Category Archives: Whats for lunch?

I Got Mine

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OK, the other day my day started (and ended) with Melody of Love by Bobby Vinton in my head. That made me think of Bob Dylan covering Dean Martin’s ‘Return to Me’ from the Sopranos soundtrack. Probably because of Bobby Vinton’s refrain, ‘Return to me, and always be, my melody of love’ before he breaks out into a Polish singalong.

In 1975 while attending St. Francis de Sales grammar school, we had to learn that song and then trooped over to a convent by Felician College to sing the song to a group of old Polish nuns. And here I am later, over 30 years later still thinkng about that song.

Another song from 1975 that popped into my head via Wikipedia was Please Mr Postman by the Carpenters. This time in 1975 it was the number one song and I remember being in the Boy Scouts at Camp No-Be-Bosco in the winter listening to this song on Music Radio 77 WABC. I always liked the Carpenters, well I always liked Karen Carpenter’s voice. I still do. I find it to be quite warm and rich.

Lucky Thomas, he just picked up the phone for a nice order. He’s done well today whereas Bradley and myself were nickle and dime’ing up the numbers. No hard feelings but I am harboring feelings of resentment and have doubts about throwing him some sales in the future whenever I hit my personal goal.

The customer just phoned in an order, sending his daughter to pick up the cigars, so things might change. Not expecting it to happen though. Thomas was in a weird mood in the beginning of the day though he did get better and not bitter. It’s after 7:00 so things have gotten considerably slower in the cigar shack area.

Not expecting sales to improve, in fact after Thomas’ sale that will probably be it. I did have some nice sales today, though not enough to get to my personal goal. It is so friggin dead here I almost expect George Romero to remake Dawn of the Dead in this area.

That brings me back to 1980 where after I saw the Exorcist with Henry Venegas and his girlfriend, we drove to the Paramus Drive In where we caught some of Dawn of the Dead on the sly, using the AM radio to pick up the audio broadcast at 2:00 in the morning. Life sure was simpler then.

Like most of my high school classmates I never saw Henry Venegas after 1980. And don’t even get me started on my fumbled seduction regarding Henry. And attempting to seduce a straight classmate was not the smartest idea anyhow. I was 17 and knew as much about seduction as I do now. What was I thinking? I know what I was thinking about. He was a good guy that Henry Venegas was. I wonder if he ever married his girlfriend?

About 30 minutes left in the cigar shack today. 30 long minutes no doubt. Rand and Lisa stopped by this evening. It was wonderful to see them. They were celebrating Lisa’s birthday and went to the movies and had some dinner out. Lisa of course looked fabulous and Rand was quite the fashion plate himself. They were just passing through, headed back to the bus terminal. I’ve known Rand 30 years and happy to be his friend, as well as Lisa’s friend.

Thomas, it turned out, was closing the store allowing me to leave a few minutes early. I hoped I would catch Rand and Lisa on the bus but they didn’t make it. But it was wonderful to see them nonetheless, as it made my day.






Is THIS your card?


11 Crosseyed and Painless

I Don’t Deserve You

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A wet Saturday and it wasn’t so bad. Of course I to work but at least that got me out of the apartment. I watched Bill Maher last night, Bill was rehearsing with his buddy Tom who is playing trumpet in the production that Bill is managing so Bill did not get home until after midnight.

I greeted him at the door and he immediately rested his head on my shoulder, he was so tired. I helped him take off his backpack, so heavy it felt like it was filled with rocks. We talked for a while then Bill went to bed and I stayed up for a little while after that.

Then it was bedtime for me, and I fell asleep almost immediately then was startled when I thought I felt something crawl across my shoulder. That kept me up for a short time before I went to sleep again only to wake up an hour later with an extremely itchy foot.

It drove me crazy, enough so that I had to get out of bed and do something about it. All I could think of was Purell and that seemed to do the trick. I was able to sleep soundly after that and woke up a few hours later. The temperature had dropped considerably making me not want to get out of bed to paddle across the cold ceramic tile that constitutes the floor of the apartment.

Bill was gone by the time I had breakfast, doing office work that he wasn’t able to do during the week. I headed out to the bus stop and was soon walking up an avenue to the cigar shack. It was the weekend so that meant an egg sandwich. Different guy behind the counter and he charged me a different price.

It was only a quarter and I think the cashier was trying to get some more out of me asking if I had one or two eggs. It was one but still he gave me the hairy eyeball. I really couldn’t say how many eggs since the fry cook has all the eggs in a pitcher and when he needs to make a product with eggs he just pours some out of the pitcher onto the grill.

It was Bradley, Thomas, Jerry Vale and me working today, another sign of scheduling ineptitude. No need for a full staff on the weekend and no one did that well in sales today, though Thomas got the top spot and I was a close second.

The possum Bradley (a name given to him by Thomas) and Jerry Vale came in third and fourth place respectively. Surprisingly enough the possum was in a decent mood, actually communicating and making jokes.

The day took it’s time getting to the end, Thomas and me manning the boards. We had a good talk about art, I didn’t know that Thomas was artistically inclined. We also talked about age, Thomas figuring out how old I was and saying that I didn’t seem like I was almost 50. It didn’t seem like I was almost 40 either. It was a nice thing to say I think, so I took it as a compliment.

Tomorrow is Sunday, so no posting. You can do what you want.