MY LIFE - JUNE

Saturday, June 15, 2002

One of these days, I'll actually arrive at work in the morning semi-awake, unlike days like today where I was completely unable to wake up and stayed in a daze up until around 2pm, when suddenly, I snapped out of it and was flying around the pharmacy and causing general chaos.

I nearly broke a phone today too. When I get bored when I'm the typer, I tend to start pulling on the phone cord and snap it like it's a rubber band. Well, the phone came flying off the receiver and landed smack dab on the ground right next to my feet. This was just as our newest employee Heather came walking by (and damn does she look good) and witnessed my little spectacle and starting laughing, partly because of what she saw, partly because I just stood there and looked down at the phone lying on the ground for a few moments.

Well, that's one way for her to find out just how it can get when working with me. In all fairness, it could've been worse. I have broken the phones before at my old store, with a little assistance from Mike. That involved a rubber ball and the main phone box in the backroom though. This was just me playing around with the phone.

Today was that kind of day though. It was slow at work and I was finally able to get the returns done that I needed to do about a month ago. Our drawer was so full of outdated and damaged items that you could barely close it, and this drawer is twice the size of a normal dresser drawer.

And in other news, my cat is completely flipping out tonight. I watched her attack a piece of fuzz that evidently made her nervous. Now she's dragging herself along the bottom step and looking around the room with her head upside down. I swear, it's only at 4 in the morning and it's only for a few minutes, but damn does she flip out.

Speaking of flips, she just did one.

Anyway, work wasn't that bad today all things considered, especially since today was the last day I'll be working for a week since I'm on vacation from work this upcoming week.

I need it too. I just need to sit back and relax for a couple days, maybe play some basketball, rollerblade a little bit, just enough to keep me active. However, I see myself playing Medal of Honor: Frontline a lot this week as well as High Heat Baseball 2003. I haven't had much of a chance to play my games since we've been here, partly because my sister's boyfriend Dan keeps using the system to play Grand Theft Auto III, which happens to be my game as well. So it may be time to cut that shit out.

In any case, tonight was spent putting money in my checking account, running to Best Buy to look at music (I've been trying to find the Menace II Society soundtrack with no success). I ended up buying Mystikal and Scarface, bringing the total number of CD's bought in the last week to 5. I've bought CD's from Eminem (The Eminem Show), Scarface (Last of a Dying Breed), Cam'ron (Come Home With Me), Mystikal (Tarantula), and Nappy Roots (Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz). I like all of them too. So that's made them worth it.

I also managed to get my laundry done which means I should no longer have any clothes that smell like smoke other than this batch of whites that are in a garbage bag that may not be any good anyway. I did lose a lot of shirts to stains because of the water from the fire, so I think that's what most of the whites are.

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Thursday night my mom and I had a pretty interesting night. At 1:30am, we got a call from our neighbor Autumn telling us that the dogs were still outside and barking and that the cops had come by at least once. My mom and I then headed out to the house and hoped that the dogs were still there.

We arrived at around 1:30 and Shade and Anubis were in the backyard still, so obviously Shade had shut up long enough for the cops to not have a reason to call animal control. We brought them in and I was surprised to see the living room completely gutted and to find a new wall going up in the middle of the room, something that I knew was going to happen, but didn't think it would so soon.

We then headed up the stairs and all the walls except a couple were down up there and my mom took me through each room, explaining what was going to happen where and how it was supposed to look. We then noticed that the bathroom did take some damage and the walls and ceiling were starting to peel and crack in some spots.

Unless it was nailed down, it's been moved or disposed of in that house, which means a lot of shit's gone and a lot more shit's going. We also continued to find things that amazed the shit out of us with how the house was set up.

While in my mom's room (well, what was left of it), I looked up and was surprised to see how badly in shape the wood supporting the attic was. In several areas unaffected by water, the wood was splintering, explaining the creaking and groaning heard when you'd walk around up there. In short, every step caused the wood to crack just a fraction more. It was only a matter of time before the floor would've collapsed, so the fire continues to bless us in different ways.

We then saw what the water itself had done, causing the wood to buckle up and make the attic extremely unstable. This would prove to be interesting moments later.

At one point I thought I had seen a cat run through one of the rooms in the second floor, but then I figured I was seeing things because the three remaining at the house were in the basement, or at least that's where they should've been.

Minutes later, I again saw what looked like a cat and realized that it was indeed a cat and it appeared to be Spooks, the same cat that two years ago ripped a gash so deep in my arm that the scar only recently went away, and also bit me through a thick glove in the thumb, causing that to bleed as well. This was during a capture attempt when we had to take them to the vet after we first rescued them.

Imagine how thrilled I was to realize that Spooks was again on the loose and needed to be caught. I could safely say that I was not looking forward to this, but we had no choice. None of the cats could be upstairs at all.

We followed him up into the attic and my mom went forward into the room just enough to get him to run back downstairs. He almost missed the ledge, which would've led to a nasty tumble, but thankfully he kept his balance and ran down the stairs into the living, presumably into the open closet door that had the opening to the basement. We didn't see him in the living room right away so we shut the door. Then, while my mom was on the other side of the room, I realized that Spooks was in the living room and that he'd been hiding behind a ladder that was in the room. I grabbed a hold of him when he tried to run past, but he gave a pretty strong warning to me and I immediately let go. I had already had one run-in with this cat, I wasn't about to have another.

This time, he didn't run all the up to the attic. We again chased him through the second floor, this time he ran into the bathroom where we heard a whole lot of banging around going on. My mom walked in and was very happy to find that he had jumped into a rolled up rug that was in the bathtub. After some careful maneuvering, she managed to get him wrapped up in the rug and carried him very carefully down the stairs, through the living room, and through the kitchen and into the basement. We walked away to the back by the far cellar and managed to get him into the room where we had set up litter boxes and the food and water. He tried three times to run past me out the door, but the last swift kick may have convinced him not try that again. I hadn't meant to kick him, but I raised up my foot to block him and he ran right into hit, face first. He retreated under the table and did not try and get away after that.

We then decided to get the other two cats. We found Big Guy first and we were in the process of cornering him when I heard a loud thump and a meow. Lazarus had jumped down from a vent and was in the kitchen. We immediately abandoned catching Big Guy for the moment and went after Lazarus. Laz was easy though. We both called him over and carefully carried him down to the room, where he put up virtually no resistance.

Unfortunately, we still had to catch Big Guy, who was clearly on to what we were doing. With a little luck, we finally managed to catch him and my mom rolled him into the back room and we quickly slammed the door shut and slid the lock in place.

The amazing part? For the first time in recent memory, we were able to catch a group of cats without someone suffering from at least a scratch. I came close and my mom was nearly bit by Big Guy, who somehow showed restrain despite his instincts saying otherwise.

We finally got out of the house at around 3 in the morning and finally got back to the house around 3:30 to finally get to sleep.

In a related incident, my mom's scratches and bites from my cat are getting better and Kisa made it very clear to my mom that she didn't mean to do what she did. The first time my mom came back to the suite after I got Kisa back here, Kisa went up to her, rubbed her leg, and when my mom dropped down, Kisa I guess had this look on her face that basically said that she was sorry.

Meanwhile, Kisa's rolling around on my bed. I swear something was put in her food or something. She's been weird tonight.

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There's one thing that happens with this site all the time that I'm not too proud of and I only recently realized that I was doing it more than I thought. It's my habit of writing about something pretty important one night, then completely ignoring it the next night. This may not seem to significant, but if it's an event that's carrying on over a period of time, I can imagine it could frustrating for some to not be able to find out more information about the situation.

I also seem to say that I'll talk about something later in the entry, then never actually mention whatever it was once. I've noticed this a lot as well and it's not something I do on purpose. I just get caught up in what I'm writing at the moment, then I forget what I was going to write and don't realize it until two weeks later when I'm looking at the entries again (which I do all the time).

I don't keep an archive of my files so that you can just go back four years and catch up on my life. No, I keep it because it more or less gives me an accurate look at how I've changed over the years, something to compare my current self to and see what's evolved and what's the same.

I currently have entries spread out over four years sitting on this server, of which 75% are viewable right now. There are still a lot of entries that I have to go through and update to the current format before I can post them up on the site, although I think anyone with a little bit of sense could probably find one of these entries, therefore allowing access to the rest of them, plus many pages that don't exist anymore.

To put in into perspective, these entries have links to "Dave's Pop Culture Extravaganza," a page that's been down for more than two years now. As you could probably guess, these entries are old, but they allow for a unique perspective on how I've continued to change over the years.

However, until we get back into the house again, I don't see myself working on the archives anytime soon. Though you never know.

Speaking of the house, I will be posting pictures of the house after the fire, pictures of the house in its current state, and pictures of the house while work continues and ends. I will also put a picture of Morgue up on the site as sort of a tribute to the little bastard. Poor guy died in his favorite spot, the entertainment center.

Shit, I'm going to cry if I start talking about him again. Putting those pictures up is probably going to be hard to do, but I feel that this cat made enough of an impression on me to make it worth my while.

One day we'll figure out why life's such a bitch sometimes. Until then, just gotta take the good with the bad.

The best part? I felt really good all day and I think I just managed to ruin that.

Shit.