PERKS & WORKS

No this is not a post about coffee or employment at Starbucks.

Happy Hump Day from your Hump Day Word-Whore!  We call it the hump-day because it's the middle of the week, it's half way to the weekend...which for many jobs is the days you have off. I presently have one of those jobs. I work Monday through Friday and have some mandatory overtime Saturdays. All in all, I like my job. I like it better than my days as a Realtor--worked weekends all the time, and my days in retail--worked weekends and holidays all the time. At the time of those retail jobs (I've worked at JC Penney, Ben Franklin, Sohio/BP, Big Lots, Dairy Mart, and at a military base Commissary, in no particular order.) that was what I wanted to do.

Yuppers, I can run a register and make change like nobody's business, honey. (Hi there. Did you find everything you were looking for today? *make small talk here* Thanks for shopping *insert store name here.* Come again.) I was a bow-girl at Ben Franklin's. During the Yule season I made hundreds of hand-tied bows with red velvet ribbon. I'd go home and blow my nose and it would look like blood because of all the velvet fibers. I stocked shelves, cut deli meats and cheeses, made great sandwiches and bad coffee at Dairy Mart. And I drank A LOT of Dr. Pepper there. At Sohio/BP me and my co-worker Brad had too much fun. When it was dead, we threw those little York Peppermint Patties at each other. If you ever bought one that was flat on one side, I'm sorry. (We usually bought them and ate them after we'd flung them around.) JC Penney during a Yule season sucked rotten eggs. People--if you pick up those clothes from the display table and unfold them to look at them, can you really not make any effort to put them back like you found them? And after the season was over, they cut nearly everyone's hours to 4 per week. Hey, thanks for helping me buy groceries, there. That will fill my table sure enough. JC Penney management = not right.

Coming up in late August we'll be talking about our "weirdest jobs," so I'll save the guitarist days for that post...mwahahahaha.

To wrap it up, though, let me tell you about my days as a graphic artist. It was a great job. Monday through Friday, I played with a computer that when I fired it up every morning reminded me in Obi Wan Kenobi's voice, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany." And it shut down to the sounds of C3P0 being unwillingly deactivated. Ah...the good old days. And when the company's Realtors who had not bothered o put in a request for the documents they needed for their open houses that weekend would show up in my office at 4:45 on Friday...they came bearing chocolate. They really understood me.

I love being an author best of all. It is my passion--the embodiment of the geekery that rules the largest percentage of my brain. It is a dream come true.