Disconnected Thoughts

I can't decide if yoga is the greatest idea I've ever had, or the clearest indication that I am something of a masochist deep down.  It always leaves me feeling good at the end of class, and the next morning I get out of bed in physical agony as my muscles protest their use. I generally walk around like an old woman for the first half hour after I wake. My leg muscles are just that stiff.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I am working right now, but I'm not clocked in. None of us are. In the infinite wisdom of the head hancho, the assistant managers were not given the password to the management computer when the new system was installed yesterday. Unfortunately, the store manager doesn't work on Fridays, and we have to use his computer to clock in. When we called for the password, Manager Man just told the assistant manager to keep track of everyone's hours.

This leads us to two conclusions: Manager Man doesn't know his own new password, or Manager Man is not going to give the assistant managers the password so that we can never clock ourselves in again. This will make it amazingly easy to cheat us on our hours, which is illegal. But that didn't stop them from taking an hour of Dizzy's time away when he didn't get to take a lunch one day because he was literally so busy he didn't get the chance to slow down until almost six o'clock. By that time it was stupid to just stick around so the logical thing would have been to let him leave an hour early. But Manager Man wouldn't let him, then deducted an hour from the middle of the day. When Dizzy saw it in his hours, he argued that it was illegal, and only after threatening to report the company to Texas Work Force (or something like that) did he get his hour back. You have to watch your hours carefully here. They will round down any time they get the chance to save a little money.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Clueless has started taking a class for drunk drivers. Not because she thinks she has a problem, and certainly not because she thinks she did anything wrong. She's doing it because her lawyer told her the judge would probably lighten her sentence if she signed up for it.

I think that any judge is going to look at her first DWI, her jail sentence, and then see her second DWI was four months after she was released from jail. I think that any sane judge would see that she clearly lied when she said she understood the gravity of her mistake, that she learned a lesson and wouldn't do it again. I think that the judge is also going to see that this time she was so drunk she didn't even realize the car in front of her was stopped at a red light, that she was so drunk she didn't make any attempt to stop and wound up rear ending someone.I think any judge who gives her less than the maximum is an idiot. She will do this again, and then she's going to prison for ten years and no amount of "I'm sorry" is going to make it better.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

My coworker is getting married on July 10th and Padawan and I are actually going to the wedding. I'm going to get a new dress, and Padawan will wear a button down shirt and nice jeans. He will not, he insists, wear slacks. Which my coworker insists is fine. She's getting married in a multi-layered, multi colored floor length tutu and a green leather corset, so it's obviously not a formal affair.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

My mother's boyfriend has murdered my cat, Fizban. Or, as I always called him, Fizzy Pop Pop. (I named him Fizban after the Kinder God in the Dragon Lance series, but Fizzy Pop Pop was his nickname. He answered to both.) I gave him to my mom when he was a kitten because I couldn't keep him and his mother, and my mother adored him. Even as a kitten he was a very handsome little thing. He grew into a beautiful cat. 

Anyway, my mom left Fizban with her boyfriend for two weeks while she went to Houston to look for a job. (I've already informed her that she can expect no visits from me as I do not like obnoxious, smelly, heavily polluted cities full of crime and angry drivers. She argued that Houston wasn't like that where she'll be living. However, pollution is pollution.) When she came back the landlord said Fizban was dead. He'd been outside the whole time she was gone (because her boyfriend is a dick like that) and he was throwing up blood and then just...dead. 

Her boyfriend insists he was snake bitten. I'm not entirely certain, but I'm pretty sure there aren't any snakes out there that are venomous in a way that makes you throw up blood and guts. No snake bite I've ever heard of can do that. However, we had a dog die a few years ago that had the same symptoms. He, too, was left alone with her boyfriend for a week. The Vet said he was poisoned. I'm starting to think her boyfriend poisons animals.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I just did a restring for a boy on a classical guitar. His guitar strings were in a sad state of existence. I restrung it for him, and the smile on his face was worth way more than the labor cost I just made with twenty minutes of my time. 

I think it upset Dizzy that I did it, but we paged twice and nobody came to help. He said he yelled to send them around to his side of the counter, but nobody heard him. All the boy wanted was to know about strings. Did his need to be changed? (Holy Merlin, yes they did.) What kind of strings did they need? (Normal tension  silver wound and nylon.) Did we have ball ends? (Yes, but they don't make the right sound.) He thought he could do it himself...but could I restring it? (Yes, I could.) How much did it cost? (Fifteen dollars for traditional classical strings, twelve dollars for ball ends, plus the price of the strings.) Why were traditional classical more to put on? (Because they take twice as long to put on.)

He was very pleased with his finished product, so it was well worth it.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I got a tip for a restring I did yesterday for a young man and his grandfather. It was just an acoustic restring, nothing fancy like a classical restring, so it was only seventeen dollars for labor and strings. I got a three dollar dip out of it, though, so it was nice.  It was my first tip ever. We're not allowed to ask for tips, of course, and we don't tell people we accept tips. But when we get them we keep them. A lot of time our customers tip us with food. Generally it's pizza, sometimes Girl Scout cookies. The best time ever was when we got brisket from Rudy's. 

Sometimes it's great to work in music.