Sunday, April 24, 2011

Dick Tricks and Poop Crunches

Happy Easter! Or as I like to call it, Greaseter.

The Jeanners and I busted our respective asses this weekend. Well, actually this Friday and Saturday because I had to work today. But anyway, Friday and Saturday we busted our asses. Got some drywall hung in our future bedroom and also our future mancave/unconceived potential future child's room. And because I'm a sucker for before and after pictures, I give you before:



And after:



There is a guy who has been coming to the store for the whole time I've worked there, pretty regularly, and he works for the local symphony orchestra. He is actually the librarian for the symphony, and he's a 100% classical music expert. Like, seriously. An expert. A super smart guy, always rumpled, bespectacled, balding with whisps of hair on the top that are always sticking up and waving around with the lightest of breezes, and totally and completely depressed. He is completely devoted to the arts and is watching interest in and support for the arts grow smaller and smaller every day. Especially his branch of the arts. And bsically, he looks around at the world and it seems like the complete opposite of the type of place he'd like to be, and it seems to be moving in the wrong direction, and he always seemed to be terribly lonely and isolated and basically I have always just been waiting for the day when he stopped coming in and I could safely assume that he had finally committed suicide. Well, he came in today and I was asking him how things at the symphony are going, and we had a variation of a conversation that we've had many times where he tells me that things at the symphony are going shittily, and things at symphonies around the country are going shittily, and that people aren't supporting the arts anymore, and that the arts "save us from ourselves," and that without art and literature and music, what do we become? I said "robots" but the correct answer was "shit." He actually started crying as he was talking with me about this. And I felt really bad, because I have total respect for the guy and I agree with him quite a bit and I can empathize with his rationally suicidal outlook on life. And so we finished up with that conversation and I figured it was just another typical conversation with Mr. K, but then he told me that he had a girlfriend (which is big news because one of the things that he was always lonely and suicidal about was the fact that he always seemed to be interested in one woman or another be they were never interest in him), and they had gone to high school together and had crushes on each other, but never acted on them, and then she got married and moved to Texas and had a son, then divorced, etc. etc. Anway, she'd been in Texas, and really lonely, and had been doing that thing where you pray for "a sign," and somehow she was visiting Baltimore and on a bus, and the bus lurched to a stop and Mr. K, who was also on the bus, bumped into her. And they chatted and then Mr. K sent her a message on classmates.com and she's been coming up to visit and stuff and now there is talk of new girlfriend possibly moving to Baltimore and moving in with Mr. K. So he said (today) that he had to run because he had to seriously clean up his house.

Anyway, it was cute and funny and he seemed a little less suicidal.