When you work in the radio business, you very quickly learn to hate the annual onset of a particular season. No, I’m not talking about what we’ve come to call “the holidays,” but rather another phenomenon entirely: Political season.

Sure, everyone hates having to put up with the ever-increasing barrage of mudslinging ads and heartfelt appeals to vote such-and-such on measure what-have-you. On the consumer side of things, though, you have the option of changing the channel or at least hitting the Mute button on your remote control. Working in the media, however, one cannot simply turn away or turn off. One must endure. Once that blessed Tuesday in November has passed, life can return to normal.

That is, if you can call nearly two solid months of jingle-bells mania “normal.” But at least it isn’t poorly-produced political crap.

For the first time in fourteen years, I wasn’t working “in the industry” during political season. As silver linings go, I’ve seen worse…

I could tell you all about my workday and how it centered on Veritas’ Symantec’s Backup Exec product. I could tell you about the monsoon rains that kept me up most of the night and contributed to the nigh-interminable commute home this evening.

Instead, however, I’ll illustrate how weird my Monday was by stating that today, shortly after lunch, my mother called to say that she loves me.

That will be all.

Okay, I filled out my ballot. (Hooray for Oregon’s vote-by-mail system!) Technically, until it is dropped off appropriately, I haven’t actually voted. But, still: If you live in my part of the country and if you care about any of the issues in play (term limits, the governor’s race, medical spending, insurance rates, abortion), please, please vote. “My vote won’t count anyway” doesn’t really hold water with me, folks. As the saying goes, you lose your right to bitch about the state of things when you fail to vote on them.

Unless you’re under legal voting age, that is.

Now, of course, I can gripe and moan all I want, ’cause the rest of the populace will vote against me on most of the important stuff anyway. Heh.

Portlanders like to joke about “keeping Portland weird,” but there are days when I think we’re plenty weird enough, thanks. Then again, maybe I’m mistaking weird people for drunken people.

Lil’ and I were at “The O.G.” last night, waiting the requisite 40 minutes for available seating. That’s what we get for going out on a Friday night, after all. We talked, as we often do, about this, that, and the other thing. One of the things Lil’ talked about was how she persuaded her eldest child to find lodging other than at her home. To wit, she put her foot down and said, “Sure, you can live here once you’re eighteen… if you’re either going to school or paying rent!” Surprise, surprise, the demonspawn in question arranged for an apartment of her own.

Out of nowhere, a voice declared, “God bless you!” We both blinked and turned to look at the newcomer to our conversation. Apparently if you’re an older drunken man, eavesdropping and butting in are perfectly acceptable behaviour. We were then treated to a rambling part-rant part-life-story treatise on how kids today are too coddled for their own good, yadda yadda. This went on for a few minutes, and then the whole scene became even more amusing (as well as annoying).

A young lady walked up and asked if we knew where she could find the nearby Sweet Tomatoes. Our new friend replied, “I’m a sweet tomato!” and offered the poor girl a hug. To the surprise of nobody lacking blood alcohol content, she declined. Oddly enough, the gentleman turned helpful: He knew exactly where to go, and gave mostly-useful directions. (At that point I remembered where it was, but he beat me to it. Such is life.) He also tried again for a hug, to no avail.

After the girl left, he returned to his attempts to engage us in meaningful dialog, then decided that it was time to go and insisted on a group hug, or at least the chance to throw his arms over both of our shoulders. (Personal space! Personal space!) Lil’ and I both suffered through the mercifully brief physical contact; we later agreed that it just wasn’t worth annoying the drunken man, as long as the hug was quick and he went far away immediately afterward. Once he was out of earshot, I collapsed into a giggling fit on Lil’s shoulder. She declared, “That proves it. We are freak magnets.”

Luckily for us, that was the only annoying and freakish part of our evening. Oh, and in an amusing bit of irony given yesterday’s entry: I had chicken parmigiana and fettucini alfredo, my “usual” when I go to Olive Garden…

Over lunch today, I considered my eating habits of yesteryear and that led me to consider how far I’ve come recently in breaking out of certain ruts I used to gleefully adhere to.

When I was a young boy, eating out meant dining on grilled cheese sandwiches. It didn’t matter where we were, I wanted my grilled cheese sandwiches. Mind you, our little family didn’t exactly enjoy haute cuisine at the best of times. Small-town Washington state, living on welfare most of the time, you know the drill. At home I learned to make two things: grilled cheese sandwiches and baked mac-and-cheese.

One magical day (which wasn’t, of course, magical enough for me to actually remember now) someone introduced me to the French Dip. I never looked back. I would only eat roast beef sandwiches dipped in au jus from then on when dining out. At home, of course, I stuck with grilled cheese sandwiches and mac-and-cheese.

Au jus wasn’t the sort of thing Mom would pick up from the store, you know? Nevermind the roast beef and the sandwich rolls.

The story of dining out is, for me, a slow series of these discoveries. In almost every case, someone had to browbeat me to the point where I would “just try it.” To say that I’m not the most adventurous soul on the planet may, in fact, be a gross understatement. By adulthood (or thereabouts) I amassed a small collection of dishes I was willing to eat, and would usually eat the same thing whenever I went to a particular restaurant.

Okay, that part hasn’t changed too much in the last few years, but I’m getting better. Part of the “new me” process I began a half dozen or so years ago involves trying new dishes. More and more often I make a point of ordering something from the menu that I haven’t tried previously, and even when I’ve narrowed a restaurant’s menu down to “here’s what I like, to heck with the rest” I generally rotate through those options so I’m not just doing the same-old same-old every visit.

It’s possible that I think too much about food. Or I think too much about what I think too much about. Maybe I just think too much about what other people think. Whatever the case, I think I’m glad that I’m branching out, however slowly and slightly, as I grow older. It’s better that than to calcify in my ways, right?