My last night sort of vanished. I am not sure where it went.
My work day yesterday was on the 'blah' side. At lunchtime I ran down to the post office by my house to pick up a package that I needed to sign for. The line was long
as it always is there
so I had to resign myself to stand and wait and shuffle forward every few minutes. There was an old bald lady in line next to me. Completely bald
not a single strand. She must be some sort of cancer therapy patient
and I feel bad
but I had to keep myself from staring at her bald head. It was a bit strange because her exposed arms and face all had the normal old-lady wrinkles and blemishes
but the stop of her head was as smooth and creamy white as a baby's bottom. I wonder if she took good care of her dome
polishing it up at night with some moisturizer.
So I finally got my package and headed back to work. I had ordered a blank flash cart for my gameboy advanced as well as the linker cable. However
much to my annoyance the linker cable was meant to connect to a GBA.. I own a game boy micro and thus had a different port on it. Annoyed
I had to go to the webpage and order another part
a cart cradle so I can transfer the roms to the flash cart. So I did not get to play with my toy right away.
I just sort of zoned out the rest of the work day
and after work I was in the mood to do a little writing so I grabbed my dreamwriter and headed down to the pub. It was actually a bad night to be there writing
some guy ended up coming in for some sort of trivia and this brought a flock of people. On top of that the little booklight I use to see my dreamwriter died on me. I really like the dreamwriter
but I need to find a way to make the screen backlit. Or install a light in it
or something.
I had three pints under my belt at that point so I headed on home. On the way I stopped at burger kind and picked up a couple of BK Big Fish sandwhiches. I really need to stop buying those damn things. Some foolish
fat
walmart shopper and nascar fan part of my brain is saying 'Hey
it's fish! It's good for you!' however my bowls respond with 'Its grease. Grease! Look! Look at that! That's some fucking grease right there!'. On top of that I wake up the next morning and my mouth tastes like it has a coating of wax.
I wish there was some more food options around me. There are a lot of spiffy restaurants on first street
but the vast majority of them close at 5:30. So when it's 8:30 at night and I get a munchies attack
I do not have a lot of choices
and not many healthy choices. I am usually pretty good at avoiding fast foods altogether
but sometimes those big fish sing to me. Square fishy goodness.
I got home and turned on 'ghost hunters'. To be honest I only caught bits and pieces of the show. Between the beer and the grease and the lack of sleep from the night before
I was phasing in and out of sleep. It did not look like I missed much though; it was not a very good episode. No spooks to be found.
The past couple of weeks I have been waking up to find myself sitting up in bed. I am not sure what that is all about. I will wake up because I have to pee or something and realize that I am sitting on the edge of my bed. A couple of times I have woken up and I am sitting up
and I just go back to sleep sitting up. I wonder what else I am doing in my sleep.
2026 Update
Dialing up April 2006, where Ed battles a bald head, a dead booklight, and a fish sandwich shaped like regret.
The post office lunch line, the dead booklight, the Game Boy Micro port mismatch—this is a museum of pre-smartphone suffering. In 2006, you had to physically travel to a post office to sign for a package, and if the linker cable was wrong, you ordered another part from a webpage and waited days. Now the delivery drivers bring the wrong thing straight to my door, and I can grumble while watching a thirty-second video of someone modding the same ancient cartridge. The DreamWriter with its dying bulb belongs to an age when a person took a word processor to a pub to write; now I just open a notes app and try to look tragic. And the Big Fish: greasy square slabs were one of the few late-night options. In 2026, there are a thousand choices at 8:30 and I will still order the same fried fish, but I will pay a subscription for the privilege. Trivia night packed the pub; now every table has a phone propped up, and Ghost Hunters has been replaced by people filming their own doorbells.
“2006 Ed, did you seriously mail-order a linker cable without double-checking the Game Boy Micro port, and was that third pint the reason the BK Big Fish seemed like a balanced meal?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Oh hell yes, I did. I sat there at work, all smug, thinking I was being clever ordering a flash cart and linker cable, and it never once crossed my mind that my Game Boy Micro has that weird little port that nobody else uses. So now I've got a cable for a GBA and a cradle on the way. Classic me. I'm surprised I didn't also order the wrong color. And yeah, that third pint didn't help. Somewhere between the buzz and the hunger, my brain convinced me a fried fish sandwich was basically a salad. The next morning my mouth felt like I'd been licking candles, and my bowels were not shy about letting me know I'd made a mistake. I swear, if I could get a decent veggie plate after 8:30, I'd be a new man. Until then, the fish keeps singing its greasy, square song.
