Good weekend

Blog 032607


ConnCon was lots of fun. I’m quite glad I went. I was a little fuzzy in the head on Friday morning after getting out of work. It was a pain in the ass night because there were too many hands in the cookie jar. 4 people were trying to determine what jobs went to what stamp press and nobody was communicating so when I went to fill the orders of the jobs, many had been moved to new presses without me know. It caused much confusion and one job got lost. Nobody could find it. I think I’m getting the blame for it which really sucks. I know of at least 4 separate jobs that got switched from press to press with little communication to me so I looked like an ass when I went to fill the open slots with more stock and it was the wrong stock. I can’t really say it felt like a bad night, just a headless chicken night. I was glad to get out of there though.

The trip down to Stamford was easy. My buddy drove my car and he showed me a way that cuts off like 15 minutes of highway driving. That was cool because it’s like a 2 and ½ drive at 70mph or more the way I go. The Merrit Parkway is also more scenic than I-91 & I-95.

I was a little apprehensive because I wasn’t able to pre-register. Mostly it was my own fault. Luckily I got there early enough to play every game but one that I had hoped to play.

We all then totally geeked to playing games, mostly Dungeons and Dragons, for 3 days straight. Of course, I also had to put up with 500 pound men farting near me (good GOD!), body order from geeks, and another 500 pound man blowing chunks in the men’s room as I took a marathon long piss. I also bought two boxes of Girl Scout cookies too!

The gaming was fun and I enjoyed playing my three characters overall. The Red Cowl, my wizard is the most powerful of my characters. I enjoyed whipping out sculpted maximized lightning bolts and fireballs dealing 60 points of damage per hit. That’s geek speak for the ignorant.

I saw a number of old con friends that I hadn’t seen in some time. They are ‘con’ friends because I only get to see them at cons. There was a hot Russian girl there this year that I hadn’t seen before. She felt sorry for one of my characters. That character had been magically diseased by a powerful necromancer. My character’s magical illness progress from pock marks in the shape of small hands to being extremely vulnerable to heat and flame. It then progressed to the pock marks oozing green puss and having an aura of scent of decaying flesh that could make people sick. Finally, her eyes turned sickly yellow and she couldn’t stand any kind of bright lights. She actually advanced to the final stage before dying which was her joints stiffening but I used my ‘reset button’ that I had. So my character is back to ‘stage 1’ which is the pock marks only. She could suffer all the stages again until she is removed from the campaign. Oy.

I went and paid to have my taxes filed on Monday after the con. I got there just as the secretary’s grandson was brought to the office by her husband. She was in a hurry to get rid of me to hang out with her grandson. Pretty much, he got more attention then me and I was quickly handed my file and roundly ignored after that. But I got a good laugh. She asked her grandson in a grandiose voice ‘did you come to see grandma?’ and the little 4 or 5 year old replied with a long ‘no.’ Her voice quickly sounded almost miffed and she told him ‘don’t be fresh’. I left after that.

Soon after the taxes I headed to work for my job interview. It’s an art room job that’s non-union. It lasted about 30 or 40 minutes. I think I did okay but I was honest and admitted I had some weaknesses or at least lack of experience in some areas of what they do for the customer. But they also either know me or have the ability to check deeply into my work habits since I’ve been working there for over a year.

After the job interview I snapped off some pictures of me in my shirt and tie since I don’t often dress up.

After a nap I went to work. The night was okay. I was training the guy that won the bid to do the do I’m currently doing. I’m just a fill-in guy so even though I like the job, it was never really mine to keep. He seems like he can handle it. Strangely, his mouth is in a perpetual frown but he seems like a normal guy and not a jerk.

Got home from work and immediately headed for the car shop I frequent to get new tires for my car. I really needed them. Part of my tax refund will pay the bill.

I got home and the weather was awesome: clear and warm. I went to check on my raspberry bushes that didn’t seem to be in good shape. I walked into my house and started bellowing out a song. I didn’t even realize that while I was walking behind my house that my brother had come home from his doctor’s visit. When he opened the door to the bathroom I was suitably taken by surprise. I shouldn’t have been, I walked past his car that had not been there literally five minutes ago.

My fantasy baseball league draft started as I was driving home from ConnCon. Unlike football, I’m not as good with the players so I had no problem with the computer drafting my team. It looks like a balanced team overall with more offensive power than pitching. Unlike this last year, this year we used players from both the NL and AL. So that means teams look like All-Star teams. While I prefer just players from one league, we had 5 or more new players to the league that don’t know baseball all that well. The winners will most likely be the teams that have the most MLB players that career years. Still, it should be fun. Last year I finished in second losing in our league’s World Series.

I had a weird dream this afternoon. I kept waking up because the local Air Force base had planes practicing landings so I literally had the biggest planes in the military flying very low over my house as I tried to sleep which sucked. My dream had me with some laid off co-workers along the trail that leads to the back field of my parent’s land. For some reason, one co-worker and I started wrestling or fighting. I got him in a headlock and slipped my arm more around his throat to choke him out. I either wanted to choke him into unconsciousness or actually tried to kill him! Yow! I can’t recall killing him but the cops were after me and I was on the run. Mostly I was on foot huffing around my old hometown but it wasn’t the same. I was running through backyards, made it close to the local mall and eventually made my way to a roller skating rink (that doesn’t exist in real life). I was on TV and fliers already. I could hear sirens in the distance. I decided it was time to leave before they arrived. I walked right past two advancing cop cars but another cop from somewhere started chasing me on foot. I was fleeing through suburban areas of houses with big back yards and lots of trees.

I can’t recall the rest of the dream. I don’t recall if I was caught but I know the cop was in the area I was and feverishly searching for me. And I recall mulling over turning myself in or fleeing to another state in the mid-west.

So I’m very happy I went to Conncon and that resulted in a good weekend. My job situation is still ever changing with me still bidding on numerous jobs including non-union jobs. I think the art room job is less paying than any job at Top Flite so I may not take it if offered the position. So things are pretty much the usual. LOL!

Oh, wu-u-un-der-ful....

Blog 032107

I’ve figured out why I’m having dreams about work. In these dreams I’m told or find out that my work isn’t done and that it has to be done before I leave. These dreams are so real that I wake up almost getting out of bed to hurry to work only to realize that it is a dream and that I often have 6 to 8 hours before I have to be to work.

This morning I really think I’ve discovered why I’m having these dreams. It’s because of my co-worker. My job is to have a several tables loaded and ready, two orders deep of golf balls for the on-coming shift. Pretty much, it’s about 12 feet of table. My co-worker’s job is to have the orders ready at the stamping machines. He has two carts for every stamping machine. He pulls the golf balls from my tables to put on his carts to bring to the stampers. So today, and pretty much every night, I have my area looking perfect for the next on first shift with 15 to 10 minutes left on our shift. Today, and like other days, my co-worker then runs over at the last minute with anywhere from 2 to 5 carts and puts a lot of holes in my supplies. So his area looks acceptable and my area looks like shit. It really drives me nuts. Sometimes I’m able to reload my area but most often, like today, I left with at least 3 areas needing to be reloaded. There were probably more because my co-worker was still working after we had all left and the next shift was arriving.

My co-worker is a decent guy and a hard worker. He also seems pretty intelligent. What I am not understanding is how he is coming to my area several times a week at the last minute to reload his carts. He blames it on the people at the stamp machines working until the last minute. I’m not sure that holds water with me because I’m a stamper and most of them seem to stop well before 15 minutes before the end of the shift. Maybe it’s just a log jam at the end? Or maybe he gets flustered because of being tired at the end of the night with a sudden jolt of work? I don’t know. I just know that I often leave my area with gapping wholes despite having the place looking the way it’s suppose to be by work standards 15 minutes before I leave for home. It shouldn’t matter much longer. Next week the new guy is supposed to start I believe and I will go back to stamping. Of course, I’ll feel sorry for the new guy when my co-worker decimates his area 5 to 10 minutes before we are allowed to leave for home.

My brother came home last night and from his body language alone I could tell something was up. Since it was his evening with the kids I was fairly certain the ex had done something. Unfortunately, I was right.

The story starts with my brother’s ex taking the kids on vacation. This vacation was supposed to be going to Niagara Falls and to see some rich uncle in Ohio. Well, they couldn’t find Niagara Falls. How you can NOT find Niagara Falls yet find the rich uncle’s home in Ohio is beyond me. The more likely truth is that the ‘vacation’ was never really about Niagara Falls. It was more likely just like the trip to Tennessee with a pit stop to Graceland that was really a long distance booty call to a guy met over the internet. And the trip to Graceland turned into propping my niece out in front of the gate for a picture and telling my niece it was too expensive to go inside. Then there was the trip to Maine to stay at the doctor’s house that my brother’s ex does medical transcriptions for. Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. Well, apparently they did finally find Niagara Falls on the trip home. Of course, it was after my brother’s young son told him on the phone that they couldn’t find it on the way done. They had found the river and a gift shop though. I may be over dramatic here but it really breaks my heart and makes my gut turn to see time after time the kids promised something by their ‘mother’ only to have her bail on the promise. She’s a real piece of shit of a human being. And nobody’s heard of this rich uncle before. My brother never heard of him while they had been married for ten years.

So finally, cut back to last night. I could tell my brother needed to vent so I told him ‘what’s up? I can tell something’s wrong.’

Turns out that during the night his daughter had told him that they are moving to Ohio and that they were checking out houses while they were there. And it wasn’t maybe they are moving but that they are moving there July 4th. So after some venting he told me he’d probably get a call from the ex now that he actually knows about this. So he goes to use the bathroom and not even 20 seconds later the phone rings and it’s the ex. He had to call her back because I sure and hell wasn’t going into the bathroom while he was defecating. So he got on the phone with her and walked outside. He came in later and went to the loft. I never heard him say a word. It seemed like he was on the phone for 20 minutes. Afterwards he came down and played some violent video games to vent more. I didn’t ask about the conversation with her. Sometime later he mentioned that she was backpedaling about the whole thing and that she isn’t leaving. Rightfully so, he doesn’t trust. After all, she only cheated on him and later was the one to ask for the divorce. And then she tried to get him through DSS and even claimed he was sexually abusing his daughter after he wouldn’t take her back after the divorce.

I fully believe that she totally intends to move away because she has wanted to do so before. It also comes at a time where my niece seems to want to have a real family life again. She’s probably sick of raising her brother because that’s what she does. Oh yeah, my niece is either 12 or 13. 12 I think. And yes, she raises her younger brother. She’s complained about how often ‘mom’ has to go to school every night and work and this and that. Did I forget to mention that my 6 year old nephew has to do his own laundry?

I don’t know how many times my brother’s ex has burned her bridges with her own mother who abandoned her at a young age. She keeps trying to get her mother back in her life and it’s always disaster. She gave up on her father and his new family and her half-sister. She gave up her first child like it was a bag of garbage to be thrown away at the earliest convenience even claiming it was my brother’s when it wasn’t. So now, out of the blue, she has an uncle. Not just any uncle but a rich uncle. How nice it must be to be that uncle. Some woman that’s never been in his life suddenly shows up and probably looking for support because that’s the kind of person my brother’s ex is. People aren’t human to her. People are a means to an end to her. And that’s why she’ll always be the miserable non-trusting fuck that she is. It just really blows that my niece and nephew have to be on the front lines of that.

Just my work (and I hope this works)

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My Super Hero Lover isAurora
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Excellent weekend

Blog 031907


This past weekend pretty much had good times or news all the way around.

Friday night the snow and sleet was so bad work cancelled the night shift. My brother woke me up a little early to tell me. I got up but was fairly well out of it so I didn’t have much energy or initiative to do anything.

Somewhere along the line I had a weird dream about my dead aunt. She wasn’t a blood relative but essentially adopted my father without going through all the paper work. Things were done differently back in the 1930’s.

I think I played Call of Duty 2 all night and read my Essential X-Men vol. 5. The book really brought me back to the days where I was totally immersed in comic books. The X-Men have always been my favorite even though there were times where I dropped the book because of creators that just didn’t do it for me. The Essential X-Men vol. 5 reprinted some of my all-time favorite X-Men issues specifically the regular appearance of my all-time favorite comic book character Rachel Summers. Rachel is from an alternate X-Men future very much like that of the movie The Terminator. She was a terrific tragic character in that in her teen years she was forced into becoming a ‘hound’ a person that hunted down others, including friends and family, to be killed or killed them herself. So even among the X-Men she was an outcast despite being the daughter of Cyclops and Marvel Girl (Jean Grey/Phoenix). She would often fly off the handle and have to be stopped from killing villains and/or enemies because that was her trained nature. She was full of anger and rage and would often release it. It was so refreshing to see someone trying to be a hero do that and/or fail and need the help of others to get through life. I guess I related to that or it was wish fulfillment despite having a terrific family life when I was a kid.

I also loved the writing and the art. John Romita Jr.’s art is absolutely awesome during that X-Men run. These days his art seems rougher and not as cool to me which is disappointing. But! He still remains one of my all-time favorite artists. I would say at this time my favorite artists are the following: Alan Davis (tops!), Marc Silvestri, Arthur Adams and John Romita Jr. It’s no coincidence that all of these artists have had a huge influence on the way I draw.

Saturday was fairly busy. My brother had shoveled some of the snow off the driveway the night before. It really helped since we got nailed with 6 or 7 inches of snow. Unfortunately, sleet followed the snow creating a tough crust. So when I went out to shovel pretty much immediately after I got up, it was some of the toughest shoveling I had done in a long while. In fact, it was tough enough to where I gave up after creating a strip of visible tar the length of the driveway. And even that was covered with black ice. Oy! Some rock salt helped to eventually melt some of that ice away.

I got my taxes done later that day. I wasn’t sure what to expect for a refund because it was the first year I could use the interest on my house for a tax reduction. Last year I think I maybe claimed 2 months of tax interest so it really didn’t do much. I ended up getting twice what I got last year. Not a bad haul. I tried not to get my hopes too high because everyone had said the interest on the house would really come back in the form of a tax break. It helped but it didn’t fulfill the dreams of grandeur that I had envisioned.

My original plan was to go 50/50 with the tax refund. 50% as an extra payment on the principal of my house mortgage and 50% towards printing new copies to my comic. That will be changed to spending the refund in thirds. A third to the mortgage principal (almost three normal payments on the principal), a third to pay for the humidifier I had installed onto the central air heating unit and then a third to do various things, some comics related some not.

Later on during the night I went to see my sister sing at a reputable bar: a shirt and tie place. They sounded pretty good overall. My sister had one or two gaffs but nothing really noticeable. I didn’t realize that one band member toured with Cindy Lauper and another with the E-Street band. But I’m guessing that was years and years ago because they are in their 40’s, one or two maybe in their 50’s.

Sunday was a trip to Boston for a comic book con. Five of us packed into a tiny car and rode up. I was sandwiched in the middle of the backseat. We were so snug I could feel the dude on my left breathing. Yuck. The ride up and back was actually a lot of fun with lots of male-bonding going on. Of course, with my crew, that usually means making fun of each other. It wouldn’t surprise me if some feelings got a little hurt but most of it seemed fairly harmless.

We were in and out of the con pretty fast. We got there early but it was pretty full by the time we left. I bought about $20 of Heroclix figures and a comic book for $5. I didn’t think I had the comic but found out I did when I got home! Bleh! But at least my new copy doesn’t have pages falling out like my first copy. I did strike out on trying to find some other comics that I was looking for which was somewhat disappointing.

Boston was weird. Depending what street you walked down on Sunday it was either fairly nice or you froze your ass off. When we first got out of the parking lot area we got out of the garage on the wrong side and had to walk around it to find the con location. I froze my ass off in the chilly gusts of wind. Then I rounded a corner. There was no wind and the sunlight made things fairly tolerable. I was doing the tourist bit looking at all the tall buildings trying to remember things for my Minutemen heroes. That comic book team is based in Boston.

The show had a lot of small name talents and my friends were in and out fairly quickly - maybe a hour – so I didn’t bother meeting anybody. Of course, most of the creators there are there to sell stuff not help competition. I get that a lot at comic book cons even from small publishers. They are just like me, trying to get their stuff mainstream and profitable enough to make a sweet buck.

After the con a couple of the crew really wanted to eat in Boston. I was vaguely against it because I had spent all my money(!) and I figured they would pick something stupid like a franchise joint that was easily available in our home region. We drove around lost taking a small circular tour of Boston that was sort of fun. A GPS cellphone was the target of our bashing at it seemed wrong half of the time with it’s directions and ‘recalibrating’ messages. A couple of seafood joints were closed so we ended up at this Irish joint. I think it was called O’Conner’s and Schmick’s or something like that. It was what I would call mid-class. The luncheon that two of the guys bought was $20. I got a turkey and ham sandwich that was $10. After dessert the finally tally for us five was $165 without tax. We were somewhat surprised. It didn’t help that I had only $6 in cash! Thankfully I was spotted some money. My $6 didn’t even cover my piece of Boston Crème pie! That was $7.

I was somewhat concerned because of the wait for our food. It seemed like a long time for us to get our chow and it wasn’t busy nor was I really hunger. Our food took longer to get to use overall than it did for a dad and his two young daughters to arrive well after us, get served and finish their meals and leave before as we were just getting our desserts served. But when it arrived I absolutely LOVED my sandwich! I was worried that it might not taste that great and that it was on normal sized toast. But the thing was PACKED with turkey and ham looking like a Dagwood sandwich straight out of a Blondie cartoon. It was a joy to eat. So even though I dropped $26 for lunch I was highly satisfied with the meal. It kept me filled for the rest of the day and we left Boston around 2:15pm.

We got back to the store sometime after 3pm maybe 4pm. A few of us decided to geek out to a game of Heroclix. Three of us played at 800 point teams a piece. My game started off fairly horribly. My strategies were okay but my dice rolling was horrible. I literally missed my first 9 attacks. So for the first 30 minutes I was fairly miffed at my futility. Because of my dice rolling futility, I lost half of my team while the other to guys lost one guy each to each other.

D had some hot dice and started pounding on me and T pretty good. So after awhile, me and T teamed up to put the kabosch on D. He was pissed. He wouldn’t admit it saying ‘it’s okay’ and the like but every other comment was how we were teaming up to beat on him. So we did until his team was very weakened and T sent his last remaining guy after me. I was able to finish him off and take out D for the win eventually. So then we had to hear D say ‘good game’ and then follow it up with 5 minutes of how me and T teamed up to take him out. The second part was true. What D refuses to acknowledge is that any time he plays a three player, everybody against everybody, if his former or current roommate plays, they team with D to wipe out the third guy before sending any appreciable forces after each other. This has happened to me twice but usually more often. Of course, D denies this vehemently with his selective memory and claims that his roommates ALWAYS go for him immediately but the rest of us agreed that was utter bullshit when D was out of earshot. Like all of us, D hates to be beat because we all have egos and we all think we are the superior player to the other guy. LOL! But that’s just us and the way we are. Unfortunately, at times it’s not ‘just a game’ and we get mad at each other for it. LOL! Maybe the term ‘grown men’ doesn’t apply to us despite our ages!

So in the end, Sunday ends up being logged in annals of history of a perfect reference to ‘the good ol’ days’ where fun and good times ruled the entire day.

I’m hoping this coming weekend at ConnCon is just as successful of a good time as Sunday was. We’ll see.

Hooky from work & lucid dreaming!

Blog 031607

Getting to play hooky from work! Six inches or so of snow have fallen so far with a lot more scheduled to come. My brother woke me up to tell me that work called and cancelled third shift. So March will be an easy month for me. I took a vacation day last Friday, have tonight off and will be taking next Friday off. Of course, finances will be a little tight.

Had bizarre dreams. One had me in my old high school but the classes felt more like a college course. There were lots of people there mostly young adults. I thought that I was my current age. I shifted from one class about social studies or something and went next door to another class. That class was on Christian religion. Many people were surprised to see me in it. One of my co-workers was there maybe even as the teacher. She is a grandmother around 40 but it like 5 feet tall and looks like she’s 35.

The teacher left and she didn’t come back for around 35 minutes – pretty much the end of the class. She was REALLY hot and young, about 5’7 with tanned or dark skin. She looked Latino but had almost blond hair – very deep golden looking. I was in lust. She wore a sort of dress that looked like evening wear from the 1950’s. It was golden sating or something. She was barefoot because she was apparently running through the halls to get back to the class. I guess she had on some sort of high heel at some point.

The dream took a turn for the weird. With the class over, I knew I had to get to my next class which was the last class of the day. I needed to get to my locker which was far away and a floor up. It was also the first day of school/college. As I headed off I passed the young hot course teacher digging through her locker which was right outside the class left I had just left.

I think I may have woken up and fallen back to sleep because the dream took some radical changes. First, it became lucid unlike the class room dream. I started switching camera angles. In the class room scene every thing was pretty much from my eyes. In this dream I started seeing angles as if I were a camera and a director. I was also changing things in mid-dream. “I” sort of became an avatar. And it was female! She was around 5’8, brown hair and eyes, athletic thin and of course, cute. LOL! She wore a black sweater with a white blouse underneath. When I remembered, the avatar wore a sort of metallic sky blue with angled black wide stripes tie but it kept coming and going. She also wore a tight pencil skirt of black that ended at the knee. She wore a sort of clubbing boot. They were knee high and had a gloss polish to them. There were some decorative straps. Although they had flat heels, the boots had a thick sole, almost a small platform sole of about an inch’s thickness. The avatar also wore a sort of oversized beret style fashion hat. I remember making her wear black sunglasses.

The school really changed. It went from my old school to more like a cement almost temple or large college. It almost resembled a wide and open lobby for a giant building with lots of giant windows everywhere.

The atmosphere really changed. From school and learning to learning and terror. It felt like the location was suddenly in Palistine or the middle east. It was warm, sunny and dry and nice weather. Soldiers and tanks including fast moving wheeled tanks were all around the outside of the college. They were driving on the roads and such and right by the doors to the college. It was wildly known that if you went outside, you were open game to be shot at. If you went out on to a balcony or any open to the air walkway you were fair game.

I was nervous because I/the avatar had to go along a carapace that was open to the air. It meant I was fair game to be shot at. It wasn’t a long distance, maybe 20 or 30 feet. Along with all the other students, I was quite nervous and concerned. I was hoping that being American would help but then I realize it would probably make me a prized capture instead. But I had to get to the class.

I saw through the windows a wheeled tank and some soldiers go by and start firing. A tank with treads did the same thing. Then soldiers entered the building. The dream took sort of an action game view very similar to a Call of Duty 2 ‘kill cam’ view as I was shot at. A girl student looking like a darker skinned middle eastern woman fired a pistol at me. I ran around a corner up a wide staircase but I was hit with a glancing wound. I never felt pain but a wound indicator like the kind in Call of Duty 2 told me I was hit. I then checked over my body and finding no wound, took a sort of away camera angle from the avatar and made/’found’ a slight wound or cut on the body. I can’t recall where the wound was, either the arm or ribs.

I ran like hell but was almost totally alone. I tried to run down a wide and open, outside staircase like you see leading to a court building but saw a group of soldiers. These guys felt like a different army opposing the tanks but still hated the students. I knew my avatar could escape if I ran back up the stairs but would most likely be caught if she ran down the stairs. Because it was more interesting I had my avatar run down the stairs and try and get through the glass doors at the base of the stairs before the soldiers could get her. Somehow, it felt as if she could make it she would be safe just by closing the doors and holding them closed. It would be sort of like ‘out of bounds’ where the soldiers couldn’t get her.

Well, she almost made it but I had the soldiers catch her. Although I was controlling this, I was also ‘her’ and could feel everything she could. The large group of soldiers was cut down to just four because I decided it. One guy punched the avatar in the head. I replayed and altered this scene a couple of times until the avatar was punched in the back of the head to then in the face just under the eye to just above the left eye. A bleeding wound and gash was opened. The avatar fell to the ground and was then kicked and stomped by the four soldiers.

The dream ended there.

God damn!

Tried to post this quit awhile ago but I had to jump through hoops with this new blogger crap.

So anyways, here's a blog that's a few days old:

Blog 030907


The casino was fairly fun I must say. I went down with a plan, stuck to it and made a small profit. The trip down kind of sucked because I was running on about 3 hours of sleep having worked the previous night. They played Kevin Costner’s The Guardian for a movie. It wasn’t great but wasn’t bad. I liked the training parts of the movies and liked the characters. The ending was ‘Hollywood’ and the movie had a feel of ‘been there, done that’ if you’ve seen ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’. Of course, that movie is around 20 years old now so maybe The Guardian seemed fresh to younger movie goers.

I will not deny that I rather enjoy looking at the females dressed up for the casino. My favorite of this trip was a young woman with dark or black hair pulled back sort of into a ponytail but from the top back of her head. She wore what I call a sweater dress. It was a sweater knit material that clung to her body and ended at her mid thigh. It was a pleasing shade of white – not to bright nor harsh on the eyes. The sleeves were either three quarters or she had then pushed up on her forearms, I can’t recall. She wore no belt. The sweater dress gave way to black stockings and black knee high boots. Her boots had a design stamped into the leather or something along with some metal studs I think. The heels were ice picks and very high, I’m thinking four inches. She was a fast walked considering her boots. She had a guy with her but I didn’t bother looking at him. She was literally turning heads. I turned to look and noticed at least one other guy too.

There were more too. Most of the people at the casino dress casually like they are going to the mall but there are enough that dress up to make things fun to watch. I liked an Asian woman in leather pants and a black shirt and cute to boot. There was a couple maybe in their 50’s or 60’s and the lady looked pretty good for her age. The guy was white haired and wearing a brighter shad of a blue or gray suit. She had blond hair cut stylishly short, a brownish dressed that showed her arms and legs and suede looking boots. She looked and her exposed flesh looked good. She had decent legs and her arms seemed decently toned for her age – no jiggling flesh or cellulite. It made me wonder if they were rich or just well dressed middle class. They looked sort of rich or upper middle class but who knows. They were after all, just walking around the whole time I saw them.

I did laugh a bit at one lady. Her outfit looked pretty good – tight gray dressy jeans, a fitted black leather jacket and some what ugly ass pumps with skyscraper heels and those toes that extend so far out from her foot that they looked like ancient Arabian shoes that had uncurled. But her face was a little rough and she had what I called a poodle hair cut. It’s where a woman’s hair is completely full of curls but the bulk of her hair seems to be like a mountain on the crown of her head. It had a very 1980’s feel to it. Her husband/boyfriend was a big guy with black hair. He reminded me of a younger version of Pussy from the Soprano’s. Maybe they were mob?

I only recall one woman in an evening dress. She was a young blond, I think I never really saw her face close up, in a red dress that showed a lot of flesh but mostly arm and back. She had on red pumps that looked like 5 inch heels. While she was good enough to remember, there was something about her aura or something that didn’t really impress me. Maybe it felt like she was over dressed since no one else looked like her.

I noticed that all the beverage serves/waitresses where middle aged women and usually a little rough looking in the face. I think most of them seemed in their 40’s or early 50’s. I was rather surprised by that. It seemed like the younger women employees were all dealers. There were a couple of cute ones too.

I might stick the white sweater dress ensemble on my super heroine Shadowdancer at some point. LOL!

Chow was okay. Dessert was better. I took some Black Forrest Cake, vanilla pudding, Jell-O, and a lemon marang (sic) pastry cup. I was sorry I was full because I missed the apple cobbler that I enjoyed last time and there was a white vanilla cake that looked GOOOOOD!

Supper was pork fried rice, mashed paper that had peppers in them (or something like that), ziti, and home fries.

I had a pretty good night gambling. I won way more hands than I lost. I always get a little ancy when deciding what to play and how to part with my money. I watched some of our group play before sitting down to play some Blackjack alongside my brother-in-law and family friend. I hit Blackjack once or twice which was cool. My system was that I had $60 for table games and anything I won went into my pocket. My $60, win or lose would take me as far as it could. After I lost my $60, I cashed out and was surprised to learn that I won $112! Not bad. All the $5 chips in my pocket were like a huge tumor on my leg. So it was cool to see a $100 bill being slipped back in my direction.

My brother and I wandered around for awhile and I check on my Keno winnings and played more Keno. The bus trip is $14 and in that you get a $20 buffet dinner and two $10 vouchers coupons for Keno. I won $15 off those. Some my ticket was paid for. I dropped $22.50 on more Keno games. I played 10 $1 games of 5 numbers. I also did ‘high stakes’ Keno which I bet $1.25 per play and I did 10 plays on 15 numbers. Top innings for that is $40,000 for all 15 numbers. I hit 7 for a $9 win and got $2 on a win for the 5 play. So I lost $11.50 on Keno.

I played $10 on a 25 cent, 75 cent max bid slot machine. I hit twice for around $3 a pop and put it all back into the machine.

My brother and I got a little bored and had lost our group for awhile. We stopped to watch a band for a minute and sat around for awhile before searching out our group again. We located them and watched them play Caribbean Stud poker. The family friend got up and had me play her chips for awhile. I won money on all but one hand. Caribbean Stud poker at this casino works in that you ante $10 (minimum at this table) and then there’s a $1 sucker bet where maybe you can win a lot more of the stars align in the sky. I have yet to see anyone win the sucker bet. You get your five cards and decide whether to bet. The beat is always double the ante. So I was betting in essence, $30 a hand ($10 for the ante, $20 to bet). The dealer has to get a king or an ace to qualify. Qualifying means the house pays the wage of the player if the player beats the dealer. Otherwise, if the house doesn’t qualify you get the ante back and the same amount from the house. You ’win’ your ante amount. What I’m not sure of is if you have to beat the dealer to win the ante amount when the dealer doesn’t qualify.

So using the initial $15 she gave me, I walked away with a healthy stack of $5 chips because the bus was waiting. I think I lost only one hand during the playing. I cashed out and got a $100 bill again! Sweet! The family friend only wanted her $15 and that’s all she would take. She had left a few more chips on the table and some I had given to her dad who was playing so I think I really owed her a total of $30 but she would only take $15 back from me. She’s owned her own insurance business for a long time so she’s not really hurting for money but it was still really nice of her to do that for me. So I cleared $85 profit in the final 15 minutes or so of playing.

So in the end, I believe I walked away with about $180 in profit. I’ll take it. J Of course, if you count that I lost a night’s pay, then I really lost in the end but only like about $30 for a decent night out. That’s pretty good in my book.

Work is as unstable as ever. The pant just laid off another 29 people. As of this writing I’m not sure I even have a job. I’m pretty sure I do but it may not be in the same area or the same shift. I’m pretty low on the bumping chart with only a few people in my current room with less seniority. So I may have been bumped. This could actually be great news in a way. I severely dislike stamping. If I got bumped I should be able to bump someone else which would put me into a new job. It could also mean a change in pay or shift.

I also let it be known that I was interested in an office job. The custom logo department has an art room. It is where Top Flite transforms the image provided by the custom into a useable digital file that’s then burned to a small printing plate about the size of a legal envelope and used in the stamping machines. It could actually be yet another pay cut but it’s something I pretty much learned to do in college and at over printing type jobs I’ve had.

Top Flite also fired the plant manager and escorted him out of the building. The escort is apparently a common thing. Some people feel that it was more of a political decision rather than a performance issue to get rid of the plant manager. Of course, with the employee lay-off’s and the saying that we have to much stock, it sounds very familiar to what happened to Strathmore Papers just before it was sold off and moved out of state. We’ll see. I had hoped to work at Top Flite for 5 years but I might not make it.

A note on the art room office job. It’s not union. That could work for me as well as against me. There’s no one to bump me but I can be fired on the spot. I’m also not sure what holidays I would get. And the job is salary. If I get stuck working 60 hours on week, I get my standard weekly pay. I’ve never worked a salary job before so I know that if I worked over time I would be pissed. LOL!

Props to Tori!

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My food shopping list from the other day. I have to admit, I’m stocked up pretty well and felt I could splurge on stuff.

2 boxes of Grapenuts cereal for $5

2 boxes of Fruity Pebbles for $5

A 9inch awesome tasting apple pie for $8

2 pounds of bananas (about 5 bananas) for around $2

4 boxes of strawberry Toast ‘ems for a total of $4

150 paper plates for $3 I think (the 500 for $6 were out of stock)

2 boxes of 12 ice cream sandwiches for $5

Buy 1 get 1 free boxes of Cheeze-It’s.

2 bottles of Big Y thirst quenchers to see if they were generic Gatorade.

I think that was it. The total bill was close to $36 and change.

Had a crazy dream where I was at my parents place in my old room. I woke up and walked around in the middle of the night and got dressed and left. Mom and dad made an appearance but I think it was after I had left the house. Later I was walking along forested mountain roads, very steep, in the middle of the night trying to get to my friend TJ’s house. There were hardly any houses, maybe one every ¼ to ½ mile. I eventually found their house and we talked about playing D&D semi-live role-play by walking along the road at night. It was pitch black though. I talked with TJ’s younger sister about getting a flashlight so I could see something so I wouldn’t walk off the road. I vaguely remembering them heading out and I was languishing behind. Their friend Keith showed up or was mentioned. I think he was suppose to be the bad guy in D&D.

It was a weird dream. I remember more elements of the dream than the dream itself. Climbing long, dark roads was one aspect. Feeling alone was another despite having friends and family about. I thought I had another but forgot it.

And a BIG thanks to Tori! She sent me a link about possibly having my comic distributed in Scandinavia! I’m just getting to look into it so I’m not sure what will happen but it’s cool of her to keep an eye out for things like this. Thanks, Tori!

Work's ever changing as always, but I have to leave or I'll be late!

Whoops!

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Umm,…whoops.

Seems the warehouse job I bid on at work is a full time meaning 40 hours, temp job that ends in June. What that means is that I would go from being a Top Flight employee to unemployed! Crap! I must’ve had my head up my ass combined with selective reasoning – as in selecting what I didn’t like and forgetting it!

So! I went to work today at 3pm and was asked if I knew it was a temp job. About 30 minutes later after a visit with Human Resources I opted out of the warehouse job and will be back at the job I really dislike but that is permanent. In the end, the only thing I lose is a job bid. Fortunately, I do have a second job bid. If I use that one, I’m done for 12 months and stuck in the new job I bid for. So I will be more careful with my bidding!

For good news though, my friend Sara has returned from the oblivion. This is most welcome news. She’s really cool and likes many of the same things I do. Now I’ve got to boot her in the ass to give me some poems for issue 3!

The weekend was decent. Spent a good chunk of time at my parents including supper both days. Sunday I hung out with friends playing Heroclix.

I had a couple of weird dreams. I just forgot one because my brother walked in. In another, I was driving around rural roads like the ones in my hometown on a bicycle. I’m pretty sure it would turn into a motorcycle when I had a hill to go up. I followed this road into a steep gulley that had a bank at the bottom. Their road out to the main road up the cliff was so steep I had to walk the bike up it or fear flipping over and rolling back down the hill.

I did another painting. I’ve been trying to do more art projects lately although they usually aren’t for the comic. I used my acrylic paints to paint a small red house on a snow covered field. It looks okay. I’m somewhat satisfied with it. Of course, it doesn’t resemble the photo reference I used as much as I hoped but the colors look fairly eye pleasing.

I also kicked out some pictures using conte crayons. These are uppity artiste crayons. They are fairly filthy to work with getting all over my fingers. One way of blending colors is to use your fingers like finger painting. The two landscapes look okay about again, not as close to the photo reference as I would like. Then again, I’ve done exactly two conte crayons pictures in a year.

I also used my color pencils to kick out some still life drawings. Since I’m color blind drawing and painting in color can be daunting to me. Following the art projects from my bargain $6 art book that I’ve grown to really like, the pictures I created look pretty darn good. One’s an apple and I like my end result more than the artist’s version that provided the instruction! My bananas look decent for my second picture except that one banana is a little lopsided. Still, I like the finally results of both.

Looks like I blew it as for getting my comic to my current favorite comics writer. I had asked some friends going to this big comic book convention but I forgot to remind them to take some copies. One friend decided to let the other friend do it. I hardly see that friend because I work third and he works second.

I can’t really think of much else. I didn’t succeed in any of the other 4 job bids I placed so it’s back to stamping logos on golf balls for me. And that kind of sucks.

Wishes DO come true. Hopefully it'll work out, to.

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Got my wish. I won a bid on a job within the same factory. I think I shall be starting it Monday but I’m not entirely sure. It’s a second shift warehouse job. So I go from stamping balls to having to use a high lift going upwards of 50 feet. I haven’t used a high lift yet and heights aren’t my favorite thing but as long as I feel safe and secure I should be okay.

I have the option of trying the job for 40 hours and deciding if I want to stick with it or go back to stamping. I did just bid on 4 jobs in one day on Wednesday. Those are ink making jobs and one UPS shipping job. Two are third shift, one second, and one is first. If I win any of those bids I would think maybe it would be ink maker third shift. All the jobs are in the stamping room. So it could turn out that I go into the warehouse for a week, win one of the ink bids and return to the stamping room. One of the guys just quit last night and I think I would like his job. It’s not because it seems like a brain dead job but because you get to move around with some variety. I believe that the company has to post his job though so I can’t just take it.

Another one of the guys in stamping wants out. That means of the 6 guys that came from my old room to third shift, only one is going to stick – for now. Even that guy gets pretty worried about his numbers and abilities. You wouldn’t think that putting a logo on a ball would be such a pain in the ass but it is. And it’s a suckless job. I had another shit night last night producing a whopping 66 dozen balls. Those numbers are horrible. But in my defense, the 8 year veteran and 30 year veteran and even another girl couldn’t get the job to work with any kind of quality on the press I was using.

I finished my Anita Blake novel. It’s number two in the series. I liked it quite a bit. The shortcomings in my opinion were two things. There was suppose to be a monster that I really didn’t find scary at all and instead thought it was kid of dumb. The second was that the ending wraps up so quickly. That’s not a huge shortcoming but you get this nice build up for 250+ pages and the bad guys are defeated in a couple of paragraphs. Still, I very much enjoyed reading this book and it was well worth my $7. I think I might be taking a slight break from buying new books for awhile though. Two books I’ve purchased recently are art books with projects to do. I’ve been doing some of those here and there and want to do more. If I don’t have other books to read I’ll do more art. I also have my Physics of Super-heroes still to read. It’s not the most exciting read but I want to finish it.

I drew a pretty nice back cover for issue three. The only reason it’s the back cover instead of the front is because it’s a portrait. I prefer my cover to have something to do with the story as opposed to being just a portrait.

Another thing on the 40 hour try-out. In the span of days three things happened very quickly. One was signing up to go to the casino with some of my family. Just got word today I got my ticket. It’s next Friday which means I’ll be calling out because I expect to be working on second shift. If I was still working third I could go in late. So I guess I better win some money to make up for the lost wages! I’ll be using $100 I’ve had saved since Christmas for a Nintendo Wii that I no longer desire to purchase.

Okay, done.