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damn.

Religious wackjobs are fucking scary.  The American Taliban is going strong.

I really, really need to get back to this. I have a lot to say.

I'll be writing more soon, honest.

What's next?

So I've explained to you, dear reader, the circumstances surrounding my recent loss of employment. So what, you may ask, have I been doing in the meantime?

Well, after I packed up my desk, I came home, put all that stuff in the garage, and sat down to block my show. I had signed up for unemployment already, so that was taken care of. I decided that, while I was going to actively look for a job, I was going to give myself a week to just do nothing. Which is pretty much what I did. I kind of wandered around the house in my pajamas until 2 or 3 each day, then had a shower and headed to school for rehearsals. By this point we were down to 1 car, since the one we had borrowed since the accident had to be returned  - which turned out to be for the best, but that's probably not a story for here.

So after that week I started looking online for job opportunities. The first thing I learned was that, well, there's not a lot out there. But that was ok, I'm flexible. I learned that many places won't even let you walk in and fill out an application - they make you do it online. Not a huge deal, but I thought that was a bit odd.

Christmas came and went. Not the best Christmas ever, but I still had a roof over my head, and was not missing any meals, so nothing to complain about. New Years eve was quiet. Got home early, and sat up watching the Three Stooges Marathon. January was busy in rehearsals and looking online daily for work. February came, and still no work. Had my resume out there on the job search sites, and got a few hits, but it was all junk. The show went great; the cast were all wonderful and kept me sane. The little catholic mafia at St. Mary's got a little upset with me, which added some well needed comedy relief. Jazz Fest came around and was a great time. My mom lost her job of over 10 years, and they were (and as of today still are) denying her the unemployment benefits that she earned. We're appealing, but they are holding fast. Cocksucking motherless fucks.

Just so everyone is clear: Laurel Lake Retirement Community in Hudson, Ohio is operated by complete and total assholes who have ZERO concept of loyalty to employees. They WILL fire you for trumped up reasons in order to replace you with part time employees making less money and no benefits. I am currently putting together information to show that this is and has been an ongoing pattern. They are 100% scumbags. 


Then March rolled around. I applied for, and was hired by a company that provides support for a large insurance company when a large natural disaster (hurricane, tropical storm, tornado, earthquake) occurs. The good news is that when such a thing does happen, there are plenty of hours available at a pretty good hourly wage. The bad news is that unless such a thing happens, there is no work, and therefore no pay. But, they hired me, so that's a good thing.

Then on St. Patrick's Day, I got an interesting phone call....which I will tell you about later.

new look

Made some changes to the blog. If anyone is reading, let me know what you think. Nothing is etched in stone.

just checking.

Spent some time adjusting some privacy settings tonight to keep the stalkers at bay. Things appear to be safe.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way....

decided to remove this one.

A second brief interlude, if you don't mind...

First things first: I went to see the allergist, and was lucky enough not to require any unpleasant tests. We believe (that is to say, the doctor believes, and I am willing to believe him) that I am allergic to ACE inhibitors. One of which is the drug Lisinopril, which I was taking for my blood pressure when I had my first, most serious attack. My regular doctor took me off of that one, and I had my second attack exactly 1 month later - to the day, and almost to the hour. The allergist says that they don't know exactly how long it takes for the lisinopril to get out of someone's system, but he feels that this was what caused it. So now I must avoid ACE inhibitors for the rest of my life, and carry an epi-pen with me at all times. Special thanks to Jen for providing me with several of these, thus saving me a bunch of money that I don't have right now.

Then there's tonight.

Tonight I got home from rehearsal and sat down to check FB, and all of a sudden it felt like I was shot out of a cannon from 2010 back to 1987 - 89.  A friend (and former girlfriend all those years ago) dug up and posted a ton of pictures from the old days. I started going through them, and all of a sudden I was 18 again. For one thing, I am currently almost 70 pounds heavier than I was 23 years ago. I've also had a beard for probably the last 12 years, so that was different as well. The memories all came flooding back. It's funny, because the bad parts, at least of our relationship, which seemed truly awful when they took place, don't seem so bad now. I've often given the advice to others that time really puts things into perspective, and thinking over this all tonight really brought that home. A boyfriend or girlfriend at 16, 17, 18 years old is deadly serious business - at least, it feels that way then. I remember just wanting to die when it ended. I was hurt, I was angry as hell, I was confused as hell. It sucked. I drank a lot and generally engaged in a lot of stupid, self destructive behavior.

I'm better now.

I'd think of her from time to time over the years. At first it would be mostly angry or hurtful thoughts, and as time passed, all the bad thoughts just went away. Granted, I had some other equally intense relationships in the meantime, some of which ended as badly or worse, but she was always different. The first really serious one. The one that got away. And I totally lost touch with her. For 20 years. Once, about 12 or 13 years ago, I talked to someone who had seen her or heard some news of her, but that was it. During one of my many moves over these many years, a few items surfaced. I found lots of photos of us, in some albums or in boxes and frames. This most recent move, I found a large plastic tupperware type box with around 200 "notes" she wrote me inside, in perfect condition, like they had been written yesterday. I read some of them. I'll probably get around to reading all of them, eventually. Oh, and there's a mixtape languishing in a box full of cassette tapes in the basement. I gotta fix one of my cassette players. Holy shit. Talk about a time warp.

Then, for reasons I don't fully understand, about a month ago it just popped into my head to search her name on Facebook. She has a fairly common last name, so I figured it was a crapshoot, and damn if she didn't pop right up. There it was, right in front of me. After 20 years. So I thought about it for a couple of days, and then I said fuck it, and clicked for a friend request. Next thing I know, we're talking to each other on Skype like nothing's changed. It felt great. In addition, she still looks great, while I have gotten old and grey.

To this day I cannot figure out how I have managed to get so many really attractive females into relationships with me. Could they all have poor eyesight? I've somehow managed to date 4 or 5 real hotties, as they say, and I don't get it. Not complaining, mind you, just curious.

Anyone who has seen or read High Fidelity will get this - over the last few years (before having read the book or seen the movie) I've gradually gotten in touch with, or patched things up with, or whatever you want to call it, with several of my ex's from through the years. For the most part, all of my serious relationships have been with people that I was really good friends with first. I'm not trying to make sense of a bad breakup like in the story, I just felt like I needed to make things right. Or at least try. And I've done alright - I'm 3 for 5. I was 3 for 4, but one of them has broken off contact with me without giving me a reason. And #5, well I'm not even going to try. I take full or partial responsibility for 1- 4, but #5 really was a lying, psycho bitch from hell, who blindsided my ass, so I'm not going to even make the effort. We're talking Satan's Daughter here. I'm not exaggerating. If she and a dog ran in front of my car, I'd swerve to miss the dog.

But the rest of them, I feel good about our relationships now, and I think they do too.

But this one, the one I've been talking about, this one has stuck in my head, and in my heart, for all these years. In the back of my mind. I'd drive through town, and past her old house, and think of her. Every time. When I used to spend a week in the old high school auditorium once a year, just walking through the building made me think of her. Marching band every Friday night, same thing. So spending that time talking - and that fucking Skype is an amazing thing - was just fucking outstanding. I probably sound like a tool, but I've always been one to wear my heart on my sleeve, and about 87% of the time it's come back to bite me in the ass, so just being able to catch up and shoot the shit? Fucking great. Like the song says, "time heals everything."


Seeing all the photos tonight, and going over all the good memories has made me really happy. I'm at peace. This one was the first really serious one, and one who I compared others to for quite a long time - and usually they came up lacking. We were best friends for a time, so knowing that we can be friends again is a great feeling.

With all the nasty shit going on in the world, it sure feels great to re-connect with old friends, especially ones who are so close to my heart. I might be dead ass broke and unemployed, but sometimes I feel like the luckiest man in the world.

A brief interlude...

Just a brief interlude before we continue our story...


I spent my Saturday morning/afternoon actually working. Got a little spur of the moment job doing some cleaning and straightening for the business of the parent of one of my drama kids. As a bonus, I got a loaf of fresh baked bread! The work wasn't that hard, but after not doing anything since the end of November, I was a bit worn out when 4:00 rolled around.

Went and picked up the wife from work (we're down to 1 car now, unfortunately) and came home for a quick nap before my gig.

Woke up later than I wanted to, changed clothes and headed out to the gig. It was a 9:30 gig, so I wanted to be there 7 - 7:30ish to set up first. I put a large oriental rug down first, before I set the drums up, and it's better if all the mic, speaker and power cables are on top of the rug, rather than under it. Got there at 8:00, and there were still people eating dinner where we were supposed to set up, so it turned out that I wasn't late. We got set up, and were waiting to go on when Alicia got there. I haven't seen her since my wedding, so it was nice to chat and catch up. We went on at 9:30 and things were going great!

During the break between the 1st and 2nd set, my friend Carrie showed up - she now wins the prize for longest distance traveled to a gig. She came from Boston! It was nice catching up with her, too. When the second set began, Alicia and Carrie really enjoyed themselves - and got quite a few other people into it, too. Sadly, I did not get flashed during the medley, but Bob did get his belly rubbed.

During the break between sets 2 and 3, our bass player disappeared. After looking everywhere for him - and I mean everywhere - we decided to start without him. His nephew was there that night, and he's a great guitar player, so we asked him to sit in on bass, which he did. During our 3rd tune, in walks the bass player, followed by one of our female fans, who is doing the Walk Of Shame. So I got to make blowjob jokes for the rest of the night. Aggravating, to say the least.

Spent Sunday sleeping, then de-christmasing the house. Monday we saw Sherlock Holmes with the wife's parents, followed by some dinner, a visit to Cookie at "The Resort," and fresh tortilla chips with the in-laws.

Tuesday I visit an allergist - FINALLY - to try to find out why my body tried to kill itself twice in October and November. I'll explain that later.

Today was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It makes me sad to see that they give kids the day off from school, rather than keeping them in school and teaching them about Dr. King's message. I was going to ask the kids I saw coming and going at the movie theatre if they knew who he was and what he stood for, but I was worried that I'd get arrested. Plus, I was kind of afraid of the answers I was going to get. We've come so far, but still have so far to go. Sigh.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

So here's the deal.

On December 11th, 2009, I got laid off from a job I held for 15 years. As of today, I've been without work for 35 days. It seems like longer, and I'll tell you why.


My last day of work before a hard earned (and long planned for) vacation was supposed to be November 27th. I was supposed to leave for Walt Disney World on November 30th, return home on December 8th, and return to work on December 9th. Now normally, we would have not had to work on the day after Thanksgiving, but because one of us was going to have work to do, all of us were going to have to come it. Let me explain:

About 3 years after I began this job, a very good customer - turns out it's the best customer the business has - had so much work they needed done in such a short amount of time, that 3 people in my department had to come in the day after Thanksgiving in order to meet the customer's deadline. we grumbled about it, but came in and got the job done. And around 3:30 or so that day, the owner let the three of us know that since it was supposed to be a holiday, he was going to pay us double time for the day. This reduced the grumbling and made us all, well, happy. As you can probably guess.

About a week and a half later, the head of my department accidentally let this slip to a guy from another department. This guy, who we'll call Brian, since his name is Brian, just happens to be what we call a "whiny little bitch." And he immediately began complaining - loudly - that if he had known we were going to get double time, he would have come in and worked also. Well, the complaining got so loud (and the only person he didn't complain to was the boss, because Brian is not even close to being a man) that our boss let us know that from now on, if ANYONE had work that required them to come in on a day that was supposed to be a holiday, EVERYONE would be coming in, and working on straight time. It was good while it lasted.



So my last actual day was supposed to be November 27th. But that, as you will see, was not to be.