Story time with Carlito Bandito:

So I dropped off of Atkins over the weekend and I am trying to get back on that modified wagon, but I feel like shit. I can’t seem to wake up. I am keeping up with the exercise and I still seem to be losing weight so I guess it’s still working, but as I said I just feel vaguely ill. Maybe a vat of coffee will help. It puts one in the perfect mood for job interviews, not that I have any scheduled.

I hung out with Liz last night. We went bowling at Pin Up, which is the most expensive bowling alley on the planet apparently – too trendy – please give me a dive. Then we had burgers and threw darts over at Blueberry Hill. I’d tell you what’s going on with her, but she’s contemplating starting her own blog soon so she can get you up to speed if she wants to. Oh, we watched I Robot as well, which was fine – lame and predictable eye candy - the video store had only seven minutes of open time when we walked in so that’s how we ended up with the flick.

I’m going to catch a rush hour of Closer at either The Chase or Frontenac with Angela later today. Tomorrow night I’m having dinner at my old coworkers house, Ann, to get caught up on what I’ve been missing these last few months in the land of the new age.

Ann and I have a long odd history and I’m not doing anything else so I guess I’ll lay it on you. Ann and I both grew up on a street here in St. Louis called Arundel Place. Marlin Perkins, of the Mutual of Omaha Sunday morning gazelle hunt fame lived a few doors down from me. It’s a strange neighborhood. On one side of us lived the St. Louis CNN anchor at that time and on the other side there was a pair of New York doctors who were only there on the weekends because it was cheaper for them to live in St. Louis and commute by plane to their New York practice. They also had a very nice Japanese nanny who lived there all the time with the couples two young boys, the very Irish Brian and Patrick spoke fluent Japanese, and they had a Jaguar that was always in the shop – never buy Jaguars they require more maintenance than a VW bug.

Ann and I never met each other, even though our childhood homes were just a few addresses apart, because her family moved away before my family moved in. We first met in my college town, Kirksville. I had been working for several years at a bookstore called Used Books and Unicorns. I had moved on to waiting tables at China Palace, but I still did odd jobs for the owner, like building additional bookcases. Shirley, the owner, brought me upstairs once to meet her new employee Ann, who was the partner of a new temporary faculty member. Hand shake – brief eye contact – that’s it.

Michelle of Columbia will remember Ann at this point because Ann and her partner lived in a brick house on Baltimore Street that Michelle and her then man would take over when Ann and said partner moved to California. Michelle bought some furnishings from Ann when they moved and then when Michelle moved to Columbia she sold some of those furnishings to me.

Flash forward several years. I am teaching part time at Meramec and can’t make a living. The plan had been, since I’d completed my Masters, that it was my turn to sit out and we would move wherever my girlfriend at the time got into graduate school. I think we were together for two and half years in total though to many of our friends it seemed like we’d always been a couple.

She didn’t get in anywhere (eek!) so at the last minute for academic work we decided to move to either Chicago or St. Louis. My sister was then due with my niece Abigail so we thought it would be nice to be close to family and friends that we both had here. I got the part time job at Meramec, was sleeping alternately on Beth’s couch or my sister’s and two weeks into my teaching semester I went back up to the ville and girl and I moved here into the townhouse where I still currently reside.

We moved in August 2001 and by October it was clear I needed a better/different job because we were not making it financially. I saw an advertisement online for a bookstore clerk and called the HAC. Who should answer but Ann. I was interviewed and hired by someone else, but in that first phone conversation it occurred to both of us that we had briefly met at the old Used Books and Unicorns.

Some months after I was working there Ann had a dream about a rug that she had played on as a child. It was a reminder of the relationship that had failed out in California and the indifference with which she had sold several family heirlooms. Not two days later she came over for a Christmas party and was sitting on an ottoman playing guitar when she looked down to see that her family rug, the one she’s played on as a child over on Arundel had found its way through Columbia Michelle to me and now back to her. At some point later I decided to give it to her and left it in her office at work. Diane – if she’s still reading the blog – will recall the day I came if with the rug.

Diane, “What was that?”

Karl, “I don’t have to tell you everything.”

I think I told her later. So tomorrow evening I am going to visit Ann and the rug and hear all about the business that the two of us saved from certain failure and that later would fire me, or as we have established – ask me to fire myself - for not being happy enough. I stayed too long at a stopgap job, should have gotten out when I had a ship to jump to. Ah well, that was then and this is now. So what’s next kids? Temp work!