Thursday, February 07, 2008

Doom

This morning I awoke feeling emotionally drained, which means I had another of my marathon nightmares that feel completely real. The only things I remember clearly now were eating a bowl of Corn-Pops from a flower pot, murdering Demond Wilson (Lamont from Sanford & Son) in my combination kitchen / garage, and then being investigated for animal cruelty for leaving my dog indoors while I tinkered on my Ferrari/bicycle in the shrubs. The feds confiscated everything in my apartment, including cabinets and lights, and said I would be going away for good if they found anything weird and related to animals. Upon awaking, I remembered having the sincere belief that I faced life in prison because my computer hard drive contains a short story I wrote about a land threatened by Giant Atomic Chickens*. Cool side note - my dream hard drive was contained in a glowing blue drawer and looked like a black leather-bound book with an iPod perched on top.

So, the Great Magnet has warned me that my future is bleak. I've already been kicked out of various bars, colleges, churches, and shopping malls for basically being me, but I've never done any serious jail time or been fired. I arrived this morning dreading the worst and got plucked into a meeting before I even had a chance to boot my computer. During this meeting I tried to defend my position on how I can't do my job until higher paid people further upstream do their jobs, then I returned to my desk and got embroiled in one of those fun "don't ask me - tain't my job" series of e-mails wherein I was copied, not because I had any info to provide, but because too many people know who I am. Then my supervisor invited me to his office, which never happens, so I wandered the corridors looking for his new office, wondering how long I can last on unemployment.

Anyway, the bad news: everybody here says I do fantastic work and they've just given me a raise, back-dating it so it appears in tomorrow's paycheck.

I was finally given a key to my new cubicle (they're just moving me to consolidate some group) and in the drawers I discovered a raffle ticket to win a new Ford Mustang. Unfortunately, the drawing was in November of 2001**. NOOOOOOOOO!!!! Curse you, Fates. At least the doom is over. Time to go spend my new raise on some Japanese food.

* In case you're wondering, that one hasn't been published yet. A lot of editors don't share my artistic vision.

** Which is really curious since the cubicles were just installed here at the end of 2005.

8 comments:

Adrianne said...

Very well written.

Deb said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Deb said...

My question to you is: why eva' did they kick YOU out of church?

I can just only imagine.

;)

Stacy The Peanut Queen said...

What funky nightmares you have!

You really need to stop eating togarashi before bedtime. ;)

Grant said...

ssc - thanks.

~deb - actually, not much of a story there. I was dragged to a Baptist church when I was young and they booted out a bunch of us because some were being too noisy. I wasn't one of the offenders, but I was thankful for the break even if it meant standing in the Southern heat in my Sunday best.

pq - actually, I've found that black olives trigger the worst nightmares for me.

Monogram Queen said...

I just say "yay to the raise"

Kira said...

When have you ever had a normal dream? I say never. Congrats on the raise, though. I still find it amazing that they figured out that you actually do a lot of work there and are competent. That's usually not something that happens in corporate America (esp. your company).

Anonymous said...

A key to your cubicle? If someone REALLY wanted to get in, couldn't they just got over the wall?

WTG on the raise!