That's right. Dreamboat Dave is BACK.
But first, a brief synopsis of why cable companies are the worst.
Since the first week we moved here, Roomie and I have been attempting to get cable television. I know this seems silly as we are in an age of Netflix and Drinking, but cable television is a very large part of my life and it is important to me to have it in my home. I don't even have a series I keep up with. I just really love TV. I find great comfort in aimless channel surfing (see: "What's wrong with our youth") and if I'm going to be an adult, I need cable. My first experience with the cable company involved a man named Jody who repeatedly said "Ma'am, you do not understand" and I narrowly escaped spending nearly 400 dollars in charges and equipment that I definitely did not need. After that attempt, I cried and ate a poorly made grilled cheese sandwich. The memory haunts me still. From there, Roomie would try about once a week to try and talk to a decent human being at the cable company, but it seemed that all of the decent employees were on smoke breaks and we only talked to sleazy guys who were just relentless salesmen. We have spent a significant (relatively speaking) amount of time in Chicago on the phone with the cable company, and nearly all of those conversations have resulted in one if not both us crying and threatening to begin new lives somewhere else. But a few days ago Roomie was successful in talking to a real life human folk who actually had her best interest at heart and an installation appointment was finally set up. OR someone at this cable company saw the tweets I sent them. They read, "Be better at your job." We may never know.
So the cable was coming! But there was one small problem that I had totally forgotten to address at any point in the last month: we still didn't have the remote control. It had been a month plus since we had our run in with Dreamboat Dave and I couldn't help but think that my texting and inquiring about said remote would be a little creepy. (In hind sight, I'm realizing that the fact that this blog post as well as the first one even exists is a little creepy. Whatevs, YOLO.) I had saved him in my phone as TV Guy so I scrolled down to the last time I had texted him. I could feel my face contort into disgust at the sight of my last message. I was trying so hard. I figured it was worth a shot, though. The guy was nice enough to get the remote from his old place so why not finally take it off his hands? I was nervous to text him. Like, what if he forgot about me? What if I didn't sound cool? What if he could tell that I was sitting on my futon in my sweatpants? And, even sadder, I had moved the futon to the other side of the room so that my phone could remain plugged into the wall while I used it. Could he sense that, too?!?! I decided to text him.
A short aside: I have a twitter follower who is also an awesome political analyst. I could have said that I follow an awesome political analyst, but for the sake of attention and intrigue, I want you to know this: he followed me first. Due to a very long winded train of non-logic, I sometimes confuse this twitter follower with Dreamboat Dave. Why? Ask me some time. It doesn't actually make sense, but their faces cross in my head and I get confused. Anyway, I decided to send Dave the text message while the third presidential debate was happening. And there was a legitimate moment of fear in which I thought Oh, he won't be able to text me back tonight, he's live tweeting the debate. This is how my brain works, people. I can't help it. And even worse is the part where I reminded myself that Dave and twitter follower are two different people and still proceeded to get confused. When actual Dreamboat Dave texted me back my first thought was, wow, so cool to text me during the debate!!!! Eventually I rectified the differences.
DD told me that he had dinner reservations at a place nearish us, so we arranged to meet up. Of course he was totally funny and cool about the whole thing while I rolled around on the futon, half giggling to myself. He even made jokes about finding an alternative to the remote control, which I thought was really funny even though it wasn't. Today (Tuesday) I got home from work knowing that I had SO many fun things to look forward to: Cable, DD, AND grocery shopping. (Prior to the grocery shopping, there was a tub of sour cream in our fridge. That was about it.) To make things even better, I got home from work at an unbelievably early time. But when I got home, I walked into the living room and I saw something on our coffee table.
"What is that?"
That was a remote control and that had been given to us by the cable guy and that was his unintentional Tanya Harding sabotage to my go see Dreamboat Dave plan. Roomie asked, "Do we still need to get the remote tonight?" And I said "Yes! Of course we do!" I was manic. I was a woman crazed. I immediately came up with all the reasons why we still needed the original remote to the television set we own. We needed it! Yes! We needed it! Around seven he texted me the address of the restaurant. When I mapped it on my phone, the nearest eatery was a Subway. I secretly hoped that he had made a reservation at Subway because he missed peasant food. What's funny is he told us to meet him at the Wendy's nearby because "I'm early and I wanted to grab a soda." Adorable. Before we left I made a passing joke to Roomie. I said, "Is it bad that I thought about putting in my contacts and putting on make up?" She said, "I put on blush." And then we went.
We arrived at the Wendy's and immediately upon pulling into its parking lot, I saw Dave sitting at a table inside. He was drinking a soda. "It's him!" I exclaimed, pointing directly at him. We went inside and he stood up to greet us, shaking our hands and saying it was great to see us again. He produced the remote from his jacket pocket and immediately apologized for not putting batteries in it. I think I just giggled or did something really dumb, I don't know. He was asking us about how Chicago is treating us when a woman kind of appeared and joined our conversation. It was his sister and I gave her a too-hearty handshake and introduced myself as though she had any reason to understand who I am. Dave said, "These girls bought my TV" and that seemed to be enough of an explanation for sister. Upon hearing Roomie's New Mexico connection, Sister told us all about the Georgia O'Keeffe museum and why we need to go and Georgia just really has a way of saying so many different things, you know? And all I could think about was the obvious Georgia associations and the fact that I was thinking about them in this Wendy's with strangers but nodding my head the whole time because I wanted her to like me. She said, "You should really go." And at the exact same time, Dave and I said, "Yeah, the next time I'm in New Mexico!" And we laughed.
After some more pleasantries, we eventually parted ways, probably forever this time. (But probably not--Chicago is the smallest big place I've ever lived. According to cosmic law, you run in to everybody all the time.) Roomie and I sighed happily when we got back in the car.
"He really looks well," said Roomie.
"Mmhmm, he does." I agreed.
"Married life must be suiting him. We should have asked him about it! Would that be too much?"
"Maybe. I think we would have gotten away with it."
And then we went grocery shopping and, as per usual, I spent way too much money on food. It was, however, lovely to come home to a nice TV that has commercials and edited versions of movies and, best of all, more remote controls than we know what to do with.
