Bad and Awesome

I started my last post with disappointing news that I would not be going on the sailing trip. A fact that is even more depressing as I follow my brothers progress with the boat he is crewing on and the amazing experiences he is having, like this nonsensical awesomeness... he got pictures of sharks jumping out of the water... I didnt even know awesome got that awesome. I regret that I have even more disappointments this time as well. I have been planning on moving to San Diego with Kari where she got placement for fieldwork for three months, there were contracts signed, plans were made, and then last week they called and told her that they cannot afford to take her in as a (non-paid)student... so after all of her classmates have all of their placements figured out, she is back out again looking for somewhere that will take her in. There are prospects in Texas, Arizona, Boston, Virginia, all over the place, but... who knows what will happen. I am definitely moving back to Pittsburgh in December, though even that has been tainted with a bit of misfortune. I was supposed to be moving into a house with a few of my friends when a current resident moved to Colorado, but turns out the guy decided to be all ambitious and go to medical school instead of taking the nursing job in Colorado. So we have no room at the house and are mow looking for apartments around the area. It wont be too hard to find something, and it will be nice to live without roommates, Kari wasn't too excited about living with 5 other guys anyway.

The last few weeks I have been transforming into a nocturnal creature due to my work schedule, and it is great. We have started to work overnights in preparation for the biggest day of the year, Black Friday, or as it is officially called by Toys-R-Us, Green Friday, because they make so much money. My work nights are 10pm to 6am and I try to keep a similar sleep schedule when I am not working also, so I am up till at least 6 every day. A lot of people would look at this as a big pain, but i actually kinda like it, plus I get a whopping $1 an hour extra. I get up some time between 12 and 4, so I have time to do all the stuff that has to be done during the day, but then most of my waking hours are during the night. They say that nothing good happens after midnight, but I beg to differ. I have always been most productive after the rest of the world is asleep, I have written about that before. The things to do at night are far fewer, and therefor produce fewer distractions, I have nothing better to do than work on my resume (click that link there and not only can you see my resume, but you can edit it! Ah the power and wisdom of google), or do some dishes, or maybe write a blog.

OK, so I just got back from work, and another benefit of being out late, you get to experience all the crazys that inhabit the night. For example. I went out for food during our "lunch" break (interestingly they call it a lunch break no matter when you are working, in this case the break is at 2am) and when I came back, my coworker and I were walking through the parking lot when the sound of screeching tires caught our attention. We look over to see a car 30 feet away, maybe a Dodge Stratus, careening over the curb of the street that goes by the store at a good 40 mph. It was airborne as it flew over the 20 feet of grassy hill between the street and the parking lot, landing in a spray of shrubbery and dirt as it landed in the landscaping around the parking lot, crunched over the concrete barriers at the front of the parking spaces, its tires flattened by now it went sideways across the lot, hitting off the barriers in the spaces opposite, almost running into the building, at this point I expected things to stop, a driver who had been sleeping at the wheel to get out shaken... but they kept going, burning metal as the rims spun on the pavement, thankfully headed away from us towards the back of the store, they slid around the back and out of sight just as we heard another set of screeching tires, this time accompanied by a siren. The cop ripped through the side lot (opting to take the entrance to the lot that was 10 feet before the spot where the chasee had decided he wanted to go through) after the guy, and I hurried over to the other side of the store to see the rear entrance where they would have exited the lot, I got there in time to see that the car had lost control when it tried to make the turn out of the lot on flat tires and wound up nose hard into the embankment across the street. The cop was out, gun drawn, yelling at people to get on the ground and a woman was screaming, and then... I went back in to the store eat the panini I just bought. After relating the story to the rest of the crew in the break room, they went out to have a look at the damage done, mostly just to the shrubs that were now scattered on the lot, and watch the arrests, there were swarms of cops cars within a few minutes patrolling the area, which must have meant that someone got away, so I made sure I locked my car. I will be checking the news to figure out what the deal was, but for me that made for the most exciting night of work at Toys-R-Us I will ever have.

Well that was fun.