Surviving tough times at work

Blog 083007


It seems I’ve avoided yet another lay-off at Top Flite. Lay-off’s hit my current room in the form of 3 people from 1st, 6 people from 2nd and 3 people from 3rd shift. We’ve heard rumors about it for around 10 days now and it’s really gotten me down over those days as I’m just sick and tired of job security. Some people apparently will take the lay-off so even if people from other shifts bump juniors on my shift there should be enough people between me and that cut for me to keep my job. So I’m not on pins and needles as much. There are a couple of people I like on my shift in jeopardy of being bumped though so that sucks. 2 of the three people getting laid off on my shift I don’t hang out with so while I’m not happy that they are gone it doesn’t bother me as much.

I won a $75 gift card from work the other day. It’s one of those sort of Visa debit cards so that was good news. If my parents won’t take it as a random gift for no other reason than being good parents to me than I’ll be spending it on Christmas gifts. The company also has a safety deal where if you don’t get hurt per quarter you get a small payout. The end of September should mark the $75 pay out so I’ll keep that one for myself.

My co-worker got really pissed with me the other night. We’re usually pretty good friends while at work and get along quite well but occasionally things hit the fan. I was just rather shocked over why she was mad at me. We were discussing another person that apparently has a somewhat bad and at least very unstable life at this time. We both know and like this person. I was saying that this person has the power of choice and can choose to change their situation but doesn’t see it as a big enough priority to change the situation. My friend feels that the same person has no good role-models or support to change if I understand my co-worker’s argument correctly. And she really got on me about it even starting to attack me personally over the statement I was making. Eventually I got to the point to where I was getting quite mad and said about the person we were talking about that by my co-worker’s thought process there is no hope for the person and that the person should just put a gun to their head and end the misery. I’m pretty big on personal responsibility and if people are going to fuck around and goof off and constantly put themselves in the situation where they are going to have problems and issues then that’s what they are going to get until they decide to do otherwise. I never said it would be easy to change or that there is some magic pill to cure things overnight but I was accused of this line thinking despite never saying a thing towards it.

I finally just said “I’m done with this argument’” after taking a pounding and personal attack that I didn’t feel was justified. For whatever reason my co-worker wouldn’t stop. She just kept attacking every single decision or statement I made for the next hour or two. As usual, because I’ve had a terrific childhood, don’t do drugs and don’t hang around people that take advantage of me my words carry no weight on such matters. It got to the point where I almost said to her face to face, “fuck off, you bitch,” because I had stopped and she hadn’t.

Later on things calmed down and it was one of those deals were it wasn’t spoken about for the rest of night and the subject was changed. It still gets me kind of pissed off and some references were vaguely made to it the next night but it’s pretty much over.

It’s the last week of regular season playing in my fantasy baseball league and I’m currently in the final play-off spot with a 7 game lead over the 7th place guy. My team is going belly up this week. So far, with a few days left to play, I’m losing 2-10 and the 7th place guy is winning 7-5. I have 0 ‘saves’ despite 4 closers on my team who picked up 4 saves in one day alone last week. Worse, my opponent’s pitchers have thrown 2 complete game shut-out’s this week. I expect to lose all but 2 pitching categories this week which is very bad since my pitching is the strength of my team. I will be highly pissed if my team misses the play-off’s. My team started the season by losing something like 6 straight weeks and usually getting trounced in those weeks. I was able to make enough roster changes to get my team up into a play-off spot and now I might lose it in the final week.

This Sunday I have two fantasy football drafts. I’ll be in three leagues this year. One ‘pick ‘em’ league and two normal style leagues. I’ll be drafting live this year barring some sort of issue so I should get respectable teams unlike last year. I do a much better job drafting in football than the computer does.

I saw some friends last Sunday that I hadn’t seen for a few months. I ended up gaming with them for 9 hours on Sunday!!!!! One game of Risk took 5 freaking hours to finish. It should have been over well over an hour before that mark but I couldn’t roll for shit. I won a couple of key battles so I was able to control South America, North America, and Africa for parts to most of the game. Unfortunately, every time I would attack I would lose waaaaay more armies than I would kill. I keep track a couple of times and my assaults would cost me something like 10 of my armies to every three of theirs. So despite me having usually twice as many armies as the defender, I would have to either retreat or I would lose whatever I had left the next turn. My two friends fully agreed with this assessment.

We then played Risk 2202 AD or something like that. I wasn’t really up for learning a new game that day but I went along with it anyway. They game is pretty cool but I knew I lost the game after my first turn and unfortunately I went first. So I was going first in a detailed strategy game that I had no experience in and hadn’t seen played before and the guy teaching the game wasn’t all that forth coming with what to do for strategies and such. So I almost lost my entire army across the world because of one card which really rather sucked. I was the only person completely eliminated from the game. It wasn’t lost on me that the guy teaching us said once or twice that he had never lost at this game. At least he did. LOL! But the three of us rookies all made mistakes because of lack of experience and we were all griping about it. Still, over all it was fun and I would play the game again.

I started drawing issue 3 of The Minutemen. I’ve got panel layout’s for over 12 pages of the book. I was trying something new in plotting the book in that I plotted the solely from panel lay-outs and nothing more. We shall see how it turns out.

I submitted The Necropolis Chronicles on-line to a publisher this past Monday but have received no answer yet.

a dream of death & music at work

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Crazy ass dream the other night. I think it was influenced by work. We had a meeting that went over the rules of work through a powerpoint slide show. It talked about sexual harassment and some other stuff. On almost four consecutive slides, one of my female co-workers made a comment to me about engaging in such behavior. The next morning I had a dream. In this dream I was in jail in a small room of execution. I was to be hanged by the neck until dead. I was accused of murder. I was innocent but there was no reprieve. There weren’t many people in the room and it was fairly small. There was maybe a desk or something for me to stand on and maybe two other people, possibly a third. The room was either rectangular or octagonal. The old western style noose was put around my neck. I wore no hood. I told them ‘you’re hanging an innocent man’. It was more for an “I told you so” deal than anything else. I also remember choking out a ‘momma’ or something and crying. It was similar to the scene from Private Ryan when the medic dies after the machine gun nest ambush. And then I was hung. I was really surprised that I died in my own dream and stayed asleep and the dream continued. I didn’t feel any pain and seemed to be pulled from my body before I ever felt the snap of my neck. I caught a quick glimpse of the room and floated up through the ceiling. I could see and hear things as I floated off higher and higher through the sky and eventually into space! As I closed in on the moon there was a growing light that eventually was almost blinding. It felt like a movie scene changing to a new location and I knew I was in Heaven after that. PHEW! Heaven was quite like Earth. I was walking or floating through the streets of a nice looking city. San Fransico entered my head and the streets were a bit above a large bay with sail boats and crystal clear skies in the distance. It was a perfect sunny summer’s day with a wonderful temperature and it felt like this was the weather every day. I passed a couple of people here and there and everything felt happy and safe in this community. I came across an artist sitting on a curb with a drawing board and some supplies around him. It was my favorite comic artist Alan Davis. He was a young man but he didn’t look anything like he should. He had long brown hair down to his lower shoulder blades and a thin beard and brown eyes. He reminded me more of my niece’s boyfriend than my favorite artist. We sat down and started working on making comics. Somehow I knew a bunch of info or something about him and even questioned how I could know this info since we’ve never met. He mentioned something maybe even agreeing with me about it but I can’t recall it totally. I woke up shortly thereafter.

At work it’s come to the reasoning that I murder and hide the bodies on my land and in my basement. This has stemmed from a lot of joshing from my female co-workers. So that’s where I came to be on death row. At least I was totally innocent. And I went to Heaven thank god. But I was really surprised that I literally died in my own dream and that it continued on.

Other news is that I worked at my buddy’s tore this past morning. They had a fun message on their machine about a guy claiming he was going to spend $50 there but the store was closed. The store was closed an hour early because the guy running it went home after a total income of $9 for the day.

I was able to play my mp3 player over a radio at work for my co-workers to hear. My mp3 player has a bunch of stuff on it including movie sound tracks (Star Wars and Star Trek), a TON of Rob Zombie, Nirvana, Zeppelin, and then a bunch of hits from 1977 and 1974 mostly being stuff everyone knows. It seems to have gone over decently. It sucks when people think your interests suck but that was not the case.

The usual, decent weekend, boring week & dreams

Blog 072007

The weekend was decent. Saturday sucked in some ways though.

I got out of work Saturday morning. It wasn’t the greatest night of work and the last job I had was driving me nuts so I was really ready to go home. After some Call of Duty 2 I took a nap for a bout 2 or 2 and ½ hours. It seemed to make things worse. I felt more exhausted than before I had gone to sleep. Still, I showered and gave a call to my buddy at the comic shop. Seems my Nemesis was there as the only player for Heroclix. I wanted to play cribbage with my buddy so I told him I’d be down in 20.

Nemesis was in fine prick form this Saturday. The last couple of meetings between us hadn’t been all that bad but not this Saturday. I can’t recall doing anything particular to set him off so I guess he just decided to start shit. Seems he got all mad after I chopped up one of his dudes for 8 clicks in one attack. After that, he seemed snippy and only go t worse. Of course, I did notice that when he put the map down he gave me the shitty side so that my dudes would have to crawl through a bunch of crap first while his guys had free range to move into an advantageous position but I didn’t call him on that. And as usual, he pulls his rules lawyering crap to help win. They recently introduced a number of revised rules through a new rulebook in a new starter set. I believe the rules are also on-line. I don’t play the game that much anymore and didn’t look them up to see if things had changed but as usual with Heroclix, they did. So I got busted by some rules changes I was ignorant to and got beat. I didn’t really care though. Throughout the game I was talking to my friends and walking away from the game table when it wasn’t my turn. Maybe that pissed the guy off, who knows. But he pulled his usual shit of “I’m superior because I know the rules better than you’ which is really pathetic. Of course, this is the same guy that probably lost a girlfriend over his Heroclix addiction and literally cried when the same girlfriend mixed up his dice. I’m serious about that last one. LOL! I only wish I had been there to witness it.

So my friend Tony sets up the cribbage board right next to me as I’m finishing up the Heroclix game. Neither of us bothered to ask the Nemesis to play. But Nemesis apparently had nothing else to do and wouldn’t leave. He wandered around the store and picked up a few comics to buy. He sat at the table and watched us play. He made a couple of comments towards me about the cribbage game but I didn’t care. I was extremely tired and missing points in the cribbage game. Tony swiped I think 20 points from me over a couple of games because I was missing obvious stuff right in front of me. Hell, I had trouble adding up the cards to announce the total of the cards that I placed on the table! But we had fun with it and laughed over it.

At one point Tony offered me his remaining French fries from his lunch. I took them and had one and placed them off to my side. I probably should’ve punched Nemesis out because without saying or asking anything he reaches over, opened the styro-foam container and took a couple out. I immediately pushed them all towards him and said, “I don’t want the fucking things now.”

A guy came in asking about selling comics and then about selling Heroclix. Tony said some general things and I asked what figures the kid had. He mentioned one character that I felt wasn’t worth much and told the kid why. So Nemesis jumps in with some comment like, ‘sure, Jim’ or something trying to embarrass me. The customer seemed to pay him no mind.

So after about an hour that included watching us play for quite awhile, Nemesis left. We had ignored him the whole time and the only time Tony talked to him was when the kid tried to start a conversation with him. He did talk about the super-hero show that he’s part of at Six Flags. He kept mentioning that Cheetah was hot. I told him I hope he wasn’t referring to the male Cheetah from Wonder Woman comics. I later asked Tony if we hurt his feelings by not asking him to play and Tony reply with a sly smirk, ‘oh, yeah.’ Nobody’s a real fan of this kid and I’m happy to say that my friends rally around me and like me better than him. They’ve also bought into my mantra that Nemesis justifies his life through winning at Heroclix.

So Heroclix was fairly suckles, cribbage was fu and talking to my friends was fun. Nemesis is back on my shit list.

I got home around 8pm and played Call of Duty 2 until around 10:30pm so that I wasn’t going to bed at 9pm on a Saturday night.

Sunday moring I slept late. I kept going back to sleep even though I woke up around 8am. I didn’t want to get up. I finally got up around 10am.

After some internet stuff I headed down to Enfield, CT to a comic shop I had visited some weeks before. They had these great statues of Marvel Comics figures and I had some extra money so I wanted to buy some. I believe they are made by Eaglemoss in England or at least distributed by them. I’m not an action figure fan but I really love a lot of these statues so I ended up buying three even though I wanted at least three more if not six more! They stand about 4 inches tall and have a felt base. The designs are really terrific and they remind me of exquisite chess pieces. I ended up buying the Silver Surfer, Storm, and Nightcrawler. I think Iron Man, Dr. Doom and Black Panther are next. Black Panther looks awesome and I already regret not buying him. So I have a new thing to collect so that should add some fun to the comic shop visit. My buddy’s shop doesn’t carry them for some reason. They might if I ask for them.

I decided I need a display case for the figures though because if I put them anywhere in my living room the fucking cat will knock them over. I still get depressed over the loss of my favorite incense burner that was a gift from my parents. I don’t want the same thing to happen to my little Marvel statues. I’m not sure what they are made of but a decent fall seems like it could damage them pretty good and I have wood floors in my living room. I checked a few places on line and there are some really nice wall display cases. Unfortunately they all start around $280 and are usually quite a bit higher! I think I found an acceptable acrylic case (i.e. plastic) for around $180 and around $30 for shipping. Since I plan I getting any where from 6 to more figurines I want a decent sized case.

I saw the new Simpsons movie and enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I laughed quite a bit. This is good since the movie is a comedy.

I had a cool dream this morning. I forgot one of them which sucks although I recall it being decent when I first woke up. The parts of one that I do remember had me in the middle of winter with a fair amount of snow on the ground. I was hanging out at Old Boston Road where it connects to Boston Road in Wilbraham. There’s a small bridge there that goes over a single set of railroad tracks. However, where Old Boston Road was there was instead two sets of railroad tracks although they were pretty much hidden by the snow.

I was scurrying about the bridge waiting for trains to come by but instead a whole bunch of skaters and cross country skiers came up the tracks. The snow was packed hard enough to skate on or there was ice just underneath the surface. They skated/skied past me but the road ends in a ninety degree turn and then over the bridge to Boston Road. So at Boston Road they all turned around and went back down. A couple of people said a thing or two to me, nice polite talk and I think I may have woken up. No trains really came by but odd vehicles like tractors and cars made to run on railroad tracks did. There were only about 3 or 4 and they were intermittent. A flatbed truck came by with a mashed or disabled car. It stopped at the bridge intersection and this crazy looking tractor came along and gave it a push to get the truck going. The truck then drove up on the flatbed and they both drove off. The tractor was yellow and looked sort like an old farming tractor that had almost huge wings on the very back of it. These were actually stabilizing weights to keep the tractor steady as it pushed heavy things along. The wings could then fold up or spin looking like a tail fin on the tractor so that it could drive up on the flatbed.

I was disappointed that few or no trains every came by so all of a sudden, there was a train!

Then I had more of a panoramic view and the dream sort of took on a TV documentary show feel as it announced the history of the train and the railroad and it followed the train along the landscape. The whole thing was on tressells and insane hills. The train leaned so much at one point because of slanted tracks that people feared a roll over and ‘oooh’ed and ahh’ed’ over every curve. And everything had sort of a train set feel to it. During the night before I went to sleep I was looking up display cases and was thinking about maybe getting one for my brother for his trains for Christmas.

After the train thing I hopped on a train and rode around in a passenger seat. But the train was more like a long distance bus! My friend and his family were there. I haven’t seen them in years, maybe even 10 years! My back was facing the back of the bus/train though so I kind of had a shitty view. The train became a bus as we backed into a bus hub and got off. The bus stopped by actually slowly backing into the wall of the building! The wall had a protective foam covering though and this was standard procedure for parking the bus. I got off the bus and gave a two dollar tip to the woman that announced everything. It was all I had except for a five dollar bill! And then I learned the trip was to last for another 2 or three days! GAH! And then I woke up.

Work will be interesting this week. Our boss, who we pretty much all love because he’s laid back and cool is off for vacation. The other bosses are decent (in my opinion) but there’s always that ‘will they be a dick to us?’ feeling when they have to cover our shift. I can’t recall the last time the crush worked a full week. This past week she worked 3 days. I wonder if she’ll work a whole week this week .She usually only works Tuesday thru Thursdays regularly taking off Mondays and Fridays. Actually, I’m surprised she still has a job considering the number of absenceses she has.

Nice rumors that’ll hopefully come true is that Top Flite will be calling more people back to my original room/job. They are introducing some new products and should need workers to fill out the shifts. They just called back a person per shift last week. I think it’s getting pretty close to my name coming up. The good news for me is that a number of people still ahead of me don’t want to go back fearing lay-off’s in a couple of months. A number of people ahead of me that took the lay-off originally bid on other jobs within the plant to get off unemployment so I think that should help me out also. Here’s for hoping!

Later!

Once again a decent weekend & biker dude!

Blog 081207

Another good solid weekend.

This week at work was quite decent overall. Monday and Tuesday were virtually free money days as we did inventory again. We just did it ourselves but this was the once a year hardcore inventory. I guess when it was all said and done we were $18 off from what we were suppose to have as a department.

I recently bought a new pair of sneakers. They look really cool being a base white with black trim and highlights and black laces. I got them at a JC Penny’s outlet store for $30 instead of the original $55. They are the first pair of white sneakers that I have bought in maybe 15 years. I’m not kidding. I always buy black sneakers.

My Sporty Spice lesbian co-workers LOVES my new sneakers. She kept making comments about them and looks at them whenever I wear them. I can remember thinking that she probably would like them more than me when I bought them. The other night at work she said I have marathon calves and she was checking me out while we were both at lunch. About twenty minutes after lunch she comes over to my area I think just to see me. She tells me she’s got to try them on. I shake my head because I could tell this was coming. She’s maybe 5’8 and I’m 5’9 so have a relatively close foot size. An older co-worker just watched in bewilderment as I kicked off my sneakers and Sporty Spice stepped into them. She stomped about for around 10 seconds or so before ditching my sneaks, donning her grubby old ones and heading off back to her station.

The next night she called in and she has missed so much time that I really don’t know if she even has a job anymore. It will be somewhat depressing if she goes. She’s a fun kid although she seems to make some really bad decisions in life matters.

Friday night/Saturday morning I got out of work and headed up with the family to my uncle’s place. He lives on a nice pond in the Berkshires surrounded by rich people that own vacation homes around him. We had a decent time there and good chow. I tried to paint the scenery but I really suck at painting so it came out terrible. It looks like something a 8th grader might do. I started a charcoal pencil drawing of the pond and trees and that started out nice but lost steam the more I added to it. I really stink at drawing landscapes.

Everyone keep telling me to take a nap while I was there. Because we were late and I knew we would only be there for maybe 2 hours I was getting pissed with this suggestion. The only thing that kinda sucked is that I wanted to take the rowboat out onto the pond but missed out on it. My brother took it to take his son fishing. We he can back we all had lunch. Soon after we left. I had hoped to play cribbage too but that didn’t happen. But that wasn’t a priority. I just wish we had spent more time there.

After arriving home after the hour plus road trip I took a quick nap of about 15 minutes. I then headed down to the comic store and taught my buddy cribbage the best I could. I have some questions on scoring that I hope so more experienced players can clear up for me. We’ll see.

I asked my brother what time he was having his son’s birthday party the next day. 10 am. Ouch! Other than some 20 minute naps I hadn’t had an hour’s sleep since before 5pm the previous day. And I asked just before 11pm. Gah! I ended up waking up at 9:30am and ran out the front door as I heard him leaving for my parents’ place. I told him as I stood there in a pair of shorts I had hurried jumped into that I would be there.

The birthday party was pretty benign. I didn’t really care for the birthday cake (a rarity!) or the cake my mom had made earlier during the week just to eat. I had a scoop of Black Raspberry ice cream and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. What a breakfast! Ugh! I’m not 8 anymore.

I took a walk up to the backfields of my parents land. I can’t recall the last time I took a walk of their 5 acres. My brother-in-law followed on his family’s small dirt bike. My brother had cut a bunch of trails in the field bushes so that our neighbors and we could putz around. The shrubbery and growth is thick and like a jungle that comes up to a man’s chest. My brother-in-law asked if I wanted to drive the bike around. It’s only a 125 I think meaning it’s small and essentially a started motorcycle. I hadn’t been on a bicycle in years. I hadn’t been on a motorcycle in maybe 20 years! So I got some quick instructions, stalled the bike on the first attempt to let out the clutch and rather wobbily, drove off. I didn’t crash or stall the bike out again but I was all over the place as I drove around. Yeah, I was definitely beginner status when it came to riding. But it was rather fun and I shall probably try it again the next time I’m up there.

The rest of Sunday was average. I mowed my lawn late in the day because it was hot. I also watched the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre on DVD. It’s one of my all time favorite movies. I also did some grocery shopping on the way home from my parents. The store didn’t have the 4 for $10 of Kellog’s Frosted Mini-Wheats so I have to try there again tomorrow. Frosted Mini-Wheats are one of my favorite cereals. I did score my 4 for $10 big boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios though.

Tonight is an annual meteor shower, the Perseid or something. It’s suppose to be cloudy at the height of the shower but I’m going to scan the skies a little later after posting this. It’s 11:38 pm as I write this.

I had a crazy dream this morning. I only recall bits and pieces of things. There was a lot about ants. They ranched from normal size to dog-sized to giant sized. I was moving around a city either killing them or fleeing from them. I dreamt about my neighbor’s pond. I was walking around it looking for frogs. I had a white bath towel with me that I was dangling around frogs seeing what they would do. One bit the towel and wouldn’t let go. I finally shook him off I believe. Most of the frogs just jumped into the water as I approached. They were big, but normal sized bull frogs. The only male I found was the one to bite the towel. When I first found him he had his lower jaw/throat fat and wide and full of air like frogs do.

One of my female Russian co-workers stopped to talk to me at the pond. She was wearing a police officer’s uniform. It was one of those all dark blue ones. It had someone else’s name on it and I knew it was a guy. She had just joined the force and a used uniform was the cheapest way to go.

I made my way unto to my neighbor’s house from the pond and entered the kitchen via the garage. I talked to the mother of my neighbor for awhile since we hadn’t seen each other in some time. I thin we were talking about ants. That may have led into me dreaming about the ants but I am unsure.

So it’s been a decent if tiring weekend. Monday showed be decent during the day. I believe my only chores are a load of wash, check the grocery store and buy an Christmas gift for my niece while it’s on-sale this week.

Really tired now so I’m done with this.

There's no pleasing non-christians

I don't usually talk regilon but I am a christian. But there really seems no pleasing non-christians. From friends and internet forums I keep seeing the same type of shit: if I don't follow the bible entirely I'm not being a good christian but if I do follow the bible entirely I'm an idiot and the scoruge of the world and a source of most of it's problems today. It just gets really sickening. And last I noticed, every other practicioner of every other religon has the same human problems as christians like lying, stealing, not helping the poor, treating people like shit and similar stuff.

another good weekend

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The weekend was pretty good. I got out of work Saturday morning and we ended up driving down to my brother’s place in Rhode Island from my parents. I was surprised in that I crashed during the ride. Usually, I cannot fall asleep in a moving car. I was in and out for about 40 to 50 minutes and it gave me enough energy for the day.

The hottub at my brother’s was busted so that was a disappointment. But his new Mustang was there and it looked pretty sharp.

I spent a lot of time in the swimming pool. Mostly a bunch of us batted around a beach ball. My arms and shoulders were sore the next day. I don’t think I’ve been swimming since the last time I went to my brother’s which was 2 years ago.

The food was quite good and I gorged. On the ride home I asked to stop at a local large farm’s ice cream store. I was hoping to get some fresh, homemade half gallon of ice cream but only there were only cones and dishes to be had. I got 1 scoop of cake batter in case I didn’t like it. $2.99 for a scoop! It cost my brother $10 for 2 scoops for him and his son! Whew! At least I liked mine. I guess they did. There were a bunch of Harley riders there. I’m dead positive they were all just business men and homemakers playing tough.

Sunday I sat out in the sun and did some drawing and got a sun burn. Chow at my mom’s later that night was awesome. She made a peach cobbler at my request and it was terrific.

I’m trying to break a creative slump that I’ve been in recently. My weekdays have been really bad: wake up, surf the net, work, surf the net, sleep, repeat day after day. I’m consciously walking away from my computer to do other things. So far it’s working but it’s been the weekend. The week days will be the real test. I think just getting into some sunshine has energized me some. I have a bad habit of staying indoors mostly because I have no real hobbies for outside. That’s why I try to draw outside just to get fresh air and sun.

Had a crazy dream this morning. I was helping my buddy run his comic shop. He needed someone to run his original store so I helped out while he worked on a new store. I ended up playing a video game that ended up being sort of a on-line alternate reality. I’ve just forgotten the real word I’m looking for because I’m distracted by my cat. Anyways, when I logged on I was a heroic elf of considerable skill and the leader of an army. It was sort of the Lord of the Rings type universe. Aragorn was there and I was sort of playing the elf. I had to lead a small army, maybe a platoon, into the caves to recover a massive gem with magical properties. This gem ended up being the size of a human man’s head! It was all pink with a slight red glowing in it. It was shaped like a pineapple. The cave system I was fighting in was narrow, pretty much single file. I was leading the way chopping everything up with my magical rapier like I was some Jedi elf warrior. I think I judged myself to be at least a 13th level ranger sort of class. I was chopping up bulky armored orcs until we took over. I logged out and later logged back in after seeing my buddy the Oompaloompa. The shyster old partner was trying to get back into the company or something so I had to make sure he didn’t. My buddy’s two stores were about a block away from one another with pretty much just a gas station in between them. The first store was comics, the second seem comics and candy and sort of convenience store stuff too.

I went back to playing on-line and transported into the world. My troops and I now had to hold out against an approaching army of orcs and whatever that was coming to win the gem back. The cave area we were in had a single tunnel leading out. I went out to scout turning right, then left which brought me to a sharp but short incline that then turned left at the top. All corners were ninety degrees and the cave was fairly square like a natural hall corridor rather than a cave. I could hear the army approaching and hurried back to my troops who were maybe 40 feet behind me at their station. I wanted a elf scout to accompany me to hold off the army. In typical gaming fashion, I knew this elf scout was pretty much a stalling sacrifice and totally expendable. He may have followed but I was in the lead. I got just about to the top of the incline when bad guys started coming around the corner. At first they were orcs but then it turned to fast moving zombies. I was killing everything but there were so many some were slipping by. My character wasn’t tired but I knew I’d be overwhelmed and fell back to my troops. We grabbed the gem and started retreating. Along with myself, I took the high level characters of the platoon and acted as rear guard so that the troops with the gem could escape. I think we were successful but I woke up.

I’m pretty sure I pissed off and internet friend pretty good. Her last e-mail was pretty irate sounding. I’m not sorry for what I did because I was trying to help. The internet is an odd place. I don’t know if I’d ever be friends with this person if I had known her first in person. Probably not, unfortunately.

I stomped my opponent in fantasy baseball going 11-2-1. He was the last place though. Now I’m facing the 2nd to last place team. Somehow, she’s beaten me in the first two meeting though. Back then, I was in last place. Now I am in 6th place which is the last play-off spot. I had an outside chance of moving to 5th by year’s end but it’s more likely I could lose my 6th place. I end the season facing the league commissioner who is currently in first. He’s only lost two match-up’s. One was against me where my team drubbed him something like 10-2-2. The other was against the woman I’m currently facing.

I think I’m done for today.

Sad news

Blog 080107

I doubt highly I can find a replacement for the porcelain incense burner that broke yesterday morning. It’s from the Noble Collection and after about 5 or 6 different Google searches and perusing Ebay I couldn’t find it. It’s like not produced any more. This has me very sad in that I loved my Egyptian cat burner. Most of it is still intact but it doesn’t have the visual balance of the candle plate that sits on top of the three cats. Since I believe in karma, I almost have to wonder if I slighted someone somehow pretty badly since I loved this particular piece.

More bad/sad news. At work I noticed a picture hanging on the wall of the custom art art room. I recognized the fellow in the pict as a guy I went to college. I hadn’t seen Ed since college. So I asked the split shift guy about Ed. Ed died four years ago. I was shocked. The guy didn’t have too many details just that Ed was engaged and had some health issues and his fiancé found him on the floor one day. That was pretty much it. It was quite sad. I remember Ed as a friend and I probably hung around him second most when in college. He was quiet and didn’t seem to have a lot of friends. I did get a little upset with him that he sometimes seemed to latch on to people but there always seemed a bit of sadness around him too. Overall, he was a decent guy.

I got up at 7:45pm tonight! Ugh! I usually get up around 6pm. I went to sleep sometime after 11:30am this morning though so I got around 7 hours of sleep. It didn’t help having to piss about three times, a knock at the front around my ‘middle of the night’ by FedEx and some C5-A Galaxy transports (HUGE Air Force planes) flying overhead.

I just signed up for my buddy’s fantasy football league. I’m looking forward to it. The two years I drafted live I won the whole league. Last year I didn’t draft live in either league. I really missed it and didn’t really care for about half of either team I had in either league. I also finished horribly in both leagues. In fantasy baseball I don’t really mind having the computer draft because I don’t know all the players. In football, I’m usually pretty good about scoring good players to make a highly competitive team. Because I finished poorly in each league and pretty much everyone is returning, I’ll have a mid to high draft pick because we draft based on the previous year’s record.

Work continues to suck when I get stuck stamping. Last night was no exception. I have hopes though for about 20 new jobs that are suppose to be appearing in Oct or Nov.

Apparently I have mutant calves. They are kind of big. One of my co-workers said if we got stuck in the woods he’d eat one to stay alive. Numerous co-workers have remarked on my calves oogling over the long, freakish muscles of them.

I’ve been in a huge creative slump. It’s lasted for about 2 weeks now. I’ve pretty much just been doing work, sleep, internet, with visiting family and friends on the weekends. This week continues that trend.

The family will be going to my brother’s this weekend for his party. I don’t want to drive since I’ll be getting out of work 7am that morning so I’ll be tagging along with someone. One thing I can never do is sleep in a car. So I will probably be awake for something like 24 hours. He got his Mustang finally. He had to settle for a red one instead of a blue one. He sent a pic of it out and it looks sharp. I look forward to seeing it in person. Makes me want to get one. I don’t miss my 1968 Camaro but it was pretty awesome looking.

I think I may be getting sick of third shift. I don’t hate it but I’m missing a lot of sunlight. I don’t really have many activities I do outdoors but it does kind of suck to go to bed in the morning and wake up as the sun is setting. In the winter I pretty much totally miss any sunlight. Maybe not getting sunlight is part of my dreariness problem.