Gorbachev for a day

Last week included Ash Wednesday, the one day of the year when us Catholics get to really freak out our co-workers. The Wife, who was raised in one of those assorted Protestant cults, admitted that she was somewhat unnerved by her fellow officemates who had gone to mass during lunch and reappeared with mysterious dark splotches on their foreheads. The Boy, who got the low-down on the whole thing at school, looked at me like a hole had been drilled in my forehead.

For me and my increasingly awesome hairline, Ash Wednesday means looking more and more like Mikhail Gorbachev once a year. Now that all that hair is gone, I’m the perfect canvas for every ordained Picasso with a thumbful of ash.

Unfortunately, their mark, which is supposed to look like a cross, usually ends up looking like a giant black blob and this year was no exception. To me it looked more like a headless Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man than a cross, but I guess it’s the thought that counts. Ash Wednesday is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.

Gorbachev on the diamond
Apparently the ashes didn’t wash off as much as I would have liked, because I played like Gorbachev the following evening at our rec league team’s first softball game of the season. I think I just needed to knock some rust off, but it certainly wasn’t a performance for the ages.

I went 0-1 at the plate, but only because I knocked a screaming liner to the freaking tallest woman second-baseman I’ve ever seen (she was at least 8’5″), who jumped and snagged it with her twenty-foot reach. She also later missed clearing the fence with a blast of her own by about three or four feet. Why are freaks of human nature allowed to participate in D-league softball? Shouldn’t it be reserved for the lame and inept?

Speaking of lame and inept, we ended up losing the game 28-1. But our team did get that one run. We prefer to take the Special Olympics view of athletic competition and laud ourselves for just being out there.

Anger, anger and more anger
I’m having some problems on the consumer front, so I figured I’d do what everyone else does – gripe about them on my blog.

The first problem involves my 2007 Honda Element, which I’ve had for about three months now. Everything has been going great for the most part, but my speakers have started popping and scratching like there’s an intermittment contact somewhere in the system. It’s not related to radio reception, because it does it when the CD player is running as well. The best part – it happens at completely random times and didn’t happen both times I stopped by the dealership to get it looked at. Score one for the evil sprites.

The second problem involves my new digital camera. Or actually, the memory for it. The camera itself rocks. Unfortunately, I can only take seven pictures at a time, because the stupid online store that I ordered it from (ButterflyPhoto.com) has been back-ordered on the accompianing high speed 2 GB memory stick for two weeks now.

You’ll notice that I didn’t link to their URL. That’s because I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you getting sucked into their black hole of customer service as well.

After waiting half an hour to get through to their “customer service” people twice, I’ve been told twice that the memory just came in and should be shipping soon. It’s day 10 and I still have zero memory sticks. Score two for the evil sprites.