A Day in the Life of The Sasquatch

I wrote this at work the other day, when things were slow. In case you can't tell, I'm attempting to fill up my blog with stuff I've already written.

I will have you know that I, like Jack Kerouac and Ed Wood, do not believe in second takes. What comes out first is the final product. So if you notice a spelling mistake or an error in grammar and you feel like mentioning it to me, I would like to kindly invite you to enter into an anatomically correct sexual position with yourself. Because as far as I'm concerned, that is something you can go and do.

However, if spelling and grammar are not your thing, you're in the right place moron!

********************************************

7:24am – peeling the eyes open

Today is a slow day at work, so I plan to comment on things as they happen and post them up here, possibly for comedic enjoyment. Failing that, however, this will serve to pass the time until the magic hour arrives and I can leave this foul place. I remember just yesterday when I lauded the advantages of switching to an earlier shift I must have forgotten how much it sucks to have to wake up early and drag my happy ass in here. I’ve never been a morning person, so whatever it was that possessed me to come in earlier is beyond me. Maybe it’s my evil cousin (the one without the goatee).

7:58am – between a rock and a hard place

People don’t listen. Just yesterday I changed something on the webpage and when I did it, I made it a point to specifically tell everyone what had happened, where everything was, and how they could go about performing their duties in a more proficient and effective manner. This morning, one of my co-workers came to my desk asking me why I had deleted everything from the webpage. “I didn’t,” I said. “Yes you did,” she said. “It’s not there anymore.” “Remember our conversation yesterday,” I said. “The one where I told you that your webpage had moved to…” She interrupted me. “I remember speaking with you yesterday, but what I want to know is why you deleted everything.” Life would be so much easier if the Supreme Court met the evils of stupidity with the joys of capital punishment. “If you’ll allow me a moment to speak,” I said, much like a patient grandfather speaking to a young child, “I can tell you what to do.” And I spent the next fifteen minutes explaining to the lady that the charts for which she had been looking were now located on her personal home page, which did not require clicking through any links. It took her a while, but she finally got it.

9:17am – elevated memories

Last night was the Dave Matthews Band concert up here in the land of fun. Believe me; I know. I got stuck in the flow of hippies on the way to Craig’s last night, and I nearly passed out from the patchouli stink. Damn I hate that stuff. But it reminds me of the good old days of my youth, when I used to be a damn, dirty hippie with long hair and pungent body odor. I went to many a DMB concert and took part in several illicit and illegal activities. I remember the time I went to a show in Lexington with some friends from high school. This was over Christmas break, about three months into our freshman year of college. Each of us had come home for the break because we had nothing better to do. That doesn’t happen anymore. It was me, Frank and Abe (the twins who can’t drive), Walt C., and Kristin. After the concert, we went back to the hotel and proceeded to drink ourselves into oblivion. Abe, Walt C. and I had a contest to see who could drink beer the fastest. I won. Frank sat in the corner with Kristin attempting to put his “game” into full effect. Little did he know that Kristin wasn’t interested. Little did he know that Kristin was a lesbian! At least, that is the line she used that evening. I would find out later that year that this was not exactly the case. No, not that. At any rate, the concert was very good. Dave and the boys had canceled the concert over the summer and were in the process of making it up. This was just before “Before These Crowded Streets” came out, so they were still in the process of fidgeting with new songs. We got to hear a strange combination of “Minarets,” “All Along the Watchtower,” and what would later become “Don’t Drink the Water.” It had a vague, Middle Eastern feel that worked really well with their still overtly jazz-infused style. I was incredibly high at the time, too, so you have to take that into account. I recently purchased the 2005 DMB album, stand. Either I’m a lot older than I used to be or they really suck now, because I felt like taking the cd back and throwing it at the clerk who sold it to me. I prefer to believe that they suck. Because it’s not possible that I’m getting old. No way.

10:04am – bland boredom

It’s slightly past 10am. I can’t think of anything interesting at the moment

10:52am – late morning frustration

A quote from the official website of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan:

“The development of Astana is so important to the country that it is considered according to the law to be one of the priority spheres for attracting foreign investment. That means that business people investing their capital in Astana enjoy considerable benefits and tax incentives.”

Yeah, right. Unless you consider “considerable benefits” to be rude employees and an inability to speak anything other than unintelligible gibberish, I have to disagree.

12:24pm - After lunch.

Have you ever noticed how we define each seasonal peak by the things we complain about the most? In the Fall there are too many damn leaves to rake, and the football fanatics, those people who affix large, gaudy flags to their car windows, start coming out of the woodwork. The winter is cold and snowy, and people with less than half a brain run the roads in their SUV’s with the express purpose of running into each other and various other inanimate objects. Spring makes us all nervous because deep down inside we believe that all the rain is the beginning of another flood on the level of Noah and his ark.

Summer is no different. At first, we enjoy the breezes and the smells and warmth of the sun on our faces. But after a while, that sun becomes a grueling slave master. When all you want is a relaxing day in the yard you get sunburn. When all you want is the comfortable sun to envelope you, you nearly pass out from heat exhaustion due to humidity.

At least, that is how it seems to me, especially today when the sun has apparently pointed its bright, smiling face directly at my bald head and fat ass. I walked across the street to get some Chipotle for lunch and I almost sweat soaked my shirt it was so hot.

On the way back, I caught a whiff of chlorine from the pool at the Hilton Hotel. It took me back to the summers of my childhood when my friends and I, recently released from the public school/prison system, would wake up late in the morning and walk up to the community pool nearly every day. The first half of the trip, the mile and a half stretch down Burley Circle and Cromwell Road was always grueling and sweaty because the blacktop roads reflected the heat so well. Plus, there was that big fucking hill in the middle of it all. It took nearly ten minutes to get to the top, and when finally go there you had to sit down in Mrs. Farmer’s yard for a breater before you continued. Sometimes she’d yell at us to get moving. Most of the time she sat on her porch and sang hymns to herself. She was a little weird.

You’d think that, with all the trips I made over that hill in my youth, I’d be in a lot better shape. I guess the evils of McDonalds and high calorie beer know no bounds.

The best part of the trip was when you turned the corner at The Hitching Post, a local burger dive which later became a three star French restaurant and then a Laundromat, The road turned downhill, you walked into the cool summer shadows cast by the large oak trees next to Greenhills Middle School, and you caught that first scent of heat mixed with chlorine that said “Come on in guys, the water’s fine!” No matter how tired we were, we always ran the last quarter mile.

We stayed there for most of the afternoon; all the local kids meeting up to go swimming and play pickle in the grass behind the fence during the fifteen minute adult swim periods at the end of every hour. Hot pavement, Cool water, Jenny the lifeguard who at the time wore a seductive one piece bathing suit, Cotton candy from the concession stand. It was summer and it was beautiful.

We stayed all day, past the five o’clock rush hour when the adults went home. We’d stay in the sun till our faces peeled, then we’d go home and play baseball in the field behind the Hinkens’ house until dark.

Then we’d get up the next day and do it all over again.

Today would have been the first day of summer vacation, were I still a kid and still in school. I would, at this very moment, be either submerged in the deep end of the pool or beaning Andy Bello in the back with a tennis ball as he tried to run towards the base, which was always just one or two steps out of the reach of my vicious fastball. Instead, I am in a cubicle working for a corporation full of people who can no longer conceive a life that includes fun and play and happiness and warmth. I want that kind of happiness again. I want that kind of warmth, even if it’s a little too humid for my adult sensibilities.

As long as it has a hint of chlorine, I’ll be fine.

1:50pm: And Now For Something Completely Different

Two hours of work left and Patrick has decided to send us approvals! This means I don’t have to talk to any more damn Kazakhstanians. Or Kazakhs. Or whatever the indigenous people of Kazakhstan are called (other than “bastards” or “bags of pig-faced rat guts”). This is good!

3:41pm: The Old Junkie Shuffle

I have nineteen minutes left until my day is over, and I now have an idea what heroin addicts feel like when they’re on the verge of another fix after a long, dry spell. The legs jump, the skin crawls, and your mind races as it processes the different possibilities scenarios that might take place over the eternity that waits between now and when your fix takes hold and calms the nerves. I want to leave now more than anything else in the world. I look at the clock, I wait an eternity, and when I look at the clock again barely thirty seconds have passed. What was I saying about the relativity of time yesterday. It is more real even today.

3:45pm: A lack of pretense

Shit. Fifteen minutes to go and my boss has wondered into the area. Previously, I had given up all pretense of work and settled into wasting the vast stretches of remaining minutes and seconds checking e-mail and looking up sports scores. Now I have to open a few folders and flip back and forth between different files on my computer to give the semblance of Real Work ™. I must also take advantage of the alt+Tab keystroke which allows me to toggle screens, thus affording me the ability to hide this little ditty when administrative eyes happen to cruise in my vicinity.

3:51pm: Words cannot express

Anger. White, hot anger. The lady from across the way is talking about my web page development, complaining that it is worthless. Rather, it is she who is worthless. I take that back. She is a former Air Traffic Controller which means she is both very intelligent (in some regards, anyway) and exceptionally vicious. I’ve met their kind before and my experience tells me I must look upon this rare breed with a wary eye. Something is afoot, but as long as I keep my head down and the toggle switches ready, I should escape from this pit of despair before the weasels close in.

3:54pm: Fast and furious

They gesture wildly in my direction. Voices topple over the cubicle walls like a vast and heavy waterfall. Fear grips my heart and does not let go. What if I have to stay late? What then? Sure, an evening full of…uh oh…toggle!

3:57pm: A Quick Escape

That was a close one! The big boss man came over to ask me about the Kazakhstanian horde. Will it not end! First the web page and now this! A curse on both their houses!

3:59pm: Bad Nervousness

Two minutes. Two fucking minutes.

3:59 and a half: More Bad Nervousness

(*joe rips the last remaining pieces of hair from his head, screams loudly…nobody in the office notices *)

4:00pm: Jubilant Exultation!

In the words of the great Dr. Martin luther King Jr, “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God, Almighty, I’m free at last!”

4:01pm: Incessant Depression

Free at last…until tomorrow morning at 7:00am, that is.