A long time ago, in September of 2006 I found a job posting on a website that's mainly for photo dorks, cool photo dorks, the sports ones, www.sportsshooter.com. Anyway, the job was with ESPN (read the original job posting that I saved for some reason. Oh sure, this blog). How much better could life be than working for ESPN, The Worldwide Leader in Sports? I have to move to Connecticut? What the hell is in Connecticut? Ef-it. Its between NYC and Boston. How bad could it be?
By Thanksgiving my car was on a flatbed truck, my crap was packed in boxes by guys I didn't know, and I had a small bag of clothes that were to last me a couple months. Off to CT for my dream job!
The first couple weeks were great, but boring. I knew no one and was living at the Extended Stay Deluxe, Hartford - Farmington , definitely more Farmington than Hartford. Not that Hartford is a Mecca of after-work activities or anything. It also didn't help that I moved at the beginning of Winter.
After a couple months, I moved to Middletown, CT because it was "happening". Uh, not really. Being exhausted of living in a hotel, I snagged the first apartment that was affordable, resembled a Manhattan loft and included heat and hot water. What a shit hole.
It didn't take long to find out all the awful things about the place, like single pane windows, no parking, being at a main intersection, no control over the heat and lastly, the stove not working. There were a few pluses though, like... uh... um, well, one was living above a bar. What happens when you live above a bar and your stove doesn't work? You spend a lot of time eating dinner (and drinking) at the bar downstairs.I met some pretty cool folks at Nikita's. I found one of them a little more "cool" than the rest.
I'm pretty sure it was the second time I went down to Nikita's for dinner after eating frozen dinners for 3 or 4 days in a row and a rather large folding sign stood out in front of the place which read, "Welcome Shannon back from Florida! Deal on beer. Come in, your stove doesn't work. Dumbass!"
I went in for dinner and met Shannon, the bartender who just returned from Florida. Go figure. It wasn't too long after that when Shannon introduced me to her friend, and you guessed it, her name was Marisa. Actually her name is still Marisa, but you get the point. She may have been a bit tipsy but she was definitely taller than most and a bit on the loud side; did I mention b-e-a-utiful? There was nothing I could do to take my eyes off her. Okay, maybe it was just her butt I stared at for a while. Anyway... After Shannon's very brief introduction, I knew Marisa wanted nothing to do with me.
This is how we met. Shannon pawned me off to her friend. "This is Joe. He just moved and lives upstairs. He works for ESPN." BAM! My in, ESPN, she's totally gonna dig that. Except for the fact that there are like 4,000 employees that work for ESPN in CT, so I was just another dude that frequented the bar. Dammit.
I didn't give up though. I knew we would hang out eventually. It was only a matter of time till she saw I was special, or had money or really good looks or got free tickets to concerts. Something was bound to let me through her Violet Parr-like force field, which just so happened to block out emotion and men, at least I hoped.
Violet Parr
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