Category: ranting

“Yea, you know it’s been a long week. And it’s only Tuesday,” I laughed.

“Beggs, it’s Monday,” Came my boss’s reply.

“Oh…” Thud. My head hit the table.

I really thought it was Tuesday. I should have known it was not Tuesday, as I have a dentist appointment Tuesday. But my mind kept telling me it was Tuesday.

My work week starts on Sunday morning and ends on Saturday afternoon. I don’t really like that, but that’s the way it is right now. I have more responsibility via the project I am, and have been, working on than someone my age with my experience should reasonably expect to have. My boss acknowledges that some of the other guys and I work too many hours. He says that when the projects we are working on are complete we will all go back to ‘normal’ hours.

Anyway, I’ve been so busy since I got back to work that I have not had a chance to even go though all my pictures form Japan yet. I’ve looked at them but not really gone through them. There are a few good ones but most of all I did not have the experience with the camera to get the killer shots I wanted. C’est la vie—I’ve got the memories and that’s what matters.

Sitting in my car driving home my inner monologue wrote this long journal entry about my work schedule and responsibility and blah, blah, blah. And I promptly forgot it all between parking my car and turning my laptop on. Typical.

But speaking of my car… I have one. Yea! I kinda wanted another truck, the four wheel drive has come in handy the past couple of winters but I don’t do any 4x4ing anymore and a nice truck cost too much—even a used ‘mid-sized SUV‘ (there should be no such thing as a mid-sized SUV. Who the hell needs a car that f’ing big? You should have to have a CDL to drive those big ass’ed trucks!) So, SUV too expensive, I thought next a VW Passat would be nice, but could not find one with a manual transmission that was in my price range. In the end I did find a really nice car—a Honda Accord ’02, with only 22K miles. Nice! It smells like strawberry’s—I’ve got to fix that, but it’s clean and drives nice. Does not have the zoom of Thilo’s BMW but what are you going to do? I’ll keep dreaming about the BMW for a few years.

One of the things I was thinking about in my car was my lack of entries here recently. It’s not just here but I have made no entry in my personal journal since before I left for Japan. And for a while I haven’t been making many entries in my personal journal. I’ve been keeping that journal longer than this online one but seem to have lost interest in it. Guess it’s just the end of one stage of life but as it has become a chore to write in the journal I will not miss it. I might miss the record of my daily thoughts that I can go back an read, but I can’t be bothered to write in it. As for this journal. I don’t know, I read once that too many online journal were just collections of self indulgent whining and I think that mine has at times fallen into that category. Hopefully it won’t fall into that too often, I do plan to keep on writing here.

OK. Nothing else going on in my life right now so… Before it is Tuesday for real I’m going to go to bed.

I have not had time to organize my thoughts on The Great Japan Trip of 2004. Work is hectic—disorder and chaos. When I get a chance to catch my breath and collect my thoughts I will attempt to distill two weeks of Gai-jin fumbling into a coherent narrative. Or maybe I’ll just try to make it interesting rather than dull and lifeless. Yes that’s what I’ll do. I’ll attempt to entertain rather than just report. Maybe it’ll never happen. I may start and never finish—like most things in this journal. But you will have to check back regularly to see. Ah, variable conditioning—the strongest form of conditioning. Like a whisker-less rat swimming with hope. So wait with antici……pation, and maybe I’ll even spell check it. Ooh. Aha. Oh what’s that? It’s Shiny!

No go

I have no car…. I have no car… they junked my car last week. At least they are going to pay me what it is worth. So I don’t have a car. Have to figure out how to get from point A to pont B till I can get a new one.

Click, click

I have a new camera—it cost a lot (don’t ask) but I have a canon 10D 6.3 mega-pixel digital camera now so I can take pics in Japan!

Rising sun or setting sun?

Speaking of Japan I leave Wednesday morning—and I do mean morning; 6:10am! But S██████ just pointed out that the schedule says we arrive in Japan at 5:25pm not 5:25am as I had informed everyone—damn lexdyxia! So we lose a whole day’s fun. At least we did not plan to take the train on the first day to Kyoto… that would have sucked!

Anyway, J███████, S██████ and I get back on the 8th so… Anata no kintama wa ooki desu ne! Oh yea and—look ma, no spell check. :)

I know I whine all the time, I bitch about my problems. Maybe it’s because of my dad. He always plays the martyr trying to get sympathy or get his way—even if it never works. But I don’t think I am like that. I whine more because it’s my way of dealing with all the things in the work that happen to me that hurt or upset or bother me. Though I only bitch about the important stuff—love life, the future, insecurities to a few people, my closest friends. No I whine and complain all the time about the things that don’t fit into my grand master plan—car wrecks, working 80 hours a week and such—because it is my way of dealing with it. And as J███████ says, I like the tale of woe.

And now for something completely different… lets talk about the good things in my life—though they don’t make as good of stories—and I like telling my stories.

First off, I have a good circle of friends that are there for me when I need them. Be it coincidence, fate, karma, insanity on their part or some master plan things in the end do work out. And more often than not it is because of my friends that it does work out.

For instance I am typing this entry on a laptop that I got from my friend J████ for basically free. It’s not a new super laptop—but it is much newer and nicer than my old laptop and more than I could afford. He did not want it because the hard drive crashed and the battery was dead. So I asked if I could have it—worst case I had to buy a new drive and battery. Turned out, by twist of fate that the hard drive in my old computer fit this one, and I got a battery from a used hardware shop for $25. Wallah—’new’ laptop for beggs.

Then their is my ride this week. Since I crashed my truck and do not have rental coverage on my policy I had no I idea how I was going to get to and from work for the next week or so while my truck is fixed. I got rides from J███████, S██████ and D—- last week but had no easy way to get too from work. But this week Thilo went on vacation and was cool enough to offer me the use of his BMW for the week. Can you say; holy shit. I can’t believe he trust me that much—I don’t think I would trust me that much. And maybe I’ll go and pick him up at the airport Sunday so I can run him over and keep the car. Or maybe I’ll call and say, ‘Yea, I’m going to pick you up at the airport—how does Miami sound?’

It comes down to no matter what has ever happened in my life I have been able to deal with it. Something or some plan comes along and I get by. Sometimes things even work out for the better. It’s my right to complain and bitch about those things that depress, scare or bother me. But maybe I do it too much.

Somewhere around nine this morning as I turned left from New Hampshire Ave. onto 18th St South, I saw her out of the corer of my eye. She came around the delivery van making a left onto 18th St. North. And there was nothing I could do.

I got out and ran over to her car to make sure she was alright. She stood up then almost fell as the adrenaline left and shock set in. She was hyperventilating.

Someone called the cops, a girl standing on the corner when it happened. The fire truck showed up in a few minutes. Then an ambulance. They took her to the hospital because she could not stop hyperventilating.

I waited for the police to look around. Then they wrote me a ticket—$25 for failure to yield. But it will cost me a fortune. Since I got the ticket, since I was crossing traffic my insurance will have to pay for both my truck and her car. Neither one was drivable.

Never mind the fact that she illegally passed the delivery van on the right. Because no one else was paying attention and no one can tell the cop what happened the law says I am at fault.

Fuck.

I don’t know what bad karma I am burning off, but every day it seams it’s something new. There goes all my money for Japan. I mean I’ll have enough to go but I don’t know how much spending money I will have.

I don’t know how I’m going to get to and from work for the next who-knows-how-long while they fix my truck. I don’t know if they can fix it. I still owe a bunch on the truck. I want a new car but I cannot afford one.

My left side where I slammed against the wall hurts. My head hurts. Just bruised, but I feel like I got run over.

It has not been a good week, maybe next week will be better. Maybe not.

I hope she is okay.