Bleh, I am hung over and have to go to Detroit today.
So I dragged myself into work yesterday, resisting every impulse to just stop showing up. I even perused the classifieds but there was fuck all there, even for Kalamazoo.
The first couple hours I felt really uncomfortable, especially when my supervisor was around. It didn't help matters that I hadn't slept worth a damn. It was very hard not to just bolt. I contemplated taking some of my cubicle decorations home with me and wondered how many I could take without anyone noticing, and just kind of never coming back.
I went on break around 5:30 and called Rob. We went on tangents about what boyd rice would do if he were an animated character, and I realized it was in fact an aspiration of mine to have him do a voice over in one of my movies.
When I came back, I talked to Tammy about my schedule. She brought up the paycheck, and how she tried to get me an advance but couldn't. Well, at least she was nice about it. Then, I made up my permanent schedule, which is 4-9. monday through friday. Well, at least I don't have to be there as much. I may modify that when I start school. She also told me that she didn't mind if it took me until the end of next week to be doing calls on my own because I was part time and I didn't have the benefit of everyone else in my training class who was here full time. Good. At least she was offering some advantage on my end for being part time.
I got back on the phone with the deadpan girl who is training me. She's a real pain in the ass. I mean, as a human being she seems harmless enough, but she seems to push me to go faster in my training because it's boring for her to have to train her. I must have told her five times yesterday that I was still learning the screens (there's a lot of different screens to learn, easily fifty of them.) and would start actually talking to customers next week. She finally shut up when I said "I talked to Tammy, and she said it's okay if I don't start actually taking calls until next week because I'm only part time. I've only been here fifteen hours this week." (monday was a holiday and I was sick on Tuesday.) So she got a bunch of office supplies and had me put together my cubicle while she snuck back to her desk to take calls. Of course, she left her chair at my desk so she would just be sitting on the floor taking the calls. What an idiot. Doesn't she realize that all that does is slow down my learning time and make her have to go through this more next week?
But it was finally time to go home. When I got out of there, Rob wanted to eat. First we went to fourth coast for coffee and then we were going to go to old peninsula. But there was already a long line of people waiting to get in. It was a little after nine and of course all of Kalamazoo seems to be out and about by 8:30. It's just unreal to me. I never like to get anywhere before eleven. We looked around downtown but everywhere else was the same: either really crowded or having some bad hippie musician playing or both. So we went to Finley's, a chain eatery. I ordered a foo foo drink and I felt like a true suburbanite. Off work from my corporate job and eating just standard, generic fare, sipping my girl drink and talking about my day. I tried to make a joke about my being a girl drink drunk with the waitress but it was completely over her head. Fuckin Kalamazoo.
So we got to talking and I made a joke about going to a strip joint. Then I said, "the scary thing is, it doesn't sound like a half bad idea." and Rob said the scarier thing was he didn't care, he could go either way. So we finished eating, went home and freshened up, unwound a bit, and headed to the Mermaid Lounge around 11 pm.
I was worried that they might frown on couples but they didn't. In fact, there were a lot of couples there. It actually seemed like it was the happening couples spot. There were a lot of couples there. So we got a bunch of dollar dances from the girls,drank a lot and generally had a good time. There were a lot of girls with a lot of tattoos, which was cool. And the dancers were neither trashy nor barbies, which is refreshing as a lot of clubs seem to be like that, especially in college towns. One girl just spontaneously started making conversation and didn't even ask us for a dance so I had her give us one just so she'd make a little bit of money. The funny thing is, this was the most fun we'd had since we moved here. I mean, those clubs tend to be a nostalgic novelty for me but Rob has always loathed places like that. But it was actually the first halfway cool place and a lot of the dancers seem more intelligent than your average kalamazoo hippie or WMU wasp that we seem to come across.
So today, we're going to Detroit. There's nothing I'd like more than to stay at home and do animation but it's Rob's uncle's birthday...