Death of an Interior Decorator

To begin with, two crazy stories:

A woman came into the cleaners (Brookside, not Foxhill) the other day to pick up a lot of her winter things so she could put them in storage. To thank us for such a good job, she gave us a box of strawberries! How nice (plus, they were delicious). Then she asked to use the phone to call a cab. OK, awesome.

So we wait for a while, no cab. Finally one comes by, but it’s not the right company. Then it comes by again. The lady figures that maybe she was just confused, and maybe that really is her cab. So she goes out there, and the cab stops. Then, in a weird twist of fate, two people get out of the back of the cab! The lady kinda freaks out, and starts backing towards the Cleaner’s building. The two young women that got out start following her!

Suddenly, she’s back inside, telling them she just doesn’t feel comfortable with it all, and they’re giving her trouble, yelling back out to the driver that “she say she ain’t interested.” To which the woman replies, “that sounds terrible! That’s not what I mean, it’s just…” But these two women will not leaver her alone. So? So I lay down the smack. I go out in front of my little counter that separates employees from customers, and I tell the women that it’s fine, and they should leave. “Really, it’s OK. We’ll take care of it.”

They left. I felt slightly useful and assertive.
The old woman then clarified to Chris (the other person working at the time) and I that when she went outside, the man said the two young ladies were his daughters, and he was just taking them home from school [At 5 PM in July, shyeah, RIGHT]. They then offered to “wait at the cleaners, so you can ride alone with our dad.” Which just sounds like all kinds of wrong.

I was surprised at the woman’s unwillingness to get into the cab. She trusted her gut, and it paid off. We called the cab company back, and they said they hadn’t even sent anyone yet. So that whole dad-daughter combo was just trying to scam a fare! Gryah. Creepy. Eventually the lady’s REAL cab did come, and Chris and I each got a dollar tip, which never happens ever.

It was exciting.
About as exciting as dry cleaning gets, honestly.
[Some other guy came in and made a big fuss, but it’s not that great a story, so I digress.]

The other story comes from directly after Ethan and I saw Live Free or Die Hard, two nights ago. Let me preface this by saying that this movie is terrific. The story is really solid, and I actually enjoyed the way the characters were formed throughout. You got a little bit of an idea as to why John McClane is the way he is, as well as what’s been going on since he was a big ol’ mess in Die Hard, With a Vengeance.

Struby and I were at a 9 PM showing of the film. Factor in 16 minutes of previews to a 2 hour, 15 minute movie, plus a bit of the credits, and we were getting out somewhere around 11:34. We come out and all of a sudden, there’s like, some kindof mob. The hallway was jam-packed with people. Ethan voiced his bemusement at what they were all doing there. I told him (albeit with a dash of profanity) that it was because of Harry Potter. We slowly started to work our way through the giant crowd.

Only then did I understand the gravity of the situation. The crowd went way far back, an insane amount; it was going to take FOREVER to get out of the theater. Plus that meant working our way through a myriad of robe-clad pre-teens and their disgruntled “muggle” parents. It was here that I remembered that they normally have exit only doors near the furthest theaters, like the one we were in. I spun around, beginning to panic, and I saw that glowing EXIT sign back where we came out.

“Ethan, exit!” I shouted. We both turned around and quickly started to back track. However, the space that was open when we exited was quickly closing up with a mass of Potter-ites. I began to run, dreading becoming trapped by the crowd. Ethan frantically yelled after me, “Run Tom, run!”

And run I did.
But something was wrong.
The Potter-ites were getting angry, even hostile-looking.

“Heeeeeey! No cutting!” I heard from behind us.
Oh dear god, I thought. It’s like coming between a mother grizzly and her cubs. Except the cub is a highly anticipated blockbuster sequel wizard film, and the grizzly is its teeming mass/mob of fans. I knew we didn’t have long. I ran faster.

*slam* We threw the exit door open and slammed it shut behind us. After which we preceded to laughed the entire way to the car. It was that funny. And so I’ll always remember that as the time I almost saw Harry Potter 5 at the midnight showing.

I ate an entire box of macaroni and cheese this afternoon.
The immense feeling of regret concerning that decision is indistinguishable from the weird feeling I have in my tummy right now. I hope I’m going to be alright.

[Author/Editor’s Note: Here, I pushed the ‘post’ button. The browser hung, so I copied the text you see above, and closed the window. Upon re-logging in, I tried to edit my posts. Greymatter tersely informed me that “there [were] are no posts to edit yet!” I preceded to freak out for about five minutes before booting up my FTP to assess the damage, which turned out to be localized to the core of GM, but quite extensive in its destruction!

The following post is what I used for a temporary index from the 13th to the 14th:]

Tragedy struck yesterday. In a terrible accident resulting in some crazy mis-posting, I effectively killed GreyMatter. AGAIN. Please recall this previously happening sometime in the past. It escapes me when, but I assuredly remember the feeling. It’s crucial to remember that the software’s pretty dated. The last official release was sometime in 2001 if I’m reading the literature correctly. Noah Grey stopped supporting it the next year. Just this past year the official forums went offline in an attempt to kill the project. A dedicated few of us solidered on, and tried to keep the project alive. Alas, this is where we part, sweet Greymatter.

You are too easy to break, and I know next to zilch about PERL, so fixing you is just not an option. In the end, everything’s still here, all the old entries that is, but it’s just a shell for what it once was. I assure you the inside is quite dead, and I cannot fix it, nor update anything new at all. And thus, we enter into another one of these delightful intermediaries whereby I do not post not becuase I am lazy (as per usual) but becasue I’m fixing the site.

I’ll be attempting a bold switch-over to the much newer, much fancier, much more popular WordPress. It comes well recommended, and has the ONE feature I need: timestamp editing. This way I’ll be able to load in the guts of the old entires, and change the timestamps to the correct date and time. Once this is all said and done, I should be able to pick up where I left off. You’ll even get to see the entry that served as the final nail in Greymatter’s coffin.

How entirely morbid.
In any case, I’ll be coding for most of the next few days, with classical music being pumped into my ears to keep me from having intermediate freak-out-sessions. We’ll see how it goes!