2000-12-19 - 5:41pm

On the internal soundtrack: "Do You Know The Muffin Man". Saw a commercial for a kiddie singalong album, and well, I'm singing along.

It's snowing! Wheeeeeeeeee! I left work early, picked up the fixins for chili, and came home. I was disappointed earlier because it was more like sleet than snow, but we're getting big fluffy clumps now. My pansies look cool with snow on them.

I love watching the snow fall.

The problem with the world (one of them, anyway) is that they think life has to go on as usual when it snows. This is ridiculous. Snow is nature's way of telling us to stay home and chill a little. When we were in public school, we got snow days; why shouldn't we have a few of them built into our work year as well?

Poindexter is currently still at work -- he is in trouble now. He should have left when I did. It's not like we can't afford the time off, for pete's sake. We live beneath our means precisely so that we can do stuff like that. But he's weird.

On my way home to get ready for the game, I stopped at Giant to get Poindexter's drugs, which he won't be using after all because he is feeling better. Figures. He can use them next time. I also got him some lettuce, because he goes through it too quickly and was out. It's the kind of wife I am.

The place was mobbed. Some woman took the space I was hoping for, but she pulled through to the space in front, leaving me room. So I parked, and when I shut off the POS, the choke was still on. It rattled and shuddered and shook for a good five seconds before settling down. (Hint: this is foreshadowing.)

I got out and thanked her for pulling up. She didn't have to, after all. I asked if Giant was always this crowded at 4pm, and she said it was always crowded, period. We exchanged some small talk and then she said, "You're hearing impaired," more like a statement than a question.

This happens to me all the time. I've got an accent of sorts that no one's been able to explain to me very well. Marlee Matlin's got it, and I can hear it, but I don't have the faintest idea how to get rid of it in my own voice. I'll have to ask a speech pathologist. There's something hollow about my voice, or nasal.

Turns out her son is also hearing impaired, which is why she recognized the quality in my voice. We chatted about that. Her son was 2 when he lost his hearing, and although he can speak and lipread and is oral at work, socially he is Deaf. Pretty nifty. I was five before I lost any hearing, making lipreading a breeze, so I never had much of a reason to learn it myself.

So, I like talking to strangers.

When I was done at Giant, I got in the POS, turned the key, and kitcha-kitcha-kitcha-kitcha-kitcha-kitcha ... nothing. Wouldn't start. I was appalled. I looked at the spark plug wires to make sure there was no loose connection but no dice.

I was not about to miss the hockey game, so I abandoned the car and took a cab home. My cab driver was from Ghana and had been living here for 14 years after a year in NYC. He doesn't mind cold weather, but hates the snow and ice.

We went back after the game, anyways, and it started right up. Poindexter speculates that the engine was flooded because of our stupid, stupid choke. It stays on for 5 minutes of driving and you can't stop it. I want to disable it. We'll see what they say when we have the ball joints fixed.

Well, the hockey game was COOL! Row E was the fifth row in! Hockey players are BIG! Whoo whoo! We were quiet, just watching most of the time (it's pretty overwhelming, really), then at then end we started screaming a fair amount. One of the Sharks got a hat trick. Too cool. All in all a good evening. Only one downside: no fights. Oh well.

A few times, players slammed into the glass right in front of us. It's loud. There were some weenies (female ones) one row in front who seemed horrified by this. That's the best part of the hockey game! Why'd they come?!

I was horrified to discover that all the expensive seats against the glass were empty. I was so mad. Grumbling to Poindexter, "Why aren't those tickets available?! I would have paid for them! It ain't right for them to go empty!" As it turned out, the bastards arrived halfway through the second period. By the end of the second period it was mostly full all in front of us. But that's ridiculous.

Poindexter's aunt, the one who's six years or so older than he is, met Mike Ricci in a bar once. She told him he needed a haircut and plastic surgery.

So, this means that we are two degrees of separation from Mike Ricci, which makes us three degrees from just about anyone in the NHL, which makes Poindexter four degrees of separation from Anna Kournikova. Hm.

There was an extremely loud, talkative woman on the Metro on the way there. She would NOT STOP TALKING. She talked about vegetables, and hockey, and goodness knows what else. Her companion was a guy in a Sharks jacket, and I was going to broach a conversation, but fortunately I didn't. When we got off the train, the woman next to me said, "I hope that woman doesn't get on my train [when I change trains]."

We saw them at the game -- they were directly across from us. Wacky.

While waiting for the Metro on the way home, I asked a couple in Sharks gear next to us if they were from San Jose. They said yes, and I explained where Poindexter grew up and where we lived those two years. And then, of all the amazing things, Poindexter finds out that the man's father used to OWN most of the land where he grew up.

I'd be surprised (Poindexter looked shellshocked), except that this kind of thing happens all the time if you talk to perfect strangers everywhere you go. In college, I struck up a conversation with a guy at a bus stop, and discovered he had lived in my exact dorm room three years previously, and he and his suitemates were the ones who had burned the nickel-sized hole in the rug. Once during a trip to visit a friend at Stanford, she took me to visit a friend of hers at Berkeley, and I ran into a girl in the hallway who, it turned out, was my cousin Stacey's best friend in eighth grade.

It's a very, very small world.

This is a wonderful explanation of the difference between the liberal and conservative point of view. There's a fundamental difference that explains every point of disagreement between the two.

So Poindexter and I generally keep the house at 62 degrees when we're sleeping. It makes for really sound sleep. However, when you actually have to GET IN bed, it's really horrible. Poindexter's crazy and jumps right in in his boxers, but I usually leave all my clothes on until it warms up enough to take them off.

Yes, I sleep naked. Whooooooooo! My parents always did, so one summer when it was really hot (back in the days before my parents turned into polar bears; when did that happen?), I tried it. There was no going back. Now I hate pajamas and nightgowns. They always get all bunched up.

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