A Synonym for Guerrilla Blue

Dating a member of a band has turned me into a groupie by default. I have attended all but one Guerrilla Blue show since they starting playing live again in April. This stunning attendance record includes accompanying the band on a road trip to the Synonym Toast Festival in Wisconsin this past Friday. Technically my function was to poke Andy in the ribs periodically to keep him from falling asleep behind the wheel. But I've also enjoyed watching the band evolve over the past few months, and playing a festival seemed like an exciting new venture for the band that I wanted to witness.

When I hear 'festival,' I picture something on the order of Glastonbury, SxSW or Lollapalooza. I wasn't expecting the Synonym Toast festival to be quite of that size and caliber, but assumed it would be at least similar to the Hennepin Avenue Block Party. A winding drive down Wisconsin's desolate and difficult-to-locate County Road F should have tipped me off to the reality of the situation, but it wasn't until we arrived at the destination that I realised my expectations had been extremely lofty.

"Yay, New Auburn!" Andy exclaimed as a campground sign came into view. We'd repeatedly lost and found the route and Nick Williams with the aid of Google maps, Mapquest and frequent mobile conferences. We pulled into the parking lot of a bar to regroup before going to the actual site of the festival--or so we thought.
"This can't be it," I said.
"What's the address?" Andy asked. The address on the Google map matched that of the street sign right in front of us.
"This is it," Andy said, laughing incredulously.
"Where's Williams, then?" I protested. As if on cue, Nick's Chevy Impala appeared from behind the bar and pulled past us. I could see the expression of disbelief on Wingate's face as Paul's Dodge followed the Chevy. I began laughing hysterically. The Synonym Toast Festival was a dive bar in Middle-of-Nowhere Wisconsin.

The group of us walked in to find an open, high-ceilinged room with long tables arranged in a cafeteria design. A small group of people crowded around the bar, which occupied one end of the hall. They seemed to be locals who convened at this spot nightly. The conversation indicated that everyone felt very comfortable around each other. Just after walking in, I heard one of the younger men crow, "I've got one on my penis!" I've still no idea what he had on his penis, which is a shame. A row of mounted deer heads stared glassily at the stage from the wall behind the bar, guaranteeing at least some form of attentive audience for the band.

After the lads and I had hauled the equipment in from the various vehicles, Andy and I struck up a conversation with one of the locals smoking at the bar. He was a younger man dressed in shorts, a Boston Red Sox baseball cap and a button-down short-sleeved shirt over a wife beater. He spoke passionately about how well a sit-down restaurant would do in the area. The town was overrun with bars and bar food, he explained, and a place offering good, fresh food was sorely wanting. His talk of the Southern-style Waffle House, along with the slight Southern drawl that carried through his passionate discourse, prompted me to doubtfully ask if he was from the area. He answered that he had grown up there but had worked at various restaurants in the South for several years.

"You have a little bit of a drawl," I pointed out.
"Y'know, everyone here thinks I sound like I'm from the South," he said. "When I'm in the South everyone thinks I sound like I'm from the North. I remember when I went down there, the first thing someone said to me was, 'Hey, d'yeeew know y'ave an ac-cehhhnt?' I was like, 'Excuse me?'" he laughed. "No matter where I go, I sound like I'm from somewhere else."
I could identify with that completely. In Ireland, everyone thought I sounded American. But when I came back to America, everyone thought I sounded Irish.


It was now growing late, and the audience was tiring of watching the first band set up. One particularly sodden person slipped behind the bar and activated the tornado siren that outfitted the rafters above. He then set about furiously clanging a massive bell, creating optimum noise conditions. Andy and I went to join the rest of the band at one of the long tables in the middle of the room. After waiting a while longer, the underaged, long-haired group burst into what seemed to be an emo version of Pink Floyd's "Time." From there, they continued on with a string of various covers. Perhaps the ear-bleeding volume of the music drew my attention to the sound guy. I nudged Andy and nodded over to where he was reassuringly using his cell phone to light the various controls on the soundboard.

Finally Guerrilla Blue was up. I talked to Paul while the rest of the band hauled their equipment onto the stage. He summed up the feeling of the bar pretty well when he said, "I feel like I'm in a bar in Tennessee decorated like a cabin in Wisconsin." One glance at the skates, skis and hornet nests decorating the rafters confirmed this description. Such surroundings created great potential for disorientation. But Guerrilla Blue still played an incredible set. All the members of the group delivered a high-energy performance from the first notes of "Fluorescent Fuzz." In fact, the strange setting seemed to be a spawning ground for innovation. Nick Williams felt inspired early on to accentuate the dueling mandolin and guitar solos on "Sometime After Midnight" by shuffling back and forth between Andy and Wingate while playing a driving bass riff.


Aside from a few occasional dancers, the audience largely stayed clumped at the opposite end of the room from the band. That's where the bar was. But they reacted well to the music, yelling, clapping and setting off the tornado siren. A few women in leis came up to dance and called up to Andy between songs.
"I like your guitar!" one of them cried.
"It's a mini guitar," Paul informed her.
"Like a ukulele!" she exclaimed.
Andy smiled and explained, "It's a mandolin."
"Oooh, a mandolin," she repeated.
"A ukulele," her friend scoffed, mocking the woman's instrument confusion.


The energy continued to build throughout the night, becoming particularly palpable on "Kobe." I'd appointed myself band photographer for the evening, and I desperately wished my point-and-shoot were more adequate in low-light situations. I wanted to capture the intensity with which everyone was playing, but I largely captured blurs. I gave up before the band launched into "Taken." It was the last song on the set list, despite my hopeful penning of "DNC" beneath it on a few of the copies. Paul and Andy left the stage for a bit in order to leave more of the spotlight to Wingate, Williams and Wiersma. They headed towards the back of the room and had a few words with Chris, the organiser of the festival. He asked, "You're doing one more song, right?" That left them no other choice but to play "DNC." The change from trippy maudlin' to 60s beach beats and back went without a hitch. After the last verse, Paul again abandoned the stage to the instrumentalists. But this time Todd stepped out from behind the drums and followed. Williams then played one last riff and unplugged, leaving the song to finish with just violin and guitar.

While Synonym Toast was no Bonnaroo, the gentlemen of Guerrilla Blue treated it as though it was. The band's cohesive performance definitely set a precedent for the festival to become more well-known in the future. The excitement of the show kept Andy and me alert all the way back down County Road F and WI-29, but couldn't compensate for the lack of sleep and the increasingly wee hours of the morning. I'm happy to say I fulfilled my assigned duty of keeping Andy awake, and passably driving his manual Subaru Forester when he stubbornly started nodding off and swerving. And though the venue was not a milestone in itself, I had a great time watching what I think was a milestone performance.

North Shore, Part III: Hoist and Derrick

Sunday morning began with a deliciously trans-fatty breakfast of shrimp and cheese omelettes and Cinnamon Grands. This left us happy but uncomfortably full on the drive to Split Rock Lighthouse. We arrived just in time to take in an informative and hilariously awful film about the site. I shook with frequent and silent laughter from the very first shot of our bespectacled, bow-tied narrator. "Name's Tinkham," he announced in a condescending, businesslike manner. "Ralph Tinkham." Ralph taught us all about the lighthouse its lens from France that turns on liquid mercury. He was not so forthcoming about the hoist and derrick used to haul supplies from the water up to the lighthouse construction site. "I won't tell you how we got the derrick up here," he smiled smugly.

After the dreadful movie ended, we went to see the site of the hoist and derrick for ourselves. We were unable to shed any more light on how the equipment had arrived at its former station, so we descended a long flight of stairs that led to the shore. The large, loose rocks that made up the beach provided a spectacular view of the lighthouse. Despite the fact that the site is designed to direct visitors down to the area, it felt very isolated. We climbed out to the edge of the beach and sat soaking up the spray from the lake until we realised how late in the afternoon it was. We were determined to make it to Gooseberry Falls before heading home, but the glinting of the lighthouse itself deterred us. I hadn't realised that visitors could go inside. We chatted to a person in uniform there before climbing the spiral staircase up to the shiny rotating lens.


I finally tired of looking at the gears displayed in a glass cabinet below the light, and we made the short journey to Gooseberry Falls. These falls were quite a bit busier and, seemingly, more tourist-friendly than the Tettegouche High Falls. You could walk across the stone in the riverbed and come close enough to put your hand in the rushing water. I wasn't quite as impressed with these falls, since I hadn't become lost in the process of finding them. It seemed a little too easy. And we were both craving a second slice of Rustic Inn pie. So we left after following the clearly defined trail around the falls.


We rather embarrassingly had the same waitress who had served us the previous afternoon. This time she was unfazed by my request for apple cherry pie, and I didn't have to wonder over her insistence upon the use of the 'and' conjunction. I'm now convinced that the best way to leave the North Shore is with the taste of pie lingering in your mouth. I was certainly content on the drive back to the Cities. It took far longer than we expected due to deer, mist and the languor of the employees at DQ. I was exhausted when we finally made it back, but I was also very refreshed. This may have had something to do with being around so many waterfalls. But my expat side had reemerged as a result of exploring so many new places, and that was the most pleasing aspect of all.

North Shore, Part II: Lost Like A Cyclist in Dublin

Contentedly stuffed with pie, Andy and I retrieved the car from across the street and drove down Highway 61. The original destination we'd had in mind was Palisade Head, but the drive was so scenic that we decided to bypass it in favour of the more distant Tettegouche State Park. Andy went into the ranger station to buy a permit and asked what we should do whilst in the park. The ranger on duty suggested a brief 0.7 mile hike to the High Falls.

We covered this distance slowly, stopping frequently to indulge our inner photographers. We'd had the good fortune to be sheltered in the car during the afternoon's sole bout of rain, and the sun soon made an appearance from behind the falsely foreboding clouds. Other hikers seem to have been deterred by the brief shower, however. We had the trail to ourselves, with the exception of a lone running man who startled us by bursting from a side path.

As we walked, evidence of the recent rain emerged in the form of expansive and frequent patches of mud. Likely because my trainers had grown uncomfortably soggy, I began to question the distance we'd travelled before Andy did. "I feel like we've gone farther than 0.7 miles," I ventured.
"No," he countered cheerfully. "It just seems like it because we've been stopping a lot to take pictures."
We continued on, and continued to take pictures. We kept confusing the sound of the wind with the sound of rushing water and expected to find a waterfall around every next bend as a result.

Instead we stumbled upon a sign for Nipisiquit Lake. We consulted our map (which previously had been of no help whatsoever) and discovered that we were significantly off course. We'd missed a turn somewhere, but where? We couldn't remember coming upon an intersecting path where we would have had the option to alter our route. While we were still lost in thought about our navigational error, Andy glanced up into a birch tree and noticed a mushroom growing high amongst its sparse limbs. "Fungus! You WAAAAAY up there!" he exclaimed, adopting his best gangsta tone and swagger (which weren't good). "WORD!"

Being doubled over with laughter helped me to forget about my wet feet and simultaneously cleared my memory. "Wait...do you think we were supposed to turn where that guy came running out of the woods?" I asked. That indeed proved to be the case. When we arrived back at the spot where we'd encountered Running Man, we found that the turnoff for High Falls was clearly and un-missably marked. I blame the distraction of Running Man coupled with how enraptured we were with the trail.

The route to the High Falls was significantly less muddy than Mystery Route. And it was significantly shorter. We reached the falls in what to us seemed to be record speed. We lingered long enough to rest our feet and take a few pictures, then started to hike back. We were hoping to catch the sunset from Palisade Head. As we reached the top of the staircase that ascended from the falls, we came across another hiker. We talked for a bit about the muddy condition of the trails. "I knew I shouldn't have worn my work shoes," she lamented. Glancing down, I saw that her feet were tied into a pair of New Balance trainers. What a great job she must have. We encountered her again in the parking lot and learned that she volunteers for the Superior Hiking Trail, driving five hours from Bemidji to do so. "Husband thinks I'm crazy," she quipped. "He can stay home."

We parted ways with our fellow hiker and embarked on the harrowing drive up to Palisade Head. The road was narrow, with tree limbs and other various forms of plant life encroaching on the black strip of tar that slashed through them. The steep incline and tight turns added to the sense of exploration we'd been enjoying throughout the day. This dissipated slightly when we found the parking lot and a couple busily steaming up the windows of their car there. We paid them little mind and managed to regain our sense of adventure by climbing as close to the sheer drop down to Lake Superior as we dared. The view of the rapidly shifting water was vertigo-inducing. And the deep crevices in the dark, slate gray rock, while not brandishing the power of freezing, pounding water, were intimidating in their own way.

Finally we turned away from the water and started exploring a little ways inland. We quickly came upon an area where white clumps of something were scattered all around. "That looks like deer hair," Andy mused, picking up a piece of it. The fibrous appearance of the cluster made me argue that it was a plant spore--a bigger, thicker dandelion puff. "You're probably right," Andy conceded. But his agreement didn't last long. After taking a few more steps he stopped and in a hushed, urgent voice told me to "Look over there...but look slowly."

Contrary to his instructions, my head snapped in the indicated direction to see a headless skeleton next to a strangely tidy pile of hide. After absorbing the initial shock, we climbed onto a higher rock for a better vantage point. From this angle we could see an intact deer leg poking out from under the hair pile. The circumstances of the deer's death seemed a little dodgy and made us both uneasy. We didn't linger long into the dusk. We found the other couple, oblivious to the carcass nearby, still parked in the lot when we went back to the car.

Perhaps it was the lingering memory of the skeleton, but the drive back out to Highway 61 seemed even more perilous than the trip in. Actually, my discomfort can probably be attributed to my realisation that what I'd assumed to be a one-way was actually meant to be a dual carriageway. But we made it back to the cabin without incident and relaxed over a steak dinner and some Newcastles. We still had one more day of exploring (and all the attendant becoming lost and finding dead things) ahead of us.

North Shore, Part I: The Pre-Adventure Adventure

With all the overwhelming inappropriateness that had been going on at work, I definitely needed a holiday. So Andy and I took a break from temping and broken transmissions and spent a weekend exploring nature in the North Shore. I've somehow managed to live most of my life in Minnesota without ever seeing Lake Superior, so a visit there was long overdue. We left promptly after work ended on Friday, and I felt considerably better after putting some miles between us and the cities. A clear, moonlit night greeted us when we reached Duluth and the start of Highway 61 around 10 PM. A wide patch of the lake reflected the moonlight with unbelievable brightness, creating some spectacular scenery as we drove the rest of the way to Two Harbo(u)rs.

We explored the surreal lighting further once we arrived at the cabin we'd reserved for the weekend. Only a short flight of hewn log stairs separated our dock from the lake. The light spilling into the shallow pools trapped in the craters on the rocky shore formed a beautiful and completely indescribable scene. It seemed as though it had been artificially created. I couldn't help feeling as though I was walking on the moon. Andy and I spent some time trying to capture the scene, but the images we composed are only a faint approximation of the lustrous scene.

The next morning was very lazy. It was our obligation to check in with Jerry, the person with whom we'd made our reservation over the phone, that finally coaxed us out of the cabin. No-one answered our knock at the main office, but a sign on the door directed us to cabin 9. Jerry motioned us in through the window as he finished up a phone conversation. We choked on the overbearing haze of stale Winston smoke that pervaded the cabin as we entered and waited for him to hang up. When he did, he explained that he'd been chatting to a woman who'd "supposedly" been his friend for years. "But now she thinks I'm an asshole for not keeping in better contact," he growled.

He seemed to set the matter aside quickly enough, and he led us out into the fresh air and back to the main office. He chatted as he attempted to run the credit card reader, telling us that he'd lived in California before coming back to help a friend with the cabins. He'd thought it was temporary. But, as he explained, "I got stuck here." Despite his gruff demeanour, I can't imagine he was actually bothered by the pristine setting. Just before we left, Andy mentioned that we were planning to visit the renowned Betty's Pies for lunch. "Is that a good place to go, do you think?" he asked. "Enh, it's OK," Jerry shrugged. "The place across the street is better, though."

Indeed, the Rustic Inn was all that Jerry had succinctly said it was. I was immediately impressed by the enormous jalapeno that garnished the toothpick spear barely keeping my turkey cranberry sandwich assembled. And the taste lived up to the expectation set by this daring condiment. Andy and I had both decided to take advantage of the lunch special because it included a slice of pie. We pored over the varieties carved into a wooden menu board as we finished our entrees, carefully considering our options. Suddenly we overheard a waitress reciting additional possibilities to a nearby table. Andy was taken with the prospect of cherry peach pie, and he inquired about it when our server returned to take our dessert order.

"Well," she replied thoughtfully, "I know we have cherry and peach, but I don't know if we have cherry peach." I shot Andy a baffled look. Surely cherry and peach was the same thing as cherry peach? Luckily Krystal assured us that they did, in fact, have the latter. It didn't occur to me until embarrassingly later in the day what she'd meant by emphasizing the conjunction. She knew they had cherry pie, and she knew they had peach pie, but she didn't know if they had cherry peach pie. Sadly, figuring this out caused the statement to lose much of the humour I'd found in it.

While we slowly ate these amazingly delicious specimens of pie, it started to rain quite heavily. A brief electrical interruption accompanied the downpour. When the lights blinked off, we immediately grew concerned for the huge quantities of ice cream they must have on hand for a la mode orders. What would happen if it all melted? In addition to the sticky puddles of ice cream coating the floors, there would be a tragic increase in the number of naked pie slices. Fortunately that disastrous outcome didn't occur. The power, including the stereo system, was immediately restored. "Is the Titanic music our cue to leave?" Andy asked. It was.

Temp Nostalgia

My job at Tax Place has come and gone. I must admit that I didn't realise how good I'd had it. They fed me free lunch every Tuesday and Thursday, my coworkers were appreciative of the work M and I did for them, and they generally just let us be and didn't treat us like we were five-year-olds. But the value of these small luxuries didn't become fully apparent until I started my new temp assignment.

Something about being a temp seems to make all of your coworkers assume that you are absolutely stupid beyond hope. My supervisor at Class Action Place demonstrated this on my first day when he was explaining how to affix adhesive labels onto forms. He not only instructed me as to where I should place these specific labels, but also how to apply them. "You just peel it off, stick it on, and give it a little press," he revealed. I let this comment slide, barely refraining from making some snarky remark about how my preschool education had sufficiently prepared me to handle stickers. Another woman felt the need to tell me how to file a form. "Make sure to put it between the one that goes before it and the one that goes after it," she said.

The superfluousness of these instructions lessened as my coworkers discovered that I was capable of opening envelopes, labeling, filing and even scanning. But this victory over insulting explanations soon lost its lustre. I arrived at work one morning to discover that people from another department had infiltrated the Temp Annex. Previously we three temps had been surrounded by empty desks. Filling these spaces would not necessarily have been a bad thing. But they were filled with some of the most obnoxious people I've ever encountered. None of the Temp Force ever determined what these people do, aside from talking excessively and excessively loudly.

The topics of the endless stream of conversation range from the Bible verses with which they intend to decorate their new cubicles to the laying on of hands to late periods to pregnancy, delivery and epidurals. Recently, a woman who feared she might be pregnant began to confide in a woman who is already pregnant. I unfortunately overheard them discussing each of the early signs of pregnancy they'd experienced. I even more unfortunately overheard one of them utter the word 'discharge' in the context of that discussion. To make matters even worse, such conversations are conducted in the droning voice of the pregnant woman, who too liberally sprinkles her speech with "Yaa knooooow," and the horrendous grammar of the might-be-pregnant woman, who favours phrases like, "Why you ain't in here?"

It quickly became apparent that no solace would be provided by this team's supervisor, who sits amongst them. In fact, he is a large part of the problem. Thankfully, he avoids talking about biology. Instead, he shares the tricks he's learned in Excel whilst managing the spreadsheets of films that he likes to keep in his spare time. When he's not boasting heartily about his love of films, his band (a cross between Tool and some other metal band), or any other subject on which he considers himself to be an authority (which doesn't exclude much), he speaks in an exaggerated stage whisper. When he's not whispering, he hisses along to the heavy metal beats playing in his headphones.

The object lesson in his pomposity occurred a few weeks ago. He sneezed, and said something in Latin to excuse himself. He then sneezed a second time and uttered a different Latin word. I know it was Latin because he then cried, "Whoa, that's a lot of Latin for one day." To me, this is very similar to saying gesundheit and then remarking, "Whoa, that's a lot of German for one day!" The others around me must have felt the same way because no-one responded. After a second of what must have been excruciating ego-crushing silence, he repeated, "I said, that's a lot of Latin for one day!"

My assignment was due to end just when I thought I couldn't take much more. I saw my supervisor in the hall as I was heading out to lunch on my rather joyous last day. "Don't forget 2 o'clock," he reminded me.
"What's at 2 o'clock?" I asked.
"The big processing meeting," he replied, looking confused as to why I hadn't informed myself about this important event.
"Oh. I don't have email, so I didn't know about it," I replied. "And it's our last day anyway. Do you even want us to come?"
"What?!?" he cried. "No, it's not. It better not be!"
I told him that Staffing Place had told us 9 June was our last day, and I hadn't heard that the assignment had been extended. He resolved to talk to the other supervisor and try to fix the debacle.

I went to the meeting after lunch. The other two temps, who'd already decided not to come back even if an extension was offered, didn't. My supervisor left the meeting to fetch them, and they eventually slunk in late. At the end of the meeting, my supervisor said, "I just found out at 2 o'clock that the temps won't be coming back tomorrow." There was general uproar amongst all the overworked people present. "They've accepted other assignments," he said, with resignation in his voice. "They weren't extended and their assignment's done." I had been looking forward to having a week or so off to write and just enjoy being rid of my coworkers. But I'd learnt from one of the other temps that morning that Staffing Place didn't have much else to offer. So I cracked under the pressure at the meeting and agreed to continue there until 3 July (if not longer).

To make matters worse, I was now the only person from my department sitting amongst the obnoxious members of the infiltrating department. I thought this might be too much to bear. Fortunately my supervisor bailed me out. "We're not going to leave you sitting over here all by yourself," she said, stopping by my desk the next afternoon. "Starting tomorrow, you can sit over where P. used to be." My escape from Temp Annex did not come soon enough, however. I was there to hear the woman concerned about being pregnant reveal that she was definitely not expecting. "It came last night!" she exclaimed joyfully.

While I can still hear Latin Sneezer ranting about films from time to time, my new area is blissfully quiet and relatively normal. It makes the job a little better. It's certainly good enough to be my source of income until I leave for Australia. But I can't help waxing nostalgic about Tax Place occasionally. I will always have my memories...and traces of toner in my lungs.

Toner Lung

Copying tax returns is a big part of my job at the Tax Place. M and I use the copier so much, in fact, that I am convinced we will both develop a rare and debilitating disease. I first became aware of my risk of contracting Toner Lung when I noticed the acrid, tangy fumes permeating the air around the over-used office apparatus. They definitely smell harmful, and they make your nose sting when you inhale. My fears were compounded when M began exhibiting likely symptoms of the illness. She was coughing more than usual, and complained about her frequent sneezing. Both symptoms, to me, are sure signs of aggravated respiratory passages.

And then there's M's accountant. Now that I think of it, I'm positive Toner Lung is the cause of his constant throat-clearing. Hmm. Or, rather, "Hrm."

Aside from slightly searing my fingertips by touching the copies before they've fully cooled, I've yet to experience any adverse copier-related effects. But I have had several mechanical issues with the machine in the past few days. Shortly before leaving on Monday afternoon, I picked up a five-state, 18 shareholder return to assemble. Just the original document was about as thick as an entire package of paper, so I knew the multiple copies I had to make would produce a staggering pile. I was about halfway through the arduous replicating process when I accidentally caught and slightly opened one of the multiple doors on the top of the copier. It began beeping furiously and immediately refused to keep working.

Annoyed, I gazed at the screen to see what debilitating injury the petulant office fixture was supposedly suffering. Per the copier's instructions, I fully opened the door I'd just bumped and cleared the mis-fed sheet from 5A. Once that had been taken care of, the screen insisted that I open the front door and check for a jam in the cavernous compartment it concealed. I did as I was told, and was shocked at what I found. There was paper everywhere. 3A, 3B, 3C and 2A were all clogged. I managed to clear all the afflicted sections and safely shut the door without burning myself on the fuser. But the copier kept beeping and insisting that I recheck compartment 3.

I opened the door again to find that the paper jam had seemingly regenerated itself out of nowhere. Paper had mysteriously reappeared, lodged in all the places from which I'd just removed it. I diligently pulled out all the firmly lodged sheets and shut the door. The copier resumed its protest, and the same series of events occurred at least twice more. Finding my usual small-repair capabilities exhausted, I sought the aid of my supervisor. She deleted the current print job (I'd cancelled it, but that must not have been definitive enough for the copier to understand) and cleared paper from sections I didn't even know existed. Her assistance silenced the copier's aggravating beeps and left it in perfect working order. By then it was time for me to go home. I was relieved to do so and left the rest of the burdensome copying process for the next morning.

After that debacle, each copy endeavour I've undertaken has run smoothly. Until this morning. I had to use a different copier than normal in order to take advantage of its ability to stamp COPY across documents as it replicates them. What I didn't realise was that while this copier has superior extra features, it's not as intuitive as the copier to which I am accustomed. This new machine doesn't sort the document unless you specifically ask it to do so. I wasn't aware of this until it was far too late.

I loaded my 50-plus page return into the tray, changed the number of copies to three and waited. I watched, slightly horrified, as the copier spat three copies of page two on top of three copies of page one, three copies of page three on top of three copies of page two, and so on. It was a small disaster. Rather than simply picking up a neatly staggered stack of three complete returns, I had to collate the documents by hand when they came off the printer.

Despite the tedium of this task, it didn't actually take too long. And now I know better. I'd still prefer dealing with jams and unsorted documents to suffering from Toner Lung.

Ah, Ahhhh, Mr. Willllson. Ah, Ahhhh, Mr. Heath.

It's tax season. While this widely dreaded occasion usually passes without much consideration on my part, it is more evident to me this year than ever before. This is because I've spent the last five weeks temping at an accounting firm. As one might imagine, the work is eye-gougingly tedious. I'm helping to alleviate the strain of the rush by assembling tax returns. This involves making a lot of copies, then stapling, red x-ing, Post-It noting and paper clipping the federal return and the state return(s). Then I bind a copy for the client and print a cover sheet and mailing label. This over and over and over and over, hour after hour, day after day.

And my coworkers are accountants. People in this profession are not renowned for their sense of humour. Some of them defy this stereotype. But I think I previously gave some of them more credit than they deserve. A few weeks ago I had finished all the returns waiting to be assembled and was doing something non-return-related (probably involving gmail) in my cubicle. One of my coworkers approached me and asked, "How's it going back here?"

"Fine," I answered. "We're all caught up. There's nothing in the bins."

"RE-ally?" she asked, obviously astonished.

"Yeah, I just checked five minutes ago, and they were empty." I hesitated, and when she issued no response, added, "I can check again..."

We both walked back up to the front of the support area and looked in the still-empty bins.

"Well," she stammered, clearly taken aback by the light load we were carrying. "I wonder if someone's slacking off in review."

"Nope, we're just fast!" I quipped as I was walking away.

"Oh, you are?" she asked, a bit too eagerly and gullibly.

"...Yes?" I'd intended the comment to be flippant, but this nuance had gone undetected.

A little later in the afternoon, this same woman had decided to help the flagrantly lagging reviewers by checking some of the returns herself. I brought one over to her after I'd finished assembling it.

"That was a really fun one," I said as I handed it over. "A three-state shareholder one."

"Oh! You liked that, did you?"

"...No."

"Ooooooooooh! You were being sarcastic!"

Since she'd called me out on it, I then had to find a way to detach myself from my snarky statement to avoid looking like a complete snot.

"Well, it was nice because it was different. Otherwise it can get a little monotonous."

Last week, I encountered another example of the humour void. I was missing a piece of a return I was assembling and went to retrieve it from the appropriate person. While I was waiting for her to print the portion I needed, I noticed a librarian action figure gracing a ledge of her cubicle.

"Oh, that's funny," I commented, "A librarian action figure."

"Yeah," she answered, "It's kind of a joke."

Um, I know! While librarians are certainly staunch defenders of citizens in the literacy and educational arenas, theirs is not a profession that would traditionally inspire one to create a miniature replica. That's why producing one is funny. Thankfully, my coworker then went on to say that she'd been educated as a librarian but couldn't find a job in that field. So she wasn't explaining that the existence of a librarian action figure was funny. Rather, her owning the action figure was the joke.

Though these coworkers don't seem to entirely understand humour, that is exactly what makes them funny (to me). Another of my coworkers takes a different approach to amusement. The standard procedure in the office is for the reviewers to put the returns that are ready to be assembled in bins at the front of the support area. One of the accountant managers flagrantly flouts this established practice. He prefers to bring his returns directly back to me and the other assembly temp. Actually, he prefers to bring them only to the other assembly temp. If she was in the middle of assembling a five-state, 35 shareholder return and I was idly checking my facebook, he'd still hand the new return to her.

The extent of his devotion to M was not entirely clear until she left early one day. I was assembling in my cubicle when I heard the constant throat-clearing that indicated he was in the vicinity of my desk. He looked a little bewildered when he saw M wasn't present. "Hrm...M's not here, huh? Hrm. Hm. Hrm."

"Nope. I can take it," I offered, only slightly sympathetic to his dashed dreams of seeing her in all her assembling splendour. He went away, and I didn't think much of it. But he came back with another return just before a firm-wide, in-office happy hour scheduled for that day was due to begin. M's accountant looked for her, then settled for talking to me when he saw that her chair was still crushingly empty.

"M didn't stick around for happy hour, huh?" he asked. "Hrm. Hrm."

"No, she went home," I confirmed. "I can take it."

He handed me the return and walked back to his office, clearing his throat in a decidedly lacklustre and heartbroken fashion.

When M returned the next day, I informed her of what had transpired. "You make me sound like a..." she hesitated, the word she wanted escaping her.

"Seductress?" I supplied helpfully. "That's because you are. He tries to stay away, but he just can't resist your charms." Pointing out the special attention her accountant paid to her may have made M feel a little awkward around him. The consequences were disastrous. She came up to me late in the afternoon and rehashed an incident that had just occurred. She'd passed her accountant in the hall, and he'd said "Hi" and stopped (presumably to have an intimate chat with her). She returned his greeting without breaking stride. "It's just getting too weird," she confided. He must have taken her not-so-subtle hint. When he brought back a return the following day, he placed it on the neutral shelving unit between our two cubicles rather than handing it to M directly. "I'll just leave this here. Hrm. Hrm."

I didn't fully realise the significance of the direct interaction M's accountant had insisted upon until last week. This time, he intercepted me near the bins and handed me a return to reassemble. This exchange happened in front of one of my supervisors, who questioned me about it after M's accountant had gone. "Which return is that?" she asked.

"Oh, <name withheld to protect confidentiality>," I responded.

"He shouldn't be giving you stuff directly," she chided.

"I think he just gave it to me because I assembled it in the first place," I explained.

"Well, he knows better," she countered.

So, he knows better than to give us returns directly. But M's special lustre is just so impossible to resist that he'll defy all the approved procedures in order to see her, consequences be damned. It must be love.

While he has not made much of an impression on M, M's accountant seems to have a more powerful effect on another of my coworkers. The returns that this particular woman prepares for assembly always seem to have something wrong with them. They're missing pieces, or the pieces are wrong, or they're out of order. A few days ago I noticed an interesting correlation between her mistakes and the location of her office. It's right next to M's accountant's. I hear his incessant throat-clearing every time I pass his office, and I have thought to myself several times how annoyed I would be if I had to sit anywhere near him. But she is actually forced to live the experience that makes me cringe to even imagine. Perhaps listening to this repetitive and, frankly, rather disgusting sound all day drives her to distraction and causes the problems I so often encounter with the returns she's reviewed for assembly. An interesting theory, and one I'll likely explore in the remaining weeks.

Tax Place has proven to be one more in my series of odd jobs in even odder places. But this time, the assignment is enlivened with, perhaps, some of the oddest people I've yet encountered as a temp. This additional element definitely helps me to continue plowing through and assembling the seemingly endless pile of paper. As M and I often remind each other just before free lunch is served on Tuesdays and Thursdays, it's the little things that help to keep you sane.