hombre horible.

I was moved to tears twice this weekend. Well once Friday morning and once Sunday afternoon.
I'll stat with the pleasant one. I held a baby that was less than 24 hours old. A squashed up hideous thing. She belongs to one of my crew. Over the years I been the first non-family member to hold 12 newborns. It always gets me.
I will do the Family Leave paperwork and send the woman on her way and usually within the week I get an excited phone call in rapid Spanish about the new baby. I'll swing by Target and get a couple of ones-es and a stuffed animal and then swing by Publix for a fruit tray the next day and head over to the Hospital at lunch. Then I'm holding a squashed up red new person and crying.
It's the complete innocent look on the babies face and knowing what's coming that bothers me. The horror of potty training just snowballs into school, dating, jobs and on and on.
Then it's back to work!
Friday's boo hoo session was a horse of a different color. Another woman on my crew to see me alone. As soon as the office door closed she started crying and begging for 2 days off to take her daughter to the hospital for some tests. I said "No problem, sweety, you can have all the time you need. Get the test done so you can figure out what is wrong." Then she started in on how wonderful I am and she was so sorry that her daughter's illness was keeping her out of work so much lately. She apologized for taking the poor thing to the Doctor.
I had to stop her and tell her the truth. "I am the worst son of a bitch you will ever meet." After she left I shed a tear or two with the door locked. How bad can life be when you look up to some one because he did not fire you for getting a 3 year old medical care? How horrible must it be when the person who gave you a 3% raise takes on a paternalistic roll?

I'm Back again.

Technology and my lifestyle aren't a good match.

I made up a name for an old friend who died in the early '90's. Ed King. I was driving and saw two stores that had the two names and voile' Ed King has an assumed name.

Ed was a very careful man. He was also the only person I've ever met who died under mysterious circumstances.

Ed was missing three months before he was found in the Talladega National Forrest that he loved so well. He was an outdoors-men's outdoors-men. He was the same generation as my Grandfather and I never saw either one out of Khaki's. Ed was very careful because as a kid he had lost most of his left ear to a water moccasin. In the Navy in WWII he lost two fingers to frost bite and a big chunk of calve muscle to another snake bite.

He always carried a sawed-off 410 shotgun. It was a single shot breach loader with a home made pistol grip and a mini flash light duct taped to the fore-stock. When I say he carried it, I mean in his hand everywhere. He lived in a little town outside of Monroe and everybody knew him, and nobody noticed the shotgun anymore. I saw him go in a Bank and a Liquor store with a sawed off shotgun in his hand and nobody batted an eye.

Once Ed, My Grandfather and Me were in a John-boat fishing. Ed was working the little electric motor in back, My Grandfather was working about 15 poles in the middle and I was taking fish off the lines and re-baiting and the most important job of passing back beer from the cooler. I was an over worked preteen.

We were pulling in a ton of crappie and they were drinking a ton of beer and I was thinking I would get to drive home. As they say in all the books, SUDDENLY the afternoon was ripped apart by Ed's .410. Having lost big parts of his body to snake's Ed had a shoot first and ask questions later outlook on life. But right after the shot something fell out of a nearby tree and sank. I pissed myself almost simultaneously to the little guns blast. I was 11 after all.

Ed reloaded in the blink of an eye and asked for another beer.

I jumped in the lake and washed myself off and spent the rest of the afternoon naked with my clothes laid out drying, taking fish off the hook and passing beer back from the cooler. Once my Grandfather caught the seventy five crappie that was our boat limit and a couple of big catfish we turned the boat toward the dock and I got dressed.

Ed explained that you saw off a shot gun so you get a bigger shot spread real fast from the end of the barrel. The power is lost after a few yards. He used a .410 so he could sit in one end of his aluminum John-boat and not blow a hole in the other end. He said he carried to church and check under his pew until they asked him to leave it at home. He decided that God was everywhere and easier to find on the end of a fishing pole.I get very melancholy when I think that no one talks to kids that way any more.

I was 11 and did drive home. I was always driving my Grandfather and his friends home.

Oh, Ed's death. It wasn't strange to me he died in the woods. He was closing in on 80 and drank and smoked like a Sailor on leave. Come to think of it, he pretty much lived his life like a Sailor on leave after he survived destroyer duty in the Pacific during WWII.

Vampires Again

There are more and more Vampires roaming around. I really don't understand the attraction. The things kill us or screw us and then go off somewhere and hide. It's really strange the attraction.
I do like the fact that Vampires are always Royalty or Aristocracy. If anything describes the relationship between the Manor born (Plantation Class around here) and the rest of us, it's Vampire/Prey. Look at Prince Charles and the little Princelings. They have little affairs with models and Army Platoons but then they grow weary of contact with the commoners and run back into their Castles and look down on us.
It's the same way here. Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie can have a show about life with the simple people who don't have money. Then when the show losses some ratings they can run back to whatever place they feel best and hide out until someone gets a better scheme that allows people with no talent other than being born into the right family can get more of our money.
The New Moon Twilight whatever teeny bopper movie has Werewolves that fight the Vampires. I like this. I hope the Werewolves kill them off and then head over to True Blood and rid us of that piece of crap too.
Werewolves are a good proletariat animal. Some guy is walking out on the moors one night and gets infected by a big dog bite. He's not part of some upper class, he's just some guy who worked late or his car broke down and now he can't help himself when the moon is full.

Angry Blog

I'm not really angry, just a little fussy today. I'm tired of crap.
Like who decided to make John Lennon music into ads for shit we don't need.
We still don't have an effective Tsunami early warning system for most of the world
but we have phones we can watch television and buy the shit they are using John
to advertise.
The people who wrecked the economy are giving themselves bonuses for talking us into
bailing them out. Then the same people tell us that a public health care system is Socialist
and will ruin the economy.
We are destroying Blue fin Tuna for Sushi, Black Rhino's for boners, Manatee's for boat rides
and all of the flowing water for green grass.
We have cancer of most body parts, diabetes, canine distemper and HIV and in return they
give us Viagra, Cialysis and sleeping pills that make us eat every thing in the house and drive
around town in a black out.
It takes 2 minutes to order a pizza online, but 15 to get to a human representative at Fed Ex.
Customer Service is a fossilized concept in the sub-basement of the Smithsonian.
But like I've said many times. Screw it.

Luck

I am a firm believer in Luck and I've never had much. When I was a kid my Aunt in Ohio sent us boxes of buckeyes. I gave to all my friends and we carried them everywhere. For Luck. As I grew older I found more things that are lucky. Rabbit Foot, buttons, pennies you find laying on heads are lucky if you put them in your shoe. If you find a penny on tails, you can change your luck by turning it over and leaving it for the next person. Four leaf clovers are not lucky. After I asked my Ex Wife to marry me she refused to answer until she found a 4 leaf clover. When you spill salt you have to throw a pinch over your left shoulder to ward off bad luck.
Break a mirror and you are screwed for the next seven years. Now there are lots of things that produce bad luck. Bringing banana's on a small boat is death. You will not catch fish, dive well and probably never make it back to dry land. How banana's get around the world, I don't know, but it's not by small boat. Black Cats can't cross your path or you have to wait for it to cross back, or you turn around. Whistling when passing a graveyard is bad. Blowing out a candle insults fire and is bad luck.
My Great Grandmother was from Ireland and was a very influential adult in my childhood. We were separated by 80 or so years, but relegated to the useless section of the family together. She was too old to do much and I was too little. She is why I know that if a person sneezes three times without a God Bless you, the little people can legally take them and keep them for years. But you don't talk much about the little people after dark, or they will take you and keep you for years.
Now after three decades of on again off again work, I've narrowed my Lucky things down to a fossilized whale inner ear bone I found diving off Venice beach Florida and a new tattoo. When I turned 21, I got a tattoo and was happy with that until I hit 40 and got another.
Then I found out that an even number of tattoos are unlucky. Now I've had a big run of bad luck this last year, so I decided that made sense.
So tonight I have a Bull Shark on my forearm and an extra lottery ticket.

Frankenstein

So, I'm having this pain in my side that turns out to be gall bladder, liver, gastrointestinal related.
The Doctor says that we can always remove the Gall bladder if it gets worse and by the way it may explode. The surgery isn't as complicated as an appendectomy. So I am wondering. Why do we have all these extra parts? These extra parts that can go bad an d kill us?
If you've never had a gall bladder flare up, it will make curl up in a ball and doubt the existence of God and the rationality of Natural Selection.
Not in the usual, "Why do men have nipples?" funny fooling around questioning that all those '80's comics loved to dwell on. This is a breach birth in during the hiking trip kind of doubt.
If there is a God, why would he lay these traps?
If Natural selection is at work, why hasn't this crap been bred out of us?
The Nurse I talked with said it was the American Diet that is killing us all off. But if you think about it, we've always had the American Diet. Remember the Mammoth feasts? Did Og eat too much of the fatty trunk meat and collapse in a sweaty heap cursing the Lake God for all he was worth? I know Og did not go out and find a nice big salad.
So, I think it was some Alien Frankenstein who has done this to us. Some Sadistic, big eyed Grey Bastard with a scalpel and a twisted sense of humor.
It also explains the seem down there.

Why do our bodies hate us?

When I was 21, I could take anything. One time I was working on a bridge crew and really screwed up. I held onto a guide rope too long and was launched over the river and slammed into a piling. I let go of the rope and landed in the river and swam to shore. I jogged back to the bridge and finished the day. I have thousands of these stories.
Last week I started to feel a pain in my side. I shrugged and ignored it. By Thursday I was walking around pressing my hand against my ribs and wincing. So Friday I went to my Doctor. Did you know that your gall bladder can become inflamed? I did not.
I also did not know that the test for this was an ultrasound. And did you know that Ultrasound guys have no sense of humor? When I asked "How's it look Doc?" the Tech explained he was not a Doctor and was just taking pictures for the Doctor.
"So I guess you can't tell m if it's a girl or a boy huh?"
"No sir I could not."

Rain, rain, go away.

The great state of Georgia has a split personality.
We have ten year droughts followed by intense rain in the fall. It's been raining for a week now. The dog and I both have mouldy spots. Laundry takes forever to dry and towels never really do.
Last night we had something new. In four hours my little town got 10.35 inches of rain. The cross ties I put in the yard to prevent the lawn from washing away, floated away.
These cross ties were taken from the train tracks last year when they replaced them and weighed about 100 tons each. Now they are about twenty feet from where I put them.

Memories, a play in one act.

Open on smokey interior.
Panic--"Dude, can you see me?"
Dude--"Maybe you should let me drive."
Panic--"No, I'm cool, I just don't feel visible right now. You know?"
Dude--"Panic, Dude, relax. It's just good shit. Now pull over and let me drive."
Man, enters from next room. "Pizza will be here in 20 minutes. They don't have doughnuts."
Dude--"Dude, I thought we were in the car going for doughnuts."
Panic--"Oh shit, am I driving. I can't fucking drive man, I'm to baked."
Man--"Man, you two light weights can't handle your weed. Ha,ha."
Dude, Man and Panic sit on the couch watching television.
Panic--"Where's the bong? What if the Pizza guy is a narc? I can't go to jail. Oh shit."
Man--"We ordered pizza?"
Dude--"I want some doughnuts."

Weather Girls. I am not gay.

My trip was fantastic, but I was accused of being a homosexual.
When doing anything on or near a large body of water, you want
to keep up with the weather.
The Weather Channel used to give weather reports all through the
day. You could watch for 15 minutes and know what what was up in your
area and those adjacent and maybe some large cities around the world.
But now they have these women who look real good but they talk about
but the forecast.
When I complained at the all you can eat Continental Breakfast, you would think that
I had to spit the cock out of my mouth to speak. "What are you Queer?" came from my twenty something roommate for the trip.
Now this kid had pissed me off from the moment I saw him. He called me 'sir' in a way that you call the 80 year old lost at the airport 'sir'.
So I explained that I love women and women's bodies, but there is no reason for them to wear low cut blouses, tight skirts and not tell me the weather. They could wear camo and tell me the weather and I would be happy. They could disembodied voices and tell me the weather and I would have been happy. I'm about to get on a very small boat and go four or five miles off shore, I want to know what is going to happen.
I assumed that would be the end. But the little snot nosed pin head talked.
After dinner I was talking to a woman in the group and she said "It's so nice to just talk to a man without any pressure"
"Well, I'm a laid back guy, ya know."
"Yeah, but you are gay so I don't have to worry about this going anywhere."
"Wha...?"

The Keys

If life was fair I'd live in the Florida Keys or Cozumel.
As it is, life gives me little installments of Paradise. Every chance I get,
I go to the Keys or Cozumel. Sometimes, like now Mother Nature gets a dig in.
I've been waiting for a month to go on this trip and suddenly Tropical Depression
Erika has popped up.
All season the Hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic and travelled North. Now Erika
goes West, dammit. Oh sure if it forms into a strong hurricane, it will be bad for the
people down there and monetary damage etc.
But I have to Dive in warm clear blue water this weekend. There is no other option.
I have to sit in subtropical sunlight and drink beer and eat conch fritters and fish tacos.
I need this badly. I haven't had a chance to dive since New Years.
To help you understand the anxiety, I'll open a window into my world.
Tuesday 6 am the bubble headed weather girl mentions a tropical depression.
Tuesday 7 am the weather guy on the radio says a tropical storm is developing.
Tuesday 9 am, my Boss says "You see the Hurricane headed for Key Largo?"
Tuesday 9:06 am Weather Bug check #1.
followed by #2-306 by 5pm.
Tuesday 6pm-7pm walk dog around Stone Mountain while fidgeting with broken radio.
Tuesday 7:06 pm check dive shop website. No mention of Tropical Depression.
Wednesday the beast is named and has a track heading for Key Largo or south of Cuba.
This is just the first 24 hours.

What did the Mona Lisa ever do to you?

Why are people attacking the Mona Lisa?
Sure it's in the most disgusting museum in the most disgusting city in the world, but it did not choose it's home.
I hate Paris. The rest of France is wonderful and I would be mind numbingly happy on the Riviera, but Paris is a city of Hate. The closet thing we have in the states would be West Palm Beach, Miami, Naples triangle.
In Paris they hate you for not being Parisian. They stand in their Levi's and berate America and Americans. They will personally insult you for Government actions. I came to the aid of a poor Canadian being attacked for a cheese import tax. In the Louvre I was sent to the restaurant ten times while looking for the rest room. No, don't look at me like that, I knew to ask for the WC. The staff was laughing at me, another Frenchman came to my aid. He took pity on me and explained that they did this to tourist all the time. He was from Normandy and loved the English and Canadians and Americans. I bought him a truly great coffee while my family shopped the insanely overpriced and over large gift shop. He was very happy that we were leaving Paris the next day.
But I digress. The Mona Lisa is very small in real life. It's behind very thick glass, behind a very imposing rope. The Mona Lisa is impressive because of it's age and the little smirk on her face. When you think that 500 years ago a man found a hooker and ground up rocks and sea shells and whatever else was needed to make paint, then sat for hours painting the hooker, and today it's still culturally relevant. Well that's just amazing. But after moving around a few countries and watching the fall of the Catholic Empire, people are now taking flash photos of the Mona Lisa and throwing mugs at it.
The best museum I went into in Europe was in Rome. They had a sorta Renaissance gone wrong room. It was a long, long narrow, high walled wonder room. It was filled, absolutely filled with green Madonna and Child paintings. When they mixed the paint way, way back in day, if you got the wrong egg ratio, after a few decades all the white paint turned green. I was enchanted with that room. Once you realize what happened and could look around the vampire mother of god, there was some amazing art work, that could never be loved, the way the pretty Christ Children would be. A Docent in broken English explained what had happened with the paint. She went on to say that the artist would have never known what had happened with the limited life span of the day.
I like Rome. It's dirty and expensive but the people are happy and proud of their city. Not like the people of Boca Raton.

marriage and idiots

So I've got friends who are married. Some have been married once and stayed that way for years. My Mom and Dad have been married for 46. I have other friends who are on second, third and my Buddy Hopeless is fresh out of five and looking for lucky six. I know a precious few geniuses who never took the plunge.
Me, I got burned bad once and have no need for another try. It's not fun to have a Judge take away your kids, house, car and dog and then leave the debt with you. When I was six I jumped off our back porch onto my tricycle, Cowboy movie style. Only I did not ride off into the sunset, I rode in an ambulance with a broken leg and a future scar on my taint. I never tried to jump on my trike again and see a direct correlation with marriage.
All the people I know who are happily married are happy. In public they are. You can never be sure who is screaming behind closed doors and who is wiping silverware on their ass while the other is out of the room.
But those of us who are single and content are happy all the time. There is nobody to scream at behind closed doors. We can go to places with another person for a dinner or a movie or a drink or dam near anything and then part ways. If we like the other person we can go and do more stuff together and maybe when we spot another person we can do stuff with the new person when the first person isn't around.
It's an amazingly wonderful life.
And that brings me to the idiots. The people who get married and have a couple of kids and then when it spirals out of control they get some other idiot to marry them as soon as the divorce decree is dry.
These are the idiots who aren't happy with themselves. They can't be alone for any length of time. I run across them once in a while and then run away. The Guys always are into something useless. Star Trek, Cars, Sports, something you can spend gobs of money on and still have no direct impact on the outcome. The Women are almost always Mothers, Single Mothers whose kids are their whole life. These people will do anything to be together. It doesn't matter with who.
I've noticed the guys will go for younger chicks with low self esteem. The women will pair up with anyone who shows a little interest, usually with men genetically predisposed to class action lawsuits and second hand trailers.
I love it when two of these idiots find each other. It's best when they are in the other half of duplex or triplex. The arguments always start about money, diapers, school. movie tickets or sports package satellite deals. They move on to unfaithfulness, money, diapers, child abuse, cable sport package deals etc. Then the explosion and the slamming doors the restraint orders and the deputy wasting taxpayer dollars watching him pack up a few Action Figures or signed Caps. And then she starts dating some jerk in a Trans Am with bondo on the quarter panel.
I've sold my share of abandoned cribs and Official Star Trek Doodads taken out of the other side of the duplex after the dust settles. I wore a Devils Hockey jersey for a whole winter before a guy in a bar bought it off my back after explaining what it was.
Marriage truly a gift from the Gods.

Wonderful Vacation Tragedies.

This is going to be convoluted.
About 5 years ago my crazy Father started announcing his death. "I'll be dead in 5 years so you better be nice to me", the rest of us laughed and every one remember that his Father said the same thing for the last 15 years of his life.
This year he announced that this was his last year of life and wanted to go to Daytona and the Dominican Republic one last time. I voted DR because every spring hump back whales gather in the Bay of Semana for calving. Nothing good gathers in Daytona anymore.
Well he decided that he couldn't make the trip to the DR so off we went to Daytona. We made this trip alot during my misspent youth. Usually two or more families crammed into a huge station wagon. (A station wagon was a giant car. It was long and low with a mile long hood and the luckiest kids got to ride in the way back and face backwards. We crammed people in the seats and pile suitcases on top.) The station wagon was the way to travel, for the first 5 or 6 hours. Then the way back AC crapped out and an infant or toddler would start to scream for merciful death. You know the scream that suddenly stops for a few seconds and your ears say ahh, but the monster was just getting a bigger lung full of air.
But eight hours in that station wagon was ok if we were headed to the beach.....Daytona back then was great. We would wade out to the breakers and body surf or bounce over waves and pretend Submarines and Sharks and Dolphins were just over the next wave. Mom and Dad or somebody else half responsible would always be with us and nobody knew what a riptide was. Back then the riptide was the under tow and it was only there very early in the morning.
After burning ourselves lobster red the first day we'd head to the Boardwalk and it never had boards.
But this was the last trip and it was different. We flew. No way backs with no AC, just assholes who refuse to turn off their cell phones.
The Boardwalk was about 2/3 destroyed some time ago and never rebuilt. The super cool video games have been replaced by crap. There are signs about Riptide all over the beach and the best thing in the world is now outlawed. Way back you could drive on the beach. Dad would get the Station Wagon up to 50 on the beach. Now you have to buy a special permit and it's only during special times and places. It's probably much better for the ocean, but.........
On the 4Th my boy and I wandered down to the Pier and watched what Florida calls Independence Day and the rest of us call the re-enactment of the opening of Saving Private Ryan. If you haven't seen it, I can't describe it.
Then we flew home with the assholes who were too important to turn off the cell phones. They refuse to turn off the cell phone even though it could turn our nice little jet fuel laden airplane into a giant flaming tube of death. I hate to fly and have bad thoughts when I do fly. Thoughts about killing everybody else on the plane for one reason or another.
Then we landed and went into the hell known as Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Nothing in the Atlanta Airport works the way it was designed. It's like a bad bootleg copy of a good airport. You know a VHS copy with bad tracking. All the things that make a great airport are there but they kind of drag and the sound isn't quite right. Or think of it as a digital TV signal that almost comes in. So you see a baggage carousel but there are blocks missing out of the corners.
But we survived the airport and the parking that should have cost $90 for the week that charged the credit card $130 without a human in sight.
I was feeling strange so I spent the night with my parents and the boy. At some point I woke up drenched in sweat standing in the kitchen telling some one about 43000 pieces of rebar attached to 23000 cables holding down the sea. Mom found me and put me back in bed with a 105 fever. I explained to her we had to loosen the cables before the next full moon or the whole system would crash. I dare you to match the validity of my hallucinations.
The next day I woke up early and went to work and spent the day sweating and talking to customers who were visiting.
And that afternoon I discovered the tragedy. My garden had been attacked. Something has eaten the leaves off all my tomatoes. They left peppers.
Then the Wonderful thing happened. I was healing myself in the AC with lots of cough syrup and listening to the radio. Iggy Pop was talking to someone and said "blah, blah...Wonderful things happen." About 10 minutes later my 71 year old aunt called and said "Was your vacation wonderful?"

Um, uh, Yes that is...

There is only one thing more boring that sitting in a Lawyers Office being deposed for 8hours. It's sitting at home reviewing the transcript of that deposition.
I never have been a great public speaker. I mumble and stutter, but I never knew how bad until this weekend.
Like all companies that are successful the one I work for is being sued. I've been working for them since 2000 so I get to be on the witness list every time we get sued.
As a named witness you get to do things like depositions. Once you sit for hours in a room with a stranger typing every word you say and another stranger video taping you and two strange lawyers asking you questions. You get a copy to read and correct.
Then you see how bad your language skills have become. I am the Ted Turner of my generation. Ahhh, I think, seem to recall, uh, yeah we did that.

So I've lost about 15 pounds and I feel great. Apparently doing good things for yourself actually is good for you. I shit you not.
I've narrowed it down to eating better, drinking less or all the swimming. I swim every night at a buddies pool.
I really can't tell you how much I love to swim. When I was a kid I would swim in anything. Pool, lake, farm pond. Give me 15 minutes and I was swimming in it. Shortly after college I won $100 American Dollars by swimming across a retention pond behind some apartments a friend lived in. I did not realize it at first but it caught the run off from three big parking lots and funnelled it under ground and away. I knew it wasn't deep and not very wide.
My Girlfriend and his Girlfriend woke up he neighborhood screaming at three in the morning. My buddy was too busy laughing to understand that I was very close to being sucked underground and away. I was swimming for my life dreading that the Police line "Caught between the Scylla and Carib dis" was stuck in my head and would be the last thing I heard. Well I finally got my feet under me and survived.
It took a week to get my money.

Digital Screening isn't what it sounds like.

I hate Doctors. Last week I go in to a new Doctor for the flu. My old Doc was kicked off the company insurance, then we switched insurance and he's still kicked off.
Well the new Doc is cool. He gave me some weird antibiotic that I can't take with food. They are so foul it's almost worse than the flu.
But the new Doc is never finished with you. I must have a physical because my blood pressure is up. I'm over 40 and it just happens. I'm also really fat. I've always been large. As a kid I was taller and stronger than the other first,second, third, etc graders. But five years ago I quit smoker and started to put on weight. Then my Grandmother died and I put on a little more. Then my last Grandparent started to show signs of Alzheimer's and I really started to eat. Anyway..in the words of John Candy in Stripes "The Doc's say I swallow my feelings. And a hell of alot of pizza."
So last Grandma died a year ago and I was starting to get over the guilt and the emotional mulching apparatus that is my family. I eased back on the drinking alone in the dark and started to walk the dog more often.
Then this flu hits me. A woman I work with goes to the new Doc and gets me an appointment for the second day I have symptoms. We're all a little nervous about this swine flu.
The Doc comes in for a few minutes and then in comes a PA who lays down the law about being fat and old and high blood pressure. She insists I get a physical and gives me a great handout about what to expect. My last physical was in 9Th grade when I played football.
The handout has a small type sentence about Digital Prostate Screening. I think "Hey all right they came up with some sort of imaging thing for that. Thank God for progress!"
So today I go to my physical (for some reason you can't wear deodorant?). The nurse takes about a gallon of blood and hooks me up to the EKG. She then shaves three half moons into my chest hair and re hooks me to the EKG.
The Nurse and I have fun taking my blood pressure together and then I get to leave a urine sample and wait in another room for the Doc.
It's a regular room without anything that looks like a Digital Imaging device. About this time it hits me "Digit is an old word for finger". So the visit ends like so many other things in my life. A stranger playing with my junk and despair.
On the up side I get a fancy new prescription for a pretty red pill to take every day forever.

Good Morning Starshine!

I woke up in a great mood. This never happens. I had a full and enjoyable weekend with the boy. We went to the Renaissance Festival and put in the garden. (I went a little overboard with the half price tomato plants, so any one who follows this blog and can find me will get free tomato's.)
But it was a great weekend.
People have always said "Oh Children are amazing! They are sooo honest and good." Well that is bullshit. A first grader in Athens Ga was arrested not long ago for battery against her teacher. It wasn't a simple she slapped me battery, it was a monster wailing away with a stick.... but I digress.
The cool thing about kids is seeing what they pick up from you and change around. Like gardening. The boy doesn't know much about what we were doing. Sure we do it every year and all but kids forget.
I showed him how to use the shovel head to measure between plants. After a few holes he was a pro. When I was his age I spent the summer in a Texas Trailer Park putting in a new water line. We dug all day in the heat and then went swimming at the park pool. The boy and I went to a friends farm and swam in a pond.
I was even in a good mood at lunch when 'Good Morning Star shine' came on the oldies station. What the hell is all the 'gloopy doopy doopy' crap in the middle? Were we that stoned back then?

Some days will not die.

So I fired my people today. If you have never fired someone you should. You get to see the five stages of grief in a few minutes. Only it's all out of order and usually ends with anger. They never leave on acceptance.
It doesn't help that they are one person out of fifty being laid off today. It does not help that you tried to get them in on another department. It does not help that you are probably in the same boat in a few months. What really does not help is the Unemployment form that's been filled out in advance.
"What the fuck is this shit! How long have you planned this Motherfucker! Unemployment don't pay shit!" This is from the person who will be called back last. The Secretary thought it would be a nice gesture to have the forms ready in advance. She feeds on misery and came in early this morning to be finished by break time.
I got to work early too. I planned to head off the panic and rumors but it was too late. Our night shift got their bad news at 6:30am and the underground telegraph was fired up at 6:33 am. So I was an hour late before I started. So I waited until the forms were done and started the long drawn out emotional meetings.
By 5 I was exhausted and ready to go home. But the boss had other plans. The other Supervisors and I had to sit and debrief him on how the lay offs went. What we told who and for how they took the news. "And for Christ's sake I hope none of you sorry bastards gave anyone a solid time frame." Uh well I told them it would be at least a month and maybe two or three before we would..."Oh for the love of fuck, who said anything about calling people back!" and on and on.
The last hope of the day was Jimmy Buffet. He's in town tonight and the girl I've been seeing for the last few weeks got tickets.
No. I'm not sitting under the stars with a honey and a cold one listening to songs of Margaritaville. She was very upset that I worked late and so gave me the I'll be ready in a minute for a solid hour and the show had started.
Finally I said "It's been fun. I'll see you around. I'm locking this door for you." and headed for the liquor store.
So I'm listening to the Live in Anguilla CD and drinking a premixed Mojito.
To show my growth as an Adult Man, I'm staying mostly sober and riding my bike to work in the morning.

Hello, Goodbye!

I like my job most of the time. Let me tell you I do not believe in careers. A job is what you do so you can do what you want to (or have to). Some people have great jobs like chocolate tasters or SCUBA guides in Cozumel. But it's still a job and eventually it will wear on you. "Well Boss I'd love to take the boat with the Tropicana Tanning Team out but my ear hurts." "Gee, the new Godiva Bars sound fantastic bu the Doctor says I have work related Diabetes".
I've been with this company for 10 years July and we've never had a slow down. I've worked my way from machine operator to night shift supervisor to Shipping/Receiving/Packaging Manager. Since the packers are the last people to see our stuff before the customers, I've been allowed to handpick my people. No one who works for me has less than 3 years at the company and most have 5 or 6. I've been to most of their houses and helped 4 of them move. I've had cook outs for all 16 at my house. Every year they make me a giant goat stew and take me out for drinks on my birthday. They make me look really good with the people up the ladder.
Tomorrow is going to be a bad day at work. The economy has hit our little factory, later than most, but we have to lay off 40% of our people in the morning. As a Manager, I got to pick the 40% of my department to fire.
So tonight I am staying sober. For my friends who get the late night insane emails. Friday morning is going to be on fire!