No More Sunday Work

I thought there would be some announcement or something, although I don't remember past announcements of previous hires.  But my co-worker back on Monday said that the department hired a new person.  She comes from the lab, and I saw her escorted around our area a few weeks ago by my boss.  She began training last week.  In a reply to asking him where he needs me next week, he said that her training is going to be stepped up; she will be filling in on tasks I filled in last week.  Eventually, she will fully take over the position that was once that "wraparound" job from Saturdays to Tuesdays, which I think my boss modified because the schedule was just too funky to attract people.  But that schedule will include Sundays, and my slot; in that same e-mail, my boss said he expects her to take over Sundays by around Memorial Weekend.

First of all, I will say that I don't think we need to fill this position -- at least I don't think.  Right now there are two of us who are jacks-of-all-trades, going through what eventually will be four departments.  The other three departments I understand; there could be a third person there, especially in filing, since there is a position open there and filing really needs someone.  But she, like us two, will mainly be out in the main department, and there has been enough people to key all the forms there that finishing on time has never been a problem.  We in fact have been cut early once each of the past two weeks.  That is an indication that enough people are working to take care of the forms that come in each day.  Another body is just going to get the work done faster, and raise the possibility that we all will get cut sooner.  I don't get that.

As for Sundays ... hey, I've got to admit that ever since I volunteered to take over Sunday afternoons -- only four hours a day to take care of a job that someone has to be there to do during that time of day -- back in the fall, I've come to enjoy it.  It gives me a good reason to get out of the house, first of all.  Also, I like going to work without having a boss there, at least usually.  I have gotten into some pickles about not prioritizing the responsibilities I needed to prioritize, and there have been a couple occasions where the machines have broken down and I didn't know what to do.  But there is a big difference going to that job when you know there isn't an authority figure there.  My boss doesn't hover or anything.  But it still feels ... liberating to be able to do your job without him even there.  Moreover, there are fewer people there on Sundays, so the atmosphere is much more relaxed because of the quantity of people.  I can turn on the radio that the night shift turns on and I'm not invading anybody's space because no one else is in the department.

Also, I have grown to like the half-days off I have needed to take in order to stay at 40 hours per week.  I have usually "made up for" working Sundays by taking off Friday afternoon.  That makes me feel as though I am starting my weekend early.  Yes, in that sense that means that my workweek starts on Sunday.  But I'm comparing myself to the others working there; namely, I am getting off of work when they still have to work Friday afternoon.  I have to admit that I feel "better than" other people when I leave work early.  And that feeling of superiority will be gone by next month, and I'll be boxed back into that five-day, eight-hour-per-day restraint.

It's those two things -- a less stressful work environment and taking off an afternoon while my co-workers continue to toil -- that I will miss most once I stop working Sunday half-days.  Yeah, the upside is that I will have Sundays all to myself now, and there won't be any conflicts once Vikings season begins.  And, with most things, I'll eventually get used to my old schedule and even see the bright side to Mondays-Fridays again.  But right now I won't.  Right now I feel as though something has been taken from me, and I am sad.  Crestfallen, even.

RIP, Bob Parlocha

Don't know exactly when I fell in love with jazz, but when I started to fall hard for it I started listening to this program called "Jazz With Bob Parlocha."  It was a syndicated program, but in the Twin Cities he was played on 88.5 over the overnight hours.

I don't remember when I first stumbled upon him.  It may have been when I had the night shift job downtown, which is now about a decade ago.  He played what I consider "real" jazz, what I guess is really called "bebop," jazz once Miles Davis put his imprint on it and tore it away from its big band, Louis Armstrong/Dizzy Gillespie roots.  I still can't describe jazz that well, but it was ... cool to listen to.  It's music to run towards while you're running away from the world, and its prying eyes.  It was your dirty little secret, something you go down the stairs to the basement to hear, but only after you peer back and forth a couple times to make sure no one sees you going down those steps.  Since Parlocha's program came on late at night, it was perfect for me to listen to (sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes) while I was trying to stay awake at work.  Maybe it was due to listening to him in that dungy basement I imagined in my head, with his deep and rich voice, his hearty chuckles and the stories that he could spin that I concluded once and for all that it's absolutely absurd to listen to jazz when it's sunny outside.  It is, don't you know.

Since I've gotten so busy lately -- really since I started the flu biller job a few years ago -- I haven't been able to listen to "Jazz With Bob Parlocha" except weekends when I was awake and remembered to flip the dial to him.  However, in the past few months, when I turned my radio over to KBEM between 11 at night and 5 in the morning, I didn't hear his honeyed words.  And when it was late at night and I heard blues on at the station (they play the blues, but I thought it was only on Friday nights) I wondered if something was wrong.  He was getting up there in age, and I was afraid I didn't catch him retiring or something.

Just now, tonight, I finally remembered to go online and see if something happened to him.  And I am afraid something did: He died of a heart attack.  And unbeknownst to me, he succumbed to it back on March 15.  Comments from Parlocha's fans saying they didn't know he had died have poured in throughout the summer.  Maybe they didn't know until well after the fact because he regularly taped his shows months in advance, and his voice was heard with new blocks of music (which always starts off with one song at the beginning of the hour, then three songs before breaking to introduce himself, then two before talking about those songs, and finally two or three to end the hour, where he would then sign off for that hour in case the station was going to go to different programming -- that was his clock, and it was dependable) as if nothing bad was about to happen.  Heck, whenever I and probably anyone listened to Bob Parlocha, his hepcat rasp had enough energy to make you feel like he was going to live forever.

Well, news of his untimely passing (even if he did live a very productive 76 years, the earliest ones as a psychiatric nurse at Cal-San Francisco before he submitted an air check tape to see if he could turn his hobby into a jazz DJ stint) has finally crashed onto my shores.  And I feel bad about it, and I really feel bad that I didn't know at the time it happened.  The most personal way Parlocha touched me is when I once took him up on his offer when he would say he could be reached through e-mail.  There was a song that he played that I really liked, and he said the name of the album but I couldn't quite hear him.  I may have not been awake during my night shift at the time.  But I remembered to e-mail him about the name of the record and a couple days later he e-mailed me back, thanking me for being a long-time listener and saying that the album's name is You Get More Bounce With Curtis Counce!  (Check out the album cover.  That would be a scandalous photo nowadays; an album looking like that must have been stashed in the porno section of a seedy bookstore when it was released in the mid-fifties.)

And with that I felt a connection to him, even when that e-mail was about a decade ago.  But he is gone.  My love for jazz will never quite be the same.  To commemorate him I should buy a t-shirt bearing the name of his program, or finally get that Counce album.  All in tribute to a man who cemented my love for jazz.

Rest In Peace, Mr. Parlocha.

The Ice Caves Of Bayfield

On Monday Father told me about the Ice Caves in Bayfield, Wis., abutting the southern shore of Lake Superior.  He wanted to go because, hey, they're retired and they have money, what the hell else would they do?

This didn't seem too far-fetched.  And I did look at a slideshow of the caves, which is seeing a resurgence if not a newfound popularity because the lake has frozen over for the first time in five years, allowing anybody to reach and even get into these caves just by walking on the lake, and it looked pretty cool.  Finally, it was something for the family to do, so why not?  And hey, it's not as if I had anything productive to do on a Sunday.

Driving to do play-by-play for games in the Bay Area, Corvallis, Ore. and Seattle while I was in college was the last time I took a road trip.  And since I technically did not get behind the wheel for any of these journeys because I was being driven by people who owned those cars, today was the first time I have driven so long on the road.  Well, there was one time where I was going to a graduation party for a friend in St. Paul, but the directions were wrong so I drove all over the metro area for, like, two hours before I finally asked for directions and go to his mother's place.  My Lexus was brand new at the time, too, which is a bad thing, because the owner's manual said to break it in gently over the first 500 miles, and I know I had put on less than that before getting lost.  Maybe that's why it's giving me so much trouble at 20 years old.

I digress ... so it was 3 1/3 hours to go up there and come back, 4 if you include our stopover at the Burger King in Superior, Wisc., which became the spot where Mother and I switched places behind the wheel.  I wouldn't consider it white-knuckle, nor was I nodding off to sleep, like I did that one time working the night shift at Macy's over the holidays.  It was fine, although because Father wants to keep the heat on, I was sweating through my underwear by the time we got back at just before 9 p.m., almost 14 hours after we started.

Go.  If you have time, and if the weather cooperates (I think there's supposed to be a warm-up to well above freezing, which may start to melt the ice covering Lake Superior), check it out.  I wouldn't say they are "caves" per se, more like crevices, although there are some big cut-ins of rock you can try to see close-up if you don't slip and fall on the ice.  Also, the first time I saw a curtain of huge icicles I thought that I spent a whole day just to see something that I can see if I look out onto the back deck.  But there is something to being in an area that you can't get to over the summer (or, for that matter, even in most winters) because you would be in water that extends downward at least ten feet.  And there is something about seeing such copious amounts of water just frozen off the side of a cliff, or stalactites hanging underneath rock, and thinking that winds howling across the lake were so cold and so fast that it was able to freeze that cascade in its tracks.

I thought my parents had fun.  Once they decided to hightail it back (I wish we could have gone as far as we could, but I'm sure we didn't) Mother walked faster than she did when we started out to the caves.  Father and I walked as fast as we could, but she just dusted us.  I was thinking, "Did she hate going up here?"  I don't remember her being enthusiastic about the ice caves.  But she says she just had to pee.

All in all, it was a great time, and more important, a time for the family to do something together.  And best of all: 14 hours, no arguments.  Well, when we got into the car for the ride back and Mother was fiddling with the GPS, Father, thinking that she needed to stop because we were across the border and so she couldn't bring up any Minnesota destinations like our house, slapped her hand in order to get her to start driving.  That wasn't nice.  But hey, I wasn't involved, so I'm happy.

Observations About My New Place Of Work

1. It takes an hour to get to and from work.  It's a goddamn nightmare.  There are three bottlenecks in the morning and two in the afternoon, and yet it takes about 60 minutes anyway.  I hate traffic, and ever since I started this project on Monday I was reminded why I prefer off-shifts like the graveyard.  Being stuck with other people, constantly braking and potentially getting into an accident dozens more times than you would other times of the day -- and especially doing all of this as the weather's heating up, as it has this week -- is only exacerbating my irritation.  Of course it's worth it; there's no way to make money if I just stay home, and even with the long commute (and the fact I have to fill up my tank after I blog about this when I last filled up my tank Monday) what I spend on gas daily I make up for in, like, one hour.  Nevertheless it's arduous.
2. I need to take naps, especially after I get worn out after spending an hour to get down to work.  Unfortunately, the parking spaces around the building complex is not conducive to that, at least I don't think.  They are oriented in such a way that the sun will go across my car through the day no matter how I park.  (And by the way, no trees that could provide shade, either.)  That means that, even though I have pretty much put the passenger seat on recline for the past three months, I can't relax in them in all my three private times (morning break, lunch, afternoon break).  On one of those times the sun will directly be on that seat.  I've tried just laying on it anyway and I fry like an egg on the sidewalk.  I can't pass out on that.  So I have to go to the driver's seat, recline that, and relax in that.  So when I drive out at the end of the day I get in with two reclined seats.  And I get paranoid of reclining the driver's seat because if the motor malfunctions, I have nothing to rest my back on while driving, and that scares the hell out of me.  But I need to close my eyes, so that's what I'll be doing the next two weeks.

Full Of Anxiety

I dread tomorrow. First of all, my night job has morphed into a day job. I took the night job because I didn't want anybody to see me doing this. Why the fuck did I say yes to this? Because I was promised one more week of working nights, then they said they wouldn't, but then my supervisor supervisor somehow squeezed off three days of work for us (OK, so she may not be that bad), I said yes because I need the money. Hell, we were given the chance to work Black Friday and the following day but during the day, and I rejected it outright because I didn't want to be seen. I am totally going to get busted by someone in high school who thought I'd be a doctor by now.

But first, I'm going to The Store. You know, just to help out. It'll definitely be like walking into Death. I overheard when my brother and sister-in-law came over for Christmas Eve Dinner that ... this is going to be hard for me to type ... they're closing down "soon." There isn't a whole hell of a lot to do there anyways, but I want to be there -- if not for freeing Father to do something in the back, then to, you know, just be there and support the old girl.

I want to be able to do that for a long, long time. But I doubt it. I just don't know when the ax is going to fall. Then again, I don't want to know, because I never want the ax to fall.

You know what I did last night, on Christmas Day? I slept. All day. Had to write an NBA preview column so I went to bed at 7:30. Father woke me up at 6, otherwise I'm sure I would've slept even longer.

And you know what? Even though I'm out of sorts, I loved it. Ten-and-a-half hours of unconsciousness, of not worrying about a huge part of my life and existence soon being taken away from me forever, of being scared I'll be outed by my high school enemies as being an abject failure. This was my day to soothe myself, because tomorrow will be very, very scary.

The Best Christmas Song I Had Not Heard Of -- And I Bet You Haven't Heard It Either

The thing about working at a mall for the holiday season is that you hear Christmas music every single second you're there. It's obviously annoying; I'm so glad my brother got me an iPod. But you can't help but listen. So I know basically every single Christmas song that exists, and you know what? Even though I'm sick of the four versions of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" I hear at least once a night (there's the original Louis Armstrong/Ella Fitzgerald version, one with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, one with Michael Bublé and one other) and there's one twisted rocked-out version of "Blue Christmas" that is a mistake, I heard a Christmas song I had never heard of that is completely awesome: "Sock It To Me, Santa."

It's a take-off of James Brown's "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag," including the guitar riff and the "ba-da!" from that song, only adapted for the season. But it felt like a song made today or recently, just with a retro feel put on it. When I googled it, however, I was shocked, absolutely shocked, that "Sock It To Me, Santa" was made all the way back in 1966. And it was made by, of all people, Bob Seger:

This song is 45 years old and it sounds like new. That is the hallmark of an awesome song, Christmas or not. This replaces "Against The Wind" as my favorite Seger song.

Before it's too late: Merry Christmas, everybody.

One Good Thing, One Bad Thing

I wanted to say that I was able to take a nap during my overnight job break for the first time Tuesday/Wednesday. It was warm enough, even if it was raining, that I was able to conk off for, I estimate, ten minutes. I felt so refreshed that the rest of the night at the mall, usually a trial, was a relative breeze.

---

I just checked my phone bill. It's $142. It used to be $62. I changed it because I was told by customer service that my monthly bill would be cheaper if I added long distance. It's not.

I remember calling these guys while I was spending my day at an experiment when I had a question about something. Motherfucker screwed me.

I have to call these assholes back ... as soon as I get done doing everything else I need to get done.

Home Invasion By Our Neighbors

I was going to the gym to work out this evening, and I see one of the daughters from the house next door walk across our driveway on her way down the street.  Like it was nothing.  I was right there, watching her invade our private property, and she was walking through like it was her own damn driveway.

I've seen the neighbors to the right of us do this several times.  Now, I've spoken to the head of the household and he seems fine.  He even works nights -- a soul brother, in a way.  He has kids, all of them daughters, I believe, some of them nice jailbait material.  This one (assuming she was one of his daughers) was not.

Maybe that's why I'm annoyed by what happened tonight; if it were one of the hot ones, I'd be OK with it because I'd go, "Well, at least she's hot, I'll let it slide."  Still, she acted as if walking through our driveway wasn't a big deal.  No, it's not, but what would happen if I cut across your lawn if it were the shorter way to get where I wanted to go?

This could get worse.  If these damn kids continue to do this, I might get pissed.  And I could easily envision a scenario where one of them is biking across the end of our driveway just as I'm backing up.  I'd feel terrible at what could happen, but who's damn fault would that be?

Is it too much friggin' trouble to go down to their end of the driveway and then walk past ours?  Sheesh.

The Continuing Death Of Radio

I love radio. The only job I truly loved was, no joke, board operator. I was by myself, had no one yelling at me or telling me what to do, I could watch TV or surf for porn on the company's computer, and when I was done doing that I could listen to sports on the radio. I also loved working odd hours. For about a year and a half I had the run of the place to myself on Sunday nights. That meant I could listen to the Sunday night baseball game broadcast by ESPN Radio while watching it on ESPN -- or watching something else, like Prime Minister's Questions on C-SPAN (I miss that).

I hate it when people lose their jobs. Especially when it's radio, a medium I love but know is dying. And also especially when it's the people working the odd hours, like what happened to the two guys holding down the fort for WCCO, the long-time news-talk station in town. They are, in the bottom of their hearts, misanthropes who love being awake when the world is asleep because when they drive home from the station's downtown Minneapolis studio, they'll be smoking down the highway as they see traffic the other way backed up a mile. (I worked overnights in other jobs.) But they have syndicates doing that now. Sad. What can these hosts do now?