Monthly Archives: June 2011

I Can Dream About You

Well this has been quite a day from hell. Once again it started last night, not a good night of sleep which carried over into today. I was pretty tried and when I went to bed, Bill still wasn’t home.

A melatonin helped a bit and by the time I started drifting off to sleep Bill had come home. It wasn’t easy falling asleep after that despite some tossing and turning. Some sleep was had but not nearly enough.

I was hoping that Bill would have been home when I arrived since I wanted to share the rare good mood I happened to be in. It seems I just get really messed up in the head when I am alone. And last night I was alone for too long.

Bill apparently met up with his friend Fred after bringing his mother back from the beauty parlor. Fred gave Bill a brandy warmer shaped like a skier to give to me, as well as a snifter.

I suppose it would be nice if I drank brandy, or drank anything really. Perhaps life would be so much better if I was an alcoholic. They seem to have all the fun and some of them turned out to be pretty good writers, up to a point.

It was a day where I would have preferred to have been left alone on my lunch hour but no, the odd customer finds me and proceeds to talk to me about U2 living in his building.

He was also impressed to see me reading a book, telling me he was donating about 250 books to the United Nations. I was hoping that he would not offer me any books. And he didn’t so that worked out well.

I started reading ‘Our Band Can Be Your Life’ by Michael Azerrad. It’s all about the underground indie scene in the 1980’s. It was definitely what I needed to read to jump start my day, only a few hours late which by the way is so punk.

I also made the mistake of playing music that I wanted to hear since Calvin was out. It’s just Bradley and Thomas and I today so I played Sandinista which turned out to be too much for the lunk heads in the man cave.

The lunk heads were vocal enough to complain so I gave the controls to Bradley who proceeded to play only the very best narcoleptic jazz music. When I came back from my lunch hour it was still playing and I realized that jazz is the silliest music around, at least in the cigar shack.

And even though I was reading about how Greg Ginn enjoyed jazz (as well as thinking the Grateful Dead were the best band ever) it still leaves me quite cold. I should have gotten it by now, but it just alienates me more and more when I hear it.

Right now, I am just looking forward to going home and seeing Bill and having a day off tomorrow. And it’s off to the bibliothèque for me tomorrow.

Glad to be home, Bill is making noise a few feet behind me. It’s been a long day and a few times I stared into the abyss. Bill was great, listening to me on the phone and greeting me when I walked through the door with a great big hug.

I am so happy to be off tomorrow. This retail world is grinding me down. You might think that after a year it would get better, but it hasn’t. Still I hang in there. There are people that don’t have a job and there are people with worse jobs than mine.

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I Can Change

It’s a Monday and it hasn’t been a busy Monday. IN fact it’s been quite the opposite. A lot of returns, Fathers who did not like their present for Father’s Day having their wives or children returning items. A pain in the ass mainly. Calvin thought it was rude, and I guess being a father himself, he wouldn’t return any gift that his child gave him.

It started out as a weird day, at least it started yesterday. I received a phone call from a woman named Jennifer who was calling regarding a job reference that my former co-worker Sean put me down as. I was eating my dinner at the time and did not take the call.

Soon after that Sean called and told me what it was about, which I gathered when I listened to Jennifer’s voice mail. I decided to call Jennifer this morning. I called Jennifer and was told she was in a meeting. I headed to the bus stop and after my usual morning phone call with Bill, I called Jennifer again.

She was out of her meeting and I explained to her who I was and what I was calling about. After a minute she figured it out and asked if it would be alright if she called me back in an hour. I thought that would be fine since I more than likely wouldn’t be in the cigar shack then.

The usual uneventful bus ride into the city, followed by yet another phone call with Bill and no call from Jennifer. I did hear from Sean though, he was anxious to find out what was going on. I told him what was what and he had no choice but to wait.

It was Calvin and I for a while then Jerry Vale joined us. It wasn’t very busy at all though and the way it stands now, Jerry Vale is kicking my ass in sales. That’s alright, I was busy with other things, like unloading and unpacking new inventory and making sure the proper inventory numbers were affixed to everything came in.

Finally on my lunch hour, Jennifer called back. She asked me a few questions about Sean and playing up her ignorance I wound up telling her that Sean basically discovered penicillin. She did not know that. I guess she never saw Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet starring Edward G. Robinson.

I never saw it either but I do remember my mother talking about it a long time ago. But I did have the gumption to look up info about it and this was years before IMDB. So Sean got a golden review from me and everyone should be happy.

Yesterday I was sucked into the Star Wars saga, the original trilogy. A Facebook friend posted a while back that watching those movies with post 9/11 eyes is interesting. The rebels are the Taliban and whatnot, and the USA is the Empire. When watching it that way, it makes for some interesting viewing.

Now I am home. I was hoping that Bill would be home but he took his mother for an appointment at the beauty salon and I guess he’s still in Manhattan.

Today I was determined to smile more, and I did make the effort. Not an ear to ear grin but a nice smile upon my lips. One has to be careful with regards to where one smiles, you don’t want to look like a grinning fool while walking past a group of thugs and wannabees.

As I was making my way through the bus terminal I had that look on my face and figured everything was alright with the world, but it wasn’t until I sat on the bus that I realized that my zipper was undone. That made me laugh to myself as I headed home.