It was a busy day and a difficult day. It didn’t start out difficult. It started out OK I guess. No running errands before work. In fact I took my time mostly.

I neglected to write about how I was interview by the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Or rather possibly. I don’t know if my quote will make it to the printed page. Publish and be damned says I, I publish my own damnation.

Some columnist named Evan Newmark was walking to the Wall Street Journal offices in the News Corpse building, walking down the Upper West Side and stopping at various landmarks like Zabar’s and stopped by the cigar shop.

He was inquiring in each store and stop, whether or not we felt the economy was on the rebound. I said that I thought it was, albeit slowly and people (mainly men) are still buying cigars. He asked if it was mainly monied businessmen, the captains of industry stereotype and I did my best to disprove that image, telling him bus drivers and garbage men as well as other walks of life come in and purchase their cigars.

It was a brief interview and I asked him to contact me if it were to be published. Evan Newmark wasn’t sure if it would make it to press. That was yesterday.

There was an article in today’s journal that had a brief interview with one of our customers at another cigar shop across town though and it wasn’t by Evan Newmark, but by someone else.

The Journal is a Murdoch paper and therefore anathema to me. But of course if I’m in it, I’ll buy it.

Today went alright. Some stress between Calvin & Raymond but that seemed to have been squashed by the end of the day.

Raymond is quite the gossip and whispering in my ear about how Calvin likes to have a couple of drinks after he has his lunch which usually runs over an hour and a half. I suppose it’s true since Calvin gets more chatty after lunch.

I had him going on about how he likes jazz and his opinion on who the most important jazz figure was in the twentieth century. Louis Armstrong it turned out to be. Made sense to me, since Louis Armstrong was a giant in popular culture back then.

He was also a major pot head, which could explain his smiling and laughing all the time.

My own lunch was spent outside the park on a bench, reading The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore. He was on the Colbert Report a month ago and also came into the shop a week or so ago. Nice guy, and meeting him inspired me to take the book out of the bibliothèque.

Once again, I closed the store which seems to be my designated role. It went well but there was a discrepancy which was all my fault, ringing up a credit card purchase as both credit and cash. But since it’s been identified and accounted for it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to clear up.

At least I hope so. I would have liked to have seen the Guitar Bar All Stars by the river at Sinatra Park tonight like I have previous years but this is how things are these days.

Yes, smoking yet another cigar.