Let us gaily tread the measure

During a slow afternoon, one of my co-workers sighed wistfully.

"I want to go to Narnia."

I stared at her. "Narnia?"

She led me through salvage to an old cabinet.



And this is why I almost regret not getting a job in the salvage department.

An elderly gentleman was standing in front of the desk, waiting to talk to our buyer. One of my co-workers comes up, greets him warmly.

"Anne," said my co-worker, turning to me with a huge grin. "This is Soandso. Guess how old he is?"

The old man started laughing a rat-a-tat chuckle.

I pulled a face. "Pushing 40?"

The old man laughed harder, eh-eh-eh-eh-eh.

"He was in World War Two," said my co-worker.

I offered my hand across the desk. "Excellent. Sir, let me shake your hand."

His wrinkled fingers were only just pressing into mine when my co-worker added, "He was in Italy making bombs for Hitler."

I have never heard a man that old laugh that hard in my life, his fingers wrenching mine all the while. "EH EH EH EH EH EH!"

Variations on this happened to me three times in the last few days, culminating in this conversation----I answered the phone at work, and the person, audibly confused, responds, "....hello?"

"Hi!"

"....are you a robot/recording?"

"No, I am a person. Hi."

"Because you sound way too peppy to be a person."

"I am. I am a human girl."

Pause.

"Well, good."

"If I'm unbearably peppy, it's because we're closing in thirty minutes." And it was SPIDER-MAN DAY.*

"Fair enough."

ANNE MOLONEY: PROBABLY NOT A CYLON

* = Spider-man day totally merited excitement---Immonen is bringin' it and then some. YAY! I know typing YAY unironically is very i-hate-math-class of me, but honestly, I mean every becapsed letter of that YAY. His MJ and Kitty Pryde are great (I love her dorky costume, and the acting mileage he manages despite the fact that we can only really see her mouth), but my only complaint at all is that his Peter isn't quite there yet. But I have faith! Immonen is kind of super stellar, and this is pretty much the strongest possible start... I give this issue five Yotsubas.

One of our dealers gave me a farewell gift: a romance novel set in WWI.

She wrote me a card: "This is for when you finish re-reading Harry Potter."

Clearly I suck at keeping my interests close to my chest to any degree whatsoever.

A lady came up and paid for a bird cage today. I went in the back to grab it for her, as she was all frail and whatnot.

It was blue, with black specks, which I thought was kind of odd.

Only when I picked it up did I learn that the black specks were hundreds of little baby spiders.

 So I had to lock the doors and let in customers one at a time today because a man with the rifle was having a "discussion" with the police on our sidestreet.  There is some (rather heated) argument amongst the management and our customers over whether shots were actually fired.  NUMBER OF DAYS UNTIL I NO LONGER WORK HERE:  TWO.  But who's counting.

In other news, 30 Rock's been renewed.

In the span of fifteen minutes, I:

• discovered someone had gone through the store, ripped open a bunch of frames, and stolen the art from inside;
• had an incredibly wretched conversation with an incredibly skeezy old man;
• found that someone had scattered cheap plastic easter eggs throughout the store.  Curious, I opened the first I found.  There was a dead spider inside.  I found and had to dispose of eight more, each rattling horribly.  (Please note that, my love of -Man aside, spiders give me the overpowering hysteric weeping heebies.)

While this sort of concentrated karmic drubbing is a great thing to inflict on a character at the very start a romantic comedy, it is specifically the sort of thing I need less of in my life.

However, getting voicemail from my sister describing (at high-pitched, enthusiastic length) the joys of otters holding hands salvaged a lot.

I gave notice at work this week, because as much as I love working overmuch for very little, I'm pressing on to greener, better-paying, benefits-laden pastures. I will miss the very particular kind of customers one gets when one sells junk, though.

This lady yesterday kept coming up to the desk to ask fairly mundane questions---"Where's the bathroom?" "What's the price on this?" "Can I sit on this?"---but she would preface each query with another:

"Can I ask you a game show question?"

I think it was her TV catch phrase. I bet I can buy a t-shirt from her website.

Anyway, I am mentally out the door, kids. There's this inner clock ticking down to Not Here, and I am far too busy paying rapt attention to it to deal with "customers" or "my duties." Normally I'm all about keeping busy, but yesterday I formally decided Forget It. Instead of working on store documents or even mundane stuff like stock, I played Solitaire for two hours. It was a very How The Other Retail Half Lives moment.

Dateline, yesterday---

ME: "God, I could really use my tax refund about now. This month just sucks."
DYLAN: "Yeah, well, it's not coming any time soon. You sent it in just a while ago, taxes aren't even due for another few weeks---"
ME: "I know, but, yanno. It would be nice. This is the ideal moment."

Dateline, this morning---

ME: "Did... did someone steal my identity and make a deposit?"

Thanks, Santa Uncle Sam! I'm gonna eat eight consecutive steaks.

In other news, I opened at work yesterday, and wound up getting there like twenty minutes too early. So I was just noodling about, sweeping the store, and I was trying to distract myself, so I figured I'd work on my wookiee impression. I've only got seven months to get it perfect. But I can't quite figure it out---it's high in your throat, but in the back too, and I've got to have my mouth open wide for it to sell---

And I turned the corner smack into our most absolutely humorless and severe dealer. She'd gotten in early to work on her space.

I tried not to fall over.

"Hi," I said.

"Hello," she said.

"I'm, uh." I scratched the back of my neck, knowing I was blushing. "I'm practicing my wookiee impression."

She fixed me with that critical eye.

Then, after a moment:

"Keep practicing."

In additional news, THE SUREST WAY TO ANNE'S HEART: HERMIONE AND RON PATRONUS ACTION FIGURES. That's one of my favorite little moments in the books, and I'm glad that I have the option to fondly giggle at it in action figure form.

I got these from work around Thanksgiving, but haven't thought to share them with you, the internet, until now. I love them unreasonably.



You know you love them too. You do.