Here it is again, once again, the incredible, the rhyme animal. I know I got that wrong but my heart is in the right place, under the rib cage. At the cigar shack once again, day two of a four day stretch. How did I used to do a 5 day work week?

Well I was generally sitting down a lot, and when I walked it was usually on carpeted floors. Nowadays, it’s not like that anymore. No, it’s all about standing on concrete floors for 9 hours a day. At this time last year I was unemployed about to start working.

A bit of anxiety was setting in of course. After being out of work for 11 months how could it not? It seems so long ago. I was working with a different crew then and now they’re no longer here. The only carry over from those days is Calvin. And now he is number one and that makes me number two by default.

Things are certainly better with Bradley. He’s a moody chap by his own admission though I doubt if he would be one to use the word chap.

I am home now and quite happy to be here. Bill is driving to Atlantic City tonight and driving again tomorrow night so if I don’t see him for a few fleeting minutes, I won’t see him until Sunday. It’s a drag but that’s how it is I suppose.

It’s so bloody warm here, heat rises and being on the top floor you can feel it. The windows are open and an occasional breeze floats through. I heard from Pedro today, he was in town and was hoping I would be free to hang out but of course he calls when I am at work, so not free at all.

I still would like a Monday through Friday job, with normal hours or at least something close to normal hours, or what passes for normal hours. No word from Joe Monaco but like I wrote previously I have extremely low expectations with him. Still hope remains, just not pounding the drums like hope sometimes does.

I closed the store tonight as Thomas was headed off to something, maybe an engagement party for him and his fiancé tomorrow. He’s quite a funny guy though by the end of the night it’s hard to keep up with his sense of humor. Being twice his age, makes me wonder how people older than me were able to deal with me and my wacky sense of humor.

But I should keep in mind that these friends and I were not standing on concrete floors for nine hours a day dealing with all sorts of people, so it probably wasn’t too hard to deal with me. So here we are, or rather, here I am, on the Friday of a holiday weekend. It wasn’t easy to see people so excited to get out of town for the weekend, four days off for them. Even the bibliothèque is closed this weekend.

I did luck out tonight, maybe it was karma, but when I got to the subway platform this evening, an express train pulled right in. And as I climbed the functioning escalator at the bus terminal, I saw a bus pulling out. Then the bus stopped.

The driver was a friend of Bill’s (no, not like Alcoholics Anonymous), Orlando. He was one of the bus driving friends of Hyman gross as well. So Orlando recognized me and said a few words about Hyman as we were pulling out.

It was a nice brief chat about Hyman and how Hyman is missed. I told him about the plan Bill and I have to visit the cemetery next year when Hyman’s headstone is placed. Orlando hopes to join us. We shall see. Check in next year, early May.