Here we find ourselves at Thursday once again. The difference this time is, I have to work. They changed my schedule on me, so now I have Friday’s off instead of Thursdays. It’s really messing me up. I’ll get used to it, but it’s going to take a little while.
Last Thursday, I sat around for most of the day. When I finally got moving, I went to Sears to try and get a plug for my Dryer. They told me that I needed to go to the Service Center, but they were closed. I will just have to get it later.
Next, I went into Garden City. It was about 8:30 at this point. I didn’t really know where I was going to go, but I planned on spending time with some of my GC friends. I went over to Ryan’s house, but no one was home. Well that’s just great. Now what do I do? I was down in GC, and had nothing to do.
I went over to Melissa’s house. We were supposed to go to Stilettos. Di Di was going to check it out, and if she felt like it, maybe sing. The only thing was, she wasn’t going to go till 12:30. We were kinda bored. I wasn’t feeling energetic at all. We watched Star Trek until she called to say that we weren’t going.
So now its 12:30 and we don’t have anything to do. She still wanted to go out, but we didn’t really know where to go. Had we known we were looking for somewhere else a little earlier, we would have had more options. We went to US-12. I knew that there are usually live bands playing there, and I didn’t know what other good bars in the area were. There was no band after all. Just the dance music section was open. Our waitress was a girl that I used to go to church with years ago. It was kinda weird seeing her again after all this time, and in a bar. (We had actually seen her before. She was the waitress at the diner by Kali’s work when she was in Canton for the 2 weeks)
(Time warp to Friday, in both senses)
Ben took the cable modem Friday. This meant that my computer was offline for the latter half of my day. During my lunch break, I went to get my own modem. I couldn’t pick it up from my work for some stupid reason, so I had to go to the payment center. I made the mistake of trying to take State St. Do you know how hard it is to try to drive right past Downtown Ann Arbor. It took forever. I was driving, and I had a green light, and I was going about the speed limit. This woman stepped out right in front of me. I had to slam on my brakes. My brakes are bad. I had this horrible image flash through my head of me hitting her. I don’t know what her problem. I’m just glad I was able to react fast enough.
I got back to work late. After fighting traffic to get down to the office, I had to wait in line. I felt kinda weird sitting in line listening to people bitch about Comcast. I wondered what they would have thought had they seen my badge. I had to fight with the lady at the window a little bit. We took some shortcuts with my installation. I had already hooked it up myself a while ago and knew for a fact that it would work. We didn’t need a technician. I did that for six months.
I had things to do right after work. So, of course, I was held up for a good 40 minutes on a call after I was supposed to be off. I got my money out of the bank and went to my Mom’s house. I’m really happy. I’ve been getting so much better at paying her off. When I was living with her, I wasn’t that responsible about paying her. Now that I have this new job, I’ve been able to give her roughly $700 a month. I am just so fucking anxious to have my car paid off in full so I can get PLPD and I can just step back and say to myself “I’m out of debt.” I think I could probably do it within say, 6 months or so. If I stay on it like this.
Next, I went to Ken and Christin’s house. We played Magic. The first game, I only had 2 land for almost the entire game. When I played a card that let me know I wasn’t getting land for another 4 turns at least, they let me re-shuffle. (and again, and again)
Afterwards, I went home and hooked up my new modem. My IP address changed. You have no idea how annoying that has become. Every time it changes I have to go and update it with Register.com. And then it takes a long time for it to go through. This is really annoying, because I’ve set so many things to point to Kronkltd.net and that means they all fail.
Truthfully, I can’t think about what happened on Saturday. Larry wasn’t there so I had the cube to myself. Ben was down at the LAN party, so I had the apartment to myself. I knew it was Saturday, and I kinda wanted to do something, but I didn’t want to go down to GC and I don’t really know anyone to hang out with here in Ann Arbor. So I made some Mac and Cheese, got drunk, and watched TV.
Sunday, at work, was surprisingly busy. They just tweaked the schedules to accommodate the work load. This means they cut the number of people that work Sundays. I’m so mad. Sundays used to be so nice. I would take like 10 calls, I took 31. Nothing much happened after work. Ben and Andy got back just as I was getting home from work. We just watched TV and hung out.
Monday, we had an anti-union meeting. They showed us a little video about how bad unions were. Afterwards, we sat around and basically bitched about all the problems we had with our job. I don’t think we really need a union. They treat us fairly well there, and while it never hurts to have some of the securities provided by unions, I do not want to have to deal with all the bullshit that comes from being part of a union. Plus, union dues suck ass.
Since I was in a meeting when I was supposed to be taking my lunch, I took my lunch after the meeting. Amy had the same thing going on with her, so we had the same lunch. We came back to my place. I haven’t really been hanging out with all that many people from work. Ben has brought some people over. (Rory, and Adam) But I hadn’t really initiated anything on my own. I showed her around my place. I’m rather proud of this apartment. We punched back in from lunch, and then immediately back out on break. Afterwards, I only had 1:15 left. And they were all easy calls to boot.
After work, I was trying to get my FTP server working so Melissa could get Snatch off of me. She already had my book of TV shows, but I still had the movies, and Di Di had never seen that movie. We tried to get it working, but never quite could.
Nothing all to memorable happened at work on Tuesday. After work, I went over to Kali’s house. I brought the movie book, because we couldn’t send Snatch the night before. I brought my alcohol bottles. I never got around to making a drink, but Kali had a shot. James was home sick with chemical pneumonia, Di Di was there too. We’re about halfway through the movie when Dave walks in. My heart starts racing. I don’t really know what I should do. Then I remember my bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on the table and the Popov in the kitchen. I just really want to know if he noticed them or not, and what he thought about that.
He doesn’t let her drink. The thing I don’t really understand is, he’s been with her for over a year and a half now. You’d think by this time he‘d have learned well enough that that is not going to work with her. They got into a huge fight a while back about her birthday a while back. He was mad that she was hanging out with me, that she would be drinking, that she didn’t want him there, etc. I’m sorry, but if he really expected her to be stone cold sober on her 21st birthday then he is crazy. Also, she wouldn’t have had a good time had he been sitting there giving her dirty looks whenever she took a drink. (or whatever they do when they’re angry, I really don’t know.) I wonder how he copes with knowing that she is so different than him. (and I wonder how much of it he knows)
So, It’s 11:30. I have just made my timely escape without having to really even look at him. I’m in GC, and I need something to do. My mind draws a blank. It’s too late to see what’s happening at Ryan’s, I swung by Dan-O’s house, but he was already asleep. (I think he was sick) So I went to Cole’s. I was there by myself, so instead of taking a booth and sitting alone, (there weren’t even any other customers up there) I sat at the counter. I talked to Lucy a little bit. I don’t really talk to her all that much about anything that deep. There’s a limit to how much you can get said to a waitress, but you can talk a bit more when you are at the counter. One of the other guys up there picked up my bill. He had paid for a few other people and then he said. “Take his out of there too, I don’t want him to feel like a step-child” I thought it was really nice.
On my way out, I saw a black cat. I stopped and petted him. He was a nice cat, and had I not already had two cat’s, I would have snatched him. (some of Melissa rubbed off on me) I thought to myself about the superstition about black cats being bad luck, but that can’t be so because I got to spend a few minutes petting a kitten. (maybe a little bigger) And that made me feel a little better, so it couldn’t be all that bad, huh?
Wednesday, I hooked up my Washer and Dryer. I’ve had them for so long, and never got around to getting the right kind of cord to plug in the dryer. My washer leaks, so I had to keep mopping up water, but I got some clothes done, which was very good because I was getting desperate.
My brother came over and we hung out here for a little bit and finished the movie on Comedy Central. Next, we took off for downtown A2. I’m getting a lot better at navigating the streets down there. We tried to go to the Hands on Museum, but couldn’t find where to park. We hit the parking structure and walked around downtown. Checked out a few shops. I need to get some sort of art for my living room. I need something over the couch. I didn’t find anything I liked.
We went to Pinball Pete’s. We tried playing DDR. God, I suck at that game. About halfway through the song we walked away saying. “Never Again” We tried the one that you use your hands. I was a little better at that, but still I would need a lot more practice. They were having an “Atheist, Agnostic, and Freethinkers” meeting on campus somewhere. I wanted to go, but I had Andy with me. I’ll have to hit it up next Wednesday if I think of it. It sounds like a good place to search for other Discordians in this city. (they would fall into the Freethinker category)
I took Andy home, and talked to my mom for a bit. Afterwards, I went home. I had to work the next day. That is so hard to get used to now. I was in this schedule where I had two consecutive days off to having a day between them. This meant that I couldn’t really stay up that late. I just sat at home anyway.
Thursday, I noticed a huge error in the configuration of my router the night before. I forgot to open the port for my Remote Desktop Connection. This meant I had no access to my computer from work, which really sucked because I had wanted to work on this post, which I had started before I left. I stopped home at lunch and tried to fix it, but I only had like 5 minutes to work on it because we had gone to the Coney for lunch. It was giving me problems, so I never got around to it.
After work, I went over to Melissa’s house. We had made plans (much to my protestations, I hate making plans) to go to the Necto, after our failed attempt at going somewhere good the previous Thursday. Everybody else was planning on going to The Metro instead, because Adam had just quit Necto a few days earlier. So we changed our plans and went there. I was horribly disappointed. The place was pretty cool, but wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. She wanted a dance club, and this was definitely not it. Even if we wanted to make use of their pitiful dance floor, it was DRQ crap. Not techno like we were looking for. Perhaps next week.
Still, $1.50 pitchers of beer is not bad. Kali kicked my ass at Air Hockey. (okay, beat by one) The couches were comfortable, and I actually had a fairly good time, truthfully, but it wasn’t what I had wanted for the night. I got a little drunk. It’s pretty easy when there is always an available pitcher of beer.
I took her home and we started watching Demolition Man. It had just started when James and Di Di got home. I stayed around for a little bit, but it was getting late and I wanted to get going. When I got home, Ger called me. I haven’t talked to him in a while. He was drunk. It was good to talk to him again. (I may be seeing him tonight)
I got to sleep pretty late. About 2 1/2 hours later, I was woken up. Ben’s car had broken down on his way to go get it fixed. I went out there to get him. He had the car towed to the shop, and we had to just go drop off the keys. (if only we could find the place) We stopped at the grocery store. (which doubled as his bank) They wouldn’t open for 20 minutes so we walked around and looked at the Japanese imported foods. I got a can of “Pocari Sweat” I haven’t tried it yet. I wonder how it will taste.
I got home, watched a few episodes of Duck Tales that I had just gotten, laid around, couldn’t get back to sleep, laid around, and then finally got up and worked on this post. And as is the custom, you will learn more at some point in the future.
