An evening at the mall

It's been a busy few days, which is pretty cool with me. If I'm not working I tend to get depressed. Not sure why that is, but any time I try to "take it easy" for a few days I tend to start getting into a really negative headspace. So, because you absolutely didn't ask for it, here's a rundown of what I've been up to.

Wednesday is the day we print the paper, and seeing as I wear an assortment of hats at my job, it's my duty to drive down to Granbury every Wednesday morning to get the paper. One thing I can appreciate about the country living you find along the way is that stores pack a lot into just one place. There's a shop that will fix your car AND buy arrow heads from you. Or how about this doozy,

which offers an assortment of services. That's right. They'll remove your hair with a laser, implant a hearing device in your ear, and well, ahem, enhance other assets if you're a lady seeking such services. That eye catching building is in Granbury proper, but another of my favorite spots along the drive every Wednesday is this gem.

This gas station parking lot features the finest products that can be found in the back of vans. You can buy wonky flags, or giant rugs, and that's just in the parking lot! Don't forget the liquor and BBQ offered inside. There used to be a guy who sold knives and pants out of his trunk across the street from this gas station, but I haven't seen him in a few months. I wonder if this rug guy ran him out of business?

Moving on to Thursday, that was a family day, which was wonderful. My three nephews are home schooled, and I've recently started coming over every Thursday and teaching them. It's actually a lot of fun, and it's really rewarding to get to play a small role in helping them learn and gain knowledge. After school I just palled around with my nephews, mom and sister in law, and eventually we cooked tacos and had a fantastic meal. I don't think I have any pictures from that day, but here's one from Tuesday when Amazon.com called me a loser.

Pay close attention to the second email, and the subject line. So yeah, that was real sweet of them. If you look real close at my reflection in the screen, you might be able to see the tears that were streaming down my face. In all seriousness, I'm pretty sure they were emailing me a recommendation for the Jason Biggs movie "Loser", which is pretty much just as insulting as calling me a loser, as they're suggesting that my past purchase behavior pegs me as someone who would want to own the Jason Biggs film Loser. Or it might be because that movie is actually in my amazon cart as we speak, but if that's the case I'll never admit it.

Friday was a super fun day. I was planning on getting up at a decent hour (which for me, means around 10:30 am) but I didn't pull it off. I was going to go see movies, but instead I decided to catch up on emails. I got my unread emails down from 97 to 7, so that was a big accomplishment. Then that night I went and covered softball and baseball, then came home and watched the last half of the Rangers game, then made some salsa (which I pretty much ruined by over seasoning it, which is a tragedy because I LOVE salsa), and even got to hang with my brother for a bit as he shared some of the most hilarious and insane stories ever. Many laughs were had, and I got to bed SUPER late, but it was completely worth it.

And then we come to today, which turned out to be a beautiful Saturday. Got up, watched the Rangers day game, then did a little work, then went and spent the

evening at the mall. Mostly I was just there to see two movies, but it actually felt kind of nice to chill amongst humanity for an evening. As you can see in the picture, there weren't many people at the mall, but it was still fun. I have a lot of great memories of that mall. I was never a hangout at the mall kind of guy, although I did have a date there once, where I met this girl I knew from church and we walked around for like four hours holding hands, and occasionally we'd get thirsty and go buy a coke, and then we'd resume walking around and holding hands. It was awkward but sweet, and I actually used it as inspiration for a short story I wrote many years later called Holding Hands. The mall date was the beginning of a short lived young romance, which many years later was rekindled as a pretty serious relationship in our adult years, if you can call early 20's adult years. Ah love, you never forget it.

But, even though I rarely hung out there, I did have several jobs at that mall. The first was at.... geez, what was first? Dillards I think, where I was a dock associate, which is short hand for being the store whipping boy. Someone have diarrhea all over the women's restroom? The dock associate must clean it! Aggressive rats in the perfume storeroom? The dock associate must battle them! A 60 inch television was purchased by a 120 pound dude who wants to take it home in his two door mazda? The dock associate must load it! The work was brutal and thankless, and you had like 14 bosses because every department manager had authority over you. But, I did meet a lot of cool folks there. There was this super cute girl who worked nights in the shoe department, and then the perfume area lady manager was really nice to me and always gave me cologne samples and asked me for rides home (maybe she was into me, now that I think about it that would explain a lot), and then there was the cool divorcee' in the electronics department that would help me hide in her section on Sundays and we'd tune the TVs to the Indianapolis Colts game.

After Dillards, I got a job at Coach House Gifts, where my best friend Chris already worked. On my second day, the manager (who had put in a two week notice) showed up drunk, went on a cussing rant about how he didn't give a crap about the job anymore, tossed me his keys and then left. Not only did I successfully close the store, but I did it like a champ, and from then on they never took those keys away from me. I may've been a champion of closing, but I was the world's most insane employee by day. I've done some nutty things in my life, but some of my alltime craziest behaviors went down inside Coach House. Dolphin Clock Baseball, Punt the Pig, Empty the Fire Extinguisher in the back room, Headless Precious Moments, the activities were legendary. I remember on Mother's Day they left just me and Chris there. There were thousands of people in and out all day, and we worked for like 12 hours straight through the rush. There was this battery operated bird hanging from the ceiling by a string, and it flapped its wings and flew in a circle. It was loud and annoying, and when the last customer left at like 10:30, Chris and I were just leaning on the counter recovering before we started what would be a three hour closing process, and this dang bird is just going in circles above us. So I grab this long stick, leap over the counter, nail the bird from the sky, and then bash it to pieces. What followed was probably the longest fit of laughter Chris and I have ever had. I'm talking, collapsed to the ground, tears flowing, muscles cramping, can't breathe laughing. It went on for like five minutes. Eventually we recovered from our state of lunacy and started the endless cleanup and closing procedures for the day. I also recall that my fiancee' at the time actually came up there and surprised us with some food, which was awesome, because it was like midnight and neither of us had eaten since around noon. She was cool like that.

Eventually my time at Coach House came to an end, and I moved on to the promised land for a geek like me, which was Electronics Boutique (which would later morph into the evil empire, GameStop). Working there was like having an extended family, as the manager Brad was the dad of the group, and then my co-workers Justin and Pedro were my brothers. The days were fantastic, full of laughs and fun and greatness. We even had a trade agreement in place with the manager of Chili's, in which he gave us much free Chili's food and we in turn gave him the hook-up.

Sadly, I left that job to go work at my first ever office job, which turned out to be this weird company that I'm pretty sure was run by criminals. It was glorious at first, as I just did data entry for like 11 bucks an hour. I listened to my cd player all day long and typed and made some serious money, but then I had to go and get myself promoted, and life fell apart. I ended up on salary, doing three times as much work for some pretty dubious folks under some pretty dubious circumstances. I can't even remember why I finally decided to quit. Probably because they were making me work like 12 to 14 hour days 5 days a week, plus coming in for 8 hours most Saturdays.

Well, that was a weird tangent. Back to my Saturday. So I saw two movies, Cabin in the Woods (crazy weird hybrid comedy over the top horror thing) and Lockout (old school action... IN SPACE), and then I headed out to do my overnight job. I tried to trailblaze my way across Fort Worth in what I figured would be a short cut, but ended up getting completely turned around in some truly frightening neighborhoods. I finally had to throw in the towel and call my brother, who used Google maps to guide me to safety. My mind was blown when I finally figured out where I was, as I had pulled this odd hooking pattern across North Fort Worth and ended up going south when I actually needed to go North into the Fossil Creek area. But my bro got me straightened, and it turned out that all of my stores I do work in overnights were in pristine condition, and so my night was blissfully short.

And now I'm home, spending an hour writing a blog so long that it is dangerously close to reaching novella levels. Not really, but you know, it's long. So that's it, loving life, staying busy, having fun, and writing ridiculously long blog posts. Because that's how the kid rolls.

I hope you're all doing fantastic!

The Frosty Weather

I haven't blogged in quite a while, and seeing as I always get a little sad when my friends don't blog, it seems only fair that I try to do it too. Life's been pretty hectic for me, thanks mostly to a really big story we broke and then covered for three weeks in the paper. The last thing I want to do is talk about the story, as I've probably poured around 100 hours of my life into it over the past three weeks. I would like to talk about some of the ramifications of the story though.

This is the kind of local politics story that inevitably leaves some people thinking you're a hero and some people thinking you're a villain. While I fully and completely stand by the story, and our fact based approach to covering it, I will say that the fallout from it is most unpleasant. I've spent my life being a fairly likable guy. I'm not abrasive at all, and I've never made any enemies as far as I know. So getting to a point where you walk into a room where there are people who actively hate you, and people that wish ill on you, it's a really crappy feeling. It's not like I'm crying at night over it, because really, if that's how people want to be then there's not much I can do about it, but there's no denying that it's a bad feeling. I'm a positive, optimistic guy, and this just just a negative, pessimistic situation.

But, it'll all come back around, as things tend to do. Something else will happen, and this story will be forgotten as stories always are, and the people that muttered things like "you're not welcome here" today will be the people patting me on the back a few months from now.

Investigative reporting, it's a bastard, folks. Sorry to be crude, but that's just my honest take on it. People get hurt, friendships get busted, and the truth gets revealed. Even if you feel like you're on the side of "right" and "truth", it doesn't mean you're immune to the fallout and the frosty weather that follows.

So, what else is going on? Here's a picture I took today, let's look at this handsome dude for a moment. I think I'm going cross eyed or

something in that picture, not sure what's up with that. The thing that I really like about this picture is the intersection of my lime green pillow, my orange pillow, and my purple blanket, which is all visible over my left shoulder (not your left, MY left). That blanket is by far the greatest thing

I've ever purchased, and is hands down the softest thing ever manufactured on planet earth. What else can we talk about? I need something so we can change the subject from my pillows and blankets, because let's face it, this is boring.

How about Del Taco? This fascinating eatery just opened locally, although I did eat at one when driving to Las Vegas. I tried it out tonight, which turned into a huge mistake. I've been trying to get healthy (finally), after 30 years of abusing my body via sitting around all day every day and eating garbage all day every day. So we got a treadmill and an exercise bike, and I've been eating all of my meals at home, and even just in a week of regular exercise and a better diet, I feel so much better. I don't think I've really lost any weight yet, but I don't care, I know that will come. For now, I feel more like I'm going to live to see 40, and that's a good first step.

Why do I share all of that? Well, firstly because I'm excited about FINALLY making these much needed life changes and starting to get myself healthy. But, I also share that so I can illustrate for you that Del Taco was the first fast food I've had in over a week, which is a big deal for a guy who used to eat fast food at least once per day. You'd think that it would be this amazing treat, like the greatest thing to ever be tasted, but the opposite happened. It tasted like the garbage, nastiness that all fast food really is. I guess that's a good thing, that I've adjusted to eating fresher, healthier foods, but I sure was looking forward to that burrito. Oh well.

Is there any other mundane and boring aspect of my life that I feel the need to share? I don't guess so. I think I'm going to change banks, as mine has been sort of screwing me for a few months and then today really screwed me. The problem is, I'm pretty madly infatuated with this one teller at my bank, she's so awesome. So if I change banks I'll never see her again. Logic says that I could just ask her out to coffee or lunch or something, but I'm pretty much just living like a coward and never doing that. We always end up talking for quite a while when I'm at the bank, it feels like there might be something there, but then I can get sort of negative and convince myself that she just has great customer service skills and isn't actually enjoying talking to me. Who knows, maybe I'll just do it, let her know I'm switching banks but that I'd love to exchange info so we could still talk. Probably not much harm in that, but considering I've got like three years invested in my whole coward plan it's going to be hard to reverse course.

I think I'm blogging longer because I don't want to go to sleep. Because once I go to sleep then I have to get up early tomorrow (early by my standards, which is 9:40 am) so I can go pick up the paper at the printing press. Yes, the logic is flawed here, because the later I stay up the worse it's going to be getting up early, but I am who I am and this is just how my mind works. Plus I'm not tired at all. Just not even close.

So let's talk about something else then, shall we? How about my super amazing new double monitor setup? Okay, here's the rundown. My brother built me this awesome super bookshelf thingy that's integrated into my computer desk. So on desk level I've got my laptop, which is my main computer. Above that, I've got my TV where I watch DVD's and stuff while I work. Well, I hooked up a few cables, wiggled my fingers, exclaimed the magic words, and boom, I turned that TV into a second monitor. Behold the amazing picture, which illustrates in one simple image what I took an entire paragraph to explain with my words.

Open on top is Spotify, where I was listening to some nice heavy metal via the Adrenaline Mob, and on bottom on my main screen was... facebook it looks like. My laptop looks puny in this picture. But, the whole setup is really rad. I just sweep my mouse up, and it flows off the top of my laptop screen up onto the TV screen. I've been tossing youtube videos and like, documents full of notes up there while I type below. It's cool.

Alright well, I guess that's officially enough rambling for one blog post. If you read this far, you're a good person. If you didn't read this far, you'll never know I was talking about you one way or the other, so I guess any witty comment directed towards you would be wasted here.

Hope everyone is having a good week!