So, I stopped journaling when I lost my last office job and went un/self-employed and didn't sit under a fluorescent light anymore.

Then I started when I went back to the cube. But then I stopped again, when they started monitoring all of our web activity.

Maybe I'll start again.

Before I left the house, I just knew it would be a bad day. My wireless router started giving me a hard time for no apparent reason while I was trying to shoot off an email to my Mom. I was running late by the time I got the stupid Internet up and running again enough to see that traffic to work was worse than usual. Almost got killed on my way to the office on 275. Then my computer at work was acting up again, randomly, so it took me 15 minutes just to log in. Had a meeting at 10, so I went downstairs to clear my head, start new, maybe get something to eat. Upon going back to the office, my access badge spontaneously wouldn't let me back into the office. Get to my desk, and there's an IM from my boss to see her in one of the meeting rooms; strange, since she's supposed to be in Sarasota today. I didn't even know she was in the office.

Diligently walk into the meeting room with my notepad to see my boss.

And the HR guy. And the HR VP. They drove up from Sarasota to fire me.

Why? Outstanding performance apparently.

Despite glowing reviews and repeated outstanding performance, and the impending audit I was going to work on, and the new department my soon-to-be overworked old department was going to turn into to oversee the processes for the whole company, and given the crappy industry my company is currently in and some glaringly bad investment decisions, money's tight. So they terminated my position and me with it.

The HR people were all actually very considerate about it.  Even more so than usual.  The HR VP wanted to let me know that since I have a bit of PTO outstanding, from a payroll perspective, my unemployment will start on Dec. 17.  I didn't ask if that's their idea of a birthday gift.

Um, yeah.

My boss found out at the last minute. She is not pleased, to say the least.  Suffice to say, I didn't see it coming.

Update: just got a phone call. Evidently the scythe is swinging fast and wide: people are dropping like it's The Stand. I thought about asking if I was the only one during my meeting, but quickly realized it was moot.  And it is.  Other people getting cut at the same time doesn't make me feel any better.  It doesn't even make me feel more justified.

So there it is. At least I don't have to be amongst the lucky few who get to stay there and endure what will now be a year of impending firings and all the lovely paranoia and morale degradation that goes along with it.  I'm just glad I was able to get home without some other dread happening.

Okay, my unemployed ass is going to watch a movie or something.

Cheers,
prs

The Dentistry Industry is not a medical profession. It is a fucking racket, a scheme of highly overpaid sadists and thugs who have engineered a legalized way to inflict unfathomable amounts of pain in never-ending cycles of alleged “cures,” and to force its “patients” (what a hypocritical euphemism that is) to expend absurd amounts of money for their alleged services. These immoral, godless, soulless shiteyes are the only people on the planet who could make a CIA interrogator understand the value of mercy.

So, I just got back from the dentist. Round 3 of 3 in my biweekly festival of pain to install a bridge for a tooth that’s been missing for about five years. I thought this was going to be a 20-minute trip. I’ve had crowns before. That’s a quick fix. A little jabbing. A little fitting. Done. They replace the temporary with the permanent and you leave. Right?

Evidently not. The fun starts when they remove the temporary. At this point, whenever the bridge is out the cold air from the office entering my mouth causes the exposed gums to hurt. A lot. Like a nerve pain, but all the nerves at once.

Then the guy jams the permanent in, which at first was literally like fitting a square peg in a round hole. I mean he really had to jam it in with force. Guess what? It was pretty fucking tight. Like too big to fit.

Pull it out (insert pain from aforementioned cold air here), shave it down and shove it in again. Oh yeah, I should mention that every time he pulls it out to shave it down, he cleans it with blasting cold air, so it’s a really cold piece of whatever being shoved on my gums. Imagine shoving a rod full of blasting freon into a bullet wound.

I bite down on it, and I see stars. Pull it out. Shave it down. Shove it in. Stars. Repeat about 15 times. I’m not exaggerating. Every time is a little better, about as much as missing the first minute of a Barbara Streisand movie is better than watching the whole thing.

Then he says he’s going to get the Dentist. He comes in. Nice guy. Seems to have a better grasp on the painlessness thing is, God forbid, so he makes me bite down on a fucking stick, and I just about clocked him.

Jerks the thing out, puts some kind of unfathomable pain inflicting adhesive on it, and shoves it back in for good, I assume in the hopes that this will cause permanent pain, because that’s what it feels like.

His duty done, I’m stuck again with his assistant, who I assume is named Igor. Igor shows me some thick blue floss and asks me if I’ve ever flossed with it before. I haven’t, so he hands me a mirror and shows me how to do it. He sticks the floss point end in at the bottom corner of my teeth. That doesn’t seem so bad. He threads it through and pulls it. Piece of cake. Until I realize the blue floss is attached to a fucking rope. When he yanks the rope halfway through, he then pulls back on both sides underneath the tooth. Now it’s bleeding. But he apparently doesn’t think this is working. So he threads the other side of the tooth and pulls on it until the rope goes completely underneath the tooth from one side to the other. This is when I realize that the bridge is called a bridge because there ain’t nothin' underneath it, except a fucking piñata of pain.

When I regain consciousness, I ask, “How many times do I have to do that?”

“Twice a day,” Igor says.

“FOR HOW LONG?!”

“A week. Have you been rinsing with warm salt water?”

“Uh… no, not since no one told me to.”

“If you did, that would heal faster and it wouldn’t hurt as much. Rinse with warm salt water twice a day for a couple weeks.”

“Thanks for the scoop.”

I get sent out to the front desk, where the ex-cafeteria lady makes me take a seat so she can do my paper work, which I think is odd. Despite all the other fun I need to do to my mouth, this chapter is done as far as I’m concerned. There’s no paper work. This was paid for a month ago, I’m ready to leave, and I really don’t feel like coming back for more torture if I can put it off for a couple months.

The ex-cafeteria lady tells me she’s ready, then tells me to wait in a different spot, then tells me to come around the other side of the desk again, so she can explain that some twunt at my “insurance” company – no doubt a mastermind of this con – has just now realized there is a little known “clause” that any tooth that was extracted under a different “insurance” company isn’t covered. So on top of the $900+ I’ve already paid, my “insurance” company thinks I should pay the other $700 they originally said they were going to pay.

It’s turned into a bad joke. I’m still throbbing sore at this point, the Dentist won’t so much as give me an aspirin, and now my “insurance” company doesn’t want to pay for any of this. Because in this day and age, I’m apparently a fool for having the tooth extracted under a different “insurance” company. That’s quite a handy little clause, especially considering that the odds of your employer keeping the same “insurance” carrier year-to-year are comparable to winning the Powerball lottery.

Ex-cafeteria lady writes down the “insurance” carrier’s name, etc. on an envelope. You’d think for the thousands of dollars I’d given them over the years, they could buy a notepad, but I digress.

Thanks to red tape, the twunt hasn’t actually processed the claim yet, so ex-cafeteria lady doesn’t expect $700 on the spot. Ex-cafeteria lady asks when I’d like to come in next. I explain that I’d like to talk to the twunt first before I make any commitments. Fortunately, she doesn’t give me a hard time and lets me walk, though that’s probably more fortunate for her sake than mine.

I wish I had some witty punch line, or moral, or even a finale to this. But I don’t. That’s it. That was my trip to the Dentist, Meister of Sadism.

Tomorrow: prs calls the twunt to discuss clauses.

Go to the dentist yesterday. Spend 25 minutes in the waiting room, filling out a form where I am asked: what is your purpose for visiting and where I write, “broken molar.”

Go into a typical dental torture chamber and sit in chair that is far less comfortable than it looks. Sweat for 10 minutes.

Asst comes in. “What are you here for?”

“A broken molar,” I say.

“Which one?”

“Top, right, far back.”

We’ll need to take an x-ray. 5 minutes later she shoves a large piece of plastic in my mouth and throws a heavy sanitary apron on top of me.

Sweat 10 minutes.

Asst reenters and sticks x-rays in a light right in front of me so I can stare at a picture of my broken molar for the next 20 minutes. Have I mentioned I have serious issues with all things dental?

Doc enters. “What are you here for?”

“A broken molar,” I say, staring at my x-ray which he does not look at.

“Which one?”

“Top, right, far back.”

Doc sticks a mirror in my mouth. “You have a broken molar.”

“Really?”

“Yep. You’ll need a root canal and a cap.”

“Thank God. I thought this was going to suck.”

“Yeah. If you want, we have an endodontist on site on Mondays. You can come in then and I can do the cap prep right after that.”

To his credit, the dentist actually seemed cool. He didn’t give me any lip for not coming into the office in three years. Then he split.

15 minutes later the asst comes in and tells me what the cost will be for the whole thing. Then she gave me a prescription for penicillin, because apparently my mouth has the clap.

Good news is my insurance works. I apparently don’t have a waiting period. The visit for one official mirror look cost me nothing. Likewise, the penicillin was also no cost (thanks to different insurance).

The suck is now waiting until Monday and hoping I don’t wake up in screeching pain with what is apparently a broken molar that needs a root canal.

250pm - Call Dentist. See if they got the fax. Put me on hold.

255pm - They got the fax.
Person at Dentist Office I talked to on Friday when I cancelled my first appt.: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don’t see anything here about a waiting period.
Me Yeah? That might explain why every person I’ve talked to said I don’t have one.
DO There’s a number here to contact them. Want me to call them?
Me Sure. Why not?
DO Okay, I’ll call you back.

310 pm
DO You don’t have a waiting period.
Me Is that right?
DO Did you want to come in?
Me …
Me …
Me Sure.
DO Did you have an appointment?
Me Um. No. I’ve been kind of waiting to resolve this first.
DO Were you just coming in for a routine checkup?
Me No. I have a broken molar.
DO Do you want to come in tomorrow at 9?
Me Love to.
DO Okay, I’ll put you down at 9 for Dr. [some person I’ve never heard of]
Me Should I come in earlier to fill out any paperwork?
DO Oh. Yes.
Me How early? 8:30?
DO Yes. 8:30.
Me These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
DO These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.

So I'm allegedly going to have a stranger drill into my head tomorrow morning. If I'm lucky.

It’s official. I have that Friday Feeling.

I should explain. Americans say “Thank God it’s Friday,” or “TGIF” if you’re really corporate, or “Is it beer o'clock yet?” or “Fuck this, tomorrow’s Saturday, I’m hiding behind something until 5.”

Norwegians say they “have that Friday Feeling.”

I found this out from working with Norwegians. One of them particularly would say this. “I have that Friday feeling.” He was very earnest about it. We would just laugh and laugh. I guess it loses something in the translation, but to us, it always sounded really gay. Not gay like: “Antwan just told me he likes to lick sphincter, I think he’s gay.” More 80s gay, like: “I can’t believe you’re wearing parachute pants. That’s so gay.” (Though I suppose if Antwan wore parachute pants, that’d be double gay, or übergay, or gay to the max.)

Coincidentally, the Norwegian who use to say he had the Friday feeling really was gay, but not 80s gay, though I don’t know if he licked sphincter. I don’t analyze gay enough to need to know that, but I digress.

My point is – as both gay and straight Norwegians would say – I have that Friday feeling.

Maybe it’s the weather. This has been our week of spring. The weather is gorgeous, breezy, just right for sitting in a field and drinking really good Belgian beer. Even when it hits 80, it’s a dry 80 – the kind you spend most of your days dreaming about in Tampa.

Or maybe it’s the dusty document I’m pouring over, trying to remove the irrelevant parts from the desperately dated parts. The whole thing’s practically useless, and it’s all about some policy or some such blah blah.

Blah.

Or maybe it’s just that Friday feeling, and I want to get the fuck out of here and do just about anything that doesn’t invoke responsibility and/or being here. Hell, I’ll even do something semi-responsible, if I can do it at home or from a pub.

Today is the kind of day that justifies why there should be outdoor bowling alleys.

I got back from DC the other day. For those out of the loop, I went to Washington DC for a weekend. Now I'm back.

It was a good trip. E. had never really been for more than three hours before, so to say she got a comprehensive tour would be an understatement. I've included a list of the sights; not a bad list considering almost all of it was in a span of three days. The list is really for my own journaling as much as anything, but if you're interested, I've included links with a little more detail for some of the not-so-obvious stuff.

Iwo Jima Memorial
Thomas Jefferson Memorial
Library of Congress
Hirshhorn Gallery specifically for the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit
National Gallery & Sculpture Garden
Vietnam Memorial
Lincoln Memorial
Korean War Memorial
WWII Memorial
Einstein Memorial
Kennedy Center
National Cathedral
Union Station
Phillips Collection - (specifically went for this exhibit: Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870–1910)
The lobby of the Cannon Club
American History Museum

A week later than I planned, but I'm back. So, if you've been sending me mails, lj responses, leaving voicemails, etc., I'm just now getting around to some of them. No promises on response.

I'm still in a bit of a haze. My concepts of date, time, etc. are completely random and screwed. I'm still trying to figure out what I was doing before Halloween, so I have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing or concerned about now. I think I'm going to a football game today. Is it Sunday? Are we still on daylight saving time? Who am I?

Hope y'all are swell.

... it pours, and there's a lot of wind and shit that uproots trees and throws them all over my Mom's house in Fort Lauderdale.

Less than 24 hours after my return to Tampa, I get a call from my Dad. My Mom's house - formerly my Grandma's - has a lovely collection of trees and plants. The mango tree, for instance, is on the neighbor's roof. The macadamia nut tree is on our roof. The loquat tree is bent over something or other. There's another tree halfway in the canal. There's glass in the house. The big awning over the back yard is in the pool. Some wall needs to be painted, and I don't know why.

The tenants moved out a couple months ago, and the house is on the market. My Dad's the only one down there. And there are no chainsaws to be bought in the area. See where this is going?

So I'm flying down there tonight. My bags - with dirty laundry - are still packed with fall/winter clothes by my desk.

I'm supposed to be job hunting and doing laundry right now. Instead, I'm shopping for a chainsaw that I'll be checking on a plane. At least I'll be properly armed for South Florida.

Hopefully I'll be back by Sunday. And then - God willing - this month will improve.

Hey kids. You may have noticed I fell off planet LiveJournal (among other planetary bodies) about a month and a half ago. At this point, you may have a few personal questions, so instead of a proper journal, I’m just going to field what I imagine your questions may be.

( The detailed answers )

The short answer:

Since I like to claim that one of the reasons I have a livejournal is to keep people not in my frequent and immediate circle abreast of what I’m up to, and since I’m drinking coffee at midnight, I suppose I should do one of these little updates.

…

…

(Sorry, I was thinking of breasts.)

Oh yeah, so the latest. Um, the latest is nothing. And everything. I’ll preface this now by saying that if it’s not included in this update (e.g. love life, my New Year’s resolution to learn voodoo, etc.) it doesn’t exist, hence no update on that subject.

Currently, I’m simultaneously rehearsing ( for this )

( for this )

and ( for this )

That’s the gist of it. I show up, someone tells me which script I’m performing that day, I pretend to know what I’m doing, I go home, and I wonder where my day went.

Also, I’ve been periodically bouncing Kitefliers stuff back and forth with trufflesfl, and I’ve been bouncing a new creative project back and forth with some other kids. The latter is so conceptual and new, that’s it’s too new to even bring up.

That’s about it. To the outside perspective, it looks like I’ve got nothing but one creative project after another going, which now that I think about it, I suppose I do. I dunno. It’s a forest and the trees sort of thing. It goes back to something Dave Foley said: you go through so much shit in this business that by the time something great happens, it just seems normal and unimpressive.

The good news is that everything is going pretty well. Girl’s Guide was the least of my concerns, because I’m not a third of the show. Ironically, this appears to be the one that’s changing the most. If someone told me this would happen, I would not have recommended it. It’s not usually a good idea on paper to fuck with a sauce that did so well a year ago that we had to add shows. However, we all seem to have a great perspective on this show, and we’re all coming up with ways to make it even better than it was the first time. The trick now is retraining all of the muscle memory for what I used to do. The added benefit is that it feels fresher, cleaner, tighter and more fun to own this newer work than to simply reclaim what we embedded into our heads last January. And for those of you who saw the first Girl’s Guide, you may now have a chance to see a revised, enhanced, and improved version.

One more note on Girl's Guide. For those who don't know, it's also touring to Fort Lauderdale, so I'll be down there for a weekend in April.

In music, I’m still digging Hooverphonic’s Blue Powder Wonder Milk, as well as The Beta Band’s The Three E.P.s, Turin Brakes’ The Optimist LP, and Super Furry Animals’ Rings Around the World (which I’m convinced McCartney does backup for “No Sympathy” and maybe “It’s Not the End of the World” and “Presidential Suite”.) There are other albums in my queue, but those are the ones I keep going back to. Also, just for kicks (and partially because of a conversation I had with broadwater) I just dumped two Hendrix albums and a Steppenwolf greatest hits album into the pc. It shakes shit up and brings me back to some very early roots.

Seen a few movies, too. I think I’ve officially reached the threshold of annoying the hell out of everyone I know with Dodgeball. It was just much better than I thought it would be. Sideways was okay – not worth the hype, but well done. I also had a weird perspective when I watched that movie, so it’s likely better than I think it is.

One last thing while I’m on the film subject. If you’re reading this, you – yes, you – should check out 1 Giant Leap. broadwater and littledorrit recommended this to me awhile ago. I Netflixed it and had it for about two months because I just didn’t want to part with it. I can’t recommend it for one specific reason. I can’t even explain it any better than saying it’s kind of the next logical step from Baraka, but better than that. Among very cool music, it features interviews with groovy people, including Dennis Hopper, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tom Robbins. Like I said, if you’re reading this, I promise you’ll find something redeemable and cool in this movie. Everyone will find something different to like in it, but trust me: rent it. At the very least, it’s a very nice break from anything you’ve been watching lately. Don’t think about it. Just get it.