AUGH. I have GOT to start typing up my entries in WordPad or something. The other day I wrote what may have been the longest entry I've ever written, and I stupidly opened something on my taskbar, thinking it would open in a new window, and it didn't. And as usual, when I hit the back button, the entry was gone. And I lost everything I was ALMOST FINISHED writing. Oh. My. God. It was horrible.

So anyway, now I am going to write this entry even if it kills me. I am not signing into MSN, because someone will distract me. I'm not even going to check my e-mail until this goddamn thing is finished.

So yeah, I meant to write an entry much sooner. I even wrote stuff in the paper journal during the week. But then I got distracted by this site which I am now addicted to. Remember SparkMatch? You know, thespark.com's old matchmakery site? You took a test, and then they'd give you an amusing personality type, like "The Angel from Hell" or "The Girl, Interrupted", or "The Furry Dildo", and then they'd tell you how well you matched with other people on the site? Well, OkCupid is the new version of SparkMatch, created by the same people who ran TheSpark before it got sold and turned to shit. Anyway, now there's a new test and new personality types and all these other fun things there. So addictive.

Alright, so here's what I wrote in the paper journal at work last Tuesday and this past Monday.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004, 5:05 pm

I'm so damn bored. If I ever own my own store, it's going to have to get better business than this one. I'm not sure if it's the location (people who live in this area are generally yuppies who work 9-5 downtown and can't come here on weekdays) or the way the store looks from the outside or what. Or maybe it has something to do with the attitude of the other woman who works here. She rarely greets customers or smiles at them or anything, and when someone asks her a question about the merchandise, she gives the most minimal possible answer in the most serious, aloof tone. It almost gives the impression that she's bothered at having to help someone out.

In fact, when I came in here to drop off my resume, she was sitting down behind the sales counter, pretty much making herself invisible to anyone who walked in (we're allowed to sit down if we want when the store's empty, but we're supposed to stand up if a customer walks in; she herself told me that when she was training me), so I walked up to the desk and she gave me this look as if to say "whaddaya want?", so I politely asked if I could leave my resume (I should mention that there was a "HELP WANTED" sign on the front window), and she very curtly said "OK", and took it without a thank you or anything and went back to the book she was reading. And I was nicely dressed, too, so don't you start thinking that she was being dismissive because I looked like a punk or anything. Believe me, I was pretty surprised when I actually got a call from the owner asking me if I was still interested in working there.

It's not just me who feels this way about the woman. A regular browser whom I'd talked to before came in the other day and told me "That older woman who works here is just awful. I've never met such an unhelpful salesperson.".

All of this considered, you'd think I'd want to tell the store owner (who is usually taking orders in the warehouse and is almost never actually in the store) about this problematic employee. Well, I can't. Because this woman also happens to be the owner's mother.

Yeah, that's right. I don't get it, either. The woman who owns the store is so friendly and bubbly and outgoing. How the one could've spawned the other is beyond me. I wonder if the owner knows what her mother is like as a salesperson. It's very bizarre. I don't necessarily think her mother is a bad person, I think she just has no idea how she comes across to the general public. The only time I've seen her being friendly with customers is when it happens to be someone she knows. Luckily I never actually have to work with her now that my training is over. Now I work alone, which gets horribly dull after a while, but I prefer it to watching her be antisocial with people all day.

Monday, October 18, 2004, 12:43 pm

I remembered the paper journal today, thank god. I left it at home on Friday, which was the slowest, mind-numbingly dull day at work ever, because it was rainy. That's the trouble with street shops. You get almost no business when the weather is bad. I can't even imagine how it will be in the winter. Oh well, anything's better than working in a mall. Ick.

Last night I hurt my leg in bed. Do you ever find yourself stretching out your legs rather hard when you're sort of half asleep, particularly tensing up your calf muscles, and then you do it too hard and suddenly there's this awful throbbing pain in one of your calves? And it lasts for maybe a minute or less but it's just excruciating? And then the throbbing goes away, but the next day it's still sore and stiff when you walk around? Or is this just something that happens to me alone? I explained it to my mom and she called it a charley horse, though I don't know if that's actually what it is or not. Anyway, that happened to me last night, so now I'm sore. It also happened to me a few days ago. I wish I had more awareness of my activities when I was half asleep so I wouldn't do that. Bodies are so weird.

I was instructed to put out the Christmas merchandise today, so I did. I don't like it thought. Christmas stuff shouldn't be out in stores until mid Novemberish or something. It's tacky. It's not even Halloween yet!

Speaking of which, I wish I had something cool to do for Halloween weekend. I haven't worn a costume since I was eleven, the last year I went trick-or-treating. Incidentally, parents, I'm thinking that's just about the age you should stop letting your kids go out trick-or-treating. Seriously, there's nothing more obnoxious than overgrown pubescent brats standing about expectantly with little children, asking for candy. And the ones who go knocking on doors later after the little ones are back home again are even worse. No one wants to answer the doorbell incessantly past nine. Especially not to give candy to kids who, let's face it, just aren't cute anymore. Let the older kids have Halloween parties or something where they can dress up and eat candy all they want. Just keep them away from your neighbours' doors. It's embarrassing.

Anyway, yeah. Next year I hope I have a larger group of friends so one of us can throw some kind of scary Halloween party or something. Because I really hate the way holidays stop being fun when you get to be an adult. Even Christmas is going to be weird this year because all our family is too far away to see now. It'll just be my mom and I. Maybe I'll volunteer to serve food at a shelter or something. Of course, then I'll end up thinking things to myself like "Is it really that noble to do this sort of thing once a year only, 'because it's Christmas'? What about the other 364 days of the year that people go hungry?"

Rrrgh. I'm getting really sick of customers always asking what we have downstairs. See, our store has a downstairs section, and there's a whole crapload of different things down there. There's a bed, various bedding, throws, pillows, lamps, various furniture, a bunch of rugs and doormats, some outdoor garden stuff, tablecloths, dishes, and even a few baby clothes. And I'm sure I'm leaving out a bunch of things. So people, rather than simply going downstairs and having a look, want to know if it's worth the energy, so they ask me "What's downstairs?" and then I have to rattle off a long list for them, because saying "Uh, a whole bunch of stuff, go look" doesn't seem very helpful. And people ask roughly a zillion times a day. If we only had one specific type of thing down there, I wouldn't mind. Even so, when I'm shopping I prefer to check things out myself rather than pestering the clerk. Am I the only one? Not that it's really pestering, it just gets really tedious after a while.

I'm also getting sick of our door. Now that it's colder outside, the front door needs to be closed, and it's a stiff door. So people have to give it a bit of a firm push to open it. But they don't. They start to open the door and feel some resistance, and so they start to walk away, assuming that we're closed (note: there is a big "OPEN" sign on the door, and the store is visibly well-lit). So then I have to rush to the door to tell them that we are in fact open. Then there's another problem. The door also doesn't close all the way without pushing it shut. So customers don't close the door behind them when they come in, and the door closes most of the way, then makes an embarrassing "rr-rr-rrr-rrrrrr" noise for like five minutes, and then just stays partly open letting all kinds of nasty cold air into the store. Then of course when customers leave they also don't shut the door behind them, so I have to go and push it shut all the way so I don't freeze my ass off. I'm so sick of having to go to the freaking door every two minutes! I wish they'd fix it or something.

Another note to parents. Please, don't ever bring your bratty energetic young children with you into home decor shops filled with fragile, breakable items and expensive furniture. You have no idea how irritating it is to find little shoeprints on the upholstery and velvet pillows thrown about all over the place, let alone broken glassware. Seriously, what are these parents thinking? Not that it happens all the time, but it does happen enough to make me wonder.

Back to the present.

So anyway .. what else has happened in the past week or so?

Well I hung out with James on Saturday for the first time since the breakup. It went pretty well. It was really good to see him. I didn't know if it would be awkward or painful or what, but it turned out fine. I'm really glad we still get along, and that we both seem to be doing alright.

On Sunday I met someone else from Friendster. His name is Dan. This meeting went a whole lot better than that last Friendster meeting I had with someone. Much less awkward and pressured. So yeah, Dan's a nice guy. He's also the one who introduced me to OkCupid, and is thus responsible for hours and hours of time I'll never get back (I can't believe I answered all the questions). We went to my old haunt, The Bishop and the Belcher on Queen West. Unfortunately, Dan wasn't too happy with his potato skins or his eggs benedict. I don't blame him either, they didn't look right. Oh well. Next time we'll have to order fish & chips and fried ice cream, and if he's still not satisfied, then I'll know we simply can't be friends. Heh. I kid. Actually, I think my reasons for liking The Bishop have more to do with the atmosphere and the company than anything else, since I used to always go there with Crystal or James. Plus, they have Trivial Pursuit cards at every table, and Boddingtons and Stella on tap. What more could you want? Besides decent potato skins, that is.

Hmm, I was going to write more, but I just realized I have to leave for my French class really really soon. So I guess it'll have to wait.

Now I'm going to submit this before I do something stupid again and lose it all.

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