MadMup.com

Apparently staff members at public schools get their picture taken every year. I don’t know who thinks this is a good idea.

Actually, I do. For the most part. See, once all the staff memebrs have had their picture taken, they post a chart on the wall outside the main office with everyone’s picture and name. I find it incredibly useful because I can stop there before heading to a teacher’s room to work on their computer if I’m not entirely sure who that teacher is. That happens to me more than you might think.

The downside, of course, is it means that I get my picture taken every year, too. In last year’s picture I purposefully went for a lopsided grin to effect a nonchalant, friendly attitude. At best I’d say the results were “mixed.”

This year I had just eaten some chocolate and I was worried that I might have some in my teeth. The photographer said, “Let me look.” Like an idiot, I fell for it and he took the picture. Argh.

I learned from a friend that sometimes blogs are good for getting a laugh. So, in that vein, I give you my school picture:

Watchful observers might recognize the shirt/T-shirt combo as my “Meeting People” outfit. I won’t go back through and find (and link) all of them, but this shirt combo is in a lot of pictures where I meet people for the first time. Coincidentally, the color combo of the shirt and T-shirt are also the school colors where I work. Bonus!

And, just like when you got your picture taken in school, I received a little picture packet with two 3x5s and 6 wallet-sized pictures. Unlike school, faculty and staff members don’t exchange pictures, nor do they write in each other’s yearbooks. So I’m stuck with these goofy-looking pictures.

All I can say is – you better have laughed.

I haven’t been to a dentist in years for no good reason other than I just never think to go. I haven’t been to a physician in years because I don’t want to hear him tell me I’m out of shape and need to eat right and exercise. And, up a week ago, I hadn’t been to an optometrist in 5+ years because I hate getting air blown into my eyes.

Nobody’s afraid of the eye doctor, as a general rule. I’m technically not myself, but I do have specific anxieties attached to getting my eyes checked (just like I have specific anxieties attached to most things in my life, really). I know they say the air-in-the-eyes thing is a test for glaucoma, but I think they’re having us on. I think they got together and decided that they could do pretty much whatever they wanted to us in the name of “Doctoring,” and that’s what they decided to try. Whoever it was that allowed them to do that to him the first time ought to be noted in the history books somewhere so we can revile and curse them.

The other thing I worry about is the Flippy Lenses Test. You know that old joke about worrying you were going to fail your hearing test because you hadn’t studied? It’s actually kind of like that. I can never tell enough difference between the two choices to feel confident about my decision. Reading letters off a chart isn’t a very good approximation of real-world reading situations, I don’t think.

Furthermore, when someone’s having the laser surgery done on their eyes, don’t they take measurements with a computer to know how they need to make the laser adjustments? Why can’t they just take computer readings of my eyes and tell me what prescription I need? Why do I need to take tests at all?

Turns out Mr. Smarty Doctor was all set with answers to these questions:

• Puff of air: “We can tell things with that test that we can’t easily determine from other tests.” Mm-hmm. Like, for instance, just how much people will let you get away with.
• Flippy Lenses Test: “We double-check without you knowing to make sure you’re consistent in your choices. We’ll go back and try a lens from before.” I guess that makes sense, but why tell me that before I take the Flippy Lens Test? Now I know the secret and I’ll mess everything up.
• Computer measuring: “Computer measuring can’t take into account the little variances and the ‘feel’ that person is after. Also, you’d be surprised to know how much of the laser surgery is based on the Flippy Lens Test.” Actually, yeah, I was. I thought that was pretty interesting, but it means I’ll never be able to go get the laser surgery done now. I mean, can you even imagine the anxiety of having that be dependent on my choices?

Before my exam I had looked over the available frames and had narrowed my choice down to two. They were pretty much two different versions of the same style and, really, the style was a big part of my decision to finally go to the eye doctor. I’ve had the wire-frames for five years or so and it was time for a change. I’d always liked Lisa Loeb’s glasses on her, and I’ve seen those more and more frequently in the past couple of years on people, and I thought I might like to try them on me. More recent examples and recent exhortations for me to try them on me pushed me to do so.

This, of course, leads to my third anxiety about going to the eye doctor: I can’t tell how glasses look on me because I have to take my glasses off to try the non-prescription demo models on… which means I can’t see myself. This means I have to rely on the opinions of others (who, I should mention, I’m more willing to trust on matters of my appearance than I am to trust myself). The only “others” around at this point are the people who work at the doctor’s office. One of the ladies said she’d help me out and looked at the two I’d chosen. She gave a definite “Those!” to one pair, so those were the ones I got. I was a little suspicious because they were the more expensive of the two and she does, after all, work for the office, but I decided that fake or not, her enthusiasm for these particular frames was inspiring. Done & done.

“They should be done in about a week.” Say what? I’m not used to having to wait for glasses. I’d gone to a “we’ll have them done in an hour” place before, so that’s what I was used to (which translates in Markspeak to “comfortable with”). Ah, well. Not much I can do about it, I guess.

A measly four days later, I got the call that they were in. Not a bad wait, really. I went in to pick them up and the same lady fitted them on me to make sure they were okay. She did a couple of “Oh, yeah, those are gooood”s, but I was still distrustful. Do I need to tip for compliments, you think?

A couple of friends have seen them now and ruled them “hip” and “appearance changing.” The changing I’ve noticed is that they are forming new dents in my head above my ears, a painful process that I hope is over soon. I also hope that the old dents go away, as it can’t be good to have more dents in your head than you need, can it? I’m still noticing the frames while they’re on me, but I’m glad I’ve had the weekend to get used to them rather than trying to do that at work tomorrow.

So what do they look like? See for yourself. Try not to be distracted by the huge forehead in the picture, a feature apparently enhanced by the haircut I got the same day I got the glasses.

So now, a week and a half later, we come to the Cowboys game, ostensibly the reason I made the trip to Dallas. As I’ve said, I’ve wanted to see the Cowboys play in Texas Stadium for a long time. Really, though, the game served as a backdrop for meeting friends, either again or for the first time.

We’d been told that we should allow three hours before game time to get to the game. We figured that was because of traffic, but we figured wrong. We got to the stadium rather quickly. What took us so long was walking from our parking spot to the stadium itself. In fact, that walk might actually have taken longer than the drive there. On the way we passed many a tailgating party and we realized just how hungry we were. Brian was tempted to wander over to a Redskins tailgating gathering and see if they’d give him some food but ultimately decided against it.

Along the way the various fan groups gave the opposing fan groups a hard time, but none quite so humorously as a group of Cowboys fans that blew whistles and flagged Redskins passersby. I’m not sure what the penalty was, but it was a hoot to see a dozen or more little yellow flags flying through the air.

Here’s a picture of me with the stadium in the background on the way towards it:

You can see how gray it is, but I don’t think you can tell how much it’s raining. It was a steady drizzle pretty much our whole walk there, and it turned into a regular downpour when we got to the gates. My newly-purchased hat kept my glasses fairly clear, so that was good. We got some food before heading to our seats (and judging from the prices, the food was laced with gold – really, really tasty gold, fortunately), which were under the covered part of the dome. It’s sorta hard to tell from this picture, but I think you can see how much it’s raining through the hole in the dome roof:

The game itself was a lot of fun. There’s something kinetic about 65,000 people in one building, let alone 65,000 yelling people. Our ears were ringing most of the time, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that we had suffered permanent hearing loss.

This picture gives you the view from our seats:

It was difficult to see things that happened on the other end of the field, but for the most part we could follow.

The thing that saddened me about the game is that it’s not really an environment you’d want to take kids to. The ticket prices are exclusionary enough, but we heard more than a few obscenities yelled. Add to that all the “birds” flipped and the obscenities on shirts and signs held aloft and, well, it’s too bad. Taking a kid to a football game used to be something great to do. It doesn’t look like that’s the case any more.

I’m sure Brian (dirty Washington fan that he is) would disagree, but the game was made even better because the Cowboys won, 27-10. The game still would have been great to see, but I’m glad they won. It’s been suggested to me that I am perhaps the Cowboys’ lucky charm and should therefore attend all their home games so they can win. I am completely up for this idea and am now taking donations to fund this season-long adventure. Who knows, with all that extra time in Dallas, I might even start being able to find my way around.

The trip back to the car after the game was fraught with danger. This is one huge mass of excitable people, all pressed together and fired up from the game. If the Cowboys had lost, I probably would have been worried for our safety – even more so than I already was, that is. But no, we made it back to our car without incident. But that’s as far as we made it incident-free.

See, the traffic to get out of the parking lot was bumper to bumper. We didn’t see much point in trying to get out, so we sat in the car to wait it out. We’re talking to each other and to other people on the phone when the guy in the spot in front of us decided to pull out and around us to get into the line of leavers. He’s apparently new to this truck he’s driving, as he doesn’t turn wide enough behind us and scrapes the rear passenger corner of our shiny purple Chevy HHR. That wasn’t enough for him, apparently, because he kept going. Loud screeching noises mean nothing to this brave adventurer! Finally he realizes what’s happening – maybe because of our wild yells and gesticulations – and he backs up. This, of course, is like pulling a broadhead arrow back out of a person and caused even more damage and screeching.

Brian was immediately on the case, getting all the needed info from the guy, calling the insurance company, calling Alamo, all that stuff. Meanwhile, the guy’s wife is sitting in the truck, rather put out. “Can we get this taken care of as quickly as possible?” Yeah, sorry, lady. Sorry your husband ran us over and put you behind schedule. Oh, and we’re fine, by the way. Thanks for asking!

Here’s what the back of the car looked like:

Somewhere along the line Brian called the police and they suggested he wait there for an officer to come by. We couldn’t really go anywhere anyway because the traffic was still backed up, but just when we had decided not to wait any longer, a policeman showed up. He pretty much said, “There isn’t much I can do here. Here’s a blue form which you could fill out, I suppose, if, you know, you wanted to.” He was nice, though, so that was good. It can’t have been in his plans for a great evening to drive to Texas Stadium on a game night to inspect an accident. Beats getting shot at by hoodlums, I suppose.

The nice thing was that by the time we were done talking to the policeman, traffic had cleared up and we had pretty much clear sailing back to the hotel, getting there a little before 1 a.m. A quick nap later and we were back on the road by 4 a.m. Brian and Lisa’s flight left at 6:something and it was easiest for me to just go with them and wait for my flight at 11:30.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. Coupled with my great trip to Canada earlier this summer, I might just have to rethink my anti-traveling stance. The secret, I think, is meeting great people. In fact, you should come on the next game trip. We’ve got one planned for when the new Cowboys stadium is built – so, somewhere around 2009. Are you free?