catching up

It's been a while. Things here have been crazy. To catch you up to speed, since I last wrote an entry about my job, my boss

(a) Lost his drivers license (as in, had it suspended)
(b) Convinced me to buy a car to drive him around in
(c) Had two of his three sons visit (one of whom drove us to the office one day, an idea which ended in me basically taking my life into my hands--terrifying)
(d) Maxed out every single one of his credit cards (some of which have spending limits higher than what most of the people I know make in a year)
(e) Confirmed that he makes more in one month off of pension than I will make in two years working for him
(f) This, if you were planning on keeping track, ends up coming out to me having to work approximately 33 and a half years (give or take a month or two) to make what he makes in one year
(g) Got his license back (this one still confuses me).

In other news, the following conversation took place today on AIM between myself and my friend Aaron. Turns out, he used to have a job much like mine. We traded stories for a while and upon his suggestion, I decided to put it in here:

Aaron: i love your blog
Aaron: i can totally relate
me: hahaha
me: yeah?
Aaron: i also was an admin assistant for a cranky old man
me: best job ever!
Aaron: o it was
Aaron: i must have bought him 1,000 sugar free vanilla nonfat lattes
me: hahahahaha
Aaron: the people at starbucks came up with a code name for it
Aaron: "the barbie"
me: that is fantastic
Aaron: i used to do negotiations with him
me: hahaha
Aaron: like with the library and stuff
Aaron: and everyone loved me so much because i was so nice in comparison
me: we got in a fight yesterday because i don't know if you got to do this at your job, but he dictates letters into a dictaphone and then has me type them up for him
me: and he was talking about the pyrenees mountains
Aaron: o excellent!
Aaron: no i never had to do that
me: and so i hand him the letter i typed up and he crosses out "pyrenees" and writes "pyrenee"
me: and i kept telling him he was wrong but he was like "which one of us has been to europe?"
me: which, i will concede, is a valid point
me: but i mean, have YOU ever heard of the pyrenee mountains?
me: ...no?
me: ...because they don't exist?
me: clever, aaron. good call.
Aaron: o man
Aaron: one time, he asked me to buy him christmas cards, so i bought the cheapest ones i could find with tons of glitter on them
Aaron: and he finished signing them and walked out of his office covered in sparkles and said "aaron, could you please not buy glitter cards next time"
me: hahahahahaha
me: he also, when dictating letters, will selectively spell people's names out
me: but i mean he'll usually spell, say, the name "william"
me: but when talking about his cleaning lady, he neglects to spell out [her really long and confusing name]
me: once he wrote a letter in which he said something about me
me: and spelled out my last name
me: for me to type up
Aaron: the thing is, the guy i worked for was pretty old, but very lucid
Aaron: he had to [do a lot of difficult things]
Aaron: not an easy job
me: yeah
me: see, my boss, on the other hand...sits around and reads the newspaper
Aaron: yea
Aaron: so, some similarities
me: how old was your boss?
me: did he know what the internet was?
Aaron: um
Aaron: like 65
Aaron: yea
Aaron: he was technologically OK
me: he came in here recently and told me i needed to email someone a file
me: so i asked him if it was on my computer
me: he said maybe
me: i asked if it was on a disk
me: he got confused
me: and went into his office and got me a file folder
me: full of paper
me: and i just could not figure out how to explain to him that you can't just...put a file folder into a computer
me: you need another machine to do that
me: so he decided he wanted to buy a scanner, and told me he was going to staples to get one
me: so i called up when he left and said "listen, i know this is going to sound crazy, but my boss is on his way there to buy a scanner and he's 87 and has no idea what a scanner is and i'm pretty sure he will have forgotten what it is he's going to buy by the time he gets there." and described what he looked like and exactly which one he was going to buy and had them keep it at one of the cash registers for when he got there
me: and the next day he comes in with it, brimming over with stories about how wonderful staples is
me: he couldn't get over how they just somehow knew what he was there for
Aaron: haha
Aaron: that's great

ps: Aaron has decided to get back into blogging as well; check out his blog if you get a chance listed with all the other links--his is at the top (Arch). Because I like things to be orderly. And alphabetical. And non-crazy. Perhaps I should get a new job?...