I am working so damn much this week. From Sunday-Saturday, I'll have a total of about 65 hours. I'm not even sure when my last day off was. I don't know exactly where the Too Much Work line is, but I think I left in the dust about a week ago.

Oh well. Money is good. And, I'll be taking a week off from both jobs in December to go meet Rijid's family and do the Christmas thing, so I definitely should be stockpiling as much extra money as I can until then.

That's a little scary, by the way. My first Christmas away from home. But, even if it's awful and his family all hates me, it will still be a good week because I won't be working.

Ahh, sweet sweet week of no work. I have dreamed of you for so long. Let me just restate that, because typing it feels so damn good. A WHOLE WEEK WITH NO WORK!!! Say it softly, it's almost like praying, say it loudly, it's like music playing.

***

The Ripon Bookworld did its inventory this morning. Numerous people I'd never seen before showed up, including a whole slew of managers of brand new stores. I met the new Watertown manager. She seemed nice enough, you know, in spite of not being me and all.

I'd pretty much convinced myself I didn't get the job in Watertown months ago, but it was still a little depressing to come face to face with the truth like that.

Then, she ended up as my partner. Revenge fantasies danced horribly in my brain for a little while. Oopsie! Was that a $50 medical encyclopedia I just accidentally dropped on your head, severing your spine? That'll teach you to be somehow better qualified for my dream job than I am, biznitch! Then I remembered I am basically a nice person, and probably sane. Sane people don't do things like that.

So instead I smiled, and explained to her everything she didn't know. That I know, of course. I know what consignment means, and I know the difference between paperback and hardcover, and I know the discount amounts for all of it. ALL OF IT, I TELL YOU!! Twitch. Twitch twitch.

Seriously, I'm fine with this. Don't look so frightened. Why, just the other day, I was thinking about how what I really wanted was to live in real city again. Watertown isn't that muxh bigger than Ripon, and I certainly don't want the hour commute I'd face if I lived in Madison or Milwaukee and drove to Watertown every day. Rationalization is fun. I'll just keep telling myself that.

***

That got a lot harsher than I really meant it to. Time for a new topic.

***

After weeks of alternating between bad scifi and Diskworld rereads, I took the mental deep breath and started Infinite Jest again. Even rereading this monster is a serious time commitment. All of you probably ignored me the last time I said you HAD to read this book, so now you have to read it twice. See what happens when you ignore me? Now you have to read the Longest Book Ever, TWICE.

It really will be worth your time, I swear it. It's so hilarious, seeing how all the little details I'd missed the first time really do all tie together. At one point, Kate is talking about the paranoia of drug dealers, and mentions in passing this one kid she's bought from, who always makes you ask him to commit a crime first. The first time I read the book, that meant nothing to me. This time, I was all, "Dude! That's Pemulis! She knows Pemulis! Rawk on!"

So, maybe it's only cool in an extremely dorky kinda way. But really, what other ways are there?

This ties in with a conversation we had at the bar last weekend. Shannon is actually becoming intruiged by the constant LARP talk, but she says she's way too afraid of new people to ever try anything like that. I told her I felt the same way at first, but she had nothing to fear. All she had to do was keep telling herself that at the end of the day, all of these people are dorks.

Dorks, I told her, are intrinsically good people. If you spend most of your life being ostracized for the things you think are fun, you develop certain tolerances towards any other eccentricities you encounter. You really have to be pretty severely twisted before the dorks will shun you. Also, dorks are by the their very nature, probably smarter than most people.

Love the dorks. Behold the mighty power of the freaks. The only reason they're not running the world is because they've got more interesting things to do.

previous--next