B365V3.54 - Unvolunteered

Lots if things on ye olde cranium, let's see if we can unpack some of it shall we?

So I woke up a couple of Sundays ago (obviously, otherwise I would not be typing this now) and being Sunday morning I clicked on the TV and a show came on.  The show was about business in the region, I am sure it is on solely for the station to meet the station's community affairs programming requirement.  Usually this is a show that I pay no mind to, but this particular Sunday I did, as the guest was the head of Yellow Cab, which Pittsburgh's version makes it the third oldest cab company in the United States.  They were talking about a new addition to the cab fleet, Z Cars.  Unlike Yellow Cabs, these cars are painted gray and rumor has it you can either call for one, hail one from the street or use an app to order one.  I say rumor has it because I have not taken a cab in many a year, so I am going on the word of the Yellow Cab president here.

During the interview he said Yellow Cab was losing business to Uber and Lyft, because both companies have new fangled apps that people can use in order to get a ride somewhere.  This is the point where, if I were in the studio, I would have said shut the hell up.  While an app makes getting a ride easy, most people that have the app have it installed on a phone.  With a phone in one's hand, how hard is it to call for a ride versus use an app?  I would argue the requisite effort required to navigate an app rather than press 7, 10, or 11 keys and call someone is negligible.   I would argue Yellow Cab's biggest problem and the main reason they were losing market share was the extraordinary numbers of times people have called for a cab and the cab arrived late or not at all.  It was a big enough problem than many cabbies carried around business cards and gave them out to customers in an almost underground cabbie network, to avoid dispatching from the main office altogether.  That mister President, was why you were losing market share, not because of some new fangled app, but rather execution of your main function.

So as I was at work on Thursday I managed to unvolunteer myself from something.  Long time readers of the blog may recall a fire that happened in the trailer park (yes, I am trailer park people, just deal with it) that my mom and her husband currently reside in.  The fire was across the street from their place, if I remember correctly, something in the kitchen exploded and the fire consumed everything, including the life of a young girl.  During the course of fighting the fire, the fire department sprayed down neighboring trailers in and effort to keep the fire from spreading.   While that plan worked at containing the fire, their trailer did sustain some damage, the heat from the fire distorted some of the metal in the front, and spraying down the trailer revealed a leak in the ceiling.  My mother's husband claimed they called their insurance company to look at the damage, a claim I find more dubious the longer I think about it, and the insurance company eventually put plastic over the leak in the roof as a temporary solution.  And then nothing happened, for months literally.  That year I remember it was a particularly rainy June, like it rained off and on for a week or more straight.  The plastic solution was not much of one, as rain got underneath the plastic and got into the ceiling and then into the walls and finally even warping part of the floor.  At this point I was asked if I could come home, to rip out carpeting so the floor could be fixed and ultimately new carpeting put in.  At this point I asked the fundamental and reasonable question, why didn't they get estimates and turn those over to the insurance company and have this fixed already, as opposed to waiting months and having the damage get substantially worse.  Nonetheless, I made the trek home and helped tear out carpeting, which was more than that because they hadn't even removed the furniture from the room in question, despite the fact no one in the house works, so it isn't like they didn't have time.

Now lets fast forward to better than a year later, to this Thursday.  I get a message while I am at work, I have to come home this Monday to install the new carpet.  Let's table the fact we are better than a year and a half past when the fire occurred, or better than a year past when I went home to help the first time, the idea that I can just drop everything at a moment's notice and rush home for a nonemergency is what pissed me off.  I have shit to do on Mondays, including getting two trucks in that day, placing a grocery order,  and as tack ons this Monday I have one person on vacation, I have tax increases on all snuff and vapor products (thank you Gov. Wolfe for that bullshit btw) that I need to reprogram the registers for and I have weekend paperwork to deal with.  Needless to say, I put the kibosh on this nonsense before it garnered any momentum.  Mind you my mother's husband is just a couple years older than me, heck if my brother were still alive he would be younger than my brother, and while my mother's health is suspect at best, to sit around for 2+ years without working and not get shit done is beyond me.  Further beyond me is to then expect me to drop everything in order to help get shit done that should have been done eons ago.

Before I get myself angry on my day off, I should note both my fantasy teams lost last week.  I note this only because I had noted the previous two weeks where they won so.....

I have been pricing my return trip to Vancouver.  I figure if I absolutely kill myself over one pay period I could make enough money to pay for it in a two week span.  Or I could ask to be paid for my vacation early, like I did last time and pay it off in January.  Well not pay it off but pay for the airplane tix and the hotel, then worry about spending cash leading up to the actual vacation.  Prices for me look to range between $800 and $2000, depending if I want to stay in a flea bag joint or away from downtown, or if I want to upscale the classiness of the vacation and stay in a more reputable joint downtown.  I most likely will do the latter, it worked so well for me last time, though some amenities I can live without.  Like the continental breakfast, I am sure I will be Tim Horton-ing most days so breakfast is not an issue.  Other meals will be an assortment of what I can have/make in my room and eating out.  It is vacation after all, the less cooking I do the better.   Last time though I did make a trip to the local IGA (a downtown grocery store, imagine that Pittsburgh) and stock my mini fridge with some items.   Plus I do have two dinners already planned, one at Storm Crow Alehouse and one at EXP bar.  Both are role playing themed type bars (another idea for Pittsburgh) and I already have lots of ideas on things I want to do there, things the weather prevented me from doing last time, like go to the beach.  Swimming in the ocean isn't recommended in March after all, this trip will be in June over my birthday, so you all will have an extra week to shop for cards and presents as I will be away.

That got some shit off of ye olde cranium and took up most of my breakfast foray so I will stop now.

B365V3.53 - Smithfield Mystery Theater

     I needed the absurdity of today, or at least the absurdity my mind created out of it.   First, I overslept, but Brian had told me the other day he wasn't coming in on Wednesday or Thursday, so all is good I figure, I get things done faster without him so I will still be in good shape the rest of the day.  Except when I get there Brian is in the office, still he didn't slow me up too much.

     The absurdity hit right when I went out for my first cigarette of the day, as laying there on the sidewalk was a gummy penis.  Yes we have photographic evidence as seen here

     While the product is odd in and of itself, it isn't surprising, given we are located underneath a porn shop and they do have some odd items up there, like candy cock rings, so bags of gummy penises (scientific plural, penii or penae?) are not beyond the realm of possibility.  My mind went to that place though where as soon as they got out of the porn shop someone had to think they had to get some gummy penis in their mouth.  No waiting on this delicacy apparently.   But they were clumsy with their new found edible genitalia, as now on the sidewalk beside my feet was a candy cock.  This instantly got filed in my brain as blog worthy, after all it isn't everyday you see a gummy penis.  Not that they are as rare as bald eagles mind you, but I have seen a bald eagle before, gummy penae, not so much.

      A little later I went back outside to check on the gummy penis, because it was raining and I thought it might have washed away, but just like a kid who frets over a caterpillar I needn't have worried, the gummy penis was still there.  I even pointed out to a coworker who didn't believe it was out there.  Having delivered the shock and awe to my coworker, I finished my cigarette and went back inside, safe in the knowledge nothing would happen to the gummy penis for the rest of the day.  I went back to the office and finished my paperwork and got the deposits ready for the bank.
    
      I collect everything and get ready to go to the bank.  I step outside and look and the gummy penis is gone.  "The Case of the Missing Penis" as I labeled it.  I looked around in case someone may have kicked it down the sidewalk, or knocked it into the street.  If I would have had crime scene tape I would have roped off the area but I left my crime scene tape at home.  I would have sucked at being a boy scout, I am never prepared.  I wasn't prepared to see a gummy penis today and I wasn't prepared for the gummy penis to disappear like a valuable piece of artwork either.  Sucks to be me I guess.

     But I can't have a crime without a culprit can I?  But since I had no clues and no suspects for that matter, I am just going to go ahead and blame this on Fucking Chicken Lady, because the only thing that would make today more complete than it already was is the image of her standing outside screaming into her phone, "You said you were going to get my gummy penae? Where's my fucking penae?"

B365V3.52 The week that was

I guess I should call this a pretty good week, certainly in fitting with the #itsmyyear hashtag thing I have going on in 2016.  The first bit of good news, albeit bad news that begat good news, was that i got to have lunch with my friend Debbie on Sunday.  The reason for this was the bad news portion of things, her mom was in the ICU at Presby after having a stroke.   I received a message from her around 6:15am on Sunday asking where there is good coffee in Oakland at that hour.  All I could think of that early was McDonald's a place that i do not care to eat at much any more, but their coffee is still better than Starbucks.  Technically I could have said the gas station at the end of my street, but I don't  even get coffee there very often anymore.  ever since Sixx left a few months back, there is just little there to get my heart all pitter pattery.  She said her mom was going in for a CAT scan,we could grab coffee when it was done.  I shot her a message around 11am, they hadn't even done the scan yet, more of that hurry up and wait nonsense hospitals are so good at.  I swear, after retiring from hospital work, those people should go look into a career at the post office.  Another profession which can be timed with a sundial.

I laid around the apartment until around 1pm,then shot a message that I was going to get a coffee and be out for a bit.  I was out and about for maybe 20 minute, just drinking a coffee and walking  when I got a message back to the possibility of grabbing lunch instead.  that was fine, I was half done with my coffee by that point anyway.  So I picked Stack'd or lunch, a relatively newish burger place in Oakland that has really good burgers (take that you frauds at Five Guys).  we each got a burger, I got a double with grilled green pepper and onion, lettuce and tomato with ghost pepper cheese and mustard and an appetizer of macaroni and cheese bites with spicy ranch dipping sauce (sooooo good) and we yammered on as people who have known each other for three decades are prone to do.  I tried to keep my pointless yammering to a minimum and do more of the listening thing since I don't really have compelling issues in my life at this point, certainly no one in the hospital.We spent about an hour together, then I walked her back to Presby where her mom was in the ICU, so no non family members allowed.  Instead we parted company and I walked back down to CVS were I bought some snackage for the evening and a couple of lottery tickets, one of which hit for $100, so go me and all that jazz.  Turns out that would not be the only one this week, I got another $100 winner while working the second half of a double on Monday night and yet another $100 winner at work on Wednesday.  So go me, times three.

Tuesday was payday, which was also nice because I had a couple of extra bucks in my paycheck after working 13 of the 14 days in the pay period and a double amongst those days.  It felt nice to not rob Peter to pay Paul on rent for October, so I cleared that off of my docket a couple of weeks early and paid my phone bill and still had money for a night of drunken boring debauchery (see me debauch some time, it is quite boring).  Usually it consists of me, Yuengling, Fireball whiskey shots and is followed up by eating drunken gyros (me being the drunken, not the gyros).

The fantasy football stuff continues to go well, I am now 2-0 in both leagues i am in, so there is that going for me as well.  On top of all of that goodness, I got my two Amazon orders in this week, I bought a new wireless router and my Verizon model kept dropping out on the wireless portion of the job, forcing me to restart it a number of times a day.  I got me a TP Link modem instead and so far it is working just fine, as I have just enough of a modicum of a skill set to set it up and have it function properly.  I also had to buy a new toaster and mine mysteriously fell off my microwave table the other day and while I was out buying things I also got the newest Spenser book, of which I am about 50 or so pages into.

Finally this week I was at work the other day when I got a message from my friend Hope on Facebook.  Those of you who have been around the blog for more than a minute know that Hope's name has popped up occasionally, I would say almost always in a good fashion.  The most recent blogging occurrence was about two years ago, when I told the story of our trip to the ballet, where I got all fuddy duddied up (meaning I rented a tux) without her knowing but when I went to meet her there was just no comparison, she blew me and my cool threads away.  Well as luck would have it, Hope's message to me was actual photos from that night (her mom took pics, this was back in the days before digital photography kids).  Anyway, apparently Hope was going through some things and sent me pictures from that night.  I found out that I was not suffering from Alzheimers, she really did look way better than I did.  Don't believe me, have a look for yourself, her and I from about 25 years ago.

And that kids is a wrap, no more old photos or storytelling tonight, I have to work in the morning.