Monday, October 17, 2005

Nothing You Need to Know, Particularly

I brought a small dish of lasagna (my mother's--lasagna is a skill i have yet to master) for lunch today, which was not enough food. I had hoped it would be. At four this afternoon, my flurry of inactivity and unproductivity was brought to a screeching halt by hunger pangs [should it be "pangs" or "pains"? I've heard it both ways. Though "pains" is the more common usage, I find "pangs" to be more appropriate both to the feeling itself and to the desired effect in communicating it verbally. Thus, "pangs."], so I immediately went to the nearest cafe area in the building complex to find sustenance.**

I procured a "beef wrap" that looked vaguely appealing through the display case plexiglass, a bag of kettle-cooked bbq chips, and a Coke. Returned to office. Unwrapped the wrap, so to speak.

What the... Tomato. On the beef wrap. Now, I should point out that, in the last building I worked in (a few months ago), the downstairs cafe had "beef wraps" that consisted of fajita beef and grilled peppers and onions. Not...roast beef, lettuce, cheese, TOMATO, and some sort of dressing. I don't usually like tomato, but I have tolerated it as of late, as long as the taste is covered up by whatever is in proximity to it. I wasn't sure if the case would be the same here.

Nevertheless, I soldiered on, and took a few bites.

And discovered the immediately recognizable taste of cucumber. I opened up the sandwich to find what appeared to be strands of shredded cucumber.

Who the hell shreds cucumber? Cucumber should ALWAYS come in its standard, quarter-inch-thick, easily-removable "wheel" shape. Not diced, and mixed in with shredded lettuce and cheese and the weird dressing.

Since cucumber is the Most Detestable Vegetable Ever (TM), I decided to dig in and remove the offending pieces from the rest of the wrap. Of course, having no utensils, I used my fingers.

For good measure, I removed the tomato pieces also. I've been entirely too lax on my "no tomato" policy. Things need to be tightened up around here.

As I sit and eat the rest of my treacherous "beef [TOMATO AND FRIGGIN SHREDDED CUCUMBER] wrap," I wonder if I'm just a bit too particular about such things.

And I'm still not sure that the wrap was worth the cost or the trouble of proper consumption.


**[At this point, I am excising a minor anecdote about having to go to two places before finding someplace open with food that I can buy with my bank card. This element of the story would be interesting to no one and would most certainly drag down the narrative...such as it is. Thus *snip*.]

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I was just talking to Ginge about an episode of Simpsons, when Bart switched out the church organist's music for Iron Butterfly's "Innagottadavida"--and how the little old lady burned through the really long solo, then collapsed. That was funny.

By the way, here's a list of the made-up terms that have been coined on The Simpsons.

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Ach. I can still taste them. Friggin cucumbers.

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It's the very definition of "non-event", but since I've mentioned the situation to y'all before, I might as well drop this in. I saw NewGirl again. She stopped coming to SunSco a few months ago, and I figured that was that. Well, she showed up to our class lunch yesterday (she still reads the weekly email I send out, it seems).

She's still attractive, but I didn't find myself being as embarrassed and verbally clumsy as I sometimes get with girls I'm attracted to. And I noticed after the fact that, on some level, I really tried not to focus on her. In fact, the only time I really spoke to her "one-on-one" (as much as one can at an open table setting, was to let her know that I am cheering for her Astros to win the World Series. This pleased her. Not that I cared.

Okay, I did care, a little. I may have mentioned this before, but there aren't a lot of women around that I'm attracted to, these days. (Yes, Dr. Cloud, I know I can fix that, but I just haven't felt the need to.) So, when this one briefly re-enters my orbit, I notice.

I've never been one to play it totally cool. I never learned that skill.

Not that eating lunch with (a group that included) her matters. Like I said--non-event. But still.

I can't decide if I'm more irritated that it felt like it mattered, or that I wanted it to.

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I'm going home, to play video games for two hours instead of doing housework and balancing my checkbook. Because I can.

(Odds are, I probably won't. But it's nice to imagine, isn't it?)

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