[On shift] it was me & Potsy. Heather and the Ukrainian looking girl were on 114. It was a busy day and there was a carry-over from what I was saying y’day. [A carry-over is coming on shift with unresolved work from the previous crew.] When it was just Potsy and I, the discrepancy in the workload was, well, apparent. He, Brian, never one to give much credit, was found mentioning it on my behalf. Good!
When I got off [work] I stopped to look at furniture. Remember that bedroom suite under the parkade for $175 but I didn’t have room for? It’s still there, but the guy wants $400 for it. Sure is nice, though. I met Dave, Charlie and the Kid at Army & Navy. We went shopping. That store must be making a killing in these times. If you get a chance, ask me in person, I’ll explain.
[Author's note 2016: 114 is the repair call section of the phone company. When other departments are not busy, it is customary to go assist repair calls. The fun part was, because anyone in my area could repair phones, answering your average repair call was child's-play. The number of "tickets" and dispatches fell dramatically when you could often tell the customer how to fix the problem himself. "Sir, unplug the answering machine you bought at Radio Shack and see if the problem goes away."
In return, this made the supervisor of that shift look like some kind of hero. Do you have any idea how much the phone company saves when it doesn't have to dispatch a truck? Anyone, repeat anyone, who thinks a clerical worker (woman) answering these same phones deserves equal pay to me can shove it. Literally, shove it and that is no figure of speech. I made the company money.
[Author's note 2016: the above should be interpreted as the amount of television I am exposed to. It is rare to not see some TV in the mall, the bar, or in other people's houses. As far as purposely watching TV, my time is zero minutes per week. But I do watch recorded movies on the television--a completely different proposition. Heather Vance is the alcoholic lady I shared a place with for the first four months I was in town. What a total loser. I never touched her. But Moogie did.]
And it looks like Lisa is the same as before. (Lisa was the ugly daughter.) No progress. Also, David is moving back, “Only for a couple of months”. (He was still there nine years later.) That’s seven adults & friends sharing one tiny bathroom instead of the 4 I had planned on. Well, 3 and Rossie.
There’s firecrackers all over the neighborhood, but that doesn’t stop me from sleeping. The jet lag leaves me in a real stupor. Even when Dave poked his head in the door at 2:00 [next afternoon], I was half-spun. Dozy again, huh, Cisco?
[Author’s note: in addition to returning to work, I had just returned from a jaunt to Hawaii that gave me serious jet lag. For one who loves to travel, I am unusually prone to jet lag on west-to-east flights. I was renting a room that I had built myself in the basement of Dave’s step-mother’s house. He had an unfinished basement on a steep hill, so I had a view of the harbor. Living there was a book in itself.
The step-mother, Bobbie, was a skinny, red-head divorcee who had been picked off the farm at a young age by a travelling salesman. She now worked at a welfare adoption agency and had, long before I met any of them, taken to adopting the problem cases. She adopted the yahoos that other people returned saying, “Take this one back.”
These were now grown men, but such losers they would drift back into town needed a place to hold up for a few months, usually to get their welfare checks sent to a good address. They’d mess around and disappear again after some week-long drunk. They were not violent, but I had to keep my door and car locked. I had just moved to the coast and was still getting started, so I lived there over a year. It got to be too much like my own family, so I moved to Birch Bay.
Being from Texas, one of my nicknames was “Cisco”.]
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