HAHAhahhAhaa. Today we had to pull these containers full of road salt out of warehouse three, and Mark had put them way in the back behind like 10 truck loads of pallets... there wasn't even room to put the pallets if you wanted to dig them out... it would have taken like three days and ten trucks, hahahaha. So they think hey, I know, right in the back of the warehouse where the containers are (which weigh about 250lbs a piece, 6 per pallet, they need three pallets) there is a rail door that goes out to the railroad tracks. So they get in Mark's truck and drive around behind the building where Mark attempts to drive over the railroad tracks... but gets his truck stuck. The axle is literally scraping the rail. It is stuck stuck stuck. So, being geniuses, they go and get the forklift, which they are going to lift the truck up with so the front wheel can clear the rail. Does any of that sound like a terrible idea to anyone? Maybe the part about driving the forklift behind the building in the mud? maybe the part about trying to lift a TRUCk with a forKLIfT? maybe the part about how the forklift is a rental and if we misuse it in any way we buy it? yes, yes, they drove the forklift into the mud and it tried to lift out the truck and got horribly horribly and completely stuck, right next to the road so everyone driving by could see what a wonderful warehouse we were. Not to mention that it was threatening rain... not to mention that there was the remote possibility of a TRAIN COMING.... So anyway, they built a little ramp out of concrete pieces on either side of the rail so that the truck could finally get unstuck. The forklift wasn't so lucky, and they had to call a tow-truck. $130 later, our forklift is muddy but safe, the truck is sitting in the parking lot, and... you guessed it... the containers of salt are still whiling away the hours behind 10 truckloads of different kinds of road salt. Ah, but it's ok, because they are going to try. again. tomorrow. HAHAHAhahaHAHAHah.

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Since you left I've been so busy
So much to do I'm getting dizzy
But if you need some time I guess I could pencil you in
I've got my nose to the grindstone, my head in the game
It's probably the same for you and whats-her-name
Ain't it a crazy world that we live in?

Cause at 5 am I gotta wake up crying
From 6 to 8 I gotta feel like dying
Then hurt like hell til noon when I break for lunch
I'm really swamped from 1 til 3
Drowning in an ocean of memories
There's a mountain of regret to tackle in the 4 o'clock crunch
About that time the mail comes in
Nothing for me but junk again
At least its junk as opposed to nothing at all
Then I gotta rush home so I'm there when you don't call...




maybe my last entry can be the bridge.

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why are you here?
looking for me?
I'm in the same place I'll always be
lying on the floor, thinkin of you
(yeah, that's the same thing I always do)

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My feet ache.

My whole body aches. I've been stacking 22-24kg boxes all day long. I got these bruises near the top of the inside of my thighs, I was a little concerned as to how they could have appeared, it's not a part of my body that I usually injure, as one could imagine... but I finally figured out today that I was carrying each box by the straps and resting the other edge against my thighs as I walked. When I went to lift it on top of a stack, I would bring up my leg to give it an extra kick to the top. Voila! Mystery solved.

Edwinn, finishing his Red Bull and responding to being asked 'aren't you coming?' (to get back to work after lunch):

Yeah, I'm coming, I'm just waiting until I grow those little wings...

I really like Edwinn because he's type cast "thug" with the do-rag and the corn rows and the sagging pants but once you get to know him he's this really shy guy with a quiet voice who's hilariously funny.

Today I set off the burglar alarm and I couldn't turn it off fast enough so the alarm people called, but I couldn't figure out how the phone worked so I kind of hung up on them, so then the police showed up, and while they were taking down my license plate number, my friends show up and get out of the car... as Mark said, it probably didn't help that they were two black guys and a hispanic guy... and then Richard takes control of the situation and calmly explains that the huge truck hooked up to the building is ours and we are cleaning out everything inside the warehouse and taking it away. This is, of course, exactly what we were doing... but it doesn't really sound right when he says it like that. Luckily just at that moment, I come out of the building looking like an inept moron that sets off alarms accidentally and the cop was satisfied. haha.

I wonder what the cops would have thought if they found me yesterday, when I was teaching my mother and sister how to break into a house with a credit card. My sister is house sitting, watering all these plants, and she accidentally locked herself out of the house. It's been so hot lately that we were certain that all the plants would die if we didn't get in there soon. My sister really didn't want to pay $40 to call a real locksmith, so my mom and I came over with some screwdrivers and our ingenuity to try and help. Fall semester I became quite proficient at picking locks with a credit card (or a used target giftcard for those who actually need their credit cards), gaining access to ranor's room to steal his PS2 for a couple hours or to wake him up- or getting into my room when I thought I left the key in there ... so I tried the same technique here and I couldn't get it, but I showed my mom how and bam! she got it right away. Maybe it runs in the family.
This I do know- with great lock-picking power comes great lock-picking responsibility... I only pick locks for the causes of good.

here is my poem:

Little boxes, little boxes... siiiitttting full of fleece
little boxes, little boxes, only 50lbs a-piece
Little boxes, little boxes, those on the racks are sure the worst
little boxes, little boxes, I'll finish them today (if they don't kill me first)

looks like the boxes won, because I'll be headed back there tomorrow.
haha, when Adam gave me the security codes for the building, he just pulls me aside and starts writing on this scrap of paper and I'm like, "yeah, you can give me the security code numbers, or just your number" hahah no I didn't say that... shiiitnaw, and then he said, "hey, see you around" even though the chances that I will ever again see that boy are slim slim slim to none. Apparently he's too good to work for the $10 an hour that we offered to pay him. whatev.

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With weapons of logic they'll bring you down
Pragmatism is the cynic's crown
Beware, Nothing but crticism comes from that throne
Disguising a drunk who loathes to drink alone
But you are high on a dreamer's mead
You choose not to follow where he wants to lead
Blessed are those who from dreamer's eyes can see
Beware the realist who desires all as blind as he
Let the dreamer wander, in a dreamy lullaby
Let the cynics rule the earth but to the dreamers leave the sky.

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The air was full of moisture. As they often said, it was not really rain so much as it was an aggressive mist. The world was temporarily quiet, awaiting the dawn.

At once the silence was broken by an orchestra of cicadas, who called out in unison as if the event had been prearranged. Perhaps it was an insect's form of advance applause for the coming sunrise.
The dragons lay sleeping around the patient feet of the aging temple. A giant, amorphous tree had split the roof of the ancient gatehouse in half, and its roots spilled down the temple stemps in a smooth, earthy cascade.
Dakar lay at the tree's base, a gnarled corner digging into his ribs and ants trying to navigate his long tail. The mist had made the ground soft and middy and Dakar was trying to create enough friction to rmain on the gentle slope of the tree's roots, at the expense of all the muscles on his down-hill side. He was grateful for the dawn just because he could stop failing at sleeping. He dreded it because he knew the sleep that eluded him was desperately needed by his exhausted body.
There was no sunrise, after all, only a general ligthtening of the sky, a progression from black to a dirty grey and finally a washed out off-white.
The dragons stirred.

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My sister is reading a book called "When Bad Christians Happen to Good People" by Dave Burchett. Here is a quote that she put on her xanga that I found to be interesting:

"Last night I had a dream. I went shopping with Jesus. We were browsing through a Christian book superstore. He stopped at the What Would Jesus Do? bracelet display. I found out what Jesus would do. He moved on. Jesus picked up the Testamints breath mints and examined them. Next he saw the Jesus and His dog statue portraying a young Jesus with a German shepherd. Did I see Him chuckle? The Jesus Saves air freshener for cars caught His attention. He looked around at the rows of products and aisles of books, row after row of books about Jesus and how to know Him and be like Him and so on and so on. "Why do you make faith so complicated?" He asked quietly. "I didn't say figure Me out. I said follow me." That woke me up."

I think I might read that book one of these days because that is a topic that I run into often in my everyday life. Many people I know would love to believe in something but they are frightened away from Christianity just because they meet simply the wrong Christians and that ruins everything.

Today was my first day of work at the warehouse for the summer and it was very fun. It was quite odd because this fellow had a warehouse in the area which was doing just terribly and he wanted to move all of his product (fleece: blankets, jackets, scarves, etc.) to our warehouse so that we could manage it better. All this was complicated by the fact that he had been trying to manage his own warehouse from New York City. So he asked us if we would kindly come and pick up all of his boxes and transport them in trucks to our warehouse. When we got there we had to wait around the corner... apparently before we stripped his warehouse of product he had to fly in from a meeting in Chicago and fire all of his employees. He was a little afraid that they would be angry and come back and shoot us all with oozies. I told them it would be ok because I was armed with my dad's box cutter. Luckily I didn't have to resort to that eventuality. When we arrived we met the company's one remaining employee, a cute 20-something named Adam. Sure, Adam had been fired just like everyone else, but he technically didn't have to leave until the end of the day and he wanted to make as much money as he could.
The project was supposed to take about three hours, but we could see as soon as we arrived that it was going to take more like three days to complete. There were boxes everywhere, stacked on racks, organized into piles, randomly stacked on each other... everywhere. It was in the upper 90s today, which also made our adventure a little more taxing.
quotes:
"I can't have my hair long, it has too much African in it... I saw this one guy... I was like, dude, you look like a walking microphone!"
-Mark
"I've got to get new pants- these pants have more holes in them than a golf course."
-Mark
"If you wrap that any faster, I think you're going to be traveling through time."
-Mark (of course) to Adam

By the end of the day I think we were all thoroughly convinced that we should hire Adam for ourselves, and boss seemed rather relieved that the one guy he had actually regretted firing that morning seemed to have gotten another job by lunchtime. I got to meet the new guy, too, Edwin. He's really nice. He and Mark dared me to stand on a concrete pilon and do the Karate Kid crane thing, so I did and just as I was assuming the pose Mark whistled really loud so the guys in the adjacent lot would look over. They just looked really confused. :P The ice cream man kept driving by and we considered trying to barter some fleece for some ice cream (heyyyy, you must be so cold in that there ice cream truck! You need a fleece...) and we found the perfect spot in the warehouse for taking extended breaks, as there was a staircase leading to a flat platform next to some huge rolls of fleece fabric. All you need to do is pull out a length of fleece for the bottom and a length of a different color for your quilt and voila! nap time!
Much to the New York owner's chagrin, the job did take more than three hours (6 hours so far)and is still only a fourth finished. I guess we'll just have to come back tomorrow! The owners peeled back Adam's layoff a couple days so he could answer the phone and accept UPS packages and help us tomorrow. Lesson to be learned here: Keep a positive and helpful attitude upon being fired and good things will fall into your lap. Become bitter and go home... and you'll have a bad attitude and no job!
Adam asked us if it was our job to just go around and clean out other peoples' warehouses after they've been shut down. It made me feel like those aliens in Independence Day that "go from planet to planet like locusts, devouring all the natural resources before moving on". We don't usually do that. What a crappy job that would be. It was so weird to be in that place, with all the desks abandoned, all the normal office crap left just wherever it happened to be when the owners showed up this fateful Tuesday morning... the lingering spirits of the recently fired clinging to everything in sight....

This lady came into to buy a couple lengths of mesh in the morning. She said that she had called but she had had to leave a message because nobody answered. I told her that we were right in the middle of moving and I apologized for not answering the phone. Somewhere during the conversation I think it became apparent that all of the usual people weren't there and she started to feel like she had just intruded on something just a little bit sinister. I felt like all the normal employees had been murdered and we were doing a poor job at acting like nothing was wrong while we searched for places to hide their bodies.

mood: calves aching mood
listening to: O-Town- Suddenly (really great song, by the bye)

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Der Resistance Achtung! You are 38% brainwashworthy, 13% antitolerant, and 61% blindly patriotic

Welcome to the Resistance (Der Widerstand)! You believe in freedom, justice, equality, and your country, and you can't be converted to the the dark side. Breakdown: Your Blind Patriotism levels are borderline unhealthy, but you show such a love of people from everywhere and a natural resistance to brainwashing, you would probably focus your energy to fight Fuehrer with furor, so to speak. Conclusion: Born and raised in Germany in the early 1930's, you would have taken up ARMS against the oppressors. Or even your friends' oppressors. Congratulations! Less than 5% of all test takers earn a spot in Der Resistance!

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 50% on brainwashworthy You scored higher than 5% on antitolerant You scored higher than 82% on patriotic

Link: The Would You Have Been a Nazi Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

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