In January, this blog will be a year old.  Something I have taken the time to actually do actively.  And there have been times
that there has been nothing going on that was not worth mentioning. 

But this year I really have been blessed, and though this year has had its share of ups and downs, the latter part of the year has
been pretty positive,  The long, drawn out work search came to a close (though I think I will keep looking anyway..), moving in with
Steve after so many months of planning and finally EXECUTING the plan (and yes, there are still boxes to unpack and merge with
what is there with the place) we are slowly learning this word....COMPROMISE. 

That came into play so well yesterday when we went out last night to a friend's house for dinner.  Earlier in the day we had went
grocery shopping and on the way to Woodman's in Oak Creek, hit a large chuckhole (larger than a pot hole) which I thought at the
time didnt do a whole lot of injury to the tire.   I was wrong...the rest of the details I am going to leave out.  Lets just say it involved a
tow truck driver and a small bill to repair a tire.

I did not have much of a Christmas holiday, since the company is a global place, they work 24/7 and basically its a regular day
for them so I worked Christmas Eve/Day.  Which meant only spending a couple of hours with my family on Christmas Day then
coming into work.  It just does not feel the same when you have to leave your loved ones and be required to work on a day when
all of your family is there and you are not.  Steve was kind enough though to send camera phone pics of them opening presents
and what food they were having, which was funny.  But I missed being there.

So with 2008 almost all over, i wish you all a Happy 2009.  Maybe things will get better, I hope.
Bye for now.

ive have not been posting for a copule of reasons, one of them has been time, which i had very little of, and i didnt think there would be anything worthwhile to post...its been a pretty strange two months working the new job and getting ready for the move. 

the move went off without too much of a hitch, i had previously asked my brother in law, Kevin and his moving company to assist me in getting my stuff over to Steve's place.  I only had one day to get all my stuff over there, so the day after Thanksgiving, I was finally together with the guy I have been sharing my life with for almost five years.  

then the reality set in--im finally living with someone i actually REALLY do care about...and that speaks volumes,.  

So if you have a person in your life that you REALLY care about and they feel the same way about you then its time to move in with them.
Don't dilly dally around.  It just makes things worse.

wow, has it been almost a month since i posted last...time flies when you're keeping yourself
busy.  and more difficult to schedule.

with the new job, and school, and eventually moving, been too busy to post here for a while. 
i finally will be with my significant other as of next month. his roommates finally moved out
last week and they are cleaning up their part of his apartment today so it should be ready
by the time i move in late november.   together, at last.

job?? you say JOB?? yeah, i am working for "large financial products and services" company,
working second shift though.  which has been a difficult adjustment to make.  but ill get through it.

the sad part about this month is that my sister had to put her wonderful little westie, Angus down.
he had liver cancer and it was affecting his quality of life for some time until the beginning of the
month.  she had planned to take him to the groomers to make him a little less rough around the
edges, and he started howling in pain that morning after he ate his food.  it got so bad that we
gave him his pain meds, but he just got worse.  she eventually had to put him down, and it was a
wrench for both of us, because i couldn't be there to help her --i had to go to school that night.

so here's a pic of the little guy....as a remembrence of him...flickr.com/photos/8343877@N05/1903576607/

so for now, this is all i can talk about...ill be back in a few weeks with more updates.

i sometimes wonder why I am still here on this earth.

lately i feel ignored and not welcome.  im just THERE.

why do I feel this way?  a number of things come to mind.

the so-called 'staffing service" sent me to an interview last week that produced NOTHING.
apparently they had their minds made up that i was not a candidate for their company.

i reapplied for my old position at big telco yesterday. 

My cell phone rang on last Friday with a message to call *big recruiting company at this phone number on Monday* to
talk about a position for *big bank*.  I was happy, it was something I was actually interested in.

Today I am regretting ever stepping foot in that office.

I got to the office on time for my appointment, did the required skills tests, filled out paperwork, and then,
sat down with my recruiter who told me "I'm sorry, but the position we had offered you has been yanked by
the client, since the deadline was yesterday, and they have filled their quota from us."

To make matters worse, they wanted me to change my school schedule, which I could do, but at a cost,
I would have to give up classes for this semester...the job is way across town in Mequon, and the school's
campus is in Greenfield.  

So i am at a crossroads here.  I really need the work, but I have to once again, put my education on hold.
I rather not do that, since I have invested too much already in this.  Why can't employers understand that
investing in an employee who is taking a risk of getting a degree is a good thing?   The benefits of having
an associate who is learning adds value to their organization.  But businesses are so short sighted, they
only think in the now and not in the long term benefits. 

Anyway, I have to sit down with the chair of my department on Monday and hammer this whole mess out.
maybe I can just take classes online for the time being.  Probably better this way.

yay, i got my first unemployment check on saturday...woohoo

its been a few months since my unemployment insurance ran out.  and i have been living off what little i have
left in savings plus help from family members.  that being said, i didn't expect the letter i got in the mail a few days
back.  the state of wisconsin, through some federal funds, made it possible to get another thirteen weeks of benefits.
the catch though is that you have to be totally exhausted of all of your benefits (i am) and been unemployed, still looking
for work (i have since march...).

so i called and filed my inital claim like i am supposed to....and then talked to the claims agent.
basically asking me the same questions over again --and then i told them i am a student, still looking
for work.  which was fine with them.   unfortunately, they wanted to know why i left big telecom company.
so i honestly told them, i left because of a medical issue.  that was week one.  i finally caught up with them
on monday, since they were so busy with the recent flood claims across the state, people have not been able to get into their
homes and have lost work and wages because of this.  which has delayed my claim discussion with an
ajudicator.  hopefully ill get all this mess straightened out. 

(there has been a report on the local news this week because of all of the claims that are being filed here
in wisconsin that the state's unemployment insurance fund will go broke in march of 2009.  which means
companies operating in the state will have to shell out more in taxes to pay for these claims if the legistlature
gets their way.  wisconsin already has a bad business climate, we have the highest business taxes in the
nation and the tax collectors have been stinging these companies in fees and penalties for not paying or
moving funds around to avoid paying.)

while doing all this and in my work search, i attended a job fair at school and ran into a recruiter for
the fastest growing retailer in the country, it starts with a K (no, not that one....) and when the recruiter
saw my resume she told me to apply for this position at their corporate headquarters.  i did apply on their
site and hopefully i will hear back from them.  things are looking up, i guess.

i want to work again.  and if this comes through it will be something i can be proud of.  time to stop acting
so negative and put a positive spin on things. 

yesterday all of us got our grade reports for CA 1.  now i have been trying to keep up with the class,
and not to be a dunce...but im sorry, when your instructor absoulutely refuses to

1,  show up before class (at least a half an hour) so if you have problems with the assignments or have questions, he could help you.

2. if you are stuck working mandatory overtime and miss class because of it, at least give the person the
    opportunity to make up the assignments so he doesn't get a big fat zero for it.

3.  and stop trying to push through two to three chapters from the book in every class session. 
     we can only take so much in the way of equations before our heads explode.

getting back to the grade reports, people all around me are either at D or an F, I fall in the latter catagory. 
fortunately i have been going to the TA in the resource center before class but its still a struggle.

ive got another seven weeks in this class and im not looking forward to it. 


 

im in my third week of classes right now and have a really good teacher for Comp 2.  unfortunately our
project is not only going to be another research paper, but a debate.

i suck at debates.

i never get the opportunity to speak my mind and i hate opening myself to attack --which is exactly what he
wants us to do.

and the subject matter that we are debating is old and tired and i don't want to work with it. 

*sigh*

Many people here in the city and suburbs of Milwaukee and other outlying areas are reeling from the large amounts
of rain from this past weekend.  I'm feeling the pain too, because Saturday evening the basement of my sister's house
got flooded by at least nine inches of sewer water that came up through the drain pipe, destroying about
eighty percent of what i had in storage on the lower parts of the racks I had down there.  There were books I
had collected over the years, music and unfortunately, unknown to me, my grade school diploma and high school
diploma were totally waterlogged and the ink washed away, so i don't have a decent reminder of graduating
from my alma mater from when i was young.  Twenty three odd years of memories have been destroyed and I
won't get them back, they are sitting in green lawn/leaf bags in the rubbish heap waiting for the city crews
to come and take them away.

Also damaged were some of my gaming papers I tucked away in case I would someday return to playing
AD&D (not that damned 4th edition---PLEASE).   The first edition rulebooks I had were in a higher area
in storage and they survived.  Woo hoo.

But I mourn the loss of the books I had over the years, some of them were gifts from friends or my
family.  One book in particular that got trashed was my copy of Ghost Rider, by Neil Peart (yes, i know,
that Rush guy again!!).  But that book helped me through the healing process also after my father died
in 1998. I shared Neil's grief and loss at that time and was very happy to find out that he was able to find
love again.  

So if anyone HAPPENS to know some one who knows eomeone (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) who might
know a certain some one who wrote the book...could I get a replacement copy?? PUH-leze?
And if not, well, I'll just go on with life. 

classes are done for now ---in two weeks they start all over again.  im a bit apprehensive of my grades,
apparently one of my instructors, being the arrogant ass that he is, lowered my grade on based on a homework
assignment he didn't get (thanks to the email system at school, it kept being rejected...finally emailed him at home
which he refuses to check..).

what is it with people and group projects?  the idea of a group project is that it is supposed to be cooperation between
the team members to achieve a single goal.  unfortunately it has not sinked in to some.  i got stuck with three slackers
in both of my tech classes who either were too busy or fucking lazy to care to do so.  one of them actually redeemed
himself when he came in late on Thursday to take his final exam and saw that part two of our project was missing a
vital design, he fixed it. he even apologized, which i give him more credit than he is due.

Saturday was spent attending my sister in law's graduation from college, and playing with the newest member
of the family, a two-month mini-weiner dog named Paige.  she's a sweetie and just wants to be with EVERYONE.

Yesterday and part of today was spent in Chicago with Steve and Marty in Chicago attending Bear Pride and
shopping in the Chinatown district, then to Norridge to go music shopping.

Here is my gripe.  Is it so fucking hard for record stores to keep an appropriate amount of back catalog of
an artist?  I'm looking for replacement CD's such as the works of Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Rush and other
artists, but can't find their early stuff, only compilations, or none at all.  This is a music store, right? 
I did make a complaint to the store manager, who stated that its their buyer, not them who do the stocking.
(in other words, "Back catalog doesn't sell, but we have shitloads of Hannah Montana and the FLAVOR OF
 THE WEEK band, the Jonas Brothers") (Back story here, when i was working for big teleco here in Milwaukee, my
car was broken into and the stereo, was ripped out of the car, along with a bunch of CD's that are totally irreplaceable,
since some of them, which might be available on Amazon.com, are out of my reach at the moment.)

So it was a fruitless search for those, but as a consolation prize, i picked up the 25th anniversary concert
Asia put on in Japan last year ---plus Yes @ Montreux.  Steve Howe, in his aging years, can still play very well.

So ends this tale for now. 

its only a couple of weeks away, the end of classes and a much needed break.

through all this i have managed to keep my grades in the A range, except for my cabling class
which im carrying a B in.  we will see after the project is done for that class if I can bump it up
back to the A i had before messing up on a few quizzes.

been doing some self rellection the last couple of days and i have realized that I CAN DO THIs
thing called school.  i would though, however liked to have more hands on training on things so I could
get a better grip of the situation.  making patch cables for me was a disaster (again).

then there is this project paper I am working on on school bullying prevention/intervention that
is sitting there just waiting to be typed in its rough draft state.  i want it to be good enough to be out
of rough draft state by monday's class so i can get done and out of the way.  i hate leaving things until
the absolute last minute.  but if i can hammer it out and finish it, it will be one less problem to worry about.

ill make it, i know i will.

and what would we like to do during spring?  guess!

school has been keeping me quite busy the last two weeks, with a research paper for one class and
a network RFP for my netos/protocols class.  but I wanted to take a moment and say it has not been that
bad since i came back.  the only real dry, uneventful class i have is the structured cabling class, which
was replaced the programming class i would have needed later on in the year.  they have been changing
the standards for the degree since its not necessary to have students make patch and crossover cables
on the fly, which to be honest, i suck rocks at.  and another thing, when i get a job, im buying a proper crimper
since someone who THOUGHT i would need a wire snips forgot i would need the crimper, also.

in the medical department, went to see doc nazir this week, he was happy with the hemogloblin A1C (a 6.0,
which is hard to come by for many diabetics). but wanted to check my INR to make sure i was at the right level.
when i got home from school on friday evening, there was a message from him to up my coumodin to 15 mg for
two days then 13mg until i get my blood drawn again on tuesday. 

i know he's looking out in my best interest, but taking this stuff is dangerous.  its been known to cause strokes
and stomach bleeding, but its the only stuff that can control my blood clotting/thrombophila issues.

ill just stay busy with school.  it seems to be my only thing that is keeping me from going absolutely bonkers.
ciao for now.

im having problems with school already.

my level of enthusiasm has been stunted by all this shit that happened the last few months.
I don't have the energy, drive and determination that I had last summer when I was in class
for the first time.  compounding this, the Easter holiday is coming up and they are not taking
any breaks for it, because to be honest, they are going to lost a number of students this week
to the holiday--

my sinuses also decided to explode this week and give me nothing but snot filled dreams and
headaches...and im still waiting for my GA-MP to kick in to go to the doctor and tell him the stuff
he prescribed for me is not workiing at all --its just making things worse.  Sudafed seems to be
the only thing taking care of the problem and with the warmer weather coming soon, its going to
be worse.

so im feeling distracted, discouraged, and doomed.   hows that for alliteration?

School has started, and will be kind of preoccupied with that so posting
might be a little spotty.  If I get the time and anything significant comes up
that makes me want to post, it will happen.  Consider it a brief hiatus.

In the meantime enjoy Simon's Cat...part two...





Have a good weekend...

So JP was home sick yesterday and he had nothing else better to do than IM me all day
(which I gladly accepted, teased and taunted...)

And he found this...which I took the survey this morning and SUCKED ASS at...



JP can kick more ass than me...oh well.

well its off and running...back at school today for the first time since i withdrew in October.

kind of wondering whats gonna happen, ill have the same teacher i walked out on a few
months back for my friday night class for networking.  at least ill have a heads up on a few
things. 

stopped by JPs place the other night to return his Dune books and was greeted enthusiastically
by his two golden retrievers, amber and luca...such nutty dogs...just so happy to see other people.
i need a social life again, i miss it.

I'm here at home considering what to do tomorrow, since its my 41st birthday.

I feel its just like another day, and not worth getting out of bed for. 
I used to plan a trip when I was younger to get out of the city to do something fun,
but in recent years that got squelched when i was working my old job because some
one else took their vacation at the same time when I wanted it and she had seniority.

I have not had a whole lot to be happy about these last several months.  Having to give
up my home, lose a job, get horribly ill twice in a year, find a great job and lost that one
due to corporate idiocy, just doesn't give me a lot of hope. 

People think I am being obstinate and lazy because I really haven't found a job yet, and
should not be so picky about what i want.  To be honest they are right.  But I want a higher
standard for myself.  For twenty odd years I had to work such shitty jobs that were beneath
me and be some one else's lackey and not get any credit for the work that I do.  For them I
put off my education because I didn't think i was good enough or mature to go to college.
Life experience puts everything in perspective, and I saw if I was to get anywhere in my life,
I had to grow academically. 

Maybe I chose a college that was a little too expensive.  But where I am going its a smaller
school and everyone is pretty much available to me in case I have questions regarding my
subjects.  As for a job, I know I have to put some more effort into it...people are not going to
be knocking at my door to say "Hey, we have a perfect opportunity for you!", its on me to get my
ass in gear to find it.  I just have fears that if I start working again the whole thing will start
crashing down on me like it happened in October, and a repeat is something I don't need.
That was hard to recover from and I don't think I can handle such a strain on myself every again.

So I guess tomorrow I'll just stay in bed.  It's supposed to rain all day anyway. 
   

My partner, Steve and I ventured up to the state capitol Sunday afternoon for two reasons.
One, to get away for a day and spend some time together, and second he had a manager's
license exam to take early this morning. 

But I will say this, Madison has got Milwaukee beat on the fucking POTHOLES.   Their roads
are so badly damaged from all of the ice and snow and salt, and the freeze/thaw they got
that there are hole you can hide a prarie dog, or a small Westhighland Terrier. 

Note to the Wisconsin DOT...and the city of Madison...fix the damn road so i wont (bump, THWACK!)
have to hit a (THWACK, THWACK, CRUNCH any more potholes (THWACK) when driving through the
city.