Domestic Geek

Well, this is what I've been dreading about Marcus' new job. He's the only IT guy for a fairly large company. It's a printer that runs the presses 24/7, so that means he's on call all the time. We were sitting in the family room watching Mythbusters on the PVR, relaxing after both of us had pretty crappy days, and he gets "the call." Yep, he had to go to work to rebuild a Windows (big surprise) box that took a dump. *sigh* What sucks is that I don't sleep well when he's not home, so I'll probably still be awake when he gets back. Man, getting him up again in the morning to go to work is going to be a bear.

Marcus sent me the following ecard to me at work today for Valentine's Day:



If you don't know what it says, copy the following, go to http://nickciske.com/tools/binary.php and put it in the binary box to decode it.

01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101

Isn't he a sweetie?

That was a colossal waste of time.

I went to work at the pizza place, opened the walk-in door to see if one of the food orders had arrived (he had placed two-jerk!) and felt no change in air temperature. Bad thing. The thermometer on the cheese rack read 56°F and the temperature in the store was about 62°F. Since it's supposed to be less than 40°F (I don't remember the exact temperature), there was no way I was going to waste my time making dough that will proof too fast and end up getting thrown out anyway. So, I cut some peppers, shot the breeze with one of the food service drivers that I hadn't seen since the end of October, weighed out the sugar/salt cups for tomorrow, then came home. So now I get stuck doing two days dough tomorrow, but not being able to get the full day off afterwards. That sucks. I'm glad that there is only 9 days of this bullcrap left.

On a brighter note, the new job seems to be going well. I don't feel like I made a huge mistake yet. That's a good thing. It will be even better when I'm not a walking zombie because I had been up since 2am doing pizza dough job. I can't wait for the 16th. I am jealous of the company's owner. He's got a lot of money and likes to spend it. I hope eventually he spends it on me (lol). Seriously, the dude has this huge house in the mountians, a separate building to house our offices, a Hummer, a huge camper, dirt bikes for the whole family, a hot tub on the back deck, a basketball court.....and I haven't even seen the inside of the house yet. I have a brand new iMac that was purchased just for me to work on. There's a T1 line. I keep forgetting to take my camera to snap some pictures. I hope this works out because the work environment is really nice.

Marcus found out a couple of days ago that the owner of our mobile home park is selling. That's opening up a whole new can of worries. Do we have to find our home a new spot? Are they going to raise lot rents even more than the ridicuous amount they already are? Are the new owners going to be @ssholes and nitpick every little rule infraction? Are they going to harrass everybody until we get fed up and leave so they sell this land for huge profits because of the Fitzsimons redevelopment? Do they plan on filling all the empty spots with really low class, trashy people? I hate that kind of limbo. Feeling a little unsettled at the moment. Grrrrr.

It's MacDude's (otherwise known as Marcus) birthday today! Go wish him a happy one. He's off of work today and I won't be around, so you know he'll be on the computer all day long!

OK, must go take a shower and get ready to go to my REAL JOB!!!!

WARNING: MAJOR WOE AHEAD! (You've been warned...)

Man, I got up this morning ready to tackle my problems head-on. That lasted about a half hour before the heavy weight of depression crushed my spirit. I absolutely hate it when I get like this, but it seems no amount of positive thinking can overcome it. I know it will pass. It just really sucks in the mean time.

No Christmas for me this year. I made up my mind this morning. This little Christmas design for my blog is about all I can muster this year. In fact, the design is a little representation of what I'm feeling this year. Cold. Lonely. One isolated little Christmas ornament. What is the point of stressing over where I'm going to get money for gifts when I'm not even covering my bills? I had hoped to sell some of my things on eBay to get some Xmas cash, but apparently I don't own anything that anybody else wants. So, that's it. I'm done worrying about it. I'm not getting gifts for anybody this year. I hope those people that I normally exchange gifts with understand. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you saved your money and didn't get me anything, either. It's not that I wouldn't have appreciated the gift, but I'm just not into this holiday this year. I feel like a total scrooge, but there's nothing I can do about it at this late date (unless somebody very close to me wins the lottery or something). There's only 13 days left. I've got over a grand in unpaid bills right now since I've been underemployed for over a month. One of those is my car payment. I've been ignoring phone calls from creditors all day. I should've declared bankruptcy before the law changed, but I was trying to protect my credit rating. Guess that's all shot to hell now. I knew I was going to be screwed once the student loans kicked in if anything bad ever happened. Now I am. Joy.

I also missed the annual tree-cutting expedition this year. I was stuck at that suck-ass pizza job. The heat has been out at work while we were in the midst of our subzero cold snap. I got to work in 40°F conditions with a wind blowing in the non-weather-stripped back door. I've also been sick all week. Being so cold at work that your back aches from just standing there doesn't help one get over being sick. I didn't need or want to be wandering around the cold forest looking for an elusive tree. Marcus brought one home, but I'm in no mood to decorate it. I'm not even sure if I can get to my decorations in storage since I haven't paid the bill. They've probably put a lock on our storage unit.

I have only had one day off from the pizza place in a long time and that was Thanksgiving. We don't have enough trays to do enough dough for me to take a day off and nobody there will make dough when I'm not there. They claim they don't know how, which is a crock. I didn't go in today, even though I couldn't get it all done yesterday. I used every tray we had and there was not enough. Sad thing is, we had enough at one point. A certain spoiled bitch manager (the one the manager that killed himself had a thing for) threw out every one of a certain kind because she didn't like them. There was nothing wrong with them other than they annoyed her. Stupid suicde manger let her do it. Now I don't have enough trays to do my job and get a day off.

To make matters even worse, that same spoiled, lazy, control-freak brat 3rd assistant manager has been fucking with me. I wish I could've just thrown the store key in her face yesterday and never came back. I can't deal with that place anymore. I have NEVER worked at a place that was so dysfunctional. I had hoped that after the manager's suicide that the crew would come together. HA! I forgot that he trained all of them. I get myself in so much trouble grasping onto what things could be instead of dealing with the reality of what is. The reality is that most of the crew there is mean. They get joy out of other's pain. They treat everybody, not just me, like dirt below their feet, including customers. I've never fit in there and I need to get away from there for good. Once I find a replacement job for the screen-printer gig, I've got to find something to do on the side to make up the pizza income. I'm being abused there and I'm not going to take it anymore.

Finally, I always get really sad about my mom's death this time of year, but I'm really missing her bad this year. Dad is, too. He sent me an email this morning telling me so. I called him right away and he came over to take me out to lunch. In case anyone reading this didn't know, my mom went into a diabetic coma between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1996. They kept her alive so we wouldn't have to deal with her actual passing during the holidays. She passed on January 4, 1997--two days before her 52nd birthday. You'd think I'd be able to handle it better after 9 years, but I don't.

Great. My period just started. Early.

I'm really cold right now. I think I'm going to go take a long, hot shower.

Today is my father's 70th birthday. How did I get old enough to have a dad that's turned 70? LOL Just kidding, Dad. Anyway, we're going to have a little BBQ to celebrate later today and watch The Incredibles (since Dad hasn't seen it and I think he'll really like it).

Anybody who knows Marcus IRL knows he is bitterly opposed to marriage. Sadly, as the years go by, the people we know are one by one proving his assessment of the whole institution to be correct. Anyway, we were looking at some shirts that were brought in to have stuff printed on the back for some trivia contests they have a bars. One of them said: "Why even bother with marriage? Just find somebody who drives you nuts & buy a house together." If there had been one in Marcus' size, I would've grabbed him one. Priceless. If you want to see what the shirt looks like, I found a picture of it at a site called "What On Earth."

Current mood: frustrated
My poor dad has been dealing with some kind of bug infestation in his apartment. It is the same bugs that bit me back in October. I never actually saw the bugs then, but from the bites dad had, I deduced that maybe they were fleas and dad tried to take care of the problem himself (even though I told him to tell the apartment manager then). He assured me the problem was better, but I saw the other day that his arms were looking bad again and he showed me the stains they've left on his mattress. While doing some more Internet research (on fleas), I came across a picture of those stains, not from fleas, but from bed bugs. I didn't know bed bugs were a problem in this country anymore. Apparently bed bug infestations are on the rise (between international travel, soldiers returning from Iraq and Mexican immigration). Also the types of insectides used now for things like ants and roaches aren't effective for bed bug control. When I read how hard they can be to eliminate, I urged Dad to tell the apartment managers.

So, dad's apartment was sprayed yesterday. You should've seen the bugs come running. Ewwww. After we came back from lunch, Dad and I vacuumed up the dead bodies and some egg caches I found. We vacuumed again today and ordered some vinyl mattress covers to keep the few remaining survivors contained. The exterminator is coming back in 3-4 weeks for a follow-up application. I hope this takes care of this. I hate seeing my father being eaten alive.

The guys Marcus works with have too much time on their hands. Here's proof.