ah, some people read those crazy celebrity gossip mags, but I dont find them remotely interesting. It's much more fun to get gossip from real people I know. and real people who write blogs on opendiary. whenever I need to relax a bit, I catch up on blogs here. I love reading about the gossip in your own life. :) it's far more interesting to me than what some reality tv star is wearing or doing.

we were invited to attend a barbecue at J and V's house, J is K's supervisor. so we showed up in the late afternoon. P was there, who used to work at K's office. P was one of the people laid off some months ago when they had to do some drastic cost cutting.

although K had absolutely nothing to do with P losing his job, P somehow is bitter at K. which at this point just becomes ridiculous and everybody thinks so. K didnt have anything to do with the decision to let P go, and in fact, it was no big surprise that P was let go. at least some of the owners dont like P at all, P was super inefficient and would take days to do a job that should take at most 3 hours. he'd charge the company all these extra hours far more than his 40 hours a week and he'd been doing that for a very long time. when K became his supervisor, K had to tell P that he'd get X number of hours to do a job, and P would basically ignore those limits and go way over them, and charge the company for those hours. K even showed P the books - how the company would cut those hours when they billed clients. "look, dummy, you're costing the company more than you're worth, you need to see this because your job is on the line." K didnt say that, but that was the obvious subtext. wake up, P.

and P said he was grateful to finally be told the truth, he had no idea what was going on. but he still didnt improve enough and still ignored the time limits given him on jobs. he got a very fair wake up call and he didnt fix the problem.

at any rate, K didnt even know P was losing his job, the owners decided and J was the one who had to fire his friend, P. sad.

what got P all pissed off at K was that months later when the company lost another employee (the guy who went ballistic and started screaming the F word and stormed out) and needed to replace him, P wasnt considered for the job. the company was clear: the new person needed a Bachelor's degree and P didnt finish his degree.

so it's not really a surprise to anyone that P didnt get offered his job back in January, but P is bitter and pissed off.

So when we showed up at J and V's house, P and his girlfriend L acted like we werent there. When I got a chance to say hi to P directly, and I asked how he was doing, he grimaced and nodded his head.

Seriously? K got even worse of a reaction, of course.

what immature drama. but yeah, I'd prefer real life drama to the creepy photographer stalking of "famous" people. real people are so funny sometimes.

P and his girlfriend (who never acknowledged our arrival) soon left the party. sheesh. what ridiculous people. and honestly, no big loss. P used to be K's friend but P was really super weird. he'd give K weird gifts, and had super weird boundary issues. which made him never happy, really. he's all sorts of screwed up and there was no helping him. which made it a losing prospect no matter what we did.

meanwhile, we had a relaxing holiday. we went to a cute small town style Independence Day parade in Alameda, the little island town. we parked in a residential area and walked to the parade and it was lovely seeing such pretty, pretty houses in tree-lined streets. I couldnt help but to think that they might be pretty, but in a big earthquake, they're all at major risk of going underwater. and I wonder what their home insurance prices are. not really worth having a house on shaky ground. :/

I realized the other day: wow, we have been utterly spoiled by buying this house in such excellent condition. we shouldnt try to buy another house again. just keep this lovely house. because no other house is going to be this nice. so we should just keep this one and enjoy it. but maybe someday buy a vacation home. :) which will probably be really hugely eye-opening about what a typical home purchase is like. I'm just so grateful we havent had any big issues with our home. that's all we can be: immensely grateful.

most of the flowers did recover once we watered them. I'll be sure to go out and water them this morning. we might need to try returning one of the flowers to the nursery. it's even supposed to be drought tolerant, strangely. but it looks pretty bad.

K and I talked a bit about his movie theater job yesterday. we're considering the options. whether he should quit, ask for just 2 days a week again, and which days work for us as well as the theater.

K is also thinking about doing the math on his loans. if this job only helps him pay the loans off 3 months faster, then it's not worth the cost of time and energy. if it saves him a year, then it might be worth it.

I'd still rather him quit the job, but he wants to be kept busy a bit especially while I'm in school. he hates to sit still, and he doesnt want to distract me from my homework.

as for our own gossip ;) we had a bit of a tiff last night. I was unpacking a few boxes (books and things, the last few boxes we've been waiting on until we get the bookcase in the right room). and I asked K what he was doing. oh, setting up our joint checking account to automatically pay the mortgage. what? oh I got irritated. he was just doing it without talking to me about it and making a joint decision.

and then he got all defensive. rather than hearing out why I might be upset about him making decisions about our account without me.

funny thing about apologizing while defending yourself: it just sounds like a list of excuses you'll make when you do it again next time. which ends up pushing the same panic buttons for the person you've overstepped on.

he apologized this morning much better. I feel better knowing he gets it and understands he needs to make joint decisions with me about our account.

hopefully he can cut his hours so he's not needing to rush to do things in the very few hours he's got left.

anyway. got to rush off to work. feel a bit better after sleeping in this morning. :) I'm going to go back to bedtime at 10pm so I can get enough sleep each night. that's just too important. and I cant go around looking exhausted all the time. nobody will want to hire me at a library if I look worn out all the time.

oh yeah, random thoughts today. thanks for reading.