ledzebulun

For my first journal entry in over four months, I have traveled to San Antonio, Texas in search of inspiration. All I found was my sister's wedding, though, and a really kick-ass stretch of restaurants and bars along the Riverwalk downtown. And, of course, the Alamo. It's smaller than Pee-Wee's Big Adventure made it look.

The wedding has been a lot of fun, and I got to see my sister's birth daughter, Bethany, who is now 13 and looks spookily like Kirsten. If I ever get internet access at home I'll have to upload my pictures so that you can feign interest.

So I had this gumbo at brunch today... yeah, fuck you, I had brunch. And although the gumbo tasted fine, I was kind of disturbed by its general aura. There was something about it which registered at a subconscious level, and it was sinister. Gumbo is sort of a leftovers-stew, and this one was grayish and gave the vague impression of containing small bits of some Lovecraftian nightmare-creature. I dared not inspect it too closely, for fear of what I might find. Fortunately, the live jazz-funk ensemble cleared the air of any lingering menace and a couple of mamosas later I was fine.

My mom wants to go out tonight and try "authentic" Mexican food, but she doesn't want it to be spicy. So in a few minutes, we're all going to try to find an authentic, non-spicy Mexican dish for her to eat. I'm going to recommend La Oatmeala. It's either that or plain tortillas.

I fly back to Minneapolis tomorrow evening... it'll be nice to get back and see m' special lady and try on my new assortment of belt buckles. Hope you're all doing well... I promise another entry within the next six months. Peace out.

Hi everybody, sorry I haven't done an entry in over a month, but I'm still busy trying to wrassle the Internet into my new apartment. She's putting up one heck of a fight, let me tell you.

Anyway. I'm still at Marshall's, and it's OK. I'm getting to know the people a little better, and while it's no comparison to the Merv, it's not bad. They're remodelling my office, so I have the added benefit of having sweaty, power-tool-wielding, buttcrack-flaunting men knock on my door every two minutes to tell me my phone is about to go out, or my cameras are going to stop working for the rest of the day, or they're about to knock down one of my walls, so maybe I'd like to step out and get some air. Whee!

So. That's work. Other than that things are going well. I got to hang out with my homies Jason and Eric the night before Halloween, which was cool. I hadn't seen either of them in a while. I've been spending most of my other free evenings either playing videogames or participating in highly illegal shootfighting tournaments. I can't really fight very well, but I've found the secret is to do so much PCP before the fights that I convince myself that I am not Phil at all, but Zuul from Ghostbusters. I still get my ass kicked, sure, and people often ask my why I spend most of the matches with my arms outstretched toward my opponent (apparently not everyone can see the lightning I am shooting from my fingertips), but hey, it passes the time.

Well. If you'll excuse me, I'm scheduled to fight some guy who calls himself Destro in an hour, so I have to run out and find a dealer pronto. Hope everyone is doing well, I'll update again in a while.

Hey everybody.  Sorry about the whole 20 days with no updates thing... lots has happened and when I did have time to update, I didn't much feel like it and didn't have much to say.

Things that have happened this month:

The Mazda went out in a hood-flipping-up, windshield-spiderwebbing, nearly-hitting-surrounding-traffic blaze of glory on 35W North.  I was on my way home from work, and of course it happened in congested rush-hour traffic downtown where there's no shoulder.  I tied the hood down with rollerblade laces and forced it to limp home.  I now drive a pimpin' Buick LeSabre.

I finished my training so I can now catch shoplifters and thieving employees.  I would have caught a thieving employee today if Target had gotten off their butts and returned my calls asking for video of a transaction there with a stolen credit card.  Maybe tomorrow.

I signed the lease on my new apartment, on Oak Grove St. and Lasalle in Minneapolis.  Not sure when I move in, exactly, because the guy living there hasn't returned their calls asking when he's moving out.  By the 1st, definitely, but it would be nice if I could move in the 30th and not have to keep all my stuff in a U-haul overnight.  Whatever, either way I'm excited.  It's a small studio but the layout is nice and it's a dog building.  I don't mean that it allows dogs; I mean that it's shaped like a giant dog, and I have a wonderful view out of the left eye.  I decided to spring for a $20-a-month storage space located in the snout as well.

It is now time for laundry, cleaning, and packing. 

I woke up at 6 this morning, shivering uncontrollably.  It wasn't that cold in the room, and I closed the window and got an extra blanket, but I still shivered hard under it for 45 minutes.  Must have been a fever.  I fell asleep for a couple more hours and woke up feeling fine, so I guess that's good.  I'm now doing laundry and dishes and room-cleaning and all that fun stuff. 

Yesterday I worked at Southdale and saw two ticket-switchers I recognized from probably a dozen surveillances at Brookdale.  They were in the store for three hours, switching price tags from low-priced items onto high-priced ones.  We closed at 6:00, and they took advantage of the final rush to the registers to try and sneak their items through unnoticed.  Unfortunately for them I had spent the entire three hours watching them (yes, it was extremely boring).  So every item in their cart was price-checked against a duplicate and they left after buying one regularly priced item.  If you're going to spend this amount of time trying stupid shit like this, why not just get a job?  The benefits are better and you get paid every time you put in work.  Oh well, if it weren't for people like this I'd be out of a job.

There's a fuzziness in my head and it's been with me for months.  I can't seem to shake it.  It's like looking at the world through a screen door. 

I have just learned that both made-for-TV Ewok Adventures movies are coming to DVD.  Caravan of Courage and the Battle for Endor.  I taped the latter when I was a wee lad, and it features not only the cute, cuddly Ewoks we all know and love, but - get this - cinema's original badass, Wilford Brimley himself.  I shit you not.  Old Man Brimley, as I recall, is the gruff, reluctant hero who teams up with the Ewoks to fight a sinister alien force.  Rent or buy it when it comes out, my friends, but don't come complaining to me when you watch it and realize you've wasted your money.  After all, I didn't tell you to rent or buy it. 

Went to the State Fair on Thursday night.  It was good to once again be surrounded by deadly foods, questionable smells, and Minnesota's finest specimens of redneckery.  I ate one hotdog, one Coke that I'm pretty sure had bits of hay and horse poop blow into it, one dozen chocolate-chip cookies, one eggroll, and one serving of Dippin' Dots: Ice Cream of the Future.  Pretty weak showing, I know, but I was with a date and I don't yet want her to know that I can unhinge my jaw and devour entire snack booths and children in the blink of an eye.  Ahem.  So.  If anyone is reading this, I can't do that, OK?  Good.

I'm about to leave for work again.  Dear readers, if you were planning on driving to the Mall of America today and stealing from Marshall's, my advice to you is this: Do not.  Unless you wanted to steal between 4:00 and 4:30, for at that time it is my custom to take my afternoon repast.  Do not be like the poor savages who begin stealing when I am preparing to sup, for I shall see thy deeds and grow wrothful, and lo, I shall smite ye with much anger and also a tab charge for Misdemeanor Theft.  And ye shall be woefully inconvenienced, and a court date shall be set.

Homies to the left, wave your hands and say yeeeeeeah.  If I may have the attention of the homies to the right: Please be so kind as to wave your hands and say hell yeeeeeeeah.  Thank you, homies left and right, for your bipartisan cooperation.

I worked at Southdale, my home store, for the first time today.  I had met the store manager at my second interview, but everyone else was a new face.  I'm terrible with names, no matter how hard I try, and this is not a good situation in which to be terrible with names.  They don't even wear nametags.  I hereby decree that everyone at the store will now answer to "Molly".  Men included,  I don't care.

It was a frustrating day.  My training is going fine - most of the policies are identical to the ones I'm used to.  The frustrating thing is that this store team is obviously not very close-knit, and I'm coming from a very close-knit store.  There also doesn't seem to be much of a partnership between the store management and the existing Loss Prevention Detective.  That is a very bad thing, because it means I have a ton of work to do to gain everyone's trust and get them into a close working relationship.  There's no way I can run things at that store by myself without that partnership.  It's basically starting out from square one, after I had developed such great partnerships at Mervyn's.  I have a feeling it's going to be a very long, very lonely time at that store until I can get people to feel at home around me and start building relationships.

To top things off, the detective who I'm replacing didn't know anything about it until an hour before I got to the store.  She's being transferred to the Lakeville store, which isn't even open yet.  Until it opens she'll be sent around the district.  She handled it professionally and introduced me to the store team and the mall's security and police officers, but I could tell she wasn't happy about any of it.  I wouldn't be either - who wants to get a call like that, and then have to train their replacement the same day?  It's pretty messed up.

We did see a little activity today.  I picked up on a couple of ticket switchers.  We called the sales lanes and told the associates what was going on, so they didn't get away with it at our store.  Later on while we were at the mall security office, Marshall Field's called and said the same two girls stole from them.  The mall officers picked them up on camera just as they were getting on a bus, but the Edina police pulled it over and brought them back.  You know you have good police officers when they'll pull over a bus for you.

I work at the Mall of America tomorrow, which should be quite an adventure.  They get ripped off quite a bit.  I will relate my adventures tomorrow evening through the medium of online text.  Until then, I tip my 40 to each of you.

Made it through the first day of work yesterday.  It sounds like this is going to be a good company to work for.  They're really not so big on merchandise presentation - they just throw everything out there on the sales floor - but the product is good and the prices are really cheap.  I was a little disappointed that even with my experience the training phase is going to take three and a half weeks, but I can see why they would want to do things right and take their time.  It's just frustrating when I know I could go out and start catching shoplifters from day one.  Tomorrow is my first day at Southdale, my home store, so I'm looking forward to meeting everyone. 

Awww man, I just found out I'm going to miss Darlene's surprise birthday party Thursday because of work.  Never mind what I said above, I HATE this new job. 

For those of you wondering, no, I didn't just blow the 'surprise' in 'Darlene's surprise birthday party'.  She doesn't know about this journal. 

Has anyone else ever had an IRS agent leave them a voicemail message complete with badge number?  That can't be good.  Since when do they audit people who filled out 1040EZ's?  What is there to audit? 

OK, time to prepare for cooking.  If I don't post again, well, I guess the IRS stormed my apartment and seized me. 

I'm not really making a birdhouse.  But that's the best line from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 

I seem to have quite a few deceptive subject lines or mood indicators... I'll have to work on that.  I'll pick up a birdhouse kit from Home Depot or something.

As long as we're on the subject of birds, let me spin this here yarn for yer.  I mean you.  I was at Barnes & Noble today - I know, I'm an evil corporate junkie, I even bought a Jones soda from the Starbucks there - and I happened upon a book which was a collection of various depictions of Satan throughout the ages.  They ranged from the fairly traditional red guy in in tights to the downright bizarre.  One of the most disturbing pictures showed Old Nick as a hideous bird-creature seated on a throne.  Beneath the throne was a pit, and the bird-devil was devouring naked people and excreting them into the pit.  Elsewhere in the picture other naked people were busying themselves with various miserable tasks.  One guy was vomiting blood into the pit while another guy was squatting over it and laying eggs.  So yeah.  It was the kind of picture that left me wondering about the sanity of whoever drew it.  I think it was a couple hundred years old... people back then must have had far too much free time.  Then again, two hundred years from now people will look back at journals like this and say the same thing about us.

I'm trying to get myself tired so I can go to sleep... tomorrow is my first day on the new job and I want to not be groggy or late or anything.  I have the usual anxiety about making a good impression and hoping I like the job and the company.  I won't be working at my store at all this week... I was looking forward to getting there and meeting everyone, but I understand that they need me to go where the trainers are.  I just wish they all didn't seem to be the stores which are furthest from my apartment.  I talked to Tim Pawlenty this morning about opening a special PhilRail system from my domicile to... um... wherever I want to go.  It would be a very complex and expensive rail system to implement for just one person, until you think about the fact that I am a veteran.  I believe I've proved my point.

Time for bed.  Stay tuned for tomorrow's entry, where I will probably write about what a complete ass I made of myself at my new job because no one understands my sense of humor.

I'm really tired as I write this, and I'd go back to sleep, but my upstairs neighbors are playing dodgeball or human wrecking ball or something with their young daughter.  Whatever it is, it sounds like The Nothing from The Never-Ending Story.  Oh well. 

I have a new employer.  I gots myself a jobbie-job at Marshall's in the Southdale mall.  Not Marshall Field's, just Marshall's, although it's just outside of Marshall Field's in the mall.  Which is good, because I get to see Alex and maybe Darlene once in a while.  I'm now a 'Detective'.  These job titles kill me.  Anyway.  I start Monday and I'm really looking forward to it. 

OK, it's now late afternoon.  I did go back to sleep after all, once The Nothing had finished its consumptive rampage upstairs.  There's nothing like waking from a long nap and having absolutely no idea who or where you are. 

I just checked Webster's online dictionary to make sure I had used 'consumptive' correctly, because I'm still pretty out of it from my nap, but I secretly hoped that the www.webster.com url would lead me to some sort of shrine to Emmanuel Lewis.  It did not.  And www.punkybrewster.com, in case you are as curious as I was, leads to some wacky French site.  Well, it isn't at all wacky.  In fact it looks like one of those domain name placeholder sites, but it is French.  www.cosby.com, interestingly enough, briefly displays a picture of The Cos but then immediately takes you to the CWM website, which I guess is the studio that produced Cosby.  www.familyties.com disappoints as well, and... holy shit... this is what I am doing with my Saturday afternoon.  I will now step away from the computer.

Wow, I really do not feel very well; I'm about to bed and sleep until morning, but before I do, I thought I'd update my journal. Check it out, I'm totally doing it.

I woke up feeling a little under the weather today, which I thought might have to do with the falling rain.  It progressed as the day went on, and after work I went to have tea and felt like I was almost going to keel over from dizziness.  It turns out that I drank half a pint of turpentine, though. So that explains that. I guess the metal container, poison control notice, corrosive oiliness, and foul smell should have tipped me off that it wasn't tea, but I was too tired to read past the first letter on the can. I jumped to some rather hasty conclusions, in retrospect, and swilled the contents with no further thought about it.

No, actually I really do feel like crap and I've decided to stay home and sleep instead of go out with the store leadership team for their last night out... which I'm not happy about, but I wouldn't be able to function even if I did go. So for those of you on the ol' Merv team who read this, you're all friends, we'll keep in touch. You'll see me again, whether out for an evening cocktail or crouching in your bedroom closet, attempting to be motionless and invisible until the time is right to strike with swift and terrible fury.

Also, I like to play bocce ball, so if the weather is warm we could just do that instead of the cocktails or the stalking. Your pick.

Tomorrow is my last day of work, which is extremely fortunate, because I'm losing my mind in there.  There's too much to do and I'm too sick, and of the things I could possibly delegate, most of them have to be done by me, like updating the key log or setting the blast charges along crucial structural points. Kassia was a big help today with removing the key cores and sorting most of the keys, but when it comes to shaping and placing secondary high explosives, I must go that road alone.

Testify.

OK. It is now sleepy-time. Peace in the Middle East. As well as all the cardinal directions, and points between.