Vacation All I Ever Wanted

I am back from vacation. I went back to work today, so it's official. Let me sum up the past week.

Thursday morning Lady M and I signed a bunch of papers saying that we are now homeowners. We own a house. We live in a neighborhood on a street with other people who own houses. We are grown-ups now.

Anyways, after the house buying, we ran a few errands then got me to the airport so I could fly to Wyoming. My plane was delayed due to a technical something or other and they weren't sure if it would be able to fly. They might be able to get everyone on another flight or we might have to wait until 9:00pm. As she tells me this, I look at my watch and notice that it is barely 5:00. Thank God they got us on the earlier flight. I make it to Wyoming at around 11:00 and was picked up by my grandfather, my dad, and my brother. We went home and called it a night.

The next day my dad, brother, and I woke up and met my uncle to go fishing. My uncle is one of the toughest men I've ever met. He's a cowboy. He rides horses, herds cattle, grows barley, chews Copenhagen, builds fences, drives a pickup truck, and anything else cowboys do, he does. He reminds me of the character, Gus, from the Lonesome Dove novel. A few years ago his horse threw him and he broke his neck. Legend has it he finished the days work and went to bed and when he couldn't move in the morning he figured out something was wrong. He got rid of that horse.

Back to the fishing trip. We went out on the boat and spent the afternoon on the lake. We caught nine fish and went back to my grandparent's house for a family photo that my mother had set up. We got back early, so we cleaned the fish and changed clothes for the pictures. The photographer shows up and we pose for about thirty minutes and then it's over. My aunt and uncle go back to their place and later we all go over there so we could borrow their four wheelers and my grandfather wanted to borrow one of his pistols for the fishing trip he had planned for us the next day. Apparently the place we were going to go fishing is an area where bears are a threat and he wanted to take the gun with him just in case. He asked my uncle where he should aim if a bear does try and murder us and he responds with, "Aim for the chest. If you shoot him in the head, the bullet will glint off his skull and make him mad." I stood there for a minute to absorb that little bit of information. I later tell my uncle that I ran across a rattlesnake rattle he had given me years and years ago on one of my visits while packing some boxes the other day. My brother asks what the best way to kill a rattlesnake is to which he replies, "It's really hard to shoot a rattlesnake. When they're all coiled up the can feel the reverberations from the gun and actually dodge the bullet. Hitting it with your rope is your best bet." Bears have bullet-proof heads and snakes can use the Matrix. Why do all the scary animals have super powers?

The next day, my grandfather, dad, brother, and I get up and go to a place called Bubba's for breakfast. I got a pancake that was bigger than my plate. Seriously, it sagged over the edges and touched the table. We ate and then drove down to the river where we were going fishing and started walking down the bank. My grandfather had the gun on his hip like Wyatt fucking Earp the whole time. As we walked and fished, we saw a beaver swimming in the river and later came across a badger. I must be way too used to city life because having a badger staring at you from ten feet away seemed really surreal in a way. The fishing trip was a bust. My brother caught one but that was the only luck we had. That was fine, though, because I was enjoying the scenery and cool weather more than anything else.

My last day there, we got up and went to church. Afterwards my parents and I went into town to shop for a couple of hours. Cody is a huge tourist trap so most of the shops are filled with campy t-shirts with a cartoon moose or buffalo on them or cheaply made trinkets and baubles that nobody really wants. There was one store that was wicked awesome, though. It was called the Reindeer Ranch and it had normal decorative things for the house, but it also had a crap load of Christmas and Halloween stuff. Really bitchin' stuff that you can't find anywhere else. I bought the little woman a really keen coffee mug with a girl on it with big springy eyes that reminded me of the Scary Godmother books and it has a little spider hanging off the handle. I also got a crazy looking ceramic bobble headed witch that I had to have. I think the shop is fairly new because I went to the website and they don't have a whole lot listed there which sucks because I was going to link to it here so then at least two more people would know about it.

That night we had the big barbecue to celebrate my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary. We ate steak that came from cows that my aunt and uncle used to own, looked at old photos, played horseshoes, and watched my two year old nephew do two year old things. The whole trip was spectacular and the only other thing I could have wished for would have been for the wife to be there too. Oh well. I plan on taking her up there one day, hopefully sooner than later.

Interview Hell

Yesterday the boss man and I were doing interviews for a couple of positions up at the store. One is worth mentioning.

This young girl, probably about sixteen, comes in and we go and sit down in the break room. I look over her application and notice that she has not listed any prior work experience. I ask if this is going to be her first job and she tells me that she actually worked at a Braums slinging ice cream for all of a month. When inquiring why she left, she proceeded to tell me that she didn't like the customers. She had to deal with demanding and mean people, which she couldn't handle, so she quit. I was picturing some irate fat man at the ice cream counter screaming till he was red in the face, "I SAID TWO SCOOPS DAMMIT! TWOOO!" I then explained to her that we get a variety of assholes every day and that she would be the first one they go to as a cashier. She assures me that she would be able to handle it. I move on.

We talk for a while about this and that and I ask her what her hobbies are and what she likes to do in her spare time. She instantly blurts out that she does not feel that she is in the right place to have a boyfriend at this particular time and that she dated a guy for a couple of weeks but they broke up, though they are now still friends. I wondered for a second what I had actually asked. I move on.

She expresses some interest in taking care of animals so we proceed into the following conversation which spirals downward until I felt as though I was talking to a child.

Me: "Are there any animals you are afraid of?"
Her: "Dogs. I'm scared of dogs."
Me: "You realize that this is a pet supply store and people bring in their dogs quite often."
Her: "I know. I'm not afraid of small dogs."
Me: "Some people bring in big dogs. A lot."
Her: "Oh."
Me: "Is there any other animal that makes you uncomfortable?"
Her: "I like small fuzzy animals."
Me: "What about reptiles?"
Her: "As long as they stay in their cage. I don't like snakes."
Me: "We don't sell snakes."
Her: "I went to a pet store once and they were selling poisonous snakes."
Me: "No they didn't."
Her: "Yes they did. I saw them. They were the red and black and yellow kind. They're poisonous."
Me: "The coral snake is poisonous, but the king snake is not. They look almost identical."
Her: "I still don't like snakes."
Me: "I saw Snakes On A Plane last night."
Her: "Do you ever let the cats out and play with them and pet them?"
Me: "No."

At this point I started to look around for the hidden cameras.

Kick it one time, boy

By request, here's the Vanilla Ice story.

Back around 1999 I was a young art school student in the Dallas area working at a Wherehouse Music in the evenings and on weekends. One particular evening, right when we were about to close, this guy with short blonde hair and forearm tattoos brings a stack of gangsta rap CDs to the front counter. I start ringing them up, scanning Ice Cube, NWA, Dr. Dre, etc. and give his total to him. He hands me his credit card and asks, "Just out of curiosity, how's the new Vanilla Ice album doing?"

"The Hard to Swallow album?" I ask as I'm swiping his card. "It's doing as well as could be expected. We're not selling any because Vanilla Ice sucks and should be destroyed."

"Have you heard any of it?" he asks.

"I've heard the 'Ice, Ice Baby' re-make that he did on the album. I don't like Limp Bizkit either." I reply.

He kind of laughs, signs his credit card receipt, grabs his shit, and leaves with his buddies in tow. He was the last customer so I turn to my manager standing by the door and tell him to lock up. His jaw was on the floor. "That was him, you know." He tells me.

The funny thing is that I didn't know. I still had the image of him from 1990 with the Ace Ventura hair and 'Word to your mother' on his glittering jacket.

Woops.

The next time I saw him was years later while I was drinking at the bar inside the art house theatre I used to manage. One of my employees ran over and told me that Vanilla Ice bought a ticket to Step Into Liquid, a surf documentary we were showing. "I've already met him." I said cool as ice as I watched him pass by the window into the theatre.

Near Death Experience

Today was my day off and I accomplished absolutely nothing. I had plans to do some packing and a few other things, but I went to this little hot dog hut across the street for lunch and it just about killed me. I don't know why places like that always seem like a good idea even though they always end in near death. I never think, 'I'm not going there, it made me sick last time.' Instead it's 'I got sick last time, but it was really good and I doubt it'll be the same this time.' Lousy hot dog hut. You're going on the 'People To Kill' list hanging above my couch.

If the hot dog hut doesn't kill me, this month will. We are closing on the house on Monday and moving a week from Thursday. Luckily, after all that madness, I get to jump on a plane and go to Wyoming for my vacation and get some down time. It's my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary and my whole family is gathering for the event up there. Lady M is staying behind and will be fixing up the new house and making it habitable. More on all this as it progresses.

Fish and lice for breakfast

I got a call at 7:30 this morning from the boss man asking if I could come in early. It seems that our fish system went down over night again and this time he had the courtesy to let me sleep through this one. He had apparently been there since 11:30 last night fucking with the system and cleaning up the water on the floor. I get there and he promptly leaves, but not before telling me that there was a pit bull in the breakroom that a Target employee found this morning wandering around in the parking lot and he wants me to do something with it. Thanks, boss. I'll go fuck with the stray pit bull with no tags and see what happens. I called animal control and they came and took the poor creature away.

Around this time, our pet care manager calls. The boss had called her last night about the fish system fucking up and left her a message. I might add that she is out of town for a fucking funeral right now. She goes off on me for him calling her during this emotional time and tells me she can't worry about that shit right now. I agree with her and remind her that I wasn't the one that called but I would pass the word along to he who must not be named.

Now we notice that the aquarium gravel, which we keep under the fish tank system, was all soaked from the previous flood and we had to take all the bags and individually dry them off. The only problem with this plan is that the bags have little holes in them and so the bags were filled with water that smells an awful lot like fish. We do what we can and leave the bags of gravel sprawled on the ground with a fan blowing on them and hope they dry out a bit more.

Then one of my employees comes up and tells me that the vet figured out what has been biting everyone lately. See, a couple of weeks ago, one of my stockers came to work with bug bites all over his forearms and chest. Since then at least two employees a week have shown up with the same thing. It turns out that our rodents that we sell are all infested with some kind of blood sucking lice. The good news is that they may bite humans, but won't stay on us. The bad news is that all of our fucking rodents have them. This is going to involve six weeks of treatment for the little vermin plus sterilization of their cages. I was also granted the privilege of calling anyone who bought one of these fuckers this week and telling them that they need to bring them back to the store for lice treatment.

This was my day. I'm drinking now.

On a random dork side note, Harvey Dent will be a character in the upcoming Batman sequel. No one is finalized to play him yet, but Liev Schreiber is rumored to be up for the role.

Misfit Muppets

Man, it feels like I have been busy lately. I feel like I haven't had time to do much of anything. I watched a couple of movies, one being Zombie Honeymoon, recommended by Skincarver. I have to say it wasn't half bad. I was expecting something more along the lines of The Fly, only the character slowly becoming zombified instead of insectified, but it was entertaining nonetheless. I also watched something called Five Children and It. Lady M put this one on the Netflix list because it has Kenneth Branagh in it, and he's one of the guys that make her go all melty and swoonish. She left the room after ten minutes out of boredom. I got all excited about it because Jim Henson's creature workshop had a hand in this one. I thought I would at least get to see one damn muppet, but the 'It' creature was computer animated. If you're going to get Jim Henson's shop to do something with your movie, there had better be muppets involved, mother fuckers!

Speaking of muppets, the other day, and when I say that I mean, like, a couple of months ago, I was watching my Muppet Show season one on DVD and they did this skit where a group of mops sang a song called Ragg Mopp and it was almost exactly the same thing as Ratt Fink by the Misfits. I checked the liner notes of the Misfits album and nowhere in there does Danzig give the Muppets any kind of credit. Those aren't world changing lyrics there, Glenn, why don't you give the damn mops some kind of song writing credit? Maybe that's why they broke up. Doyle and Jerry wanted to give the Muppets a cut of the profits from that song and Danzig wasn't having it. I know Skincarver is going to leave at least one nasty comment about this, so I'll stop.

I'm trying to figure out my next review for BSL. I'll have some time on Saturday to put something together so stay tuned.

I, Zombie

I got home last night at around 11:00 after closing the store. I dicked around for about an hour and went to bed knowing I had to be up at 5:00am to go and open the fucking store. Man, was I wrong. I got a phone call at 1 mother fucking 45 in the morning from the boss who needed me to rush up there because the fish tanks were overflowing. I go up there and he had turned the water off to stop the waterfall that occurred and the floor has become an ocean. We get everything cleaned up and talk to the fish system support guy and try to figure out what the fuck happened. It turns out that there are a series of plugs going to various components of the system. Two of these plugs were switched. That was it. A plug in the wrong fucking socket made me go up to the store at 2am. I go through the day in zombie mode and leave at about 2 in the afternoon and sleep until about 9pm. My clock is all fucked up now.

Tomorrow is the infamous Cannibal Holocaust anniversary for the little woman and me. We decided that since we are such the wild couple, we are going to spend the day watching DVDs. I get to pick two and she gets to pick two. I know that one of mine will be Zombie Honeymoon at the suggestion of Skincarver from his BSL review. I'm not sure what movie number two will be.

I've been awake now for about an hour now, but I think I'm going to start drinking. That sounds nice.

Mostly Dork Stuff

Finally, I'm home from work. Today was one of those days where something was always looming over my head just waiting to kill me. I haven't had a cigarette in over five months and haven't really thought about it in a while, but today really made me want to smoke my lungs black and rotten so with my last dying breath I could spit tar on the face of that fucking store. I don't want to get into it right now.

Lady M suprised me the other day with the first season of The Venture Brothers, an Adult Swim cartoon that I love and would marry if I wasn't already spoken for. If you haven't seen it, you really need to check it out. It is a strange amalgamation of the old Johnny Quest toon and The Tick with the guy who played Puddy on Seinfeld doing the voice of Brock Samson. Speaking of The Tick, season one of the cartoon comes to DVD this month. SPOON!

The other day I was able to watch one of my Netflix movies called Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo; a seventies B-movie that I thought would be kind of like Snakes on a Plane only with deadly spiders. I absolutly love spider movies, mainly because they scare the shit out of me in real life. This movie, however, really didn't do a hell of a whole lot for me. The thing that cracked me up most was the fact that they used two very different looking species of tarantula in this film and tried to pass them off as the same thing. If you ask me, Kingdom of the Spiders still holds the title for best killer tarantula film.

Other than that, the wife and I have been watching the Firefly series. As huge Buffy fans we tried to watch this one a while back and quit halfway through the first episode. I think we were distracted or drunk or something but we just couldn't get into it. We tried again at Lady M's sister's request and this time it is really working for us. It's a really well written sci-fi western hullabaloo with plenty of action and humor to go around. I also just found out that Morena Baccarin, who plays the whore on the show, was cast as Wonder Woman in the upcoming movie.

While we're on the subject of comic book movies, I also just found out that Heath Ledger has been cast as the Joker in the next Batman film. I was really hoping for Adrien Brody because he's a damn fine actor and has the pointiest face in Hollywood, but I guess I'll have to give Heath a chance. Jack Nicholson left some really big clown shoes for you to fill, Mr. Ledger, I hope you're up for the job.

Please don't throw things in the store, sir.

It's been a while since the last blog so let me sum up the past few days. Mob and the wife came in town for the big bachelor weekend which you can read all about on Dear Bastards and Wine When Drunk From A Mug. They both pretty much go through everything worth knowing in detail, so I won't bother with it here. It was really good seeing Mob and Karmen and am so glad they were able to make it down. Sunday night the little woman and I went and saw Clerks II which was bitchin' so I wrote a review for it on Big Suck Loser. I seem to have swiped that one from Mob who was planning on reviewing it also, but he was able to squeeze one out on 2 Minute Movie Reviews.

The really big thing that is going on right now is Lady M and I are going to buy a house. We are going to meet up with Sam tonight and start to finalize everything. This place is in Arlington, which is further from work than I'd like to be, but the house is really nice and in our price range, and I might be able to transfer to another location. I might just look for another job altogether, though, and I'll tell you why.

Thirty minutes before my shift is over, this guy walks in looking for flea treatments for his mutt. I take him over to the proper aisle and show him the variety of products we have available. He thanks me and I walk back to he front of the store where an old co-worker has walked in and I strike a conversation with him. A few minutes later the guy is wandering around the front area looking perturbed. I ask if he needs anything else and he goes on about how the girl at the register asked him to go to the next one and she would ring him up there. On the long trek to the next register two younger, faster hoodlums cut in front of him and stole his spot. I told him everything would be okay and assured him that these two delinquents will probably go to hell in the end anyways so if he would just step over to register two, I would personally check him out. He turns and heads that way mumbling something about how much he hates our store and how our policy must be 'the customer is always wrong.' I ring him up for a bag of dog food, two separate spot on flea treatments, and a flea comb. After hearing the total, he asks how much the flea treatments were. I tell him that one is $6.49 and the other is $9.99. He argues that they are both $6.49 and goes back to the shelf where he got them and brings back a price tag he had ripped off the shelf that reads $6.49. I explain to him that the price tag that he brought up belongs to the product that rang up $6.49 and that the other one is still $9.99. "Fine! I don't want it then!", he yells and throws the product across the store. I told him that was unnecessary and took the item off the total. He pays and asks if the computer doesn't update when a price changes in our backward store. I tell him that the prices are correct and tell him that I really didn't know what he was so pissed off about. He insists on taking me back to the flea section and showing me the incorrect price tag for the item he hurled. I walk back with him, picking up the product on the way, and put it on the shelf with the other like products above a price tag reading $9.99. "Oh." He says. "Well I'll take that one too, I guess". No apology. Granted, this kind of shit is not the sole reason why I am thinking of looking for employment elsewhere, but it sure as fuck doesn't help.