Lunch!

Got over to Oak Hill Bar and Grill in Homewood early, thank goodness, so I could cover my tracks from Tuesday—“Will there be one, orrrr…” “Nope! Give me two menus again today and let’s see what happens!”

“K.”

Gotta love that combination of ennui and apathy that is the mark of a fine eating establishment, especially when applied to a place that ain’t.

Anyway, as I said, I wanted to be able to wipe away my tracks so that there wouldn’t be one of those awkward, Costanza-esque ‘Clash of the Worlds’ scenarios that killed Independent George, where I’m having to explain exactly how it is that I know a certain local teevee girl, and how I have this website that I do…but it’s not usually pronygraphic [sic] or nothin’…and that I occasionally refer to him as My Friend Jeff™ and say mean stuff about him. But, since I was there a few minutes early, I got it all taken care of.

He showed up a minute or two later, wandering around outside looking for the usually-late me, so I hopped up and shouted “Hey, Moron!” out the door at him—“You’re the moron—you’re usually LATE!”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

We were e-mailing junk back and forth the other day, and he mentioned something that nearly floored me, being that he and I had known each other now for FOURTEEN years. Hard to believe. He came to work at The Bad Place about six months or so after I started, at which time I immediately struck up a relationship with him based entirely upon merciless teasing, bitter sarcasm, and car talk.

Ahhh. Y’know, it’s hard to find friends like that.

He got the chicken wrap and I got the half-pound wad of cow on a bun and we discussed the usual variety of topics: job search (he’s still looking), car shopping (with their third on the way, they’re shopping for a minivan so they’ll be JUST LIKE US—BWAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!), my Oldest (delusions of persecution so strong they make your everyday Arab seem like Pollyanna), his Oldest (pooping on a schedule now, though only through the judicious use of a time clock and whistle mechanism and chemically-doctored juice every other morning), stupid people, things I don’t quite like about our van (no auto door lock, the hatch unlocks with all the other doors, the transmission downshifts right when you’ve set up a nice four-wheel drift through a curve), mortgages, siblings, our burnt-out hippy Mutual Friend Mike, and then it was time for the reason for the whole get-together, the heartwarming ritual swapping of magazines—he got six AutoWeeks, one Automobile, one Hot Rod, one Popular Hot Rodding, one High Performance Pontiacs, one Mustangs and High Performance Fords, and the July issue of Hemmings.

I got a Car and Driver.

AND, stuff to blog about, so I call it even.

Wow. Fourteen years. Still hard to believe.
posted by Terry at 2:01:00 PM