Uncle Bob's Diary O' Chuckles

LOVE. EXCITING AND NEW. COME ABOARD. WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.

I'm in love.

It's the kind of love that finds you skipping through fields of flowers ... yellow flowers ... yellow flowers that some people refer to as "daisies" ... a field of daisies.

It's the kind of love that finds you under the covers of your bed at 2 a.m., whispering sweet nothings to your lover on the telephone so as to not wake the rest of the people of the house.

It's the kind of love that would make it simple to press the barrel of a gun hard against a man's temple if he dared to insult your lover even in jest.

I love my new/old job.

Which, after a long debate with my id and super ego, I have decided to just start referring to as "my job".

No more "new/old".

It's just "my job".

Gosh.

Just typing it makes me love it even more.

My job.

My job.

My job.

Mineus. Jobbus.

My job.

I show up for the first day at my job yesterday at 8:30.

Nobody's there. It's all locked up.

I grab the morning newspaper on the steps of my job's building and read that.

It's 9 a.m.

Still nobody there.

THIS is what I love about my job.

We're supposed to open at 8:30, but people get there WHEN THEY FEEL LIKE IT.

Finally at 9:15 a.m., the bookkeeper shows up and lets me in.

The sports editor didn't show up at all yesterday.

The sales manager was there for all of ten minutes before she left for the day.

The boss came in at 10 am, dressed in sweats and said he had to go take a stress test and would be back about 4 p.m.

I took it upon myself to do some work on the computer, fixing some things that have been bugging me about the look of the paper.

Drunk Assed Jamie showed up at 11:30 and said "Let's go have lunch".

So we went up to a popular lunch spot and ate lunch.

Came back to the office and a lady walked in and handed me tickets to a fancy party taking place Saturday night and said that they would LOVE to have me there.

Me??

Piss Boy???

You want Piss Boy at your fancy party attended by locally famous people like TV news anchors and city council people?

I took the tickets, thanked her and told her I'd "try" to make it.

I'm not going because by Saturday night I'm usually exhausted and go to bed before 9:00.

But it just reminded me that when you work for the local newspaper whose main attraction is the society pages ... you get invited to everything when you're the news guy.

Piss Boy was never invited.

But News Editor Guy is.

I love my job.

So Drunk Assed Jamie and I spent the afternoon checking on all the newspaper racks we have around town because I swore that most of them were dead and abandoned.

And they were.

Soooooo...she's fired.

I don't have to fire her. Drunk Assed Jamie is doing that today.

Then Drunk Assed Jamie is taking over the route which is fine with me until I find out he hasn't been delivering the papers either.

Then it's my turn to run the route which is also fine because part of my pay stems from the sales of the newspaper and I'm about the only one who'll make damned sure papers get where they need to be.

The best part of the day came at the end of the day.

The Boss was hanging around the office.

He found a desk that's right outside the bathroom that nobody uses.

"Do you want this desk?" he asked.

"Not really," I said. "I thought I'd just sit back in the news room with the rest of you."

"No," he said. "You're going to need an office."

"Give him YOUR office, Dad," Drunk Assed Jamie hiccupped.

The Boss smiled.

"If you wanna clean it up, it's yours," he said, sweeping his arms around his immensely cluttered office.

I hesitated.

"I think that may be something we can tackle together," I said. "I don't want to throw away anything you might need."

"How about the sales office?" he said. "There's an extra desk in there."

Earlier I had met the sales manager who was only in the office for ten minutes.

She had asked me if I was going to share her office with her and at the time I said "no" because I thought I'd be back where I used to be for ten years ... at a desk in the news room.

But the Boss said I could take the extra desk that the sales manager had been using to lay out all her junk on as my own desk.

This has always been my favorite office in the building because it's dark in there and the only lighting are little lamps on the two desks. I just always found it cozy in there but never did I think it'd be my office.

So I'm sharing an office with the sales manager which is cool because the sales manager is never there for any lengthy periods of time.

Today I have to get familiar with all the computer stuff which won't be hard.

I'm going to a local school to take pictures of their career expo.

And snapping some photos around town of whatever I can find that needs photos snapped.

I'll probably stroll in around 9 a.m.

10 a.m. if I feel like taking my time.

God.

Welcome home, Bobby.