I saw a rain dirtied valley

Oh man, Halloween is OVER and it feels good. I'm going to go watch Slither and make apple crisp. Or attempt to make apple crisp. When it comes right down to it, I have no idea what's going on with this apple crisp business. Every recipe I've found so far has been so wildly removed from the last that the only thing I'm really sure of is that there are apples and probably some sugar involved in the making. I think there needs to be an industry standard for apple crisp. Somebody should take Plato's theory of Forms and apply it to cooking, and then compile a book filled with standardized recipes for things like meatloaf and tater tot hot dish and apple crisp. The book should be really plain and industrial looking, too, like all black with "FOOD" in big white block letters on the cover, so people know it's not one of those funnin' around cookbooks. That book would mean business.

And also would tell me how to make apple crisp, that would be helpful right about now.

You cut through lies

That's it, ready or not I'm pulling that stupid pie out of the oven and going to bed. Riddle me this, Batman: why, after being in the oven for twice the time recommended on the can, is my pumpkin pie still wiggly liquid?

I DISAPPROVE.

I was dumbfounded by truths

I just filled the beams on the underside of my bed (or the ceiling of my office if you're feeling saucy) with cans of Vault soda. If you are unfamiliar with Vault, do you remember Surge? Vault is pretty much repackaged Surge with extra caffeine. Or if you scratch your head at Surge, imagine Mountain Dew in cough syrup form. With extra caffeine. And if you don't know what Mountain Dew tastes like, man, I don't even know. Just pretend that last paragraph never happened or something.

Anyway, the ceiling of my office (or the underside of my bed if you're going to get sassy about it) is now fully stocked with my godawful energy pop of choice, and every time I look up I see can after can of Vault and I'm not sure whether to grin with nerdy glee or cringe. Mostly I grin.

After spending a three day weekend back home, today was an awfully long day at work. At least Halloween ends tomorrow. I AM SO GLAD. The Halloween season is fun for about two days, and then it starts to feel like a circle of Hell that Dante forgot to write about. The last few days before the 31st are the worst, because we get swamped with angry, frantic people who want to know why we sold out of makeup (it's the day before Halloween you doofus) and where that costume they saw last week went to (it went home with somebody else you procrastinating goober because it's the day before Halloween WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US). On the bright side, we did over $95,000 last week, which is insane. We will double bonus this month. And tomorrow is the costume contest, so I intend to wear my mullet wig to its fullest potential. I'm even going to black out a tooth or two. What can I say, when I have a mullet wig on my head, it means I'm playing to win. In this case there's a $50 gift certificate at stake. We'll see how this goes. "By The Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah just started playing on my ipod, and it feels very appropriate. I like it when that happens.

Thanksgiving feels awfully far away.

While you filled the skies

I was idly looking at my bus fare for the day, and I just noticed something. Next time you get your fingers on one of those Susan B Anthony dollar coins, flip to the back and check out the eagle. There is nothing strange about an eagle on an American coin. I mean, if there was a badger or a nice giftbasket stamped on the back, that'd be one thing, but an eagle is only to be expected. After you you finish ogling the eagle, look over to the upper left part of the coin and check out that round spot. Ahh, an eagle against the night sky, with a full m--

Waaaaaait.

The moon doesn't have continents. The moon has craters. Just like those craters beneath the eagle's feet, come to think of it.

HOLY CRAP THAT EAGLE IS ON THE MOON.

WHY IS THERE AN EAGLE ON THE MOON.

This just baffles me. We have a perfectly good national mascot who looks perfectly marvelous soaring above amber waves of grain, and it's not good enough for us. No, we have to take this coin to the next level. We have to send that eagle to the frozen, unforgiving vacuum wasteland of outer space. We have to put that eagle on the moon. This is something you'd expect to come out of Kelso in the circle, not the US treasury. I want the next coin to be a screaming eagle holding a cow in its talons as it angles for re-entry into the atmosphere, just to show the world that nothing, not even a cow, gets to screw around with our moon. Not even if it can jump there. This is AMERICA. And we got this eagle, see.

I was grounded

Today a guy came through my line with a basket stuffed full of ties, and I'm thinking, crap. Deja vu. This is gonna be another hundred tie mystery and I am just going to be baffled all over again. This is just going to follow me for the rest of my life, strange men with an inexplicable quantity of ties and no offered explanations. I could retreat to the dark wilds of the Congo, living off nuts and berries and pygmies and whatever it is you do in the dark wilds of the Congo, getting bitten my mosquitos and chased by the pygmies you didn't eat or whatever, and one day a man in a canoe would paddle up stream with a duffel bag stuffed with ties, and I'd be like, crap. I started bracing myself for the inevitable mystery of it all.

Actually, as it turned out, I needn't have concerned myself. The moment he set that basket down on the table, he grinned and told me he was going to make curtains out of them. Just like he saw on Decorating Cents. You know, like that one decorator with all the hats.

I felt very smug for hours.

Even after we are gone.

Mondays bring in the hoarders and dealers, Thursdays and Fridays turn up the deal sharks, Wednesdays are populated by hardcore regulars or first time shoppers, but Tuesdays are Senior days, and I find they make for the most interesting crowd.

Today I learned that in the used book market, 75% of the value of a first edition fiction book derives from the condition of its dust cover, while that same dust cover counts for only 25% of the value of first edition non fiction books. I was handed candy by one lady and an unopened stick of Avon lip balm (circa 1988, thanks ma'am, I'll use this if I want my lips to taste like an Avon dust fart) by another. Somebody's grandfather told me how to make rosettes, somebody else's grandmother bought some unusually racy undergarments I'd rather not think about, and one aged couple asked me where to find purple hair dye.

So long as you don't mind being up to your elbows in a heap of cute but impractical baby clothes and slightly frumpy but sensible Koret pants brought to you by genial but slow-moving folk, Tuesdays can be almost pleasant.

Our shadows will remain

Today was about as awkward as I expected, but they bought us donuts. I really wanted to buy a coke during my break but Tasha spent most of the day leaning against the pop machine and crying, and you can't just buy pop around a crying person when she's covering the coin slot like that.

Well, ok, I could. It's one of those things I might do if I don't keep a close eye on myself. Fortunately, I was.

Other than that, the day was pretty tremendously busy. An old man complimented me for my Evil Dead shirt and then very enthusiastically sang to me his "Christmas Rap" while I listened politely. A guy wanted me to help him make a Columbo costume, and I pretended I totally knew what he was talking about and mentally hazarded a guess as to what a Columbo costume would entail and pointed at a tan trench coat, which was met with excitement so I think I got it right. I don't know anything about Columbo. I've seen maybe two episodes of the Rockford Files, and that's about as '70s detective as I've ever gotten. I was pleased with my good luck. To put it nerdily, I had just rolled a natural 20 on a DC 25 bluff check and had just enough circumstantial bonuses to make the check. That sort of thing always feels good.

Then an old woman dumped half a container of orange tic tacs in my hand ("They'll help keep you awake!") and another one, the one who gives each of "her girls" (the cashiers) something each time she comes in, gave me a good sized jar of some Avon hand lotion. And I helped two women put together She-Ra and Castaspella costumes.

Lake Street may be a dump, but the customers are so lively.

I was pondering this today while I sat thirsty in the break room on my fifteen. Maybe it's because I was listening to "Here Comes a Regular" on my ipod, but it occurred to me that a lot of people come to Savers just for the sake of coming to Savers. Of course you'll always get your mix of devoted dealers in to scour the new merchandise and pride themselves on befriending every cashier in the hopes of a few fudged price tags every now and again, but more than just those, there are people who will spend hours meandering the aisles and leave without spending a dime. Everybody knows their faces, everybody calls them by name and asks them how they are that day, and maybe that's most of what they're shopping for. Smiles on an individual basis, free of charge.

Around that point my train of thought derailed because Tasha abandoned the pop machine in favor of crying in the bathroom, so I scuttled over and bought something to drink. But I think I got most of my thinks out anyway.

To find where we belong

UFFDA today was hella busy at work. We did 14k yesterday and will almost certainly make at least 10k today. That means this weekend we did more business than Maplewood did at their grand opening. That means madness. At least we'll probably double bonus this month, which is always delightful. Can't say no to an extra $100. There was also this chick with an amazing orangy red mohawk, too. It had to be at least a foot and a half tall. Very nice.

And then ten minutes before I left, Londie died.

Londie was the production manager, so I never worked directly for her, but she was pretty friendly all the time, so I liked her well enough. Early this morning her sister called to tell Christina that she'd had a severe asthma attack and was hospitalized in critical condition. This was that the beginning of my shift. Eight hours later, she was dead. She couldn't have been older than 30 and she'd just had a baby a few months ago. Christina was a wreck, because they were pretty good friends. I'm more boggled than anything. It was so out of the blue, so fast.

I mean, when I said goodbye to her on Friday and told her to have a good weekend, dying on Sunday was not on the itinerary.

And a prayer out of our bones

Guess who got a guitar in the mail today?

(answer: me)

Guess who's really glad they aren't around to hear Betsi rock the casbah today?

(answer: anybody with ears)

The world will make a dream

So there I was, sprawled on the couch watching Yojimbo, a scotch egg in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, half listening for the timer to tell me when the frozen pizza was done as I ate my delicious cholesterol bomb, when two things occurred to me:

1. I'd make an awfully good bachelor, and
2. I'm awfully bad at being a girl.

I mean, this wasn't a revelation or anything, I pretty much already knew I would never succeed at being feminine. It wasn't like I had a flash of inspiration so much as I heard the last nail being driven in, mostly while I was cheering as Sanjuro beat the crap out of, like, fifty swordsmen, because that's awesome. Sanjuro is pretty hot.

I know you just read the word "beer" and your eyebrows shot up into your hairline a little, so let me explain: soup. Beer cheese soup. I had to do something with the other bottles, you know. Let's not be unreasonable about this.

I just made the soup tonight, actually, and I can tell you that I probably should have known better than to choose Guinness as my soup beer. The soup is actually pretty gross. I am disappointed and annoyed. I had such hopes.

I don't know how I made it this far without ever seeing a Kurosawa film before Yojimbo, but I'm hooked now. I picked up both Yojimbo and the sequel, Sanjuro, and am currently dreaming of buying Seven Samurai and Rashomon. Unfortunately the only dvds out there are all Criterion editions, which is nice quality and all but I can't really afford to be dropping thirty bucks on a dvd. That's just crazy talk.

Sanjuro: So you won't mind if I kill some of you, then?
Street Thugs: Wha--? Kill us if you can!
Sanjuro: It'll hurt...
Street Thugs: Gamblers aren't afraid of pain! [draw swords]
Sanjuro: Huh. No cure for fools.

No one to hold

tee hee

Here's to the losers, bless 'em all

WOW, we have a lot of amazing crap in the jewelry room at work. Mary sent me back in there to find stuff for the next auction (which works out fine for me, I'd rather dig through dusty stockpiles of cool than jab at buttons on a register any day) and once I finally managed to clear a hole to work in, I was amazed at all the stuff back there. Some of it is not ever going to sell because it's stupid and shouldn't have been set aside for the auction in the first place but Mary seems to think it will just fly right off the charts so I have to stick it in anyway (hello, can I interest you in these fine leather jackets? No?), but some things...I could dig in there for hours and probably not find half of what's in there.

There are two vintage accordions, one of which I sold in the last auction. I got that one out of the way first because the other one, and I can't believe I'm saying this because I didn't believe they actually existed, is a very cool accordion. It's like if a mariachi band had to go undercover in a '50s diner, all gray and black and white with chrome detailing. There's a little girl's stamp collection from the thirties, filled with stamps from countries whose borders have warped and morphed into nonexistence. Two musical posters, one for Rent and one for Chicago, slouch in poorly-fitted frames under the weight of their cast signatures, both pinned to the table by the respectable heft of a book of photos of the Normandie cruise ship from around 1933. Tucked in a box was one lonely postcard sent by a Clara Kuckenbecker (yeah, I don't know if I spelled that right) to a cousin who was apparently very bad about maintaining correspondence. We have The Beatle's Magical Mystery Tour album sandwiched between six old Catholic art prints and a sword. To my delight, I found a box full of vintage Star Trek comic books and fanzines. That kept me busy (and drooling slightly) for a looooong time. There was what appeared to be a very colorfully autographed Ozzy Osbourne album (MYTH BUSTED (I looked his autograph up on google image search, even allowing for severe brain damage that's still not anywhere near his handwriting, and I'm slightly relieved, I really didn't want to put that in the display case)) and even a pile of '70s Playboys, which I will not be putting in the silent auction. I don't care if they're collectible or not, I am NOT going to be the one who has to open up the case so some sleazy geezer can spend an hour seeing if the articles are any good before he puts down a false bid and shuffles away. Not gonna happen.

I think what gets me the most is the small stack of big, old family photos in their bulky frames and convex glass, the ones where the man's face is dominated by massive amounts of mustache and the woman's hair is pulled into a bun as severe as the cut of her dress, and they both look out of the picture with an expression as stern as it is slightly quizzical, and you'll never know who they are or what they meant to somebody because someone packed them into a box and bequeathed unto them the anonymity of a thrift store shelf. They're just pictures, gazing out from a moment frozen on paper, and the only people who knew anything about them either don't care or are no longer in a position to care. I guess in an age choked with media, where even the phones have cameras and most pictures are taken by at arm's length by pointedly sad-faced teenagers with their hair brushed in front of their black rimmed rectangular glasses, it makes you pause a moment to recall that there was once a time when photographs were serious business, that moment when you would be preserved for generations to look at you and wonder why you look so uptight and what made you think curling your hair that way would ever be a good idea.

Well, and then you wind up nameless under a card table in the back room of a filthy thrift store, but I guess that's just how it goes.

To the lonely summer lovers when the leaves begin to fall

I just discovered these on YouTube and was completely blown out the window and had to be later retrieved wandering the streets of Bemidji, that's how blown away I was. I had no idea I had even forgotten ever watching it! Holy crap. It's like a Faerie Tale Theatre acid trip. I did remember a few bits and pieces of it, but not in the "oh it must have been that rock'n rhyme movie" sense, more of a "why do I have this image of ZZ Top in a tub in outer space stuck in my head this is kinda weird" sort of thing. And any time I thought of Little Richard (which was pretty infrequent, I mean it's not like I usually have much reason to think of Little Richard. So like once every few years or so when Little Richard crossed my mind is more what I mean), I would always picture him with pink hair and confuse him slightly around the edges with Nat King Cole. Now I realize this is because Little Richard played Old King Cole in the movie and my brain just gets a little soupy with time so the two kind of leaked into each other a bit.

Well, ok, it's not the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, but the answers to life's ponderous questions have to start somewhere.

To the girl who sighs with envy when she hears that wedding bell

I spent my sick day elbow deep in food, which is always an amazingly good idea when you have a sneezy cold.

I washed my hands lots and didn't sneeze on anything, don't get all feisty. I'm just sayin'.

I did make Irish soda bread, which was a first. I'm not at all certain I've ever actually had soda bread before, so I don't know if it turned out or not. But it tastes all right. My first plan was to make the bread, and then I realized I didn't have one of those pastry blender things and wasn't sure what to use as an alternative so I decided to nix the soda bread and make something else instead, and then ten minutes later I apparently forgot that I decided not to make the bread and went ahead and started to make it. And then when I got to the pastry blender part I remembered that I had forgotten and just mashed at the mix with an ulu, and then a whisk, and then a spatula, and then I just said a few naughty words and declared it "probably good enough" and moved on. I guess it all worked out anyway.

Also today some guy called on the apartment line and asked for Erik. He asked for him by first name, so I'm thinking, probably not a telemarketer, right? I tell him Erik is currently unavailable and ask to take a message. The guy says, "Oh, I see. This is Mrs. Berg?" Except he didn't pronounce the ? at all, so it didn't sound like a question so much as a statement: this is Mrs. Berg. Which confused the daylights out of me, because while I've only ever met Erik's mother once, she certainly wasn't a man. So in my confusion, my articulate response is, "Huh?" He repeats himself, I repeat myself, he finally asks it in the form of a question and I'm confused again because I had assumed this guy knew Erik personally or something, but if he's asking if Erik is married to me then apparently he has never met Erik, so I say "huh?" one more time, at which point the guy sighs in exasperation and says he'll try back later.

Mara gets asked that a lot, too, when answering the phone for Erik. The telemarketing world must think he has this whole harem of women here to answer the phone for him, and one of them is apparently retarded, poor dear.

Know not too wisely but too well

Called in sick to work today for the first time since Snappy Stop. By my reckoning that's like paying $59.52 to stay home and do nothing, which is not a very good deal at all, but I knew if I tried to go to work I'd just be miserable and stuck at work, sneezing and coughing and possibly feigning death in the break room. And nobody wants that.

It felt a little like cheating, but honestly, I would've been all kinds of miserable if I tried to go work in a big dusty thrift store for eight hours. On one hand I've got a vicious cold and a sore throat, which I can deal with. On the other hand my hayfever has been kicked up into overdrive, likely exacerbated by the fact that I work in one of Minneapolis' biggest active dust repositories. Either one I can handle on its own, but NO WAY am I combining the two. Not worth it.

Here's to those who love not too wisely

Pressing Concerns:

-I gotta say, I really wish my computer didn't sound like a lawn mower trying to gargle crickets.

-They canNOT just boot Jeffrey like that. Yeah, I know, they're just implying it in the teaser, it's probably just commercial drama to get us to watch the second half of the finale (like you're really going to watch the first half and skip the second), but if they really do kick him off before the show I'm going to bite my sofa. And if Project Runway makes me bite my sofa, there's gonna be trouble.

-My allergies are acting up something fierce at work :(

-I forgot to watch House AGAIN last night >:(

-HOLY CRAP WHY WAS IT SNOWING THIS MORNING THERE HAD BETTER NOT BE ANY MORE OF THAT NONESENSE OR I WILL WRITE A LETTER TO THE PAPER OR SOMETHING

-My first attempt at homemade ginger ale turned out flat as a pancake, which was disappointing, but I'm going to give it another go because what the heck else am I going to do with all this leftover ginger root?

'Cause you were the same as me, but on your knees

It just occurred to me today how much I've adapted to living here. I wake up in the morning, I go to work, I fantasize about all the things I could make for dinner and then throw a frozen pizza in the oven because, well, honestly. I do my laundry and buy broccoli and studiously ignore the crazies on the bus and go to little hipster concerts and drink my tall pumpkin spice latte in the Starbucks at the bus stop while waiting for the 2 and all without direct adult supervision (Mara doesn't count). Even though everything has changed, I really never think about it. It just is.

It's not like I never miss home or having family around, because I do. Just not actively. I think I lay face down on my mattress and sulked for about five minutes afterMom and Dad hugged me and left the day I moved in here, and then got up, took stock of the room, and tried to remember where I packed my sheets. I slid into a new chapter with no need for a segue and haven't really thought on it since. I guess that's how I function. It's like how the old poem put it, what with the moving finger having writ and all that. Or how in Super Mario Bros you could advance the screen all you liked but you couldn't go back at all. Maybe you could've stomped another Goomba or caught that 1up mushroom, but if you didn't, you didn't, and all there is to do is dump Bowser into the lava and see if maybe this time the princess is in the castle (she isn't, she never is). My life is just rolling onward and if I spend all my time looking back I'll walk backwards into a telephone pole or something. No saves, no restarts, nor shall all thy tears wash out a word of it. Who knows, maybe the next level will be one of those nifty underwater ones.

In case you didn't notice, I just drew a parallel between The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Super Mario Bros and used it as an analogy for adjusting to change. I'm not sure if that's brilliant or soul-crushingly sad. I vote brilliant, but I could be a little biased.

When did I grow up? I don't remember it happening, so it probably hasn't. So long as nobody else catches on to that, I should probably be in pretty good shape.

Just a little while ago I was fiddling around with google maps and I was able, on the satellite image, to manually zoom in from a view of the world down to fifth street southwest. Yup, that's home, just how I remember it: a pixellated gray smudge. I suggest painting the roof hot pink, it'd stand out a little better. It's easier to see the bright yellow house next door. But I guess I can't complain too much. No matter where I go in the world, so long as I can hop on the internet for a few minutes I can see my house. It's like looking up at the night sky in Athens and seeing the big dipper, except less Fivel and more Jetsons.

And you're not thinking 'bout tomorrow

For the first time since I moved here, I have actually done something not related to sleep or groceries on a Friday night. Diagnosis: excellent. I went to a concert at the Fine Line with Lizard and Cj, and it was very awesome. I didn't actually know the guy's name before we got there, much less any of his music, but I think I can safely say now that Joseph Arthur is very cool. I am a fan. Unfortunately we had to leave early to catch the last bus of the night. Morning. Nightning? It was 1:15 anyway. I was planning on being up at 8 tomorrow. Four hours of sleep would be a very bad idea indeed.

Awwww yeah, guess who's gonna be up aaaaaaaaall night.

The bus ride to campus was interesting, too. Nothing quite like a big busload of happy drunks, two of whom like to get evangelical. One was an older black man who told us stories about how classic blues and soul singers met their downfall because of wealth, interspersed with song. It wasn't like just any old drunken singing, though. The guy had a surprisingly good voice. If somebody had gotten up and started dancing I would've thought for sure I'd fallen through the cracks of reality and into some kind of poorly executed musical.

"Yoooooooou gotta go dooooooown that roooad, that looooong and darkened rooooooad...Aretha, there was a beautiful woman, but she had herself a bad man. Yoooooooou gotta knoooooow which waaaaay to gooooooo...James Brown, my man, my brother, where you been? Yoooooou gotta do your laaaaaundry right theeeeeeere...y'all been great, God bless y'all."

Then he got off the bus and walked into the laundromat.

I just don't know.

I almost fell into that hole in your life

Today somebody pooped in one of the fitting rooms. Not only did they poop, but they wrapped it up in two pairs of jeans and left it for us. Surprise!

I was horrified. Christina was nonplussed. Apparently this is by no means the first time something like this has happened.

I guess I really do work in Craptown.

Baby's black balloon makes her fly

Today Mary snuck up behind me and asked if I had any plans for a license or car or both in the near future. Then she asked how old I was, acted surprised when I said I was 20 ("I thought you were more like 24!") and said I was very mature for my age. I think she must be getting really desperate for a supervisor.

OH GOD I DON'T WANT TO BE QUEEN OF CRAPTOWN PLEASE

I might have to do something drastic. So help me, if I have to pee in the register to get out of this...

This is definitely not encouraging me to get a license, that's for sure. I'm a little worried that not having a license isn't going to be enough if she doesn't find somebody else soon. Mary has an insanely mercurial temperment--she really likes me now, but it won't take much to completely polarize her in the other direction, and as much as I don't want to be supervisor, I definitely don't want to get myself on her bad side. And I think if she offered me this position and I turned her down, that'd be all it takes to get there. I just really hope it doesn't come to that.