Creatures of the night

Encouraged by the nice spring weather we've been having lately, I decided to resume running. I wasn't as out of shape as I thought I would be. My running days were unexpectedly cut short last season when I was unable to overcome my fear of bats. The only time I had to run was in the evening and since I live in the middle of nowhere, I basically run in the woods. The woods are full of mosquitoes, and therefore bats. I don't mind one or two swooping down at me, but the final straw came one night when they were particularly active and numerous. I stopped to take a drink of water and one swooped close enough to touch my hair. I took off at full speed towards the house, but to my horror it followed along right behind me, screeching all the way. I finally reached the house. Now to be fair, the blood-thirsty cries of the terrifying beast actually turned out to be the hissing sound my water bottle made when I squeezed it. (It was dark and I was paranoid. Don't judge me.) Nevertheless, my running career ended in early October. So anyway, it's good to be back at it.

I was abandoned at Wal-Mart last night. Normally, I have a car so I can drive home but we were short on cars yesterday so my parents said they would pick me up. Unfortunately, 10:30 is really late by their standards and they never though of me. On the plus side though, I got to observe the after hours inner workings of the store. One reason I was so intrigued with Wal-Mart was the Natalie Portman movie ‘Where the Heart Is’ where a pregnant, homeless teenager lives in a Wal-Mart for 2 months by hiding in the washroom at closing time and clearing out in the morning. I always thought it would be really cool to live in a department store and just have the whole place to yourself. In reality, though, Wal-Mart is never closed as I learned yesterday while waiting for someone to pick me up. Shortly after we all leave at 10:30, the nighttime crew begins to show up. These are not people you would want to run into in a dark alley. If you thought the daytime Wal-Mart workers were a bit rough looking, you should see the night crew. They make the daytime staff look like the cast of The O.C. They clean and stock shelves but they also make obscene pages over the intercom. One guy's sole purpose seems to be the capture of the roughly 5-20 squirrels that make Wal-Mart their home. They seem to have a pretty good time, but I 'm kind of dissappointed that I'll never get to live in the Wal-Mart.