Return Of The King
Shortly before Christmas, Lori and I want to the pet store and Lori saw a guinea pig she totally fell in love with. We already had our hands full with two, but we got this one as well. It was female, so we would put it together with my oldest guinea pig, Nova. That was the one I had since I first moved to Colorado. We named this one P-Chan after the character in a Japanese Anime called Ranma ½. She was very shy and drove Nova crazy.
Lori, holding our newset edition as a curious Nala looks on
Around this time the company Lori worked for was having their annual Christmas party. This year, the party was actually at a VIP area in a local live music venue.
Brian Setzer and his Orchestra was having a Holiday concert where he mixed his hits in with Christmas songs. The concert was great and I got to meet some of Lori’s co-workers. One of these co-workers was a guy named Chris. He seemed nice enough, he worked in their IT department and seemed to fit the part in many ways. Lori seemed keen on getting me to like him by the way she would express what similar interests we had. I didn’t think much about it. My biggest concern was going back to New York for the holidays for the first time since moving to Colorado.
Of course, the one time I go back to New York without Lori, Jen, the girl I have been crazy about for forever was around most of the week. We hung out a lot. When Lori came with me, she was never available. Lori always joked that I never wanted her to meet Jen, even though I talked about her all the time. And who knows, maybe sub-consciously it was true.
In the middle of the week, as a Christmas present, my parents flew me up to Rochester to visit my brothers. We had agreed to go to the midnight showing of "Return Of The King" that Thursday night.
They picked me up from the airport and took me directly to their office. I was excited to see my older brother’s business in full swing. What a disaster. Everything was disorganized. There were only three people that worked there. My older brother, my younger brother, and a girl that worked as their receptionist. I think her name was Michelle.
Michelle was so excited to meet me after hearing all the stories about me from my younger brother. When I got there she started asking me questions.
"How was your flight?" It was good.
"Where did you land?" Odd… the Rochester airport.
"They let you? Did you have any problems?" Weird… there is snow on the ground, but isn’t there always up here…
Then came questions about my job. Each question was more peculiar and then my brother interjected that I don’t like giving details about what I do. It was only later that I found out she thought I was a drug smuggler pilot from Colorado that was planning to land my prop plane on a little used highway outside of town. Naturally, my I-Don’t-Know-How-To-Answer-These-Questions looks I gave her only fueled this belief.
I wanted to help organize their office. Spending a few hours there allowed me to see the disfunction. My older brother spent the day on the phone arguing with Yvonne, the girl whom he recently told me he was engaged to back in November due to some pact they made in high school and then later found out had become pregnant. My other brother was on the phone talking about music and things relating to his band and the receptionist was sleeping or passed out ith her head on the desk. I thought to myself, if any of them put in a full day at work things would be more organized. All they had me doo was put invoices in different piles in the other room.
That night I told Kevin and Tommy as much. Tommy said he would if Kevin would take this seriously and pay him. I asked Kevin about the girl. This is when I found out about my job as a drug runner and felt I should set the record straight. Kevin told me that she told him she would be at work tomorrow so it should be good. I asked him if it was normal for her to tell him when she would be coming to work as opposed to when she was going to be out and he explained she worked two jobs and was a bartender at T.G.I F. as well, so she was exhausted. He was making excuses for her.
We saw the movie. The next day she wasn’t at work. She didn’t call either. Her boss from her other job did. Kevin told him that she would have her call when she got there. By 3, when she hadn’t come to work, he called her to tell her to call her other boss. Really, Kevin, really?
By the time I left, I told Kevin to E-mail me the billing info, and I would create invoices. His major problem was he wasn’t billing anyone for the services he was providing. This clown could have been making a lot of money. He did the same thing with his paper route. He collected money to pay what he owed and everyone else got the newspaper for free.
When I got back to CO I would create invoices while sitting at my desk at the bank and things ran smoothly… for awhile.
asked him point blank if he liked the girl and he said he did. After that, she had locked herself in Dan and his wife, Casey’s guest room for a few weeks feeling really depressed. I hated thinking of her that way. I called her right away.
Years later, I brought the guinea pig thing up to Dan. He said he used that example because it was in a movie he had just seen, but I had seen and watched that movie since and there was no such quote.