Blue Monday
2 things of note today.
#1 I was informed that, once again, I am being bumped by someone more senior with the district. I will be unemployed after July, 31st. This sucks. I’m tired of fighting to continue working in a place that has done none of my requested/suggested things to ensure that they retain me. I don’t want to lose my job, but I’m at the point where I feel I just have to make the best of it.
#2 I went to the bullfights tonight. Photos tomorrow.
Kevin Bacon subverted
I am so frequently surprised when I realize that not everyone thinks as I do. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but nope, it’s always a shock.
Case in point: It seems the most natural thing in the world to me to share my friends with one another. I mean that if I know two people that are cool, I want them to know each other. I make the introduction and I try to facilitate the creation of a friendship that can stand on it’s own. Not everyone thinks this way. Actually, I’m not sure if I know anyone else who thinks this way.
Three examples.
Mary. Mary has been my friend for many years. We’ve had church and work in common, among other things. Of course, Mary has her own life, and I have mine. But I’ve thought of her as one of my closest friends. She got married last October to a man that she’d been dating for a year and a half or two. The wedding was only the third time I’d been in the same room as her husband. Even now, I have not been in the same place as him since the wedding. (I had the opportunity at the baptism of their child, but I didn’t go.) For a long time, I had no idea how serious they were because the life she led which involved him was completely separate and distinct from the friendship she had with me.
Letitia. We’re not friends anymore, but when we were together, she had a virtual parade of friends coming through town and staying at our place. Many of them very clearly wanted nothing to do with me. I on the other hand shared all my friends with her. I often felt that many of her friends were actually rather disrespectful of me and the fact that they were guests in my home. Their attitude seemed to be, “I’m Letitia’s guest so I can do whatever I feel she’d be ok with.” They occupied my space, sometimes my bedroom. Sometimes I was asked to go significantly out of my way to pick them up at this or that airport. One one standout occasion, one of them was really quite free with her derision about my faith. I don’t believe any of my friends ever behaved so ungraciously. Anyway, as I mentioned before, none of her friends (the ones I did like) had any interest in continuing to know me after she and I were over. Perhaps they were just pretending before that.
Lance. There is such a long list of my friends that I have introduced to Lance. And yet, not once has he ever made any effort to have me meet any of his friends. At one point, I asked about meeting one of them in particular. He stated very plainly that he liked to keep his world separate.
So what’s my point? I don’t know anymore. I think I had one in mind when this topic occurred to me last night, but I can’t remember what that may have been right now. I’ll say that often I would like to develop a friendship with the friend of my friend, but my friends always seem to see themselves as gatekeepers regulating contact with their friends. Maybe I really am that unpleasant?
Missed it by that much
Almost got away with not leaving the house today.
The only time I did head out was to go be the sacristan for the 5:00 Mass. What sucked is that I showed up and someone had already taken care of getting things ready. I hate wasted effort.
But I thought it would be ok since I had committed to meeting a friend at the Queen Bean for some music in the evening. Only problem there was that we must have had our wired crossed, because she didn’t show up and I have my doubts about whether I was at the right event anyway. So, that too failed to pan out.
I should have stayed home.
Friday is the old Friday
I frequently wonder how in the heck I get myself so busy. On the surface, I really dislike being overbooked. But I wonder if deep down I don’t really enjoy it. I mean, I get to that place all the time!
This morning I went down to the church to serve as a sacristan for a Memorial Mass. I don’t do this very often so when I do come up on the rotation, I’m usually unsure of what I’m supposed to be doing.
I had lunch at Papachinos downtown. I made a point of having some pasta with chicken, a highly recommended day-before-a-race meal. And it was really, really good too! I’m going to have to go there more often.
This afternoon, I had a meeting with other members of the Pastoral Council to continue working on the strategic plan. This was a three hour meeting. It feels like it’s going rather slowly to me, but I really think we’re making progress.
I went and picked up my race bag from Doctor’s Medical Center. They had the wrong shirt size for me so I hope I fit into the one I got.
After that, I went and hung out at Minnies for a couple hours before the hafla. Boring. I stuck around for about an hour once the dancing started and took some photos.
Now to settle in for a good night’s sleep.
Sunday potpourri
I started the day by playing/singing for Mass. Despite my lacerated index finger, I think I did a tollerable job. But here’s the problem, in 3 weeks, the Mass schedule changes and the 10 AM Mass will be in the Maze church. We still don’t really have a plan for what will happen with music when the schedule changes. I suspect that Mike will not last long and if/when he goes, Chris will follow. Cynthia has turned out to be pretty much worthless, so maybe I’m all there is. *Sigh*
Played several more hours of LOTRO this afternoon. Haelindir again. I got him up to 38, so mission accomplished. Back to Aluatis tomorrow night. All of the enhanced xp is used up for Haelindir, so I probably won’t play him again until next weekend.
Our tri-tip fundraiser did turn a profit, but I’d guess that it will all turn out to not have been worth the effort.
Did week 7, day 3 of my 5K training this evening. I’m pretty sure I upped my speed. That’s great! I have two more training sessions before I actually run a 5K (next Saturday).
I’m very much not looking forward to going to work tomorrow. I’m rather discontent. I’d like so much for things to be different but I am ruled by inertia. I keep looking for that combination of things that will lead to change. The search continues.
Oh, and it seems I’m an inconsiderate jerk.
Psych!
Ok, so yesterday I was told that I would soon be out of a job. I made a conscious decision to try to handle the whole situation with grace (in contrast to some of my colleagues). Then, this morning, Rosanne came to tell me that a mistake had been made and actually, I was safe. Crimeny!
I am glad of course, but as I told Rosanne, I wasn’t super bummed out yesterday, so I wasn’t going to be overjoyed today. It’s unfortunate that this all happened. I feel sorry for the person who will get bumped instead of me.
This bumping rights thing is evil.
Surprise!
Today I was informed that another employee at the district had decided that they deserved/needed my job more than I do. I am being bumped out of the position I’ve held for the past 7 years or so. I think these bumping rights are a pretty vile and evil thing. I told Rosanne, our union poobah, that I hadn’t heard a single good argument in support of this right to bump, but that I could think of numerous arguments against. I’ll enumerate them tomorrow. For now, it is late and I must go to bed. Suffice to say that come July 1, I will not have a job.
Happy cows come from California. Skinny Cows come from Genesis 41:3
I don’t think that many people share my way of thinking about some things. For example, I don’t think that I should pick up after others, nor should they pick up after me. We should each be responsible for fixing or cleaning up our own mess. Of course, we are free to ask others for help, and they are free to ask us. And it’s only polite to offer that help (when asked) within reason. I suspect that most people would say that we SHOULD go around and tidy up or whatever after others. Poppycock. You know how I mentioned that on Sunday I came back to Central Catholic and found the gate closed and locked? That was undoubtedly some do-gooder cleaning up after me. But what he really did is make things worse.
In 2002, I shared a house with Letitia and Becky. At the time, I was working a job that was more or less swing shift, so I tended to get home well after the girls had gone to bed. One night, I arrived home to find a package of Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches had been left out on the table and had mostly melted. It was a mess on the table-cloth and had begun dripping onto the floor. Now some people would think that they needed to clean this mess up. Not me. As I said, I didn’t create the mess and I didn’t think I was responsible for cleaning it up. However, if I left it alone, it would continue to melt and make a bigger mess. So I placed the whole thing in a plastic grocery bag and left it where I found it, only now it wouldn’t make more of a mess. This struck the girls as ludicrous and I’ve received a fair ration of crap about it since, but it made perfect sense to me.
So I ask you, what do you think of my solution? Should I have cleaned up their mess? Should I have thrown the whole thing away without cleaning? Should I have ignored it (and maintained plausible deniability) and just gone to bed?
All weekend in a post
Above all I wish to state that my suffering has begun. It is officially too warm for me. Rule of thumb: If you have to run the A/C to be comfortable, it’s too warm.
Here’s a recap of the past several days.
Thursday I went up to Stockton for the Chrism Mass. Music was ok, I got a couple of decent photos, and dinner was excellent!
Friday I got off work at noon then went for my walk/jog/run. When I finished that, I came home and fell asleep for a couple of hours. In the evening I went to the fish fry at the parish. I think it was even more successful than the one we did earlier this season.
Saturday I went out in the afternoon to the Modesto Earth Day celebration at Graceada Park. Sadly, it was pretty boring. Oh well. After that I went to Mass where I served as Commentator. This being Passion Sunday, the Gospel was quite long. I took the part of the narrator in the reader’s theatre style proclamation. Still later in the evening, I stayed up much too late watching TV. Merlin and Walking Dead.
Today, Sunday, I got up earlyish to go down to the church and open the gates to Central Catholic and post signs indicating that there was overflow parking available. I was quite proud of myself for getting it all done. But when I went back this evening to lock up, someone had already closed the main gate. So for all I know, people went looking for parking only to find a locked gate. Annoying.
After opening up, I went to MJC to do my walk/jog/run on the track. I actually felt quite good after this session! I can tell that the workout is getting a little easier. That’s encouraging! Another nap (geez I’m getting old) and this evening I went out to the Clarion for the belly dancing thing. I took a few photos but I haven’t processed them yet. We’ll see if they’re any good.
Ok. There you go. Now you’re up to date.
Choir practice
Went to Choir Practice at Our Lady of Fatima tonight. The rehearsal was for the Mass of the Oils on Thursday. The music is mostly the same as the past several years; functional, pretty (maybe), but not terribly fun. Rehearsal was… difficult. Most of the choir was from OLF as was the director. But there were several of us from other parishes too. So we had a combination of over-familiarity on the part of the OLF folks, and under-familiarity for the rest of us. Add to it that another music director from another parish was there, and he had trouble not directing. And the organist must be new because he had a lot of trouble following the director. Just ugh.
Oh well, Mass is on Thursday and then it will all be over.
