My Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Adventure into Sleeplessness.

So I had to work Sunday morning at 4 am. First of all, there should never be anything that you have to do at 4 am other than sitting on your ass or partying. Second of all, if something IS to be open that early (ie. restaurants) they should only be managed by robot waiters. No one should be forced to get up that early... Well, anyway... For about the last month or so, I have been going to bed at about 4 am and then waking up around noon. This put an odd spin to my early morning shift. I decided to simply stay up and go straight to work, mostly because I was invited to go to a Clash tribute show at the West End Cultural Centre. I then reasoned that it would be to my own personal benefit to sleep longer saturday morning. It should be put forward that this is next to impossible in my house, as my parents are really annoying. I have begun to keep my door closed in a vain attempt to block out SOME of the noise they make in the morning. It doesn't work. It can't block out things like: my mom making screeching noises in order to get my dog excited and barking, my dad coming into my room to get the soft towel for cleaning glasses for the sole purpose of cleaning MY glasses which are sitting on my dresser, my dog forcing the door open with her nose to root around in my garbage can for food (of which there is only dirty kleenex), my dad using the computer in the room next to me (our computer is kinda loud), my mom vacuuming the downstairs, my parents watching movies downstairs, my mom walking (she walks really loudly).....ARGH... I think you get the idea. Maybe all of this doesn't sound so bad to you, but I also have to contend with my parents coming into my room and asking me questions like: "are you feeling ok?" , "when do you have to go to work today?", "Is your car ok?" , "where did you go last night?" etc. It is a physical impossibility to sleep past 10 am in my house. The solution that I have come up with is to be really rude and grumpy in the morning to them so that they don't want to talk to me anymore. Unfortunately this has not deterred them. It has only made them respond to be snappy answers with comments like "gee you're grumpy in the morning!" or "you're not really a morning person!" DOUBLE ARGH!!
I seem to have gone off on a tangent here... oh well. My point is that I wanted to sleep longer but couldn't. My friends and I rushed out to the Clash tribute show, finding out at the last minute that it started at 8 pm not 10 pm only to find it sold out. So tossing a few ideas around, all-girl punk show, movie, etc. We settled on going to see Big Fish. The problem was that it didn't start till 10:10 pm, so we had a bit of a wait. Luckily Grant Park shopping centre has a Zellers and a McNally Robinson to kill time in. Zellers was closing in 10 minutes so we had to cut that short, although I did see a former co-worker from back in the day. It's been nigh 2 years since I left there! McNally was really packed. We looked at lots of books.... One thing that I noticed and I don't think my friends did was this guy sitting in one of the chairs there reading. We came into that section (Canadian and World Politics) and started looking at books and talking. He shot us a SUPER angry and indignant look, like WE were interrupting his reading and should leave. I didn't mention anything then because the place is a freakin' store, not a library. Eventually, in a huff mind you, he left (still shooting us a dirty look.) What a cock!
Once finished there, we proceeded to Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up some reasonably priced snacks for the movie. My buddy Jay bought a bag of oreos. Double Stuffed ones to boot (Jay is a larger fellow). He then stuffed them down his pants... Dave carries around a European Carry-All (ie. purse) so was able to hide his beverages, while I had to stuff mine into my jacket. I bought some Reese's bites and a vanilla coffee beverage. I didn't want to because it was a Starbucks drink and I don't support them, but I needed something with caffeine and did not feel like a soft drink. I took off the seal and stuffed it into my coat, not realizing that I had also loosened the cap! It was with good fortune that I am so slick that I was able to prevent any serious spillage into my pocket. Then I said "screw it" and just chugged the whole thing anyway...
That led to the viewing of Big Fish, which you can read about from yesterday. Following that we went to Jay's place to hang out for a while, since I needed to be at work for 4 anyway and no one was tired. The problem with Jay's place is that there is nowhere to park nearby that is not a snow route. The city has an overnight parking ban on all snow routes and I didn't feel like paying another 35$ ticket. The best thing that we have found to do is to park in a deserted lot a few blocks away and walk. The lot used to be a building until it was torn down. Now its free parking baby! (except in the day time). So at Jay's we decided to watch "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (original) as Terena had never seen it and it is one of Jay's favourite movies. That was fun.
So then comes the time when I had to go to work. The security guard wouldn't let us in without approval from his boss, so we had to wait for a while. The good thing was that there was nothing really to do anyway, so we just sat around making 13$ an hour. Once we DID get in, we found that the crew from the previous night had left us a bunch of work that they should have done. Unfortunately it required the use of the forklift, which neither me nor Darryl (my co-early shifter) could use. Darryl decided to give it a shot. Watching someone struggle to use a forklift is strangely funny at 4 am. Anyway... eventually someone came in who could use it and we had a fairly uneventful rest of the shift. Two notable events were Anna (more on her later) getting on her bus to go to Central America for 6 months and the crew getting shit loads of Bacon and Egg McMuffin's. (I hate McDonalds but was REALLY hungry...)
So now my shift is over and I think "I wonder what it will be like to stay up another whole day??" On "Downtown" Alex started to have hallucinations! That would be kinda cool! So I drive home gradually falling more and more asleep. Once I walked in the door though, that all changed, as I was greeted with my parents asking questions like "where were you last night?" , "what's wrong with your hand that you couldn't call?" , "where did you change?" , "why didn't you leave a note?" etc. etc. etc. TRIPLE ARGH!!! I am freakin' 23 years old now... Is it really necessary that I constantly tell them everything?? Should I really have to ensure that they always know where I am and what I am doing? Maybe I am wrong here, I don't know... Anyway, I was instantly annoyed so I totally forgot about my plan and ended up going to bed anyway...
I like it when you don't give the obvious ending to something that people have been expecting forever. But only when that ending still makes sense.