THE JO-TEL …believes some of what Nathaniel and John say, but believes England is still our sovreign

It’s hard work being on vacation. Hard as a motherfucker. It’s 8:14 am, and I’m outside on the porch waiting for the FedEx guy to get here. He came yesterday at 8:41, and I missed him by 7 minutes. I walked all the way home from my girlfriend’s place in North Beach with a hangover that would kill someone even slightly less awesome than I, and as I walked up the steps I saw it in my peripheral vision: the dreaded Door Tag. What the hell, man?! I jus–

Oh, hi Shanny D. Morning. Yeah, it’s rough; I’m just writing about it right now actually. Yeah, totally. Thanks, I will; you too.

Anyway, yeah, so the FedEx guy… ridiculous. Little known fact: those guys are like the ninjas of the delivery world [FN1]. They strike with surgical precision, and they’re quiet as hell when they do. Also, they carry swords [FN2].

Hmm… perhaps I’ve started a little too far in media res. Let me back up a bit for those of you who haven’t heard:

I quit my job. It’s awesome. I resigned one Monday morning just over a month ago, and my last day was a week ago. It’s actually surprising how great it feels to leave a job that you don’t like. Maybe “don’t like” is a little bit of an understatement; I “didn’t like” it so much that I quit without another job to transition into; I guess you could say that I “hated working there so much that I’d been losing several hours of sleep a night from the stress of being so overworked and underpaid”.

But not anymore: I recently accepted a position at a small PR & marketing firm, and I start on July 2 (although I have a meeting next Wednesday). It’s sick. I’ll travel a little, get paid more, and be doing what I actually want to do: client-oriented PR (as opposed to the in-house PR I’ve been doing the last few years).

So I’ve pretty much been chilling out the last few days. Didn’t do shit on Monday except read; walked around The City, got glasses, and got faded Tuesday; walked around The City and got faded Wednesday night; spent Thursday hungover, then went drinking with Raph at The Bucc. Which brings us back to this morning, and the FedEx guy…

…who still isn’t here at 8:44. What the fuck, son? I called yesterday morning when I got the Door Tag, and they said they’d have you come back around later on; they even called me back and said that you’d told them you’d be back between 10:30 and 2. Guess when you showed up.

Exactly.

So I’m out here like a dumbass waiting for the package that sorta-came yesterday and then didn’t, waiting for Sir Lies-a-lot to get his ass back here, unable even to walk to the Peet’s around the corner for a cof–

Holy shit, it’s the FedEx guy. And only 30 minutes after I came out here. He must be like Beetlejuice: you say FedEx three times and suddenly he appears. Hold on a sec…

[This is where the hold music starts… maybe a little Yeah Yeah Yeahs, maybe some Sex Pistols, maybe even some Caetano Veloso; who knows - this isn’t a phone, you’re not really on hold, and there’s not actually any music playing right now.]

Nice. Got my shit. Now all I have to do is wrap it (it’s a present) and go back to sleep for two hours. And then it’s off to Berkeley with Raph to stone-cold kick it in the warm sun and brainstorm ideas for my first work meeting next week.

It’s so much work having nothing to do: the drinking, the FedEx-waiting, the sleeping, the drinking, the brainstorming, the drinking… I’m starting to understand how Hip E. felt when he was unemployed for six months with nothing to do but eat pizza and make his bedroom smell like bologna. It sounds like a cake walk, but it’s more like a Long March in buckle shoes.

Now if you’ll pardon me, this nap isn’t gonna take itself.

-Thrill

FN1: More of a “lie” than a “fact”, really.
FN2: See FN1.