rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

today started out shitty, became mediocre, became pretty cool, became mediocre, and is now OK. it’s 1:45 in the morning. I got home about twenty minutes ago.

I’m at work at 4 pm, readying for this budget meeting we do every day, my cell phone rings. with a weird area code. and I think to myself, Fuck. it’s the landlord.
my landlord has informed me that he wants to know if I’ll be resigning my lease in June. the current lease is a year. so that’s three months on that he wants to know if I’m staying or going. I don’t want to sign for a full year, but I would like to maybe do a smaller one, but I don’t think he’s going to be cool. so I’m avoiding him temporarily.
anyway. I answer and it’s not my landlord. it’s my cousin, Tommy.
Tommy is my dad’s first cousin. so that makes him my second cousin, I think. whatever. Tommy’s the shit. he’s sixty, and a hustler. he lives outside of Gainesville and he sells tropical plants for a living. he’s also worked for the state. and managed an apartment complex in West Palm Beach, which was the kind of place that frequently appears on episodes of COPS. and about a million other things I haven’t even heard about, most of which seem to skirt the obligations of legality. he’s kind of wiry, likes beer, voted for Perot. drives more than any person I’ve ever met in my life. ever. the truck he bought two years ago has 150,000 miles on it. I mean, that’s fucking ridiculous.  

I saw him a couple of years ago at my grandmother’s funeral. before that, though, I stayed at his house near Gainesville for a night, on my way down to the beach. I abused the shit out of my relatives on that trip. it was Galia and I. it kind of sucked. but Tommy’s was legit.
he wasn’t there when we got in at 12:30. he was driving up from Miami, where he worked four nights a week. so his wife let us in and we slept on couches, and we both tried to ignore the giant, excited labrador named Pickles. giant, goofy dog, that goes against Tommy’s demeanor. which made it more funny when I heard Tommy at the door when he came in, whispering, “Pickles, you stupid goddamn dog, get down.”
anyway. Tommy was in Charlottesville selling tropical plants to a couple of local nurseries. this is what he does. traveling plant salesman. and he calls me up, and he’s “at the mall, on the, what, on 29.” like a city block from the newspaper.
so we went and got a burger and I drank beer and took a nearly two-hour lunch break. and now he’s out of here. he had to get to Hagerstown tonight. “up at this Motel 6 I stay at in Hagerstown, they got an Applebee’s across the street, so I can have a few and I don’t have to drive.” then, he’s going to Harrisburg, and then hauling back down to Florida by Friday.

that’s an intense style of living. but it’s all I’ve ever known him to do. I guess, if you find something that you’re good at, something you like, then you do it. how simple.