An Unsettling Seat

March 13, 2004

Ahhhh. That’s better.

Nine hours of sleep, two meals, and a couple of hours of basketball. Weekend, where has thy sweet sting been, bitch? Now this is the life.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to chit-chat right now. We’re off in a few minutes to hang out with some friends — there’ll be some laughs, and some drinks, and maybe some more hoops. Good times, good times.

But I don’t want you folks to feel neglected or anything, so I thought I’d pop in for a ‘quickie’. (Yeah, I’d elaborate on that further, but I think I already covered that ground a couple of posts ago, so I’ll let it slide. Wouldn’t want to recycle bad jokes quite so quickly, you understand.)

Anyway, I wish I could regale you with tales of conquest and weekend debauchery. But honestly, these days I’m just a boring old fart with a house payment. Sometimes life just isn’t as titillating as it once was. It’s good; don’t get me wrong. It’s more stable. Certainly, it’s nice to not have quite as many restraining orders to keep track of. But the downside is that the ‘highlight’ of my weekend so far has been a trip to Staples with the wife to buy a desk chair.

And frankly, that wouldn’t have been quite so interesting, had I not done my part to spice it up. Hey, it’s the least I can do. We all need a little excitement in our lives, right?

So, I spent the first twenty minutes at the store playing with one of the employees. It went something like this:

Him: Hi! Welcome to Staples. Anything I can help you with?

Me: Well, yeah, as a matter of fact you can. Have you got file folders?

Him: Sure! They’re right over here in aisle —

Me: *ahem* I, uh, didn’t ask you where they were. I just asked whether you have them.

Him: Oh. Um… well, yes. We have file folders.

Me: Come on, now — say it right! Have you got file folders?

Him: *sigh* Yeah. Yeah… we’ve got that.

Me: Very good. Now. How about desk lamps. Have you got desk lamps?

Him: Yeah. We’ve got that.

Me: Paper clips. Any paper clips around here?

Him: Paper clips? Yeah. *heavy sigh* We’ve got that. Look, can I go now? I’ve got other customers to help.

Me: Dude, we’re just getting started. I’ve got lots of questions about what kinds of writing utensils you have, for instance. Let’s start with the ballpoint pens…

Eventually, that routine got old. But I think I managed to break his spirit first, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. From there, we moved on to a few rounds of chair-testing. First with the pants on — you know, just to weed out the pretenders. And then we picked out a few that we liked, stripped down to our skivvies, and gave ’em a whirl. And a shimmy, and scootch, and a cheek-wiggle or two. I think my wife may have even farted on one; I can’t be certain, and she’s not talking, but I swear that chair was unseasonably warm when I got to it. Downright steamy, even.

I think it’s important to test-drive your new furniture in real-life situations, though. So we went that extra mile, and spent the extra time in our undies, making sure we made the right decision. The other customers weren’t too happy — I probably should have remebmered to change out of the boxers with the hole in the ass — but in the end (so to speak), we found a chair we liked and brought it home.

So there you have it — that’s the extent of the excitement around here today. I put the chair together, and we’ve taken turns sitting and spinning on it in the office. Breaking it in, and all that. It was fun until I hopped in it one time, and found it to be… well, warm and swampy again, frankly. I don’t know what that girl’s been eating lately, but I can see that I’m gonna have to keep her out of my chair for a while. Either that, or let her read this — she’ll kill me for it, and then I won’t have to worry about sitting down ever again.

Either way, now it’s time for me to be off. Catch you crazies on the flip side. Aloha!