Only the best for Mother

My mom's birthday was Monday.  Hi Mom!  She doesn't actually read the blog.

Anyways, that's important, but only important in a little bit.  Friday Samil came home from work around 7:20pm.  I can say that with a good deal of accuracy because he was kicked out of the building at 7pm and it takes about 20 minutes to get home.  Samil was very upset.  He was upset because grades were due on Friday and the kicked him out before he was able to finish start inputting them.  This was clearly not his fault because well, he started working on determining his grades at 3pm.   He finally finished grading all his final second marking period assignments and calculating marking period grades at 7pm when the security guard told him "Hey, its Friday, asshole.  Its 7pm.  You need to go home because I want to have a life and I can't if I'm sitting here babysitting you in this building.  Why are you even still here, anyway?  It is Friday, you know."  (that's at least what I imagine the security guard saying.)

Samil was not totally receptive to my point that hey... they were due on Friday, maybe um... you shouldn't have started work on them on... Friday... after school ended.  It was, obviously, the fault of his boss, since she scheduled professional development on Friday.  I doubt she understood Samil's work schedule, and gosh darnit, that's why he can't do a good job.

Sunday, my mother came for a birthday lunch.  She recommended a Mexican place near Samil's old apartment, which while not being all that far away from our current digs, would mean we'd be driving past about 50 other amazing restaurants so I suggested a Mexican place closer.  After giving Mom the tour of the apartment, I told Samil what was going on and mentioned her suggestion which caused a very elaborate conversation about Thai food.  He thought we should not only drop the idea of eating Mexican, but drive all the way to his old apartment and eat at a... get this... take out Thai place.  Only the best for Mother, of course.  After being as cordial as possible towards his suggestion we made our merry way to the close Mexican restaurant.

On returning, I brought back a menu from the establishment, which Samil found to be an invitation to read aloud the various foods they sold.  Samil was very impressed with the menu.  He thought the prices, which were on the slightly higher side for a few school teachers, to be particularly fascinating, and he recited those a few times for each dish.  He also, for some reason, was very interested in a single dish: the Fish Tacos.  I need to stress that this interest was not ironic in any way.  He was actually delighted that they offered the entree.  Now, I don't hold anything against a person who enjoys a good fish taco, but Samil doesn't.  Samil is a vegetarian, and not the type that says they're vegetarian but still eats fish.  So every time he mentioned the Fish Tacos, which he kept coming back to when looking over the menu, I became more confused.

You would think that moments like this would become less surprising for me after living with Samil for 5 months.  But, I'm not.  My only fear is that maybe he's getting more Samil-like.

house cleaning

One of the things that I told Samil when we started the process of moving in together was that I required we have someone clean our house.  I was too old to be having room mate spats about cleaning and stuff, and I knew I was really busy, and that he was pretty lazy.  So I thought it was a good time/money/stress balance.

Its now January and we're finally getting our first cleaning.  While the house has been messy, it hasn't been terribly dirty, so its not a big deal.  I had someone in mind to do this, but she became unavailable so Samil suggested someone else.  We'll call her L.  His selection of L combines a fair amount of smart thoughtfulness and a heaping dose of "that's a terrible idea Samil, what the hell are you thinking."

Samil decided to pick someone that worked in the activist organization we both met in.  This is a nice idea because its pretty much a group of poor college students who could use some money and need a flexible schedule.  I also like not paying a middleman or overhead: every dollar goes to L.  But here's the "that's the terrible idea" part.  Samil and L were, shall we say romantically involved, in the fall, but when he suggested they make it a formal sort of relationship she turned him down and that was that.  I am convinced, without a shadow of doubt, that this move is an attempt be near her every 2-3 weeks and eventually win her favor.  This is not behavior I'm comfortable my room mate engaging in with the person cleaning my apartment.  At the same time, who am I to keep Samil from making a fool from himself?  At the very least it will provide me fun things to write here...

And last night he did not fail to perform.

Once L got in, he gave her the tour of our apartment and then sat her down to chat for a solid hour.  He talked about tea, the stress of his job (more on that in another post), and the goings on of their mutual friends, etc etc.  Once she started to clean, he followed her around to see what may or may not need to be done in the apartment, trying to decide exactly what should be done in the apartment and what was not necessary.  This is of course something a contractor should tell a contractee if a job is to be done right.  You don't want to be unhappy because you weren't clear with your expectations.  That said, I don't think he needed to tell her that the shower needed to be cleaned or that the living room HAS to be vacuumed.  These things, I think, are fairly obvious.  But I'm probably crazy.  Also, between each room he made sure to ask if she had everything she needed and if there was anything she might want... tea, water, food, weed, and so on.

Once she finally got the rundown, he went into his bedroom and set up Pandora for her listening pleasure.  While she attempted to clean, he attempted to talk to her about Lady Gaga, and began by asking if she had ever heard of pretty much every single she's released, playing each song for about 30 seconds.  Her affirmative answers were obviously a sign to Samil that he should talk about how great Lady Gaga could be, if she got the right producers and engineers and songwriters and worked on her singing.  But she's pretty all right now.  He digs her.  The music is good and all, but you know, its not great.  It could be better.  If she had the right producer.  And if she didn't sing like that.  But this song is great.  Oh, but did you hear this Remix of Poker Face?  Oh man, you need to hear it.  She's pretty good, but man, if she had the right producers...  (I think you get the idea).

Eventually he got the idea that well, she didn't want to stay there all night and it would be nice if she could get on with cleaning, so he left her mostly alone... checking in periodically to see if she needed anything.  At this moment, possibly the funniest thing Samil has ever said was um... said.  He walked into the bath room and declared, "Hey... this is my last piece of gum.  Do you want it?"  "Um.       Okay."

I hope she comes back.

Like Father Like Son

Samil and I went to nearby high schools.  They weren't rivals, but the sports teams did play each other regularly. So Samil will do this thing whenever he meets someone who went to my high school.  That thing is he'll talk to them about his experiences on the wrestling team.  Thing is... none of my friends care about wrestling.  They don't care my team had a paw print on the butt, or that his team always lost, or... really anything about it.  I wonder if and when he'll get that hint.

And that's not related to this story.... Samil also has an issue with time management.  As he told our mutual friend Brian, everyone should have a 30 minute window to be late to something (Brian's response, for the record was "I'll actually kill anyone who makes me wait for a half hour.").  This is a curious thing because he wanted to leave this morning for his father's place at 10.  As I expected, he started eating breakfast at 11.  Not a big deal... going home a little late on a Saturday morning is not the end of the world.

Except his sister was taking the SATs and was expecting him to pick her up when they finished.  So around noon when he finished cleaning up from breakfast, he turns to me, informs me about it, and then goes "do I need to be there at noon or 1?" as if I'd know.  So, his bright idea is to call his dad and tell him to pick her up.

He made that call while I was on my way to pick up Brian, and when we got back to my place, he was sitting on the couch staring at the wall.  We sat around and talked for a bit: we're all teachers, and two of us are workaholics.  The other is Samil.  Two of us like to be on time to things... and the other is Samil.  etc. etc.

And then Samil's little sister calls waiting to be picked up.  Apparently dad is not there.  This causes Samil to angrily call Dad.  A while passes and we talk about politics and the sort.  And then the sister calls again, with the same problem.  Now Samil is flipping out, and tells Brian and me "my dad has the worst time management skills EVER.  We would always be sitting in the living room, and he'd walk in going 'let's go let's go let's go' and we'd always say 'we're waiting for you dad' and I mean, how could you do that?  And his temper.  He's always so angry, and we always have to put up with him."

The logician in me of course is wondering how Samil can be so angry at his father for his sister not being picked up when Samil had volunteered to do it and pawned it off on his dad when he was running hours behind the time he said he'd be in town.  Of course... like father like son.

Smart Phones.... again

So I mentioned in the last post that Samil got a new phone.  I've also mentioned Samil's troubles with his borrowed Palm Pre here and here.  Well, he is now the proud owner of the Sprint's most popular Google phone, or so people told him it was.  Last weekend when he came home he couldn't get it activated online.  Monday night he attempted again...

Samil plunked himself down on our comfy chair ready to set his phone up using mine while I played Modern Warfare 2.  After fighting with the Internet set up for a while, he started yelling at his laptop and then called Sprint.  He was put on hold for an excruciating (to me) five minutes.  After the customer service rep got all of his information, she took a look at his phone details and said "your phone should be activated."

"Really?"
"Yes, it should be working."
"But..." ::his phone rings::  "oh."
Then Samil picked up his phone and started talking to the person who called him while the rep just sat on the line probably wondering what the fuck was going on.  He then awkwardly told her thank you and hung up on her.  She did tell him one important piece of advice before he hung up, which was to turn off his old phone for 24 hours so there wouldn't be any confusion in the network as to which phone was really Samil's.

When I finished up with my games, I made my way to my room, and I could hear him loudly exclaiming the joys of his new phone.  "Oh man, they have a COMEDY App!?!?!?!!"  Now, I am very comfortable admitting my addiction to my crackberry because I didn't get a fancy phone to have one, but for all the bells and whistles that make my life easier.  Clearly, Samil did not get his smart phone for the newfangled productivity tools bundled with it, such as the To Do List, and the Calendar.  We're different people, and honestly, I'm not sure if a calendar would help much.  There is such a thing as lost causes.

The next morning I woke up to some little Mozart ditty playing from his bedroom.  For 20 minutes.  It was probably playing longer than that, but it woke me up just before my alarm, and continued playing through two of my snoozes, so it was at least twenty minutes.  Samil was in the shower for part of this, and in the kitchen for the other part.  So where could that little Mozart ditty be coming from?  My bet was on him not being able to turn off his new alarm, but boy was I wrong.

I walk into the kitchen to make my tea, and found Samil playing with his new phone on the counter, about an inch away from a solid still wet quarter sized spill of blueberry smoothie.

"Your Blackberry - does the alarm go off even when the phone is off?"
"Yes."
"Oh.  I didn't know phones did that." (my coworker said his phones been doing that since high school, just thought you should know.)
"Oh."
"Yeah... so my um, my old alarm was going off for a little bit, and I thought I was just hearing it in my head because like, it would always go off in the morning.  But it turned out, I guess, that um, it was going off because the phone turned on.  That's so weird."

In... his head.  He thought he was hearing his alarm in his head.  After hearing that, I wish he simply couldn't turn off the alarm on his new phone.  Also, its just further proof that smart phones are not named because they make the holder smarter.

Except for the frozen yogurt...

Samil just got home. His Grandmothers cousin died on Thursday so he went down to DC to be with family.  He immediately went to the kitchen, made a bowl of cereal and walked into my room.  Parenthetical thoughts are, of course, the ones going through my head.


"Hey, I just got in.  Look, I got my phone.  I couldn't activate it.  Sprint was busy."
"Oh.  Hi."
"How are you?  Weekend good?"
"Quiet."
"Mine was Awesome.  Except for the frozen yogurt.  We went to this swanky yogurt place, a chain.  It was bad.  No bueno."
"Oh." (Awesome weekend consoling family over loss of an elder... except for that yogurt!)
"Yeah - I think I'm going to go to sleep in like an hour and a half, maybe.  Oh man, early night."
"Okay."  (that would make it 9:30, which is a little early, I guess.)
"Yeah, I'm just gonna eat this and head to bed."
(Wait, what?  Its going to take you 90 minutes to eat that?)

OoooooKkkkkkk

So today Samil told me he was thinking about starting to use HGH, otherwise known as Human Growth Hormone, otherwise known as the stuff baseball players use to get an illegal but undetectable edge on their opponents.

Why?

He's tired.  And the first people to test HGH were doctors (um... no shit).  My, I feel slightly more logical, solution was to go to sleep earlier.  But!  He did go to sleep early last night.  He went to bed a good hour before me, even.

Or not.  Instead he was perfecting an email to send to a girl on OK Cupid.  For an hour and a half.  Or two girls.  So instead he went to sleep a bit later than me.   He was also calling people for advice on these emails - girls, of course (he felt the need to tell me, thus I feel obligated to tell you.)   I'm glad I'm not a girl, because then he would have woken me up to ask me questions like "should I say that I'm a teacher or should I not?  I mean, I want her to be intellectually curious, but maybe I should wait to talk to her about her favorite movies.  Should I tell her I'm a revolutionary?  Is this too long?  I don't want to bore her."

Clearly, the solution to his problem is HGH.

Random things...

 1) Samil just walked into my room with the, and I quote, craziest thing ever.  What is that craziest thing?  His keys fell into the lining of his jacket.  BUT HE COULDN'T FIND THE HOLE IN HIS POCKET.  Eventually he did.  Post finding hole in pocket, it is still the craziest thing ever.

2) Samil told me it was okay for MLK to cheat on his wife.  Just thought you should know.  Guys have needs, after all.

3) We've had an on and off battle with heating the house since early October.  Its not that big of a deal, but I don't want to spend money burning gas when I can just put on a sweatshirt.  I know - I'm crazy.  Samil had been complaining a lot about how cold he was at night and kept turning the heat up because he was freezing.  At first, I mentioned to him that maybe the heat wasn't on in his room, because I woke up every morning extremely toasty.  About three weeks ago he even moved his bedding (he doesn't own a bed) into the office to stay warm.  A week later he called our landlord demanding she put up storm windows.  She politely told him that these windows didn't need storm windows since they were brand new, but that it didn't make sense he was cold.  So she came over, and told him the heating vents in his room were closed.  She opened them.  For the last two weeks he has still been sleeping in the office despite this.

4) I know #3 was longer than all the others, making the list very unbalanced.  Shush.

5)  With any luck, I'll be able to tell you about Samil's upcoming date with someone he met on OK Cupid soon!

6) I need to get more guest parking passes because we want to have parties at our house.  Except... you only need a parking pass M-F from 8-5.  Samil is aware of this.  Suddenly, I think we have different definitions of what a party is.