Meatball Subs, Misread Signals and Schadenfreude

There are so many things to talk about, so little time to talk about them. The combination will make for a rather rambling post, but I’m sure most of you are used to that by now.

Quiktrip meatball subs:

The gas station chain Quiktrip is well, an institution here in the St. Louis area, you can find one in every urban neighborhood, every suburban town, and every small town on the interstates. I have never seen a gas station like it anywhere else, the stores are always clean, everything is easy to find, the cashiers are fast and professional, and the food is always good. This morning, I had their new meatball sub and two steak taquitos. Combined with some Lipton peach tea, it was so good.

A strong dose of disappointment:

I found out recently that the bank teller from my post Bank Teller Confessional is married. Why are all the good ones always taken? That’s right, it’s because they’re the good ones……

Oh well, she talks to me when I come by the bank, and she is a great woman, very friendly personality, and it turns out that I did know her from back in the day when we were in the same church together. I would like to get to know her better, and meet her husband, but it is disappointing that she’s already in a relationship. It’s kind of surprising too that she got married when she was only 21, that is kind of unusual for our generation.

It is making me question my ability to read people and context in conversations. As most of the blog audience already knows, that’s something I have always struggled with, I thought my sense of being able to “read” people was getting better in person, but this is making me question a lot of things. I had thought at first that she was trying to flirt with me, but now I don’t know what to think of how I was interpreting it.

Schadenfreude:

The term is starting to catch on more with each day, but it means roughly a sense of joy over someone's downfall. It’s a unique term, and a rather adequate one to describe how I felt when I found out that my mom and dad’s next door neighbors had to leave their home this week due to a foreclosure. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving family.

I know that sounds incredibly cruel, but I talked briefly back in December about what her and her husband and kids were like. She wasn’t half bad when she moved in about 12 years ago (was a little arrogant from the beginning though), but as the years went on she kept getting worse and worse. She became even more arrogant, she would let her bratty twin boys (they about 14 now), terrorize the neighborhood, and then get hostile (nearly to the point of violence on several occasions, she made threats against the neighbors), whenever anyone would confront her about their antics, which included trying to climb my mom and dad’s chimney (I’m serious). Her husband was just as bad, a loudmouthed lazy hoosier of a guy. They calmed down somewhat after she was embarrassed and humiliated by the fact that her arrest for heroin possession made the local newscasts because of the job she had in local government at the time.

I think it humbled her a bit, and she knew that she had to calm down or face repercussions from her probation officer. Apparently she told her kids to go terrorize some other neighborhood, keep the mayhem away from home, to keep from getting complaints and police calls from the neighbors, because we rarely had problems with her sons after that.

An Illinois State Police officer stopped by Thursday night to make sure that they had left, he said that was their deadline to leave or face forced removal and/or arrest. When I saw the combination lock on the front door and a sticker from a property management company saying that the bank had taken possession of the house, I felt like dancing like this: (skip to 1:47 or so)

OK, not quite, but you get the idea. ;)

David Sedaris:

A fan of the blog told me on my Google + page recently that my blog posts, and rather odd post titles (I’ve laughed at myself after coming up with some of them), kind of reminded her of the deadpan humor of comedy writer David Sedaris.

He has a very dry, but very funny sense of humor, kind of like he is funny without even consciously trying to be. Here’s a few examples:

I really want to thank the fan of the blog who introduced me to his comedy, I rather enjoyed it. :)