I Want To Follow You

How is it that I always manage to attract creepy people? When I went to Target this afternoon, I was just walking around, minding my own business. All of a sudden, this short little black guy with dreadlocks and his arm in a sling comes walking by. He looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back. Then he turned around and started walking back toward me, and said "hi." I said "hi" back. Then he asks me "how are you?" I told him I was fine. Next thing I know, he's walking along beside me and talking to me. "What's your name?" he asked. I was hesitant, but I told him my name. "How old are you?" By now I was getting a little freaked out, and I asked him "why?" He said he was just wondering, so I very hesitantly told him my age, as I looked for an escape route down the nearest aisle. "Where's your boyfriend" he asked next. "Gah! I just came here to do my shopping! Leave me alone!" (I'm just kidding, I didn't really say that, but I wanted to.) I quickly just told him "uh, he's not here" as I started trying to make my way in the opposite direction from where this guy was standing. He was about to start trying to get the details about where exactly this "boyfriend" of mine WAS, but before he could find out anything, he asked me where the pharmacy was. "That way!" I quickly said, as I pointed back in the direction where we had come from. "Oh, I walked right past it!" he said. "That's because you were too busy talking to me and being a creep" I thought to myself, as I tried to disappear as quickly as possible.

That's not the first time something like this has happened, but it still freaks me out every time it DOES happen. It's not so much being approached in general that made me feel uncomfortable, it was the fact that he was asking personal questions, and being kind of persistant/pushy about it.

What do you think? Is it reasonable to freak out when someone approaches you in public like that, or was I just overreacting?

How ironic...

Day 1: Yesterday afternoon at about 3 something, I found out some good news. I got a full-time position with the job I'm currently working at, starting the 16th! (Even though I'm currently working there, I'm only a temp.)

Day 2: This morning, I saw that the office manager had sent out an email saying that they were going to go ahead and start moving the new hires to where we were going to be permanently seated. Later on at lunch I was informed of some more things by one of my friends who is already a full-timer. He said that at that point, 2 of the other temps had already gotten moved to where they would be sitting, and then told me where they were. This led me to ask "I wonder where they'll be moving me?" He told me "I don't know, but they moved a computer to the empty cubicle directly across the aisle from me." Immediately, I started wondering if it was mine, since he didn't know who it belonged to (btw, I've been on loan to a different department for the last 3 months, so that's why I didn't know what was going on). I asked him if the computer across from him had a purple sticky note taped to it, because mine does, and he said "yes."

This is where the irony comes in.

The one person I was hoping to get away from, the one person I don't want to see, or be around, or have anything to do with anymore, sits directly behind my friend.

How ironic...

Missouri Unemployed Melt State Phone Lines

(As some of you may know, I work with the Missouri Department of Labor, Division of Employment Security. It's a good thing that I'm in the Appeals Unit now and don't have to be on the phones in the Regional Claims Center anymore, dealing with this...)

St. Louis, MO (KSDK) -- So many people phoned Missouri's Department of Labor after Congress approved an extension of unemployment benefits last month that telephone wires melted, according to Missouri's Department of Labor Director Larry Rebman.

"The first three days we received 165,000 calls a day. Our Jefferson City facility was overwhelmed and phone wires actually melted," he said.

Rebman was in St. Louis as part of a tour of Regional Claims Centers. He wanted to thank employees for working overtime and on weekends trying to process all the claims.

Since the beginning of this year, Rebman said staff throughout Missouri answered more than 816,000 calls from claimants.

When Congress approved the latest extension, Missouri had to immediately process 55,000 claims, Rebman said.  The majority have been processed but 11,000 claims remain.

Rebman is asking people to be patient when calling the claims centers.

KSDK

(article by Leisa Zigman, taken from http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=212173)

Apology...NOT accepted?

Have you ever had someone say something to you that they shouldn't have said, but you didn't realize it until they came to apologize to you for it? I did...today.

A "friend" of mine came to apologize to me for "yelling" at me, but I didn't even know he had done any such thing. I must not have heard him, or I must not have been paying attention. But how could I have missed something like that? That seems like something that would be pretty obvious. Maybe he just dreamed it and thought it really happened? He IS pretty crazy... Or maybe he yelled at someone else and thought it was me?

Anyway, when I asked him what it was he had said to me, he wouldn't tell me. He kept just saying "that's good" when I told him I didn't know what he was talking about. Whatever it was, it must've been pretty bad if he was glad I didn't know what he had said, and that he wanted to keep it that way by not telling me.

I was kind of mad that he wouldn't tell me. I wanted to know.

I was also kind of mad, simply because of the fact that I found out he had supposedly said something bad about me. Yeah, he apologized, but I couldn't "hear" it. All I could "hear" was the fact that he had said something bad about me. In my eyes, it would have been exactly the same if he had come to me and said "Oh, by the way, I was talking bad about you last week when I yelled at you. I didn't think you heard me, so I thought I'd tell you to make sure you knew."

I know I probably shouldn't feel this way, but I do...

Dirty Old Men

Why is it that within the last few months, I've become such an old-man magnet? Apparently I'm very attractive to unmarried men between the ages of 51 and 52 . I know I've always been kind of an old-man magnet, but never like this. Never so...bold. It's kind of like:

Him: "My friends keep telling me I should get a girlfriend."

Me: "Oh...really?"

Him: "I've been trying to get back into shape. Pretty soon I'll be all ripped and looking GOOD!"

Me: "...oh?"

Him: "Maybe we could go out to eat later. You know...like...on a date."

Me: "Oh...um...well..."

Him: "I haven't been on a date in a long time. I bet it'll be magical. I would make a really good boyfriend too. I'm not like any of the other guys you've dated. I was kind of unsure at first about trying to start a relationship with you, but now I think we would be really good together.

Me: "Uh...."

Him: "I'm surprised."

Me: "Why?"

Him: "Because you haven't tried to kiss me yet. I bet it's been a long time since anyone has kissed you." (As he starts to lean in.) 

Me: "O God...I have to go now."

Perhaps these guys are going through a mid-life crisis, and I just happen to be the unlucky prey. Or perhaps these guys are dirty old men/pedophiles that see any good looking single girl half their age and go "OOOO!" Or perhaps my pheromones are just too much for them to handle. Do any of you fellow Xangans out there have any input/suggestions?