Seventy-one years ago, today.

Time doesn’t fly, though — it feels much, much longer.

I sometimes wonder, as I’m thinking on blogging, how it would be if I could read future entries. If twenty-six year old me, writing my first, horrible post way back on September 1st, 2004, would devour my posts from the last few years trying to decipher what city I was living in, where I worked, and most importantly, how much I made. I know that thirty-two year old me would happily devour blog posts leading up to my twelfth blogiversary (heaven help us all) for clues about how my life turns out.

In any case: six years! I’m not going quite as strong as I used to be, and the passion for multiple posts a day just isn’t here anymore, but I can’t say I’ll be giving up blogging any time soon.

Now, can I ask everyone to join together in a chorus of “Happy Blogiversary?” Thanks!

Previously, Borders’ Rewards programs was pretty basically summed up: get coupons once or twice a week (usually 33% off list price for one item), and $5 back when you spent $150. That program is sticking around, but there’s a new premium (i.e., pay for it) version called Plus. Here’s the breakdown:

Free Program:
Coupons for use in-store and online.
You will receive $5 in Borders Bucks for the first $150 spent in store (annually). After that, you will receive $5 for every $100. (The $5 for $100 part is new!)
30% List Hardcover Bestsellers
Free Shipping from Borders.com on orders of $25 or more (or orders shipped to the store for pickup).

Borders Plus ($20 a year):
Coupons for use in-store and online.
You will receive $5 in Borders Bucks for the first $150 spent in store (annually). After that, you will receive $5 for every $100.
40% List Hardcover Bestsellers
20% off select hardcovers
10% off most everything else purchase price (in addition to other discounts)
Free Shipping from Borders.com on all orders (regardless of order price).

Well, I was tired of using “Hey, Barnes & Nobles charges for their membership program!” anyway.

On the bright side, as an employee, I’m automatically enrolled in the Plus program … for free. See that extra 10% bit? Yeah, that works on top of my discount. So, if I buy a $10 book, my discount takes it down to $6.70, and then I get that extra .67 cents off. Can you say awesome?

My wallet certainly can’t!

So, sad face.

On the other hand, if you saw what I ate this last weekend, you’d be happy only to have gained back a pound too! So, happy face!

These are the names of a coworker’s car, and another’s bicycle.

My bike is named My Bike. No, really.

Okay, no, not at all.

This is my bike:

I bought it shortly after I moved to DC. Okay, granted, it’s spent most of the last two years collecting dust in my building’s basement. But as I’ve been losing weight and spending time on, among other things, exercise bikes, I’ve been wanting to ride again. Truthfully, I haven’t ridding a bicycle regularly in fourteen years.

Oh, and also? Riding a bike in DC scares the crap out of me. But I’ve got a helmet, and I’m willing to give it a try.

Unfortunately …

You might notice the front tire is completely flat. You might also notice there’s a bike pump behind the bicycle. Anyway, both tires were flat when I pulled it out of the basement. The back tire inflated — the front tire? Not so much.

Checking on Twitter for bike shop repair facilities, I was recommended to venture out to City Bikes in Adams Morgan. Describing the tire’s failure to inflate, it was suggested the problem is most likely the inner tube, which’ll need to be replaced.

So, um, anyone know about how much that’ll run? I’d like to get the work done early this coming Saturday so that I can do some biking Sunday and Monday mornings.

Wow, what might’ve been!

This is for three reasons:

1. I am an intelligent adult who believes wholeheartedly in the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free expression, and freedom of religion.

2. While I don’t always succeed at this, I try not to tar people with the same brush: in other words, just because person of group A did this to me, does not mean all people of group A would behave in the same manner.

3. I actually know Muslims in real life. SHOCKING!

I mean – how far away does the mosque have to be to pacify the opponents? Because honestly, it seems so ridiculous. First people were upset that it was at Ground Zero, then when they found out it was two blocks from Ground Zero they started protesting that now, it was just too close (okay, but before you were upset that it was AT Ground Zero, so shouldn’t you be happy?). For me, honestly, all this shows is the base fears of the people protesting the mosque: they don’t care where it is, as long as it’s not built anywhere in New York City, I betcha.

Recently, I came across this post on UDoTheDishes, and wow, did it piss me off:

So where does that leave us? Unlike many of you, I live outside the DMV but spent most of my youth there. You DC people care mightily about politics, the media, Chelsea’s wedding, wine tasting, Georgetown cupcakes, traffic, getting a corner office overlooking the Potomac or how to make a living as a civilian in a defense industry/political world. I don’t. I don’t care about any of it because I’m still dealing with the Confederate flag. I live in South Carolina, a state that still flies the Confederate flag on the State House lawn and where full-sized replicas fly in the beds of trucks. Hell, I even saw a girl draped in a real one heading home from the beach one day; not a flag towel or flag blanket, a real Confederate flag held together with clothespins.

Are all the people who support flying the flag racist? No, they’re not. Is everyone who says that the Confederate flag represents a heritage that supported limited government, states’ rights and true capitalism simply denying the fact that the south housed slaves? No, they aren’t. Believe it or not, not every white person in the South from 1609 – 1863 owned a slave! Was everyone fighting for the South fighting to uphold slavery? No they weren’t. But, were there a ton of racists in the South during the Civil War; was the South comprised of many prejudice white people who owned slaves; did many in the Confederate army fight for the belief that white people were in all ways better than black people? Yes, yes, and yes! And does the Confederate flag symbolize, to our society and to our world, one of the darkest times in our country’s history where we treated people who didn’t look like us with hatred and ill-will? Absolutely. There’s no debating it.
Food for Thought: The same argument that keeps the flag flying in South Carolina is going to allow a mosque to be built near Ground Zero. There may not be a comparison between slavery-9/11 or how 9/11 killed 2,000 and the Confederates killed untold numbers of slaves, or that there is no real debate between religious freedom vs “racist freedom”, but please keep it all in perspective.

The writer seems confused here (or maybe it’s just me). Not all Muslims hijacked airplanes and flew them into buildings on September 11th. In fact, given that there are close to a billion Muslims on the planet, the majority (by an extremely vast amount) did not. However, all (or most) of the people who choose to drape Confederate symbols from their trucks or iron Confederate symbols onto their clothes, make a conscious choice in what they display, and what that says about them. (And if they don’t, they should be more aware: ever seen someone with a tattoo of Asian characters that they got because they “thought it looked cool?”, and it really said “Hi, I’m a jackass and a whore”? It’s that kind of situation).

I recognize that what one thing means to me, it does not necessarily mean to others. So I’m willing to listen to the writer’s argument that the flag represents a “heritage”, I agree that the flag symbolizes “one of the darkest times in our country’s history where we treated people who didn’t look like us with hatred and ill-will”.

Now let me tell you how I view the Confederate flag (in all of their many forms): I view it as an endorsement of a failed attempt to destroy this country. It is the flag of traitors, and rebels. And while I’m sure a great many simply followed it out of, I’m sure, a well meaning sense of patriotism, that doesn’t make it right. Not all Southerners were Confederates: they were large pockets of Unionists in the South (hello, West Virginia! Tennessee! Jones County!), and obviously, the Confederates themselves would reject the notion that black men and women were within their self-identified group.

And it wasn’t just any attempt to destroy this country. The Civil War almost crushed this nation. Not the Nazis, not the Japanese, not the British nor the Soviets came as close to defeating America as the Confederacy did. This is not a situation that only one side or the other deserves all the blame for, but whatever the Confederacy could have become, the United States of America, as we know it today, would have failed if the CSA didn’t die in the mud of Appomattax. Whatever that country could have been doesn’t matter, it will never be.

And those today who wear the flags and symbols of the Confederacy make a conscious choice, knowing full well what the Confederacy stood for, to wear those emblems. They cloak their intentions in heritage, but the heritage and the legacy they stand for was the downfall of the country we all live in today.

And then there’s this:

The flag flying isn’t physically hurting anyone, neither is a mosque being built near Ground Zero. Each has a right to be in established, each is granted that freedom under our laws, and each alludes to a heritage/history that is not 100% violent or 100% racist or 100% sexist or 100% wrong.

America grants freedoms, it’s what is so wonderful about our country. But isn’t it ok to draw the line somewhere? Isn’t it ok to know your kids may test the limits of drinking in high school but not be providers of the alcohol?

One would think that if a line were going to be drawn somewhere, it would be drawn to prevent the display of the symbol of traitors and rebellion. But it isn’t: and why? Because of the First Amendment. And because Americans do not have the right not to be offended.

So if the First Amendment allows for the protection of the symbol of what damn well came close to actually destroying the United States, it should certainly allow for a group of religious folks, affiliated only in the most broad of categories with the zealots on those airplanes on September 11th, to build a center in New York City where they can exercise their Constitutionally given rights to worship their religion.

Here’s some Food for Thought: Just as it would be unfair to identify me, a Catholic (albeit, a long-term non practicing one), as being a terrorist based on the alleged conduct of Father James Chesney, suspected in a 1972 bombing in Belfast, so it is unfair to identify a person of the Muslim faith as being complicit, or approving, of the 9/11 hijackings. And yet, that’s exactly what the opposition of the mosque does: hey, you know what? Those hijackers? They were human beings, too, certainly that makes me just as complicit as they in the attacks. And if the opponents of the mosque are successful in urging lawmakers to pass rules preventing the mosque’s construction, they will have successfully pissed on the First Amendment, and utilized identity politics over, you know, that whole “Freedom” thing they so often claim to cherish, yet conveniently forget to practice.

And if some jackass decides to wrap himself in a Confederate flag at Glenn Beck’s little soiree on Saturday and run up and down the Lincoln Memorial steps? Hey, it’ll make me proud to see him allowed to exercise that freedom. But I’ll make sure to point him to the National Archives Metro stop (conveniently located on the Green and Yellow lines) when he’s seeking to depart the National Mall.

I walked home four out of five nights from the Bookstore (Wednesday I just snagged a bus because, y’know, it’s okay to be lazy every once in a while). Saturday, with the unrelenting heat finally relenting, I resumed my long-walks and took a leisurely not-quite-six mile walk:

In addition, on the advice of a former colleague (the woman who hired me to my current office job, actually; she blogs here), I began drinking beer. Well, I mean, I’ve been drinking beer. But I usually don’t have a beer at 10:20pm when I’ve just walked home from work and I’ve gotta get up in a few hours, because that just seems silly. But her advice to me was:

“you need to do something to shock your system again, and usually cutting out a chemical for two weeks is enough to do the trick. In fact, one known gimmick for continually overcoming the plateau effect is to totally use alcohol in that fashion, because after the two weeks you take it back up, and then when you next level off, cut it out again. It’s pretty much a two weeks on two weeks off situation, but it is known to work.”

So: to sum up, I’ve been drinking beer at night (I’ve actually stopped doing it for this week). With the heat not so hot, I’ve been walking. One thing I haven’t been doing is going to the gym in the morning: rather, I’m sleeping in until six, and loving it.

Last week I was 238.5.

This morning? 233.5.

FIVE POUNDS, BITCHES. FIVE FUCKING POUNDS LOST!

(I’ll probably find them by next Monday … le sigh).

BUT! 233.5? Is currently the lowest I’ve weighed since I began this effort over half a year ago. Wow, it doesn’t actually seem like it’s been that long. In any case, I can now tell people I’ve lost “over twenty-five pounds” and not by lying — twenty-five and a half pounds, gone! Feels great, and I’m looking forward to my walk home tonight.

In any case, lately, my schedule is this:

Sunday: 9-6:30p
Monday – Friday: 5-9:30p

When you factor in my Sunday lunch break, that gives me thirty-one hours a week. Here’s something to consider: non managerial full-time employees (with a couple of exceptions), are only scheduled thirty-two hours a week. I work part-time. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point, rather, is this: starting next week, a handful of employees from our closed sister-store will begin working at my location. I don’t know where it came from, but looking at the weekly schedule, I noticed that, somehow our payroll got bumped! And every night that I looked at: wow!

Holy shit, for the first time since, Christ, probably Christmas, we’ve got enough people on hand to appropriately staff the store: two people in the Cafe? Two at Registers? Two at Info? One at Music Info? One more for Recovery? Holy crap! I might even be able to anticipate a night assigned only to Recovery. And to go four hours without having to assist at the Register? Folks: that’s fucking golden (because I hate the registers, with a passion). And, as the Christmas season approaches (true story: our Christmas 2010 cards have already arrived and are sitting, unopened, on pallets in the stockroom), the store is gearing up to hire seasonal help. So: YAY!

I had actually been anticipating their arrival on the schedule for another reason: because I’d kind of hoped it might mean I’d get a weeknight (or maybe two?) off. But, last night, when I examined the schedule, I saw that mine was identical. Okay, not entirely identical: I requested a late start on Thursday because of an afternoon doctor’s visit. But I’m still on six days.

I mentioned this to a supervisor who was in the break room with me. He pulled the buds from his ears, set down his sandwich, and said, “That’s because you’re indispensable.”

You know — if people at my office job, the one that pays my rent and bills and all? Sometimes I wish they could actually do a decent job of conveying to me if I’m even appreciated or not. So my 70+ hour work weeks continue, and I don’t mind: working this much keeps me out of trouble, helps me build my savings account, and most important?

The Bookstore needs me. I feel valued. Though, I’d still like that fucking raise guys. Really.

HT: Urban Bohemian.