a big thank-you to the wpd

today as i went to refuel on dr. pepper during my work break i noticed that @##^*@$ little parking-enforcement police car parked in one of the best spaces in town AT AN EXPIRED METER. now in a normal town this probably isn’t a big deal, but our traffic cops are relentless. i have seen these heartless people stand next to my car as the meter was about to expire, ticket pad in hand, no doubt hoping i wouldn’t make it back in time to pay up. i have sprinted across the lot at the start of my work break yelling “WAIT!!!” while a cop looks at my car and then tells me that since he wrote the first three letters of “volkswagen” on a ticket that he’s got to keep going but i’ll have to re-meter anyway if i want to keep my car there for the rest of my shift.

i hate them.

so i’m looking at that ugly little cop car with its dumb little red light on top in the expired meter while legitimate downtown shoppers are circling blocks and lots looking for a space to park, and in my head i’m picturing my own personal tab with the wpd parking crew, which is well into triple digits by now (i’m sorry, 20 bucks for a freaking parking meter? i think i’ve given them enough money to buy a new stupid little parking-nazi car with my name on it). while i am working a nine-hour shift and watching the clock so i can remember to go out and re-pay since the meter time limits won’t let us cover a whole shift at once, some cop in a stupid vest with “parking enforcement” written on his shirt and nothing else to do is standing there having a little $20 countdown and watching my meter click 4 minutes…3…2…1…ticket! and then they think they can park that shit in a prime parking space and not pay the meter?! not on my watch.

i practically ran back to work, took a piece of paper from the register and wrote out a little piece of my mind. then i stealth-ed it back down the street and slipped my purple-markered you’re-a-jerk ticket under that god-awful car’s windshield wipers.

so i haven’t exactly realized my dream of spending an entire 9am – 7pm day patrolling the gap parking lot and subtly feeding meters alllll day to thwart their plans of taking an exorbitant amount of hard-earned money away from downtown workers and shoppers. but at about the same time i walked back into the gap, one of the three cops i passed on my way back (i played it soooooo cool) was walking up to that stupid car and finding a nice, all-capital-letters “HYPOCRITE…FEED YOUR METER” ticket from me. and i feel a little bit better about myself.

gotta find the tapioca

so after an exhilarating and nostalgic monorail ride from the magic kingdom, we’re waiting at the disney transportation center for the bus that will take us to mgm studios. it’s two-something pm., we’ve been at the park since the gates opened at nine am. and even thought we don’t yet know that our day’s travels will take us to all three major theme parks and we won’t get back to our hotel until almost one am (an epcot nightcap is coming up – even though i very much enjoyed my first brief experience at animal kingdom, i think i’ll probably always consider that “new” park an afterthought), we’re pretty exhausted already.

so i’m standing there in the packed mgm bus line concentrating on willing my aching feet to stop hurting so badly so i can just concentrate on hitting up the rockin’ rollercoaster again when all of a sudden this brash midwestern female voice interrupts my thoughts – “yeah, this is the mgm bus…mgm…MGM I SEE THE BUS…” she’s one of those people whose voice just cuts through a crowd, and christina leans over to me and says, “oh man it’s sue.”

now sue hawk, as you’ll recall, is the lovable and classy truck driver from wisconsin who spiced up the first (and best) season of “survivor” with her inspiring words of wisdom, her breathtaking, ice-cold if-i-saw-you-laying-thirsty-in-the-street-i-would-not-give-you-a-drink speech to kelly wigglesworth, and her amazing pronunciation of the word “tapioca.” okay, maybe scratch the “lovable” and “classy” part, but at any rate sue was absolutely phenomenal to watch, and i for one miss having her in my life.

now with this new celebrity association, i turn my attention to this disney world sue, using her loud pipes and fantastic accent to corral her party together so they wouldn’t miss “THE BUS TO MGM LARRY HERE IT COMES LARRY”…

the bus lanes are packed so i’m glad we get on right after sue and larry and all their kids and friends. unfortunately for my feet, i’m stuck standing, and slightly unfortunate for my peace of mind, i’ve got sue right behind me and larry right next to me. a minute after we leave, sue (whose real name we find out is patty) yells to larry that she wants the whole gang to stop for a minute after they get off the bus so that she can talk to everyone, and larry does his part to make it happen by shouting all the way to the back of the bus so that the gang knows not to follow the crowd into the park but to hold back so patty can say something. not gonna lie, i’m a little curious as to the nature of patty’s address – no doubt she’s got some words of wisdom for her clan…

so i’m just chilling, hanging on to the little strappy thing they suspend from the overhead bar for standing passengers and trying to support all my body weight with my arms so my knees don’t give and send me crashing into patty-sue, and i’m fighting the urge to ask her to say “tapioca” when the driver gets on the mic and gives the whole “no eating, drinking, smoking, flash photography, bombs” speech when larry decides to take embellishing restrictions to a whole new level – “no knife throwing, sword fighting, stripping oooh oooh no passengers who haven’t showered in five days and don’t believe in deodorant!” – i quickly change my game plan and concentrate on not falling into larry.

the rest of the ride proves uneventful – patty blabs on about something or other while larry meets his neighbor – she’s here with her boyfriend (one of the few good men left out there) and she’s really excited about the tower of terror (larry says the reprogrammed random drops the ride now throws out makes the ride even scarier). i manage not to fall into anyone. we get off the bus, patty-sue issues her rally cry and i try to hang back for a moment to hear a bit more of that horrific accent before i remember about rockin’ rollercoaster and the reprogrammed tower of terror and dinner at the sci-fi “drive-in” and the great movie ride and i’m off for ten more hours of theme parks…love it.

i still want a hula-hoop…

today the mccabe clan learned the answer to an age-old question: what does santa do with his 364 vacation days? apparently he spends them in disney world, and today he decided to see if epcot’s soarin’ was worth all the hype…

when my cousins and i walked off the ride, we saw santa (it could have been his stunt double, but we’re pretty sure it was him…) eating a quick morning snack in the land building (it looked to be a salad…). we almost felt bad about our blatant staring and then my attempt to stealthily capture his picture (see exhibit a), but then we decided that the guy had to know what he was doing. i mean, it would be a terrible thing to point at someone who happens to be pleasantly plump with white hair, but if that person chooses to grow that white hair longer, add a ginormous, perfectly santa-shaped curly white beard, and then walk around disney world wearing a red shirt and white suspenders…well then he’s embracing his role and it would be a shame not to acknowledge it.

exhibit a:

later, we found him sitting on a bench outside of figment’s world of imagination, just taking in the sights (see exhibit b). we observed him (and we watched the way that every kid walking by him stared at him), and our consciences were further cleared when a woman walked up to him and said something that prompted him to pull out a business card, write something on it, and give it to her. ah-ha! so it would seem that our dear santa may be hitting up the disney theme parks to try to make a few bucks during the off-season…very clever, santa.

exhibit b:

after that, my mission was clear – i needed a picture with him. a stealth picture. i enlisted my cousin’s help, and i’d say our mission was successful.

exhibit c:

mischief managed.

faux overnight story

a wise trip once said that sometimes she’ll do something just for the story. i think that’s pretty true of a lot of people (anyone who knows me at all knows i’m a huge fan of the story…), and i was thinking about that postulate tonight. the things one does for the story can be of the more extraordinary dancing-to-”like a virgin”-on-the-stage-at-a-country-line-dancing-bar-that-you’re-not-really-supposed-to-ever-return-to variety, but sometimes good stories can come from spicing up and finding the humor or the absurd in more menial tasks. manzo and i pulled an overnight with alex at the gap tonight, but as one sees from the time of this journal post, it turned out to be more of a standard college-school-night timeframe than a bona-fide all-nighter. our purpose in being there wasn’t to do a fun move or anything like that, we just had to be in the store while an electrical service installed new sensor machines, and in an odd way, i was kind of disappointed that we didn’t have to stay all night. apparently our back door is a logistical and electrical nightmare for sensor towers, so the guys only did the front door tonight and are going to have to come back at some date to be named later to finish the back. by manzo’s and my earlier calculations, it would have taken them until around 7 am to do the whole store, and in that weird way i kind of wished that we would have to stay until then – since we didn’t have a fun project, we clearly weren’t doing any real work, so instead of leaving the store with some kind of mark that said “vic & manzo were here all night,” we basically ended up doing an 8-hour close (at least the fitting rooms are empty…). the main reason i was hoping for the full overnight was to have an excuse to stay up and watch the sunrise – the last all-nighter i pulled carried with it a much more extreme form of pressure (finishing my flipping thesis), and there was certainly no spice girls dance party interlude there. (as a side note, though manzo and i don’t get a sunrise story, the spice girls dance party interlude most definitely provided the electrical guys with their horror story of the week…at least we stepped it up a little bit for them).

anyways, lord knows i have enough 6 am sunrise shift stories (ie. the time that anna and i went in at 6 am on a sunday for a 5-hour power replenishment that turned into a 5-hour breakfast/fit session…), but for all the times i’ve arrived at the gap at sunrise, i’ve never *left* the store at sunrise, and i kind of thought an overnight would be a nice story to add to the bunch, especially since manzo and i sacrificed laura’s birthday celebration part two to work. i did eat three dinners, which is an exciting story (leftover taco bar from qdoba > leftover italian sub from al’s > half a pie – that’s pizza, massachusetts – from ferraro’s). i complemented all the food with a nice ginormous vat of dr pepper, which may be the only reason i’m not sound asleep right now. and extremely randomly, i discovered that a very old friend from italy express now works at ferraro’s, so i was quite excited to catch up with him and tell him that the choice arabic phrases he taught me (intentionally or not) have come in handy over the years (ie. the time i introduced myself to an hc classmate from cairo by accidentally telling him graphically what he could do to his mother in her house and then gracefully trying to recover from my greeting by offering the less offensive threat of kicking his ass, followed by the word “bread”). and of course, i had a lovely bonding session with manzo, who shared some delightful stories of her own and apparently thinks that all madrigals sound like christmas music.

ps. though we acknowledged that “mama” is perhaps not only the worst spice girls song but possibly also one of the worst songs of all time, we threw pride out the window and belted it out all the same. gap stole our pride a long time ago anyway.

scaring the trip

today was part two of my first day back at work – because i only “worked” two hours on my first first day and the quotations around “work” should be emphasized heavily …anyways, it started with my manager putting me and my trip becky on the same project, which, given our rate of productivity and volume of conversation, we are sure will never happen again, and ended with the two of us hiding in the elevator closet for at least 15 minutes waiting to jump out and scare our other trip jeanmarie, who rolled in to work a cool 17 minutes late (but with donuts!). clearly the three of us will never be scheduled together again, but we had to do it – sometimes you just have no choice

god laughs

i had thought the only uncomfortable part of church this weekend was going to be realizing that the beautiful music of schola masses at st. joe’s are a thing of the past, but nothing could have braced me for the supreme mortification i was forced to suffer during the sign of peace.

my mom and i arrived fashionably late, so we quickly scanned the crowd for my sister and brother and slipped into our seats without taking notice of any of the people we were passing on the way, so i sat through most of the mass completely unaware of the people sitting in the pew right behind us.

so during the sign of peace, i hugged my fam, shook hands with the people in front of me and then, completely emotionally unprepared, i turned around and came face-to-face with the grinning face of mr. green ford explorer (name changed to protect me from further ridicule), the owner of the car i once mistook for my father’s and jumped right into while it was stopped at a downtown stoplight. god must have wanted to get back at me for something, so he placed the three people who can laugh at me most right behind me and then enjoyed my deer-in-headlights shocked face when i turned around to see them staring at me – it was the car driver, his son (who rode shotgun) and his daughter (who sat in the back left seat)…the only passenger missing was the laundry bag that sat in the middle back seat separating me and the girl (incidentally, both his family and mine use the same cleaners…i should probably be on my guard there too…).

anyways, i was most certainly not on my guard at church this week, so instead of conspicuously making myself busy trying to stretch over and shake the hands of the people two rows in front of me, i had to make eye contact with the three of them and let them each take a turn shaking my hand and giving me that you-jumped-into-my-car-one-time-when-it-wasn’t-even-parked look.

i hate that look. the next time i accidentally jump into someone’s car i’m going to make sure it has out-of-state plates, lest i inadvertently find myself sitting in the backseat of another parishioner’s vehicle.