A New Chapter in my Life

Entry 03/08/2014 12:27:28 PM – Mentat 690

Going into my third week out of the Valley, I’m finding the need for sitting down to write almost overpowering, and while I feel I will get farther with each failed attempt, I find it frustrating because it’s taking longer to un-knot the residual anger I have there…

Yes, I’ve moved out of the Valley and away from the two douche-bags that have worked me up to a furious frenzy.

Yes, I’ve only moved 3 blocks east of where I was living for a significant amount less monthly rent than the shit-hole that I was living in. And the kicker is, that while I lost 1 room (3 instead of 4), it’s still significantly warmer than the shit-hole I was in — even with a drafty door and 3 drafty out-dated windows currently installed. Of course, it’s about 200 feet from the door of my mother’s place. Not entirely a bad thing particularly given what happened with her (below).

Yes, I have a metric fuck-ton of improvements that need to do be done to the apartment in order to make it appear someplace I live and not simply the holding pattern of someone else’s attempts at making an apartment livable. Yes, there’s pictures of this on my G+ account but I’m too lazy at the moment to link it within my blogs…

I find myself at the moment in better spirits when dealing with practically everyone in the world at large. Partly because I’m not dealing with liars, thieves and users.. Mostly though because in spite of the occasional noise of party-goers leaving Tammany Hall at closing time — this is a surprisingly quiet neighborhood: even with the the fire department heading up the street to the old folks home at the corner of Atwells Ave and the off-ramp/service road parallel to I-95. Not as much police sirens (like running Valley Street), no construction, and no one 20-something bored and making noise as they head to friends or head home.

But there’s still a long way for me to go to being more like the person I was prior to moving into the Valley. Something that I know is going to require not only my ability to sit down and write in my journal more, but to also seek out professional help as well. More of that to come in the near future…

So, what’s been happening between my last journal entry and this entry right now? Quite a lot actually…

When faced with eviction because of the routine non-payment of getting the douche-bag slum-lord of a landlord to work on the properties, at the very moment of fighting and showing him to being the douche that he was, I decided on taking the option out and make an agreement to leave… quietly. On the plus side, I didn’t have to worry about court costs, outstanding rent and what was left to the non-existent and completely used up by the douche-bag security deposit. That left the slum-lord landlord having to foot all of the outstanding costs (somewhere in the vicinity of 2 months rent at $600, remaining security deposit of $100 and some odd, and $1500 for the court and lawyer costs… (Sure it’s not all that much, given the lawyer was a friend of his)…. On the down side… I was left with a lot of pent up and unresolved anger.

Within a week of the court date, and during one of the coldest and mostly frozen parts of the month, while my mother was walking Jack she slipped and fell and broke her hip. So for the next month, my mother spent her time at the hospital and a nursing & rehabilitation home getting used to having to keep her feet up when she’s not relaxing — hobbling about with walker. During the month she was at the hospital and rehab home, I was here watching Jack — her Chocolate Labrador. Fun times with that dog, as he’s more stubborn than I am and in spite of trying to train him with a bit more discipline — continues to have a mind of his own.

My mother got home just over a week ago, hobbling up the stairs as best she can and getting better at it each day. In fact, today (like Wednesday) she went out with her husband to get a haircut and do a bit of shopping in Attleboro. Not sure when she’ll get home, but I’m sure that I’ll be walking the dog before then.

I did the move the third week of the month. Took two days and six trips between the old and new apartments. It went surprisingly well, in spite of the fact that it took me almost three days to get over the aches and pains of the move.

Moe’s doing surprisingly well within the new environment. Other than the usual of him trying to find the smallest place to secrete himself into — underneath the stove around/near the Broiler — he tends to stick around the bed whenever he hears any noises other than me within the house. And of course, the instant he determines that noise isn’t me — under the covers he goes. Heh, such a scaredy cat. And unlike the apartment in the Valley he gets up onto everything… Table, counter-top (where the sink is), pantry cabinet shelf (at least one of them), all the windows and of course he has complete access to the top of the Fridge from one of the windows and the table. Unlike at the apartment in the Valley (where he loved knocking things off of the top), all he seems to like doing when he gets up there is to feel like king of all that he surveys… Funny thing is that everything on the top of the fridge is practically the same between the two apartments… So I can only assume it’s because there’s windows and more light near the fridge.

In the month we’ve had warm enough to have the windows open to colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra… We’ve had snow, slush, sleet and of course a hell of a lot of ice — mostly melted now. Sure there’s still some ice in many places within the neighborhood, but it’s not quite as bad as the first week of February which was when my mother fell down and broke her hip. I think I remember a time afterward that it had been worse; particularly when it came to the amount of sleet/slush that turned to ice.

I also remember for a couple of weeks after the accident that it was truly hellish getting from my mother’s house to my old apartment… Sure, it was only a 10 minute walk but it felt like the longest 10 minutes I’ve ever experienced.

The apartment itself? What a nightmare of a DIY project. The walls are riddled with nail holes, a poor use of stick up hooks that have done more damage to the walls than they should have. The walls are the worst example of sponge painting for walls I have ever seen in my life… The kitchen is blue-white… the office (used to be the den) green-white, the bedroom orange-white… And the bathroom? Brown-white… The worst example of brown too: as it looks shit brown. Not the color one should paint for a bathroom at all… There’s not tile around the bathtub, and instead it would appear that linoleum floor tiles… poor choice for the wall protection given that they did not use any additional glue/sealant for them.

The actual ceramic tiles used around the sink in the kitchen for example don’t have the proper grout between the tiles to make it watertight, making the tiles around the front of the sink to lose cohesion and are pretty much falling off… Hell, the counter-top needs to be fixed, replaced as well.

Three of the windows in the apartment (two in the bedroom, one in the office) need to definitely be replaced as I’ve said before. They’re the really old windows with the side locks on them… Single-paned and no screens or storm windows on the outside either. And rotted out and drafty looking… Along with the door to the apartment itself. Surprisingly even with them looking drafty as they are, the apartment is surprisingly warm even with the heater running at low temperatures..

And I haven’t a clue what happened to any of the 5 blinds that had been in the windows. The slats on the blinds were destroyed in places they shouldn’t have been even for the previous dweller owning a cat. The tilt wands were gone and many of the hooks for the controls gone… The covers for the installation brackets were missing and the only thing holding the blinds themselves in were small screws.. Finally many of the bottom rails were split in two. They were useless even in their state so I had to have them removed. Now I have more then enough curtains for the windows, save one: and that window’s near the sink. Sure I won’t be able to walk to the sink naked (because the neighbor’s across the street will be able to see me… But until such time as I can get blinds, I don’t need to be heading to the sink naked.

Surprisingly, in spite of the mess for the floors being painted and paint-splattered from the walls (and ceilings) being done they’re a lot cleaner than expected. A quick sweeping/vacuuming and a quick mopping and I find my feet to being cleaner than the old apartment in the valley. Sure, they look pretty crappy — but it’s just cosmetic.

Oh yeah, the heater… Smaller space heater than the gas-on-gas portion of the stove at the old apartment and yet at setting 3 on the thermostat for the heater, I can keep the apartment above 66 F (18.8 C). And the best part of it is the fact that the space heater has a thermostat control, which means that the heat doesn’t have to stay on all the time — making it run only when the temperature drops enough to need to re-run. Definitely cheaper than the old gas-on-gas that came with only two settings: On and off.

As for me personally, well I’m not playing as many games as I used to but instead am back to binging on television shows. Sure there’s many of the shows I’ve already seen from beginning to end (Stargate SG-1, Torchwood), and a couple of new ones/continuations… Elementary, Primeval, Ultraman in many of the different versions over the last 40 years… and of course all the movies that have come out since. Some of them good, some of them questionable.. And some? Incredibly bad. The kind of bad that you wish you could get the time spent on them back. Yeah, there were a couple like that. I don’t remember all the movies that I’ve seen in the last three months.. But at least they were entertaining.

Oh and there have been the webseries that I’ve stumbled across. Some I’ve mentioned before (not sure here though): G&T, Husbands…

Well, that’s about it for the time being. I think it’s almost time for dinner here and then it’s a little gaming, trying to watch a little television before I pass out in no time flat. Seems that for the moment my staying up ’til late has flown out the window and barely last until 10 PM.. Put on a little television (albeit YouTube channels) and I’m out by 9’ish max. I’m sure I’ll be able to sleep less come the summer, but until then… I think I’m making up for lost sleep the last 3 months. Off I go.. Until the next time.

Transitions, Changes, and Lurches

Entry 11/20/2011 02:27:47 PM – Mentat 622

“Love flies, runs, and rejoices; it is free and nothing can hold it back.” – Thomas a Kempis

Okay, so it’s Sunday and sunny… Weather outside my window has been warm enough for me to turn off the heat and open up the windows. I was in a pretty damned good mood, given that I had woken up well before the alarm was supposed to go off (and I shut the thing off so I could sleep a bit later than normal. Then it was after a couple of hours of slacking about the room in the comfy clothes — off I went on a tear cleaning up the house — right down to washing the floor. Then after a little time-out/break while I waited for the bus to pick me up so I could head up ½ mile (.8 km) to the laundry on the same road…

Heh, what can I say? I was lazy and not in the mood to schlep about 60 pounds (27.2 kg) of laundry in an Army-issued duffle bag.

Now I’m home chatting a bit online, listening to some music (other than the noise that’s going on across the street at the car wash), and realizing that it’s been more than six weeks since the last time I sat down and wrote a journal entry. Not to mention quite a bit’s happened since the last time I’ve written. So for those of you that like it summed up quickly for the tl;dr mindset:

1. I’ve got (and still have) a job, and
2. I’ve moved to Providence

Now the long of it.

It was the Saturday after the first week of work and I was sitting there with my aunt in the kitchen talking about the insanity of what I was learning on the job (more on that in a few). My uncle saw it as the opportunity to tell me that it was time to move. Didn’t say much of anything else other than that and walked off to ignore what was going on after that. Dropping bombs on me like that before my morning coffee (and not even after my morning shower) is never a good thing. I pretty much stormed out of the house and headed to my part of the house sitting in the darkness. Then for the next week, I was going through all sorts of anger issues (unresolved mostly of how that was just dropped on me) along with me being the drama queen expecting the worst at any given time — given that my uncle is well known for his impatience and his explosive attitudes.

The next two weeks, the environment around the homestead was dysfunctional, silent as a tomb, with moments of explosiveness given my aunt’s been the go-between between myself and my uncle through most of the bullshit of the announcement. The last thing anyone should be doing while I’m juggling two different sort of stresses (work and looking for a new place), because it’s a guarantee I’m going to shoot the messenger. And I did…

Every time she came into my sights to talk about it.

Eventually around the second week, I had finally worked through my anger and my outrage at the change of situation and knew that the timer was going to finding a new place to live. One that I would need nearly the whole of the month to find somewhere to move to. I was determined to live in Providence once again mainly because I was seriously tired of the nearly 2 hours it took getting to and from work. Not to mention that during my off-time, It took a mile to walk to the stop, and another hour to get to Providence to be around anything. And then, when I’m actually in Providence, given the uncertainty of the late night bus service, I won’t be able to stay late without having to spend $60+ for a one-way taxi ride to get back home.

No matter how much I look at it, it’s not the sort of proposition I want to deal with on my time off, and while there’s usually a good chance I wouldn’t do anything in the first place (given my history being back here in the Biggest Little) I like having the opportunity without having to invest way too much time into actually getting to what I’m doing. And let’s face it — suburban life while being nice — I have and always will be a city-boy (man).

Checking out the haunts and the potential apartments in the area were certainly a challenge; partly because of the time constraints, but mostly because at the end of 9+ hours days, I didn’t have the energy to schlep all around Providence checking out this apartment or that. So most of the apartments I did check out were within the Federal Hill and Broadway area as it’s along the lines that get me to work, and are in the neighborhoods that make it an easy walking distance to downtown (from what I’m seeing in Maps – 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the central public transit depot — Kennedy Plaza).

Missed one place in the area by about 2 days as they had someone else take the room. Another I wanted to check but ended up backing out of it because they were college students, and that would easily work my nerves. The next place I checked out had seen better days in the 60s. Sure, the landlord said that he would be having the place painted and touched up, but it would take more than a lick of paint to fix the linoleum and the bathroom was in sore need of new plumbing. Ended up checking a place out in the Mount Pleasant/Eagle Square area with a roommate that’s about my age. The place is a little small for the likes of two — but the thought that this is a temporary situation with me inheriting the place in 6 months isn’t too bad. Not to mention it allows me the tradition of shedding the crap I don’t need anymore.

Now the fun has been getting this place into some sort of order. Today I finally got around to picking up the necessaries for washing the floor, and realize that it’s going to take more than one washing to get this place into looking like an apartment my family would live in and not something a poor college student ends up landing in after a night of cheap beer drinking. At the moment, even after cooking a modest supper — I can take a deep breath and the place smells damned clean. But there’s a bit still left to do — though most of it is out of my hands, relying entirely on my roommate doing his end of the cleaning — like his bedroom and the den that I spend positively no time in. But the rest? The kitchen, pantry and bathroom? Better than when I moved in three weeks ago. As I mentioned in a tweet — compared to my roommate — I’m definitely more like Felix Unger to his Oscar Madison. But at least he doesn’t make a mess as he moves through the house…

[Last Edited: 11/22/2011 08:09:09 PM]

It’s been a couple of days since the last time I was writing this, and now it’s time to talk about the job… After being at it for six weeks, I decided that if I were finding myself drinking to calm down from dealing with the job — then this is definitely not the sort of job that I want to be part of. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind some challenges when it comes to making the sort of changes necessary to a better work environment… But when I find that the challenge is overwhelming.. When I find the obstacles daunting. When I find myself ill from the amount of multitasking that I need to do in order to keep my head above water, and not simply so that I can divert some of my personal resources to doing something relaxing… This isn’t a job. This is a hydra and I’m finding myself fighting the beast like Hercules. That’s where I’ve been for the last six weeks since I took up the position and found myself hitting the ground running on day two.

I understand that there is a sort of scarcity of jobs out there, but honestly, if I’m finding myself fighting my blood pressure along with trying to calm myself after working through lunch for almost three weeks straight (and thereby putting in on average of 50 hours a week because of it), well… I might as well go back into business for myself as I did some decades ago and work myself into an early grave. Sure, I can work up a hell of a laundry list about the things that I noticed in the time there, but I find that the simplest thing to say about it, will cover the issues extremely succinctly…

It was a small company trying to do the work of a big company, without understanding the value of the years that bigger companies take in setting up standardization.

To describe the job — yeah, it was helpdesk. It was third-party helpdesk for many companies within the New England area ranging from law firms to medical practices that didn’t want to deal with hiring someone in-house to handle their IT needs and instead went to outsourcing it to companies like the one that I worked at to get their computer needs handled. The inherent problem with this is that out of the 40 or so firms that they were handling for their IT needs, they had 40 different ways of handling the companies IT infrastructure. There were many programs that I’ve had experience with performing helpdesk work, and many more that left me wondering whether the company I was working for should be supporting in a helpdesk environment to begin with given the nature of the programs.

And what really made it a bugbear that was the straw to break the camel’s back was that this one company that worked in the production of medical equipment, were absolute luddites when it came to basic computer needs and expected the company to bend over backwards to handling aspects of support that any reputable agency would’ve put stops on their mad and prima donna hissy fits and standardized what was and wasn’t support for those users that remoted into the home-office. While I admire their “we support practically anything” vision — too many years in bigger business IT departments taught me — that is a Pandora’s Box of horrors and a quagmire to never-ending grief for the support professionals as they try to fix one thing only to end up watching it break time and time again.

So last night, after having a coffee mug filled with bourbon (Jim Beam to be exact), and then having an extremely stressful lack of a night’s sleep, I decided with clear conscience and clearer head to tender my resignation by e-mail (in the same manner as I did in accepting the position in the first place), effective immediately and also did something sincerely — wished them luck in their road ahead.

I think that with this, I’ve finally learned my lesson that I shouldn’t hold any ill will for a position that I simply can’t fit into. While I am flexible (for the most part), I am not completely malleable at my age anymore.

Anyway — that’s all for the time being. I’m off to relax with the cat and look forward to my bed finally coming in tomorrow. Until the next time.