Happy Halloween!

Not much to say about yesterday, unfortunately. The highlight of the day was probably grocery shopping. I picked up stuff for a week's worth of dinners (jambalaya last night, fajitas tonight), as well as some candy for the trick-or-treaters that'll be wandering around the apartment complex in, well, just a few minutes. Anyway, I forgot to turn down the heat on the jambalaya last night and I ended up burning a little bit of it, but most of it was just fine. Had to settle for chourico again, but it's still fine.

Work was a fairly long night. And it seemed like the whole aisle was having a tough go of it, not just me. But even then, nothing particularly stood out about it. It was just tough.


The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance the story may have to any real life incidents or people is purely cooincidental. You know, like Primary Colors.

This is the story of a girl named Jeanne. Well, actually it's not, it's about a girl named Jill, her name has been changed, to protect the author. Jeanne is, perhaps, the most physically attractive girl I have ever met. In fact, she was Miss Teen Maryland, once upon a time; stunningly beautiful, and with a body that can stop traffic. Unfortunately, that's all there is to our dear Jeanne. She's an order of fries, without the fries, if you know what I mean; basically, an empty box. Any personality she may have once had has been effectively drummed out of her by her mother (one of those pagent mom's - see the movie Little Miss Sunshine and you'll understand) and her Christian Youth Group.

I have no idea how she got involved with the Jesus Freaks, although her best friend came from a family of them, so it's probably through her. Her own mother (dad split when she was a little kid, apparently), by all accounts, does not fit the description.

Anyway, I met Jeanne through my sister's best friend, who herself joined up with the JFs after a nervous breakdown she had at about 15 or so. She met Jeanne after my sister moved out of town, so she was looking for a new best friend. What she got instead was a life-sized barbie doll.

My sister's friend idolized Jeanne, just the way a good Protestant girl shouldn't. Jeanne was everything that she wanted to be. And the rest of the "Christians", too, gladly accepted her. The JFs are, after all, just a different offshoot of freaks. The beautiful girls don't become JFs, because they aren't outcast. But Jeanne did, and she became the Megan's giant trophy, and she paraded her around at every opportunity, always telling any guy who came up to her (and they ALL came up to her) that Jeanne was available only to "Christian" guys.

There was one problem. Jeanne's Christian credentials were tampered by an unfortunate love affair she had with alcohol and screwing. Also, she is a bit more, shall we say, materialistic than Jesus would have wanted her to be. The short version of the story is, Jeanne ended up engaged to this guy who fronted a "Christian" "Rock" band. The problem is, it wasn't exactly a "successful" "Christian" Rock" band. So the guy had no "money".

One guy who did have money was an old flame of Jeanne's from the private college in California that she went to. The guy wasn't exactly "Christian" (this wasn't a Jesus College, just a private one), but he was "rich". Rich enough to fly Jeanne out to California, where the pair of them engaged in her two favorite pasttimes.

Well, as you can well imagine, this did not go over well with her "Christian" friends back in Maryland. Deep down, of course, the "Christian" girls all hated her. I mean, she was their trophy, and they were certainly very nice to her, but they were seethingly jealous everytime she walked into a room all of their boyfriends couldn't keep their eyes off her. Jealousy is a stinky perfume, and once Jeanne faltered, the claws came out. My sister's friend didn't hate her, even deep down (she got over the jealousy by standing really close to Jeanne at all times and convincing herself that the guys who were staring at Jeanne were really staring both of them), but she still disinvited her from her wedding last month (she was slated to be a bride's maid), and the rest of the girls were all too happy to pile on.

The poor bastard who was engaged to her is the only one who is willing to forgive her (although I'm sure all the other guys in the Youth Group would be only too happy if she decided to reconvert and the fiancee wouldn't take her back to help lead her to redemption themselves). But she isn't exactly in the mood to be forgiven. You can just picture this poor guy's world tumbling around him - he's singing in a band, and he's got the most beautiful girl he's ever seen promising to be with him for life - then *poof* she's gone. And he's willing to do anything to get her back, even degrade himself to the point where he is willing to pledge his life to a girl who clearly isn't that interested in him.

Of course, the guy is better off without her. He didn't love this girl (and she certainly didn't love him). You can't love this girl; there is nothing to love. I mean, a great set of tits will only get you so far. You can't talk to a great set of tits. They won't comfort you when you're down, or give you support, or connect with your soul. You can squeeze them, and that's all kinds of fun, but it's no substitute for love. And this girl is kidding herself if she thinks that moneybags in Cali is in love with her, either. My sister once said that Jeanne has been bred to be a mistress, and I think she's right.

It's a shame, too. On the couple of occaisions I met this girl it seemed like there was something there, but it was buried so deep down under the all individuality crushing pagent and "Christian" nonsense, that it seemed barely there anymore. Maybe that's what all of the drinking is about, I don't know.

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is, or even if there is one. I'm not sure whether the story is supposed to be funny, tragic, both, or neither. It seems to me though that it is a worthy story, and that there is something to be learned from it.

And I'll leave you with that.

NFL Power Rankings on the sports blog, the political blog entry hasn't been filled yet - I may not get to it tonight, with all the munchkins running around. But I'll try to.

Weekend Wrap-up

Dear blog,

This was another rather unremarkable weekend, catagorized by a lot of napping on the couch and watching football (more on that in the sports blog, of course).

Friday night was supposed to be the "graduation" celebration at UPS for me and the coworkers who had also made seniority since the last such celebration, but because 10 of the 14 workers who were supposed to be so honored didn't show up for work on Friday, the celebration was pushed back (nothing too special about the celebration, just freee pizza and an extra 15 minutes of break time). So, I still have it to look forward to, I suppose.

As usual, Kait and I went down to the Cape on Saturday morning, meeting our parents and Duncan - the folks' dog - there for the weekend. They won't be up next weekend - they are going to Florida to visit friends. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing that weekend.

That's really all I have to report. I think I'll spend the rest of the entry telling you about my coworkers. On any given night, somehwere between 6-8 people will be manning the sort aisle, not including John (the supervisor), Matt, or Keith (the trainers). People move around, even from night to night, but on a typical night the people on the sort aisle will be me, Andy, Adams A & B (the A and B don't stand for anything - I don't know either's last name), Bobby, Fred, and Jen.

If Jen stands out to you on that list, you can imagine how she stands out on the aisle. I'd guess her height to be around 5'2" or 5'3", but I might think that she is shorter than she actually is because of her company on the aisle. She is blond, always smiling, and perhaps the most aromatically pleasing person I have ever met. When you're up to your knees in packages and your unloader has the labels facing every which way and you'd really like to kill yourself, nothing makes you feel better than someone floating by with a smile on her face and leaving a floral aroma in her wake. She is the only girl on sort in the entire shift (there are 4 aisles), and I'm glad she's with us. She and Fred are the only people from that list who have been on the aisle for more than two months - the rest of us have been brought into the aisle in recent weeks to reduce the friction between the sorters and unloaders that was apparently getting in the way of production on the aisle.

I've mentioned Fred before. He is in his early-middle-age, and he is by far the best sorter on the aisle (every night he is there they set him to sort Chris - the fastest unloader; it's rumored that Chris is able to unload at his superhuman speed because he shows up to work high on cocaine; almost nobody can keep up with him - nobody except for Fred, that is). If you're not careful, you can find yourself just watching him, awestruck, as he goes about his business. Why he is sorting packages at his age is beyond me - it seems to me he should at least be a driver at this point - but I don't pry, mostly because my level of self-absorbtion is so high that I'm really quite disinterested. Hey, I'm not proud of it - that's just the way I am.

If Jen is the perpetual ray of sunshine, then Adam A is the perpetual storm cloud. Adam got to the aisle not long before I did - he still hadn't made seniority when I arrived, and working there while most of the combatants were still on the aisle seems to have tainted his view of the unloaders. In addition to that, he has two personality traits which make him quite unpleasant; first, he is a classic one-upper - you know the type, whatever story or gripe you have, they always have something that happened to them that was just a little bit cooler, or better, or worse, or more painful, and they're happy to let you know exactly what it was in such a manner that makes it clear they aren't sure why you told your story at all; and secondly, he makes it his business to be the most pissed off person on the aisle at all times. However, Adam is an intelligent enough guy who can be good for some decent conversation provided you catch him in one of his rare happier moments.

Andy I have mentioned numerous times. He came to UPS the same time I did - we did the training class together, then ran through the certification tests that all the sorter's have to pass at the same breakneck pace. Specifically, it took us all of two days. For comparison, Bobby, who arrived a week after us, only passed cert last week, and Adam B, who arrived with Bobby, still hasn't passed. And that isn't a bad reflection on them. Anyway, as the only two sorters from our training class, Andy and I became fast friends - especially since, as I mentioned, I don't really have other friends up here yet. Recently, though, Andy had a near-death experience in his automobile due to the lack of sleep he was getting in his ridiculous schedule, and so he has cut back to working 3 nights a week. Honestly, I don't think that's enough, but I'm his friend, not his mom.

Adam B and Bobby, like I mentioned, have been at UPS a week less than have Andy and I, which means they make seniority this week. Bobby is a smaller kid - he can't be older than 18. When he first got to the aisle he had to stack the larger boxes that were destined for the belts above his head next to him until he could get help getting them up. But no more (you'd be amazed how quickly you get into shape working at UPS...I've already lost enough weight that I have problems keeping my jeans up). Adam B is probably my next closest friend at work; he's not quite as sharp as Andy but he is an agreeable guy with strong opinions but will respect anything you say.

Honestly, I couldn't ask for a better batch of co-workers. My interactions with my fellow sorters have always been pleasant - even Adam A has never directed a harsh word at me, or anyone else on sort - and we watch out for each other, without having to be told to do so by the supervisors. They are the reason that a job which on its merits is barely tolerable is, in fact, very decent and sometimes even, on rare occasions, a little bit fun.

Pay Day...And relax, people!

Dear blog,

Thursday was another tough one at work. But I got the check today, which is always a good feeling. And this week's check was huge, thanks to the extra work on Thursday. Well huge in a relative sense, not an empirical one. Let's just say that this check was for about 133% of my regular check (and, no, it's not $133).

Woke up kinda late today - did my sports & politics blogs, then went over to our cousin's house where Kait used to live and is in the process of getting the very last of her possessions out, and got the Christmas tree out of the basement. This, by the way, is one year where I can not wait to put the Christmas tree up. You may have read my earlier entry where I mused about not having a place I feel is really "home" right now. I think I'll be a lot further along that trail with respect to this apartment once I've put up a Christmas tree here. Call it hokey, but it's true.

Dinner was jambalaya, with chourico because they don't have andouille up here, at least not at our supermarket. Despite the sausage discrepancy the meal was a success - in fact, I thought the chourico was quite decent. Not andouille, but quite decent. And Scrubs, of course; great stuff, as always.

Then it was off to work...


ESPN.com has a particularly good football analyst by the name of Gregg Easterbrook who writes on all manner of subjects (he is a regular writer for The New Republic). Lately he has been throwing into his column information supporting the argument of his new book The Progress Paradox, which is that people who spend more time enjoing life and less time trying to get ahead are happier. It seems obvious, when you think about it, but so many people spend so much time clawing their way to the top (but such a minute percentage of us will ever get to the top, or anywhere near the top, that it is a lifetime struggle of futility for nearly all who undergo it), that even the obvious wisdom of the idea has trouble talking root.

But it is true. Money can not buy happiness, and the struggle for money can, in fact, make one unhappy - creating the exact opposite effect you were going for.

And if it ever could make you happy, boy, now is the time. We live in what will forever be known as the Golden Age of Consumption. We have it all - Ipods, high speed internet, XBox 360, gigantic-assed trucks, SkiDoos, cell phones that play our favorite songs when our friends call us and can take pictures and in some cases shoot video, little fucking things we can stick on our dashboards and ask it to give us directions to the nearest Cambodian restauarant...(and if you can't afford all that shit, well, you don't need to be able to! Just sign over your soul there and we'll give you this credit card. Of course, you'll immediately use it to buy everything you can't really afford, always telling yourself, "I'll pay it off, someday." How, that's how we make all our money - hounding these people for 100 bucks a month for the rest of their lives!)

Think about going back a mere decade and telling yourself about all the great shit that was in store for, well, you. The past you would go nuts, thinking about how great life was going to be.

Well, it's like that now. And is all of that stuff making you happy? I mean, really happy? Do you go to bed at night thinking, man, life really is great!

I'm not sure you do. I think, if you did, you woudn't be so ready to go to war at the drop of a hat (of course, I don't mean actually going to war - most of you hawks have no plans nor ever had any plans of volunteering to go over there yourself. Most of you were kind enough to volunteer to fight "the war on the home front", as it were). But trust me, life is that good. It's great, in fact.

You just have to slow down and realize that.

Hump Day and Survival of the Dumbest

Dear Blog,

Wednesday sure earned the nickname "Hump Day" for me today. It was easily the hardest day of this week so far; it seemed I was up to my knees in boxes for 4 straight hours. Only proper for Hump Day, the day after which you can look back at last weekend and know that now the next such rest period is closer than the last one is.

Got up around 1:00 yesterday, wrote in my sports blog but forgot to get to the politics blog (don't worry - I've got a hell of a good idea for an entry for tomorrow for that one to make up for it), and ate lunch and watched a couple of episodes of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law On Demand, which is the greatest thing, like, ever! (On Demand, not Harvey Birdman, although he's great, too)

Made and then ate pizza, watched Scrubs, then checked out another show On Demand which I had seen once but I never gave it enough of a chance to get into it called Numbers, which airs on CBS I'm not sure when. But now that I know we have it On Demand, I'll be able to catch the new episodes when it's convenient for me. Damn, that read just like a commercial.

Anyway, work was a bit of a chore last night, as noted above. I should have known when I started the night sorting a paper load and having to deal with the leftovers from the guy in front of me, who was sorting a truck with two folks in it that it was going to be a bad night. Most of you have no idea what I just said, so I'll fill you in:

Paper load is the bane of a sorter's existence. What it is, is Office Depot is always shipping loads and loads of printer paper through our warehouse. These fucking loads come in all the time, and when they do, it's practically a whole truckload of this shit, one box after another. Now, paper load isn't bad for unloaders or loaders, because the boxes are all the same size and weight, and so they're easy to stack or to unstack. But for the sorter the boxes are miserable, because they're a) heavy as hell (and a healthy dose of them are guaranteed to be going on a belt above your head), b)easy to unstack, so they come at you by the boatloads, and c) horribly labeled, so you have to look at each box individually and read the ship to address, usually in small print (as opposed to having a human readable, which allows you to tell by three large, bold numbers which shelf the package belonged on), before you tried to lift the beheamoth over your head while ignoring the other ones spilling off the belt and onto the backs of your legs. Yes, sir, paper sort sucks.

Ok, when we sort there is usually a bar that runs the width of the belt, keeping one sorter's flow to himself (or herself, implied from now on). But sometimes, when for some reason the sorter cannot be expected to be able to handle the load by himself, he will run what is called a half-bar, which means the bar only extends about 1/2 way down the belt, knocking the packasges closer to the sorter but allowing the packages he doesn't get to to pass by, rather than getting piled up and ending up around his feet. In this case, Bobby (the kid in front of me) had two folks unloading his truck, which is certainly cause for a half-bar. Since I did not have two guys in my truck, I was at full bar, so all of Bobby's excess packages were coming my way and making the already horrific chore that is paper load even more difficult. Now, go back and reread paragraph 4, I'll wait for you.

*whistles, checks watch*

Ah, you're back. Anyway, I think I handled the adversity pretty well and the guy behind me in line, Fred (who is an older guy - older than us, I mean, not like white hair and a cane old - and has apparently been doing this a while because he is really, REALLY good at it) helped me considerably when things started to get out of hand a few times, and I was able to get through it. That was, of course, the worst part of the night. It was all uphill from there, but not far uphill.

Honestly, though, I've had worse days. But after a relatively easy Monday and Tuesday, this Hump Day was a little tougher to get over.

I'm convinced that America has a big problem. There is an infestation going on in this country and you know what I'm talking about.

No, not Mexicans. But if you answered Mexicans, then you sir (or ma'am) are part of the problem.

It's Dumb people. They are now completely unchecked and they are breeding like rabbits on eccstacy.

You see, those of you familiar with Darwin know all about the concept of Survival of the Fittest, which states that evolution occurs when a particular strand of gene causes the best genes to flood the genepool, because those animals which have the most beneficial qualities to it's survival will be the ones which survive long enough to multiply fruitfully.

But when you take survival out of the equation, the best genes cease to necessarily be the genes which flood the genepool. In the human species, in this country, those of us who are multiplying the earliest and most often are not the best and the brightest, but rather the Dumb, and the Dumber. In olden days, these people would wander off into the woods and get eaten by a bear, but in modern times, nothing keeps them from popping out little morons nonstop from age 13 to 53, and longer in men's cases. Now they're taking over this country, and it's everywhere you see; People drinking Budweiser, people watching Larry the Cable Guy and yelling, "Git-R-Done!", people listening to Kid Rock, people laughing at that guy on the Dodge ads who keeps yelling about his "Hemi"... It's a goddam catastrophe. And you can't even teach them about Darwin, because the Dumb in this country don't even "believe in" Darwin.

It's not to say they don't have dumb people everywhere, but they can't take over other places because in the third world they tend to get eaten by bears or sharks or bitten by snakes. Even in this country, the dumb can sometimes find themselves in positions where they can be killed or almost killed by carnivorous wildlife - see Seigfreid and Roy. In the rest of the developed world, like Europe, the dumb people are only breeding at the same rate as everyone else - right around the replacement rate.

But in this country the dumb just breed and breed, and the smart people have made the world nice and safe so there aren't nearly enough stupid, dangerous things dumb people can do to knock themselves out of the gene pool early (although kudos to Ben Roethlisberger for figuring out a way - too bad it didn't work out for you this time, Ben; try little harder, next time!). Even the clowns who smoke their way into lung cancer aren't usually snuffed out until they're in their 50s or so - well past prime breeding age.

So what do we do? Pick up and abandon - flee to Canada or Europe? Dear Lord, no! First of all, there is no way I am allowing these goobers to manipulate me into leaving my homeland - which I love very much, by the way; for reasons most of you who would call me unpatriotic are far too dense to understand - and second of all, if we leave these guys to their own devices here in America, then we are giving them The Bomb.

On that note, I take leave of you this morning. I hope all of you check out the kick-ass essay I'm going to write tomorrow in the Return of Dascent, and whatever I have cooked up for tomorrow in the sports blog.

Oh, and please leave comments at the end of my entries. I'm not saying do it everytime, just enough so that I get a good idea of who is reading this. You can all post now - I know that when I started the sports blog a couple months ago you couldn't until just recently, but you can now. There is a word verification to avoid spam, but that's it.

Later...

Happy Hump Day...and the nightshift essay

Dear Blog,

Tuesday is an all-around crappy day. When you're done work on Tuesday, there is no feeling of, well, anything. On Monday, after work, you're like, "well, I've made it through the worst day." Wednesday is hump day, so when you're done Wednesday, you always know you have less of the week in front of you than you do behind. Thursday always means only one more day to go, and for many of us (myself included), it's also payday, when we reap the rewards of our work. And after Friday, of course, the weekend starts and you get to relax.

But Tuesday? Nothing special. As I write this, I still have the majority of the week separating me from the next two day rest period, and there's no feeling of accomplishment that follows getting through a Monday. It's just depressing.

I woke up yesterday around 1:00ish, which is a bit late for me (I usually wake up in the 10:30-12:00 vicinity, but 1:00 is not a completely unusual occurence). At 4 I went to the post office to mail the check for the excise tax on my car, and Dan's necklace, which his wife hand-made for him and also which he left at the bathroom of my cape house the weekend he came over.

Last night, we had spaghetti for dinner (another wonderfully easy meal to prepare for yourself; I put quite a bit of effort into it actually, although I don't yet make my own tomato sauce - but I do chop up fresh vegetables and meat and cook them before adding them to the sauce; it's a goal of mine over the next few months to start making my own sauce; you can really taste the difference the more you add to a recipie). We laughed at Scrubs, but not nearly as hard as we laughed at an on demand episode of CSI Miami that aired, I suppose last Monday. There is a particularly awful scene where David Caruso is driving around in a SUV that has a bomb in it to a remote location where it won't hurt anybody when it blows. He gets there with maybe 15 seconds left on the bomb, takes his sunglasses off, gets out of the car, immediately puts his sunglasses back on, and then walks, not runs, away from the vehicle, which explodes (in slow motion of course) while Caruso is having his mandatory Robert Duvall in Apocolypse Now moment, and then he says, I'm not making this up, "Burn, baby, burn." If you don't watch CSI Miami, then you are missing out. This has to be the most unintentionally funny show on the air (it might be the most funny show, period). David Caruso has got to be the world's biggest jackass, and watching him poison any scene he speaks in (which is practically every scene in the show) is comedy at its best. At one point we had to rewind a scene twice because I was laughing so hard at Caruso's overacting that I couldn't hear what the dude was saying who was talking to him.

Work was actually pretty easy today - I didn't even open up the water bottle I brought for the second half of my shift - but like I already said, Tuesday is the worst day because there is no feeling of accomplishment after you leave.

I wanted to write about working the overnight shift. When I tell people about my hours, they invariably grimace and wonder aloud how I can do it. Honestly, I like working overnight. I'm a bit of an owl already, and the hours are certainly convenient to anything else I would do - like taking classes next semester. I don't have to worry about my work schedule conflicting with anything, I just need to make sure I get my 6-9 hours of sleep every 24 hours (or so). Also, working the night shift makes you feel a bit closer to the people you work with. It's like the guy who originally gave us our tour told us, "it's not what we do, but when we do it, that binds us closer than any other shift."

And best of all, there is no traffic, to or from work. I live in downtown Lowell, as I mentioned earlier, and I can tell you, from 4:30 or so to about 6:30 there is no sense even getting on the roads to go anywhere, because you'll be sitting in traffic pretty much the entirety of the trip. I can't imagine anything I'd rather be doing less than that after work. Well, I can think of a few things, but they all would be a violation of the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the 8th Ammendmant to the US Constitution. Anyway, drive these same roads at 10:30 on a weekday night, then again at 3:00 in the morning (or later), and there ain't another car in sight.

The only problem is Friday nights, though. As overnight workers, our weekends start later than anyone else's (on the other hand, they end later, as well - we have all day Monday to recover from the damamge we may have done to ourselves Saturday and Sunday). But on the whole, that's an easy sacrifice to make. I mean, it's not like we don't get Saturday nights. And we can still go out on Friday night, we just have to be in by 10 and we can't get drunk. But as far as going to a resteraunt or a movie goes - why not?

No sir, you guys can keep your day jobs. I love working at night.

That's what I got this morning. When I get to my sports blog this afternoon, I'm gonna write a beauty of an essay on why the NBA did the right thing keeping 18-year olds out of the NBA Draft (I know, I know, couldn't be more timely, right?). As for the politics blog, I don't know what I'm gonna do yet. But with plenty to write about, I'm sure I'll have something interesting and more timely than the basketball essay to say.

Seniority, and breakfast at McDonald's

A couple of items on my day:

- Went shopping around 2, ended up spending quite a bit less than usual because I was pretty well stocked up on a lot of the things I need to make food for a week. Had tacos tonight, which were very good, as always - if you're interested in cooking for yourself but you want to start with something simple, I definately recommend trying tacos first; they are very easy to make - all of the instructions are on the pack of taco seasoning, whether you use McCormick's (my favorite) or Old El Paso (my mom's preference), and they are rather delicious, especially if you make your own guacomole, you'll have to figure out how to do that yourself.

-I went to watch the freshmen football team at my sister's high school (Dracut High) play. I've seen the freshmen team play twice, and both times they won convincingly. I don't know what their overall record is, but the varsity team is 6-1 - I've seen them play once. Kait is more concerned with the freshman team than the varsity, though, because she teaches mostly freshmen in her English classes; she gets really excited when her favorite student, the unfortunately named Geraldo, gets playing time - which unfortunately is usually near the end of blowout games, if you get my point. But she does have other students on the team, including the star QB/WR/safety/kicker. This time they beat the other school - which I believe was Haverhill - 28-0.

- Scrubs was great, of course. The Daily Show & Colbert Report are doing all reruns this week in preparation for their Midwest Midterm Midtacular, which will be coming out of Cleveland next week, so instead we watched Inside the Actors' Studio, which tonight featured the voice cast of The Simpsons, which, as James Lipton said, has the most consistently funny writing in the history of television. Think about it: what is the last Simpson's episode you ever saw that "missed"? It was fascinating to see the faces behind the voices, and to hear the stories of from where they came.

- I made seniority at work today, which means I am officially no longer "in training" and I am now a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. I haven't completely paid the initiation fee yet, so I am not yet eligible for health benefits, but I am under the Union's protection, which basically means I can't get fired unless a) I do something really stupid, like get into a fistfight or get caught stealing something or b) I rack up enough offenses (which are all noted in paperwork) that the union can't back me. Since I plan on doing neither, and since UPS won't be laying anybody off anytime soon (and by "soon" I mean, like, ever), I basically have this job as long as I want it, which at least is a measure of security.

- Also, my friend Andy accepted the opportunity to work 3 days a week at UPS. I relaize I spend a lot of space on this guy for a heterosexual, but you have to understand that I don't have a lot of friends up here. I'm only on a first name basis with about a dozen people, period, relations excluded. In other words, it's plenty lonely enough here without losing what few friends I have. It's like Jason Bourne said to the German chick when they got to his apartment: "Forget you? You're the only person I know."

Now my rant. I was at the drive through at McDonald's today (I'm not proud of it - they're cheap and I'm poor), and I found myself looking at the breakfast menu while I was waiting for the speaker to ask me what I wanted. My eyes wandered to a monstrosity called the "Bacon, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle". For those of you who don't know, or for those of you who do know but never took the opportunity to reflect on the implications of this information, the Bacon, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle is a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwhich. Unlike the Bacon, Egg, and Cheese McMuffin or the Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Bagel sandwhiches, however, the Bacon, Egg and Cheese McGriddle is a sandwhich where the bun is, in fact, two pancakes! When I realized exactly what I was seeing, I wondered, "holy shit, can you put syrup on this thing?" I can only imagine you can. Probably butter, too. Can you imagine eating two pancakes, syrup, butter, strips of bacon, an egg, and cheese all at the same time? Can I get that with a side of double greased, fried potatoes? Sure you can! You can get a Coke, too, if you want! No wonder this is the fattest country in world history. They ought to have a T-shirt that says, "I survived the Bacon, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle" and then give it out to any customer who successfully ingests one of these biohazards without immediately going into cardiac arrest.

Anyway, that's what I got this morning. The sports blog will be updated next, with my latest NFL Power Rankings, and then the political blog, where I'll be talking about a terrific article in the New York Times.

Oh, Monday, Monday...

Dear Blog,

This was by far the least exciting weekend I've had in a while. No friends visiting, no trips to New Hampshire or anywhere else, just a quick drive down to the beach and a lot of time on the couch watching ball. While it was the least exciting it was the most relaxing, and I'll go to work tonight the closest I have ever been to fully recharged.

I should start, though, with Friday night. My best friend from work, Andy, put in his two weeks notice Friday. You'll remember Andy as the guy who never sleeps; well, that finally caught up with him. Apparently, he dozed off at the wheel on Thursday and came to just in time to keep his collision with a roadside tree a minor one, and that has understandably given him a case of The Fear. Moral of the story: you NEED sleep, kids.

It occured to me, on Saturday night, that for the first time in my life there isn't a place that I would call "home". The place I called home for years - the house in Pasadena - is now just a shell of itself, and I personally have only been there a handful of nights over the last 6 or 7 months. The house on the Cape is more like a weekend retreat than a home, at least for me and my sister, and the apartment in Lowell, while the best candidate for the honor, well, I've only been living here for a month, and it doesn't feel like "home" to me. Not yet, anyway.

Well, I'll start the politics blog this afternoon, and they'll be a quick post on the World Series on the sports one, so check them out.

Hard Day's Night

Dear Blog,

What a day yesterday was. Thursday is California Night at UPS, which means that an assload of packages from California come in at the end of the shift, often extending the shift, which usually ends around 3 AM, to past 4:00. Tonight, however, the convoy was late. Very late. They didn't even get in until 4:45, and we finally got out at 6. It's much, much later than I am accustomed to working, but oddly enough I don't feel nearly as exhausted as I would think I would be. Thursday is also pay night, so I'll be bringing my check over to the credit union when I get up today (how much is the check for, you ask? Not much).

I watched yesterday, for the first time, The Guns of the Navarone. Or it might just be The Guns of Navarone, I'm not quite sure. Anyway, it was a pretty well done movie, for a picture of that era. And since I believe it is somewhere in AFI's top 100 films of the 20th Century list, I recommend it to anyone out there who is interested in watching classic films - a hobby I only recently started - would you believe I never saw The Graduate until last summer?

We had pizza for dinner last night, a day later in the week than we usually have it because we had the fish Wednesday, and it was very good, as usual. I was worried because the supermarket was out of Boboli shells and I had to get this supposedly healthy, thin crust from some company called "Mama Mary" (not even Mama Maria? Throw us a bone, guys!), but the crust was fine. Note: when making a homemade pizza, always chop up at least one and maybe two cloves of garlic and spread it on the pizza as you would a regular topping.

The folks are coming up to Mass this weekend, so they'll probably want me to do all kinds of work. I'm not sure when they'll be up or if they'll be stopping by the apartment at all, but supposedly they have a desk for Kaitlin and so I guess they more or less have to come by, because there's no way a desk is fitting in my Corolla.

I promise I'll write my essay on driving in the wee hours of the morning soon. It'll be good. But right now I've been up to wrong to write anything so involbed. In fact, I don't think I'll be writing anymore right now at all.

Double Dog Entry

Ladies and Gentlemen; tonight I come to you bearing THE TRUTH. But first...

Ummm, about yesterday. You see, I got home from work at about 4:00 AM (read the rest of this post for an essay of the wonders at working all night so you can drive at odd hours), and my sister's car was in the shop, so there wasn't any real sleep until after I could drive her to work (her work is within walking distance of the shop so she was able to get back without my assistance), and then, after another period too short to call any rest you might get during said period "sleep", my firend Andy from work dropped over. He goes to the Community College during the day (AND he has another full-time job; the kid never fuckin' sleeps; I have no fuckin' idea how he manages it, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to; we're all crazy, it's just a matter of degrees), and on MWF he has an hour break where he can pop on by (and I do mean pop on by, I can see the school from the window of my apartment) and we can shoot the shit about whatever for about 45 minutes, and I can get him a bagel if he wants one.

Anyway, after he left I could finally get some sleep, so this is the first opportunity I have had to write in this journal (actually, upon rethinking the matter in my head, it occurs to me that I very well could have written it in the first break in time between getting home from my work and dropping my sister off at her work; well, now the purpose of the giant-assed story is out the window, but I spent too much damn energy writing it at this ridiculous hour of the morning and I damn sure am not just going to delete it; I'm sorry if you motherfuckers are sore that that giant-assed paragraph you just read didn't amount to diddly shit, but I worked too hard typing that to just piss it away; some of you may be just figuring out right now that THIS giant assed paragraph is, in fact, ANOTHER colossal waste of your time, and that's probably stinging your ass pretty good; in fact, so is this sentence).

This is cool, it's like I'm travelling into the future and across the span of the internets to fuck with you.

Ok, where was I? Oh ya, today. Or, technically, yesterday - people who work all night have a hard time with their sense of "today" vs. "tomorrow"; my rule of thumb has always been, what happens before I go to bed is today, whatever happened before I woke up is "yesterday", and whatever will happen after I next wake up "tomorrow". For most people, myself included for many years, this was a pretty accurate depiction of the world, except for on the weekends. But when you go to bed at 5:00 in the morning, just as about everyone else in the world is waking up, "today" can mean, depending on how you use it, to mean an event that took place up to 20 hours before the most recent midnight, or an event that takes place up to 6 hours after the next one, a time span which includes parts of three different "days", by its proper definition.

To make it even easier on you motherfuckers, I'm going to type "yesterday" for anything that occurs before - or as - I type this. So, I'm typing this yesterday. Wierd, huh?

Yesterday, after I awoke from the slumber that defines, for me, the difference between "yesterday" and "today", but occuring well after what the standard definitions of those words define that border to be, I made a fish meal which we had for dinner ("we" being my sister and I; read the other entries if you're just joining us now - they're located below or click on the "archive" on what believe is your left; I don't have the template memorized and I damn sure don't intend on editing this if I made a mistake, so I'll just mention here that it could POSSIBLY be on your right; if you weren't able to find it on the left); it was damn tasty, but the salmon had too many bones and I made too much of it; I'll be having some tommo - err, today - for lunch. Oh, and I watched Dances With Wolves for the first time since I had seen it in the theaters when it came out (goddam what a fantastic movie that was; I'm not sure I've seen many better ones since I saw that, at an age too early to appreciate it) (it now occurs to me that that was another opportunity to update this thing to- *ahem*, yesterday).

Scrubs was decent, as usual (Scrubs was the most consistently funny show I had ever seen run while it was running, and watching the episodes over again on Comedy Central, even if I remember some of them, is a delight), and the Daily Show and the Colbert Report bost bested par (which is of course saying something when you consider what par for those two is). Work was a bit of a drag. They sent me to unload, which I actually enjoy doing once a week to break up the monotany (which is saying something consider the monotany of unloading - it's more monotonus than sorting; I was breaking up the monotony by a different kind of monotony, a more monotonus one, even, but it still works; I just realized that's kind of sad as I was typing it). But I cut my hand this particular time, and that's just gonna be a goddam ugly thing on my hand that's gonna sting until it goes away and it sucks because I was just getting rid of one of those on my elbow as this happened. Other than that, it was fine, which is about all you can hope for (the REAL good thing about unloading, even better than the monotony break-up, is the fact that you can't have TOO bad a day unloading; not compared to what it's like when you have packages piled up around your knees because half of the sort belts aren't working so your screaming at your unloader to shut his belt off and you always have to yell several times, the more, it seems, the more badly you need the relief - it never gets that bad; unless you cut yourself, of course).

I promised you guys, several paragrapghs ago, an essay on the wonders of driving at the ass hours of night, when only the overnighters are on the road; well, I'm too tired. Too tired to even go back upd correct it. So you'll gave to wait some more. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow.

I mean, today.

On manners

Dear blog,

I've been thinking about it, and the proper response to "thank you" is "you're welcome". Saying, "forget about it" or, worse, "don't mention it" seems like the modest thing to do, but it really sends the wrong message. For instance, if I keep doing nice things for somebody, but every time he tries to thank me I say, "don't mention it", then eventually he might actually take me at my word and NOT mention it. And no matter how hard you try not to let it bother you, if you do something nice for someone else and they do not acknowledge it, you are going to be a bit resentful. Saying "you're welcome" not only indicates to the person that your services are at their disposal (think for a bit about the literal meaning of the words "you're welcome"), but it also says to the thanker that you are acknowledging their good manners and responding in kind, as opposed to "don't mention it", which is basically saying, "I refuse to acknowledge your manners, and in fact request that you do not use them here." Which may in fact be the message you are trying to convey: a lot of people believe that giving other people permission to be rude to them automatically gives them the permission to be rude back. Which brings me to my next point...

I hate it when I go over someone's house, knock on the door, and when they answer it they say to me, "oh don't bother knocking, you can just come right on in." I don't fuckin' think so. When I go over someone's house, I am going to announce that I am here, and at the same time ask permission to enter. I do that because I respect them, their privacy, and their space. And I damn sure expect, when they come to my door, that they show me, my privacy, and my space the same respect. That is how civilized human beings interact.

In a note somewhat related to the first point - the proper way to receive a compliment is to say "thank you". Again, the desire to sound modest makes a lot of us think that the proper way to respond to a compliment is to downplay it, but the fact is that sends the message that we think that the compliment we just receieved isn't genuine. By doing that one is, in fact, calling their complimentor a liar. So, just say, "thank you". And when you say it, the complimentor damn well better say, "you're welcome".

Kevin's Kevin blog...

The internet man came by the apartment late laste week, so with constant access I can now maintain multiple blogs, and I'll be intorducing two this week. This blog, here, which is where I'll keep track of whats happening in my own little world, and a political/current events blog, which I'll get to sometime later on in the week.

As for this blog, it will either be the most interesting or least interesting of the three depending on your personal preference for this sort of thing. Oh, who am I kidding? This will be by far the least interesting blog of the three, even for me, but I'm writing it anyway because it will be cathartic and the few minutes of daily self-reflection will help me keep life in perspective. If that sounds like a fun spectator sport to you, by all means, read away.

My life has been a whirlwind since the beginning of this year. I've moved not once, but twice: first to Cape Cod, and then even further north to Lowell, MA. The new apartment my sister and I have is great - 2 bedrooms, 2 full baths, and very large living room and an adaquate kitchen. The location is teriffic; we're right downtown (for those of you who don't know, Lowell is a city in miniature, kind of like a larger version of Frederick, MD, except the residents have all their teeth). And did I mention my folks aren't here?

This past weekend my friends Dan and Mark came up to visit. It was great - we walked around Boston and Cambridge, visited a friend of Mark's he hadn't seen in forever, and spent Sunday hanging out at Cape Cod. We were as close as brothers back at UMBC, so it was really cool to get back together, and although the visit was far too short, it carried the promise of longer ones in the future.

By the way, anyone reading this (other than random blog readers, who surely must have gone onto something more interesting at this point) has an open invitation to come up and visit whenever. Weekends are best for work-related reasons, just give me appropriate notice and we'll work it out.

I've started working for UPS. The pay is shit, but the benefits (full medical & dental after 3 months, tuition assistance immediately) are top-shelf, and UPS has the advantage of being a company where everyone from the CEO on down started out doing the same shit I'm doing for the same shitty pay. So, basically, everyone who is making decisions is doing so with the experience I'm having under their belts - there is no one asking us to do things we can't do or are not safe.

Well, that is pretty much the last 6 months or so in brief. I'll start getting to the good stuff tomorrow.