posting office hours

I think that I'm going to post office hours on the door of my office.  Not that my office has a door.  Come to think of it, I don't even have an office.  At work, the room where my desk occupies a solid 36 square feet of floor space could possibly be termed an office.  But, mine, it ain't.  It's the copier room and the lunch room and the cloak closet room and the shredder box room and the Accounts Payable file room and the thoroughfare to the locked backroom where we have a monstrous old safe to store the ill-gotten gains of the EnHenn Bookstore.  It's a lotta things to a lotta people but it's definitely not my office other than that I usually get stuck washing the sink full of dirty coffee cups.  This, despite the fact that none of them are mine.  I definitely spend way too much time there but, still, it's not my office.

Where I really want to post my office hours is on the front door of the Goodwill store off of University and Fairview in St. Paul's prestigious Midway district.  I'm there pretty regularly on Saturday mornings so that seems like a logical place to post office hours.  I'm sure that the staff of the store wouldn't mind a bit.  I'll be heading over there tomorrow morning (it'll be Saturday, after all); I'll check with a couple of the cashiers to see if it's okay.

I don't remember how long ago I started making the Goodwill a regular stop on my Saturday tour of the Midway (along with visits to the bank and Menard's and the post office and my Cub).  The Goodwill's always been there and it's always held an allure for me even after its bosses didn't hire me to run the internet end of their business.  It must have been last spring but I'll have to take a look through my closet to go over the stuff I've bought and see if the physical artifacts can help me narrow it down.

I've lost some weight over the past six or seven months; nothing dramatic but enough to make some pants and shirts make it look like I've lost some weight.  So, out with the old, oversized stuff (mostly donated to the Goodwill) and in with the new old stuff which fits me marginally better.  Yes, I worry about buying my donated stuff back but it hasn't happened yet.  I did buy an Eddie Bauer button-down shirt in a dark navy and white check that I already owned one size up but that doesn't really count.  Especially since I donated the larger size to the Goodwill soon after buying the other one.

Miz Susan puts up with this hoarder bullshit because I'll occasionally buy her off with a piece or two of china. She has, however, resisted all of my invitations to make the trip with me.  You don't suppose that she's happy to have me out of the house, do you?  Ouch.

I did manage to zing her last Saturday when I told her that I'd bought a pair of socks at the GW.  I hadn't really though I'd worn them that day.  This was far and away the the ugliest pair of socks I own, a black and brassy brown hounds-tooth pattern, which I love dearly.  I told her that I'd bought them that day and she accused me of buying back something I'd donated.  She was sure of it and she's still miffed that I'd conned her.  For the record, I don't believe that I'll ever buy socks (or underwear, for that matter) at the Goodwill.  That said, though, I have no idea of how much lower I'm capable of sinking.  Time will tell.

I've run into a number of family members and friends on various Saturdays: my sister taking a retail therapy break to avoid killing one of her kids, a sister-in-law and her partner out shopping for their little stall in an occasionally-open junk shop, a former Macalester food service coworker and Linwood parent (who dresses even rattier than I do) and a ex-co-owner of a toy shop on St. Clair who is one of the few people I know who can out-talk me.  He leaves me panting and gasping after spending fifteen minutes trying to squeeze in a few words edgewise.

It's like it's already old home week.  Why not make it official and post my hours?