Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you just have to talk to one through a nifty headset

Since Wednesday I've been filling in for my step-dad's receptionist, who was kind enough to go on vacation just when I most needed money. Jack runs a non-profit legal office for low-income senior citizens, which should tell you a bit about why I felt the need to educate poverty-stricken children in Thailand.

It's not bad work, actually. Most callers just want someone to listen to them and make sympathetic noises, which, I've discovered, I'm exceptionally good at. I haven't yet reached Jack's level of proficiency, which allows him to wander the office, make copies, write letters, juggle cans of Pepsi, and debug computers while listening and making sympathetic noises, but I'm working on it. All in good time, my child.

There are some challenges (read: wack-jobs) though. Like the British guy who began to yell at the top of his (non-senior-sounding) lungs when I told him the next available appointment was July 5th and insisted I accomodate him because he almost married a member of the royal family, was in the Guiness Book of World Records TWICE for the most blood donated, and could quote Shakespeare. (That "first kill all the lawyers" line was totally out of context, I might add.) Or the guy who wants to sue his neighbor for accusing him of being a child molester and he refused to die with people thinking such horrible things about him, but in the meantime, I sound like I'm so young and have such a pretty voice. Nuttier'n a fruitcake, Jack says. (I assume fruitcakes have a lot of nuts here. I really wouldn't know, but they must, or else why would everyone use them as an example of nuttiness?) They also like to talk about their laparoscomies and oxygen tanks and the time they had surgery on their kidneys.

In other news. . .wait, there is no other news. I forgot, I'm the world's most boring human because I need to save every penny if I'm going to move out of my parents' basement before someone kills someone else with a hatchet.