'Cause I found some kind of fairy tale

Life's pretty good right now.

Work's been interesting. Q, our new GM, has finally moved down to San Marcos and is going to be opening five days a week, moving Bill back to sharing the closing shifts with me. As it should be, and all that. I'm getting my near-50 hours a week, so my paychecks are pretty decent right now - not nearly the ones from Sonic when I was getting 70+, but nothing to sneeze at either. I did take off three days this week - Tuesday through Thursday, so I can rest and do stuff and generally enjoy life. Good times.

I was off on Valentine's Day, and I was going to take Mom out for dinner, since her and Billy had just broken up. I stopped by work to turn in my new insurance; they were somewhere between forty and fifty pies down. That was... well, crazy. Trey and Michelle were there, but I couldn't see how they managed to get that far down. I love Bill to death, but I wonder sometimes. Anyway. I was in my pajama pants, a t-shirt, and wearing sandals (yes, I was wearing pajama pants at seven pm. I had gone to sleep after class, having closed the night before and staying up for my eight o'clock class), but I threw on an apron, a hat, washed my hands and arms thoroughly, and jumped in. Two hours later, things were finally calming down. I hate nights like that - not because I mind having to work really hard, or that I was annoyed having to help out on my day off or anything, but because we gave a lot of people terrible service. I've taken to referring to it as the 'Valentine's Day Massacre', which I think sounds neat. I'm trying to remember if there was actually a V-Day massacre, or I'm thinking of another day. Either way. Bill and Q both thought it would be slow on V-Day, but Stan seemed to think we should have anticipated the high volume better.

They decided to do a 3.99 medium 1-topping carryout special, open to close, all this week, ending Thursday night at close. Interesting choice. It did boost sales above last year (the stated goal behind this) for a lot of stores - not ours, of course. Despite doing 2066, we were still down almost six hundred dollars from last year. Of course, we're down over twelve thousand for the period - second on an absolute level (one store is down seventeen!), and not doing *that* bad on a percentage level.

Other than that, work's been pretty much the same lately. Been on a huge Vanessa Carlton kick lately. Not sure why, but I keep queuing up her stuff to listen to. I mean, I like some contemporary singer-songwriters, at least the commercially successfully ones that I don't have to dig too deep to find - Vanessa Carlton, Michelle Branch, Jewel, being the three that come readily to mind. But Vanessa's stuff especially has really been resonating with me lately. In fact, I might (a) change my profile song to reflect that and (b) my ringtone. It's been 'Boyfriend' by Ashlee Simpson basically since I started importing mp3s, and it might be time for a change. We'll see.

I bought the drums for Rock Band. Holy crap, that's fun. I mean, crazy fun. Michelle, of course, made the snarky comment about learning to play a real instrument, instead of pretending to play a fake one, but whatever. I can learn this one in five minutes, don't have to buy an expensive drum set, and can play it along with my friends playing their fake instruments. Besides, I did play trombone for seven years, so it's not like I'm musically illiterate or something. Anyway, lots of fun. I'm working out how to get Matt and Cullen and Ambra and Rose all together for some group fun. As for the drums, I'm still having coordination issues, especially with the kick drum, but I'm quickly getting better.

School's going well. Took my second chemistry test this morning, have my first discrete test on Thursday. Good times. Still haven't talked to anybody in any of my classes or anything, still working on that one.

I talked to Rebecca last night at Wal-Mart, that was cool. She asked me if I was avoiding her on Thursday (V-Day) or something, I told her that no, I was just anxious to get home and play drums, and that Rose wasn't feeling well, so we didn't want to dilly-dally (didn't manage to work that in there, or anything). She was all, "Oh, 'cause I wanted to wish you a happy Valentine's Day." That was awesome. We talked about stuff. I told her what I ended up doing on Valentine's Day, learned that the guy she's dating right now is only her second boyfriend. And, of course, today. Josh and I played our usual two hours of racquetball, I took the set 4-2 (putting our total record at something like 12-3 or thereabouts). Anyway. After dropping him off at the store, I went to the bank to deposit my paycheck. The first three or four lanes had a car at the kiosk, but the next one was both open and empty, so I pulled in there and started filling out my deposit slip. I glanced over at the car next to me, and lo and behold, she was sitting in the passenger set. Holy crap! She was earing like a pink shirt. It was the first time I'd seen her outside of her current place of employment. She definitely saw me too, but she didn't really openly acknowledge me or anything, leading me to draw one of a few conclusions. (A) She could have been with her boyfriend, and didn't really feel like explaining who I was ("Him? Oh, he's this guy that's had a crush on me for like two years; he comes by Wal-Mart a lot just 'cause I work there and we've started talking a little bit more each time. Basically, just some guy.") (B) Boyfriend might be a little possessive? (C) Regardless of who she was wiht, she just really didn't want to deal with me outside of work at all, perhaps fearing I'm now following her around or something (like I know what other kind of vehicle she might be riding around in? That would be scary.)

But I had this huge grin on my face as I sat there filling out my stuff, with her right there. I didn't really turn back or anything, because I was following her lead, regardless of the reason. They left fairly soon, but it was awesome.

Anyway.

Vanessa Carlton -- Nolita Fairytale