rena_librarian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rena_librarian) wrote2007-04-17 04:32 pm
rena_librarian) wrote2007-04-17 04:32 pm
The length of the taglist alone should explain why I'm lj-cutting
Written at...
For those of you who've seen Elizabethtown...you know the part after they sleep together, and she's leaving his hotel room? Everyone in the hotel is all, "Way to go, Claire!" and "Claire, you slut!" And she's totally agreeing with them and happy about it?
I feel like that today. ^_^ Last night was a night of firsts. (No, not THAT kind of firsts, you dirty-minded people.)
Duncan came over last night around 9:30, and, long story short...he's still here. Downstairs, asleep on my couch (what a good investment THAT turned out to be--and if my grandmother who contributed toward it knew!! XD).
It was too late for dinnner, of course, but we were going to watch all three LotR EE's. (That was the plan.) We also finally made margaritas like we'd planned at one point. (Okay, he mixed, I watched.) And we watched Fellowship over margaritas, and started Two Towers with brandy bucks (he agrees with me, they're surprisingly good). I also gave him the last of the strawberry daiquiris that Nico left over here a while back (before my birthday). We were both drunkish (tipsy, anyway, not totally inebriated) and we laughed maybe a little more than we might have otherwise, but it was fun. If you get two people who are nitpicky about grammar drunk enough to misspeak and they catch all the times the other person does--it gets funny, or at least we thought so. The downside is that Duncan has a lower alcohol tolerance than I do, and he drank quite a bit more than me--besides the daiquiri, he tried shots of brandy straight up and the Cuervo straight up since he'd never had either. So we had to make a few pauses during Two Towers because he got sick. (I'm torn between pity and wanting to point and laugh at his low tolerence--even he said he hadn't had nearly enough to drink to justify how sick it made him. At least whatever mess he made, he cleaned up himself, so I can't come down on him too hard.)
When TTT was winding down (it was over at nine AM, lol) he said he didn't think he could stay awake for RotK, and I offered to let him crash on my couch. I went and napped in my room for a while--I do have to work tonight--but got woken up by the phone around noon (Katchan) and now that I'm awake I need to stay awake. More sleep right now would only make me cranky. I woke Duncan up and asked if he wanted to go to lunch, but what he really wanted was another hour of sleep. As soon as I'm done typing this I'm going to go try him again.
So yeah. It was all kinds of laughter and good times, and we agree about pretty much everything LotR-related (my list of PJ's Four Major Mistakes and his list have at least two in common, lol--if we both had a list of six, we'd agree on the mistakes, just not in the order of how much they irritate us). I won Tolkien trivia points four to one, lol. (Though if we ever get to Shelly's and get to play LotR Trivial Pursuit, I so want Duncan on my team, because he knows SO much about behind-the-scenes stuff--producers and budgets and scoring and all that. His knowledge of that for movies in general baffles me.) My tile floor+stocking feet=fun, multiply it by drunk and it gets even more fun.
At one point we walked up to the gas station (after the margaritas, before the brandy bucks) and hung out for about twenty minutes with his best friend, who still works there, and I think I have best friend approval, lol. At any rate Robert--what are the odds that I'd know two?--should know me well enough that when Duncan refers to "Sarah" he won't say, "Who?" Lol.
We're not dating; at least not yet. But several times Duncan referred to me as his friend, and that makes me happy.
Firsts: first time I've honestly felt drunk (though I'm wondering if I have been drunk and just didn't stand up to notice it, lol), first time someone's been sick at my house (I haven't even really had a cold, which is relatively surprising) first overnight guest I've had at my house, first male overnight guest I've had in my life, period (though I suppose that's kind of a given what with having been living at home). First time that I saw Eomer's sword fall out of its scabbard as he gets on his horse in TTT (watch it, after he gives Hasufel and Arod to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli).
They're replacing the window in my catchall room. Well, they already have, but they need to replaster the wall around it now. I kind of don't want to be here when they do, so I'm going to go wake him up again now.
*bliss*
We went to El Charro's for lunch. Good stuff. Then, as El Charro's is in a storefront, we went windowshopping in a few of the stores in the same shopping center. Duncan wanted to go look at boots in the shoe store, so we did. I found a pair of sparkly silver high heels I loved but couldn't convince myself that they were worth $30, lol. $20 I would have done, but $30 was a bit much, considering how often I actually get to wear shoes other than my work shoes.
Then I dragged him to Katherina's--it shocked the heck out of me that he was even interested in going in, because it's all jewelry, shoes, purses, etc. But he wasn't bored, he spent the time looking around for things that would work for different costumes, lol.
After that, we came back here (his car was here) and I pretty much had to kick him out because it was going on 4:30 and I had to be at work at 5. If that had not been the case, he might still be here, lol--I didn't want to send him away and he didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave.
He's supposed to come over again tomorrow night, as I get off at nine instead of closing.
We spent nineteen hours together (well, okay, I slept for three of them and he slept for four, but still) and he still wants to come over again the next day.
This could be the start of something ALL KINDS OF beautiful.
As he was leaving, we were making arrangements for tomorrow. He's always careful to throw in "Yeah, barring death or something drastic, that should work." Today it was "barring death or zombie attack." And then suddenly he started on this tangent about how if there was a zombie attack in Mountain Home, he would do everything in his power to come rescue me. "I would call and make sure you stayed here until I could come get you. And I'd make sure to grab something to bonk the zombies over the head with and I'd fight them all off..." I told him I felt much safer knowing that. (I was only half-kidding.)
Work was okay--I was really tired until I went on break, and I'm not sure if it was the food or the fact that I wasn't on headset anymore, but either way I was fine after I got back. I was on dishes, and back drive for a little while, and both of those jobs are pretty mindless and leave you free to think about other stuff. I was thinking about the nineteen hours that transpired before work, of course. Something Duncan said has inspired me to start a short story. ^_^ (The fact that I will have to do some research--ie, ask him a lot of questions about the subject in question--is only adding fuel to the creative fire.)
Anyway. Now I am tired, and have stuff to do before work tomorrow. More later.
I am SO pissed off! I hate my job--I never came so close to walking out and quitting as I did last night.
Ken decided that since there was no school today, he was going to schedule a few people to stay a few more hours and do some detail cleaning before CER (Taco Bell's inspection)--me included, even though I'm not even IN school. They made no attempt to let me know beforehand--I didn't have a clue until I showed up to start my shift.
May I point out that I've only had one day off this week, and this was the only night I wasn't supposed to close? I tried everything I could think of to get out of it (including monetary bribery), but nothing worked. I HAD to stay until eleven, not nine. On top of that, I didn't get a break, even though I worked more than enough hours to be entitled to one.
And you know what? It wouldn't have been a big deal, really--on the only up note of it all I think I'm definitely going to get at least a little overtime now (ETA: NOPE! >_<)--but for the fact that Duncan was supposed to come over. He said he'd be here at my house when I got here.
The only favor I was granted was that Steve let me go to my car at ten to nine and call Duncan to let him know what was going on. (He wanted to make me call from inside, but I pointed out that I don't actually know Duncan's number, it's just in my phone, and Duncan wouldn't have answered the Taco Bell number because he wouldn't have recognized it--a wise move, I think. So he let me go to my car, on the clock no less, but of course with the understanding that it was not to be a long conversation.) I got Duncan's voicemail, of course, and then had to spend the next two hours worrying about what he might do--or think of me--if he didn't get the message. (Believe me, I cared far more about that than anything that happened at work.)
Well, my stress aside, he DID get my message pretty quickly--he texted me at 9:15, so I assume he called his voicemail wondeirng what was going on. Of course I didn't get the message until I got off work, but bascially he said he hadn't slept since he'd been here before, so he was going to go home and sleep. (This was Thursday night, and he hadn't slept since 1:45 in the afternoon on Wednesday. And that was the end of about five hours of sleep. I totally understand.)
I texted him back and told him to call me whenever he woke up and got the message--he hasn't called, but I'll let him alone until I get off tomorrow night and know my schedule for next week.
And I feel the need to add something: I got a touché point. On Tuesday night, Duncan had asked if I had anything in the house to eat in case we got hungry later, and I told him there was a frozen pizza in the freezer. When it got to be about six AM, after he was done being sick, he started getting hungry and I reminded him that it was there. He was kind of hesitant to eat "my" pizza, and asked if I minded or if it would be a problem if he went ahead and made it, to which I said no, it was fine, go ahead. I honestly didn't care in the slightest, though I thought it was kind of funny--and sweet--how conscientious he was being about it. (Side note: as much as he hates orange, he seems to like, or at least not mind, being in my kitchen--he mixed the margaritas and cooked the pizza. My involvement in the above was pretty much just to tell him what drawers/cabinets all the untensils were in.) So he made the pizza and when we were settling back down in the living room to continue the movie, I originally sat on the end of the couch further from his chair in hopes that he'd sit on the couch with me. He didn't--I think he'd gotten attached to the chair he'd originally chosen, lol--so I moved back to other end of the couch, and said, "On second thought, I'm going to sit down here by you, so I can do this," and totally just helped myself to a pepperoni off his plate. And he asked, "Oh, so you can eat my pepperonis?" And I just looked at him and said, "What do you mean YOUR pepperonis?" XD I wish I could describe his reaction, but words fail me. At any rate, I got a touché point for that one. Go me.
I don't know what it is about Duncan, but the wit that seems to fail me at work and refuses to provide good comebacks until about three hours after I can actually use them just flourishes when I'm with him. (Mayhap this is what is meant when someone says "he brings out the best in me"?)
Oh! When we were walking back from the gas station, I told him my idea of dressing up and going out for dinner. "I think we really should do it," I told him, "Because I had a kick-ass outfit planned and I don't want it to go to waste." Not only was he all for doing it at some point in the future--after my next payday, for sure, lol, I went a bit DVD-crazy this week, but I'm DONE with the gosh-darn Columbia DVD purchase commitment!--but he proceeded to ask me what COLOR SCHEME my outfit was so he could coordinate. (!!!) (Easily enough for him, it's all black, lol.)
Anyway. I need to be at work here in a little while, and so I need to sign off. I wanted to go online today but the library closed early for Good Friday. *headdesk* Oh well.
Wow, have I really been able to hold this in for five days?
Saturday--I went to Sonic right before work, and when I went to leave, my car wouldn't start. I called Taco Bell to see if someone could come give me a jump, and they sent April (who I hesitate to come down on too harshly, as she went to Wal-Mart, bought jumper cables, and after all the rigamarole I'm about to describe, donated them to Taco Bell for any future occurrences). Long story short, neither of us was quite sure what to do (Laurien is not properly color-coded! Must fix with Sharpie later!!), we got it hooked up wrong, and Laurien started giving off smoke. Figuring that this was bad, we unhooked everything. Some dude came out of Sonic and started helping--he removed the smoking piece, which turned out to be a plastic case with wires in it. The plastic case had a HOLE melted through it. >_< He and another guy who worked at Sonic helped us move my car into the next lot, which is an eyeglass store and has considerably less business than Sonic. Some relative of April's works for a towing company, and she arranged for Laurien to be towed--to the shop where my cousin works--on Monday morning. (And of course it was closed Monday, just my luck, but whatever.)
April then drove me to Taco Bell and has offered to help pay for it, since she feels partly to blame. If it had turned out to be a cheap fix (under $100), I would have let it go, but Rodney (my cousin) says it's going to be $200-300 just for the PART. >_< Granted, he tends to overestimate at least a little (thankfully), but we're still talking well over $100. So we'll see--I DON'T want to take money away from her if she needs it to feed her children. (If I recall correctly she's working again because her husband got laid off. She's worked at TB before and even though she's new as far as how long I've seen her working, she has something like six years with the company.) Then again, we are talking about the woman who once went to Sonic and bought root beer floats for everyone on the night shift--a shift she wasn't even working. (So, see, she totally rocks, and I like her. She just accidentally fried my car. You know she's got to be pretty awesome if she harmed Laurien--accidentally, but still--and I still think she rocks.)
I really won't know anything until at least tomorrow, I may not even have Laurien back by the end of the week. (Now that I think about it, that might be a good thing, because Monday's payday and it won't hurt quite so much to pay for it after that!) Grr.
The talk of Laurien reminded me--one of the nights Duncan was here, probably Tuesday before last, I introduced him to Laurien (yes, I AM that much of a geek), told him how it was spelled--and he asked if it was a play on DeLorean or Lothlórien. He GOT it. OMG. ^_^ And then when I started to tell Shelly about all this on the phone, she worriedly asked, "What? Laurien's sick?" I heart my car.
The really sucky thing is I haven't been able to go anywhere (like grocery shopping or online) and I've been having to bum rides to and from work. (I could walk if I had to, but I would not be a happy camper to work a seven- or eight-hour shift after walking, and I would probably sit in the parking lot for 20-30 minutes after said shift before walking home.)
The really cool thing is that I've had to bum rides to and from work. And here we segue into my favorite subject--Duncan! ^_^ (Aw, come on, who didn't see that one coming?)
Saturday night Nico dropped me off, Sunday they sent Tyler W. from work to pick me up and Bri drove me home, Monday afternoon my dad came and picked me up, and Bri was supposed to drive me home again that night. But after having been more or less unreachable (I left voicemails Saturday and Monday, and sent a text message Sunday, none of which got a response other than a "Happy Easter" text message on Sunday), Duncan came through the drive-through! And miracle of miracles, I happened to be in back drive--closing dishes, since Rachel was the only other closer--so we were actually able to have a relatively private conversation.
I wasn't sure if it was him at first because I couldn't see the driver of the car, the tail of the car in front of him was what was directly in front of the window. I stood there thinking it looked like his car (it's silver, but it's a darker silver than Laurien, more distinctive), but also told myself that anytime I see a sporty silver car I think it's him. Then I noticed a nametag hanging from the rearview mirror--Duncan used to leave his nametag there between shifts at the gas station and for whatever reason hasn't taken it down. I couldn't actually see the name, though, so I still didn't want to get myself all bouncy about it and be wrong. So, on the pretense of looking down towards the second window to see what was taking so long, I leaned over a bit, and then the driver of said sporty silver car started waving at me to get my attention and it turned out to be him. ^_^ I opened up the window and leaned out and he inched his car up as much as he could. Of course he was there as a customer, I had to run his credit card and all (stupid credit card comapny, even though he never answers to his first name, they won't let him have "M. Duncan" and his card actually says "Michael D."), but that gave me a chance to tell Bri, who was in front drive, that it was him and all, and I think she and Tab both got a good look at him. (Tab did, anyway, lol.)
In between the business stuff, Iwas lik asked him what he was doing later, and he said he had no definitive plans, and I asked, "Well, hey, I kind of need a ride. I mean, I have an if-all-else-fails-ride, but if you could come get me, that would rock." Rachel had already said that she wanted to get out by 11:30, and so I told him it would be anywhere between 11:30 and 12:30. (It would normally have been about midnight--it did turn out to be 11:37, which speaks to the powers of proper motivation.) He said that that was cool, that he'd try to be there around 11:30, but to call him a few minutes before we were ready to leave and he'd be there. I ended up taking the trash out around 11:25 and he wasn't there yet, so Bri let me call him, even though I'm technically not even supposed to have my phone in the building. (I leave it off and I've been surreptitiously checking my voicemail on break in the break room--it's actually to their benefit, because it also lets me keep track of time and not come back from break late. I will quit and go back to leaving it in my car like I'm supposed to when I have a car to leave it in again.) He said he'd be right there--he wasn't by the time we left the building, but he got there before I had time to finish a round of pool on my phone. (I want to play real pool again now that I've gotten good at that--I think I might triangulate better.)
So I got into his car, and he had a CD in--"Wreck of the Day" by Anna Nalick--and "Breathe (2 AM)" was playing. I cannot emphasize enough how much I love that song--if I ever burn a mix CD of my all-time favorite songs, that will probably be on there. (Breakaway. Iris. It's Just Started to Rain. Higher. Not Done Yet. I probably shouldn't tempt myself by starting this list until after I get my new computer--which seems further off than ever, what with Laurien breaking down.) So that was--haha--all kinds of cool. (He and I are starting to have inside jokes--most of them grammar-related. ^_^ He STILL isn't reading "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves," though! Oh well.) I spent the ride to my house telling him about the shift, which was actually kind of pointless--I really should spare people my work chatter unless it's someone who works/has worked at Taco Bell, or my mom, who kind of knows how things work there just because I do tell her so much. Anyway, when we got to my place, I told him he could park in my spot since Laurien wasn't there, and then as he pulled in, I asked, "You ARE staying, right?" He said he supposed, for a little while anyway. ^_^ I ran upstairs and changed and we sat talking for a few minutes, but then he said "This is weird." That freaked me out for a second, but then he continued, "It's barely midnight and I'm already tired." So I asked if it would help if we got up and did something, if he wanted to go for a walk, and we ended up wandering around the subdivision across from my complex. He pointed out some weeping willows that I hadn't noticed when I'd gone walking with Jacqui.
I also confessed to him that he has inspired me to write a short story. "May I inquire as to what it's about?" And I basically told him no, because it wasn't finished--or even started--and I don't like to give away too much. But then I told him that the reason it wasn't started was that I didn't know anything about zombies (yes, it's actually about zombies--a subject I NEVER thought I'd toy with, I usually leave that sort of thing to Katchan), and then he got all excited. He's obsessed with zombies, and they tend to randomly fall into the conversation. (The moment of inspiration was when he was carrying on about rescuing me.) We spent most of the walk discussing all my questions. I told him I didn't feel adequately informed on the subject, and that the idea that seems really fresh and different to me--because of how little I know about zombie films/literature--might actually be old hat, and he reassured me by telling me how that might actually work to my advantage--how I might bring a fresh perspective to a genre where a lot of ideas have been overworked. (He might be right about that. I've only seen one or two zombie movies and anything I've read about them, Kat wrote, but I really haven't ever heard of anyone using my idea.) At one point I mentioned the notion that zombies might only be able to survive (as I pointed out, I use the term "survive" loosely as they're not even alive, lol) in certain climates and he said he'd never seen that done anywhere. ^_^ I felt smart.
Anyway, I now feel adequately prepared on that front--and let's face it, I'm relatively certain that if I do run into a snag he'll be around sooner or later for me to ask him about it--and I'm working out scenes and plot points and I imagine I'll make a rough outline in a day or two. I used to hate outlining, but it really seems to help whenever I try to come back to "In Another World." I probably would have forgotten a lot of what I had planned if I didn't have a scene outline, and it also helps me with my timeline--certain things have to happen on certain days and all. When I do manage to find a few hours and the mood, it really helps--I can read over the last page or so, look at my timeline, and pick up right where I left off. It helps in D2D in the sense that having Tolkien's timeline to follow keeps us moving. (Um. That was random. Anyway.)
We went up to the gas station and chatted with Robert for a bit (Robert's actually pretty cool--if things work out with me and Duncan and there turns out to be a lot of the-three-of-us time, what with them being best friends, I think I could deal with that), then came back to my place, and we stood outside talking for a while before he left around two. Got another hug--I've gotten a hug every time he's left since the first one, except for today but I'll get to that later. I'm hoping he'll clue in to the fact that I wouldn't mind getting one or two without his exiting the scene. Ahem.
Then on Tuesday he came over again, because I didn't have to work. He got here around quarter to five, and we watched two movies I'd bought--Jurassic Park and King Kong, packaged together for $15, which I thought was a good deal because I would expect to pay that just for King Kong at this point. King Kong I'd been wanting anyway (it's PJ!), and Duncan had said it was pretty good. Then at some point (back when he was still working at the gas station) he'd referenced Jurassic Park, and when I told him I hadn't seen it, he just stared at me and said, "Look, I can forgive your not having seen Star Wars, especially the prequel set, and I can forgive you not having seen -insert some other movie I can't remember here- because it doesn't seem like your genre, but at least rent Jurassic Park." So it was suddenly on my to-see list, and when I saw the two of them on sale together it seemed like fate, lol.
Jurassic Park--I wasn't quite as impressed as I'd hoped to be as far as plot (and Duncan's advice is not to bother with the sequels), but I have to tip my hat--if it had not been for that movie there would be no LotR films today because there would be no Gollum. Period. It was enjoyable enough, but not my favorite.
About halfway through, around six o'clock, JoJo (a girl who works at Taco Bell and has been giving me advice about Duncan, I think I've probably referenced her before just because of that, but I don't remember) called me and said that she and Liz had walked out on their shift. (Apparently she called a lot of people about it.) I told her I couldn't stay on the phone long because I had company, and she got the drift, but we talked for a few minutes. I really can't wait until I get something else--ANYTHING else--lined up so I can do the same thing. Granted--I think some of her reasons for doing it are stupid. But people will say the same thing about me when I get to go, so whatever.
I guess one of Jo's main reasons for leaving is that Hannah has gotten made shift manager. (This is stupid because it wasn't like Jo was up for that promotion. The following stuff I'm about to say about Hannah all also applies to Jo.) Now, here's my thing--I agree that Hannah being made a shift manager is complete and utter bullshit. She's still in high school. There are people who have worked there longer and (IMNSHO) deserve it more. (WTF is Ken doing creating more shift managers when what he should be doing with any extra funding is making Nico an assistant?? Okay, okay, so Taco Bell protocol doesn't work like that, but STILL.) But I'm not mad at her, if I was in her place and they offered it to me, I would have done the same thing and I wouldn't give a crap who I pissed off. It's a promotion, it's a raise, it's authority and prestige, and she'd be stupid to refuse it. She won't be hellish to work for, and besides that, it's going to be a good long while before she actually gets to run shifts--at least until school's out or until she turns 18 or something. Nor am I mad at Ken, really, because it's just another stupid thing in a long string of stupid things that he's done. The only things he could do to piss me off are put me back on days after I've worked so hard to become a valuable closer (I can close ANY position in an hour-twenty or less, and the only reason it's ever that long is if I have to close both ends of the line) and make it worth his while to leave me on nights, or fire me. So it irks me, but really it's just a promotion for show and there's no point in getting pissed about it. (Now, if the authority turns Hannah into a bitch, that'll be another thing entirely, but I won't hesitate to tell her she's being a bitch, lol. It probably won't, being made a team trainer didn't affect her.
Anyway, after Jurassic Park was over, Duncan and I ordered pizza. I LOVE living in town. Delivery!! I didn't really have any nonalcoholic drinks in the house except milk, so we tried buying sodas from the machine by the laundry room door, but it spit out all the money we put in and no sodas. (At least it DID spit the money back out!) It got frustrating enough that finally we decided to go get a two-liter. We were both going to go, but then I suddenly realized that the pizza MIGHT arrive in the interim, so I stayed and he drove up to the gas station. As it happened, the pizza guy pulled in about two minutes after he got back, but better safe than sorry.
While we were getting our plates ready and getting drinks, I took his picture with my phone. He knew it was comingunlike the picture I took of him sleeping on my couch that he still doesn't know about and it came out really well. I would love to post it, but I can't pull pics from my phone until I get my new computer. >_< I want to show it to him again because I got to studying it later and noticed something--he's wearing a black shirt, and the reflections on the pic (from the kitchen light above and behind him) are such that it almost kinda sorta looks like he had the White Tree on his shirt and it's almost faded out. It's a little off center, but the idea is still funny and I love the fact that he'll actually know what I'm talking about. I couldn't have made that happen if I'd tried.
(I almost made the picture my wallpaper, but refuse to do so unless he actually becomes my boyfriend. The idea of it, though, actually prompted me to remove Elijah. I had taken a closeup picture of my Chinese takeout lamp lit up, and it looks really cool and artsy. All you see is the glowing Chinese character against red, and it works really well as a wallpaper--it's framed perfectly that the text doesn't cover anything. I have some Hello Kitty pics that I downloaded, but honestly they're the wrong size and look kind of funny stretched out. There's one or two I could tile, I guess, but I like MY pic.)
So then we watched King Kong. Now THAT was impressive, and not just the fact that Kong looked real. I actually enjoyed the plot, thin as it sounds when described. The action was pretty intriguing. I never realized that there was any depth about where Kong came from and the island and all. (The dinosaurs kind of put Jurassic Park to shame, lol, but that in and of itself was cool to compare.) Yay for Naomi Watts, who I knew from The Ring and The Ring 2. Jack Black was hilarious--he was so tenacious, lol, even when he really should have given up. I wish they wouldn't have killed off Andy Serkis, but at least he had a visible character in this one, as well as doing the voice for Kong. ^_^ Most surprising moment: "OMG, was that Kyle Chandler? OMG THAT WAS KYLE CHANDLER!!" Poor Duncan was looking sideways at me and asked, "Um, so what's he from?" Early Edition, of course, which REALLY needs to come out with a bigass box set of all the seasons (six or seven, I think). I want to watch King Kong with Mom one of these days, or at least show her that part of it so she can see him. Not that he looked all that different, he's one of those people that seems not to age much--but she loved EE, too, and likes to know what he's in these days. (And now I'm wondering whatever happened to Shanesia Davis and Fisher Stevens. Huh.)
Around nine, Nico called me from Taco Bell. I didn't answer because I never answer when it says "Work calling." Either they're trying to call me in, or it's someone calling me personally from work. If it's the former I generally can't/won't do it anyway, and I can ignore and delete a message, but an actual human on the other end is likely to be more capable of persuading me. (Grr. It's like I've tried to explain to Nico--yes, I understand I have to be available, so schedule when you need me, but then understand that as soon as I know when I have to work, I am going to plan all the other crap I have to do around that schedule, and I have a right to say that I can't come in early/stay late/come in on my day(s) off, because technically that's MY time, since you didn't claim it. I'm absolutely certain everyone in the world understands this concept except Ken, Nico, and Steve.) If it's the latter they can leave me a message and I'll call them back either at work or later on their home phone, if I have it. At any rate, I figured it was Briannah (I knew she was in charge, JoJo had said so) trying to call me in since they were two people short. I sure as hell wasn't about to do it with Duncan there, and I knew Bri would probably understand and approve wholeheartedly. (She is a girl who has her priorites straight.) When the voicemail went off I listened to it and it totally wasn't anyone calling me in. XD Like I said, it was actually Nico, not Bri, and the entire message ran as such: "You and I are going to start a business. We're going to start an evangelical Christian gym. We're going to call it Jehovah's Fitness." I laughed and told Duncan, "I heart Nico," and told him the joke. He laughed and said that given the fact that two people walked out, it was probably Nico's way of trying to get me to call back so he could sucker me into coming in, and I told him that I knew that was probably true and I had absolutely no intention of calling back. (Duncan understood this perfectly.) I asked Bri tonight and she said that they hadn't needed me, so I'm not sure if Nico just wanted to call and tell me the funny or what. He called me tonight and I called back when I got off work, but he didn't answer. Whatev. At any rate, he finally seemed not-pissy on the voicemail he left me tonight, so maybe his PMS is finally over. He's been bitchy at work the last few days. (He said he thought I would be pissed, but if it's because of Hannah he's wrong. I found out that his roommate just got hired, though, and THAT'S more than a little irritating. On the bright side, I have a feeling that she won't last long.)
After King Kong, Duncan and I went up to the gas station to chat with Robert again. Robert and Duncan somehow got to discussing handguns, and when Robert had to step inside to deal with a customer, I told Duncan, "You realize I've understood pretty much nothing said in the last five minutes, right?" And he started to explain, and I told him I didn't really care to know since swords were cooler anyway. He tried to argue that point a little, that as cool as he thinks swords are, guns are neat, too, and I said a sword just looked cooler, and he said there were some pretty cool-looking guns, and I held up my hands and said, "You can say that all night long, but honestly, when my knight in shining armor shows up to rescue me, I want him to ride up on a horse with a big-ass sword in his hand." And then Duncan kind of laughed and said, "But I could take a gun and bang! Your knight in shining armor would be down for the count." And then Robert reappeared and they got to talking about how you'd need armor-piercing bullets and so on and so forth. So then when Duncan and I finally left and started heading back to my place, I suddenly burst out, "I can't believe you'd shoot my knight in shining armor!" And I ranted for a moment about how that just wasn't nice, and finally I asked, "WHY? Why would you do something like that?" Tongue-in-cheek, of course, but he went with it. "To...prove a point?" "But STILL!" He asked, "What? Did I kill your fantasy?" And I told him yes, he killed my fantasy. I think we changed the subject after that. What I wanted to say was that the real reason I didn't think he'd shoot my knight in shining armor was that it would be suicide. Ahem.
When we got back to my place, we again stood around outside talking until the off-and-on drizzle stayed on long enough to drive me to want to go inside and prompted Duncan to leave. Hug for Sarah! ^_^ We touched on some sensitive subjects--we talked about how we get along with our grandparents and such, and I suddenly said, "You know, I'm referring to my grandparents and siblings because that's what they are to me, but you should know that there's stepfamily stuff that I'm not bothering to explain. It's the second marriage for both my parents." (I really don't get into that much even here on LJ. I don't really like to talk about it. I can count on one hand the number of people I've trusted enough to tell the whole story to. Hobbity: You're definitely next, the next time I feel like sharing. For a long time now it's not been a matter of trust so much as a matter of not wanting to type it all. Though you'd never know that to read this entry, lol.) And I ranted a bit about Dad's first wife and what a bitch she was/is (I only know this secondhand, but I know enough). And then I blurted out: "I really hope that never happens to me. I only want to be married once in my life." And Duncan's response? "Me too. And I almost got married once." (I knew this, he's referenced his ex-fiancée several times. I don't know the details, but it seems she up and ran off to marry the best man. It's been a while back, they got together in high school. She's definitely not competition.) He continued: "In retrospect, I'm glad it didn't happen, but from now on I don't want to get involved with someone unless I'm pretty sure she could be the one." My GOD. I told him that I've reached a point in my life where I've realized it's definitely better to be single than it is to be with the wrong guy. (I've learned this, watching the relationship turnover at Taco Bell. There are guys that I once had crushes on that are now despicable bastards, IMHO. It just struck me one day that if one of them approached me I'd say no because I've seen how they've treated their last girlfriends and it would only be a matter of time before they'd cheat on me/dump me for another girl. And self-confidence ensued. ^_^) Now all I have to get him to see is that I'm pretty sure he's the RIGHT guy.
Anyway, before he left I asked if he could come get me for work today. Long story short, he could and did. (He swung me by Rodney's shop first so I could drop off the trunk key, and I was half-hoping Rodney would ask who was driving me, just to cause a stir, but he didn't. I wonder what my extended family--a few gossipy aunts in particular--thinks of me and my not ever having had a guy, and I can just imagine his wife and their kids talking about me and the mysterious guy, lol.) We had some time to kill, so we went to Mickey D's (I didn't eat, I'd had pizza, lol--I told Duncan "Thanks for buying dinner--and lunch for the next three days.") and then sat for the last few minutes in the Taco Bell parking lot. (Okay, okay, Nico, I lied, I COULD have been on time or even a few moments early today. So sue me.) We just couldn't stop talking! Even when I was telling him that the Taco Bell clock currently read 5, I just couldn't tear myself away. I was a minute late today. (Beats 45 minutes due to car trouble.) But even in the short thirty minutes we had to talk today--less, because of the errands and talking with the woman working drive-thru at McDonald's and all--we talked about so much it was crazy. I showed him my new phone wallpaper (in case he'd noticed Elijah, which he might have), we talked about photography and how the sky would make pretty pictures today, and Anna Nalick, and when he worked at Hastings, and why business clocks are never right and how you have to adjust your watch, and how he could cheat the clock when he worked at Home Depot, and even got onto how society pressures people to be thin (with him saying he needed to get back into shape and me saying that I was surprised at how many guys I'd met recently expressed dissatisfaction in that department when it used to be a chick thing), and I even told him how much weight I've lost in the last few years. (We'll probably be coming back to that last topic again at some point in the future because there was so much more that could have been said.) But it's insane. Occasionally we'll hit an awkward pause, but it never lasts long. We'll even comment on it. "Ooh, awkward pause." "Um, okay, I can't think of anything else to add." *moment of silence* "Hey, I was going to ask you, have you ever seen/done/read/heard of..."
We have enough in common to keep from being polar opposites who can't stand each other, and enough differing interests that we're learning a lot from each other. (Like me and zombies. Okay, okay, so it's not generally practical knowledge, but like I told Duncan the one time he pointed that out, "If I wanted practical conversation, I'd be calling my grandfather, not you.")
The whole spacing-out-calls barrier is completely gone. I've communicated with him in some form at least once every day this week--and as a matter of fact, I've seen him every day this week except Sunday. And tomorrow is to be no exception--he said pending his suddenly getting a job (the odds of which are pretty low, he might have an interview tomorrow but even if he got something he probably wouldn't start until Monday) he would come over at some point, since I have the day off. We confirmed it today. The Holiday came in the mail today, so we're going to watch that (and probably at least one other movie, though which one I don't know) and I really think he's going to like it. (The man watches romances and romantic comedies--and not only does he like them, he's not at all ashamed to admit it!) I can't wait to watch it again. (Hopefully Kate Winslet's character's monologue on unrequited love will not sting so much this time around--when I saw it in theaters with Shelly, it was days after the whole...Matt...thing. Matt came into Taco Bell the other day--suddenly blonder!--and I just couldn't bring myself to even say hi. I really don't care about him at all anymore. I don't hate him, and if he tried to contact me I'd probably talk to him, but I can honestly say I'm not interested in him that way anymore. Like I said--I bounce back faster than I used to.)
I wonder if there's a limit on the number of parentheses one should use in an LJ entry. I rely on them too much.
Anyway. One last thing--when I got to work tonight, one of the first people I saw was Liz, and I walked up to her and said, "Apparently I was misinformed." I wasn't. She felt guilty and called Ken this morning and got her job back. JoJo tried, and almost had it, but then suddenly said she only wanted to finish out her schedule this week and he said nevermind, we didn't need her. (Whatever. I work the same hours she does so they can't have me work extra to cover her lost hours.)
So yeah. Taco Bell is in flux again--I have a feeling a few more people are going to quit in the next few weeks, and there's going to be a lot of new faces (pity that one of them is Nico's roommate's. >_<)--not that there aren't currently! There's at least three guys that I would still consider to be "new." I actually kind of resent the fact that I've worked there long enough to pick up on these patterns. (Okay, so maybe it's my psychic abilities flourishing, but I'm trying to stamp them out.) I just wish I could tell whether or not it's going to suck--and where to put in applications!
Anyway. If it feels like it's taken you forever to read this, take comfort in the fact that it took me about four-and-a-half hours to write this last big chunk of missive. (Counting coding in the LJ cuts and such, but still.) It's quarter after five AM, and I have no idea what time Duncan will be coming over, lol. Good night.
I haven't really spoken with Duncan since he drove me to work Wednesday. He never did call Thursday night. I texted him around 8:30 and said he was still welcome to come over, but I wanted to know when he thought he'd be here. No response. I called him around 12:30. "Hey, it's Sarah. Remember how I told you it sucks to have an overactive imagination? Well, I'm sure you're out where you have no signal or maybe you suddenly got a night-shift job for all I know, but there's something in my head telling me that you might be lying dead in a ditch somewhere, so give me a call and let me know you're still breathing." He finally texted me around 1:20, and he'd been working out on the lake with his dad (who works for Game & Fish, though I'm not entirely sure what he does).
Which is fine. But if he'd texted me before going out on the lake instead of after, I wouldn't have sat around all night. Granted, I was drawing for most of it (finished a nice one of Sarah and Mike for D2D), but still. I could have, say, gone out with Nico or something.
I texted him Friday when I got off work, "Happy Friday the 13th, started the zombie story today." Never heard back. Called him earlier today and told him I was off Tuesday and Thursday and if he was going to be free to give me a call at his convenience. He hasn't, but I figure that if he does call, it'll be at the moment he happens to be free. He tends to roll like that.
So tomorrow I'm going to get up relatively early (for a day off anyway), go pay my electric and internet bills, and go online for a copious amount of time. If he calls, great, and if not--well, then not.
Got Laurien back today. $400. >_< It sucks, but at the same time I feel incredibly grown-up because I can HANDLE this. I got my $475 paycheck today, so I paid $200 out of my checking account and put the other $200 on my credit card. That left me quite a bit to pay my other bills that are due (electric, internet) and also fund groceries and such for two weeks. Tomorrow, online, I'm going to pay the $30-odd I had on the credit card already and my balance will be $200. The only thing due out of my next check is rent, so the rest of my next check can go to paying that off. If it's not quite enough, it'll be most of it, and the rest can definitely-for-sure come out of the check after that. So yay for building a credit history with quick paybacks.
(On a side note, why is it free to make a Capital One payment online but $10 to do it over the phone? WTF?)
The only sucky part is that I'm completely screwed as far as getting a computer in the next few weeks--my deadline of "by the end of April" is going to whoosh by. *scream* I've been paying for internet and haven't been able to use it! *headdesk* (Okay, okay, so I have enjoyed being able to watch TV. I missed Home Improvement more than I gave myself credit for.) On the bright side, that means by the time I feel like I can afford it, my credit line will probably have shot up to $500. With that in mind, I'm going to look into Dell before I go and get the one at Wal*Mart.
Anyway. I have crap to do before I sleep. Talk atcha later!
For those of you who've seen Elizabethtown...you know the part after they sleep together, and she's leaving his hotel room? Everyone in the hotel is all, "Way to go, Claire!" and "Claire, you slut!" And she's totally agreeing with them and happy about it?
I feel like that today. ^_^ Last night was a night of firsts. (No, not THAT kind of firsts, you dirty-minded people.)
Duncan came over last night around 9:30, and, long story short...he's still here. Downstairs, asleep on my couch (what a good investment THAT turned out to be--and if my grandmother who contributed toward it knew!! XD).
It was too late for dinnner, of course, but we were going to watch all three LotR EE's. (That was the plan.) We also finally made margaritas like we'd planned at one point. (Okay, he mixed, I watched.) And we watched Fellowship over margaritas, and started Two Towers with brandy bucks (he agrees with me, they're surprisingly good). I also gave him the last of the strawberry daiquiris that Nico left over here a while back (before my birthday). We were both drunkish (tipsy, anyway, not totally inebriated) and we laughed maybe a little more than we might have otherwise, but it was fun. If you get two people who are nitpicky about grammar drunk enough to misspeak and they catch all the times the other person does--it gets funny, or at least we thought so. The downside is that Duncan has a lower alcohol tolerance than I do, and he drank quite a bit more than me--besides the daiquiri, he tried shots of brandy straight up and the Cuervo straight up since he'd never had either. So we had to make a few pauses during Two Towers because he got sick. (I'm torn between pity and wanting to point and laugh at his low tolerence--even he said he hadn't had nearly enough to drink to justify how sick it made him. At least whatever mess he made, he cleaned up himself, so I can't come down on him too hard.)
When TTT was winding down (it was over at nine AM, lol) he said he didn't think he could stay awake for RotK, and I offered to let him crash on my couch. I went and napped in my room for a while--I do have to work tonight--but got woken up by the phone around noon (Katchan) and now that I'm awake I need to stay awake. More sleep right now would only make me cranky. I woke Duncan up and asked if he wanted to go to lunch, but what he really wanted was another hour of sleep. As soon as I'm done typing this I'm going to go try him again.
So yeah. It was all kinds of laughter and good times, and we agree about pretty much everything LotR-related (my list of PJ's Four Major Mistakes and his list have at least two in common, lol--if we both had a list of six, we'd agree on the mistakes, just not in the order of how much they irritate us). I won Tolkien trivia points four to one, lol. (Though if we ever get to Shelly's and get to play LotR Trivial Pursuit, I so want Duncan on my team, because he knows SO much about behind-the-scenes stuff--producers and budgets and scoring and all that. His knowledge of that for movies in general baffles me.) My tile floor+stocking feet=fun, multiply it by drunk and it gets even more fun.
At one point we walked up to the gas station (after the margaritas, before the brandy bucks) and hung out for about twenty minutes with his best friend, who still works there, and I think I have best friend approval, lol. At any rate Robert--what are the odds that I'd know two?--should know me well enough that when Duncan refers to "Sarah" he won't say, "Who?" Lol.
We're not dating; at least not yet. But several times Duncan referred to me as his friend, and that makes me happy.
Firsts: first time I've honestly felt drunk (though I'm wondering if I have been drunk and just didn't stand up to notice it, lol), first time someone's been sick at my house (I haven't even really had a cold, which is relatively surprising) first overnight guest I've had at my house, first male overnight guest I've had in my life, period (though I suppose that's kind of a given what with having been living at home). First time that I saw Eomer's sword fall out of its scabbard as he gets on his horse in TTT (watch it, after he gives Hasufel and Arod to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli).
They're replacing the window in my catchall room. Well, they already have, but they need to replaster the wall around it now. I kind of don't want to be here when they do, so I'm going to go wake him up again now.
*bliss*
We went to El Charro's for lunch. Good stuff. Then, as El Charro's is in a storefront, we went windowshopping in a few of the stores in the same shopping center. Duncan wanted to go look at boots in the shoe store, so we did. I found a pair of sparkly silver high heels I loved but couldn't convince myself that they were worth $30, lol. $20 I would have done, but $30 was a bit much, considering how often I actually get to wear shoes other than my work shoes.
Then I dragged him to Katherina's--it shocked the heck out of me that he was even interested in going in, because it's all jewelry, shoes, purses, etc. But he wasn't bored, he spent the time looking around for things that would work for different costumes, lol.
After that, we came back here (his car was here) and I pretty much had to kick him out because it was going on 4:30 and I had to be at work at 5. If that had not been the case, he might still be here, lol--I didn't want to send him away and he didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave.
He's supposed to come over again tomorrow night, as I get off at nine instead of closing.
We spent nineteen hours together (well, okay, I slept for three of them and he slept for four, but still) and he still wants to come over again the next day.
This could be the start of something ALL KINDS OF beautiful.
As he was leaving, we were making arrangements for tomorrow. He's always careful to throw in "Yeah, barring death or something drastic, that should work." Today it was "barring death or zombie attack." And then suddenly he started on this tangent about how if there was a zombie attack in Mountain Home, he would do everything in his power to come rescue me. "I would call and make sure you stayed here until I could come get you. And I'd make sure to grab something to bonk the zombies over the head with and I'd fight them all off..." I told him I felt much safer knowing that. (I was only half-kidding.)
Work was okay--I was really tired until I went on break, and I'm not sure if it was the food or the fact that I wasn't on headset anymore, but either way I was fine after I got back. I was on dishes, and back drive for a little while, and both of those jobs are pretty mindless and leave you free to think about other stuff. I was thinking about the nineteen hours that transpired before work, of course. Something Duncan said has inspired me to start a short story. ^_^ (The fact that I will have to do some research--ie, ask him a lot of questions about the subject in question--is only adding fuel to the creative fire.)
Anyway. Now I am tired, and have stuff to do before work tomorrow. More later.
I am SO pissed off! I hate my job--I never came so close to walking out and quitting as I did last night.
Ken decided that since there was no school today, he was going to schedule a few people to stay a few more hours and do some detail cleaning before CER (Taco Bell's inspection)--me included, even though I'm not even IN school. They made no attempt to let me know beforehand--I didn't have a clue until I showed up to start my shift.
May I point out that I've only had one day off this week, and this was the only night I wasn't supposed to close? I tried everything I could think of to get out of it (including monetary bribery), but nothing worked. I HAD to stay until eleven, not nine. On top of that, I didn't get a break, even though I worked more than enough hours to be entitled to one.
And you know what? It wouldn't have been a big deal, really--on the only up note of it all I think I'm definitely going to get at least a little overtime now (ETA: NOPE! >_<)--but for the fact that Duncan was supposed to come over. He said he'd be here at my house when I got here.
The only favor I was granted was that Steve let me go to my car at ten to nine and call Duncan to let him know what was going on. (He wanted to make me call from inside, but I pointed out that I don't actually know Duncan's number, it's just in my phone, and Duncan wouldn't have answered the Taco Bell number because he wouldn't have recognized it--a wise move, I think. So he let me go to my car, on the clock no less, but of course with the understanding that it was not to be a long conversation.) I got Duncan's voicemail, of course, and then had to spend the next two hours worrying about what he might do--or think of me--if he didn't get the message. (Believe me, I cared far more about that than anything that happened at work.)
Well, my stress aside, he DID get my message pretty quickly--he texted me at 9:15, so I assume he called his voicemail wondeirng what was going on. Of course I didn't get the message until I got off work, but bascially he said he hadn't slept since he'd been here before, so he was going to go home and sleep. (This was Thursday night, and he hadn't slept since 1:45 in the afternoon on Wednesday. And that was the end of about five hours of sleep. I totally understand.)
I texted him back and told him to call me whenever he woke up and got the message--he hasn't called, but I'll let him alone until I get off tomorrow night and know my schedule for next week.
And I feel the need to add something: I got a touché point. On Tuesday night, Duncan had asked if I had anything in the house to eat in case we got hungry later, and I told him there was a frozen pizza in the freezer. When it got to be about six AM, after he was done being sick, he started getting hungry and I reminded him that it was there. He was kind of hesitant to eat "my" pizza, and asked if I minded or if it would be a problem if he went ahead and made it, to which I said no, it was fine, go ahead. I honestly didn't care in the slightest, though I thought it was kind of funny--and sweet--how conscientious he was being about it. (Side note: as much as he hates orange, he seems to like, or at least not mind, being in my kitchen--he mixed the margaritas and cooked the pizza. My involvement in the above was pretty much just to tell him what drawers/cabinets all the untensils were in.) So he made the pizza and when we were settling back down in the living room to continue the movie, I originally sat on the end of the couch further from his chair in hopes that he'd sit on the couch with me. He didn't--I think he'd gotten attached to the chair he'd originally chosen, lol--so I moved back to other end of the couch, and said, "On second thought, I'm going to sit down here by you, so I can do this," and totally just helped myself to a pepperoni off his plate. And he asked, "Oh, so you can eat my pepperonis?" And I just looked at him and said, "What do you mean YOUR pepperonis?" XD I wish I could describe his reaction, but words fail me. At any rate, I got a touché point for that one. Go me.
I don't know what it is about Duncan, but the wit that seems to fail me at work and refuses to provide good comebacks until about three hours after I can actually use them just flourishes when I'm with him. (Mayhap this is what is meant when someone says "he brings out the best in me"?)
Oh! When we were walking back from the gas station, I told him my idea of dressing up and going out for dinner. "I think we really should do it," I told him, "Because I had a kick-ass outfit planned and I don't want it to go to waste." Not only was he all for doing it at some point in the future--after my next payday, for sure, lol, I went a bit DVD-crazy this week, but I'm DONE with the gosh-darn Columbia DVD purchase commitment!--but he proceeded to ask me what COLOR SCHEME my outfit was so he could coordinate. (!!!) (Easily enough for him, it's all black, lol.)
Anyway. I need to be at work here in a little while, and so I need to sign off. I wanted to go online today but the library closed early for Good Friday. *headdesk* Oh well.
Wow, have I really been able to hold this in for five days?
Saturday--I went to Sonic right before work, and when I went to leave, my car wouldn't start. I called Taco Bell to see if someone could come give me a jump, and they sent April (who I hesitate to come down on too harshly, as she went to Wal-Mart, bought jumper cables, and after all the rigamarole I'm about to describe, donated them to Taco Bell for any future occurrences). Long story short, neither of us was quite sure what to do (Laurien is not properly color-coded! Must fix with Sharpie later!!), we got it hooked up wrong, and Laurien started giving off smoke. Figuring that this was bad, we unhooked everything. Some dude came out of Sonic and started helping--he removed the smoking piece, which turned out to be a plastic case with wires in it. The plastic case had a HOLE melted through it. >_< He and another guy who worked at Sonic helped us move my car into the next lot, which is an eyeglass store and has considerably less business than Sonic. Some relative of April's works for a towing company, and she arranged for Laurien to be towed--to the shop where my cousin works--on Monday morning. (And of course it was closed Monday, just my luck, but whatever.)
April then drove me to Taco Bell and has offered to help pay for it, since she feels partly to blame. If it had turned out to be a cheap fix (under $100), I would have let it go, but Rodney (my cousin) says it's going to be $200-300 just for the PART. >_< Granted, he tends to overestimate at least a little (thankfully), but we're still talking well over $100. So we'll see--I DON'T want to take money away from her if she needs it to feed her children. (If I recall correctly she's working again because her husband got laid off. She's worked at TB before and even though she's new as far as how long I've seen her working, she has something like six years with the company.) Then again, we are talking about the woman who once went to Sonic and bought root beer floats for everyone on the night shift--a shift she wasn't even working. (So, see, she totally rocks, and I like her. She just accidentally fried my car. You know she's got to be pretty awesome if she harmed Laurien--accidentally, but still--and I still think she rocks.)
I really won't know anything until at least tomorrow, I may not even have Laurien back by the end of the week. (Now that I think about it, that might be a good thing, because Monday's payday and it won't hurt quite so much to pay for it after that!) Grr.
The talk of Laurien reminded me--one of the nights Duncan was here, probably Tuesday before last, I introduced him to Laurien (yes, I AM that much of a geek), told him how it was spelled--and he asked if it was a play on DeLorean or Lothlórien. He GOT it. OMG. ^_^ And then when I started to tell Shelly about all this on the phone, she worriedly asked, "What? Laurien's sick?" I heart my car.
The really sucky thing is I haven't been able to go anywhere (like grocery shopping or online) and I've been having to bum rides to and from work. (I could walk if I had to, but I would not be a happy camper to work a seven- or eight-hour shift after walking, and I would probably sit in the parking lot for 20-30 minutes after said shift before walking home.)
The really cool thing is that I've had to bum rides to and from work. And here we segue into my favorite subject--Duncan! ^_^ (Aw, come on, who didn't see that one coming?)
Saturday night Nico dropped me off, Sunday they sent Tyler W. from work to pick me up and Bri drove me home, Monday afternoon my dad came and picked me up, and Bri was supposed to drive me home again that night. But after having been more or less unreachable (I left voicemails Saturday and Monday, and sent a text message Sunday, none of which got a response other than a "Happy Easter" text message on Sunday), Duncan came through the drive-through! And miracle of miracles, I happened to be in back drive--closing dishes, since Rachel was the only other closer--so we were actually able to have a relatively private conversation.
I wasn't sure if it was him at first because I couldn't see the driver of the car, the tail of the car in front of him was what was directly in front of the window. I stood there thinking it looked like his car (it's silver, but it's a darker silver than Laurien, more distinctive), but also told myself that anytime I see a sporty silver car I think it's him. Then I noticed a nametag hanging from the rearview mirror--Duncan used to leave his nametag there between shifts at the gas station and for whatever reason hasn't taken it down. I couldn't actually see the name, though, so I still didn't want to get myself all bouncy about it and be wrong. So, on the pretense of looking down towards the second window to see what was taking so long, I leaned over a bit, and then the driver of said sporty silver car started waving at me to get my attention and it turned out to be him. ^_^ I opened up the window and leaned out and he inched his car up as much as he could. Of course he was there as a customer, I had to run his credit card and all (stupid credit card comapny, even though he never answers to his first name, they won't let him have "M. Duncan" and his card actually says "Michael D."), but that gave me a chance to tell Bri, who was in front drive, that it was him and all, and I think she and Tab both got a good look at him. (Tab did, anyway, lol.)
In between the business stuff, I
So I got into his car, and he had a CD in--"Wreck of the Day" by Anna Nalick--and "Breathe (2 AM)" was playing. I cannot emphasize enough how much I love that song--if I ever burn a mix CD of my all-time favorite songs, that will probably be on there. (Breakaway. Iris. It's Just Started to Rain. Higher. Not Done Yet. I probably shouldn't tempt myself by starting this list until after I get my new computer--which seems further off than ever, what with Laurien breaking down.) So that was--haha--all kinds of cool. (He and I are starting to have inside jokes--most of them grammar-related. ^_^ He STILL isn't reading "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves," though! Oh well.) I spent the ride to my house telling him about the shift, which was actually kind of pointless--I really should spare people my work chatter unless it's someone who works/has worked at Taco Bell, or my mom, who kind of knows how things work there just because I do tell her so much. Anyway, when we got to my place, I told him he could park in my spot since Laurien wasn't there, and then as he pulled in, I asked, "You ARE staying, right?" He said he supposed, for a little while anyway. ^_^ I ran upstairs and changed and we sat talking for a few minutes, but then he said "This is weird." That freaked me out for a second, but then he continued, "It's barely midnight and I'm already tired." So I asked if it would help if we got up and did something, if he wanted to go for a walk, and we ended up wandering around the subdivision across from my complex. He pointed out some weeping willows that I hadn't noticed when I'd gone walking with Jacqui.
I also confessed to him that he has inspired me to write a short story. "May I inquire as to what it's about?" And I basically told him no, because it wasn't finished--or even started--and I don't like to give away too much. But then I told him that the reason it wasn't started was that I didn't know anything about zombies (yes, it's actually about zombies--a subject I NEVER thought I'd toy with, I usually leave that sort of thing to Katchan), and then he got all excited. He's obsessed with zombies, and they tend to randomly fall into the conversation. (The moment of inspiration was when he was carrying on about rescuing me.) We spent most of the walk discussing all my questions. I told him I didn't feel adequately informed on the subject, and that the idea that seems really fresh and different to me--because of how little I know about zombie films/literature--might actually be old hat, and he reassured me by telling me how that might actually work to my advantage--how I might bring a fresh perspective to a genre where a lot of ideas have been overworked. (He might be right about that. I've only seen one or two zombie movies and anything I've read about them, Kat wrote, but I really haven't ever heard of anyone using my idea.) At one point I mentioned the notion that zombies might only be able to survive (as I pointed out, I use the term "survive" loosely as they're not even alive, lol) in certain climates and he said he'd never seen that done anywhere. ^_^ I felt smart.
Anyway, I now feel adequately prepared on that front--and let's face it, I'm relatively certain that if I do run into a snag he'll be around sooner or later for me to ask him about it--and I'm working out scenes and plot points and I imagine I'll make a rough outline in a day or two. I used to hate outlining, but it really seems to help whenever I try to come back to "In Another World." I probably would have forgotten a lot of what I had planned if I didn't have a scene outline, and it also helps me with my timeline--certain things have to happen on certain days and all. When I do manage to find a few hours and the mood, it really helps--I can read over the last page or so, look at my timeline, and pick up right where I left off. It helps in D2D in the sense that having Tolkien's timeline to follow keeps us moving. (Um. That was random. Anyway.)
We went up to the gas station and chatted with Robert for a bit (Robert's actually pretty cool--if things work out with me and Duncan and there turns out to be a lot of the-three-of-us time, what with them being best friends, I think I could deal with that), then came back to my place, and we stood outside talking for a while before he left around two. Got another hug--I've gotten a hug every time he's left since the first one, except for today but I'll get to that later. I'm hoping he'll clue in to the fact that I wouldn't mind getting one or two without his exiting the scene. Ahem.
Then on Tuesday he came over again, because I didn't have to work. He got here around quarter to five, and we watched two movies I'd bought--Jurassic Park and King Kong, packaged together for $15, which I thought was a good deal because I would expect to pay that just for King Kong at this point. King Kong I'd been wanting anyway (it's PJ!), and Duncan had said it was pretty good. Then at some point (back when he was still working at the gas station) he'd referenced Jurassic Park, and when I told him I hadn't seen it, he just stared at me and said, "Look, I can forgive your not having seen Star Wars, especially the prequel set, and I can forgive you not having seen -insert some other movie I can't remember here- because it doesn't seem like your genre, but at least rent Jurassic Park." So it was suddenly on my to-see list, and when I saw the two of them on sale together it seemed like fate, lol.
Jurassic Park--I wasn't quite as impressed as I'd hoped to be as far as plot (and Duncan's advice is not to bother with the sequels), but I have to tip my hat--if it had not been for that movie there would be no LotR films today because there would be no Gollum. Period. It was enjoyable enough, but not my favorite.
I guess one of Jo's main reasons for leaving is that Hannah has gotten made shift manager. (This is stupid because it wasn't like Jo was up for that promotion. The following stuff I'm about to say about Hannah all also applies to Jo.) Now, here's my thing--I agree that Hannah being made a shift manager is complete and utter bullshit. She's still in high school. There are people who have worked there longer and (IMNSHO) deserve it more. (WTF is Ken doing creating more shift managers when what he should be doing with any extra funding is making Nico an assistant?? Okay, okay, so Taco Bell protocol doesn't work like that, but STILL.) But I'm not mad at her, if I was in her place and they offered it to me, I would have done the same thing and I wouldn't give a crap who I pissed off. It's a promotion, it's a raise, it's authority and prestige, and she'd be stupid to refuse it. She won't be hellish to work for, and besides that, it's going to be a good long while before she actually gets to run shifts--at least until school's out or until she turns 18 or something. Nor am I mad at Ken, really, because it's just another stupid thing in a long string of stupid things that he's done. The only things he could do to piss me off are put me back on days after I've worked so hard to become a valuable closer (I can close ANY position in an hour-twenty or less, and the only reason it's ever that long is if I have to close both ends of the line) and make it worth his while to leave me on nights, or fire me. So it irks me, but really it's just a promotion for show and there's no point in getting pissed about it. (Now, if the authority turns Hannah into a bitch, that'll be another thing entirely, but I won't hesitate to tell her she's being a bitch, lol. It probably won't, being made a team trainer didn't affect her.
Anyway, after Jurassic Park was over, Duncan and I ordered pizza. I LOVE living in town. Delivery!! I didn't really have any nonalcoholic drinks in the house except milk, so we tried buying sodas from the machine by the laundry room door, but it spit out all the money we put in and no sodas. (At least it DID spit the money back out!) It got frustrating enough that finally we decided to go get a two-liter. We were both going to go, but then I suddenly realized that the pizza MIGHT arrive in the interim, so I stayed and he drove up to the gas station. As it happened, the pizza guy pulled in about two minutes after he got back, but better safe than sorry.
While we were getting our plates ready and getting drinks, I took his picture with my phone. He knew it was coming
(I almost made the picture my wallpaper, but refuse to do so unless he actually becomes my boyfriend. The idea of it, though, actually prompted me to remove Elijah. I had taken a closeup picture of my Chinese takeout lamp lit up, and it looks really cool and artsy. All you see is the glowing Chinese character against red, and it works really well as a wallpaper--it's framed perfectly that the text doesn't cover anything. I have some Hello Kitty pics that I downloaded, but honestly they're the wrong size and look kind of funny stretched out. There's one or two I could tile, I guess, but I like MY pic.)
So then we watched King Kong. Now THAT was impressive, and not just the fact that Kong looked real. I actually enjoyed the plot, thin as it sounds when described. The action was pretty intriguing. I never realized that there was any depth about where Kong came from and the island and all. (The dinosaurs kind of put Jurassic Park to shame, lol, but that in and of itself was cool to compare.) Yay for Naomi Watts, who I knew from The Ring and The Ring 2. Jack Black was hilarious--he was so tenacious, lol, even when he really should have given up. I wish they wouldn't have killed off Andy Serkis, but at least he had a visible character in this one, as well as doing the voice for Kong. ^_^ Most surprising moment: "OMG, was that Kyle Chandler? OMG THAT WAS KYLE CHANDLER!!" Poor Duncan was looking sideways at me and asked, "Um, so what's he from?" Early Edition, of course, which REALLY needs to come out with a bigass box set of all the seasons (six or seven, I think). I want to watch King Kong with Mom one of these days, or at least show her that part of it so she can see him. Not that he looked all that different, he's one of those people that seems not to age much--but she loved EE, too, and likes to know what he's in these days. (And now I'm wondering whatever happened to Shanesia Davis and Fisher Stevens. Huh.)
Around nine, Nico called me from Taco Bell. I didn't answer because I never answer when it says "Work calling." Either they're trying to call me in, or it's someone calling me personally from work. If it's the former I generally can't/won't do it anyway, and I can ignore and delete a message, but an actual human on the other end is likely to be more capable of persuading me. (Grr. It's like I've tried to explain to Nico--yes, I understand I have to be available, so schedule when you need me, but then understand that as soon as I know when I have to work, I am going to plan all the other crap I have to do around that schedule, and I have a right to say that I can't come in early/stay late/come in on my day(s) off, because technically that's MY time, since you didn't claim it. I'm absolutely certain everyone in the world understands this concept except Ken, Nico, and Steve.) If it's the latter they can leave me a message and I'll call them back either at work or later on their home phone, if I have it. At any rate, I figured it was Briannah (I knew she was in charge, JoJo had said so) trying to call me in since they were two people short. I sure as hell wasn't about to do it with Duncan there, and I knew Bri would probably understand and approve wholeheartedly. (She is a girl who has her priorites straight.) When the voicemail went off I listened to it and it totally wasn't anyone calling me in. XD Like I said, it was actually Nico, not Bri, and the entire message ran as such: "You and I are going to start a business. We're going to start an evangelical Christian gym. We're going to call it Jehovah's Fitness." I laughed and told Duncan, "I heart Nico," and told him the joke. He laughed and said that given the fact that two people walked out, it was probably Nico's way of trying to get me to call back so he could sucker me into coming in, and I told him that I knew that was probably true and I had absolutely no intention of calling back. (Duncan understood this perfectly.) I asked Bri tonight and she said that they hadn't needed me, so I'm not sure if Nico just wanted to call and tell me the funny or what. He called me tonight and I called back when I got off work, but he didn't answer. Whatev. At any rate, he finally seemed not-pissy on the voicemail he left me tonight, so maybe his PMS is finally over. He's been bitchy at work the last few days. (He said he thought I would be pissed, but if it's because of Hannah he's wrong. I found out that his roommate just got hired, though, and THAT'S more than a little irritating. On the bright side, I have a feeling that she won't last long.)
After King Kong, Duncan and I went up to the gas station to chat with Robert again. Robert and Duncan somehow got to discussing handguns, and when Robert had to step inside to deal with a customer, I told Duncan, "You realize I've understood pretty much nothing said in the last five minutes, right?" And he started to explain, and I told him I didn't really care to know since swords were cooler anyway. He tried to argue that point a little, that as cool as he thinks swords are, guns are neat, too, and I said a sword just looked cooler, and he said there were some pretty cool-looking guns, and I held up my hands and said, "You can say that all night long, but honestly, when my knight in shining armor shows up to rescue me, I want him to ride up on a horse with a big-ass sword in his hand." And then Duncan kind of laughed and said, "But I could take a gun and bang! Your knight in shining armor would be down for the count." And then Robert reappeared and they got to talking about how you'd need armor-piercing bullets and so on and so forth. So then when Duncan and I finally left and started heading back to my place, I suddenly burst out, "I can't believe you'd shoot my knight in shining armor!" And I ranted for a moment about how that just wasn't nice, and finally I asked, "WHY? Why would you do something like that?" Tongue-in-cheek, of course, but he went with it. "To...prove a point?" "But STILL!" He asked, "What? Did I kill your fantasy?" And I told him yes, he killed my fantasy. I think we changed the subject after that. What I wanted to say was that the real reason I didn't think he'd shoot my knight in shining armor was that it would be suicide. Ahem.
When we got back to my place, we again stood around outside talking until the off-and-on drizzle stayed on long enough to drive me to want to go inside and prompted Duncan to leave. Hug for Sarah! ^_^ We touched on some sensitive subjects--we talked about how we get along with our grandparents and such, and I suddenly said, "You know, I'm referring to my grandparents and siblings because that's what they are to me, but you should know that there's stepfamily stuff that I'm not bothering to explain. It's the second marriage for both my parents." (I really don't get into that much even here on LJ. I don't really like to talk about it. I can count on one hand the number of people I've trusted enough to tell the whole story to. Hobbity: You're definitely next, the next time I feel like sharing. For a long time now it's not been a matter of trust so much as a matter of not wanting to type it all. Though you'd never know that to read this entry, lol.) And I ranted a bit about Dad's first wife and what a bitch she was/is (I only know this secondhand, but I know enough). And then I blurted out: "I really hope that never happens to me. I only want to be married once in my life." And Duncan's response? "Me too. And I almost got married once." (I knew this, he's referenced his ex-fiancée several times. I don't know the details, but it seems she up and ran off to marry the best man. It's been a while back, they got together in high school. She's definitely not competition.) He continued: "In retrospect, I'm glad it didn't happen, but from now on I don't want to get involved with someone unless I'm pretty sure she could be the one." My GOD. I told him that I've reached a point in my life where I've realized it's definitely better to be single than it is to be with the wrong guy. (I've learned this, watching the relationship turnover at Taco Bell. There are guys that I once had crushes on that are now despicable bastards, IMHO. It just struck me one day that if one of them approached me I'd say no because I've seen how they've treated their last girlfriends and it would only be a matter of time before they'd cheat on me/dump me for another girl. And self-confidence ensued. ^_^) Now all I have to get him to see is that I'm pretty sure he's the RIGHT guy.
Anyway, before he left I asked if he could come get me for work today. Long story short, he could and did. (He swung me by Rodney's shop first so I could drop off the trunk key, and I was half-hoping Rodney would ask who was driving me, just to cause a stir, but he didn't. I wonder what my extended family--a few gossipy aunts in particular--thinks of me and my not ever having had a guy, and I can just imagine his wife and their kids talking about me and the mysterious guy, lol.) We had some time to kill, so we went to Mickey D's (I didn't eat, I'd had pizza, lol--I told Duncan "Thanks for buying dinner--and lunch for the next three days.") and then sat for the last few minutes in the Taco Bell parking lot. (Okay, okay, Nico, I lied, I COULD have been on time or even a few moments early today. So sue me.) We just couldn't stop talking! Even when I was telling him that the Taco Bell clock currently read 5, I just couldn't tear myself away. I was a minute late today. (Beats 45 minutes due to car trouble.) But even in the short thirty minutes we had to talk today--less, because of the errands and talking with the woman working drive-thru at McDonald's and all--we talked about so much it was crazy. I showed him my new phone wallpaper (in case he'd noticed Elijah, which he might have), we talked about photography and how the sky would make pretty pictures today, and Anna Nalick, and when he worked at Hastings, and why business clocks are never right and how you have to adjust your watch, and how he could cheat the clock when he worked at Home Depot, and even got onto how society pressures people to be thin (with him saying he needed to get back into shape and me saying that I was surprised at how many guys I'd met recently expressed dissatisfaction in that department when it used to be a chick thing), and I even told him how much weight I've lost in the last few years. (We'll probably be coming back to that last topic again at some point in the future because there was so much more that could have been said.) But it's insane. Occasionally we'll hit an awkward pause, but it never lasts long. We'll even comment on it. "Ooh, awkward pause." "Um, okay, I can't think of anything else to add." *moment of silence* "Hey, I was going to ask you, have you ever seen/done/read/heard of..."
We have enough in common to keep from being polar opposites who can't stand each other, and enough differing interests that we're learning a lot from each other. (Like me and zombies. Okay, okay, so it's not generally practical knowledge, but like I told Duncan the one time he pointed that out, "If I wanted practical conversation, I'd be calling my grandfather, not you.")
The whole spacing-out-calls barrier is completely gone. I've communicated with him in some form at least once every day this week--and as a matter of fact, I've seen him every day this week except Sunday. And tomorrow is to be no exception--he said pending his suddenly getting a job (the odds of which are pretty low, he might have an interview tomorrow but even if he got something he probably wouldn't start until Monday) he would come over at some point, since I have the day off. We confirmed it today. The Holiday came in the mail today, so we're going to watch that (and probably at least one other movie, though which one I don't know) and I really think he's going to like it. (The man watches romances and romantic comedies--and not only does he like them, he's not at all ashamed to admit it!) I can't wait to watch it again. (Hopefully Kate Winslet's character's monologue on unrequited love will not sting so much this time around--when I saw it in theaters with Shelly, it was days after the whole...Matt...thing. Matt came into Taco Bell the other day--suddenly blonder!--and I just couldn't bring myself to even say hi. I really don't care about him at all anymore. I don't hate him, and if he tried to contact me I'd probably talk to him, but I can honestly say I'm not interested in him that way anymore. Like I said--I bounce back faster than I used to.)
I wonder if there's a limit on the number of parentheses one should use in an LJ entry. I rely on them too much.
Anyway. One last thing--when I got to work tonight, one of the first people I saw was Liz, and I walked up to her and said, "Apparently I was misinformed." I wasn't. She felt guilty and called Ken this morning and got her job back. JoJo tried, and almost had it, but then suddenly said she only wanted to finish out her schedule this week and he said nevermind, we didn't need her. (Whatever. I work the same hours she does so they can't have me work extra to cover her lost hours.)
So yeah. Taco Bell is in flux again--I have a feeling a few more people are going to quit in the next few weeks, and there's going to be a lot of new faces (pity that one of them is Nico's roommate's. >_<)--not that there aren't currently! There's at least three guys that I would still consider to be "new." I actually kind of resent the fact that I've worked there long enough to pick up on these patterns. (Okay, so maybe it's my psychic abilities flourishing, but I'm trying to stamp them out.) I just wish I could tell whether or not it's going to suck--and where to put in applications!
Anyway. If it feels like it's taken you forever to read this, take comfort in the fact that it took me about four-and-a-half hours to write this last big chunk of missive. (Counting coding in the LJ cuts and such, but still.) It's quarter after five AM, and I have no idea what time Duncan will be coming over, lol. Good night.
I haven't really spoken with Duncan since he drove me to work Wednesday. He never did call Thursday night. I texted him around 8:30 and said he was still welcome to come over, but I wanted to know when he thought he'd be here. No response. I called him around 12:30. "Hey, it's Sarah. Remember how I told you it sucks to have an overactive imagination? Well, I'm sure you're out where you have no signal or maybe you suddenly got a night-shift job for all I know, but there's something in my head telling me that you might be lying dead in a ditch somewhere, so give me a call and let me know you're still breathing." He finally texted me around 1:20, and he'd been working out on the lake with his dad (who works for Game & Fish, though I'm not entirely sure what he does).
Which is fine. But if he'd texted me before going out on the lake instead of after, I wouldn't have sat around all night. Granted, I was drawing for most of it (finished a nice one of Sarah and Mike for D2D), but still. I could have, say, gone out with Nico or something.
I texted him Friday when I got off work, "Happy Friday the 13th, started the zombie story today." Never heard back. Called him earlier today and told him I was off Tuesday and Thursday and if he was going to be free to give me a call at his convenience. He hasn't, but I figure that if he does call, it'll be at the moment he happens to be free. He tends to roll like that.
So tomorrow I'm going to get up relatively early (for a day off anyway), go pay my electric and internet bills, and go online for a copious amount of time. If he calls, great, and if not--well, then not.
Got Laurien back today. $400. >_< It sucks, but at the same time I feel incredibly grown-up because I can HANDLE this. I got my $475 paycheck today, so I paid $200 out of my checking account and put the other $200 on my credit card. That left me quite a bit to pay my other bills that are due (electric, internet) and also fund groceries and such for two weeks. Tomorrow, online, I'm going to pay the $30-odd I had on the credit card already and my balance will be $200. The only thing due out of my next check is rent, so the rest of my next check can go to paying that off. If it's not quite enough, it'll be most of it, and the rest can definitely-for-sure come out of the check after that. So yay for building a credit history with quick paybacks.
(On a side note, why is it free to make a Capital One payment online but $10 to do it over the phone? WTF?)
The only sucky part is that I'm completely screwed as far as getting a computer in the next few weeks--my deadline of "by the end of April" is going to whoosh by. *scream* I've been paying for internet and haven't been able to use it! *headdesk* (Okay, okay, so I have enjoyed being able to watch TV. I missed Home Improvement more than I gave myself credit for.) On the bright side, that means by the time I feel like I can afford it, my credit line will probably have shot up to $500. With that in mind, I'm going to look into Dell before I go and get the one at Wal*Mart.
Anyway. I have crap to do before I sleep. Talk atcha later!