Wild Bushman

Hi, everyone.

One would think that with the amount of time I have now on the nights I'm off during the week, much like ten years ago when I started this blog, I would be better at updating it. That is not the case.

My overnight management job has taken over my life. Even on my days off most of the time I am dead tired or swamped with stuff to do around the house -- laundry, dishes, cleaning the cat boxes, grocery shopping, etc. I have become the epitome of the middle class worker in middle management who's constantly exhausted and disheveled. That's just how it works, I suppose.

To be fair, the wife has attempted to help me get out of that job (because she did -- a year ago today, actually), to get a better one somewhere, and I've been looking as well. However, it's not that easy. While there are thousands of jobs in Omaha, not all of them can I do nor would I want to do or drive half an hour every morning or evening to get to -- especially not in the winter, and especially not when pieces are rusting off of my truck. Yeah, because that's a thing too.

Truck is old, so I can't complain that much. I also don't drive it that often, as I still don't have the money to replace the tires, and Omaha is entering its rainy season -- which means I'd hydroplane everywhere. I named it "Whitey" so that when it finally dies, I can say I did my part to kill Whitey. I will eventually get new tires on it and get the work done to it that needs to be done, or I won't and I'll just get something else. I long ago gave up on the dream of owning a brand new vehicle -- right now I just want something that runs and isn't falling apart, and I've only got one of those two things.

Truthfully, my job isn't bad. I actually really enjoy it, and very much enjoy being part of the leadership team there. I've got great friends and colleagues in that building, I feel like I'm making a difference, and I feel needed/wanted/respected. Well, by most folks, anyway. The job itself has changed since I started working there (going on four years now, passed my 3rd anniversary a few months back), and in doing so, it's gotten more difficult. It's definitely one of those "sometimes absolutely hate it while you're there" jobs that get better from an outside perspective on your days off. I did eventually get my back pay from being an interim manager as well -- almost a year later, but I got it.

Let's see, what else is going on in my life?

The wife and I are doing well, moving towards our fourth year of marriage. All four of our parents are alive and doing well, and now all four of them are officially retired as well (reminding me yet again of my mortality and how all of us are getting older). Our nieces and nephews are getting older, bigger, more intelligent. Every time we see them -- granted, half of them live in Canada now -- I am surprised how much they've grown. I think that's something everyone comes to eventually as they get older, as well.

Do I think I'm wiser now that I've gotten older and have settled into the life I have? Eh, not really. I'm still me. I still wear rock-n-roll and nerdy t-shirts, I still wear cargo shorts and flip-flops until it's so cold my feet will turn blue, I still grow my hair and beard out so I either look like a dirty hippie or a wild bushman (I actually need to trim up and groom the beard today), and I still have a collection of hipsterish eyeglasses that I use to further accessorize my look by the day. I haven't been to the eye doctor in over two years to see if I need an updated prescription, but I should probably go.

Over Labor Day last month, the wife and I drove out to West Virginia to visit family and friends. We were only there three or four days, but as the last time I'd seen my parents was at our wedding, and the last time I'd actually visited home was five years ago, we figured it was time. My parents are getting older, have a beach house in North Carolina, and plan to fully migrate there soon for their retirement years. As such, part of the trip was to gather whatever I wanted to save from the house and bring it back with us (which is why we drove versus flying out there). Plus, driving there and back allowed us to stop at not just one, but two different White Castles and one of the six remaining Rax Roast Beef restaurants -- as well as a few vegan destinations of the wife's choosing, for balance and compromise.

The second reason we went back home is much more somber -- my grandmother is 90, and is in a nursing home as she gets closer to the end of her life due to old age as well as congestive heart failure. I planned the trip to see her before she dies, as she (as well as the rest of my family) already knows that when she goes, I won't be able to just drop everything and fly home for the funeral. This was the compromise -- seeing her while she was still alive and could actually appreciate my visit, and allowing her to finally meet and spend some time with the wife.

Those of you who know me well know that, to me, family comes first. It always has, it always will. When I told my Director about my grandmother's condition, as well as about how I hadn't been home to visit in five years, he told me "Put in the PTO now, I approve, go." I didn't get to see all of my family while I was out there, but I saw some of them. There just wasn't enough time or energy. I saw a few friends as well, but not nearly as many as I wish I could have. To be fair, most of them have their own lives and are either buried in them too much to see us or they're no longer living in the state, and that's okay. I'm not royalty, I don't expect a parade of well wishers or onlookers to pay their respects and kiss my ring -- I understand other people have priorities. We did what we could to be conciliatory and work with everyone, and sometimes plans fell through. My old iPhone 5c got a workout while we were out there trying to get with everyone.

We were tired and frazzled by the time we returned to Omaha, but overall it was a very good trip. Daisy, who had never been to West Virginia before aside from a quick drive-through while traveling, got to see where I came from and experience my home as I always wanted her to see it -- the real West Virginia, unfettered by the stereotypes and financial problems the state itself carries with it. I love my home state, but I would never want to live there again. We drove up and down mountains, got to eat at the local places I've wanted her to be able to experience for years, and most importantly, she got to spend some real quality time with my family. While leaving again made me sad, it was also a good feeling -- a feeling that in my life, I've moved onward and upward. I'm no longer hobbled by or ashamed of where I come from.

We came home with my entire comic collection and my guitars/amplifier in tow, weighing down the car. There are still a few boxes in the trunk of the car I need to bring upstairs (not that I necessarily have anywhere to put them) that we'll bring in eventually, but yeah. Apparently I left way, way too much stuff back home, and thinking of what I actually brought with me eleven years ago when I moved out here and how little of that stuff I still have left today, it's actually sort of funny.

In other news, I did finally bite the somewhat expensive bullet and upgrade to an iPhone 7 after our return from West Virginia. Daisy asked me if I wanted to do it before we left, and I was like "Psh, no, what if it gets lost or broken on the trip? Screw it, I'll use the old one until we're back." And that's exactly what I did -- I waited until we returned home, waited for the day the iPhone 8 went on sale, and at that point immediately got a 7 as it would be the cheapest it would ever get. In doing so, I saved myself about $25 a month in charges from Sprint. Activating it was a pain in the ass, as was getting all of my info and files from the old one to the new one (something I still have to do for my pictures), but I actually have a phone that isn't four years old now, so there's that.

And yes, as soon as it came out of the box it immediately went into an OtterBox case I'd ordered and had arrive in advance. This means that nobody can see its pretty rose gold finish (because, yes, I'm that kind of fancy boy), but eh, it means it's protected. I may eventually get an opaque case for it (like the wife has for her Galaxy S6, another phone rapidly reaching its end-of-useful-life), but right now I'm fine with the hardshell black OtterBox. The 7 is longer and wider than my 5c, but it's thinner. It feels different in the hand and in my pocket -- I'm not completely used to it yet, and I'm really paranoid I'm going to crack the screen just from it being in my pocket and the accompanying leg movement. So far, so good though.

I still haven't smoked -- I no longer feel the craving or want for a cigarette and haven't in about six months or more. I am still vaping, however, though I've even cut down on that quite a bit. Mainly because, well, juice costs money that I'd rather spend on nerdy t-shirts and shaving equipment (no joke there -- I've fallen down the rabbit hole on Amazon for fancy shave butters/creams/aftershaves). I don't know exactly how long it's been that I've been a non-smoker, but I know it was April of last year, so 18 months or so, roughly.

I couldn't vape in the house in West Virginia, however, because it would harm the parents' parrot. Yes, they have a parrot, because, well...honestly that shouldn't surprise anyone knowing the type of family I come from, so we'll move on.

Not much else going on; life continues as normal, as it always has.

Above: me and my grandmother, Labor Day 2017.

My Piece

No, I'm not talking about my penis.

Hi there everyone. It's been a long time.

Truthfully over the past ten months I've come to this blog several times to try to write something, only to get interrupted in the middle of it, lose interest, and come back to it a few weeks later to see what I was going to post no longer applies.

Some updates that are relevant for those of you paying attention:

Yes, I am still vaping. I have not had a physical cigarette since June or so, and have only smoked 1.5 cigarettes since I quit last April. One of those was a luxury Nat Sherman cigarette one of my friends had at a wine-and-music event last summer, and the other was one a friend gave me at work last fall -- that made me sick, but I was so stressed out at my job I needed something to kill it.

I do my part to educate people on the benefits of vaping and to dispel the stigma of it, and have gotten a few friends who were previously smoking to start vaping instead as a means to quit the cigarettes. I have about ten devices, numerous tanks and atomizers, and about thirty different flavors of juice. It has become quite the hobby, and sometimes an expensive one, though in the long run it is much cheaper than cigarettes, with the benefits far outweighing the costs.

Speaking of outweighing the costs, the downside is that since I quit smoking, I have gained about 50 pounds in the past ten months -- putting me back up above my college weight and making me feel like a supremely fat fuck. As such I have had to purchase a lot of new clothing that will actually fit me and donate a lot of what no longer does. Weight gain is a very common side-effect of quitting smoking, because suddenly one gets an appetite again. And because the winters in Nebraska suck and are usually really cold and snowy, I feel even more lethargic than usual -- so I have no energy to get up, get out of the house, and be active. That's a problem. The wife and I plan to start an exercise regimen once everything thaws out for good this spring, the temperatures get to be tolerable outside (consistently, anyway), and the days get longer.

I still drive my Silverado -- haven't done anything to it physically or upkeep-wise since I got it from our brother-in-law (aside from put a Team Instinct sticker in the back window -- yes, the wife and I play Pokemon GO, I'm level 26 now, she's 25). It desperately needs new tires, which I'm sort of half-assed saving for as it'll be about $800. Because of this it won't really go anywhere in the Nebraska winter and we take the wife's car most places -- I take the truck to work and back if there's no snow/ice on the roads, and that's about it.

My student loans can be put off no longer and are now due every month on the 11th -- to the tune of over $600. To put that in perspective, I pay more on my student loans every month than I paid for rent every month in my house in Kansas -- by a substantial amount. This is, of course, a shit situation, but it can't be avoided. That's also part of why it's very difficult to try to afford tires for the truck, and means the wife and I have to very tightly budget everything now, to the point where we are afforded very few luxuries.

That's fine, I suppose -- I have learned to save quite a bit of money on household stuff by getting it directly from Amazon, shipped to my door. About the only things I don't get on Amazon these days are perishable foodstuffs that they wouldn't really be able to mail. Almost everything else is purchased and is delivered to us a few times a week, depending on what's ordered. Carrying cat litter, paper towels, toilet paper, laundry detergent, etc etc in from the car is a thing of the past.

The cats are fine, by the way -- they're all turning ten this year. The girls like to sleep and eat, and Pete likes to be a bastard the same as usual. If there's been one constant in my life over the past ten years it's been those little furry buttholes.

I did pass the milestone of ten years living in the midwest around Thanksgiving or so, and barely gave it a second thought. It's so long ago now. Hell, Daisy and I have been married almost three years. Our bills are getting paid, we have food in the house, the lights are on, and the years just go by. Milestones are generally for the sentimental, and I'm more of a nihilist than anything else.

No, we do not have a child yet. It is one of our long term goals, as is getting out of this apartment and into a house of our own. In the time since we've been married, both of Daisy's sisters have each had another child -- the latest being a new niece born right around Christmas. Meh. We'll either have kids eventually or we won't. We'd like to, but given our monetary situation and lack of time as it is, honestly it's on the back burner at this point.

I suppose I should mention that Daisy acquired a new job last fall; she is now working for a bank. This means she has much better hours and all state/federal holidays off. Her pay is about the same, however. She likes it much better than working overnights (and then, later, during the day) as a shift manager for a gigantic telecommunications corporation, as she did before.

I also got a new job -- I'm working overnights as a shift manager for a gigantic telecommunications corporation.

Surprisingly enough, these two occurrences are not related.

In August I (finally) got promoted to Area Manager on dayshift, leading one of the top teams in the building, when my superior was moved to a different segment. After being an interim over that team for three months, one of our overnight managers moved to Dallas around the same time some restructuring was done with the teams on dayshift and my team/position was eliminated. As they needed someone to fill the spot on overnights and I already knew and had worked with all of the After Hours people previously (I started on After Hours in that place before moving to days, as you may recall), I volunteered to take the third shift position as an interim with the full promotion being awarded to me once the dust settled and leadership decided who would be moved to my team -- and they agreed. I started the overnight position (8pm to 7am four days a week) in October and received the official promotion to Area Manager during the first week of November. I am still hourly as of right now, which is a good thing for many reasons -- for one, it means I can still get any and all overtime offered to me, and for two it means that when my work day ends, it ends. My move to salary was postponed indefinitely when the federal edict on overtime got overturned/erased back in December, and while there is still plans to get me over to the salaried payscale, I'd rather not hurry it when I'm getting 4-6 hours of sweet, sweet overtime every week.

The downside is that I was supposed to be awarded back pay for my interim months and that's on record (it was part of my hiring documentation), and that has not come through yet over four months later. I've been told it's coming and is being taken care of, but as of late my inquiries about it -- as well as inquiries about becoming salaried -- have gone unanswered. 

As an aside, I really like working overnights. I work Sunday through Wednesday, I work with a group of people I've known and trusted for years (as well as a Director who is awesome and actively cares about the job and his employees), and while overnights does deal with a fair amount of bullshit and stupidity, it's way less than I had to deal with when I was on dayshift in that place. For the most part, I believe I am wanted, needed, and respected -- as well as appreciated when the shit hits the fan -- and right now, that's really good enough for me. Because of my experience and tenure, as well as the fact that there's a shift differential and I am a valued employee, I got something around a 25% pay raise in my promotion as well. Swimmin' pools, movie stars money.

Well, not really. But it's nice to be making more than I did before. Really, the extra pay goes almost directly to my student loans with little, if any, left over. So I sort of break even.

My overnights schedule doesn't really intersect with the wife's day schedule, though -- that's a bit of a downside. However, it does mean we get to share evenings and weekends together. She works a normal day schedule to 8-5. I get home at 7am, spend some time with her as she gets ready, go to bed when she goes to work, and wake up an hour or three before she gets home. We spend the evening together and then I go back to work at 8. This repeats for four days, and then Thursday/Friday/Saturday nights (not to mention Saturday day most of the time) we spend together and get our quality time -- with the benefit that I still get some decompression time to myself in the overnights as long as I stay on my normal sleeping schedule. Lately, that time has been spent watching Netflix and/or playing a video game to turn off my brain.

Another downside is that, especially during the winter months, my energy levels are at all-time lows. I get up in the evenings and need to pound coffee to wake myself up for the night shift, and I can't really eat or I'll get all groggy and even weaker. If I wake up in a bad mood or I have anything else happening that stresses me out, I carry that mindset into the entire night because I'm being forced to wake up and deal with it. Daisy long ago realized that it's generally a bad idea to try to have serious conversations with me in the first hour or two that I'm awake, because in that time I am a vile, horrific person. I really can't help it, and I've done all I can to curb it -- but it's chemical/biological more than anything else as it's usually caused by me not having any caffeine or nicotine in my system. I am not a "get up and go" type of person -- it's a slow roll.

Anyway, it's probably time I get to the overall point of this post, and why I wanted to start writing it in the first place: we have a new president.

I have tried to stay as silent as possible on the subject of Donald Trump. Really I have. I don't talk much about it on social media, and truthfully I am so sick of there being no news anymore but Trump news, anywhere, to the point where I've stopped paying attention to most news in general because I just can't take it. Please, news sources, anything but something else about Trump. There is more happening in the world, I know it -- please report that instead.

But, since we're now stuck with Trump, I suppose here's my two cents.

I never thought my country could be so stupid.

I never thought my country would allow what is currently happening, as a whole, to happen.

I never thought my country would see injustice, blatant violations of the constitution and civil rights, the closing of our borders and the slow-roll of a burgeoning police state coming to power all happening and do little else but some "we're upset and don't like this" protests and sharing stories on social media outlets before moving on to more pictures of cats.

I never thought I would see such a complacent "oh well, what can we do?" society form, instead of throngs of people taking to the streets with pitchforks and torches. 

I've never seen a more milquetoast reaction to our rights, powers, and privileges as the people of the United States being stripped away one by one. And to those people saying "well, he's only in there four years," they're not seeing the big picture. The actions he's taking will set back our society's progress by fifty years or more as people keep getting dumber and more complacent.

I once thought, optimistically, that we would see the formation of Starfleet in my lifetime. A real Starfleet, ex astris, scientia -- from the stars, knowledge -- a unification of Earth's ideologies gathered for the common goal of exploration and settlement, the broadening of our knowledge and cultures and experiences for the benefit of the planet, the species, as a whole. I now know that will never happen, not as long as I'm alive, not as long as it's not made a priority and the number one goal of our planet.

It was a lofty goal, to be sure, but it is one I could've seen coming together within 20-40 years if, say, Bernie Sanders had won the presidency.

Now we have Voldemort and his death eaters in the White House, leading the most powerful country on the planet and systematically dismantling all the progress the past several decades of sane, rational leaders have made. We rational, intelligent Slytherins disowned Donald Trump long ago, much as I'm sure not every Slytherin (or even most of them) supported Voldemort.

I know I'm making a lot of pop-culture references here, but bear with me.

For the record, even though I voted for her, I don't think Hillary Clinton would've been much better. I didn't want to vote for her, I wanted to vote against idiocy. My man was always Bernie Sanders from the beginning of the actual race, and I think there was a lot of shady or otherwise underhanded shit Hillary did to basically steal the nomination -- for a job she couldn't win. She couldn't win it eight years ago and she won't win it four years from now. Also note how deafeningly silent she's been since she lost the election, too.

Then again, with the exception of Barack Obama, I have a history of voting for losing candidates. I was a month too young to vote in the 2000 election, but I would've voted for Al Gore. In 2004 I backed John Kerry to get Bush out of office. Both of those elections failed spectacularly.

That's also not to say that there aren't some of Trump's policies I agree with -- there are, they're just very few and far between. For example, I do believe strongly in bringing jobs back to America and penalizing American companies who outsource or build factories in other countries to ship products back to us. Hell no; build those factories here, put those jobs here. Working in telecom has shown me the evils of outsourcing as many of the best technicians I previously worked with had their jobs outsourced to Asia or the south pacific. And let me tell you, I'll gladly pay $50 more for an iPhone or laptop if I know it was built here in the states. I want to see the best cars in the world built in America again.

I believe very strongly in rebuilding the infrastructure of this country -- hospitals, airports, roads, bridges, our electrical grid and other power plants, schools, universities, and the like, from the bottom up. I want to see people at work making this country a better place -- but that also comes with paying people what they're worth. Teachers, professors, cops, firemen, public works people, etc -- all of them need a liveable wage. All of us do, but start with the people who shape society more than anyone else and keep it running.

I also disagree with a lot of what's happening, obviously. "Building the wall" is a really stupid, dumbfuck idea that won't make this country any safer overall and will bankrupt our treasury. The travel ban isn't helping either. There's a lot of immigration policy I disagree with most liberals on, but I definitely agree that the wall and the travel ban are both really dumb. For the record, I don't support the ICE raids that are happening in a ton of different states right now either. I support it on paper, but putting that into practice like the Kool-Aid man smashing through the walls of workplaces, arresting illegals, and leaving homes where kids don't know if they're going to have parents to come home to after school is holy shit level fascism.

The bad part is that it's all going to get worse before it gets better, until there's some sort of actual revolution in this country. And given the complacency of the populace thus far, I fear that will never happen. If it does, I also fear that the revolution will be quelled so quickly and the leaders quickly condemned as crackpots by the media that anyone else will fear to make any more waves. It is by complacency and by the hands of those who sit there and do nothing that this country will meet its end -- and I am sure there's no shortage of other societies around the world who will be happy to see us crumble and fall apart when we do.

So, on that happy note, I'm going to end this post. I've said all I need to say on the subject.

In two days it's Valentine's Day. I proposed to my wife on Valentine's Day four years ago. This year it's the "kitchen gifts" anniversary, apparently, as I've gotten her a few gifts that she's wanted for a while. Life goes on, right?