Sometimes, "You're doing the right thing" is a lot like being asked, "And how large would you like the `WELCOME' tattoo on your back?"

Friday: Buffalo Kisser phoned me on the site phone to tell me that there was someone in the foyer that needed my help. I was in a meeting at the time, but he hung up immediately after saying that so I went out.

Buffalo Kisser was still standing there with the person, whom I didn't know. I approached and asked the person how I could help him.

It turns out that he was doing a job for Telus (telco) in one of the adjacent buildings, but one of the keys that he needs wasn't in his job lockbox. There was, however, a note in the lockbox to the effect that if he came over to my building and went to Evil Property Manager's office, they'd have a key.

You'll note that Evil Property Manager is the client for Buffalo Kisser's company, not mine.

So I told the guy that he already had the guard that he needed (ha!), but that EPM's office was closed and this guard didn't have the keys for it, so he'll have to come back tomorrow morning.

Buffalo Kisser is an idiot. Maybe next he can call me to help rescue some lady's kitty from a tree two towns over.

Monday: I was on the SkyTrain, heading home from work. I've got about ten stops before I get to my own, and by stop six there were only two of us on the entire train: myself and some dude puffing from his crack pipe.

Ah well, nothing to do with me.

Sadly, my stop is a terminus station that late at night, and so everybody has to get out there. Worse, they lock off the station, so you have to take the elevator down to the street, and this elevator clearly has something against gravity, as it takes close to two minutes to drop three stories.

The transit cops on the platform ask the guy if he was smoking on the train, but he said no.

So myself and the aforementioned cocaine afficionado are locked into the elderly elevator and down we go. He's got the whole cocaine psychosis thing going on, and says to me "They called me a madcap up on the platform."

I said, "What, the transit cops?"

He says "Yeah. Crackhead." while pointing to himself.

Then, and I shit you not, went over to the steel doors of the elevator and proceeded to beat his face (not his forehead, his face) against them for the remainer of the ride down, which was well over a minute.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! (blood started to flow) WHAM! WHAM!

As the elevator slowed (and you'd need precision instruments to figure out when that happens), he stopped that and started doing the pee pee dance in front of the doors, saying "Open. Open. Open..." while I looked at the butterfly of blood on the doors and all over his nose and cheekbones.

The doors finally opened, he slipped out as soon as they were wide enough to do so, and was immediately hailed by a couple of his crackhead buddies. They didn't comment on his bloody face. Go fig.

Tuesday: A couple of the women at the site were heading home just as I got on shift. They called me over, we exchanged pleasantries, and they said that there was a cake in one of the fridges that I was welcome to eat, or even take home if I wanted to.

Normally I'm a bit suspicious about unsealed food offered to me by people, but that's mostly because I would be the sort to make baking soda cookies, so I assume that others do that. I'm a prat.

But I did try it, and that was some good cake, although "cake" isn't exactly accurate. I couldn't quite nail what it was, but it obviously had fruit in it, and the sugar content was enough to make a hummingbird beg for insulin. Yeesh.

Wednesday: 1.5 of the elevators were screwed up. Yes, that's one point five. One just wouldn't work, so we locked it off. The other one worked fine for me, but I kept having people tell me that they were getting stuck in it and had to go from floor to floor before it would open. I even pried a few of them out of the elevator myself when I was near it. So I put some signs up: "Use this elevator at your own risk - some prying to open the doors may be necessary."

People seemed amused, but most took the stairs. Ah well, it's healthier for them anyway.

Thursday: Age of Empires 3. I've been playing the hell out of this game. What a good franchise, despite being a Microsoft (Ensemble) product.

Friday: Got paid. Got a raise. Far too little.

Saturday: Played Fictional Correspondant's game. We've actually completed the chapter/chronicle, and will be moving on to something else. Maybe we'll come back to this story sometime, who knows?

Fictional felt that it was somewhat anticlimactic, but I disagree.

I do have to say that if I'd known my character's odds against one of his foes were so good (50/50, according to Fictional during his playtesting), I'd have hunted that bastard down months ago and given him the hard goodbye.

But we got lots of good play out of it, so I'm just as glad I didn't. ;)

Sunday: I composed the witty one-liners I was going to use for the week. That's not to say that I originated them all - some of them I stole. However, my store is getting depleted, and these are some one what I ended up with:

"What's the collective noun for people that work in the banking industry? It's wunch. As in, `they're a wunch of bankers'."

[pretending to receive phone call] "What's that commissioner? Aladdin is going to magic carpet bomb the Middle East?"

"The problem isn't that I have an explosive temper. The problem is that I have too damn many targets."

See? I told you I was running out. :P

Monday: It was bothering me that the three other guards at my site were all making a point of writing on their reports that they were checking something in particular (after I asked them to a couple of months ago), but that there was no way I could verify that with the magnetic key system (that door is on a normal key). So I taped a SECURITY sheet to the door where you would sign and date when you checked it. I know, I'm just asking to be disappointed, but how I can fix problems if I'm don't find these things out?

Who remembers Polish Guy? Well, he came back to the site for a single graveyard shift, as a bike patrol guy. It was nice to see him, although he was pissed off that I was leaving just as he showed up. He didn't believe that I was on the afternoon shift until he saw my relief (Palooka) arrive. He asked if Evil Property Manager was still upstairs too. He hates him. ;)

Apparently he's been working in a bank (not as security) for $16/hour, and does security for extra money. But since the shift he was working at the site pays, as I happen to know, $9.75/hour, I find this somewhat unlikely. Who works all day, then works all night just for a low wage on the second job? He doesn't owe any money that he can't pay off with his normal job, unless he was a) lying about it or b) only part time.

Not that it matters to me. But how weird was it to see him again? Weird.

Apparently he didn't sleep during the shift, although he did make a point of telling Palooka that he can, in fact, sleep any place, any time. Good brag.

Going home from that, I saw the crackhead again. This time there were four of us in the elevator, and he didn't panel beat the door into submission. Instead, he had a full-on case of the junkie shuffle and appeared to be throwing fingers with himself. He was also apparently rolling his eyes for comic effect, but there was no joke and he might have just been trying to focus on the swirling dots in his retina.

His nose looks fine by the way, so I guess he didn't break it the previous week. I wonder if I'm now going to have an ongoing crackhead saga to report every Monday.

Tuesday: Palooka didn't sign that security sheet at the checkpoint, although he noted on his report that he checked the area twice. I knew I was going to be disappointed.

Palooka called me while I was on the train home to inform me that his key didn't work on a particular door. It was the door to a department that had a woman working in it, that I made a point of telling him about so he'd keep an eye on her. Mostly because if she has any problems, there's nobody else to find her. You know, if she falls or has a heart attack or something.

Anyway, he couldn't get in there. And he's getting more and more like DiceGimp on the phone. I heard in excruciating detail about how he tried to unlock the door, how he tried his left and right hand, twisting slow and twisting fast, while holding the handle and while not holding the handle.

When I finally got a word in edgewise, I told him to do the rest of his patrol and try again after that. I explained that it wasn't his key, it was the lock and was probably the temperature or humidity (both of which the building's environmental systems seem to have malfed on). I told him to try that door again frequently, since we want to make sure that lady was all right.

He expounded on that for a while, how he didn't like when he couldn't get into an area, blah blah blah.

I was on the phone with him for my entire train ride until I went into a tunnel and it killed the connection. Thank God.

Unfortunately, when I got out of the tunnel he called me back and went back to the detailed litany of key-operation. That went on for a solid fifteen minutes, which I know because I was only able to cut it off when the bus came.

Then, after I got home, he called again but immediately forgot why. After hemming and hawing for a while, he remembered. Get this: I had mentioned to him that the client was coming in on Wednesday. He'd become a bit nervous and I told him to just do whatever it was that he normally did in the mornings, since if she had any criticisms they'd have already been decided and would be dumped on me, if anybody.

Well, I guess he was thinking about that and wondered if he should have someone drop off his shaving kit in the morning so he wouldn't look so scruffy.

Sigh.

He didn't look scruffy when I left him, so I told him that wasn't necessary. It was 0230 when I finally got him off the phone, and he closed with "If I think of anything else, I'll call you."

I bet his mom held his hand while crossing the street at a late age.