End Of The Chase Era (A.K.A. My Last Post As A Chicagoan)

I'm sure the time will come in the next few weeks where everything calms down and a routine develops and I start to really enjoy this new stage of my life living as a Memphian with my fiancee. But right now, I feel like there's a deep, dark unknown dead ahead, and I'm headed for it whether I'm ready or not. I can't be dishonest about it because it really seems bad if I'm asked by my fiancee or anyone else how I'm feeling about everything, and I respond, "Great! Can't wait! Very excited!" My face and voice and demeanor would betray that immediately. I'm not worrying about the relationship with the fiancee. I'm worrying about my entire life being uprooted, all of my routines being changed, everything with which I'm comfortable and familiar becoming unfamiliar and uncomfortable. I spent this last week savoring many things about Chicago and my surroundings that I will miss, and as a result, I now have the next two days to pack my entire house and prepare to move first thing Monday morning. But hey, I do everything last minute. I may not publish this post until tonight because I'll be typing and packing intermittently. But I will eventually publish the details about my last week as a proud resident of Chicago.

Just found out that I misplaced the box of garbage bags that I bought a few days ago. Now I gotta go back. Fuck.

Ok, back. Still immature, still irresponsible, spending money on a product that I already bought but managed to lose. At least it was the dollar store garbage bags.

So anyway, I've been doing the endless list of things one must do preparing to change jobs and cities, so I won't bore you with all that. The new job, Symcor, has been wishy-washy on my start date. Julie, the H.R. person I've been dealing with who's based here in Chicago, told me that originally, they were going to let me chill until maybe May while they get new management people in place at my site in Memphis. Then a few days ago, she said they wanted me to start ASAP. The last days she mentioned to me as possibilities were this coming Wednesday or Thursday, which would give me a full day or two to recover from the move and wash some clothes. I haven't heard back from her, but I figure if she had not called me by Monday, I can spend a few minutes of that 10-hour drive to Memphis calling her.

I had a voucher to have my house cleaned for an hour by an outfit called Sassy Sweeper, and I scheduled a cleaning for April 2, but they never showed up. I called their "customer service" four or five times complaining about this, and each time they said that someone would call back if I left my name and number. Finally, a woman calling herself Audrey, who I guess runs this outfit, got back to me and told me that I should have gotten an e-mail telling me that my previous appointment was canceled because I requested a downtown cleaning crew even though I live near the western suburbs. The stupid website never indicated that I couldn't choose the crew I wanted, so that's what I did, and I never got any fucking cancellation e-mail. Audrey made good on the voucher by scheduling for this past Wednesday at 9A. I was already planning to call in sick just to enjoy the nice weather, so I decided to make it an eventful day by buying a ticket to a White Sox game, scheduled for 1P. Well, it was a day of things not going as planned. The Sassy Sweeper crew didn't arrive until about 9:40, throwing my whole schedule into disarray. I wanted to leave as soon as they were finished because I had to stop downtown at the public library to print the tickets since my printer is out of ink. By Sassy Sweeper not being done until 10:45 (and doing a shitty cleaning job), I couldn't leave the house until 11:15, and I didn't get to the library until 12:10 or so. Then I had to hustle to the renewal desk because my library card was just a little bit expired, like, 4 years or so. Then I finally printed the tickets, paid the pocket change for the printing, and got to the ballpark just in time to miss most of the 1st inning. Not only that, but I bought a "premium club" ticket in the same LG Skyline-sponsored section that my fiancee and I attended a couple of years ago when I won those tickets thanks to the ESPN Zone Sports Spelling Bee. That section provided a free buffet-style meal, unlimited food and drinks, and it was just the best damn time I ever had at a ball game. That section, I was sad to find out, no longer offers free food. They have an usher peeking her head around the corner every couple of innings asking us if we wanted to order anything, but we'd have to pay for whatever we ordered. I got the $5.50 hot dog and chips. We Sox fans as a whole didn't get what we wanted from the game because the Pale Hose managed to take a 3-run lead into the 9th inning, give up 3 runs to tie it, then give up 3 more in the 10th to lose. I got to see my team for one last time, but it was an up-close look at the fact that their bullpen currently sucks a fat dick. Even the postgame meal didn't live up to my hopes--I decided to go to Potbelly, a Chicago sandwich shop, and try their Uptown salad, which had chicken, cheese, lettuce, dried cranberries, apples, and grapes. That combo of cheese and chicken and fruit didn't do it for me. But at least I tried it.

Friday was my last day at Chase, and I had been feeling weird about leaving ever since I gave notice two weeks ago. This was my first job leaving voluntarily, and I was torn between taking it easy since I didn't have to worry about my performance here anymore and still helping everyone out. I kinda split the difference because I busted my ass as always the days that I was there, but I took a sick day this week and last week. But it was still weird because we're just as busy as always and I still cared about my job and the people with whom I work. I felt like I was leaving some unfinished business. Plus, I didn't know if they were going to give me a sendoff or not. But they did, and it was so sweet. The new supervisor, who's only been over me for the past month and a half, stopped work just before 10A to have everyone gather near my desk and share some doughnuts and coffee and tell me goodbye. She gave me a paperweight of the Chicago skyline and a pen. She asked me for a speech, and I got up and just told everyone that my shyness and introverted style was turned out by their kindness and social skills over the years, and I was thankful for that. Then Linda, one of my team leads, presented me with a couple of signed cards, and she was very anxious for me to open one of them. When I finally got around to checking it out, it was filled with many dollar bills, which totally stunned me. I wasn't expecting financial help at all. Like I said, I didn't know if they were going to do anything for me. I'm not the warmest guy at work. I'm very business-minded and cold-blooded, and probably seen as an asshole. Plus, if anyone had been paying attention over the years when cards went around for other people, I never, ever contributed money. I could never see it in my heart to donate to anyone else's cause, justifying it by how poor I am. Well, these folks ain't rich either, and they cobbled together $176 cash just because I was leaving the company. I could never thank them enough. As a final send-off, I couldn't leave the floor all day for break or lunch because we were so busy. Guess that's why everyone was approaching me all week not saying how sad they were to see me go, but congratulating me for leaving, as if I were being released from prison.

I'm watching the Bulls choking against the Pacers while I pack as well. Hopefully that changes before the game ends.

So I took the long way home yesterday, still a little disbelieving that I was taking my last ride as a Chicago commuter after all these years riding buses and trains everywhere. But the symmetry of what happened this morning brought it all home. My aunt took me back to the driving facility so that, once again, I could attempt to get my first driver's license. The insurance card was printed on an 8x11 sheet of paper this time, making it much harder for me to lose. My aunt had to get used to the concept of riding in a car with me driving, and hey, I can't blame her. All these years, I've been the fat ass waiting for people to caddy me around, and now I'm going to do the driving. I guess she thought I was a complete amateur, but eventually she relaxed. The lines and the waiting were much lighter today because it was raining this morning. Not too hard, but really, if you can help it, not the kind of conditions where an inexperienced driver would choose to take his or her first road test. But I had no choice. It was do it now or wait until Tennessee, and who knows when my fiancee and I would have time to coordinate our schedules to get it done. The person administering the test was a young brotha who remained calm throughout, which helped my nerves a lot. After all the varying answers from various folks to the question "What are they gonna have me do on the road test?," all he had me do was drive in a two-block square, turning left with a couple of rights thrown in, then he had me turn down a side street about three inches before stopping and backing out while turning right so that I could turn around and drive back on the previous street. I did it very slowly. The rain probably helped me do everything very slowly, including staying under the speed limit the whole time. At one point, he told me to get all the way to the right in order to prepare for a right turn, and I obeyed a little too well, not checking for other cars or signaling. He immediately scribbled something down on his clipboard. Fuck, I thought, I just failed this damn test! But I kept my cool and did everything else he asked, finishing by pulling headfirst into a designated parking space at the end of the test. He calmly told me, "Now wait until I get out, then park the car in the regular lot and come in and get your driver's license." I almost didn't believe what I heard. I really did think that I fucked up the test, and given my history of fuck-ups, I honestly expected him to tell me that I had failed. But it wasn't a joke. I went in, got my pic taken, and in minutes, I walked out with my very first driver's license in my hand. I immediately took a picture of it with my cell phone and sent it to my fiancee, who wrote back, "YOU TOTALLY ROCK!!!!!!" Yep, I go 35 years, 3 months, and 25 days as a Chicago commuter, relying on public transportation to earn a living and the generosity of friends, family and lovers to socialize. And the day after I stop being a commuter, I become a licensed driver. I guess it was just meant to happen that way.

Bulls win! Derrick Rose is the fucking truth.

So I continue putting my life into boxes and deciding what's coming in the house with me and the fiancee and what's going in a storage unit. She's already decided that my sports and wrestling tapes have no space in her home. They will go to a climate-controlled storage unit along with my music cassettes and vocal diary cassettes and childhood memorabilia. I really should let go of those relics of my past, but that's what happens when you're an only child--you develop relationships with things that represent who you were, who you are, who you wanted to be someday. I mean, I'm sure that happens to some people who weren't only children as well, but I imagine it's a lot easier for those who had to rely on themselves from day one. It's all still so strange, the concept of sharing my life with someone else. I keep telling my fiancee that no matter how much we prepare, the amount of frustration we're both going to experience while getting adjusted to each other's constant presence is unimaginable. And she's expressed concern over my demeanor, since every time she tries to tell me how excited she is that we're finally about to make a family together, I sound like I'm about to be audited or something. But as I said earlier, I'd be lying if I didn't say how worried I am about the move and the job change and the bad times we will have, as every couple has. The good times, I have to learn how to enjoy them, because it's not in my nature.

My friend "Jacob" has learned a lesson on not opening his mouth and offering assistance when someone is in a tough spot. He said weeks ago that when I found a job, if I needed help moving, he could drive down from his current residence in central Wisconsin and git 'er done. Well, I found a job sooner than I expected, and way sooner than he expected, and he is going to undergo an ironman-style endurance test. He's driving to the Chicago area Sunday evening with his mom. They will stay at a hotel, then come pick me up early Monday morning for some grub. Then, while she takes my Comcast cable equipment back to Comcast since they won't come pick it up, he will come here and help me load up the truck. We will embark on the 8 or 9-hour journey to Memphis with his mom driving his car behind the moving truck and drop off the stuff that I'm allowed to take into the house. The fiancee will have a large rib dinner waiting for us whenever we finally make it. Then we will take her bed and load it into the truck to take to goodwill, since she has decided to use my bed for our sleeping needs because I'm more comfortable on my harder mattress. Then we will finally drop off my stuff in the storage unit, which is a 24-hour unit. Then Jacob will take the truck to its final drop-off place. The fiancee is putting Jacob and his mom up in a hotel so they don't have to drive back home until the next day. I'm so lucky that Jacob is going to take on this task because I don't know how I would have moved if he hadn't volunteered. And I will be repaying him by spending an ungodly amount to make it up to Wausau for his wedding in a month. I have to take a 1-stop flight there and back because there's no such thing as a nonstop from Memphis to Wausau. It ain't cheap, and it's not counting the tux rental or their gift. Sigh. The duties of a best man. At least he's not into strippers so whatever bachelor party I can throw together, it won't be expensive, nor will it threaten the sanctity of either of our pending nuptials.

So this is it. Chicago will be in my rear view mirror literally in a matter of hours. I'm still stunned at how fast this is all happening. I am so Chicago. My tastes, my sports allegiances, my attitude, everything I like has a bit of Chicago about it. No matter how long I'm away from Chicago, a part of me will always be Chicago. And never say never about a return someday. Maybe I will grow a set and pursue a broadcasting career and find my way back to the place I know best. But until that happens, here is the official proclamation: The new home town of this blog from this point forward will be Memphis, TN, and its surrounding suburbs, and my fiancee and I will reside in one of those suburbs. Any blog posts written outside of Memphis or a suburb will have that city as a date line, but the new default location will be Memphis and its suburbs. I will be a full-fledged Memphian as of Monday, April 18. Let our new life together begin!

Jack Of All Trades, Boss Of None

Everyone has a day at work where they feel like the only intelligent person in the entire building. I had that day a couple of weeks ago. Basically, a piece of mail came in that was sent to our customer's lockbox address, which is our building, because the lockbox was peeking out of the top of the envelope window. But if one looked down at the lower half of the window, a totally different address in Florida was showing. You had to work to find our customer's lockbox address because it wasn't clearly showing; someone actually peeled part of the envelope up to more clearly see the lockbox, ignoring the Florida address that was clear and easy to read. The return address was to our customer's lockbox. To me, this was obviously a case of mistaken mailing. The post office sent the piece of mail to the lockbox even though it was intended for the Florida address. But absolutely no one saw it my way. My team lead, my supervisor, a learning coach...all of them advised me to process the contents of the envelope to the lockbox instead of returning it to the post office as a missort. This was a two-day argument. One piece of mail came in and I refused to process it, and the next day, a second mistaken envelope with the exact same problem came in. My supervisor had to kindly ask me to process both to our lockbox before I finally gave up and did what I was told. It frustrated me because the company in Florida that should have received that mail will be sitting there for who knows how long waiting for two invoices that won't get there because we were so eager to process any mail that may have our client's lockbox number anywhere on it that we effectively intercepted the invoices and mailed them back to our client. It doesn't affect me personally, but I just hated doing something that was clearly the wrong option. But that's what I had to do in the end, because I'm just a worker bee and I have no real power. The funny thing is, my team lead had taken to calling me "Boss" as a nickname because I'm so adamant and forceful in stating my point, in this situation or any other, that I guess I act like I run the place according to her. I'm not trying to run the place, I'm just trying not to do stupid things like open mail obviously intended for another address. I know, I know, how silly of me.

The prospect of moving to Memphis with my fiancee and leaving this company isn't looking good right now either. I have two networking angles that I'm working, but I'm not optimistic that either will work out. One of them told me straight up that the bank job market in Memphis is the worst he's seen it in 30 years, and this is bad because he's the executive vice president of one of the larger banks in Memphis. As a courtesy, he asked me to e-mail my resume to him anyway. The other angle is the executive director at Chase who claims to have a nephew coincidentally employed at a bank in Memphis. About three months ago, I e-mailed my resume to my executive director for forwarding to his nephew, but he took forever to actually send it off. He kept walking past me every day saying "I haven't forgot about you" and "I'm gonna have something for you soon." It was just this past week that he finally informed me that he was planning to send my resume, but you could call it a bad sign that he then asked me if I had ever sent him my resume previously. Yeah, about a million years ago, buddy. So I'm not counting on that working out either. I'm sitting in limbo right now, searching Memphis job sites and finding not much, while my fiancee waits for me to move down with her in advance of our October wedding next year. I'm trying not to move down until I secure employment, but I may have to just make the move if I don't see anything worth applying for. The move and the wedding are potentially stressful life changes off in the distance. Facing me down right now are my continued financial woes and another cold winter looming, and the winter brings more financial trouble with the heating bill and physical trouble with the way my knees and ankles and toes seem to severely swell and flare up in a freezing climate. Yes, I'm looking for part-time work to ease the cash flow pain, and I may even work overtime on Thanksgiving. However, as much as it seems like I'm depressed and bitching and moaning, I'm sure that better days are ahead. I'll be married to a wonderful woman this time next year, I'll be in warmer temperatures, and I'll be sharing household expenses. I just gotta stay strong and fight through these tough times, and eventually, my patience will be rewarded. So long as I don't snap and go postal on my workplace for telling me I'm wrong when I know damn well that I'm right.

Normal Working Hours?

I almost forgot what it was like to work Monday through Friday, morning to evening, but through a chain of events, I will rediscover the feeling. Due to the U.S. Postal Service eliminating the time shift that allowed us mail extractors to receive mail on 2nd shift, we were informed in a meeting a few weeks ago that our 2nd shift would also be getting terminated. We were handed sheets with new potential schedules and told to put our names on the sheet and rank our most and least desired new shifts. There were only two choices for full-time workers, which is what I am, and they were 7A-3:30P and 9A-5:30P. I chose the 9A-5:30P slot because I couldn't imagine waking up at 5A to get to work by 7A every day. But either way, I was excited to be leaving 2nd shift and going back to 1st, freeing up my evenings again. I had become accustomed to my life as an evening worker, but it was stifling the slightest bit of social interaction I may have had a chance to experience, and it was also not making my fiancee happy that she couldn't have a decent conversation with me after work because she and I were tired at that time of night.

I worried about not getting the 9A shift and having to work at 7A, but I would adjust if need be. Hell, I knew I'd be okay with the earlier shift the first night I would be able to be home at 6P for the start of the night's baseball games, which I'm never home to see except on my off days, Tuesday and Wednesday. Well, a couple of things happened a week ago that altered my plans. First, we were informed in another meeting that J.P. Morgan Chase had worked out some kind of agreement with the USPS to have a skeleton crew work that shift, making it possible for us to retain several people for our 2nd shift. Chase still wanted some people to move to mornings, but it was no longer necessary for everyone to have to find a new shift. They handed out new sheets for us to ponder what schedule we preferred, and now I had to make the decision: Did I really want to go back to mornings, or was I comfortable enough working evenings to stay? I chose to ask for the 9A shift again. It was just too tempting to not have to worry about getting home at night because certain bus lines had stopped running, and finding places to go on my 7P lunch break since some restaurants around my job closed by 5 or 6P, and like I said, it would make my fiancee very happy to have me available in the evenings. At the same time, I had been placed in a program where I was processing all of the courier packs of mail that were dropped on the floor, which is a lot of work because sometimes those FedEx and DHL and UPS envelopes are just stuffed with checks. But hey, processing checks is processing checks, and I have to be at work 8 hours every day regardless. I was never given a straight answer why I was chosen for this project, but I've been doing it for almost a month now, and I'm getting used to it. Little did I know how important doing this project would turn out to be.

Last Friday, I was informed by my current supervisor that I received the shift that I asked for, which is 9A-5:30P. I was excited. More chances to hang out with friends, more baseball and football games that I could actually watch, more conversation with my fiancee. Now, I assumed that I would keep the same weird days that I work, Thursdays through Mondays with Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, because I've been constantly told in the three years that I've worked there that we get most of our mail on weekends and Mondays, and that's when they need the most people. And it's true; I've worked a couple of Tuesdays in the past month in order to free up a weekend day to have off instead of burning a vacation day, and the work has been so light, I've seen people arriving for work on 3rd shift at 10P be turned around and immediately sent home. However, when my supervisor told me that I would be placed in the same courier-pack program when I move to mornings, I wondered how it would work out. We get almost no courier packs on the weekends. Would I be sent back to my regular workgroup on Saturdays and Sundays, as I am now? Wouldn't it make sense for morning courier-pack people to work Monday through Friday, since we don't hardly have any courier packs on weekends? I wondered this to my fiancee, but I never spoke to anyone at work about it. Then, this past Monday, my supervisor gave me my new schedule in writing, and there it was: Courier Pack Group, 9A-5:30P, Monday through Friday! OMG!! She explained that on 1st shift, everyone in the courier-pack group works weekdays only. For the first time in 3 stinking years, my weekends are free again!

I have to wait until June 1 to start this new stage of my Chase career, but I cannot wait. All I've been thinking about the last several days is, Saturdays and Sundays off to do as I please...talking on the phone with my fiancee...stepping out and going to weekend activities with her when she's in town...watching baseball...watching FOOTBALL, which I haven't done much of the last 3 years...attending family functions and events without using up vacation days...perhaps once again joining a bowling league with my uncle, who only bowls on Sundays...spending a weekend at friends' houses, or maybe even hosting a poker weekend at my crib...getting home every day when the sun's still out...I'm not going to know what to do with myself. I suffered through 3 years of that shitty schedule, and now it's paid off, because I have to believe that I wouldn't have been chosen for the courier-pack group unless I had the experience at this job to not panic at the large volume of work and the daily deadlines that come with courier packs. Of course, seemingly everyone else at my job is unhappy with their new shifts, but we've been told that preferences for certain shifts were assigned based on productivity and quality of work, and since I don't make errors and do a decent amount of work every month, well, I guess that made me the pick of the litter. I'm a little sad for some friends who didn't get the shifts that they wanted, but I'm certainly thrilled about how things worked out for me. Sometimes, patience does pay off.

33 Years Of Opportunism

Ballots were handed out at my job a few weeks ago voting for 2nd shift's various characters, such as Most Likely to Transition to a better job in J.P. Morgan Chase, Most Helpful, Most Outspoken, etc. The last category was for Most Quiet, and almost immediately after the ballots were distributed, several people approached me asking for my last name so they could rock the vote for me. I didn't have to guess which category they were putting me down for, but after that day I forgot about the ballots until the awards show happened this past Friday. I have to admit, I expected to be in the running for Most Quiet, but I didn't necessarily expect to win. There are close to 100 people working 2nd shift, so I didn't think I'd be able to beat everyone out. But the nominations came up on the TV screen, which displayed the nominees for each award with their name in lights and music in the background, and for Most Quiet I was the 2nd nominee displayed. It was so funny because my name popping up was immediately followed by several people in the room saying, "Who??" I was so quiet that a lot of folks legitimately didn't know who the hell I was even though I've been working 2nd shift now for a year and a half. I guess if I'm that unknown, I deserve to be named Most Quiet, and indeed I won. Now, I didn't vote for anybody in any category, and I dismissed the whole thing as silly the day that ballots were handed out, so you'd think I would be embarrassed or nonchalant about winning. But, once again proving myself to be a hypocrite and proving that when it comes to the spotlight I have no shame, I basked in the "glory" of my win, stretching my arms out when my name was called, strutting down the red-carpet aisle, and accepting my award with a big smile as if I accomplished something. I grabbed the microphone for an acceptance speech, and, no lie, I heard several people gasp at the prospect of me speaking, and one woman said, "This should be something. I haven't heard him say a thing in two years." I then gave my one-word speech: "Shhhh..." Then I took a bow and headed back to my seat in the back of the room as everyone laughed and applauded.

Hey, if I thanked the Academy and took forever in my acceptance, then I wouldn't be deserving of Most Quiet, now would I?

But here's the thing: Those close to me who work with me every day don't think of me as very quiet. When someone does something stupid at work, or my boss gets on my ass about my numbers, or something happens that pisses me off, I'm not quiet at all. I'm quite loud and outspoken about dumb shit. I don't say much when things are going smoothly, but there are days where everything seems to be going off the rails and I appear to be the only one capable of steering the train back on track. A good example would be last month, when an account in my workgroup that has a lot of difficult instructions became a problem because I wasn't there to work on it for a few days and people in a different workgroup tried to do it. They screwed it up, but it wasn't their fault. There are a lot of instructions that were accidentally cut off of the online instruction page for that account, but because I've been working that account for a couple of years, I know what instructions are missing, and I work the account the right way. I have mentioned to previous supervisors and team leads that the instructions need to be fixed, but no one listened, and now people were running up to me saying "I'm so glad you're here!" because I returned from having a few days off early in November and I was known as the only guy who really knew how to work that account. Really, when you're running up to me saying "I'm glad you're here!," you have major issues. Because I had mentioned the problems with this account's instructions page many times before, I decided that I was going on a full-on crusade to have this taken care of once and for all, and I talked to team leads and supervisors from 1st shift, who seem to take these things more seriously than 2nd shift, and I grabbed Maria Perez, one of my old supervisors who got promoted upstairs, as she was walking by. And I explained to everyone, one by one, in a calm voice that--how did I put it--this account's instructions are extremely fucked up and someone needs to get off their ass and fix it. After four or five days of different people consulting with me about what needed to be added and subtracted from the page, the job was done. If I wasn't so quiet, this could have been done months ago, I admit, but the point is, when I take charge of getting something done, I'm not quiet at all. I'm rude, crude, brusque and straightforward, and I'm relentless, never pulling up until I accomplish what I need to accomplish.

On this, my 33rd birthday, I am reflecting on that bulldog attitude that I have at certain times that make it such a laugh that I won an award for Most Quiet. I am who I am, and I wouldn't want to change that. And who I am is a quiet person by nature who gets loud and aggressive when he senses the achievement of an accessible goal or the stench of incompetence. I'm like a chameleon in that respect. Last Friday I made a section of a room gasp in shock when I opened my mouth to speak, while another section of the same room winked at me as I accepted my award, knowing that I can get vociferous with the best of them. I like to think of that as being opportunistic. Like one of my favorite wrestlers growing up, Arn Anderson, I will take shot after shot waiting for the right time when I can hit my one good blow that does as much damage as many shots by other people. In other words, when I strike, I make it count. Looking back at my birthday entry from last year, it seems that I decided to keep my cloak of invisibility a little while longer, until I choose my moment to stand up and make myself heard. That's not so much being anonymous, that's just being opportunistic, and I don't think I want to live any other way.

Smelling The Fresh Air...Of My Apartment

The school semester has been over for a couple of weeks now, and I have been enjoying my free time. "Jacob" and I will play video games on a typical morning until it's time for me to go to work, then when I come home we might go get something very unhealthy to eat and settle in with some late baseball thanks to the DirecTV MLB Extra Innings package. When I'm not working, like today (I still have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, which I hate), I'll make myself useful by cleaning up or doing the dishes or laundry, and in the evening I'll cook the only thing I know how to cook, pre-prepared chicken breasts, and veggies and pasta or Rice-A-Roni. I'm not worried at all about my grades because I definitely got at least a B in physical science, and maybe even an A, and I'm fairly sure I got an A in psychology and media. The psychology class came to a very curious end. From the beginning, we knew we would have a ten-page paper due at the end of the semester, and the syllabus says, verbatim: "The topic is to write a paper describing exactly how you will apply learnings from this class to your own life objectives." There's nothing in there about it being specifically a research paper, but during the last class before the paper was due, I decided to ask the teacher if I was on the right track doing a paper on major depressive episode (basically a recounting of what "Karen" did to me). She expressed to me an expectation that the paper would be more of a research paper, with medical explanations of what depression was, citings from the book of diagnoses, etc. So I had to turn around and put together a ten-page research paper in two days. However, I didn't do much research. I only used two sources, and all those were good for were listing symptoms of depression and major depressive episode. The rest of the paper was a little of my childhood as background, then what happened with Karen. I hope it was good enough to keep the A that I had earned through the tests. The psych teacher pulled a typical psych job for the final exam, too. After telling us that the test would be 100 questions, no essay, she told us the morning of the final that something went wrong with making the copies of the test, so she made up an "impromptu" final consisting of seven essay questions that she scribbled on the board. I was not ready for an essay test that day, especially since I had been up until 1 the previous night rewriting her damn research essay. I think I did okay, though. Besides my girlfriend coming up for the Sick-A-Cell Walk-A-Thon weekend in June, the other interesting event coming for me is some sort of catered dinner with the new boss at my job. Everyone who works there will eventually be invited, from what I understand, but we have to do it in clusters because otherwise it would be impossible. My cluster goes on June 12. I'm debating what I should bring up with him. Do I complain about the methods by which I am determined to be working at less than 100% productivity, even though I am consistently near the top of actual documents processed per month? Would that sound like I'm whining? What else do I talk about? I'm not very good at brownnosing. It's not my personality. I'm either reserved and introverted or confrontational and irritated, but I'm no good at submissive and eager-to-please. Unless I'm trying to get laid. I have a couple of weeks to figure out a strategy to get in the boss's ear, and if that doesn't work, I may not have long after that to find a new gig.

(GRADES UPDATE, 5/22/08, 10:50A--It's an A for media and physical science, and only a B for psychology. Guess Mme. Daramus didn't like my paper.)

Hmmm...

From my blog post "End Of The CEDA Era," at the end of 2005: "...I am not going to ever forget my time at CEDA. What a perfect impetus to push me through school and urge me to keep going and make education a priority. Cause if I don't, I face a future of jobs in which my diligence and perfectionist nature cause me to be fired perpetually because I didn't produce enough mistake-filled, hurried work to satisfy the assholes in charge."

From my blog post "32 Years Of Anonymity," a few weeks ago: "My supervisor Lucy...has been on my ass virtually every day for the past two months because my items per hour was below 90. But when she thrust the November numbers in my face showing me how many other people in my workgroup have better IPH rates than me, I noticed something in the total items column: Only one person in my workgroup nailed more than 10,000 items total last month, and that was yours truly. Then I remembered that I was on vacation for a week in November because I spent several days in Memphis after Thanksgiving! You'd think Lucy would be thrilled to see that bit of information when I pointed it out to her. Her response: 'It doesn't matter how much work you do.' I never thought there existed a job where someone could be told that it didn't matter that they produced more work than anyone else."

Yeah, guess I haven't figured it out yet. Quality work, bad. Fast, crappy work, good. Note to self--make that my new mantra...

32 Years Of Anonymity

That's two years in a row now that someone wondered why I didn't make a big deal of my upcoming birthday upon finding out about it. This time, it was my team lead at work, Tasha, who doesn't know a thing about me and never expressed a desire to. "You gotta tell us about things like that," she cooed. "We're like a big family!" Yeah, right. All In The Family, maybe. When I told the people I used to work with on 1st shift that it was my birthday, the reactions ranged from surprise, of course, to pity that I was spending my birthday working. But it's all good. I wouldn't have done anything today but clean the house anyway. What am I gonna do, go out clubbing?

The fact that no one knew my birthday was coming is but a small piece of my daily routine. I'm Mr. Anonymity. I'm the modern-day Mr. Cellophane, for you fans of the musical Chicago. Every day I trudge to work or school or both, and I trudge home, and I barely say a word or have a word said to me. Really, I might be known by some as That Weird Guy With The Headphones, because for almost 20 years now I've hardly been out in public without my headphones on, usually big ear-covering ones too, "kickerboxes on your head," as a former co-worker once called them. The bigger the headphones, the less I have to hear, plus they double as great earmuffs for those Chicago winters that my girlfriend will get to experience when she moves here in the next few years. I could be some cult figure like the loudmouth preacher downtown with the portable loudspeaker or those guys that dress in silver and gold bodypaint and do mime performances on the corner. There might be some punk band in Wicker Park whose members dress in baseball caps and huge headphones and nothing else, as some odd homage to that eccentric fat guy who always looks like he could kick the world's ass. But I would never know. And that's how I've always wanted it. Speaking up and making my presence known is not something I like doing most of the time. After I got to know my co-workers at my jobs, I wound up loosening up and being the class clown, so to speak. But my demeanor is the same for most of the day--head down, no smile, walking with a purpose, going where I gotta go, doing what I gotta do. Sealing off the whole world in a way for various reasons, be it shyness or lack of social skills or lack of confidence or, in those really special moments, hatred of the entire human race. (If you've ever wondered why I refer to myself as Planet Dre...)

My latest problem at work may not be directly tied to my attempts to be anonymous, but it's loosely connected. See, my job is rather simple when you break it down: Type in P.O. box number, scan a header ticket to start a batch, open all the mail sent to that box, enter the check amounts, run the check through a check reader, scan a separator ticket between each check, end batch, move on. Boring, I know. But apparently, the way I do my job is not satisfying this items-per-hour ratio that's been established by people above me who don't do this job and therefore don't know how impossible it would be to keep up that ratio for all 7 or 8 or however many hours you're working. The ratio is 133 items per hour. That means that in addition to checks, you can staple the material inside an envelope that has no check inside (we've been getting a lot of Christmas cards lately, for instance) and add that to your batch at the end when you close it, and you can also add the unprocessable items for those checks that may have something wrong with it, like a missing signature or it was sent to the wrong P.O. box, so it's not just 133 checks per hour, it's 133 items. But seriously, if you sit down and start working on a bundle of mail, like I do, you run into missorted envelopes in the wrong bundle, you run into a large amount of material that has to be taped together because the automatic mail opener sliced the pages up, you may have to photocopy an envelope because if it's cardboard (FedEx, DHL, etc.) it's too big to fit into the image machine...you run into a lot of shit that takes up too much of your time to process 133 items per hour. It's impossible. The way that co-workers are getting around this number is that they're pre-staging their work, meaning they're opening the envelopes and taping letters and making copies and all that good stuff before they ever start to type in boxes and check amounts. That saves time from their items per hour, but it doesn't get as much work done because they're spending hours pre-staging and not working, whereas I just sit down and work because that's how I prefer to do it. My supervisor Lucy, this ogre of a woman who obviously got off the first boat from Russia years ago hoping to wrestle bears in America for money or something, has been on my ass virtually every day for the past two months because my items per hour was below 90. But when she thrust the November numbers in my face showing me how many other people in my workgroup have better IPH rates than me, I noticed something in the total items column: Only one person in my workgroup nailed more than 10,000 items total last month, and that was yours truly. Then I remembered that I was on vacation for a week in November because I spent several days in Memphis after Thanksgiving! You'd think Lucy would be thrilled to see that bit of information when I pointed it out to her. Her response: "It doesn't matter how much work you do." I never thought there existed a job where someone could be told that it didn't matter that they produced more work than anyone else. Did I mention that I haven't made an error in my mail extraction job duties all year? I tie this to anonymity because when you're just a number in a humongoid company like J.P. Morgan Chase, no one has time to listen to individual issues. Something like this should be handled on a case-by-case basis, and someone should have the common sense to back off the most productive worker in the workgroup instead of smothering him daily just because his items-per-hour number is low. Since I produce more than workers who work more hours than me, it seems that the items per hour isn't that damn important. Oh, and Lucy showed me the numbers for December 1-15 just to bitch at me more about how my IPH hasn't improved since she started yapping at me. Guess who's done more items than anyone the first 2 weeks of December as well? But of course, how much work you do doesn't matter. How retarded.

So in this, my 32nd year on Planet Dre, I vow to work even harder in college and continue my push towards (hopefully) Columbia College and a degree in radio. Anonymity has worked well for me for the most part, but I'm starting to get a little tired of it. I can see a time where I shed my cloak and reach for the spotlight and let the world see and hear what my warped mind is creating. The right time, the right place, it all has to come together in a perfect mix of my guts, someone's need to smell-la-la-la-la what I'm cookin', and a whole hell of a lot of luck. But every day that I am told that my hard work doesn't matter because it doesn't fit the mold, I get closer and closer to being ready to leave behind my carefully constructed wall of anonymity and go for what I want.

No Gnus Is Good Gnus

This post dedicated to Jrbour Jump. (Why is his profile missing from Wikipedia's Great Space Coaster page? Or did I imagine him being on that show when I was a kid?)

I'm putting out a general post on my life even though there's no actual news to report. But as busy as I am at work and school, I know I could easily go without making a blog post until the semester ends in December, and the 3 people out there who read my blog may get worried if I wait that long.

• At home, the animals living above me continue to be on a rampage. A few Saturdays ago I turned on my bathroom light, and I heard a sizzling noise for about 5 seconds followed by a burning smell. It took a while for me to figure out that some water had made its way into the globe that covers my light bulb and the sizzling was the electricity burning off the water from the bulb. If that globe had not been there, the water would have been all over my floor. Apparently they haven't been trained to bathe in the actual bathtub, but rather anywhere in the bathroom will do. Later that night a boy who looked to be about 15 banged on my window and asked me to buzz him in because he had accidentally locked himself out upstairs. Thinking that this wasn't unusual considering who my neighbors are, I buzzed him in. A second later, feeling uneasy about my decision, I called my aunt, who owns this building, to basically ask her if I should have done this. Her son said that she and her husband just left. The reason they just left is because my other first-floor neighbor, a fat white guy who may be even nerdier and more introverted than me (complete with cat), had called my aunt complaining about some menacing-looking young black guy banging on his window. Oh, and he called the cops. My aunt explained to me that no, I shouldn't have buzzed him in because technically no one needs to be in that apartment that late except the two people on the lease, an old woman and her old man. Their kids are the problems, and they're not supposed to be there. But call it a hunch, I don't think they will leave anytime soon. My aunt told me at the beginning of the summer that they were about to move. They're still there. And I bet everyone will know when they actually leave because of the property damage they will cause to the house as a parting gift. Speaking of the house, I will get a little help in keeping cold out as well as (hopefully) hundreds of flies on a random evening invading my kitchen. My place as well as every other apartment in the house will be getting brand new windows. This was supposed to happen last Saturday, but instead it will happen this Saturday. But I won't be home to oversee it because...

• At work, The Powers That Be decided to move my off days from Friday and Saturday back to Tuesday and Wednesday. The explanation I was given was that they need more people working from Thursday through Monday because that's when most of the mail we process arrives, and since I have hardly any seniority, I had to go. I'm not happy about this at all because Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays just feel like off days more than the other days of the week, and it seemed to have a negative effect on my attitude to have to come to work on weekends. The streets are desolate, the other people I commute with seem to have dead souls like me, and the people I work with aren't happy either. No one, not even a homebound grump like me, wants to work weekends. I had already conceded missing most of the football season working Sundays. But now by working Saturdays, I can't watch college football either, nor can I watch the handful of Saturday night NFL games at the end of the season. Plus, my girlfriend was using her free weekend minutes to talk to me on Saturday mornings, when we're both alert and awake, as an alternative to talking when I get home from work at 11:15 every night. But now we will have to cut off our Saturday conversations because I have to get up around noon and get ready to go to work. Sigh. Life ain't fair. The only positives I can take is the fact that now Tuesday and Wednesday after class, instead of hustling to work, I can come home, chill, study (if I feel like it) and talk to my girlfriend that evening at a much earlier time than usual. The folks at work are also on my ass about my productivity numbers, but I feel that since I'm error free and don't waste time yapping with other co-workers, they should take it easy on me. It's not like I'm trying to be slow, but I am trying to be meticulous. I will not screw up trying to go faster thanks to their pressure. If they hate how slow I work, they need to stop giving me bonus money for being error-free. Also at work, they had to send several people down to the Dallas office a couple of weeks ago because for some reason they were backed up. It was a 2-week stint, all expenses paid, hotel, 3 square meals, and I believe a $70 per diem. I would have loved to go just for the adventure aspect. Alas, I am in the middle of classes. And speaking of classes...

• At school, I'm performing better than I hoped I would. The biology class is where I thought I would really get creamed, but the 2 major tests we've had, I've pulled a B out of both of them. If the teacher hadn't posted an online study guide for those tests, I would have gotten Cs at best. The lecture with this teacher is just dreadfully boring, and the teacher is kinda hot, so it must really be bad for me to be nodding off every single class. She's really thin and likes to wear shirts that are short-sleeved to show off her guns and are too small for her so that they raise up a little at the slightest movement, showing off a peek at her abs. And she just had a kid, so she's really anxious to show off her abs. Even when it's been chilly, she just happens to have a shirt on a size too small. And I'm still one step away from snoring during this class. The computer class is a breeze for now because we haven't gotten to the real hard stuff yet, like Excel and lite Web design. That teacher doesn't care about anything, man. He starts his lesson on time, he ends it on time, and if you missed something, tough shit. But that's cool for me, because I can go in there and study biology and surf the net and do whatever I want. The speech class has been fun, not because I like standing in front of a room full of people I don't know and speaking, but because the teacher in that class is a world-class goofball and she keeps things light. It's scary sometimes how much she reminds me of "Sarah" because she's also from Kentucky (Sarah spent a lot of time in Kentucky as a child) and has that same accent and off-the-wall sense of humor. On top of that, she drifted off one day talking about a good-looking black guy she saw on a TV program, so just like Sarah, I bet nothing gets her off like a big black cock up her ass. But since I'm pulling an A in that class, I won't have to resort to that to get a good grade. Oh yeah, and I'm taken. Speaking of my girlfriend...

• She has wondered why I haven't made any posts about us lately, and I was proud to tell her that it was because since she's not psychotic and I'm not nearly was whacko as I was, there's just nothing to make a post about. It's not like we have a big issue to resolve and I need to post and figure out which way to go. (I mean, besides the possibility that we'll decide to get married next year. But that's a little issue, not a big deal at all.) Everything's going well with us, as well as a long-distance relationship can go where we sometimes don't find time to talk to each other until midnight or 1 in the morning. The next big deal on our horizon is Thanksgiving, when I travel down south and meet...her family!!! (Cue screams of horror.) And speaking of horror...

• My football picks against the spread so far this year: 38-43. That's under .500, and that's pathetic. If I were still gambling, I'd be crying in my cream soda. And speaking of sports, I don't know whether to be impressed by the Colorado Rockies making the World Series by winning 21 of their last 22 games (or something like that) or sickened that they happened to get hot at the right time and win a very weak and winnable National League. One thing I do have to chuckle at: that's somewhere around 50 years now that the Cubs haven't won a National League pennant, and now the Rockies join the Padres, Diamondbacks, and Marlins as expansion teams since then that have won a NL pennant, and I might even be missing a team or 2. And next year will be 100 years without a World title for the fuzzy Cubbies. Lovable losers? Well, that's half right.

Maturation

Today is the one-year anniversary of me being an associate at J.P. Morgan Chase. Only nine more years before they can kick me out on my ass like CBOE did. But seriously, I have been taking steps to distinguish myself at this gig, like volunteering for the quality team, which makes a presentation once a month talking about productivity numbers and error rates and what we can do to improve our performance and stop pissing off our customers. The first time I spoke at a Q-board meeting was the end of December, and although I was nervous and monotone because of my lack of public speaking skillz, I could feel a sense of newfound respect from my co-workers, like they saw me in a whole new light. And I saw myself differently as well. I only volunteered for the team because my old supervisor told me that it should push me into the highest level as far as my reviews go when combined with my nearly flawless productivity numbers. But now that I've been doing it for three months, I feel more responsible, more in-the-loop with those in charge, and more of a leader when I'm doing my job because people who have questions see me as a go-to guy after hearing me preach about asking more questions and reducing errors. Last month, that's what I spoke about, customer service and paying attention to the critical care list, which contains accounts that have complained about various mistakes we've made. My old supervisor told me about a conference call headed up by the C.E.O. of Chase, Jamie Dimon, who said that other banks can get the ear of customers on our list and tell them to take their business away from us. Those banks can say, "We won't make those mistakes," whether that's true or not. I relayed that story during my speech, and the floor went silent, so at least my co-workers were listening for a second. I was told later that some higher-ups heard the part about Jamie Dimon's remarks and said, "Yeah! That's what we need! Someone to talk about those kind of things!" So I'm starting to make some kind of impression. I've stopped coming in late, I stay until all of my work is done, and I even take out the garbage at the end of the day because my team lead is preggers. (No, I didn't do it.) Somewhere in the last calendar year, I've matured a lot. I'm not totally sure why. I think it's some combination of my personal life becoming much calmer and more peaceful, my living arrangements becoming settled, and my being scared shitless by not finding a full-time job for thirteen months. Whatever happens with this gig, I'm not going down without making as hard an effort as possible to step up in the food chain and distinguish myself. This job is something I have been able to sink my teeth into because there are a ton of standard operating procedures to follow, and being an asshole perfectionist, I get off on coming up with the right procedure when everyone else is scratching their heads. In other words, I'm starting to like it here.

Darkest Before The Dawn

What a last few days it has been. I'm finally moved out of the old apartment and into a basement just outside of Elmwood Park. My aunt warned me that it was just an unfinished basement, but I wasn't quite ready for it. It's cold and damp, very dungeon-like, but unlike most of my ex-girlfriends, I don't get off on dungeons. I don't know what the people on the 1st floor were doing Saturday night, but all of a sudden, water started dripping from the ceiling onto one of my many unopened cardboard boxes, and I could do nothing to stop it. So yeah, it's a trip. It's where my life has led me though, so I just have to deal.

Last Wednesday morning, I put on my new suit and went to the second interview for the data processing job with J.P. Morgan Chase knowing that I should have been moved out the night before and that I had to work double time to get moved out later that day. My nervousness showed up when I spent ten minutes looking for the address even though I brought my datebook with the correct address with me. But I settled down and gave my usual calm if not boring interview, then I got out of there. They said that I would hear from them in a week if they wanted to hire me. Then I went home and packed and wrapped nonstop until my dad arrived with some guy to help with the move around 4P. We went to U-Haul a few blocks away and rented a sizable truck, then they had dinner for about an hour while I continued to pack. But I ran out of time and strength, so we had to come back the next day. The bad thing about moving the stuff that we did move is that I got nauseous and threw up around 9P, even though I had not had anything unusual to eat, and I was very weak from that point on. And the guy my dad brought was an older skinny guy, late 40s to early 50s, and he wound up having to carry the load because I wasn't much help. That pissed me off. I hate throwing up, especially when I don't know why. We got the U-Haul to the basement after midnight, and a younger guy who lives on the 1st floor of my building was on his way to the store and decided to help us unload, so that wound up taking only 40 minutes. We gave him our cell phone numbers and he told us that he would help us the next day. But he never called. So Thursday was worse, because the older guy was unavailable and instead my dad brought an older woman, and she had to lift the heavy stuff with me because my dad was sick. She was tough and hung in there, but she dropped a case of tapes and broke it. She complained about her back later, and I felt bad because I'm sure my dad didn't tell her that she would have to help me move when he brought her there. He told me that she was there to help me with cleaning the apartment once I moved everything out of there. The worst feeling was when my dad asked several times why I didn't have any male buddies helping out. I had to tell him that I have no male buddies, but I didn't have an answer why. I guess it's because I see guys as a threat. I can't enjoy some dude's company because I'm always comparing myself to him and wondering why he can get a good woman and I can't, or if he's single, which one a woman would choose if it was between him and me. I would stop doing that because I know it's unhealthy, but I can't. It sucks to know that I'm not good enough for most of the world, but it's torture to keep measuring myself and reaffirming the fact.

I tried to write a note Thursday night to my landlady and leave it on my kitchen table along with my keys. I wanted to tell her that I would definitely be back that weekend with a friend to clean the apartment, but the two pens that I tried to use to write the note both ran out of ink. So I just left my keys and took the one hour bus ride back to Elmwood Park. The little mini-fridge that the previous "tenant" left in the basement doesn't work. I plugged it in and turned it all the way up Wednesday, but as of this moment, it's still not cold. So I've been drinking warm soda and juice since I moved in. Of course, if I wanted something to get cold, I could leave it on the concrete floor, and it would get cold quickly. I cannot stress this enough: It's an unfinished basement, and it is COLD. I've got several layers of sweatclothes on when I try to go to sleep, along with two comforters and a blanket on the bed. I'm still sleeping on a mattress sitting on eight milk crates, but I'm no longer on carpeting but rather on the aforementioned concrete floor, so there's a lot of shifting and sliding whenever I try to get into bed and during sleep. I'm probably going to have to readjust the crates daily. You can fill in the blanks in your mind what the rest of the place looks like. You've all seen a dungeon before--dark, dank, looks like it's freezing even when it's not, spider webs everywhere...all it's missing is a wooden torture rack, some handcuffs, and a mistress holding a cat-o-nine tails. There are some signs that someone once lived there, such as the posters on the wall and the many hangers of clothes dangling from the pipes. But it's still a dungeon. The dream I had the first night I slept down there was really fucked-up. Basically, I dreamed that I was at an airport with my family going on a family vacation, which we've never done before, and all of my ex-girlfriends kept walking past me in the terminal, then I saw some woman, I don't remember who, and I just had to be with her, so I traded in my ticket for one to go where she was going. Then a friend who worked with me at CEDA and who in real life helped me clean the old apartment Saturday showed up in tears, and I remembered that I had agreed to take a trip with her. So I tried to trade in my ticket again, and my uncle basically ripped me a new one, which he has done before in the past when I fuck up, and I woke up with that lovely feeling I seem to have of disappointing everybody and letting people down. That's a hell of a feeling to have after any dream; this time, I looked around after I woke up and realized that I'm 30 years old and living in someone's basement. Disappointment? Letting everyone down? That's an understatement. So yeah, I was feeling pretty low at that point.

But I've heard that it's always darkest before the dawn. The next day, Friday, I was lying in bed virtually all day because my body was sore from the move and because I didn't want to come from under the covers because I was freezing. I turned the ringer to my cell phone off at 3:30P and took a nap, then woke up an hour later to find that I had a message. It was Mary, the woman from Chase who gave me the first interview back on Thursday, Jan. 26. She offered me the job. I said yes. I screwed that up too, though, because she only offered me $10 per hour instead of the $11 she told me during the interview. I accepted a bit too soon. I asked her today if there was anything she could do about it, and she said she could write to the suits in HR and see if my request can be obligated, but that's it. I really don't care though. I got a fucking job! It's not minimum wage, so I'm not worried about an extra dollar an hour. That's what over a year of unemployment will do to you. It's Thursday through Monday from 8A-3:30P, allowing me Tuesday and Wednesday to do homework for my classes on those nights. I got the drug test and fingerprints done today, and I officially start next Monday.

I'm doing this blog entry at school because I still haven't gotten a connection for my phone line back at the dungeon; therefore I can't get on the internet. The phone company came out twice, but both times they told me that they only had to work outside and didn't have to come in, so I wasn't home. But Saturday, while I was cleaning the old apartment, the guy called me on my cell phone and told me that apparently I'm missing a wire and that they did have to get in to the basement to fix it. My play aunt and her daughter, who lived downstairs from me all 18 years of my childhood, live on the second floor of this building, so they would have a copy of my keys to let anyone in, except I haven't made a copy yet. The guy told me he would come back yesterday, when I would be home, but he faked me out. He said at about 3:30P that he would be there in an hour, but I never heard from him again, and he turned his cell phone off so I couldn't contact him. I had to call the company this morning and set up a whole new appointment, and they won't be back until Thursday. The good news is that DirecTV will be out tomorrow. Dungeon schmungeon--nigga's gotta have his phone line and cable. But I'm so happy to be employed again. I should have the money saved up by the time this semester is over in May to make a drama-free transition into a new apartment. I just have to remember to save a few hundred bucks for a moving crew. As I sat in the U-Haul with my dad Wednesday night, both forearm muscles and biceps as well as my stomach muscles severely cramping, hands swollen, shoulders hurting, fingers throbbing from being pinched between boxes and walls and furniture, nose and throat sore from all the dust, and feeling nauseous again, I told him as far as the next move: "Never again." I'm throwing out a lot of the stuff that I moved, and I'm hiring people to lift the rest of the shit. I freely admit--I'm soft as Pillsbury, and I am not going through this nightmare again.

One Hurdle Cleared

I got the second interview for Chase. They just called and told me that it's next Wednesday morning, February 1, when I'm supposed to be totally out of this apartment, so that should be interesting. I don't think my dad is going to be able to help me move this weekend because he's playing a gig, so I would have to wait until next Monday or Tuesday during the day. Then I have to recover and get ready for the interview at 10:30A Wednesday morning. Nothing's ever easy. It's all good though. No matter the circumstances, I will have my suit on, I will be there next Wednesday, and I will do my best to wow the suits at Chase. Period.

Regression

Crazy week. Monday I went to O'Hare Airport and met a sweet woman who visited Chicago all the way from Europe. She was going to meet a guy from the internet group that I was a member of (actually the same group I met "Torrie" in), but that didn't work out. Apparently the guy wasn't trying to hide his interest in meeting others as well. So she made the trip anyway just to see America, and she stayed over in Chicago Monday before spending a couple of weeks in Houston with friends of her family. She was everything I can't find in American women--genuinely nice, not looking to take advantage of anyone, thinks highly of me despite the weight...of course she wasn't coming to meet me, she was coming to meet some asshole, so in that respect she's just like American women. But she was very grateful that I came to meet her because she didn't think that many guys who were not going to knock boots with her would have done that, and she's probably right. But she has chatted with me through IM many many times telling me to keep my head up, and she is a true sweetheart, so I had no problem meeting her. It was my pleasure. Tuesday I started school, but for the second day I came up to the school expecting to get my bus pass and was told to come back. So Wednesday I went up there at 8A because if I didn't get my pass Wednesday, I would have had to go through student services to get it mailed to me, and that may have taken a couple of weeks. I was pissed because I had a job fair at 11A on the near west side, and since they started doing passes at 10A, I had to hope that they got around to me in time for me to get out of there and make the job fair in time. And believe me, with all of the bitching and moaning that I do when things don't go my way, when I got out of there with my pass, made it to the train stop just as the train was arriving, and made it to the job fair at 10:55A, I made sure to thank whatever force was responsible for me threading the needle and pulling that stunt off. The fair seemed to go well, there were more construction and warehouse jobs there than anything, but there were some office jobs as well. The woman in charge announced right off the bat that they would look at everyone's form/resume and decide who could be interviewed for potential jobs that day and who would have to come back some other time, and I was interviewed that day. I think it went well. On my way to classes that very night, J.P. Morgan Chase called me on my cell phone and told me to come in for an interview for a data processing job next Thursday, so those of you reading who don't hate me (all three of you), wish me luck. Then yesterday was the funeral for one of my grandmother's brothers, the one who owned the house I grew up in, and because our household had zero income with me, my sick mother, my grandmother who didn't work and later became sick thanks to lung cancer, and her deceased sister's daughter who had Down's Syndrome, who knows where we would have lived if not for the man I called Uncle T.C. So I felt I had to go pay my respects. Then I went to class, and let's just say that it was a little hard to concentrate after attending a funeral.

So now I'm home all weekend, or at least I don't plan to leave the house. And I now have to face the current situation, one that I have not wanted to think about, but I have no choice. In perhaps as little as a week, I have to regress and move back with my family. I couldn't get to sleep for four hours last night mostly sweating that predicament. It totally goes against everything I'm trying to do with myself mentally, trying to gain self-esteem and confidence. Hard to do when you gotta move back in with your folks at the age of 30. I'm supposed to be a grown-up. This ain't what grown-ups do. It's bad enough not having a car or a job. Soon, I'm not going to have a pot to piss in. I'm moving with my family even if I get a job in the next week or two because it would take at least a month for me to save some money from the job to be able to get my own crib again. But I would definitely get out after I save that money, so I won't be there very long, hopefully. It's just pathetic that I have to do this at all. I haven't made the move yet, and already I'm not dealing with it well. The first time I have to use the bathroom and can't because someone else is in there, I will have to strongly fight the urge to dig an outhouse in the back yard on the spot because I am not used to waiting on anything. This year may be my most challenging yet, because it may serve to be my most humbling. Character building, those who don't have to go through this shit may call it.

My uncle's house is not an option anymore, because they were going to shoehorn me into a very small room in the basement since my old bedroom is taken now, and I have better options as far as size goes: My aunt's basement, or maybe my own pad, a basement in a building that my aunt owns, but I'm avoiding that option because she tells me that there's no shower or bath in that place (I would have to go upstairs and bug the neighbors to get clean, and that doesn't sound fun at all). My aunt lives on the west side, so the only benefit from going there would be potentially seeing "Grace" more since she lives close to the area, but Grace and I have been so busy, we don't talk much anyway, so I don't know what that future holds. That shouldn't be a concern anyway. The reason I had not considered my aunt's house before is because my aunt can be overbearing as far as her beliefs are concerned. My uncle may be an asshole, but he would stay out of my business. My aunt will give me crap every time I'm out late or don't come home that night, or just go meet someone, for that matter, and Sunday mornings would be spent telling her 325 times that I don't want to go to church with her. And I may have to rent storage space for my porn collection and a P.O. box just to handle the Playboy subscription. But hey, grown-ups have their own place to live. They don't have to worry about that stuff. I do. I had an ad on craigslist.org begging for an understanding roommate who would realize that I haven't a dime to my name right now but would hold up my end of things eventually when I became employed. I got many responses, but I decided that if I was going to be in a living situation where I don't have any privacy and I can't have phone sex or fuck anyway, I might as well be with family and not have to pay as much or worry about trust issues or my potential roommate's sweatsock fetish that he forgot to tell me about before I moved in. So that's where I stand right now. I feel sick about it, but that's where my life is right now, and I would risk falling back into my rut of beating myself up and feeling like the future is hopeless if I dwell on it too much, so I'll stop now. All I can say is, come on Chase, give me the data processing gig ASAP.