So I had a great night tonight! (before I go on, I'm giving in and finally coming up with fake names for my coworkers, so if you're like, "who the hell is " whatever weird name I give them, just know I've probably refered to them before but not by fake name or whatever. Really, I dunno why I bother, I could just name names as I doubt they'll stumble in on the ol' blog and if they did they probably could still tell who they are from it blah blah blah I'm just doing it that way, okay!) I had dinner with about three of my coworkers, two of them (Carmax and Sista) had actually gotten off an hour earlier but stayed till when my break was just to have dinner with me, which made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. The other one (Optimus Prime) I think we found out at the last minute got off right then and she was invited. Which, was awesome, because she's awesome too. So I got to have dinner with four of my favorite people from a group that I enjoy being around already. It was kickass!

Oh, and for Phoe From Elsewhere, I just want to mention that at dinner the topic of weird dreams came up, and I think my one coworker's finally topped your Harry Anderson sex dream, as she once dreamed of making out with Optimus Prime (hence me giving her the nickname optimus prime).

I did feel a little bad though, after I got that set up apparently some scheduling thing went wrong and they wanted to move my break. I have the feeling I'm the first one they decide to jerk around on scheduling conflicts nowadays, because I'm so flexible about it, usually. But anyway, since I had dinner set up, I had to say no. It felt kind of bad, but it also felt kind of good, to let them know I'm not a doormat. And I wasn't a jerk about it either, or even uncompromising, I basically said I had plans, but if it was really necessary, I would do it anyway (yeah, I AM a doormat) and they backed down.

And here's something I find a bit eerie: remember how I said I was all annoyed that people always assume I'm amish or something? And the one coworker (a manager, actually) who was all the reason I brought it up because he thought I was all innocent? Well Thinks-I'm-Innocent (AKA TII) has been at it again several more times since then. I remember one day he said that whole thing about misjudging me again over a conversation I was having with someone else about farting (I am always telling people--not real customers, mind you, just coworkers and friends and family--not to go to Barnes & Noble because they fart into their books). And come on! Any fifth grader has probably had a more offensive farting conver than we were that day! I myself have probably had a thousand conversations involving farting and other bowel stuff. When you have bowel problems on the scale I do, it just doesn't gross you out to talk about anything bowel related. So today at close I made some joke to someone about crack.

Again, if you know me, I have a weird fascination with crack. I've never done illegal drugs of any kind, never even drank alcohol before I was legal. But I LOVE joking about crack. I dunno. It's just hilarious! It's crack! A lot of people don't think pot's that bad, so jokes about pot aren't that great. But crack jokes--money in the bank, my friend! And this time TII wasn't all I misjudged you, he was all, it's wrong for you to make jokes about crack and you should just quit. But not in a way that means it's wrong for anyone to joke about crack, just that I'm too innocent or whatever. And then later in the conver I brought up my point about pot not being that funny, and the coworker I was talking to, Hootie, said something about pot jokes being funny while you're stoned or if you're telling them to stoners, and I said something like I've never done pot so I don't have any jokes like that, and TII pipes up again and says that that regains me points. So I'm just curious what TII's thing is, because he's never on any of the other employees about not talking about drugs or farting or whatever.

Explanations of fake names: (TII and Optimus Prime being explained earlier)

Carmax: she claims she's dangerously addicted to carmax, and it's become a running joke with us.

Sista: we were looking at the promo books once and she thought this book title, "things a sista should do" was just hilarious, and as a joke I actually took it, and she occaisionally asks me if I read it yet or if I've picked up any good tips on being a sista

Hootie: Hootie's another one of my favorite people around there. Tonight her and I were talking about fish and she said she read they could only remember like 30 seconds at a time. And she was telling me this story of her friend or sister or someone's fish, named Hootie, that got overfed and how horrible she thought he must feel because (fish frequently die if you overfeed them because they're too stupid to stop eating when they're full) if the last 30 seconds is like his whole life, he feels like he's been dying his whole life. Anyway, that sounds like a sad story but the way she told it it was pretty hilarious.