The Christmas Mysteries

Yesterday I had most of a post ready. I've been using the new blogger interface in the Google Chrome browser. I accidentally clicked the browser window closed. No problem, I thought, in writing draft mode,I have auto save turned on.  Except it wasn't. So I went to turn it on. And I can't find it. I can't find it in help, either. It was one of the nicest features here.  And now it's like it never existed. I hope I'm just being dense. Wait - it just auto saved. I guess I have to hit the "save" button after which Blogger takes over? If you're in cyberspace can anyone hear you scream? At any rate, my immortal words vanished into the sub electronic ether.

My post yesterday ("... and now the scratching starts...") was written in full nasty virus rampaging through my system incoherent babbling can't type properly for shit mode. (To tell the truth, I am often a lousy typist even when I'm feeling quite well.) Austanspace posted ????? marks in the comments, noticing "I'm not poor enough to get anything better." When I saw her note at 5:30am or so this morning, I found myself totally flummoxed as to what the hell I'd meant. This was no right wing reference, not even for satire's sake, of social services programs, which I suppose is one way to look at it. (I once went through a mini hell of applying - with the assistance of a social services worker - for subsidized housing. After a lengthy wait, I was denied assistance because my then current landlord told them that I was late in paying my rent. Which was why I was applying in the first place...) I think what I intended is "I'm not paid enough", but that's an odd phrase for me, I think I'd write something more like, "I don't earn enough". The upshot is that I have no idea what I intended to write. I still have very claustrophobic feelings about my living space, though. As I sit in my chair typing, my knee bursts forth a pain bubble that makes me move my foot backward. I smash into a box temporarily under the chair because I've no place else to put it. These remarks should not be interpreted to mean that I am unappreciative of the space I rent, or my current landlord. Or spell check which I seem to need to use every three or four words because of my "there isn't enough light in here for me to see clearly and I never learned to type properly" attempts....

I had written a bit about the time I worked at Macy's one Christmas. I had a very desirable position selling VHS and Betamax video  tape recorders in the electronics department on the mezzanine off the Main Entrance (on the Herald Square/Broadway side). I'll have to tell that story again later. I just lost my train of thought again between my typing and the toilet flusher breaking. Again. 

I also wrote about working for Columbia/TriStar pictures in Boston and the morning of December 23rd, 1992 when a very non-professional-NPR voice suddenly interrupted my attempts to get up with an essay in which its writer reminisced about working at Macy's at Christmas. Needless to say, I loved it. It's now a true holiday classic. Get that cuppa, snuggle in for a few minutes, and give a listen: