How To Be The Easter Bunny

Part One - The Suit

Naturally, in a lot of ways, this is the most important part. I was volunteered for the role of The Bunny for our five stores here and I had no involvement in choosing or renting the suit. This was a horrible, horrible mistake. If possible, go to the rental place - see the suit - try it on if at all possible. The suit we got was a misbegotten thing that looked like it was from the 1950's. Many of the seams had been re-stitched so many times the seams were thick scars of fabric and thread and the mask had been fixed so many times that it's vaguely dog-like face was lumpy with ears that didn't even try to stand erect.

And the feet/paws were the worst part. Too small for me, with ratty pink fur on the outside and a sole made of what appeared to be 100 year old leather with the outline of a bare foot sweated into the material on both sides. Oh yeah, and the suit was about 3 sizes too small for me, creating a dirty greyish-white bodysuit for me that could have doubled as a costume for some shameless, inept superhero. It was also impossible to zip myself, forcing someone else to zip me into my tiny corset, my hands sheathed in mittens incapable of grasping anything with precision. Even without the mask/head it was claustrophobic. The legs were also roughly 6 inches too short, leaving an expanse of socks between the end of my "legs" and the beginning of my "Paws".

Terrifying. The head had some sort of plastic harness inside that broke off immediately after donning, leaving me wearing a plastic head strap for no reason. All this for fifty bucks... maybe that should have been a sign.

So try and find a good suit. Maybe one that actually looks like a bunny and fits properly?

Part Two - The Setting

 

We did the shoots in a series of stops at each store over the course of two days. 2 hours at three stores on day one and 3 hours at two stores on day two. Two hours was just about right. It was a short enough time that I didn't truly start freaking out about being in the suit and  we didn't overstay our welcome. Of course, the three hour shifts were justified when we showed up to lines of kids waiting. But try and keep it short if you can. You'll regret long ones. Allow for ample time between shoots. Our stores were 6 minutes apart and with a 30 minute window it felt like we were scrambling between shoots

Each store made their own little backdrops from random Easter crap in the store with varying results. One store's looked fabulous... and one store had 3/4s of their decor fall before the first hour was up, leaving me sitting in a pool of plastic Easter grass and window clings that stuck to my feet much better than the wall. Avoid high chairs like barstools too. The last thing you want is for some kid to fall off your knees and it's easier to sit in a broad low slung chair.

Part Three - The Accessories

This is a two part thing - Items you need for the shoot and items for in between.

During the shoot, be sure to have a basket with candy. Nothing attracts reluctant children like sweets.  Choose a nice sturdy basket with a high handle. You can rest your heavy head on it between kids. Also grab a big fluffy bunny toy. It's handy for dancing in front of children like a puppet, waggling in front of babies to get their attention and for squeezing tightly when you would otherwise be choking the life out of a parent. tee-hee.

Also bring a towel or two - you'll get sweaty. A Good supply of water in a bottle that can be opened with mitten-paw hands and I carried dryer sheets with me to stuff in the suit between shoots to stave off the funk of forty thousand years that resided in the thing. And the stinky babies. Make sure the location has set up a cordoned off place to go for brief breathers too - somewhere where the kiddos can't see you.


Part Four - Be The Bunny

 

This is really the most important part, in truth. You can wear a crappy mask, street clothes and fuzzy socks on your hands and kids will still buy it if you are convincing acting enough. Number one - The Easter Bunny doesn't talk... I'm not sure why this is... I know rabbits don't speak generally, but they don't hide eggs in houses either. Movie EB's talk... I'm guessing that they're mute because it's one of those characters that both men and women play and unlike Santa, who generally at least has a masculine voice, so it would take away some of the illusion for a kid to see two bunnies with radically different voices... Which doesn't explain the wide range of appearances, but whatever. At any rate, EB is generally mute. This is a plus and a minus - It's nice to not have to have conversations with people or answer awkward questions but communication is also very difficult.

You have to over-act everything. If you shrug, that shrug has to be a good 5 inches if you look at a kid, you have to turn your whole body so he can tell you're looking at him. move your whole arm, not just your hand. High fives, thumbs ups and hand shaking goes a long way to gaining a kids confidence. It's almost like being a hot, sweaty, miserable mime.

heck's sake, act like a bunny - hop or skip, hold a basket in front of you, snuffle at things... don't just stomp to the corner and strip away the hellish helmet. Regardless of what you think, kids will notice. also... hula hooping is almost impossible, but it gets a great reaction.

Part Five - The Kids

It's no secret that I am not a kid- person. Don't have any, don't want any, don't particularly enjoy most of them for more than a minute or two. So I was surprised what a kick I got out of some of my.. attendees? Victims? Subjects? I have no idea what they call a person that gets their picture taken with a stranger in a mask that offers them candy.  Anyway, the Easter Bunny in particular is an odd beast. There's only a very limited age group that really believes in him and about half of them are terrified of him. Too young and they have no idea what to think - those ones are about 50/50 screamers, I think. Too old and they immediately know it's some sap in a suit. Even if they couldn't see my socks and a healthy amount of bare calf, they could see the shadowy form of my glasses through the mesh eyes.

Yet, inexplicably, their parents make them get their picture taken. I don't get this, but if a sullen tween sitting on the lap of a sweaty bored thirty year old is what you want, you got it!

I will say that I loved that perfect age group though, both the screamers and the believers, The screamers were just so terrified... it was a primal, red faced, gasping horror that you never see outside of moments like that and it was surprisingly... dare I say gratifying? And the level of amusement on parent's faces as their children went into paralyzed shock then sobbing hyperventilating at the sight of my goofy self was the icing on the cake.

And the believers were just as great. Little girls faces lighting up with wonder and little boys drawing me pictures. I had one little girl come running over and give me a hug, her head making an audible hollow clonk against my fake noggin that really believed in me 100% and a little boy that I finally won over after 5 minutes of waving from across the store that left convinced the Easter Bunny was real.

Don't give up on kids either. I had more than a few that refused to come over initially, but after watching four or five other kids be unafraid, or having their mom take a picture with me or simply waving to them between photos when they didn't think I was watching, finally join me for a photo.

That said, I also likely gave two kids a complex they may never outgrow when I snuck up on them in an aisle after they refused to come over....

Part Six - Conclusion

I did not enjoy playing the Bunny. In the end it was humiliating and painful and boring and generally pointless. But if you have the chance, give it a try. I think if it had been planned better and I'd had a better suit, it could have been a really fun experience. 

The ROUS FAMILY -   

 

 

 

 

A Small Sigh Of Relief

Now Playing -  I've Been Everywhere by Johnny Cash

 

Life - 

Well, it's not as bad as I'd feared. A few months ago, the large chain drug store I'm a manager for announced a major management restructuring. And that was all they said. No info, no reassuring words, just a formal announcement then the sound of a zipper sliding across their lips. 

So naturally, speculation ran rampant. And I mean RAMPANT. None of us would have jobs or if we did, they'd be for less money and more work. To be frank, though I love the company I work for and it's been nothing but good to me for the last nine years, I was worried. My wife and I are finally getting our funds and debt on track and without my job, that wouldn't really happen. And there's that little matter of the fact that we not only moved 3,000 miles to Maine with the company, but we then moved even further north to Bangor, where, if my job was eliminated, I could have a very difficult time finding a replacement. 

Without saying too much, when the final, official plan was announced this week, it wasn't as bad as feared by any means, it was simply a way to restructure the company  to be in line with its current expansion. (Or lack thereof.) There's been some changes, and I do think we'll end up losing a few good folks, and had I not taken the promotion a year ago I'd have some hard work and decisions coming up, but in the long run, it will be good for us. Us being me, my family and my job. I don't know how the pay will pan out, I may end up getting a cut, but for now it sounds like everything should stay status quo around the ROUS Motel. At least as far as my job is concerned.

The only thing that bothers me about it is that the announcement made last week outlines a plan that is to take place over the next two years. Nothing really immediate, and really, there's no reason they couldn't have made some of this clear months ago and alleviated some of our stress. 

But it's over now, and we can all look to the future. Oh and for those that follow me on a closer basis than this infrequently updated blog (Less infrequent now, I hope!) knows that I was also up for a promotion to store manager. Didn't get the job, but I did, apparently impress at the interview and I'm in the store with the new manager, with their faith in my ability to help him and get our little drug corner ship-shape. It's actually kind of exciting. And not just because I get to watch this new structure from a slightly different perspective than I would have as a newly made manager.

The ROUS FAMILY -   

 

 

 

 

Comp Weekend

Which Now Playing -  Your Love by The Outfield
 

Lumberjacks Are Sexy!

Life -  

 At my job I'm salaried and working in retail, that means from November to January, my position works six days a week instead of five. Which, when you typically work ten or eleven hours a day, that's a lot of working. So in return, they give you two extra days off in January to compensate. Mostly. Usually they let you combine it with your days off, like I did this year, to get six off in a row.

Which is pretty cool, a mini vacation without using vaca days and after the holidays, you can use some unwinding time. Yet somehow, in the last six days, I've accomplished... not much. I cleaned the house a bit, we made a trip into town, I put a few new items on my Etsy shop and edited about a third of my book, but that's not much when you consider the amount I should have gotten done.

Part of the problem, I think is that as of right now, there are so many shoes up in the air, I feel like a spider at a slumber party. I have an interview on the 9th for a promotion, at roughly the same time, the company is announcing a major management restructuring that could make that interview moot and eliminate the position I'm interviewing for. Or they could eliminate my current position and... well... Anything could happen, honestly. In two months, I could have my own store, making enough money for us to finally put our plans for the future into action or... I could be unemployed. Worst case scenario, but not entirely outside the realm of possibility.

So I have had a really hard time concentrating on much of anything this last week. I'd even planned to write five or six blogs for each of my sites and schedule them. Instead I read a couple of comics, two novels and took apart some Legos.

Sigh.

The upside is that my frustration at not knowing what's going on has given me a case of severe cabin fever. Instead of dreading the return to work, I'm looking forward to it. Perversely, that's the easiest place to keep my mind off of it.

Wish me luck.

The ROUS FAMILY -   

 

 

 

 

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

Now Playing -
City Of Ember DVD

Life - 

My wife finally found a job out here in Maine! Hooray! And when I say finally, I mean she waited until we had two cars, chose one place that she was excited by, went in, talked to someone for 20 minutes and had the job a couple of days later. Freakin' show-off.

I think she'll like it. The job is night audits for a fairly swank hotel/spa/wedding facility in Brunswick. So it's nearby, pays decent, is in the industry we eventually want to work in and she should have time to work on her writing while she's there. Right on.

And I got promoted today. Which means I'm one step away from getting my own Walgreens store some day. It's the same position I volunteered to step down from around a year ago, but I decided that this district would be a better place for the position and took it. The added money was also a consideration, of course. It means I'll have a slightly longer commute, I have to drive to Portland every day now, but it's a pretty significant raise that should help us pay off our debt eventually. (I've started getting the official bills from my car accident and while they aren't as bad as I'd feared.... they're still hefty.)


We also found a tick on Pooka's forehead today, right smack in between his eyes. Stupid tick. Stupider dog. Trying to get that dog to hold still while we pulled it out was like wrestling a bull hopped up on crazy juice. I've never seen a tick before, or at least, not that I remember... not a fan.

I saw some turkeys on the way to the Hannaford's yesterday too, running through the fields outside my house. So many odd beasties out here! Though I still haven't found anything as cool as the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

Writing - 

I officially started writing my query letter a couple of days ago. Yeeek! I've posted a few drafts online to get fellow aspiring author's opinions and thus far, the few I've gotten are encouraging. It needs some work, and I may make a second version for certain agents, but as of this Monday at the latest, I plan to have queried my first agent.

The Opposite Of Boredom

Life - 

My how things can change overnight!

Last night Maine got hit with a pretty gnarly winter storm, though quite unlike the storms most of the rest of the East coast has been getting. Instead of snow, we got inches of rain and winds. Oh the winds! Sometimes exceeding 90 miles an hour, the trees behind the Northeastern Motel, (The crummiest little motel in the east) were whipping back and forth in a truly majestic fashion. You could hear the deep groaning of the wood echoing through the forest. We lost power at around 10, just as an episode of House Hunters was on that I wanted to see. They were buying a home in Morocco! It looked intriguing!

So instead, we sat in the dark and read or watched nature bend. This morning it was dramatic outside to say the least. Roads washed away or flooded. Trees downed and stripped of their branches. School buses blocking areas where bridges used to be. (Note: The author may be over describing things for dramatic effect)

I drive 24 miles to work, through fairly windy back roads, in a line of cars too cheap to take the wide route and pay the toll. Today, between closures, detours and LONG lines of cars, it took me almost two hours. There was a six mile section of road when my speedometer never left its peg I was moving so slow.

When I arrived to work. CHAOS. Eight stores without power, stranded employees, no contact, power coming on then failing in stores. Melting Ice cream, flying Ws, ZOMBIES!!!! EeeeEEeeee!!!!

Love it.

There's something about the breakdown of routine and modern conveniences that gets my juices pumping and for once, as the acting admin, I feel like I have something to do. I'm the brains, the mother ship for all of our poor little foundling stores. Most of whom seem to have NO idea how to cope with circumstances like this. I've spent the day coordinating stores, updating statuses, giving advice and orders and aiming for the brain stem.

BRING IT APOCALYPSE, I'll kick your butt.  



I just wish I'd brought my shotgun and drove the hovercraft to work. Getting home could be a pain.

nook!

Now Playing -
The Neverending Tick Of The Clock...

Life - 

For the last week, I have been the temporary Administrative Assistant for the district office at my work.

This is not a job I have any experience in, nor one that I’ve ever really had any desire to get experience in, but it has been an interesting week, make no mistake there.

Not a thrilling week though. It’s pretty obvious that they’re taking it easy, not giving me all of the tasks that a typical admin would do and as a result, I spend a good chunk of my time fiddling with things and trying to convince myself that I’m doing meaningful tasks. I dusted the plants. I spent fifteen minutes refreshing my email screen, waiting for an important missive, only to learn that it refreshes itself and makes a little beep when they arrive.

My boss, a very nice and good natured fellow has no problem with me reading my nook, but even with his blessing, I feel like I’m cheating, doing something scandalous and I feel obligated to  tuck it aside and check the computer screen when people walk past.

The worst part about the job though, is the drive. It’s apparently not excessive for this area, where up to an hour commute is not considered too long, but the 36 minute drive each way seems like a lot of wasted time to me.

Luckily, this is only a temporary post and I’ve just been officially notified that my next destination is in a store in Bath, ME. Which Lindsay and I loved on our visit. We started looking into places out there that accept pets last night and Lindsay is spending some time calling around today, in the hopes that we can head that way on Saturday and look at some potential apartments.

If I had the internet at “home” (We have not had it for a week now, if we want to check anything, we have to go to the office, rouse the landlord and make him let us into one of the closer rooms for a few minutes.)  I would post a photo here of the snow storm we got the other night. It was gorgeous and made for a bit of a harrowing and long drive home but true to the resident’s word, the street crews were on the ball and by morning, the roads were bare and clean and by nightfall, most of the snow we had received was melted away again.

Reading -

I am woefully behind on updating my reading, and I’m certain I’ve missed two or three books on the list, I just can’t remember what ones, and they’re all boxed away in Idaho. At any rate, here are the books I’ve read so far since the last update –


NIGHT FALL
by Nelson DeMille
2007, 512 pages

A WALK IN THE WOODS
By Bill Bryson
2006, 397 pages

BITTER TRUTH
By William Lashner
2003, 592 pages

KILL NOW, PAY LATER
By Robert Terrall
2007, 220 pages

THE CAMEL CLUB
By David Baldacci
2006, 624 pages

TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE
By Lawrence Block
1991, 304 pages

I’M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF
By Bill Bryson
2000, 304 pages

THE NEON RAIN
By James Lee Burke
2002, 275 pages

THE HUNTER
By Richard Stark
2008, 208 pages

THE SOUR LEMON SCORE
By Richard Stark
2010, 168 pages

GO-GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE
By Victor Gischler
2008, 336 pages

THE NIGHTMARE PEOPLE
By Lawrence Watt-Evans
2005, 203 pages



A few of these were read on the nook, my new little buddy out here in a land where I don’t have my personal collection and no library card. (They frown on giving those out to people with an Idaho driver’s license and no permanent address…) So without further ado, here’s my initial review of the nook, by Barnes and Noble -

Reviews Of Unusual Size - 

The Barnes & Noble nook

I had mightily resisted liking these at first, despite my interest in e-readers, but as I’d feared, I am blown away by the convenience of reading on the nook.

The screen is a nice matte grey-white and has very crisp, clear words that legitimately feel like reading a printed page. I was pretty shocked at that. I’ve read five books or so on the nook since getting it on the fifth of this month. That’s pretty good, though a few were shorter books than usual.

5 Things I LIKE about the nook –

 -1-   Incredibly portable and convenient. I have packed this all over the place since getting it, to work, bed, in the car… I even read it as I’m brushing my teeth!

-2-   The holding capacity. I have 148 books on my nook right now, 10 from B&N, the rest side loaded from my computer. It’s very simple to load and with the expandable SD slot, I’m only using up 1% of my available memory. That’s a lot of books in there!

-3-  The ease of reading. The screen is easy on the eyes, incredibly similar in terms of eyestrain to a regular book. Even to my headache prone brain, the nook is great.

-4-  Design. Though a bit gimmicky, I’ve come to like the touch screen at the bottom of the nook. It lets you access the menus easily and without feeling too foolish and when it shuts off,  you scarcely notice it’s there, it doesn’t interfere with your reading at all.

-5-  Page turns. Though the nook has the inherent page flashes as the e-ink screen refreshes with each page turn, it’s not that distracting, and scarcely takes longer than a real page turn, which is fully fine to me. It’s easy to turn the pages too, with buttons on both sides of the device and the option to flick the pages using the touch screen once it’s gone dark. I do keep thinking the buttons should be higher on the left side though, likely to do with how I hold it with my left hand.

5 Things I DISLIKE about the nook –

-1-  Despite the upgrade and ease of use, the nook is still very buggy. It freezes a bit sometimes and you have to reset it and it does silly things now and again, like taking you to the settings page in the midst of a book.

-2-  Battery life.  Though I’m pretty sure I’m using it more than anticipated, my battery only lasts for about three days, rather than the suggested ten. It’s not that big of deal though, and I have admittedly been playing with the touch screen a lot because it’s a new toy.

-3-  Durability. Despite the ease of packing the nook around, I’m still pretty paranoid about how fragile it seems. My particular nook suffers from a problem that a few have had, the left hand forward button has cracked slightly. This is something that B&N is fixing, but it does make me a bit concerned about future problems.

-4-  The usb connector port. This is a silly little thing, but there’s a tiny ledge along the port and it’s pretty sharp edged. This is also the one spot that my finger tries to rest every time I use this thing.

-5-  The outlandish cost of accessories. Most sleeves and cases for the nook that I’ve found so far run you around fifty bucks. That seems ridiculous. Instead, I bought a case at Target on clearance for fifteen that seems pretty great. I’ll try and get pictures posted eventually.


I’m also a bit concerned about how easy it is to order books on your nook. It’s extremely simple. Like to the point that I should disable my card just in case.

4/5

I’ll likely do a new review on this once I’ve had it for a while, to see how it still holds up.

Frustration and Once Again, Work.

My internet here in the great state of Maine has become increasingly erratic and useless, more often than not just working long enough to anger me when it goes down again. Usually just after I've hit submit on something, causing me to lose anything I'd typed.

But that's okay. Apart from that, we really like it here. In the next few daqys we are starting to look for a house to rent or buy, will hopefully escape this goofy little apartment and good things will happen.

I started work three days ago. My new store is full of incredibly hilarious characters, the kind that should fuel many a blog. The store manager, really more of a circus ringleader than a manager has his hands full. I've worked three full days, doing the first actual labor I've really been able to do since my accident and each evening/morning, I feel it. My back and shoulder are stiff and sore, and my left arm, which is forced to bear the brunt of my work is quite unhappy with me.

It feels good to get back to work though, and every exertion makes things easy the next day. One of the pluses of working for my company is that most stores are very much like any other store, so getting adjusted to working in one only takes as long as you need to meet and get comfortable with the employees.

Over the next few months they will be, as my boss put it, whoring me out to other stores, helping out wherever I'm needed, both setting up stores and working in established ones. Next week I work in Augusta, an hour drive from Windham, where we've set up shop for now. I just hope things settle a bit eventually so that I can get into a groove and start writing again.

Pictures soon, just not now. I started uploading pictures a few times, but the connection failed before they loaded. Bah to the internet at the Northeastern Motel.

Ahh Work.

SO last night an unusual gentleman entered the place of my work around 3am. He was rotund, a little squirrelly looking, had a limp and was wearing two coats. He had that look; like someone that was full of self-loathing, but acted confident around people, though it was clearly an act? The kind of guy that immediately grates on you because he looks shady and fake.

Also, 3am is my goofing off and doing nothing time, so that's one strike right there, buddy!

He wanders the aisles for a while, poking this, fondling that, never carrying anything with him, not really looking lost so much as appearing to be waiting for the right moment. Finally, I cornered him in the appliance aisle and asked him if he needed any help.

He asked me if the store carried plastic plunger handles. Now, we've got a little bit of everything, and lord knows people need some queer things in the wee hours of the night, so I politely showed him our plungers we did carry, a wooden handled generic model and something called the Ultimate Plunger, which looked like a G.I. Joe bludgeon of some sort. He shook his head sadly and said that they wouldn't work and continued on his browsing way.

About twenty minutes later I was called to the pharmacy to help with a coupon problem, only to see the gentleman at the counter there. Seems that one of the items he was buying was supposed to be on sale. As I approached, Mr. Wizard, my pharmacist found the coupon but I was curious what the fellow had decided to buy.

A coloring book, a waterproof personal massager, a vibrating ring condom and three, count 'em, three different bottles of lube.


I can only pray that he also had a broken plunger at home that needed a handle and that the items were unrelated. And that I can sell a book eventually and stop working graves.

Thanks Has Been Given.

Now Playing -
Green  Christmas - by - The Barenaked Ladies

Life - 

Salt Lake City, Utah is a horrid place. I've decided that after two days of driving about and being generally lost or annoyed or generally perturbed by the residents and streets of the town and area. I'm also increasingly shocked and dismayed by the way the city is growing and becoming slummier and slummier as time passes.

We were in SLC for Thanksgiving, being held at my Brother-In-Law, Dylan's new house in one of the suburbs of SLC.  Apart from the traffic and my inability to navigate in towns with more than 70,000 people, however, it was  a great trip.

We brought teh boys with us, their first long car trip since we've gotten them, and the performed admirably! They didn't whine or complain, for the most part they just looked out the window or slept. Pooka did get a bit antsy a couple of times, but he quickly settled down.

Dylan and Cami have a nice house in a 'burbs style home, a split level walk up on a quiet street. It's very cozy and comfortable, and it was great fun spending more time with them, they're the part of the family that I've seen the least and it was nice to catch up.

The food was grand. We made a Pomegranate sipping punch and the stuffing, and each of the family made something else. Dylan cooked the turkey in a Dutch Oven designed for poultry and it turned out shockingly moist, almost melt in your mouth.  Apart from four separate trips to the grocery store, everything went off without a hitch. Our boys behaved themselves and were a hit with the people, who aren't accustomed to big dogs.

We had a chance to sleep in their camp trailer too, which was really good for us, we had our own space and we've been thinking about getting one some day, so it worked out perfect. We loved it, but in order to buy one, we would need to buy a pickup, which seems like an unneccesary expense. We'll probably end up sticking to a teardrop trailer or something the Element can pull.

All in all, it was a nice Thanksgiving. We had to leave around six that night so that I could work, and again, the boys were well-behaved on the ride home.

As I predicted, Walgreens had a terrible Black Friday. Between the mix of items and the lack of a finite hours of sale, when I left at 9am on Friday, we were already down $3,000 from the year before. Thanksgiving itself was slower than usual too. From what I saw, it looked like most people were only shopping for big ticket items, and were picking up a lot less impulse stuff than usual. I haven't been into the store since then, but I'd imagine a pretty poor showing.

It was kind of a pain working one graves shift in the middle of my days off, and Friday, was mostly a bust as far as getting anything done after work was concerned. We did head out to Home Depot with my mom to grab a Black Friday special, a dryer for $280, to replace the one that her mysterious destructive static field obliterated. Naturally, they only received nine of the dryers and were long out by the time we got there around three, but they were very cool about it. They have a deal where you can pay for it then and when it comes in, they'll deliver it for free to your house. The salesman was very friendly and competent and despite the busy store, took the time to find us the accessories that we would need too. Then they let us buy them at the same time. I was pretty damned impressed. I fell asleep in my chair reading around 7, and drifted in and out of consciousness after that. Beautiful weather that day too.

Writing - 

Not really anything here, and unfortunately, looking ahead at the coming weeks, something tells me that The Whispering Ferns is going to have to wait until January if I want to get anything done on it.

Jenga!

Last night at work, I started prepping for our big Black Friday sales at Walgreens. I'm tempted to put quotation marks around "BIG" (There, I just did.) because Walgreens has a very iffy idea of what it means to have a Black Friday sale. Typically, you go to places like Sears and buy things like $100 pool tables and save $300 on a miter saw. Big, premier stuff that you can't usually afford. Either that, or you hit up places like Wal-Mart for ridiculously cheap prices on a few items and middlin deals on the rest. Like $50 for an off-brand flat screen TV, but they only have... Thirty-Three of them. Clearly, those will sell out in sixteen minutes, so they hope you'll bite on some of the slightly less outrageous deals like Care Bears or memory cards. AT any rate, Black Friday is all about ludicrous prices on pretty decent products, with a small amount on hand. That's why people line up outside of the stores at 5am, hoping to get one of those elusive few. There's all sorts of websites, with driving plans and buying strategies, even the best way to load your cart with the stuff as you race through the store. Crazy, says I.

Back when I ran a Chevron, I used to like opening on Black Friday, chatting with the shoppers as the girded their loins for the assault or helping them lick their wounds with a doughnut afterwards. Now that I work for a major retailer, things a re a bit different, but I still like working that morning. With a few notable exceptions, most of the shoppers are in a pretty good mod and fun to work with. Of course, like I said, my job has a different idea about what Black Friday is. Unlike the big box stores, Walgreens advertises a bizarre mix of no-brand toys, Christmas Decor and everyday essentials. It's evolved over the years too, going from outright deals for a limited time, to mail in rebates, with the products changing a lot over the years too.

This year, they're changing things a bit again, instead of having a three hour sale, they're running little specials on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and running them all day instead of a few hours. For the day itself, I have to confess, it seems like a silly mix of sale items - Fake Potted Trees, some Webkins, LED lights, frozen pizza....It doesn't seem like anything worth getting out of bed on a cold morning to me. Luckily for me, I'll already be up and out of bed. I work Thursday night from Midnight to 9am.
   
This means my wife and I will jet down to Salt Lake City Wednesday morning, spend the night at her brother's new home for Thanksgiving the next day, take a quick nap and drive back to Idaho in time for work that night. Sounds like a hassle, and it kind of is, but I really don't mind working Black Friday, and though it's in the middle of my "Off Days" the knowledge that I wont have to work Christmas because of the shift makes everything a bit sweeter.

Having Thanksgiving in a different city and with the Graves' should be interesting. My immediate family never really got into Thanksgiving too much. My mom makes the best stuffing around and my extended family always has a big shindig, but for some reason my brother and I never really got into the spirit. Frankly, I think it's kind of a silly holiday. I don't think we need an official holiday to celebrate what we're thankful for, we should do that year-round and as for celebrating family, well, there's other BS holidays for that too. I'm not really sure where my Meh-ness for Turkey-Day (A phrase that drives me nuts, by the way) came from, but even as a young kid, in the midst of two dozen family members, you'd typically find me in the corner with a book, ignoring people.

As we got older, my mom and brother and I started doing our own thing, going to a movie, eating a turkey, decorating the tree, more than anything, reveling in the vacant city that reveals itself during holidays.

So Thanksgiving should be a change, a smaller family group in a different town, football on the TV. In a way, it may be more of a traditional holiday than I've ever really had.

I almost didn't make it to the holiday, Some damned fool at work thought it would be clever to stack the trees we're selling at work as high as possible, going so far as to stand a ladder in top of  the top bay in the stockroom, and stack it as high as they could from there. When I went to get them down in preparation of the sale, I quickly realized how precarious the stack really was.

I pulled out one box and the entire stack went down, like a huge game of Jenga. Boxes buffeted me in the face and back, pushing me back and away from the stack, my feet stumbling along the bay, 20 feet above the cement stockroom floor. I felt my feet teeter on the edge and lost track of where I was standing. My glasses were knocked away and everything went fuzzy. Then, there was nothing but air beneath me and I fell.

Luckily, I had stumbled around like Mr. Magoo long enough that by the time I lost my balance, the trees had beat me down to the ground and I only fell around four feet, onto the stack of banged up and bedraggled artificial trees.

Almost had to change my pants that night, I can tell you that!


Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving everyone, from someone who's just happy to be here without any broken bones!

Apple of my eye

Now Playing -
That Certain Female by Charlie Feathers

Life -

Thanks to a truly cool dude and a good friend, I'm back amongst the land of the functioning computer again. Although my laptop is still most awesomely rocking the Linux, there are a few things it cannot do, namely iTunes and Photoshop. Thanks to my new baby, a used Mac Mini, those fine items are again at my disposal.

It's been years since I've used a Mac, and it's taking some adjustment, but it's comforting to know that I have something to edit photos on and color artwork with. (I assume my assorted sister-in-laws will appreciate getting their wedding photos eventually now, too!) Bravo, little white box. Bravo.

Work blew. Busted my tush all night to get things done, only to have the big boss-lady disappointed in the overall job done over the weekend. Quite frankly, none of that was my fault, but that's yet another curse of the Graves shift, you ALWAYS get the brunt. Luckily, I only have one glorious day left on this rotation, then it can be my compatriot's job to please everyone, all of the time.

Writing -

I wrote nothing last night. NUFFINK! I did bust out a few words a second ago, primarily because I'd started a chapter and left it hanging. The chapters in Graves are short enough that there's scarcely an excuse for that. I'm really looking forward to the next few days, I'm enjoying writing Graves, have a lot of hopefully fun revisions to make to The Whispering Ferns and have hit a bit of inspiration for the spot I'm stuck at on my other kids novel, Hieronymus Masterson's Unremarkable Bit Of Magic

The Last Sentence -

The cowboy isn't dumb, he looks around at the customers he's standing near and his eyes narrow.

From - "Graves" (WIP)

Lost on the Toy Aisle

Life -

I just spent two nights straight resetting the toys in my store to the new plan that the head office has thoughtfully created. It always boggles my mind that they've gotta have some vague clue that the computer program they use for the dimensions of stuff has to have some errors, yet they leave no margin for it in their designs. It takes hours of re-jiggering things to get everything to fit and look nice, especially in the toy section. Then, naturally, some bratty kid whose parents don't find it important to watch him, comes along and trashes everything. I spent a lot of the early evening cleaning up messes and glaring viciously at ragamuffins.

We also had a group of inbred hillbillies, a term in this case that I mean very literally, like "Hey you guys!" inbred, come in with their drunk and wasted friend, face painted up with marker, wearing nothing but a sweatshirt and they filmed her as they ran around the store. They were telling her she was at the prom and I think that she was both out of it and mentally challenged enough that she believed them. I was tempted to stop it, but maybe later, once the rest of them sober up and watch the footage, one of them will feel some sort of shame and eat the black end of a shotgun or at least think twice before doing it again.

Bleak, I know, but people that are as cruel as these yokels were really get my hackles up.

Made a simple meal out of some noodles, a can of Snow's Clam Chowder and some spices, quick and quite tasty, the recipe is on the back of the can. If you can find Snow's I recommend it wholeheartedly. My fave of the canned chowders. Which is to say it still tastes nothing like real chowder...

Writing -

Wrote another chapter and a half in Graves. At this point I'm pretty much just waiting out the clock until I have some days off...

The Last Sentence -

There's something about the word 'Zombie' that sounds ludicrous.

From - "Graves" (WIP)

Buffragette City!

Life -

At my job, I have roughly 6 customers that I dread seeing every night.

1 - Santa. This man is an older gentleman that looks exactly like Santa Claus. He wears an oxygen tank and wanders around the store for hours. I actually get a kick out of him, he's good natured and friendly, but he wears out his welcome after four hours of telling me fish stories and dirty jokes. He also has constant problems with his perceived costs of sale items and requests a lot of rain checks, which I hate writing out.

2 - The lady with the strange growth on her face. I love her, i really do. The story she told me about her father's bar during prohibition is one of my favorites, and she talks with me about movies. She's one of those people that I should despise, but due to a combination of her healthy UFO conspiracies and refusal to leave the house during daylight hours I don't, but like Santa, every time she's in, I can guarantee at least 3 hours of work down the drain.

3 - St. Patty. An extremely Irish war vet, St. P. has a tendency to call around a dozen times a night when he's active, asking us the same questions over and over. He also likes to read us his poetry over the phone. Most of what he says is an unintelligible mish-mash of Irish Brogue and Drunken Mumbling, but I get the impression that his poetry is about the war. He often stops and says "Huh, laddie. What do ye' think of that?" assuming, he's asking me a question I start to respond, only to be cut off by more "poetry" so maybe it's actually part of the work. If, at any time during the call, which can stretch for hours, you have to put him on hold, he hangs up, calls back and angerly chastises you, then calls a taxi to take him over to the store, where he can act like it never happened.

4 - Ms. Paul Bunyon. One of those ladies that looks like a man in a dress, Ms. PB is mentally disturbed and frankly, I think she uses that as an excuse for being a jerk to everyone. She's also a price switcher, sometimes going so far as to take entire rows of things and place them in front of a cheaper price. I refuse to let her do this, unlike the manager that works the opposite shift, so Ms. PB and I are enemies.

5 - The really big, grumpy smelly guy. This guys is probably around 380lbs, constantly rates "Oscar" on the grouch scale and smells a bit below the Bog Of Eternal Stench on the "Smell Bad" scale.

6 - The annoying drunk ladies that think it's hilarious to make messes on aisles. These ladies are in their late thirties. I expect teens to play with the whoopee cushions and throw sponges at each other, these broads (A term I reserve for number 6 and any woman that tries to get me killed while solving PI cases only) these broads should know better.


All of these customers but Ms. PB were in last night, she likely saw that the other manager's car wasn't out front and went back to her trailer, muttering. In fact, I think I could actually feel the earth shudder when, for around an hour, St. Patty, Santa and Paranoia Lady were all in the store at the same time. Ugh.

I heard talk about how people with leg injuries should be hung in the Vatican, the link between Viagra and watermelon, German film festivals and bad premonitions about Obama, and spent an hour cleaning up messes left on floors.

Oh yeah, we also had to deal with the indignity of our Ludicrously Sexist and Crude Floor Dude. Not only did he ask how often I got hot babes in with no underpants (In Pocatello at 3am on a Wednesday? Not often.) and speculated on what two animals mated to create a manager at a different store, but his buffer was leaky and left a likely toxic cloud of propane fumes in the store. Luckily, they muffled the smell of Oscar.



Writing -

Uhh, I think I wrote about 200 words while I listened to Santa yammer on about fishing and the price of blackberries.

The Last Sentence -

It's around forty degrees and there's a thick fog blanketing most of the world.

From - "Graves" (WIP)

June 11, 2009 - Michelle Obama Still Owes Me An Apology!

Life -

Last night, I had the nit picky customer call again, to check and see if I had changed the Stationary sign to Stationery. I snarkily responded that "Ironically, it hadn't changed" I don't think she got the joke. I wanted to ask her if she ever got her apology from Michelle Obama, but I figured I'd pushed it enough. (Amusingly, I just saw that if you type in "Michelle Obama Owes Me An Apology" in google, this blog is the first thing to show up after a few links to Ann Coulter.... I'm not sure if that's good or not.)

Another fun night at work last night, had a mentally unstable customer that has hated me inexplicably since the day she met me come in and every time she sees that it's me managing, she causes problems, makes messes, then refuses to let me ring her up. Instead, she asks me to bag the stuff so that she can buy it later. Ugh. Luckily, my hatred is stemmed by how much I pity her.

I also had a guy that in his own words was "Falling down $#itfaced drunk and just got done at the titty bar!" He claimed to be a famous author who had written a book whose title he could not recall, yet was shocked that I'd never heard of it. He was also unable to tell me his name... Not sure how I'll find it, but I totally want to read his book now! The famous author also offended my clerk by calling her "Woman" paid for an $.89 cigar with 3 quarters and lit up in the vestibule. He wanted me to call his agent in Colorado, but I figured that regardless of the truth in his delusions, no one wanted to be called at 3am, so I got him a cab instead. By the time the cab had gotten there, the fella was across the street harassing the road crew. Funny guy. Linz, who had just gotten off work and D, my night clerk were kind of freaked out by him, but he definitely had the "Harmless old drunk" vibe going, so I got a kick out of him. I guess I've gotten a pretty good Drunk-dar after working at Chevron and on Graves for so many years.

We bought a slightly spendy Humidifying fan setup at Home Depot yesterday, all sorts of pumped about the idea of cool, moist air filtering through our bedroom in the afternoons while we sleep, filled the reservoir only to have it start spewing from a huge crack in the lining... back to Home Depot it goes... Shoddy Workmanship. We'll probably pass on a second try too, I hate to bring it home just to have the next one faulty as well.

Overworked my ankle last night, I figured out a pretty efficient way of wearing my brace and a shoe that gives me some support and protection (And keeps my sock cleaner) but it apparently makes me cocky. I did a few things last night that turned into a bit of pain. That said, I was significantly more functional than I've been in weeks now.

Writing -

Finished the revision on my second to last chapter, just have the epilogue to re-write before a final edit and mailing it off.... Eeee!

Also read about a certain disease that could add a bit of vague plausibility to my zombie novel that is an approach that I haven't seen before to the best of my knowledge, so that's cool. And lets face it, for a zombie story, you really don't need any plausible causes, so its just an added plus!

The Last Sentence -

It seemed like she always got the crazies when she worked a double, regardless of whether it was the night shift or the overnight shift.

From Graves

May 18, 2009 - Michelle Obama owes me an apology.

I have been pretty bad at updating anything lately, been too busy to really be online much, and our connection has been spotty the last few days, which usually just ends up annoying me enough that I give up. (I think the recent winds may have blown our internet receiver on the roof askew or something...) At any rate, here's an update on our lives and eventually I'll have to find time to comment on the 6 or so books I've read since my last reviews.

LIFE -

I've spent the last few days fighting with plumbing, yet again, but this time on my mom's end. We decided to try and milk the last few bits of luck we had and exchange her currently dead and over a decade old hot water heater with my half dead one that we just replaced, rather than buying a new one for a house that she will likely be in for less than 3 months (Hopefully) Of course, that meant we still had to get the old one off, and moved, with it 5/6 full of water, in a crawlspace with dirt (or more accurately mud) floors and 5' ceilings. This was not a fun task, but with my brother and I slowly sinking into the ground beneath the house, we got it shifted 3 feet over, and with a minimal amount of effort installed my old one instead.... Only to have nothing happen. I don't know what's wrong, its hooked up, filled with water, and there's power to the thermostat and element, but its not heating. I didn't have time to fiddle with it at the time, but now I'm wondering if it could have something to do with us just taping off the bottom element's wires rather than hooking up the old, busted element... could that make the upper one non-functional? Of course, there's the possibility that the other element is dead now too, it was in the rain for 2 days before my mom's died and I thought about switching them, maybe it crapped out... Grr. I'll say it again, I hate plumbing.

We've been pretty slack on the dog walking front as well, sadly, they've gone walk-less for 3 days, though we've been exercising them. . . Mowed the lawn for the first time this season, shocked that my mower started on the third pull rather than the 30th. It's been hot the last couple of days, around 90, which makes it hard to sleep during the day... summer could be a long season.

Work has been odd, we're currently in the process of buying out a few Rite Aid drug stores in the area, and with it, hiring some of the employees, which is great; we need them, we're currently pretty darn short handed, unfortunately, the thing was supposed to be done 2 months ago, and we just finished the first of 4 yesterday, which means we've been running with half the usual managers, making everything a little more difficult. I've worked the last few nights with only myself and a pharmacist on duty, which leaves me with this conflicting choice between trying to get things done between customers and not, but at least I tried, and not doing anything all night and using it as an excuse. Naturally, the customers are crazy as usual. I had a customer call and complain that we had the incorrect spelling of the word Stationery on the sign above our aisle. Sure, we do have it spelled Stationary, and I was aware of that, but its also been there for over 5 years like that. She told me that she was horribly offended, and she was calling corporate because we needed to fix it immediately. I fought the urge to explain to her that it meant the aisle didn't move. She also told me that she had written a letter to Michelle Obama, chastising her for using I instead of ME in a speech, and that she was expecting a letter of apology. I too! Me want apology!

Then, last night, I had a customer that made it ALL worth while, I had a 5 foot tall leprechaun come in. Either that, or a really odd 60 year old cross dresser. He was wearing a blackish-green fedora with a little rose pin in it, had long wavy gray hair to his shoulders, wore a cream colored button up blouse with a flowery lace design down the front, some generic slacks, and shiny black shoes with a sensible inch high square heel, topped off by delicate gold buckles. And while he didn't pay with gold, he did pay all in dimes and nickels... I was very tempted to try and capture him, but he looked like he'd had a rough night.

The good news is that Lindsay is currently in discussions to work a comparable overnight rotation at her job, which would mean we'd see a lot more of each other and have the same days off.

WRITING -

Well, unfortunately, not a lot of progress here. I wrote a rough plot summary for a humorous book I had an idea for, around 800 words there, and last night I managed to get in around two thousand words, bringing my total on my YA novel to 19,754 words, which is just under halfway... I think I may go longer than 50,000 words though... we'll see.

THE LAST SENTENCE -
Can they cure his curse, so that they can be together forever, or will her wicked stepfather and his evil hordes find them first?
(Untitled romantic pirate/zombie/werewolf/vampire novel)

Saturdays In The Graveyard

How does a typical night go, working a graveyard shift at a 24 hour Pharmacy, you ask?

Friday,
2:45pm - Finally stagger into bed.

7pm - Wake up, get a drink, take some Ibuprofen, check email. (Learn that another potential Motel has officially been crossed off the list) Briefly call wife, fall back to sleep.

8pm - Pooka wants to cuddle; briefly tolerate the big galoot, eventually telling him to go lay down; go back to sleep.

8:45 - Pooka wants to cuddle again, signals such by sitting on face.

9pm - Give up and get out of bed.

9:30 - Make a sandwich, feed the pets, gather work stuff, try not to fall back to sleep, read for a few minutes.

10:32pm - Get to work, count safe, run end of day, make list of work for evening, sort new ad tags, double check pulling of old ad tags, make clever collage of missed tags on previous manager's locker.

11:15pm - The crazies start arriving; 300lb mumbling lady, twitchy meth head, 14 year old teens goofing off, native mother with kids that she doesn't watch, the regulars, the sick folks from the ER.

Saturday,

12:15am - Crazies finally stop, buy Guava Rockstar, Popcorn, discuss list of work with clerk, briefly talk on phone to wife to tell her goodnight, get interrupted 3 times in a 4 minute call.

1:15am - Start hanging ad tags, follow likely shoplifter around store.

1:30am - Legitimately insane customers arrive; Tweakers asking about spray paint, Meth Heads in midget smuggling pants trying to pass fake scripts, 90 year olds buying 12oz bottles of lube, the guy that rides his bike with his oxygen tank in the flower basket in the front to buy cigs, the schizo lady that always calls you the wrong name and gets angry when you correct her, the clearance price tag swappers, the drunken bar ejects, the heavyset Hispanic lady in clothes 3 sizes too small that asks everyone she meets if they like her new shoes; a pair of firetruck red 6 inch stilettos, the cross dresser that's better looking than most of the other women in the store, the cool gay couple that freaks out my clerk when they buy the Trojan His and Hers lube, the vegan New Yorker with the large growth on the side of her face that often tells me stories of UFOs, Conspiracies, her father running a speakeasy during prohibition, and all of the television shows she tapes to watch over and over, we often discuss Commentary tracks on DVDs, the "dancers" from the strip club; just off shift, replenishing my singles supply, the hunched over man that looks like Santa Claus who follows me for hours some nights, towing his O2 tank and telling me horribly off color jokes...

2:15am - a new one; a guy comes in asking me if I can change the photo on his passport; he's lost weight, and wants a new picture. He also tells me that he's unhappy with his cat's passport photo. Sadly, he never shows me his cat's passport. The customer then proceeds to follow me for a half hour, talking about his Winnebago, his job as a airplane repairman, crossing the border in his scooter, how he chemically removed his fingerprints on accident, ("They're like Teflon, now!") his guns, lifting his shirt to show me his operation scars, asking me to stitch up a cut on his finger, and finally asking me out to see his guns in his Winnebago. Sadly, I could not leave the store and view the guns that belong to the man with no fingerprints and a face that doesn't match his passport...

3am - Finally start moving the 300 cases of Coke 12 packs that we will likely sell by Monday afternoon to the front.

3:15am - Send clerk to Rolbertos 24 hour Mexican restaurant for lunch, we (Me, him, the Pharmacist) each order a breakfast burrito, I ordered Sausage, egg, cheese & Potato with sour cream, mine comes labeled "Sasaugoa" on the wrapper and sans egg and sour cream. It appears my sour cream ended up in my clerk's Ham burro, my eggs are likely in someones taco salad somewhere... all in all, a pretty accurate night for Rolbertos. Drink Rockstar, AKA Purple Meth.

4:15am - Attempt to motivate clerk to continue stacking endless piles of Coke, finish most of ad tags. Regular customer comes in, an awesome older lady that is slowly dying. She's almost 10lbs lighter than when I saw her last week, her otherwise frail frame thrown crooked by her left leg, swollen with fluid. She tells me that her upcoming operation has a 50/50 chance of survival. I sell her Ice, a pair of pajama pants and a package of ham, and wish her luck. She tells me to cross my fingers, but not my toes, or I'll walk funny.

6am - Finally finish all of the ad and Coke, clean up store, scrub bathrooms, clean up mess from Cadbury egg fight on aisle 6, wake my clerk, asleep on the photo counter, catch breath outside in the thankfully snow free air.

7am - Light pours through the front windows, blinding me, and making me shy away, Nosferatu style. The second the sun hits, I start getting tired, eyes drooping. Browse through Sunday paper, "Shoplifting" information.

8:45 - reinforcements arrive. Flee building, the combination of clocking out, putting on my jacket and staggering into the sun energizing me slightly, though still daunted by the list of chores ahead at home, concerned about what time I'll make it to bed.....