Woke up, felt slightly chirpy, until I realized that I’m [redacted]–scourge of the literary underground and total fuck-up. Now officially twenty-three years of age, I opened my eyes and spied something like 10 missed phone calls and 8 text messages from friends near and abroad. It’s a good thing I turned my phone to ‘silent’ otherwise I would have been awake all night having to hear people ask about how I’m “feeling” and whatnot. To put it bluntly, a birthday is just like yesterday and every other day of the year, only the phone rings more often and it makes me feel really uncomfortable when I’m out in public. The original title for this entry was going to be: It’s My Party and I’ll Die if I Want To. I still might use that one, next year.
So after my morning shower (phone rings two more times, plus one more text message) I put on clothes and head over to Panera to steal their WiFi so I can find cousin’s phone number. I’m sitting outside (phone rings once, plus one new text message), it’s cold and windy, and this Panera employee comes and plops down next to me to smoke a cigarette. Without hesitation or even an introduction, he launches into this whole story about how Panera lost power this morning at 3am and he had to come in early (“you know, like, 5am”) to help fix the problem. I heard all about how some guy ordered thirty paninis and showed up at 8am to get them, but the order didn’t go through because the computer system was down….I got this whole stupid story. Then all of a sudden the guy looks at me and starts talking about how he used to be addicted to crack and heroin and now he’s clean. He mentioned that he still smokes a ton of pot but it’s not really a drug, anyway, since Panera doesn’t look for it in drug tests. Then he asked if I wanted a job at Panera–as if this inside information about their lax drug testing policy was going to blow my mind–and I said no thanks, I’ve already got a job. Then I told him I had to go, and he introduced himself as Ainsley and said to come back some time and he’d “hook me up.”
Took 41N all the way through Skokie and Willamette to Highland Park (phone rings once) to see my cousin. We went to a really small dive bar for cheeseburgers (phone rings once, three new text messages) and then she treated me to an all-fruit smoothie since I’d never had one before. The advertisement for the establishment (something Juice, it’s called. Sounds like Java) promised five servings of fruit, so I announced rather confidently that now I didn’t have to eat any fruit for the rest of the week. Afterwards we went back to her condo and I played Mr. Fix-It with her computer for a while (one new text message), before leaving and returning to the apartment in West Ridge. I played some guitar and got some writing done (phone rings twice). When hostess Jet returned we decided to go down into Wrigleyville to hang out near the baseball game and get some drinks. We also stopped at the other Reckless location (phone rings twice) where I found a ton of records.
When we eventually got home, there was a note from Steve Albini in my inbox saying that he was sorry but his girlfriend’s birthday is the 26th and she bought them both tickets to fly to LA for a few days that he obviously could not decline. He’s going to be home tomorrow late-evening (which is when I was planning to leave for Louisville), and he has work Thursday, so I’m going to try to stop by the studio for a bit tomorrow night. We’ll have to wait and see what happens…it’s going to be a close call, it is.
Total accumulations: 27 phone calls, 20 text messages. I should’ve turned the damned thing off for the day.
