I Got More Hats!

So before I went off to my gig yesterday/Saturday, I brought two hats: One to represent the company I was working for in the afternoon, and one to represent my alma mater, whose Game I would be watching from our bar if I went there straight from the stadium.

Well, they asexually reproduced, because I came home with four.  I was given another hat from the company.  And on my way to the bar, I saw a Twins cap on a walk button stand.  It's a yacht rock-themed captain's hat, and this was for a giveaway that I believe was from a Game two Weeks ago.  So it looks like someone who went to that Game wore it yesterday/Saturday and dropped it and didn't bother to pick it up or something, so someone else picked it up and put it on the stand in case the owner wanted to retrieve it.  Instead, I stole it.  Now, it's been worn already, so I don't look forward to absorbing another man's head sweat.  But it was unclaimed, it's free, and now it's mine, as is the other three I brought home with me!

(Another) Busy Weekend

It's rare that I will be working both a Gophers and a Vikings game on the same weekend.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I've ever done that before.  But I will be doing that this weekend.  That's cool, and dare I say, I am proud.  It's a sign that I'm wanted and people think I'm still doing a good job.

Both games are on the same network, so I wonder if the company, or at least someone back at world headquarters, know that I'm working two games for them back-to-back.  They should ... shouldn't they?  Well, if they don't, can't think that would matter.

Anyhow, it's cool that I'm doing this.  And I don't take it for granted that these opportunities (setting aside the timing that I'm working two games on the same weekend) are going to be around forever.  That means my weekend will be quite busy, but I'm not wishing for the alternative.

So I am working a Game this afternoon, but because my friend and co-worker got sick, I'm stepping up to take his job.  Generally speaking, it's a position I've done before -- long, long, long ago.  I hope that the combination of being thrust into this job just yesterday/Friday and the people I'll be working for and with are chill (fingers crossed) will make this assignment a non-bad one.  But do I have a guarantee the you-know-what won't hit the fan?  Nope.

Wish me luck.

Random passive-aggressive lash-out: Sweat to fucking God, if that immature incel reacts to anything I say that he even remotely thinks questions his so-called superiority on the rules of football, I will say something.  Probably won't scream or completely insult him.  But I am too old for this shit, and I do not know if I can keep being stepped on by some twenty-something prick who believes he's got a ticket to move up in the industry he's wanted to work in since seeing SportsCenter for the first time without coming back on him.  Just saying that I cannot be complicit in my debasement for much longer.  Jesus, what a fucking goddamn asshole he was/is. ...

They're Coming Home Because They Think I Should House The Cousin I Haven't Heard From In Decades

This was going to be a more expansive blog post because my cousin isn't the only person who has reached out to me and wants to see me.  But things had to take a scary bad turn for me, and that's because of my goddamn parents' meddling, again.

I have learned to check the spam texts the hard way.  I lost out on a gig I applied for because the person hiring for the crew texted me, and since this number was not from a trusted contact, it went into the spam folder.  Curiosity was the only reason I checked that folder, and I saw it months after this person offered the gig to me.  What an embarrassment ... and that company hasn't hired me since.  And yet I still go to their hiring board.  I applied for something a couple weeks ago.  And I am checking the spam folder just in case they give me another chance.

Anyway, it was also in this spam folder where I saw a long text from my long-ago cousin to whom I haven't spoken in decades.  She is in town and wanted to catch up on old times.  I will be honest.  She is one of four sisters and brothers my brother and sister and I remember hanging out with from time to time when we were young.  I like this particular cousin the most even though that's based on guesses on what I remember back when we were kids.  The oldest of the four I have problems with; thing is, I don't remember if I ever got into a fight with her.  My memories of interacting with her enrage me now, but I really don't know if she thinks we don't get along.  I just don't want to see her again.

But I need to give family a chance, so I reached out ... as soon as I spoke to My Father, whom my cousin, or "cousin," said gave her my number.  I hadn't spoken to my parents pretty much for the past week, but I finally had reason to ring them up.  And yes, Father said my cousin is the real deal and so gave her my number.  OK, this is not catfishing.  We spoke -- can't say I was over-enthused on catching up, but I want to see if I could see her over the holiday weekend.  We promised to compare schedules the middle of the week.

With that matter kicked down the street, I went to Art-A-Whirl's last day.  And while I was minding my own business, trying to give myself some grace and be a part of a community that I love, I feel a buzzing on my ass.  Father called again.  I took the call while wandering around an art studio.  I should have known they would have called again demanding that I be more "hospitable."  They asked me to ask my cousin if she needed to borrow my car.  She already told me that she and her son (he'll be studying in town for the next several years) have gotten a rental.  They then fucking asked me to open up the house to them.  I told them my cousin and cousin once removed already got a hotel.  I completely fucking lied; I'm pretty sure they have, but I don't know that.  What I do know is that there is no goddamn way in hell I am going to let them stay here if I can help it.  No offense, but fuck no.

The call ended; I don't think My Fucking Parents heard the combination of rage and fear in my voice at the end of the call.  But I kept thinking about them while I was doing my personal art crawl.  Also, I remember that goddamn time they surprised me by coming home and not telling me.  So goddamn scarring; I'll never forgive them for doing that to me.  I know that they suspect that I don't keep the house clean while they're gone.

So that leads me to one conclusion: They're coming home.  They might not tell me.  They might.  But they're coming home.  They think I am so unable to be a good host for family that they will fucking pay the obscene amount a plane ticket costs these days and come home to see if I have cleaned up the house.  By the way, they insisted that I gave them my cousin's phone number, even though I think they already have it.  I can totally believe that My Fucking Parents insisted, if not demanded, my cousin cancel their hotel and car so we can give them housing and transportation.  Fucking weirdos.

I can imagine them booking plane tickets online right now.  Fuckin' A.  The house is a mess, just like I wanted to.  And I need to clean it up in five fucking days to impress one person I haven't seen in decades and another person I didn't know existed until yesterday?  Fuck that shit.  I'm too tired to clean, and I'm too busy to care.  And that's how My Fucking Parents will screw me again.  All because oh-oh-oh, I need to be good hosts for family!!!  I'll bring shame to them if I don't!!!

Fucking hate my parents.

My Own Personal Lockdown

So I got home, without incident, at around 5:45 last/Thursday night.  I had to open the door again because I got a delivery.  But, once I shut my door at around 5:50 p.m., I did so with the firm intention of not opening it until Sunday afternoon.

Yeah, so like I said in a previous blog post, since I didn't get the Wild gig I thought I was going to get, that opened up the possibility that I could take today/Friday off in solidarity with the general strike (which is also in the vein of a nationwide walkout for which I did my best to participate in by leaving work Tuesday afternoon).  And, it just so happens that the most brutal cold snap in what seems to be at least a few winters is descending on us this weekend, the worst of which is happening right now through this/Friday afternoon.  When there is more than one sign pointing you in a certain direction, you best pay heed.  And so, with the blessing of my new boss and my co-workers, I am staying in from now through the weekend (which means that not getting the Wild job is a blessing in disguise; I would otherwise have to be running around the tunnels underneath Grand Casino Arena and driving around town, and then I would have to hang out during the Game at the compound where there is no heat while temperatures plummet).

I'll admit it: I don't want to get my ass kicked.  But how can I show my support against fascism without sticking my neck out?  By not working or shopping today, which many faith leaders in the Twin Cities has asked us to do in order to get these motherfuckers out of our safe, diverse community.  I could march downtown Minneapolis like a lot of people are planning to do, but dammit, the government will get my face, plus it's brutally cold.  (And I wonder if it would have been better to march through a part of the city where more immigrants reside, but I'm not marching, so who am I to scold?)  So I get to protest by going to bed late, getting up late, and not working?  That's a win-win!

I am in awe of the list of local businesses (as well a few places in Duluth and Rochester) that are shutting down in solidarity, which are listed courtesy of Bring Me The News.  You know this economic blackout (coming on a Friday, natch) is getting to be pretty fucking serious when even Dreamgirls, the downtown strip club where I have had a lot of fun before (even though it's been years), is participating in the shutdown.  I think people are getting the message that a lot of places they would go to shop and dine and, well, get lap dances won't be open today/Friday.  So, for those businesses, especially the local ones, that will remain open, will they make enough money to justify being open?  Remember that there is a polar vortex happening right now.  A shop or a restaurant may not care one way or the other about what's happening in our community, but it might not be worth it to open because it's so goddamn cold.  And I think there will be brownie points given if they choose not to open.  Does it matter if it's really because to save money when you can just say you're standing with your neighbors in the face of federal occupation?  It may not be for the right reason, but that's a compromise I'm willing to take.

As for myself, I intend to just chill for the next, oh, 66 hours or so ... and hope that these people don't knock on my door.  I have thought about just not answering, which is what I hear more and more people are doing when they hear a knock on the door.  But that might not matter because these pricks have been given permission to violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and just bust the door down.  You know, I hate guns, but this is the point where I have to consider invoking my Second Amendment rights.  Maybe more on that later, if this siege continues.

It is profoundly sad that, as much as I want to feel safe at home, I don't feel 100% safe here right now.  I can't even enjoy sanctuary where I live because of this out-of-control Republican government?  We don't live in a democracy anymore.  And I hope my personal lockdown expressing that anger is a valuable contribution to the Resistance.

A Gig Or Democracy (Or Neither)?

I anticipated working a Wild Game this week.  I signed up for it and everything.  But I have yet to hear back from them confirming I would be working for them.  At some point, if I don't hear anything from them (and I swear I looked everywhere -- e-mails, texts, and especially the junk boxes for both just in case their messages went there), I have to figure they're not going to hire me.

I decided that yesterday/Monday afternoon was the deadline.  I checked everywhere one more time, but no one said, "Hey, can you work the Wild Game this week?"  I knew this was a Game for which they could use a runner, so a few months ago I blocked off two days this week at work.  Well, I'm not going to work the Game even if I get a late-night, desperation text right now asking me if I could work it.  Too late, you know?

That means I now can work this week ... however, you may have heard that there is not one but two walkouts planned for this week, one today/Tuesday and one on Friday.  I want to support democracy and protest our fascist regime in my own passive-aggressive way ... by taking those days off.  And I might as well give up the ghost to illustrate the absurd irony of this situation: The two days I had to block off to work the Wild Game are tomorrow/Wednesday and Thursday.  So I am going from taking tomorrow/Wednesday and Thursday off to taking today/Tuesday and Friday off ... well, seeing as last-minute as this change is, taking this/Tuesday afternoon off, which would coincide with a planned nationwide walkout this/Tuesday afternoon.

And, well, wanting to take today/Tuesday and Friday off.  This is very last-minute, but I tried reaching out to my new boss about flipping my days off this week.  I haven't heard back from her yet.  I hope I can still do it, and I hope this change doesn't affect all the plans she and my co-workers may have had when it comes to where they're working.  But, well, if I can't work a hockey Game, I may as well protest our freedoms being taken from us, right?

Fucking Hate Driving In The Snow

It may be recency bias, or it might be me getting old.  But I swear, driving yesterday/Monday morning was the most treacherous drive I've ever had.  I don't exactly know how it works since temperatures all day were below freezing, but the snow that fell on Sunday (and by the way, I don't think we got more than four inches; the problem was the wind was swirling it all around) melted and then froze, so what we got was more akin to ice than snow.

That meant we had to be really, really careful when driving, and there were a couple occasions (taking a right turn, stopped at an intersection) that I couldn't get going.  Worse off is the feeling when I was driving at, oh, 40 or 55 miles an hour that I didn't have complete control of the car.  It takes me back to when I was driving to a Wild Game in the middle of a snowstorm in my old car for work with the radio station; I tried to merge and actually spun a couple times and, thank God, rested right in the left shoulder, facing in the correct direction, without hitting anything.  But that loss of control always stayed with me, and I felt it a few times when driving to and from work yesterday/Monday.

Will the roads get better?  I want to say that road crews getting another day of it will finally make driving better.  But the problem is there are clippers coming in both this/Tuesday and tomorrow/Wednesday morning.  It shouldn't drop more than an inch in either case, but could it be enough to make driving bad again?  I don't need that shit.  I fucking hate driving in the snow.

Ah, Men Who Aren't

So Saturday night, after working the Gopher football Game, I was hanging out with a couple dudes downtown who saw our alma mater's football Game.  They left, but I wanted to hang out a little while longer.

I was standing up scrolling through my phone.  I was the only one of this table that had three chairs; although it was busy, there were other tables around me.  One that was occupied was occupied by a lot of people.  I didn't notice that another person joined them.  He apparently wanted a chair.  He saw the one that was next to me.  And he just took it, and used it to sit down with his friends.

No, he didn't ask me.  And he should've.  Sure, I wasn't using it.  But it was obvious that it was a chair that was at a table I was at, so a quick, "Hey, you using this?" would have sufficed.  That was too much to ask of this guy, who sat his incel ass down and, I think, began scrolling through his phone.

---

It was a bear to drive down the Megamall Black Friday.  The on-ramp to the first highway I hit was backed up, the drive into The Lowry Tunnel was backed up, and my God, the traffic to park at MOA was backed up for half a mile.

I finally parked.  I'm walking in, and I hear these clomping footsteps behind me.  There's this tall White dude who has this IDGAF attitude coming up behind me.  I fling the first door open for him; he keeps it open while not saying thanks.  At this point he's about to clip my heel with his toe, so I open the second door for him.  He doesn't say thanks; he just keeps striding, almost leaving what looks to be his kids in his dust.  I sarcastically give him the thumb's up; it's only comeback I can think of to let him know what I feel about his fast, intrusive walking.

---

There has been a school of thought that video games cause violence.  That idea has been debunked by researched a long time ago, even though I think a lot of people still cling to the notion.  But there has been very small evidence that video games cause aggression.  There are some studies that note a correlation, especially in the short term.

I'm going to be so bold as to believe that video games do cause aggression, and not just in the short term.  I think that the advent of video games coincide with societal coarseness.  I believe that more people have become dicks since video games became popular.  I will go out on a limb that these two arrested development motherfuckers play them, and as a result have no manners and go about life thinking everything's about them, they don't have to wait their turn, and they do whatever they want, fuck everybody else.  A lot of people are like that now, in this country and around the world.  And that's also partially why Trump's in office -- well, that and Russian interference (which Trump asked for, which is illegal) and Musk and social media (also illegal).  And while aggression isn't the same as violence, the former can easily bleed into and beget the latter.  That would be a correlation, wouldn't it?

People scoff at calls to ban or limit video games from the youth until their brains are more fully developed.  Those calls have been proposed to curb violence.  I'm going to say it: Maybe video games should be limited as a way to curb aggression, and then that curb on aggression can lead to a curb in violence.  All things are connected to each other, and in a world that is going mad and is hellbent on screwing the little guy, maybe we need to think about doing that.  Then, maybe these supposedly "frustrated" boys will actually grow the fuck up.

Still fending off this runny nose, and now I see that snow is forecast for today's/Saturday's Gopher Game.  Don't know how much is going to fall, but at least according to my Weather Application, the bulk/worst of it is supposed to fall right during the Game.  I will be outside for good chunks of time; add falling snow and I'm going to be both wet and cold.  And add blowing my nose all day.  Great.

I want to go to a speakeasy this evening, but this damn cold and my running nose is still bothering the hell out of me, and I doubt it'll get any better as I go shopping and walking out in the cold today.  Maybe I should just punt on that, especially since I work tomorrow/Saturday.  But it's been a couple months since I've gone back there, and I want to remain somewhat familiar over there.  Plus, I don't know any other good time to go before the year is out.

I'll go out.  Maybe.

Now I think, or I am reminded, that my runny nose and aching legs is something that seems to happen the weather gets colder or snowier.  And I've been blowing my nose like the dickens all day at work yesterday/Friday.  I thought I had it under control when I went to bed.  This sounds weird, but I could tell the moment, the exact moment, when my sinuses, which was running like a burst dam, completely shut.  I could tell because I don't think I slept at all last night.

Alas, my sinuses got to running again once I got out into the cold, and my nose kept running while I was working.  It's gotten worse since I got home.

Heat, intense heat, has always seemed to shut off my sinuses and snot-running.  I need to do that, but I need to finagle the space heater from Mother's new bedroom, and then, maybe my parents won't like me using so much energy to run the space heater until my room feels like a sauna.  But I work outside at the Gopher football Game Saturday, and I want to shop tomorrow/Friday, and I need to be as healthy as possible, and to do that, I need to warm my body up.

I am cocooning for the next day and a half, and I appreciate doing so instead of being out and about, but I still feel quite crummy, and I can't afford to remain this sick.

Not Working Tomorrow/Sunday, And It'll Be Weird

I am not working tomorrow/Sunday, even though I have worked for many, many seasons.  I was told on Monday that the production crew have their own people and therefore I was not needed.  The last time I hadn't worked a Game was during the pandemic.  If you take that as an exception, the last time before that was the last Game of some Year when the team sucked.  It may have been New Year's Day, and I decided to spend it at the Walker.

The person who broke the news to me emphasized that me not working was not a reflection of my work for them.  Assuming this crew does not come to town any other time this season, I am working the other Games, as planned.  I believe him, in all he said.  That said, I have to recognize that I am an at-will employer.  These people treat me well, and I am paid very well.  But it's not as if I have a contract with them.  They can pull the plug and no longer hire me for any reason, or for no reason.  It's the reality, and I am under no illusion of what could happen, at least theoretically.  Nonetheless, this news is a stark reminder of that reality, and I have to admit that I have caught myself on a couple occasions this week thinking about how my life would be affected if I could no longer work for these people.  It's my favorite job; losing it would be like losing a piece of me.

Really tired right now.  Should go to bed, obviously.  But I fear that I'm so tired I won't wake up in time for the Vikings Game.  What I usually do in those cases (but especially for Vikes Games) is keep my laptop open and use it as a second alarm.  I hope I won't be so tired as to sleep through both my cellphone and my laptop.  It's never happened, and I hope it won't happen this time.  Wish me luck.

Wowee.  I was feeling sluggish all day at work yesterday/Thursday, even though (or maybe because) I took a two-hour nap Wednesday evening (and I woke up just before the start of The Amazing Race, thank goodness).  Maybe my body was telling me something I should have heard.

I was, um, having some fun after work, so I didn't come home till about 8:30 last/Thursday night.  I promptly changed clothes, watched some Law & Order: Organized Crime, napped, woke up to hear the radio post-Game of Bengals-Steelers, got up to turn off the radio, crept back under my sheets ... then woke up to my alarm just now at 10 this morning.  It's possible, maybe probable, that I slept for 11, maybe 11 1/2 hours last night.  I guess my body really, really needed a lot of uninterrupted sleep.  And if not for my alarm, I think I could have slept even more.  I'm still feeling sort of groggy, to be honest.

Well, time to work the Game.  It's going to be a long one; shouldn't come back until 2 in the morning.  Groggy though I may be, this was the perfect day to get a lot of sleep.

Think I'm Coming Down With Something

Starting on Sunday during work.  Felt achy that evening.  Had a huge, cycle-wrecking nap in the evening, but felt kind of the same.  And then during my real job yesterday/Monday I started getting the sniffles, and then after work the aches came back with a vengeance.  Uh-oh.

This felt like COVID.  The main thing I noticed when I got the virus is that my nose was running constantly, and that is happening now.  I just took a test, though, and it turned out negative.  Then again, it's more than two years old.

Welp, I took some NyQuil.  My nose is totally dry now.  Feel oogy, however.  And my aches and pains are still around.  But I'm tired, which might be my body's way of saying it needs me to rest while it fights off whatever it is is invading my body, even though I took another long nap this evening.

I wonder where I got it from.  If I started coming down with it on Sunday, I probably caught it Saturday, and the only social thing I did indoors with a lot of people was the game-watching event downtown.  Probably got it there, darn it.

Addendum To: My Fucking Parents Are Fucking Psychos

What I truly hate about my parents, especially right now, is that they do things, and make me do things, with no advanced warning.  Yesterday, I was woken up by both My Fucking Mother and My Fucking Father to help them clean up my former bedroom, which, for some goddamn reason, is going to be the bedroom My Fucking Mother recuperates in when she gets knee surgery.  She says she can only go up the stairs after surgery and not down.  That's bullshit.

Anyway, even though this surgery hasn't even been scheduled yet, they both decided, out of the blue, that they're going to redesign it.  And that meant both shitty parental units woke me up to move heavy, heavy things around.  That was bad enough because I had a long day working a Gopher football Game.  But when My Fucking Father decided to bang his hammer to get the bedframe aligned, I sighed loud enough for My Fucking Mother to lose her goddamn mind.  "I do everything for you!  I cook and clean and give you beds!  And I ask you to do this one thing, and you get so mad!"  And I realized yesterday that she is a fucking toxic narcissist.  It has always been about her, her, her.  And after years of insulting me, acting hurt over shoving gifts in my face for which I didn't ask is the ultimate sign of mental manipulation.  And she and My Fucking Father tore my bags into shreds because they wanted to get into a locked part of my desk.  They call me unreasonable???

I don't bother arguing with either of them anymore because they can't speak English well enough to understand my nuanced emotional points.  Now, I don't bother arguing with them because they are too goddamn narcissistic to see how hypocritical dicks they are.  Fuck them both.  If they want to throw me out of the house for throwing my stuff on the floor, they have to kill me.  What assholes.

I'm Too Bleepin' Busy

Work is one thing.  But when I have free time after work, only for me to do other "fun" things every single day, that "fun" stuff ain't fun no more.

Case in point, the next several days:

• I have to work a Game this/Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis, plus there's an MNUFC Match in the evening I need to go to.  And I will have a couple hours to kill, so I figure I can go to a brewery, drink a beer, and work on my fantasy football stuff, which I should have sent out at least a couple weeks ago.
• Tomorrow/Sunday I get to sleep in (if my parents don't fuckin' wake me up in the goddamn morning), but I am supposed to go out to Palmer's to see Cornbread Harris in one of his final residencies before the place closes next month.  I figure it's better to see him now than one the final ones in September because I'm guessing it'll be really crowded after Labor Day.  On top of that, there's the Nine Inch Nails concert at the X in St. Paul.  I'm not a huge fan, but I still want to see him.  Moreover, many of my friends from high school love NIN, and for that reason I want to see if there's a ticket at a non-unreasonable price available.  Harris's concert is from 5 to 7; the arena show doesn't begin till 7:30, and who knows when Trent Reznor & Co. hit the stage.  So my plan, assuming I get a Nine Inch Nails ticket, is to drive all the way to downtown St. Paul in the afternoon to get a free spot (thank Buddha St. Paul doesn't enforce meters on Sundays), take the light rail westward to Palmer's, and then take it back eastward to see NIN.  Sounds like a plan ... a very long and busy one.
• I've realized that work on Mondays will be the longest just because the work in the departments I work in aren't usually worked on over the weekend.  Therefore, wherever I am, I have to deal with the work that came in Saturday as well as Sunday and, possibly, that Monday morning.  On top of that, I have gotten kind of tired of going home real late and seeing all the food my parents left for me.  It's usually a lot, and despite them repeatedly saying I don't have to eat it all, they're a bunch of damn liars, and I have to eat it all.  Finally, my wellness screening at work is Thursday, so the less shit I eat, the better.  With that being said, after work Monday I plan on going to Hooters because I have a calendar coupon where I buy ten boneless wings and get another ten for free.  But I will not drink pop.
• I have Tuesday and Wednesday off because I need to block off time to do some extra exercising before the screening.  I need to work out in the worst way.  But I will do that after eating dinner with my parents where I can control my portions.  Tuesday afternoon I plan on seeing ****e for a visit (if you know what I mean), and Wednesday I want to ... well, eat somewhere.  That and maybe hunt for this tool Mother wants me to find.
• Thursday's the start of The Minnesota State Fair, and assuming I get out at a decent time (and assuming I can find free parking somewhere), I will start my day getting my screening at work, then work, then going to The Great Minnesota Get-Together.  I love going to the Fair, but right now, that entire day seems daunting to me.

So next Friday will be my next "boring" day, where I just go to and from work.  Things might actually slow down next weekend.  But that's next weekend.  These next seven days are so might be too hectic for me to have any fun.

Some Things Shouldn't Be Done On A Phone

I have trouble -- maybe not old man trouble, but Gen X trouble -- typing on a phone.  It's the second most-frequent thing you do on a cell (behind scrolling I reckon), but I am permanently fixing my errors because my fingers are too fat for the small keys, and autocorrect somehow takes those errors and thinks, "Hmmm, based on what you typed, when you say 'got a good time' you mean 'I love MAGAts'" or some shit.

What I am worried about is doing more and more important things on a phone.  I am not comfortable, for example, having anything to do with any bank accounts I have on my cellphone.  I have gotten over loading my credit card information onto it, but having my money that accessible is a bridge too far for me.  I could easily lose my phone, or I could easily have it hacked and emptied of all my money.  Why would anyone pay like that?  Sorry, that's just me.

The annoyance of typing on a small device has been married with my fear of losing my personal information now that I have to onboard myself to a human resources company through my phone.  I need to do that in order to work Saturday, but I was completely caught off-guard that I need to do this, and it looks as though I can only do this through my cell.  I have had to put in my name and address a few times, and now I have to upload a voided check and an image of my passport.  Really?  Through my cellphone?  That doesn't seem to be a smart thing to do, and I have to do all this important stuff while not making a keying error.

Worst of all, I somehow have a deadline.  I need to do all of this today.  And check this out: I have a Zoom meeting I need to "attend" before I can get this all done so I can work.  A Zoom to do HR stuff?  Let me guess -- it'll be some AI bot I have to talk to, right?

God, technology is going to lead humanity to ruin.

Man, If I Lose Work Because Of This ...

Earlier this summer I was asked to work two Games, one back in June and one coming up on Saturday.  I said I could do both.  I was told that the August Game (the one coming up on Saturday) may have a follow-up confirmation, just in case, but in my mind, I already said yes, I could do it.

Flash to yesterday/Monday.  I am getting a tad nervous.  I sometimes have not been given schedules and call times until two days before the day of the Game, but considering how much junk mail comes through my inbox, there is a chance that something I need to see gets overlooked.  So I just did a search in my inbox ... and there was an e-mail from the production company confirming (actually re-confirming) that I can still work on Saturday.  And unfortunately, she sent that e-mail back on the 30th.

I want to think I've built up enough of a track record whereby they know I am trustworthy to do any gig I agreed to two months in advance.  But I also know that I am an at-will employee, and this job I agreed to can be yanked from me for any reason, or for no reason.  It is completely possible that after a dozen days after she sent an e-mail, and with the Game approaching at the end of the week, she could've gotten nervous and gave my gig to someone else.  And I would absolutely hate that, I really would.

Guess I'll know some time today if I have work taken from me because I didn't see an e-mail in time.