My Boss Works in Flip-Flops (and other things)

For anyone who’s worked in a warehouse environment, you know that most employers in the transportation/warehousing industry have a “closed toe shoe” requirement for employment.  Not everyone requires steel toed shoes, but generally the rule is don’t let us see your toe nails on the floor. 

My boss, who is the warehouse manager, the NIIC (Head Idiot In Charge) shows up at midnight today wearing a t-shirt with cutoff sleeves, basketball shorts, and flip-flops.  He’s a class act.

Now, I knew he would be coming in early because this is a holiday weekend.  Whenever he’s got time off, vacations, personals, holidays, he comes in at midnight and does a few hours so that he can get a jump on his time off.  Must be nice.

I’m an active fireman again.  I haven’t been to my firehouse in months.  Actually it’s been since February, probably.  But I have a new battery in my pager, and I’m going through my memory to remember where gear is located on the trucks.  I’m going to ease myself back into the job, though.  I’m going to jump MVA and obvious B/S calls.  Skip anything with a dispatch “PD on location, confirming fire”.  They don’t need me re-popping my cherry on a middle of the row worker with legs.

But I miss being a fireman.  I miss the feeling I get when I’m on the truck going to a job.  I miss the attention I get from women on tag day when I’m in the middle of the street with my helmet and bunkers.  Even I look cool wearing an FD helmet.  And knowing you just made somebody’s worst day ever a little better.  It justifies the other areas of my life that are so fucking lacking in substance.

So it’s time to dust off my brain bucket, check the battery in my flash light, and make sure my gloves are still in my bunker pants.  It’s also time to look for some of those obnoxiously bright blue LED light bars for the Danger Dakota.

Feeling inspired by watching American Dreams the other day, I decided to watch a couple movies starting Brittany Snow.  On the Doll and Finding Amanda.  She plays a hooker in both.  She seems to be working very hard to get away from that innocent school girl character that she played to perfection in American Dreams.  On the Doll is one of those incredibly depressing movies about molestation, abuse, broken children becoming fucked up adults.  And there’s a little, dead, baby bird that plays a very prominent role for some reason.  And while that movie plays more like Requiem for a Dream, Finding Amanda is a light comedy starting Matthew Broderick and Maura Tierney and Dauber from Coach.  It’s a comedy about a television writer (Broderick) who goes to Las Vegas to retrieve his niece (our girl, Brittany) who’s turning tricks in a hotel/casino with an Aztec theme.  I would love to see her get some more mainstream work that didn’t involve her playing a working girl.

I’m starting to put a couple dollars together for a new computer.  I want a HTPC built out of either a NES or Xbox case.  I have a couple worklogs for NES cases, but none for an Xbox case.  I already have an Xbox that’s not doing anything.  At least I think it’s still sitting around the apartment somewhere.  So I’d rather build an Xputer.