quick update - the sleeping co-worker

Currently crackhead is still working. He worked last night. The rumor going around is that he might not be with us long. I expect him to be there tonight (Monday).

He's also going around promoting his innocence and that he wasn't sleeping. He was 'looking at the ground' while thinking. Three of us, including me, fully thought he was sleeping. The supervisor that found him is number 4 that thought he was sleeping. And when I saw him his head was slowly slumping down onto his chest. Yeah,...he wasn't sleeping.

Crackhead was also saying how he was yelling back at the supervisor. This is possible as the pair walked into the super's office out of sight but I kinda doubt it. Crackhead was all tough talk but it carried little weight. After he left the area having protested his innocence my group agreed he was asleep.

Crackhead also failed to mention once the passing supervisor that caught him sleeping the first time that night. Apparently that supervisor walked right up to him and kicked the chair crackhead was in waking him up.

Well, if crackhead loses his job it's his own fault. And he's still working under the temp. agency so the union ain't going to lift a finger to help him.

No sleeping on the job!

No, it wasn't me. There's this fairly new guy - still a temp - and he's a little weird, usually a big bundle of juvenile energy. We all knew our supervisor had switched for one night with the 'by the book' supervisor of our mirror shift. So crackhead Bob, the bundle of juvenile energy gets caught sleeping by another supervisor passing through our department. Later, crackhead Bob gets caught sleeping a second time by the 'by the book' supervisor. So this supervisor sent him home. I guess he also told crackhead Bob to call before coming to work to see if he has a job. We all know being caught sleeping on the job is grounds for termination. We work 12 hours, we work 7pm to 7am, but we all know there is no sleeping allowed.

Our super probably would've given the guy a warning but I'm hearing a note was left explaining the situation to the lady that runs our department and rules over the supervisors. The feeling of my co-workers is that our supervisor will have no choice but to fire crackhead Bob or suffer the rath of the boss lady himself. We'll see.

I couldn't believe another co-worker of mine. The song Ohio came on. It's by Crosby, Stills, Nah and Young and is about the U.S. National Guard firing on and killing Kent State University students protesting the Vietnam war back in the early 1970's. The song was written and released around 1971 I think.

Anyways, being a jerk, for fun I started yelling at my co-worker Jon. I was mouthing off, 'I was there, Jon! 4 dead! 4 DEAD!!!!!' I was pretty dramatic about it pretending to be really angry. So, about 3 minutes after my rant, co-worker Adam - a 21 year old or so - leans over and asks in all seriousness 'Were you really there , Jim?' And then he asked how old I was. I replied that even at my advanced age of 35 that I was a mere babe at the time and nowhere near Kent University. Hell, I doubt I was even out of diapers! But I was highly amused by Adam's question for the rest of the work night. Ah, youth. It can be so dumb! LOL!

And Sara pimped futureworkscomics.com on her blog! Thanks, Sara! And thank you for the gifs for the website! I'll post them after my 3 days at work.

Ugh! I'm useless today.

I am. After getting only 90 minutes in the middle of a 36 hour period I'm fairly useless today. I slept until noon and forced myself out of bed to keep from sleeping more than the 8 or 9 hours I did. But I don't feel all that rested, just very sluggish and with not much desire to do anything.

Had really weird dreams on Tuesday or maybe it was Wednesday. I was trying to sleep but kept getting woken up by various sounds. The hazards of working nights, days tend to be noisy making it hard to sleep. So I kept falling in and out of REM sleep and having tons of dreams.

One had me in a car accident with my Chevy Cavalier. That's pretty much all I remember. Another had me as a patient of psychologist Dr. Melfi from HBO's The Sopranos. I had entered a version of my parent's house that was Dr. Melfi's office. The house was about half as narrow as it normally is. I was looking out from the dining room watching her trying to cross the road to get to her neighbor's to return something. Turns out this neighbor was my former dentist. Dr. Melfi kept trying to cross the street but it was quite busy with traffic. A suburban area road with lots of trees and such but a really busy road. Cars kept slowing down and yelling at her and flipping her off. After some hazardous attempts she made it across. She was returning a pait of shorts. Super bright red ones that were huge as if they would fit and 8' giant. They were like cut-off's but neatly tailored. Really weird.

As I was waiting for her to return my friend Wendy showed up for her appointment. And Wendy somehow had parked her SUV in my parent's living room which was more like a bare room. Wendy was a little taller than she normally is for whatever reason, almost as tall as me. I think we b.s.'ed for a second or two. I then lended forward to kiss and she was receptive to it. So we start getting a heavy wet kiss going when I get worried that Dr. Melfi was going to find us. On some level, and Wendy agreed (you sicko, Wendy!) that it was hot to get caught. But I didn't feel I could keep having Dr. Melfi as my pysche doc if I had been caught doing the deed in her place of business.

And then the dream ended.

I had another dream where I was driving all around. It was on highways and then in and around a city. It was no city that I really knew in real life but i seemed to somewhat know it in my dream. Again, I was in my Cavalier. The other car accident dream and this one were somewhat similar so I may be confusing parts of them with one another. I ended up at a store that looked something like a Home Depot and found one of my older brothers there needing a ride. But someones else was already on the way to pick them up. I think I gave them a ride anyways.

We ended up at some place like an industrial park. The driveway entrance was a small hill leading steeply down surrounded on all sides by buildings. For some reason my mom was in the car and I was no driving it remotely using an oversized calculator to control it. Mom and I were out of the car and it started driving off. I tried to stop it using the remote control but it wasn't working and it went down the hill into the industrial park. I was slamming all the buttons in a panick but nothing wroked and the car slammed into big truck door to a wharehouse. I ran down to find all the people surrounding my overturned car. I kept my silence as they asked various questions of one another but I finally owned up to owning the car. Things seemed to peeter out and I started walking around the area seeing all the heavy contrustion equipment. Some benign stuff happened like watching a bucket loader being fired up to move my car and the dream ended.

I think that dream occurred before the Dr. Melfi dream.

I also had an erotic dream involving some fetish stuff but I'll keep that one to myself. :)

Today is one of my brother's birthdays. He's 39. We're heading up to mom's because she cooks a birthday dinner for who ever's birthday it is. Usually it's whatever the birthday person wants but I don't know if my requested requested anything. There'll be a cake too. I'm 35 but I'm a sucker for a good birthday cake. So I'm defiantely there. LOL!

More shit from my brother's ex

Not a bad weekend overall. Wasn't home much other than to sleep. Visited friends and family most of Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Updated the www.futureworkscomics.com page. It hasn't shown up yet on my browsers but I added an e-mail listing and a new page that for the moment only has a single new pic. My hosting service says it sometimes takes up to 48 hours for updates to post to the internet. Yeesh.

Trouble with my D&D character Nef AKA Neferteiri Furio. In the game, she's a rogue more commonly known as a thief. Because the national campaign I play in is battle intensive everything else secondary, certain characters become fairly useless as the levels of danger go up. Rogue is one of these characters. It kinda sucks because my vision for the character is to have a raven familiar that can talk and do some impressive things while Nef leaps around opponents with her tumbling skills ripping their guts out with her 10' long spiked chain weapon. The visuals and role-playing aspects are terrific. The character would make a great character for a novel. But the way the game is played my poor character will slowly be unable to hit her opponents but will get hit by them very often. Sometimes the game mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons really suck. Pretty much, if you don't play a very specific wizard, cleric, or massive fighter type in the campaign I play, at higher levels you won't live. You won't even be useful. So it goes. But because I don't play all that often in the said campaign (maybe 6 to 8 times a year) I should be able to enjoy Nef for at least a year or two before she becomes worthless which is cool.

A weird dream involving my friend Sara. In the dream I called her up. I got either a recorded message or very automated but chipper sounding Sara. I then panicked and hung up without saying a word because I figured she didn't want to hear from me. I woke up with a headache to boot. :(

And finally, yep, more shit from my brother's ex. Once again, she doesn't want my 6 year old nephew to visit his grandparents. In her mind, we talk shit about her to her kids. This is out and out wrong. We talk shit about her but to ourselves. Never when my nephew is around to hear. If nothing else, it's for the very reason she's bitching. The other reason she doesn't want him there is because he gets dirty and because he recently got posion ivy causing him to get a rash. My parents have 5 acres of land that is part field, partly wooded and has a nice stream running across it. It was an awesome place to grow up. I got dirty and got poison ivy all the time. It's part of being a little kid. Meanwhile, she lives in a duplex with neighbors on all sides and maybe a 1/4 acre lot if she's lucky. But apparently she'd prefer my nephew sit in his room watching TV all day. We're thinking that's what my 12 year old niece does. She's over 120 pounds at age 12 and she's not tall. I haven't seen her in some time but she sounds fat. And it's most likely all about her lifestyle - sittin' in front of a TV or computer with little to no exercise.

And today my brother's ex called here looking for him. She fought my brother for full custody and won because my brother gave in terrified that he would lose his kids entirely if they went to court. Massachusetts apparently has a fairly bad habit of giving kids to their mothers in the vast majority of custody cases according to my brother. There's a whole lot more but currently the agreement is she can't leave the state to live anywhere else.

So!

She has full custody and it's her week to have my nephew for the summer (they switch off weeks during the summer vacation). The boys & girls club (i.e. daycare) calls to have my nephew picked up. It's unclear who they called first but that they did call my brother's place of former employment. He got laid off just 4 days ago, last Friday being his last day of work. So the ex calls here telling me my brother has to pick up my nephew immediately. Well, he ain't here. He went fishing and doesn't have a cell phone.

Seeing as I am long winded, the short version is, she wanted my brother to pick up his son on her week of custody. This is most likely because she has been repremanded for leaving her job to pick him up before. So she bitches about not getting any help from my brother even though she FOUGHT for full custody and got it. Hel-fucking-lo?!?!?! He helps plenty. So we have to put up with her usual song and dance about what a horrible family we are. Gee, it has nothing to do with the fact that she cheated on my brother throughout their marriage, lied to him from day one saying her first child was his, doesn't acknowledge the fact that they lived with my parents for 9 months free of charge when they were down and out, asked for the divorce when my brother didn't want one, lived in his duplex for 8 months free of charge while 'looking' for a new apartment and then complaining when my brother legally kicked her out that she wasn't given enough time to find an apartment...and on and on. Christ, what a piece of work she is.

And I highly doubt that any of the child support he gives her goes to the kids. Definately not my nephew, the only new clothes and shoes he's ever been seen with is what my brother buys him.

The Party's over

It's back to work tonight after some 10 days off. Looking forward to the money but not the return of long, 12 hour shifts. I only work 2 days and then have three off though.

What did I do in those 10 days?

Got about half the work done that I had planned for the comic. I may have set my goals at unrealistic levels. I was to work 6 hours a day on the comic. Didn't do that. What I did get done though is collect a number of poems from the contributors. I also got 10 or 12 pages of bio's basically totally done. This includes all the art production of drawing/scanning/grayscaling/importing into Adobe Illustrator stuff. Also wrote up the bio's and had them editted. I just have to replace the mock-up's with the real thing. I also have most of the back cover done. It's coming out better than I expected. I will have to rework the front cover. Not satisfied with the image I currently have for it.

Decided not to buy the Bengal kitten. This kinda sucks as I was rather hoping to get one. But $800 for a kitten is too extravagant and expense. However, the lady I visited is retiring one of her females from breeding. The cat is currently promised to another lady but I got the impression I impressed the lady enough to be considered as the buyer instead. The cat is a little over a year old and is really neat. She also has the softess hair I've ever felt on a cat. The lady wants about $100 for the cat and the cost of fixing it. I'd go for that. We'll see as the breeder wants one more litter out of the cat.

Didn't play any D&D On-line but I did play a bit of Call of Duty 2. This game almost never gets old for me. It's just running around shooting up other people in a World War 2 setting. It's simple and fun and there is almost always a big game of 20 people or more going on somewhere. Sometimes I do fairly well and other times I get totally stomped. And there's always someone bitching about the play of the game. I guess they don't get the idea of stress relief.

I actually didn't see much of my friends. I think we only got together 3 times. I did work at the comic shop one Wednesday. It threw off my whole system for the day though. I hate it when I slosh through a day.

I'm stuck in the middle as the communication guy between my brother and my neighbor and it's getting old. My brother was suppose to bring this guy mulch for his flower beds. According to my brother the guy never set a specific date. Now the guy's been wanting the mulch for a few weeks and my brother hasn't delievered. My neighbor's an okay guy but I hate being the communication guy. I'm the one that has to hear the shit from both of them. I have no other interaction other than being caught in the middle. It's annoying. They should take care of their shit without involving me. I think it's finally come to that point - and thank god.

Injuries are finally costing my fantasy baseball team. I've literally had to replace half my team over the season and pickings are slim for good replacement players. I've fallen from 2nd to 4th. So far this week, my current opponent's pitching pitched something like three shut outs. You can't beat that so I expect to lose again in most of the categories and plummet farther down the ranks of the league. I've sat in either 1st or 2nd since the start of the baseball season so to fall like a sinking ship now really sucks.

I'm sick of writing now. LOL!

My computer does weird things

I use two different web browsers because both have problems. I usually use Mozilla Firefox for most of my stuff but for whatever reason, it will not load Yahoo.com. I have no idea why. This all started about a month and a half ago. One of the most common pages in all the internet and it won't load it.

I also use Internet Explorer. It also won't load Yahoo. But I can load Yahoo groups and 'my yahoo'. So go figure. MySpace pretty much dies on me after viewing 1 profile and then won't load a new one no matter what browser I use.

So then I go to comixfan.com almost always with IE. It wouldn't load the page up at all after 4 seperate times. So I fired up Mozilla and it loaded it up in 2 seconds, literally. So who the hell knows what goes on with my computer.

My brother-in-law did well in his emergency surgery so that's great news there. And my brother got a job which is also very good news. There was no way he shouldn't have a job because he has too many valueable skills NOT to be hired. Stuff like heating & air conditioning exp., waste water treatment license, boiler technition for 10+ years and all sorts of mechanical skills.

The comic's coming along. I haven't done as much as I could have but it is progressing. It's looking pretty good overall though.

Still in 2nd place in my Fantasy Baseball league. But because of my computer's shenanigans, things are getting screwed up where guys I put in don't get put in and still sit on my bench.

Things are going pretty well so I can't complain. My holiday paycheck was about $100 more than I was expecting so good news there.

And I'm actually terrified by what's going on in the Middle East. I am so glad I live in America. But all these crazy folks over there actually have a big bearing on my life. They could push gas prices to extremes in weeks or days instead of months. And they might drag us into more war. I've actually never been scared of war before. Here's a thing I noticed about the middle east. It's not based on countries per say, it's not Syria versus Israel. It's muslims vs jews according to the terrorists. It's a shitty situation all the way around.

Pirates and anime

Saw the new Pirates of the Carribeanne (sic) today. I enjoyed it overall. The first one was funnier but this one seemed more about adventure. It's also a 'middle' movie of a triology so it has the tough task of being a full story on its own while trying to tell part of a bigger story. I thought it was well worth the money I paid to see it. But it's loooong. The good thing is, I didn't notice how long until I checked the time in my car. That's a good sign when a movie is long and you don't notice it. Pretty sure it's 2:30+ minutes long. My biggest complaint about the movie was that I had a hard time understanding what the actors were saying. They seemed to be really playin up pirate talk so I was kinda lost for the first part of the movie.

Went to ConnectiCon on Saturday. This was, of course, after working Friday 7pm to Saturday 7am. So I was kinda concerned about how well I'd feel. Connecticon is a anime con that had some Dungeons and Dragons there. That's what I went to do because I have no interest in anime. The place seemed to have a pretty good attendance and I think 70% or more were in costumes. So it was defiantely a fun visual experience. I was concerned about the gaming though. The registration I used had only 8 players there which is a puny amount. I was worried the games wouldn't happen. There was enough for 2 tables in the morning slot and then it wasn't a worry because lots of people showed up for the other games.

The D&D games were decent. The first was a wee bit weak because the DM had a soft voice and I missed half the stuff he was saying. A couple of the players were really weird too. These guys seemed like the type that give D&D players a bad name.

The second game my table and I froze our asses off. The AC was really cold in there. I was wearing a t-shirt and jogging pants that are a little heavy and I was shivering. I even tucked/pulled my arms inside my shirt trying to build body heat. This got a laugh out of one guy but I noticed him and another guy do the same thing later on. Apparently we were all freezing!

My D&D friend tried to get me to go down on Sunday instead and I'm glad I didn't. He played one game and then left because he had played everything else that was playing the second and final Sunday gaming slot.

I saw the church fanatic former comic store owner down there. In fact, he nearly walked right into me. And he didn't notice who I was. Meh. I'm always a little leary around him.

I saw on kid that really struck me. This was a teenaged girl. She was sorta dressed in almost a suit or something with a white shirt. Kinda reminded me of someone at a funeral or something. She had her hair black and in a paige boy kinda cut. Heavy black make-up and either fangs or braces, I couldn't tell. And I think she was wearing those godawful gothic platform shoes.

Anyways, I don't know what she was doing but she was walking around very Golem like. She was either leading her friends around or they were following her around like she was a dog leading them. It was just such a bizarre image. A skinny kid with a crazy smile skulking around with a guy and a girl following her like she was a guide or something. They may have been some sort of anime character but I have no idea because I don't watch the stuff.

So overall, despite the $35 entry fee and $16 for all day parking, it was worth it because I got in to play three games like I had planned.

I'm on company shut-down time. Bacially, I'm not working for around 10 days straight but I also have no money coming either. I planned appropriately so I should be fine. I then go back to work for 2 days and then have 3 days off because of the way our crazy schedules work. So I'm spending the time trying to get the bulk of my Necropolis Chronicles Companion issue done. I inked up three character sketches today and pieced together some scanned images so that they are ready for use.

On the bad news front, my brother-in-law needs emergency surgery. He's got degenerative disks in his spines and will need mulitple operations. I don't trust my sister's driving so I volunteered my services to drive them to the hospital for this Thursday for the first operation. But he has to be there for 6am. Ugh! My mom plans to go to keep my sister company during the whole time. I'll be a snot most likely and return home to sleep.

Oh yeah, my trouble making niece got pulled over by the cops. Seems the 12 year old was driving a golf cart down the road and someone turned her in. Actually, I'm kinda amused by the whole situation. I'm going to guess she was pretty scared during the whole incident. At least she was polite to the police I'm told.

Later!

Nothing overly new

Nope, not really. Was a bit of a slug yesterday sleeping and staying on my computer mostly. Monday and Tuesday were spent mostly at my parents place because of the 4th of July holiday. Great chow both days. Working tonight and tomorrow. And then when I get out on Saturday morning I come home to eat and then go to ConnectiCon. It's an anime con but I'm going to play Dungeons & Dragons. This could backfire as there are only a couple of people signed up to play games and it's $35 to the con for the day. I'll be bringing along a couple of couples of my comic just in case D&D doesn't go off.

My friend and his buddy are going Sunday for D&D. There's nobody signed up at all for Sunday gaming. He wanted me to switch days and go Sunday. Screw him. He's an alright guy but I know where I stand with him on a friendship level - he only contacts me when he wants to play D&D or maybe split a room at a con. And he usually bows out if I try to get a group of people to do anything else.

Things didn't go well at the comic store after I left last Friday. The co-owner doesn't want anything to do with the drunk now. It's kinda too bad because the drunk ain't a bad guy at heart, just weak-willed and lacking in discipline. And it gets him into serious trouble. I'm talking drug-overdose bad. It really sucks to have a friend that you really don't know what'll happen to from day to day.

As usual, my fantasy baseball team is losing again. I'm down 4 categories to 5 or maybe 6. I'm playing the 9th place team and I'm in 2nd place. The team is run by my friend. Last time we face each other I lost something like 3wins to his 6 wins and I lost the next 2 or 3 weeks. And again, like before, I have 4 of my starting pitchers facing off against one another and only one start from each of them this week. So at best, I will come out with 2 wins in a best case scenario. Last time, was NOT a best case scenario. And it doesn't help that I've already left something like 5 runs, 5 hits, 2 HRs and 3+ RBIs on my bench while the other guys have gone a combined something like 0 for 10 or 12. Sigh. Of course, if you don't follow baseball in detail you probably have no idea what I'm talking about.

Worked on some more character portraits for The Necropolis Chronicles Companion issue. Per plan, I have 3 to go and 1 shot of the school to do. I have so more optional shots in case I need to fill pages. These would be of characters not yet introduced though. I may do a 'things to come' picture showing glimpses of bad guys to come. I REALLY like two story arcs that have yet to see print and I'd love for them to get printed. We shall see.

Think that's all for now.

Good news! Well, sort of...

My internet friend Sara is okay. That's the good news.

The bad news is that she had a house fire and has no internet access for a bit. And that's some fairly suckless news on her end. Me, I'm just glad she's okay.

Oh yeah, the copyright for The Necropolis Chronicles is finally registered! I only sent the thing in early 2005. Yeesh.

random stuff

There's a new sci-fi convention with gaming in Springfield! This is really cool because we only have one a year and that's in November and it has very little gaming. But I guess nobody likes coming to Springfield because the registration fees are kinda high compared to other cons. And then there's the bad news. I have to work that weekend. Frackle-frazzle. If there's some gaming availiable I may go Friday night. I could kill myself and try and go for a few hours Saturday but I like to be in bed napping anywhere from 2:30pm on Saturdays. 12 hour shifts become quite hard with little to no sleep. And yeah, I could just call in to work but it's also my 'big' wek meaning I get 8 hours OT and it makes for a NICE check so I don't like to skip those. We'll see.

Stumble into a fight between two friends at the comic store. One of the owner was one and the other was a friend that works there but quit/ is quitting because he's been less than reliable lately. Now, I can't blame the owner because he's rather justified overall. But! He loves drama. He needs drama. He lives for drama and starts a lot of shit when there's no reason for it. And I got the feeling as soon as I walked in the drama either re-ensued or started up because I was there. So I hurriedly bought what I planned on and skirted out ASAP so I was there maybe 5 minutes.

The Bengal cat lady e-mailed me back. She mentioned that she has a couple of marble kittens who's patterning isn't all that terrific for shows and that she would consider selling one at a discount. She didn't say what kind of discount but I'll check out and see what's going on.

One the good news side of things my dental insurance kicked in. I was concerned because it had a $50 deductable but it paid the normal 80% like it said it would. So I now get to keep 3/4 of the money I set aside to pay the dentist because the insurance took care of it. Sweet! I put it into my 'cat' fund just in case I decide to pull the trigger on the Bengal cat.

I got my first raspberries yesterday! Only a whooping two, but I only planted the bushes this year. One tasted not so great and the other was what I was expecting for a taste which is good.

Saw a firweowrks display last night. It was pretty good. The town that puts them on is fairly small and not rich but they have a very nice, compact but exciting display. I am glad I went after considering not going out of laziness. And I would've been extremely lazy too because my brother drove because he takes his son to see them.

Ugh! Got the teller again. And he STILL sucks. Okay, I was a little out of it having just woken up but I really don't see what's so hard in understanding 'I'd like to cash this check and put $200 of it into checking'. So I see him type in my account and stare at the screen for a good 8 to 10 seconds and then ask me if it's a transfer of money. Sigh. So I re-explain what I want and he gives me my money. He proceeds to drop it to. Sigh. I'm glad i made sure to do my second transaction seperately because that usually totally screws him up. I always put $10 and whatever change there is into an account every week that I'm saving up to give to my nephew for a college fund. But when I tell 'the teller' that I would like $200 in my checking account, $10 and change into this seperate savings account and the remaining balance of the check to me in cash, it doesn't compute with this guy and I have to explain things three times over for him. And it usually takes literally like 8 minutes for him to process this. Maybe I should just go to direct deposit.

The plant shut down at work has been delayed by a couple of days because supplies are lasting longer than thought. I'm not sure if this will just delay the shutdown or shorten it. I think shorten it for my area because right now we are the bread and butter and really the future of Top Flite.

Later!