MAGGI PICAYUNE

I know I missed the date by a couple days but it was still too great of a time to not mention after 10 years. Besides, it was my first true/real vacation as a full-time employee of any job since 1993.

So this is the tenth anniversary of New Year’s Eve at Jose’s house in Orlando. Years ago, the bulk of our clique would celebrate at the Silders’ place in (southside) Chicago. Then they moved to Baltimore in 1995 which prompted us to move the festivities there. The bigger plan was to rotate the location every year with the appropriate resident hosting. No dice with the Silders and 1997 ended on a sour note for me in general; the Silders weren’t responsible for that. Despite it being just Jose and me, it was an awesome week of movies, drinking and trying to meet women. I was also glad to see how well Orlando panned out for Jose too. I didn’t think moving there in 1991 was a wise move but his mother was relocating to Florida (still “planning” to this day). However, when you’re just out of university, close to broke, up to your waist in student-loan debt and underemployed, taking an offer to get assistance from your parents is probably the wiser move. Jose did the smart thing unlike me. Five years later, he owned a house, paid off his car, had a full-time job with the Orlando Fox affiliate and was attending his second year of law school. I wasn’t jealous. I had a pretty good life in Austin after a rough first year. I was thrilled for Jose because broadcasting is a cutthroat business and his mother put off moving to Florida for her career, leaving him there on his own for most of the five years.

It was definitely a non-stop quasi-party from when he picked me up at the airport. First there was a late dinner at Steak n’ Shake near his house. I couldn’t believe how much I missed that food. I had grown up with it for years, took it for granted and never gave it much thought on the day I left in 1994. Jose gave me the tour of his house, quite nice. He had a roommate so that section was off limits though. No loss. I was actually impressed with how he could function with AOL for DOS on an old 486 to check our e-mail. The following day was Sunday and due to a scheduling error on Jose’s part, he had to go to work at the TV station. It would be pretty empty so he wanted to know if I would mind coming along. I was pretty stoked to check it out. He gave me the grand tour and we still have some parts of it videotaped with the hope of one day editing it into something fun. The rest of the time was spent watching the various feeds, queuing up commercials, telling jokes and snacking. It was Fox which meant the NFC playoffs were on but all the sitcoms afterwards were reruns with plugs for some new cartoon called King of the Hill.

Jose’s replacement showed up on time and was gracious enough to let us split early in order to catch a movie, the mediocre buddy comedy My Fellow Americans. The better movie we caught that week was Beavis and Butt-Head Do America which inspired our ongoing catch phrase for the remainder of my vacation, “I see you’re wearing overalls. I have overalls too.”

The New Year’s Eve party at Jose’s house was quite nice. I met his Orlando-based friends, his classmates from law school and several other coworkers. The weather in Central Florida was great despite some weird fog rolling in late in the evening. The leftover beer continued to fuel us for the rest of the week. (Not really binge drinking, just a casual bottle now and then.) Jose even demonstrated his cooking abilities by making paella. Puerto Rico’s version is pretty different from Sonia’s El Salvador brand.

Since he lived in Orlando, we had to take in all the cool amusements on the city’s southern side; Pleasure Island and MGM. He didn’t have any interest in EPCOT or Disney World. I can’t remember why we decided against Universal. We also checked out downtown because there was a Magic game that week. I told him to get tickets in advance too. Even if the Magic were playing the horrible Toronto Raptors, you can never be sure what the attendance will be like. Jose didn’t heed my advice. We were turned away at the box office because it was sold out. I told him it didn’t matter much anyway, the Magic would slaughter the Raptors. Ha! When we saw the news at a bar later that evening, the game was a double-overtime victory for the Magic. I never let him forget it until we saw a Magic-Bulls game in 2002. MGM was interesting, namely for all the Star Wars stuff and the 20th anniversary re-releases were coming which gave it an air of excitement.

Pleasure Island was the most eventful part. Originally we were there to use some coupon for the recently opened Planet Hollywood (a place you couldn’t pay me to go into now). The rest of the place was fun yet touristy. There was a bar with a different theme that most people could enjoy, even a curmudgeon like myself. The main one we checked out had the contemporary tunes and dancing. I can’t remember what it was named. The primary dance floor rotated counter clockwise which assisted even the most rhythmically challenged white males I know (most of my freshmen floor mates at Marquette). There were a couple of cute women we saw. One had overalls, thus the modification of the Butt-Head pickup line mentioned earlier. And yes, we got shot down by them. No, we didn’t use the “overalls” line neither.

It still dovetails into the last thing I remember fondly of this vacation, our resolution to do a better job at meeting women because we’d both had been experiencing some ugly dry spells. For some other reason, many women were being ensnared by this awful book called The Rules written by a couple psychos. This awful waste of paper was still making the media rounds then too. While I was waiting for Jose to pick me up at the airport, I caught an interview of Dr. Judith Kuriansky who completely refuted the psycho authors; manipulation and playing games will never end in a good outcome. I was impressed with her enough to buy her book. Jose knew of her from a radio show. Sadly, the book store we went to only had one copy. We shared it, reviewed it, had a few laughs and in the end I think it was a step in the right direction even if most of the advice was “obvious.” I still have my copy to this day because Somara wanted it around for her amusement.

The following year, Jose came to Austin to visit me in the Spring and I did return to Orlando in 2002 for a week of fun. Since then, we have just hooked up in Las Vegas but I will always remember this Orlando trip because I consider it my first actual vacation as an adult.

What started off as a simple cold evolved into an extremely sore throat and then tonsillitis. Yeah, that illness little kids get and it ends with the infected body part being removed. I chose not to have them removed when I was younger because I actually thought I could save the post-operation ice-cream-based diet for a later time.

In the beginning, I had no idea it was tonsillitis, it just felt like a sore throat that wouldn’t quit with swelling I couldn’t stop. Steam didn’t help. Soup couldn’t be swallowed. Sleep was impossible as breathing ceased being an involuntary action. After the jerks at Time Warner were done messing with my cable hook up (no idea why, the apartment complex paid for it), I decided to call the only friend I had remaining in Austin, Sonia. As soon as she was home from something more pressing she drove my car to the nearby hospital because it was now late evening.

Matters didn’t improve much in the emergency room. The staff wasn’t completely sure it was tonsillitis until the specialist arrived. This doctor had his theories but it required the Baron Harkonnen method on the insides of my mouth and throat to confirm it (the part involving needles). I thought I was going to tear the arm rests off the chair. Sonia was a trooper, she stuck around until the doctor made his final recommendation. I think I embarrassed her with a little outburst of emotion to let her know how much I appreciate her friendship. Hey, as I said about her on her birthday, she’s like my little sister.

The doctor said I had to spend the night due to dehydration, the painkillers he pumped into me and to see if the medication would bring down the blockage in my throat. Sonia took my car home and I gave her instructions to call PowerComputing to let them know where I was (speaking remained difficult). It was the most relaxing evening of my life after that. A comfy hospital bed, soothing painkillers to make me sleep, semi-liquid food like pudding since I regained the ability to swallow in an hour and I always remember David Alan Grier’s talk show being on. They released me the next afternoon so I walked home. There was follow-up medication which led to the discovery of my penicillin allergy. This stuff itched worse than fire-ant bites and freaked out José during my vacation 10 days later.

However, the distressing tale didn’t end then. The crappy insurance company PowerComputing used weaseled out the claim by stating I had a “preexisting condition.” Their twisted logic went along these lines: Since I came down with tonsillitis over 20 years ago, the insurance crooks classified it as preexisting, as if it were equal to diabetes, cancer or HIV. The specialist who treated me thought it was bullshit too. In the end, I was left holding the bag of a $1900 bill that I did finally pay off and clear in 2000. I’m going to keep the politics of insurance reform and healthcare out of this but I was fortunate with the bill only being under two grand in 1996. However, it seems the doctor applied needles to where it hurt and Big Insurance put a  knife to my throat. The aftermath is another reason why I would never work for a slime-bag company like State Farm in my former hometown. As I told my grandmother, I would rather work for the Mafia before State Farm because the Outfit admits to rackerteering and extortion, they’re just not protected by the Republican Party.

This day in personal history will always live in infamy with Paul and me. Why? It was the last day of our first semester of Marquette…and it didn’t kill us! Technically, I had completed my last final exam a couple of days earlier and I was breaking the rules by staying in the dorms; residents were supposed to leave within 24 hours of finishing their last exam. No one seemed to mind if I stuck around, worked some extra hours down in the cafeteria and enjoy college life without having to take classes, besides, Paul’s parents were going to give me a lift to O’Hare the following day.

When Paul returned from his Spanish 001 final, I remembered opening the windows in his room, turning up the volume on his roommate’s stereo and proceeding to enjoy Van Halen’s 5150. I know I was guilty of some air bass playing, I can’t recall if Paul was doing his best Eddie imitation.

After visiting some distant, obscure relatives on my mother’s side, Paul and I got back together to celebrate and this is when the evening became more interesting. I’m not going to bore you with the sordid details, I’ll leave that to Paul since he would be a more credible witness. He also tells the story better. Maybe this will prompt him to leave a comment or two.

The next morning was awful because I had never felt sicker in my life (events over the next 20 years found a way to exceed it in 1999). I am grateful no one chose to doodle on me too, an old college prank that was recently referenced on the new Brian Posehn comedy CD. Thankfully I’ve never had a hangover last for three days ever again.

I will always remember this day fondly not for the evening and aftermath but for the thrill of completing my first semester of college. When you’re growing up, people instill all this fear about how difficult it is. They go on about the classes, the homework, the professors and even the food. The real crisis is not going crazy from all the independence you get and how you can dig your own grave through it. A good chunk of our floor was on academic probation when we returned in January. These guys weren’t all dumb, they were just less disciplined than Paul and me. Okay, they were undisciplined compared to Paul and I was just cruising on what little smarts I had left from high school.