Use It or Lose It

Walgreen's sells vibrators, so it doesn't matter if their selection of dog toys is fairly small.

Robbie and I had a proper nooner yesterday - I was forced, due to circumstances beyond my control, to take the day off work, so I picked him up for lunch at 11:15. We dropped his car off to be washed, waxed, and detailed; we ate steak; we did a spot of shopping at the abovementioned purveyor of questionable appliances; we hung out in the outdoor waiting pavilion at the car wash (which reminded me a bit of our dear old three-martini break spot); and eventually he returned to his office about two o'clock.

See? That's what I call a proper nooner. Well, except that his wiener wasn't involved.*

We're coming up on the end of the fiscal year, here. That's why I am now slated to visit four cities before the end of August. It's also why I had to take yesterday off. Do you know, my old cube neighbor Audrey never had this problem? She hated the job so much, and (quite frankly) lacked the capacity for finding joy in the company of cool people there, so she burned vacation and sick time faster than she earned it. It's kind of hard for me to imagine, because I find our employer's vacation leave policy to be particularly generous, although the concept of a limited amount of sick time, that you can actually run out of, is a little odd. Still I've accumulated more of both than I can even imagine being able to use. And I've only been there two and a half years!

Robbie and I had lunch at Montana Mike's. Have you ever played Paper Mario? The trainee waitress shadowing our waiter brings this game immediately to mind; but if you don't know what I'm talking about, never mind - there's not really any explaining it. "You can have a beer if you want to," said Robbie magnanimously, "but I can't."

Oh! the humanity! Not being able to have a drink during your two-and-three-quarter-hour lunch break! My heart bleeds. Somewhere, a very small violin is playing.

But I just had iced tea, because I was already planning to go to Diane's happy hour later, anyway. Diane has a great group of sweet, friendly and funny cohorts she goes out drinking with every Friday, and I always want to go, but I don't get off work until 5. They don't either, but they're all charter members of the KMA** club and take off whenever they damn well please. Friday is a blow-off day. So whatever!

Happy hour was at Donn's Depot. Either the wine is extremely cheap there, or else I owe Diane money. My favorite thing about that bar is the ladies' room, because it's an old caboose - rather plushly furnished, with little closet-like rooms for each commode, rather than stalls. And instead of the usual ladies'-room sofa that never gets used, because who the hell relaxes in the effing bathroom?! - there's the little sitting area you have to climb a ladder to get to, the old lookout seat of the caboose. Don't think I haven't thought about it. There are random women's thoughts scrawled on the pink-and-white-striped wallpaper in the stalls, but they aren't all that profound. I didn't bring a pen.

I have four more off-hours to burn off next week - probably Monday afternoon, I'm thinking - and then, after the travels are over, it's back to normal. Until the next hurricane.

I love my job, almost as much as shopping at Walgreen's! Still, thank God for the occasional nooner.

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*This pun will never, ever get old
**Thursday I was tasked with putting together an acronym glossary for the supervisory manual I've been working on. I think that's a relevant entry, don't you?