Downgrading

I will start this post with the email I sent to my parents this morning regarding my car, as I don't want to re-type and/or rehash everything again:

So here's the latest update on the car -- we got the estimate yesterday from the steering column repair guy here in town, and it's pretty much along the lines of what I was expecting. Yes, the parts for the steering column and ignition/switch themselves are pretty cheap and are in stock (maybe $100-125 total) and the labor isn't incredibly bad for it either. However, it looks like they damaged the entire turn signal array/mechanism as well, which means the wheel needs to be replaced (another $12-15 or so for a compatible wheel). The problem, however, isn't in getting the parts but in getting a key that goes with those parts. Since my car's anti-theft device is in the ignition switch (which, I might add, is the first thing the thugs ripped off/cut out) and corresponds with a security microchip in my ignition key, we'd have to get a steering column and ignition that already had the key with it ready to go -- otherwise the car would need to be completely re-keyed and that would add another $150-200 to the total. It's substantially harder to find one with a matching key set for it, so the estimate for everything is anywhere between $250 and $450-500.

The other option, of course, is to sell the car. The people who the used parts come from (U Pull It Omaha) buys vehicles to add to their used parts inventory. You can fill out a form online and they'll make you an offer, come to you, tow the car for free, and write you a check then and there. They're a really reputable company and we have friends who have used them before not only to get parts, but to sell their cars. Therefore, over the holiday weekend, I'm going to see what they'd offer me for the car as-is (since the rest of it is in good working order and it has two new tires with less than fifteen miles on them). If their offer is more than it would cost to fix it, or at least comparable, I'll just sell it to them and put the money towards something else as long as it has four wheels, doors, and a heater. At this point I really don't care as we're going into winter and I need a car.

This pretty much sums it all up, to be honest with you.

Daisy has told me that we can do whatever I wish; if we want to try to fix it regardless, we can, if that's what I so choose. If not, we can get me something else. If I do have to get something else, I am being honest -- I really don't care what it is as long as it runs, has heat, and I can drive it to and from work. If nothing else I'm sure I could find a Sunfire or Neon or something like that which I could purchase relatively cheaply and drive it until I can afford something else. At this point it's not about what kind of car I'd want, but what I could get. Believe me, I have wants, but none of them are anywhere near our available price range, and because of our current credit card debt we don't qualify for a car loan right now. We checked. 

So. Those are really our options. Before all this happened, we'd originally planned to get me a new car sometime in the spring once it warmed up, as we would've been able to save enough money by then and have our credit cards paid down more, enough to where that would be a feasible option. Now? Yeah, it's been bumped up and it's no longer feasible to wait. Obviously, this puts us in a rather tight spot. Plus, there's the issue of my student loans coming due in about two weeks as well, so...yeah.

I'm not messing with any of it until I'm off for my "weekend," as I don't have the time or patience to otherwise fuck with it until then. We'll wait and see what happens.

Middle Fingers, Part IV: Holding Patterns

I've made it no secret here in my blog over the years how much I love my car. She is like a child to me, the one thing I have that nobody can take away (aside from the cats, of course). The Monte Carlo is the first vehicle I've ever had that I've owned outright, name on the title, no payments, leases, or anything like that. Therefore, when anyone touches the car aside from me or my wife -- and especially when a group of thugs tries to steal it (not once, but twice) and ends up heavily damaging it in the process -- it's a huge violation. I basically feel like my car was raped. To an extent, it was, depending on how one looks at it. That may not be the best analogy, and I would imagine that rape survivors may scoff or be offended by that analogy, but look at my ignition:

This took time. This took effort. Wasted time and effort, of course, since the first thing they did was cut off the one electronic piece that would actually let them start the car, but still. That's like beating a dead horse.

Anyway, to continue from where I left off last, the car is undriveable (of course) even with its key. I texted my coworkers on Friday afternoon to make sure that the car was still there before I went to work, and they confirmed that it was -- so the first thing I did when I got to work on Friday was schedule it to be towed back home to our apartment parking lot. The scheduling of this was perfectly fine -- AAA allows you to do it online, type in details of what you need, etc etc, and they give you a timeframe estimate there on the website once you schedule it. That was easy; however, getting the car out of that lot was, well, not.

I'll remind you that the one part of the car that makes it able to do anything was completely destroyed. Without being able to even turn it on, I can't shift it out of park. It was parked with its nose up against a treeline, so it's not like the truck could've gotten up in front of it to just lift it and pull it out. It had to be towed from behind, which is a much harder job that requires the car to be lifted and an extra set of roller wheels attached on each side in the front in order to get it out of there. Daisy thought I was being irrational by having it towed home immediately after I got to work, but the fact is that I get to work at 3, and we only have daylight until 5-ish. Not only would the tow driver need to be able to see to get the car out of there, but I wasn't leaving it there after dark again so that the thugs could possibly come back and try to get it a third time. No, I was getting that car home safely ASAP, and at that moment I didn't care who it inconvenienced (read: Daisy, who had to be awake early that afternoon to not only get me to work, but to tell the tow driver a space to put it in once it got home). So no, at that time I didn't particularly care -- if the thugs came back a third time for it, I'm sure they would've found a way to get it out of there even if they had to tow it themselves. The damage on it already isn't covered by insurance, and neither is theft -- even if it can't be fixed, if it's actually successfully stolen, I can't even sell it and get something out of it. So yeah, pardon my "irrationality."

The car was towed home safely and put back into our apartment parking lot. I thanked the tow guy profusely, and he told me that he didn't think the damage looked incredibly bad -- it looked pretty fixable. Once it was home, Daisy took the pictures of it, one of which I shared above, in order to get them sent off to a shop who specializes in ignitions and steering columns here in Omaha. We've been told by multiple sources that the mechanic there is the best in town for that stuff, both on quality of work and price. We've yet to hear back from him yet; however, I have looked up replacement parts for the car to have an idea of how much these things would be to replace outright -- from U-Pull-it Omaha's site a new steering column with airbag is $69, without airbag $49. An ignition switch is $12. A new steering wheel, if the mechanics in mine is too damaged to use, is $11 or something like that. All of that is do-able, even with whatever labor costs the mechanic may charge. It may suck, but it's do-able. Better than that, all of the parts appear to be in stock.

Right now we just appear to be in a holding pattern more than anything else; as we've not heard back from the mechanic yet, Daisy is going to call him this afternoon once I go to work to see what he says. And since the car is "safe" at home, I'm not too concerned about it right now. I say "safe" because, as you'll recall, it was also broken into once here in our parking lot. Not that there's anything left in it now to take out of it, of course, unless a thief wanted half a bottle of radiator stop-leak or a two-year old air freshener tree hanging off my rearview mirror, I mean. I took the insurance card and registration out of it and brought it back upstairs for the time being as well, because not only was I relieved that it was still there, but because one can never be too safe.

As an aside, when I had my car towed home, the other car the thieves had stolen (and left there running with a screwdriver in the ignition) was still in the lot next to mine, though it was no longer running at the time. I didn't get a good look at it, honestly. It was a red, mid-90s SUV like a Blazer or Jimmy or something. I don't know if the cops turned it off when Daisy gave her report, or if it just ran out of gas in the hours between -- but it was still there when Daisy went to the gas station the next night, and when she got back twenty minutes later it was gone. So, it appears the thieves did come back to get it. No tow truck would've picked it up at 1AM, and Daisy says she was only gone for 20 minutes. Because of this, she apologized for snapping at me over my "irrationality" earlier, and told me she knew I'd feel vindicated. Ironically, the one thing I did notice about that car next to mine is that it had two AAA stickers on the back glass, one on each side.

With nothing else that can be done for the moment (and no more money to afford anything else repairs-wise until after we get paid on Black Friday, paying rent and bills first), we wait. We go about our lives as per the usual. Despite the stress caused by this bullshit, I've actually been in a decent mood all week (for the most part). Last night we went to see Big Hero 6 and did a little Christmas shopping -- and to some extent, it was therapeutic. Our work schedules this week are altered from the usual, of course, due to Thanksgiving -- one of only five or six days per year that our business actually closes down -- and I get Thursday off. We all have to clock out before midnight on Wednesday night, to be honest with you, as it'll screw up the time system otherwise. Most of us will be working on Black Friday, including Daisy and myself, on what is historically one of the craziest days for the year or the most silent. It's a flip of the coin, really. If a major retailer's systems go down on Friday? Oh, we're boned. Otherwise? Crickets.

"Here's the thing," I told one of our coworkers on Saturday, "if it's busy, good; we'll be there, we'll be working, it'll be a normal Friday afternoon. If it's quiet? Well, then we're there and we'll get paid to get a reprieve from the normal Friday onslaught of craziness. Either way, there's only going to be so much we can do anyhow on a holiday weekend with most of the workforce being gone."

If Saturday (and, from what I heard, Sunday) is any indication, it's going to be a fairly quiet week in the office if only because of the holiday. My boss is out of the office on vacation through the beginning of the month, which puts Daisy as the next in line on the chain of command most of the nights she's there working.

The cold has let up, at least a little bit; it was probably in the low 60s on Saturday, and though it's been cold and windy since, it's not so brutal that you're frozen to the bone. Tonight, however, we're supposed to get a rain-to-snow mix that's going to hit the east coast on Thursday, including back home in West Virginia, so I'm waiting to see what's going to happen there. I've been getting to and from work with Daisy's help as well as with the occasional ride there or ride home from a few coworkers when they offer. It's going to remain that way, sadly, until I get a vehicle again that I can drive myself -- whether that be my car or another, newer car. We'd originally planned to start looking for a newer vehicle for me once it started getting warmer in the spring, but it appears that timeframe may be bumped up somewhat depending on what we can do with the Monte Carlo.

Middle Fingers, Part III: Death Knells

I would like to preface this post by saying that for the moment, none of this matters anymore; the car is currently dead. But there's a definite lead up to how it got there.

So.

We got the car towed to Firestone Monday afternoon and had to leave it there overnight. On Tuesday morning they called me and said that it was done -- two new tires and an oil change for $218. There were other miscellaneous little issues with it they told me about as well, but it wasn't anything I didn't already know about, nor anything I haven't known about for years -- wheel bearings are loud, "service engine soon" light on (it's always been on since I bought the car), etc. I picked it up, paid for it, and it fired up perfectly fine. The drive was smooth like butter on those new tires, and the oil change helped out the engine quite a bit, as I could already tell. And I went to work and came home with my stress levels already lowered compared to the usual.

This was fine for two days -- Tuesday and Wednesday. And this was my normal pattern of work (which, for the record, has been awful this week). Yesterday, I went to work as I normally do at my normal time, and because there's never any parking in the main lot, I parked in the overflow lot, in the same spot I park in every day when I have to park down there. The overflow lot is about 100 yards from the front of the building, and I park under the treeline at the end of it. It sucks in the cold sometimes, but otherwise the lot is fine. I walk back down there at the end of my shift and get in, fire it up, drive home.

Last night at the end of my shift -- to my absolute horror, of course, I found that the car had been broken into. In the work parking lot. But it wasn't just broken into, oh no -- it had basically been destroyed on the inside. The entire dash had been smashed in, the rearview mirror ripped off and down, the glove compartment bashed open, stereo (obviously) ripped out and stolen, and (worst of all), the entire ignition assembly had been torn out and was laying in pieces on the floor, the assembly housing completely trashed and even the metal scarred and torn up.

Now, the Monte Carlo is old, but it does have an anti-theft system. That system is a chip embedded in the ignition key of the car. Without it, or if that chip is malfunctioning/doesn't complete the internal circuit, the car won't start. I've had my fair share of complaints about the engineering at GM on that car, but this feature is more than likely why the car is still sitting in the parking lot at work.

However, the would-be thieves had already torn out the tumbler assembly of the ignition switch, severing the wires and everything. Which means there was nothing for the key to connect to. While I could still stick said key into the hole, it would only go in about half an inch, as the chip assembly/key rotator switch was torn out, wires cut, and that's what makes the car start. My car would ding at me as it recognized that the key was in there, but it couldn't turn or turn over the engine (obviously), so there was nothing I could do. It appears that they tried to jam a screwdriver in there (or some other metal tool) in an attempt to get it to turn. Yeah, wasn't happening with my car. At some point they left, and I came back to my car at midnight when my shift was over with it all fucked up.

So. Daisy called the police and found that we could do a report via phone; however, the people who did that weren't in until 7AM. With the car rendered undriveable and no other recourse at midnight after another soul-crushing day at work, we left it there in the parking lot and came home; me for the night, Daisy on her lunch hour. We discussed our options. The first thing I had to do, of course, was file a claim with my insurance company (Geico) in the morning for the attempted theft, and then we'd go from there. Realistically we'd be using our AAA membership again to get it towed home or to a junkyard, as I figured a report of damage would total it out since it's so old and half falling apart cosmetically anyway.

This was not the case, but I'll get to that.

When Daisy got back to work after her lunch hour, she immediately called me.

"Was there a car parked next to yours when we left?" she asked.

"Nope," I said.

"Okay, I didn't think so. I'm calling the police. I hope they're still fucking there."

What transpired after that is nothing short of mindblowing. I shall defer to Daisy here, as her description of it she wrote is pretty spot on as-it-happened:

Brandon's car got broken into yesterday, Thursday-- they fucked it up, pulled the ignition out, etc. He discovered it as he went to go home from work. I took my lunch and drove him home and then went back to work. As I drove by I had a feeling and looked to the left in the overflow parking lot where his car was parked. There was a car parked next to his. We'd called the police earlier and were going to file a report later today. I called 911 again because there was no reason a car should be parked next to his in that lot at this time. While waiting for the police, another car arrived, a grey truck, and parked behind Brandon's, facing the exit and ready to drive away. Forty minutes later the police arrive-- not the officers' fault, they were sent from SW Omaha because of another incident that had taken police attention in the area. The grey truck drove away as the police drove by. The police circled back, not aware the people they were looking for just drove off, and discovered they'd left the car next to Brandon's-- the one I originally called to report-- still running, hot-wired, with no one in it.

I watched a crime from my work window cursing the delay it took for police to arrive. The damage has possibly totaled out Brandon's car. But, on life turns. Things could always be worse and I'm thankful that we're both okay. I'm also thankful for my amazing people I work with who walked me up to police and held my hand to make sure I was okay.

Yeah. That's the brief rundown of it all, anyway. According to my wife, it was ongoing; they came back -- apparently hell-bent-determined to steal my near-worthless Monte Carlo, and continued to try to hotwire it for forty more minutes before the police showed up. How do I know this? Because Daisy and at least three coworkers were watching it as it happened. 

Daisy gave our police report to the officers in person, and got our case number -- which I have and gave to the Geico people this morning -- but told us not to expect to hear back from them (obviously) because there's nothing really the police can do here. I have not yet seen any further damage they caused to the car, of course, because it happened after I was home and asleep for the night. The car remains in the lot.

So.

This morning when Daisy went to bed, I was just waking up and she gave me the rundown of what was going on. My first job, of course, was to report a claim with Geico. I did so, online, and then missed a call from an agent who gave me a number to call him back...a number that went right into Geico's phone tree and took me nowhere. I got another number for the claims department from an operator in some department in Texas, and called back in. This time I got an agent on the line and explained my situation, and she gave me a list of questions about the incident -- which of course I answered truthfully -- before looking up my policy and telling me that theft, attempted theft, and vandalism/damage is not covered by my insurance plan, as I do not have "comprehensive coverage."

For fuck's sake.

My car is almost twenty years old, and to put it under comprehensive coverage (I later found out) would cost me $1000 total per year to insure the car. I only paid $500 for the car to begin with. There is literally nothing the insurance people can do for the car as it is -- this is all on me, out-of-pocket.

"What we'll have to do is file this as an informational claim," she said.

She was, for the record, very sweet and very helpful -- as much as she could be, anyway -- but it still means I'm boned. They can't total out the car; nothing can be done with it now other than to A) have it towed home so that it's no longer in the parking lot at work, and B) have it towed again to a scrapyard to sell it for scrap, or conversely, to an auto shop to see if the entire ignition assembly can be repaired for a somewhat reasonable amount.

Again, I am thankful Daisy signed us up for AAA earlier this week.

More information as it comes in.

Middle Fingers, Part II: Tire'd

The cold has been unrelenting.

Since last week when I last wrote here, it has not been above freezing. Not once. Most of the time, temperatures have struggled to get into the 20s, and there's been a near-constant 15-30mph wind at almost all hours of the day and night. And, to add to the mess somewhat, on Saturday we got our first snowstorm of the season, which produced whiteout conditions for chunks of an hour or two at a time until it finally stopped and moved off to the south and east.

On top of all of this, my car had to go in for surgery.

Let me explain.

Last Thursday when I drove to work, I got out of my car and saw that my tire was low. Hmm, I thought, I should go pump that up tomorrow on my way to work. When I left work that night, it was even lower -- to the point where it was difficult to steer/the tire was producing drag when I was on my way home. Of course, as it was midnight and midnight is fucking dark, I couldn't see how low, only that it was super-low.

By Friday morning when Daisy got home from work, it was completely flat. Rim-sitting-on-the-ground flat. I called Dad, who brought over his portable air compressor (which plugged into the socket of his new truck) and in the absolutely blistering cold, we ran it for over a half hour to see if the tire could be re-pumped. While it took some air and there was a slightly noticeable change in the tire's appearance, it lost it almost as quickly. My tire was flat, it was fucked, the car was unusable.

Mind you, throughout all of this I had no clue what was wrong with the tire (I never found out, actually, but I'll get to that). There was no visible punctures, no nails or anything sticking out of it that I could see -- it was just flat. I asked Daisy, very sweetly, if she would pick me up a can of Fix-a-Flat on her way home from work on Friday night, as I couldn't exactly do it myself (on Friday and Saturday I was picked up and taken to work by one of my coworkers). Daisy picked up said Fix-a-Flat, and the plan was to put it in the tire on Saturday morning while she was sleeping, and if it pumped it up enough to drive on, to then take it down the street about two miles to the local Firestone Auto Center, who I would just pay to replace it before work. We'd gotten paid on Friday, so this wasn't a huge concern for me.

Except...well, remember how I said we got our first snowstorm on Saturday? Yeeeeah. About that...

The forecast for this storm kept changing on Friday night -- both for accumulations and for start times -- and both kept moving up. Originally they gave the estimate of 1-3 inches, which briefly changed to 3-5 before settling on 2-4, and originally the storm was supposed to start at noon or later in the afternoon. They updated that to 9AM with the heaviest snow starting around noon.

On Saturdays, I'm not awake before 9AM and I have to be at work at 3.

By the time I woke up, it was already snowing. Spitting snow, anyway. By the time I woke up enough to function, it was already coming down hard. My coworker had already asked me if I needed a ride to work on Saturday as well, since she would be running errands in the morning before work/before the snow hit, so I told her yes. The plans for working on the tire on Saturday were scrapped, and my poor baby Monte Carlo sat through a snowstorm with one flat tire and one low tire, helpless and powerless against its onslaught. Because of my tire situation, our Saturday manager (a dear friend) gave me permission to work 2-11 and get out of there when I could.

Of course, this didn't help Daisy, who works overnight Saturday nights and is the overnight manager, and Daisy doesn't come in to work until the evening, sooo....yeah, it was not a fun drive in for her. Or for us to come back home when I got off work and she took her lunch. Or for her to go back to work after lunch. Or for her to come back home in the morning.

By midnight or so the snow had completely stopped, but the cold would remain. We gave up on even attempting to look at/work on the tire on Sunday, as the snow was deep and blowing, most of the roads were still at least somewhat nasty, and it was freezing. Instead we made the plans for Monday to get everything done with the car we could, as I had to go back to work on Tuesday afternoon.

Monday came, and with it one of the coldest, windiest mornings I've ever experienced in Nebraska. Daisy and I woke up, bundled up, and went downstairs to put the Fix-a-Flat in the tire to see if that would help. I cleaned all of the snow and ice off the car after she (miraculously, I might add) fired up and I put the heater/defroster on full blast.

There was a method to this madness, of course -- for those of you who have never used Fix-a-Flat, it's pretty simple. It's an aerosol can full of hyper-expanding, sealant foam that has a hose on the nozzle. You connect the hose to your tire valve and pull the trigger, holding it until the entire can has emptied into the tire. If your rim is off the ground, even if tire is still super-low, you're then supposed to drive the car 2-4 miles to get the foam to evenly distribute and expand. In that even distribution and expansion, the sealant plugs any holes of punctures (if they're not huge, of course) and you can take the car to get the tire replaced -- apparently Fix-a-Flat can be driven on for up to 100 miles, according to the can. Stuff is tough.

Well, that didn't happen. It was so cold that the foam froze. In the hose. In the can. While trying to get it into my tire. Daisy and I were near-frozen too, of course. To add insult to injury, when it froze, the hose exploded, which sprayed the rim of my tire with the foam. Twice.

We'd had enough. We went back inside, freezing and frustrated, and looked up towing places. Daisy had already made us an afternoon appointment with the Firestone place down the street, and if the car was getting fixed that day, we had to get it down there somehow.

"They do everything else there," I told Daisy. "Why don't we see if they can tow me down there too? I mean, since that's where we're going anyway."

Daisy called. Despite the fact that we were less than three miles away, the tow down to the shop would cost an extra $80. Eighty dollars for a three-mile tow. We declined, and considered our other options.

"What about AAA?" Daisy asked.

"I don't have it."

"No, but we could sign up today. I know they do free tows with their roadside assistance stuff."

"Could we get a free tow today, on the day we sign up? I don't know if they'll do that, babe," I said.

She looked into it, called AAA to see what they could do, and about twenty minutes later we both had a full AAA membership for a year...for $60. Total. This included free tows anywhere in Omaha within a 10-mile radius. We scheduled the tow truck to come get the Monte Carlo that afternoon. Due to the weather, however, they were backlogged and we had no clue when they'd arrive -- the lady on the phone apparently gave Daisy a five-hour possible window.

Middle Fingers

I don't have enough middle fingers for this weather.

Let me explain.

On Monday morning, I was sitting on the porch enjoying the cool breeze, drinking my coffee and smoking my cigarettes per the usual, and it was a nice and tolerable 60 degrees or so.

By that afternoon, it was barely 40. By dusk, it was about 20. In the overnight hours, it began snowing. Hard. And it didn't stop for hours. By yesterday morning we (officially) had 2.3 inches of snow, and everything was covered by said snow and ice. Everything was a mess. No, quite literally, a mess. People were getting into accidents all over town, cars/vans/buses couldn't get up or down hills safely (compared to living in Kansas, Omaha has many, many hills), and people were getting stranded.

Yeah. In 2.3 inches of snow/ice. Yes, I know.

We weren't supposed to get anything, honestly; the storm was supposed to track north, and the official forecast said there was a 20% chance of flurries, with maybe a trace to a dusting. Yeah, well...

Anyway. It snowed like hell again during the evening hours last night while I was at work, but this time around it didn't stick to the cars, structures, or roads. This is good, because with the sharp dip in temperatures (it was 12 this morning when I awoke) it's already miserable enough. It's 21 outside now, but the temperature -- highs and lows -- isn't supposed to get back above freezing for the foreseeable future. And we're supposed to get more significant snow accumulation on Saturday. How much? Who knows. The weather people haven't released numbers yet, but if they're predicting it this far in advance it's usually a bad sign.

My car does not like the super-cold snap. Don't get me wrong, the Monte Carlo usually loves and/or craves the cold most of the time, but not this time around. She wanted to fight with me a little both when I left for work yesterday and when I came home last night when I started her up, and because it's a short five-minute drive from the house to work and vice versa, she doesn't even really get a chance to warm up unless I sit in the car before I move for five minutes or more. Part of it, I'm sure, is because when I lived in Newton, I could put the car in the garage when it was this cold, or at least pull up really closely to the garage under the balcony so that the house itself would give some shielding and protection from the elements -- here in Omaha, at our apartment, I park in a wide-open parking lot with no protection whatsoever. Same at work, too, unless I have to park across the street under the trees.

Work, by the way, is work. We're getting a new third shift person, and she's in training now; I met her last night. We now also have the help we need on the weekends (for the most part) again, so unless we have some sort of crazy, unbearably busy days, we should be able to manage just fine without performing mock triage on the issues we have to work without being able to give said issues the attention they need since we're so swamped. I've also been told that the winter months are the quietest months at that job, to the point where people can actually breathe and function without a 20-point blood pressure rise due to stress.

Not a whole lot else has been going on as of late; Daisy and I purchased and set up our Christmas tree, and yesterday she even hung up the Christmas Board, keeping that tradition alive. Daisy, again, is waaaaaaay into Christmas. She's doing everything she can to make the holiday season (I hate saying that this early) festive and bright, and I'm just sort of along for the ride at this point. We don't even know what our plans for the holidays are as of yet; I know I'll not be working on my birthday or on Christmas Eve, but that's about it. We have no clue what our Thanksgiving plans are or what we'll be doing on Christmas Day aside from more than likely spending the vast majority of it with the parents/family. There's literally nothing else on the docket as of yet. Looking at the way the holidays fall on the calendar this year, I'll work the 23rd, 26th, and 27th that week, and as it's the week of Christmas I'm guessing it'll be stone cold quiet on those days, which I'm totally fine with. I've heard Black Friday is dead quiet at work as well unless a major retailer goes down/offline. I will be working on Black Friday, of course. It's a Friday. You didn't think I'd ever get a Friday off, did you? Oh, foolish mortal...

Anyway. To the grind again, out into the tundra. Wearing flannel today because I need it. I'm not looking forward to the cold again. Let's just say that I've drained my vapor pen in the past two days because I really, really don't like going outside in this.

Hell Weeks

Where do I begin?

I haven't been sleeping much lately.

Well, no, let me correct that -- I haven't been sleeping well lately. As I've previously mentioned here, almost every time I sleep, even if it's just for a nap (which is rare these days due to lack of actual free time), I dream about work. Doing work, being at work, performing the processes of work. I can't escape it. The problem is not that I don't like my job; I like the job fine, and I take pride in the fact that I can (and do) do said job better than a lot of other people there. No, the problem is that I spend far too much time there doing the same repetitive shit. Being good at my job and not hating it is a curse in itself, for it means I'm given extra responsibility and do efficient work. I just can't leave it there.

I can leave it there physically, even consciously, but I simply cannot leave it there unconsciously, which is why I haven't been sleeping well and dream about that building, my cubicle, and the programs I use at work every. single. night. I don't know if there's anything I can do to stop this, nor do I know if it will ever stop. I don't dream about the people there, just the work. I'm afraid that eventually, it will drive me insane. It's not like they make some sort of drug that can change your dreams, after all. It's not like there's any sort of analyst or therapist (or, heh, an analrapist) one could go to in order to combat this problem -- it's just there.

Part of it, I'm sure, is that the entire month of October at that job was fucking hell. I don't say that lightly -- our average everyday workloads have doubled since/compared to September, and as the company is cracking down on overtime, we don't have as much help as we did before on the weekends. Add to those two things the fact that a lot of my coworkers have had out-of-town or other activities/vacation days/etc that made them unavailable for large chunks of the month, and the stress levels involved with working there have become astronomically high.

Case in point: on Saturday night I had a migraine by the time I left the office...at well after 9PM...when I'd been there since shortly after 11AM. Said migraine had been building all night long, making me nauseated and dizzy for a good portion of the evening, before opening up (almost) full force once I got home. I've had many migraines which were worse, yes, but all migraines suck regardless of intensity. I came home, ate, and went to bed. My days at work since have not been much better; it appears that November is shaping up to be a hellish month much like October was.

Another case in point: our six-month wedding anniversary was on Halloween, and we were so insanely busy at work that we didn't even remember it until earlier this week.

Despite that, today I'm actually in a really good, really productive mood for some reason. I don't know why, really -- I just woke up that way. I've been working around the house all day, cleaning and doing laundry. I took a shower. I cleaned the cat box. I drank almost a full pot of coffee. I've been keeping busy while Daisy is asleep and while I prepare for another two nights in a row of work -- I'll leave here in about forty minutes for my shift tonight.

And, after all, the bills are being paid, there's food in the house, the lights are on, and there's gas in our cars. The job does end once we clock out for the day and come home, and usually the next day we're not going back in to the office to deal with the exact same issues, only similar ones.

Over the course of the past few weeks, and over the course of the next few, there's a lot that's happened and even more that must be parceled out and dealt with. What's coming up is that I have to figure out what's going on with my student loans, as my forbearance is supposed to end this month (yet I've heard nothing whatsoever from my loan servicer yet).

Update: I have checked with the loan servicer and my forbearance doesn't end until December 10. So I have a little more than a month of forbearance left. That's comforting. I more than likely won't qualify for it again as my new job pays much, much more than I made while teaching. I'll have to check on that when the time comes. I'd imagine I'll be getting some more paperwork in the mail for it at some point soon, so it's likely to be at the forefront of my mind for the next few weeks.

Daisy has already started her Christmas shopping; I, meanwhile, have already finished most of mine over the course of the past few months that I've actually had spendable money. I'm done shopping for her parents, and I've gotten two or three things for her as well. I have to get one more big item for her (which I already have planned and ready to purchase, of course), and we'll do shopping together so that we can finish up for the nieces/nephews and the parents, but even in the first week of November we're almost there already. I'll get something for my parents as well, and have it shipped back home to them, but the bulk of what needs to be done is done. I also have a buttload of Christmas cards I've collected/received from various charities and as free gifts with certain Christmas present orders I've put in, so in about a month from now I'll begin sending those out to a lot of friends/family friends I have addresses for.

The gravity of the fact that this will be our first holiday season as a married couple is not lost on us; Daisy is perhaps the biggest fan of Christmas on the entire planet, to the point where she is insanely happy that one of the radio stations here in Omaha (102.3) has already switched to 24/7 Christmas music, and has declared that every time we are in the car together we must blast it and sing along to it together.

I am very glad that my car doesn't have a working radio.

Ahem.

Anyway, the biggest task she wants us to take care of over the course of this next week is to go buy a tree. Artificial, of course -- we can't get a real one because A) they're not out yet, and B) I have used pine-based cat litter a lot in the past, and if the cats smell something pine-y, I'm pretty sure they'd piss all over it. We looked for trees this past weekend, but let me tell you that buying a fake tree is no longer as cheap as it once was. My mother and I got a fake tree about 25 years or so ago from Big Lots for $20. While you can buy a tree for $20 today, it's also about four feet tall and looks like green pipe cleaners. The cheapest one we found that Daisy is marginally interested is $90. And yes, while we are not suffering on money and/or scraping by anymore, it's still really hard for me to justify spending $90 on a fake fucking Christmas tree. And that's the most inexpensive passable tree, at that. The ones at Lowe's start at about $200 and go all the way up to about $950 or so.

Oh yes, I know this; we drove around town to three different stores and called a fourth. On the weekend after Halloween. Looking for fake Christmas trees.

Do I want to put up a tree during the first week of November? Do I even like Christmas? No. I think both are a huge pain in the ass and more trouble than they're worth. But, as I've come to realize after being married for more than six months now, pick your battles.

So. We'll be getting a tree soon.

Gravitas, Part II

All I do is work, come home, eat, and sleep.

When I sleep, no matter what I do, I cannot prevent myself from dreaming about work.

Occasionally, when I'm not too absolutely fucking exhausted, I will shower, clean part of the house, or try to catch up on Parks and Recreation on Netflix.

My beard is growing out more not because I'm trying to grow it, but because I never have the energy to shave or keep it trimmed up. A beard, I might add, that is rapidly going grey.

This job has consumed my life, and not in the good way.

Gravitas, Part I

A year ago today, my youngest sister -- a girl I'd never met, yet was my sister anyhow -- was killed in a car accident. It is a day I haven't forgotten, obviously, and it cast an ominous pall over what would become a rather shitty October, in retrospect.

The full year since has given me many changes and many challenges. I have dealt with and done a remarkable amount of things in the past year, from moving to another state and getting married to starting a completely different career. There is very little of the me from a year ago that still remains now, in most aspects anyhow. Comparing the two years is akin to a snake shedding its skin. While some of you may find it morbid that I'm using the anniversary of my sister's death as a milestone, and it is, it was also a turning point of sorts in my life -- the turning point upon when everything started to slowly begin changing.

Make no mistake, if you read my posts from a year ago I did mourn my sister's death, but I did so in a rather detached way. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter, really; I was hip-deep in the semester and I had never met or even spoken to the girl. That doesn't change the fact that she was flesh and blood, of course. I was shaken up indeed, though nothing about my life had changed. I tend to process death a lot differently than most people I know do. I'm the person who will cry at sad scenes in movies, and will cry when someone famous and/or I admired dies, but when someone normal dies, such as a friend or family member, I'm much of the attitude "yeah, well, that happens," and I go on with my life. I don't know why that is. I did not cry for my sister, but I did cry when George Carlin died. I came pretty close to crying when Robin Williams died. I don't know if this is a personality flaw or if I'm some sort of low-level functioning sociopath, or what.

Today starts my sixth week at work, and it feels like I've been there much, much longer than I have been. Again, my weekends go far too quickly and my weeks do not. In a few more weeks, I will be fully accustomed to the job and its duties right as I am thrust into the proverbial pit of hell over Halloween weekend when almost everyone will be out of the office -- meaning I'll have to do all of their work. That's part of why, as I mentioned in my last post here, I've been training on gatekeeping. I will not only have to be gatekeeper, but I will have to work as many issues as I can handle because nobody else will be there. Even a month out, the thought makes me shudder. The job is busy enough as it is when I'm doing my own work. I do not yet dread going to it, but I get the feeling that I will soon enough. The work is challenging and I learn something new every day, but you want to be bored shitless and stressed out of your skull at the same time, boy, this is the job for you. As I slap on my professional attitude every day I'm there, there's never been a day where I've not thought remember the paycheck, remember the paycheck at least five or six times. It is indeed a far cry from teaching college students three days a week. That was so much simpler, I had autonomy and I was actually in charge of something then. As I've probably mentioned before, I am now a corporate cog. I have job security, yes, but that's about it.

So, not all changes over the past year have been for the better...as you're probably gathering at this point.

Today it is storming. Well, at the moment, it's just raining hard. The rain started right as I was getting dressed and ready to go in to work, and I found about half an hour before I had to leave that Pete had yacked all over the couch in the living room...so that was fun to clean up. I used to love rain and storms -- for many, many years -- until I found that upon moving to Omaha, where I smoke on the porch outside, there's nothing to stop me from getting completely soaked. Therefore I dread rain and storms now when I'm at home.

Daisy, while I'm at work today, has a lot of stuff to take care of -- while cleaning last week, she found her passport, which will now allow her to change her name in the eyes of the federal government (read: the only place aside from work that she doesn't have my last name already). She also has to renew her car's registration, which expires today. It's 2:15 PM and she's still sleeping, so she'll have to wake up soon to do these things. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, I'll be in a cubicle until midnight because that's apparently my lot in life now if we want to be able to survive and pay the bills.

Do I sound bitter? That sounds bitter. I'm really not trying to be bitter about anything, but as most of you know, I tend to see the bad in everything much more than I see the good.

Anyway. This will continue later. I'm nowhere near done talking about life as of late, but I do have to go to work now.

The Keymaster

Last night I made one of the (many) Transformers themes the ringtone on my iPhone, and it was the most exciting thing I've done all week.

No, seriously.

I've been working variable shifts at the office; they're training me on a new system/task, and because of that I have to be there when the regular person who does that is there so that I can get some on the job shadowing/training. This means I've been coming in and working 1-10PM most days. I don't really mind this to be perfectly honest, as it means I'll be getting off earlier than the usual, but my sleeping schedule has now readjusted itself to where no matter what, whether it's a weekday or weekend, I will awaken at 9-9:30 AM. This, this I mind. I don't function well in early morning daylight, and I still classify that as early morning. On Saturdays I will still work the 3-12 shift, but for the foreseeable future on weekdays, at least until my training/shadowing is complete, I'll be there 1-10.

As mentioned before, the job is mentally draining, and as I haven't worked a 5-day, 40-hour week in a long time, I come home at night, eat (if I haven't eaten yet), and crash within two hours or so. The weeks are very long, or at least seem very long most of the time, and when I get my two weekend days off they go very quickly and I can't really get anything accomplished during them. Then it's back to work for another five days in a row, repeat. Look, the money is good, the job itself is fine, and I really like the people I work with (including the wife, obviously) but it really feels like I can't enjoy any of my free time any more because there's so little of it and/or every time I clock in at work it feels like I've just left the place. I can't make any plans to do anything because I don't have the time or energy, and the one real day Daisy and I get together off every week (Monday) we have to fill with doing the things that we haven't had time to do throughout the rest of the week -- like the grocery shopping and cooking actual meals. Or paying bills. Or all of the above. There's no real downtime where there's not something to do that desperately needs to be done.

Yes, all of our bills are now being paid more easily than ever, but still.

The new system I'm training on at work is more of a process, and it's called "gatekeeping." It boils down to me being responsible for making sure everyone has an evenly distributed workload when I'm there, but it doesn't come with any managerial power or a higher salary or anything like that. It's just another aspect of the job. I will train on doing it off and on for about a month before I'll take it over fully when necessary once I know all of its ins-and-outs. About 1/3 of the people on our shift know how to gatekeep fully, and most everyone has at least some cursory experience of it. I'm being trained to do it as a full backup, which means when the normal gatekeeper(s) is/are not in for the day, I can jump in and run everything. Again, this is something that (overall) I'm fine with; having another skill under my belt at that place won't just be job security, but it'll more than likely eventually help me move up through the company. What I, and most of the rest of us in the office, do now is basically middle management. That's fine for the moment, and I do like my job for the most part, but obviously it's not something I plan (or want) to do forever.

In other news...

Daisy and I purchased a large dining room table last week. While I've been rather lax in updating this blog (based solely on the time I have available to do it and the lack of any breathing space during the work week), last Sunday afternoon we went to Nebraska Furniture Mart, picked one out, and bought it. We then set up the delivery for today, as we wouldn't have time to clean out/clear out the dining room before this past weekend, and yesterday we received the call that it would be delivered between 8 and 10AM today.

"That probably means we'll be their first delivery of the day," Daisy said.

In hindsight I should've realized that myself; we scheduled the delivery a week in advance, so of course we'd probably be the first on the docket.

This also meant that we had to empty out the dining room (still cluttered with boxes and bags of everything from not only the move, but from the wedding/bridal shower) and clear a patch for the delivery guys to bring in the table. This was a much longer, much harder task than I thought it would be. it also involved firing up the steam cleaner for the first time and scrubbing the floor under where the table would be, as we'll probably not have the chance to do that again until we eventually move out of this place.

We completed these tasks at roughly 4AM, then crashed. Daisy's phone rang at 8:05, telling her they'd be here in 10 minutes. She got up, let them in, they brought it all in and set it up, and then she went back to bed with me. She's still sleeping now.

As for the table itself, it's nice. As you know, Daisy and I have very different senses of taste, style, and decor when it comes to furnishing living spaces, and for the most part I just let her take the proverbial wheel on it. While I have opinions about different styles and colors, they really don't matter and it's not worth fighting over (remember folks, if you're married, pick your battles). We found the table -- over five feet long on its own, and it comes with three two-foot leaves and six chairs -- and the price was right, I liked the finish, Daisy liked it, so we got it. I'm not going to tell you how much it cost, because fuck,  but I will say that yes, it was a good deal, and we now have a table and chairs, and we can finally have friends and the parents over to the house for dinners and the like.

Daisy has also been decorating the house for fall; she was able to find some affordable decorations at a few stores, including the Dollar Tree, and our place no longer has completely bare walls or the "minimalist with a lot of clutter spread around" feel. It's beginning to feel more like a home. I told her we should probably order our Christmas tree on Amazon soon, as we're likely to get a much better deal on it now instead of two months from now.

However, our next big purchase -- which will probably happen during the month of October, once we get paid again on the 3rd -- will be a new, larger television.

Let me explain. My flatscreen HDTV I bought in 2011 is fine, it's nice, yes. But it's also small. It was perfect for the house I had in Newton because it sat in the living room, the living room was small there, and I used it primarily for DVDs or football only -- which meant that during 90% of the year (roughly) it was off. But, when it was on, it was the perfect size, brightness, and loudness for that room. The same cannot be said for it now, as the living room here in Omaha is more than twice the size of the one I had in Newton, making a 22-inch widescreen HDTV look more like a computer monitor stuffed into a corner than an actual television set. And, while it was plenty loud enough for broadcast television, it is not loud enough for Netflix most of the time unless I crank the volume (it has shitty speakers in it).

So, because we're a dual-income household now and are doing decently well budgeting our finances, and because new TVs are super-cheap for what we need/want, that's going to be our next big purchase. We've already done some price searching/matching, and this is something that Daisy is going to let me handle on my own as I know what I personally am looking for. Basically it boils down to nothing below 46 inches, and with as many HDMI ports and AV inputs on it as possible. There is much more to it than that, of course, but those are the important things. I am not yet sure where we'll get one from, but it'll be several more weeks before we have to worry about that anyway.

With the table and chairs taken care of and the TV about to be taken care of, the last "big" thing right now I have to focus on, at least in the long run, is my car.

I mentioned back in June how my insurance dropped by a lot when I moved to Omaha and registered the Monte Carlo here; part of that is because I've kept the same insurance on the same car for multiple years, I'm sure, but part of it is also because I updated my account on their website to tell them that I'm only driving about 20 miles per week. This is true, actually -- it's about four miles to and from work, round trip, five days a week. As I was already planning on working where I am now even back in June when I renewed my insurance, this information remains accurate. Anyway, as I'm not putting anywhere near as many miles on the car as I was when I lived in Kansas, I'm saving a ton of money on gasoline and other maintenance on it.

However. All is not good.

Several times in the past few weeks, the car decided it just didn't want to start. Not the whole "turn the key and the starter whirrs and whirrs but won't start the car," no. That I would actually be okay with as long as after the second or third try it would fire up. No, this is, to be completely accurate, putting the key into the ignition, turning it part-way and having the lights inside come on like they're supposed to (showing me that there is indeed power in the car and the battery is fine) and then turning to start it and....nothing happens. Just silence. Nothing whirrs, nothing spins, nothing moves, nothing does anything.

Take the key out, put it back in, try again a few times. Still nothing. Try it one or two more times and the car remembers it's a car and fires up normally, with no dashboard error messages or lights or anything.

I...yeah, I don't know. I've got nothin'.

I'm sure this means something; I'm sure this means that an expensive part or component is starting to burn out or otherwise go bad, and this is my baby car trying to tell me or give me some sort of advance warning of it. Could be the starter, could be the alternator, could be any number of things. The car's been running and driving perfectly fine otherwise -- in fact, it feels like she's been running a lot better and/or more smoothly since I'm not putting 200 miles on her a week anymore -- but this isn't exactly a good sign. It has me a bit on edge, especially as I need the car five days a week now (compared to three or four, max, when I was teaching). Still, it's only done this a handful of times over the past month or so -- maybe five or six times at the most, and I've always been able to get her started after trying for a few minutes, so I don't know. I'd chalk it up to the car being old and temperamental as always, except it's not like I've been abusive to her or anything over the past several months.

"Could be anything," Daisy said. "You haven't had an oil change in how long?"

"It's not the oil, babe," I said. "The oil's not even low, nor is the coolant, and that's not going to stop a car from starting when the key is turned."

I thought it could be the spark plugs again, or the wires, but if it were I'd have the flashing light on my dashboard like I had before. So, yeah. I'm pretty much clueless here. It doesn't appear to be a battery issue, even though the battery is a few years old, as I will always have full power to the lights, fans, and other electrical stuff in the car even if it won't turn over, so....

Ahem. Anyway. So that's the next big thing I'm going to have to deal with. I told Daisy that I'd much rather buy a newer car outright off of Craigslist or someplace to avoid a car payment (read: yet another bill we'd have to pay every month), but that may not be possible as it's not like we're ever flush with cash up front. If we were, neither of us would have anything on our credit cards right now.

"If I have to go to a dealer," I said, "I'm going into one with very specific wants and needs -- I'm going to tell them I want certain makes/models between, say, 2001 and 2005, I'm not paying more than $3500 total for a vehicle, and I'm not paying any more than $150 a month."

"You can do that," she said.

I do have a shortlist of makes and models I'm interested in, starting with the upgraded version of the Monte Carlo I have now (or an Impala), as well as a few others. Older Firebirds/Camaros are on the list, but I also have smaller, more economical vehicles like the Toyota Echo and older Subaru Foresters. So, eh, it's not exactly a shortlist as much as I thought it was.

Anyway. That's about all that's going on right now. I shall update you when I have the time, but because of my work schedule and the need to do everything I can do on my days off because I have limited time to do so, I cannot yet tell you when that may be.

Foreseeable Futures, Part II

Yesterday afternoon we went shopping at Gordman's. I ended up finding six or seven "business casual" workshirts I could wear to the office, several of them being green (the others were black, blue, or grey, which I can wear with pretty much anything). I'm not a big fan of bright colors anymore; whereas when I was teaching it was basically anything goes as a professor because I'd get admiration and respect from the class anyway, the same is not true in corporate jobs in the private sector. As I live in the shadow of my wife while working at that job, I also have proverbially larger shoes to fill than most other employees, and the last thing I want to do is stand out for any reason.

Yes, any reason. I doubt many of you have had the opportunity to work in the same office as your spouse, but let me tell you, it does create an interesting work dynamic. Learn things too quickly and excel at your job too quickly, and you'll both be singled out for favoritism, as logic would dictate that there's some handholding and extra training going on with you that hasn't been given to the other employees equally. Learn things too slowly and/or find yourself unable to grasp the job itself or its duties (or, conversely, screw up too much), and everyone thinks you're an idiot (and, by extension, they'll think my very intelligent wife married an idiot, which doesn't make her look good). No, until I'm comfortable in the work environment fully, and until I can learn all of the nuances of the internal office politics, I'm staying under the radar -- I'm showing up, clocking in, doing my job, and clocking out. Just because my wife works there and just because she's a supervisor doesn't make me special or any different than anyone else. Moreover, I don't deserve nor do I want special treatment. If I screw up, I don't want to be treated with kid gloves because of who I am -- I am independent and my own person, and my responsibility is my responsibility alone.

All I can do is attempt to keep my head above water, and do it even more when Daisy is not there working with me. Excelling when she and I aren't working together that particular day is fine -- for example, two of my five days this week (tomorrow and Wednesday) she has off. She normally works Wednesday, but took it off as her own Labor Day makeup holiday. She doesn't work today either as it's one of her normal days off.

Anyway.

So I now have work clothes -- or at least more of a variety of work clothes I can wear on a daily basis to my job. Two of the shirts are long-sleeved, even though i generally hate long-sleeved shirts that aren't hoodies. While I can wear hoodies/jackets/etc to work if necessary, dress code dictates that it's not work-appropriate enough attire to actually work in. Or something like that, anyway. Truthfully I didn't pay attention any more closely than I had to, and I wore one of my fleece zip-ups for my entire shift one day last week when it was cold and rainy. I'm getting the feeling that as long as you show up, do your work, and don't make waves...nobody really cares as long as you attempt to look decent.

I also got a new belt, some coffee, and a shaving/shower gel set from Gordman's as well. The one nearest to our house is the one we went to, and it's not the "good" one. I paid $10-15 for each of my shirts there and everything I got was on clearance -- the one closer to the parents' place has a bigger selection and I was getting shirts there last year for teaching outfits for $5-10 each at the most.

After the Gordman's trip we went to the Dollar Tree, where Daisy was able to find some stuff to decorate the house for fall. She got a wreath and some fake leaves, as well as two little scarecrow-like figures, and she's going to hang them up and decorate the interior of our home. I asked her why.

"What do you mean?"

"The point of decorations is for people to see them," I said. "Nobody is ever in our house but us. Exterior decorations I'm fine with, but interior decorations for fall/Halloween? Eh, what's the point?"

She and I don't see eye to eye on this, of course, but whatever makes her happy makes me happy. I've learned to pick my battles and not put up a fight when it's about her doing something which makes her happy.

Mind you, we did get a lot of other stuff at the Dollar Tree, stuff I/we needed as I haven't actually been to a Dollar Tree for real shopping since I was living in Newton. I shop for bargains -- if there's something I can get for $1 that would cost me $3 or $4 at Walmart for the same thing, I just get it there. That includes stuff like deodorant, shaving cream/razors, my allergy medicine, garbage bags, etc.

"I want to go to the mall," she told me while we were Dollar-Tree-shopping.

"Of course," I said. I hadn't been to the mall since, oh, last fall? Before Christmas? Possibly last summer -- I can't remember, really.

Apparently there was a big sale (and she had a good coupon as well) at Torrid, which (if you're not aware) is like the girly, plus-sized version of Hot Topic without most of the glitz and glam. A large chunk of Daisy's wardrobe comes from Torrid, something I support because she looks fucking hot in almost everything she buys there. So yes, I'm fine with tagging along with her to the mall and to Torrid. She found a shirt she wanted and an embossed peacoat jacket that looked so good on her that if she hadn't bought it, I would've bought it for her that very second in a heartbeat.

Not every man goes to Torrid with his wife.

Ahem. Anyway. Afterwards, we wandered the mall for a bit. I found two t-shirts in JCPenney, one a Superman shirt and the other a John Lennon shirt. At the last remaining Suncoast store I've seen in operation anywhere in the past fifteen years or so, I purchased Pacific Rim on DVD for $7.99. Daisy, not to be outdone, got herself some stuff from Bath & Body Works (where I also picked up a new body scrubber for my shower). The rest of the trip, however, was a bust -- I wanted to see if Old Navy had anything I needed or wanted, and they did, but none of it was in my size or it was too expensive. I was also in there to look to see if they had their winter coats out yet, as I'd found a peacoat there a few years ago that I loved and would replace the one I have now (which is falling apart after about four years of daily wear in the wintertime). Then we came home.
 
We do still have to go grocery shopping tonight as soon as I get home from work, though -- we were too tired last night and had been on our feet all day running around stores and the mall. I told Daisy to be ready as soon as I get off at midnight, because she'll be home and will be awake -- and the clock, after that, is ticking until I'll absolutely need to eat and pass out. While I could go shopping myself without her, there's probably a fair amount of things she needs, and it's something we generally do together due to, well, the amount of stuff we get. Tonight it'll be a fast, but big, trip -- we should've gone two nights ago and we didn't, and now the stuff I needed before I desperately need now because i'm either out of it or very close to being out. I also know Daisy doesn't want to spend any more time shopping at midnight than she has to, and I don't blame her because I don't either. It's my first day back at work for the week and I'm super-tired already; who knows how I'll feel at midnight.

Foreseeable Futures

I have now been working my new corporate job for a total of three weeks -- two weeks of training first, and this past week I've been on the floor doing my actual job.

This, of course, is why I haven't updated the blog in the past three weeks. No, I'm not dead; I am, in fact, very much alive and more financially stable than I've been in a long, long time.

As for the job itself, I can't really talk much about it. Legally, I mean. I had to sign a bunch of nondisclosure agreements when I took the job, as it is a corporate job in which I'm dealing with and working with/for very high-profile customers and accounts...and that's about all I can really say about it. I am little more than a middleman (in fact, I've been told that most of the job is "middle management") between those accounts and the massive corporation I work for as a business contractor of sorts. That's about as in-detail as I can go.

Everything I was told about the position is correct, however -- it is not necessarily a difficult job, but it is a very detail-oriented and somewhat stressful one. I'm seeing that already, even after only working one week of my normal shifts. And no, I've never done anything like this before, so it comes a little less naturally to me than to people who have worked in similar environments for years. However, each day I'm learning more and I'm able to work more quickly and naturally. In another week or two of experience at it, I'll be on par with pretty much everyone else in the office.

After all, this is what I wanted, right? A desk job in an office. Well, I got what I was looking for, at least. And, as you may already know, I get to work with the wife.

My shifts are staggered with hers, and I took second shift (3PM to midnight) when it was offered specifically for that reason. I work that shift Tuesday through Saturday. Daisy works the overnight shift Wednesday through Saturday. Four of my five at-work days, I will work more than half my shift with her. I am not working tonight, even though it is a Saturday night, because I got tonight as a paid day off to make up for Labor Day, which is a day I would've had off regardless as it was a Monday. Yeah, this company does that sort of nice thing for its employees -- anytime there's a paid holiday off that I wouldn't work anyway because of my schedule, I'll get a makeup day for it sometime during the rest of that week so that everything balances out. So does Daisy, technically, even though as a manager/supervisor she's a 24/7 employee. She's taking hers later this coming week, I think, as she can do that whenever she wants since she's fully salaried and not hourly (read: she doesn't clock in and out like the rest of us do).

As I've mentioned before, though Daisy is a supervisor there, she is not my supervisor. Technically she can't be, as it would be construed as favoritism/nepotism. There are several "teams" in the office led by three different supervisors, and I'm under one of the other ones. We also, of course, have to be professional in the office even though we're husband and wife, so this basically means we have to act like strangers in front of one another despite the fact that yes, we do sleep in the same bed together at home. I'm fine with this, though it's yet another new dynamic to me -- just because she's my wife doesn't mean I can talk to her and act like she's my wife at work; because she is a supervisor, even though she's not mine, she does technically rank above me and I have to treat her as a superior just as I would any other supervisor at any other job. This is not without its difficulties, but I think I've managed to deal with it fine. I can be professional and quite serious when I need to be, especially in a working environment.

Really, my goal in my new job is just to do well; Daisy now gets to see that firsthand. It's always been my goal in every job I've ever worked to do the best possible job I can do in my position and to be eager and look forward to going to work because it's another opportunity I have to learn something new and improve myself. That applies more to this position than any other position I've ever worked anywhere, I think. As I mentioned, there is a learning curve to the job -- some people take to it faster than others. I know people working there now who are picking up the ball and running with it quite well, and I know people who are taking a long time to learn all of the systems we have to use. I've been told I'm good, and I've been told I'm learning quickly, but really I don't think I'm doing any better or worse than anyone else at this point. I'm still new, and I'm still learning processes and procedures in the position every day. It's hard to memorize them all until I've been "on the floor" and experienced for longer than I have been now.

At the same time, I've thought in the back of my head already that this is not a job I want to do my entire life from this point forward, but it's actually somewhat fun (thus far) and challenging for me, which is something I haven't experienced in a long time. Teaching, for example, came naturally for me. It was not hard, it was not a challenge, even though it was very time-and-work-intensive at times. But, here's the thing -- this company has incredible opportunities for advancement, and it's a company that's never going away (it's headquartered here in Omaha, for one, and for two it's getting bigger every year). This is a position that -- as long as I can do the work and do it well -- pays me extremely well compared to any other job I've ever had, and in six months I qualify to begin moving upwards through the company if there are positions available. That's what Daisy did; she started out in the position I'm in now, applied for the supervisor position when she could, worked it on an interim basis for a few months, and got it officially shortly after our wedding.

So, if I like the company and enjoy the work I do for the company, I see myself working there in some capacity for the foreseeable future. If that means I eventually move up through the ranks, then so be it. If not, at least I have a position that pays me really well for what I do. Make no mistake, I am incredibly thankful I have this job. No, it's not teaching, but this actually feels like the beginning of a career for me -- and I haven't felt like that since before graduate school when I was working for the newspaper.

Ahem. Anyway.

A lot of little things have happened in the past three weeks, not all of them work-related of course (though it does seem like I'm there more often than I'm at home). It's been really stormy and nasty most days, and when it hasn't it's been either 90 degrees or 50 degrees with no real rhyme or reason to the weather patterns. As a result, my allergies have gone fucking nuts yet again. No wonder Daisy's doctors told her she was allergic to Nebraska -- apparently so am I, because my allergies won't go away. Like, ever. Oh, sure, I'll have some good days where they won't bother me that much, but I'll also have days where they systematically crush me and I can't breathe or go more than five minutes without blowing my nose. Let me tell you, that's fun to deal with when you're busy at work all night.

A week into my training, I went out to the car to go in one morning only to find that my car had been broken into and all of my stuff inside the car (read: what few things I've ever kept in the car) were all scattered and in disarray.

No worries, there was no damage to the car. Why? Well, it's probably because I can't lock my doors. I mean, I can, but I wouldn't be able to get back into the car afterwards because I don't have (and have never had) the door key. Yeah, my car is that old, so old that it has two different keys -- one for the ignition and one for the trunk and doors. I never got the latter key when I bought the car. Seriously. So for the past several years I've owned and driven my Monte Carlo, no matter where I've gone I've never locked the doors.

Whoever "broke into" my car rifled through my stuff, unsuccessfully tried to tear out my (non-working) stereo, and they took my really old GPS that was about useless and I got on Amazon for $30 or so used several years ago, but that's it. I'd even forgotten that I'd had the GPS in the car because I haven't used it in so long. My insurance cards and registration was still there, and the car itself was and is fine, so eh. Daisy called to report it to our apartment's management office (as it happened less than, oh, 40 feet from the building), and all they told her on the phone was "Oh, well, we haven't had any other reports."

As if that helps me or solves anything, right?

There's no use to file a police report or anything; I don't care about the GPS and there's nothing the cops could do anyhow -- other than tell me "well, we'll make a report, but it's not like you'll ever get your GPS back." It's just the principle of the matter that pisses me off. I told Daisy that if the thieves really wanted to fuck me over, they could've left the door ajar, as that would've killed the battery. We do have a security detail that does sweeps of the properties every night at least once or twice, but as the thieves were probably in and out of my car in less than 30 seconds, that doesn't help much.

I got my first paycheck yesterday, and Daisy got paid as well -- and we immediately began paying bills. Mine is a paper check right now as the direct deposit doesn't kick in until the second check, so I have to deposit it physically at the bank on Monday. However, eh, not a big deal. I completely paid off my Amazon Chase card tonight -- the card with the highest interest rate -- and over the next two months or so I'll be paying the others down and/or off completely as well. This weekend, on the days we have off together, we need to do our normal grocery shopping as well as run a few other errands -- such as hitting up the local Gordman's to see if I can get some workshirts with green in them. Literal green, as in, one of the colors in the shirt -- Dad gave me a ton of his old slacks and pants when he lost a lot of weight earlier this year, and many of those pants are a dark forest green. I have almost no workshirts with green in them, which means that while I look damned good in the pants, none of my "business casual" work attire will actually match them.

Yes, the dress code at work is "business casual" and it is fairly strict. Dress shoes every day -- no tennis shoes or other shoes/sandals of any sort. Shirts must have a collar. No jeans (except on Fridays). Slacks or khakis of any sort is fine, but no cargo pants. Women must wear hosiery with all skirts and dresses. Etc. Stuff like that. However, I've found that a lot of people don't necessarily stick completely to the dress code -- they only stick to it just enough to get by. For example, the dress code also states that all shirts must be tucked in. To that, I say "well, good luck." Most of my shirts won't tuck in (they're either not long enough or they won't fit under my belt/waistline and still allow me to button my pants), or they'll immediately pull out when I make any movement of my body above my waist. I've not once tucked a shirt in at my new job, neither in training nor in my actual position, and nobody's said a word to me about it. I'm not bringing it up if nobody else does.

I'm still getting used to my iPhone -- I'm a lot more comfortable with it now than I was before, and I know how to do/use most of the things on it, but I don't really mess with it that much. It's a phone, and I hate phones as it is. Today I was frustrated with it because you can't download files to it (unless they're, say, picture attachments) no matter what you do. For example, I sent an mp3 to myself this afternoon, an mp3 that I had edited and had turned into a ringtone. I can play it, yes, but I can't download it from my email and set it as my ringtone. You can't even turn a song you've purchased -- a song you own -- into a ringtone and save it that way. Apple won't let you. Can you buy ringtones from them and have them save to your phone? Of course. Want to do it yourself? Sorry, you're shit out of luck. There are apparently workarounds for it, but all of them involve installing iTunes on your computer and editing your own ringtones through that, then sending them to your phone, where Apple will apparently "recognize" them somehow and they'll work. Yeah, no, I'm not wading through all of that bullshit. To put this into perspective, I could download and set any ringtone I wanted, any ringtone I'd gotten from anywhere, on my Motorola Razr V3, and that was seven years ago.  Want to do that on an iPhone? Sorry, denied.

While I love my phone and I love what it can and does do, it's little things like that which piss me off. I get super-irritated about little things in all walks of life though, as you have probably gathered by this point.

On that note, that's about all that's going on right now. I'll continue to update when I can, though with my new schedule I'm not sure how often that will be. Is it possible I won't write another post here for three more weeks? Yes, but it's also possible that I'll write another one tomorrow.

Countdown

With three days to go before I start my new job (or at least start the two weeks' worth of training for it), I've been trying to take care of what needs to be done around the house. This includes paying bills, keeping up with correspondences, printing/filling out paperwork for said job, etc. It feels like, no matter what I do, there's something I'm forgetting. This is nothing new, of course; I always feel like I'm forgetting something no matter when or how I take care of everything. I've made sure to pay the bills I have due; this is good, as I can forget those now that the vast majority of them are paid online with paperless statements. We only have two bills that I/we don't pay online -- one of them is my Citi card's bill, as their website won't let me in without some stupid pin number I set up for the account five years ago (which, of course, I cannot remember now) and the other is the water/trash bill. Everything else but the rent is paid through until well after I'll get my first paycheck, so we're good. Finally we'll be somewhat financially stable again. Daisy gets paid a week from today, and then two weeks after that we'll both be bringing in paychecks every two weeks, and our income will double from that point forward.

Both Daisy and I are paranoid about money; I think I tend to be much more paranoid about it than she does, as for many years I have lived a life of abject poverty. However, she is very smart with money, probably because she is very sensible about most things and, well, because she spent a few years working in a credit union. I have to be smart with money because I've spent many years of my life really poor and scraping by. Yeah, there's a reason why I drive an eighteen year old Monte Carlo with 233,000 miles on it, and only a small part of that reason is because it's fast. So, yeah, it's really nice that we'll be a dual-income household and really nice that said income will allow us some breathing space.

Aside from those chores and tasks, everything's been quiet all week. I'm getting used to the iPhone, I suppose, though I haven't really done much more on it than before. Apple did see fit to send me a really long email with this, though:

I mean, I like the phone, and it's really useful for some stuff already, but it's going to take a loooong time for me to actually use it like an Apple master or anything like that. I have a few apps, I have my numbers programmed into it that I need, and I tried out the GPS tonight by plotting in the address of the place I have to go on Monday morning for my processing/ID badge creation/etc. It's apparently three miles away, and will take me eight minutes to get there. That's useful info. But aside from run of the mill calling, texting, and reading the news? Yeah, so far I've not done much more than that with it and I don't know how much more I will do with it. I actually need to read the manual, which the phone doesn't come with -- it's all online, apparently. I don't even know how to turn the phone off and on, or how to turn the sounds off and on. Yeah. It's a complicated little device.

I did special order and put a rubber case on it, though, because I needed to do that. iPhones are really smooth and sleek, and I have the feeling that if I didn't put a case on it, eventually it would slip out of my hand and I'd drop/break it. I'd rather not do that, especially as the phone retails for more than I paid for my car.

Anyway.

I still follow the news for back in the Wichita/Newton area if only out of mild curiosity for the place in which I spent five years living. Apparently there was a shooting today in Newton, which is really rare for a town like that. The newspaper (which I worked for, as you may recall) was reporting on it like crazy, as was the Wichita news channels. Shootings in Omaha are nothing new -- several per week, gang violence in certain parts of the city, etc etc -- but down there it's a major event when something like that happens. I looked it up on the map and found that it was maybe a mile or so from my former house, out by the discount grocery store I went to often.

The university starts back up on Monday, same as WVU does back home. My mother informed me that today is "move in day" at WVU and she's glad she has the day off so that she doesn't have to navigate student traffic. My friends who remain in Wichita, the few who are still there finishing their degrees (read: less than ten grad students who I actually know and know well) aren't looking forward to the beginning of the semester. Well, Parker probably is, as I'm sure he's itching to get in front of a classroom full of students again. It will be the first fall semester in five years that I will not be teaching classes when Monday rolls around, but it is clear that the fates have a cruel sense of humor, as I will be reporting to work on Monday morning for the first time since the semester ended in May. That seems so long ago now; I wasn't even married yet when the semester ended. I was still living in Kansas when the semester ended. I had really long hair and a really full, thick beard when the semester ended. It's so weird to think of how much really can change in the span of a few short months.

"Are you nervous about starting your training?" Daisy asked me tonight over her lunch hour.

"No," I said. "Psh. I just don't want to do it."

That may be the most honest sentence I've uttered all summer. I don't want to do it. I've been enjoying sleeping on my schedule, eating on my schedule, being able to shower and shave and smoke and go to the bathroom when I've needed or wanted to instead of when I have time to. The concept of being trained to do a job where I will have to report to people above me and have little to no autonomy in said job whatsoever isn't so much nerve-wracking or dread-inducing as it is frustrating. For the past five years, I've been teaching -- and when you're a teacher, you are more or less in charge. When you lead a classroom and teach lessons, you tell students what to do and how to do it. Because I was damn good at what I did, I rarely had to report to anyone. Yes, there were superiors above me, and yes, I did consult them when necessary, but for the most part, I was in charge of what I did and how I did it. The same does not apply to this new job I'll have. I will have at least three direct supervisors to report to, and while Daisy isn't allowed to be in charge of me at this job (nepotism, etc etc), she is ranked above me...and everyone there I'll work with knows she's my wife. In fact, from what Daisy tells me, I am the most anticipated new employee joining the crew.

That's something that may be really hard to live up to, honestly. Truth be told, I've never done this sort of work before. I've never even done anything close to it. Now, you give me enough training and I can do damn near anything and do it well, but I'm also a fairly slow learner when it comes to stuff that I have absolutely no experience with.

"You're lucky," Daisy said. "Things are starting to slow down right now. This is the beginning of the slow part of the year."

Okay, well, yes. That's good. That will help.

There are many upsides to the job, of course; I'll get to work with my wife, I'll get to work (after the training period, anyway) a schedule that is, quite possibly, the best schedule I could've been assigned, and unlike being a professor my job will goddamned end when I clock out for the day. I can't tell you how freeing that will feel again. I haven't had a job that actually ended (aside from breaks between semesters) since 2009 -- as a professor, yes, you go home at the end of the day/night, but there's still always lesson planning that must be done, there's still stacks of papers that must be graded, grades that must be entered on Blackboard, quizzes and handouts to write and make, etc. It was a very rare occurrence that there was nothing I could be doing for my students in one capacity or another. The fact that I don't have to do that stuff anymore is both a blessing and a curse, depending on how one looks at it.

So, that's about all that's going on. I'm sure I'll update you again over the weekend, provided I have the time and energy to do so.

The iMan

So. I have an iPhone.

After doing lots of different research through different companies and different carriers/sites/et cetera, Daisy and I realized that none of the options were going to be any better than any other, and some of said options were incredibly expensive to even start out with a new contract. For example, one carrier I looked at charged $250 up front for the phone and the first month's service plan, and that was a plan with very limited data and talk/text limits as well.

"So what do you want to do?" Daisy asked.

"I suppose we just go to Sprint and see what they can do," I said. "Nothing else is remotely reasonable and/or won't require me to buy the phone off-the-shelf up front."

I don't know if any of you have ever purchased a cell phone off-the-shelf before, but let me tell you, it is not fucking cheap. Most current smartphones cost more than my desktop computer did. Some of them cost more than I paid for my car. If you buy a phone yourself outright before signing up for a plan, yes, you may save some money in the long run, but it's so little that it's negligible when spread out over the length of a cell phone contract.

And of course, there's the fact that we don't have $400-600 to just spend all at once on a phone before any sort of plan even comes into play.

My iPhone 5c (they were sold out of the 5s; apparently there's some sort of promotion going on right now where current customers can get a free upgrade) was, on paper, $549. That is more than I paid for my car. That is much more than I paid for this desktop computer. However, it's worked into my contract that I don't pay it all at once, but over the course of the two years I'm with Sprint.

When it was all settled and done, I had a white iPhone 5c 16GB running iOS 7.1-something, unlimited talk/text/data, and I'm paying somewhere around $80 a month. When it comes to cell phone carriers, the phone I have, and the plan I have, that's a really good deal, actually. We priced Verizon beforehand as well -- they charge over $200 a month for a very similar plan. We got the best deal we could for the money. The 5c was (obviously) cheaper than the 5s as well.

As for the phone itself? Eh, I'm happy with it. No, it's not the metal-and-glass 5s, but it's good. It's fine. I still don't really know how to use it that well yet. Mind you, I've never owned a smartphone, and the only experience I've had with one is the handful of times I've had to make a call on Daisy's phone, or when she handed me the phone while driving and told her to text Mama something. Beforehand, I consulted Parker, who is an Apple-phile and owns basically every new i-device, on the learning curve of an iPhone for someone who's not only never owned one before, but who has never used a smartphone before. He gave me some good tips on how to use it, what services to turn on/turn off, and then told me that it's going to take a week or so to get used to it. I can totally see and believe that.

I haven't done much with the phone yet; I installed the Facebook and Twitter apps, installed an app for one of my favorite podcasts, and put Instagram on the phone despite the fact that I do not yet have an Instagram account. I called my mother as well as my grandmother, since I can now actually talk to them without having to worry about dropping a call or running out of minutes, and gave them my new number. I migrated my number book from my old phone into the new one manually, one contact at a time, weeding out the numbers of people I've not called in years and/or no longer need. I texted a few close friends to let them know I have the new phone and a new number.

I also got my first wrong number phone call not half an hour after I got the phone. They were asking for someone named Charlene.

"That's a bad sign," Daisy said. Daisy herself has had the same number for years, and she still gets calls for some woman who apparently had her number before her and didn't bother to change it for certain things (like prescription refills and the like).

I haven't gotten any more wrong number calls yet, but it's not like anyone really ever calls me to talk to me, so it doesn't really matter. What's important is that I now have a reliable phone that actually gets signal around the city, and can finally let the other old one die -- not that it works here anyhow.

So that's done, at least. That was a major thing I needed to get taken care of since, well, basically since I moved up here. It's a new expense, yes, but it's one we just have to bite the bullet on and take -- it's not like I could go forever without having a phone, because that's just not feasible in today's world. I justify it to myself by saying that I've finally leapt into the 21st century by getting a GPS that updates itself, by getting a way of actually talking to people that I don't have to pay for per minute or per message, by having a device that fits in my pocket that lets me access the entirety of the internet anywhere, anytime.

It's not like I needed any of those things to survive, mind you, and I'm sure to many of you, this is nothing new -- many of my friends have had iPhones (or equivalent smartphones) since their inception almost ten years ago now. But to me, it's all new. I am so inexperienced with it that I have no clue where to start. I'm like a child given a new toy with all sorts of different ways to play with it. When I was a child, most of my toys were pretty basic. The newest game system was a NES. The most complicated toys were Transformers. Now, with children growing up in the world of fully electronic toys that I only wish I would've had as a kid, and playing Xboxes and Playstations that have games that look real, the iPhone is the last thing that I really have left in this world that I can actually marvel at as an adult -- as I've never experienced anything like that before. If I were to leap back in time to 20 years ago, 1994, and tell my younger self that in 2014 I would have a phone half the size of my hand that accessed the entirety of human knowledge and recreation and allowed me to take it anywhere and talk to anyone I wanted as long as I wanted in various ways? I'm not sure I would've believed my future self. So yeah, I'm stoked that I have a new piece of technology, and no, I wouldn't have changed waiting this long to get it for anything. Will I use it as much as the average smartphone users use their phones? Probably not, but the fact that I can is what's exciting about it.