Life Sudoku and Oosik

Well it's been a rough week. Not by worldly standards or anything like that. It's been a rough week for me...a guy who's used to having two or three days off from work in a week. Today is the last of a six day week I've worked as a Hersheyizer. It's not hard work, but it's not the kind of thing you want to do six days straight, either. And even though it'll be 6 days straight, it was broken up so that I still have three days off each week. Ugh! I am beat like a rented mule and am not making any more money to show for it.

The thing is, standing for seven hours straight and dealing with the stupid comments and questions of my customers is exhausting! For some reason, people seem to think that I get to eat as much chocolate that I want. "You must love your job," they say. I don't.

I've got customers asking if we have any kind of To Go containers for their bakery items. You would think that any kind of walk up bake shop would have to have some way to take the items out of the building. You would think that, but then, you have more sense than my customers.

People think that free samples are some sort of government mandate (thank you Democratic Party for creating a nanny state). Here's a hint: 90% of free samples are GARBAGE! They are items that we can't sell because they don't look right or because they're past their expiration date or for any number of reasons that would normally make you not want them. That's not just my store, that's EVERYWHERE! *Note: I give out a free cupcake every half an hour. There's nothing at all wrong with them and they're actually better than the ones you'll buy. That's our way of getting you to buy more expensive items. Haha!

I had a woman come in two days in a row to get her child a free birthday cupcake. The first day she told me the daughter's birthday was the following day, and I gave her one thinking she wouldn't be back again. (We get a lot of tourist traffic.) Boy was I wrong. She came in the next day and wanted her free cupcake. I gave her one. But I would have liked to have told her she was a cheap bastard and made her buy one. It's a dollar fifty, you cheap ass!

There was a chef who asked me how we tempered our chocolate. I told him I wasn't a chef and I didn't know. I wanted to tell him to take a frigging class. I'm not a culinary experts. I just slap frosting and toppings on a cupcake. (And the next time someone asks me how we temper our chocolate, I'm prepared to answer, "By insulting it's mother." That'll teach him.)

It's not all bad. I did meet a little old lady with a nice necklace that I inquired about. "It's Scrimshaw on oosik." Scrimshaw is the type of painting on the oosik. Oosik, for those like me who are not in the know, is the petrified penis bone of certain animals. In this particular case, it was that of a walrus. Glad I asked. Hearing the words "petrified walrus penis" come out of this woman's mouth made my month.

But life hasn't been all work, work, work. I have also become dangerously addicted to Sudoku. No (mom) that's not some sort of designer drug. It's a number puzzle game usually found in the newspaper next to the jumble or crossword. (I get mine from www.websudoku.com.) In Sudoku, you have to fit each digit, 1-9, in each row, each column, and each 3x3 square just once. Unlike a crossword puzzle, you are not subjected to sometimes obscure or purposely misleading clues. There's only one way to solve each puzzle and, if you're good, you can do one in 8 minutes to a half an hour. I've gotten pretty good. Depending on the difficulty of the puzzle (and the free time I have with which to focus on completing it) I can do them in 8-35 minutes. Not bad.

And I've learned something about life from Sudoku. See, in Sudoku, you don't just figure out where numbers go, you figure out where numbers cannot go. There's only one right answer and sometimes you have to ask indirect questions to find it. Applied to life, there's only one way that your life will end up. And sometimes it's not about where you are and what you're doing...sometimes it's about where you're NOT and what you're NOT doing. I thought about it this way. Here I am in Chicago (okay, Evanston). I've got a job where the pay is lousy. I can't pay my bills. I certainly can't splurge on extravagancies. I've got no love life and barely any social life at all. Maybe this isn't the right arrangement of numbers to figure out my life Sudoku. Maybe I need to get out of this city. I could move to New York. I'm not making any money and somehow I'm still alive. Maybe I can make no money and stay alive in New York, where the opportunities are even more bountiful. Or maybe I need to find a new line of work. Perhaps the acting business isn't what I was meant to do. (Not that I have anything else in mind.) Maybe I need to start looking for love in all the right places. Who knows? And when I find that I've got the numbers in all the right places, I'll win!

We'll see. In the meantime, I'll keep filling in my life Sudoku with pencil and, as my friend Ryan says, keep my ass to the grindstone.