04/13/2004 - 1:56 a.m. | my hair smells like fruit salad

I am a bard, did you know that? "Jack of all trades, master of none." I thought this day was going to be all hard and shit, and it turned out to be cake. And now that I have my big shitty soda, I should have just about enough energy to explain to you why in mind-numbing detail. I lived it; you just have to hear about it.

I know I went out to cross the guard this morning, but I don't really have any clear impressions of what happened. Oh! That little slow weiner kid ran today, which made me happy. Most of the day I just sort of remember through commute, though. The handlebars on my bike are getting crazier; they rotate on their axis at all the worst times now, so I'll be reaching for the brakes and miss by like 50 degrees. I really wish the academic world would not reward my poor study habits, but I'm also sort of happy about it as well. The last test biopsych test I studied extensively for, and it ripped me a new one. Today's I could barely command enough interest to peruse the lecture notes (which were, ironically, about attention), and it was easy as pie. Cake, pie. I'm in the bad metaphor bakery today. But yeah, it seems like most of the material came from the 30 pages I did read, or it was just sort of intuitive stuff I could make up on my own. They didn't cover the crazy EROS brain imaging thing that I did not comprehend at all; they might as well have said they used unicorn blood to measure neural activity. Perhaps my success was all the work of the ten minute nap I took. AH, REFRESHED! I made it a point to act like it wasn't a big useless waste of time, and that my body was seriously thanking me for it. The 90 minute one after class actually did help, though, even if it forced my hand on the rest of my work. "Shit, have to make graph in four minutes. No time to read for the quiz! Gotta go!"

Strangely enough, the quiz was over pretty much the same stuff as the earlier exam, right down to that damn EROS garbage. I guess the lady who invented it or something was pretty much the teacher for this part of the semester in my biopsych class. Answer: Meeting the professor the day you take the test. What is "Things Nate Finds Humorous," Alex? Luckily, no one there understood it either. They thought it was the leprechaun's gold. I guess there is another lab report due next week, which is sort of strange because today's, uh, lab wasn't much of anything at all. It literally took me one minute of my time. 20 seconds of some DOS simulation about spatial reasoning, and 40 seconds in a verbal task (Name as many words starting with such-and-such a letter - no plurals. I was really hoping for something with good swear words in it, but I bet they have robots that figure out beforehand that I would try that juvenile tripe).

I tried very hard to win Will's theme music guessing thing, but I've never even seen an episode of "MacGyver," so my lack of in-depth knowledge about its title song makes sense. Maybe you arent happy about it, but it makes sense. Right around quarter after 4, my brain got very nervous. "So, uh, you're not really going through with this whole Buckle thing, are you? I mean, joke's over any second now, right?" Nope, joke's over in like 6 hours when I've learned more about jeans than should be humanly possible.

It's really not a bad job. The music in the store is OK, and I like the people I work with. Well, the big manager kind of acts all manager-y, but I guess that's to be expected. Someone has to take this job seriously, even if it means somehow convincing yourself that the Buckle is God's gift to the planet Earth. Everyone else, though, was very nice. I like the assistant manager, Heather (There are like 6 Heathers on stuff. 4 Mikes.), a lot. She's all loud and honest. And I kind of thought this one girl hated me, but maybe not, and besides she's leaving, so ha. But man, all those jeans. Most of my time today was just being shown all the various jeans around the store, and the differences between them. And really, I prolly have the guys' jeans down - at least to the point where I could fudge it. The girls' stuff is another story. I mean, besides the fact I walked into this with no prior knowledge of female clothing ("What do you mean the jeans stretch?!" Shatter my dreams, why don' t you?), there are nearly 50 different types of women's jeans in the store, and that's just on the crazy scrawled list I managed to throw together. And they all have imperceptible differences. "See, this one who a 3 inch slit on the ankle, and this one has 4 inches." And oh God the flares and the boot cut. I know what they mean, but somehow everyone else can tell this by sight.

The more concerning issue has to do with me and salesmanship. I actually did manage to sell a few things today, but mostly that was just me falling ass backwards into it. See, the problem is that I need an in. I mean, once I know that someone is looking for some jeans or shoes or a button-down shirt or whatever, I can totally narrow it down and help them out and junk. Or, if they do try something on, I can hand them similar items or stuff they might like, etc. But man, it's hard getting past that knee-jerk reaction. Obviously, the old standards will never work. "Hi, do you need help finding anything?" "NOPE." But every clever idea I came up with got shot down just as fast. "Heya, are you looking for some jeans, man?" "Nah, I'm just browsing." "Hi, guys. Doing a little spring shopping today? Whatcha shoppin' around for?" "Nothing. Just looking." Listen, I know I probably come off as some sort of a hack or something because I pretty much suck at any game ever, etc., etc., but I do take some stuff seriously, and this is definitely one of those things. I know it was only my first day, but the other people were getting sales from people who had already shot me down. It's really important to me that I learn how to do this. It's why I took this job. This has been the first time I've been this sort of nervous in a long, long while. I do not want to fail at this. I really would like my personality to shine through, but I only imagine horrible consequences where I come cartwheeling up to people screaming songs in a Scottish accent. I want to be the nice, helpful guy who is outgoing without being too obnoxious and who doesn't take his job so seriously that he can't joke around. Is that incompatable with selling stuff? I guess we'll find out soon, won't we?

What a way to speed through the day, though. It's already 2, and I am especially tired. I am also just a teensy bit worried about this weird bump on my right wrist. I have a bump on my left wrist, but it is clearly a bone and fairly innocuous; it will appear and disappear depending on how my wrist is bent. The right one, however, is really huge and sticks out all the time and seems to be made more of, dunno, tumor than bone. So sometimes I bite it.

That's all.