I'm really diggin' this Sondre Lerche kid. Even though I'm not sure what the correct pronunciation of his name is, it's good stuff, and he's cute as a button to boot! Talk about a package deal! I want to listen to some new and exciting stuff. Or old stuff that is exciting that I haven't heard. Either way is fine. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I saw a 40-50-ish man in a suit with an eye patch last week. Yes really. It probably was the highlight of my week.

Oh man! Earlier tonight I was sitting at the computer with the TV on for background noise and I hear a most familiar piano chord. Followed by another. And I whipped my head around to find out what the hell was going on to find Death Cab's Transatlanticism playing as a bed for a Bell commercial or something. Everything suddenly was speeding at me. I was having a hard time taking it all in because I was so excited. I know that there were people doing the wave all over the place - in the grocery store, on the street - and it all culminated in a large stadium full of people. I think it was more the shock of it all that threw me off guard. I check the site whenever I get a chance to sit at the computer and I never read anything about it being used for a commercial. I heard about it being on the OC and Six Feet Under, but no commercials. Man, they're getting huge. I don't know how I feel about that. I'm always torn when things like this happen. I want them to stay small so that the shows are more intimate and not mobbed full of people who only know the one song they hear on the radio. But at the same time, I want them to be successful. Blah.

August is less than a week away and I seriously don't know what happened to the year. I don't remember New Year's being anything very eventful. I guess my days all seem to blend together with my work schedule. I know that there's a lot of work with a bunch of laundry and eating out tossed into the mix. How sad that I've done absolutely nothing this summer. I've not gone to one barbecue or to the beach or anything. But despite my lack of summertime activity, I've still managed to get myself a pretty nice watch tan, so I guess that's something.

rock out: DCFC - Transatlanticism

My sleeping has been screwed over the past few days. I did an overnight shift at work from 9 Sunday night until 6 the next morning. (Even though I really stayed until a quarter till 7 because I wanted to look at all our new stuff. I am a huge geek.) So I got home and ate something since all I had was some pizza at around midnight with a side-order of so-called "dots". Supposedly they were to be some sort of bread ball-type things with cheese melted on top. But they were actually mostly raw dough with melted cheese on top. Chewy to say the least. Right, so sleep until 2-ish and then awake. More eating, and then off to the Braid show. The boys are still spectacular, even though 3 of the 4 look a bit older in the face. Damon no longer looks 12. He's more along the lines of 18 now. Bob, on the other hand, looks exactly the same. He was manning the merch table in a lonely corner when we first got there. I went up to get my Killing A Camera DVD and some pins and a shirt, and before he grabbed my items for me, he took out his little wire-rim glasses and propped them a little low on his nose. It was quite possibly the cutest thing ever. He seemed tired, which I don't doubt. (They're on tour you know.) I wanted to chat with him, but it didn't seem in the cards. I was thinking that people must come up to him all the time and know so much about him after reading his blogs and whatnot, meanwhile, they are complete strangers to him, and how odd that must be.

So Recover and Moneen opened for them, along with one other band that I don't remember the name of. Recover put on a short but sweet set, and then Moneen blew the roof off the place. It was a little bit of a homecoming for them since they're Canadian and all. The crowd was very into it and singing along and it was great. But then Braid. It gave me chills seeing those boys again. There seemed to be only a handful of people who were really jazzed by the whole thing though, which made me sad. I wanted them to be adored. I wanted people to be handing them bouquets of flowers as they left the stage like they do at the Olympics. I wanted tears and screaming fans ala Michael Jackson in Japan. I wanted them to really know how much they're still loved and appreciated. But there were no tears. And I would have told them all myself, but they seemed to all disappear as soon as they left the stage. I'll post pictures if I ever get around to scanning them. But thank you boys. You were spectacular.

I will now share with you a funny story that one of my managers shared with me. She was walking down the gay strip and there was a truck with these two fresh faced farm boys. They even had the hats and denim shorts and were naive in all their glory. Well, on the back of their pickup was a big sign that read "Cherries $5" and it was surrounded by gay men.

We've got a handful of new hires that are all from Ireland. They've all got the great accents going and they're fantastic drinkers. Now, I don't have a lot of experience with Irish folk, but they've got some crazy names. For example, there's Niamh, which is pronounced Neev and also Caiomhe, which is pronounced Kweeva. *note: a's and i's are possibly reversed, but you get the picture.

A bunch of my coworkers got jobs at the same company. It's a pretty fun sounding job. What they get to do is, you know those phone in things you see on tv where it says something like "meet sexy local singles now!"? Well, they get to screen those people's messages that they leave in their mailboxes for things like prostitution and underagers and whatnot. So if they hear a suspected message, they get to call and pretend to be interested and find out if they're charging for their services or whatever and if they are, then their number gets blocked. Two of the guys doing it are gay (like most of my male coworkers,) and it's funny because they get to pretend to be straight sometimes and they get such a kick out of it. So all day, they listen to these people's messages and you can imagine what these people are saying on them. What a job!

Hoooooweeeee it's been a long time. I've been very disconnected from the computer for a while. Too much working and laundry makes me too tired to be able to sit and type/click. Nice to see Brett dropping a line, even if it was over a month ago.

Our idiot manager at work finally put us out of our misery and quit. She's going to work as a flight attendant. (Watch out Air Canada passengers!) But this leaves us down to 3 managers instead of the 6 that we're supposed to have. And then on top of that, our head of store's girlfriend had a baby a couple of days before her last day, so he was out for a week or two. And then on top of that, one of our other managers got into a dune buggy accident. On the street. In Vancouver. Yes really. Apparently, the story goes that one of his friends got a 4-seat dune buggy and they took it out for a spin. The driver of said dune buggy saw his/her mom and turned to look and wave and say "Hey, there's my mom!" and as he/she was looking over at mom, they hit the car in front of them. My manager, (who will be referred to as "E",) was in the back and hit his face on the roll bar. He just so happened to hit his face at an angle that caused his 3 front teeth to be pushed up into his gums. I know. That's what I said too. It's kind of funny because he already looks really young (customers have laughed at him when he's told them he was the manager,) and now, he's got his three front teeth gone and is going to need braces on top of that. Kind of funny after the fact.

Glenn and the fam just got back from Orlando. And with his granny still in the Philippines, that left me with the house to myself for a whole week. I was really paranoid at first. The first night, I forgot to leave a light on before I left for work, and I wasn't going to get home until after midnight, and I was convinced that someone would break in, rob us, and then set the place on fire, and then I would come home to a smoking pile of ash. I even called home before I left work to see if any strangers would answer. I am a big geek.

I've made a push for a raise at work and I'll find out pretty soon if I get it. I kind of decided that if I don't get this raise, I'm going to start looking for another job. One of my other managers, L, told me that our head of store S thinks that the Old Navy that's opening up in our mall is going to steal me away. Heh. Maybe this will help.

Eat to work sleep to work work to work work. Now that I'm full time, it's really starting to kick my ass. A whole bunch of our best workers are all in the market for new jobs because our in-store situation has become so unbearable. Sad really.

I about shit myself when I saw this. I am giddy!

Our soundtrack at work has been surprising me of late. November had the Postal Service on it, and then January had Death Cab and Saves the Day amongst a whole bunch of other stuff I didn't expect to be hearing every 3-4 hours. And then this month, Hey Mercedes. What the heck is going on here? Good music at work? Twilight Zone up in here.

The past couple of days have been shite. I was a dumbass and ended up getting that virus that's been spreading itself all over the place, so I apologize if any of you caught it from me. It took me a while to get the ole comp to even be able to startup again, and then I couldn't connect to the internet, and that took another while to get fixed. But this little program got us all cleaned up so we're up and running again.

Some DVD purchases of late: Lost In Translation, Reservoir Dogs (10 year Special Edition), and Space Ghost Coast to Coast Vol. 1. We ended up settling for Mr. Orange for our Res. Dogs because he was only $15 or something ridiculous like that. Mr. Orange. The narc. But Tim Roth is an okay guy.

Krispy Kreme opened about 15 minutes from our house. We visited said Krispy Kreme last night and in additional to the dozen of original glazed goodness, we got a variety box. It was as if the gods themselves had created the variety they had available. Not only did they have my fave, chocolate dipped custard filled, but they also had a key lime filled and a cheesecake filled. Holy shit. That was me. Falling on my ass.

I'm sick and I hate it. Plus on top of the regular sick, I also had a lovely allergy attack yesterday as I was out to get my hair cut. Super. Well, the hair cut was/is super, but the rest of it was not so much. And I'm supposed to work tomorrow at 7, which means I'll have to be up a little less than 12 hours from now. And there's a game on tonight.

Alright, enough moaning and pissing about. I did do a pretty decent cash training on Sunday morning though. There's a little positive for you. And I was also asked to be the men's merchandising specialist, which really means that I'll be the lackey for the actual men's merch manager. But whatev. Woo hoo! Responsibility!

And by the way, yes, I am still slowly plowing through Infinite Jest.