Last weekend was an absolute blast from start to finish. We began Friday evening at Bites and Brews, located next door to The Elbow Room on Ellsworth in Shadyside. In celebration of Lara's birthday, we treated her to surprisingly excellent pizza and our sparkling company; we learned a great deal about one another and about ourselves from playing a game called "Deep Questions," which is exactly that.
Afterwards, we drove on down to Lawrenceville and bowled several games at Arsenal Lanes; we each won at least once and I bowled the best game of my entire life, an immodest 114. During this, we were regaled by karaoke singers, some tone-deaf, some talented, and one insistent. Lara dazzled the room with a pretty lovely Kathleen Turner-esque rendition of "I Feel the Earth Move" by Carole King. All in all, a pretty entertaining and very fun night.
The next day, Chavonne and I trekked out to Trax Farms and had a variety of experiences; we shared our first hayride, which was brisk and intimate. We also challenged and dramatically failed our first corn maze; Chavonne's posterior was a casualty of the slick mud from steady rain the day before. We also took part in a petting zoo where we met a goat, a llama, a pot-bellied pig, a chicken who looked remarkably like Kairi, and three rooting pigs. This was a fairly emotional moment as we saw exactly what the life was we were consuming daily on our plates; Chavonne and I have wrestled with becoming vegetarian and it's truly difficult to defend the practice when you look such beautiful children in the eye.
On the topic of food, we tried
fried Oreos for the first time (not recommended for the faint of heart, or anyone), purchased some farm fresh produce and would eventually prepare a delicious chicken noodle soup with them. On the way back, we visited the finest Gamestop I've ever been in, nestled in the shell of a former Long John Silvers (!) with an enormous collection. I purchased
Avalon Code, which I've had my eye on for some time, for a mere $19.99. We also visited a clothing store and got a gorgeous pink argyle for Chavonne, so everyone managed to win something over the weekend.
The work week wasn't especially taxing; the pantry saw twenty-four families and seventy-one individuals for the month, and I completed only four Dollar Energy applications. The real meat of the work came from preparation and execution of the BRAVO Luncheon. This year, we placed piggy banks before each guest (the well-heeled and otherwise) to solicit donations for the agency. Such networking is among my most despised aspects of this job, but I'm slowly understanding that although I'm most comfortable with my current grunt-level work, networking enables me to deliver more services for my clients in the long run. It was comforting to note how many more people I knew in the room compared to last year and all in all, it was a wonderful event that I'm immensely glad is finished for the year.
I've finally managed to free the brothers Mario from the stomach and sinus of Bowser and
Bowser's Inside Story has as a result become instantly more compelling. The landscape of the Mushroom Kingdom is positively littered with buried beans, tantalizing the player with promises of magically and improbably enhanced agility and power. I'm looking forward to liberating these from their loamy prisons and progressing further in the quest for redemption.
Finally, in the spirit of the season, Chavonne and I carved an absolutely jocular gentleman pumpkin named Lorenzo yesterday evening. Chavonne has never in her lifetime handed out Halloween candy, let alone trick-or-treated herself, and this is a way for us to slowly ramp up our involvement with this bizarre holiday. Lorenzo, with his snotty nose, keeps a buoyant vigil over our home day and night, welcoming potential X-Men and princesses alike. Chavonne baked some delicious pumpkin seeds and again, all was well in the Wright home.
All in all, this was one of the most wonderful weeks I've had in quite some time. I hope that whatever you choose to do this holiday, you enjoy the company of someone you love.
This week wasn't especially stressful at work; I completed a near-record low of four Dollar Energy applications and only seventeen families (sixty-one individuals) through the food pantry, which itself was staffed by two volunteers! I also managed to successfully restore diplomatic relations between myself and a particularly difficult co-worker by defaulting to professional interactions with no discussion of private lives, which was surprisingly effective.
I also tried to vegetate at home during my downtime; after completing a paper for class due on Tuesday (which was also surprisingly simple to complete), I set out on a campaign to catch up on current episodes of
Naruto, an
anime so famous I need not
detail it. I began the week twenty-nine twenty-three minute episodes behind and, at 1:30
a.m. this morning (shocking for a grandpa like myself), I am caught up. I'm grateful to have had the time to entertain myself this way as this show is still, 351 episodes later, one of the most amazing shows I've ever seen.
Sadly, although I purchased
three new games, I didn't play even a second of anything. Alas Mario awaits in the gurgling bowels of
Bowser yet another day.
You'll notice that I have yet to mention my
Northstar in this post,
Chavonne. As I prepared to write this post, I noticed that the majority of my stories spun revolve around the challenges of adulthood or the digital masterpieces I enjoy
more so than the most important person in my world. Late Wednesday,
Chavonne brought home a mantra, resting now on our freezer door, detailing our privileges and responsibilities as a couple.
On that particular night, I was far more interested in simply shutting down my consciousness after a rough day than engaging and I realize now just how much I take for granted my beloved. More than anything else, my most important gift and sanctuary is the kindness and love I receive from my wife and I do a poor job of making time for her when, God forbid,
she may need to vent. I learned, then, that prioritizing
Chavonne and her needs should take center stage and that, at least, I should blog about how great she is more often.
On that note, we're going to (attempt) to complete a corn maze in some corner of the world called
Trax Farms this weekend; although we both like puzzles, this is really just going to be a nice opportunity to reconnect and share time together. Assuming, of course, we can find the place.
This week saw some of my most frustrating moments in my career, the entirety of which resulted from specific (backbiting, and overwhelmingly negative) coworkers. One rather ridiculous hiccup that occurred at work this week was the continued abuse of office equipment by clients; these included visits to adult websites as well as an obscenely long fifty-two minute long distance phone call to Los Angeles. Although it appears nowhere in my job description, apparently management of equipment and
Internet usage is under my shared jurisdiction. Although a nuisance and an irritant, the disappointed expectations I have of specific coworkers were by far the most negative aspect of this work week and for the first time since I began working at
Brashear, I didn't like my job, which is a worrisome development.
Last weekend - filled with formulaic romantic comedy, mild Chinese food, and misjudged apple green paint - seemed like a getaway compared to this most recent weekend. Friday evening, we enjoyed some head-scratching fashions and beautiful seams from
Project Runway season two, and the next day the mousetrap-like box store
Walmart enveloped us in deals and debt. We failed to reach
Bridgeville, PA for a wedding reception for some good friends of ours after nearly two hours of navigating poorly in search of 279-South which I maintain does not exist outside the logic of Google Maps.
The NFL gratefully and ravenously accepted my remaining free time this weekend and all of a sudden, it's Monday once again. My obsessive crusade to better manage my time fell victim to my own defeated and exhausted needs for controlled and quiet interactions and as a result, I managed to waste far more hours in front of a flickering box than I care to admit.
Chavonne, however, turned me onto a wonderful website (
RealSimple.com) and my innate urge to organize and has been renewed once more; sadly, any activity on that front must wait until my homework is completed. This week, however, simply can't be as frustrating and defeating as the previous, in which I was pushed two steps back for every tentative and unsure stumble forward. However, it's said the measure of a man (or woman) is how they experience defeat and adversity; let's see what kind of man I am.
This week, the phone continued to literally ring off the hook, clients continued to stream through the door, and intake forms, income documentation, and other paperwork continued to mount. Since October 1st, I calculate I’
ve spoken to some fifty distinct families seeking assistance with an energy bill of some sort; some calls last far longer than others and some families I’
ve spoken to more than once, so the total is even higher. In the midst of this, the food pantry continues at a pace of roughly twelve families a day and some forty-plus individuals and my self-sufficiency clients continue to need help; it’s enough stress to drown in.
However, this year I’
ve been trying something a little different. Instead of taxing my well-honed multitasking skills by juggling calls, bags of food, resources, and intakes, I’m doing my best to
finish the task at hand until moving onto something else. Often this means letting the phone continue its insistent call and typing away obliviously and sometimes I’
ve broken down and answered a call during an appointment, but for the most part, it’s working. I’m usually exhausted by the end of the day, but I’m not angry or bitter or feeling harried as I was last year. It’s a modest victory, but I’ll take it.
Chavonne and I are doing wonderfully, when we’re able to see one another, anyway. We watched
The Office last night and saw Jim and Pam get married, in a way perfectly suited to them; it reminded us of our own wedding in more ways than one, and it was a wonderful moment to remember how lucky we really are to be with someone we don’t just tolerate or enjoy but truly and deeply love.
We’re planning this weekend a number of semi-social activities (Lulu’s Noodles with Lara!,
Couples’ Retreat!, painting for the first time ever!,
Project Runway!) and it’s always a welcome and needed respite from the unceasing need out there. Winter’s coming, inevitably, and the problems clients are facing are going to get worse before they improve; but I can’t advocate on their behalf worth a damn unless I can maintain some serenity.
This week marked the beginning of the Dollar Energy season, far and away the busiest season of my work year. In a single day, I received seventeen phone calls from families looking for help with their energy bills and saw many of those same clients on Friday throughout the day. Because the federal energy assistance programs will not open until
December 1st, we have been
inundated with calls and only expect things to get worse in that regard. On the bright side, I'm not searching for things to do throughout the day.
This year, I'm planning to conduct my work differently than last year; instead of juggling phone calls and tasks, I'm working to complete one piece of business before moving onto the next. This way, ideally, I'll be able to finish the expanded reporting responsibilities associated with each application and not generate a backlog of work for myself. We'll see how it works in practice.
Chavonne and I are spending much less time with one another this month on account of her changed schedule; she's now working on Sundays from 8a-4p with a day off on Wednesday. She nearly cried when she got that news and as a result, we tried to make Saturday a completely enjoyable day. We visited Vincent's Pizza on
Ardmore Boulevard which is a legendary parlor in Pittsburgh; we found the restaurant to be intolerably filthy (
Chavonne had chunks of food floating in her ice, for instance) and the pizza itself rested in a pool of grease and did not maintain its taste after the first slice. Disappointed, we eventually made our way to Lowe's so we could take the plunge into painting, buying our supplies and paints (Ultra White for the walls, and Apple Green for the trim) helped out by a Quentin
Tarantino lookalike. We're planning to do the work incrementally over the next several weekends to convert the former children's bedroom to a walk-in closet. Stay tuned for how that turns out!
This weekend, sadly, wasn't enough time for me to feel rested and recuperated, but I'm hoping that I'll still be able to stay focused and effective over the next several days. Good luck this week!
