I got up so early this morning that it might as well have been last week to go to work for the busiest shopping day of the year. I figured it was a good way to score points with the managers so they'll let me stay on as a permanent employee after the holiday season ends and the mall takes down it's nearly twenty-seven miles of weather-proof garland and lights. I had to park way away from the store because apparently the mall rent-a-cops told all the merchants that nobody can park anywhere near where they work because the parking is needed for shoppers. (I swear, when the Old Navy/ Yankee Candle store Allied People's Labor Front finally builds a barricade and rebels, I'll take up arms with them.) So, after marching back to the store in weather so cold it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey, I clock in and proceed to start shelving books. Of course, nobody told me the proper way to organize the sections until I had messed up, but that's how everybody there learned. Two hours later, the store was ready to open and I was set to run a cash register for the next six hours. It wasn't so bad, though, because I got to work with Dawn the extrovert. That's not her real last name, obviously, because I can't spell her last name. My imagined surname is apt, though. She spent the early morning compensating for my cold dead silence by talking about anything that came to mind, and we built a conversation on this somehow. Business was steady throughout the morning without being nuts like I thought it would be. Even the food court at lunch was pretty calm. I had two giant slices of matza-thin pizza from the pizza place with the cool employees for lunch, and then back to work. By the time I left, my shoe heel pad inserts had slipped down into my arches, giving the sensation that I was walking on jello. I was hungry and tired and tired of being hungry and cold. What's the best remedy for this? Why, Mexican food! One hour and a veggie combo "e" later I was good to go. I ended up going back to Barnes and Noble to buy Thickfreakness by the Black Keys. It's a CD I've wanted for a long time, and since I just got my first paycheck, I bought it. Don't worry, it's published by Epitaph, who is not a member of the riaa.

I'm free this weekend, so I plan to go looking to try to figure out what to get people for Christmas, as well as what I might want. I really can't think of anything, though. There's a book I saw at work that looks cool, but that's about it. Ah well, no matter. Any meaning in this season that can't be gleaned from the Peanuts Christmas special isn't worth my time.