August 29, 2003 - 2:01 p.m.
Sorry about my last entry. I wasn't really trying to make any profound point about myself, I was kinda just typing for the sake of typing. I actually thought it was funny at the time, but now that I'm less exhausted, I see that it is mostly just incoherent. My bad!
Everything about work today was designed, cosmically and flawlessly, to annoy me. I wasn't even at work yet and it was off to a bad start: I needed to turn left onto a street. This is normally uneventful. But I could not, because there was a police car parked askew in the left turn lane. I had no choice but to go forward, towards absolutely nothing that would get me to work ever. I realized then that I had been taking it completely for granted every time I went to work and successfully turned left, because now it was all I wanted to do, and yet, I could not.
Sitting at the red light waiting for the green light to go the wrong way, I looked longingly at the right way. They had blocked off the entire street for as far down as I could see. There was no accident, there was no activity, there was no construction, there didn't even appear to be any conversation going on that necessitated the closure of a busy street. But you just don't argue with police cars, so I drove forward, turned around, and navigated a "low-income" housing area to get to work. So I was in a lousy mood, because every minute I'm late to work is a minute I have to make up at the end, and I think you all know just how much longer minutes are at the end of a work shift than at the beginning.
I got to work and, er, got to work. (English sucks!) I put on "Roomic Cube" by Takako Minekawa, and slowly I was lulled into a deep nostalgic funk. That CD reminds me of so many wonderful moments involving Amanda, and I'd totally forgotten that, since I haven't listened to it in a while. It reminds me of driving slowly away from her old apartment, whishing I could go back and find a non-violent way to vaporize her roommate so I'd never have to leave. It reminds me of going to Brea for the first time. It reminds me of when we used to work together, fighting off job-related insanity and strengthening our newly-formed romantic relationship through the brilliance of the song "Fantastic Cat." Basically, it reminded me of a time that was happy and simple and cute, and what it was like to be so giddy over just having a new awesome person to share those times with.
So I was kind of lonely for the beginning of my shift, and I don't often get lonely, so it made the time drag by at record-breaking slow speeds. It went so slow it actually made an audible sound effect ("Moooooooo"). Astonishingly, shortly after I finished the CD Amanda called me at work to ask about Eddie Izzard tickets. I should be way more excited about that possibility, but at the time I could barely listen to what she was asking me, becuase all I wanted to do was reach through the phone and pull us both out into last winter.
Also, I got my paycheck, and it was smaller than I'd estimated. Because I am incredibly stupid with numbers, I had mistaken an 8 after the decimal point for the digit in front of the decimal point of my hourly wage. It came out to be a difference of only a few cents, but at the time it was incredibly demotivating to realize that every single cent on my paycheck was earmarked for somebody who wasn't me.
Oh, and co-worker-longtime-friend Matt didn't show up for work today either, despite yesterday's claim that he "always goes to work on payday." So I had nobody to distract me from my funk. And it wasn't the good kind of funk.
Cedric the housemate-kitty just yowled outside my door. Well, actually he was yowling outside housmate-human Scott's door, because Scott has been out of town for a while. But even though I am not Scott, I went outside and pet the kitty. I feel better now, heh. But I still have to finish my crappy story.
On my lunch break I tried to run my traditional payday relay, which is driving through McDonald's, eating a burger while driving to my bank, depositing my check, and driving back to work. This ordinarily takes exactly one half hour, which is convenient. But I didn't even make it one block without hitting a snag, because the darn cop cars were still there, blocking off the road. I felt like Ness in the beginning of the brilliant postmodern RPG Earbound, when he can't go anywhere interesting because the police have blocked off all the roads, in an effort to set a "world record" for "blocking off roads." Anyway, using orange cones, they had set up a crude detour, which I followed.
And it led me straight to a construction site and a traffic jam. It seems they did not really research exactly where they might be leading the traffic; it only mattered that they stay off the busy road they all wanted to be on. Bear in mind that I had yet to see any sign of something in the road that might make it make sense, like a four-car pileup or escaped baby elephant. The construction site seemed to be an independent building company--not Caltrans or something that would be understandable-- and it clearly did not start off the day preparing for a load of cars. As a matter of fact I noticed as I rolled at the exciting speed of one mile per hour that we were passing signs that said ROAD CLOSED that had been crudely shoved aside. So it would seem that some authority in my town closed a large road so that they could make people drive down a closed small road.
Halfway through my lunch break I finally made it to McDonald's. I waited for an employee who for some reason absolutely had to at that exact moment be standing in front of my car in the drive-thru lane interacting with the window employee who was supposed to be taking my money and giving me my frickin' cheeseburger. And that's when I noticed that I had forgotten my paycheck at work.
The little annoyances kept piling up-- I went to throw away my lunch trash, but the trash cans had disappeared. When I was standing where they were supposed to be, an old lady I've never seen before who resembled the pure essence of insanity itself beckoned me over into the breakroom. "C'mon in here, sweetie, you c'n eat yer lunch in here!" Reacting as calmly as I could for a person who had just been called "sweetie" by insanity itself, I said I'd already eaten my lunch, but I supposed I could go into the breakroom to throw it away. She winked at me as I did so.
When I headed for the bathroom, I found all three of our company bathrooms occupied. When I returned to my work station, Crazy Old Alice was telling a loud story about how she got some lamps. This was also a long story, and note that there is nothing interesting about even a short story that has "I got some lamps" at its conceptual core. She also smelled unusually bad, even, but I stayed.
Then my thumb started to hurt. Then it hurt some more. I kept myself working by reminding myself that people have endured much more pain for much crappier jobs. I told myself to stop being a wuss. I even accused myself of manifesting the pain psychosomatically just to have an excuse to go home early. Soon it felt like every joint and muscle in my thumb had been replaced by a miniature flaming porcupine made of knives, so I went home early.
It wouldn't be so bad-- I mean, hey! I went home early! Whee!-- except that I'm more acutely aware now of exactly how much money I'm sacrificing for every hour of work I skip out on. And although this is the last month that I'll need so much money, I won't really be safe for another two weeks. So I'm annoyed at my thumb and Alice and the bathrooms and the trash can and the drive-thru and the roadblocks and the stinky day.
But now that I've typed it all out, I feel a lot better! Ahhh, thanks, cathartic diary!
For those of you who actually made it all the way to the end of my whining, don't worry. I have some Socialization planned for this weekend so I should have a much better story or two for you next time.
And just so this entry isn't a complete ball of blah here is a picture of a kitten in a shoe.
