shoe fetish

As if I didn't have a large enough selection of footwear already, I went out today and picked up another pair. In my defense, these were calling my name, and since I didn't have a pair of orange ones yet, I was able to justify the purchase. They're a bit loud, but mighty fly nonetheless. I shall call them my citrus sneaks.

Now that I've checked out other styles of Pumas online, I also want these, and these, and these...oh, and maybe these as well. Oh, what the hell, these too.

super support man
Tyler, my part-time assistant started today. He'll be working one day per week until I go to Philly, after which he'll be working full time to fill in for me. Now comes the task of giving him a crash course in the life of a crazy graphic designer. It feels like a lot of knowledge to impart, but he'll have j & k just a phone call away, so he should be okay...I hope.

He was actually supposed to start on Wednesday, but The Medium Cheese (not The Big Cheese) wasn't very clear when he made the job offer, so Tyler didn't know when we expected him. I was slightly amused (or was it annoyance masked as amusement?), but not really surprised, as The Medium Cheese has done the same thing before to a contractor we have working with us. The sloppiness and lack of clarity is starting to become symptomatic.

Perhaps he's too busy playing superhero. Mo and I were teasing him today about it. In retail, there is usually a support manager function - someone who acts as The Manager (as in "I demand to speak with The Manager!") and fields calls from angry or annoyed customers, etc. The Management team rotates this responsibility so that one person doesn't have to carry the burden of this on a regular basis. The Medium Cheese seems to relish under the weight of this extra responsibility though. It's like a little power trip or something.

Anyway, he gets really theatrical when he has support manager duties...always running from one so-called emergency to the next, while we look on, bemused. When he puts on his safety vest to go through the warehouse and open the store, he has a habit of making a performance of it. It's a dramatic right-over-left motion as he fastens the velcro straps of the vest securely to his chest. This is followed by what I like to call fastwalking, with support phone clenched in his right fist. "Can't talk...I'm Support!" he'll say as he whizzes past us in a hurry to put out the next little fire.

As he did his thing this morning, Mo raised her arms above her head, a la Superman in flight, and shouted in a singsongy voice, "Support Manager to the rescue!" I laughed and froze in Running Man pose as I exclaimed, "Off I go to preserve Justice, Peace, and the Swedish Way!"

I relayed the story to Sharri later in the day, and laughingly, we concocted a scheme to fashion a long flowing red cape for him the next time he's the support manager. The plan is to pin a sheet of red fabric to his vest and hang it on the back of his chair. In order to perfect our scheme, he needed a superhero name, so after a little thinking, Sharri came up with 'Super Support Man.' Once the words left her mouth, we paused, looked as each other, and giggled like immature little school children because it sounded like the name of a bra or jockstrap.

Perfect!