A Question of Etiquette

There is a question I have been struggling with for awhile, and have tried to see if I can come up with the correct answer myself, but so far I am not having any luck, and was wondering if someone out there either can point me to a definitive answer, or give me suggestions as to what to do. My question that I've been struggling with is:

What is the correct etiquette for conversations in public restrooms?

I don't think there's nothing wrong with having a conversation about something on the way in, and continuing the discussion in the bathroom, or even striking up a conversation with someone (someone you know that is) as long as you're next to each other in the urinal, or as long as there's no one else between you in the urinal. There are a few grey areas for me though.

1.) Is it ok to keep the conversation going, if one goes to the urinal, and the other goes into a stall? Personally, if I see someone start walking towards a stall, I'll end the conversation. If its me going into the stall, I'll try my best to end it. I don't want to talk over the wall..and besides I like my peace and quiet while I'm making a twosie.

2.) What if one is in a urinal, and the other is cleaning up at the sink? For me, it depends on how good of friends I am with the person, and if there's someone else in the bathroom. Its a very close scenario to #1, where you don't actually see the person you're talking to, and you kind of have to talk louder than a normal inside voice, since there's water running and stuff.

3.) If you know the person in the stall next to you, and its just the 2 of you in the bathroom, is it ok to talk to them? I'm thinking that's a no-brainer for a answer of NO. Again, I prefer peace and quiet.

4.) If you are in a scenario where one person walks in and sees you and starts talking to you, just as you are finishing up washing your hands (or vise-versa), how long are you obligated to talk to them if they initiate it? Do you try to end it ASAP and leave as politely as possible, or do you stand at the sink and continue the discussion? If you do continue the discussion, do you turn around and talk at the persons back, go to the door and try to leave ASAP, or do you continue the conversation while the person finishes up, and then washes and dries their hands? I really don't know an answer to this one. There's one guy on our floor, who I only seem to see in or on our way to the restroom. I don't interact with him on a work related basis. However like I said, I seem to only seem him in or near the restroom. Sometimes we'll start the conversation on the way in, but oftentimes, we end up in instance #3. If I'm on the way out, I usually just say a polite hey, so that I won't get stuck just standing there talking to him the whole time. Sometimes when I do say hey, he'll reply and then bring up a highlight from that morning's episode of SportsCenter, and then I'm left there awkwardly drying my hands for a long time while discussing some big story in baseball or basketball. The only other thing I could think of is to act like I don't see him, and try to avoid any conversation altogether.

Thoughts, ideas?!?

Midweek Randomness

- I think that based on singing alone, after watching the final performances last night, that Jordin should win American Idol. I thought Blake won the first round, and Jordin won the second round by a very close margin, but Jordin clearly won the final round of the night. Having to sing that incredibly cheesy song as the last song of the night, was clearly not Blake's style, and he seemed to realize that as well. It looked like he had all he could do just to get the song over with. I think for Blake's sake, I hope he doesn't win tonight, since he would be stuck having to record that song as his first single. I wonder if he would get a better chance to put his own stamp on it if he does win? I really don't see how even he could save that song though.

- What is up with the gas prices? I paid $48.00 last night ($3.05/gallon) to fill up my Jeep. I thought that was bad, until I talked to Lloyd this morning, and he told me that gas is going for $3.58 in the Metro-Detroit area. I guess its a good thing that I'm flying up there next week for his wedding, and not driving. I'd have to take out a rather hefty loan just to fill up my tank for the round trip.

- Its a great time to be a fan of Detroit sports teams, well most of them anyways. The Pistons are looking like they are well on their way to the NBA Finals, and so far the Tigers are looking just as good as last year, and that's with out 2 of their key pitchers. The Red Wings made it to the conference finals, but really, its hockey so who cares? Now if only the Lions will start turning in the right direction, but that's probably too much to ask as long as Ford owns the team and Matt Millen is running the show.

- I seem to been listening to Van Halen a lot lately. I don't know why that is. I had put them on one morning on my way to work, to give me something loud to listen to in hopes it would help wake me up or something. Ever since then I keep going back. That's not a bad thing I don't think..I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a fan of the band. What it had done is made me wish that they would get back together (I'd be happy with either David Lee Roth, or Sammy Hagar) and tour again. I saw them back in '98 or '99 during the tour where they had their 3rd lead singer, but that doesn't seem like it should count. While musically it was great to see Eddie and Alex tear it up, it made me wish I could have seen them with one of their previous lineups. Maybe one day they'll throw their differences aside and get back together and do what they do best..rock it out.

- After seeing Gwen last week, I've been bitten by the concert bug again. I'd really like to go see some more concerts. I'd really like to see John Mayer in DC in July, as he is probably at the top of my list of people I really would like to see live. We've been talking about seeing Dave Matthews Band this August when they play up in DC. It's not really a summer unless I see DMB, since I've seen them at least once a year since 1996. You can usually count on a great show from them, and if I see them one more time, that will be DMB show #50 for me.

Front row seats, moving, and sore legs.

So Sara and I went and saw Gwen Stefani this past Thursday up in Northern Virginia. We had great seats (front-row center), and I must say, I left the show pretty impressed. Going in, I wasn't exactly expecting much. The past few times I've seen her perform on TV (like American Idol), I thought she sounded horrible. I also figured that the show would be more focused on entertainment aspect (i.e. dancing with heavy choreography, massive lip-synching and/or a case of where the backup singers carry most of the load), and not the music. I couldn't have been more wrong.

It took the first couple of songs for us to get over the awesomeness of just how close our seats were. I then started looking to see if she was lip synching, but I realized that she didn't need to. For the most part her harajuku girls (spelling?), and back-up breakdancers carried the load as far as entertaining went. Occasionally she would run around and interact with the others, but for the most part she concentrated on the singing. There were quite a few of costume changes, but while that was going on, the band would be playing something, and the backup dancers would keep things rolling. I think one of the coolest parts of the show is when she jumped off the stage, ran to the back of the pavilion, and then performed the next song in the middle of the lawn, along with some of the guys in her band. The only other time I'd seen something like that done, is when I saw INXS at Pine Knob, and Michael Hutchence sang 2 songs from a random seat in the pavilion. Very cool. I would have to say that the funniest part of the night was when Gwen came out after a costume change, wearing a tank top. The first thing Sara says to me is "Look!!! She's got stretch marks!!!" I looked, and sure enough she did. We were so close we could see Gwen's stretch marks.

On Friday we finally made the big move. The movers came and moved all of our big furniture to our new place. Its nice to finally have that done with. We spent the rest of the weekend, with the help of Sara's mom, unpacking and trying to move the rest of our small stuff out of our old apartment in the ghetto. Even though we had professional movers move a lot of our stuff, I'm somehow still very sore. Its probably from climbing the 3 flights of stairs to load up our Jeeps with the smaller stuff from our old place. I think its safe to say that I will never live on a 3rd floor again. I hope I never get to the point where I have to live in an apartment again, let alone one that's not on a ground floor.

I can't wait for Memorial Day weekend to get here. I need a 3-day break. So far we've got a cookout to go to at Sara's aunt's house, which are always a lot of fun. I'm sure we'll end up doing some cooking out of our own at the nice patio at our new place as well.

Infrequent Friday Randomness

So I was looking at my blog today, and saw that its been a month since I've last posted anything. Whoops. I guess its time for another round of Friday Randomness..

- When we found out that Sara was pregnant, one of our top priorities was to find some place new to live, since we were out of room in our apartment. After a lot of searching, we're finally moving next Friday. I can't wait to get out of the crappy neighborhood we live in. We're renting a nice townhouse in a newer development, just north of town. It'll be so nice to move out the ghetto where we've been living, and move into something nicer and hopefully quieter.

- May/June/July are going to be 3 of the busiest months that I can ever remember. The rest of May has us moving, going to see Gwen Stefani (with front-row center tickets that Sara just "happened" to get), unpacking, Memorial Day, and a trip up to Michigan to Dock's wedding. For June, I'm home a week, then we go to Myrtle Beach for a week for our vacation/anniversary. For July there's 2 more weddings to go to - Sean's up in D.C. and Mike's up in Michigan. My Jeep will be adding a ton of miles. Good thing I like roadtrips.

- It's funny, it seems like weddings and pregnancies happen in spurts. Like I just said - Dock, Sean, and Mike are getting married this summer, along with Mike's brother Steve who is getting married this month as well. Soon after we found out that Sara was pregnant, we also found out that Joe and Lori (well technically Lori) are expecting too. Even cooler, Sara and Lori are due right around the same time. Coincidentally, Joe and I's birthday's are pretty close together (2 months exactly to the day), so it'll be cool that our kids are so close together as well. Sometimes its strange how thing play out. It'll be interesting to see just when both babies arrive.

- Last Saturday we went with my mother-in-law to see Rod Stewart here in town. Thanks to Sara's cool job, we got free tickets to the show. While the show was entertaining, I really think its time for Rod to retire. He was huffing and puffing after the 2nd song, and he looked like he was struggling most of the show. He regularly relied on the band to jam out so he could catch his breath, and when the song hit a high spot, he would stop singing and let the crowd take over for him. Now I don't think its wrong for the singer or a band to stop, and let the crowd take over momentarily, once or twice in a show, but he did it virtually for every song in the 2nd half of the show...It became a bit of an overkill. I'm glad our tickets were free and we didn't have to pay the $55 price that the seats in our section cost.

- While reading on my lunch break today, I found there's a new sport involving Wiffle. It's called Wiffle Hurling. It looks like it might be a cross between Lacrosse and field hockey? (That's a question because I know nothing about either lacrosse or field hockey..that's just my guess) I think I'd be willing to give it a shot, especially if the sombraros are mandatory. I don't think we'd do any worse than we do every summer at the Wiffleball Tournament in Ohio. Anyways, here's a video of it:

- So American Idol is down to the "Final 3" - Blake, Jordin, and Melinda. While Blake is my favorite, I don't want to see him win. I think if he wins, he'll be locked in by the contract the winner gets, along with all the obligations they have to fulfill, and as a result he wouldn't be as free to do what he'd be best at. I think by not winning last year actually helped Chris Daughtry quite a bit, and look how big he is now. Ideally I'd like to see Melinda get kicked off next week, have a Jordin/Blake final, with Jordin winning. I'd like to see Blake have one more awesome performance before the end of the show. Something along the lines of what he did with Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" which might be the coolest performance I've ever seen on AI. Should be an interesting last couple of weeks.