i used to move furniture.

i've done a lot of crappy jobs, by crappy i mean that the moving job was just one of several that i've had that are really just the kind that a person does during high school and college to make a bit of extra money. none of them are at all anything that you want to do, you do them because you'd rather not choose between putting gas in the car or going grocery shopping or you just don't want to bug your parents for money. when i say "done" a lot of crappy jobs, i mean worked at, although i'm sure that i've done lots of work that could be qualitatively described as "crappy," my grades in high school can attest to that. i don't guess that that's either here or there, but maybe if i'd made better grades then i could have scored an internship or something a bit less menial.

to be really honest, even though i'm describing them as crappy jobs, i quite enjoyed all of them, but then maybe that's because they fall victim to a sort of enhanced and romanticized memory syndrome. there was the maintenance man deal that i did during the summers in high school making five bucks an hour. it was rough, and some days it was ridiculous, like the day we had to dig an eighty yard trench in 105 degree heat, but i think if i hadn't spent those summers doing that, me and dunx probably wouldn't be the friends that we are. i delivered pizza which was cool, which basically entailed me getting paid to drive my car, the hours were crappy, but the money was really good, i'd never make less than twelve bucks an hour and on a good night i'd clear twenty an hour easily. other that that, there was the summer i worked at 7-11, not behind the counter, that woulda been sweet, but their corporate headquarters is in dallas, so i worked in the office there, sorting and filing, it was postitively mind-numbing.

so then there was the moving. it wasn't like any of the other ones, mostly because i wasn't locked in to a schedule with it. i knew a guy who had a truck and whenever he had a job and needed help, he'd give me a call. there was that and the fact that he paid fifteen bucks an hour and in cash, which, even though he was kind of a jerk, made him my favorite person quite frequently. one job that i did for him was a two day job, in which the first day was twelve hours and the second day was another four hours. i made nearly three hundred dollars on that job, most of which could be used discretionarily, so i decided to put a cd player in my car. given my pretty soild distaste for pretty much anything on the radio, which on my somewhat frequent dallas to chicago trips would be compounded by the fact that the airwaves for the duration of the trip were filled with little more than third rate country music, i figured that it would be a pretty reasonalble expense.

that's pretty much exactly what it's turned out to be. it's played my cds for going on five years now, sparing me the chore of wading through cruddy radio station after cruddy radio station in search of a song that doesn't absolutely suck, and ensuring that i would the only radio i'd listen to would be from America's favorite radio station which i can only do in the car in dallas anyway. here lately though, it's not been cooperating with me, and it's been arbitrarily spitting my cds back out on arbitrary, but consistent occasions. i've tried the lens cleaner and everything like that, and nothing's worked. i don't really want to replace it, but i'm at a loss as to what else will get it to work.

at least i don't have to move furniture to get a new one.

feeling: strained
thinking of: ashley
music: "bob" NOFX