fair warning...

during my christmas break in ireland a few months ago i learned that an uncle of mine, who felt it necessary to relocate to singapore about 10 years ago, would be visiting ireland himself this coming july, the 8th to be exact...along with his kenyan wife, 10 year old son and 1 year old triplets...(diverse and fertile family no?) i haven't seen any of them for nearly 6 years now, a combination of bad timing and circumstance ever since i moved to the big banana.

i was also informed that my buddy, paddy, of the dodgy stag-do-location fame, was gettin married on july 11. right there i had 2 solid reasons for a home visit in july.
fly in on friday the 8th after work, see the family...go to the wedding on the 11th...wake from the guinness induced coma sometime round friday and fly back on sunday the 16th, ready for work on the monday...

i mark this up on the calender that hangs in the front office at work...a sort of shrine to doctor's appointments, dentists, holidays and so on that some of us utilize for the purposes of informing our collegues of our future absences. i mark july 8th to 16th on the calender as my summer time off...i do this on january 9.

time goes by and i learn that one of the owners of the company is getting married in july...and the word goes out that time off for anyone other than him in july has been withdrawn...sort of like a chain gang member having his weekend furlough revoked cause he didn't scrub the john well enough.

now i thought 6 months was fair warning for my time off but the boss calmly informs me the other day that "august would be better".

"but i have a wedding and relatives to see in july".

pause......staring contest............pause................

"august would be better" and he just walks off!.........dick. (i ain't missing no irish wedding by the way:)

irony is strong on a trans-atlantic flight...

so i'm high-tailing it back across the pond for the aforementioned stag do this past weekend and i can't help but second look a guy in business class as i walk through to the cheapseats. it was one of those moments when you are convinced you know who it is but for the goddam life of you the name won't come to mind.

i take my seat but can't shake off the bug of trying to work out who this dude was...i'm kinda bad like that. so i start flicking through the mental catalogue, movies, tv shows, real life...and finally it comes to me. the dude is an actor in a show i've never even seen; scrubs. john c mcginley is sitting in business class heading to northern ireland for some reason or other. no big deal right?

well, the irony comes into play after the flight. i always feel like a ball of grime after flying for 5 or 6 hours...touching public stuff yada yada. so i head to wash up in the airport bathroom before our bags come out and who is in there already straining the spuds, only mr mcginley. again, nothing interesting. but i found it ironic that a dude who acts in a famous show called scrubs just zips up the weapon and heads out the door without a quick hand wring under the hot water. scrubs? doesn't scrub?