I don't have much of anything to say tonight, but the past week or two's posts have been so negative that I sort of feel obligated to balance it out somehow.

I'm still reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My bosses in their office must wonder why I sit snickering (alone) in the break room... The other book is Life, the Universe, and Everything. Here is something else: the one I'm reading now is a FIRST EDITION. I couldn't believe that. On the other hand, I wanted to read it too badly to keep it mint condition, and it IS a paperback....maybe it is not a true first...

And, The Telling by Ursula Le Guin. I haven't begun it yet. It's a libary book. Also, The Blue Flower, based upon the life of Novalis. I never did get to finish reading Faust or Ecce Homo by Nietzche, and I want to. They were both too heavy to read with a brain already exhausted from working in the deli. By the time I'd get into the flow, it was time to go back to work.

I had some kind of an idea today, but now I can't remember it. The irritating thing about this job is that it is multi-tasking that entails CONSTANT interruptions. You cannot simply begin a task and follow through on it until it's done. Oh no. You begin sweeping the floor, and a customer arrives. You wait on them, they buy up all the chicken, and four or five more people swing through before you can cook more chicken. Someone wants salad, and the salad runs out, so you go to get more. FINALLY, you get a chance to rush to the back room and grab the chicken and pop it in the fryer. If a customer comes while your hands are gooey with raw meat, too bad! Someone else will have to deal with it! The minute you're done with that, more customers. They want meat, and wouldn't you know, it's meat that hasn't been sliced up yet. So, you do that, get the meat to them, and clean off the slicer, and package up the remainder of the presliced meat, all in between cstomers, of course. A crowd of teenagers march in and can't make up their mind. Then the buzzer goes off on the chicken fryer! You dash to the fryer and retrieve the chicken, get what the customers want, and start to put the chicken in the hot case. Oh- a co-worker walks by and asks you to stop doing that and do (whatever) first. So you do. Then you run back and finish putting the chicken in the case. The teens bought up a lot of other deli food, so you have to cook more of that. While it's cooking, you notice the tables are gooey and messy, so you wipe them off, and then get the stuff from the fryer to the hot case. Stand there a little dazed...because it seems like there was a loose end somewhere...ah yes: the sweeping. You resume this. Then, the phone rings: someone wants nearly all the chicken in the hot case....arrgh!!!

My point is that it's sort of remarkable if you can think about anything else at all there. Holding a thought until the end of the day would be...almost miraculous. I'm a focusing sort of person. There are things I care nothing about, and things that I focus on, with very, very little middle ground. The middle ground is merely and temporarily tolerated so that I can get to what I really thrive on: focusing on something. If I seem preoccupied, it's generally because I'm either trying to recover a thought, or trying to hold a thought until I can get some task or interaction over with and get back to the thought or preferred task. This holds true with people, too. If I look bored, don't take it too personally; I'm an introvert. If I'm focused, chances are quite good that I like you. If I'm focused AND missed you, it's exceptional, because you are.

Anyway, the scatterbrained nature of this job drives me nuts. I kind of hate it.