lonecity.com

When it comes to dealing with emotional situations I’m just about as close to a rock as a person can become.  I don’t have trouble setting through funerals or watching friends walk away and it happens not only without tears, but also without sadness.  Its not that I’m uncaring.  I just don’t form the same kinds of inter-personal relationships that others do.  Thats probably a big part of why I’m not married.  Your partner wants to feel that life with them is important to you and I have trouble conveying that feeling.  Mostly I guess because I’ve never found anyone that I felt I needed to be around.  Still some people you cannot help but have creep in.

Over this last weekend I gave away the eldest of my three younger sisters.  Seated watching her standing before the alter listing to the words of the bishop and and holding hands with her future husband I actually felt a tear form.  Its a strange feeling to me.  I never expected it.  I actually felt some sort of loss.

I’m a bit late writing this weeks entry into my blog because of the whole wedding fiasco.  I had to request two days off and I spent the majority of the both of them hauling things around for my little sister.  Its true that the bride was just glowing though.  Even with all the panic and fervor as the wedding approached she simply lit up the room.

On another note, my brother drove out to attend the wedding.  Its a fourteen hour drive so I don’t get to see him all that often.  After the wedding and for the next day or two he stayed at my home and we played nintendo pretty much the whole time.  (except when I went to work)  I’m pretty sure somewhere along in my blog I mentioned how good a game twilight princess is.  It would seem he agrees with me as I spent most of the time watching him play.  While I seldom buld attachments to people I do greatly enjoy observing them.  Watching as he trys to solve puzzles that I’d figured out the answer to already was most entertaining.  (though it was tough holding back and not giving him the solutions.

Aside from the video games and the wedding fiasco I’ve also suffered through my first week of work at the new job.  My boss is pretty damn hard to read.  I have no idea if I’m doing what they want or not.  I do know I’m in over my head.  I’ve got to find an alternate source of income.  I need a way out but even before that I need a backup.  I need that feeling of security.

Beware of Signs

Over the past fifteen or so years that my family has owned this home I’ve had the opportunity to visit the trans-jordan landfill about half a dozen times.  We don’t produce alot of waste, but theres been a few times that I’ve needed to haul a large item away.  Once it was the railroad ties that came as a part of the yard decor with the home.  (I always hated them…)  Another was when my refridgerator gave up the ghost.  Most recently it was hauling away the server cabinets that I spoke of in last weeks blog posting.  The scrap metal guy who was supposed to handle it didn’t come through so I took them down to be recycled.

Anyhow, theres this one little sign on the side of the road as you enter the landfill that almost inspires me to do something.  I want to make a monster and paste it to the back of the sign so it looks like the sign is its mouth or something.  This clever little road sign has a message that is so ironic that it just jumps out at you.  Every time I’ve gone to the landfill I wanted to take a camera and photograph the sign but until this last trip I’ve managed to forget every time.  Sadly the picture didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped.  You can’t read the sign in the photo.  To sum it up, the sign reads “Beware of signs.”  Its almost as if its a foreboding warning that the signs around the area are like wild animals about to attack.

I have a broken dryer and I managed to find a cheaper replacement than I could get it fixed for.  I had planned to give it to a local shop that refurbishes appliances and resells them.  After seeing that my photo didn’t turn out I’m tempted to take the dryer to the landfill for recycling just so I can try to retake the picture.

That’s going to be the motto for this week.  “Beware of signs.”  Many changes going on in life with the new job and such.  They all seem like a sign that I need to do something other than just accept the transfer and keep on keeping on.  I’m pretty sure I hate my new boss.  I never wanted to be a (supervisor/lead/coordinator) whatever the hell they feel like calling it today.  I was perfectly happy bieng a grunt.  If it hadn’t come down to take a promotion or a layoff I’d never have accepted.  Unfortunatly I still need a job.  I’m ok managing people if I don’t have to do it.  If I see someone standing around I give them something to do.  I just don’t feel right about having to be responsible for them.  Two days in and I already feel like I need out.

My instinct is to ride it out because things are bound to get better, but all the signs that I need to beware of are saying other things.  Things like “run for the doors,”  “Find another job,” “It’s time to move on,” ect.

Well thats all I’ve got for this week.  We’ll see what happens in the next couple of days.  I might get a better picture of that happy little sign to post here later on.  Or maybe not.

Its finally over!  The doors are closed to the public.  The sign on the front of the building has been taken down and we’re well into stripping the building down to the bare cinder block walls.  We’re just a few days worth of shipping away store fixtures and I’ll never have to stop in utah county again!

I got a good sense of what I’m in for at my new store the other day and I’m positive its going to be more work and a worse job than what I have had before.  Still I guess I should be happy.  For one, I still have a job and among a recession thats a good thing.  Another is that the worse the job looks the more I’ll shine when I do it well.  (Just a chipper way of saying I’ll have to work my ass off.)

A couple of weeks ago I promised I’d put up a photo of the pavers I bought.  I finally managed to get the palm hotsync software re-installed so I can get the photos off my phone onto the computer.  (I hate cell phones, but I love the palm treo 650…)  This little beast does everything I need for an organizer and it has the phone built in for emergencies.  I leave the phone turned off, but its nice to know I have it in a real emergency.  So far its replaced my watch, my alarm clock, it works as a portable mp3 player should I need one, and a portable video player.  Most cell phones do all that now a days, but this beast has done it for me for going on three full years now.

My 700 or so new Lodgestone Pavers

Anyway, I don’t have a whole heck of a lot going on this week.  Its my fifth or sixth straight week of working 20+ hours of overtime.  It’s great for the paychecks, but really makes it hard to talk about anything but what I worked on last week for the blog…

I did make a really stupid decision yesterday that has bugged me most of the day today.  As the final teardown of the store commences we find ourselves throwing out things that we couldn’t readily find a buyer for.  One such thing is a pair of Network Server Cabinets that held the stores datacenter computers.  The servers go back to our network IT department, but the cabinet was to be disposed of.  Once we were done selling things it turned up that our cabinets were unsold and had nowhere to go.  I happen to know the store paid between $3000 and $4000 dollars for these two cabinets about two and a half years ago.

My immediate thought was not to let them throw away these cabinets, but rather to claim them and sell them myself on ebay.  So thats what I decided to do.  I loaded these very expensive monster cabinets onto my truck and dragged them home.  Here’s where the stupidity comes in though.  I don’t have a place to store them until I sell them.  I looked on ebay and these cabinets should sell at $500 used without a problem, but it might take a month or two to get them sold.   I’d also need a way to ship them freight.  (not going to happen)  So after a days debate and trying to figure out if I could convert them to pantry storage or a very obscure dvd cabinet I decided there’s just no way I can use or store them.  The final result is that I did what my store would have done.  I called a scrap metal guy and told him to come get em.  They won’t be an eyesore in my driveway by tomorrow.

I suppose it wasn’t as bad a decision bringing them home as I make it out to be.  Still I pride myself on not doing things like that.  Just the thought of making a few hundred bucks by doing an easy cary it home and ebay it move seemed like a good idea.  If I had a garage it might have been.  Oh well, done is done.  On to the final days of cleaning out the building and I’m on to a new chapter in my life.

Its strange how people can think of themselves as moral upstanding people and still do the most terrible things.  Con artists thinking they aren’t taking anything more than what people can spare will swindle the last dollar from a starving family and feel good about it.  Shoplifters will take from retail stores thinking that they arent hurting anyone but big businesses who can spare the money when in reality it comes directly out of the pockets of the hardest working most poorly paid people in the country.  The ones who have to stand there and smile and try to give good customer service to a bunch of filty thieves who have all day to do whatever they want.

A while back this subject came up when speaking with a co-worker in a past job.  For years he was a supervisor over many people at the kennecot copper mine in tooele utah.  Utah is well known for its mormon (moron?) population.  I’ll have to paraphrase a bit as I can’t remember exactly how he said it, but it went something like this. “Its strange how they look down on you for having a cup of coffee and for going to the store on a sunday but they don’t think twice about spending an hour of their employers paying time bullshitting in the breakroom.” It was a comment I couldn’t agree with more.

The problem seems to affect overly religious people more than your average folk.  Far right wing republicans as well.  Perhaps its the other way around though.  Perhaps they’re mentally deficent and that makes them religeous or republican.  Either way if you think about it its obsurd the kinds of acts these people commit and feel right by doing it.

The gay rights folks have been on the tv protesting alot lately.  Personally I don’t care one way or the other but its outrageous to me that the churches can spend MILLIONS of dollars promoting anti gay legislation that serves no real purpose.  Who the fuck cares what the defenition of marrige is anyway?  It does siken me to think that these people actually feel good about themselves for doing it.  This is tantamount to a hate crime and needs to be treated as such.

Anyhow I didn’t really want to go off topic and talk about the fags and the morons this week.  What really brought on this train of thought was a shoplifter in my store yesterday.  We’re two days away from closing the doors forever and a 50 something grandmother dressed like a church lady comes in to rip us off.  Seariously folks a store in its last days of liquidation doesn’t have anything worth stealing anyways.

This woman has to have some slip in the line between right and wrong and must actually believe what she’s doing is ok or something.  She heads over to the video game section and gathers up the last of the remaining ps3 games, brings them to the empty part of the store and hides them under a shelf.  Presumably she expects them to still be there when the discounts have gone up and to get them for next to nothing.  Perhaps the thought was “I wasn’t really stealing if I buy the merchandise for pennys on the dollar?”  Whatever the justification was she obviously knew she was doing wrong, chose to do it, and felt ok with her decision.  She did it right in front of me!  Then she came over to me and tried to make idle chit-chat.

What a fucking piece of human filth.  At least a robber has the courage to know he is doing wrong and to act the part.  A car jacker isn’t going to dress in church clothes and pretend hes a good person.  Hes going to hold up a gun and tell you get out of the car.

I see the same trash worthy traits in some of my co-workers.  Its funny how the idea of ethics is only an ideal.  You either chose to do right or chose to do wrong.  Instead of coming up with some elaborate scheme to buy an appliance for pennies on the dollar why not just steal the appliance?  It seems like people actually believe that as long as they paid something for it it wasn’t actually stealing.

I can understand the motive for shoplifing in children.  They want something.  They don’t understand the consequences.  They take the shortest route they can concieve of to get it.  Its when the same mental path gets taken by an educated adult who damn well knows better that it pisses me off.  If they’re a junkie I can see where the motivation might exceed the sane sense.  I can understand even if I don’t agree with it.  What really fucks with my head is when someone like this woman does it.  She obviously was capable of buying the games.  She obviously knew what she was doing.  It was just somehow skewed to where she wasn’t thinking what she was doing was wrong.  This brings me back to the thought about the right wing republicans sponsoring hate legislation.  Somehow these people have an unbreakable sense that what they belive is right not only for themselves but for everyone and even if its a total load of bullshit.

I belive strongly in the total and complete separation of church and state.  Your religeon has no place in politics.  Spending millions to sponser a bill and to influence voters to pass a bill defining the “defenition of marriage” is an outrage to me.  The government has no reason to even know if people are married.  Marrige is a religeous institution.  I’m going to have to stop writing now because even thinking about these stupid people any more will keep me from sleeping tonight.