My anxiety regarding the new gig was completely unfounded. My coworkers and my boss and the owners are all nice beyond the telling. They all insisted that I order Chinese with them and offered to make me hot coffee drinks all day long. See, the thing with the lunch deal is that this place is so much like home that people will just sit in cozy chairs for hours drinking coffee and knitting. So, every day, the morning girls all order lunch together and sit down to eat it. If some one comes in and needs help, one of them gets up and does it so that everyone else can continue eating. I can also wear whatever I want, so rather good, here I come. I�m also going to get a long sleeved shirt from BUST.

As for the perks, I get free coffee drinks and free day old bakery goods, 50% off all other food type stuff, and 30% off all merchandise. Oh, and the fact that I am getting paid to do this. Oh, also, I work with feminists!!!

Luke is still gainfully employed with B&N. His manager clearly had very little to go on in punishing him, so she moved his desk (he now has two) and banned all but managers from the annex. She told him conspiratorially that she didn�t tell anyone else about what had happened. Luke was pretty amused by that, as he�s been telling everyone he can. Even though a lot of his coworkers thought that he had just up and quit. One of said coworkers got really angry and kind of flipped out because entering the annex is a major component of her job and having restricted access to such an area will impact her work. That seems to be the problem very often there. They tell you to improve your work, but don�t tell you what you can do to improve it. I hold the current manager responsible. She�s terribly sycophantic and snarky, depending on when you talk to her. If she�s talking to you, she�s all treacly and lying, but to others she�s slagging you.

I had a nasty dream this morning and it was very similar to dreams I�ve had in the past. I keep having these horrible nightmares about Luke and I being apart, that he�s here and I�m home with no way to return to him. This time it got uglier than it previously was because I started tearing M�s hair out (why she was there, I don�t know). But, she was saying such nasty things to me and I just went at her, pulling large handfuls from her scalp and making her bleed. I have to say, though, that even though it was supposed to be M, it was really my own mother�s body and voice. Fucking great. So, now on top of the mother dreams, I have these terrible away from Luke dreams and I�m simply horrified. I�m really tempted to call him at work and just tell him about it because I�m so addled by the whole thing; I�m literally on the verge of tears here, my ducts stinging and my throat tensing. What I need to do is stop thinking about it.

Luke�s coming to the store tonight when he gets out of work. He has to find a ride, so that might be a bit of a spoke-wrench, but he said he�ll only call if he runs into emergency type trouble. I have to focus on the fact that he�s here, not so many miles away from me. His smell is in my bed and on my pillows, his clothes folded in the bureau behind me, his empty Guinness bottle in front of me. If he were so far away, all these things would only be torture to me, but because I know he�s little more than a � hour drive from me, they all serve as comfort.