Showing posts with label frustration. Show all posts

On occasion (when my boss hates me), I have to drive to a few workshops or other informational seminars regarding some of the "stuff" I have to handle. Lots of regulations, policies, and procedures to remember and they feel that sometimes it's a good idea to have a refresher or two. I don't have a problem with the concept.

My problem starts when they inform me that I will travel a few hours for a class that is only a few hours. It's counterproductive in my opinion. I found out that my opinion doesn't matter all that much, so off I went. It was a shorter trip than some as I was only expected to travel up to the Stockton area which is only about 3 hours from where I work. No problem thinks me, I can get there, get er' done and get back by the end of the actual work day. I forgot to factor one thing in my equation that would have told me how long it would take.....The other driver.

We have all had our fair share of bad drivers I'm sure. Too slow, too fast, texting, talking on the phone. I have great luck in that I encountered all of these on the way. There were a few more as well. One bright guy was reading his newspaper that was sitting on his passenger seat as he drove 55 mph in the fast lane. A woman was putting on some form of makeup around her eyes or on her eyes or eyelashes, I couldn't really tell which since she went flying by me at about 85 mph and not more than 5 minutes later I was passing her because she was now doing about 50 mph.

I got to the point that I figured it was my duty as a good citizen to make these people aware of their thoughtless ways. I made a point of honking at every driver who was text messaging while driving. I honked at every driver who was talking on their phone. I honked at one guy who was taking a leak on the side of the highway...ON THE SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY in mid morning traffic...Are you serious??

I started to realize that maybe those 5 cups of coffee might be adding to my frustration, so I stopped at Starbucks for a 6th. I was back on the road and ready to face them all. By the time I reached my destination, I'm quite sure my battery was losing a charge from all the honking I did. I'm also sure that my finger was cramping from all the people I gave the #1 sign to.

My glorious trip was made complete by the fact that our meeting took exactly 25 minutes less than my drive to this place. Now that is some time management. I made sure that I called my boss on the way back (I use blue ant) and told him what a wonderful guy he is, and what a command management decision he made in having me "refresh my memory" on this particular subject.

So to hell with caution when you are buying, because we are all broke anyway. Be far more nervous when you are driving. I think that they need to take all these furloughed DMV people we have here in California and maybe have them give a workshop on how to friggin drive on the highway. They can get their Friday workday back and maybe just maybe one or two of these less than enlightened individuals will get a clue!

The only other option I have come up with is purchasing a tank with a working turret. Now let's see you cut me off while you are text messaging your girlfriend you snot nosed brat!

I have to do a fair amount of traveling for work. In any given day I drive an average of 150 miles. I am thankful that it is almost always away from the freeway. As I work for an agricultural firm (yeah we are killing the planet) I am usually held to the country roads, and one minor highway that leads the back way to Southern California. I'm in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley in Central California, and for those of you that aren't familiar with the area, it used to be flourishing with farming.

There was cotton, grapes, almonds, pistachios, lettuce, onions, garlic...Well you get the picture. Pretty much everything grows here. The soil is a miracle of nature in the Central Valley. It reminds me of those Sea Monkies from when I was a kid. Just Add Water..... That's pretty much the equation around here, just add water. Unfortunately the powers that be, aren't letting us have the water we need, so that is causing thousands of acres of fallow land. Bankrupt farming operations, unemployed communities. Well you get the picture. That is not what my biggest problem is right now though.

As I stated, I drive a fair amount daily, and I thought to myself that it wouldn't be that bad, cause after all this is in the country. There won't be all those annoying freeway commuters, in a hurry one minute and eating a donut and talking on the phone the next. This will be a calm relaxing drive to and from work, and back and forth to different locations during the day should be just as enjoyable right???

Well.....No wrong. It's a nightmare of stupidity out here on the country roads of California. People don't pay attention to where they are going, they don't pay attention to how fast they are going. Worst of all they don't pay attention to their surroundings. They are usually too busy talking on their flippin cell phones. Even better is when I see them still using those God awful CB radios. Come on people get into the 21st century. these are not a reliable means of communication.

I don't generally use the phone at all in my pickup. I will pull over if I talk. I take the whole thing about not driving and talking on the phone semi-seriously (I don't really like blue-tooth technology). I will finish my conversation and then I can just jump back on the road and get about business. You would think that is simple enough for most people to handle. After all it's not like they are flying down the road. Most of the time, these "farm workers" are either going 10 or 15 mph below the speed limit. I say farm workers because I don't know most of the time if they are the owners of the farm or just a hired hand, so I prefer to lump them all into one big category. That category is basically the annoyances. These are people that drive too slow and swerve on the road cause they don't pay attention to what they are doing while driving.

The other side of the spectrum is the Andretti's of the world. These are the people that drive 15-20 mph OVER the speed limit. These are people that don't generally drive out here in the sticks. They are driving in their BMW/Mercedes SUV or some biofuel crackerbox (no prius out here). They zoom up and down my roads (that's right they are mine Mon-Fri). Don't exclude our state's finest CHP officers. They love to exceed the speed limit, and then have the nerve to pull me over for not making a complete stop at a stop sign in a town of 70 people. BRILLIANT!!!

I have decided to take my bosses advice and do more work from home here on my faithful computer. I can avoid all the hustle and bustle of the country driving (never thought I'd say hustle and bustle with country). The only problem I can find with this scenario is no more donuts for breakfast, no more Mcdonalds for breakfast, and most of all no more BJ's Country Kitchen for breakfast (they have the best biscuits and gravy on the planet). If I can find a way to survive without these oh so necessary evils, I think that I"m gonna be a homebody a lot more often.

OK, so I'm a bit of a sports fan. I played sports when I was a kid. For that matter, I played them as an adult, until about 3 years ago when I realized that I had lost more than a step. I had a hard time giving up baseball (and softball), it was such a part of my life and watching is just not the same as playing.

Since I'm sorta on the sidelines nowadays, I get to relive my youth by watching my nephew play baseball. Now Ryan is a great fielder. In the 10 years I've watched him play I can only recall 3 errors that he has made in the field. Batting is not so strong for him, but he still manages fairly well, and is a starter on the high school team as a second baseman.

So this time of year we have what's called Fall Ball (duh it's fall). There is no score in these games except that every parent and every coach keeps score. So it's not officially scored, but trust me people pay attention to it. It's supposed to just be a sorta practice session for all the high school teams to prepare for the regular baseball season. Some of the kids don't take it serious, but for the most part the kids seem to play it like it's a scrimmage and they hustle and try their best.

Unfortunately for us there are very few good umpires at the High School level. There are even fewer good umpires in Fall Ball. In fact there has been one game that I was happy with the umpires so far in Fall Ball. I sorta figured that this was practice for the umps as well as the players. So I try not to be too critical, but I'm a big baseball fan, so it's hard not to scream at blue when he makes a bad call (blue is the umpire for you non fans).

So bring us to the game this afternoon. We are playing at our home field, and while there isn't too much of an advantage at this level for home field (since all umps suck). The advantage lies in the fact that I don't have to drive out of town to watch Ryan play. The game is pretty nip and tuck, very close most of the time.

Unfortunately for us, the umpire behind the plate is the epitome of what is wrong with high school umpires....inconsistent. The guy can't decide where the strike zone is. The kids don't seem to be getting overly upset with him, although there were a few times that I thought they were gonna argue with this blind schmuck.

I figured that since we had such a load of crapola behind the plate at ump, maybe we would make up for it with our field umpire. Usually you don't get stuck with two total morons in the same game. Well I guess today was just our lucky day. The guy in the field couldn't make the same call twice if his life depended on it, and the guy behind the plate just deserved all of the not so pleasant thoughts I was sending to him. I considered the Jedi mind trick, because I remember obi-wan saying that it worked on the feeble minded and this guy was if nothing else feeble minded. Reminded me of Tom Cullen from The Stand. If you have never seen or read The Stand, I suggest you check it out, just so you can get a better understanding of how terrible this guy was.

So we got 4 innings of bad calls, from the field and behind the plate. I noticed that the kids stopped caring all that much, but the coaches and parents (and uncles) seemed to be pretty unsettled. Thankfully, the game was called after a 2 hour time limit (the only good thing about Fall Ball). My nephew went 0 for 2 with an RBI and a walk. So I wasn't too terribly upset. I always feel bad for him if he doesn't hit well (silly since the kid is 17).

I have come to the conclusion that if all the umpires are going to be this bad, then I'm absolutely glad that it's still football season. I would rather complain about bad refs compared to bad umps.

I'm a little ticked off. I had to get tires put on my truck today. I figured that it would take a couple of hours, so no problem. I had plenty of work to do in the area. So I drop the truck off and sure enough he tells me, "No problem it'll only take a couple hours." I'm thinkin' this is pretty good. I can finish up my paperwork at my office, get the truck and run to the next site and finish up all my paperwork and be home by 5:00. Sounded really good in my head, but unfortunately..............

The tires were the first problem. They didn't get finished with my truck for about 4 1/2 hours. So that alone threw off my whole getting home by 5 idea. Then I ended up fielding phone calls more than completing paperwork. Now I'm figuring maybe 6:00. So I finally get my paperwork done at office #1 and I rush to office #2 thinking "I can still do this." It's only 3:00, I can rush through and get out of the office by 5:00 and that means home by 6:00. Oops another rush of phone calls. I always wondered why these guys never want to know about the possible side effects of pesticide inhalation on Wednesday at 11:00? Why does it always have to be when I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off? So I finally get the answers they need to the people that need them and set off at mach 10 to finish up this pile of ....paperwork.

By 5:00, it's painfully obvious that I'm not anywhere close to being done, and I get to bring this stuff home. But I still figure it's not that bad I can be done in a couple hours and everything will be A-OK. Raining cats and dogs, so it takes about 1 1/2 hours to get home (a lot of people don't really know how to drive in the rain apparently). Get my kids and we realize that we have to go get some Dog House repair materials (small leak in the house.)

So finally, I sit down and get started only to realize that I didn't bring home all the information I needed to complete all of this boring safety material that I have to present tomorrow in a meeting. So now I'm fishing through the Internet for the information I need, and it's coming along at a really quick snail's pace. Low and behold I finished at about 11:55. Which is not too bad, except I realized that I have to be up in about 4 1/2 hours. Did I mention I suffer from insomnia...Yeah my day is now complete. I have 3 1/2 hours till I have to get up, I have no coffee (well I have coffee, but it's not the good coffee), and I'm going to present a safety meeting to 58 people, and about 50 of them don't understand English all that well (can you say hand signals and drawings).

Wow....I feel much better now that I have just unloaded all that on any poor unsuspecting reader that happened by. Now I can concentrate on the fact that, I am actually feeling pretty good, my kids are getting over their school induced cold. My wife is still getting almost 40 hours at her job (makes for much nicer weekends). And I am gonna have a really good lunch tomorrow.

Of course I am buying for everyone, because they always sucker me into lunch on meeting day...

1:30 in the morning and yet here I am, no closer to sleep than I was at 1:30 this afternoon. I'm the lucky owner of insomnia. Sometimes a curse but sometimes a gift.

I haven't always had it. Growing up I was always quite capable of falling asleep (sometimes right in the middle of class :P ). About 10 years ago I was afflicted with a "condition" called Guillain-Barre Syndrome. For those of you that are into medical terminology it's Idiopathic demyelinating poly neuritis. It's autoimmune, so basically my body thought it was fighting an invading body, but in reality it was attacking the myelin sheath around my own nerves. It causes a severe slowdown in nerve conductivity. No big deal you might think. The problem with that is you get severe weakness in the arms and legs, and you get as clumsy as the corner wino. If you are really lucky (as I was) you will also get a Bells Palsy. So I basically was walking around like an 85 year old man who had suffered from a stroke.

Another of these wonderful side effects is insomnia. They don't know why, but it's extremely common in people that are afflicted with this condition. Now the cure for this wonderful little experience is something called plasmapherisis which is basically pulling the blood out of your body(via a central line through the carotid artery) where it is then put through a centrifuge and separates the blood cells from the plasma. The blood cells are introduced to new plasma and reinstated in your body. If that sounds uncomfortable. It is most definitely uncomfortable. I sat through 5 of those procedures, I every other day.

But after about 6 months I was considered cured. They test you for this condition by a lumbar (spinal tap). Fortunately they only do nerve conductivity tests to gauge your recovery. I will take the little shocks from the conductivity tests over a lumbar any day of the week.

So I was given a clean bill of health and told not to worry about it, that this is random so my chances of getting it again are about 1 in 200,000. Guess what the doctors don't know enough about how this works to say that. I get relapses on a regular basis (nothing as bad as the original thankfully). Unfortunately one of those symptoms that I get (along with the numb fingers and toes) is insomnia.

Well the curse side of insomnia is that in my former employment, I was forced to get up rather early on a regular basis. It wasn't uncommon to have to go to work at 5:00 am till 3:30 or 5:00 pm. Not a problem if you can get to sleep at some sort of a decent hour. It really sucks though when you don't get to sleep till 2:30 and then have to get up at 4:00. Do that for a couple weeks and you start to see things (no really).

Now the gift side of this, is that I have tons of time to indulge in my favorite books, or in the past my favorite video games (Guild wars). I could read an extra 3 or 4 books a month with that extra time. It also didn't hurt when I was writing my short stories. It's amazing what kind of weird sick crap you can come up with when you haven't slept more than 3 hours in a week.

It's like tweaking without paying for it. I've tried relaxation exercises, drinking, sex, you name it. Nothing allowed me to sleep. So I decided what the hell, I'm just gonna go with the flow and accept that it's part of my life and enjoy the ride.

So if you get a few really off the wall rants on my blog, just remember this post. It's bound to happen, and sometimes I'm told that the BS I spew while in a "mood" is highly entertaining.
Who knows one of these times I might even get up the nerve to put one or two of those short stories on here for some critique.

We have had some of the worst luck when it comes to housing... Landlords that bought a home for an investment, when they evidently didn't understand that paying the mortgage is the way to keep the house. So we have been forced to move twice in a three year span.

first of all the property management company we dealt with really sucks. They are as inefficient as it gets. They may as well work for the Govt. It doesn't get any worse than that.

Then of course there is the move. So every little thing we buy seems to end up in the garage. Now i have a garage full of garbage and the decision to make is, keep it or trash it. Well after taking about 7 truck loads to the new house, I decided that trashing alot of it is just fine with me.

The rest of the family wasn't so happy with my decision. They evidently liked alot of that stuff that was stored in the garage. Even though they hadn't touched it in 2 years. I normally get run over in my house, but on this occasion I was able to win the battle (while I'm sure I'll still lose the war).

So now we have boxes of "stuff" everywhere. Marked boxes, unmarked boxes, bags, you name it. It's laying around the new house scattered through rooms waiting to be put in the proper shelf or in the proper drawer. The only problem is that I don't know which shelf and which drawer most of this stuff goes in. (That goes back to the whole normally run over in my house thing.)

So I'm sure that over the next 3 or 4 weeks, my wife will explain to me where I need to put this item or that and which shelf needs to be hung up where. But in the meantime, I get to work at 7 am and rush through the work day, only to come home and lift heavy items and load them in the truck for the move that is finally ending tomorrow.

Now all that's left is some general cleanup at the old house, and moving a few items that are still there (pet turtle and a couple dogs). The next step will be the fixing up of this house. But that's for another day, and for another post.