These Days

These Days – Nico

This Saturday I’m handing in my two weeks notice to my manager. It’s official. The Alex Lee era at Food Basics is coming to an end. Let’s take a look back at the fantastic run I put into this place:

– 2+ years of steady work without taking a serious vacation
– 2200 hours of my life I’ll never get back
– 3240 shopping carts moved
– at least $100 made in leftover quarters from shopping carts
– 1 major argument with a customer who NEVER came back to the store again
– 11 awkward heart to hearts with the boss
– 550 prices made up because the barcodes didn’t work or I couldn’t recognize a certain vegetable
– 1 truly unfortunate crush
– 2 Erin Dunlop sightings
– approx. 800 laps around the store, running from end to end for one reason or another
– countless satisfied customers

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things, but those statistics do a decent job of summing up my experiences at Food Basics. Obviously, a part of me is torn up about leaving. You spend so much time doing one thing, even if it’s getting stabbed with a knife, and you’re eventually going to grow a fondness for it. Perhaps fondness is too strong a word. Dependence. That’s better. It is going to be an odd experience for me to not have the dread of an impending work day looming over my head. I haven’t quite gathered all my thoughts on this subject yet. Let’s move on.

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I hope things work out for this guy suing Michael Jordan. If he wins, I’m sooo suing Hugh Jackman. It’s really getting to be a problem.

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Last Thursday night, I got dragged downtown to have a Frosh Committee meeting with Julius and some other people. Normally, I would have told him to screw himself but a voice in my head kept reminding me about commitment and sacrifice and all that junk and I decided to suck it up and go. We were down there until about two in the morning, if I recall correctly. I forced Julius to give me a ride home. His car was having problems, so I told him to stay over. I was as tired as hell, but he kept me up all night trying to give me girl advice. Normally, that’s all I talk about, but for once I actually just wanted to go to sleep. In the morning, he called a tow truck to take him and his hunk of junk home. It was fun time though, and I hope he knows that he’s got a homie in Markham that he can hit up anytime he needs a place to stay. He’s a good man.

The girl issue is actually something that has been coming up very often these days. You know how it is, when a topic comes up in your life, it seems like everyone wants to talk about it. Like they can sense that it’s on your mind. So yeah, even moreso than usual I have people from all sides giving me advice and pep talks and support and letting me know that, “It’s gonna happen for you sometime, big guy!” Thanks, everyone.

After Julius left, I had to get ready to go out with Natasha. I hadn’t seen her in forever. That was one of the toughest parts of the last year, not being able to see friends. I swear, the longest conversation I had with Michelle was when I was mad at her for not talking to me. As for Natasha, our schedules were always conflicting…or something. Regardless, we ran into each other once or twice but we didn’t get to do much. So we made plans to watch a movie last Friday. We didn’t want to watch Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, because we knew it would be as busy as hell. We ended up walking around Scarborough Town for an hour or so, stopping at pet shops and such.

Afterwards, we went to get coffee. I had my first mochaccino (meh) and Natasha ordered a fruity shake. She tortured our waitress about wanting sweetener and not sugar. She’s on one of those gimmick diets. Let me tell you something. I complain all the time about girls having the upper hand on guys, but this is the one area where guys have the advantage. I can’t believe the things that girls have to do to look good for us and how much they worry about it. Most guys can get away with looking like shit and still get some decent tail, but girls work hard for the attention they receive.

We decided to watch The Break-Up. A lot more serious than I expected. The trailers sell it as kind of a wacky romantic comedy, but it’s a lot smarter than you’d think. Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston deliver solid performances, which you forget they’re capable of after watching Vince improvise his way through his comedies and Jennifer do her thing on Friends. Good movie.

The whole time, Natasha was telling me about her boyfriend and how jealous he got when he heard she was going out with me. She said she was going to tell him about all the crazy, sexy stuff we did today (in her head at least). We had a good laugh about it. Then, he actually called her and I think he was kind of pissed and then she felt bad about making him jealous. Even though she knew this was exactly what would happen. Damn, girls are crazy.

The whole day was awesome, albeit exhausting. Natasha is one of my favourite people in the world.

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Here is a cartoon made using audio from a hilarious Dane Cook bit about Kool-Aid. OH YEAAAAAAHHHH!!!

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My schedule is set for my last year of school. To say that I “chose” my courses would be grossly inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say that my dumbass selected an unorthodox combination of programs that resulted in me only having a handful of options if I hope to graduate within the next 18 months. I also did two things I swored I would never do after last year: I have a lecture that ends at 9:00 and it’s three hours long. Strangely, I am still looking forward to the coming year. In unrelated news, I’m half retarded.

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Jess, it occurred to me the other day that you should have taken your guitar overseas to duel with strangers in a strange land. A lost opportunity if there ever was one.

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This coming Sunday our Frosh Committee is having a beach party. There’s this girl named Patricia who I think is kind of cute. I’ll keep you posted.

Richie, this illness, this closeness to death…it’s had a profound effect on me. I feel like a different person, I really do.
Dad, you were never dying.
But I’m gonna live!