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Well folks, we are approaching “The Holidays”. I’m sure many of us (Gina) are still in the warm afterglow of Halloween and the mountains of candy it leaves on our living room floors. But now we’re a matter of days to Turkey Day, which is – as we all know – just a stone’s throw to Christmas.

Have you ever been minding your own business when out of nowhere, BAM, you’re hit with this appreciation of the holiday’s creeping up on you? You know … when you’re otherwise perfectly willing to continue on your way oblivious and apathetic toward the world around you when you are suddenly pulled abruptly into the holiday spirit by a nearby pine scented something, or a cheery shopping center carol-spewing speaker, or even just a brisk fresh winter breeze that takes you back to the excitement of the free-spirited not-so-distant past holiday seasons? Walking down a busy sidewalk suddenly for the first time noticing the now month old lights on the pine trees and tinsel laden shop window displays and you just cant help but smile and breath in a deep breath of seasons greetings? Yes?

And when this happens, is it also, for you, followed by the consuming and paralyzing realization that you have neither started your Christmas shopping nor have any idea what to get anyone? You know … when you’re otherwise perfectly willing to run over your many reasons to hate working for a living and fantasize about how you might announce your retirement in the most dramatic and poignant fashion when all the sudden you’ve got an (unrelated) knot in your stomach and find yourself standing motionless on a busy street fighting through a newly realized headache to decide which nearby store might provide a quick gift idea? Suddenly mentally counting the available remnants of the last payday from the job you only moments ago were cursing to long forgotten gods and you just cant help but whimper a little as you pat your wallet and head into a store only to realize how tired you are and wonder silently how in the new world of the internet you can find yourself forced to fight through throngs of shoppers each and every year – the muzac version of “Carol of the Bells” now after it’s 15th run through 7 stores firmly in your head and nearly overpowering the currently playing Manhattan SteamRoller single?

Yeah … Me too.

Happy Holidays.

Now I have alot of addictions really … some healthier than others … most harmless.

You all know that I’m addicted to Diet Coke (or more specifically the caffeine within it). In fact some of you once held a bit of an intervention (never mind the fact that those same people routinely encourage me to drink beer/liquor until I’m at the brink of death). You all also know that I’m the first to admit this addiction. For me, there is nothing’ as comforting as a 32 ounce diet coke within arms reach.

The other night was rough. It was a long hard day at work and hadn’t had a diet coke since lunch. I took the L home (something I’m trying to do more often, Gina) and so suffered the 40-some minute ride with no diet coke. I walked home from the L and about half way home I realized I was going to have to make a very difficult choice when I got home. Do I immediately chug a diet coke (my mouth watered just thinking about it and I could barely resist the urge to start jogging back to the refrigerator waiting at home)? Or do I fall directly into bed and crash for a few hours? The rough day at work (and lack of caffeine to top it off) had me beat. The thought of pillows and sleep nearly inspired me to stop at Water Tower and take a little nap on a bench. I was between a rock and a hard place.

When I got home I chose the latter. I crashed … hard. Hours of blissful peace passed and I woke up sometime after 9pm.

Upon getting out of bed I instinctively set down at the computer and checked the email, turned on the IMs, and started an instance of SWG. I had planned to turn on these programs and get a diet coke as they loaded. But an unexpected email, and IM, and then a series of in-game transactions, which required my attention, kept me at the computer.

About an hour and a half later I was going thru some serious caffeine withdraw. My head was pounding my hands were shaking and I thirsted no matter how much water I drank. I took a few Excedrin (not so much for the headache but because they contain caffeine) and finished my dealings in game. I couldn’t put off the diet coke anymore. The Excedrin slowed the progression of the withdraw but only slightly and it was wearing off now … comin’ down would just be all the harder now.

I go to the fridge and reach into the diet coke ‘fridge pack’ and immediately panic. I can tell as the cardboard box moved as I reached in that it was empty.

I rip out the box and pear into it … confirmed empty.

I actually whimpered. I’m not sure that I have ever whimpered in my entire life to date … but I did that night. I let out an involuntary vocal whimper.

I stood there for a minute trying to not break down into tears. I could here the crisp beeping of the SWG client telling me that I was receiving messages in game. “Bah”. I ignored them. I knew that it was crunch time.

I’d been sleeping and sitting at the computer for hours. I was in no shape to leave the apartment. Further it was midnight. I wasn’t going to walk 5 blocks to a Walgreen’s at midnight for a desperate diet coke run.

This little illusion lasted about 10 minutes before I was combing my hair and putting on my shoes.

5 blocks later, I purchased a new case of Diet Coke, and also a 20 ounce bottle … I had no time to let the diet coke case get cold … and drinking warm diet coke is like cutting off your arm … you just shouldn’t do it unless you will die otherwise. Thankfully a refrigerated case of 20 ounce bottles was available.

Still I couldn’t drink it. If I had cracked open that bottle I would have chugged it like a vampire downing a goblet of blood after a 350-year nap. I couldn’t put on that little performance in Walgreen’s no matter the hour.

On the way back from Walgreen’s I was thankful it was so late. My head was killing me and the scowl on my face would have frightened most tourists.

I finally got home and tore off the bottle cap. Took a swig … Immediately my hands stopped shacking and an “Aaaahhh” just as involuntary as the whimper before was heard. All of those Coke commercials suddenly had a whole new layer of meaning to me. Another swig and my eyes started to stop hurting. By the end of the bottle my headache was gone.

Now I’m not saying this story isn’t more than a little telling of a problem … but until they have a caffeine patch … I’m screwed.

Gotta run … I’ve only had 1 diet coke so far today and the cafeteria is about to close.

Well, as most of you know by now… Doug and Jana are Married!! The wedding was awesome, and the reception was a blast. A great time was had by all…and the happy couple is currently on a boat somewhere around the Hawaiian islands (from which Doug has blogged – be sure to check that out).

There are actually several blog worthy events that came from this past weekend. But in an effort to make up to you my faithful davidmeade.com readers, I’m going to try and spread them out over several days.

So for this first installment I will tell you about my brief run as a criminal.

After the wedding it fell to me as one of the best men to take care of a few things for the happy couple who were already flying to a tropical paradise. These tasks called for me to impersonate my brother more than once (something I’m rather used to doing being a twin), but Sunday night … I was not prepared for.

After an extremely entertaining episode of “Alias”, Ted (my older brother) and I left the house to finish some errands Doug and Jana needed done.

Maybe it was inspiration from watching Alias… maybe we were just being security minded…maybe we were just idiots…but for whatever reason we decided to arm the security system on the house. After all, Doug wanted us to do this before we left the house for good… we should test it once…right?

So we closed all the doors and locked them all (save for the garage exit) and I hit the code to the security system. The system was now armed and in 60 seconds any open door or window would trigger an alarm which I had been warned was loud enough to not only wake the dead but but bring anyone within the house (who might be able to shut down the system) to a tearful self urination in the fetal position. Needless to say… I had no desire what-so-ever to experience this.

So Ted and I bolt for the garage exit. Closing the locked door behind in (what we imagined was) the nick of time, we walked to the drive way and finally hit the garage door button to lower the metal door behind us.

About an hour later (roughly midnight) we returned.

It was at this point when I realized… we didn’t have a garage door opener with us. While there was an opener in Doug’s car, I’d only brought the car keys for Jana’s car with us. The opener in Jana’s car had been removed and placed in my hands a few days earlier. At the time however I failed to realize why the clicker was so important.

We stared at the garage door for a while when finally I shrugged and said “Oh well – guess we’ll have to go in the front door.” After all, the key I had would work on that door as well as the one that was behind this impenetrable metal gate.

So happy to be home and eager to dig into the Ice Cream we’d purchased we walked around to the front door.

I insert the key and turn it… no problem…key fits here too…

I turn the door knob … ah it’s unlocked…excellent…

Oh…if only I’d stopped here…

but I didn’t….

I opened the door…. 3 inches before the security bar caught. (You know that little bar that hotels have … latest evolution of the security chain – designed to do the same job but be much harder to break).

So… there I was. Door open 3 inches… and thru the crack opening I could hear in a distant hallway the high pitched beep of the security alarm…warning me that I have 60 seconds to enter the correct code sequence to avoid the alarm.

I’d like to say here that under preassure I came up with some brilliant plan to circumvent the security and get into the house. However unless standing stupidly mumbling “oh shit shit shit” counts…I did not. I think all the blood must have run out of my face. only about 3 seconds had passed before I turned to Ted – Panic stricken – and exclaimed: “We’re fucked! We’ve only got 60 seconds! 60 SECONDS!!!”

A few seconds of Ted giving me the “What the hell is wrong with you, and should I be ducking?” look passed and then Ted realized what was happening. I saw on him the expression I must have made to the door…and that damned security bar. Moving past me, Ted pushed me out of the way and got to the Door.. hoping that perhaps he could remove the security bar from the outside.

Me.. I reached for my phone while jogging between two spots not 3 feet from each other. I dial Jana’s cell phone.

Now I know that it’s not customary for the Brother-in-Law to call the bride on her honeymoon…but we only had 40 seconds left.

Doug answers: “Hello?”

“Hey, we’ve got a problem” I rattle off far to fast for anyone other than Doug to understand.

“Are you ok?” he asks.

“Yeah – door open – but bar locked – no garage door opener 60 seconds – LESS – alarm” I stutter out inside of 1.5 seconds. “What do I do?! How?!”

“Oh uh..shit..” he answers “um…the garage, you have to..”

“NO OPENER!”

“Shit – my car there is a…”

“NO KEYS!! HURRY!”

“ahg…ah…uh…”

“mmm Ted? I… shit”

“You’re screwed – you’re screwed.” He says. ” a window!! you have to break a window! you have to…”

And then the alarm sounds.

I guess that 10 seconds or so passed of my jumping up and down in a nervous fit while trying to cover my ears. Ted was still furious and futilely working with the lock. I remember fighting the mental battle of putting the phone down so I can better cover my ears while at the same time bringing the phone back up so I can scream “shit” to Doug.

I ran to the side yard to get away from the door. The alarm was (as I’d hoped) slightly less loud here…but not much. I spent maybe 2 minutes here talking with Doug … explaining how we’d gotten ourselves into this mess. Doug was saying things like “You have to just break down the door – you’ve no choice!” And Ted came over and was saying to me “I can kick the door in…I’ve done such things before…I can kick it in?”

By the Grace of God the alarm stopped. Apparently after it’s been triggered if the door is closed again and stays closed for a few minutes the audible alarm is silenced. Now able to think again I told Doug that we’d figure it out and promised to stay at the house to oversee whatever repairs were going to need to be done thanks to our entrance.

Ted and I surveyed the house for a while… looking for the easiest thing to break/repair. But I kept coming back to the car. The car. The car was the key to it all. Inside that car was the garage door opener..and inside the garage..the door I had a key to which had no security bar. We’d mapped out several possible entry ways by the time I remembered the things I’ve learned from hacking and network security. And I provide now to you the greatest of those things:

Lesson 1 – Social Engineering: People want to help people…and will…even when they really shouldn’t.

So I called a tow truck company to come and break into Doug’s car. To make a long story …less long… about 4 hours later I was inside Doug’s house with no damage. The tow truck company had broken into Doug’s car … allowing me to break into his home. All it took was a smile and a healthy tip for the guy to overlook the fact that I didn’t know the year of the car, the address of the house, the number at which he could reach me, or the fact that once the car was open Ted began to desperately trash the car searching for a garage door opener.

All in all it was a surprisingly exciting evening. Oh and, Doug, sorry about the mess in your car… but hey… your patio door is still in one piece.

I got a haircut last night… the worst haircut I have ever had in all of my life.

You may remember from previous blogs that I’m not wearing contacts anymore. So when the lady told me to take of my glasses I was blind. I couldn’t see ANYTHING she was doing. But this wasn’t a problem, I thought, since I had told her exactly what I wanted: “#3 on the sides, straight across the back, leave the sideburns alone, and just a little trim on top.” My college roommate could have pulled this off. SIMPLE. I have given these instructions to hair dressers/barbers all over the world and every single one of them has understood me.

Somewhere in the conversation with this lady (and here is argument #1 in my upcoming book “Why the barber shouldn’t talk to me”) she says something like “You have really great hair.” and I say something like “Oh…thanks…someday I’m gonna get a new style…but for now I’m too chicken shit.”

So the talk continues as to what style I should get. “you could do [this/that/the-other-thing]” she says. “haha yeah I guess I could… but I have to go to LA this weekend so I can’t do anything crazy today – just the usual.”

“Everybody is crazy in LA.” is her only response.

A few minutes later she tells me to put my glasses back on and does a “Ta-da” gesture. Apparently she had decided that today was the day for the new hair style. I’ve never seen anything quite like what this butcher had done to me.

I don’t think my “Wha…wha…what…” response was the thankful relief she was hoping for. I think I managed to get out a “Put it back”.

She gave me this disgusted look and a “*Humph* You’re just like my brother, you’ll never change!!”

NEWS FLASH BITCH: I AM NOT YOUR BROTHER!!! STOP WORKING OUT YOUR FAMILY ISSUES ON INNOCENTS!!!

….*huff*huff*….

I stumble home….dazed….and get in the shower in hopes that I can comb this … mess… into something I can be seein in public with.

As it turns out… not only did she give me a style I didn’t ask for — she gave me that style badly.

I can’t recall when — short of BIRTH — that my hair was this short. I can’t really do the “comb back” thing that I do normally because it’s too short in back (and everywhere else really). And I can’t do the comb forward (that she was going for) because it so short in the middle that it will just stand straight up.

I spent the next couple of hours in near panic. Never really getting my hair to do anything good.

Several beers later I gave up.

So now… here I am… Tuesday morning…trying to think how I can fit a baseball cap into business casual. I suppose I should concentrate more on finding a way to stop muttering “I hate that bitch, I hate that bitch, I hate that BITCH!!” under my breath.

I guess this is one more argument as to why I should go get LASIK, ASAP.

…. I hate that bitch.

Well I think I may have passed 2 or 3 of the “You’ve lived in the city too long when…” tests.

You know you’ve lived in the city too long when you ignore the foreboding warning of personal doom.

Living in Chicago you get used to crazy people. But the other day when I was walking from the L to the office I met one that was rather unique. On a nice clear morning along a nice, well traveled sidewalk I pass the crazy, and I swear I hear him pleadingly squeak (in the creepiest voice ever) “…turn back.”

Now like I said I’m pretty used to crazy people…they don’t usually bother anyone. But no matter how bright the morning, or familiar the street, and no matter how common place the crazies have become… I’m not sure if I can describe how very eerie it is to have one of them warn you to “turn back”.

But I ignored him and went on my way. Thankfully, nothing more terrible than an unpleasant desert experience at lunch happened that day — though that is a story for another time…like after I’m dead and gone. But the point here is I ignored the warning completely – trusting in his craziness. Evidence, perhaps, of my having lived in a big city for too long.

You know you’ve lived in the city too long when you laugh in the face of pigeons.

For those of you who don’t live in a city swarming with pigeons, let me explain something to you… pigeons are simply rats with wings.

I think I first discovered this with “The Crack Pigeon” incident on my first day working in the city. Ever since I’ve had a hate-hate relationship the little winged beasts.

Today while walking from the L to the office I was text paging a friend when from out of nowhere a pigeon flies up at me from the ground! Having survived one pigeon attack already in life — which was on the scale of Hitchcock’s “The Birds” — I think I was relatively numb to this single, albeit filthy, attacker.

However I may have underestimated this bird. It flew up to me and just kind of…hovered…right in front of my face. (Who knew pigeons can hover?! Clearly this was some super-space-mutant-pigeon here to finish off what it’s minions had failed to do the last time.) I didn’t even flinch. I mean, in the past I would have dived out of the way…maybe even yelled. But, I just stood there and sent it the best “You do NOT want to fuck with me” vibe I could. Now the absurdity of trusting in a dolittle-like telepathy aside…it worked. The flying rodent hovered itself backward and then away from me. Fearless hatred for pigeons…another sign that you’ve been in the city for too long.

You know you’ve lived in the city too long when you pass Charo in Little Korea.

You know…she’s shorter than I had expected.

You know you are in for an interesting day when you sit down in the morning to blog and you title it “Blood soaked special offer and Another time round the mulberry bush”. What’s really scary is that I chose this title above the other possible titles: “Blue tile avalanche”, “Spritzing the sewage”, “Excuse me could you button my pants?”, “Buried Alive”, and “Damn the torpedoes”.

I’m not even sure where to begin…

I guess some back story is in order. My bathroom has this long shelf along one wall. It’s not really supposed to be there. I mean its nice, but I can tell that the previous tenant added this herself. (I say herself because I know for a fact it was a woman). The problem is…she — apparently — isn’t terribly “handy”. So despite her drilling into the tile wall and attaching the shelf supports … said supports aren’t exactly sturdy. And despite copious amounts of some brown, paste-like adhesive atop each of the thin metal supports … the shelf isn’t really attached them. Now, I would fix this on my own, but as it turns out I’m not terribly handy myself. My solution to date has been to slide the (tilting) shelf back onto the supports and — estimating the rate at which it slides off the supports — try to get back to it in time to adjust it again before it crashes to the floor.

This morning while brushing my teeth I knocked this precarious shelf with my elbow. And — unfortunately — I did this just after having flushed a Kleenex. So imagine if you will… I walk over, hit the flush lever, turn to walk back to the sink, hit the shelf. Now at this point I turn back just in time to see a small travel-sized spray bottle fall off of the wobbling shelf toward the whirlpool below it. Now one hand is trying to catch the shelf…the other has a tooth brush in it….I have a choice to make.

Having just witnessed the most pathetic Boilermaker basketball game in history – and thusly quite used to things bouncing off the rim and missing – I decide to let the little spritzer bottle fend for itself, abandon the tooth brush, and save the shelf. I mean after all…even if it DID fall into the flushing toilet it couldn’t possibly get sucked down – it’s too large – and it was a clean water flush…I can rescue it later.

As it turns out, however, the spray bottle was not too large after all to get sucked down the plumbing.

I spent the next 5 to 10 minutes stupefied, standing over my toilet wondering how far it could have really gone, was there any hope of retrieving it, and whether or not I am going to have a minor disaster the next time I, or anyone on the 7th floor, try to flush.

As far as I can tell the little spray bottle got swept clean away. Time will tell, I suppose, if that’s true but until then … there’s nothing to be done. So on with getting to work.

So on my way out to the street I decide to get my mail. I hadn’t checked in a day or two and having finished my book, I could use something to read on the train. I was shocked to see how much mail I had, and reaching in to grab the 37 credit card special offers and AOL disk I got what I thought was a paper cut on my thumb. All I know is that something in the mailbox attacked me. So after the instinctive withdraw, cursing, and thumb sucking…I went to get the mail out for a second time. As I thumbed thru the mail deciding what I could just toss right then and there I stopped on a piece of mail from my former employer (which no doubt was the piece of mail that attacked me). As I started to put the mail in my bag for review on the train I see that the rest of my mail is covered in blood. Bleeding with great efficiency, I stand there wondering what the most discrete way to get back upstairs would be. I really didn’t want to walk past the door man with a fist full of bloody mail. But then I couldn’t really fight with the keys and locks on the back door without leaving blood all over the door.

Now… how is it such a small wound can bleed so profusely?! Anyway I have to go back up to the apartment, stop the bleeding as best I can, and get a bandage.

After I’d left, I realized about a block from my apartment that I had forgotten my camera. But, running late already I decide against going back for it.

Now, there are three blogs worth of stories that I’m going to skip here for the sake of brevity…but lets just say that I was relieved to finally get to the L.

That is until the L stopped dead on the tracks somewhere between Chicago and North/Clybourn. This sort of thing happens all the time so I wasn’t too upset…for the first 10 minutes. At some point the conductor tells us there is train in front of us and we’ll be on our way shortly. Five minutes later or so she tells us they are replacing the tracks ahead. (Which, to me doesn’t sound like a job that can be completed quickly.) We had to have been stopped total for 20-30 minutes. Eventually we did of course start moving again. Which is good because I was about to go postal. I think however the conductor may have just lost it. We started moving…fast…when we heard over the speakers “*beep beep beep* We are being delayed because there are workers on the tracks ahead, we expect to be moving shortly”. We WERE moving…fast. Oh well…kinda funny. Then it was repeated. Suddenly I’m having visions of CTA workers diving out of the way of a red line train commanded by a conductor who was just tired of waiting “for signals ahead”. Then we slowed way down…and as we passed what was obviously the work zone I heard CTA people outside shouting something.

But, screw them…I’m REALLY late now – drive on Ms. L conductor….drive on.

Anyhow if you’ve been following along you are no doubt wondering “where does the mulberry bush come in?”

Trust me on this one… don’t ask.

So I was on the train this morning – heading to work – reading my book (“Blackwood Farm” by Anne Rice) when I vaguely hear: “This is Argyle”. Shortly afterward came the announcement “Doors Closing”. It was several seconds after this that I looked up from my book and realized … Argyle is my stop.

So — in a brilliant impersonation of a special ed student during a non-scheduled fire drill — I BOLT for the closing doors.

Thankfully – although my book bag was open, falling, and carried along precariously by only a zipper tab, and although my book was in a continuous lateral pass from one arm to the other – I made it out of the L car before the doors closed on me. And even more thankfully there was a platform based billboard behind which I could hide from anyone who had witnessed this.

Once I had my book back in my bag – and the bag properly sealed … (and once the train full of witnesses had left, and the others who got off at this stop were well on their way down the stairs) … I continued on to the office.