I rule!
I skipped posting last night and I have so many things I want to talk about. For some reason, since I started writing this blog I have been having deeper and more thought provoking conversations with people. I have felt more open and relaxed. I don't know what it is about sharing how you feel to complete strangers and friends who find the link in your AIM profile, but it really is making me a better person. Thank you, annonomous reader!
Anyways, my birthday came and went. I worked from 8AM when I placed my first call about the delivery to about 8PM when I finally got everything in enough order to leave for the night. I decided that I am going to do this in a "my trip to the grand canyon" style slide show because as I promised, I took a bunch of pictures.
This is what my store looked like when I showed up at 9am. It was pouring rain like the end of the world all night and all through my trip to stroudsburg.
This is the view out the roof not more than a half hour after I got into the mall. It turned out to be a beautiful day. Only problem was that the wind. It was so windy that the huge steel doors on the loading dock kept slamming into the concrete door frame and making a noise that made me want to stab myself in the ears.
The truck finally arived with my store one day and 4 hours late. Where is Mr. McFealy with speedy delivery when you need him?
I had to stand up against the wall of the dock and lean over a box to get all the boxes in one picture. My store took up every single inch of the whole bay. The delivery was 2800 lbs.
This is halfway through the move in. I only include this pic because the yellow cart that is on the left has carried the entire store. I don't know why that stands out in my mind, but I find it interesting that my whole business was put on that cart and wheeled through the mall.
All the packages safely at K4 and ready to be assembled.
End of day 1. The entire base of the store was pushed into the proper locations and all the rest was stored inside.
Just a closeup view of the front of the store.
This is the completed store at the end of Day 2 (with the exception of the swinging door that I didn't hang today because I didn't have my level).
Just one more shot of the store from the end of Day 2.
OK, so you may be asking yourself at this point, "So he did this all on his birthday?" You bet your ass I did, and I did it ALONE! I unloaded the truck, brought every piece from the loading dock to my location (K4) on the other side of the mall, unboxed everything, set everything up, made sure everything was straight, took out all the garbage, and cleaned up without any help what-so-ever. It took me every bit of 9 hours to get the store set up once it arrived and took me from 8am to 12 noon to do all the work I needed to do on the phone. Not only was I doing all the physical work, but I have agents that sell phones all over calling me all day with sales issues and customer service problems I had to deal with. Around 8pm when I stopped to walk accross the mall to get a drink of water from the fountain I realized something. Physical labor is pure. It made me feel good. On my birthday, which is one of the hardest days of the whole year for me, I felt good. I had purpose and a goal. I was cleansed by pain. My back and legs were throbbing and my hands were cut and blistered. My feet were feeling the crush of my body plus the weight of carrying and moving heavy pieces of furnature all day. My head was spinning with exhaustion. My shirt was hot and wet with my sweat. I felt whole. Alone and under duress I felt better than I have in a long time. I had no time to think about my life. All that mattered was the store. I had to get everyting off the dock, I had to set up the store, I had to make it look good, I had to. There was no option for failure. I could not quit. My eyes were no longer used to take in what was around me, they were only to make sure I wasn't going to hurt anyone while carrying heavy loads. I didn't see lights and stores, I didn't hear the christmas tunes, I just worked. I didn't know it was my birthday. I didn't know what time it was. I only knew what I had to do and did it. I was an ant marching with a crumb. For some people, working with their body is torture. They feel empty and always dream of an office job and a soft chair. All I wanted for my birthday was to be alone and I was. Not only that, but I was given the gift of hard labor to fill my hours.
When it was done I pulled up a bench and sat and just looked at it. All of a sudden it felt like someone turned up the dial on the world around me and I could see and hear everything again. It wasn't some unconscious thing. I felt it happening. The second my job was complete and I stopped the world started back up around me. I immediately went stiff and my legs didn't want to carry me anymore. I took out my phone, took a few pics, checked my messages, and realized that Brad was going to stop over tonight and I needed to go home. EB Games is right next to me, and I love video games, so I stopped in to get myself a present. I picked up Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders for Xbox. One of my ideas I had was that I would review games in my blog, but I have too much to talk about tonight and I belive I'll start a second blog for that, so I'll spare you. I got in my truck, turned on my XM radio to listen to Opie and Anthony, and started home. I got a call from Brad telling me that he was sitting at my dinner table eating my food and to hurry up, so I told him I'd be home in a half hour and left. All of a sudden I started feeling emotional again. I don't know if it was how tired I was realizing I was or what, but I had that feeling that tears had been loaded in the chamber and were just waiting for both keys to be turned to be fired. I turned up the radio and realized that I had heard this section of the O&A show this morning (it was a replay. They are live 6am to 10am) and changed it to my new favorite music station XM22. It plays a good mix of music and most of them are from the late 90s, so it reminds me of high school and brings back a lot of memories. I was wearing my favorite sweatshirt, a light grey fairfield football sweatshirt I bought in college with my number in the middle. I wasn't cold, but I wore it because when my hood is up you can't see my eyes. I needed it because I knew if I got emotional in front of my friend I would want to make a quick exit without the reason being public knowledge. There was a white box on the counter that had "Hoser" written on it in black marker. Brad and I both have CBs in our trucks for when we offroad together so we can chat while going through the woods and because of a little movie called Strange Brew we have gone with the CB handles Hoser and Knob. I had no clue what he bought me, but he was excited to give it, so it could have been anything. I opened it up, and then thanked God I had kept my hood up. It was a Ram Head hood ornament! I have an 86 ramcharger that I love more than anything else I have ever owned that I am SLOWLY trying to rebuild. Brad and I have scowered 5 different junk yards for years and never found a hood ornament for my truck. I just figured I'd spread a little bondo over the hole and paint over where it was supposed to be because I was just never going to find it. I couldn't say anything. I just held it and looked at it. There were no words. It was unlike any gift I could have imagined. It was perfect. Not only was it totally dude law approved and manly, but it was something personal that nobody would realize that I wanted but a close friend. If I was a chick I would have broken down in tears. I almost did. I put it back in the plastic wrapper as carefully as you would handle a baby and then back into the box. I closed it and just held it to feel the weight. I am getting choked up writting this. It is awesome. The only words that I could say were, "holy shit," "awesome," and "thank you" and I said them over and over. Brad said, "this will be the last thing you put on your truck when you are finally done with it." I guarantee I'll have my Fairfield Football sweatshirt on that day, but I don't think it will hide anything. I did take it out one more time before I went to bed and I took pictures. For those of you thinking, "what the fuck is this fucking ridge running hick getting choked up about? It's a fucking hood ornament." ... GO FUCK YOURSELF! YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND AND YOU NEVER WILL!
I have the best friends ever.
Speaking of my friends, midnight, 1st of December, 2004 I started receiving IMs from friends saying happy birthday. I was playing on the xbox at the time and just saw a few boxes pop up right at midnight. It was a strange group, but the fact that they remembered my birthday and actually waited until the first minute of the day to recognize it was amazing. I was really feeling shitty and they made me feel good. I think all the negative hype in my head blows everything out of proportion, but I am just not ready for people to treat me like that. I couldn't believe it was happening. It was only 3 people, but I've never had anyone but girlfriends do the midnight happy birthday thing. The first person was a buddy of mine's girlfriend, the second was an ex, and the third was BBB who is one of my Masshole friends (who are my new close circle of friends, I'll talk about this in another entry when I haven't allready typed 10 pages). I loved his message. He said, "i hate birthdays.. i've gone to the hospital 3 years in a row...age 20: broken left hand from punching a wall(wasted) age 21: broken ankle from jumping off a fence (wasted) age 22: went to the hospital for a pulminary doctor to see if i have a serious lung condition (not wasted)" His grammar blows, but it's a direct quote and it was at midnight on my birthday.
Today was day 2 of the build and it was another 12.5 hour day. I left at 9AM to get to the Stroud Mall and began working on the rigging for the top of the kiosk you can see in the last two pictures. Yesterday went too well. Everything was there and everything fit. Today, nothing was ready to be assembled and nothing fit. I ended up spending $150 in tools and parts. I don't have a cordless drill, and our power hasn't been hooked up yet, so I had to go out and buy a cordless drill. On top of that, the box containing a rubber mallet and all the hardware for the rigging was not deemed important enough to deliver to me by someone in the chain of people who handled my order. So I was off to Sears to pick up some bolts, nuts, washers, a rubber mallet, and a screw gun. Sears sells more pillows than powertools now-a-days, but they did have a great deal on a drill/flashlight combo with 2 batteries. I bought it and realized that I couldn't charge the batteries, so I made friends with the EB Games guys and they let me charge it there. I couldn't move ahead without a fully charged battery, so I went to burger king for lunch and to Home Depot for hardware while the batteries filled up. The guy there was super helpful and I was in and out much faster than I could have wished for. I came back and went back to work. That was when I realized that the aluminum cross bracing for the track lighting was not drilled properly and I had to go back to Sears for a $10 bit that would go through hard metal. I got everything put together and it was time to put up the beams. I used my new Super Drill Gun to brace up the corners and then started dropping the beams in place. The first one dropped right in. The other 3 didn't fit. I was not about to buy a $200 router to rout out the holes, so my drill gun and metal bit became a router and I got the other 3 beams in after about an hour of work each.
Now I had a square with 4 8foot beams sticking out and a big metal square that needed to be put on top. Luckily I made friends with the night maintenence crew boss, George. The mall manager danced around my question when I asked if I could have a helper and a ladder to put the top of my store where it belonged, so I took it to the soldiers, and they were loyal. While Kevin, mall manger, said he could maybe spare one person for a few minutes, George, night maintenence manager, had 5 people and a ladder available for whenever I was ready. He brought over his crew and we all climbed up on ladders and benches and whatever else was around. The top went on, and I felt like spiking my drill gun because I had just scored a kiosk TD. Not only had I completed the tasks of 5 men and a weeks time in 2 days, but I did it alone until the very end and made some powerful friends in the mall world. I beat the steam engine with just my hammer. Luckily I dind't drop dead, but I know as soon as my head hits the pillow tonight I will be out as if I was dead.
Speaking of death, I picked up another present for myself today. I have been using an leatherman micra to cut whatever needs to be cut. It is a good little knife and has a lot of useful tools in a tiny little package. Yesterday one of the maintenence guys offered his knife to me to cut boxes open. I replied, "hey, I tried cutting these boxes with my leatherman and this cardboard is going nowhere." He proceded to dice every box like he was freaken zoro. The boxes peeled like a banana and there were just sections of my store where boxes used to be. I decided I needed a new knife. Now when you are at a store that sells dragon slayer 2 handed swords that stand about 6 feet tall you don't really realize the size of what you're buying. I just asked for something that locks open that was extremely sharp and would keep an edge but wasn't a million dollars.
Here is my little micra.
How adorable!
Look! He's yawning!
I could just eat him all up!
Now, for my crocadile dundee moment:
NOW THIS IS A KNIFE!
I realize that looking at things against my hand makes sense to me, but maybe you don't realize what you're looking at. I opened the micra and measured the "work knife from hell" with the included ruler. This machette is a good 8in long. Yes, I do use it for work related tasks and no, there is no reason for it to be so big or for it to be half serrated. I clip it on my belt and I can't decide if it even looks remotely like something you'd use on the job. Especially since once the store is up I will be selling freaken cell phones. But whatever. I like it, so it stays. Plus, Rich the knife guy gave me a discount and is a really cool old fella. He does more TV watching than knife selling, but he does carry everything from pocket watches to throwing starts, so I'm sure I'll be back to help out his annual statement. I am a sucker for weapons, especially guns and knives. I refuse to hunt, but I love target shooting and collecting interesting knives. In my previous life as a painter in PA I ran across a dude in his 80s from Germany who had a collection of guns, knives, and swords on the walls of his den. He was a "collector of the tools of war" in his own words, and his den was one of the coolest hangout places ever. If my penchant for weapons is wrong, I don't want to be right.
This post has done everything but the most important task... end. And now it has.
Anyways, my birthday came and went. I worked from 8AM when I placed my first call about the delivery to about 8PM when I finally got everything in enough order to leave for the night. I decided that I am going to do this in a "my trip to the grand canyon" style slide show because as I promised, I took a bunch of pictures.
This is what my store looked like when I showed up at 9am. It was pouring rain like the end of the world all night and all through my trip to stroudsburg.
This is the view out the roof not more than a half hour after I got into the mall. It turned out to be a beautiful day. Only problem was that the wind. It was so windy that the huge steel doors on the loading dock kept slamming into the concrete door frame and making a noise that made me want to stab myself in the ears.
The truck finally arived with my store one day and 4 hours late. Where is Mr. McFealy with speedy delivery when you need him?
I had to stand up against the wall of the dock and lean over a box to get all the boxes in one picture. My store took up every single inch of the whole bay. The delivery was 2800 lbs.
This is halfway through the move in. I only include this pic because the yellow cart that is on the left has carried the entire store. I don't know why that stands out in my mind, but I find it interesting that my whole business was put on that cart and wheeled through the mall.
All the packages safely at K4 and ready to be assembled.
End of day 1. The entire base of the store was pushed into the proper locations and all the rest was stored inside.
Just a closeup view of the front of the store.
This is the completed store at the end of Day 2 (with the exception of the swinging door that I didn't hang today because I didn't have my level).
Just one more shot of the store from the end of Day 2.
OK, so you may be asking yourself at this point, "So he did this all on his birthday?" You bet your ass I did, and I did it ALONE! I unloaded the truck, brought every piece from the loading dock to my location (K4) on the other side of the mall, unboxed everything, set everything up, made sure everything was straight, took out all the garbage, and cleaned up without any help what-so-ever. It took me every bit of 9 hours to get the store set up once it arrived and took me from 8am to 12 noon to do all the work I needed to do on the phone. Not only was I doing all the physical work, but I have agents that sell phones all over calling me all day with sales issues and customer service problems I had to deal with. Around 8pm when I stopped to walk accross the mall to get a drink of water from the fountain I realized something. Physical labor is pure. It made me feel good. On my birthday, which is one of the hardest days of the whole year for me, I felt good. I had purpose and a goal. I was cleansed by pain. My back and legs were throbbing and my hands were cut and blistered. My feet were feeling the crush of my body plus the weight of carrying and moving heavy pieces of furnature all day. My head was spinning with exhaustion. My shirt was hot and wet with my sweat. I felt whole. Alone and under duress I felt better than I have in a long time. I had no time to think about my life. All that mattered was the store. I had to get everyting off the dock, I had to set up the store, I had to make it look good, I had to. There was no option for failure. I could not quit. My eyes were no longer used to take in what was around me, they were only to make sure I wasn't going to hurt anyone while carrying heavy loads. I didn't see lights and stores, I didn't hear the christmas tunes, I just worked. I didn't know it was my birthday. I didn't know what time it was. I only knew what I had to do and did it. I was an ant marching with a crumb. For some people, working with their body is torture. They feel empty and always dream of an office job and a soft chair. All I wanted for my birthday was to be alone and I was. Not only that, but I was given the gift of hard labor to fill my hours.
When it was done I pulled up a bench and sat and just looked at it. All of a sudden it felt like someone turned up the dial on the world around me and I could see and hear everything again. It wasn't some unconscious thing. I felt it happening. The second my job was complete and I stopped the world started back up around me. I immediately went stiff and my legs didn't want to carry me anymore. I took out my phone, took a few pics, checked my messages, and realized that Brad was going to stop over tonight and I needed to go home. EB Games is right next to me, and I love video games, so I stopped in to get myself a present. I picked up Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders for Xbox. One of my ideas I had was that I would review games in my blog, but I have too much to talk about tonight and I belive I'll start a second blog for that, so I'll spare you. I got in my truck, turned on my XM radio to listen to Opie and Anthony, and started home. I got a call from Brad telling me that he was sitting at my dinner table eating my food and to hurry up, so I told him I'd be home in a half hour and left. All of a sudden I started feeling emotional again. I don't know if it was how tired I was realizing I was or what, but I had that feeling that tears had been loaded in the chamber and were just waiting for both keys to be turned to be fired. I turned up the radio and realized that I had heard this section of the O&A show this morning (it was a replay. They are live 6am to 10am) and changed it to my new favorite music station XM22. It plays a good mix of music and most of them are from the late 90s, so it reminds me of high school and brings back a lot of memories. I was wearing my favorite sweatshirt, a light grey fairfield football sweatshirt I bought in college with my number in the middle. I wasn't cold, but I wore it because when my hood is up you can't see my eyes. I needed it because I knew if I got emotional in front of my friend I would want to make a quick exit without the reason being public knowledge. There was a white box on the counter that had "Hoser" written on it in black marker. Brad and I both have CBs in our trucks for when we offroad together so we can chat while going through the woods and because of a little movie called Strange Brew we have gone with the CB handles Hoser and Knob. I had no clue what he bought me, but he was excited to give it, so it could have been anything. I opened it up, and then thanked God I had kept my hood up. It was a Ram Head hood ornament! I have an 86 ramcharger that I love more than anything else I have ever owned that I am SLOWLY trying to rebuild. Brad and I have scowered 5 different junk yards for years and never found a hood ornament for my truck. I just figured I'd spread a little bondo over the hole and paint over where it was supposed to be because I was just never going to find it. I couldn't say anything. I just held it and looked at it. There were no words. It was unlike any gift I could have imagined. It was perfect. Not only was it totally dude law approved and manly, but it was something personal that nobody would realize that I wanted but a close friend. If I was a chick I would have broken down in tears. I almost did. I put it back in the plastic wrapper as carefully as you would handle a baby and then back into the box. I closed it and just held it to feel the weight. I am getting choked up writting this. It is awesome. The only words that I could say were, "holy shit," "awesome," and "thank you" and I said them over and over. Brad said, "this will be the last thing you put on your truck when you are finally done with it." I guarantee I'll have my Fairfield Football sweatshirt on that day, but I don't think it will hide anything. I did take it out one more time before I went to bed and I took pictures. For those of you thinking, "what the fuck is this fucking ridge running hick getting choked up about? It's a fucking hood ornament." ... GO FUCK YOURSELF! YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND AND YOU NEVER WILL!
I have the best friends ever.
Speaking of my friends, midnight, 1st of December, 2004 I started receiving IMs from friends saying happy birthday. I was playing on the xbox at the time and just saw a few boxes pop up right at midnight. It was a strange group, but the fact that they remembered my birthday and actually waited until the first minute of the day to recognize it was amazing. I was really feeling shitty and they made me feel good. I think all the negative hype in my head blows everything out of proportion, but I am just not ready for people to treat me like that. I couldn't believe it was happening. It was only 3 people, but I've never had anyone but girlfriends do the midnight happy birthday thing. The first person was a buddy of mine's girlfriend, the second was an ex, and the third was BBB who is one of my Masshole friends (who are my new close circle of friends, I'll talk about this in another entry when I haven't allready typed 10 pages). I loved his message. He said, "i hate birthdays.. i've gone to the hospital 3 years in a row...age 20: broken left hand from punching a wall(wasted) age 21: broken ankle from jumping off a fence (wasted) age 22: went to the hospital for a pulminary doctor to see if i have a serious lung condition (not wasted)" His grammar blows, but it's a direct quote and it was at midnight on my birthday.
Today was day 2 of the build and it was another 12.5 hour day. I left at 9AM to get to the Stroud Mall and began working on the rigging for the top of the kiosk you can see in the last two pictures. Yesterday went too well. Everything was there and everything fit. Today, nothing was ready to be assembled and nothing fit. I ended up spending $150 in tools and parts. I don't have a cordless drill, and our power hasn't been hooked up yet, so I had to go out and buy a cordless drill. On top of that, the box containing a rubber mallet and all the hardware for the rigging was not deemed important enough to deliver to me by someone in the chain of people who handled my order. So I was off to Sears to pick up some bolts, nuts, washers, a rubber mallet, and a screw gun. Sears sells more pillows than powertools now-a-days, but they did have a great deal on a drill/flashlight combo with 2 batteries. I bought it and realized that I couldn't charge the batteries, so I made friends with the EB Games guys and they let me charge it there. I couldn't move ahead without a fully charged battery, so I went to burger king for lunch and to Home Depot for hardware while the batteries filled up. The guy there was super helpful and I was in and out much faster than I could have wished for. I came back and went back to work. That was when I realized that the aluminum cross bracing for the track lighting was not drilled properly and I had to go back to Sears for a $10 bit that would go through hard metal. I got everything put together and it was time to put up the beams. I used my new Super Drill Gun to brace up the corners and then started dropping the beams in place. The first one dropped right in. The other 3 didn't fit. I was not about to buy a $200 router to rout out the holes, so my drill gun and metal bit became a router and I got the other 3 beams in after about an hour of work each.
Now I had a square with 4 8foot beams sticking out and a big metal square that needed to be put on top. Luckily I made friends with the night maintenence crew boss, George. The mall manager danced around my question when I asked if I could have a helper and a ladder to put the top of my store where it belonged, so I took it to the soldiers, and they were loyal. While Kevin, mall manger, said he could maybe spare one person for a few minutes, George, night maintenence manager, had 5 people and a ladder available for whenever I was ready. He brought over his crew and we all climbed up on ladders and benches and whatever else was around. The top went on, and I felt like spiking my drill gun because I had just scored a kiosk TD. Not only had I completed the tasks of 5 men and a weeks time in 2 days, but I did it alone until the very end and made some powerful friends in the mall world. I beat the steam engine with just my hammer. Luckily I dind't drop dead, but I know as soon as my head hits the pillow tonight I will be out as if I was dead.
Speaking of death, I picked up another present for myself today. I have been using an leatherman micra to cut whatever needs to be cut. It is a good little knife and has a lot of useful tools in a tiny little package. Yesterday one of the maintenence guys offered his knife to me to cut boxes open. I replied, "hey, I tried cutting these boxes with my leatherman and this cardboard is going nowhere." He proceded to dice every box like he was freaken zoro. The boxes peeled like a banana and there were just sections of my store where boxes used to be. I decided I needed a new knife. Now when you are at a store that sells dragon slayer 2 handed swords that stand about 6 feet tall you don't really realize the size of what you're buying. I just asked for something that locks open that was extremely sharp and would keep an edge but wasn't a million dollars.
Here is my little micra.
How adorable!
Look! He's yawning!
I could just eat him all up!
Now, for my crocadile dundee moment:
NOW THIS IS A KNIFE!
I realize that looking at things against my hand makes sense to me, but maybe you don't realize what you're looking at. I opened the micra and measured the "work knife from hell" with the included ruler. This machette is a good 8in long. Yes, I do use it for work related tasks and no, there is no reason for it to be so big or for it to be half serrated. I clip it on my belt and I can't decide if it even looks remotely like something you'd use on the job. Especially since once the store is up I will be selling freaken cell phones. But whatever. I like it, so it stays. Plus, Rich the knife guy gave me a discount and is a really cool old fella. He does more TV watching than knife selling, but he does carry everything from pocket watches to throwing starts, so I'm sure I'll be back to help out his annual statement. I am a sucker for weapons, especially guns and knives. I refuse to hunt, but I love target shooting and collecting interesting knives. In my previous life as a painter in PA I ran across a dude in his 80s from Germany who had a collection of guns, knives, and swords on the walls of his den. He was a "collector of the tools of war" in his own words, and his den was one of the coolest hangout places ever. If my penchant for weapons is wrong, I don't want to be right.
This post has done everything but the most important task... end. And now it has.
posted by NJX70 at 4:35 AM
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