When I Begin to Read Comic Books

I can't imagine there's anyone out there not as interested in this as I am; in fact, I've taken so long to post about it that probably every single other person out there has already come across the news. Right? Right? C'mon, don't disappoint me, people! How is the publication of a comic book story set in the Enderverse not exciting news? And no, I've never been obsessed with anything, ever, in my life.

By the way, a spacecraft I've been too busy to pay attention too successfully switched parking spots yesterday.

Never in my life. I mentioned that, right?

At It Again

Last night, I had a surprisingly pleasant night at SuperEvilBigStoreThing. I was pulled from apparel to head back to domestics (where I wound up working all last week), a department I think I do like better. A little. There's not a whole lot of better it can get (well, actually, there is, but it won't show up at BigEvilBuyThingsPlace). Tonight, a different lady was sent over to help me. One who has been in that particular department less than I have, or at least a lot less recently. And when she arrived she didn't question my method of sorting and placing things. I didn't even have to explain it. She didn't tell me I was doing anything wrong. Instead, she saw what I had been doing and jumped right in. And the modifications she made that worked for her, well, that was okay with me, and I didn't have a problem with what she was doing either. And then a miraculous thing happened; we got all our work done easily and quickly, and all was well in the domestics department at MajorBigMerchandiseShop. Who would have ever imagined it could happen?

Actually, I had a surprisingly pleasant night back on Monday night as well. It tends to go that way when they pay you overtime to sit around during your regular work hours and eat a free steak and shrimp dinner with all the trimmings. Including a surplus of sodas (I didn't write that. I wrote pop. They gave us lots of pop) and all sorts of desserts. I guess there are perks at any workplace. Or maybe I just have cool managers. But my manager can still beat up your manager.

Lists and Answers

Things I've learned since starting work:

• I know a lot more Spanish than I thought I did, and a lot less than is actually useful.
• It is possible to communicate with just hand motions even when you don't know sign language.
• Mexican food is not only the stuff that is served in every single Mexican restaurant in the USA in various forms, and is still good.
• It is strange to me to find religious articles, from Bibles to rosaries and icons (mainly Our Lady of Guadelupe, so perhaps it makes sense), in at least one section of every major store; but not nearly as strange as hearing the song Awesome God playing over the speakers in NameYourOwnBigPublicStore. I know what it's like to hallucinate; I had to stop and think about it, but I'm sure I wasn't.
• I need to take up karate or some other physical art form that involves fighting.
• Security videos don't have very high quality images.
• Doing laundry for my family is, relatively speaking, really quite enjoyable. (Doing laundry for myself, on the other hand, is still a matter of "how many days' worth do I have left if I really try hard and wear a strange outfit?")
• It's safest to hide in the back or the break room later on in the night. All the knife fighting tends to happen up front. I'm not sure quite wear I stand with the clothing sections being in the middle.
• However, my manager can beat up your manager! Do we rock or what?

Right then, enough with the random listing of stuff, before I come up with 100 other interesting experiences. It's.. good writing material for all my best-selling novels later on, isn't it?

To answer a couple questions from the comments: I'm not sure what I want an M.A. in. Theology would be fun but, job-wise, useless; education has appeared a good option from time to time; some sort of science, provided I do better at the math this time around (and I'd probably need to go back for another Bachelor's first) could also be fun and overall more useful. And I can't imagine ever being called Mistress Myth; it has an entirely un-me-like sound to it. I'll have to come up with some other interesting title.

Also, we deposit half our souls in lockers, which only each person plus one or two other people, plus any manager that wants to look, plus anyone who gets their hands on the printed out sheet of combinations, knows how to get into, and the other half is mysteriously sucked into the computer system through a USB port and kept there for as long as our grandchildren's great-grandkids shall live, or until someone hits the keys so hard that the computer explodes. They have to be kept there for the duration of our shift, though the part in the locker may be temporarily removed if we leave SuperEvilStore grounds for lunch, and small pieces of them may be collected to take with us on break. We again get the locker portion back at the end of the shift, though Super Evil Employer keeps the computer piece to ensure our return as well as our co-operation with their plan to take over the world (we mustn't hinder the plan while off-duty). The also have a second system, deceptively called a Discount Card, by which they steal another small piece of our soul every time we purchase something from one of their stores throughout the world. Most former employees take refuge in so-far unconquered countries in order to escape the influence and retire with whatever remains of their soul, though those safe countries are slowly diminishing as SuperEvilStore's influence extends ever further across the galaxy.

And now, if you'll excuse my being serious for a moment, and also not creating a seperate post.. today is Saint Joseph's feastday! In some places this is a large and important celebration; I've lived and fallen in love with those places, and it remains important to me, though not so obviously celebrated anywhere I've been in the USA. So happy feastday!

We come to the, O blessed Joseph, in our sore distress. Having sought the aid of thy most blessed spouse, we now confidently implore thy assistance also. We humbly beg that, mindful of the dutiful affection which bound thee to the immaculate Virgin Mother of God, and of the fatherly love with which though didst cherish the Child Jesus, thou wilt lovingly watch over the heritage which Jesus Christ purchased with His blood, and by thy powerful intercession help us in our urgent need.

Most powerful guardian of the Holy Family, protect the chosen race of Jesus Christ; drive far from us, most loving father, every pest of error and corrupting sin. From thy place in heaven, most powerful protector, graciously come to our aid in this conflict with the power of darkness, and as of old thou didst deliver the Child Jesus from supreme peril of life, so now defend the holy Church of God from the snares of her enemies and from all adversity.

Have each of us always in thy keeping, that, following thy example, and born up by thy strength, we may be able to live holily, die happily, and so enter the everlasting bliss of heaven. Amen.

(http://www.prayerbook.com/Devotions/Joseph/sjstress.htm)

Spring in Texas

This is the view from my front yard last week. See the flowers? I'm bragging about it now, before I mysteriously die from being too hot in the summer. Why is it mysterious if I know what I'm dying of? Because I'm just that cool.




And this, I think, is me.

Come Back With Me Lucky Charms!

I don't have to pretend, I really am part Irish. I also wore green by accident (not that I wouldn't have anyway.. I certainly intend to tonight), likely won't have an opportunity to partake of corned beef (which is sad, I love the stuff), and even more likely won't be offered a single glass of beer (or, for that matter, multiple glasses). However, I am going to listen to Irish music (as well as other types), hopefully dance a bit (though my brother's not here to pull me out on the floor), and enjoy food and company (though no stage time this time). I expect it to be wonderful, as I happen to know this brilliant, wonderful, awesome sounding, better than.. <\insert name of popular good band here/> (okay, maybe I'll stop now).. group that just happens to be scheduled to sing.

Now that it's taken me an entire paragraph to say it: Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

On The Job Front

In case anyone was curious, I ran away to Dallas over the weekend - last weekend, not this current one - though I think at least half of my readers already knew that. I have no pictures though. Which must be quite an accomplishment for me.

I haven't bothered posting since then because I've been exhausted, mainly due to beginning work nightly at EvilPlace BigLargeEverythingStore (actual name withheld to protect the guilty.. or, rather, my own job in case the guilty happen to somehow come across this, since as long as I don't reveal the name of the store I'm not directing customers away from it or anything strange like that). It's been terribly, extremely, unbelievably exciting so far, in an entirely undescribable way. Mostly involving folding clothes and placing things on the correct shelves and racks so that the customers can come and unsort them again. I knew there was a reason I always attempted to place things back where they came from when shopping; I now doubly appreciate the effort any other customer makes to do the same, rather than forcing me to remove every single unit of socks from an entire shelving rack to resort, something I found myself doing during my most recent night of work because it was so hopelessly and otherwise uncorrectably out of order. Welcome to overnight stocking, folks.

I also have started working as a substitute at a preschool, or rather, almost started working, only the first day I was called in a number of the kids in the class got sick so that they didn't end up needing an extra adult in the classroom. Still, I'm on their list, and will be called in the future. This job is much more actually (rather than sarcastically) exciting, and will hopefully be much more enjoyable - and much more useful for future job applications.

It seemed only proper to follow up my rushed college years, including the overabundance of classes taken at one time, by holding three different jobs at once (four, if you count random babysitting as an actual job as well; five if you count the fact that I'm still a partial owner of my family's bookstore back in MI). I've already been told that I'm insane, though I'm apparently not violent and likely to go ballistic while at EvilPlace BigLargeStore, or so I'm told was verified with my former employer whom I put down as a reference. I'm assuming, though I haven't inquired, that the same questions were asked of my other reference, who - I'm still assuming - did not in fact tell them that I'm crazy, or perhaps did and they were desperate enough to hire me anyway. And who either way most likely had a good laugh at the thought of my becoming overly violent.

Future updates may now include random anecdotes of the insanity of my schedule, much like they would have had I ever blogged in school or bothered studying for all the classes I was taking, something I'm told would have added to the numbers of hours spent per class greatly and possibly lessened the number of credits I was capable of taking. Perhaps, if I ever get a chance at a second go around, I'll have to test the theory - my former method might not work so well for that M.A. I hope to get, anyway. And that's a theory that won't be tested soon.

3/4

Yep, I need to find myself a new crop of pictures to work with. Preferably a better one. Be that as it may...

Happy birthday Kevin!

Not Just For Fun

After less than one week, I decided my little Lenten blog experiment was not working anywhere near the way I had hoped, or even really working out at all. I now return to entirely normal programming (at least as normal as it gets around here). The first part of that "normal" is a discussion about Lent. Go figure.

This past Sunday our priest gave a homily about Lenten sacrifices. He used the story of a man who drank a lot, and gave up drinking for Lent, only to return to it by drinking a ton on Easter. The point of the story was that if it doesn't change you, what good is it anyway? The man didn't stop his bad habit of drinking a lot. My first impression of the homily was an immediate "but, that's not the point!" The man in the story was giving up a bad habit just like a new years resolution, with the difference that it lasted over a month until he reverted again. The focus was not on God; it was on giving up drinking. Now, this might have been a faulty first reaction (and how do I know he wasn't giving up drinking for God, anyway, and not because it was a bad habit), and I've since heard both reactions similar to mine and others who thought it made a lot of sense, that, if you're just going to go right back to it come Easter, what's the point? How has anything changed?

The second opinion does make sense, especially given the way so many people treat the idea of giving something up for Lent. There was a bit in last Sunday's reading that stated that Jesus fasted for forty days and, at the end of those days, he was hungry. It was followed by the fact that the devil tempted Jesus by asking him to make bread - of course, if he was hungry, he's going to want to eat. We know that there was a reason for Jesus' time spent in the desert fasting and that he accomplished more than simply starving himself. But too often we give up something for Lent and because our focus is only on giving that thing up, all we accomplish is to make ourselves hungry. Instead of using the time during Lent to focus more on God, we count down the days until we can gorge ourselves on bread again - and on sweets, movies, music, beer, or whatever other things people choose to give up. If that's all that we're doing, then I agree; what's the point? We're hungry, but not any holier (phrasing partially stolen). And probably better off not giving up anything at all.

I found myself in a discussion about this topic within the past week, and had the exact same initial reaction; that's not the point. There's something more to it. We're not giving up something bad in order to, in that way, better ourselves during Lent. We're giving up something good as.. and I stopped there, because, as so often happens, my powers of conversation failed me and my thoughts froze. As what? An offering, a sacrifice, a penance, simply a means of reminding us where our focus should be whenever we think about what we're missing? I didn't end up actually entering the conversation, because I couldn't easily explain it, though a good portion of that IS due to the common and frequent brain freeze that leads most people who know me to wonder if I'm mute.

So what I actually want to do - and will, but I'm putting this thought on a "to-be-continued" status and running away for the weekend - is make use of a method where I rarely have brain freeze problems, and write down my actual thoughts on the matter. But that brilliance will have to wait until I'm home again.