The Course of Events on the Night Before the Night Before Christmas

I woke up yesterday and immediately put on music. I do this most every day, but for some reason on this morning I needed to hear Ain't Nobody by Rufus and Chaka Khan, with a reasonable amount of volume. I think I got carried away, because I woke up one of my roommates, one of my INSANE roommates, and he proceeded to blast his OWN music super loud so that now he and I weren't just awake, but all 5 roomies, and perhaps the tenants below us were now awake. If they didn't wake up from the music, and bad music in my estimation, and not bad meaning good like Chaka, they were surely given a rude awakening by the ensuing ferocious door slamming. He has a hair trigger temper and seems to have a revenge philosophy similar to that of Sean Connery's character in The Untouchables ("They send one of yours' to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue, etc"). If the door slamming and music blasting doesn't convince you that he has the philosophy, then you have to believe me when I say that when I went into the bathroom which we share to shower I saw that the shower was running, left on hot. I had reason to believe that he did this intentionally to run me out of hot water, so I was slamming my fists on the tile walls of the shower in a fit of rage, which is totally out of character for me. Dead-on in character for him, but not me.

So, after my cold shower that left me feeling like pneumonia's wet dream, I was off to take pictures of Santa!! I was ecstatic to see that I had a GREAT crew when I got there. I've worked on and off with photography company employees "C" and "W" for over a year, and both know what they are doing, are a lot of fun, and I consider them friends. W brings a lot of energy to his job, like me, he may be a roommate real soon (see last paragraph) and both of us were amazing and jingling the sleigh bells to get the babies looking at the camera, and then snapping the picture with expert timing. All in all it was a pretty fun gig, and I think we did really well. It's a stupid, weekend job, but as I've said in previous posts, I take pride in my work and like when everything goes to plan, and the customers are satisfied.

That evening I went out for a few cocktails with two of my buds. Together we made up 3 of the 4 Horsemen. The fourth had to close the restaurant he manages. I know it sounds nerdy, but we have always called ourselves the 4 Horsemen, because we hit it off so much when we go out, and it has a nice ring to it. It seems that it's tough to get all of us together, and even tougher to get all of us together AND single. Currently, the guy that didn't make it is engaged, one guy is headed that way, one of them is really excited about a girl he's been talking to, and one of them is me. Our favorite bar, The Liar's Club, had a small crowd on the day before Christmas Eve, since many Chicagoans had already packed up and went home to their families. This enabled us to get the table that is elevated five feet in the air, which we found to be a lot of fun, if you can endure the heightened smokiness. With our bird's eye view, oldness, and wise-cracking ability, we likened ourselves to Waldorf and Statler from The Muppet Show.

Our one friend was having a lot of doubt about the idea of marriage. He loves his girl, but he has had A LOT of marriages around him crumble. Through the course of our conversation, it became evident that all 3 of us want kids, but are unsure about wives. Anyway, we decided we will start a Four Horsemen Commune, where the 4 of us will live and help each other raise our children, which we will adopt, etc. It would almost be like a TV's Full House situation, only with one additional uncle, and less vomit-inducing corniness.

Okay, I'm off to see my non-commune family for Christmas. Hope you all have a super holiday!

Sincerely,

The Gancer