Everything I Tell you is Hearsay

major life changes underway. they have affected my work schedule, and as such, we needed more hands on deck at the clinic. dr anne hired a young college grad in her waiting year before med school to come and run the front desk since i wont be around to do it all the time anymore.

we’ve been training since tuesday. within about 20 minutes, i knew this was someone i could work with. she’s sharp and funny, witty and laid back. ideal traits in a coworker, if i do say so. catherine is the bees knees, if you ask me.

so wednesday morning we get right back to training. we are elbow deep in learning how to schedule an appointment when a client comes through the front door…

“how much for the lenses?”

what i noticed first, was how unequivocally fucking CRANKY this guy was. obviously he had been hard done by (at least to his mind) and he was going to make someone pay for it. trying to communicate with someone who is angry in advance is never a treat, when you add to that the clear case of English not being a first language. well. it’s pretty much my favorite thing.

after sussing out that he wanted:

a) to bitch about Sears (and who doesn’t, really)

b) attempt to haggle with me over the cost of his lenses

c) have me reassure him that the hideously trendy bvulgari frames he had in hand were “hot”

i was willing to play along. one does this frequently in sales, as it turns out. and then. right in the midst of our haggling, bitching, reassuring session, he turns to catherine, gives her a long up & down look, and says huskily

“i like you.”

i am instantly defensive. i use my most scolding tone to say,

“yes, she’s lovely, isnt she?”i hope this will dissuade him from further comment. vainly.

he agrees with me, then goes yet further

“i like the boobies.” gesturing helpfully in case we missed his meaning amidst the morass that was his accent. he then turns to me. “what with your belly? why are you so skinny? do you take the skinny pills? my wife she takes the skinny pills. she’s still fat, but now she also fucking crazy. she get them from the tv.”

i am so taken aback by this turn of the conversation (not least because he didn’t say anything about MY boobies, which are in fact prodigious) that i rather fumblingly answer “no, i go to the gym 3 times a week” rather than a more customary response like “go fuck yourself you fat dickless assmonkey.”

this seems to be the extent of his need to sexually harass us for the moment, and so he returns to discussing the cost of “the lenses” suffering from a little social whiplash, but still attempting to focus on my job, i gamely finish making a quote. he then asserts that he has to go and get some money, but that he will be back shortly to pay for “the lenses”

after he clumps out catherine and i look at each other a little tiny bit in shock. what. the. fuck.

as we are discussing the bizarre sexual advances of the world’s crankiest walk-in, linda, our lead optician comes out and happens to overhear our conversation as do our other coworkers and dr bill.  after we relay the whole story linda firmly states that we are going to send him away when he returns. that we do not want his business and we never have to tolerate that kind of treatment from anyone. ever. dr bill heartily agrees.

flash forward 1/2 an hour. Catherine and i are once again focusing on training, when in walks grumpypants mchorndog. catherine and i become even MORE engrossed in our task while Linda comes forward to say to him with the most careful courtesy

“sir, i’m afraid we wont be able to help you fill your prescription, here are your frames.”

and this is when all hells break loose.

he immediately begins shouting at linda, lacey, catherine, and i in random, ill-formed bursts of insult and expletive.

“are you okay?” tapping his head “what the fuck is the problem? are you seriously okay?”

linda continues in a very calm voice to explain that we cannot make his glasses for him and we would appreciate if he left the clinic. he goes on shouting at her and everyone in the line of fire, until dr bill comes around the corner to intervene

“it is totally inappropriate for you to talk to my staff this way. we do not want your business. you need to leave the clinic”

this creates a whole new burst of incomprehensible invective.

“get the fuck out of my face! the fuck is wrong with you!? get the fuck off my face!” and then, mercifully, he leaves.

as we all sit there, vaguely stunned by the vehemence of his response, we are utterly dismayed to see that he has simply made a loop from his car and is coming back toward us. linda steps forward and throws the bolt on the door to keep him from coming back inside. he then proceeds to stand on the other side of the glass screaming and gesticulating for a full minute before he gives up and storms back to his car.

about a minute later the phone rings. i lift the receiver and identify myself only to hear the accented ranting commence all over again. i felt no compunction whatever hanging up with gusto.

lacey points out there seems to be some kind of second day curse. on her own second day a young miscreant attacked someone at the ATM 2 doors down from the clinic and snatched her purse. right before our plate glass windows we saw several bystanders grab the kid and proceed to deliver upon his ass a well-deserved beat down til the cops arrived. another employee of ours was jumped by an ex after her second day of work. the only thing that happened on my second day of work was that i turned 30. we all agree that sex trumps violence in terms of excitement, so catherine wins this particular horse race.

and so i turn to her and say,

“welcome to the clinic! way to go getting sexually harassed! what’s say we go to the strip club to celebrate?”

she readily agrees. i knew i liked this girl.

and so off we go to jiggles.

jiggles is, for many reasons, about my favorite strip club. it isn’t for everyone, i will happily concede, but for what i prefer in a club, it simply can’t be beat.

variety! i am a fickle beast. i like novelty in my life, and this is Jiggles’ strongest suit. every shape, size, color, and flavor of girl can be found in this place at some time or another. and if you sit still long enough, you’ll get to see them all. there are 3 stages, and the rotation is one song & gone. the last thing i want to do is have to stare at the same naked girl for more than 2 1/2 minutes at a time. if i like the look of someone, i know she’ll be back in a little bit to cover one of the other stages.

lap dance anyone? some clubs really don’t encourage this as the primary draw of their establishment. some places really want you to sit at the rack and tip, others want you to hang back and buy the dancers drinks. at jiggles, they provide all the means for the best lap dances i have ever had in this whole town. from the high backed and perchable chairs in which the dances are administered, to the floor to ceiling mirrors arrayed behind the dancers; all the details of the setting are perfect. as such, the girls who specialize in lap dancing tend to like to work there. frankly, it’s where the money is, and the women who work there have learned to hone their craft.

but, there’s no BOOZE!! this is true, but as everyone who knows anything already knows, the drinks you get at a typical strip club are overpriced and craptastic. i personally do not believe my well G&T should cost $8.50 and taste like gnawing on a juniper bush. i don’t really need to drink to have a good time, and even if i did, i know how to carry a fucking flask and so should you.

my hopes for a wednesday night were fairly modest. we got there at about 8:30 which is prime time to see the end of the early shift and then welcome the late shift at 9. plus also the cover jumps from $10 to $15 once 9pm rolls past.

i did see some ladies i was sort of stunned were up to the challenge. one dancer made me worry about what pole tricks would do to her arthritis. another that the lopsidedness of her breasts (at least they were real…) would induce some kind of limp if they were left unfettered too much longer.

then there was some speculation about who picked the songs for each dancer. it seemed a little too trite that the latina picked Santana, the black woman Barry White. but to amuse myself i decided we should try to guess what the dancer about to mount the stage was going to look like based on the song selection.

“ok… Gun’s n’ Roses. i’m voting for a buck toothed Liv Tyler type”

(dead on)

“Lifehouse? really?? um. methed out bleach blonde?”

(fail. fairly robust sandy brunette)

“Al Green. its the lopsided lady again.”

(yep)

then the late shift came on. after this there was less laughing, and more drooling. friend jason looked meaningfully across the table at catherine, who was a charmingly apparent newbie in the strip club scene and says

“do you need a lap dance?”

i turn to her and await her answer expectantly. she demurs and says she hasnt come prepared to spend the money on a dance. i assure her that if that is her only reticence, it is easily remedied.

“jason, you’ll sponsor catherine to have her very first lap dance, wont you?”

of course he will.

and she had a candidate even sooner than we could possibly have imagined. not necessarily someone she chose, so much as someone who chose her. this dancer was the most aggressive persistent piece of ass i have ever met. with leg warmers. usually a dancer will ask you if you would like a dance, take you at your word, maybe chat for just a bit, and then wander away. not this girl. no way.

leg warmers came by the table no less than a dozen times over the course of the 2 hours we were there. catherine had started looking around for someone to administer her lap dance and even had one sort of picked out, but she came back to say goodbye with her clothes on, so the search began again. meanwhile ms. persistent panties simply would not go away. she escalated her approach over the course of the evening to sneaking up behind catherine, once without her top on and rubbing up against her. she at one point asked if she could see catherine’’s breasts (it was a good day, popularity wise, for her boobs) and finally, worn down, catherine agreed to get a dance from this eager and determined lass.

and holy mother of god, she got the works.

at one point i looked over to see the topless dancer rotating at the waist with her bare breasts pressed firmly against either side of catherine’s face. catherine is clearly a little overwhelmed by this experience, and is trying to politely avert her head from the treatment. to no result.

however, she came away from her experience in excellent humor. and there are not enough points to give for how many points this earned her. the boys were deeply impressed with her being so very game. and so was i.

frankly i think this should be the routine on EVERYONE’S second day on the job.

*i decided to make this a series on my vacation after i saw the length of the post for just the first day. forgive me, i ramble*

i managed a restless night’s sleep on friday last. i was ready, but trying not to let my anxiety rob me of the pleasure of anticipation… i was moderately successful.

i got to work only to discover we were totally overstaffed and the ladies did not need me there. after all the buildup and going in to work anyway they shooed me out the door with prayers, best wishes, and no small amout of eye rolling. i scuttled out of town gleefully, but with no clear sense of what i was going to do with my extra 3/4 day of freedom…

well. my whole attitude here was “act on a whim” and so that’s pretty much what i did. i had all day to get out to my first destination, which was the Sheep Rock Unit of the John Day Fossil Bed National Monument. originally, when i was planning on leaving after work, i wanted the fastest route to get there, since it is no small distance. as it was, i thought i’d take the scenic route. so, over Mt Hood i went. when i rolled into Madras, i saw the signs pointing out to the Cove Palisades and thought “what the hell, i’ve never been down there…” whim followed.

it was hot, it was really the perfect day for swimming, but though i had a suit, i didn’t have the $5 in cash to pay for the park fee. i also didn’t have patience required to listen to the 8,746 screaming children who were in evidence. so, i got back in my car and rolled out. it did however solve the mystery of just where exactly the hell lake billy chinook actually is.

next bit of excitement occurred as i drove into Prineville. before my entire concept of this little town was: Les Schwab is from there. and sure enough, as i came through the western edge of town i drove past the Les Schwab Retread Center, which, hilariously, was painted neon mint green on the outside. it gave me that same special thrill i always get at “free beef” time.  but this thrill was QUICKLY AND TOTALLY ECLIPSED when i got onto main street and saw: The Arctic Circle.

apparently, they do still exist. they have not gone the way of the dinosaur just yet. i wasn’t hungry, and couldn’t justify eating there for no reason, but i knew i’d be back through the next day and filed this information gleefully away under “opportunities for fry sauce.”

i drove east for a good while longer and noticed a high concentration of large animal roadkill. all told on this entire trip i saw: 2 deer, 1 antelope, 1 raccoon, 2 coyotes, and countless possum, squirrels, chipmunks, and unidentifiable smears in the road.  both deer and the antelope were on this one stretch between Prineville and Dayville. it’s a dangerous place to be a critter.

when i finally got to the Sheep Rock Unit i’d been in the car for about 5 hours and really needed to not be in the car for a while. i spied a little shoulder spot which looked to have creek access. i picked my way down to the water and had a little sit down. i have literally never put my feet in water that was a more perfect temperature for foot putting. i was quite pleased. slipping back into my leather flipflops and trying to climb out of the creek bed with wet feet too slippery to gain proper purchase in my shoes was a slightly frustrating if ultimately amusing experience.

i got out to the main interprative center area and looked over the musem artifacts and various fossil-related propaganda only to realize: i think geology is boring. i mean, i like looking at rocks, under the proper circumstances, but the whole “this is the product of MILLIONS OF YEARS OF VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND SEDIMENTARY BUILDUP AND UNIMAGINABLE PRESSURE EXER- blah blah blah. i realize, this makes me a terrible person, and many of my friends who are much smarter and sciencey than me will learn of this and feel nothing but scorn, but its pretty much totally true. one thing i will say about my fossil beds experience; it is minimum effort required for fairly gratifying payoff. most of the best stuff can be seen from your car or a walk requiring less strain than carrying in the groceries. this lovely shot was taken from a parking lot across the street.

the drawback here, was that i had pretty much planned to spend an entire day poking around the monument and since i discovered that: a) i find rocks boring, and b) nothing here required much time or effort to enjoy, i realized i was about a day ahead of schedule and had no idea what to do about it. it was clearly time to smoke a cigarette.

i went out on thursday and GLEEFULLY purchased a pack of the smokes i used to like to smoke back when i periodically smoked. which was about 4 years ago. it is not as much fun as i remember. first i couldn’t get the damn thing lit until i got out of the wind. the only place i could find to get out of the wind was an outhouse. nothing quite like taking a deep breath and getting a lungful of smoke and potty-roma. eww. then i was going to finish the cigarette while driving. it’d be FUN! but instead i IMMEDIATELY burned klaus’ upholstery by carelessly leaning too far to the left with a burning tip. then i managed to ash on the inside of my car when i was trying to make it out the window and then i dropped tobacco all over the floor when i was trying to put it out inside the car without losing any burning cinders out the window into the extremely fire-prone desert. it was a serious cigarrette FAIL. i didn’t even try to smoke another one. and now i have 19/20ths of a really fancy pack of smokes and no desire to smoke them. sweet. with that distractionary tactic out the window (or rather, not) i realized i had to revert to a more typical means of wasting time: it was clearly time to drink.

in order to do this, i needed to get to camp. had a few places picked out as possible campsites. i only had a vague idea of where they’d be or what the facilities would look like. when i arrived, there was smiling. i could see the John Day river from where i parked my car to sleep. i had a nice big tree to give me shade and scenery. a picnic table and fire pit rounded out the spot. $5 for a BLM site, so the price could not be beat. no running water, but i hadn’t been on the road long enough to lament that yet. what i DID lament was the realization that conditions were such as to prohibit fires. which, reeeeeeeeaally sucked. for, how was i to cook my din-din? and how was i to begin to use the 7.6 million tons of firewood i had crammed into every available space in my car?? i used the ENTIRE SPACE inside the cargo box my friend David lent me, and STILL brought more wood. i mean, i always overpack, but in this case it was harming my mpg for chrissakes. though, i will admit i like how the box makes me look EXTRA tough and outdoorsy.

there were a few families with kids, but for the most part they kept their screaming to a low roar. thanks to the tutelage of my friend Emma, i now know enough to always bring an eyemask and earplugs whenever i’m camping so i was content to ignore the din from the camp next door.

bummed out there would be no fire, i pulled out livingston and sang to myself for a while. this was apparently a signal to the attack chiuhauhas from the neighboring camp to come over and alert me of their fierce protective stance. they hopped and barked in outrage at my presumption until i told them solemnly what scary dogs they were and how i was deterred from taking any aggressive action against their families. they seemed contented with this and wandered away. i returned to my strumming and i plucked out the chords to two songs i really like and wanted to figure out how to play, and discovered a chord which led me to the first verse of a new song. it’s not a happy one, so i had to stop writing it when i started dripping tears into the soundhole. played with my nintendo for a while and fell asleep before the sun was even totally down.

NEXT: The Most Volcano Intensive Day of My Life Thusfar

ohmygodmytripisfinallyhereandimleavinginonlyalittleovertwentyfourhours!

deep breaths.

i spent most of my day off yesterday running around doing trip prep. even my lunch date with TBIL ended up detouring to REI so we could buy gear for our respective outdoor jaunts. he needed biodegradable potty paper. i am happy to say, i will not be going QUITE that rustic.  i did buy a super kick ass Benchmark® atlas-cum-recreation guide, nalgene, and RIDONKULOUSLY bright LED flashlight. couldn’t find any pepper spray (which was more for the peace of mind of my loved ones than for me) but the bear repellent was like $45. i’ll take my chances with smokey for that price.

went over and bought a 1/4 cord of firewood, which as it turns out, is WAAAAAAAY more wood than will fit in the cargo box i am borrowing from Mr Pencil. packed spare logs in all the places in the car that wont be likely to send slivers of barkdust into my bed. leaving the rest at home for later use in our little patio firebowl. also seized by the realization that all that time alone in the car is BEGGING for a pack of fancy expensive* smokes. so i stopped at the smoke shack on Foster and procured a package of Nat Sherman Natural Mint Cigarettes. i’ve promised myself i wont smoke one until i’m on the road, but oh, the sheer joy at sliding them across the counter, at holding the square green box in my hands. also, got a bright shiny new lighter of the crack torch variety. heeee hee hee.

spent the rest of the day shopping and packing and organizing and sorting. crates of kitchen items, bags of bathroom stuff. cameras**, ipod, tarot cards & books, guitar, journal, bicycle, knee braces, frisbee (maybe i’ll meet a friendly transient in the wilderness who wants to play?!)***

and all other manner of goodies to try and keep myself occupied on my journey. all needs done now is to fill my spare with air, load everything into Klaus, and roll.

am planning to avoid the internets (assuming i would even have service). may have apoplexy keeping away from twitter. we’ll see….

*turns out my fancy smokes are lots less expensive if i buy them in the ghetto!

**have managed to lose media card for one camera and have only flaky crazy weird wont-turn-on-all-the-time camera plus one disposable film camera to get me through. peeewp.

***maybe this is why i need the pepper spray…