Oot Of Toon

I've fled to San Antonio, Texas for the next few days. Mark had been bugging me to take a roadtrip all quarter, and now that I quit my job, I finally told him to put his money where his mouth is, so we're leaving tonight.

I told my mom something, and she agreed (for once): "I know it's not a good long term solution to physically flee your problems, but it sure as hell works short-term!"

Adios, Vortex Of Suck. I'll see ya Wednesday night.

When I Grow Up...

71 Year Old Man Busted For Growing Hundreds Of Marijuana Plants In His House.

Fortunately, this is not my dad. He's still got a good four and a half years before they come pounding on his door...

Hilarity Ensues

Find out how your high school teachers are rated!

Thanks to Kim, whose husband did great in this little dealie

Not What I Had In Mind

I'm quitting my job immediately, not in two weeks. I had been looking for an excuse to do this, but the reason I'm doing so is not the reason I would have preferred: I fear for my safety.

Four guys, about 19 or 20, came into the bar. They wanted to know if they could smoke while they waited for their cab. I told them sure. They said they had been drinking at [bar where underage people frequently drink] and this immediately raised a red flag.

They asked what the cheapest beer I had was, I said 2.50 for MGD. They scraped the money together, I asked for ID, which they claimed they forgot. I said you can stay and smoke, but I can't serve you any alcohol. So they each ordered water.

They rambled at me about alchol for a while, asking prices for shots of various types of alcohol. One guy talked for some time about what a huge alcoholic he was, that they'd have to send him to AAAA, not just AA.

They seemed like a nice bunch of guys. In retrospect, I am clearly a poor judge of character.

After they left the bar, the cabdriver showed up some time later, at which time these four proceeded to rob him at knifepoint.

I found out about this when a cop came into the bar and said "Do you remember the four black guys who came in here earlier?" and when I said yeah, sort of, he told me what happened.

I can't remember anything specific about them. I remember one was wearing a coat with fur lining, I remember they all had brown eyes (but really, how many black guys have blue eyes?), I remember a couple of them wearing winter hats. But that's it.

When people start drunkenly rambling at me, I tune them out almost completely. I'm not good at giving descriptions of people in general, especially people I have never met and am pretty much ignoring.

I felt really bad, because if I were the cabdriver, I'd be exceedingly pissed at me, the asshole bartender who served these clowns for 20 minutes and remembers nothing about them.

Fortunately, these four were apparently caught by the police (I had told them, truthfully, that I could not make a positive ID on any of them). However, I found out that they're part of a larger group of suspects in a string of robberies against this particular cab company.

The company, of course, is one of the only ones without a Plexiglass barrier between the front and backseats in every cab.

The fact that there's a larger group of suspects does not make me feel good. If these guys think I'm the one who ID'd them, they know where I work. And "the short fat white chick" at my hotel fits pretty much one person (even without the clarification of "bartender"): Me.

If any of the co-conspirators find out where I work, I'm seriously concerned that I'm gonna get threatened with a knife or a gun.

The security in my hotel is...lacking, to say the least. I won't elaborate, but suffice it to say that I feel the security measures they have in place are woefully inadequate, especially if I'm really worried about getting shot.

At first it didn't affect me, but the more I think about it, the more concerned I get. And I can't have this.

I put in my two weeks' notice today, but I'm going in to talk to the manager tomorrow and saying look, I know I said two weeks, but I fear for my safety, and when I fear for my safety simply by going to work, I'm quitting the job.

So that's what I'm doing, getting up tomorrow morning (if I manage to get to sleep before the manager comes in) and going in and quitting. And nothing the dumbass manager can say will change my mind.

And I'm probably going out of town to get away from this place for a few days. I've had so much go kerflooey in the last few days (including a few things that I haven't posted here simply because there's too much else) I need to physically run from my problems, at least for a while.

Ugh. I'm going to try and go to bed. We'll see if I succeed.

And I promise, once life gets more lighthearted, I'll start posting funny things again.

Bah

Didn't get the Braves job.

The guy I talked to was real nice about it. From what it sounded like, he really wanted to hire me but the person doing the hiring ended up hiring someone else. I guess them's the breaks, but I'm still disappointed.

He even gave me the name of a friend in the Cleveland Indians organization who's looking for people to help run in-park production, but it sounded like he's looking for people with more experience than I have. I'm sending him an email anyway, because it'd still be awesome to work in baseball.

I'm still quitting my bartending job, but I guess now I at least get to be professional and give them two weeks' notice.

Ugh.

The Best Way To Treat Depression Is A Depressant!

WARNING: The return of drunken posting!

Still no word from the Braves. I am, however, good and drunk right now.

I feel this is a good plan for my future should this job fall through, which theoretically I'll know by tomorrow.

They said they'd tell me by the 12th, and tomorrow (or really today) is the twelfth, so theoretically I'll hear. I'm calling if I haven't heard by 1pm, because I really can't take the suspense anymore.

It's driven me to clean, and now that everything's pretty much clean, it's driven me to drink. Because drinking, in addition to providing unnecessary calories, at least gets me good and fucked up, and doesn't just provide said calories, unlike just eating my cares away.

I want this job so badly, I just don't know what to do if I don't get it. And because I feel like that, I'm more certain than ever I didn't get it.

Hopefully, I'll actually know tomorrow. However, they could just say, "Oh, we haven't made our decision yet, we'll let you know next week." My hair will start coming out if that happens. I'm really about to lose my mind.

One decision I have made for certain: I'm quitting my current job no matter what tomorrow. Whether it's effective immediately or in two weeks is up to the Braves, but I'm quitting no matter what. I'm sick of getting bitched at by two bosses.

It's like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, except when they're both bitchslapping me to avoid taking blame for things that are their fault.

I don't care if I have to work as a barback (busperson, essentially), I'm sick of getting no money and no respect. Preferably, you get both, but you need at least one to put up with a job, and currently I'm getting neither. So fuck this bullshit.

But at least right now, everything is much funnier than it normally is. Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Oh, I am going to pay for this tomorrow morning...

Unintended Consequence

When I'm nervous or anxious and I'm trying to avoid eating to satiate this tension, I usually end up cleaning.

This is how, once I got the super of my building to pry it open (we lost the key to the lock), I spent this evening cleaning out the storage unit. I found several boxes from tenants who moved out about a year and a half ago, and several boxes from other various occupants.

Cleaning a storage unit is a bit like playing an elaborate game of Tetris: You have to have good spatial relations skills to be able to figure out what will fit in the foot-wide space next to your enormous stack of say, seven boxes of unsold copies of your album.

You also have to make sure to leave a way to get to the back of the unit in case someone needs something. This was the main problem prior to the cleaning: Everything was just sort of thrown in there and there was no way to get at anything in the back.

Now all you have to do is move my amplifier (conveniently on wheels) and drag my stereo box full of baseball cards and make sure my garbage bag full of stuffed animals from my childhood doesn't fall on your head, and voilá!, you have your access.

I'm still going through my room, mostly because I've been getting up too late to be able to run the vacuum (we have some really bitchy neighbors) and I just got the dustbuster back a couple days ago from Adam's friend who borrowed it a couple months ago.

I still haven't hit the living room, though that's a simple enough chore to do in about an hour tomorrow, since all I have to do is move all the furniture around and vacuum. Jesus, I'm turning into a 1950's housewife...

I'm losing my mind and tearing out my hair waiting to hear back from the Braves, but at least my apartment will be sparkling!

Really Dumb Ideas

Giving this name to your new cleaning product during a time of war and terrorism.

Blah Blah Blah Weekendcakes

(If you don't get the title, you need to read this more often.)

Didn't actually get much done today besides cleaning and sleeping, both of which were things that needed to be done.

I get to go get the good old Pain In The Ass evaluated by a surgeon to see if more needs to be done so that it doesn't become a permanent pain in the ass or if it can just be left until it again becomes a temporary pain in the ass.

I get to have Fun With Bolt Cutters tomorrow since I can't find the key to the storage unit down in the basement, and it desperately needs to be cleaned. I tried whacking the lock off with a hammer, but it's a good lock and a good 10 minutes of whacking didn't even dent it.

So now tomorrow either the super for my building will cut it off or I get to rent bolt cutters from Home Depot.

Oh, my exciting life!