Wednesday, June 26, 2013

This Is Why I Love Jack Kerouac's Writing

THIS IS AN OLD DINER like the ones Cody and his father ate in, long ago, with that oldfashioned railroad car ceiling and sliding doors - the board where bread is cut is worn down fine as if with bread dust and a plane; the icebox ("Say I got some nice homefries tonight Cody!") is a huge brownwood thing with oldfashioned pull-out handles, windows, tile walls, full of lovely pans of eggs, butter pats, piles of bacon - old lunchcarts always have a dish of sliced raw onions ready to go on hamburgs.  Grill is ancient and dark and omits an odor which is really succulent, like you would expect from the black hide of an old ham or an old pastrami beef - The lunchcart has stools with smooth slickwood tops - there are wooden drawers for where you find the long loaves of sandwich bread - The countermen: either Greeks or have big red drink noses. Coffee is served in white porcelain mugs - sometimes brown and cracked. An old pot with half an inch of black fat sits on the grill, with a wire fryer (also caked) sitting in it, ready for french fries - Melted fat is kept warm in an old small white coffee pot.  A zinc siding behind the grill gleams from the brush of rags over fat stains - The cash register has a wooden drawer as old as the wood of a rolltop desk.  The newest things are the steam cabinet, the aluminum coffee urns, the floor fans - But the marble counter is ancient, cracked, marked, carved, and under it is the old wood counter of late twenties, early thirties, which had come to look like the bottoms of old courtroom benches only with knife-marks and scars and something suggesting decades of delicious greasy food. Ah!

The smell is always of boiling water mixed with beef, boiling beef, like the smell of the great kitchens of parochial boarding schools or old hospitals, the brown basement kitchens' smell - the smell is curiously the hungriest in America - it is FOODY insteady of just spicy, or - it's like dishwasher soap just washed a pan of hamburg - nameless - memoried - sincere - makes the guts of men curl in October.

-Jack Kerouac
From Visions of Cody

Monday, June 24, 2013

Home Alone 3 (or, SHOWERPUFF DOWN!)

The Jeanners has left for the day, and she will be traveling to Atlanta, where she will be spending the next 3 days.  So I am home alone with the little dude, left to fend for ourselves with no feminine assistance.  Here's what I am predicting:

1.  A decent amount of time at the Y.

2.  Lots of Civilization III playing after the dude has gone to bed.

3.  Probably not a lot of leafy greens goin' on. 

4.  Attempts to clean the house and get it ready for a week's worth of visitors that will be commencing on Thursday. 

This morning I made a mosquito trap.  It will hopefully decrease the number of mosquitoes in our yard as the number of mosquitoes inside the trap increases.  I am skeptical, but hopeful. 

I think I have been settling into unemployment nicely, thank you very much.  Although to be honest, being unemployed from B&N doesn't feel all that different than being employed at the B&N.  In a weird way.  I just don't have to go there anymore.  But really, for a good chunk of the week I didn't have to go there during the day, anyway, and then there were lots of nights that I didn't have to go there, either.  So think that my schedule there was just erratic enough that it makes the absence of the schedule seem not that different.  Don't know if that makes any sense. 

It's taken me like 4 hours to finish this blog post.  I hope the time and effort shows in its well-craftedness. 

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Separation Anxiety

Been working on getting Sam to be OK with being away from Mom and Dad for any period of time.  There's a little daycare at the YMCA and he pretty much just screams and cries the whole time he's there.  And then when I get back there after a 20 minute workout or run he comes tear-assing over with tears streaming down his face and gives me a look that says "How could you leave me like that?  Don't you like me anymore?"

So that's what we've been working on.

Aside from that, having a Y membership has been awesome.  Totally gives me something to do with him every day, if I want or need to.  Cause he really likes the pool, and being in the pool with him is easy and fun, and kills an hour or an hour and a half.

Jeanners has entered her busy season at work and has been putting in a lot of hours this week, so I've been on Sam patrol more than usual.  It hasn't been too bad.  Tomorrow I've got a meeting down at the building, and I'll be taking him with me, so I hope he stays calm and quiet.  I'll have to bring some books and tows and stuff.

What else?  I'm currently watching Pretty in Pink, which I have never seen.   I think I was pretty much Duckie in grade school and junior high.  The whole "riding your bike by a girl's house a hundred times" really rings a bell.  I think I had graduated to Blaine by high school, though. 

Not working has been fun so far!  I feel like Jack Kerouac, except with a kid.  I guess the kid kinda ruins the whole free-wheelin', On the Road vibe, though.  Oh well. 

Sunday, June 16, 2013

All Done

No more working at the B&N.  End of chapter.





We joined the YMCA last week, and took Sam for his first swim this morning.  He seemed to like it a lot, splashing and shrieking and occasionally trying to drink the pool water.

Now it is nap time!  Where's Jeannie?  Doesn't she know it's nap time?

Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Beginning of the End

3 more shifts left at work.  Tonight's my last closing shift.  After tonight I will never again say:
Attention, B&N customers.  The time is now 9:45 and B&N books, music, and cafe will be closing in 15 minutes.  We ask at this time that you bring any final purchases to the registers on the upper or lower levels.  Once again, the time is now 9:45 and B&N will be closing in 15 minutes.
 I was always pretty good at that.  I've got a good voice for overhead announcements.

The Jeanners and I have joined the YMCA.  Gonna try and have a healthy summer and get the lil' dude exposed to some poolin'.  Also, as I told Jeannie this morning, the Y is the "perfect place to lick d**ks."  

What else?  Not much.  Just counting down the days.  Sam is cute, and walking more.  Sometimes across the room.  He's also been pooping on the floor when Jeannie lets him crawl around without a diaper. 

We've been getting a lot of rain.  Before we got all the rain, we used our rain barrels to water the garden, and it worked perfectly.  Which is nice, because if it didn't work I would've been sad because the rain barrels were expensive and, really, if you can't water your garden with them then they're kinda just useless and ugly.

Thassall for now. 

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Changeover

Worked my last changeover at the Nobes today.  That probably means nothing to anybody who hasn't worked in the music dept. of the Nobes, but changeover is like the one day a month when I actually had to do work, when I had to be organized and move quickly and tell people what to do.  So I guess I've done about a hundred of them over the last 10+ years.  No more for me, and I might miss them a little bit but not too much.  I'm guessing the new job will have many more opportunities for me to do work, be organized, move quickly, and tell people what to do. 

Not much else going on.  I had another dentist appointment yesterday, and I took the magic drugs that feel like they're not doing anything, and then you go home and sleep for 4 hours and when you wake up it seems like everything that happened at the dentist was a dream that you had 5 years ago.  It's pretty nice.  It sucks that it makes a dentist visit waste an entire day for me and for Jeannie (who has to drive me around and then take care of the kid all by herself on a day when we're both off work), but awesome that I can now 1) go to the dentist, and 2) go to the dentist without freaking the fuck out or feeling like I would rather die three painful deaths than go to the dentist. 

 I don't have a plan for tomorrow, which sometimes makes for a bad Sam-watching day.  The days always seem to go more smoothly (i.e. less whining) when there is a plan and an activity and some get-out-of-the-house time. 

Jeannie's reading in bed next to me.  I just ate some cheese and crackers.  We just watched an episode of Paul and Jamie, and I just drank a G&T.  Life feels pretty good.