Ice Skating Adventure

Sasha, LeeAnna and I went ice skating the other night. It was a lot of fun. LeeAnna had never been before, and Sasha hadn't been in a long time, so I spent a lot of time hovering around them, trying to help them along. Unfortunately, the one time I decided to stretch my legs a little and go around the rink at a faster pace, I missed seeing LeeAnna in a spectacular twirling fall to the ice. I looked over, and there she was, sitting on the ice. She didn't manage to get up on the first try, I had to brace and give her my arm for support. She did fine for a while longer, but I caught her a couple more times before the night was over. And she had some pretty spectacular near-misses, involving lots of arm-flailing and a-l-m-o-s-t tipping over, but not quite.

Oh, and I assaulted a 10 year old boy. Not as much as I wanted to, but I just went with the spirit of the moment. This little punk was obviously an experienced skater, and was zipping at full speed all over the rink. This wouldn't have bothered me, except he had made a game of darting between the three of us, through spaces that were barely wide enough for him to get through. With Sasha and LeeAnna being timid skaters as it was, this nearly made them fall over every time. And freaked us all out. So, I told them "When you see him coming, hold hands!"

We were unable to do this. I decided to skate in the middle, and we were staying close enough together that he didn't try to go between any more. But towards the end of the night, we were drifting apart again, and he managed to piss me off just enough that I was willing to do something about it.

We were skating along, and the kid was horsing around with another brat up ahead. We drifted towards the center of the rink, to go around. As we were passing, he decided to dart out right in front of us, and try to go between Sasha and I. He made the mistake of skating about 6 inches away from me. I didn't even have to exert myself, I just stuck my arms out and grabbed him in a bear-hug (he only came up to my chin). I leaned down and said in the most hostile voice I could "YOU need to stop skating so close to us!!" and then I let him go. He said "Whatever!" in a tone clearly meant to tell me that I had no power over him, and skated off. I wanted to go after him and swing him into a wall, but decided that was carrying things a bit far.

He was still in the same area of the rink when we rounded our next lap. He hollered over at me "Don't touch me!" in a defiant voice. But he said it from 12 feet away. And I didn't have any more trouble with him the rest of the evening, although I was on high alert for it. I was mildly disappointed that I didn't get to tell him off again. Oh well!

Something In My Bed

The other morning, I woke up around 6:00 a.m., when it was still dark out. I needed to got to the bathroom, so I sat up. I heard a scraping noise coming from the direction of my nightstand. Wondering what was scraping up against it, I turned in that direction, and backed up a little. In the dark, I could faintly make out a large shape that moved towards me as I moved. Still groggy from sleep, I none the less wondered what the thing was. I reached over with my left hand and scraped the blankets aside, then picked up what I found there. It was a heavy cylinder, soft on the outside, but with a solid core. A few seconds of thought identified it as an arm, and a few more seconds brought me to the realization that it was MY arm!

I sleep with my right arm curled up underneath my pillow, and it had gone to sleep. It was COMPLETELY numb! I raised it closer to my face, and was able to make out my fingers, which were splayed still in the shape they would be under my pillow. I began beating on my numb arm with the other fist, trying to get some life back into it. Eventually, I was able to feel pins and needles again, and could flex my hand. After a few moments of sitting there pumping my fist, my arm and hand finally returned to normal.

I found the whole incident highly amusing.

The Evil That Is Christmas Music

I write tonight to reveal to you my full loathing of Christmas Music. I'm not generally fond of ANYTHING having to do with Christmas, with the exception of candy canes. But ever since I started working at the craft store, I've begun hating it even more.

As I'm sure you're aware, during the Christmas season, most stores play Christmas music the entire time they're open. However, with craft stores, Christmas season starts sooner than other stores. Early November, to be exact, although Christmas merchandise comes in earlier than that.

At our store, we subscribe to a "Muzak" company, which offers various channels that play only Christmas music. These channels each apparently only represent one CD each, because no matter what channel is selected, it always seems like they play the same 15 songs over and over again. Never is this more apparent and annoying than during Christmas season. Because even if you get a different song for a change, it usually just some one else's version of "Jingle Bells" or some other over-played Christmas song.

The last two years, the channel selected has been a mixture of timeless classics and more modern Christmas songs. This year, we have a new manager, who probably didn't know what channel was picked in previous years, and probably left it on the first one to play Christmas music. So, we have been stuck with the "All Dead People Christmas Network". Not a single song was sung by anyone who is currently still living. All of them are older, slower, and with each singer trying to "make the song their own" (translation: mangling it). This has proved even more torturous than what we had to put up with last year.

My department, and the area where I usually work most of the day, are directly underneath a speaker. So, there is very little escape from the endless stream of "Silver Bells". And this has caused me to come up with two very major questions this year:

1: At what point did "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things" become a Christmas song? Aside from mentioning snowflakes and mittens, it has nothing to do with Christmas!

2: What is with the "Thumpity thump thump" part of "Frosty the Snowman"? Did the writer run out of lyrics? Because I don't really think the idea of Frosty running around evokes in me a feeling of "thump"! I may have to come up with alternate lyrics, just for my own satisfaction.

But at any rate, as awful as the overhead music is, it's nothing compared to what we now have to put up with.

A week ago, Chris (our manager) aparently had enough of the overhead music, and shut it off. There followed a blissful week of silence. Into this silence came a woman with a guitar. She played a few songs for Chris and some of the people in the store. It was odd, but she left soon after, and I didn't think anything of it.

Well, apparently she made some kind of arrangement with Chris, because when I went to work yesterday, she's all set up just inside the front door, playing her guitar and singing. She's sitting on one of the stools from the Frame Department, she's got a music stand set up, and Chris had Sasha from my department decorate a tip jar for her.

Now I know the true meaning of pain. She suffers from the same problem I have, namely, she sings an octive too high. I've compensated for this by either not singing in public, or concentrating on singing lower. She, however, compensates by singing louder.

She also is prone to forgetting the words in the middle of her song, but she cleverly disguises this fact by suddenly switching to another song. Usually "Silver Bells". She also subscribes to the notion that "My Favorite Things" is a Christmas song.

She sits right next to the cash registers, an area that has enough stress around it as it is. The first time I went up there to cashier while she was singing, I was there for all of 3 seconds before all I could think was "Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!!!" I find myself yelling at the customers in order to be heard over her shrill singing. Any higher pitch, and it wouldn't be a problem, because only dogs would be able to hear her.

So anyhow, she was there for the second day today, and who nows how much longer we'll have to put up with her. Hopefully I can keep from killing anyone.