CEDA is a government organization, and Columbus Day is a government holiday, so the offices are not open today, so I'm just sitting here at home watching sports highlights and wondering if those fumes from the construction next door are always that strong or if it's just my lucky day. I can't make up the missing work hours with overtime anymore, because CEDA has hired even more temp workers for an evening shift and for Saturdays and Sundays, so they made the announcement that overtime hours are no longer an option for anybody since theoretically they now have enough personnel that OT shouldn't be necessary, even if we want to do it. But OT means time and a half, so I'm not surprised that they outlawed it. Those of us in the main computer area that work the 8:30A-5P shift actually have to get up at 3:30P, when the 3:30-10 shift arrives, and move to a different area adjacent from the main area so that the new shift can all sit together. Whatever. I'm just pissed that I could have taken advantage of OT last Saturday and Sunday and chose not to because I was tired and I figured I could just do it next weekend. Now there is no more OT. Those six or seven hours at $15 per made for a nice little bonus in the regular weekly check. Oh well.
"Laurie" and I have communicated better lately, although it looks like nothing is going to happen between us for the forseeable future. She says she needs to straighten out her life first, and that she doesn't "feel it" with me right now, which I can't blame her for not feeling it after I almost hooked up on a booty call with a stranger a few weeks ago. Not much else to talk about here. She's dealing with her situations where she is, and I don't fit in her life right now. There's so much tension and nervousness in our phone conversations that I don't know if we would even make good friends right now. That could be because I can only talk to her when she's at work, since her cell phone is still not on. But since we're not getting together anytime soon, I'm not sure what we're going to talk about when she turns her phone back on. She e-mailed me telling me that she's going to be asking for my address so she can send me the money she owes me instead of having me come up there to Detroit and see her. Ouch. Nothing I can do about it, though. If she doesn't want to see me, she doesn't want to see me. She also told me that she's not stopping me from continuing with my life, meaning that I could go try to get with someone else, I suppose. But my heart's not in it. When I stopped seeing "Torrie" a couple of months ago, it was because I thought I was going to step up and build something with Laurie. Now that that's out, I don't want to go somewhere else. The thought of another relationship right now makes me sick (or is that the fumes??). The big 3-0 is looming in a couple of months. Right now, I feel like starting over and going from scratch in pretty much all aspects of my life, considering how badly I fucked up my 20s. That would mean no more internet hos, no more cross-country attempts at love, no more begging women to love me. I can easily see myself going six years without a date again, like I did from 1996 to 2002. It's not worth the aggravation, especially (most importantly, those who know me would say) if it's a situation where I don't feel good about myself and I don't feel that anyone with any respect for herself would want to date me, so I find myself dating someone that I don't like or respect. That's part of what made me go mad when "Karen" screwed me over--I felt like I was going out with a drunk, ugly, boring woman who was horrible in bed, plus she was dating me so she had no taste, but I stuck with it because she said she loved me and I wanted love so bad, but she was a lying skank all along.
I'll end this with a few words about the White Sox and their push for the pennant. I am so proud of them. I've been wearing this Sox ring that I bought after I first started working for CBOE in 1995, even though it's bent and no longer fits my ring finger because I keep getting fatter and fatter, so I'm wearing it as a pinky ring like I'm auditioning for the Sopranos or something. I've had to wash my Sox cap twice since they clinched a playoff spot a week and a half ago because I've been wearing it everywhere. I have a Sox jersey too, and it's personalized with my name and the number 00 (because I'm a big nothing), but my apartment is so messy, I can't find the damn thing. And yet I'm not bragging or talking about the Sox every second like I would be any other year. The reason? Simple: I don't feel I have the right to be yelling and screaming about them because I completely buried this team before the season began. I said they wouldn't be shit. I was very angry that they traded Carlos Lee, a powerful OF about to hit his prime, to the Brewers for a light-hitting 30-year-old guy who could run and a no-name RP for no other reason than Lee's free agent year was this year and they wanted to get rid of him before it became obvious that they were not going to pay him. I was very angry that they pretended that they couldn't re-sign Magglio Ordonez, another powerful OF who was actually their most consistent player the last five years, because the knee injury he suffered to end last season was just too questionable. A bunch of other teams were lined up with contract offers (Ordonez accepted the Detroit Tigers' offer because, with incentives, he could make more money there than with any other team), but not the Sox. Oh no, they couldn't risk signing a guy who might not recover from his injury. So who did they sign to replace him? Jermaine Dye, one of the most injury-prone players out there. But Dye's market value was very low, or, as I put it when the Sox signed him, "Do you really think Dye would sign with the Sox if there was a good team out there that actually wanted him??" And to top it off, they signed a 30-year-old Japanese guy named Tadahito Iguchi to play 2B for them. The guy had never played major league ball in his life. There's usually a big bidding war for good Japanese players that want to come to the majors, and you know if there was a bidding war, the Sox weren't going to be involved. But no one wanted the guy, so he signed with the Sox. So all of their moves this past offseason, in my opinion, were made because the price was right and they didn't want to spend the money, and that followed hiring Ozzie Guillen as their manager the year before because he had no managing experience and therefore would be cheaper than getting someone that, you know, actually managed in the majors before. I angrily responded by cursing them and vowing to not buy any tickets to any Sox games this year, which I haven't. I didn't count on their moves all actually working out. The skinny guy they traded Carlos Lee for, Scott Podsednik, led the majors in SB most of the season before his legs gave out, and he was a big-time catalyst at the top of the lineup. That offset the fact that Carlos did have the breakout season he was expected to have, making the All-Star team for the first time. This Iguchi guy seems to have a habit of hitting clutch opposite-field HRs when you least expect it, and he's a decent fielder, too. Dye shocked the world by staying healthy all year, and he had some huge hits as well. Ordonez couldn't come back from his knee injury until about a couple of months ago, making the Sox look like geniuses. And Guillen is absolutely fucking nuts, which is a good thing, because opposing managers have a hard time managing against him because they don't know what the fuck he's gonna do next. Clearly, having no experience works well for Guillen, because he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants and he doesn't have to have an answer for why he does it, just that he "had a feeling." This team really is just like the Boston Red Sox team that won the World Series last year. The Red Sox earned the nickname "The Idiots" because they didn't know why they did half the shit they did, they just knew that it worked. So who did the White Sox sweep in the first round of the playoffs this year? The Red Sox. The Idiots were swept aside by The Morons. And The Morons are too stupid to know better. They're not done yet. And while I might not be yelling about them at the top of my lungs, I am watching from afar with a great amount of Sox pride.
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