Every Avenue

I had a really shitty day at work on Friday. I was having an off day to begin with, I kept making small mistakes, and of course, my manager was there breathing down my neck. First, I forgot to put the stupid vitamin drops in the parakeets' water. Apparently I took too long picking the live crickets out from the dead ones, because Johnathan cam over to tell me to hurry, and what do I do? The second he turns around I drop the crickets (mostly dead now) loudly on the floor. After that I dropped the bin of cricket food, and even though it didn't spill much and no one was around I still felt like an ass.

Then came the hard part. On Fridays we count the fish by SKU (so we have to differentiate between the fish) while they're swimming in the tanks. Some are easy because we only have two or three. The rest are almost impossible to get an accurate count. A lot of our fish come from the same genus, so they look very similar with the exception of one or two markings; hard to count. Some fish are all one color (i.e. black) with no markings at all so I can't tell which ones I already counted; hard to count. Some fish (I'm looking at the guppies) swim around so fast that I can't even guess how many are in the tank. Add my inability to count the stupid fucking fish to my completely inability to concentrate on anything recently.

Then there was the stupid hand activated paper towel holder that some idiot mounted half way over the sink. Every time anyone washes dishes it spits the towels out directly into the sink and it's really annoying, so everyone just stuffs the paper towel back into the machine. But, of course, I'm the only who gets in trouble for it. Johnathan patronizingly told me not to do it and then came back out later and told me not to do it again, because apparently Julie did it too. That was really fucking annoying because all my life I've taken the blame for everything everyone else does and I'm really fucking sick of it.

I'm really starting to hate my manager. He's gone mad with power. While I was there he printed 4 sheets of things we're not supposed to do and made us initial it, threatening to write people up for this and that. I know that when the store isn't functioning right, it reflects on him, but he doesn't have to take everything so personally. Everything I mentioned so far happened between the hours of 5 and 11 Friday morning.

After work Steph, Heather, and I went to get autographs of a local band called Every Avenue. We lined up and I was number 9, but the staff gave us numbers and had us move to watch the band perform. The crowd was incredibly unenthusiastic even though the performance was great. When we lined back up for autographs, a bunch of 13 year old girls pushed in front of us despite the number system. I ended up taking off the shirt Heather bought me for my birthday in the store to get it signed, even though Josh is the only member who signed it (again, because of the 13 year old girls), but that's fine.



The next day we went to see them play at the Crofoot Ballroom in Pontiac. It was easy enough to get there, pretty much a straight shot down Hall Road. We got there an hour early and had to stand around in the cold, so Steph and I went across the street to get some coffee and hot chocolate (which came up to be $13.73 for 4 smalls). We huddled there for the rest of the time and watched the bands unload their stuff.

Four other bands played before Every Avenue, and they were all pretty good. I completely forgot the name of the first band, but the second band was was called Brandenberg and I really liked them. The lead vocalist and the guitarist (I think he was the guitarist) were twin brothers. Steph bought their CD and we listened to it for a while in the car. The third performer was a funny girl with a really great voice and a band called Charlotte Sometimes. The fourth band was mediocre and played some techno.





The rest of the show was great and I had a really good time. I'm really glad I went.