Three No Job!!!

I'm going in to work at the test scoring place.  Today I try and qualify for the second and final phase of this project.  I will know by the end of the day whether or not I am in or out.

Last night, just out of curiosity, I booted up my old tablet.  I did not turn it off, and I forgot that I had an old alarm setting at a quarter after six in the morning.  I have not been able to go back to sleep since.  To be up two hours and fifteen minutes before going to work is ridiculous.  Being up that long I will need a nap, and that's when the first test begins.

A part of me is almost certain that I'll fail, and since there's nothing else to do, my work there will literally be done.  Another part of me, frankly, is oblivious to these tests -- "What, me fail?"  I hate that there's a part of me that feels absolutely doomed when there's no proof, and I also hate that there's a part of me that thinks everything's going to be just fine when there's no proof.  Truth is I have no idea how I'll do in these tests.  And I hate that most of all.

Meanwhile my contact at the temp agency left me a voicemail.  This after getting what appears to be a call from him on his personal phone line and not being able to hear him.  And that comes after work yesterday where I tried to reach him, got his voicemail because he was out, and was told his mailbox was full.  Honestly, I wish I could have left a voicemail; that would make talking about not going back to this job in the fall a lot easier.

Nevertheless, I feel more and more sure that not returning is the right thing to do.  Everything has crystallized now.  I can deal with just about everything there except The Asshole, and The Asshole is the only reason (well, there is that issue of pay) I'm not coming back, and I'm OK with that.  I would like to think that I'm smart enough to find work at another place where hopefully I won't get screamed at by a guy just for asking one question.  I think I've made enough money for the temp agency that they'll get me to someplace else, someplace better.  Hopefully.

Finally, I have waited all week for a call from the network.  The Twins game is being broadcast nationally, and that usually means they need someone to help out with the game.  Well, it's Friday, the day before the game, and I heard nothing.  This means one of two things.  Either the move to cable means that they no longer are looking for day players, or it's something more sinister -- they choose some other local bobo instead of me, a guy who's been loyal to them for years helping out with Twins games.

---

To sum up: I have no work for tomorrow.  There's a chance (a good one?) that I will have no work come Monday ... which will raise a lot of questions with my parents, of course.  And come fall, I won't have work then.  That one is the worst; it's a place that wants me and is paying good money.  But I'm not going back to a place where I'll be disrespected like that.

I'm thinking now more than ever I need a change.  But I looked at bank account last night and it's still fucking below two grand.  All this work, and I'm under two grand!  I need work.  Why can't I find work that pays well where I can be totally happy?  Why the fuck not?!

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey (Scheduled Post)

#-1: Lynx (Last Week: 0).  Um, OK, my bad.  In last week's WMNSS I said that the Lynx were going to have three upcoming games past week.  Checking back on the team's schedule page those games (at Chicago Friday, home to San Antonio Sunday, at Connecticut Tuesday) are actually this week.  Don't know where my head's at.

They apparently have a huge hole in their schedule, for some reason -- Independence Weekend?  Women's World Cup?  The only game between Saturday, June 27 and Friday, July 10 was Friday's 82-57 she-lacking at Target Center of the Seattle Storm, the same team against which they registered the largest road comeback in franchise history on June 25.  The quartet of Moore, Whalen, Augustus and Brunson remain the nucleus around which the club orbits to great success, but I'm still worried about the revolving door at the 5.  Ashja Jones, signed to replace the Janel McCarville when she surprised the squad by taking a sabbatical this year, replaced Damiris Dantas at Center to start the game, but like Dantas in most games, she was frequently substituted.  In the end, it looks Dantas and Devereaux Peters played more minutes than Jones.  The team's winning, no problem there, but it would be nice if they found answer at the pivot.

The other big news is the belated arrival of Anna Cruz, who is expected to be Lindsay Whalen's back-up Point Guard.  This should allow Monica Wright to dedicate her time solely to the wing guard/Small Forward spot.  We'll see if it works for the team that, as of press time, has the best record in the WNBA.

#-2: Twins (Last Week: -2).  Well, Miguel Sano's start in the big leagues is going a hell of a lot better than Byron Buxton, the prospect that was supposed to be better.  In Thursday's 2-0 win over division-leading Kansas City he legged out an infield grounder for his first-ever professional hit.  Soon after -- some time during the organization's 5-2 screening week -- he hit his first Home Run, which I think reached the upper deck in left-center field.  It's very early, but he seems to be keeping up with the speed and power of the pitching in Major League Baseball.  Consequently or coincidentally, Sano's call-up has suddenly sparked life in the moribund lineup.  Torii Hunter continues to drink from The Fountain Of Youth, Joe Mauer is batting a hell of a lot better, and they once again are mashing the ball.

Two Twins of note, possibly with bright and long futures with the club.  The first is Brian Dozier, who kicked off his campaign to be the last player voted onto the American League's All-Star team by walking off Monday's 4-2 win over Baltimore at Target Field with a two-run homer to left.  Sabermatricians have been on his jock the past couple years, but his combination of steady defense and timely hitting for power is now getting the regular baseball fan's attention.  It may be possible that he can be the future face of the Twins now that Mauer is facing the back half of his career.  The other guy I'm noticing is Pitcher Kyle Gibson.  He showed major brass ones in that Thursday victory at the Royals.  In the eighth, with runners in scoring position (I think) and over the magical 100 pitches, he got his second Strikeout swinging and induced a weak grounder to get out of the inning.  And he remained solid in Tuesday's 8-3 win over the Orioles.  I don't know if he's get ace stuff, but he's looking more and more like a very good pitcher that belongs in the majors for a long time.

Oh, by the way, with Wednesday afternoon's 5-3 victory, the Twins just swept the O's.  A split of the best team in the AL on the road followed by a sweep, remaining in line for a Wild Card and a spot in the American League Play-In Game?  That ain't a bad week.  They finish the first half of the regular season with four games at home vs. Detroit.  Then it's the All-Star break for everybody on the team except, for now, Glen Perkins, who will make his third ASG appearance in Cincinnati.

Tomorrow I Close A Chapter, Proactively

Last week my temp agency called me; the flu biller place wants me back for the season.  So however much time I had to really think about whether or not I wanted to go back to the place where The Asshole yelled at me, already short because of the time of year, now had a concrete period of time.  Even less so Tuesday while gassing up the old car before coming home yesterday (Tuesday).  I had thought about what I was going to say to my contact at the agency.  I was going to wait until the right time this week.  Maybe it was going to be Friday afternoon, but no, maybe give the flu billers Thursday afternoon so they know what's up before the weekend's through.  But then work threw yet another goddamn curveball and said that we would not go straight away into training for the second (and now final) phase of this project after getting down with the first phase; we will instead be cut for the day and start training the following morning.  The way it looks now, the cut day is today (Wednesday), giving me plenty of time in the afternoon to give him my final answer.

And what is my final answer?  I'm scaring myself half to death that I don't have the stones to go through with it, and maybe I won't.  But I think it's going to be no.  It's sad.  I'm going to be a broken record, but I liked (parts of) the job, I liked (most of) the people, I liked the workload once it settled down, and I definitely loved the commute.  With all those advantages, it seems short-sighted, juvenile, even petty to let one man be the reason why I'm not coming back.  And I do have other reasons to leave.  I should get serious about either finding a full-time job or going back to school, and if I'm going to use my broadcast journalism degree, now's sure would be a good time to use it.  Honestly, if The Asshole weren't there, I'd jump back in, gladly.  But he probably is, so I'm out.

This is where being a temp is a good thing.  There are many downsides, financial security being one of them.  That's partly why I'm thinking of moving on.  But one of the upsides is that I am not tied down to any particular job because of the benefits or the track record I have built up working for the same company for years.  I can walk away whenever I want, for whatever reason I want.  If this were a full-time job, I guess I would have to suck up The Asshole for what he did to me.  As a lowly temp (an image The Asshole probably had about me when he decided he could yell at me), however, I can stand by my principles, as bizarre as it probably will sound to my contact when I call him, and say that if I ever see that man again, if I ever have to be in the same fucking building as that man ever again, I will punch him the face.  And that's why I'm not coming back.

I am not anticipating what the contact will think about this.  Once again he appears to be really concerned with getting this project up and running.  He wants me back; so does most everybody else.  But not him, and I'm afraid I'm basing this decision on that.  And my contact at the agency may not like that.  I understand.  I just hope that he knows that I've been good to him -- and that I've made money for the company he works for -- and I think I'd be a good asset for another company that doesn't have a screamin' prick with anger management issues.  Give me that, and I'll work for minimum wage.  I just can't go back.

It is very strange for me to do this.  Normally my modus operandi is to take life as it comes, to float on like a Pisces.  That brings me times of joy and peace, but it also lets opportunity pass me by and may allow things to fall apart.  In that case, and in this period of my life, maybe it's better if I make things happen, if I close doors shut behind me instead of seeing which doors shut in front of me.  Maybe if I had a different mood I would remain passive.  Right now, and maybe spurred on by The Asshole, I think I am going to be proactive and start making changes.

And hopefully I'll stick to my guns and at least tell my contact how I feel.  Wish me luck.

My Car May Have Risen From The Dead, I Hope

Despite the fact that it has taken yet another hunk out of my checking account, I have to admit that after thinking that my old car was done for good, it drives as well as it used to, for the most part.

The mechanic that replaced the head gasket and the brakes (for some unknown reason) gave a six-month warranty on it.  The initial thinking, thought up by Mother, was that the old car would become the winter beater while I drive the new car free of the danger of salt and rust for the warm weather months.  But winter is six months away, and it'd be kind of a waste not to at least drive the old car on weekends, when I don't have to go to my regular (for now) job to without seeing if the repairs worked or if this mechanic is a ripoff artist.

So far, so good, with one exception.  The weekend before the one just past, while (I think) I was starting the car on the way from the Mall of America (and I think it was that Saturday and not that Sunday), the Check Engine light came on.  The car seems to drive just fine with it on.  It drove fine all those months when it was on and all the sensors in my car were failing.  In fact, come to think of it, all these huge problems with the Mass Air Flow Sensor and the head gasket happened after I got all the sensors fixed in an attempt to turn off the Check Engine light once and for all.  Maybe I shouldn't've screwed with it.  After all, my parents' minivan has run with that light on for upwards of a decade, at least.  Hell, when I went to The Other Mechanic Around The Corner and borrowed his Toyota loaner, I didn't notice until the fourth time I used it that there was a square of black tape on the instrument panel; when I looked around it, bam!, there was the Check Engine light on.  Now if a freakin' mechanic thinks a car can run with its Check Engine light on, surely the old car can, right?

Well, not if it's under warranty, even if that warranty is for something else.  I should talk to my parents about so they can bring it in during the week.  But something has come up: Last week's hailstorm which My Fucking Father noticed by did not, much to my shame, of course.  He said he was going to call the insurance company Monday.  Either he remembered or I reminded him when I texted him Monday afternoon.  Either way, I am supposed to leave the new car today (Tuesday) so they can drive it to wherever they need to drive it in order to have it assessed.  That means, for old time's sake, I drive the old car to work today (Tuesday).

That brings up a host of things.  First, I had to spend a half-hour after dinner throwing shit out of the new car and into the old car, because I know he's going to look at the trunk of the new car and see all the stuff in there and complain about me hauling trash everywhere I drive.  Hopefully I can justify everything that's in there right now -- blanket, tissues, ice scraper, jumper cables, etc.  Second, although the old car drives fine, I still have PTSD-type flashbacks to when the temperature gauge started to go up while I was driving.  I am obsessively looking at that gauge while I'm driving.  I know that's dangerous, but so is allowing the engine to overheat, even though the repair seems to be working and I've checked the coolant overflow tank and it seems to be holding the antifreeze just fine.  And it would be just my luck that after two weekends of smooth sailing it would overheat at an inopportune time, such as driving to work.  Hope this doesn't cost me more time away from work, like it did two months ago.  Wish me luck.

Bad Tooth

I have a bad tooth.  I was alerted to it the last time I went to the dentist, which was around springtime.  I had felt a weird sensation when flossing around a couple of the teeth on the right side of my mouth for a while up to that point.  And sometimes I use a toothpick or my fingernail to press up against one or two of the teeth and I feel a bad sensation.  When I told the dentist, he or she said that they could see the beginning of a cavity there.  Keep brushing, he or she said, because there's a chance that the cavity could reverse itself.

I have been a bad boy when it comes to that.  I have never been a religious tooth-brusher; guess Grandmother never taught me that every night.  Hell, I should do that now, but the NASCAR race is running right now (even though it's being held in Daytona and it's about to hit midnight in the friggin' Mountain Time Zone) and by the time that's done and I'm finished with this blog post I should go to bed, so I can't even spare the two minutes I need to brush my teeth.

But when I do brush my teeth, and I take the dentist's advice and concentrate on that tooth or teeth in question, I can really feel some pain there.  Then, when I spit out the toothpaste, it's not its usual white or light green, but red.  Then I look around the area of the bad tooth/teeth and there is a blood emanating from the gumline there.  It now happens nearly every time.  And I'm not sure if that's a bad thing; I've been told that if you brush to the point you get blood, that means you're getting the bad stuff out of there.

Nevertheless it still hurts, so I don't know if my irregular brushing is helping at all.  It's about to be time where I have to see the dentist again, so I'll see if I'll need a filling or not.

Just wanted to put this down for the record.

Long Weekend, Longer Week?

The downside to long weekends?  Long weekends end.  Normal weekends end, too.  But there's nothing like anticipating a long weekend, especially, in this case, Thursday afternoon, when you feel like you're free and you don't have to worry about working for The Man forever.  A two-day weekend you know you have to go back to work.  But not a three-day weekend.  It's like a bonus just for living.  And you don't worry about that Monday.

Until Sunday comes.  Then reality hits you, hard.  That's why I hate long weekends; you have many more free days that you miss once they're gone.  With two-day weekends you know you have just oh-so-long to enjoy yourself before you're back in the suck.  An extra day lulls you into thinking that you're free forever, and once you remember that you're not, you get more depressed than you would after a typical workweek.

I'm that way now.  I'm anticipating the Women's World Cup Final but also dreading the possibility (real, I believe, even if Five Thirty Eight says that Team USA has a 2-in-3 chance of winning) that they'll lose and I'll be all shitty coming home tonight.  Also, it's humid, and although I respect that humidity is a part of summer, it still blows.  But worst of all is that this particular phase of our project will wind down this week.  It was initially projected to be Thursday, but we've worked so fast (too fast) that we will start training for the next phase Wednesday.  That brings back all the anxiety from training for the first phase, where I was thisclose to disqualifying and thus losing my job.  There is no reason why it couldn't happen this time around.  I'm going to get all terrified and shit again.

And oh yeah, I had one more blindside pulled on me.  There were supposed to be three phases to this project.  But, because it's their prerogative, they have taken away the third and final phase of the project and gave it to other people.  That means that once we're done with this second phase (assuming I pass), we're done.  Period.  Project over, and I think work for the season over, too.

The first week of August was the drop-dead date.  I did the calculations; I could safely assume that we would have work through about July 15.  The supervisor said that the second phase would get over by the end of this month.  But that isn't what the pace is telling me.  If we keep up our work rate, we'll be done by July 24.  Which, although it's past the 15th, still really sucks.

Oh, I still haven't totally made up my mind about the flu biller place, but I don't think I'm going back.  Maybe tell you more later.

---

Should throw in a prediction: Japan beats the U.S. in penalty kicks.  I'm a pessimist like that.

Basically, $15 Was Stolen From Me

That was the amount of the cover of the party my ATF, ***e*, was doing.  I haven't seen her in a long time, and she still owes me money.  I thought about not going, especially since another girl, ****a, yanked my dick to completion during a massage in the late afternoon.  But I missed her, and I thought that as long as I could just get a clean dance from her (which would not erase the debt), that would be enough.  Besides, she's a girl where, if I whipped it out, she'd play with it for a little bit and not charge me extra.  That's why ***e* is my ATF.

So I told her that I'd see her at the tail end of her party.  This is at the new place of her friend.  She is the one who, with ***e*, participated in the first double-team I was subjected to.  Since then, however, she has done nothing but rip me off.  When *e** had a party she charged me $25 for a dance that had always been $20 at her parties.  And the cover for her dances have been $15, which is much more than others.  I wouldn't go for that, but I wanted to see ***e*, so I acceded.

I got lost on the way there, so instead of getting there a half-hour before the party was over, I got there about ten minutes before.  The doors were unlocked, so I went in and saw the host and paid her my $15.  There was ***e* dancing for a guy behind this sheet blocking off the living room, so I waited patiently for her.

"Do you wanna dance?" the host asked, of course.  I told her no, I didn't have any money, but ***e* and I "had an agreement" where she would dance in order to cut down on her debt to me.

"Oh," she replied, "she already left."

The fuck?  I told her I was coming around this time.  And like I said, I have no money for a dance, with ***e* or with anybody else.  So why the fuck am I here?  Feeling burned that my ATF screwed me over, I ate really quick and left.  Ten minutes tops.

I was thinking about how badly I got screwed and how I could only blame myself.  I didn't intend on going, and it turns out that was the right idea.  And I don't have much money right now, so I thought of myself as Mr. Moneybags after he got that "pay hotel tax" card after landing on Chance.  But then I thought: Why didn't the host give me my cover back?  It's not as if I stayed that long.  The lady I wanted to get a dance with wasn't there, so that means I get my money back, right?  But then I thought: No.  First of all, that salad and Dr. Pepper I got probably was enough food and drink in her mind that I "got what I paid for" when I paid the cover.  And if I asked for it, she would probably say no, and she might start a fight over it.  Just have to cut my losses with that ripoff bitch and never go to her place again.

Now that I think about it, as much as I should be mad at ***e* for ditching the party and not telling me, I am more mad at the host because she took money from me again.  I don't think I have ever pissed away $15 in a stupider way.

My Cuz's Mystery, In Plain Sight

Happy 4th of July, y'all.  This evening I will partake in what has become a tradition with me: After dinner I am going to visit my cousin and his friends who I still don't know, eat his food, then come dusk we're going to walk over to the field/park to watch the fireworks, after which we'll go back to his place and see him blow shit up with fireworks he got going to Wisconsin.  Quiet, free, and it's one of the few things I still do with my cousin.

What will be hanging in the air, however, is his girlfriend.  Never met her before, although I see her on his facebook all the time.  The problem with this is that he had another girl.  A wife, in fact, not too long ago.

Look, we have to talk about this some time.  It's just that this family ain't the most open about things, especially embarrassing family shit.  We will explain things only when we absolutely have to.  And I guess it's going to be at this party, otherwise he would make it a point not to invite me.

I just wonder how it's going to come up.  There's a huge elephant in the room, so I don't think he can just go, "Oh, she's my girlfriend" and think that explains it all.  Then again, I have this urge in me to find out the whole truth (it's the journalist in me) but I don't want to come off as a dick, especially when my cuz is there just to party and not to explain how the hell it all fell apart so quickly.

Tonight might be interesting.

Oh, Father, You Got Me Again!

I think I realized something just now: I have the need to tell everybody I'm right, and I get that from My Fucking Father.

Just now, after we had just eaten dinner, he comes back inside after throwing the trash and he calls me from my bedroom, and I already know it's bad.  "Did you see that your car has hail damage?" he says, with that sniveling tone that he saw something that I didn't, and more importantly to him, that he saw something that he believes I should have seen that as soon as I laid eyes on my car.

Monday was wild.  For 15 minutes in the evening, and for only 15 minutes, bad weather swept through town, and we had hail the size of, oh, ping-pong balls.  During that crazy period I walked out to the hall to see My Fucking Father look outside.  Man, that hail was nothing I saw before.  But I didn't think about it the next day.  I took a look, and it seemed fine.  I chalked it up to the new technology of car exteriors, or something.

But just now he basically taunts me, "You can't see it?"  So of course I have to go outside and show concern.  And in the dappling early evening sun, yes, I see the pock marks of hail damage on the hood of my new car.  But I don't want to be the only one, so I look even more intently at my old car as well as my parents' minivan, and they had as much damage as my new car.

"Well, if that's hail damage, then all the cars have hail damage," to which he turned around from martyring himself washing the rest of the dishes to say, wincing smile meant to cut me down, "I'll call the insurance company Monday."  That wince was his way of saying that, once again, I disappointed him.  Don't exactly know how.  If I told him Tuesday that there was hail damage, well, the car is still damaged, so why the smartass tone, dick?  And I don't know how car insurance claims work, so does it really matter if I call it in a week after it happened as opposed to a day?

Oh, I see -- you think I wasn't paying attention?  OK, now I know what this means.  He's going to come back into my bedroom and start nagging me about not throwing away all the papers I've accumulated, and he's going to start asking me every fucking day when I'm going back to school.  I see what he did there -- find a way to see how superior he is to me, how I once again have failed him.  And he's going to goddamn let me know it, for a long fucking time.

Can't let him win.  So that settles it; I'm not going to clean up shit in my room.  'Cause fuck him.  I might stay out for a long time, too.

By the way, this is why I didn't want a new car.  New cars always get old.

I swear, at some point at work yesterday, while I was just sitting down and looking at papers, my stomach just grew.  Like I was a snake and I swallowed a rat whole.  It's just so weird how it happened, but at one moment I was just doing my thing, cursing the sucky papers I'm looking at, and then I thought to myself ... "Hey, all of a sudden I'm fat."  And then I feel my stomach, which I do often.  I've got a gut, and it didn't feel any different than all the other times I've felt myself, but at that point I felt like the shorts I was wearing were stretching even more than before.  It was weird.

I continue to realize that I need to eat less.  But yesterday I didn't eat more than I usually do.  I have gotten into this routine: Father lays out a banana and an apple for me to take to work; an hour into work I eat the banana before it spoils to much through the day; then after lunch I eat the apple.  My stomach grew some time in the afternoon after eating the apple.

Ever since then I've felt really icky and really guilty.  I've had this urge to exercise, but the community center is closed for Independence Weekend.  And my tummy feels so big that even walking around during this holiday vacation, in the hot weather, won't seem to cut it.  God, I hate feeling this fat.