Peak 2019

In my previous entry, I was complaining about the late September/early October heat, and now it's fucking Winter. It even snowed on my birthday! At least the ground was too warm to stick to the roads, so roads were mainly just wet as I was driving home from the Slayer concert. Fatigue was a bigger issue driving home, which leads me to work.

Peak has been awful. Too much work, and not enough sleep to recover from it, which explains the fatigue. I took a week off after my birthday because I was so god damned tired, and didn't have time to do anything, including taking advantage of my new health insurance. I managed to get my dental and vision cards in October, but I don't think I got my medical card. If I did get it, then I couldn't find it, and there's always the possibility that it was accidentally thrown away. I finally found out my Member ID by the end of the week, and was able to print out a temporary card. I also ended up getting two(!) cards in the mail the following Monday, a result of having called them just the previous Friday. I had already had a labs followup appointment scheduled for the morning after my birthday, and decided to go see a psychiatrist after that appointment, and that's where I got my doctor's note to get me out of work. I also made a couple of trips to the dentist, and have gotten some much needed dental work, along with an antibiotic to deal with an abscessed gum.

Here's something that confuses the fuck out of me. I went to my local Walmart to get my prescriptions filled, and picked them up on Friday, after printing out my insurance card. I was able to get Januvia for $5.00-something. I looked up Express Scripts' estimation for getting Januvia at Walmart a couple of days later, and they said it would be $90-something. What gives? This shit is confusing, and is a good example of why the U.S. for-profit healthcare industry needs to be burned to the ground.

The major shopping holidays are just around the corner. I'm hoping things will be less painful after Cyber Monday.

Zugzwang

One of my current favorite TV shows is "Lodge 49". I don't know if I'm totally correct, but it seems to do a good job of showing the myriad humiliating ways in which people try to make a living, whether it be pyramid schemes, legit sales work, or having to put up with corporate philosophy bullshit. I learned a new-to-me term from the most recent episode, the term and the episode title both being "Zugzwang". From Urban Dictionary:

German word for "compulsion to move." Zugzwang is a term used in chess when it's your turn to move a piece, but regardless of where you move, you will be at a disadvantage. In other words Zugzwang is when you need to move, but you don't want to because of the terrible conditions.

I feel like my life is a neverending zugzwang. Like Ernie from Lodge 49 said, "It doesn't matter if we make the smart choice or the stupid choice, we wind up worse off anyway!"

My dad got really sick around Labor Day weekend. He goes to doctor appointments regularly, but he has a bad habit of not going to the doctor when he feels bad to the point where he's forced to be hospitalized. On the Sunday morning before Labor Day, he was breathing hard, and could barely move, causing him to piss himself. He didn't want me to call 911, but I did it anyway, because as much as I might hate him at times, I'm not going to leave him to suffer in his own filth. He was admitted to a hospital, and discharged himself at the end of the week, before they were ready to let him go, because he got mad that they wouldn't let him put his stoma in so he could talk. But anyway, I was so god damned stressed that Labor Day weekend that I called in that Monday and Tuesday night.

I got to go to the Saturday installment of the Louder Than Life festival. It was a pretty good time, I just wish it hadn't been so hot, and that I had had more money for food. It happened to come around the same time as my car payment and cell phone bill, which was about half my check. One thing I was hoping to avoid was having to get a phone charging locker, but I had to get one because my four-year-old phone was already down to 50% before the first or second bands even finished playing. I would've been better off financially these past few weeks if I hadn't gone, but damn it, I finally got to see Suicidal Tendencies, and I even got to see Guns n' Roses play a few songs. I wish I could've stayed for more of GnR's set, but they started forty minutes late, I had been there all day and was exhausted, and it was an extremely long walk back to the car.

I'm only sixty days into my ninety day probationary period at Moisture Farm, and it's been the longest two months I've had in a long time. I totally can't stand that place anymore, and am trying not to melt down or rage-quit before I even get my insurance. I need to find a new career before next Summer, because that place gets too damned hot, and I can't take any more of these Peak seasons encroaching on Halloween, my birthday, and Thanksgiving.

On a related note, I make $14.50 an hour. That's almost twice what I made working at a computer company this time twenty years ago, when $7+ an hour was well over the minimum wage of $4.25. And yet, I feel poorer now than I did twenty years ago. It's not like I'm buying tons of music or movies, and I haven't even gone to see a movie since July, nor am I going to a lot of concerts. Hell, I've put off buying a lot of stuff that needs replacing. I feel like I'm being punished whenever I try to make my own life more bearable. Meanwhile, rich people are making more money than they know what to do with. Something's got to give.

Work update, 8-24-2019 edition

I finally fuckin' got hired on at Moisture Farm on August 6th. My original hire-on date was supposed to be July 29th, but it was pushed back because the person who used to teach the HAZMAT portion of the orientation quit, among other reasons, so they had to find someone else to teach it. I'm in the middle of transitioning from being paid weekly to being paid bi-weekly. I hate being paid bi-weekly. And I'm only getting paid fifty cents more an hour than I did as a temp.

I get health insurance, but it doesn't start until November 1st. I had a blood labs and follow up scheduled for September, but rescheduled them for November so I wouldn't have to go through the torture of paying entirely out of pocket. My medical insurance alone is about $72 every two weeks, which is damn near twice what I paid at Steel Johnson. I'm also getting dental and vision, as well as contributing to a Health Savings Account.

Despite suffering there as a temp for ten months, I still have to go through a 90-day probation period before I can use any vacation or personal time. And by the time my ninety days will be up, Peak will be in full swing, and I believe they usually have the entire month of November blacked out, meaning you can't use vacation time. I'm not sure yet if I can use Personal time during the Blackout period, but one thing I do know is that two of my favorite bands, Slayer and Ministry, are playing in Louisville on my birthday this year, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let Moisture Farm ruin this upcoming birthday like they ruined my last one, where I ended up missing out on getting to see The Psychedelic Furs again.

I actually do kind of like my job. What I don't like is:

• Getting out of bed to go to work,
• Working eight hours plus lunch a day,
• Working five days a week,
• The fucking heat, which it looks like I'll have to put up with for another month and a half.

I mean, if I must work eight hour days, then I'd rather just work three days a week. If I must work five days a week, then I'd rather work four to five, maybe six, hours a day. And actually make a living wage either way. A friend posted a meme recently that people over the age of 40 shouldn't have to work more than two or three days a week. Shit, life goes by faster than I can keep up with anymore, and I fully support that meme. If you don't like this, then you can eat my ass.

Peak will be here before I know it. I'm looking forward to the money, but not looking forward to having even less free time than I already do at forty hours a week or less.

Besides lack of time, I'm still having a hard time getting anything outside of work done due to burnout and depression. I've been meaning to call Centerstone for the past six months to get therapy and psychiatric help, not sure if I should bother since I'll have insurance soon. I've heard recently that a lot of depression is caused by inflammation, and that anti-inflammatory medicines have been shown to be effective in treating depression more than anti-depressants alone. I asked my doctor a few days ago about getting prescribed anti-inflammatory medicine for depression. She said she hadn't heard of this. I can't say I blame her for not prescribing some for me since these studies were pretty recent, and since she's more of a medical doctor and doesn't follow psychiatry. Plus, there probably aren't any that are indicated for treating depression yet.

I hate that I'm dependent on employment for barely-adequate health insurance. I can't tell you how many pickers I've seen come and go on third shift this week alone. These people start out at $2 less an hour than I did starting out, and I don't think I would have put up with that place as long as I did if I were on their pay level.

Just when you think things can't get any worse...

The couple of months since my last entry have been a bit of a nightmare. I'll try to give a Cliff's Notes version.

Since my roommate still wasn't working by the end of April, I decided that it was time to move out. She was technically employed, but the nature of the job was such that she hadn't done any work yet, and the couple of times she did come in, she was told they weren't ready for her and needed to reschedule. I ultimately decided to move back into my parents' place, to try to save money. I notified my roommate's dad by voicemail before the end of April to let him know that I was going to move out, with or without the roommate. It was a couple of weeks before we heard anything from him. He didn't want her moving in with him, and he offered to help pay half the rent if I stayed at the current place with her or got a new place with her. I might have taken him up on it if he had mentioned it a couple of weeks before, but it was too late to change my mind by then. We were supposed to be out no later than May 31st, a Friday. I hired a moving service to move my stuff, and was hoping her stuff would also be out by then, but nope, she needed the entire weekend to pack and move her stuff. I came over at 6:00 that Monday morning, and there was still more stuff there than I was comfortable with. It was 9:00 a.m. by the time we got everything out and turned her key in. Anyway, her dad was able to get her an apartment within a couple of days of moving out. Now, if she can only get working.

On May 3rd, I ended up wrecking my precious 13-year-old Saturn. It was raining, I was driving northbound on Preston Highway, and some asshole decided they were going to try to cross the northbound lanes to make a left turn onto the southbound lanes. I avoided the car, but ended up fishtailing, ultimately crashing the side of my car into the concrete base of a light pole. I almost wish I had hit them, so they couldn't have gotten away with it. The repairs would have been about two-thirds of what my car was valued at, so it was totaled out, meaning I'd have to get a new car. This totally put a wrench in the "saving money" part of my plans for moving out. I got my stuff out of the car on May 8th, and thought State Farm was ready to come get it. Another two weeks passed, and I still hadn't heard anything about getting a check. I don't know what happened, but apparently I missed a step somewhere, or maybe the collision center forgot to contact State Farm or something, because the car was still sitting in the collision center's salvage yard. The main thing I don't remember them telling me to do was to take my license plate off. So, I went and did that. It was May 30th when I signed the title over and got the check, but it would be a couple more weeks before I was in any shape to go car shopping. I won't go into the whole story about my car shopping experience, but long story short, I really shouldn't go car shopping without an "adult". I was eager to turn in my rental, since State Farm stopped paying for it on May 26th (I really wish I could've gotten my check while they were still paying the rental), and I called in sick so I could get it done, so I ended up buying the first car I came across.

I had long term plans for that Saturn. I even bought a new CD player for it back in March. The stereo itself worked, but the CD player died around late November/early December, and a few months of not having a CD player drove me nuts. I couldn't even have the new CD player taken out of my car when they were valuing the car because they would've had to do a new estimate, and I didn't want to fuck with it. But thankfully, my new car has a rocking sound system. Too bad the hearing in my right ear isn't what it used to be.

I still work at the place I've been working at since October. They have big ceiling fans, but some areas have no airflow, and there's no real climate control. I sweat so god damn much that I'm dubbing this place "Moisture Farm" from now on. The day before my wreck, my team lead came up to me and told me that they wanted someone to go to Third Shift (or as I call it, Turd Shift) because they needed someone competent there. I begrudgingly decided to do it, mostly for the shift differential and the likelihood of getting hired on sooner, and was to start Turd Shift the following Monday. The irony is that they were supposedly so low on work that Friday that Turd Shift wouldn't have to come in at all, so if I had already been working Turd Shift that week, I wouldn't have wrecked my car! I didn't hear anything about getting hired on until a few weeks ago, and officially applied about a week or two ago. I have no idea when I'll officially be hired on. They're also trying to make me the official Turd Shift lead. I have no doubt that I'm the best qualified for it, but I think I might be too scatterbrained for it. I have enough stress in my life without having to be put in charge of people.

I'm glad that I haven't had to worry about rent, but I'm still a hot fuckin' mess. I've had to buy tons of allergy medicine because Ohio Valley, which ain't cheap. I also just started taking probiotics again, in hopes that I won't be getting the Metformin Squirts so often. Probiotics are also not cheap. I hope that whatever health insurance I get through Moisture Farm is worth a shit, and that they pay for Xigduo (Xigduo = Farxiga + Metformin), since the side effects with Xigduo are less severe than with Metformin alone.

Burnout. Or, "Everything Sucks!"

I'm still at the job I've been working at since October. And instead of hiring me on, I got to switch to their main temp agency when the one I worked for was being phased out after Peak. I don't know how they expect me to put up with this place for the next six months without vacation time or health insurance(!). Between my situation and other stories I've heard of people getting screwed over at their jobs, it's like companies are just setting up Unions to become popular again.

I've been meaning to write about everything that's been bugging me, but I seem to have lost interest in just about everything, and my thoughts are scattered. The health insurance I had at Steel Johnson sucked, and the insurance I had most of last year was pathetic. It's like, I survived 2018, and all I got were these ungodly medical bills. My insurance was canceled because I forgot to pay it in January and February. I opted not to have it automatically withdrawn because it was due the same day as my rent, which I have a hard enough time paying as it is.

I only work eight hours a day, sometimes less, but I'm often falling asleep before 8:00 p.m., and need every bit of bedtime I can get before 6:00 a.m.. I don't really have many people to talk to at work. I have no social life outside of work anymore.

If I took home about $500+ a week like I did during Peak, I'd probably be doing okay. Everything is so fucking expensive now, and I'm making close to the same amount of money as I did when I got laid off in 2008. People act like the price of everything is going to skyrocket if the Federal minimum wage is raised to $15 an hour, but the minimum wage hasn't gone up in ten years, and the cost of living has skyrocketed anyway. Capitalism doesn't work unless people are paid enough to participate in it. I almost feel like I'm being punished anymore if I want to do something fun that costs more than going to the coffee shop and falling down the internet rabbit hole.

I don't see anything in the U.S. getting better until Trickle Down Economics and the for-profit healthcare industry are utterly annihilated.

Metallica remasters, and semi-retiring from the Loudness War

I'm not totally retiring from commenting on the Loudness War, but I have realized some things that make me not care so much about it anymore. One is that I do most of my music listening in the car, and sometimes more compressed versions can sound better in the car than some more dynamic versions. Another is that while I might hear differences in different masterings, they're usually just that, differences. I rarely have clear preferences between them, so I don't care unless they sound like total dog shit, or if the quieter songs sound louder than the loud songs. An example of the former, Anthrax's thirtieth anniversary remaster of "Spreading The Disease" sounds like shit, but the thirtieth anniversary remaster of "State Of Euphoria" sounds alright to me in the car. A couple of examples of the latter include Steve Hoffman's "remastering" of Phil Collins's' "No Jacket Required", as well as the most recent remaster of Black Sabbath's "Vol. 4".

I do want to comment on the recent Metallica remasters. I own or have owned these versions of the first four albums on CD:

• "Kill 'em All" - Marino '95 remaster
• "Ride The Lightning" - DCC Steve Hoffman re-remaster, original Elektra
• "Master Of Puppets" - DCC Steve Hoffman re-master, Marino '95 remaster, original Elektra
• "...And Justice For All" - original Elektra, Marino '95 remaster

I don't know how the remasters of the first three albums compare to the original Elektras, but I strongly prefer them over the Marino '95 remasters and DCCs. I've only gotten to listen to the new remaster of "...And Justice For All" a couple of times, and I don't know how I feel about it. It's by far the most different of this batch of remasters. It seems like they did something to make the guitars less overpowering, thus making the bass guitar slightly more audible, especially on "One" and "To Live Is To Die". The main differences I can tell between the original Elektra and the Marino '95 remaster of Justice is that the drums suffer some from the brickwalling, but the drums were mixed so loud that they're still loud as fuck, and the bass guitar is slightly more audible when listening in the car.

I previously only had the "Garage Days Re-revisited" tracks on the "Garage Inc." compilation, and the only reason I bought the remaster of "Garage Days Re-revisited" was because of the mastering glitch on "Last Caress/Green Hell" on my copy of "Garage Inc.". If I had had the original Elektra of "Garage Days Re-revisited", then I probably wouldn't have bothered with the remaster. I actually could've bought it for $30 a year or so ago, but couldn't justify paying that much for it at the time, nor would I now (but that's a topic for another post). I wish I had bought it back whenever I saw it in the early Nineties, along with a copy of "Kill 'em All" that also had "Am I Evil" and "Blitzkrieg" that I saw at a Walmart back in 1992.

I imagine that Metallica will probably put out a remaster of their self-titled album (a.k.a. The Black Album) sometime between now and the end of 2021, though I see no reason to since the version that's been available since it came out sounds perfect, unless they just want to expand on it. The only albums of theirs that I really want to see CD remasters of are "St. Anger" and "Death Magnetic".