Struck Down

My ex-girlfriend is sick. Last week she had a cerebral aneurism and was taken to the hospital. She is lucky in a lot of ways. Her boyfriend was there to take care of her and she had just gotten back from camping far from any hospital help. I haven’t seen her or her boyfriend but mutual friends have filled me in on some of the details. After the aneurism she was taken to the hospital and underwent surgery. They still have her in the ICU she is very sensitive to sound and has headaches. She is resting as best she can but is getting sick of being in the hospital. She reappeared on facebook yesterday which I take as a good sign but she mentioned that she won’t be posting much due to some double vision.

I knew that she had high blood pressure but she is too young to have an aneurism. She is 29 years old and in a hospital bed in the ICU. The doctors seem to think she will make a full recovery, and that is comforting but she could have just as easily died.

I am not sure what role I play in this. We were together for 7 and a half years but that was almost three years ago. I now only see her at the occasional party thrown by one of our few mutual friends. We are not interested in the same things and do not go the same places. Friday night when the news came down, I was notified by two different people and on Saturday I was updated by three different people. I am astonished at where I am in the flow of information. I am going to try and visit her in the hospital but I don’t really know what to say. She is bored but still resting and recovering. What do we talk about? Do I chat with her new boyfriend about what I know about her family medical history? Do I bring her favorite candy? There is so much history that I have been setting aside for years, and now I do not know what to do with it.

Work continued

It has been a few weeks now since I started my new job. It has not been a smooth ride.
My boss and I do not see eye to eye and that has been a bit of a problem. We don't use the same words, phrases or descriptions. We don't live our lives similarly and we don't relate to other people in the same way. It has been difficult to adjust myself to his expectations.
He is typically in the office at least a half hour early and tolerates NO tardiness I had gotten used to an amount of leeway in normal operations, and now I need to be there early for fear of being late. I was 2 minutes late yesterday and that was not good enough. Today I was 10 minutes early. I am allowed NO personal computer use at work. I was looking into how to root my phone and he called me on it (way after the fact). I was tracking a package and he asked me if it was work related (it was). I am the new guy and even though the other guys get there at +/- 5 minutes and check personal email, I am held to a different standard. So be it. At least he doesn't expect me to eat my lunch at my desk while working like he does.
I am friends with his boss (lets call him Dubbs) and I have found out through him that he is the only reason I haven't already been fired. I was close to being fired for these transgressions before I even knew that they were problems. My boss was ready to cut me loose after two weeks. This company puts a serious focus on interrelations and personal growth so much that they have documents outlining how to properly guide the growth of new employees by developing goals and setting 90 day growth plans. These documents are available to anyone in the company and I dare not even suggest to my boss that he read them.  I started by trying to pattern my behavior after those around me but that wasn't good enough. Now I have been given more guidance and I am trying to conform. I am worried every day that I will lose this job. I have at least 90 days as a freelancer before I have any sort of pretense to stability, but the point of no return is actually February 20 when I have to decide if I am going to drop my classes (and thus abandon my schedule for getting a Bachelor's degree) for this job.
Its like walking on eggshells every day. I like the work other than that, I get to walk around and meet the other people who are almost all nice and I am learning a great deal about computers. The atmosphere is generally positive and the amenities are generous. My team is full of competent intelligent people. I know a bunch of people that work with the company and really think that I can form good friendships there. The only problem is my immediate supervisor. I just need to apply myself and struggle through this.

Inflection Point

I have stopped working. I have decided that, given the facts, there is no reason to expect the company to turn around and become profitable again. This leaves me with a few options that I need to consider.

First let me mention that I have a solid savings. Even after the vacations that I have planned for August and November, I could probably live off my savings for a few months more. I have moved back to my mother's place for what was originally going to be a month before renting a house with some friends (that plan is dead and buried) and my bills are practically nothing. As excruciating as it is for me to be unemployed and living with my mother, I am not poor or uncomfortable at the moment. (To clarify, I don't mind being around my mother, I mind the social implications of living at home at my age, but not so much to go out and burn money on rent unnecessarily.)

Second I should mention an obstacle in the way of obtaining solid work. I have an almost three-week vacation coming up. I will be out of town late August to early September in eastern Europe. Any job that I attempt to get would have to be flexible enough to allow me the time away after only a month of working. I am not going to skip out on my vacation even if it means being unemployed until then. I could collect unemployment until then, or I could live off of savings.

I have a few options on how to proceed with getting a new job. First is the choice of what to do with my current job. I am now on zero hours per week, my boss will lay me off if and when I ask him to and I believe he would hire me to work for him again if he were able to make the deal he is trying to get to open an installation branch for another company. At this point I cannot wait any longer for this deal to go through, I need to secure another job and paycheck. If I get something temporary and the stars align enough to allow my boss to hire me again, then I will consider it then, but now I cannot count on it. So, I have to get some other job.

The jobs that I am looking at are through a couple of contacts that I have. I don't have anything concrete yet but I have a couple of potential positions. The first is an installation job wiring together some systems for the government. It is somewhere between a year and two years worth of freelance installation work. This job would be for more money then I was getting, but with no benefits and no security and in the same type of work that I think is a dead end for me. With the constant march of technology, I believe that skilled installers such as myself will find our jobs evaporate from under us. I expect that as systems get more powerful and easier to install, my services will be less in demand. I am not interested in hanging around until I become obsolete.

The second job connection is from an editor friend of mine who thinks that he can get me a job in the machine room of the facility where he used to work. The pay would be less then I make (don't make?) now, but it would probably be an employee position where I could move up to a better position. In this option, I would try to eventually become a supervisor to do the job of dealing with the client and keeping the editors on track and working at full efficiency. I would not be trying to become an editor due to my lack of stereo-vision and the inevitable dominance of 3D programming. This job is less likely for me to get and less pay but has a greater potential for the future.

I guess it mostly depends on which job I can actually get. I think the best outcome is doing the freelance thing between now and my vacation and then trying to get the permanent job after I come back.

Wish me luck.

Bound for Mexico

Thanksgiving has been less and less of an event as years go by. It started as a huge gathering of my fathers side of the family where we all catch up with each other. Now my grandparents are gone, and father is rarely in the country for thanksgiving or for his birthday which is around the same day. Now the dinner feast is just one family and a couple of uncles and cousins. I go each year because if I didn't then I would only see this part of my family for Christmas or not at all.

This year a few anomalies have cropped up, both are birthdays. My father may actually be in town for thanksgiving and his birthday and so I want to be able to celebrate them with him. The second is that it is my girlfriend's grandfather's 90th birthday that weekend, and she has invited me to go with her to Mexico City to celebrate with her and her family.

I have not been to Mexico in many years and Mexico City is where the Girlfriend grew up, so I very much want to go with her. I decided to approach this decision directly and e-mailed my father about his birthday. He said that I should go, and that if it were his choice he would go himself. That makes half of the decision but now comes the financial part. I have recently booked a eastern Mediterranean cruise and done an expensive car repair. The thought of buying another plane ticket does not thrill me. I very much want to go, and probably will but now I am watching my carefully constructed savings crumble before my eyes.

Bent

I was just out working on a bowl on my lathe and I think I broke it. I have an old shopsmith 10ER. When I say that this thing is old, I mean that this thing may be 50 years old or older. I was working on making a bowl out of a piece of purpleheart not unlike the one that I posted a picture of recently, and I caught the tool digging into the wood and stopping the revolutions of the blank. This put too much pressure on the spindle and it bent.

I know that my father has one of these machines (in fact he has managed to collect 4) and had done the same thing once. I am going to have to consult him on how to proceed from here. one thing is certan though. I am putting this machine through more stress then it was designed to handle. I have to face the fact that I need to get a real lathe. The problem is that the kind of lathe that I want costs around $5000 and I don't have that kind of expendable cash lying around.

What the hell do I do now!?

Doomed

Despite how crazy I feel about my new girlfriend, I cant help but feel that our relationship is doomed. A myriad tiny clues lead me to the feeling that we have a time limit. I am worried that we have 8 to 12 months, and by that time it will be over. I don't want this to happen but the feeling persists. What I have to remember is to not make it a self fulfilling prophecy. If I were to act like we had a time limit then I would be the one limiting the relationship, and I don't want that.

Cracks

I have done a little woodturning the past few days. I was successful in making a bowl out of purpleheart for my girlfriend but since that I have tried two more times and failed due to cracks in the turning blanks. This is a bit disheartening. One of the blocks was mango that my father brought me from the Philippines and the other was a piece of Olive that I cut myself when a friend was cutting down an olive tree in his yard. I hope that some of the other olive blanks are actually usable but I fear that they are all too cracked to use.

Distracted

I am working onsite alone today and I can't seem to stay focused. I only got about four hours of sleep last night because I went out to karaoke (I sang Weird Science) and so I am dragging. The larger reason is that I have a girl on my mind. I have only met this girl twice but she is dominating my thoughts. I have a dinner date with her this Friday but I am impatient, I want more now!

It has been a long time since I have had this reaction to someone.

Collapse

At HapKiDo last night my injured ankle gave out under me while I was trying to execute a defense against punch technique. I am to do a foot-block at head height, step down and jump into a 180 spin-kick followed by a 180 low spin-kick. During the jump-180-spin, my left ankle gave out and I fell to the mat. This is not good. My Black Belt test is at the end of April. I hope I am healed up by then.

Dangerous Choices

I had some friends over to watch the movie Thank You For Smoking, and one of them left her keys here. So we figured out a midpoint and split the hour drive. When I got to the agreed upon Denny's and passed off the keys, I was approached by a young man in need of some help. This guy was wearing plaid shorts and a couple of t-shirts, he had a lot of tattoos and buzzed hair. He also had a fresh white bandage on his arm and was carrying a plastic baggie with what looked at first like hospital bed restraints but turned out to be his belt and the contents of his pockets from his recent arrest. He needed a ride back to the shitty hotel that he and his pregnant fiancee were reduced to living in. He was very worried about her because the last she had heard from him he was going to jail.

I was very suspicious of this stranger asking to be allowed in my car in the middle of the night, especially when I noticed that he had a large swastika tattooed on his left calf, but he showed me that his pockets were empty and offered to let me hold his bag of belongings (a pocket knife, belt, prescription drug bottle, and a hospital wristband) I asked my friends that I was there to meet to follow me and said yes. I know that this was a dangerous situation, and that this guy could possibly hurt me, but I relied on the facts that I was holding his knife and that I have martial arts training ease that fear.

As I drove him what wound up being just under a mile to his motel, I got filled in with the bits and pieces that where his story. He is 24 and his fiancee is 30. She is 3 months pregnant with his child. She lost her house and her two kids recently. all that they have is a car and no phones. He was recently bitten by a brown recluse spider and the bandage and pills were from an infection. He had taken too many pills and was out of his head in a WalMart where he started to use his knife to open a package that he was thinking of buying. They called the cops and he was arrested for petty theft. He cooperated and they processed and released him, but he had no phone and no transport so he needed help.

I wonder how wise it was to help this stranger, but I really wanted to help him. It was raining lightly and he was in a shitty situation. I wish I could have helped him more but the safety factor plus the late hour and a rather cynical thought that there was nothing that I could say or do in the time I was willing to commit would make any kind of meaningful difference in this man's life. I simply told him to take care of himself and his baby and dropped him off.

Its moments like this that I really appreciate all that I have, materially and through the relationships I have with friends and family.

Getting Worse

Today at work we had a little talk. It seems that things are not going so well. I have to decide what to do next.Weeks ago when a friend called to tell me about an assistant editor job, I considered the possibilities of moving on into a related field. I talked to the boss and he said that he wanted me in the company so I shelved that idea and stuck around. Now I don't have that offer and it seems that the company is in serious trouble. We had an offer to buy the company but that seems to be gone due to legal matters. The company may dissolve and re-form but that is not certain and the time frame is questionable. Now I am losing money and facing tough decisions. I still have a good amount of savings but the future looks scary.

Terrible News

Seems that we didn't get the bid we spent a whole week working on. Now I have no idea where that leaves us.

Paranoid

Sarah told me yesterday that she has come down with H1N1, the flu commonly known as swine flu.
She was diagnosed after stopping by to pick up a few things from my apartment. I am now paranoid that I will catch H1N1 from touching something she touched yesterday. I bought Clorox wipes and spray and have been running around wiping things down. Most importantly the keyboard that I am currently using, which I know that she used to get directions somewhere. I don't want to come off as not caring how she is feeling, I do but I am also going to do whatever i can to keep from catching the flu.

Double Trouble

Work has slowed down quite a bit. Now I am not sure about the stability of my position. I don't think I would be fired but I may lose my job. This is quite scary for me. I have held this job for something close to 5 years, and now I need to start running the 'what if' through my head. I am going to need a good resume, and perhaps need to start making calls. What frightens me the most is my uncertain set of skills. I have an associates degree and A/V wiring experience. I can write a basic website, and have done some small management on a per project basis. As I think over what my resume looks like on paper, it is not impressive. My real assets are an emphasis on teamwork and the ability to solve complex problems. How do you write that down so that it doesn't look like bullshit?

I have never been one to live paycheck-to-paycheck, so I am safe and secure for a little while, but nobody likes a question mark hanging over their financial future. If I start a job search what do I look for? what jobs am I suited for besides the one I already have? The uncertainty of it all.

My hours have been cut. I am home very early to putter around my lonely apartment looking at the things that Sarah hasn't taken home yet. I was with Sarah for a long time and she is still in my thoughts. I wonder how she is, I wonder where she is sleeping, I wonder when she is going to start packing her stuff out. My present is in flux, my future is in flux. I am afraid and eager. My emotional state is chaotic when I am at home, with little to focus on and nobody here to distract me. I am calm when I am away from pictures, Like the one of the two of us when we went to see Zumanity in Las Vegas, or the picture of Sarah in her hot-pink playboy bunny costume posing with a pair of hooters girls, and here I cannot help but feel the lack. I want to have my space back again but I am also sad that it is over.

Part of me wants to lay down and sleep it all away. Just sit there and stare off into the distance while time does its all wounds cleaning trick. Another part of me says to get out there and get busy. To bend myself to my website project, to turn more goblets, to build a ceramic kiln, to flirt with pretty girls, and to get on with life.

I have never been filled with so many conflicting emotions in my life.

A Post About Posting About People

I have once again run into one of those hateful quirks of the internet that can drive a man crazy. Many of my friends have blogs of their own, and of course when you have a blog you post your feelings much like I am doing right now. This allows you to gripe anonymously and get things off your chest. The problem occurs when you wish to vent about a friend who is in your social network or subscribes to your blog. I have recently found a third place where a friend has posted something that I perceive as negative about me on the net in a place I should not have seen it. There were no names and the post was written to not point out who it was about but I felt it was about me and about a conversation I had. I was alerted by a mutual friend as before, and I had to figure out how to proceed. It is a different friend posting and a different friend notifying me each time, so It is not a personal pattern, but a general one.

This is one of the most seductive things about the internet. The ability to anonymously, blow off steam, or offend with no real fear of consequences. Should I be offended when my friends post negative things about me on the internet where they think I won't find them? I feel that it is as if they are talking behind my back. Or is it just a common part of our hyper-connected culture that I need to accept. Is it acceptable to post something behind a privacy filter so that some of your friends can see you complaining about another friend? Or should these things be open to anyone trolling the internet? I am left offended but uncertain as to how justified I am in my offence.

I try to resolve differences in person and with no ambiguous terms. Not everyone is as assertive when they have been offended or perceive that they have offended others. I posted months ago about a friend that decided that they don't like me and would not like to be around me if we didn't have mutual friends. In that case I let the matter go, but in this case I wish to repair the friendship. I enjoy spending time with this friend, we have things in common, and are in regular communication. This makes me feel like the whenever this person looks at me they are thinking "what an asshole" and I care about the opinions of those I chose to surround myself with, and if there is a problem, I want it resolved.

So I got in contact with this friend to talk it out. In the post It seemed to me that my friend was upset at some things I said and I wanted to clear the air and expunge the offence. The conversation can be summed up shortly

ME: I saw this thing. what's up?
Friend: WTF? that wasn't really about you
ME: so we good then?
Friend: we're good <3

Now I'm not sure if I'm still the asshole for bringing it up or emo for getting all upset. Am I in the wrong for peeking into a private post? or should the friend not have posted about me hidden from me? It is very difficult to find boundaries on the internet. Now here I am posting in vague terms about a friend who posted in vague terms about me. So is this just repeating the offence? Damn this is complicated.

Good friends and bad traffic

I spent the weekend driving around to various friends's places to visit. Played boardgames Friday night, drank beer and watched internet funnies Saturday and played Beatles Rock Band on Sunday. I have such great friends, and I had a great time, thank you all (you know who you are). On Sunday I got the short end of the traffic stick. I ran into a closure of the 710-405 interchange on the way out to Costa Mesa, and on the way back I got stopped behind an accident on the 55, and then detoured around a complete closure of the 5, and slowed by no less than 3 other road constructions. Good grief! are ALL of the freeways broken?

A beating

Yesterday I went out to my local martial arts supply and picked up some sparring gear. Today was sparring at my dojo, and since my Wednesday running partner rescheduled for tomorrow, I found myself fresh out of excuses. I went in and did a little fighting.
For my first match as an adult I was opposite Jujitsu black-belt. He had clear control of the fight with superior aim and timing despite the fact that he was old enough to be my father. He landed one punch squarely (if not very hard) on my nose giving me a double nose bleed. I retired to the restroom to sort it out. After I stopped the bleeding I had to reconsider my enthusiasm in the sport. I had been fighting less than 5 minutes in a light contact easy manner and already I had my own blood on my gi. I pulled myself together eventually and went out with a green belt (I am what is called a red-stripe-1) and managed to get some good even light sparring. He did at one point kick me square in the balls, bit it was a light hit and I was already a little pumped up so it barely hurt. Last I faced a Hapkido black-belt and we traded punches and kicks in a more easy rhythm. Overall I learned quite a bit. I will be going back but I am not sure when, as I do go running on Wednesdays.

No Pain No Gain

I am in some pain today. On Wednesday I did the abs portion of the P90X system and then went on a 3-mile run. The problem comes in where I sprinted the last 150 yards of my run, and yesterday I had a Hapkido belt test. Today my hip flexor muscles are wrecked It is painful to stand and painful to walk. At least I got my next belt.I am now a red-stripe-1 that is a red belt with a black stripe down the middle of it. My next test is for red stripe 2/recommended black belt in two months. I hope to be test for black in February.

My Aching Back

It all started three weeks ago. I was doing some work under a desk in a Protools room and I developed a muscle knot in my back. It hurt a bit, but I figured it would work itself out in a few days. It didn't. Two weeks later was watched the movie "UP" and like I do during movies I was slouching in my theater seat with Sarah leaning up against me. When I went to get up I felt a stab of pain in my back where I had the knot, but this time it was much more intense. I managed to walk to the car with a shot of pain with every step I took with my left leg. I was hoping I would sleep it off, but I didn't. The next day was monday and I had work doing much the same thing that started this whole chain off, so I told the boss I got a stunt double to do the wiring for me. I, in the mean time got a massage that I should have gotten at least a week sooner. Unfortunately it was too late for that, and although the massage was nice, the problem had progressed from a muscle knot to a couple of ribs out of place.
It seems that the knot in my back had weakened the muscles enough that when I was slouching with my sweetie in the theater, I put enough pressure to do a little damage. Now it was time to see a Chiropractor. On Tuesday I got on my health insurance's web page and looked up a local bone cracker. I went in that day and he confirmed what the masseuse had said, it was a couple of ribs out of place, the difference is that he could do something about it! He more or less jumped up and down on my back a couple of times, and then attached muscle stimulating electrodes to my back for a few minutes, and after settling the tab, I went on my merry way. My back hurt worse for a couple of hours but then It has been constant improvement. I went in again on friday and got adjusted again. I will be going in a few more times but all is going well. I have been healing except for the jumping up and down with my hands in the air that I did at the VNV Nation concert that set me back a little. I think I will be pain free in a couple of weeks.

Back Pain

So now I am in some serious pain from an aggravated knot in my back. I have had a little pain mostly when I cough for about two weeks bun now its much worse. I can't walk without a little pain bending over is out of the question and getting in and out of my car is a careful maneuver. There is no way I will be able to do the work that I have scheduled today so I am going to have to get a subcontractor to do it. I just can't squeeze into the required areas. I am going to have to get a massage today to fix this.