14 November 1998
 
    
    I'm at the Strand again.  If things keep up the way they are, this journal may become a once-a-week thing.  So far, though, this beats all environments for doing a journal entry.  I got the mocha again, and the music is something vaguely Indo-Eastern.  No family with me this time, which helps in the distraction department.  My skateboard is under my feet, as I feared theft where I was parked.  Better to carry it and look ridiculous (hey if I were a real skateboarder, I'd be riding it down the hill, right?) than have it taken.  It's actually a nice feeling, rolling my feet back and forth, twisting my chair about, while I type.
    Doing the journal from work is a hasty affair, trying to get as much in as I can before the hour is up, including spell checking and uploading.  Doing it from home while the kids are up means constant interruption.  Doing it from home after they go to bed means I can barely stay awake.  And you can forget about doing it at the Huz's house from the laptop.  I hate that goddamned thing.  It's sllllllooooooowwwwwwww, and a maddening slowness that has as much to do with the liquid crystal monitor as it does with the RAM.
    A strange man is looking at me.  A bit scraggly, two tables away, his head is so tilted in his observation of me that it is horizontal.  I think he is trying to figure something out.  He looks really weary and a bit unbalanced.  Not threatening, though.  I'm not afraid.
    You can tell that there are two sets here, people who are drawn to the "internet" part and people drawn to the "cafe" part.  Near the windows on the plush sofas are old men reading the newspapers over their coffee.  At a table midway across the floor it looks like the worlds are melding, as a slightly nerdy guy reminiscent of JP McCormick, CEO of Activeworlds, is speaking animatedly to an older couple who seem as though they might dabble a little with AOL at most.
    I'm hungry.  I don't know what I want.  Anywhere you go, most entrees are either heavy on meat or meatless.  I like a moderate amount of meat.  It's like the food guide pyramid was built around my tastes, for I am nuts about bread and like the meat to be the smallest fraction of the meal, as well as the daily intake.
    So much is roiling and boiling in my mind.  so much of it I can't really codify into language, or really spell out so blatantly.  Oh, some things are easy:  at work, I have never felt so frustrated and thrilled at once.  I am doing so many different things that the weight and the exhilaration overcome me sometimes.  In an email to a friend, I recently said that I am holding up an avalanche with a piece of cardboard.  It sometimes feels exactly like that.
    Thursday I finally got to officially do some up-and-down-the-street pre-selling.  I'd done it before, on my own, but this time I was grouped up with a regional rep from Urban Juice and Soda and once of our own new salespeople.  We hit Lakewood and Brick, a region that is a tantalizing mixture of Hasidic and Hispanic neighborhoods, intertwined.  Some of the shopkeepers were tough, way tough.  Price was an issue in some of these places, and a premium soda is hard to price low.  You have to work with the customer quite a bit in situations like these.  In other places, space was the issue, solvable with our own refrigeration, warm racks, and the offer to swapout whatever isn't moving.  Several shops simply didn't have decision makers on the premises; that's to be expected.  It was really a good thing for me, a real shot in the arm for someone who knows the product inside and out, who knows what the opposition is, and who has an answer for everything.  The guy from Urban was very hip to pricing issues, and the salesperson was all warmth and courtesy.  She can put people at ease in an instant.  I really think she is gonna work out splendidly.
    When we got back to the office, El Prez had a surprise for me.  He tasked me to call up the newspaper and place an ad, and by God, the ad was for an office assistant.  I began my hallelujahs right then and there.  Joy and I extensively discussed what we want out droid to be and do.  And droid pretty much covers it.  I need a body to answer the phone, manage correspondence, pack and ship, run the fax, and enter data, thus freeing me up to do the job I drooled over when it first became a possibility: assistant to the chief and liaison between him and the other branches of the operation, as well as a manager of the chain sales wing.  This is good.  This is very good.
    Joy herself is being liberated from data entry to concentrate solely on marketing and PR, something she can do from her home office.  This is an important point, for she is allergic to our office, and the move would greatly positively affect her health.
    Now comes the hard part:  making the money to cover all the new payroll.  We are now up to four New Jersey reps, two New York reps, one New Jersey delivery driver, and I think two New York delivery drivers.  I really believe in our sales force, though.
    Ugh.  I just realized I have to make up a bunch of new names.  I know I gave the NJ delivery guy a name, but I can't remember it now.  I should call him Chatty, cuz he isn't.  He waaaaaay isn't.  Condiman you know already.  We still have him, and a valuable asset he is, too.  He's gonna be head of a huge sales force one day.  Sly is really coming into his own as well, proving himself an excellent salesman.  We no longer have Straight; he moved on to work for Nissan.  Fast Forward is taking a hiatus until spring.  Oh, by the way, Condiman and Dearheart are officially engaged now.  Poor bastards, heh.  Seriously, that's a good thing, and I'm glad for them.  Augmenting Sly in New York is Dynamo, an older Korean American who is legendary for selling huge quantities in short order.
    New Jersey has been redrawn, with Kitty, the salesperson I went out with the other day, taking one chunk of Straight's territory, Curly, an older guy with a sharp sense of humor, taking another, and Rocky, a former kick boxer, taking portions of Straight's and Condiman's former areas.  It's a very equitable division, as everyone has a major urban area except Curly, who has the now sleeping shore.  He will go nuts in the summer, when all the people leave the other folks' turfs to vacation in his.
    God, I have to go put money in the meter.
    Great, I only found two quarters.  Sheesh.  I'm still hungry.  I still don't know what I want.  
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