07/07/2003 - 10:20 p.m. | wait a minute!

Excuse me if I�m a little frazzled; I just drove home through weather that could only be described as �apocalyptic.� Continuous lightning all around (a bolt hit in front of my car, I think, but you know � depth perception and all), torrential downpour, hurricane winds. The Midwest isn�t supposed to get monsoons.

Hours: 7.5 (7-2:30, no break)
$$$: $85.cough
Tropical Sno Flavor: Pineapple / Passion Fruit
CDs:
-�Maladroit� � Weezer
-�Amnesiac� � Radiohead
-�King of Yesterday� � Jude
-I THINK I AM MISSING ONE BUT MY PRIMITIVE BRAIN CAN�T RECALL IT
-�The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner� � Ben Folds Five

Back to the grind and all. The first day is never too, too bad as far as waking up goes. I stumbled in and out of the shower (cleaning myself in between) and got out of the house with enough time to actually arrive at work ON TIME. Of course, this can never happen, so the wagon decided that it prolly needed gas or something, and I was behind schedule again. Still, Snake King seemed rather surprised that I arrived at 7:05.

Weld, weld, weld. It was hot as hell today, and I stupidly wore jeans while running around, so I was just leaking all day long. I drank lots of rancid tap water and peed it all out again. My life is a non-stop roller coaster. Well, a water slide perhaps. It stormed for a while this morning, which always renews my hope that the power will go out and I can leave. This has only happened once in all my time there, and it was fucking wonderful. Doughboy was wearing a ringer tee, so he looked like a punk kid. I wanted to tell him so, but that would lead to conversation. No.

I also wisely avoided giving Harve a piece of my mind today. See, he�s sort of passive-aggressive� or at least when it comes to me (I guess the headphones don�t help). He came over with a panel he found off to the side and said, �Do you know who this belongs to?� Now, this is code for, �Did you fuck this up, Nathan?� Honestly, I did not. I always clean up or fix my (very few) mistakes, usually as soon as I make them and always by the time I leave. But here he is blaming me. So I take a closer look at the panel and whoever messed it up put it in the bender a completely insane upside down and backwards way. Only a cretin could make this sort of a mistake, and I really wanted to yell at Harve for thinking me capable of it. Instead, I offered to fix it and repeated several times that I was doing this out of the goodness of my heart and that I really didn�t mess it up. Fell on deaf ears, and he goes into his little lecture anyway. �Well, I hope whoever did do it knows how much I hate having errors lying around like this.� I�m not gonna even decode that one for you. I fucking hate you, Harve. I always try to speed him through his lectures by summarizing them for him. �Yeah, don�t want scrap around. I�ll clean up any extra, even if it�s not mine � which this isn�t. OK?� And he just keeps going. Luckily, I have a diary, so I won�t be going postal. Can�t make the same promise with Doughboy.

Nothing highlights class struggle like a factory. Harve and the boys sit in the air conditioned office while we slave away in the hot as hell warehouse. Time for an uprising, I think. It shoudl go well.

By around noon, I was getting pretty exhausted (despite the Kit Kat Big Kat, which is much better than I expected. Gigantic food always is � except Super Colossal Zagnut). Luckily, Vanessa called at around this point to say hey from her little band camp thing. Her voice is deeper than I thought it would be, but I have this weird AIM sexism where all girls (even the ones I know IRL!!!! lol g2g) have high-pitched voices in my mind. Anyway, we couldn�t talk long because of all the old men breathing down my neck (except Lowell, who I think is nice � everyday he comes over and says hi and asks how things are, then he leaves � perfect), but just having someone intelligent to chit chat with for a few minutes really cheered me up. The last couple hours passed sweatily enough, and then it was time to go home for some hardcore econ studying.

OK, I exaggerate. My studying was less than hardcore. Had leftover lasagna (yum) and listened to music while working, which is hardly strenuous effort. But I more or less had everything down. Except stupid elasticity, which I tried my very best to remember. By the time we got around to the test, however, I had apparently either forgotten the midpoint formula or he had written the wrong choices on the test (either are very, very likely), so I had to fudge it a little. And I was distracted by, well, something very stupid that I will not go into. I would hope I could get an A, though. I certainly understand things more than my little group. Common sense, folks. Come on.

Stopped by HyVee to see if they had discount snakes (oh, but you don�t know about that yet), but apparently some other genius had the same idea. Damn it. I took 80 to Ottawa for Tropical Sno, so of course the weather had to turn awful. By the time I got my sno and back on the road (Cute Tropical Sno Girl has a lisp! :D), the aforementioned monsoon or tsunami or whatever had descended. But here I am, alive and well. Lucky you. I saw a sign today that said �Fasten your seatbelt! Someone needs you!� Oh, fucking rub it in, Jesse White.