A Blog About Nothing

I woke up this morning simultaneously startled and wanting to throw the cell phone doubling as my alarm clock across the room. Wake up time, as it so often does , came much too soon for my liking. I shaved, showered, drove to work, drove home and went to sleep , with the expectation of doing it all again tomorrow. This is not very exciting stuff, is it? It worked so much better for Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza in making their show about nothing. I guess it doesn't play nearly as well in in cyberspace on my blog page as it does each night in syndication. I've seen those shows dozens of times and still laugh at the same things, well, with the exception of the times when the scowl and shaking of the head that is inevitable each time Kramer appears on the screen.

Allow me to attempt to liven things up a bit. I woke up, went to work, had lunch, struggled to stay awake for the remainder of the day, drove home through lighter than usual traffic, took my daughter to basketball practice, ate and went to sleep. Yawn. Yeah, it's boring me too. Sorry, I'll try one more time. Since you and I both know that work provides nothing noteworthy the majority of the time (except for when I'm lucky enough to deal with special people-- see my Dilbert Files ) so we'll just fast-forward to lunch. Chinese food. "Chinese food?" you say. "You hate Chinese food!" True indeed, but let us put a caveat to that statement. The greasy stuff crammed into funny shaped white boxes that, after only a short time, leave you wondering if you had anything to eat at all, is that for which I have a strong dislike. However, having worked for a Taiwanese company and traveled to Asia to eat some real authentic food, which hardly resembles the crap we call Chinese food at all. I've managed to survive and sometimes almost enjoy the experience. I still won't ever request it and would rather go to a steakhouse if given the choice, but I can stand it.

The problem is that since I hardly ever seek out this cuisine voluntarily, I never know what to order. Nothing sounds particularly good and in my experience, the stuff that does rarely comes out like I expected. Luckily, my phone rang while I was struggling through the menu choices. I usually don't like for my cell phone to ring during meals, especially at fairly nice restaurants, but I do sometimes glance at the caller ID to make sure that its not an emergency or something.

As it turned out, it was my friend Mimi. It's like when you're using Microsoft Office and that stupid paper clip or that brown and white puppy dog or whatever character you had in the settings, popped up to foster a guess as to what you were trying to do and then started offering up ways to help you. Do you want to merge some documents? Do you want to archive your mail right now? It looks like you're writing a letter? May I help you? Well, unlike the paper clip, Mimi's timing was spot on because at that precise moment I was beginning to panic as I could see the waiter making it back to our table to take our order, and I still hadn't made any sense of this Chinese cuisine.

Let me tell you something about Mimi. About 4 or 5 Christmas' ago I was doing my usual December 23rd all-in-one-day shopping excursion to Union Square and at the 11th hour was having trouble finding a particular item. Not only did she help to decipher what I was trying to describe , but she was able to tell me precisely where to find it. No...I don't think you understand. I wish I could make it plain. I was standing on the corner of Geary and Stockton in front of the parking garage when I called her. With the presence of John Elway in the huddle on "The Drive" (you know, back in the 1987 AFC Championship game against the Browns?)she paused, took a deep breath and probably rolled up her sleeves, and licked her finger tips as if she needed to improve her grip on the ball before getting under center. The ball was snapped.

She told me to walk across the street where I would see a life sized picture of J-Lo in the window of the Louis Vuitton store. "Turn right," she said, " and walk down to the second set of double doors...that will be Macy's. Walk in and down the 3 stairs where you'll see a security guard sitting in front of a bank of elevators on the right." She was in rare form, marching down the field like a 4-star general. "Those elevators will take you to the Cheesecake Factory, but keep going straight about 10 more steps until you get to the counter where they keep the Movado watches, turn right and follow this counter around to the left where it well end as you reach the mannequin wearing the red Nautica jacket with the blue fleece lining," She was in the red-zone now. I felt like Indiana Jones following the very detailed instructions that had involved years of research, deciphering hieroglyphics, learning the secrets to get past the poisoned darts that flew out of the wall and ducking just in time to avoid decaptiation as the blade swung just above my head.

"Make a quarter turn to the right and then button hook over your left shoulder behind the white ivory display case," she said, back pedaling, scanning the field, looking for the open receiver. "And it is there that you will find the Coach key chains." Touchdown Broncos! At that point, I took the phone from my ear and looked all around that store to see if she was watching me or something. There have been no less than 5 incidents like this where Mimi has led me to within inches of whatever I was seeking in various shopping establishments across Northern California. If she were one of the X-men, her special power would be some sort of x-ray vision that would superimpose schematics and blueprints of all of the world's shopping centers about 6 inches in front of her face in green laser light. She's like what would happen if you crossed a librarian with Alicia Silverstone's Cher in Clueless.

Once again it appears that I have taken infinitely more time giving you background on a subject than the actual incident itself. But that's part of my charm right? You love my verbosity, don't you? Of course you do. That's why you tuned in to read my blog about nothing. Okay, let me wrap it up.

So, I'm back at Ming's, and the menu is making me nervous. I panic. Mimi calls. I told her of my very urgent situation and told her that I was at Ming's. Without hesitation, she said, "Get the Honey Walnut Prawns." This time, she sounded like Phil Jackson calling the play as the Bulls left the timeout. You know the rest.
Jordan takes the inbounds pass, drives to the middle with Ehlo draped all over him, stops, shoots...Bulls win!