Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 

The store has been oddly slow the last few days. At least compared to the crowds we've been seeing in the last week or so. This can only mean one of three possibilities.

1) people have actually been thinking ahead and began doing their back to school shopping anywhere up to a month ago in order to avoid the crowds. Naturally this thins out the crowd, making our work less hectic. And this unexpected intelligent foresight in turn validates my faith in humanity. Or,

2) everyone is waiting until the absolute last minute (read: the long weekend itself) to do all their back to school shopping. This in turn means we will be swamped for the next few days, driving us to curl up into little fetal balls and think of our happy place...or else break the glass on our "Use In Case of Homicidal Rage" cabinet house the Customer Appreciation Amazing Pancake Maker. Of course, this would nullify all that "validation of faith in humanity" thing. Or else it might be,

3) my phereomones are in fact driving customers out of the store. Which might explain why the store gets busy whenever I'm not around, but within a minute of my return, the place empties out again. (I know it can't be my B.O., since I use deodorant every day.) Now, if only we could harness this power for the forces of good...

In other news, I have begun Christmas shopping already, the Evidence Mice have been lying low, I get to sleep in tomorrow and oh dear God, I don't know what the cat did in the litter box, but it's making my eyes tear up from the burning!!


Oh, and for anyone playing the pool at home, here is Today's Asking Asshat number: 5.
posted by Phillip at 9:40 PM

 

This past weekend was spent in the company of friends, family, a lot of mosquitos and more than a few vices. Though there was (sadly) no Tequila present for me to indulge in my favourite alcoholic vice, I did discover a few fascinating vice-related things. Like how it feels to be the person who has to hold back someone's hair while they pay their tribute to the porcelain god.

Good times were had regardless...at least for those of us who didn't suffer a hangover the next morning. Though it saddens me to say that at the bonfire celebrating my sister's birthday, I lost no less than 3 marshmallows and 2 hotdogs to said fire.

I blame it on my sticks. They all caught fire and broke off, taking my hapless and delicious meals down with them. And now I've apparently been banned from selecting or using sticks to cook hotdogs/marshmallows over the fire ever again. Geez, you'd think I'd been trying to put an electric kettle onto the fire or something...

Anyhoo, it's the week before school starts, and thus far I'm please to report I haven't been forced to kill any silly-arsed customers. Yet. The week is still young, of course. Mind you, we are considering setting up a betting pool regarding our signage. Currently we have a promotional deal, and the sign advertizing for it says:

Perhaps it's because of all my time being trapped in the retail trenches that I'm inherently skeptical now, but whenever I see a sign proclaiming any sort of sale, I immediately search the rest of the sign for the fine print, requirements and other such limitations. Then again...this does help further my belief that everyone should spend a "tour of duty" of sorts in the service sector for at least a required 4-6 months. Perhaps then people will tone down their asshattery.

It's either that, or I revert back to the Customer Appreciation Amazing Pancake Maker.

Today's Lesson: sometimes the smell of bong wafting through the balcony window can smell a lot like dog poop.
posted by Phillip at 8:50 PM

 

For the last hour or so, Mel has been running through Hyrule (with a great deal of cursing its sidequests, might I add). And I have been washing poop that mast managed to get matted into the butt-fur of our dog.

Do I know how to have a kick-ass Friday night or what?

In other news, I am truly convinced that customers are in fact like swarms of locusts that will decimate your display and leave behind a horrid, sad mess that takes a very long time to clean. If they're this bad with mere stacks of backpacks, I shudder to think what a store with a shoe sale would look like after the carnage.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Katamari soundtrack I must listen to...
posted by Phillip at 8:57 PM

 


As I look at the calendar, I marvel at how it has been almost a month and a half since this little bit of nowhere saw anything resembling life. The blog has become dust-ridden and riddled with cobwebs during the interim. But for no more! (At least, that's how the theory goes.) And so, my loyal readers...the both of you who are left...this little bit of nowhere returns.

There's a slight bit irony running loose in the world, I must confess. (There's also a slight bit or ironing running loose, but that only happens when you leave dirty clothes unwashed for so long that they develop their own intelligence.) Half of the inherent absence of any new updates was due partially to Net apathy and partially to "nothing really fancy schmancy to comment on". Most of these things, apathy especially, contributed heavily to a lack of updates. And the first interesting thing to happen to me that's really worth commenting about renders me bedridden, sick and pretty much unable to go near a computer let alone type on it, for nearly 2 weeks.

So yeah, Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease was had.

I don't recommend it. Unless there's some foul little malevolent asshat you really do loathe. In which case, hey, so long as I'm not the plague monkey that has to give it to them, enjoy the spectacle!

Let's take a moment to break the disease down, however. Hand, Foot & Mouth is primarily a kid's illness. It's rare for adults to catch it, and usually when they do they exhibit no symptoms. Just think, all you hypochodriacs out there: the virus is infecting you, only you just don't know it. Feel free to scream and sanitize your hands at your leisure.

But getting back to the disease, it's near impossible for an adult to suffer the effects of HFMD the way a child would. I, however, happened to be that gosh-darned lucky one in a million. And I didn't even get a gold statue or purple ribbon for it, or anything for my troubles. Bah, I say!

ASt the very least, we were able to trace how I got the virus. One of my co-workers babysits her niece on a regular basis. And guess what quirky little disease happened to be running horribly amok at said niece's daycare? So my co-worker was probably a carrier, much the way a plague monkey can carry a deadly virus but not be affected by it. I had a work shift with her...and a day or two later, I started to notice strange, little red marks on my hands. These soon multiplied and became strange, little red marks on my hands and face.

Now given the location of the marks, at the time Mel & I thought I was merely suffering from a bug or spider bite. Something had crawled into my pillow and was making a meal of all my body parts that rested on said pillow. The bedding and pillows were washed. The spots got bigger. And bred like scary viral bunnies.

A day or two after that, I was knocked flat on my ass by a fever. By now, the marks were all turning into blisters. Blisters that were slightly itchy and somewhat painful. Except for the ones that showed up inside my mouth and on my tongue. Those were more-than-somewhat painful. They also had the unexpected side effect of preventing me to eat.

By the time Mel returned from an overnight getaway with her family in Niagra, she found me a sad, sorry little mass asleep on the couch. She called Telehealth, the phone-in medical line. After hearing my symptoms, the nice guy on the phone line said it would probably be a good idea to go to the ER. We went to the ER. We arrive at the ER at about half past midnight. At around 4:30am, we were actually allowed out of the waiting area and into a triage room. An hour or so later, we were graced by the presence of a doctor who took all of 5 minutes to tell me there was nothing I could do about the virus and nothing they could do to help. (As it turns out, HFMD has no cure, and no known antibodies can help lessen the symptoms.)

So when you whittle it down, we waited 5 1/2 hours to be told I needed bedrest. Now on the one hand I do appreciate the doctor's advice; I was able to procure a few sick days from work, and used those days to sleep and recover as best I could. Knowing me, I probably would have still tried to go into work if I was under the impression whatever I had wasn't so serious. On the other hand...five and a half frickin' hours for that?! Lucky I wasn't the other poor bastard who was stuck waiting about as long as we were; that guy had a wrist that was at best broken and at worst as horribly maimed as it can get without bone punching through the skin. I lost counto f how many complimentary ice packs he went through that night.

Anyhoo, a week was spent in the company of a lot of sleep. And I do mean a lot of sleep. I maybe spent 3-4 hours in total being conscious per day, and not all at once. And the drool. Oh God, the drool! Because of all the blisters in my mouth, I was lucky to drink a few cups of water or milk per day. Whenever that happened, my salivary glands kicked into overdrive and I had this uncontrollable drooling problem for the next 10 minutes. I also had this problem whenever I woke up too. We went through so many napkins and Klenexes as a result.

Do you remember the dog from the movie Turner & Hooch? I became the human variation of Hoouch and that "It looks like you swallowed a tennis shoe and the laces are still sticking out" drool. Again, I don't recommend it.

But in time, I started to recover. I stayed awake more often and for longer periods of time. I actually had enough energy to take Shady outside. I started to drink more liquids, and not drool all over the place for the next hour. About a week after our fated visit to the ER, I upgraded my eating habits to include the "can finally eat soup" feature. (A definite improvement on the previous "might be able to half-drink, half-dribble a glass of water or milk" feature, I can assure you.)

Most of the symptoms shifted into a "going going" as opposed to "gone" phase. My mouth, while still sporting its myriad of "I'm amazed it's not leprous!" spots/blisters/scary-looking bumps, started to show more mobility, flexibility and a lot less pain than usual.

Granted, it was still another 3 days before I could start eating solid foods again. Yet suddenly being able to eat again had one unexpected drawback: hunger. I suddenly found myself staring at TV commercial and go "They're eating food. I HATE them."

No, really, I'm serious. Two days ago I saw a KFC commercial and thought to myself, "You know, I could go for some of that." And considering my past history/restraining-order relationship with KFC, that says something.

You may laugh, but I have subsequently dropped an inch around the hips since the week of too-painful-to-eat began. It's very disconcerting to pull up your jeans, and then have the jeans slowly slide back down to your kneecaps. Methinks my forcibly repressed metabolism is going to kick back in with a significant vengeance once this is all over.

As for the hands, the blisters are starting to show signs of fading. Most turned from solid callous-like blisters into those watery ones you're afraid of accidentally popping. (Because let's face it, the last thing you want to do is grab a can opener, and suddenly feel something wet trickle down your finger.) It's been the usual Polysporin & Bandaid treatment since I started working again.

Which brings us to the here and now, where there has been a near full recovery in all proverbial avenues. My mouth has no sores, my appetite is very healthy if I'm a swarm of locusts, and my hands have no blisters at all. Mind you...my hands are sporting large pinkish blotches where the blisters used to be. They are starting to fade and return to my normal skin pallour, but in the meanwhile, I look like I'm decomposing. I could easily be in a zombie movie, and the only effects they'd have to do would be on my face.

Ah, what a beautiful way to return to this little bit of nowhere! With pustules and drool and ugly little viruses, all of which can be shared with so many unlucky sots. Truly, online journals are a thing of beauty.

But has anything else happened, you ask?

Nah, not really. It's back to school season at work, which means busy shifts, sad-looking children and a myriad of dumbass questions that only demonstrate how often customers DON'T bother reading the big bold letters on a sign. When I'm not at work, I'm spending a lot of time with Mel and catching up on my writing. Oh, and I'm usually very hungry.

In fact I'm hungry right now.

So we had better cut to Today's Lesson before I bugger off and raid the fridge for the third time tonight: rabbits will, if given half the chance, race around their cages all night long in a valiant effort to keep you awake against your will. (Which makes it amusing in a way to consider that we now have Tachi the lop in our guest bedroom.)
posted by Phillip at 6:30 PM