LET THE CIGARETTE HOARDING BEGIN!!!! My word. In the face of the new 75 cent tax increase on cigs, Minnesota's smoking residents are hoarding like never before. People come in and buy cartons upon cartons of smokes. This dude tonight bought 13 cartons of Winston Lights...that's 130 packs. He spent around $360 bucks. Of course, he saved about 97 bucks....if, that is, he smokes them before they go bad. I dunno...we've made sooo much money this week off of cigs...it's amazing. I predict our sales go down for one, maybe two weeks...then it goes back to normal again. I dunno...people are funny.

Tonight work went by pretty fast. We were really busy...I dunno if that's a good thing or not. I decided not to wear the tux shirt...which was a bummer, 'cause I told the other worker about it and he thought it would've been really funny. Oh well. It was partly because I wussed out...and partly because I was talking to Meredith before work and I ran out of time to find my old high school tux shirt. No big deal.

I didn't end up falling asleep until around 5 a.m. last night. Wow. And then I woke up at 8 a.m. and couldn't fall asleep again. I don't know what my deal was. Well...I know what it was last night...but not this morning.

At any rate, I think I'm going to go and pop in a movie downstairs and watch it before I go to bed. I can't decide if i wanna watch Back to the Future or Spiderman. Tough decision, I know.

I can't sleep tonight. Too many thoughts swirling around inside my head....about the past...far, far, back. About the future...like what the heck am I going to do after I graduate? And the present.....yes, the present. No need to elaborate. I really do need to get some sleep, but I'm wide awake. I really could use a good, long, late-night conversation...about anything....but there's nobody to talk to.

Your Power Color Is Red-Orange

At Your Highest: You are warm, sensitive, and focused on your personal growth. At Your Lowest: You become defensive and critical if you feel attacked. In Love: You are loyal - but you demand the respect you deserve. How You're Attractive: You are very affectionate and inspire trust. Your Eternal Question: "Am I Respected?"

What's Your Power Color?

Your Sexy Brazilian Name Is

Alexandre Pereira

What's Your Sexy Brazilian Name?

So I had this dream. About a badass pink frilly tux shirt I saw at RagStock. Seriously. Do you think my subconscious is trying to tell me something? I think so too. I think that I'm going to go to Burnsville Center before I go to Iowa on Sat. and buy that shirt. If they still have it. I'm half-way tempted to wear it with my band tux (plus black cumberbund and tie) down to Iowa...for Nathan's "Retirement Party"....but those guys already give me enough crap for having a ponytail. Maybe if I showed up just for the party it'd be different...but since I'm getting there like at FIVE....not so much.

In other tux shirt news....this dude that I work with...Wes...yes, I know, I just posted about him. Sorry, but he's the coolest SA emp. that I've EVER worked with. He's a mixture of Joe Vaughen, Hunecke, Nathan, and John. And none of you know all of those people...so that's meaningless, but he's super cool. Anyway, he just got a tatoo on his forarm, which means, according to SA uniform policy, he has to wear a long-sleeve shirt. And it's hilarious, because the only longsleeve shirt he owns is his tux shirt from high school jazz band. So he wears his SA vest with a tux shirt. hahahaha....so anyway, tomorrow is the last day I work with him. Ever...because he has to go to college soon and he's going on leave or something now. Anyways, I'm going to wear my high school choir tux shirt...partly to give him crap, and partly because I think it'll be super funny to have both of us wearing tux shirts and the vests. In a gas station. hahaha....that's great. If I can find the cufflinks my sister-in-law gave me for high school graduation, I'll wear those as well. Craziness.

Anywhoo....I need another beer, but there's only one left. Dangit. Moral problem. Hmmm.....I'm going to drink it.

The worst thing that could ever happen to a gas station happened tonight...excluding a hold-up. It was this kid Wes and I working tonight, when suddenly the registers started going crazy and listing all of the pump numbers and then the message "Pump pay off-line." Wes and I just looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. I had never seen that error message before, so I didn't know what was up and Wes just started a few weeks ago. Shortly after those messages, everybody outside came in and said the pumps weren't working. Uh-oh. I quickly called the manager. No answer. I called the District Manager. No answer. I went in the back room and checked how much gas we had in the tanks. Although we were low (I guess this was a blessing in desguise) we still had plenty to keep the pumps going. Still, I figured that since the low tank warning was going off, that could be the problem. When I came out of the backroom, I found out things had gotten worse. Now the pumps had actually turned themselves off and the screens were dark and blank. I called up maintnence and they said dispatch would get a hold of somebody. They also gave me the number for an emergency fuel delivery. Eventually I got a driver on the line and he said he'd be there as soon as possible with some gas, but neither he nor maintnence thought that the low gas level was the problem. So for about twenty minutes, none of our pumps were working. We were turning people away. You've got to be asking yourself "What good is a gas station if they don't have any gas?" Exactly. Well, after about fifteen minutes, a maintnence dude calls me back and has me go into the backroom and walks me through a bunch of different things. Long story short, we got the pumps back on-line and going again. About 2 hours later the gas truck finally came. We had about 800 gallons of regular unleaded left. Think about it...if the average person puts in 15 gallons, that's only 53 cars. When it's busy we get that many in an hour. Yeah. We were cuttin it close. But everything ended up ok. And the manager finally did call us back. But by then the disaster had been averted. Have I mentioned yet that I would be a dang good gas station manager? I seriously hope that's not my true calling in life....but I guess it's something to fall back on. Fall faaaaaar back on.

In other news, I'm definitely going down to Waverly again this weekend. My roommate (Nathan) is throwing a bit of a going away party. For himself. Him and another one of my roommates are going out to Denver this fall to do the same type of thing I did this past winter. So anyway, I figured if he would take the time to let me know of it then he must be planning something pretty big...so I switched some shifts around and now my weekend is open. And they're planning on getting a keg. I think probably the last time I went to a real kegger was when I ended up puking out of a car window...while we were driving. Good times. I was planning on buying a case of some cheap beer one of these days and bringing some of it down there...but now I'm not sure if I need to. The only real problem is that I like to have a couple of beers when I get off work to relax myself again...and I've been drinking my dad's beer. I feel kind of bad about that...but then again, it's free. If I was in Iowa tonight I would've stopped by a gas station and just picked up a cheap 40 of something. Maybe like some Mickey's or O.E. or something. But I'm not. And gas stations don't even carry 40's. Really they don't. Next time you're in MN look at them....they're 32 oz. AND they're 3.2 beer. Double ugh. But they still cost the same as a normal 40. Triple ugh. Anyway...that's all I got for most of you...except Saienga.

Saienga, think back to 9th grade choir. Do you remember that kid that had the messed right hand that always wanted to "Box" with Rowan? Ghetto Bowler, you went to McGuire, right? Do you remember that kid? He came into SA today to buy some gas. I'm not sure if he recognized me, but I recognized him. Chris something. Anyway, he's married. Crazy. Oh yeah, and Tom Earp came in the other day as well. We passed through that awkward...I think I know that kid...what's his name again....maybe he won't say anything....yeah, one of those.

It's amazing what one conversation will do to me....Suddenly, my creative thought has returned. I was/am in a really creative mood right now...the only problem is, I'm not ready to write anything. Although I think I HAVE found the solution to my plot structure, I don't know for sure what the second half of my plot will be. hmmmm...so I wrote like 2 paragraphs tonight of a possible starting point for Part 2. But I don't know if that's where I want to start. hmmm...
Anyway....that's all I got. But man, I'm in a great mood right now....

You can tell my mom is the mother of 3 boys....so I got this postcard from the Rock Bottom Brewery because I'm in the Mug Club...and it's good for a free appetizer or dessert on my birthday. So my mom gets it, and decides that's where we should go for my birthday meal. "Good food, and definitely good beer," she said. Only raising 3 boys could condition her to say that. I was really hoping my best friend would be able to come to Lakeville on my birthday...and then I could introduce that best friend to a Twins game...but I understand that that isn't going to happen. Kind of a bummer. So now it's going to be me, my mom, and my dad. Woopee! My oldest brother is in Iraq, his wife is in Iraq, my other brother will be on the East coast with his wife, and my cousin that's in town will be with her boyfriend. How lame am I? Oh well, it's just 22. My word...I'm getting old.

In other news, SA is going to get 10 times worse in like a week. There are 3 dependable workers there right now. 2 of them are leaving in a week. The other one is me. Damnit! One of them just graduated from high school and he is by far the most enjoyable SA worker I've worked with since ever. Thankfully, with the exception of tomorrow, I work with him every day during his last week. Also, he's just going on leave for college, so that means I might work with him over Christmas as well. So yeah...I'll be stuck working with a bunch of Douchebags for the month of August and a little bit of September. Of course, we just hired some character named Bill....we'll have to see how this "Bill" turns out. More details to follow.

Hmmm....to recap the last couple of days doesn't take much. Yesterday I went shopping with my brother, then ducked out on Jess's birthday celebration (G-Master and I made up for it by buying her a present, though), and went to a movie with my bro and cousin in the evening. Today I worked. Nothing really else to say. I did get a phone call from Meredith today. That was lovely, as usual. Sorry for the boring post. I honestly don't have anything else to say.

Wait. I take that back. I mentioned on here probably about a month ago that I was having issues with the plot structure of my longest work yet. Well, even though I haven't touched any of my pieces in about a month, I have been thinking of possible solutions to my problem. And I think I finally found one. The only question is how confusing it will be to the reader. You see, this whole time I've only been thinking one dimensional -- to tell the story of David, my main character, pretty much the whole story has been told from David's point of view. Now I understand, though, that his the next half of the story needs to come from Geoff. And through Geoff we can truly understand David. Only like one or two of you have read what I've written, but that doesn't matter. Where I'm at right now is like the climax of my intended plot line, thus is near the end. My plan is to make what I've written Part 1. Now I'm going to go back in time through the character of Geoff and tell of his relationship with David starting with when they first became friends and through the current time....and at the end of Part 2 with be the resolution to Part 1 and, ultimately, the entire story. That's my solution....I'm just worried that the reader will get confused. Why not just put Part 2 as Part 1, you may be asking yourself? Because I think it's important to start In Medias Res (in the middle of the story) and go from there. We'll see how that goes.