Curses, Foiled Again!

Let's say I'm Hannibal, or Napolean, or Washington, or Commander Adama, and I want to trap my enemy so he cannot escape.  The first thing I would want to do is to cut off all routes into and out of his location, forcing my enemy to expose himself to great dangers and hardships and rendering him vulnerable to attack and delay. 

Now, let's say I'm the transportation authorities of New York City, and my enemy is...hmmm...let's says it's us.  Would I do the same?  Yes, yes I would. 

They hate us.  They hate us a LOT.  Our subway was completely rerouted, which would have forced us to switch trains half a dozen times (including a brief run on Supertrain), show passports and declare any fruits and vegetables we were carrying.  Fortunately, we live near an alternative train, the entrance to which plunges several miles into the earth's crust.  The escalator, however, was tragically inoperable (heralding 742 consecutive weekends of repairs) so we hoisted child and stroller into the depths, past some exposed rock stratum, to finally get to a working subway.  We managed to get to our stop, which we chose because it had elevators, but in a final ambush said elevators were broken.  Touche, MTA...touche.

All this was in an effort to get Cheeky to ECG's to spend the night, so Oodgie and I could go see the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  If you make it to New York, I highly recommend you see this, 'cause it's pretty freakin' funny, although it did give us a little angst about Cheeky's inevitable "awkward stage", which the poor girl has no idea is coming.  Neither of us, despite being wicked smaht, were ever in spelling bees, probably because (a) we weren't nerds, and (b) we didn't need the stress.  (Correction:  I lie....I was actually a huge nerd, but even nerds think spelling bees are for...well, nerds)  But there was some audience participation, which sets off my schadenfreudometer and gave us fits of laughter, and the cast was fantastic.  Plus, with ECG grandparenting we could party hard and sleep in without fear of repurcussions.

Today, we opted to drive rather than suffer through another subway debacle.  Since we already had to give up our sweet parking spot, we headed to Costco first so we could buy 300 diapers (which we pray gets us through February) and browse the aisles for 60 lb. jugs of pickles.  That was a pretty productive trip, but when we headed to ECG's the transportation gods struck again, closing the tunnel we needed to get to that side of town, and routing us through a zone where all one-way streets go away from where you need to go.  Thank god Oodgie was driving, because I'd have given myself a subconjunctival haemorrhage (again) dealing with all of this--I'm as well-behaved as Yosemite Sam behind the wheel.

This story doesn't really go anywhere...we eventually picked her up, got home, and watched the Steelers put an end to my Super Bowl prediction.  You didn't expect a Kaiser Soze ending, did you?  It's just frustrating to be at the mercy of boneheads who use my tax dollars to trap me in my 'hood, that's all.  I need a freakin' jet pack. 

Comments

[Lori]

You know, there are different types and levels of nerd.... ;)

[Mr. Big Dubya]

I've been sitting here for about 20 minutes trying to come up with some witty retort about why, just because I was in a town-wide spelling bee, I am not a nerd, but I got nothin'...zilch...nada...zip.

[Hud]

We of the spelling bee past are NOT nerds. Rather, we were well-read child prodigies whose parents got their rocks off proving to other adults that their children were smarter than the Jones down the street or the idiot principal of the school. By the time they found we had a penchant for visualization, recall and competition all in one... why, we were on our way to ever-expanding bees. More than nerdiness that's what it was. I'd be willing to bet, Mr. Big Dubya, that by the time you had a well-balanced ego and sense of self-worth you also resigned from the practice. Yes, Web-Doggy, I bet even you didn't know this was part of my dark secret past... and I AM DEFINITELY NO NERD. (I'll never forget the word in which I lost the county-wide bee and got second. Aggrandizement. Even as a child of 10 I knew more than those punk judges. I spelled it the British way and they wouldn't allow it.) Hud.

[CroutonBoy]

Hud, I've known you for 17 years...and you are a huge nerd.

The fact that you even acknowledge the British spelling of a word makes you an even huger nerd. Nerd. ;-)

[West Coast Brother 2]

I'm glad you corrected yourself on the nerd thing Tony but I have to agree with Lori. There are different levels on nerd. You are the D&D, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek nerd. Not the spelling bee, home schooled, band geek! Oh wait a minute, you were a band geek. Dang! I guess your a hybrid.

CroutonBoy,
Whhhhsssssssshhhhhh....thudd! That was all the wind leaving my sails. I'm shocked and appalled. Especially given my name at http://sexy.namedecoder.com -- Hud

CroutonBoy,
Whhhhsssssssshhhhhh....thudd! That was all the wind leaving my sails. I'm shocked and appalled. Especially given my name at http://sexy.namedecoder.com -- Hud

[Bill]

Umm... I won my 7th Grade Spelling Bee and I take great offense at the mere suggestion I might be a nerd. Oh wait, I am a nerd. Drats, foiled again.

[Phat Daddy]

I think we're confusing the taxonomy of geek vs. nerd vs. dweeb here.