Day 144

Oh boy things have went down hill pretty quickly. I had all day Friday off and so did my mother. While I was getting ready for the gym my mom received a phone call from the County about her taking in more foster children. I assumed that since we already had one foster child we would be fine but when I came home from the gym I was told that we were going to add a two year old and a one month old to our happy foster family. I have nothing against foster care as a system but by everything that is holy while I am typing this the baby has been crying for over 45 minutes straight and I have to run to the garage to be able to hear myself think. To top everything off I walked in from work today and my sister and mother are watching an all day marathon of America's Next Top Model. I can't wait to try and watch the Super Bowl tomorrow with a house filled with screaming kids. Unholy fucker of mothers I'm going to the garage.

Day 146

It has been a pretty busy week. In order to cover everything properly I am going to itemize the things that have happened in the last week and a half.

Statutory Rape
I am currently working with a bunch of seventeen and sixteen year old girls at the theater. Last Thursday night two 20 year old guys came in two hours early to buy there tickets to see Book of Eli. After they bought the tickets they walked into the theater to use the bathroom and on their way out of the theater one of the guys stopped at the concession stand and started hitting on my concessionist. After about a minute he left and the girl quickly ran into the box office to tell me that kid had asked her out to watch Book of Eli with him and his friend after her shift. I thought it was a pretty classy move to ask a girl out on a date to somewhere she works but that is besides the point. This particular girl was sixteen years old and pretty freaked out because after she turned the guy down he said he would come back and ask her again later. After I calmed her down and got her to go behind the stand I was informed by a nice old man that my car had a flat tire. At this point I am in a pretty lousy mood so when these two yahoos come in an hour later and start walking to the concession stand I tell them to meet me outside to talk about something for a minute. I took them both outside and started ripping into them telling them that the girls inside work for me and that its tough for them to do there job if they are worried about creepy assholes hitting on them. The one guy started to shake and the other guy was just looking at me blankly so after I was done I told them that they were to go straight into their movie and that if I saw them outside of their movie before it was over I was going to kick them out and call the cops. They both apologized and ran into the theater without so much as looking at the girls. That made having a flat tire in -20 weather much more bearable.

New Roomate
So we now have a foster child in our home again. In the past when my parents had foster children we were in a much bigger house with two spare bedrooms so it wasn't that inconvenient for the rest of the family. Since then my parents have moved into a new house that is much smaller than their last home. now that we have a foster child I have been kicked out of my room and am now being forced to share a room with my sister. My sister is sleeping on a futon and I am sleeping in her bed. So if living at home with my family isn't complicated enough I now have no place to really escape them all. My fortress of solitude or bat cave or whatever nerdy reference works best has been taken from me. If I want a moment to myself I now need to go to the garage to what my father has dubbed "The Man Cave". It is a nice enough space but as soon as I go out there my family starts to worry because I don't want to stay inside with them and the new foster kid. Other than the rooming debacle this little girl is incredibly talkative. She is eleven so the asking a million question routine gets pretty old pretty fast. The other day I had made a glorious bean dip for myself and was sitting on the couch enjoying it when this girl sits on the couch next to me. She then begins to stare at what I'm eating and making faces. She then apparently decides she doesn't have a good enough angle on what I am eating so she starts leaning closer to me to get a better vantage point on my bean dip. I may be in the minority here but this weirded my out to no end. Having someone just starring at your food while your trying to eat is just something I guess I can't handle so I had to go upstairs and eat by the balcony and watch TV through the bars.

Day 158

I just got my Rochester Police Results back and I got a 90. I guess I am in the top percentile of the applicants who took the exam. I am very excited about this but since I am in the top percentile I am going to be in the first wave of people taking the physical agility exam. I was expecting this to be in late March early April but instead it is going to be on February 13th. This obviously throws my entire workout time line off so I need to figure something out pretty quick or else I am going to fail this exam which would suck. If I do pass the exam I get pulled aside to conduct an interview with a background agent who will comb over my entire life with a fine tooth comb which is also a little nerve racking. That is enough complaining over something completely sweet.

So while I was working last night at the theater I had a family come in with what appeared to be a mother, father, grandfather and a child about age six. They came in the looked at the movie times for a little while and then they started talking to the little boy about what movie he wanted to see. Apparently the little boy wanted to see Alvin and the Chipmunks but the film had started about 30 minutes before they had gotten there. The family tried to explain this to the little boy and told him they could come back and see the next showing of the film which would give the little boy plenty of time to play video games but he wanted nothing to do with this. He opened the door to the theater and ran into the lobby and demanded his parents by him Airheads and Skittles. After they bought them for him he then demanded they go and watch the showing of Alvin and the Chipmunks that was already playing. The parents caved in after the child threatened to throw a fit and bought tickets for the movie that was already playing. I was shocked at how this child was running his entire family so easily but not three hours later a 13 year old girl came in with her parents to watch Lovely Bones which had started 52 minutes before they had arrived and when the parents objected to watching the movie since it had already started she looked at them and told them that is the movie she wanted to see and then proceeded to walk into the theater leaving her parents to pay for the film. If that were me I would have gotten a quick slap to the back of the head and told I was going to watch whatever my parents wanted and if I didn't like it I could wait in the car. Basically if I don't get out of this theater before too long I am going to feel like and old man telling kids in the lobby that in my day...

Day 160 Holy 17 Year Old Girls Batman

It hasn't taken too long for this new job to start to get dramatic. In my previous post I talked about how the manager I went to high school with has an on again off again relationship with the bosses bipolar daughter but last night I found out that the level drama is much higher than what I thought. All of the females who work at the theater are about 17 years old and at that prime age for high school drama to be flowing through there veins but with a North Country spin that i was not prepared for. One of the girls named Brianna doesn't get along with another one of the girls at the theater but instead of handling this like normal teenage girl Brianna told one of the other girls to tell her hated foe that if she looked at her again she would punch her in the face. The other girl apparently responded by having this girl tell her that she would totally kick her ass but it would show up on her college transcript so she didn't want to ruin her chances at college. I of course heard all of this second hand and I had to pick my jaw up from off the floor because they are both adorable 90 lbs girls. I had forgotten how women up north don't talk things through but rather they handle their issues with fists and tequila.

On a different note I would like to congratulate Luke for passing his entrance exams. Way to go Big Delicious!!!

Day 161

I have a feeling that this new job is going to drive me nuts if I stay there too long. I just found out that all the girls that work at the theater are in high school so you can imagine there is a lot of drama going on. A couple of the girls think I'm cute and whenever I talk to them they get all giggly. I have also found out that one of the managers nick used to date the theater owners daughter until she broke up with him for her ex boyfriend. now she wants him back so she hangs out at the theater and makes sure nick can't even look at another girl without her knowledge. Last night she started to cry because she thought Nick was flirting with one of the 17 year old concessionists even though he is 23. She then told him he was leaving but instead of leaving she sat in the parking lot and watched him for twenty minutes to make sure he was not flirting with the girls. just when I thought it wasn't going to get any better she was supposed to give him a ride home but she never showed up so I had to give him a ride to his house. This place is awesome.

I went to Buffalo on Sunday and I must it did me good to see everyone for a little while. It was tough to come back to Potsdam after such a nice weekend even the moments where I was puking were better than in Potsdam. I can't wait until I can come back permanently.

Day 166 French Club Rummage Sale!!!

So today was the annual Potsdam French Club Rummage sale. This a sale where the Potsdam high School students who are going to France bring in all of their junk and put it all in the cafeteria. This event is a staple of the Potsdam experience and I have long felt that this rummage sale allows you to see what people are really all about. Every year I show up early at the high school with Tim so we can scope out the best swag and talk with the other regulars who show up early. After about an hour one of the French Club workers came up to tell us we could wait in the lobby since at this point it was getting pretty cramped where we were standing. When we all went to move into designated area this dumb bitch who had been waiting for about three fucking minutes decided she could cut in front of everyone. After jumping over a couple of boxes and running down the hall I assured that I got a place at the front of the line and when I looked to my left I noticed this she-bitch was standing next to me. We stood in front of the cafeteria door for about ten minutes and the whole time she was trying to figure out a way to cut me off before the doors opened. When the doors finally opened to allow everyone into the sale this harpy decided to try and use a box to push me out of the way to cut off everyone else in line so I decided enough was enough. When she hit me in the back with the box for the second time I gave the box a quick elbow to shove her and her decrepit friends into the wall so the mob could deal with them. Everything is fair in love, war and rummage sales.

Day 170

Yesterday was a day of firsts for me. I started my gym life off with Galen yesterday by going to the gym at SUNY Potsdam. Since I am just starting out I was hoping I could go to the gym without having too be embarrassed by how little I am lifting compared to the guy next to me. Well I guess I had expectations too high as the guy next to me had a bicep that was seriously bigger than my leg. I have decided that this is something I can't avoid since the guys who look like they have bigger muscles in their neck than I do in my whole body probably spend the whole day at the gym. I'm still really stoked about acheiving my New Years goal of gaining 20 lbs of muscle so I can look like Arnold when I go for my police physical fitness exam.(I thought this would be reasonable)

The other big first I had was yesterday was the first day of my job managing the new theater. Everyone should be aware that by "new" I mean it is new for me to work at this paticular theater. The theater itself has been run to shit. As I was getting the extended tour I believe I uttered the phrases "No Way" "Your kidding me" and "Isn't that a fire hazard?" more times than I can remember. The place has a lot of potential but through a combination of the poor building layout and poor management it was run into the ground. Here are a few of the issues I was shown:

Sewage pipe access is in the middle of a theater so if the chinesse restaurant dumps grease down the drains it comes out in a theater.

A live wire hanging from the booth ceiling connected to nothing.

Old staff spent no time cleaning but instead put up all the movie posters they received on the walls in the projection booth. Many are held up with heavy screws.

There are so many little things that are not right about this place but those are the ones that just made me laugh when I was shown them. I am really excited about working at this place because I feel after i get the hang of the new projectors I will be able to do whatever the hell I want to improve the place.