B365V2.87 - Economy of thoughts

It's Tanuki time.  Yes I am back in Schenley Park, late at night, seeing if I can't muster a blogging idea or three.  I brought an offering for the gods, some tortilla chips.  I tossed a few out as bait, now to sit here and type and see if I lure any out.

You know, Tanuki time would have made a fine segment of Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show.  To get my fascination with that you have to have been around the page a very long time.

I have my snack, my beverage and my cigarettes, I am all kinds of locked in place here.  Nowhere to be until tomorrow, when I have to work and then Sunday for the Steeler game.  Ed almost gave me a second ticket today, but I find asking people to go someplace last minute, by last minute I mean anytime I don't have at least a week's notice, always turns into a futile exercise for me.  The people I want to go with by then have plans, and it ends up spending a lot of my time and energy with questionable results at best.  Some times I get lucky, like the last baseball game, but far too often I end up eating tickets and I am sure that would have happened again with an extra Steeler ticket.  It's a preseason game, it doesn't count and I wouldn't even think of going if I didn't have a free ticket.

So I was sitting in the park downtown today after a rather shitty day at work ( at least the second half of it was) and scientifically speaking our brains are wired to remember the first and last things in a series of events.  So my wiring had me remembering the end of my day.  It started to fall apart right around 1 pm or so.  I was shown a leak in the basement ceiling.  I instantly had two ideas where it was coming from, so I told Sammy to check the back freezer upstairs and if that was fine, then check the air conditioning room across from the deli.  About an hour and a half later as I am finishing off the bank deposits, I am told the roof is still leaking, so I go and check this out myself.  Sure enough it was the air conditioner, the filters hadn't been changed since the last time the repairman was in.  It is a process that takes about two minutes to do, but if it isn't done every couple of weeks then the filters clog, condensation builds up in the units and they start sweating so to speak, which is what was dripping through the floor upstairs and down into the basement.   So now I am doing someone else's job for them, after I had asked them to check the very same thing a couple hours sooner.  So I finish with one set of air conditioners and go to check our other set back by the dairy coolers and they had one filter jammed so far underneath the unit that I had to get a pair of pliers just to pull the filter out to be replaced.

Now it is after 3 pm, the bank closes at 4 pm and I have to lug the weekend change back from the bank, which involves getting $525 dollars together and buying a box of pennies and a box of quarters.

Sorry, I keep hearing something across the street from me in the woods, I am hoping it is Tanuki or one of his underlings.  If it is I will try to get footage.

Anyway, so now I am rushing to put my deposits together, I had all of my numbers balanced at least, when I throw my bank deposit bag into my +1 bag of wholesome goodness and head off for the bank.  My lottery deposit was fine, as was my change order, but my sales deposit was off.  I left two checks to be deposited sitting on my desk.  So now I have to lug the change order back to the store, grab the checks and go right back to the bank.   I fucking hate when I make stupid mistakes like that.  I probably wouldn't have made it if I didn't drop everything to deal with the air conditioners while I was in the middle of doing the deposits to begin with,  but still I have to do better than that.  Well I suppose I don't have to, but I expect more from myself than that.  I wasn't given control of the store a little over a year ago to make dumb mistakes all the time.

So I have that going on in my head when I sit down in the park downtown.  I try not to write out of anger, so if anyone gets my squirrelly wrath on this page, then they most likely earned it.  It is not a mindset that I like to write in, even if the words and profanities would flow pretty easily.

Okay, one of those drug trucks just went by me and stopped further down the turnaround.  It's now 12:26 am, if you are parking in the park now, you are either fucking or getting high.  There isn't a blogathon taking place here tonight, I am assuredly the only person here doing any writing.

Anyway, back to our story, so in that mindset I started thinking about wasted energy.  Mental energy that is.  Like I started wondering if the people I think about think about me.  Not that there has to be a one to one correlation, if I think about you for one minute you owe me one minute of your time.  Nothing stupid like that, but you would like to think that the people you think about at least think about you at some point in time.  Otherwise what is the point of wasting your energy on them.  Because I am sure there are people who do think about me whom are probably on the wrong end of that equation as well. If only there was a way to tell, to focus your energy on those that focus on you.   Anyway that was where my head was, not a place that was fitting for blogging where I was angry and contemplating how much of my focus is misplaced.

By the way, nobody on here got the $25 Amazon gift card, instead a friend on Facebook got it.  She said she was going to put it towards a new dress.  Hey if someone can get use of it, then the effort of working my underground economy wasn't wasted.  The underground economy as I call it, is a bunch of different outlets that allow me to get free things, some of which I keep, some of which I giveaway to deserving coworkers ( you bust your ass for me and I try to take care of you) and some of which ends up on here where I give it away, usually by making a game or contest of it.  The underground economy consists of Swagbucks, My Coke Rewards, Pepsirewardsplus, and Foodservice rewards.  The last two are not open to the general public, but rather to retailers, but the other two anybody can do.  I am not even a serious Swagbucks user and I can tell you since I have joined I have probably racked up over $500 in gift cards. My Coke Rewards I have been doing just about as long as I have been blogging.  From there I have given away vegetable steamers, web cameras, photo albums, MP3 downloads, movie passes on top of the things I have kept for myself.  Foodservice rewards and Pepsirewardsplus I found out about at work, and they were opportunities no one else there was taking advantage of, so who knows how much potential stuff we threw away before I started using the stuff at my disposal.

Okay a second vehicle just went down the road and stopped alongside the first one.  I could be witnessing a drug deal going down, if my vision weren't so shitty at night that I would be better off as a bat.  Just screech at stuff and if the sound waves bounce off of it, it must be an object, because I am too blind to see it at night.  Well they both just left after a very short rondevous, so I am back to having the park to myself, and any critters that may show themselves.

I took some time tonight and shaved down to a goatee again.  I call it my "Mirror Mirror Matt" persona, in an offhand tribute to the Mirror Star Trek Episodes, where they encounter their alternate timeline selves, except everyone is evil.  And usually with a goatee.  So what evil can I bring forth this evening, besides this long pointless blog.  If you have gotten this far, congratulations, so have I.  But now is a good time to stop I think, I have prattled on way too long.

By the way, Public Image Limited is coming to Pittsburgh soon.  I should buy a ticket, but if I do I am not sure what that means for the future of the band.  I passed on The Church tonight, so they are probably still together as of this typing.  Besides, if I am saving for a real vacation, sacrifices must be made.  Just not my morning coffee at Crazy Mocha.