be still my heart, engine turning over, won’t you start?

I don’t know why I was so  happy over this weekend, but I was, estaticly happy, the weather was good, and though I didn’t actually do anything save for taken my dogs out to the boulder res, I was really happy to be doing it.  The drive over was amazing. I took 287 up to lookout road and lookout road right to the res, drving up lookout road was great, it’s one of those roads that goes up and down as it passes throught the fields of corn and wheat, and at times you can’t see the sprawling mertopilis sounding us, just me and my dogs and a shit load of wheat, off in the distance you could see the foothills rising up over the landscape and rain falling somewhat to the north. it was beatuful. 

and then at the res, the back side where they allow dogs, there weren’t any cops driving around (I’ve seen them before, nothing to ruin a good walk than being run off of the trail by a black police suv) it was nice and friendly, the people actually wanting to know what kind of dogs these are and so on, more friendly than I’ve seen people in the denver area be on a regular basis ever before, and to tell the truth, a tinsy bit annoying as well, I had my headphones on and was trying to listen to music… but not that big of a deal becuase there wasn’t anyone around comparied to usual.   and here is the kicker, when we got back home, the dogs just passed out from exhution i gess. 

but i still haven’t worked on my car, and it’s getting close to the date when I have to, the tags expired last month, so I really need to get a proper exhuast system on there and some how change the idle point of the motor, fix what ever is making it idle at 1500.  and then once It’s passed emissions i need to get a fueul injector set up on it. I don’t want to have to waste entire cans of starting fluid on it again this winter.  not to mention the spring that i’ve spent two days trying to cut off of the car and finally just said screw it and left it three quarters of before driving to grand juction.

and my guess would be that I will need it to start when it gets cold out again this winter, I’ve been interviewed for 5 jobs all in places it’s too cold during the winter. bend or, seattle, medford or, glennwood springs co, and somewhere else.  not a single job where it’s nice year round yet. god I hope one of them calls soon, I don’t know how much more crap I can put up with at work, and it’s getting mighty trieing living here with my fam.

 

NP: mirah, engine heart

another Marxist celebration, this time with pipes instead of guns

I’ve been wondering what up with peoples dress lately.  I mean people from prior eras are fine with they clinging to dress standards from a bygone era, but one of the guys I was working with said something like “lets be serious, which would you rather work with my in my dress slacks and buttoned down long sleeve shirt, or you in your t-shirt and jean shorts?” I replied that i’d rather work with the guy who looked comfortable. 

he took great offense to this.  and I’m not really sure why.  I mean to quote Steinbeck, “you’ve got to be pretty rich to dress as poorly as you do”  the people with enough money to do what they want, even back in the forties and fifties dresses as through they didn’t care about it.  can we, as a society have gotten more anal?

so anyway this guy, who was greatly offended by my comment, stated that he was quite comfortable in St. loius in the summer in his dress slacks and long sleeve shirt.  which i find a little bit ridiculous. A long sleeve shirt comfortable?

I don’t really see any reason for long sleeve shirts to exist.   I can kind of see the point if you are out gathering hay or some sort of outdoor activities where you are going to cut up your arms if you don’t have something covering you arms (I’ll take the scrapes over the pain of the additional heat kept in by a long sleeve shirt, but that may just be me) but what point could they have in the outside world? I mean if it’s cold enough to wear a long sleeve shirt, chances are It’s cold enough to wear a actual jacket or coat.

and it’s not like when you get inside it’s going to be cold enough that you will need the extra layers, it’s liable to be hotter that you are comfortable with inside. 

np: built to spill,  still flat

 (god I need a new job, I’ve redacted to posting coments on the weather in my blog, please, anything!)

he said he wanted me to move, but that just won’t do

you know what’s a little wierd, the last four times I have driven on I70 west on denver, I’ve seen four different acciedents take place.

oddly enough they were on two of the trips. 

I drove out to cali without incident, but on the return trip, an exploder pulling a trailer jackknifed and bassically blew up. the expolder was ok, but there was nothing left of the trailer. it’s wierd how at like thirty five, a thousnad pounds of thin plywood can total a car,  but they got it slowed way way down before it flipped and everyone was out of the car by the time I was going past, as you can imagne traffic came to a stop.  but it’s also wierd how a suv can be pretty much crushed by rolling over once. it wasn’t at speed or anything, I’m pretty damm sure that no more wieght than that of tehe vicle it self was pressing down upon it… I thought that back in the eightes the passed a law that a vehicle had to be able to support it’s own wieght. but anyway, eveyone was ok in that.

in the next two,  they happed just yesterday, the first was a large turck.  i’m not really sure what kind, or what kind of accident it had. but it was pouring down rain and the highway was flooded, rivers of water (by co standards) flowing accross the highway. an if you aren’t paying attention, really close and good attention, you can easily get caught out by one of these. if just one of your front wheels gets caught by one of them, and you don’t handle it right, you are going off the road. 

so anyway, I saw a large truck of some sort, (did I mention it was pouring down buckets of rain?) but it’s tail lights were to me, and it was big, seeing as how that secone of road has a barier that’s taller than my car, and I was able to see it’s taillights.  and then just before I pass it, I see a cheap hatchback flying through the air.  I think it was a toyota yaris., but i only saw  it for a fraction of a second, it was turning towards me, nose down, as it had hit the same patch of road that had causd the first accident, and then it went below the sight line and into the front of whatever truck was stoped going the wrong dircetion in the fast lane of I70. then some parts flew over the barrier.

 the fourth and final accdeint happen just a mile from those two, I’m not really sure what happened, but a car some distance in front of me spun, I don’t know why, as I was going threw that same section faster and on wider tires and I didn’t have any problems, he wound up facing traffic in the left lane, maybe a 1/8 of a mile in front of me.  Could i have stopped? yes, but before i even opened my door I would have been rear ended, so i pulled off the road te first place i found that was safe, and proceded to try to make a call to 911.  only problem? I didn’t have a clue where I was, and B my I-phone didn’t have a signal. 

there are loads of things I love about my I-phone, the abilty to receive email all the time, the abitly to receive internet acces pretty much everywhere,  the albity to get me a porn moive at 2am because I just can’t get to sleep even though I’ve been laying in the motel bedroom for three fucking hours. yea, those are things I like about my I phone.  the things i don’t like are all AT&T.  or else their coverage. I never had any problems with my old phone dropping callls, and yet now, wiht a cell phone tower in sight, standing in te middle of a field, it drops the call.

so anyway, After trying a couple of times, and getting no reposne, I give up,  figering in the five min I was trying to call them they would have figured it out by then. 

the interview, the very reason I was in grand juction for the night? I think it went really well. the only thing is he might not hierd me as I scored better than him on the IEA, so he might figure I got that job (god i hope I do) why should he figure on giving me a differing one?

 

NP: that dog, minneapolis

I love to dream, right between the sound machine

I’m woundering if i should take this job up in bend if I’m offered it. it’s with the tax payers avocdic office, so there is the bonus that I won’t be screwing tax payers out of money they don’t owe us anymore. that alone is worth a couple of bucks an hour.  but bend oregon? it get’s less rain than colorado.  as if that were possible.  14.6/year down to 13.o/year in bend, and a good portion of that is snow! I don’t like snow.

but given the oportunities i’ve been offered in the past year? I think I’d better take it.  it’s a GS 07 position, vs my current positon at GS-06 (finally) and it offers promotion to the GS-09 level. 

plus It offeres cheap living, I can buy a house for less than 150K with an acere of land:) that sounds good to me. 

that’s all I really want, a decent job (where it’s not my job to screw people out of money/bennifits)  and a decent enough rate of pay to aford a decent place somewhere I can take my dogs out after work. it would be nice if it would rain there once in a while, but that’s really just a bonus:)

 

NP:  Steppanwolf, magic carpet ride

over and out now, over and out now, that’s what you said

So I don’t really know what’s up with my job search, i had an interview with the social security administration today, and it was depressing.  I hope it didn’t show that much, but I know it did. it would be a grade five step two, which would be a bit of a demotion from my current job, but I would have the pleasure of telling maybe 10% of the calleds that we had aproved them for benfifits, vs now maybe 98% of the calls are can you full pay today?  but then again we are talking about a roughly 2K pay cut from what i make as of today.

but that other 90% are much much worse,  I mean for the really desitute, all we can take from them is 15% of their social secuitry benifts.  for the really destitute amoung the SSA recipients all we can take from them would be their only bennifit they have comeing to them. 

I don’t know that even if I offered the job, if i’ll take it. 

but i might, just so as I can get out of here.  It’s not so depressing now, the rain comes nearly every day, so pretty much everything stays green. but in a normal year, everthing would already be dead. and we’d have to wait for aonter 9-11 months till it grew back. 

and te job is in new mexico so that’s definaily a huge plus. down in ablreuue or how every the hell you spell it, 8K form the government would be a huge bonus on buying a house (as reenforced by the reaction of the people i was interviewing with today)

but i’ve got high hopes for the test I’m signed up to take on thurs. It’s the imigartion and enforcement agent test, which should be the same as the boradder partol, test I took earily, I got a 95, and the IEA doesn’t have the math secsions which I blew, cuase I don’t know my math mathichs times tables.

But I’ve still got hope for the futrue so there is that…

 

NP: 764-hero – sick of appogizinging

“I’m sick of appogizing when I don’t know what I said, whne I don’t know what I did”

I screwed her and she screwed me, but we never once had sex

god i hate it when you emal someone and you don’t get anythig in responce, no thanks but try again, nor a positive responce, but instead nothing. 

I mean i can see prefectly if someones not intested, i can under stand, but to just ignore them? that’s just rude. 

but then again, how long should one wait?

NP:built to spill, joyride/girl

“i knew i’d find a nice girl someday, find a nice girl settle down, someone i can talk to, someone i don’t have to talk to, someone who would give me time and give me space and take it all away.”

had one of those days when you want to try heroin, drunk driving, some from of soft suicide

it’s not really been a bad week, but it has been far from a good one,

I don’t know, everything just looks so damm depressing outside.  It’s nice enough, or at least it has been, on friday it was really windy, followed by smog, followed by snow, followed by nice weather again. but by sat, it was really nice out,  not a cloud in the sky save for the contrails left by the jets takeing people somewhere better….

but everything is gray, and/or brown, everywhere you look, there was a house which was so nicely painted a year ago, really light line green, with drak green trim,  over the course of the year it’s faded and chipped off in the areas where the sun hits it, in the spots where the sunlight doesn’t reach, it’s still vibrant and colorfull.  but only on the north side of the house. 

add to that the fact that, well the ecconomy is in the toliet and no one in charge of anything seems to have the slightest idea what to do about it.  i mean really, no propsals to get more people working, stuff like rasieng the amount workers get paid for overtime, and limiting the hours they get to work before paying them overtime, say 36? 32? hours a week, and you can have part time employees but they still get the minium wage, 7.15X32 or whatever, and bennfits, well  they should all get bennifits, but that shouldn’t inculde health care, that should be nationailized.  (and no one should be able to get a “contract job” where they are paided regaless of how much they work, unless they really are an independant contrator) 

why are the big three automakers failing? it’s not the crappy products that they make,though i beleive that they make some of the crappyist products on the market today, no it’s health care costs.  well that and the unions. 

unions are a very good thing, i’m a member of the NTEU chapter  32, i have them to thank for a 2K rasie( this year, and come june it will be good for another ~4k),  but in the same breath, i have to say that an auto worker, a high school drop out, can be making $80K/ year for a job that could easily be repalced with a robot, and when he gets fired, he still collects pretty much all of his wages,  there is something wrong with that.  and that’s what the unions represent, at least the auto unions,  where someone can go to school and become someone who designs the cars, and gets less money than a person who dropped out of school and builds them?  (at least to start) that’s pretty damm wrong.

but anyway, I’m still depressed, and nothing is really helping.  even the idea i had some time ago, of taking this summer off to hike the appalican trail isn’t much help, they don’t allow dogs in national parks, and the north and south parts of the trail are all national parks:(  the rocky mtn trail is national park in the middle, so i guess that’s one up, but it pretty much means i’m about half as likely to take the summer off to go on a hiking trip….

NP: leash, by the Weakerthans,

High green chilly winds and windy vines in loops around the twining shafts of lavender, they’re crawling to the sun

I know what’s wrong with me, it’s not lack of sunlight that’s doing me in, instead it’s a lack of green stuff around,

I’m faily certain that’s the problem, I mean how else could i be nearly as depressed this winter as i was last winter? last winter was all snow, we had something like 3 months of snow:( this winter, it’s been above 50 degrees pretty much every fucking day (if you avegage out all the 0 degree days with the 70 degree days, ~50+) though even with a week of 45+ degree days there is still ice on the local cess pool.  i wasn’t strong enough to stand on today, but it was yesterday.

but never mind that, i’m thinking it’s the fact that inspite of some 340+ days of sunlight, nothing ever grows in colorado that’s doing me in.

here’s what i mean, i mentioned to my doctor that i might be moving to somewhere it rains, either north caloina or oregon, as potenial locations. and he starts talking about his sister up in oregon, she had to cut down some trees in her yard, these trees where normal size for oregon, but in colorado terms, well these trees were bigger than anything we had ever had in the state. hundered plus foot tall trees.  and bigger around than you could put you arms around.  and these where nomal sized trees. 

so anyway, i’ve been latey thinking it’s not a lack of sunlight that bothers me, it’s a lack of greenery.  the fact that in colorado we might get 2 weeks of spring, we might get 2 months, but never more than that, we still get between 12 and 10 months of everythings dead. 

even freshly painted houses start looking grey and washed out after a couple of months. there is this one house that was painted lime green a couple of years ago,  and now it’s even washed out under the overhangs, but it was almost painful to watch, day one bright shiny house, day two,  it seemed duller than it did before, and that was yesterday, a month later it was visibly duller than it was under the overhangs, two months in it already looked like someone had painted the house different colours, one where it was exposed to sunlight, a different colour where it wasn’t. a couple of years in, it looks like differnt colours entierly, but it’s not for naught, they are both flaking off. 

and the federal gov. is hireing, yep, for 3K jobs with the TSA they whent through 90K applicants.  

but i suppose in this ecconomy that’s pretty good. to bad they were mostly part time jobs:(

NP:

St. Stephen, by the grateful dead

we kidd ourselves that there is future in the fucking, but there is no fucking future

How can it be 60 degrees out when i’m going to work, ~11am, then at 4PM, it’s like thirty degrees out? and then when i get off of work, 8:27pm, it’s like fourty, and then when i’m takeing my dogs for a walk at 11PM, it’s 25 degrees out.

I just don’t get it.  oh, and add in 100mph winds before the sun even came up as well.  the sun was out all day, and yet it got colder as the day went on, till after it set, and then it started getting warmer. 

god i want out of this place.  and even considering that i started looking online for a new house, it appears i can get a house for cheaper than renting an apartment:( a real house, with a garage and a yard and everything.   but then, i did look in some other places, in detriot, i can get a huge place in a semi decent neighborhood (by detriot standards) for less than 10K, in somewhere i wouldn’t mind living, it’s going to cost at least 100K, but even that is less than rent here.   (figure 100K, = ~550/month)

it almost makes me happy to have a job at all.

NP: los Campesinos!, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

i don’t care about cleaver, i don’t care about funny

god i hate my life right now.  it’s been frezing since satuday, i mean really really cold, like -18 on sunday.  add it my idiot brother in law, who lost my dog, in the house yesterday, my idiot mother who tried picking the lock on my door, and proceded to break it.  and my father, who decieded that the room where he smokes up, is now his room (I’m prefectly ok with that, just why all of a sudden? when for yearshe refused to smoke up their?) and there is my sis.  who is an idiot,

I still can’t belive billie, he lost the dog, milo, in the house.  he calls me all franticly, I don’t know where you dog is? did you lock him up in your room? and sends me text messages and so on.  of course i didn’t lock him in my room, there are more wires in my room than in the rest of the house.  i don’t want him chewing on any of the wires.  so to make a long story short? i say I’ll be home in a few minuetes, just relax and i’ll take care of everything.  the about five minuetes later, i get a call from my dad, matt where is the key to your room? I have to get in there to get the dog out.  and i repeat, i’m on my way home, just relax.  he’s not in my room. and then about five minuetes later another call from my mom. same exact sript.  and then five minuetes later I found him he wasn’t in your room at all. big surprize.  he was in my mother bathroom.  so anyway, i’ve already gone home sick from work.

and when i get there, i find that oh the reason the spare key, which i told them where it was, didn’t work, cause my mom had already terid to pick the lock, using a peice of plastic.  which broke of inside of the lock.  so while my mom is flipping out, i proceede to melt the plastic out of the lock “oh my god, it’s going to be like three hundred dollars where am i going to come up with that much money?”etc

it’s not like there is anyting of any real value in here, it’s just my privacy that i value. so i don’t come home and find things like books on my bed. pamphelts from what ever nut thing my mom comes up with (everything from “do you need jesus in your life?” to soy is really really bad and you are going to die about five minuetes after eating anything with soy in it)

and if that wasn’t bad enough, today, at seven o’clock, my dad calls.  i swear i’m going to move out and block anyone who calls before 10 am, i don’t mean just not answer, i mean block their number and never return their calls ever again.  i mean it’s pretty basic, you don’t call before 10 or after 10, unless you have some agreement or it’s an emergency.  the emergency? my dad forgot his phone.  and he needed me to take it down to him.  when ever it was convent to me.  and for this pleasure he was willing to pay me. 

so i took the phone down to him, after takeing milo to see the vet (he’s pretty health, but only about a year old) and for this, he pays, four dollars.  yeah, just enough to cover the gas. that’s it.  i mean i would have taken him his phone for nothing, but he insited on paying me.  so fucking pay me! don’t give me four bucks and say there you go son. i mean that’s basically an insult. i took an hour of my time to take him his phone, and that’s worth nothing? i’d be more pissed, but that’s the way he thinks, and he except the same from me so i can’t be all that mad at him.

but my sis is another topic all togther. 

but i’ve ranted more than enough for one night when i’m already short of sleep

np: lilly allen, the fear

“i want to be rich, and i want loads of money, i don’t care about about cleaver, i don’t care about funny, i want loads of clothes, and fucklads of dimonds, i heard people die when their trying to find them, and i’ll take my clothes off, and it will be sameless, cause everyone knows that’s how you get famous, i’ll look at the sun, and i’ll look in the mirror, i’m on the right track, i’m on to a winner. 

I don’t know whats right or what’s real anymore, and i don’t know how i’m meant to feel anymore, when do you think it will all become clear? cause i’m being taken over by the fear….