2003-03-28 - 2:33 p.m.

"Don't say nothin"

Man, so much to say.

Part 1

First of all, last night I thought I found my calling in life. We were having breakfast dinner (as is typical on a Thursday night in the Prevas house), and I was sauteeing the mushrooms for the western omelettes, when I realized, "Hey, I really like sauteeing. And I'm good at it."

Later that night, as in midnight, I got the urge to bake brownies and did so. And that was when I decided that food services were going to give medicine a run for its money. After all, cooking is fun, I wouldn't have to take any more chemistry, I could get out of four years of med school and however many years of residency, and I could wear one of those chef hats and own my own restaurant.

It was only today that I truly realized the dark side of food services. After setting up 20 folding tables and the chairs that go with them down at church for Aunt Sue's Quiltathon, I went down to meet Wild Willy at the market in Fells Point. A little bit of history - the market used to be owned by my family - it was called Prevas Bros. and my grandfather and his brothers, and Wild Willy and his brothers all spent their childhoods working there. They sold it back before I was born, and most of it was torn down to make way for a road, but up until last year it was still called Prevas Bros. Now the guys who run a chicken/meat shop out of there now are good friends of my Wild Willy's. So when the guy needed labor years ago for a festival, my brothers and I filled in, lugging crab cakes back and forth from the market down to the stall they were running at the Fells Point festival. Well, that progressed into my oldest brother working a summer down there as a butcher, and my other brother, who is a vegetarian, going down there every saturday for a year to cut up chickens. Fortunately, I have as yet avoided this call to work. However, I realized that although I may be incredibly good at sauteeing mushrooms, and even red peppers, my journey to the top of the food services hierarchy would not be an easy one, and so perhaps sticking with med school would be the better option.

Part 2

Last night, while I was waiting for the brownies to bake, I went downstairs and got onto the computer (the same one I spent all last Saturday trying to fix) to check my email. Well, the moment I clicked to open my email, I heard a loud crack and a sizzle and the computer died. I tried turning it back on, and nothing. Flipped the surge protector on and off, nothing. Everything else still would turn on and off - the monitor, the scanner, the printer, but the computer was stone dead. I opened it up and fiddled around with some stuff, but as little as I know about computer software stuff, I know even less about hardware. So that's in worse shape than it was when I got down here, when the only problem was that it wouldn't hook up to the internet. I think I killed it for good. The smell of something burning that was coming out of the computer couldn't have been a good sign.

Part 3

So Wild Willy and I met up at the market, talked to his accountant and one of the brothers of the guy who owns that part of the market for a while, and then we went ahead and drove out to the Prevas and Prevas law firm to get lunch with my Grandfather and Uncle. More background - Wild Willy is one of four sons, two of whom are lawyers, and one of whom is a city judge. His father is also a lawyer. So Wild Willy's the black sheep of the group. Anyway, so we get down to the office, meet up with my Grandfather and Uncle, and then go down to the food court at the foot of the office building to get lunch.

So we're sitting in the food court, eating (this is, of course, after I got screamed at a few times by my grandfather - he insisted on getting everyone's drinks from the soda fountain, and I kept offering to help him out, and apparently he wasn't too keen on that idea). My uncle John, the judge, better known by the family as Judge Wapner, walks in and sits down with us. Now Judge Wapner is the uncle who's just kinda never been around. We see him at New Years, when he gives us each a birthday gift (four years ago, I got a red plastic periscope, three years a big lego helicopter, two years ago a Maryland picture book, and this year a book about the ice age.) Well, he walks in, sees me, and proceeds to ask me how college is. Now I was shocked that he even knew I was in college, but after regaining my composure, I tell him it's good. So he sits down, begins talking to my Grandfather, and then proceeds to relate to my Grandfather how proud he is that there's a Prevas going to Amherst. I kind of turn and look at him quizically, and he's looking at me the way he does, and I say, "I go to Williams." Well, he ignores me. The conversation continues. Then a colleague of his walks in and comes over to talk to him, and he introduces us all (it's like a big family reunion in there, three generations and everything), and he introduces me as "my nephew Jimmy, who goes to Amherst." So I correct him again, but once again he doesn't really listen. Well, after two more references to my enrollment at Amherst and some other tasteless conversation between the lot of them, it comes time for me and Wild Willy to go. So we all say goodbye, I get my requisite "gapier" from my Grandfather ("Don't say nothing"), and my dad and I leave. So I am left trying to figure out - does he really think I go to Amherst, or was he just heating me?

Epilogue

So that's my eventful day and a half. All that's left to do now is try to figure out what to tell Aunt Sue about the computer, how to fix the computer, and how to make it seem like the death of the computer is not my fault.

All three of those are much easier said than done...