Brain fart

My boss (the nicer one) called me a few minutes ago. I expected her to give me shit for something. Instead, she invited me to a staff party on Sunday. I had a brain fart, thinking I worked on Sunday anyway, so I was going to be there regardless. I didn't realize what the hell I had done until I hung up. I'm spending my one day off in that fucking shithole of a mall that I work at.
For what it's worth, I like my coworkers and my coworkers do a good job of pretending to like me. They have to. I'm the guy that does the payroll. I'm not sure if I can carry a conversation with them, but it'll be nice to hang out with them outside of work, when I'm not busy pulling my hair out. It'll be interesting to see if my boss (the more asshole one) will still act like he has something stuck up his ass. I actually hope he does, because it'll be weird to see him be nice one day only go back to being a prick the next. The least he can do is be consistent.

Mo' fiyah

I think I'm gonna get rid of that coffee can ashtray on my front porch.

Srsly?

This made me want to die.

Memory

Another thing I plan on doing this summer is cleaning up my room. My room is in a perpetual state of messiness. I always do a half-assed job of cleaning it up, which never lasts long because I end up messing it up within the same day anyway. Part of the problem is that I'm a packrat. I can never bring myself to throw out a lot of stuff. Even if I've kept it for 5 years and never once used it, I'll think "What if one day I need to use it?". Like, I have a pair of those red and blue 3D glasses. When the fuck am I ever going to use those?
Other useless things I've kept:
-all my old Metropasses
-user manuals for things I don't even have anymore
-a giant battery for...something. I don't even know what.
-a Bic lighter that ran out of fluid maybe 3 years ago
-floppy disks. Floppy disks! No one uses floppies anymore!
-an empty box of matches
-pens and markers that don't even work
-rubber wristwatch strap
-bottle of rubber cement that I'm sure has solidified
Anyway, you get the picture. I'm going to slowly throw out any and all shit I don't need/use. I'm also going to have to get rid of a lot clothes I no longer wear.

Part of the cleaning up process was done today. I bought boxes to properly store all my photos, rather than tossing them into a plastic crate. While I was moving them into the boxes, I played a game with myself; I'd pull out a random photo and see if I could remember the story behind it. I could only remember maybe half of them, and even then, for the ones I could remember, I could only remember the moment that the photo was taken, but never the moment leading up to it or what happened after. I could remember where the photo was taken, but never what the hell I was doing there. But I guess it doesn't say much; most of the time, we were loitering anyway. I wonder if I'll be able to remember any of it 10 years from now.

Cars Can Be Blue

I heard this in a skate video and couldn't resist laughing. It's really cheap humor, but please take into account that I have the maturity level of a 7 year old at times.

Retarded Retard

That is all.

"The Wild One"

Happy Birthday, Sergio.

More whining

When I first took this job and met the bookkeeper I'd be replacing, she didn't strike me as a very friendly person. She wasn't particularly pretty to begin with, but the fact that she never smiled made her even less pretty. She had the same solemn, stone-set face. And it wasn't that she wasn't nice or anything; talking to her, she was alright. But her face always gave me the impression that she had something stuck up her ass all the time.
On the way to work this morning, I've realized that 3 months later, I've become her. It actually takes effort to smile, even outside of work. It's particularly taxing when a customer walks in the store when I'm in the middle of freaking the fuck out, and I suddenly have to pretend that I'm loving every minute I'm there.
In brighter news, we hired a new bookkeeper last night. The bad news is that she isn't replacing me; merely lending an extra hand. I've decided to give it until August 10th. If things don't improve and I'm still ripping out my hair, I'm going to quit on my birthday, August 11th. It'll be a birthday present to myself. It'll suck to start job hunting at the ass-end of summer, but it's gotta be better than what I'm going through now.

Also on the way to work, I saw a car with the license plate "YRU SAD". I decided it best not to respond back to the car.

Pen-FT

This year, I had more money in my bank account than I've ever had in my life. According to my coworker Sal, it's still not much, but to me, it was definitely enough that money wasn't really an issue anymore. It was one problem taken care of.
Anyway, all that money is gone now. I'm broke. $300 in the hole, actually. I paid for my entire school year's tuition on Tuesday. I figured I'd pay it all instead of semester by semester in case I didn't have any money by then. I don't get paid again until the end of the month. Straight scroungin' from here on in.
I still don't regret buying that camera.

Speaking of which...








The camera only takes half-frames. I actually like having two photos, side by side, to look at in one frame. The photos also came out amazingly crisp. So yeah, I'm broke, but I think it was totally worth it.

Band practice again today. A huge improvement. I don't suck as much anymore. We could get through the two songs we've been working on without me facepalming. So that's a start. We have a tentative show on September 17. Come out if you can. You can watch me choke under pressure and facepalm like crazy.


Earlier this week, I noticed a stack of resumes on my boss's desk. Being the nosy prick that I am, I took a closer look and flipped through a few of them. I'm 99% certain it's for my job; they all listed bookkeeping, accounts receivable/payable, etc. as previous work experiences. Thank God.
I can't adequately put into words just how miserable work has made me. I've never wished to be fired before, just so I could be taken out of my misery. I can't even enjoy myself even when I'm not at work now. I hope it ends one way or another.

Hey Jay-Pappy

Happy Birthday to the luckiest guy I know. Seriously.

B&W

I haven't taken black and white photos in a while.

Earrings be trillion cut and my grill be slugged up

-Lenny, Sergio, JP and I went to "Smithsfits" night at 751 Saturday night for maybe 45 minutes. It was packed full of hipsters, but I had a fun time dancing anyway. They played 'This Charming Man' twice. Thanks to JP for doing what he does best (climbing impossibly high shit) and sneaking us in.

-I scratched a tickling feeling on my neck during dinner last night only to discover that the source of the tickling was a spider. It was shaped exactly like a black widow spider, but grey. It fell off my hand and right into my dinner that I was greatly enjoying. Bummer. For my troubles, the spider died shortly thereafter. Apparently, Thai food is lethal to spiders.

-Mark, Matt, Michelle and I attempted to go to the beach today. And by "attempted", I mean we succeeded, but it was very poorly planned. And by "poorly planned", I mean there was no plan at all and we just showed up with no towel, food, or anything to keep us occupied. So I propose that we try it again in a week or two. It'll give us more time to organize everything. What do you say, guys?

-Saturday night was the first time in a ridiculously long time all of SB were literally in the same room together. Getting all of us to hang out was always a little difficult, but I find as time goes on, "difficult" slowly becomes "impossible". Yeah yeah, that's life, people change and whatever, but it doesn't mean I can't be saddened by it.

-I've been working at the optical store for over 3 months now and I still can't get over rich, middle-aged women using the word "bling" or worse, "bling-bling". And seeing as how a lot of the sunglasses are decorated with jewels, it comes up a lot. I cringe every time. Can't they just say "jewels"?

Nobody raise your voices...

So much for my little vacation. It's been equally, if not more, stressful with my bosses gone than when they're here. I've dubbed today Nervous Breakdown Day. I've gotta take care of as many problems as possible before they get back tomorrow. They're the kind of people that literally look for things to yell at you for, so I'm going to get yelled at anyway. But I'd like to give them as few reasons as possible to yell at me.
Next Wednesday has also been dubbed Brick Shitting Day; one of the companies is going to be audited by Revenue Canada. They're coming in to inspect the books and track every single penny. I have to be there to answer any and all questions. Guess what? I don't know anything.

Beirut was highly enjoyable. The company I went with was great, the music was great, and for once, short people stood in front of me. My back hurt like hell from standing for so long, but it was worth it.

Fish Eye Pt. 2

This was the first roll I took with the fish eye. Didn't get the pictures back until today.












And more from the picnic:

New

Both my bosses are gone on vacation. This in turn means I am on vacation. Not because I no longer have to work (I'm writing this from work), and not even because it means I can slack off (even though writing this from work constitutes as slacking off), but because I can breathe easier when I work. I don't have to fear being yelled at for screwing up. I just have to cover up my screw ups before my bosses get back.

I saw this on sale the other day:

After I pay for school this week, I won't have that much money. Knowing that, I still decided I'm going to buy it. Who needs money for food anyway. I think I'll slowly build a small collection of cameras instead.

Beirut this week. It should be a fun time. I haven't been to a concert in a while.

Fish Eye

Shoplifters of the world, hand it over.

A brand new pair of Gucci sunglasses ($300-$500) went missing from the store yesterday. What sets this apart from normal shoplifting is that all the glasses in the store are locked down. They're either in glass drawers or on locked racks. So whoever stole it decided to take it from the damn window display instead. There are a few objects in the way, but it's not locked down. Still, it's actually kind of difficult to steal it because it's still in plain view of whoever is in the store. So whichever employee at the store happened to be there while it got stolen must have really not been paying any attention.

Which is where I come into the story. Maybe.

No one is actually sure when exactly it was stolen. We noticed it was missing yesterday, but it may have been missing as far back as a week or so ago (if not longer). And it may or may not have been me who was watching the store when it happened. But the odds aren't that great for me; I'm usually the only one in the store 5 out of the 7 days that it's open, and during those days, I'm there 6 out of the 11 hours that the store is open. So chances are, it happened when I was the only employee there. And not a lot of people come in either; one or two people come in once every 3 hours, so it's not like I have the excuse of "The store was so busy, I couldn't keep an eye on everyone". So like I said, I must have been really off in my own little world to have missed the shoplifting go down. Which sounds pretty Darren-ish.

If she hasn't already done so, my boss will be reviewing the security tapes today to determine under whose watch it happened on. I might not have a job by tomorrow. We'll see.