February 7th, 2002. Thursday
I've spent most of the morning wrapping and re-wrapping my left ankle, which I sprained rather seriously last night. It's all Caryn's fault, really. I was meeting her at Botanica for a quick drink before I had to go to the second job, and she was late showing up. Had she been there, I never would have thought to walk to the back room and fall in a whole by the bathroom on my way. The entire endeavor started off poorly before I even got inside. I literally fell into the bar, tripping over a bunched up doormat on my way in. Still trying to recover from that embarrassment, I only managed to get about 20 feet before tripping yet again. It was in front of a big group of people, so I tried to maintain my dignity and spring right back up after stumbling only for a split second. It was a opretty deep stumble though. You know how there's sort of this imaginary embarrassment line that you have to stay above any time you trip or fall? You can usually stumble forward, which is still sort of embarrassing, but sort of funny too. But if you just drop straight down, it's utter humiliation. So I was on my way to the floor, but braced myself precariously against my awkardly turned ankle, determined not to fall down. So I tripped, screamed a quiet little scream, walked to the back room, and darted into the bathroom, closed the door, and screamed. I think the scream may have been "FUCK!" I'm not sure though.
The only reason I actually went to the back was so that I could make it look like I was looking for someone before going to use the the bathroom. I really needed to go, but I didn't want them to think that I was just using the bar for the bathroom. So I had to go through this whole little charade. Once I was actually in the bathroom, I couldn't find the light, and fumbled around in the dark. After about 20 seconds of cursing and fumbling and agonizing pain, I still couldn't find the light. By now I was too embarrassed to open the door and let a little light in so that I could see where the light switch was. I didn't want the big group of people to look over and wonder why I'd been standing in the dark in the bathroom for half a minute. But eventually I just gave up and opened the door. It wasn't even a traditional switch, but one of those flat, plastic switches you just sort of pivot on its plane. Anyway, the pain was so blinding that I had a tough time peeing. I couldn't concentrate on anything else than my ankle. It took some doing to block out the pain long enough to empty my bladder. God, I hate that bar. The stupid floors are all crooked. It's not the first time I've stumbled around there. For some reason, at a random point in the floor, the whole thing just rises half a foot. What's worse is that it's right by the doorway to the back section, so at the precise moment you have to pay attention to what's going on at eye-level, the floor fucks with your base. It's really quite devious.So Caryn shows up, and we sit for about 10 minutes while I drink my pre-work beer, using it between sips to try to ice my ankle a bit. Then off to work. I had to watch "Special Unit 2" on UPN. When I first had to watch it at work, I thought it looked pretty lame. But I have to say, it really won me over. I like it a lot. It's pretty clever, with funny and engaging dialogue. There are a lot of wise-ass one-liners, but they pull them off pretty well most of the time. Anyway, I'm sure the show will be cancelled soon. I thought the Tick was pretty hilarious too, but Fox pulled the plug on that pretty quickly. Not shocking, really.
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