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 The super cool video games have been replaced by crap.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!