i had a motorcycle twitch because i hadn’t ridden in so long. i knew it was supposed to be raining on wednesday and it was supposed to get freakin’ cold on thursday, so tuesday night i called brad and kelli up to see about riding around. kelli backed out, but brad and i hit the town. well, first i had to jump my motorcycle battery off my element because i’d accidently left the key in the ignition with the light on for several hours and it didn’t have enough juice to start. but after that we hit the town. we went to poison girl for an hour or two and sat out in the back, then after a quick stop by hollywood for me to get a cigar (a havana honey) we headed to la carafe. after an hour or two there, we drove over to late night pie where we ate some pizza and then played joust. around 1:30 i made it home.
wednesday after work i met some of the guys for a going away event for a co-worker. they started off at hooter’s, which i missed (and am not too upset about), but i met them at the westbury square cigar shop. the shop is a shady kind of place, but they have a big walk-in humidor and a pretty interesting cigar selection. they also carry pipe tobacco. the owner and some of the (what i assume are) regulars kind of gave me the cold shoulder and/or talked down to me, but i’m guessing maybe it’s the kind of place that treats “newcomers” like that. at least the owner seemed to be satisfied enough with my cigar selections (i bought two), and i also bought some low odor zippo fluid and a cheap butane lighter whose head can be tilted 90 degrees to be used as a pipe lighter. the guys from work were playing poker in one of the back rooms, so i sat and watched them for a few hours and smoked one of my cigars. the walls in the room (and in the humidor, and i think in the rest of the store) had framed small pics of what appeared to be mostly playboy pics from the 80’s. like they cut them out of the magazines. i had originally planned on asking about the concealed handgun class they were supposed to be getting together…and there were several police folk there while we were there…but after getting the cold shoulder and talking down to i decided to not bother. maybe if i go there a few times and they soften up some.
thursday after work i went to chuy’s with a couple of co-workers for happy hour margaritas. one of them was actually buying me a couple for helping her out at work. it was sort of a big deal because it dealt with the contacts and info on the cell phone of one of (if not the) most famous doctor where i work. phones aren’t something i support for my job, but they asked me and i thought of a solution and i did it, so they were all happy. it’s somewhat ironic that the first big congrats i’ve gotten in awhile from outside of my group was for me doing someting i don’t even actually do as a part of my job.
after i got home i took the time to figure out how to turn on the pilot light on the heater in the attic. raj and kiera had turned it off before they left and gave me rudimentary instructions on how to turn it back on, but i’d never had to mess with a pilot before (that i can recall) so i was somewhat apprehensive. a couple of other nights before had gotten kind of chilly without any heat, but i decided i’d rather not tough out freezing temps. and it’s a good thing i got it going too, because it got down near or below freezing. so far the house hasn’t blown up and/or burned down, so i think i must have done okay.
friday i think i took the evening off. seriously, i can’t remember what if anything i did. i think maybe i reconfigured my stereo system and watched most of a clockwork orange. i know i did that at some point. i’m at a loss. it must have either been a horribly boring or horribly exciting evening.
i also evidently ordered a 12 can mix-n-match case of timemist refills for my timed aerosol device, because i have a confirmation email from around 11:30pm. yes, i have one of those misters they use in restrooms in businesses. i like the idea of my place smelling nice, but i don’t like having to constantly burn incense or candles or oils or whatever, so a few years ago i bought one of those timed metered spray things. i like it, except it starts chirping when it thinks i need to change cannisters. and it kind of scares people when it whirs and sprays every 15 minutes or whatever i have it set to. i’ve gotten used to it, so it doesn’t phase me, but visitors are usually thrown a bit by its sounds.
Sadly, almost anything at Westbury Square is kinda shady these days. The place was beautiful, back in the day, before it was neglected and Home Depot bought a chunk of it. The pizza place, the ice cream place and the candle shop were lots of fun. (I grew up in Westbury, moved away for a while, then moved back to Westbury.)
I was going to comment on how great Westbury Square was back in the late 70’s/early 80’s, but it looks like someone beat me to it. I remember going to see fireworks there. The people across the street from us had a chinese restaurant there. Good times.
yeah, y’all’s memories of the place seem quite different than the place now. i was there in the evening after dark so i couldn’t really get an impression of the area as a whole, but what little i saw didn’t strike me as garnering terms like “fun”, “great”, or “beautiful”. unless maybe you’re a hoodlum. 😉