Monday, October 27th, 2003

I’m in a bookstore looking for The Brick Testament for Lynnette. I ask an employee and he leads me around the store in search of it.

Later…

I’m in a Rite Aid-like store getting a coffee for Adam and some nuts. I scoop the nuts (pistachios maybe?) into a small paper bag and take it to the cashier. There are three cashiers and the one on a particularly high counter takes my items. She tells me the nuts are $5 a bag. I tell her that’s wrong because they’re by the pound and I have less than a pound. She waits for a manager to do a price check. As I wait, I look outside onto a large wooden deck where a scene from a Clint Eastwood movie is playing out. Clint has his gun on an injured villain on the ground. There’s also a henchman ready to shoot Clint. The villain and Clint are bantering back and forth about who can kill who first. I want to see how this scene plays out but I’m also getting very irritated at the cashier.

Finally, I abandon my stuff and go to leave. I have to exit through the deck but it’s pitch black outside. I ask one of the employees to turn on the deck lights and they all ignore me. I slowly make my way onto the deck when a flash of light startles me. I fall to the ground as a man (who was playing the henchman) helps me up. He apologizes for shooting his blank gun at me and leads me to some staircases that will get me out of the store. Instead of stairs, there are diagonal planks I have to carefully slide down to get to the next level. I’m very annoyed at the construction of the place and plan to talk to the owners about it. I slide down into the 2nd level (I was originally on the 3rd floor), then to the ground level. These two levels look like a very nice restaurant. I make a mental note to talk to Brett (in real life the owner of Village 247 – the restaurant across from the video store) about the poor service and dangerous stairs.