Interlude

So I'm at home, standing at my kitchen window, looking out at the people on the street walking by. I live in an apartment. I'm on the third floor.

I do this once or twice a day. I look out, I think to myself, "Wow, that guy looks kind of depressed", or, "Hey, what a nice-looking suit that guy's got", or, "Those people look really happy".

So I'm standing there, one half of me almost wanting someone to look up and notice me, the creep in the tanktop on the third floor looking down on them. It never happens. (And I can hide behind the curtains if it ever comes to that.)

It's early evening, say around six. A gorgeous day outside, sun is shining. Summer.

Two girls walk by. They are maybe seventeen, eighteen. They look almost the same: cute, blonde, hair in a bun, summery clothes. School's out. Girls. I imagine they're best friends. They laugh and giggle.

Just as they're passing my window, they react to something behind them. They stop and turn around. A boy of about the same age as the girls comes running after them. I imagine he's calling out, "Hey! Wait up!". He's sort of awkward looking. He's out of their league, but I'm speculating here. Maybe they do know each other, in that high school way where you sort of know people, and you sort of don't.

The boy has a cup from McDonald's in his hand. He says something to one of the girls, then hands her the cup.

I imagine the following scenario: the boy notices the girls at McDonald's, which is a block away. They leave, maybe he bumps into them outside of McDonald's. Maybe they chat for a bit. Maybe they don't. For whatever reason, one of the girls leaves her cup of Diet Coke behind. The boy notices this, assumes she forgot it, picks up the cup, runs after the girls, catches up with them right outside my window.

The girl awkwardly accepts the cup and says thanks. The boy smiles, waves goodbye in an awkward way, and then goes back the same way he came.

The girls observe him as he leaves, then turn to each other and giggle nervously. "That was weird", they maybe say to each other. One of them laughs. They turn around and resume walking. The girl with the cup throws it on the ground between two parked cars.

Birthday

I know I will regret saying this, but so far this has been a pretty good day. One of my co-workers is having a birthday, and he brought cake. I got a slice. He's a good guy. Thanks, JJ.

Rage Against (The Idiot Who Broke The Copy) Machine

You'd think in the time between opening up the copy machine with no idea of what you're doing and actually breaking the supposedly idiot-proof handle thing that you're supposed to press-to-release rather than pull-to-open you might stop and think "maybe I should ask for some help from someone who has actually done this before." In fact, you probably did have this thought, but then thought "Nah, I'll just go ahead and pull this thing until I rip it the fuck off, then I'll leave the copy machine totally broken for God-knows-how-long until the copy machine jerks come to fix it. In the meantime, I'll talk to my coworker about how I'm having a rough day with technology, seeing as I just broke the copy machine. You're telling me, sister. Now I've gotta make copies with the "Copy" function on my goddamn computer scanner/printer. I think it may be quicker to fax this shit to myself. I may as well get a rotary stencil duplicator and save myself the trouble. JESUS.

Defeated

The other day I was walking down the hall and this dude goes "You look better than usual today. You usually look more, you know...down." What the hell is that? Thanks for noticing my apparently uncharacteristic buoyancy, prick! Now I'm all self conscious about how defeated I look the other 90% of my life. And guess what, you're shitty backhanded compliment just slapped me back in my sad sack place! Now I'm going to think about it all the time and seethe with contempt and dislike whenever you come to my cubicle. I can't decide who I hate more now, you or the bookkeeper lady who hassles me about the amount of hours I'm giving the interns but won't let me see the budget I'm working off of (because said budget doesn't even technically exist) but in the meantime I'm supposed to do twice as much work as one well paid person can do and I am forced to use four underpaid goons who have no motivation and only do like one thing every hour and that's why I have to give them each 8 hours a week because, even though they're lazy they're not stupid and they know that lifting boxes full of books for $8 an hour is a rip off, but double that is fair, so they do half the amount of work that anyone trying at all would do. But then I have to yell at them for it and then they quit and I end up doing it anyway. Goddamnit.

Danish

When I got to work this morning, Gale the secretary gave me a big smile. It actually warmed my heart. Then, five minutes later, just when I'd sat down and started wading through my unread email, she showed up at my desk and told me I had to go back out in the blizzard and buy twenty-five danish for this conference call the suits are having at 11. Ten regular ones, ten with chocolate, and five without gluten.

This is the worst.

Man, this is so lame. Todd, my boss, just printed out 10 different inventory sheets with 10 different formats for ten different storage areas on site. Now I have to make like 24 copies of each, collate them, hole punch them, put them all in a binder and separate every 10 sheets with a divider stating the bimonthly dates of the inventorying. WTF! Shouldn't there be some kind of robot inside the copy machine that does this crap? Also, why not just one format for 10 different storage areas? Then I could just make one copy 240 times rather than 10 copies 24 times. Sure it's the same amount of ink, but it seems wasteful somehow.

Kitchen detail

Just before he left, my boss told me I better have the computer done by tomorrow or I'm on "kitchen detail" for the rest of the week. I don't even know what that means! He laughed when he said it, so hopefully he was joking.