Two Nightmares

Before I completely forget, I had two pretty vivid nightmares over the past week.

In one, I was in a huge, multi-story shopping mall complex, and I saw that a very, very slow-moving avalanche was on its way to bury us.  I was trying to get out of the shopping mall and warn others of it on my way out.  I don't know if I made it because the nightmare ended.

In the other, I noticed a really, really nice hunk of barbecued ... I guess it would be pork shoulder because I could cut it into thin strips.  (One of my stripper girlfriends, ***e***, showed me a picture of one recently as an enticement to come to her stripper party which was, I think, last Saturday.  It looked great, but alas, I couldn't go because I had dinner with family in town.  Anyway, I think that's how that pork shoulder got into the nightmare.)  However, it was in a cardboard box filled with other things which I don't remember, and the whole box had water, maybe, in it.  Furthermore, I think I was in a bathroom, and I may have been using the toilet.  And that may be the reason for the crux of the problem I was facing while in this nightmare: Can I eat this pork shoulder in the bathroom, from a box, with other stuff and what I guess is water in it?  It looked really good, and yet the whole situation was gross.  And I remember that was my dilemma before I woke up.

Nightmares

Got two nightmares I suffered through overnight.

The first one ... goddamn.  So Trump cheated to get into the White House again like he did in 2016, and for some reason I am trying to escape the White House, and him, through a series of doggy doors I continue to get stuck in.  Jesus, this asshole.

The second one is kind of escaping me now because I actually woke up from this one.  All I can remember is that I had this incredible urge to take a shit and I couldn't.  I woke up afraid that I crapped my pants.  I didn't, but I went to the bathroom just in case.  No, nature did not call.  Thank God I didn't have a wet dream going the other way, if you know what I mean.

Nightmare

Late breaking news reports that up to ten golfers -- really big ones, including Cameron Smith, who just won the (British) Open (and, when asked about the rumor he's jumping ship, got offended at The Media in a way that all golfers in that sportswashing league has perfected to a tee -- are headed to the LIV golf tour (as soon as tomorrow/Tuesday but possible by Labor Day), and it was news I read just before heading to bed.  Well, I have said that many of my nightmares are fueled by things that happened to me the day before that nightmare, and I have to include that here.

I don't remember the specifics, but eventually a couple of women came around to the place I was at (I can't remember if it was a residence, but it was a place I felt was home and "mine," and it was outdoors, so ... maybe it was a houseboat?) and declared that everyone who was at this place left and joined the LIV tour.  I was alone.  And then I felt that familiar feeling in my nightmares about needing to run away but not being able to.

I was headed toward a door.  I don't think I was walking normally; I might have had my feet tied or something.  I opened that door but couldn't go through it.  I think it was higher, and so I had to jump to get through it, and I couldn't.  But there was a little space right next to it that was open; I just had to crouch, then extend myself through this hole, then shimmy to get the rest of my body in there.  And I started doing that ... and then I woke up and realized I had my head off my pillow, about to hit the wall with my noggin.

I don't ever remember waking up to a motion because of what I was dreaming.  Weird.

Maybe I should stop drinking so hardcore.  Maybe that's it.

After it happened last night, I was so afraid to be outed that, honestly, I had an idea about wandering into ongoing traffic and ending it all.

Right now, as I type this, I'm still thinking she could out me.  All the criminal texts. ...  I want to go out and enjoy the day, but I'm scared as hell she'll find me.  So should I just stay cooped up inside, in my house ... where she could still find me anyway?  I fear a knock on the door from her, or her druggie boyfriend.

I calmed down a bit after walking, which I needed.  But I still sent out a bunch of messages, casting about for safety, for approval.  I regret some of them now.  There is one who is a lawyer, for example.  But, just to cover my ass -- again, who knows how she'll get to me -- I think I'll disclose some things to him.  Oh yeah, I should talk to my therapist, too.

Maybe I should have just went up, told her she misrepresented herself, gave her money, then told her never to talk to me ever again.  She's been a pest for a long time, and this way would have told her not to contact me anymore.  But if she wanted money -- well, that would have been a small price to pay in order to get her to leave me alone for good.

Shouldn't have deleted her texts, either.  I regret that now, too.  But she was threatening me!  That's my go-to defense mechanism, and now I have no way to offer proof of my side.  Meanwhile, she has all the texts I sent her.  She has my license plate, too, and I'm scared to death she'll find me.  Bitch is fucking crazy.

Maybe not giving her money is better.  If I did, she'd just ask for more ... or else she'll tell on me.  Maybe that's why I need to admit the truth.  Truth will set you free, you know?  That's what I told myself last night.  And even though I came to the quick realization I was fucked no matter what I did, I stopped having the idea I should run into the street to escape it all, either.

---

I'm being vague about this, I know.  Let's just say that my, uh, hobby has blown up in my face.

Nightmare

In the one I had this morning, I had no underwear or pants on, I was holding a pair of pants, and I was trying to find a locked room in which I could put on my pants, but every time I stopped to put on my pants, someone would come in and interrupt me, so as not to be caught with no pants on, I had to continue running.  I did not put on my pants before I woke up.

Is the meaning behind this something sexual?  I've been trying to arrange a sex session the past couple days, but I got a HJ from two strippers last week.  (shrug)

The Great Escape, And The Sweetest Release

Things are tense at work right now, at least from my perspective.  When there are lingering terse interactions with people at work, and you know that you'll have to see those motherfuckers again, things get tense.  I need to work on my meditation; I hear that helps, though my mind can't think how it could.

Didn't help that I had this new position I was finishing up training and starting work in last week.  I may have trained myself into fearing and thus hating it, but I feared and hated it nevertheless.  I'm still amped up over last week, and since I will be filling in again next week, my jitters aren't going away.

When I'm like this, I feel as though I need to get away.  It was pure, blissful happenstance, then, that my half-day off Tuesday coincided with what appeared to be the last of my training.  I scheduled that afternoon off, which I shortened from four hours to three, well before training was scheduled that day for me because there was a Twins Game that was rescheduled for that afternoon (it was rained out from earlier in the summer) and, well, even though the Twinks blow this Year (and they lost the Game I went to), it was nice to play hooky so you could watch a baseball Game during work hours, aka a "businessman's special."

But the more I think about it, I needed to go to the Twins Game.  I'm not a man who's patient when it comes to training.  I understand I am learning information I don't know but have to know, but it's still boring to me.  And as I was being taught more stuff I didn't understand, the more I felt my mind crammed with crap.  I'm sure I rolled my eyes at my supervisor who was training me.  And breaks and reaching the end of the day didn't stop because, well, there was more the next day, and my capacity to take in information kept shrinking.  Getting away from it all and escaping to a baseball Game -- and in case I haven't said it here, I'll say it again: There are worse ways to spend your waking days on this Earth than at a baseball Game -- could not have come at a more opportune time ... but, and moreover, Tuesday morning, before I left, was also my last day of training.  I was going to jump into work the next day.  Completely abandoning work so I could take in a sport I love was the perfect way to cleave preparing for this new position and actually working this new position.  It seemed ... right, if that makes any sense.  Now, could I have trained the whole day?  Sure; I think I could have used it, and I think my supervisor would have preferred it.  But if the training wheels were going to be off on Wednesday, I think I should both be rewarded for what I went through and given a break before I started doing this for real.  In that sense, a weekday afternoon baseball Game, although it was only seven Innings instead of nine, was perfect.

And yet Wednesday was shit.  Sure, it was my first day, but I didn't expect, nor want to, stay for over an hour afterward.  (There is someone in Filing who began her day an hour after I started mine on Wednesday; she got out of work about 15 minutes before I got done with mine.)  I felt overwhelmed at many points.  There were dishes I needed to spin in the air for hours, and I still don't know if I haven't forgotten to do something.  (I was told I did fine, but I don't feel that way.  I usually don't after my first day at work.)

So it just so happens that sexual activity, the best way for me to relax after a bad day at work, was waiting for me once I finally got done.  Like with the Twins the day before, I did not arrange this specifically so that I could release tension right after work.  My stripper girlfriend ******e texted me because, instead of going home to Las Vegas, she was staying in town for another week.  (I don't know if she works.)  That gave me seven more days in which she and ***e* could, uh, double-team me.

At first I didn't like the surprise that she wasn't leaving for another week.  But I can't pass up two hot women stroking my dick, even if they had done so just the week before.  So I gave her several nights in which I was not busy and, turns out, Wednesday evening was the best time for them.  Things got really complicated with the death of ***e*'s father, but she was a trooper as those two dutifully wanked me that evening, a session I had to delay because I stayed at work late.  It, and I, came right on time, a sweet release also representing a great escape from the hell that is work from which I ran away from just less than an hour before.

I find myself diving into both sports and pornography as a way to keep myself sane in order to continue working in order to continue making money.  But if one is happy only if one gets away from it all, wouldn't it make sense just to stay where you get away from it all?

Nightmare

This one I had Wednesday evening.

I was in an open office setting, with high walls but closely clustered cubicles.  I'm not walking between the cubicles.  I'm not walking, period -- instead, I am floating.  Not upright but prone.  And I am using the dividers of the cubicles to pull me forward around and around and around this workspace.

I am floating through this workspace in a panic.  (In my nightmares I am usually in a panic.)  I am panicked because I know that in the room next to this open-floor plan, people were being stabbed to death.  I confront -- either because I literally decide to stop floating in circles or I somehow was "captured" -- what I think is a person from the other room.  I don't remember if he (or she) is someone who has been stabbed or has been doing the stabbing.  Anyway, I push myself forward over the top of a low-height cubicle, I fly Superman-style towards this subject and ... that's when I wake up.

I feel as if I'm running away in nearly all my nightmares.  And I am floating, or at least moving at a pace and with an ease faster than walking, in most of my nightmares.  What could that mean?

No, Casinos, I'm Good

I have lost some money -- money I can't afford, but still only some -- on the two casinos I hit before today.  So it doesn't really matter, I guess, that when I went to the third casino today (one of the final three in the St. Louis area I have gone to regularly -- there is a sixth that is too far south to go to) and won eight bucks the first time I pulled on the slot machine, I got up and left the casino with the eight bucks I took from the casino.  And that totally took the piss out of me gambling.  Well, I wasn't going to go all crazy anyway, since I have no money.  But I had to go to the other two casinos -- just to, you know, let the casinos know I still care -- and I spent only two bucks in each place because I wanted to preserve a "profit" from the casinos I went to today.

Sad?  Smart?  Eh?

Asshole Warning (Scheduled Post)

As I get further and further into training in my new departments, I am told and confronted with people who won't be courteous and professional.  I'll be vague about it, since this has to do with work, but I will say that there are enemies, both foreign and domestic, and my job will, eventually, have to do with dealing with them.

Am I ready?  I don't know.  A part of me is looking for a way out -- again, as I usually do, and as I think is the smart thing to do.  But there's this one dude, one who isn't at the company but one who works for a company that my company works with, who apparently is motherfucker, and a dumb one at that.  If I have to speak with him, and he doesn't cooperate, well, I don't think I will want to run away then.  Will I react professionally ... or will I defend myself, and possibly be fired for doing so?

I might have to come up with an answer.  Or maybe I need to find a solution so that I don't have to even have an answer.

Um, Actually, I Was Offered The Job

So on my last blog post I complained about not hearing from these people with whom I interviewed, to the point where I thought it was weird that the person who asked me call her back didn't pick up the phone either time I left a message on Thursday.

Well, I tried again while at work yesterday.  And after confirming that they thought the interview went well ... they offered me the job.

Holy shit, they offered me a job.  Like, a full-time job.  And she even said there would be benefits.  This is the first time I've ever been offered benefits.  Hell, this is the first time I've ever been offered a job that wasn't temporary.

So I said ... I need to think about it.  I mean, I should take all weekend to loll through all the things that could go wrong.  In fact, I'll name one right now: The conflicts I have with the weekend.  I did raise this subject with the person I was speaking with and she said we could deal with that after I say yes.  OK, that sounds good with me.  I'm just not sure if she knows the extent of the time I need to take some afternoons.  I told everybody about my work with the Vikings.  I'm not sure if I told them about my alumni club stuff.  Wait ... on second thought, I haven't told them about it.  Well, if the times are what they usually are, in the evening, then that won't be a problem.  But I know that our first game starts at 3 p.m., and that will make it impossible to hew to my regular hours.  I think they're flexible.  I hope to God they're flexible.

You know, I still have until Monday to think about it, but there is no reason I can think of not to say yes.  But I still think I have the right to take the weekend before declaring one way or the other.  I'm just ... shit, I'm just scared.  I've been complaining about not being able to find something permanent, and now that it looks as though I have something, I feel this natural urge to pull away and to run away.  But for God's sake, I can't do that!  That'd be crazy ... wouldn't it?

Nightmare

Fell asleep around 1:30 and woke up from an intense dream at around 5:30.  My God, the nightmare was about me getting caught having an affair with another woman.  I was escaping, as usual, but this time I was going down to the basement of some house for some reason.  Can you imagine me, getting caught cheating with a married woman?  Lol!

The Comedown

OK, it's been three days, and even though I subconsciously feel like I have to "break free" from the event, I know that there are still a few things I have to do, so I'm still in some kind of an "on" mode, even though I am coming down.  Does that make any sense?

I'm still not done.  Mostly it's social media stuff, such as writing stuff and uploading photos.  But I'm so damn tired that it's kind of a slog.

Nevertheless I think the event went really well.  With so many people, all I had to do was not act rude and just let the people mingle and have fun.  By doing nothing (I think), everybody had a great time.  And there were a lot of people there; probably the second-highest turnout for our annual event.  Having a lot of people there helps a lot.

Still, I think I screwed up in a couple places.  One parent asked me a question I had no idea how to answer; when I said I didn't know, I got the feeling he was disappointed in me.  And then I forgot to ask anybody if they wanted to host this next year.  That was a huge mistake, because I need to know right now if anybody can do this next year, and as weird as this sounds, I need to line this up now.

Yeah, I don't want to abdicate my duties, but I feel like I want to run away from this as far away as I can, even though it was a rousing success.

Vicious Hand Lovin', I Hope And Presume (Scheduled Post)

After My Fucking Father's latest meltdown on me, I need a good HJ, even though I shouldn't be spending the money I'll need to spend.  But right now all I can think about it is getting the hell out of the house after eating dinner.

That wasn't a problem last (Wednesday) night, when I told my folks I would already be gone for the night.  What I really wanted to do was go down to IKEA and see if there are any boxes I could use (long story).  But at work in afternoon I got a text from, of all people, ***e*, who is expecting.  She's doing a party at a hotel downtown, and she has brought with her *******y, who, with ***e*, double-teamed me so many times ago ... even though the sex session wasn't that great and they were cleaning the house then, which they kind of botched.

Now, I don't have the money, I hate that she told me this the day of, and I am still wary about doing shit at hotels.  But I haven't seen her in a while, and Lord knows I could use the release.  And so, after blog-posting this scheduled for the overnight, I'll go over there and see her for the first time in ages.  Hopefully I won't be meeting the police there too.

P.S.: There are a slew of parties that keep getting scheduled in clumps as well as on the same day.  I should write more about that.  But let's just say that on Wednesday afternoon I was texted two more parties, one on Saturday and one on Friday.  That Friday party falls on the same day as another party I already knew about.  This is getting to be so much that I'm of a mind not to go to any of them.  I could catch a lot of hell for bypassing all of these, especially the one I knew about a week in advance, and instead going to one I heard about mere hours before.  I'll tell them I'm catching up with old friends.  Maybe that'll work.

(Sigh) We're Babysitting Again

I was eating Thursday night when Father looked at the "ding" that came from his cellphone.  He usually doesn't bring his cell to the dinner table.  When he picked it up, he said something to Mother in Chinese.  I didn't get everything he said, but I knew: My brother and sister-in-law are coming by Saturday to drop off my niece for a few hours.  Then Father showed Mother the text: She's coming over at around 5:30, right in the middle of the two football playoff games.

I know I'm going to hell for saying this, but I would rather not babysit my niece for the three or so hours they'll be gone.  And I'll be brutally honest: If they didn't drop her off for us to take care of, if they opted for an actual babysitter that they would pay, that would be more than fine by me.

The reasons are manifold.  I love my niece, I really do.  But by God, she's a holy terror.  She has boundless energy, more than I have at my advanced age.  (Knowing that I probably had the same amount of energy when I was 3, I would understand why Grandmother and my parents would be fed up with my antics.)  She wears me out.  Every time my niece comes by to play, I get so tired that I have to run away into my bedroom to nap.  Serious.  I have to let my folks (well, Mother) take care of her while I recuperate.

And I feel terrible about saying this because retreating away from interacting with my niece is what Father does.  It's weird how she doesn't do anything with her.  When she comes over, Mother is actively playing (and, to be honest, bothering her; she gets a little too overbearing sometimes when she wants to get a reaction from my niece) with her.  In those cases, Father oftentimes just sits in the dining room table, watching from afar -- whenever he doesn't go down to the master bedroom.  Compounding that weirdness, Mother continues to say that Father always asks if my brother is sent her photos of their granddaughter.  He loves him from a distance, but never up close.

That is how I see My Father had parented me, and that's bad.  And so I don't want to propagate that neglect by refusing to play with my niece.  But I have that urge to stay away from her and watch football by myself in peace is sure proof that I am My Father's son, dammit.

Now that I have typed that, I know what I have to do.  I'll keep the TV on while I play with my niece.  I just hope she's not staying overnight.

OK, Two Days In And This Lunch Ruse Thing Already Isn't Working

Because she loves me -- I know that -- ever since she came home from Las Vegas she has packed food for me to take to work.  It always has consisted of a sandwich, done with love and quite tasty, and fruit, usually a banana.  (Though sometimes I grab the banana on the way out.)  What I usually do is eat the fruit first thing in the morning, then eat the sandwich for lunch after my lunch break while I'm working.

Now that I am not working, it's not necessary.  What I do when I'm not working is go to a coffeeshop close by till lunchtime, then (at least ostensibly) have lunch at either a fast food place or a fancy restaurant, something I can't do while I'm working, then, like, work out or something.  Chores and other things I can only do during the day will (or at least should be -- my goodness, I'm saying "at least" a lot) be sprinkled throughout my forced-upon sabbatical, although I will try and take the odd job here and there.  But I'm not chained to a computer at work, so I can find my own food.

That, of course, can't fly.  If I tell Mother that I don't need food, she'll then ask, "Why don't you?"  And then I either am forced to lie, thus forcing me to keep track of those lies, or I won't be able to tell a lie and they'll know I'm not working, and that raises a whole holy hell of shit about unemployment.

So I will have to keep taking food to go to work in order for them to believe that I am going to work, and I will have no idea when in the day am I not full so I can just eat the food Mother gives me so I can get that out of the way.  And I don't know about you, but eating food that's been in the car for a whole summer day isn't that great.  Take yesterday, for example.  I had to clear up my health insurance in St. Paul, and since I'm not out in St. Paul often, I had lunch there at a good place.  It took me till the late afternoon when I had time to eat the sandwich Mother made for me, at the community center, dead tired, before I planned on working out, in my car.  And the moisture from the deli meat and lettuce sopped into the white bread, so I was putting my fingers on this really squishy bread.  It was alright, and I'm not sick yet, but it was messy, and I don't know if it really is safe to eat a hot sandwich.  Also, in lieu of the banana (because Mother said they weren't ripe yet) she packed grapes and cherries for me.  I had to sit down after my 40 minutes on the elliptical to eat them, just before I went home and had dinner.

So you see that I'm at a crossroads.  I'm trying to do what I can just to get through to next week.  What I wanted to do this morning is surreptitiously leave with the sandwich Mother made but without a banana, so I only have to chow down on one thing instead of two.  But Mother was up in the kitchen early enough this morning where I had to grab a banana before I left.  Man, she wasn't up that early yesterday morning.  I need her (and actually Father too) to sleep in so I can just leave with just a sandwich so I could come back and, if they ask, say, "Whoops!  Sorry, I just totally forgot on my way out!"  But I can't now, so I'll have to find the time today to eat a soggy sandwich and a huge banana while eating a cookie and having a mocha in the morning (at the coffeeshop where I'm writing this now) but before I go to this taste test where I'm not supposed to eat anything a half-hour before it starts, and then after I watch Captain America: Civil War this afternoon.

This is my life, for God's sake.  How can I go on with my life if these are the obstacles I have to overcome during my day?

I Can't Fucking Believe What They're Doing At Work, The Sequel

This really isn't an addendum, more like deja vu all over again.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak.

So everything is hunky dory with the new scoring place.  Well, the commute sucks and it's not the coziest of rooms people-wise, but at least I didn't have to put up with someone being elevated to my boss right in the middle of a project.  But on Monday, a whole new raft of people came in to start scoring.  That's not too bad; I heard that up to 11 people no-showed at the start, and they can only train on papers starting on Monday.  No big whoop.

But they added another immediate supervisor, too.  Huh?  I didn't think they would add one, especially since they (at least theoretically) staffed up that position to handle a certain number of grunts like us.  Since fewer grunts like us showed up, you wouldn't need another supervisor.  In fact, you could (at least theoretically) cut one because you have fewer people to supervise.  But here he is.

This is totally unnerving, but I thought I could at least just deal with this situation not being totally similar to the old test scoring place because I didn't think I would have to deal with this new person.  Except that yesterday (Wednesday), I got switched around when the entire room was broken off into other mini-projects, and he became my go-to.  So whenever I had a question or I had to wait for further instructions, it would be this new person -- someone who started off on this project after me -- who will tell me.

How is that different than the situation at the old scoring place, the one where I was so infuriated by the move that I quit?  Since Monday I'm trying to figure that shit out, to no avail.  In the meantime I am still trudging to work every day, fearing that I am nothing more or less than a hypocrite.

So I will try and figure out how this situation is the same and different from the old one.  This might be a little internal, but alas I need to stretch this out via bullet points:

• Like I said, he started on this project after me.

I really don't know where he came from.  However, I saw him around the building the previous week.  I assume that the room made her higher-ups aware that they had 11 fewer people to score on this project.  If so, possibly he was in the building because he was hired to supervise the new people they were scrambling to get starting on Monday.  I would have no problem with that if that is true.  Also, I may have overheard from some of the other supervisors that they needed to come in over the weekend.  If that is the case, did they come in to help train the new person?  That is also OK with me, because like a scenario where he was getting up to speed last week, both cases showed that this company at least knew to bring a new person in and trained him up away from the project.  These three sudden supervisors at my old job basically are doing their new jobs on the fly, and I couldn't take that half-ass stunt.

• He did not start alongside me on this material.

This new supervisor is not a grunt.  We were not in the same boat.  Again, he apparently trained away from us, preferably before Monday.  This forces me to change my perception on why seeing this babe supervisor in my old test scoring place bothered me so.  It looks as if he got onto this project after I did, which would mean that I should know more about this than he does.  But really, it doesn't.  I asked him questions yesterday and I took his answers to heart.  So maybe I got so mad at the old place because I saw with my own eyes someone who was once my equal raised up not to be my equal anymore.  The promotion was too in-my-face for me to deal with.

• I know the person.

He actually was my immediate supervisor last year.  And you know what?  I think he may be the best immediate supervisor I've had in this industry.  He is direct, he explains things, he will listen, he is flexible, and he occasionally is funny.  You need someone engaging and communicative, and he's got that in spades, last year and now.  Also, I know that he has done supervising for many projects for a long time, and that too gives me pause as to my reasons for walking away from the old test scoring place.  I keep telling myself that tenure isn't the issue, namely that I couldn't stay because someone who was at the job for a shorter amount of time got a position I had never gotten in all my years there.  Yet, I am totally going to see as legitimate someone who I have seen in a position of authority before and who has been in that job before.  And yet my argument was that it doesn't matter how long you have scored or even how much experience you have supervising -- if you did not start on this project at a certain position, you can't jump into that position now.  That should still hold true.  Therefore, I should still have a big fucking problem with this.

• This might be temporary.

The project for which I was one of his grunts is continuing on this year, just without me.  I had heard on Monday that this project is going to begin next week.  Presumably, then, he will be gone next week -- and, if I'm not mistaken, so will these new reinforcements; they actually all were assigned to this same project, many of whom I remember from last year.  If this is temporary and they'll be ghosts by Friday ... well, maybe I can put up with it.  Still doesn't make it right.

• One final consideration: I can't walk away from a second job.

It took me 80 minutes to get home Wednesday.  We are still clocking in only eight-hour days where I know the old scoring place still wants people to work nine, plus the weekend.  And unlike the old test scoring place, where you can put down your own time and they allow you to round to the nearest quarter-hour, at the new test scoring place you use a badge to swipe in.  That tells you exactly what time you came in.  I'm late a lot, and from time to time we are dismissed early.  That means that I lose a couple minutes in the beginning of the day and a couple at the end, so I will be nickel-and-dimed to the point where my paycheck here will be a fraction of what it would have been over there.

Saw my direct deposit receipt Tuesday; made $1,300 my last two weeks over there.  That was a lot of overtime.  And I have basically used all of it already; a grand to pay off part of my credit card, the rest for taxes (and I'll still have to pay a bit on top of that).  I won't come close to that amount at the new place.  Someone keeps telling me we will have OT.  I'll believe it when I see it.

And yet, I can't walk away.  I walked away from one job, and I doubt they'll let me back.  And I called my temp agencies; they're ain't shit they have for me.  So I am stuck, goddammit.  Even if things get progressively more inhospitable for me, I have no choice but to swallow down my fucking principles and take advice from a guy who, if he does in fact stick around, presumably knows less about this material than I do.

I have asked someone for an explanation for all the shit that is happening this week.  If I really, really don't like it, maybe I will quit the new scoring place and try to go back to the old one.  Hey, my immediate supervisor there shouldn't have the job and maybe doesn't want the job, but at least she's got a great ass and a nice rack.  All the while I'm angry that she gets the responsibility of printing out papers at least I'll get to see her shake her ass.

Maybe I should have stayed.

Yeah, I'm Beginning To Regret My Decision To Leave

The commute was one thing I knew was going to be bad, and it has been all that and more.  Yesterday, coming home from work, I was shunted to cutting through downtown, where I was going to get back onto the highway I needed to get to, but the street I needed to use was closed for some goddamn reason, and then once I got closer to home traffic that usually isn't there was suddenly there because of some fucking accident.  I have been getting home in 50 minutes on the best day.  Yesterday it took me 80.

I said that if you asked me if I regret my decision to quit the old test scoring job for the new one I would say it would depend on when you asked me.  If you asked me while I'm driving home, or as I type this right now, it would be yes.  But the time I'm thinking that I made a big mistake in jumping ship is spreading beyond times like my afternoon commute.

I can't quite put my finger on some things.  The vibe of the room, especially this week, has taken a turn for the worse.  The leader of the room seems to be kind of a bitch, although I have talked to her in the past and I know she is a decent person.  This week there are new people, and that blindsided the shit out of me because I left my old job partly because of that same reason.  I need to talk about that, maybe for next time.

What really got me, though, was what happened yesterday afternoon.  I get up out of my seat a lot, to get coffee or use the bathroom.  I'm restless that way, and I feel like I need a brain break in order to be able to concentrate on my work.  After I did that, my immediate supervisor chased me just as I left the room and told me I couldn't do that anymore.  I'm not quite sure what the reason behind it was, but apparently the room has been "hearing complaints" about people from our room loitering in the hallway, or at least they are afraid of ginning up a perception of people from our room loitering in the hallway.

I don't know why in the hell she singled me out.  I get up a lot, but I am prompt in coming back, always, and I have never loitered in the hallway or the break room or anywhere else.  (I was planning on reading the paper for a few minutes on my way out the door, but don't tell her.)  She seemed pretty apologetic about stopping me, and I have been on the other end of this and had to tell other people to stop loitering.  But she told this to me, and I feel like I have been accused of something I didn't do.

But, I apologized and insisted that all I was doing is going to the bathroom and back, which I did.  But now what?  Am I not able to leave, not even to pee or get water?  I think my work speaks for itself, but apparently I have been perceived as a "loiterer" who cannot be trusted.  Well, then, I'm a lawbreaker too, because if I need to get up for coffee or to relieve myself, I'm doing it.

I now see a stark contrast between the two test scoring places.  The old place angered me because of one move that reflected how lax they are in their profession and with the treatment of their employees.  This new place has issued a series of things reflected how unyielding they are in their profession and with the treatment of their employees.  Call me Goldilocks, but I want a place that's just right.  So right now, I want to run away from this situation like I did when I was stuck in the middle of the previous situation.

Shit, stuck ... I'll be stuck in traffic until this motherfucking project is over.

Have I Boxed Myself In?

I'm feeling very nihilistic, and therefore free, now that I don't have to go back to the strange and troublesome situation from the old test scoring place.  I now go to a new test scoring place where, honestly, I have absolutely no fucking guarantee that it will in fact be worse than the place I came from.  But I have faith that it won't.  Honestly, not seeing those three do duties as a result of undeserved promotions will be a burden lifted from soldiers.  Running away sometimes is the best thing you can do.

However, there is one small problem.  While I do have this feeling of indifference towards what anybody back there would say about me, I wonder if I said the right thing.  I'm not trying to burn my bridges, is what I'm saying, so I kind of blurted out something that I'm afraid might bite me in the ass.

I haven't told them I'm going to a rival scoring company.  Legally, I don't think it's any of their business; I'm an at-will "gig" worker, so I can come and go as I please for any reason or for no reason, the same way they could just not ever hire me again for any reason or for no reason.  (This Republican way of employment is kind of the reason why I still want to vent to that company my reasons for quitting.)  But just in case they would get mad -- after all, beyond this project, I wouldn't mind coming back here year after year, just like I have the past several -- I think it's best to hide that fact from them.  (Aside: I have seen a few people that have worked in both places, though not necessarily at the same time.  One of them I saw at the place I'm leaving now working at the place I'm going to last year, I think.  Another person who moonlighted in both places, like me, is going to be working on this new project I'm going to starting today.  So it's probably OK, but again, I don't volunteer that fact.)

One problem.  When you tell people you're leaving for another job, they'll naturally ask: "Where are you going to?"  I still don't think it's wise to blurt out you're going to a competitor.  So after some thought, I decided to lie and told everyone who asked that question that I'm going to the health insurance company I was working for over the winter, and they asked me to come back and do something similar to what I did then.  My real reason for leaving -- that I could not on principle take instruction from someone who learned the material at the same time as I -- is replaced by two reasons that might make more sense to people: That this job pays better (though just by a buck per hour) and that the length of the assignment is longer than the ones at this building.

Should expand on that last point.  If I were to stick it out at the old building, I have been told that I would rejoin a project from which I landed on this cavalcade of a disaster, and that would take me to around the 4th of July.  When I went to the new place, I was given one assignment but lined up for two more which, taken together, would take me to mid-August.  Presumably, then, I'm getting myself into a better situation, at least when it comes to length of work.  However, I was only assured that these subsequent projects are going to be offered to me.  Really, I have no guaranteed work beyond the six weeks slated for this particular project.  And when you add my general rule regarding these test scoring projects -- you really have only half the projected time guarantee -- I could be back on the dole in three weeks.  I still think it was better for me to jump.  But if I get let go before the end of April, I reserve my right to change my mind and beat myself over the head with a tire iron.

Anyway, the health insurance company is the job I told everyone there I am going to, starting today.  They didn't ask too many questions after that, thank Buddha.  But now I'm scared that anybody who's double-dealing there and here would see me tomorrow, think nothing of the fact that we're essentially cheating on our companies, and tell someone in authority that they saw me at this new test scoring place when I told them I was working somewhere else.  I'm not sure you can be let go because you're working for a rival.  But I think I would get fired for lying.  And that would be burning my bridges.

Man, all of this web of intrigue, all due to a simple question that's often uttered as polite curiosity -- "What's your new job?"  I hope I haven't boxed myself in.

Mother, I Was Hoping You Wouldn't Be Acting Like A Cunt

She's up to her old bullshit tricks again, My Fucking Mother.

If I haven't said this before, I'll say it now: I think my cursed life is the result of getting the worst tendencies of both of my parents.  I doubt I inherited any of the best from either, but I don't know if that's because I've squandered any goodness gene from either or if neither of them had any to begin with.  But I'm still trying to sort out which parts of the badness in me comes from my old man and which comes from Mother.

For what it's worth (and hopefully I'll remember to reference this the next time I'm hating my parents and taking inventory as a result), I think I am making a little bit of progress on who to blame for which of my faults.  Unfortunately, that only becomes clear every time they talk shit to me.

Case in point was last (Friday) night, where, once again, Mother called me down for help with her laptop because OH MY GOD I DON'T KNOW HOW TO WORK THIS THING HELP ME!!!  Per usual she asked stupid, obtuse questions that I can't even begin to answer -- partly because I don't know how to solve the problem, partly because she isn't clear on what in the fuck she exactly wants.

But asking stupid and obtuse questions isn't something she passed down to me, at least I don't think.  It has been often that I can't solve her computer problem, at which point Mother just shoos me away and, well, that's it.  With her problems (OK, with any problems that aren't mine) I quickly forget about them as soon as I am given the impression to not worry about them.  I barely remembered what this one was about ... something about -- oh yeah -- something about increasing the size of this array of mini-windows in the online screen she had in her online real estate portfolio.  It was really small, and the size of it should be increased, and I tried zooming on the keyboard and with the mouse, but to no avail.

So I pulled up stakes.  Hey, Mother continually harped on how she could bring up this exact same screen with normal-sized type at her computer in Las Vegas, so maybe she can fuck around with it so it looks like how she wants it.  I was done with it; I wanted to go upstairs to fold my laundry and watch The Amazing Race.  And it was then, while I was walking out of her office and through the furnace room, where she says something that she often says to me when I fail to please her by fixing one of her fucking inane problems (and I'm paraphrasing here because she says a range of things that basically center on this one main theme): "You went to college, so I wonder why you're not able to fix such a simple problem."

Oh, fuck you, Mother.  But it was that point where I realize that I have oftentimes been dismissive of people who let me down.  There was that bitch I had to watch over at the flu biller place who was nothing but a sullen backtalker.  Oftentimes I think of her, even to this day, and I think of her with such contempt.  I really, really want to think she deserves my thoughts of her because she was lazy and insubordinate.  But maybe, just maybe I think that about her because My Fucking Mother oftentimes said equally hateful things about me.  Although my old man makes no bones about how much he thinks he's better than me, it's possible my condescending attitude comes from her.

Also, I always have the urge to backtalk myself, to always get the last word in an argument ... usually as the other person was walking away, like was when Mother pulled that verbal diarrhea on me, like she often does when she doesn't like that I couldn't figure out one of her impossible, stupid issues on her fucking computer.  My God, I got acting like a cunt from my mom.

Because of this I ran away from home; after watching Washington Week I left home (while Mother was talking to Father, probably about how I failed her) to go to the stripclub and then to Glam Doll, where I'm writing this.  Don't know yet if running away and complaining behind peoples' backs is something I got from the old man or the battle ax, or if it's a maleficent trait I made up all for myself.

I Hate This Game

So the experiment I'm doing now is unlike any I've ever done before.  Many aspects of it are familiar, but they haven't been squished together like this.  Add other new wrinkles on top, and I'm sure I'll never see the likes of this study ever again.

First off, it's long.  It was supposed to be 14 consecutive workdays of dropping by this office.  That would have been fine, even great, had I not realized that there was a vacation right in the middle of this study.  Like I said before, I wish I knew, because then I wouldn't have been out $40.  If I knew, I would have either called and set this all up sooner or pushed it back until after I came back from my vacation.  Either way I would've crammed in all of my visits instead of missing two of them.

Also, this study, which I found on a flier at the University of Minnesota, isn't being done at the U.  It's being done in downtown Minneapolis; while I remember going to a breathing study in Nordeast once, this is the first time I've ever tried to find parking in order to go do an experiment.  That has brought up its own predicaments.  They reimburse you for parking (after the whole experiment's over and not when you could use the money, of course), but finding it has become a huge hassle.  I have had to walk a few blocks over the office because I couldn't find anything closer.  They put down new black tar on Washington Ave. a few days ago, thereby eliminating a bunch of spots I could've used.  And for how long do I reserve my spot for?  Guess it doesn't matter since the study will pay for it, but I still don't want to pay for too short a time or too long a time.  The rules state (and they can be a little fudgy) that they will only pay up to a half-hour before and a half-hour after your appointment.  So far so good, I reckon; now I just need to make sure I have my receipts with me.

From then on the study looks kind of familiar.  It's one of those things where they strap a net of electrodes on your head to record brain activity related to eye movement ... maybe?  That's done while I'm playing a series of games, which is something I've done before.  What is new to me, however, is the absolute difficulty of playing this game.  I swear, this takes me back to the times I was playing on my brother's Nintendo or Super Nintendo and I threw the controller across the room because I got frustrated over losing.

I can't reveal too much, partly because I shouldn't say what it is, partly because I can't explain it myself.  But this is what I can tell you.  All of the games are played by pushing both shift keys.  Each game has its own set of rules.  Some of them are difficult.  Some others are just impossible.  Here is an example of one of those impossible games: You see this part on a ring with a color on it.  If the color is blue, you then look at the shape of the head.  If it matches the one you saw three parts ago, hit left shift; if not, hit right shift.  Now, if the color on this ring is red, you look at the logo on the body.  If the logo on that body is military in nature, hit right shift; if not, hit left.  Oh, and if you see an additional yellow ring while looking at this part, you don't hit either shift key.  And by the way, you're timed at this, so not only do you not get any points if you hit the wrong button, you may not get any points if you don't hit a button in time.  Unless you see a yellow ring, in which case you do wait so you do get the points, otherwise that part gets zapped.

See what I mean?  Not all of them are that complex, but some of them are, and when I see those very hard ones (especially the ones that ask me to remember what I saw two or three parts ago), honestly, I kind of check out and go, "OK, I'm gonna shit the bed on this one."  And when the two minutes are up and see that I missed more than half of the parts (and by the way, I'm not completely convinced that is true; I think this game is trying to fuck with me), I flash both middle fingers at the laptop screen and hope that I'll be done with it soon.

I get so demoralized after I'm done that, on Thursday, I forgot to take my hat and watch from the station I was at before leaving.  It was a very busy day, what with trying to get to a stripper party immediately after that and then the Saints game in St. Paul that evening.  But after that net of electrodes was peeled off of my scalp I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of Dodge, so much so that I left some things behind.

Honestly, I am working way too hard to continually fail at these games.  I hope that's part of the overall design.  But with this experiments, there is always some ulterior motive lying underneath.  I don't know what that is, and frankly, it's not important.  I just want to be done with it and collect my money ASAP.