Three jobs.

Started a day job yesterday. So now I've got myself three jobs, if you count working for Charles whenever that opportunity presents itself.

The job is in a warehouse packing and shipping books all around the country. The company is Hartman Publishers and they specialize in textbooks for CNAs -- they feature such charming titles as "Nurses Assistants Handbook Workbook" and "Assisting with Nutrition and Hydration in Long Term Care". It's a temporary job (through December, probably) from craigslist and so far I really like it. The pay is very good, the hours are great, and most importantly, so seem to be the people that I work with. Completely different pace and attitude towards a lot of things that bothered me in restaurants. We *won't* sell slightly damaged goods. I *won't* get approached and gazed at by total strangers who "remember me from somewhere".

I'm basically the mail clerk in an office, now, in addition to being the doorman at Foxes. I wonder which is the Clark Kent and which the Superman.

So -- thirty years old and I am *finally* out of foodservice. If I'm smart I'll bring my kitchen stool to work, though, since being on my feet all day like that does get to me. I'm wearin' out.

So I work yesderday afternoon, then go to R.B. Winnings to go online and eat something only to be told the kitchen's closed and normally I couldn't even get coffee after five except they've got a poetry reading that night. So I eat a little granola date bar and have my two permitted refills of coffee. It comes to the same it would have cost for a huge blueberry pancake and unlimited coffee at Flying Star; and the person behind the counter's not exactly rude to me, but not exactly helpful, either. I get the clear impression that I really shouldn't be there. It wasn't "all in my mind"; I'm just *very* sensitive to that. It wasn't really pronounced, either, to be fair, and I have also had exceptionally good service there from time to time. But why the hell should I have to put up with that anywhere that I spend money?

It's almost enough to make me stop tipping, at least when it *isn't* earned. Then again, what better insult than to tip some pathetic nobody *too* well?

Winnings, I *adore* your coffee, love your plants, enjoy your quirkitude, and all of that, but man, I'm very, very sorry -- as a business, you're just not fulfilling my needs. I can't depend on you. I *can*, and *do*, depend on Flying Star. I genuinely hate the way they're opening up a Satellite right across from you (I never plan to go there) and do not want to see you die but I can't go online when you're open and don't make enough to eat out more than once a day and little granola date bars just don't cut it for me.

I then went to work at Foxes. No big news there, a fairly quiet night. Chased one drunk guy out of the parking lot. (A very slight exaggeration, that: in fact I merely went out front with the maglite; he saw me and said he was leaving, then left.) Everyone who was out was at AMC.

Good god. I'm in the Nob Hill Flying Star (formerly the Double Rainbow) on Central because it's closer to both jobs than Downtown and gas is up to three and change. It's filling up with queers. Couples. They're talking just like normal people. Out in the open and everything, where people can see them. (Are they completely mad?) There are a few breeders out too but without the screamin' kids. Reminds me why I moved out here. There's no place like this in El Paso.

Driving home saw the cops in front of me stop one lane of traffic just to bug a couple of guys outside of AMC who were apparenlty making out. It's not surprising. They stop so many people around our bars specifically you might be forgiven for thinking Maryor Chavez and the police chief were both homophobes. At any rate our hired security guard was there at the same time and I'd just gotten an important call so I had to move on.

The call was from a good freind who shall remain anonymous. I'm tired and I want to go to bed, but I make the mistake of calling this fellow back and winds up he's suicidal. Or at least talking about it like he is. He's very capable of it. He's tried it in the past. So it's not just a "come and listen to me" ploy, though honestly, that always seems to be a factor. He's been out drinking and is in really bad shape. Desperate and very, very lonely. Had conversations with three or four people in the bars but wound up not really getting anywhere with any of them so between that and some other stuff he's basically convinced his whole life is worthless. I go over to his house, we go out to get him cigarettes, and I spend the rest of the night basically sitting up with him.

My reward: a DVD full of *superb* silent era Felix the Cat cartoons from Walgreens. More than I could have ever reasonably hoped for.

I get home around 6:30 am, take a bath with the cats (they're fascinated by the running water) and fall asleep to the sounds of the world falling apart around me thanks to NPR. Wake up with maybe four hours sleep to head in to Hartman Publishing and we've got a big load of books going out. The delerious joy of laughter at seeing customer's strange names -- just try and imagine pronouncing "Isibor Joy Nosebge" or "Mark Crsbo" while folding a few hundred letters sometime -- is a special thing. Then over here to write this. Next to Foxes. I need to be sure and go home alone tonight and sleep. Working graveyard for over a year taught me that -- a sleepless night now and then never killed me but every night sleepless for months on end very probably will.

No day job tomorow, next day, or Monday -- just Foxes, and I probably have Sunday off, there, meaning I need to go in for chicken. I may actually break down and go to a laundromat now that I have laundry that needs to be done but it isn't such an unmanageable pile yet that I can't move it.

Life is good.