Every 18 minutes someone in the US dies of suicide.

Every 19 minutes someone is left to make sense of it.

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
National Suicide Prevention Hotline -- 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433)
The Bridge -- Official Movie Website

Damn, I'm tired. For some bizarre reason, they only scheduled three people to be on checkout tonight. One of those was a girl who could only work until 9pm because of her age. Another was a young guy who was "sick" tonight.

Guess who that left "minding the store".

So from 6:30 to 9:00 pm, it was just me and this girl on checkout. After 9pm, it was just me. Thank god for self-checkout lanes!

Our security guard went home without telling anyone, so no one locked the door on time (10pm). The store is doing a big inventory sometime next week, so the asst. mgr. on duty was trying to work on getting ready for that, but he had to keep putting out fires (rhetorical ones, fortunately). I ended up chasing out some guy that wandered in about 10:15pm (15 minutes after closing). Half the lights in the store were out. I guess he thought we were trying to save money, or something. Maybe he thought he was going blind and he should hurry up and do his shopping while he could still see!

Bleah!

A couple of nice things happened before I went to work, though. I got my first paycheck from this job (yay!!!) and this morning, sunnydale47 drove me downtown (since I don't currently have a working car) to get a bank account. So, that makes me feel a little bit more human again.

Also, right before I left, I got a card in the mail from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. It's a very simple little card. The front has a blue background with the life preserver logo of the AFSP in white. Inside are the words "Our thoughts are with you on the anniversary of your loss".

They're a little early. Connie didn't die until the 26th.

However, my Grandpa, Rev. Forrest R. Stickler, did die 12 years ago today.

An interesting coincidence that their card came today. I'm not even a member of AFSP. Not yet, anyway. That's something I want to do once I get have a little extra money. But I have to register for the 2006 Overnight (aka Out of the Darkness) first.