It seems only like last week that I gave that bear to Jill (‘Marcia’ has since given me permission to use her real name ). What an interesting year it’s been since… You see,  about that time I had listen to Daft Punk’s The Prime Time of Your Life and really took the lyrics in. I started taking the song as a motivator, telling myself that “This is the prime time of your life. Now. Do it today.”

So I did it; a week later, I asked Jill out on a date. As per both of our recollections, we were at work and we were just about ready to close for the night. Back then I was the closing cashier and she was buying something (I think it was her turn to buy us Gatorade), and I was ringing her up. I figured now would have been the best time, if there were a such thing. So as I was finishing up the transaction, it all came out at once: “Wouldyouliketogooutsometime?” I don’t even think I understood what I had said at the time, and she didn’t catch what I said. I felt a bit deflated, but I tried to collect myself and I asked again, this time much more slowly: “Would you like to go out sometime?”

Her face lit up and she said, “Sure! Sounds like fun!” She spooled out some receipt paper, tore it out of the printer, grabbed a pen, and jotted down her phone number. My heart was probably still pumping from all of the excitement and adrenaline, but I knew what she was doing. She handed me the paper and said, “Let me know!”

I thought for sure I was going to ruin everything, and for a little bit, I thought I had. The first date I planned was just a round of minigolf so we can get to know each other better, but she ended up postponing the date. Why? One of her eyes swelled up and she said that her mom didn’t think she should go out in that condition. I didn’t mind; I saw that she indeed had a little bit of swelling the next day at work. She explained that she has a lot of different allergies, and probably the swelling was caused by a reaction to the new way she got her nails done. We made plans for probably a week later for a lunch date. She contacts me a few days before the date that she was having lunch with her grandparents and she had forgotten. This time I was a bit disappointed, but things happen, so I let it slide. The third attempt was planned for a day that we hadn’t counted on the weather turning into just a prolonged torrential downpour. I quickly suggested that we simply go see a movie or do something indoors, but her mom didn’t want her doing any unnecessary driving in the heavy rain. Completely understandable, but I think I had told her that the ball was now in her court to try to set up a date. I was probably getting a little frustrated, and she picked up on this. She caught up with me at work and apologized, saying that she really did want to hang out and didn’t want me to feel like she was ditching me. She pinky swore that the next time, we would definitely go out.

Oh, but then I remember how she set it up; she sent me a text message (at 4 AM!) asking if I was free the following Thursday. I said that I was, asking what she had in mind. She suggested going to the batting cages, and we went. The date ended out going great; we we able to keep the conversation flowing, and it wasn’t more awkward than first dates have to be. We agreed that we should go out again, and to make a long story short, we hit it off and we have been going steady since April 1st, 2010! (Yeah, yeah… April Fool’s Day… I didn’t realize that midnight passed when I asked, but it didn’t matter because I was serious. Oh well, anniversaries will be lots of fun. )

We are still dating today. We have so much in common; we just clicked right into place. We’ve shared so many experiences together, and now I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I can’t imagine my life without her how. So I’m trying to apply that saying in other aspects of my life now: “This is the prime time of your life. Now. Do it today.” It doesn’t matter what stage of life you’re in, because now will always be the prime time of your life. We’ll see where it gets me and indeed, where it gets us!

I just knew I had to buy it. So I did.

At first, I had no idea why I was buying this or who for. It was just hilarious and I had to buy it.

Eventually, I got it in my head to give it to my co-worker. We’ll call her Marcia (names will be changed for a few reasons).  Marcia’s around my age, has a pretty good sense of humor, and is generally an all-around sweetheart. We work in the front-end of a grocery store, and our hours more often than not overlap. Because of this, we’ve talked quite a bit during downtimes and have established a pretty good rapport.

What made me ultimately decide to pull this semi-gag? She’s told me a few times before how Valentine’s Day is overrated, blah blah blah. Perfect. I’ll dress up this bear with a nice red gift bag, stuff in some pink and white tissue paper, make my own card with handsomely hand-written message of affection. Everything needed to look legitimately Valentine’s-y up until she saw the rather crass bear.

So yeah, I bought the bear from LoveIsLame.com, and waited for a while. I received the bear in the mail just in time, just shy of a week before Valentine’s Day. Then I went out and bought a nice, red, shiny bag; tissue paper; and a small red paper bag that usually come in brown (the ones you use to bag lunches).

I then spent some time setting my plan into motion. Behold!

Man, this bear is great. Whoever thought this up is a genius.

My photos are of terrible quality. You can blame the convenience of cell phone cameras. So yeah, that’s the bear I ordered.

Less popular Valentine's Day color: green.

That’s the bag and the tissue paper. I wanted some red tissue paper, but I figured the gift bag had enough red.

So why's it called "tissue paper" anyway? Maybe I don't want to know.

NO! Not on the tissue paper! That's what the newspaper is for! ... This is why it's called "tissue paper" isn't it?

I removed the tag from the bear here.

I get it. It's a chocolate bear. This is probably wrong on a few different levels. What were you thinking?

Getting the insides together. That box is a Whitman’s chocolate sampler.

Maybe the bag is too big. But then the bear may be too small.

There’s the bag for a size comparison.

I swear I'm never going to think of tissue paper the same way again...

I put in some tissue paper in the bag first to pad it a bit.

I bet you can think what I imagine that is. D:

After padding, I then carefully put in the other tissue paper along with the bear and the chocolate box.

You know you can't hide that, someone going to find that and then blame it on YOU.

There, covered up the bear. Now all that’s left is a hand-crafted card.

Oh, good, I need to hurl...

Hey... what's that say? Is that a love note? :V

I cut out section of the bag and then wrote a special message for her. This part wasn’t a gag, so I blurred it. You get to come up with your own message.

Is that the card there? Gimme that!

The card snugly placed on the top of the bear and the paper. I wrote her name on the front of the card, but I obscured that, too.

So then I go to work the next day and begin my shift. I don’t see Marcia around for what seemed like hours, and I’m starting to think she called out. But then I pass by her when I head over to clock in (out?) for lunch break, and she says, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Matt!” in her usually cheery voice. I swivel my head around and respond in kind, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Marcia!” Oh, yes. Operation Bearly Politically Correct is a Go.

My friend who also works at this store happened to be around (we’ll call him Steve), so I tell him to stick around for a bit while I grab some foodstuffs, and I’ll show him the bear and such (I’ve let him in on the scheme). So I pay for my food, and we go to my car, I show him the bear, he laughs his head off, and we shoot the breeze for a bit while listening to the radio and while I eat.

My lunch break ends, and my friend is in tow, me with bag in hand. I get some smug “Who’s that for?” and “What’d you get me?” comments from coworkers as I make my way over to the service desk. There are no customers around, so I just walk right up to Marcia and proffer the bag. Her face just brightens up and asks if I’m really giving her a gift. Yes, I am! Just take it! She does, and starts thanking me with this brilliant smile on her face. As I’m headed to clock back in from break, she asks me if she can open it now, and I just play it cool; “You can open it now. Or open it whenever.” I clock back in, and start passing by the desk to get to my register, and say, “Actually, let me go get Steve. He might want to see this.” (Looking back, this was probably a dumb thing to say. Oh well.) So I go tell Steve she’s going to open it, and we head to the desk, and I tell her to go ahead and open it.

By now a handful of coworkers have gathered around the desk wondering what’s going on. Our coworker (“Paul”) comments, “I hope it’s a gag gift!” She sets the bag down on the desk and slowly begins pulling out the bear, with this entrancing smile on her face. Then she sees the bear. Oh, boy. It was subtle, but her smile twisted just a bit when she read what the heart said. I just burst out laughing. Oh, that was priceless. Apparently her face skipped a few shades of red, as one of our coworkers pointed out. The coworkers not in the know at this point were just itching to know what was going on, as Steve and I were just reveling in the pure hilarity of the moment, but we won’t say anything. Paul’s trying to take a picture with his phone, but Marcia is apparently too embarrassed to show her face or the bear, as she turns around to look at the bear some more. “Show them the bear!” I egg her on. “Do it, show them!”

She reluctantly turns the bear around and our coworkers all crouch in to see what this is all about. You can see the anticipation instantly release as eruptions of laughter escape from the mouths of grunts and managers alike. Oh, this is just absolute gold, the peak of civilization as I care to immediately know it. When the laughter dies down, Marcia turns to me and thanks me again and says that she likes the gift. I expected a greater shock display, but on the inside I’m just beaming with pride. I’m just absolutely glad at how well this gift turned out. With success achieved, I start putting on my cashier’s apron and declare my need to get back to my register.

Over the remainder of her shift, she wastes no opportunity to thank me and express her gratitude for the gift. “I’m glad.” I say.

Oh, Marcia. Thanks for being such a great sport. <3

I’ve moved this site to DreamHost, and so far it’s pretty fantastic. I’m not even day three or so of my free trial, and I’m already sold on this new host. Unlimited domain hosting, bandwidth, diskspace, SQL databases, FTP/shell users (shell access! YES!) and a bunch of stuff for under ten bucks a month for two years. If you’re interested, I can create some promo codes to get you a discount on new accounts. Otherwise if you’ll say that matthewvalitalo AT gmail DOT com referred you, that would be awesome, ’cause I get monay. <3

This is awesome that I can host unlimited domains too. I also have wundersprockets.com hosted, but that’s just going to be a sandbox so I can play around with/teach myself some PHP. Oh, anyway, enough geeking out.

Firstly, I want to tell you how my Christmas Eve went. Oh, how I hate working holidays at a grocery store.

Generally, the customers I get are pretty cheerful, or at least act like human beings. Every once in a while, I’ll get customers who just seem to be having a bit of a bad day, and I’ll understand that that item didn’t ring up right, I’ll get it fixed for you. Then there was a woman in a tier of raging hatred all her own. She was pre-destined to hate every particle in the totality of all creation. She fought me every part of the way, from the time I said, “Hello!” and started ringing up her items until she left the store.

I was released for lunch break early that day. I should have said something, because I knew that when I returned to work, I’d be working for four and a half hours with no break (and quite literally. On holidays, you pretty much don’t stop ringing up customers). I’m probably at about 3 hours into this fray when she comes through. “Hello!” I say. She just intensely stares at the selection of candy near the register for those impulse buys. Okay, whatever. I start ringing up some organic butternut squash and one regular butternut squash. I start ringing up on the other items in her order, when she sharply asks, “Is that organic? I don’t want organic. The bin was just mixed with organic and regular, and I don’t want organic. You should tell them to separate them.”

I say, “Well, these two are organic and this one isn’t. Do you want me to take them off?”

“Yes. I don’t want organic. Take them off. Just ring up two more regular ones and I’ll go switch them out.”

I was going to say that they’re sold by their weight, not by item, but I just knew that would just summon a shitstorm. “Okay,” I say. I ring up the rest of her items and give her the total, and she pays. Just as the receipt is printing, she makes a comment about the total, saying that I “made a mistake”. I calmly reminded her that I rang up the regular butternut squash two more times, like she asked me to.

“Oh, okay.” she replies. Whew. Situation resolved. Good thing I won’t be seeing her again. Oh, crap, she’s leaving her receipt! Don’t just leave it on the counter after I give it to you! You need that! Cashier sense is tingling! …oh. Oh. Good, her boyfriend/husband took it. Disaster averted.

So I go along my way, ringing up just some really chipper and upbeat customers, and just some who want to get out as quickly as possible so they don’t make conversation. That’s be cool. I’m helping move the last bags of a really nice elderly woman’s bags into her cart, and as soon as I turn to get back to the scanner to ring up the next customer, the vast scape of the celestial bodies rumbled in agony as the noise reached my ears, “Where’s my receipt!?” “Ma’am, I gave you your receipt.” “No, you didn’t! I don’t have it!” “Ma’am, I definitely gave you your receipt. You need that to make sure you get your regular butternut squash.” The boyfriend/husband enters the scene, and offers, “It’s right here.” “Oh,” she says.

“Well, you rang this up wrong!” I was speechless. The shitstorm I was trying to prevent was brewing up anyway. Judgment Day is inevitable.

“You know that these are sold by weight, right?” she demands. “Ma’am, I just took off the organic ones and added two more regular ones so that you could go change them out, just like you asked me to.”

“Oh, well you’re supposed to know that these are sold by weight.” The boyfriend/husband probably feels pretty embarrassed at this point, so he’s trying to calm her down. I don’t remember what he was going to say, because she violently overlapped his voice with her own, “No! He’s supposed to learn that these are sold by weight!”

I say, “Well, they’re pretty close to the same size, I didn’t think it would matter if you were going to switch them out…” The boyfriend/husband says something else to calm her down, and I suppose that worked. I was pretty much done with her shenanigans. I needed to get back to the line of customers I have. I say in my moset cheery/friendly voice, “Have a nice day, ma’am!” and simply turn away, asking my next customer how he was doing as I was ringing up his beer. I saw a disgusted look from him that was directed to the woman, and I felt better because of that, even if he didn’t say hello back.

But that doesn’t end my day, oh no, things need to get much worse.

It’s about three minutes past the time I was scheduled to stop working, so I turn off my light, finish up my customers, and start cleaning my register. I wasn’t thinking too clearly by not having a proper break in about four and a half hours, so I forgot that one of the managers needs to tell me to turn off my light. So I’m cleaning up my register, and the front-end manager asks me who told me to turn my light off. “No one.” I say. Must’ve struck a nerve, because she goes, “Oh, you’re running the front now?” This takes whatever energy I had and just about halves it. “No… I just…” I couldn’t even come up with an excuse; there was nothing I could have said anyway.

I slink back to my register and prepare for another onslaught of customers as I turn my light back on. I take some heavy sighs, and remember that I started running low on single dollar bills and quarters. “Well, if that’s the case, I’ll need singles and quarters. Right away.” “Right away?” she had a look of disbelief. I pushed. “Right away. Stat.” She just stared, and the other manager she was talking with gave me a weak smile and said, “You can turn your light off.” I do so immediately. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. I just want to go home and drink some sodas and watch TV or something. I almost leap for joy, I was so elated.

The other manager spots something, and addresses the front-end manager, “There are a few carry-backs here (for those not in the know, these are items that customers abandon in random places in the store or at the register when they no longer want them). Did you want him to do these?” My heart sank. I already knew the answer. “Yeah, he can do those.” I was livid. I was ready to just quit my shift then and there. I worked for four and a half hours with no proper break, and from the looks of it, I’ll be here for another half hour! I value my job though, so I keep my gob shut.

Only minutes after I start putting items back on the shelves am I called to the front. Okay, they were just pulling my leg. I’m going home.

I get to the front of the store and surprise! Humanity is dead, and some guy’s card was declined on a couple-hundred dollar order, so all those items are to go back too. Add another hour’s worth of work. One of the other cashiers asks me to help her out with these items. I’m fine with it, it’s not her fault. At least it’s valid this time, and not some manager’s head swelling up with power. Okay. We split up two carts full of items, dividing the store in half to help quicken the job. About ten minutes later, I’m called to my register. I’m going home for real this time. I wanted to help the other cashier with these takebacks, because this wasn’t about political nonsense trying to screw with me. She actually needed help. I just wanted to go home, though. So I compromised; I put back all of the cold items and left the rest. I went to my register, and the one manager was there to count my till. We go through it like normal, my till was pretty close to what it should have been, and I initial off and clock out.

My day is over? Wrong again, my friend. Almost, though.

I notice the gas tank in my mom’s car is about a quarter full, so I decide to give her a sort of a Christmas gift and top off the tank for her. I stop at a Marathon, they’re usually pretty cheap. I swipe my debit card and am ready to start pumping gas, but then the pump says I need to see the attendant. I go, and he says that the card was declined for some reason; I figured they froze it because of Christmas Eve and all. Whatever. I thank the attendant and just get back on the road again so I can get home. When I pull onto the road, I hear something hit the road, but there were no cars around. A half-second’s thought after seeing the tank cap hatch open reminded me that I forgot to put the gas cap back on. It’s in traffic now, crap! I pull to the side in a turning lane and put those emergency lights on that make both blinkers blink (can’t think of the name at the moment). Anyway, I get out of the car, screaming profanities at myself for being such an idiot. Traffic’s really coming now! I hear a distinct POP! as cars pass by. I shout more profanities, as that popping sound was the cap being destroyed. I managed to recover half of it when traffic thinned out. I looked at it. There was no way that thing was going back on the car. I sat it down in the passenger seat and just drove home, just saying one string of profanities after another.

Then I arrived home, and my night finished much, much better.

tldr; I worked for about 5.25 hours without a proper break after having a really bad customer, then my debit card was declined when I tried to get gas. I also forgot to put the gas tank cap back on and it was destroyed in traffic.

You know what? Much of 2009 was pretty much just drudgery and disappointment for me. The new year will be better. New opportunities will arise, more good times will be had. Who knows? Maybe I’ll move out in 2010. Maybe I’ll find someone who isn’t a nutter. Maybe I’ll become self-employed. Maybe I won’t have so much gas (what on Earth did I eat?). Maybe I’ll open up an account at a credit union and ditch my bank. Who knows? Bring on 2010!

So picture this: It’s four minutes to close while you’re working at a grocery store. A customer comes up with all the items she wants to purchase in a cart. After ringing a sizable amount of items, the total is around $270.00. She writes out a check, and we follow policy of making sure her phone number and such is on the check, and I feed the check in the machine as per usual. An error message displays in the register, simply that we cannot accept the check. The closing manager of the night says she thinks she remembers that with this particular error, the check can only be accepted if it’s for $150 or less.

The customer does not have another method of payment. So, we start voiding all sorts of items to try to get the total down. Most of these items need to get back, as many are either cold or frozen items; luckily we have someone to take care of these items.

We spend approximately 20 minutes or so doing this, and we finally reach a total of less than $150. The check is finally fed into the machine! Joy!

Same error.

Unfortunately, since the customer didn’t have another form of payment, the whole order had to be voided out. Apologies for the convenience, ma’am. Here’s a number you can call to try work out a solution with your checks.

Then there was the last customer; I’m so glad. Almost time to finish up the work night. There were two or so items that this customer pointed out having an incorrect price. Now, customers do deserve to get the prices that are advertised, but… sigh. It’s 30 minutes past closing. Please let us know without sounding agitated; we would like to get home too.

Once finished with a few purchases by associates and getting the register situated, around three of us or so needed to get the rest of the items back on the shelves or freezers, which took about 15 minutes more.

Yeah, this was definitely how I wanted to spend my Saturday instead of going out of town to see someone and have some fun at the local fair. That’s a rant for another day, though.

Sorry, I needed to vent.

Oh! And the moral of the story is this: Please use a card or cash when purchasing things nowadays! Please avoid using checks, thank you.

Okay, so I don’t know if it’s the boredom of sitting around the house for too long, but certain songs have been looping in my head for the past few days. Right as I am typing this, Daft Punk’s Human After All is occupying my mind. Other times of the day, other tracks from the same album (also called Human After All) just take the same place, and it’s almost driving me to the madhouse.

Listening to the album doesn’t help for long. I get distracted for a bit, but eventually the album runs out of tracks and it starts all over again. Apparently my mind isn’t getting tired of it. Listening to other music isn’t of much help either, as I’ve now added another song to this pesky loop.

It’s a good thing that I don’t hate this music, but that actually may be the problem. I don’t know what to do to get this to stop.

Anyway, maybe some good karma will swing my way if I share the album with you. Here, you can at least get a taste here: http://www.last.fm/music/Daft+Punk/Human+After+All

I fired up FileZilla  and queued up all the files like normal, and it went smoothly at first. Probably at the final 200 or so files though, some of the transfers were reaching 100%, but they ultimately failed. Whatever, reset it and re-queue them up. I had to do this a handful of times until two files remained left. After about a half hour, those things just kept doing the same thing over and over, reaching 100% but with the transfer failing. What the crap? Reset, requeue. Reset, requeue. Lather, rinse, repeat. Argh!

So then I opened up Windows Explorer to connect to my FTP server. The transfers worked without a hitch.

Way to drop the ball, FileZilla.