industrious

industrious: diligent and hard-working.

I've been busy, putting my left foot in and shaking it industriously all about. Two jobs is tough stuff.  But so far I'm managing. It's the small things that get me trough.

There's a regular that comes into Albertson's, he usually buys a loto ticket on Wednesdays. I'm kicking myself for forgetting his name.  We started off on the wrong foot.  I was tired and he cracked a joke that I found offensive.  Who knew he'd become my favorite customer.  He works at Micron and likes to give me practical life advise.  It's people like him that make me think the world is worth wading through.  One morning we were chatting it up when I pushed the intercom button on accident and a good five minutes of our conversation was broadcast to all the store.  Eventually we noticed and I started cracking up when my supervisor tried to talk to me about "the incident".  I didn't get in trouble or anything, just told to be careful. What a good day!

There's another guy that comes in regularly.  He an older African American man with orange hair, seriously it's orange.  Think Dennis Rodman but 50 years older.  He oddly smells like waffles and maple syrup.  One day he came through my line to buy a bottle of face wash.  He asked me if I could read the instructions to him.  So I turned the bottle over and started reading, "lather face with two..."  He interrupted me and said it's better if I just explain it in my own words.  So then I walked him trough step by step how to wash his face. Just so he remembers he proceeded to recite the steps back to me, acting out the motions even.  He put his hands to his face and moved them round and round in tiny circles saying, "first I wet my face, right? Then I get a wet cloth...no scratch the wet cloth, I don't need that.  So I get my face wet then I later on the soap and I rinse!"  We did this three or four times until he was satisfied that he could remember the steps.  Best part is, after I rung him up and said "have a good day" he came back twenty minutes later and we did the whole thing over again!  This time I got creative and drew out a diagram on a note card for him.  He put it in his pocket and looked at me a bit sideways and confessed, "I'll probably miss place it."  I reassured him, "well, I'll be here if you do." 

I've got a confession of my own, when I'm bored I draw little punk rock cartoons in my notebook or on the back of recite paper...I'll scan those in for you later!

As for my internship, I get quite a bit done here and really feel productive.  But when there's a lull in work I like to write my initials in the dust on the tops of the archive shelves.  So far I'm up to about 63 shelves I still have about 110 to go.