Multiply 365 Day 242 - Keys to Deliciousness

 

I guess an explanation is in order. Because I do have my keys now, which is very good, not only do I have my apartment keys on that key chain, but I have the keys to Universal News and the keys to the office at Smithfield News on that ring as well. I really didn't want to have to go to work and try to explain just why it was I didn't have the keys for work anymore.

But juts how did the keys come up missing in the first place? Well, let's revisit that issue shall we. It started about 3am on Wednesday morning. I live in an efficiency apartment, so my livingroom and bedroom are in fact the same room. So often I will use my recliner closest to my bed as a multi-purpose piece of furniture. It is a chair, a table, and a foot rest (when I am sitting on my bed I will sometimes prop my feet up on the back of the recliner while watching TV), but it was the table application that I had used it for on this particular occasion. I had emptied my pockets of my pants of their contents, and because I had the recliner extended (a leftover from a previous foot rest usage) I laid the contents of my pockets on the top of the recliner. Well I woke up around 3am on Wednesday, and as I am sometimes wont to do, I will smoke a cigarette and then try to get back to sleep for a couple of hours. So I reach over to the top of the recliner to grab the smokes and I here a jingling. I think to myself I had knocked the keys off of the back of the recliner, but since I didn't hear them hit the floor, I assumed that the keys and fallen onto the seat of the recliner, so I made nothing more of it.

Around 5:30 am I get up, get showered and dressed and go to start gathering my things to go to work. Laptop, check. Wallet, check. Bus pass, check. House keys, not so check. I remember that I had knocked them down the night before, I look on the cushion of the recliner, no keys. Maybe they fell down beside the cushion. No keys. Maybe they fell all the way through the chair. I lift the recliner, no keys. Now I am in panic mode. I check all around the chair, no keys. I start thinking in what direction I might have batted them if that was what I had done at 3am. Still no keys. Now I am running late, so late that I miss my bus. But I have no keys, so it isn't like I can go into work and open up the office, those are some of the keys that are missing. I continue pawing around by the chair, give that up thinking I had imagined the whole key thing at 3am in a dreary slumber like move and realize that I am going to have to go to work, sans keys. Which also means I will be leaving with my apartment unlocked, not an ideal situation on normal days, even less so with the students having moved back in the last week or so. Of course anyone who wanted into my apartment would have had to either realize I didn't lock it when I left or had the intent to break in anyway, but still I left with a significant amount of unease.

I end up getting to work about 45 minutes late, the day doesn't get much better as I am sick most of the day with a pounding headache and sore throat and am worried about who may be going into my apartment in my absence. I end up being so distracted that I completely forget to phone in the Coke order, I go through the entire process of putting it together and then simply forget to phone it in. Most days while I am scheduled until 3pm, I am sticking around till at least 3:30 or 4, but Wednesday I dart out the door maybe even a couple of minute early. I catch a bus back to Oakland, not waiting for the one that runs closest to my place but catch the first one headed in that direction. I will have to walk a little more when I get off the bus, but I will get home about 30 minutes sooner. Timing was taking precedence over my laziness.

Mind you, I felt crappy enough that I had no intention of busting in the door and resuming the search for my keys, I figure I had plenty of time when I got home to look for them, no sense rushing around when I wasn't feeling well. Instead I got in the door and proceeded to climb into bed and was asleep by 4pm. I didn't even wake up until 10pm, by then most of the headache had alleviated, so I plugged in my laptop, tinkered a bit with some Facebook apps including the release of the new Madden season (I haven't determined if I will play this one out or not) and around midnight I resumed the search for my keys. Again I looked in many of the places I had looked before, still nothing. I even rattled the recliner a bit to see if I could hear the keys jingling in there, thinking maybe they had gotten stuck, but nothing. I again start checking pants pockets and what not, still nothing. Then I picked up my laptop bag. And I here a jingling. Apparently what had happened was the bag was on the seat cushion, the chair serving as a table and when I knocked the keys down they actually had fallen right into the bag. I had them with me the entire day and never knew it.

My excitement (and relief) over finding my keys had me up the rest of the night. Well that and the fact I had slept for 6 hours already. So instead I stayed up. The thing was I had a pretty big day planned on Thursday. We were getting a deal on Gatorade (3.80 off a case if you buy 60 cases or more) so the Pepsi order coming in was 268 cases, plus another truck after that and I had to do two grocery orders also. Plus I had to pick up some things at WalMart after work, so I had to determine which store I wanted to go to, and alos do some price shopping for the store. We are looking at buying our 12 packs of cans of Pepsi products from them rather than from our Pepsi rep because it is cheaper that way. If the price is decent enough to merit us going out and hauling it in that is. The thing about Pepsi pricing is, because we are basically labeled a convenience store we do not get the prices that a bigger chain would get on such products. And with Ed wanting a 40% margin on his beverage products, if we go through our rep we would have to retail 12 packs for $6.99 in order to hit our margin, which is just a little too pricey for our clientele. So if we could find a way to get that cheaper where it also benefits us to go out and buy it in large quantities is something I wanted to investigate.

But I did have the issue of which WalMart. On one hand I could go to one of their smaller stores, it would only be one bus ride and I could probably be in and out relatively quickly, on the other hand I could take a longer bus ride and know that while I would get there on one bus, I would have a convoluted ride coming back but go to a super center and buy lots of things while I was there. I opted for the super center route, and ended up spending about $80 on groceries and more cheap crap I didn't need, like a $3 Hawaiian shirt and $5 shorts (I also got “Kick Ass” on DVD for $7.50), but until I got out of work at 4pm and got there at almost 5pm, then did some shopping and waited for one bus, then transferred to another bus, till I got home it was 8pm.

And while I admit I like WalMart for all of the cheap crap I can get, I also was reminded of why I dislike WalMart so much. It pretty much started as soon as I got off the bus, when some guy with crazy wild hair and wearing overalls is running across the parking lot screaming at some lady who parked, yelling “You're not handicapped, you're not handicapped” because she had apparently taken a handicapped spot. I don't know which was worse, here parking in that spot or this crazy man's behavior because of it. Then I get in the store and it gets worse. Despite the store having relatively wide aisles, I can't recall the number of times an entire aisle was blocked because someone would leave their cart right in the middle of the aisle and then have their ass act as a goaltender, trying to keep anyone from getting around either side of them. So getting around the store was almost like driving in Pennsylvania, lots of turnarounds and detours to get to where you need to be. Then some lady's kid starts bawling. And just won't shut up. It took all of my fortitude to not run over to the bedding section and come back with a pillowcase to put over the kid's head.

But after about an hour of this I did escape the store, only to find out I had just missed a bus and had to wait about another 50 minutes for the next one. Now I don't know how many of you are familiar with the people of WalMart website, but damn if I didn't see an addition while I stood there waiting for a bus. Picture this if you will. A man, with sandy blond straight hair and glasses, not fat but overweight, wearing almost Coke bottle like glasses. Wait there's more. For his ensemble, he selected the following; black tennis shoes, gray knee high socks pulled all the way up, 70's style baggy blue running shorts and the capper was a green Lucky Charms T-Shirt with the words “Magically Delicious” printed across the front. There is just no way a woman could be chemically addicted to that.

After that I see a gorgeous blond female come driving into the parking lot, driving a Chrysler convertible, with the radio blaring the Rolling Stones “Emotional Rescue” and I am thinking, you aren't hear to rescue me, you are hear to taunt me, This is like the 5^th circle of hell here, and you are here to enjoy each and every last moment of my torture.

Finally my bus had arrived and I was able to escape this circus like atmosphere and I had a book with me which between the two buses I had to take home, I have almost completely finished now. Good thing too, I am so ready for my Amazon order to get here, which shipped earlier this week. If I can finish at least one of the two I am reading by tomorrow I will not feel as guilty about breaking into the new books as I would if I had two already open and not finished.

And I believe that is about it, I am going to go grab a shower and call it a night. I am still not sure I can wash the images of Mr. Magically Delicious from my mind however.