I'm Sure this Means Something...

Last night I had a dream that was a brilliant amalgamation of all the things I'd expect from a dream – bits and pieces of the previous day, and elements of everyday life, all blended seamlessly with the completely surreal.

I was working at the local Hannaford as a drive-up teller. I had a little teller station in the entry way and people would pull up to the outside window and I'd cash checks and make change, that type of thing.
At one point a man pulls up in a dune buggy and hands me a bent piece of paper. There's a check printed on it, but even in my dream, I'm analyzing all the things wrong with it - the routing number has too many digits, the account number is entirely missing, the check number is different in two places, and the ink is bleeding in the top right corner. So I take the check to find a manager.
I turn and enter the store, and even though in my dream I know all the managers are by the service desk, I make a right towards the bakery. Anyway I run into Ryan Cowan, Sarah Jenness, and Ashley Perry, three friends of mine from high school, all suddenly working at Hannaford. They're walking in the opposite direction so I turn and walk with them, back toward the service desk. They all work as regular cashiers and I feel as if they look down on me because I work out front.
When I finally find the manager she's in a back room which is apparently on a cruise ship because she's wearing a bathing suit and reading a novel, while lounging in a deck chair. I show the check to her and she tells me not to cash it under any circumstances, it's definitely bad.
So I trek back to my teller station and tell the guy that we called the issuing financial institution and we couldn't cash the check for him. He says, 'Well shit, I better tell my mother!' and pulls off in his dune buggy which has suddenly become one of those tiny cars the Shriners ride in the parades. I turn to one of my coworkers and say something like, 'That was the worst counterfeit check I've ever seen, that guy's fucking retarded.' Someone behind me, apparently a friend of BadCheckMan, starts screaming and yelling at me. When I turn around, he's swinging a heavy piece of metal at me. There ensues a pretty detailed fist fight, which eventually ends with me sitting astride the man and repeatedly slamming his head into the floor. I can really feel it happening, it's so intense.
At this point BadCheckMan returns with his mother. When he sees what I've done to his buddy he pulls out a little revolver. My first impulse is to try to get the gun away from him, but someone's suddenly in my face, telling me I can't treat customers this way. BadCheckMan points the gun at me but then sticks it in his mother's mouth, pulls a second gun from another pocket, and puts it in his own mouth. There's a moment when I can only see his eyes and hear him breathing around the barrel of the gun and then he pulls both triggers, hers slightly before his.
Then I'm running through the Hannaford, looking for a place to hide. I run into the back 'Employees Only' place and it's all under construction and every room is half done and I can't find a place to hide. I just keep going from room to room looking for a place to hide, but I can't find one. Eventually I come into a room with a really dark corner and as I crawl into it I realize that it's open to the outside and that it's very cold. I crawl in further, but find several very tiny wire cages full of very tiny moles, mice, and hedgehogs, all frozen to death. There are probably 35-40 tiny little rodents all frozen on top of each other. There is one little white mouse outside the cage, also frozen and dead, but somehow looking at me. An overwhelming surge of sadness sweeps over me and I wake up crying.

The Spirit of Christmas... One of them anyway...

We opened Thursday night, Thanksgiving. I'm not sure I've mentioned that I'm involved in a local theater production of A Christmas Carol, but I am and we opened Thursday night.

I have two parts, neither of them particularly large, but both important to the story. Thomas Shelley is a street vendor too poor to pay his rent. Scrooge threatens to turn him out if he doesn't 'make good.'
The Ghost of Christmas Future, I'm sure needs no explanation. It's an interesting role to have, despite having no lines. I find it to be one of the most challenging roles I've played. This is primarily because I spend all of my stage time on drywall stilts, draped in 50-60 lbs of black cloak, sweating and trying not to fall over. Oh, and occasionally pointing at things, menacingly...

Thursday night was the preview night and last night was the Gala Opening. Diane and her sister, Karen, came to see it last night. It's a decent show, I think. The guy that plays Scrooge is wonderful.

So you should come see it. We're going three weekends – Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:00pm. Don't see it Saturday the Fourth, because I won't be there, someone else will be covering my parts, and if you're reading this, I trust you want to see me in action, not those other fools. The Belfast Maskers theater is located on Front street in Belfast, down by the waterfront.

Two Weeks Coming...

When I sat down to type this, I thought, 'My Gosh, it's awfully quiet. Why don't I listen to some streaming radio?' This very quickly turned into a 30 minute search for the perfect 'post composing' music. I finally settled on a station playing nothing but early 90's – I Wanna Sex You Up. Sigh...

Let's pick up from the last post, almost two weeks ago...

Fast-Forward through most of the work week – it's pretty much the same thing every day... Except for Friday. Friday started out like the Hindenburg's maiden voyage.
I got up early to mend a pair of slacks so that I could wear them to work. To tell you the truth, I was pretty impressed with my sewing ability. It looked pretty good. In the process of of getting dressed, I managed to snap one of the shoelaces on a pair of dress shoes I had purchased just over a month ago. I frantically searched for a donor with compatible laces and found a match in my six year old pair of Docs. I performed the surgery as fast as I could, and though I was running late, I still thought I could make it to work on time.
After spending roughly ten minutes attempting to get the Cougar running and rolling, I was perhaps 20 feet out of my driveway when I got pulled over by one of Belfast's finest. I should mention that my inspection ran out in September. I have no reverse, one of the tires is in rough shape, and there's a hole in the exhaust. Fearing the worst, I was delighted to escape with a verbal warning to get the vehicle inspected within ten days.
When I finally got to work – late – I managed to rip the pants I'd just mended and by lunch time I had dropped an entire pizza, face down, on the floor. I ate most of it anyway.

After work Friday night Diane, Josh, and I went out for Thai and spent an otherwise peaceful night at home. We watched Donnie Darko because Diane hadn't seen it. I'm pretty sure she was asleep within the first 10 minutes, so Josh and I watched the rest by ourselves.
Saturday morning I had to work but after that Diane and I went out for lunch with Sarah and Jesse which eventually turned into an afternoon and evening of casual drinking. We had lunch at Ming Gardens, in Bucksport. If you live anywhere near Bucksport, ME, it's worth the trip over – the food is great, prices are reasonable, and the drinks pack a punch.

By the following Friday, fate had placed a new (used) car in my driveway. Diane found it on the internet, and over the course of several days of intense dickering and begging, it became mine. It's a 1993 Honda Accord. It's black, power everything, only 60,000 miles and it's mine. No more pushing the Cougar around! They actually took it as a trade in – I paid $500.00 for it a year and a half ago, and that's what I got for it in trade. This Accord is the nicest vehicle I've ever had the privilege to call my own. I'm very happy with it.

That night, Diane and I traveled up to Orono, to see a show with Isaac and Audrey. I was very glad to see Jose and meet his wife. It's been years since I've seen him and I've never met her. We had a pretty good time and, we didn't hit Belfast until almost 3am.

That should bring you up to date – I'll try not to let another two weeks go before the next one.

The Voice of Reason

Back to the drawing board, as it were. I've decided (with appreciated help) to use the proffered loan only as a last resort. Being aggressively sodomized should always be a last resort - unless you're in to that sort of thing...

So this weekend I'll start hitting the 'Special Credit' lots with the hope that I'll find a suitable car, at a suitable price, and a suitable interest rate... Maybe I'll get to keep my eventual children after all.

Hooray for Excessive Provisions!

After waiting most of the day, word finally filtered down from the loan deities that an arrangement might be reached. I just have to render up my first five children and any money I ever make, ever. Then they'll let me borrow the money... if I can get a co-signer.

Sigh.

If there are any college freshmen, or high school seniors reading this, please take my advice. When you get to school, you're going to be bombarded with advertisements for credit cards. Lots and lots of credit cards. You may hold out for a while. You may think you can get by without them. However, eventually you're going to falter and in that fateful moment they're going to pounce upon you like a ferocious Mountain Lion on a hapless hiker... You can play dead, but they're still going to eat you alive - there's nothing you can do about it.

So my advice to you is this: Don't go mountain climbing whilst wearing Lion Piss Cologne. It's bad news... And don't use credit cards either, because you'll no doubt screw your chances of getting a car loan later in life.

I'm going to go drown my sorrows in a whiskey sour.

Limbo

I'm still waiting. There seems to be nothing else for me to do but wait... The Cougar is at this point so frustrating to drive that I avoid it as much as possible. I drove it to work this morning and borrowed a co-worker's car to come home for lunch.

I've got someone on my side, battling the forces of Evil for me, so all is not lost. Hopefully I'll get an answer soon. I just hope it's the answer I want.

Well, back to work...

The Election and Other Frustrations...

Well. I suppose by now everybody's heard the news - we're in for another four years of President Bush. Well, given all the things he's done just this election year, I'm terrified to see what he does now that he has free reign to muck about with our freedoms for another four years when he's not concerned about getting elected again.

Sigh...

In other news, I applied for a car loan. The Cougar is reaching the end of its run. Reverse is sketchy, at best, and more often than not, I have to push it to get it rolling backwards. Forwards seems to work alright. Well, the amount of hassle I had to go through to even get anyone to look at my application is pretty disheartening, but now I'm just waiting... and waiting. I hope I have a definitive answer one way or another tomorrow. I've picked out a pretty nice car that seems like it's worth the money. We shall see, I suppose. I just wish I hadn't had to wait all day - I've been sick-to-my-stomach nervous all day long.

Blah.

Diane and Me at a wedding this summer.