I put this little sign up on the board at work. I hope they appreciate it.

symptom	allergies	cold	flu	zombie infection
fever		rare	common; usually high	at onset
			can last 3-4 days
headache	sinus pressure	rare	common	at onset
stuffy nose	common	common	sometimes
sneezing	common	common	sometimes
sore throat	sometimes	common	sometimes
cough	common	mild	common, can be severe
general aches/pain	sometimes	mild	common, can be severe	at onset
chest discomfort	sometimes	rare	common
fatigue/exhaustion	sometimes	mild	common, can be severe
			can last 2-3 weeks
incoherent speech		rare	mild	common
desire for human flesh	mild	rare	common	pervasive

  I think I was going to write something else when I made this title the other day.  But now I realize that this brand new thing is stress over money.
  While that is nothing new, this particular session is exciting and special.  I whipped through the money from my loan pretty quickly.  Perhaps I should have done it differently, but I felt that I had projects to do and time off to do it, so that was how I was going to spend the money.  I'll always have the bills, so I can catch up on those later.
  I hope.
  And now we are nearing the end of the month.  My decision was to take off the month of October, and then in November look for a second job.  It's just a few days away.  Although I like having the time off, I miss the security of having enough money coming in.  And I also miss the security of *knowing*.  I mean, just because I'm going to start looking for a new second job doesn't mean I'm going to find one.
  So I have just a few more days of blissful ignorance before I can go out into the world and get truly frightened, stressed-out, and frustrated.  I can't wait.
  It'll be an exciting adventure.  What kind of job will I get, what kind of people will I meet?  What bizarre schedule will they want me to keep?  Will I have a better attitude this time?
  I've learned a little.  Not much, but a little.

I said *while we're at it--*
  Miranda came to stay this weekend...she got bored and wanted to go home.  I took her back last night.  It's not all circuses and kittens, I guess.  But that meant I had today free to work on some stuff.  A few days earlier...or maybe I week earlier--I framed up the wall for a room in the basement for Detroit's oldest son.  It's one thing to have an albatross around your neck; it's quite another to give it room and board.
  I framed up the walls, and today I finally wired it.  The electrical in this house is a little comical.  I think part of it has to do with the job earlier in the year.  In March, I think, we had a new circuit breaker box installed for the house to pass code.  It's all well and good now, but the fucker just hooked the wires up however he felt like it.
  And they weren't terribly logical to begin with.  I spent over an hour last week mapping the breakers.  I had a light, a couple of testers, and some ibuprofen.  I turned off one breaker at a time, and then tracked down what turned off.  I had a couple of false starts and things so bizarre I didn't believe it until I tried it a few times.  But it paid off, because now I know what breaker every outlet, light, fixture and miscellaneous electrical appendage goes to.
  The first project was a new front porch light.  We had purchased four matching carriage lights months ago, and now that it's too late to take them back if something is wrong I finally put one up.  It didn't work.  I tried several different possibilities, but the evidence pointed to the fixture itself.  Okay.  The next one I tried worked fine.
  The dream--and everyone has a dream of carriage lights, don't you think?--was to have one on the front porch, two on either side of the garage door, and since we had four, the last one would be on the back porch.  Our dreams have some flexibility, however; we now decided that no one is going to see the back and the front at the same time.
  Then I wired the boy's room.  Not too difficult--in fact, it was fun.  I like doing this kind of work.  After that one, I worked in Alex's room, re-arranging some light fixtures and outlets and switches.  Oh My.  Wow.  Okay.  Except for the bathroom wall I need to tear out and rebuild, we are pretty much ready for drywall.  Alright.  We go and buy the drywall, and it is late afternoon but I'm still gung ho--but we get back and now it's a little later, and I was going to make my baked potato soup. 
  So that's where we are right now.  At least I've been doing stuff, I just ran out of time.  Now I'm waiting for soup.

  Oh, I was just listening to some talk radio, and it was three people--the host and two guests.  One of the guests was some famous atheist (really, is there any other kind?) and both the host and the other guest were believers.
  I turned it off.
  Not because I was in danger of having my faith become shaky.  And not because I was angry about what they were talking about.  It's important to talk about, sure, but mostly, I don't care to discuss it with most people.  Why?  Well, most people are stupid.
  I'm going to generalize because that is my gift:  most atheists that you've heard of are smug, condescending assholes.  That's not to say most of the entire lot is, just most of the ones you've heard of.  The ones that get air time or Internet time.
  And right there I can prove that atheists are wrong and there is a God.  The internet is proof of Intelligent Design.
  When I was new to my faith I was fired up and ready to battle with any non-believer who dared to cross swords with me.  I had the knowledge (I thought), I had the power (not really), and I had the spirit (a little).
  Some things over the years have managed to...not even shake my faith, but maybe jostle it a little.  That's a natural thing.  After all I've done and seen and been through, my faith is still here.  Like a grizzled veteran on the bench, it's solid, dependable, quiet.  And mildly annoyed and amused at the rookies at the same time.
  But faith is a very personal thing.  I don't want to argue with someone about what I believe.  I don't want to argue with someone about what THEY believe.  I know what I know, I believe what I believe.  I think what I think.  I piss what I piss.  What, do you think you have some compelling argument, some important proof or documentation, some intractable knowledge that there is no God?  Good for you.  And then, you want to take that information and FORCE it on me, and make me know what you know, and make me believe what you believe?  Will I then think what you think, and piss what you piss?
  I know that religionists have been--in your view, at least--pushing their wares upon you relentlessly.  In their view, you and others like you have been pushing God and religion away from everyone.
  In a country where everyone is supposedly able to believe what they want, you sure do take a marked interest in trying to get them to believe in nothing. 
  I'm just really not that interested in whatever "proof" that you may have, just as I have noticed that you are not interested in whatever "proof" I may have.  I have an answer, a reason, an explanation for all of your little feats of evidence.  No, I'm not going to enumerate them, because that would mean engaging you on the field of philosophical battle.  Although it's the only battlefield where no one dies, there can also never be a victor.
  My answers and reasons aren't as pat as "God put the dinosaurs there to test our faith."  There is deeper meaning and larger understanding in all of it.  Evolution?  Probably happened.  The Bible doesn't specifically say it doesn't, does it?  The Bible doesn't mention calculus or iPods,either.  Do they not exist?  The Bible is not a science book.  It's not a history book, even, although it does cover historical context. 
  And this is where I have a problem with the Bible thumpers.  It is the Word of God.  It's not the only Words he spake.  And it was translated and changed and distorted and intentionally hacked and accidentally spilled on.  The ones who believe it is the end-all/be-all word of God exactly as written don't understand editing, committees, politics, parables, or basic communication skills.
  Look, I know that when I talk to various people--and I was going to write about this in a different context--when I talk to different people, I talk to one of them differently than I may talk to another.  I'm treating them equally...but different.  In order to get the same results out of some people, I have to talk to them differently.  This is how it is, this is the nature of us as individuals. 
  So God spoke to the savages of that time quite differently than he might speak to you, sophisticated and jaded uptown college professor with patches on your elbows.
  My faith is sufficient to navigate the troubled waters of aggressive atheists and the tiny shallow streams of belligerent religionists.  I know that they each have some measure of truth, even the non-believers.  I know that they mean well, except I can't excuse the Muslim jihadists.  Maybe I should ask for forgiveness, for not being able to move past that--
  I'm not interested in winning an argument against any of them.  In the end, we shall all find out.  And then you will see, you will finally see...
  That I am right and you were wrong.
  Neener-neener!

  Hahaha.  Having said all that, let me leave you with these thoughts:

Islam is like the soccer of the religious world.  It's popular everywhere else in the world except America, Americans don’t really get it and don’t really want to, and it’s violent as hell.  Also, you never really see women fans in the stands.
And if you call it violent, the fans will get a rugby player to kick your ass.

I guess NASCAR is like religion in America.  The biggest day is Sunday and you can still drink beer.  You just sit on your couch and watch.  It’s really loud and it doesn't require much understanding.  The chicks are hot in a trailer-trash kind of way.

Cricket IS a lot like Wicca.  You never expect to actually see it, so when you do, you really have no idea what you're looking at.  You can’t really follow it and are really just hoping to see some naked chicks.  Whenever someone tries to explain it to me, they just sound really condescending.

Is baseball like Judaism?  The real players make a lot of money.
The men in black--rabbis or umpires--make the rules.
Steroids are optional.

Calling Scientology a religion is like calling date rape a sport.

  About a year ago, my 12-year old daughter was about five-foot six.  Now, at 13, she is five-nine.  We make 'em tall in my family, I guess.
  And usually with some deformity.
  My son is a behemoth at six-foot-eight.  His feet are flat like his mother's, and shaped much like a duck's foot.
  Miranda has a real arch like I do, but she is knock-kneed, a condition for which there is a long word for.  With her knees together, there is 20 centimeters between her feet.  That is...a bit much.  Luckily, the orthopedic doctor says they can do something about it.
  We should have done something about this a year ago, before her last growth spurt, but I put it off and put it off.  However, I made an appointment for her to check out the possibilities.  The did some x-rays of her knees and also her hand to check her bone age.  It looks like she has a little bit of growth left in them.  Maybe enough.
  What they would do is make a tiny incision above and below the knee, right on the bones on the inside, and screw on a couple of plates.  These would inhibit the growth on that side while allowing the other side to continue to grow.  This should allow the legs to straighten out somewhat.
  It might be a little late to get full recovery on her legs, but the doctor seemed hopeful that they can get the gap down to about half, or 8 to 10 centimeters.  Anything over 18 is too much, which is what she has.
  So.  So now we set up the surgery, make the calls to the insurance, and get it going.  They do it as an out-patient procedure, and she can walk out of the office.  She might have to take a few days off of school, but it's not very invasive.  She is actually looking forward to it.

  This Bed is too hard.
  This bed is too soft.
  And this bed is just right--
 
  We had our new bed delivered last night, pretty exciting stuff.  Sunday we took a break from whatever the hell it was that we were doing and went to the bed store.  I told this story already.  I looked over it, and reviewed the three paragraphs, wondering if I could add to the story somehow.  The verdict?
  Not really.  Reading a about someone shopping for a bed has to be slightly less interesting than the actual bed shopping itself, which is a complete drag and it made me feel both sleepy and ironic.
  Nonetheless we paid and arranged for delivery, which would be Wednesday evening between 630 pm and 930 pm.  I thought that was kinda late but it was their window, not mine.  The gentlemen showed up around 830, and it was point and grunt to show them where we wanted the bed because they no habla the Englis.
  It's a purty nice bed.  A king, like I said.  I like having the room, although I get the feeling that Detroit wants to cover it with pillows and chiffon and stuffed animals and crap like that.  She is such a girl.  We...tried the bed out...and then went to sleep.  It was very quiet, as well.  No squeaking, no creaking, and very little moaning.  Maybe I'm off my game.
  I was enormously comfortable.  I woke up with no aches, which is always a plus.  Alex took our old bed, and his old bed we (and by we I mean they because I wasn't there) moved it into Miranda's room-slash- the guest room.
  Detroit had finished painting the living room several days ago, and now the furniture is arranged more or less the way she wants it, I think.  It's starting to come together.
  No, I still haven't fixed the sink.

  I just did the math, and it's a little scary.  It's amazing how far 2900 doesn't go.
  I had a loan on my 401k, and it was just paid off.  It was automatically paid out of my paycheck.  I figured that I was already used to not having that money, so why not get a new loan, because I had some things to buy. 
  The max I could get was 2900 bones, so that's what I took.  I got the money deposited Friday, and this morning I look at my account.
  I have 900 dollars left.  Fuck me, where did it go?  Well, the biggest part of it was actually yesterday when me and the ol lady bought a new bed.  One of the things I lost in the divorce (Aside from my...crap, I can't really think of anything funny at the moment.  Maybe I will, maybe I won't.  But you know how I think.  It would be something funny and ironic, yet poignant, because that's exactly how I am.) was the King-size bed.
  I've been in a queen for these past three years and let me tell you, sharing a bed with Detroit is not the easiest thing in the world to do.  She hogs the covers, and the bed.  She takes the middle.  She tosses and turns alot, and she snores.  She gets hot and whips the covers off of both her AND me.  She wants sex all the time, no matter how tired I am, or how unattractive and bloated I feel.
  She won't even make the bed in the morning, but that's another complaint entirely.
  But I like a king bed.  I've had one since high school, essentially, when my parents passed their old one down to me.  A king is nice.  Lots o space.  No more of that icky touching and sharing and crap.
  We went to some store that sells beds--Mattresses and More, or some such crap--and the fine young homosexual salesman made us a deal.  The bed was 2100 dollars ("Compare at 2699!" whatever that means) but we worked a deal that involved me stripping at a party for him and we got it down to 1200.  With delivery and so forth, about 14 medium-sized ones.  If a grand is a big one, and 14 big ones is 14 grand, then maybe 14 little ones is 140 dollars, and 14 medium sized ones is 1400.  See, I just--never mind.  It was funnier in my head and there are more of us in here than there are of you out there.

  So that's a good half of the money.  The rest I still have most of, but maybe I need to pay a bill or something.  Ugh.  Oh, I did spend some of it on the lumber and hardware, and started building in the basement.  The plans are, redo a wall in the bathroom to add a shower, add a wall to Alex's room to cut out a small section for a storage room, and build the walls for Brandon's room.  So far, I have Brandon's walls framed up.  I need to add the wiring, and then we can drywall.  Detroit, meanwhile, painted the living room again, re-enforcing the belief I have that someday soon she will tire of me.  Either that, or she'll want to slap a couple of coats of paint on me, like she did the living room walls.
  Anyway, that's where the title came from.  Pink Floyd's "The Wall."

Finally, up to date....
  I'm not sure if I buy into the whole premise of United Way.  Just as an observation, they seem really self-involved and all about the fund-raising but not much about the goals.  They give you little teasers about what they do with the money, but the salaries and bonuses they pay are never shown in those PowerPoint presentations.  Know what I mean?
  Their slogan should be "Give us cash and assuage your guilt."  Because that's what it amounts to.  That, and a tax write-off.
  So here we are in the winding down of our own United Way campaign.  We had some fun events, like the chili cook-off and the E-Bingo.  Of course, they sent out the bingo numbers to everyone even though only a certain number were playing.  But several times a day I would get an email telling me the next number.
  "B-7"
  "I-22"
  "O-64"
  Finally I had to send her an email letting her know that I had had enough.
  "You sank my battleship!"

  And then we had the trivia night.  Just last night, in fact, so it is still fresh in my brain...like an unanswered trivia question.  These things are organized much as one might think they are.  We have the umbrella group called the "Moral and Events committee," which I just call the "Sun and Fun Committee."  Under this heading everyone is divided into subcommittees.
  The Facilities and Logistics subcommittee arranged the venue at some golf course club house, and the Food and Beverage committee planned the food, snacks, and beverages.  Communications and promotions sub made sure everyone was aware of the event and sent out emails and put up fliers.  The decorating and purchasing sub handled the decorating, and all other receipts went through them to the finance, budget, and record keeping sub.  This was not an idea spawned by the program and entertainment sub, but a recurring event that we have.  No involvement from the employee recognition sub either.
  I'm on the Employee events committee, which I just noticed is not a sub-committee.  I remember I had wanted to be on the food and bev sub, because I have food service experience.  Lisa, the head of HR and I realize now my friend, thought that I would be better suited for another committee.  And I'm glad, because food and bev is alot of work.  I'm on the events committee because eerily, Lisa recognized early on that I am an idea person.  Eerily, I say.  I'm on the events committee because I come up with ideas.  So what did I do?
  Well, when we had the chili cook-off, I rode shotgun with Bunny to Sam's and did the heavy lifting for the chips and buns and hot dogs.  For the trivia night I went with her to do the heavy lifting for the soda and snacks.  Then, because someone else was suppose to deliver them to the venue and they weren't around, I did.  I really am a one-man committee:  Ideas and heavy lifting.
  Carrie from the food and bev committee catered the event, so someone from finance and budget cut her a check.  I wonder if it's just a coincidence that she's on that committee, or if it's because she does catering?
  I was one of the team captains for the trivia, and there were ten or eleven teams, I think.  I made little table-top folds with our team name on it.  From the Monty Python, and also because all of us are more or less conservative, the team was "Right Thinking People."
  It was a good time.  And then the trivia started.  Oh, Lord.  There were ten categories with ten questions.  After finishing the round all the teams handed in their sheets, and the hostess (with the mostest) went over the answers while someone else tallied the scores and wrote them on the big board.
  So keep in mind this is a company event.  A table full of HR people, a table full of loan officers, a smattering of managers and VPs everywhere.  About 80 people in the room.  The posted everyone's score, and for the first round, our team was on top.  I did what was natural.
  I got up and did a victory lap around the room.
  Funny once, I know.  I figured I would do it only for the rounds we won.
  Well, we won every round.
  After a while it's not funny anymore, and I'm just an attention-seeking asshole.  When people laugh at it, it only serves as fuel.  ("Whatever you do, *don't* encourage him!")  Of course, there were two rounds were we were tied with another group, and I got up and instead of running and doing a victory lap, I did the sullen walk of sharing fame.
  There was even a round where we scored ZERO points, and we still won.  That was further into the game, and someone tied us at that point.  We still pulled ahead.  By the end, second and third were tied about three points behind us.
  The prize was two hundred and fifty bones, or clams, or whatever it is you want to call them.  The precedent had been set in previous years, so we agreed to donate it back to the Cause.  Of course, not everyone on our team came to that meeting.  Suzan was shocked, but we had already decided and I swear I thought she was there but she probably wasn't listening because with a table full of people there are always at least three conversations going on.
  I went up to accept the prize. I grabbed the mike and promptly unplugged it.  I said, "I'd like to thank the Academy--"
  Then I continued, out loud to cover the whole room.  "Our team would like to make an announcement.  We have decided that even though--even though 250 dollars divided by seven people is almost 120 per person--" I let the math sink in-- "we have decided to donate our winnings to the cause.  Thank you and goodnight."
  Since I had already made an ass of myself, it would have been much worse if we had kept the money.  Then again, I don't know why that stopped me.

  And today I talked with a few people that were there.  There was a table full of loan officers.  These are the big money people, the movers and shakers, the ones that make things happen.  Once when I was making a victory lap I stopped at their table, turned my back to them and shook my ass.  In hindsight, probably not a good move.  I don't need to get fired from this job too. 
  They were not happy.  Not all of them were upset, just a couple of the soreheads.  Most reasonable people accept it for what it was, which is just some good natured ribbing.  Take it as motivation to try and beat, dudes.  Hell.  These are supposed to be the super-motivated super-salesmen, trying to out-best each other.  They should have tried harder.
  I think our ace in the hole was Joe.  We all contributed well, but Joe almost single-handedly took care of the round about drinks:  given the ingredients, name the drink.
  Joe has a part-time job as a bartender.
  He also pretty much cleaned up on the round about sports.  The funny thing was, there was one round were we scored zero.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada surf.  That was one of the two times when someone caught up and tied with us.  We scored a donut on one round and still won the hole thing.  It was one of those stupid things where we had pictures with eyes and hair of someone and mouth and nose of someone else, the guess who the two celebrities are.  Fuck that.  That's not trivia.  Either that or it is the true definition of such.

Long about October 13 or 14th, I think...
  I figure I needed to take down these notes, since this is something I said the other day.  Speaking of which, there is something I said the other day that I want to remember, and I don't think this is it.  I think I forgot what it was.  So, if anyone can remind me, that would be great.  Thanks.

  The first thing is about Deja Vu.  But first, a joke:
  ADD-ja-vu:  Where you get the strange feeling that you’ve been distracted before.

This particular style of Deja vu used to happen to me regularly when I was a teenager.  VERY regularly.  Didja ever have Deja vu?  You know what it is, right?  Basically, something happens to you that is familiar, like you saw it in a dream.  Right?  Ever have that?
  Okay, now:  ever have that feeling where this seems familiar, and you realize that you are *about* to have that deja vu moment?  It's coming up, but it hasn't happened yet?  No, yes?  Some of you?  Very few?  Okay.
  So have you ever been in that situation, and saw what was coming and what you were about to say or do, and then...you tried to change it?
  Did it work?
  Because it doesn't for me.  I do something different from what I thought I was going to do, and it turns out that my memory was just fuzzy, and what I ended up doing was what was originally in the deja vu to begin with.  I just remembered it wrong.
  The thing about it is, though, is that the "wrong" deja vu memory lingered as well.  Almost like they were alternate universes that branched off at different decisions.
  Wow.  I've never actually written this down.  If it wasn't for the fact that when this stuff happened it was completely and utterly mundane events I would think this is a great sci-fi story idea.  In fact I may still use it.
  But I wrote about this as an example of how I, on a daily basis, battle with my brain.

  I just remembered what the other thing was that I wanted to remember, and it is ever so lightly related to this.  There are different levels of consciousness.  There are also different levels of unconsciousness as well.  I guess that is just a different end of the same scale.  But I wanted to enumerate and identify them, or at least some of them.  I'm sure I've experienced several of them.
  Just as a for instance, did you ever wake up from a dream and you were still in another dream?  I think those were two separate layers.  Just like daydreaming, if deep and vivid, is another.  There are more.  There is the whole "in the zone" thing, and some other stuff I want to research about this.  This has nothing to do with my potential ADD.  I swear.

  But I do battle with my brain all the time.  Not just distractions--hell, that's preschool shit.  I'm talking about my brain thinking of...
  Let me put it this way.  I don't have a multiple personality disorder, I think.  The big clue there is that I don't have any missing time and I never wake up wearing odd clothes and wondering where I've been and what I've been doing, other than that one time.
  But there is alot of noise up here (this is me, tapping my skull).  You talk to yourself?  Really?  I have a mix between a committee meeting and a classroom and a bachelor party going on in my head all the time.  I can hear music right now.  I can feel several minds looking over my shoulder at what I am writing.  Someone is narrating this, and a few are arguing, with one of them at a chalk board.  The guys sitting at the table are drawing architectural plans and putting together remodeling ideas (for the house, not my brain.)  Someone else is rifling through my story ideas for me, editing and taking notes and planning characters.
  Another clown is surfing the web for porn.
  They are all in my head talking at the same time.  And they keep grabbing the microphone away from one another, so I hear each one of them in turn.  The guy watching porn doesn't say much; he's busy.

  Maybe all of that is an exaggeration, because when I say it like that it does sound like a multiple personality.  It's not, it's just me.  Several of them, but they are all me.  And they all want to do several different things all at once.  Very often, that's why I procrastinate.  I want to do so much that part of me sees the futility in it and knows that I'll never get it done, so why bother?  Other times I get pulled in different directions so badly that I end up spinning my wheels.  A year and a half ago--more or less--I had a similar situation where I wasn't working as much, and it drove me batty because I had too much time on my hands and all I was doing was wasting it.
  This time, at least, I approached it with a plan, plus it was the time of year where I feel really constructive, plus I had a small chunk of money coming my way to do some projects with.  I look at the calendar now and see that it is about two weeks since I got fired.  What in the hell have I been doing?  I know I got some things done, mostly last week.  I haven't done much this week, except for Monday.  Tonight we are going out.  This weekend I expect to frame me up some drywall, righteously.  if I get this accomplished, it will make me feel like I didn't waste the week, when all I did is stuff everybody does.
  I still haven't fixed the sink.

This would October 12th, Columbus Day
  I did so much Saturday and Sunday, and I couldn't believe that I actually had another day off.  This is the first three-day weekend I can every remember that I actually got off all three days for.  Detroit had off Friday, but she had to work today.  Some schools are open because they don't like the idea of celebrating Columbus Day.
  I say fuck em.  Columbus is not the one personally responsible for gutting the Central and South American civilizations.  He didn't personally bring over syphilis.  He didn't subjugate, take over, and conquer the indigenous cultures.
  We did. 
  We are the winners.  We won.  They lost.  Don't get me started on this.  It was them or us.  We should stay in Europe stacked on top of each other while this land gets over run with a few million backwards Indians and several billion buffalo?  I don't think so.  Shit happens.  Throughout history, shit has happened.  It is much better to be the ones that bringeth the shit than to be the ones shitteth upon.  But it is going to happen, one way or another.  You can cry over 500 year old spilt milk like a bitch, or you can live your life.

  All of this so that Detroit could get up and go to work and I could stay in bed.  Hah-ha!  But I did get up and venture out.  It was a little wet out early, but it dried up.  I drove down to this place that would recycle scrap metal and so forth, and asked them about all the metal from the fireplace.  They said yeah, they would take it, but no, they would not pay me.  What a crock of shit.
  But it was more important to get rid of it, so I loaded up the truck with the stuff and headed off.  It actually wasn't that easy.  The bigger part of the fireplace was mostly metal, but there was some blocks of concrete or something like that between the walls for to be heat resistant.  I had to bust it, pry it, bend it, and cut it to get it down to size and get that stuff out of it.  Looked like their might be some asbestos in there too, which is now on my garage floor.  When I sweep it up and throw it out, no one will know.  So, sshhh!
  But I trekked the stuff to the recycling place.  Then I took the library book back, dropping it in the repository.
  I wanted to get to the TV ordeal.  If you recall, I got a 60 inch rear projection TV from helping someone move.  I didn't have room for it, not until we got rid of the fireplace.  It has sat in the garage for about a month now.  I had the boys help me bring it in, and then Brandon helped me hook it up to try it.  It works!  Okay, NOW I can move the other one. 
  And now I have a big-ass whopping TV in my living room.

  Let's see...the next project starting this evening is the kitchen sink.

This is October 11th...
  So we took a break Sunday afternoon and went to the Fall Festival.  Held in Olde Towne, they close off a street and fill it with vendors and miscreants.  We parked two blocks away and added to the crowd.  It was a nice fall day:  The sun was out, and it was about 50 degrees.  Bunny said there was lots of food available, and I wanted lunch.  But there were other attractions as well.
  Where we walked up was close to the middle.  I could hear live music.  When we got there, we saw that it was just one man singing with a karaoke machine.  And he was dressed like Elvis.  He worked the crowd, baby.  We went to the right first and walked down, then down the other way.  Lots of little booths set up, everyone selling their little arts and crafts and crap.  Some of them were fundraisers for various organizations, and some were just misguided get-rich quick dreams.  Do you really need a cell-phone cozy?
  One guy had framed photos of St Louis from the past.  The Arch being built, 1965.  The turn of the century, the World's Fair, the all-St Louis World Series in 1944.  I brought a limited amount of cash with me for this very reason, otherwise I would have bought something.
  Further down, we saw a guy playing bagpipes.  We stood and watched, and then Detroit talked to him and got his card.  He was in the outfit, kilt and everything.  Man, I want a kilt.
  We continued.  We got some food and kept walking.  Lots of interesting things to see, as well as people.  Occasionally we would chat with someone.  We saw several different bands on the route, a blues band, some guy playing a keyboard by himself, a polka band, and another miscellaneous band. 
  I saw a display that Detroit waited patiently for me while I checked it all out.  It was antique military vehicles.  Jeeps, a small tank, and a couple of 6-by trucks.  Also some uniforms, memorabilia, and a rack full of old military weapons.
  We finally found Bunny, in a booth from her church.  They were doing face painting for kids.  It was right then that I had the idea, and I want to do this next year.  I want a booth in the next fall festival.  It'll just be me, in a chair, with a table.  With a sign that says, "Free Sarcasm Samples."  I'll also have a jar that says, "tips."
  Next to Bunny was a couple of tables with literature upon it.  They were the North County Republican Club.  I chatted with them for a bit, and picked up a few items.  I just may join this group, and maybe some others.  I wanted to get involved, and this might be a good way to start small.
  We continued.  We got down to the end of the street, and the brand new fire house was having an open house,  We walked around it and looked at everything.  Cool.  There was a special vehicle that we couldn't identify, and we asked one of the fire chiefs about it.  He said it was one of five in the metro area for disaster response.  Every firehouse has some people trained for it that respond and go when this truck is sent in.  It's for floods or earthquakes or terrorist attacks and the like.
  That was the end of the row, and we headed back up the gentle incline, this time taking in the opposite side of the street.  People were walking with their dogs, stopping and chatting with neighbors and with strangers.  A guy on stilts made balloon animals.  We walked again past the area where there was a concrete retaining wall covered with chalk.  Being on this side I could see that they had chalk out for people (mostly kids) to write on the wall and the sidewalk and the street right there.  I picked up a piece of chalk off the ground and found an open spot on the wall.  I wrote "Bryan + Kim" and drew  heart around it.
  An older couple walked by and smiled when they saw that.  I thought, aw, that's sweet, that they think that this is sweet.  Then they started to give me shit.  Hecklers.  Detroit agreed with them.  "You could have carved it in a tree where it would be permanent."  Right then I was thinking *not so much.*
  I'm surrounded by assholes.  We made it back to the car, and then lay on the couch when we got home.  Lotta walking.  Tired.  But a good time.  We enjoyed it, and experienced a sense of community.

   Call this one October 10th
  I had lots of plans for this last weekend.  It was--well, let's face it, an exciting time for me.  A three-day weekend in which I would get all three days off.  For the entire week before I made plans and drawrings and such; by the time Friday evening rolled around I was properly stoked.
  Let's see, what did I do Friday night?
  Wow, it's been a while.  I don't remember when I did what (or even why, really--)
  The previous weekend we removed the fireplace.  That was quite a bitch.  Heavy, awkward, and unreasonably attached to the house like a desperate co-dependent.  Lots of sheet metal with sharp edges, and it had sharp jagged edges after I took to it with a pair of tin snips.  I was Johnny Depp, in a crossover between Edward Scissorhands and that musical thing about the barber.  No, I'm not looking up the name because a shit I giveth not.
  All of the fireplace came out and was sitting in my garage in pieces.  All of it except for these two pieces of slate or granite or some other really heavy rock.  Four pieces of it made the base, or mantle or whatever the hell it is.  Two of them came out.  Christ, they were heavy.  One piece was five feet long, sixteen inches wide, and about an inch thick.  It easily weighed over two hundred pounds.  Another piece was only two feet long or so, so it was a little lighter.  The remaining two pieces matched the smaller one, but the bordered the fireplace and were attached to the wall with a serious dose of adhesive.  How, oh how do we get them off the wall.
  Detroit said that in a worst-case scenario, we would cut them off the wall and replace the drywall.
  I said, no, in a worst case scenario the earth plunges into the sun and we all die in a blazing inferno.
  But yeah, for our immediate purposes, that would be bad.  I tried to McGyver it by nailing a piece of plywood to the wall to give be a leverage base and then using a pry bar on it, and I thought it was working...
  Until the drywall ripped off the wall with the piece of slate.  "Well, it's off," I said.
  Based on past experience I knew the next piece would do the same, so I took the utility knife and cut the drywall around the slate.  This made a fairly neater hole in the wall. 
  Detroit and I know our strengths; we work well together.  She is great at the mudding and taping event.  I can't do that so much, but I can carelessly measure and sloppily cut a piece of drywall and then force it in the hole like a date gone horribly wrong.  I cut the first whole fairly big, making it go stud-to-stud and squaring it out.  The next hole was quite luckily lined up pretty much with the studs, so I just squared it off a bit.  I cut drywall, screwed it up, and let her have at it.
  I think that was Saturday afternoon, or Friday night, or a little of both.  Saturday morning I know we trekked out to the Habitat for Humanity Re-store, the warehouse where they sell all the used crap ripped out houses they rehab.  There was some crusty shit in there.  But there was also some cool stuff, and some new stuff.  One of the workers told me that builders and manufacturers make corporate donations on a regular basis.
  We found a shower enclosure, which is something we have wanted for the basement.  It took a while to get someone to give me a price on it, but it was 150.  I countered, "One-twenty?"
  He said, "I have to make it 150.  Brand new is over three bills."  Normally in a hardware store you can't play Let's-Make-A-Deal, but the whole yard sale atmosphere just brought it out of me.  I actually didn't want to pay more than a hundred, but I was willing to go a little over.  Hmmm.  I needed to think about it.  That's what I told him, anyway; I was fairly certain at that point that I had already decided to buy it anyway.
  We continued to look around.  We found our way to doors, and Detroit explained what she wanted in an exterior door.  We want to put a door in the kitchen to the patio, because currently we have to from the kitchen to the landing through the garage and then to the patio.  It's not that big of a deal for us but it's a pain in the ass for the dog, which makes it a pain for us.  We actually leave the back door to the garage open all the time so that we only have to open one door to let Mac out.
  She wants a back door that is all glass, or mostly all glass, to let light in, and make the space seem bigger.  "Like this one?"
  She looked.  "Yeah, like this one."  She was immediately interested.  We couldn't decide if we wanted it.  I saw the price was 125 bucks.  Another stack of them had prices written on them of 250 to 375.  I said, "That has to be the original store price, right?"
  Finally, I talk to a guy.  I said, I want the shower enclosure, and this door, and this ceiling fan--make me a deal.  He looked at it all and said he'd throw the ceiling fan in for free.  Okay.  Thirty five bucks for this pretty nice fan, new, wrapped, with a control box.  I wanted to put it in the garage.
  So, for 275 bones, we got a shower enclosure, a prehung exterior door, and a ceiling fan.  Retail price of this showcase, probably over 800 dollars.  Easily over 6, I know that.  In fact, the guy told me, while we were loading, that the door was marked wrong.  All the rest of them said 250.  He thinks a customer marked it lower and moved it, hoping to make off with a deal.  *Bummer,* I thought.  *For him.*
  I was supposed to go to my friend the Dude's house Saturday evening.  And I did, except--
  I can't call out on my cell phone because I'm late on the payment, so it just redirects me to Verizon:  "Please stay on the line."  Yeah, like that's going to make me pay.  Pfft.
  But I drove out there without calling, and it looked like no one was home.  I swear I didn't think about it again until Monday night.  What the hell is wrong with my brain?
  Sunday, I patched the ceiling hole from the chimney stack of the fireplace.  We'll see how that one goes.  That was in the morning, and I called Bunny to let her know I was taking the trailer back to my cousin Joey.  She said she was at the town's fall festival in Olde Towne.

  (To Be Continued...)

  Good Samaritan.
  (This was actually October 9th)
  I had just come back to my desk after putting out a fire somewhere...or maybe I was just off fucking around.  Not alot of difference here in the office.  Debra says, "Hey, Bryan, are you busy?"
  I'm sure it's a trick question.  "Well, I'm *always* busy."
  Meanwhile, I've come to embrace the lack of train of thought that I have.  I get to the point, just hang in there.  The line between Good Samaritan and sexual predator is much finer than I originally thought.
  You can't ask how old someone's daughter is without sounding like a pervert, did you know that?
  It was raining sometime last week and her daughter had just stopped by to pick something up from her, and as she was leaving she had a flat tire.  So there she was, out on the street in front of the office, in the rain, with a flat.
  I sighed.  Yeah, I'll help.
  I don't even remember the daughter's name, or if I even heard it.  She is a cute little black girl.  I know she has a baby, so she has to be at least...13 or 14.  Dangerous.
  But she is driving, too, so she is at least...16 or 17.  Aye, Carumba.  Oh well.
  I grabbed a cardboard box and went out to help.  She had the jack out and was getting the spare out.  She was working on it herself.  Aw, that's sweet.  Not only was the tire flat, but the rim had a big-ass dent in it, right at the seam of the tire.  Obviously, she had hit something like a curb and bent the rim and that's why she had a flat.
  I took the jack and repositioned it, and took the tire tool and loosened the nuts.  As I was doing that I asked her, "Is the parking brake on?"
  She said yes.  Good.  This is the front tire of a front wheel drive car and we're on a hill.  The parking brake stops the back wheels, so that is important.  After I loosen the nuts a bit, I start to jack up the car with the cheap little scissor jack.  The tire starts to come up and then...
  The car rolls back, the jack slips out, the car goes down.  Real fucking funny.  She checked the e-brake again, and I went to the other side of the street and grabbed a couple of big rocks from the landscaping. and used them to block the wheels.  Let's try it again.
  I had to step on the side of the jack to straighten it out, and then put it under the car and started again.  The little girl took a turn at turning it, too.  That was good because it was a lot of long, slow cranking to get it up.  Finally, it was high enough to take off the tire.  The spare went on quickly, and I put on the nuts.
  I've changed many tires.  Very many.  The nuts went on quickly and I got them hand-tight, then dropped the car and used the tool.  We put everything back, like the rocks from the landscaping, and I told her, "You may or may not need a tire; that one looks pretty good.  But you are definitely going to need a rim, because that can't be fixed to hold a seal anymore."  She nodded and understood.
  The spare was low on air, of course.  She was going to take it easy to the next block where there was a gas station, and get some air in it.  She was on her way.
  Back inside, I hung up my wet coat and tossed the wet piece of cardboard, then washed my hands and brushed my dirty knees off.  When I spoke to Josh later he mentioned it.  "How did you know?"
  "They called me and asked me first, but I wasn't at my desk."  He said it's raining out and cold, they need to call AAA because he's not going out there. 
  I said, "That's one of the many reasons why I'm a better person than you."  But only barely.

  It's about 930 on a Saturday night, and normally I would be working.
  But I got fired, remember?  It doesn't bother me, not at all.  I thought it would bother me a bit--Christ, they were right to do it.  Not only for the reason they did but because of my attitude.  Certainly, it would have become a problem.  And I'm not sorry for any of it, either, so there you go. 
  The thing I am sorry for is the problems I've caused my buddy Mike, who I feel like...

  It was an intense firefight.  The battle had raged on for almost two weeks, both sides firmly entrenched as they tried to take this tiny hill on this tiny island.  It was only one of hundreds in the South Pacific, why did this *one* matter?  Because the Commander said.  Take this island, hold this ground.  It is of strategic importance.
  It was night now, and both sides were quiet.  The American encampment was at the bottom of the hill.  The Nips got there first, and they held the top.  A Jap pillbox gave the Marines no end of trouble.  The Sergeant came down with orders.  "I need two volunteers."  Bryan and Mike, the two grizzled veterans of the outfit, stood up.  Mike growled, "Let's do this shit."
  The mission was to sneak up to the pillbox, create a diversion, toss in some grenades.  This would get the Americans up this side of the hill, on an even keel with the Japanese.  They were trekking through the jungle at night, snaking up an unseen path.  Sneaky and fun.  The fortification was insight.  Wordlessly, they signaled to each other.  Bryan went to create a diversion, and hopefully take out some guards while he was at it.  Mike went the other way, armed with grenades.
  Bryan never completed his objective.  It's as though someone knew what they were up to.  Was there as spy?  Oddly, these were his last thoughts as he was cut down by automatic weapons fire.  As he lay there and bled out, he could see the stars.  But he would never see home again.  And he couldn't warn Mike, couldn't stop him, couldn't tell him--it was all a big joke.  Just a joke, he gasped and choked as his throat filled with blood.  Dimly, he could hear other gunfire taking Mike out.  "It was just a joke," Bryan thought, as the lights went out on him.

  I guess I feel like it's an invasion of privacy.  Do you have a warrant, mister?  Yeah, I know I post the shit on line, and yeah I know it's public.  But instead of reading JUST the part you feel is relevant, you need to read the rest of this, to know the context.  And by the way, there is alot of it.  Did you read about my divorce?  My children?  My childhood?  My hopes and dreams?  Did you read about my past experiences with Domino's Pizza, and how I always came back them, the faithful, loyal lapdog, ready to take it up the ass again for this completely misguided sense of duty that the corporate world has done it's best to beat out of me? 
  To read this all is to not necessarily know the truth, because I don't know the truth.  But to read this is to know *ME*.  To get a sense of what is in my heart and soul, for better or worse.  To know the demons I struggle with.  To know my pain and sorrow and everyday life.  To know my thoughts  and feelings.  To know that I'm full of shit.  To know that I mix truth with lies and fiction, as easily as you mix your anti-psychotics with your mood stabilizers.  Why do I do it?  Well, first of all I don't need a reason.  Secondly, it's how I am.  But thirdly, and the reason this whole thing started, is that I'm writing here to practice writing.  I want to be writer when I grow up.  I mix truth and fiction, trying to get a feel for *story*. I have novels that I want to write, I have stand-up comedy that I want to perform.  I *have* been on stage, you putzes, in case you didn't know that.
  If you go back to the beginning and follow up to now, hopefully you will see an evolution in my writing technique.  I used to write like I talked.  Or worse, like I thought.  Slowly I learned to use tense more correctly, and also how to write a sentence more clearly.  Before, the last four sentences would have been one, filled with dashes, ellipses, commas, and a train of thought with no caboose.  I hope I've come a long way in terms of improving my technical skills at writing.  Of course, the creative part you can't do much about. It's rather like herpes.  Either you have it or you don't, and if you do there's not much you can do about it except wait it out or spread it around.
  Trying to incriminate Mike based on something I wrote here is laughable at best, and at worst it is the flimsiest sort of unsubstantiated rumor mongering there is.  You don't know what really happened.  Your corporate guy was there, and he doesn't know what really happened.  I could see it his eyes, the level of near-miss in his misunderstanding.  He almost, but not quite, knew what was going on.  (And I am speaking of course about the whole provel-cheese-on-thin-crust debacle, and not something more sinister as you would like to wish.)  Mike had very little idea what was going on.  And you, sitting there after the fact looking for clues in a ranting diatribe from a disgruntled former employee have *NO* idea whatsoever what is going on.  The role of supervisor is purely hindsight.  "You should have done that.  You should not have done this."  Come along after the fire is out, carefully analyze the situation, and then brilliantly say, "I'm going to call the fire department."

  There is a group of people whose job it is to monitor the internet for any and all references to their company, and I'm not even sure what they are looking for.  The shame of it is, as far as they are concerned, is that I'm not getting any money for this, otherwise--
  No, they still couldn't make me stop.  It is still a free country, despite O-Fucking-Bama's desire to control the airwaves and the internet and independent thought.
  But I'm wondering--and I'm talking to you, people at Domino's Pizza Inc whose job it is to monitor the internet for any and all references to the aforementioned corporate entity--just how in the hell did you get such a lame job?
  And look, I don't mind you reading it.  Enjoy.  But why not leave a comment once in a while, huh?  Let me know if you really enjoyed an article, or something like that, you know?  Don't be a lurker.  Interact.  I need the encouragement.  Thank you and good night.

   A quick little story.

  Back in the early nineties, when it seems like everything was happening to me, I lived in this old house in Jennings, built circa 1920.  High ceilings, great craftsmanship, awesome windows.  Shitty neighborhood.  To be fair, in 1920 it was a classy place.
  In addition to the shitty neighborhood, the plumbing was shitty as well.  The water--geez, I had nightmares about the plumbing.  The bathroom was upstairs, like on All In The Family.  Periodically my failed attempts at plumbing made themselves known by dripping on me while I sat in the living room.  The drainage system was fucked as well, and occasionally the sewer would back up into the basement.  After one such nightmare, we were all in the basement trying to clean it up, and see what was salvageable. 
  We had only moved in recently...so this was actually 1988, then.  We had a young Vietnamese dude living with us named Sonny.  Since we had only recently moved in, there was still some of my ex's brother's stuff in the basement that we eventually had to throw out.  One of the things down there was one of those old washing machines, the kind with, like a wringer on top, I guess?  But it was electric, because there was a motor to agitate the clothes.  Seems pretty high tech, or I'm just old school because I do all of my agitating manually now.
  We had no idea if it worked, but Sonny wanted to try it.  He reached down into the 4 inches of water he was standing in and found the ancient, brittle, frayed cord.  He saw an outlet.  He reached to plug it in.
  "SONNY DON'T!"  He stopped.  "Holy shit, man--you're standing in water with a wet cord in your hand."
  "So?"  Like a caller to Mr Obvious, he didn't see the connection.
  "So don't plug it in, dude.  I don't want to see you shake and pee."
  He shrugged.  Sonny had kind of a deathwish.  "I don't see the big deal."
  "Yeah, well I'm standing in the water too.  Let me get on the steps first if you really want to die."
  "Oh."  He dropped the cord.
  We never did find out if it worked.  But at least I lived to tell the tale. 

  And now is the winter of our discontent.  But it's not winter yet.  Maybe this is the fall of my ambivalence?
  In the fall, though, I do get energized and active.  Insanely, so.  Luckily, I am one of the newly unemployed but I still have a job.  I still have my day job at the bank, but I am persona non gratis at Domino's Pizza.  I need to find another part time job soon, but I decided to take the month of October "off" basically.  I still have one job, but it's like I'm on vacation.  Just forty hours versus the 65-plus that I was working?  Yeah, I'm on vacation.  I have so many ideas and projects and plans and designs and hopes and dreams and wishes that I don't think I'll be able to fit them in to one month, even a special month like October.
  Octo is my favorite month.  I love when it turns cooler, and what with the crisp leaves, and the air, and the colors, and whole Octoberness to it.  It's just downright bitchen.
  So this has come at a good time.  Right when I am feeling instinctively motivated to get some shit done I have the opportunity.  You may call it immature and irresponsible, but I call it Providence.  And as long as I am in Rhode Island, I'm going to build some shit.
  Saturday Detroit and I went to a friend's house from work for a bbq/bonfire, and I got fairly drunk, which I needed after the week I had been through.  Then Sunday, I finished the job Detroit had started, taking the fireplace out.  I had the boys as laborers, removing the pieces I dismantled, and finally getting to the heart of it, we put it on a furniture dolly and carted it out.  Where we stand now:  most of the fireplace is gone, but it's in the garage.  I hope to be able to recycle the sheet metal.  The chimney is still in place, and I intend to leave it on the roof, and close it off below the rafters, then fix the ceiling.  Also, there are still two pieces of slate stuck to the wall.  I may have to remove the wall around them and replace it to get those off.  Then we have to patch the walls and paint over 20 plus years of mismatched walls.  I'd call the score 9-8, with me up over the fireplace in the bottom of the eighth.
  So we'll see how much I get done.  We'll see how much my brain lets me accomplish.  Here's a short list:
  finish the wall where the fireplace was
  build some walls and put up some doors in basement
  redo the basement wiring a bit
  get up in the attic and fix that wiring for ceiling fan installation
  finish cleaning out and arranging garage
  some electrical work in the garage.

  And there are some minor projects too, fixing some things that are broke, like the sink and the curtains and so forth.  Luckily--and I love saying this, I love the feeling--I know where all of my tools are and how to get to them.  I can do pretty much any project for which I have tools.
  Of course the simple things stump me, and that's why I have people I can call.  The alternator went out of Detroit's van last week.  Wednesday night, her boy took it to give someone a jumpstart.  I don't know how or why, but the next day, the alternator was no good.  It ran the battery dead.
  We had it towed to the house.  The alt sits right on top, one of the smartest things Ford ever did.  I got it off easily and took it to Auto Zone to test it.  FAIL.  Yeah, and then the guy went to the counter to look up how much one is for me, because I'm a sucker who pays regular price in shit.  One hundred forty-nine dollars.
  I said, "I need to check with the wife."  Actually that was just an excuse, because I was not going to buy a new one.  Saturday I called a junk yard and they said they had it for 20 bucks if I bring in the old one.  Hell yeah I'll bring in the old one.  I don't need ANOTHER large greasy paperweight that rolls off my desk.
  It was a fun day at the junk yard.  I took Detroit and she enjoyed the carnival-like atmosphere.  Nothing brightens my day like going to the junk yard, I'll tell you that.
  Monday I finally got the new alt in the van, because Sunday, as per Detroit, I tore out the fireplace.  I had to call my cousin and get the number to the mechanic he knows and call him and ask him a question (about the alt) and have him talk me through it, but it went super smooth.  Now, on to bigger and better things.

  Likewise, this is about another call I got when I lived in Jennings in the early 90s.  Of course I was sleeping, and the phone rings.  It's early.  I can't really decipher the time from the clock.  Sometime between 6AM and Purple, before boiled eggs but after fictional prose.  Maybe I should put my glasses on.
  I stumbled across the room and grabbed the phone.  In a gravelly voice I muttered, "H-hello?"
  A woman's voice answered.  "Oh, I'm sorry.  It's early for you.  Did I wake you?" 
  "Yeah..."  my eyes weren't quite open.
  "Oh," she responded, "are you naked?"
  "Yeah--"   A perfectly reasonable question, I thought.  After all, I was.  I still didn't--
  Her voice was more upbeat.  "Oooh!  Do have a hard-on?"
  "Who *IS* this?"  Only now did the question even occur to me.
  *Click.*
  Well, I did have a hard on.  I had just woken up, after all, and I had to pee.  I went to the bathroom, and then back to bed.  To this day I still wonder who it was.

  Time for a look back, because this is how my mind works.  Stop me if you've heard this before.  I mean, if you think you can.
  Back in 19 and...shit, when was it?  It was the early, early 90s.  I lived in Jennings, and we had new neighbors.  My old neighbor, the last white guy besides me in the neighborhood, worked hard to sell his house so he could move, because Jennings was (oh, and still is--don't kid yourself) a shithole.  He even cut my small front yard for me, to make everything look better.
  So enter the new family.  A typical black extended family, with a single mom, a couple of kids from various baby-daddies, a shiftless uncle, and maybe a cousin with a baby as well.  They were nice people who felt so relieved to move out of the dangerous neighborhood in Wellston into this nice, suburban utopia.
  Boy, did their Realtor ever lie to them.
  I was working at Domino's at the time, of course, and since we closed at one AM I slept later than the typical 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning.  I would sleep until 10 or so if I could, depending on the child.  Mitchell was a baby, sleeping in his crib, when I got this call about 8 o'clock in the morning from the oldest son next door, Anthony.  Anthony was in his early to mid 20s, which put his mom at about mid-30s.  I'm not cynical, I'm a realist.
  Ring!
  "Hello?"
  "Bryan."  He said it quickly, like a one-syllable word.
  "Yeah?"
  "I got a quession for ya.."
  "*Who* is this?"
  "It's Amfony!"  He said it like I should recognize his voice.  Hell, I don't even recognize it when my wife would call.  I had barely spoken with this guy.  We were hardly BFF.  And like I said, it was early.
  And yes, his name is Anthony.  And yes, he did pronounce it this way:  "Amfony."
  I rolled up, took a wake-up deep breath.  "What's up?"
  You had to hand it to Amfony.  He was a go-getter.  An entrepreneur.  Since he was having trouble finding work, he was going to start his own company.  "I'm gonna start my own lawn-care bidness.  I'm writing out what I want on my bidness card right now."
  "Oh, good."
  "Yeah.  So, how do you spell 'bidness'?  It's B-I-D- something, right?"
  Only my lack of sleep kept me from the clarity of seeing the extreme humor of this.  In retrospect, I should have said, "Yes.  It's B-I-D-N-E-S-S.  Bidness."  It's the kind of thing you would see on the intarwebs:

Amfony's Lawn Ker Bidness And Shit I will hook you up fat, Dog. Gimme a Holla

    

I guess I was nicer back then.  Instead of fucking with him, I corrected him on it, but I don’t think he believed me, though.

   Knowing what I know now, which I will keep as a surprise for you, I was wondering if I should post this at all.  But I wrote it, and I'm gonna.  It's probably not that interesting.  Should I highlight the funny parts for you?
 
  One of the exciting things one has to look forward to when working in a chain restaurant/franchise/whatever is the arbitrary application of rules mis-enforced and randomly directed for incoherent reasons and over-exaggerated importance.  In other words, The Big Inspection.
  They can come annually, or quarterly, or if you work in a really sadistic place, monthly.  If you are getting monthly inspections your upper management has too much time on their hands.  Not only that, it's an indicator that the corporate structure is top-heavy and any chance you may have had for a decent bonus as percentage of profit is eaten up by the unnecessary layers in the office, who spend their time and actually have meetings and spreadsheets trying to figure out how to keep the people who work in the store from getting more of the bonus that they earned so that it will go to them.
  At Domino's this Big Inspection is called the OER, and I could give a shit less what it stands for.  We get it twice a year.  Ever since July, there has been the big push to get ready for the second inspection.  This OER has a hyper-inflated sense of importance over things that used to matter, like making a good pizza, raising sales, and running costs.  The OER measures things like:
  Store cleanliness.  I'll get to that.  Oh, but just let me say this:  it's a bunch of fucking bullshit what happened to me in 1996.  I was manager of a store that I had completely turned around.  I had sales up 24 goddamn percent over the previous year.  I had turned it from a pathetic shithole to a pathetic shining star.  I was profiting, and I had gotten several raises as we.  I was a golden boy.
  During a week of my big sales blitz called a mega-week, the Director of Operations, Gary, came in to my store Friday afternoon before dinner rush.  I thought it was to see how well things were going, give me a pep talk, a little pat on the shoulder, or something like that.  Instead he derided me because the tile baseboards in the back of the store were dirty--still dirty, even though I had been told last week to get them cleaned.  Never mind that I was busy with this promotion and on pace to not only break the old store record but stomp on it and make it my bitch.  Never mind that I was profiting, raising sales, and giving good service.  My baseboards in the back of the store that no one sees are dirty, and maybe they should think about replacing me.
  And several months later, they did.
  Service times.  Even though we haven't had a guarantee since 1993, we (and other pizza chains) have to have an arbitrary metric to measure service so that bonus points and money can be deducted from the manager.  Although survey after survey as well as tons of anecdotal evidence supports the completely logical notion that customers don't care as much about exactly how long it takes for delivery as much as they care about getting an accurate estimate, Domino's Pizza continues to measure based on the faulty yardstick of a thirty-minute delivery.
  Not only that, but if the pizza leaves the store in over 15 minutes, it is counted towards bad service.  Eighty-five percent or more of the deliveries MUST leave the store in less than 15.  If they leave at over 20 minutes, they are automatically counted as a late.  Only a small percentage of any deliveries in any Domino's take ten minutes or more to drive there.
  So these are faulty metrics.  My own experience since 1993 can be summarized in this conversation, a conglomeration of THOUSANDS that I have had in the past 16 years:
  "Okay, your total is 17.83, and we'll have that out to you in 35 to 45 minutes."
  "Okay, great.  Thanks."
  Once in a while--especially from 1993-1996--you would get a sorehead who would claim to want it in 30 minutes.  But in actuality, what they wanted was 3 bucks off if we didn't make it. 
  Uniform and Other Standards.  This is pretty much the definition of unimportant and arbitrary, and yet there are hundreds of people employed and millions spent on enforcing these "standards."  I know and I understand that in a corporate environment, you want to strip people of individuality and replace it with "professionalism," which means applying uniform standards as a matter of life and death.  Seriously.  I have to wear a belt?  I have to, to hold up my pants, actually.  But I have to for the job? 
  How is wearing jeans going to keep me from being more effective at my job?  Conversely, how does wearing khakis make me better at my job?
  Product properly dated and stored.  Listen, I've had my food service safety and sanitation certification.  I know about food storage, expiration dating, and so forth.  Maybe I know too much.
  I know, for instance, that for many things that are dated the dating process defines the word arbitrary.  Consider this:  a long time ago, in a pizza place far, far away, we were having a problem with the green peppers--they would expire within five days of getting them, because they had seven days on them, and two of those were in transit.  "Is there any way," we asked, "to get green peppers with a longer shelf life?"
  The DNC, Domino's National Commissary, owned and operated by DPI, or Domino's Pizza Inc, came up with a revolutionary, ground-breaking solution:  They changed the dates on the green peppers so they had nine days instead of seven, giving us seven days instead of five.
  Did they use a different process to prepare the green peppers for us?  Nope.  Did they use different green peppers, or a different supplier?  Nope and nada.  Did they spray the green peppers or soak them in a preservative that will eventually alter our DNA and mutate us into half-human, half-goat monsters?  Hah!  I wish.  Not a ba-a-a-a-d idea, though.
  No, they just changed the dates.
  It was a revelation for me.  How do you know when anything is *really* expired?  Really?  Because it *says* so?  Who says?  If the bread is moldy, most likely I'm not going to eat it.  Hell, if it's hard, I'm not going to.  If raw meat has that sickly-sweet smell of rot, you definitely don't want it.  If it's starting to get slimy, you want to be careful.
  But cooked meat?  How long is cooked meat good for?  Refrigerated, seven days.  It says so right here.  But I...I don't believe that anymore.  It's good until it doesn't seem appetizing.  I don't believe in expiration dates.  I believe in...subjective analysis.
  Take this example.  Dried, cured, processed meat, like summer sausage or pepperoni should in theory last for a year, just hanging by a rope in your garage like drifter that you gave a ride to late one night.  But suddenly, once it is sealed in a bag and put in a box and shipped to you to put in your walkin, it's only good for seven more days?  The shit is designed to outlast Armageddon but you can't use it past the Fall Premiere of your favorite shows?
  Everything we make a pizza with is supposed to be refrigerated.  Everything.  Absolutely EVERYTHING, no exceptions.  This is sound food safety advice.  Everything.
  Except--
  Well, the dough.  The dough has to proof.  To proof, it needs either time or temp or both.  You have to watch it, though, because dough is pretty volatile.  And to help that, you want the dough actually warm when you use it.  Why?  Because when it's cold it holds its shape and is much easier to handle.  Therefore warm must be better.  These pizza scientist say that warm dough cooks and rises better and they have a point, to a certain degree.  I'm not even going to argue this one.  But I can make a pizza that you can't tell whether the dough was warm or cold because mine is evenly shaped.  It's easier to spread fear and control across the board.
  But that's it, just the dough.  Everything else must be refrigerated.
  Wait, what about the sauce?  Oh, yeah.  It turns out that it's better if you put the sauce on at room temperature.  I get that. I understand how much the difference between 70 degrees and 40 degrees makes when you put it in a 500 degree oven.  Also, it can only be at room temp for six or eight hours, so if it is out too long, you have to throw it out.
  But it--it's not spoiled.  It doesn't smell bad.  There's nothing wrong with it.  There may be some accumulated bacteria over time but that is world in which we live.  Never mind; throw it out.  Then it's waste.  Then you have to get more.  Buy more.  From whom do we purchase our foodstuffs?
  Why, DNC, which is owned by DPI.  All these small accumulated wastes based on random rules that have no real basis in the real world that the rest of us live in are conveniently arranged to cost the stores small amounts of money.  Multiply it by the over 5000 stores nationally, and you have a sweet little addition to the bottom line. 
  Maybe I'm just cynical.
  Except for this:
  These two certain sauces we use, the garlic parm and the marinara (not the pizza sauce; this stuff has texture and is for the pastas) is by standard mandatory that it be used at room temp.  Therefore it MUST be left out.  However, it has a room temp shelf life of eight hours.  In eight hours, you're not going to use much.  Hell, in eight days we aren't going to use much. 
  It would really matter not at all--it would not affect the quality one iota to use these in a refrigerated state.  But since we have to keep them at room temp, even in the smallest amount they are going to get wasted and thrown out.  But seriously, really--they DO NOT have to be at room temp to use.  We are not master chefs here.  This is Domino's mother fucking Pizza, not some five-star restaurant that I'm too poor to even walk past.
  I understand that they want to be perfect in everything.  But that is a fallacy from the start, because if you wanted to be perfect in everything, you sure wouldn't start at Domino's.  Besides, although this stuff works well in the carefully controlled conditions of the Domino's Pizza corporate test Kitchen, I live in the real world.  And in the real world, you can't do everything the way you *want* to, because there are other consideration, like costs, the bottom line, and profitability.  In other words, reality.
  The public relations created answer is, of course:  well, you need to raise sales to a sufficient level at this store to not only use adequate amounts of the product but also offset any other wastes you may have.  Therefore, it is your failing that caused this problem.
  But again, I live in the real world.  There are only so many nickles you can squeeze out of a neighborhood for pizza.  It would be so much easy and much more logical to just be realistic.
  But I learned that you can't argue with corporate; they are always right.  If they are wrong, you misunderstood, and they actually are right.

I'm not sure if its good or bad, but my blog right here that you hold in your hot little hands was number 7 on Google for "Moral Responsibility for 30-minute pizza delivery."  I don't want to show up that high on any search that includes the word "Moral."

  With any luck, I'll be getting fired from Domino's soon.
  But probably not soon enough.

  Today, by the way, is the 23 anniversary of when I started working at Domino's the first time.  Back in nineteen and eight-six--ah, I remember it well.
  I had just been hired by the manager the previous week, and when I showed up on my first day, the smell of pizza mixed with the crisp fall air has created a lasting memory for me.  And although I don't like these toppings on *my* pizza, the smell of green peppers and black olives cooked is such a distinct flavor that it brings to mind all the memories of the past at Domino's.
  I showed up on my first day, nervous and excited, and ready to work.
  "Can I help you?"
  "Yeah, I'm supposed to start today."
  "Start what?"
  "Start work.  I was just hired."
  "When?  By who?"
  This isn't going well.  "Uh...last week.  By the manager, I guess."
  "What did he look like?"
  "He had a hat, a red and white shirt, and a mustache."
  "We all look like that."
  "I know."
  As it turns out, the guy who was manager the previous week was now manager at another store.  Luckily for me, the new manager here decided to keep me.  His name was Tom.  I'd like to give a shout-out to my brother Tom!  Thanks for giving a guy a chance!  I'd also like to thank the Academy--

  I'm right now coming off of three days in a row at Domino's, in addition to my day job.  Since Tuesday morning until now (Friday at 5pm), I've:
  slept 18 hours, including naps (2+4+1+4+2+5)
  and worked 53 hours (7.5+7.5+6.5+7+7.5+8+9.5)

  It was a normal night, or it started out that way.  Stan was dayshift through dinner.  Usually he sticks around way too long, but for some reason, he bolted out of there about 7pm, as quick as he could for some reason. 
  Oh, I know the reason.
  The details aren't important.  Someone ordered a special with cheesebread, but wanted cinnastix with it instead.  It only rang up as cheesebread, so Stan told Paro (or Belgium driver) "Make these cinnastix."
  Okay.
  But he didn't he made them breadstix.  The end of the world, I know.
  This customer apparently knows this is tricky, because they checked it at the door.  Paro brought it back, said we needed cinnastix.  Here's where it gets painful.
  Paro is hard to understand at times, and has difficulty understanding us.  However, this was a simple mistake, much simpler than the ones Stan makes minute by minute.  Stan berated Paro continuously for several minutes over this.  We also had a customer in the store.  Stan didn't want to listen to what Paro said, just kept talking over him.  And told him at least 8 times to make this new bread coming out a cinnastick.  "Just make sure you make it a cinnastick."  Over and over and over. 
  Stan continued to harp on it, and wouldn't let it go.  The final time he said, "Just make sure you make it a cinnastick," I turned to him from my spot on the line.
  I was alone, making the pizzas while Stan flailed out of control at the cut table, continuing to chastise Paro over this transgression.  He said it again, and I turned to him.  "Stan, please stop saying that.  We get the idea.  Quit talking to him like he's a child.  It's uncalled for."
  So now he turns on me.  I'm not treating him like a child, *he's* treating *me* like a child.  I won't be talked to like that.  You need to stay out of this.  I think I know how to handle this.  I know when I'm over the line.
  I turned back around to make pizzas, but mouthed the words, "No, you really, really don't."
  Stan continued to mutter to himself.  Finally, Paro left with the bread and his order.  Stan clamped his mouth shut, stocked a few things up on the makeline, and before I knew it, left.  Of course, he had to get a ride from Mike.  Mike asked me, while waiting for Stan, "What's his deal?"
  I gave him the you-know-how-Stan-is eye-roll, and then said, "Just remember that whatever he tells you in the car is bullshit."  Because Stan always twists the story around to not be his fault, because it never is.  And it's not his fault what happened to the bread--but the way he over-reacted his completely his fault.
  What I hope for the most is that Stan says something to me about expecting an apology from me.  I'm not going to apologize to him.  For two reasons:
  First, I did nothing wrong.  That in itself is not reason enough to not apologize, as anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows.  But I'm not sleeping with him, so call that reason 1.5.
  Second, he owes me an apology from a year ago.  Remember the thing with my brother's pig roast last year, and I stopped by Domino's to get some wings?  It was something I had been planning for a long time.  But when I get there, Stan is thoroughly upset because of his own incompetence (showing up late, not getting a time order made in time, getting busy and getting behind, and forgetting to make stuff) that he doesn't want me in the way to make my wings and won't let me help him get the shit made.  He was stubborn about it.  I yelled at him, and stormed out.
  Later, I apologized for yelling at him.  He thanked me.  What he did not do was apologize himself.  Maybe he did feel regret, but the words "I'm sorry" did not pass his lips.  It's a thing with him, he can never admit fault.  And so, I will not either, and the words shall not pass my lips.

  But that's not why I might get fired.

  We got our big corporate inspection last night, the equivalent of a random drug test with a surprise prostrate exam thrown in for free.  It comes twice a year, like a threesome with Santa and the Easter Bunny, and it is also full of surprises.
  It was after 10 pm.  Hell, I figured after 8pm, the chances of seeing anyone were astronomical.  Well, I should buy a lottery ticket, because about 1030, some guy in uniform comes in and stands at the counter, and it's not Mike.  Fuck.   I can see him through the glass.  I took the two beer cans from the desk and sat them below the desk on a tub of uniforms, and shoved it back, then went up to greet him.  Oh, shit.  it's the Guy.  You know, *the Guy*.
  We shake hands, and I wonder if he can smell beer on my breath.  He goes in the office and wants me to do something on the computer, and then make a pizza that he can test.  I quickly pick up a few things on the desk, and get rid of my little foil ashtray.  I put on my had and picked up my phone and went to the front, trying to call Mike, who was on a run.  No answer.
  I made a pizza.
  Oh, wait.  Before I did all that, while Tom (that's the guy, not the same as our supervisor) was in the office printing up our service report, I quickly went into the walkin...and grabbed the half dozen cans of beer that were out in plain site in a dough tray and slid them between the wheels under a stack of dough.  The call was safe at the plate, and I got up and dusted my knees off.
  Then I made the pizza.
  Mike comes back with no hat on either.  I'm not wearing an apron, but the chance of me needing it are pretty low.  Tom, meanwhile, does a walk-through of the back and the walkin, checking expiration dates and so forth.  He wants to check the money in Mike's pocket, because he's supposed to have less than 20 dollars.
  Mike has three hundred on him.
  I had my back turned, making the pizza.  I heard Tom say, "Twenty-nine dollars.  What kind of tip did you get on that last run?"  Mike managed to pull out a separate stack of cash, but he still got busted.  Still 29 is better than 300.  Mike came to me for change, then, which I gave him.  As I gave it to him, I dropped practically all the cash in the drawer, because it's supposed to be less than 75 dollars.  Tom goes back to the office, and then comes out and wants to see what's in the drawer.
  He follows Mike out to his car to check his cartop, and when he did that I grabbed the beer cans that were hidden in the office and moved them to the trash in the back, and put them in the bottom.
  This little dance went on for an hour or more.  Luckily I had stalled on breaking down the line, otherwise we would have been busted on that as well.  Why?  Corporate guidelines state that it can't be broken down until close.  I've got a lot of experience with bullshit, so I recognize it when I see it.  And that's bullshit.  I cleaned up around him as well as I could, but I couldn't get to the safe and I couldn't count the food.  Fuck me.
  He asks me to make a pizza so can watch.  He likes to watch.  (hahaha)  A thin crust PC, pepperoni and extra cheese.  Sounds to me like there is some sort of catch, and so I go to it, wary of what I am doing.  I grab a shell, screen it, sauce it, and approach the cheese.  Aaahh.  The old Extra Cheese Gambit.
  I hate to break it to you, kids, but if you order extra cheese on a pizza, what it means is you get a little more cheese on top.  And if you have a topping like pepperoni, you get a lot less on the bottom.  But with a corporate guy watching me here, of course I'm going to make it right.  First, a little provel, then fill in with the mozzarella, then throw down the pepperoni, then some cheese on the top.  sprinkle some oregano on it, and pop it in the oven.  Perfect!
  I didn't do it right.
  You see, since he didn't specifically *ask* for provel, I should have only made it with the mozz.  Corporate guidelines.  It's always a good idea to argue with a cop, or with the guy who is grading you.  I said, "St Louis is a thin crust market.  We put provel on every thin, unless they ask us NOT to.  Only one person does that."
  His argument amounted to fascism to me.  "Corporate guidelines state it differently.  They trump." 
  I relented, a bit, but I then tried a new tack.  "What we are doing is *Exceeding* the customer's expectations."
  He studied and researched the topic, and grabbed a menu.  The difference is technical and shouldn't matter to any of you because it barely matters to me and I was in the middle of it.  I was arguing a case that I didn't give a shit about except the fact that I didn't want to be wrong, and even that desire was losing its appeal.
  Finally, he's wrapping it up.  We passed, but with a 3-star.  It's no 5-star.  It's no 4-star.  But it's also no FAIL.  The things he got us on was stuff like uniforms (no hats, no apron), expired product (damn short shelf life on some of this stuff), Mike and too much money (if he only knew), and he said there was evidence of smoking in the store.  That one, right there, is the reason I might get fired, because they (the franchise I work for, not Corporate) said that's the rule.  We'll see.
  Other things were our service times, which we can only do so much about.  The store was clean enough and the pizzas looked good.  Oh, but I made the thin crust wrong, so that was a few points.  After he left I called Adam the new manager, and he bitched, not at me but about them coming in after ten pm.  I thought it was shit as well, and seems like a tactic that is pitting the corporation versus the franchisees.  There are some other things going on as well, but I see this as a subtle thing.  They have offered some prize money to stores that get a five star, and even more to stores that get a perfect score.  Therefore it is in their best interest to make sure no stores score perfect, and very few get a five.  That's why we got our inspection so late, to throw us off our game intentionally.  As a consequence, instead of getting out at 1207, I left about 115 am.  And this was my third day in a row at Domino's, working on very little sleep.  Bullshit, just bullshit.
  I wonder how many points we would have lost if he had found the beer?