Empty-Headed

Work has gotten to me this week. I feel empty-headed right now as I am ready to walk out the door. I don’t have tons to say tonight, but I’m glad that the weekend is here. It’s been a long, rough week. I’m more than ready for the three days.

I don’t have any real plans, but I have lots to do. There is yard work and grocery shopping and paying my bills. I want to take Bosco for a long couple of walks at the river park. There is fishing and kayaking. Then I have dinner with the kids and the ex on Sunday. And we are still supposed to go see Machete tomorrow. I will, of course, find time for sitting by a nice fire at least one of the nights with some wine and music.

Everyone have a great, long weekend. I hope the time goes by slowly.

A Very Quick Rant

I have to get this off my chest. I work with a bunch of ninnies. “I might call out sick tomorrow because of the hurricane”. “Why do we have to work overtime in a hurricane?” “Why can’t you close operations for the day?” Get a grip, people. According to the news and weather reports it’s not even supposed to make landfall here. And we are almost two hours inland here. And none of these people live down the shore, or even have rentals there.

Go on then. Go home and board up your houses and all that. And while you are at it, hit the store on the way home and stock up on bread, tainted eggs and milk. Honestly, who does that anyway? When I know I’m going to be homebound because of some storm, I want alcohol, pizza and nachos, and plenty of it. Not milk and sandwiches. Good lord.

Rain, Kidney, Fatigue

Well, it looks like we are finally going to get our rain on Friday as the hurricane makes its way up the coast. No more brown lawn. On the other hand, it also means I’ll have to break out the mower and weed whacker over the weekend.
I’m not too fond of that prospect.

I had my quarterly appointment with my nephrologist this afternoon. I can report that everything is as fine as it can be for someone with only one kidney. My blood pressure is in great shape, I don’t have swollen ankles and none of my lower organs are enlarged.

I’m tired tonight from the overtime. I can feel the lack of motivation all over me like a second skin. It’s a good thing we are not working overtime tonight. I don’t know if I’d survive that. It’s really hot here too, as we are having another heat wave, and that just adds to the magic. I can’t wait to get out of here.

A Number Of Random Things

I can’t believe that I got up without any problems this morning. I have enough energy right now, but I may be dragging later on this evening.

The one thing I hate the most about working these kinds of hours is that the more I am away from home, the more Bosco wants my attention when I am there. I really wish I had more time to spend with him during the week.

It’s only Tuesday, but I have my eye to the weekend. Right now I have no plans except for going to the movies with the kids on Saturday at some point to see Machete. That type of movie is a guilty pleasure for me. Every once in a while I can’t help but go see one.

This weekend I do have to take my new guitar amplifier back to the store. It is making a constant loud humming when I have a guitar plugged into it. That’s not supposed to happen. I make enough noise as it is without help. Luckily it’s under warranty.

My sister sent me a wedding photo from my nephew’s wedding in July in a frame. It arrived in the mail yesterday. I haven’t opened it yet, but as Billy mentioned, the package sounds like it has a kaleidoscope in it. There are “fragile handle with care stickers plastered all over it. Way to go, USPS.

One thing I dislike about my job is when I try to help people stay out of trouble and they don’t try themselves. It’s unfortunate what they do to themselves, the way they jeopardize their livelihoods. They just don’t believe that anything bad will happen to them. It’s sad that they can’t or won’t see reality.

Illness And Other Assorted Nonsense

It’s time for my usual writing assignment on “what I did this weekend”. Friday night I stayed up for a while messing around on the computer. I slept in until about 11:00 Saturday morning. I did some cleaning around the house and ran some errands. In the afternoon I took my car to the dealership for maintenance. After that I had some Chinese take out from a place around the corner with Billy Boy.

Later on, while I was noodling around on the guitar, a friend called and asked me to come over to help her work on a book manuscript. I was honored to be asked and I went. We worked on the manuscript, then drank some wine and talked for a long while. I left there around midnight and stopped at Taco Hell on my way home. I spent some time on line and ate my food.

Sunday morning I woke up at around 8:00, violently throwing up. For a while there I could not stop retching. My ribs are sore from it today. I was alternating between sweating like a pig and being cold. To make matters worse, I had screaming diarrhea to go along with it. It just had to be the fast food- mild food poisoning I’m guessing. I’m staying away from that place from now on. That being what it was I stayed in bed until 1:30 p.m. By then I was feeling better, so I got up and did some laundry, talked to my brother on the phone and then got ready to go have dinner with the ex and the kids.

We went to dinner at an oriental fusion restaurant that the kids like. The food was really good, and I didn’t have any problems keeping it down. After that we went to a discount CD store. I picked up eight CDs for $35. They were all old things from the eighties and nineties I have on cassette or vinyl that I wanted on CD. Then we went to Friendly’s for ice cream. I went home after that and watched the Broncos-Steelers game with Billy and talked to my mother on the phone.

I got up feeling pretty good this morning except for the rib issue, until I remembered what this week is going to be like at work. We are facing lots of overtime. The really sucky part is tonight into tomorrow. Tonight we work until midnight and then have to be back in tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. I just know I’m going to be burned out by Wednesday from this. I’m going to need the upcoming long weekend to recover.

Everyone else have a great week…

Weekend Plans, The Lack Thereof

Well, here it is, another Friday night and I have no stellar plans for the weekend. Tomorrow afternoon I take my car to the dealership for routine maintenance. Sunday afternoon late is dinner with the kids at some restaurant called the Coconut something or other.

Other than that, there’s nothing doing in my world. I’ll probably squeeze in some kayak and/or fishing time, and take Bosco to the park. I could get my bill paying out of the way, although I usually wait until after the first of the month when I actually have all of the bills. I don’t like having to do it twice.

Some weekends I like to have no plans, but this weekend I wish I had things going on. Actually, tonight I’m missing a party at a friend’s house- an adults-only party. I think those are the best kinds sometimes. The hosts are making arrangements with their child for the evening to help make it happen.

It’s a quiet night at work, which I hate. All the work we were supposed to get hammered with didn’t materialize because the ship didn’t hit the port and dock when it was supposed to dock. Next week will now be a nightmare. I already know that we will have overtime every night next week, and maybe even into the following week. Why this keeps happening is too complicated for me to explain here. That fact that it’s happening is unnecessary.

In other news, on a total impulsive whim, late last night I emailed a poem to a former lover that I wrote about us. Now I don’t know if I should have or not. I still want her, and now she knows…

The Problem With Them

This may be boring to some of you, but I feel like I have to get it out.

I work in a production environment. We in management have told the employees here a several times that we have an objective of saving a million dollars in labor over the next three years. We are to do this by cutting overtime and temporary labor usage, and by working a little faster without reducing the quality of our work. If we don’t achieve this, the executives may very well decide to replace us with third-party labor, which they are considering.

Third party labor means bringing in contract workers for cheaper than what our workers get paid, and no benefits. Those contract workers would, by following their contract, meet all production and quality objectives outlined by our company— for much less than what our people make, which is about $22.50 an hour, plus great benefits.

Every time we get executive visits, which is more and more frequently nowadays, they are looking around closely, trying to decide if we are worth keeping or not. They do the same when they look at our monthly productivity and quality statistics. We tell our people this over and over. We try to not let them forget that we are being watched closely, and that their very comfortable livelihoods are at stake.

Now, what would you do if you were in this situation? Would you do your very best at work? Would you hustle while on the job and stay focused? Not these people. Instead of moving with a sense of purpose or urgency and concern for their jobs, I see people sauntering around, being lackadaisical and apathetic. I see people placing more importance on socializing than working. I see people who are truly unconcerned and think that the company would not dare replace them. This is especially true of the more senior employees.

There are some good workers who understand and they do the right thing, but they are a small minority. It seems like most of these people just don’t get it. And I don’t get that. And it angers me, because I don’t want them dragging me down with them, which is exactly what they could do. Along with everything else I do here, it has become my job now to try to protect these people (and me) from themselves. It’s perhaps the hardest thing I have ever had to do in this job.

Dreams, Inspiration, And NYC Lady

It’s a slow night at work. Luckily. I’ve been tired all afternoon and evening after working overtime last night and not sleeping well. I kept having strange dreams that woke me up. Typically, I can’t remember any of them now.

In one of their songs, King Missle said that in order to remember your dreams you must put a bowl of milk on the floor and say, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty…”. When the cat laps at the milk, the dream is realized. Strange stuff. They are no longer. I miss their weird sense of humor.

I am in a writing dry spell. I’m having this problem that I’ll think of a couple of good lines or a premise when I am nowhere the computer, like when I am commuting. When I do get to a computer and have a chance to do something with it, it doesn’t sound anywhere as good to me as it originally did, so I scrap it. All of my poetry is either confessional or observational, and it’s hard to come up with fresh thoughts at times.

No word at the moment from NYC lady. She is on a two-week combined business and pleasure trip to somewhere in Massachusetts. She is an artist, writer and musician who is currently working on a couple of apparently big installations for public and private galleries. She is well-educated, well-rounded, very well set financially and likes a lot of things I like. She has a pretty smile. Honestly, something about her kind of scares me a little bit. We’ll see where this goes, if anywhere.

Finally, an advertisement of sorts. If you know her and you haven’t yet, contact SWG about getting a copy of her book. It’s a great read from cover to cover.

Tuesday Night Stuffs

At the beginning of the shift I told everyone that tonight; we absolutely have to stay until all the work is completed. There can be no carry over. Last time that proposition was made to them they hustled and finished two hours early. Not this time. As of right now it looks like everyone wants the overtime.

I have been trying to work soda out of my diet, or at least greatly reduce my intake. My goal is only one a week. I had read that carbonation may contribute to colon cancer in some way. It’s been on my mind since that’s what my grandmother died from and she was a heavy soda and beer drinker. I’ve been drinking a lot of water at work, and a lot of iced tea at home. I’ve also started drinking Vitamin Water Zero. The lemonade version is pretty good. I’m sure I’ll be better off for this.

Billy Boy called me at work tonight, which is a very rare thing. My first thought was that something was wrong with Bosco. I always worry about that little dog when I’m not home. I can’t help it. Anyway, he had just called to tell me that he had been grocery shopping and what he had bought was up for grabs.

It’s funny that Evil talked about a Christmas tree in her blog today, because I was thinking about Christmas today. I was thinking about how I want to get a jump on the shopping and get it done early this year. Hit the stores when no one else is thinking about it and get in on some good sales. I always seem to wait until December and I hate getting caught up in all the hassle and hubbub.

Well, not that the overtime is here, everyone is hustling. It figures.

You WILL NOT believe this

I just read it in the news this evening: Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter plans on imposing a $300 annual  business tax on- get this- bloggers. Yes, if you have any kind of a blog you will get hit with this shitty tax, regardless of whether it is an actual business for you or not.

His name says it right. The man is a nutter. He should be flogged. Rode out of town on a rail. Hell, as some of you are fond of saying, he should be fucked in the neck. In the rain.

Once the other nutters, the ones who run the state of NJ, get ahold of this, and they will, I won’t be blogging anymore, because I simply will not pay it. I’ll have to wait for the lawyers to latch on and get it overturned.

This is wrong on so many levels.