2025: One battle after another...

2025 was some bullshit, so glad it's over.

I always say that I have more work to do outside of work than I do at work. My dad passed away on December 11th. I'm less bothered by him being gone than I am by the amount of work needed to do since he passed, a lot of it being due to my mom having dementia. My "outside work" workload has effectively doubled from what it normally is, and has added more chaos to my already clouded brain. The work in the smallest nutshell I can put it in is:

1. Making sure mom is taken care of, which involves making sure she has money coming in every month, and making sure her health is squared away.
2. Moving back to mom's house, which involves clearing out one or more rooms to make room for some of my stuff, and packing stuff from my apartment to go there. There's also the matter of moving the cats from the apartment to the house. All of my cats want to be the only cat, and transitioning them from the apartment to the house will be a tremendous pain in the ass.

Trust me, that's more work than I made it sound like, especially for someone with a bad case of executive dysfunction. I also have to take care of myself.

What's new? (July 2025)

 So, what is new in my world, you might ask? Well, my dad was in the hospital a few weeks ago. He had some fluid surrounding his heart. They drained the fluid, and he's been feeling a little better since, but the doctors are only giving him a few months to live if he doesn't start doing dialysis, and have even suggested hospice care. Granted, his kidneys have been failing for about three years now, and they didn't expect him to live this long without dialysis. My dad is more concerned about my mom, as are my brother and I. She has two kinds of dementia along with a mix of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Her memory was never great, but now it's pretty much shit, and she will not be able to live alone when dad dies. My brother and I tried to get them to get some of their affairs in order so we're not all totally fucked when dad dies, but, and I can't think of a better way to say this, they're being kind of stupid about it.

One thing I know is that I will have to move back into their house at some point.

Great, another one gone...

 As soon as I was finally getting over last Fall/Winter's bullshit (see previous entries), someone else had to go and break my heart. One of my biggest karaoke crushes blocked me on Facebook last Thursday. Why, I don't know. The last time I saw or talked to her was at a silent disco three weeks prior. The top reason I can think of for blocking me would be she got tired of her notifications blowing up from all my Likes on her posts and stories. The last posts of hers I reacted to were one about her not meaning to turn a work meeting into a therapy session, and one about being in the middle of a river. Or, maybe someone told her how much I really liked her? The girl has been through some shit this year, so I can't hate her too much, but it still hurts. Trying to make new friends at the monthly karaoke has been a fool's errand. I'm still friends with a few of them, but it seems like I just end up alienating people after a while. It's almost like I shouldn't bother talking to anyone who I wasn't already friends with before I started going there.

The KJ from the monthly karaoke has a weekly karaoke gig at a bar on Tuesdays. I rarely went at first because it starts at 9:00, and I'm dead to the world on Tuesday nights after working around 36 hours in three days, or occasionally 40-44 hours in four days. Since December, it had been a combination of that and the fact that one of the fuckheads who unfriended me in December attends every week. I decided to go this past Tuesday since I was on vacation. I probably shouldn't have, since I might have been agitated when I went in, and got more agitated while I was there. I want to emphasize that it was no fault of my friends, it was more things like having a speaker directly over us blasting music, so I couldn't hear and join in their conversation, or just waiting on the bartender. I knew that the fuckhead would be there, but I wasn't expecting the girl who blocked me to be there, which made things even more awkward. She didn't acknowledge me, which proves that the blocking wasn't a mistake, or just some FB glitch. After doing two songs, I decided I would do another two. But after a while, I just felt out of place, and I was like, "Fuck it, I'll just do this next song and go home."

It's funny to me that the best friend I've made in the past 2+ years is someone who found me on a dating app. She's helped keep my spirits up, and I try to keep her spirits up when needed.

The destruction of a person builds character! Part 2

 I have a freakishly long memory. Apparently, a lot of people on the Autism Spectrum do. I think one reason a lot of people are happy is because they forget so much, and don't have so much trauma piling up in their heads. I'm not so lucky. I'm still haunted by stupid shit I've said or done 30 to 40 years ago. It's possible that I perceive time differently from most people because of this, like 20 years ago is a long time ago, but it probably doesn't feel as long to me as most people. Having a long memory is probably why I have a hard time getting over stuff, and can hold a grudge indefinitely.

The Promoter and his promotion have an event every December involving Krampus. I had never gone before, but I decided to go last year despite my falling out with him since a lot of friends would be there, it was in a fairly large venue that was neutral territory, namely the same place where I mentioned going to do karaoke in Part 1, but most importantly, there was probably fuck-all going on anywhere else. I had no idea how The Promoter would react to my being there. I figured one of two things would happen: either he would ignore me, or he would kick me out.

One "friend" who I knew would be there was actually working the show. She was someone who Friend Requested me on Facebook the previous Spring. We had a lot of fun talking for a couple of days, met up right after that, and...she seemed to lose all interest in hanging out. I eventually gave up messaging her. Anyway, she's the one I'm referring to as The Other Woman. She was one of the first people I saw before I went in. I mentioned my falling out with The Promoter to her. I only mentioned it because she asked me if I was going to get my picture taken with Krampus, and I told her probably not if The Promoter was playing Krampus, which it turns out he wasn't.

The Acquaintance had a booth there, promoting his variety troupe and their next show that was coming up in April. I told him that I wasn't sure how The Promoter was going to react to my being there, and I'm pretty sure I also said that The Promoter can eat a dick.

Why would I talk shit about a promoter at his own event? Because I'm a dumbass who will never learn how to "people" properly!

When I finally did see The Promoter, he was actually nice to me! I wondered if he had completely forgotten about our argument and him unfriending me, but that's when I remembered that some people have so much going on that they forget and get over a lot of shit. As I told some friends, him being cordial was not on my bingo card. I figured I'd let bygones be bygones and let it go.

The Artist had a booth there. He ended up giving me his Krampus print. Miss Thang went all out getting made up like Krampus. Twenty was also there, I didn't really talk to him much. I took selfies with lots of friends, saw some good bands. The only real downside was that before I left, I mentioned getting a selfie to The Other Woman. She was like, "A selfie?". I may have turned around and talked to a friend or one of her coworkers, and when I turned back around, she was gone! I was afraid that I might have crossed some boundary and scared her off. But I still messaged her the next day saying it was good to see her, and was sorry that I didn't get to say "Bye" before I left. She never replied. Other than that, it was a wonderful night. I was feeling good about myself. This was on a Saturday night, so I had to work early the next morning and had stayed up past my bedtime, but it was worth it. I had been watching "Dragon Ball Daima" around that time, and the last line of the of the opening title song as translated in the subtitles goes, "I want to meet someone amazin' again tomorrow!" That was how I felt for most of the week after the event. I wish I could have that much fun every day.

The Friday morning following the event, I saw that I had one less friend on Facebook. It was The Other Woman. I guess I did scare her off. But Facebook will occasionally unfriend two people without their knowledge, and I had learned that instead of assuming the worst, it sometimes helps to ask the other person if they unfriended you, because they probably didn't! So I messaged and asked her if she unfriended me, that I was sorry if I made her uncomfortable, and that I was asking because sometimes Facebook will unfriend people. She never replied. I posted on Facebook that while I've accepted the fact that I will never learn how to "people" properly, it still hurts when someone rejects me. Or to paraphrase Stone Temple Pilots, I think someone's kinda neat, and they tell me I'm a creep. I also mentioned that someone who was at the event apparently wasn't as happy to see me as I was them. Miss Thang commented, saying that it probably doesn't help with peopling to make posts like that. And that maybe not speaking negatively loudly about promoters at their own events would help, because people see and hear things. When I read that, I was like "Well, shit." I guess word got back around to The Promoter. I sent her a few responses, she didn't reply to any of them, I don't know if she even saw or read them. One response was that The Promoter was a dick to me, and that I really won that particular round of "Peopling". I noticed not much later that The Artist unfriended me. Miss Thang unfriended me the next day. Then the following Monday, I saw that the guy I had known for twenty years unfriended me. That really hurt, but he can be a self-righteous prick. The Promoter's "club" page had still been following me on Instagram, but they unfollowed me, and I also got blocked from the "club"'s Facebook page.

I felt like the good time I had the previous Saturday was a lie.

I assume that these people were butthurt because I talked shit about their buddy. It's also possible that someone could've heard me talking to a friend or two about The Artist and how he got to take his girlfriend to concerts I wanted to go to (and should've been taking her) but couldn't, and he was kinda living the life I should've been living. Some people would probably call that talking shit, but I really spoke highly of him and was envious. By Christmas Eve, I was no longer mad at The Promoter, and even sent him a message apologizing for being a jackass. I don't think he saw it, it sent as a Message Request. But getting unfriended by four people over the course of a weekend really fucked me up. Like, what do the Three Fuckheads think I do at home, plot revenge? No, I'm just over here chilling with my cats and watching movies and Youtube videos! I was isolated all Winter and felt like I had no friends, which wasn't technically true, but I only got to see people at my favorite venue's monthly karaoke and monthly Goth/Industrial Nights, so about twice a month.

Are these people happy that I was alone and fucking miserable? Does the destruction of a person really build character, as Superjoint Ritual so eloquently put it? Because I was completely and utterly destroyed, and it didn't build shit except more bitterness. I couldn't move on until I really got to hang out with friends again.

The destruction of a person builds character! Part 1

I always feel like I'm just one fuckup away from losing friends. And people wonder why I'm always so stressed out. It has happened before, it will probably happen again. Sometimes, those "friends" are just assholes. Here are a few stories of times within the past year(!) where I fucked up and lost "friends". 

In my previous entry, which I recommend reading before starting on this one, I mentioned that I realized last Summer that I was never going to "people" properly. This was after an incident that involved a woman I met at the beginning of 2024 who I happened to first hear the term "neurospicy" from. We ended up not talking a lot after we friended up on Facebook. I messaged her at the end of February asking how she was doing, got no response. That Summer, she invited me to a neurodivergent goalsetting group on Facebook. One Saturday last July, I asked my best friend that morning what she was up to that day, she didn't reply until much, much later that day. I was super depressed and needed someone to talk to, and during that time before my best friend finally responded, I saw that the woman I met at the beginning of the year was online. Instead of asking "How are you?", I decided to tell her a story about something that was bugging me that was related to the group, but I didn't want to share in the group because reasons. Well, she said she wasn't going to read all that. Long story short, she interpreted what I thought was an attempt at starting a conversation as me trying to make her my therapist, and after a little back-and-forth that was civil on my end, she told me she was blocking me because she didn't need more work to do. Jesus fucking Christ, I can see how it could've been interpreted as me needing a therapist, but I would've just left her bitch ass alone, blocking me was unnecessary. This was an example of two neurodivergents mixing like oil and water.

I hate Winter, and I was especially miserable from December 2024 until about the end of March. Some of this was weather related, since January and February were fucking cold and occasionally icy, and March was downright stormy and soggy. But it had more to do with being isolated, especially after having been unfriended by four people over the course of one weekend in December, three of whom I believe unfriended me because of someone who unfriended me in November, and then not hanging out with anybody outside of a couple of monthly events, not even my best friend, who had her share of adversity in November and December. I made a new friend at the end of March, and hanging out with her has helped me get over last Winter's bullshit some. But I feel like I need to tell this story one last time and put it on the record. Before I start, I have to list the cast of characters:

• The Promoter
• The (Gay) Acquaintance (I'm still Facebook friends with him)
• The Other Woman (Someone I had met the previous Spring who, unlike the rest of the cast, is only loosely connected to The Promoter at best)

And then there are The Three Fuckheads, who consist of:

• Miss Thang (An ex-crush)
• The Artist (He's been Miss Thang's boyfriend since last Summer)
• Twenty (Close friend of Miss Thang, and someone I had known for twenty years)

As of October 2024, I had been Facebook friends with The Promoter for three and a half years, but I was starting to get the impression that he was getting a little irritated with my online presence, namely my comments or responses to his friends' comments. I first noticed something was off when a comment I made about not knowing he had been in a local band who opened for a touring band I went to see in 2010 was deleted. Later in October, he started a fun post asking people which band had the better discography, Judas Priest or Iron Maiden. Not who was better, but who ultimately had the better albums. I played along and gave my answer, he Liked it. One friend of his essentially said that it depends on the period of time, like now versus ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. But what intrigued me was his last paragraph:

"That being said, the Priest vs. Maiden thing doesn't always make sense when you consider the differences in origin, style, performance, etc."

 That was interesting to me because I always found people pitting Priest versus Maiden funny because Priest had a lot of albums out by the time Maiden's first album came out. I replied to the guy and said as much, along with mentioning another commenter's "Elvis vs. Beatles" comment, and saying that pitting Priest versus Maiden is like pitting Black Sabbath against Witchfinder General or St. Vitus. This guy Liked my response. He responded with some good points, and I Liked it. Then The Promoter responded to me with:

"If you don't understand the question don't comment on the post? It's not about pitting fans of the bands against each other. Or which band is better."

I apologized, saying that I was just having fun, and also pointed out the flaws in my response to his friend. But seriously? I don't get out much and pretty much live on Facebook, this is sometimes the most interaction I get outside of work on my work days. I showed one of my best friends screen shots of this exchange. She does not know the promoter personally, but she concluded that he's a massive dick, and that I shouldn't have bothered apologizing to him.

Fast forward to November 6th. Waking up to the election results was bad enough, but I also discovered that a friend who I absolutely adored and never got to know as well as I would've liked had died. This was made even more tragic by the fact that her husband died just three and a half years before, and they had a very young child who would grow up without either parent. The world had really gone to shit. But my favorite venue's monthly karaoke was that night, and I would be celebrating my birthday there although my actual birthday was still a few days away. I went out for coffee before karaoke, and was scrolling down my feed on Facebook. The (Gay) Acquaintance shared a post about how The Heritage Foundation's Director Of Finance was the owner of Hobby Lobby, and he added that there are all kinds of similar places to shop that aren't trying to make life harder for kids who are like him. I Liked the post. The Promoter commented that Hobby Lobby and Bucc-ee's both give millions to hate groups. I knew about Hobby Lobby, but Bucc-ee's was news to me. The Acquaintance replied that he didn't understand why everybody loved Bucc-ee's, and thought it was common knowledge that they donate to hate groups. I replied to him that it's not that well known, especially with Bucc-ee's being a fairly new entity in Kentucky. The Promoter piped in responding to me with:

"It takes 2 mins to look up a company's politics. 2 mins."

For some reason, probably due to his previous antagonism, this set me off. I told him that I don't have the time to look up every god damn company, and even my gay Progressive brother FROM TEXAS(!) has even less time to look this shit up and he probably didn't even know about Bucc-ee's either. Then The Promoter responded with:

get the fuck out of here with that "do you know how many there are" crap.

Next is well, I gotta shop somewhere, don't I?

 The best response I could come up with at the time was, "Uh, no." Because seriously, what the fuck? All I was saying was that it wasn't common knowledge. Maybe it wouldn't have gone down like that had I said in my first comment that I'll boycott them and spread the word now that I know.

Right afterward, I made a passive-aggressive post goofing on the fact that we're all supposed to know this, but I included a link to an article about Bucc-ee's CEO giving money to some asshole politician in Texas. A couple of minutes later, I saw that The Promoter unfriended me. I'm guessing he unfriended me after the comments, I doubt he saw my post, but I edited that post to go from passive-aggressive to aggressive-aggressive, even calling him out.

Not long after that, I saw Twenty post about the karaoke going on that night. I commented that I'd be there celebrating my birthday. I then saw The Promoter comment that he'd be there. I thought, "Oh, joy." 😒 It was funny though, I sat in the very front, The Promoter sat in the very back. The Three Fuckheads sat with him. Miss Thang didn't acknowledge me until she was on her way out, giving me a hug and wishing me a happy birthday. I had told a few people about the argument between me and The Promoter before the event and our falling out, but not everyone. Like, I didn't tell the Fuckheads because I didn't think they needed to know, this was strictly between me and The Promoter. I wasn't trying to turn anyone against him, I was, and still am, fine with people being friends with both of us, I was just saying he's an asshole.

I got confirmation from my gay Progressive brother from Texas that he didn't know that Bucc-ee's CEO gave money to Gregg Abbott and other fuckheads, so the Promoter can get the fuck outta here with that shit.

To be continued.

 

Why is it hard for me to make "close" friends?

I love the term "neurospicy". I considered in the recent past changing the name of this blog to "The Neurospice Must Flow".

I've been trying to figure out for about thirty years, if not longer, why I have so much trouble making and keeping real friendships. I have a ton of acquaintances, and I'm lucky to get to see some of them a couple of times a month at events that are too loud for me to socialize properly in. But I can count the number of people I could truly call close friends on one hand. The only neurodivergence I've officially been diagnosed with is Central Auditory Processing Disorder. It tends to overlap a lot with ADHD. These can definitely affect your social life, but it doesn't stop everyone. There's also the fact that I'm an adult child of an alcoholic. Being from a dysfunctional family alone can fuck you up as an adult, having some kind of neurodivergence on top of that definitely doesn't help.

I have not been tested for autism, but I think there is a good probability that I'm on the autism spectrum, so I'm self-diagnosed. It would explain a lot, like why I feel constantly drained, why I feel overwhelmed by big crowds and sensory overload, and why just getting through another day feels like a victory. Possibly even AuDHD? I've been watching a lot of videos from people on the spectrum, especially people diagnosed later in life, and one thing that comes up often is having very few real friends, and people just plain disliking us. I've noticed that a lot of attractive women with ASD Youtube channels have partners, but attractive women tend to have an advantage over mediocre looking guys in the romance department in general, that's not limited to neurodivergence.

One thing I've observed is that neurodivergent people in creative fields seem to do better socially than those of us who are not creative. This is especially true for people who work in live theater. I can think of one person in particular who I have known for 21 years who works on tons of projects, and has tons of friends and no trouble dating. She's also super hot, which helps with the latter. I actually love performing. My performing these days is limited to singing karaoke, where I can just read the words off a screen. I'm not a great singer, but I'm not terrible, and I have far more confidence on stage than off. I've had people tell me that they love seeing me perform because it's obvious how much fun I'm having up there. I actually had a lead role in a play when I was in 8th grade. The other kids were amazed at how good I was at memorizing lines, and I really worked on my character. But boy, was it draining! I think I'd rather do film acting than live theater. Doing voiceover work has crossed my mind, but I wouldn't know where to go to see if I'd be a good fit or have a future in it.

Trying to make friends since 2021 has been very strange. Seems like most people I meet in real life and then connect with on social media have plenty of friends already, and no real desire to get to know me beyond a superficial level. I think some people would like me if they got to know me on my terms, which would be one on one at a place that's public, but not too noisy. But I can't make anyone want to get to know me. Hell, a lot of people I'd love to get to know better are homebodies like me, getting them to meet up is like pulling teeth. I'm better off just making new friends on dating apps! 😆

I'm a little too close to 50 for comfort. I thought I'd be much more socially advanced at this age than I actually am, like I was going to find the key to unlock the secret to having a normal-ish social life that seems to come naturally to neurotypicals. Young me also thought I would've done a lot more dating and had more sex, but that's a story that may or may not get told another time. It occurred to me last Summer that I was never going to "people" properly, but knowing this doesn't make getting rejected or shunned hurt any less. The purpose of this entry is really to be a prologue to the next episode, "The destruction of a person builds character!"

Another bump...

 Back in July, I moved my computer and desk to the living room in hopes that having it in the same room as the tv would motivate me to get on the computer more. It hasn't. I still have plenty of projects I want to do on a computer, as well as stuff to write about in this blog, I just have no desire to sit at my computer in the apartment, especially when I can just watch Youtube videos on my tv. I'd rather go out to a coffee shop and do computer stuff there, but I would need a new laptop, and that's not high on my priority list right now. Getting new tires for my car is my top priority for now, followed by getting a 4K blu-ray player.

Maybe connecting the computer to the tv would help? I doubt it, but it might be worth looking into.

One positive thing to come out of moving the computer to the living room is that a lot of junk that I had in the living room has moved to the storage room, so there's less of an eyesore in the living room. Now, if I could only organize the storage room.

Bump

I have lots of stuff I want to write about, but despite having a working PC now, I've had no desire to sit in my Computer Room and do it. The next time I post is anyone's guess.

Computer update!

 I'm just stopping in to say that I have a working desktop PC again! I had my ex-brother-in-law look at the desktop PC I had been using since 2020, not just to fix it, but to upgrade it as well. He couldn't really do everything we both wanted with the chassis of the old computer, so he fixed up a computer that he had sitting around. I'm very happy with it, it's much faster, and no more freezing up after a couple of minutes of idling. Hopefully I'll get to do more blogging soon. I'd start up a whole new entry, but I had a busy morning, and just want to retreat to the sofa.

Last quarter, 2023

 I'm typing this from my ancient laptop at a coffee shop. I fucked up my desktop PC trying to fix it. Someone with a similar problem (freezing up after being idle for a few minutes) said that they fixed the problem just by taking the RAM stick out and blowing on it. I haven't opened up a computer since I left my job at a computer company in 2001, but I figured it was something I could probably do myself. I eventually got it back together. That fix didn't work. Then I noticed that the front of the chassis wasn't all the way on. I can't remember since I actually haven't looked at it since then, but I think I got it on, but then the computer wouldn't start. I might be able to fix it myself, but I haven't been in the mood to. I may just pay someone to look at it.

Others have said that the problem could be the CPU, some have fixed their computers by upgrading it. I figure mine could use an upgrade, along with doubling the RAM. I'm definitely going to have someone else do that for me, too.

I'm so glad the Peak season is over. It was rougher than last year, due to having two accounts to work for instead of just one, and not having a good bilingual helper this year. I had two Cuban women who barely speak or understand English, and I had another person who was actually trainable, but I was too busy to give her as much training as I would've liked. She was let go recently because she supposedly failed her background check. We had another girl for a couple of weeks who was a real piece of work. Security walked her out the very first day for being insubordinate, but she was brought back the next day. The woman complained about ev-er-y-thing, and loved talking more than listening, which I will not abide. If I had hiring/firing power, she would never have come back after that first day, or I would've fired her after just a couple of days. Oh, and my supervisor was moved to another building for November and December, he was not missed at all. He was back this past Tuesday, thankfully he didn't bother me too much. I was seriously thinking about gunning for his position, or just pestering the way-higher ups into making me a lead or something similar. While I'm good at the work, I'm terrible with people, and really have no desire to deal with staffing issues. I'm better at just finding shit that's wrong.

I may do more posts about movies and music soon, since I think a lot of my rants about them on Facebook are probably more suited to the blog. I thought about making a whole new blog just for that, because personal stuff has taken up so much of it in previous years, but I'm too lazy for that. One subject I want to do soon is my current take on the Loudness Wars. It hasn't been a pet hobby for me in a long time, but I do have some thoughts. 

A quick one... (September 2023 edition)

 It's been entirely too long since I've posted. Entries that are only about two or three paragraphs can take hours to write. On the rare occasions when I get on my home computer, I end up spending a lot of time watching Youtube videos, and find myself moving on to other stuff when it gets too late to do an entry. So I'm just going to try to make this quick.

Speaking of the home computer, I've been having issues with it freezing up if I leave it idle for just a few minutes since January. That's when Avast Antivirus pestered me about some drivers needing updating. I did the Microsoft Update to tell me what drivers needed updating. Some of these "new" drivers dated back to 2019. I bought this computer at the end of 2019 or beginning of 2020. I figured "What the hell", and updated the drivers. And that's when the freezing bullshit started. I did a Restore thing, but I think that only helped temporarily. Can't figure out what the exact problem is. So, I haven't been real enthused about using this computer. I'm probably better off taking my ancient laptop to coffee shops again, might probably help keep me from staying home if I have plans to go out.

Work is still ridiculous. The Peak season has started, and we're still ridiculously understaffed. My direct boss is still an idiot. I've been trying to work extra hours since June. For the first month or two, all I was really doing was making up for the fact that we weren't working Saturdays. I tried to get even more days in, in hopes of being able to pay all my bills and still have money for groceries, and maybe actually have disposable income, including going to a concert or two. I did go to one concert, where I was fucking miserable most of the time, but that's a story for another time. What I really wanted to do was see Duran Duran at the Bourbon & Beyond Festival, but I didn't make enough money for that. I'm really bummed about not getting to see them, especially since my brother and his husband got to see them in Austin. As much as I hate my job, I'd sure hate it a lot fucking less if it paid enough to afford me to go to concerts, or indulge in my music/movie collecting addiction. Like, in order to afford concerts, I'd have to have only one day off a week, and that place drains me too much to do that. Hell, I was so exhausted this past Sunday that it ruined me for the rest of the work week, and I spent a good portion of my first day off after that taking naps.

The one good thing I can say about work this past Summer is that I got to have Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day off.

In other news, I popped my Covid cherry in August. Yup, I somehow managed to go three and a half years without getting it. As far as congestion issues go, it wasn't bad at all. That (Covid-less) sinus infection I had in late November/early December last year was way worse in that regard. No, what really did me in was the brain fog that can come with Covid. I can deal with congestion, but the brain fog made me feel dumber, and that's what really concerned me enough to get tested.

(TMI Alert) Also in August was the tenth anniversary of the last time I got laid. Or about as laid as I can get, but that's another story that I may not even tell here. Sex is pretty overrated, despite how fun movies and tv shows make it look*, but I miss intimacy. I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that, aside from hugs, I may never touch another woman ever again.

*Florence Pugh in (or maybe I should say ON) Oppenheimer comes to mind.

May 2023

 To follow up on my most recent post, "Community Standards", it took about three weeks or so, but Facebook finally quit giving me 24-hour restrictions from Liking posts and comments. I guess that's something I'll have to deal with every once in a while.

My main helper at work moved to Nebraska. Her husband got a job there. It must pay well to move all the way over there for.

Speaking of work, they keep coming up with more ways to annoy me. One was closing down the first building (we had five warehouses in the area up until a month or so ago), and bringing those people and accounts to my building. They moved a bunch of bulk storage lanes for our main account over to what had been dock staging lanes, and a lot of outgoing stuff that used to be staged in those lanes are now staged in lanes on the opposite end of the building. So, instead of just doing dock audits in a corner of the building, I have to go back and forth from one side of the building to the other. But at least that account is away from the conveyors! The other account new to this building occupies a quarter of the Picking area, where another account that moved to a new warehouse previously occupied. We have enough issues with the main account on our conveyors, we really didn't need another account adding more bullshit. And QA is understaffed and overworked as it is, this adds a lot more to our workload. I talked our manager (not my supervisor, but his boss) into talking to the bean counters or powers-that-be about adding another QA or two. He came back, and said something like, "I talked to them, and they're like 'Well, volume is leveling off, and (blah blah blah).'"

Just this past week, they started a new break schedule. Keep in mind, we work 6:00am to 6:30pm. Our old break schedule was first break at 9:00am, lunch from 12:00 to 12:30pm, and last break was at 3:00pm. The first and last breaks were fifteen minutes. Now, we have three ten-minute breaks. The schedule now is first break at 8:30am, lunch from 11:00 to 11:30am, second break at 1:30pm, and last break at 4:00pm. This new schedule fucking SUCKS! From what I've heard, someone went and complained to HR about the break schedule violating labor laws. I'm about as pro-Labor as you can get, but having three 10-minute breaks throughout a 12-hour shift is some bullshit. That's barely enough time to eat a candy bar, not to mention that's when I have to make calls or deal with HR, and 15-minutes wasn't even enough for those! They should've just given us two 20-minute breaks instead.

Another reason we need more QAs is because the other two that I currently have cannot be depended on to show up on Sundays. I think I can count on one hand the number of times both of them have come in on a Sunday. I now expect one of them to be out any on given Sunday, but even expecting it doesn't make me any less pissed off when it does happen.

One good thing from work: my boss is in Memphis for three months, doing some kind of career-furthering training or something. It started at the beginning of April, should end at the end of June. What I should do is find another god damn job before he comes back, so I don't have to deal directly with his ass ever again.

Since I always talk about holidays, I am happy to say that we have Memorial Day off. But I still have to work that Sunday.

"Community Standards"

Or, "Mark Zuckerberg, I'm getting really tired of your shit!"

I kind of like Facebook. But at the same time, I fucking hate it. It's the easiest way to keep up with a large number of friends without actually having to message each one of them. Louisville Mojo is dead, MySpace is totally different, I don't really like Instagram, and I hated Twitter long before Elon Musk got his hands on it. I know of no viable competitor to Facebook, so I'm forced to put up with it.

But Facebook has really been testing my patience these past two weeks.

So, what have they done that's been pissing me off so bad? They've been giving me 24-hour restrictions from Liking posts and comments, due to not following some vague "Community Standards".

Due to the nature of the restriction, I'm guessing that I must have Liked what they perceive to be too many posts in a certain amount of time. I guess Facebook thinks I love my friends and cat pictures too much. But I've looked through the "Community Standards", and there's nothing explicitly stating that you can only Like a certain amount of posts/comments in a certain amount of time. This is the closest I can find to mentioning anything like that, under "Spam", which is under "Integrity and Authenticity":

I cannot find anyone at Facebook to complain to about this particular problem. You can appeal a decision about something you posted that got taken down, but I don't think the Review Teams or Oversight Board handle things like Liking posts/comments. But I've got this here blog, so I can complain about it here!

Between March 11th and March 17th, I had multiple 24-hour restrictions from Liking posts and comments. On March 18th, I started refraining from Liking news articles on the News tab, which cut down my Likes by a lot. I didn't get another 24-hour restriction until just an hour or two ago today, March 23rd.

I figure it must be some dumbass AI who thinks I'm a bot.

To Facebook: I've been on Facebook for almost 15 years. I've been the same person on that profile for that entire 15 years. I assure you that I'm not a bot, and my profile hasn't even been hacked by some foreign scammer. Why restrict people from interacting on posts when there's no stated limit to it?

Facebook, please... FIX YOUR SHIT!!!😡

Like squeezing blood from a stone

 Work has been extra annoying this past month. Since Peak is over, our client isn't as willing to throw money at us, meaning they're being stingy. They've even gone so far as to downsize my already understaffed department. My shift only had three people, when four is the bare minimum we need to run adequately. I'm really glad that my main helper told me at the end of that week that they were going to pull this shit, because my supervisor said absolutely nothing to me about it. He might possibly have been afraid of me going ballistic, which I would have, but it's better for me to go ballistic early, rather than come in at the start of the week and go ballistic then because I'm just learning about this shit that morning. I was happy to see my helper that morning, but it turns out she would be in Picking, leaving me as the only QA on A-Shift. A couple of weeks later, they moved one girl from B-Shift, and one girl who worked Monday through Friday, to A-Shift. I don't think either of these girls speak or understand much English. The other woman we had working Monday through Friday is now on B-Shift, so we now have no extra help on Mondays and Tuesdays.

They picked a really fucking bad time to downsize QA, because we've been busy as fuck for the most part! Or at least too busy to just have three QAs. Hell, I've found some fucked up shit that the girl who was originally on B-Shift should've reported, but didn't. It turns out, even if B-Shift finds errors, they don't technically report them like they're supposed to. There are days that B-Shift supposedly has no errors, which is a crock of shit, because I find a lot of crap that B-Shift did wrong.

I mentioned in my previous entry that I was going to ditch my therapist. I kind of wish I had just canceled my last appointment with him, because he annoyed me bad enough that I was like, "Yup, I'm done."

I've loved singing karaoke since 2004. I got to do it a lot during the "good ol' days" of Louisville Mojo, but I haven't gotten to do it much after 2008 or 2009. There is one place I've been going to since November that does really, really fun karaoke, but they only do it once a month. I always have such a good time there! But then I get depressed the day or so after that, because I can't have that much fun every night, and I can't channel the confidence I have on stage to the rest of my life off the stage. The guy who KJ's (karaoke jockey) there has a weekly gig elsewhere on Tuesday nights, but with Tuesdays being my Friday, I'm so wore out that I'm dead to the world by 8:00 or 9:00. I really need to hang out with friends more between those Wednesdays, but trying to make plans with others is a pain in the ass, especially if they're homebodies like I am.

Peak 2022

 Eh, I guess I can talk about the past few months.

I mentioned back in September that the QA I worked with since February would be relocating. I believe it was early October when she did. The week after she quit, we got one of our people back who had worked for a couple of months earlier in the year, and who was pretty good. She was so out of practice though that I had to retrain her a little bit to get her back into the groove.

The week of my birthday was alright, but would've been better had I not been on Qelbree that week. Qelbree is a non-stimulant ADHD medicine. It was definitely effective, but it also made me not want to eat anything.

• At work that Sunday, I ended up vomiting after lunch because I ate and drank too much, except it wasn't really any more than normal.
• That Tuesday after work, I went to see Napalm Death and Brujeria. I got a 20 piece Chicken McNuggets from McDonald's on my way to the venue, and ate them when I arrived there. It was really ten pieces too many, but I managed to keep it down. The show was a lot of fun. I wish I could've seen them at one of their Texas dates, because MDC opened on the Texas dates.
• That Thursday, I had a therapist appointment in the morning, and went to see The English Beat that night. I went to Taco Bell for lunch and just got a Chicken Quesadilla, and could barely finish it. Went to the Best Buy up in St. Matthews to look for movies, and found out they don't carry movies anymore, so I went elsewhere to go movie shopping. I ended up having a massive headache the rest of the day. Went to Smashburger before the English Beat show and got three chicken tenders, and could barely finish them. Got to the show, talked to a few friends. I really only know four English Beat/General Public songs (Mirror In The Bathroom, Save It For Later, Tenderness, and GP's cover of I'll Take You There). I was ready to leave early due to my headache, so I looked up their setlists from previous shows, and discovered that they actually do my three favorite songs early in the set, and did my least favorite towards the end of the show, so I decided to stick around for my three favorite songs, then left.
• I went to see Black Panther: Wakanda Forever that Friday, and did some shopping. I ended up vomiting when I went to the bathroom just before going to bed that night. I decided that night that I was going to quit taking Qelbree.
• That Saturday was one where I was scheduled to work, but I ended up calling in, partially due to being sick from the Qelbree, but also because the drastic change in weather had me fucked up. It was unseasonably warm that week, which I didn't mind at all. But we went from being in the mid-60s Friday afternoon, to fucking snowing on Saturday morning, and I couldn't deal with it.

This year was the first year that I had both Thanksgiving and Black Friday off since 2008. Thanksgiving was weird, mostly because my parents are weird. My dad is an asshole, and my mom's memory has been going to shit, which in turn greatly annoys my dad. My mom's memory problems supposedly stem from her meds, and not any dementia or Alzheimer's. As for Black Friday, I've been determined that if I ever had a Black Friday off, I'd spend it being a lazy motherfucker and just watch movies, or maybe just one long ass movie. I finally got around to watching the director's cut of Wim Wenders' Until The End Of The World, which is almost five hours long, but probably took a lot longer than that to get through, due to having to take an occasional nap or break from the movie.

We actually got Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after Christmas off, and I used my Floating Holiday for the 27th, so I had that whole week off. I was glad we had that time off, since a shitty snow/ice event that weekend made driving hazardous. I went nowhere between the Thursday afternoon before Christmas, and the Tuesday morning after Christmas, and ended up doing Christmas with the parents that Tuesday.

New Year's weekend was fucking stupid. Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday that my shift would've normally had to work. You'd think they would've made us work the following Saturday, which was the 31st, but thankfully they kept that as B-Shift's Saturday, so we got New Year's Eve off. Here's where it gets stupid. I've had every New Year's Day off since I started at this place. Since New Year's Day this year fell on a Sunday, it was decided that NYD would be observed that Monday, the 2nd, so the Monday-Friday people would have Monday off. I would've had no problem taking NYD off and coming in that Monday. What they did instead was have Outbound come in on Sunday, and they gave us Monday off. The only reason I can think of for this is that this year, they've decided to give us time and a half if we end up working on an observed holiday, instead of giving us a Floating Holiday like they had been, and I guess they didn't want to pay us extra to come in on Monday. Since Sunday wasn't observed, we wouldn't be getting holiday pay or time and a half for working on Sunday, so they made us come in on actual New Year's Day. It's hard enough to get people to come in on a regular Sunday morning, having them come in on a New Year's Day that falls on a Sunday is downright moronic. Meanwhile, Inbound had New Year's Day off. I don't know if they had to come in that Monday, and at this point I'm beyond caring. But anyway, we worked less than half the day because we didn't have that much work. They should've just bit the bullet and had us work half the day Monday. Oh, and I was doubly miserable coming in on New Year's Day because I didn't get enough sleep, if at all, though not for lack of trying. I wasn't even up late or anything, I just couldn't sleep.

I've never had MLK Day off. I was prepared to work on MLK Day this year, even though my employer has made it a paid holiday. The Monday before MLK Day, my supervisor told us that we had MLK Day off, so I was looking forward to having it off. The next morning, he told us that they got an e-mail from our client telling them that they wanted my shift to work on MLK Day, so only the Monday-Friday people would be off. This really pissed me off. I assumed that all the Monday-Friday departments would be off, but they all ended up coming in. The only people who didn't come in were my supervisor and our two Monday-Friday QAs, so it was a normal day aside from those three people not being there. It would've been fine if my boss hadn't gotten my hopes up the week before.

Star Trekkin' and physical media

 I'm not only a music collector, I'm also an avid movie collector. I am not going to address streaming here. The 1980s and '90s may have been a golden age when it came to the selection of movies you could rent, but VHS was a shit format due to incorrect aspect ratios and poor quality altogether. If you were a movie purist, you were collecting movies on laser disc. Then DVD came along, and it was fine for the age of Standard Definition, but kind of underwhelming once you got a taste of HD. Now, with 1080p and 4K UHD blu-rays, we're in an era where movie presentation at home is kicking ass, but they're more challenging to acquire at a brick and mortar store. Suncoast is long gone, and Best Buy's movie selection is shrinking, and will probably be gone before too long. I can sometimes find blu-rays from boutique labels like Criterion, Shout/Scream Factory, Arrow Video, or Kino Lorber at stores like FYE and Barnes & Noble, but your best bet is ordering online. I usually try to order the boutique companies' product from their own websites, and try to avoid Amazon, but I still do Amazon every once in a while.

I have a ton of DVDs, and a ton of 1080p blu-rays, and quite a few on UHD, but only if they include the movie on both UHD and 1080p blu-ray, because I have neither a 4K TV nor a UHD player, but I like collecting UHDs so I can future proof. Even though DVD sucks by today's standards, I still feel bad for upgrading since a lot of the DVDs I have, especially "Pulp Fiction" and "Fight Club", have pretty elaborate packaging. My collecting policy is to try to buy movies on blu-ray that I don't own on DVD. I'll wait to upgrade my DVDs until they come out on UHD. It's a good idea to read or watch reviews before upgrading.

Here's my history of buying Star Trek movies, and for this entry I'm only referring to the movies that came out between 1979 and 2002. I bought a complete set of the deluxe editions in 2008. The Motion Picture was the Director's Edition. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was a really interesting one because it was the only Star Trek movie to be filmed in Super 35, so they opened up the matte to 1.78:1. I was pretty underwhelmed with the image quality of these DVDs, but they were all we had at the time. I believe I bought The Motion Picture on blu-ray in 2015, just because it was the theatrical version. I thought it looked fine, but more knowledgeable people complained about the DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) on it and all the other Star Trek blu-rays out at the time. In 2016, a special 25th anniversary edition of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan was released on blu-ray, based on a new 4K scan. I finally bought that in 2021.

I'm pretty sure Paramount has pissed off a lot of Star Trek fans in the past year or so, especially me. Not long after I bought that edition of Star Trek II, they announced that they were releasing the first four movies on UHD and blu-ray. A lot of us were like, "What about V and VI? What about the Next Generation movies?" Well, a lot of us bought the 4-movie collection. Not long after that, it was announced that they were working on redoing the VFX for the Director's Edition of The Motion Picture for 4K. A lot of us assumed they would be putting out a set including it with V and VI. This past Summer, they announced a number of releases for September, including a six movie set, and the six movies sold separately. When I heard about the separate movies, I thought, "Cool, I can just buy TMP:Director's Edition, V and VI, and be done with it." Unfortunately, while II through VI included both the UHDs and 1080p blu-rays, the UHDs and 1080p blu-rays for The Motion Picture:Director's Edition were being sold separately. I wanted all of them in 1080p and UHD, god damn it! The only way I could get the Director's Edition in both UHD and 1080p together was to get it in the 6-movie collection. So I preordered the 6-movie collection on Amazon through a link from The Digital Bits, because I love The Digital Bits, and want to support them. Somewhere around this time, maybe just a bit later, I also preordered the "Halloween: 1995-2002" Scream Factory UHD/blu-ray set. Unlike the first five Halloween movies, these had to be sold together because Miramax owns the later Halloween movies, and would only license them out to Scream Factory if they were sold in a set. The Star Trek set was set to release on September 6th, and the Halloween set was set to release on October 4th. I thought to myself, "They're coming out a month apart, there's no way they'll charge me for both at the same time, right?"

WRONG! But I'll get to that in a minute. I don't know what happened, but it seems like Amazon didn't get enough copies of the Star Trek set to actually send out in September, and they were telling me it was expected to arrive on November 1st! I went to Best Buy to see if they had the set, and that was a big no. All they had were a couple of copies of a couple of the individual movies. I checked Barnes & Noble, and they had one set! But it was about $30+ more than I would be paying for it on Amazon, and it sounded like a disc might have been loose. I have paid a premium elsewhere to spite Amazon, but I didn't quite have the money to justify doing it this time, so I decided to stick with my Amazon order. So anyway, October 4th comes, and as far as I knew, the Star Trek set was still expected to arrive by November 1st, and the Halloween set was expected to arrive in mid-to-late November. At some point, I checked my e-mail, and saw a message telling me to update my method of payment for one order. I had about $200 or less in the bank, enough for one set. It turns out they successfully charged me for the Halloween set, but payment for the Star Trek set was declined due to lack of funds. The Star Trek set was a higher priority for me, and the Halloween set hadn't shipped yet, so I canceled the Halloween set, and planned to use the money I got back to get the Star Trek set. These companies will take your money in a heartbeat, but are always slow to give it back to you. I finally got the money back...that Friday, after I had already went ahead and "updated" my payment method. I decided to wait to try and order the Halloween set later. The Star Trek set arrived just the next day!

While I was typing this up, I decided to see how much the individual sets for the UHD and 1080p TMP:Director's Edition, V, and VI would cost. It might have actually been cheaper to buy all of those than it would have to buy the 6-movie collection, thus not rendering my 4-movie collection obsolete. Fuck me running. Now, I have the 4-movie collection and the 35th Anniversary Edition of The Wrath Of Khan to sell.

Labor Day 2022, and the week that sucked balls.

 The two new girls that started at my work in August were gone just a couple of weeks later. My idiot boss waited a whole fucking month, this week to be exact, to replace them. The replacements seem to be doing pretty good for their first couple of days, though. But we may be losing the woman that's been working with me since February pretty soon. She's moving up to north Indiana to be closer with her girlfriend.

My company managed to make a mockery of Labor Day again this year. We didn't work all god damned day like last year, but I was there for a little over nine hours. I don't feel like we had enough work to justify keeping us for more than half the day, and my holiday might have been salvageable if they had let us go after eight hours, but that extra hour fucking ruined it. I was hoping to be able to make it through an entire movie before wanting to go to bed, but I was so fucking tired that I only made it through the first hour of the original Total Recall before going to bed. I had to finish it the following night.

This week has sucked balls. Sweaty, stinky balls. Work was horrible, made worse by the fact that we had to work last Saturday. I really should've taken a Floating Holiday on Saturday, but I didn't want to leave everyone else hanging. I'm not gonna go into specifics about why else work sucked. This was also the week of the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville. I thought maybe I could at least make it to the Thursday edition, when Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Tenacious D were playing, until I saw what a single day GA ticket cost, which was $129, plus a $20 or $30 fee. Then I was like, "Never mind." I've only seen Nine Inch Nails once, way back in November 1994. I've seen Ministry twice, but I wanted to see them in Covington, KY back this past March, and didn't get to because I didn't have enough money, and I'm pissed that I had to miss their second Kentucky appearance this year. I've never seen Tenacious D live. There was at least one band playing that night that I would've avoided like the plague, I heard more than enough of them when I went to Louder Than Life in 2019. Hint: the singer is a woman who does a lot of corny ass screaming. But the cherry turd on top of this week was shopping at Walmart on Friday morning, being 99.9% sure that I put everything that was in my cart into my car's trunk, and then somehow not having one or two bags of stuff worth $50+ from there when I got home. I've looked everywhere for it. My car, my apartment, went back to the store twice, and I even stopped at Meijer on that last trip, since that was my last stop before heading home this morning, and looked around the area where I had parked. Nothing. And there's nothing Walmart can do to help. You know, those assholes in charge of Walmart make more money than either I or the typical Walmart employee can even fathom, you'd think they'd throw us a fucking bone every once in a while. This is also the second time in about three years that this has happened to me at Walmart. I wonder if this wouldn't happen so much if they either changed the color of their bags, or the color of their carts? After all, other places I shop at (Kroger, Meijer, Price Less) have bags that contrast starkly with their carts, while Walmart's bags are virtually the same color as their carts and their parking lots, creating something of a camouflage. Maybe I should start a petition on Change.org to get Walmart to change the color of their bags.

That last trip to Walmart was mostly to pick up a prescription. The guy at Walmart's exit told me to have a good day. I told him, "My day's pretty much fucked."

I'll leave you with Ministry's live version of "Breathe" from 1990.

Staycation 2022, and going back to work

 I was hoping to make it out to the Austin TX area to visit my brother before the Peak Season at work hit, but I still didn't feel like I had enough money for the trip, even after my sizable backpay check. But that's okay, because my brother decided to come up to Kentucky on the second-to-last weekend of July, his first trip up here since 2019. I was originally planning on just trying to get that Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off, which Monday was absolutely necessary because I had to drive my brother to the airport. But then I decided to request that Tuesday off as well, since I had hoped to take a whole week off before the Peak season, and figured I might as well make it that week. In reality, it was more like a week and a half off. It was really nice getting to spend time with my brother, and really nice not having to deal with work for a week and a half.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were supposed to be rainy days, so I decided to work on some stuff in my apartment. I've got plenty of boxes lying around, and I refer to the decor of my apartment as, "I stopped unpacking when I went back to work." I really didn't do a lot toward cleaning up the place, but what little I did do was quite a bit of work. One of my biggest jobs was setting up my turntable and cassette deck, which I have hooked up to a DJ mixer that's hooked up to the Line In jack on my computer. When it was set up, I could tell that there was sound going to the mixer, but no sound was coming out of the speakers. After some searching, I discovered that I need to set up my Line In jack to be outputted through the speakers, instead of whatever the hell they were set to go out to. I played some records and tapes to test with. At one point, I put in my Judas Priest "Unleashed In The East" tape in, and the deck fucking ate it! Thankfully, it's a dual cassette deck, so I still have the other side to play tapes with. But after all that, I was like, "Fuck it, I'm done for the day." I have a story as to why I was wanting to listen to that particular tape, but I'll save that for last.

I went out on Friday night to an event where Goth and Industrial music was being played. I had so much fun! I ended that week in a good mood, but I knew going back to work would ruin that.

Sunday: It was raining pretty hard on my drive to work, and I absolutely hate driving in the rain, so the rain made going back to work even more horrible than if it had been dry out. And there were only two of us QAs there that Sunday. I ended up having to cover two distinct areas. Just working in either one of those areas will wear you out after a while, but going back and forth between them both will wear you out real quick! The entire Outbound department got to leave three and a half hours early. I think Inbound was staying until 6:30. I had plenty of work to do on the dock, so I could've stayed the whole day to work on it, but I was so exhausted by 3:00 that I just left then. I was in bed by 7:00 that night.

Monday: A girl who started the previous Tuesday and didn't show up on Sunday actually showed up on Monday. We also had a new girl show up at the beginning of the day, which shocked the hell out of us because our brand new people usually don't come in until 8:00 or so. We decided that I'd train the newest girl in one of the other areas until 8:00 when our boss came in, who would then tell us where to go. He decided to keep me training her, and he was going to have the Monday-Friday woman work on the dock until she left at 4:30, to which I would take over on the dock then. But sometime before lunch, he asked me if I felt like she'd be comfortable working on her own after lunch. God damn, there is a hell of a lot to learn in any given area, it took me at least a week to get comfortable with it when I started! I started off by showing her what we do and how to do it, and had barely gotten her to get some practice in by the time he asked me that. So I was pretty much like, "Hell no!" I trained her until 4:30, showing her one of the other main areas when things were slow in the area I was training her in. Taking over the dock at 4:30 was a fucking nightmare, and I got a massive headache. The headache was made worse when some dumbass new woman who thought we were scheduled to leave at 6:00 asked me what we do at 6:00. I told her that we work until 6:30, and we only leave at 6:00 if one of the higher ups tells us we can leave at 6:00. She said her husband and kids were waiting outside, and I'm like, "That's not my problem." She said she'd have to check her paperwork again because she swore that it only said she'd be there until 6:00. Needless to say, she didn't return the next day.

Tuesday: Tuesdays are almost always the worst day of the work week, like I'm being fucked with no lube, thus I call them Lubeless Tuesdays. I also got a massive headache on this day. One thing I absolutely hate is being sent to multiple areas in a day, and I ended up working in four different areas this Tuesday. Getting into the dock groove is especially hard, I do my best work there when I start and end my day there. My boss's original plan for me on Tuesday was to have me get the trainee squared away in the first half hour, then have me go to the area of another account to take pictures of some pallets that were getting ready to ship out, and the Monday-Friday woman would work on the dock. I actually started helping out in the area that I always go to first, then tried to get my trainee squared away before heading to the other account. I could barely get anything done there because my trainee had a lot of questions that I tried to answer via e-mail. At one point, I just gave up with the e-mail and went there to show her what to do. At our meeting after our first break, it was determined that the Monday-Friday guy who usually does audits in the other account would be going to another building that's supposedly even more understaffed than we are, and I'd be doing the audits in the other account after I was done taking pictures. About an hour later, we got an e-mail from our boss saying that I'd be going to the dock after lunch, and the Monday-Friday woman would be going to do audits in another section. Fuck me running! I was really hoping she'd be on the dock all day, especially since we had so many "hubs" shipping out that day. These hubs are the bane of my existence, since I'm supposed to take pictures of every single fucking one before they go on the trucks, and then take one picture when they're in the trucks. To add insult to injury, I think it was about 10:30-ish when the Monday-Friday woman e-mailed me asking if I could go to the dock and finish one of the hub trucks for her, because she still hadn't taken her 10:00 break. Things were so hectic there that I never made it back to the other account. And they started loading a hub truck right around my lunch time (12:00). I didn't even go to lunch until almost 1:30. Just as I was getting ready to go to lunch, I got an e-mail from my trainee saying that she knew I was busy, but if I could come help her out at some point. I wasn't just busy, I was overwhelmed! I apologized, and told her that I was just now going to lunch. I sent her an e-mail much later asking about the problem, but I didn't get a reply, and I never made it out to her. I usually pick up Taco Bell on my way home on Tuesdays (Taco Bell Tuesdays!), but I was so tired by the end of that day that I didn't bother, and went to bed by 8:00.

It occurred to me that I probably should've looked for another job while I was out, but I was too busy doing shit with the apartment. Besides, I need to go to the dentist before I look for another job. I realized that I'm paying about $30 per paycheck for dental insurance, so I better fucking use it!

Whew! So, back to the Judas Priest tape. I bought it in 1997 at a gas station that some friends worked at. I bought the remastered CD in 2005, only for the bonus tracks. The Judas Priest remasters are notoriously bad, the only one that's supposedly come out good was the 30th Anniversary Edition of "Turbo". Every time I listened to the "Unleashed In The East" CD, I thought to myself, "I do seem to remember the tape sounding better." So the reason why I was wanting to listen to it last week was to hear if it sounded anywhere near as good as I remembered, but it didn't get far before the player ate it.

Untitled (July 2nd, 2022)

 Life has been really annoying lately. My dad was in the hospital briefly in May. My mom was in the hospital briefly in June. And I ended an 11 year friendship with my ex after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade. She no longer cared whether abortion was going to stay legal or not, and she didn't understand why I would care, since as she put it, I'm not going to get pregnant, nor am I going to get anyone pregnant anytime soon. I care because I'm not a total fucking sociopath! But I'm not sure what pissed her off more, my take on it, or the legitimate reason I gave her to be pissed off at me, which I'm not going to go into because it really was stupid of me. But fuck her, I'm done with her stupid ass, I almost wish I hadn't bothered trying to be more than just friends with her eleven years ago, even if it would mean that I'd be 45 years old and never actually had a girlfriend in my life. She was never very bright, and she was also extremely gullible, but she really went Full Dumbass when she started watching some jagoff Youtuber's videos almost two and a half years ago, some grifter who claims to be a liberal and used to pander to the Left, but now panders to the Right because they're so much easier to grift.

All my life, I've had to dumb myself down to try to be accepted among the general public, or to make myself more "dateable" to a large number of women. No more!

I do have a couple of bits of good news related to my most recent post back in April. One is that I've reached that point where all my medications are now free for the rest of the year. The other is that I found out that I'm not getting paid as much as I'm supposed to be, so I'll now be making $2 more an hour than I have been. It's still not enough, but it should take a little bit of the sting off. I found out a few weeks ago that my temp co-workers were getting paid more than me, so I bitched about it. HR found out that I was supposedly bypassed for a $2 bump in pay last August, so they're not only giving me a $2 raise, but it should be retroactive, giving me $2 for every hour I've worked since sometime last August. I thought for sure that I did get a $2 raise last August, because I went up from $15.50 to $17.50. It makes me wonder if my coworkers were getting paid more than I was this time last year, or if they just didn't want to piss off my current coworkers by cutting their pay from $19/hour to $17/hour?

(Update, July 4) I forgot to mention, I worked half of Memorial Day, but I get to have the fourth of July off! That's the first non-Christmas or New Year holiday I've had off in over a year.

Mo' Money, Mo' Problems, My Ass! April 2022 Edition

 I'm just giving an update for the sake of giving an update. I have a lot that I've been wanting to get off my chest, but don't feel like taking the time to type it all out. The gist of it is that I make just enough money at my work to cover rent, my car payment*, car insurance, phone and electric bills, Hulu with HBO and Disney+, and not much else. I've tried working overtime, but those checks have been underwhelming. We've been so slow these past two weeks that not only do we not have opportunity for OT, but we've been leaving early every day, so my next check is gonna suck. I'm either going to have to get a second job, or find a full time job that pays at least $23 an hour, which is over $5 more than what I'm currently making.

I still haven't recovered from my insurance making me pay almost $300 for a 90-day supply of Januvia a few weeks ago, when I only needed a 30-day supply! Hell, just today, my nurse practitioner took me off of Januvia and put me on Rybelsus, so I now have 60+ days worth of Januvia just sitting around. She did say that I could continue to take it while being on this medicine, but probably wouldn't see much benefit. I may continue to take it until it's gone just to get rid of it, can't let $300 go to waste! And it looks like I'll have to pay this month's phone and electric bills next month.

*Regarding the car payment, I can't help but think, "I wouldn't have this car payment if I hadn't totaled my car three years ago, or at least not had to deal with the amount of bullshit I had to deal with and gotten my check sooner rather than later." But what's done is done, and beating myself up over it is counterproductive.