Reflections on 2004 pt.3

I turned 42 this year. 

Unbelievable.  Never thought I’d make it- wasn’t sure I wanted to.

-Then.

 

Now-

It’s been a good year for me, probably the best in decades. 

Really.

 

I made several road trips with an assortment of old and new friends.

I drove a half dozen cars and other vehicles- the most in years.

 

I got some, the first time in eight years.

 

I bought a digital camera.  A 2Mg Nikon.  I’ve been having fun with it.  I took several hundred pictures this summer when my friend from Japan was here.  I’ve posted over 300 pics on OD, some of them from the digital camera and others from my archives.  I’ve always liked taking pictures and have boxes of prints.  Scanning them has been an on-going project so I can archive them on CD too.  I really like the digital medium.  It is easy to store and to manipulate and is easy to share electronically.  I would say that buying this camera and using it has been one of the high points of ’04.

Another high point has been the job situation.  I began the year working very part time at the zoo’s gift shop.  I had been working there since May ’03.  The zoo is of course rather seasonal, so the year began slow but it ramped up as the year wore on.  I began working on Saturdays and Sundays, delivering the Sunday Oregonian in January.  That turned out to be steady work, so I was able to cancel the Unemployment claim and to wean myself from the Food Stamps.  As the year went on and the seasons changed, the zoo became busier and there were times when I worked 7 days a week- 5 at the gift shop and 2 with the paper.

June was beginning and I was looking forward to plenty of work at the gift shop.  The zoo had privatized the gift shop the summer before, so I was working for that company, which went on a hiring binge for the summer busy season.  My hours there had settled into a four day a week thing, so with the paper, I was working six days a week.  After years of idle time, this was good.

They hired all these high school girls and gave them my hours.  I had been a consistant, reliable employee, but I was male, and the lesbian who was the manager at that time wanted to ogle girls.  (Ok, maybe not, but she was a cunt anyway, so- )

When I asked why my hours had been cut after doing very good work for them and several customer “atta-boys”  I got some song and dance routine that told me that they didn’t give a shit about me and wouldn’t mind if I went away.  I wrote about that on OD but that is among the lost entries from the hacker attack.  I went home that day in a foul mood, for sure.

At about that time, the driver who did the dailies on our two routes had a stroke and was out of it.  The boss was doing the dailies, one of the Sunday routes, and the replenishment runs too.  He was getting maybe 4 hours of sleep a day.  I knew for sure that he was looking for a dailies driver but had demurred because I was enjoying my job at the gift shop.

After talking to the gift shop’s manager that day I called my newspaper boss on the way home and took the dailies job.  The transition was seamless and effortless.

This is good- it took me a long time to find work and when that didn’t work out I was expecting to be fucking poor again and was dreading the endless job search.  To step from one job (iffy) to another (solid- every day work) is very, very good. 

It is the highest high point this year.

 

In RL, that is.

 

A woman at the gift shop I had the hots for told me about Open Diary as she politely deflected my advance (ok, this sounds so fucking shallow I’m blushing) and I logged onto it, read what she’d written, and discovered I needed to be a Member to note her entries.

I have an unlisted phone number.  I’m on the No Call List.  My official address is a post office box.  I have been keeping a very low profile for a long time, so the thought of giving up my anonomity was provoking, to say the least.

I thought about it for a while and decided to join this community.

 

I hate to say it beacause it sounds like I have no life, but joining the OD world has been the most satisfying thing I’ve done- maybe ever.

I think I’ve lived an interesting and different life than the majority of the rest of people have.  Here I get to write about it and the things I think of or see and this is very good too.  I have wanted to share my story and had despaired of finding a venue to do that.  I have no idea how to sell myself.

Americans are great talkers but do not listen as well as I would like.  And I’ve always been long winded, so writing is the perfect media for me.  People generally read because they want to, so the chances of them paying attention are that much greater.

The point is, I enjoy writing and reading here.  I’ve met and gotten to know some cool people too.

And I really like this new dimension of life.

It’s almost as good as getting some.

Really.

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