I got an e-mail from a guy I used to work with this morning. Apparently I was behind him on the way in to work. We work at the same place, except in different locations, but we live in the same general vicinity, and there aren’t a helluva lot of different ways to come in from the sticks to the big city, so I’m surprised we never came into contact before. So we had an e-mail reminiscence of my past life as a refrigeration mechanic, remembering the good old days of working in the anatomy cooler, squeezing between the cadavers hanging from their ears with their giblet juice dripping on the floor. If I close my eyes, I can almost smell it.

Let me tell ya, one place you really don’t want to be when the refrigeration isn’t working is inside the anatomy cooler. Unless you somehow enjoy the smell of hot formaldehyde (actually, they’re embalmed with formalin – basically formaldehyde and water with a little menthol thrown in – but preserved in phenol, which leaks out into the bottom of the clear plastic bags they hang them in, and of course the bags leak a bit). Whatever it was, it was nasty stinky, that’s for sure.

Ah, those were the days.

I probably didn’t notice my buddy in front of me because I was bust trying to figure out why I was listening to this Bob and Tom show again. I have to say, it just isn’t funny. And the one bit of music they played this morning was some “gag” song about never trust a puppet or something that had people laughing hysterically but was just plain not funny.

I dunno. The things I do to avoid hearing the news.

I tried plugging in my mp3 player (yesterday motivated me to load up a bunch of Steve Earle and Robert Earl Keen), but I couldn’t listen to it because the output is very low compared to the radio and the volume knob on the car stereo doesn’t really work, but I have a remote that I usually use, but I guess the batteries are beat ‘cuz it didn’t work, so I couldn’t hear the damn thing.

But at least it’s Thursday, which means I can work from home tomorrow, which is a lot better than coming in to the office. And it’s supposed to be a decent weekend, weather-wise, which means I can hobble around trying to get some stuff done. I got my new cordless weed whacker yesterday, so I can play around with that, I guess.

But first, I guess I better get through today.