When I was a boy, my big brother held on to my hand and he made me slap my own face

Watched about five episodes from the first season of Arrested Development with Mara and her roommate, Matt, last night. I'd only seen about one or two episodes of the show before, but after hearing so many raving reviews about it, and from people with good comedic taste, I was eager to dive into the show. My analysis? Funny and worth watching, but not quite equal to the hype surrounding it. At times it seemed as if it was a little too self-aware over how clever it was being. But that's just an impression, born from my unfamiliarity with the show. Perhaps over time I'll come to love it dearly, but for now I'm a handful of laughs shy of being enamored with it.

I picked up The Shadow of the Wind yesterday, and about eighty pages into it, I'm impressed. This book has received a ton of acclaim and at least so far it looks like it's been deserving. I attempted to get Erikson's The Bonehunters, but that proved to be a wasted effort that spanned the whole weekend.

Even though Barnes and Noble didn't have the book on the shelves when I was there yesterday, I checked the store stock online this morning and it showed that they a few copies in stock. Wanting to be sure, so that I didn't have to waste a trip to Burlington, I got the store's number online and called over. Meadow, the girl I spoke with, confirmed that they had the book in stock. I asked her to double check because I didn't see it when I was there yesterday. She put me on hold and, after a couple of minutes, got back on the phone and confirmed that they had it. She told me it would be waiting for me behind the counter.

At the store a while later, I approached one of the cashiers, a guy in his forties with a ponytail, and asked him to retrieve the book for me. He scanned the counter behind him and didn't see it. He shrugged and said, " Guess we don't have it". Now, I'm not a high maintenance customer, but considering I had just been told not twenty minutes earlier that the book would be waiting for me behind the counter, I didn't think it was too much to ask the cashier to dig a little deeper.

He got on the phone and spoke with someone in the fiction department. They didn't have it, either. I explained to him I felt the matter could be resolved quickly if he asked Meadow, the girl I had spoken with on the phone, where she put the book. He gave me a blank look. "Do you know this girl, Meadow?", I asked him. He looked at me incredulously, as if I was asking to track down my adoptive parents. "Can't say I've heard of her, but it is a big store, so....".

My patience was hanging by a thread and I thought carefully about how to pose my next question. I wanted results and, despite my tendency to assume most people possess at least as much intelligence as I do, I dumbed down my approach for this guy's benefit. "Could you find out where she is?", I asked slowly.

The fucker had the audacity to shrug in response! Again! I didn't know what to say and gave him my own incredulous look. Sensing my displeasure with him, he said, "I guess you could ask that guy down at the other register. He might know." I wondered if I underestimated the amount of people working at a Barnes and Noble. It seemed as if they numbered well into the hundreds.

Wanting to expedite the matter, I pulled out my phone and showed the cashier the number I had dialed. "Is this the number to your store?". There was a pause and I thought, Confirm or deny, I don't care---just don't say I don't know.

"I don't know." Fucking prick! I thanked him curtly, and left the store. Piecing this fiasco together, I quickly realized my folly. I called the number from earlier and asked the girl who answered what location she was at.

"Burlington", she replied.

"What state?".

"Vermont".

So, as dumb as that ponytailed dufus was, I displayed my own idiocy quite well. All I had to have done was pay a tad more attention when I was retrieving the phone number, and I would have saved myself some aggravation. And why a mental alarm didn't go off when I started dialing a number with an unfamiliar area code, I'll never know. Anyhow, my day wasn't ruined, but what the fuck?