A few months ago Gillian had told me (actually I read it on her Facebook page, where her and I are friends) that she was accepted into grad school. Because she wasn't sure how to break the news to her coworkers at the bank, she asked me to keep quiet about it until she found the proper place and time to tell them. Not an issue with me, I kept her good news a secret until she had a chance to tell everyone. She told them her last day at the bank would be August 14th.
Me being me, I wasn't going to let such an occasion go without doing something to mark the occasion. With her last day coming one day after payday at work, I figured I would have time Wednesday after I got off to work on my plans, glorious plans. I wasn't sure what I would do yet, just that I wanted to do something nice for her. After all, she had to put up with me for months on end, in Boys Scouts they give you a merit badge for such an accomplishment.
Last Monday Sammy and I were at the bank together, I will take him with me some days because there is an insurance issue involved, our insurance company will only cover someone up to $10,000 if something should happen to them on the way to the bank, any amount over that is just lost, so I avoid that by creating two deposits and both of us going, especially on Mondays where I have all of the weekend sales money as well as three days worth of lottery sales and money we borrow from the lottery account to buy change that all needs to be deposited. While there I had made mention of Gillian's last day was 10 days away or some such silliness, and she said no, actually her last day was now Tuesday, not Thursday, because there is an orientation program for grad students that she needs to attend on Wednesday.
This threw a couple of kinks in the works for my plans, glorious plans, because I get paid on every other Wednesday and while I am not destitute, a good chunk of my last paycheck went to my rent. Seeing as how it was the first month on my new lease (roof over my head for another 12 months, holler) I didn't want to pay it late and start the new lease off on a bad note. So I wasn't going to be as flush with cash as I might have thought, nor was I going to have as much time to go out and about to find something to mark the occasion.
I muddled over what to do in my head and inspiration struck me when I realized that while I might not have adequate cash on hand, I did have adequate Amazon cash on hand. One of the reasons I love Amazon is I can squirrel away cash and gift cards there, almost like a bank, and then just pull on those funds whenever I need them. This would be one of those times, but I didn't want to just buy the first thing that happened upon my computer screen.
One of the many bad habits I have (besides the cigarette I am currently smoking) is that I pay attention, even when people don't realize I am paying attention. It is how I can pull obscure details out of the blue at work at almost the drop of a hat. As I often joke, I am the keeper of the great knowledge. Likewise I knew some things about Gillian, I know she likes hockey probably as much as I do, and I also know she likes things to do with sailing and the ocean. So I turned my trusty skills to Amazon and got this, a 3' x 5' Pittsburgh Penguins banner
and this, which I said was kind of like Build A Bear, but with jewelry and seafood. (For the record you can not eat the oyster in the kit.)
Still picking out the presents wasn't the only issue, since I ordered them from Amazon I still had to worry about them arriving prior to Gillian's last day at work. What good does it do me if her stuff arrives after she no longer works there? That was the part of the plan that had me in a little bit of a panic, sure I thought I had left myself enough time between when I ordered and when she was leaving (I had them shipped to my workplace, just to save me a day on my delivering them to her) but until I have the goodies in my grubby little paws then I wasn't going to be happy.
Enter today at work, where once again on a Monday it just seemed like I was swimming in quicksand, I could never get caught up. Every time I would make a little progress something else would pop up that would stop me in my tracks as I had to attend to something else. It wasn't until almost 3pm before I even got the sales numbers done, not that it mattered much, for the better portion of the day her gifts hadn't arrived anyway. It wasn't until after 2pm before Fed Ex actually dropped them off at work, and while I would have been content to run them down the street as son as they arrived, I still had piles of money on my desk that needed counted, including $1100 in $1 bills and another $1200 in $5 bills. It wasn't the amount of money slowing me down, it was the sheer numbers of individual bills. It didn't help that I was busy fucking up my first sales report and spent additional time trying to figure out why I was going all full blown retard.
Eventually everything got done and I did manage to get out of the store and took the box from Amazon with me to the bank. Whether Gillian actually liked her gifts, well you would have to ask her, wouldn't you? All I know is my work here is done.
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