9.10.1993

I skipped out on work again today. It's been so slow at the plant that if it continues much longer I'll be laid off by the end of this month. I'm unhappy and depressed with the way things have been going at Bill and Dave's. I'm already tired of it. I'm tired of scrounging around the factory looking for something to do in different departments. The only good thing that has come out of the slowdown so far is I've been cross-trained on a bunch of PC board lines. I've been out there in the hand load lines for weeks. Now I know how to build boards from the ground up. It put everything I learned in my week long training class to good use. Building PC boards is sort of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I like it. If business picks back up I'll have to go back to running the robots.

Things around the house have been shaky. Joe has been getting bent out of shape over every little thing. Instead of talking about what's bugging him he holds it in until it festers. The main reason why he's agitated so easily is he's still unemployed. He's got way too much time on his hands sitting around the house thinking about the way people relate to him. Frequently he gets into debates with me about what he calls "social interactions" between himself and any given person. It's like he's being far too introspective and I think he's going insane. Most likely it will be a long time before Joe finds a job again, if at all.The last few jobs he had didn't seem too bad to me, but as soon as something happened that Joe didn't like he walked out the door from each place. No one told him he had to go. He quits. I really don't see him trying very hard to improve his situation.