered, and she could love me like before, I'd go back to the end and start over again, on 12/12/84..."