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Monday, January 31, 2005

Roadtrip To Montana

Man, am I bored out of my fucking mind. Spokane sucks. There's nothing to do in the downtown area. Everything recreational here is like for people with speedboats or guns. It's too hot to do anything outside most of the time now. Every day it has been in the mid 90s to low 100 range on the temperature. Being in the car is the worst because I end up using the air conditioning. I started having more bloody nose of hate lately because I was using the air conditioning at night in my apartment and during the day in the car. Especially when I left the one in the apartment on all night. I'm all screwed up now and bleed almost every time I sneeze.

I went into Montana over this past weekend so I could see a different part of the country, and get out of town for a while. I was hoping the drive would help me to relax and clear my thoughts on how rotten this relationship with Jennifer is going. Before I left Spokane I stopped by a chain record store and picked up Lush's new album, Lovelife and also got a tape by some new band called Garbage. I needed something different to listen to during the drive to Missoula, Montana. I'd be on the road for a while.

I took the Interstate east out of the city and across the panhandle of Idaho. Driving through the skinny strip of Idaho known as the panhandle I became more homesick for California. The scenery reminded me alot of the Sierras around Tahoe. Continuing east I hit the Montana state line and an interesting freeway sign caught my attention. What I got out of it after reading the black and white large text sign was, "As long as safe weather conditions permit, you sir, may drive as fast as you please". There was no speed limit in this fine state. I had to give this a try as it seemed too good to be true.

There wasn't anyone out on the road that day. I hardly saw any houses along the freeway and seldom saw any other cars. I knew some people lived near the freeway in a few places though because their chickens were pecking at junk in the meridian of the freeway. I took the rental car up into triple digits for long stretches of pavement. It was fun. Speeding shouldn't be such a crime, I thought. It felt like it was more fun than it should have been just because I knew I was doing something on the road that was taboo. I was rockin' out to Lush and Garbage on the car's stereo while the outside world blurred past me.

Up ahead there was a Montana Highway Patrol car.

Well, shit. If I'm going to put this speeding thing to a serious test there's nothing better than finding out what the lawman will do when I pass him at 125mph. Fuck it. It didn't take much more foot pressure to reach the 120s so I gently gave it a shove and next thing I knew I was up alongside the cop. Feeling a little nervous, I looked over my right shoulder into the driver's window of the squad car and saw the patrolman look over at me about the same time. I gave him a shit-eating grin and waved at him. I sped away and watched his car fade in my rear view mirror. The red and blue gumball lights never turned on, so I guessed the Montana no-speed limit was for real.

Arriving in Missoula I was hungry. I didn't know anything about the town other than it had a college and a girl I was seeing years ago in high school named Sophie Curtis had at one point gone to college there. Wandering around the city on a grey afternoon I pulled into a diner that didn't have a single customer in sight. I got a cheeseburger and fries and thought about how miserable I was. After the meal I found a payphone in the parking lot and I called Senor 23 and left a stupid message on his answering machine at the B Street house.

That afternoon I drove all over Missoula and parked the car in downtown areas that looked interesting. Walking around the place I talked to alot of the locals and I was treated exceptionally well. It's funny, my feeling was that Spokane would be progressive and cool, whereas Montana people would be backwards and podunk. The exact reverse turned out to be the case. Everyone in Missoula was totally cool to me and acted like they had a brain between their ears and all the people of Spokane seemed completely jacked up like some country bumpkins working the fields. I never would have expected this. Talking with some of the people I mentioned how weak I thought the Spokane scene was and they all said the same thing, those guys 'over there' are assholes. That was kind of a relief to hear because I thought it was just me being weird about it all. It's good to have a reality check every once in a while.

Bathroom Fun?

Every division I've worked in here at Bill and Dave's company has supported some form of on the job work experience for developmentally disabled or mentally handicapped people. Basically, they are kind to retards and let them perform low level tasks for us like sift through our trash bins. Please don't confuse the genuine retards I've been writing about (my coworkers) with the real retards. The real retards can't help the situation they were stuck with so I cut them some slack, as we all should.

Now then. Each division works with a local agency or group that brings in the retardeds, supervises them while they're in the factory, and then takes them home each day. It all seems to work out well enough. We get some work done that nobody else wants to do and they get paid to do a job and learn how to deal with being around others in the workplace on a daily basis. I have observed the supervision of these souls at numerous sites and divisions over a period of years and generally found their caretakers to be top-notch. They really go out of their way to make sure these folks are looked after and stay out of harm's way or get into trouble. Things here in SKD are a little less than desireable when it comes to looking after these people though. I'm not sure what the problem is exactly, but the retards here are not being watched in the building when they leave their work area and the result is some of them are bouncing off the walls. Literally. Must feel good to be free.

I bailed out of the production area post haste the other day because the lunch I got served up in the cafeteria did some unspeakable things to my guts. I hit the closest bathroom to my line knowing that I was about to commit a war crime in the bathroom stall I walked into. While I was waiting for the cafeteria poisoning to pass on through into the bowl below I heard the bathroom door fly open, and then I listened to some mis-stepped goofy foot noises on the floor. The door swung shut and all was still for a moment. Then the odd laughter began. On the other side of the bathroom stall I was in I could hear this loud chant like, HUR HUR HUR HURRRRR. What the fuck was that all about, I thought? Then I looked up to see one of the retarded guys was peeking through the bathroom stall door at me while I was taking a dump. We made eye contact. I was like, "Oh good christ". He stood there and laughed even louder after I spotted him. I guess being in the bathroom and watching someone poo is pretty funny. Maybe I'll have to try that myself sometime.

TV Is More Important

I used to call Jennifer every night. I wanted to know how her day went, if she was okay, and if anything happened I'd need to help her with. She gave me the brush off so many times that I call her in the evening after a few days have passed. There's no point in calling her daily anymore as she never has anything to talk about and she's angry I'm interrupting her television shows.

Jennifer is a sucker for those stupid late-night soaps, as I call them. She obsessively watches crap like Melrose Place and 90210, or some shit. Personally I think shows like that are for people who are bored with their own life and don't have any friends. A long while back Jennifer gave up on trying to get me to sit on the couch next to her and watch junk like that. I couldn't handle it. I'd get squirmy and bored almost instantly and then I'd have to leave the room. The worst was when she dragged me to a few dinner parties her coworkers scheduled so they could sit down to dinner together just as the opening credits to Melrose Place came on the screen. I started to make myself scarce around the house on weeknights those shows were on. Too bad I didn't have a garage to hide in like most guys do when their spouses or girlfriends are hassling them over inane shit like that. There is a sports field across the street though. I used to run over there and stand in the middle of the field and Jennifer couldn't see or figure out where I had disappeared to.

Sometimes Jennifer will call me at the apartment after 11 when her shows are over, and have nothing to talk about. When I call her I generally get attitude and a rude "I'll call you back". The volume on the TV is so loud I can clearly hear it over the phone line, click. The line goes dead. Changing my calling tactics I attempted to avoid calling her during the mindless television action but she seems to be watching something else I didn't anticipate when I made the call. There's too many late night brain rotting soaps on the tube apparently. I'm unaware of all of them for the most part. I guess I'd rather stay home and read a book or something.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Rewarded For Nothing

I'm here working for one of the most advanced technology companies in the United States.

I'm surrounded by lazy idiots.

Every other week it seems, my fellow coworkers feel they aren't being rewarded enough for all the hard work they're putting in to make this instrument transfer successful. I see them doing virtually nothing, day in and day out. We head into our weekly line meetings and someone like Slobbering Mouth Kid, or J2 will raise their hand and once they've been given the floor will pose the question, "When is the next company function? When is the next party?" Some of them seem to feel a sense of entitlement to being rewarded for a job well done. But it's a job they haven't performed at all let alone performed well done. The Drunk will usually say she's working on it. Next thing you know there's plans to go on a lake trip with dinner and all the booze you can drink provided by Bill and Dave for free. Or there will be some lavish lunch planned on a Friday at a resort near here and after the gig we get to go home paid for eight hours but we only worked a half day at the factory.

I would feel alright about this if these guys had actually done something constructive. If we really accomplished something towards the goal. Nobody is putting in much effort. I feel ashamed about it, like the company is being ripped off blindly as a whole and we haven't earned the reward. I haven't gone to any of the parties, and I don't plan to. I stay behind at the plant after they've all left, and I finish up my eight hours on the job. I'd participate if I liked even just a couple of these people. I'd be there if we had done something worthy in the past couple of weeks but I don't see much being done. It's just a freeloader's paradise and I can't allow myself to take part in it. It's not right.

J2

One of the California technicians on the line is one of those "third world people" Chuck is always angry about. Today I happened to hit the bathroom the same time Chuck did. Since I told him I didn't need him around anymore he discovered he could hang out on a production line over by the other side of the building. A couple of his buddies work there so he can hang out all day long and yap with them, and still get paid. Best part is I never see him anymore. Now that he's realized he can just loiter around he's much happier. Anyway Chuck, myself, and J2 all were using the sinks to wash up about the same time. J2 finished first and walked out the door.

No sooner had J2 left the bathroom Chuck turned to me and said, "Did you ever notice how third world people use the bathroom sink like it's a toilet?"
Chuck hadn't said more than two words to me since I kinda kicked him out of his spot on the line.
He continued. "They usually blow their noses in the sink, gargle the water in their mouth, spit, and try to wash up in it like it's a bathtub. You ever notice that?"
J2 did spit in the sink just a few seconds ago but so what. Some guys spit in the urinals while they're pissing. Is spitting in the bathroom sink a bigger crime? I told Chuck I didn't notice or care. I could see the disgust in his eyes as he looked at me. I was just another California fuckup to him. He left the room.

J2 is from Venezuela. That's what he's told me about himself anyway. I've been watching him in the test area the past week or so. He's right on the other side of my final assembly bench. His daily routine is to come in, put his feet up at his tech bench, put on some huge stereo headphones, and place his arms behind his head. He spends most of the day kicking back. Rarely if ever does he touch an instrument. The only time he gets animated is when a woman walks by in the hallway. Doesn't matter if the woman is old or young, fat or skinny, ugly or beautiful. If it's female and breathing, he's up out of his seat like a shot from a gun and he's immediately walking side by side with her trying to pull the Latino Lover scam. He's married with two kids. They're all back down in California. Up here he's trying to cheat on his wife like there's no tomorrow. I find his antics to be repugnant.

Can't do anything about J2. He's protected, another of The Drunk's kiss asses. If J2 whines about something in a line meeting to The Drunk, or if he whines to her in private she gives him what he wants with no questions asked. The company is treating us pretty good on this gig. We get a ton of fringe benefits while we're here. How'd you like to have a fully furnished apartment with weekly maid service, a company car, instant credit on a corporate card, per diem per day, and tons of company parties? Apparently that isn't enough for J2. He's complained that he can't afford to call his family back home. Calling California can't be that expensive, I thought. Well, that wasn't the deal. He wanted to be calling his family back in Venezuela every night after work. So he complained to The Drunk about it and she's paying all his private phone bills now. Huh? And he complained he couldn't afford his cable TV bill. She's paying that for him now too. All on the company dime. They aren't doing stuff like that for anyone else here so what makes J2 so special?

Monday, January 24, 2005

Board Butcher

Interfacing with the technical side of the house is becoming routine for me. Up 'till now I haven't had to deal with them much, but lately I've had to repair instruments and some boards for them. Or I have to take something back to them that they messed up. I'm not impressed with the California or Spokane techs on this line so far. Take Board Butcher, for example. He's a tall, older man with greyish curly hair and a moustache. He has glasses and wears an outfit that is brown or grey. I don't think I've seen him wear any other colors. On days that he comes in to work wearing all brown he reminds me of an old UPS delivery man with a big beer gut. He always carries a black briefcase with him. I don't think I've seen him open it up here at work even once.

Board Butcher seems to have missed out on some basics of reworking PC boards. During the replacement of a damaged part it's a general rule of thumb to secure the new part flat to the component (top) side of the board. You don't load the part in all cockeyed and then solder it into the board. Also it's a good idea to trim the metal legs of the part sticking through the circuit (bottom) side of the board before putting that board back inside an instrument. Otherwise it might make contact with something and short the fuck out. Board Butcher has BBQ'ed a bunch of stuff since I've been here. I got a phase mod from him the other day that he said he fixed. When I opened up the metal casing just to double check his work, I found an IC that was completely cockeyed and the IC's leads were jammed up against the back of the metal case. If I had installed this into a unit and powered it up we would have had another component BBQ party on our hands. I don't trust this guy's work.

For some reason Board Butcher seems to think I'm an OK kind of guy so he's been telling me alot about his anti-government views. You see, up around these here parts there's a large concentration of people that are in militias or are invloved in some kind of white supremacy group. As I mentioned before there's considerable overlap between the two camps. Board Butcher believes that all freeway signs have a number printed on the back of them that are supposed to tell US Army soldiers where to take civilian prisoners during some sort of a round up that he thinks will happen any day now. The numbers are some system that will reveal the location of giant concetration camps out in the desert of Nevada or Arizona. He's not jacking me around about all this stuff, he genuinely believes everything he's been telling me. A couple of times I freaked him out by making some comments about his views within earshot of other employees. He pulled me aside and asked me not to mention those things when others were around.

Sometimes I get random wisdom from him. The other day I walked by his desk in the test area and he stopped me with this question. "Hey Factory_Peasant. Know why Wonder Bread says it's 'fortified' on the package"?
"Uh, no". I replied.
"Do you know why Kellogg's Frosted Flakes says it's 'fortified' on the box"?
Again I thought about it for a microsecond and replied, "Nope".
Board Butcher looked me right in the eye and he said, "They're fortified because there's nothing in them. That's why". He nodded his head at me like I would know exactly what he was talking about and then he went back to his board butchery.

A few years ago there was a sickening incident at a place called Ruby Ridge, in Idaho. A guy by the name of Randy Weaver was allegedly set up on some bogus weapons charges and the FBI showed up to lay seige to his house. They killed one of his sons and snipered Mr. Weaver's wife. During the standoff, Board Butcher claims he was there delivering food to the family holed up inside the house. I don't know if his story is true, but if it is, the guy really is hardcore anti-government. No doubt about it.

He's mentioned other stuff about himself that I can appreciate and admire though. He's all about self-sufficiency and he apparently does most if not all of his construction on the family home by himself or with friends. He was able to get off the power grid by using alternate methods of fuel or other ways of generating electricity. That is very cool and there's nothing wrong with being self reliant, but there's this off-center creepy element about the guy that puts me off. Oh well, his personal beliefs aren't hurting anyone so no big deal. I just wish he'd stop wrecking our PC boards. I don't need the extra work right now.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Self Managed Work Teams

Management at Bill and Dave's has made some pretty bad decisions over the years. Well, I'll be blunt. They've made some seriously fucking stupid decisions over the years. One of the worst was a concept they got hold of and implemented across some of the divisions called Self Managed Work Teams. The idea was this: chop the dicks off of your line supervisors and put them in some sort of screwy adviser role that no one will understand, then empower your manufacturing employees to write each other's evaluations and figure out how they will get boxes out the door to customers. Sounds great, doesn't it? Not really. For the most part this half baked idea was a complete disaster.

Spokane is the only division I've been in where the Self Managed Work Team is active and in place. Everywhere else in the company already got rid of it since it didn't work worth a shit. Why the Spokane folks are still using this style of management is a mystery to me, then again alot of stuff here seems really backwards so what the hell. I've asked Don alot about what he thinks of it and what has happened here as a result of the SMWT thing. It's all pretty bad. He said during the first few rounds of peer written evaluations, some employees were given poor marks by their coworkers and as a result didn't get a raise. Sometimes it was for real reasons but other times people panned their fellow employees just to be mean. To retaliate these people would then in turn also write bad evals for the people that originally gave them a negative review. After a while everyone was practically ranked at the bottom of the barrel and no one was going to receive a merit increase in their wages. It was all a downward spiral of hate.

In a feeble attempt to get control of the situation, the SKD management team opened up the guidelines on who could write an evaluation. Instead of having a coworker on your line write one for you (that would probably be suicide), they allowed people to go shop around for an employee outside of your work area that would write a favorable review. At first this made some sense, but once again the pendulum swung way too far over to the other side. Employees could go find someone in an area they barely knew and had nothing to do with the kind of work you did. In a way those write ups were just about as inconsistent and worthless but at least you weren't going to get raked through the coals by your immediate coworkers. Don said one time he had someone's secretary write a review for him. Cool, I guess. Either way it all seems dumb to me and I wonder how they've been able to get along this whole time with such a useless system in place.

Monday, January 17, 2005

Boot In Awning and The Bead Lady

It was one of the many nights we had been getting drunk and lounging around B Street. My bedroom window opened up onto the second story roof of the house, from there if you wanted to you could walk onto the roof of the hair salon in our front yard. This particular night Senor Random got drunk as hell and climbed out the window into the night air. He muttered something over his shoulder to us about wanting to walk on the awning that hung over the front of the hair salon. Sure thing buddy. Whatever you say. We crowded around the windows and watched.

That awning was nothing more than a pipe framework with thin canvas stretched over it. I knew it couldn't hold much weight. So he puts one foot up and steps down on it. Wham! His foot went right through, Senor Random loses his balance, and the next thing I know the canvas is up to his hip. His left leg was still on the roof and he appeared to be peforming a kind of gymnastics manuver. Random almost went over the side of the building but luckily he regained balance and pulled himself up onto the roof again. He was wearing big burgundy Doc Martins so the hole he made in the awning was huge.

Timing is everything. Had this event took place a couple of weeks before nobody would have cared about it. Funny thing was, the lady that ran the hair salon just had the awning replaced with a brand new one. The hole in the canvas was centered almost perfectly above their front door. The girls that worked there noticed it the next morning. Obviously, we were blamed for the damage, but they had no proof of wrongdoing on our part (once again). The property manager called me up a few days later to investigate the deal but I lied like a rug. There was nothing they could do.

Eventually, the hairdresser closed up her shop and moved away to Arizona. Apparently her ex-husband had been harassing her so she wanted to skip town. It must have been serious business because the guy came by here twice before she moved away and threw bricks through all the windows in the salon. Since I am a nite owl I was up each time he came by and smashed up the place. Never saw him though. He was smart and did the job on foot instead of using a car.

The salon was vacant for months after that. B Street breathed a long sigh of relief. No more wars with the dingbats over their customers blocking our driveway. No more frantic calls from the property manager threatening eviction over complaints of damage to the building. I started tossing my empty beer bottles out the window onto the hair salon roof again. A couple of the guys brought crummy lawn furniture up to the roof and sat out there at night. Things were good.

Then that scumbag Bead Lady moved in and turned it into a hippie bead shop. Fucked everything up.

Bead Lady was a burned out 1960s summer of love leftover that was super skinny and had shoulder length hair that was turning gray. Every time I had to go down there to talk to her she was completely spaced out. It was irritating. I had to talk to her a number of times when she began moving in to the front building because she thought it was cool to use our driveway as a loading zone for her boxes and crates full of beads and other hippie crap. Bead Lady blocked us all in every time she parked there. At first I was nice about it and tried to explain politely that our driveway was not a parking spot for her future customers or as a loading zone. That's what the yellow curb out front was for and those little things on poles that you put change in, well those are parking meters for your customers. She didn't seem to get it. Not once. Then I would yell at her and tell her to use the "Fucking loading zone". Didn't seem to phase her one bit.

One morning I came back to my room after taking a shower and as I opened the door to my bedroom I heard a car pull into the driveway and the motor died. Doors opened, two people got out, closed the doors and walked down the driveway out to the sidewalk. I could hear the gravel crunching under their feet. I jumped onto my bed and peeked out the side window just in time to see two college age bead hungry girls turn the corner and head into the shop. Murder! I will do murder to you! I was in a rage. This was just like having the hair salon here. The product had changed but we still had the same bullshit problems brewing bewteen us, retail shop and animal house wars would ensue.

Before I knew it my feet were carrying me down the porch and out the driveway to the street. I marched along the sidewalk in my pajamas and slippers to the door of the bead shop and I barged in. My hair was wet and I scanned the inside of the shop like a Terminator looking for two filthy humans. As the door shut behind me the Bead Lady looked up at me from behind the counter. She was sitting on a stool and I avoided making direct eye contact with her. I ignored her. I was about to make a horrible scene take place in her shop since nothing else had got the message through that you will not abuse our precious driveway. I could see a startled and somewhat worried look come across her face out of the corner of my eye. Yup, you know it's coming now. You done fucked up too many times. The line has been crossed and now I'm hoisting the black flag. Time to cut some throats.

Scanning the room there was one guy with a backpack on, shopping. I would spare him and he didn't pay me any attention anyway. Directly in front of me were the two college wenches. They were looking at beads and stupid shit on the wall so their backs were facing me. I raised my arm, pointed at them and shouted as loud as I could into the store, "Hey! Stupid bitches! Our driveway isn't a fucking parking lot!" They were shocked and Bead Lady almost fell off her bar stool. One of the two girls said to me in a squeaky girlie voice, "But... we were just going to be a few minutes"... I cut her off and bellowed back at them "A few minutes or a few seconds it doesn't matter! Get that shit heap car of yours out of there now!" Before they could say anything else I did an about face and marched back out of the bead shop, smiling. I never made eye contact with the Bead Lady. That show was mainly for her, not the two girls. I wanted Bead Lady to know how things were going to work around here from now on. If I put Leaky Pete or Senor 23 on the job things would get much worse for her.

Those were the days.

8.20.1996

There was little if any real greatfulness in my heart for Shamu. Nevertheless I emailed her a thank you letter. If it wasn't for her personal friendship and influence with The Drunk I might not have been brought back. The thank you letter was something I had to do. I'll never forget what a lousy manager Shamu was when I worked for her in the PC Board department.

I really don't know what to do with Jennifer. Another benefit the company has given us all while we're working on the product transfer is round trip airfare once a month to either fly home for a weekend or fly someone up here to visit. I am going to avoid heading home because I think it will make me much more homesick and depressed. I hate flying anyway. Should I let Jennifer use this month's ticket to come up here again? Should I move out of Jennifer's house when I head home and just get my shit together? Right now I feel like nothing is there for me. I really wish I knew Jennifer. The only way that would happen is if I could somehow read her mind. Maybe I'd finally be able to understand her. I try, but most of the time I keep guessing as to what I should do or how I should react to her. I need to not try to figure out women. People keep giving me advice to that effect. Problem is I frequently run into trouble with them and it makes me sit down and stare into a corner while saying to myself over and over again, "What the fuck just happened"?

The people I've talked to all seem to think something is horribly wrong with Jennifer. Nobody can tell me exactly what it is, and I have nothing to gauge it against. Most of the time I blame myself. I suppose the reason I'm still with her is because I have a hope that things will get better. They never really do. Once in a while something good happens between us and that makes me wait around for the next time. I'm out of my mind most of the time in her house. I had a gut feeling things would be bad with her and looking back on it now I wish I had followed my instincts. I never should have left B Street.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

8.16.1996

Today it was really slow at work so I left the line around 8:30 this morning. I did what I could to scrounge around for something to do, but nobody needed any help. I'm doing good on supplies and pre-fab stuff like board modules and card cages so I went to the portable building to check my email. Much to my surprise there was a message from Joanne. While I was writing a reply to her an alert window came up about an incoming message. It was from Marie. I miss working with both of them . Joanne and Marie were on the late swingshift back at TDS. Sometimes they worked graveyard hours. Both of them are crazy old ladies full of fire and brimstone. They were alot of fun to work with.

The ladies told me serious shit had just gone down in the Closed Area. Apparently my former supervisor there at TDS had been removed from her job. I was shocked. Joanne said that when they gave my nice boss the news she was almost in tears. I would imagine they did it because they feel she just isn't getting the job done. The reality of it is however no one else they put in her position will be able to do any better. It's just the nature of the beast. I think it's terrible and I feel bad for her. The new guy they were bringing in to take over the Closed Area supervisor job was a guy named Bob. I never met him so I have no idea if he's any good, but Joanne mentioned in her email that she thought the guy was an asshole. They split up the shifts by giving them a swing shift manager as well, and Joanne said that person is a dummy. The whole time I worked at TDS we never had a manager on swing shift. It was basically me, and they never paid me a dime more than my factory peasant wage for my trouble. All I can say about that is, I'm glad I left when I did.

I think they put a swing shift supervisor in there because of all the vengeance attacks we did to Mr. Janitor. The guys won't be able to scuff up his floors with the heels of their shoes anymore, but if they're covert about it they could probably keep spilling isopropyl alcohol all over the place and screw Mr. Janitor up that way. The guys told me their Hate Crime Friday attacks on Mr. Janitor continued after I quit the company. That made my little black heart glow with warmth.

Boredom continues to plague me. I've got the whole weekend in front of me and I can't think of a single thing I want to do or go see. I was going to work an overtime shift tomorrow to help kill one weekend day, but now there's nothing that needs to be done in here. Around this place it's like the US Army, always hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait.

Jennifer is fucking up again. I left her with a few basic things that needed to be done. Nothing too difficult. I gave her the key to our PO Box downtown and asked her to check it once a week, then send our bills up to me here in Spokane so I could pay them on time. The bills stopped coming up a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't figure out why. Jennifer was being evasive about it so I called up my Mom and asked her to drive across town to our place and take the mailbox key away from her. Mom got over there, I told her what I suspected was happening, and she was really pissed off when she got back home with the key. She told me Jennifer had a large cardboard box on the livingroom floor and it was jammed full of all our mail. Bills included. Stupid girl. When I called her about it Tuesday night she got smug with me and said she was sorry in a condescending tone of voice. Jennifer wasn't sorry at all. It was all part of some deliberate petty plan of hers. Why does she keep doing stupid shit to me? I told Marie about this crap with Jennifer and she said, "Well, if that girl wants an engagement ring out of you she's sure going about it the wrong way." Damn straight, woman.

8.10.1996

Driving around town bored as usual, I happened to look up from my instrument cluster at just the right moment. I was passing another derelict strip mall and glanced at the shop listing signs. Most of the once readable shop names had been broken to pieces by rocks or bricks being thrown into them and the sockets inside that once held the flourescent tubes were covered in rust. What caught my eye however, was an old wooden board that had been somehow secured to the metal frame of the mall signs. The board was old. It looked like it had been hanging there through some rough winter seasons. It was almost black from age. On it in big white crudely drawn letters was the word LIQUOR. And there was an arrow pointing into the parking lot. Man, I hoped this one was for real. The others I had found were either always closed or had moved. In the case of liquor stores that had relocated to somplace else no one bothered to leave a note in the shop window as to where they had moved to. Brilliant.

I made a hard right into the parking lot. Instantly I thought this was going to turn out to be another wild goose chase because this mall really looked abandoned. Weeds a foot or two tall had grown through large cracks in the pavement of the parking lot. I had to swerve to avoid getting them caught in my radiator grill. None of the shops had any signs of life in them and there wasn't a single car parked in the lot. I kept driving deeper into the mall.

Following the parking lot around to the back end of the place, I spotted a single shop window with a light in it. There were three cars parked out front. Maybe this was the real deal at long last. I pulled up close and killed the motor. I walked up to the door and much to my surprise it wasn't locked. So I barged into the joint. The lobby, if you could call it that looked spartan and reminded me of a doctor's office. The walls were covered in simulated wood grain panels of vintage 1970s caliber and the carpet was faded bright orange. Disgusting. There was a fake plant hidden under thick layers of dust. In the distant past it must have looked green. To my left, and before you could walk into the next room, there were dozens of brochures and pamphlets available for the taking all over the wall. I looked them over. All of the literature was anti-alcohol in nature, fact was applied to the reader or the more heavy handed fear tactic was taken. Some showed black and white photos from brutal car accidents that displayed graphic images of mangled steel mixed with human body. A simple caption like "Drunk Driver" was underneath the image. These were gold. I knew Gabe would be able to use alot of this stuff in collages and multimedia projects so I grabbed a bunch of them and jammed it all into my shoulder bag. I would mail them down to him back home that week.

Passing the propaganda section filled with teen pregnancy statistics and drunk driving death rates I stepped into my Mecca. Everywhere I gazed I saw simulated wood grain bookshelves loaded to the brim with glistening bottles of evil spirits. Each bookshelf had a golden number glued to the top of it. The gold numbers were the same ones apartment complexes use on the front doors of each dwelling. This was a real low-brow operation here. I noticed that each bookshelf only had the same color of booze or bottle in it. Were they trying to be clever and only group by color of bottle contents? Didn't matter. I was going to pay the State of Washington some of my hard earned cash for rum and vodka, then get the hell out. I was long overdue for some serious binge drinking. Maybe I would be able to forget where I was for a few hours or a day. Hopefully I'd forget all about my job, this lousy town, and Jennifer.

Behind the cash register stood a grumpy old man. I could tell why he was giving me the hairy eyeball. He thought I was some punk teenager trying to hand him a fake ID. From his facial expression it was obvious he didn't like me and wanted me out of his store. Most people in this city don't like me. I'm getting used to it. Grumpy old guy made me take my driver's license out of my wallet and he stared at it back to front for a minute. Oh the drama. I wanted to tell the dimwit to knock it off and let me pay for this shit. You old bastard. Instead I kept my yap shut and watched his ID scrutiny act. Grudginly he handed my license back to me and rang up my boozes. I paid, took my bag out to the car with a self satisfied smirk on my face and marked the address of this liquor cache on my Spokane city map.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Meet J1

Late in the afternoon I was walking back to the production area from the bathroom. One of our line technicians was walking towards me in the hallway. He's a little taller than I am I think and he's in his early 20s. He's got bright yellow blonde hair that's receding from his forehead and he's got a big old honker of a beak on his face. I haven't talked to him once since I arrived here. There's no need for me to talk to the techs much, if at all yet. He's definitely one of ours though. Another California reject. J1 came right up to me in the hallway and with his eyes wide open said, "Did you see that full moon last night?" He stopped me in my tracks.

This was strange. I thought I heard a theremin somewhere in the building playing UFO music. I had not said hello to this guy once in the whole month or so that I've been here. I replied cautiously, "No I didn't." I wasn't sure where he was going with this, like if this was going to be some sort of joke or if he was mentally deranged.
"Whenever there's a full moon out I go outside and I rip my shirt off and I howl like a wolf at it." J1 stood there and stared at me. Was I supposed to be impressed? Did I ask or do I care? No. Great, yet another fucking nitwit got onto this product transfer and I'm gonna have to deal with him. Super.
He continued. "I think I scared one of my neighbors in the apartment complex because I saw her standing in a window watching me as I howled." J1 smiled like he was a night predator, king of the beasts. I wanted to slink away under a desk or something and pretend I never saw him.

Not knowing what the desired reaction from me was supposed to be I decided to treat J1 like I was dealing with an 8 year old. I told him that it probably isn't a good idea to be making howling noises that late at night, and that if there were any elderly people in his apartment complex he could scare them into having a heart attack, or at the very least end up having the cops called on him. Apparently this was not the desired response J1 had sought from me. Luckily it made him go away though. I don't want to talk to him again if I can help it. I'm also glad to know he doesn't live anywhere near the apartment complex I'm at.

Why are most of the employees here so completely screwed up? It's amazing. The only things I can think of are that managers didn't want to let their good people leave the lines they worked for back home because it would cripple their production ability. The other thing supervisors there probably did was shuffle off their poor performers and problem personality cases. See, managers at Bill and Dave's company never really deal with problem employees. You have to threaten someone with death or get caught stealing an expensive item before they'll maybe fire you. The rest of the time they keep shuffling the problem people around from area to area and never try to work with them to straighten their act out. I mean, supervisors have all the authority in the world to work with these guys and either motivate them to do the job they are supposed to, or throw them out. It's not that difficult. As employees we've been given the rules, we know what is acceptable and not. So why are all these fuckups running around loose here? I don't get it. I just don't get it.

TDS Troubles

My boss from TDS called me at work on Friday. It was really good to hear from her. I actually miss working for her, especially compared to what I have to deal with here at Bill and Dave's. She said she would start to email me this week. Very cool. I'll have a little something to look forward to and read before going home in the afternoons. She's been really busy back down there at TDS as things aren't going well from what other employees have been telling me. While we were jabbering about work stuff she told me they are so far behind on production of the weapon system that hey had to go with a mandatory six day work week. Whoa. I'm glad I got out of there when I did, but I didn't mention that to her. That would fucking suck having to work six days a week. I asked her how everybody took the news and she said, "Not good."

Marie called me the other night too. I feel sorry for her since she's still stuck at TDS. She confirmed the six day work week thing and added that they were 4,000 units behind schedule, plus everything they already have committed to ship weekly. That's really terrible. I thought about it for a few minutes and figured it out. If they were going to make that shortfall up by the end of the year they would have to ship 1,000 units a month until January 1st. I don't think in the two and a half years I was at TDS we were ever able to ship a thousand units in one month. I hope they make it, I really do. Honestly I don't think it's going to happen though.

Much to my dismay Ricky Rockanova hasn't been fired yet. He's still there spending most of his time on swingshift talking on the phone and telling lies to nice girls. I don't know how he consistently gets away with the shit he pulls on women. Anyway, I suspected he was the thief we were looking for that stole from the petty cash fund and later swiped the Employees' Association money. In the lunchroom they had a glass Alhambra water jug that we could throw our spare change in. At the end of the year (usually around Christmas time) they would have a raffle and whoever won it got all the cash that built up in the water jug. Typically if it was nearly full of change it would cash in around four hundred bucks. It disappeared one evening. Ricky is in dire financial shape and I believe he is the culprit. I've been talking with Dave and Gabe alot and they've been telling me there's some other really weird shit happening with that guy outside of work right now but I'm not clear on the details.

Dave needed a room mate a while back. Ricky was looking for a place to live. They talked it over and Dave asked me what I thought of the guy. I told him how fucked up in the head Ricky is and I said over and over "Don't do it. Find anyone else to move in. You don't want that guy in your house." Well, I guess Dave was in a bad way and really needed somebody to help cover the rent and no one more preferable was available. Ricky moved into his place. Then the "episodes" in Dave's livingroom began...

Friday, January 14, 2005

Bogus Weekend Visit

Jennifer was here for a weekend visit. While she was here, she was a total bitch. I met her at the airport and brought a dozen roses for her. She didn't want them and acted very indifferent towards me. I didn't get a big hug or a passionate kiss as soon as she saw me. I got nothing. Jennifer didn't seem happy to see me or to be here in Spokane and I wondered if she had missed me at all. She said little as we walked out to the car and I hauled her luggage. The only thing she did tell me was that she wanted some food, but she didn't give me any clue as to what she might like for dinner. So I started making suggestions like fried chicken, burgers, Chinese, a steak, and drove around the city. Nothing sounded good to her but she still wanted food. She was being difficult on purpose and it made me really angry. I tried to play it cool. She never did tell me what she wanted so we ended up at a drive through fast food dump.

We didn't have sex until the last day she was here. Sex was the first thing I wanted to do with her when she arrived. Obviously our priorities are way out of sync with each other. I hadn't seen her in a month and I missed her badly. During the weekend visit Jennifer went out of her way to be distant and annoying. I was completely depressed and I felt like the weekend was ruined. The worst part was the other night when I took her out to an expensive dinner at a resort in Coeur d' Alene. I got dressed up and took her to a place called Beverly's which is near the top floor of this resort high rise building. The window seating in the restaurant is cool because you can look out over the lake. Near the end of the meal Jennifer decided to inform me that she was going to "hold out" having sex with me. It was messed up.

Sunday afternoon we sat down and talked. Well, I did most of the talking as usual because Jennifer never talks. Not about relationship stuff anyway. I told her how I felt about the way she has been acting but I don't think she understands how hurt and frustrated I become when she treats me like this. It's a constant problem and sometimes I just snap. I suspect the main reason why Jennifer was being so lame was I had mentioned I got her some jewelry as a surprise gift. I wasn't specific about what it was, however when she got back home she told me over the phone she was expecting an engagement ring from me. Heh. If she keeps this kind of shit up she isn't going to see an engagement ring from me, ever.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Another Dimension

As I step out of the car into the streets of Spokane I can hear the faint sound of theremins churning out sci-fi UFO music from the golden age of B movies. Doesn't matter what time of day or night it is here. The theremins are always with me. I realize I no longer exist in the world and I am now trapped in some alternate reality. In this odd dimension I can drive down a large street mile after mile and feel like I haven't moved an inch. I pass a Safeway on my right. Then there's dozens of car dealerships and burned out malls in my rear view mirror. I pass another Safeway on the same side of the street. More car dealerships. Car dealerships, and I spot a single Chinese restaurant surrounded by brand new automobiles for sale on the dealership lot. I pass another Safeway on the same side of the street. Good thing I was counting otherwise I'd think I had been driving in circles.

Continuing towards the downtown area I run through a two or three block section of derelict buildings where the hookers attempt to entice motorists to pull over and cut a deal. It's like running the miniskirt and spiked heels gauntlet. Now I've been in most if not all of the major cities on the west coast, and I've seen prostitutes in all of them. What's shocking is these women here in Spokane are so brazen, so totally in your face that I can't believe it. They think nothing of smiling and waving at you, then for extra measure pull their skirts up all the way to their hips so you can see their naughty bits. There isn't a cop anywhere to be found. On a sunny weekday afternoon heading to Thaddeus T. Thudpucker's for some fried chicken I can usually get an eyefull from this stretch of town on the way to eat and on my way back home. Sometimes the whores make me laugh with their antics to try and get me to pull over. Occassionally I'm tempted to stop and pick one up because they're so young and cute. Other times as I look out my window at them I feel depressed.

Planned Parenthood clinics are a popular target for bombings here. When the police respond to the emergency the same group that carried out the bombing is already on the opposite side of the city and they rob a bank. They use the bombings as bait for the cops apparently, and then go after their real target. The Police haven't wised up and keep falling for the same old trick. Sounds to me like it's either a White Supremacist group or a Militia behind the rash of tandem bombings and bank robberies. As there's so many of both groups up here with a substantial amount of overlap in membership it's difficult to say who's really the culprit. I've asked a bunch of people back home if they've heard about any of this in the news and none of them have. Makes me think maybe the media is trying to help cover it up. Maybe.

The downtown part of Spokane has a few high rise skyscrapers and at a distance looks as modern as the financial district in San Francisco or some other city. However when you stand on the streets in the shadow of these buildings it's painfully evident nothing is happening. No one is around, litter blows in the wind and leaves pile up in the gutters. Few if any cars are around. Most of the windows in the first two stories of the buildings have been boarded up. I see glass enclosed walkways between a couple of the buildings and wonder how anyone could use one since everything here appears dead and locked up. Walking around it's as if everyone has vanished in some end of the world event that I must have slept through. I feel horribly alone in this city.

Sunday, January 09, 2005

8.5.1996



Chuck was on vacation in Alaska for a week so Don finished training me in Chuck's job, Final Assembly. Since I got burned out of the Material Coordinator position this is what I am stuck with. Final Assembly is actually when the instrument gets built from the ground up. Other assemblers on the line put together the instrument chassis and power supply, all of the board modules, a card cage, and the front panel interface. I have to grab all of those and then install them to the chassis. Then I've got to install a few hard line cables and wire the whole fucking box up. The wiring harness has about 50 connections that have to be soldered into all the board modules and the card cage. Good thing I got alot of wiring and soldering experience back in the PC board days otherwise this would be alot more difficult.

While Chuck was gone I finally got to take a deep breath and relax a little bit. Chuck is extremely obnoxious to work with. He won't shut his mouth and just about everything he talks about is racist in some way or abusive to someone around. He's a total fuckup. Anyone who has skin other than white he refers to as "Third World" people, and he likes to talk about whores. I'm getting tired of hearing about Cat Houses, as he likes to call them. The real problem working with this guy is he doesn't like anything I do as far as getting the job done. If it isn't performed exactly the way he would do it, I'm a retard and he lets me know it. None of the shit he complains about really matters though. It's all petty. For example he yells at me if I don't use all the same colored screws in the instrument chassis. If even one of them happens to be slightly discolored somehow he will bitch about it. Stupid stuff like that. He keeps getting in my hair and I have been real angry about it.

When I am training in a new job and I get to the point where I feel comfortable with working on my own, I will go back to the trainer any time I have a question. I've told Chuck this over and over. The first two days that Chuck was back from his Alaska trip he was pissed off that I was working in his spot. He sat right next to me and watched me like a hawk all day long. It was making me nervous and I make more mistakes when I'm nervous. Chuck jumped on every little chance I gave him to bitch at me when I messed up. Finally I got so fed up with it that I told him to buzz off. He didn't take it too well. Hey, I'm making enemies right and left in this joint so might as well add another one to the bone pile.

This job is going to become mundane quickly. I need to have more stuff to keep busy with so The Drunk gave me permission to float around between a half dozen assembly stations if there is work to do. If I start to get bored I can break up the monotony a bit.

Sabotaged By The Troll

The Drunk pulled me into a private meeting today and informed me that I was not going to be the line Material Coordinator. I suspected this was going to happen. The Troll is apparently personal friends with my alcoholic supervisor and she has been pissed off that the job was given to me initially. Well, now I was the person that was in a rage. That job was going to mean more income for me and I just got juked out of it. I did not accept my boss' decision and I told her it was bullshit. She got red in the face and told me I had no choice, there was nothing I could do or say to change her mind. Her decision was final and not up for discussion. I fought back anyway and it got to the point where I thought she was going to take a swing at me. That was when I backed down.

Outside the main building there's a portable room they set up for us with telephones and computers to make calls home semi-privately and send or check email on the PCs. I called up Squirmy and told him what was happening. I asked him to help me out here, but he squirmed right out of it. He said that The Drunk was the transfer project manager and that she had final say in all business decisions regarding our group. Squirmy said there was nothing I could do about it. If she gave the job to someone else then that's the way it was going to be. It is painfully obvious to me now that nothing has changed at all since I left Bill and Dave's a couple of years ago. Managers here are substandard.

I don't care how long it takes or how I'm going to make it happen, but I will somehow exact my revenge upon The Troll. I will get even with that ugly bitch.

7.21.1996

Right now I'm at a coffee shop waking up. It's located on the corner of 13th and Grand Avenues. After I'm finally awake I'm going to go check out the races at the Spokane speedway. It's located on the west side of the city near Fairchild AFB and a maximum security prison. Strange area over there. All three, the speedway, the AFB survival training range, and the prison are all close to each other. There's signs along the roads demanding drivers do not pick up hitchikers. From what I've seen up here so far I wouldn't pick up anyone within a hundred miles of this place. I don't think I'll go to Montana today. I've only been here for a few weeks and I've still got two and a half months minimum to go and see the the neighboring states if I want to.

Yesterday afternoon I went into an art gallery next to the 4,000 Holes record store. The guy that runs the art gallery seemed pretty cool. Instead of doing a consignment deal for local artists he simply allows them to rent wall space by the month. That's an excellent idea. Also to bring in extra foot traffic he has art classes for children a few days a week. Most of the stuff on display was paintings of the rustic great outdoors or had a definite Western theme to it, but there were a few interesting abstract and progressive pieces.

One artist on display at the gallery makes beautiful drops of glass that have different color patterns inside of them. At the bottom of each droplet there is sort of a fisheye lens that allows you to see the color pattern like a blown up kaleidoscope. Very clever. Apparently this guy considers himself to be more of a scientist than an artist because of the different chemicals and temperatures he has to control to make the glass. When they are finished the glass droplets are meant to be worn as necklaces. He only charges six bucks each for them so I think I'm gonna get one for my Mom and one for Jennifer. I'll surprise them both with them when I get home.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

7.20.1996

I'm sitting in a Starbuck's on Hamilton and Sharp streets in Spokane. I wanted a light breakfast and I needed to get out of the apartment and see some other stuff around the city. Sitting at the window I can look out onto busy Hamilton street. I watch people and cars pass by for a while.

I worked a four hour overtime shift this morning. Then I went home and called Gabe. He said Mr. Janitor has not been at work for two weeks because his father died. So I told Gabe what he ought to do when Mr. Janitor comes back to work is walk up to him and say, "Hey Mr. Janitor. Know what I did this weekend? I hung out with my Dad". Gabe said, "Yeah. My Dad is pretty cool Mr. Janitor. Know why? 'Cause he's alive". We were laughing pretty hard. I miss talking to fucked up people like that. Right now I miss all my former coworkers at TDS. Being here and working with all these rejects is a nightmare. The Spokane people don't like me because I'm from California and I'm stealing their jobs. And I don't like the California people because they are a bunch of obnoxious assholes that refuse to do any work and keep taking every advantage of the company. So on the weekends I don't hang out with either group of people. I'm always on my own.

Things are really depressing right now. I have nothing to look forward to each day when I arrive at work, I have nothing to look forward to when I get back to my apartment each evening. Thanks to Jennifer I have little to look forward to when I get to go home in a few months. About the only thing I can count on when I get back home is seeing my friends. When I get back I'm definetly gonna get hammered with a bunch of them and try to forget Spokane exists.

7.15.1996



I'm stressin'. The moment of truth is close at hand. The first four instruments that I have built from the ground up are going into the test process tomorrow. I hope they will be OK. If not, I'm going to be really embarrassed and I'll probably have alot of rework ahead of me. That's not the only reason I'm stressed though. I suspect that Material Coordinator desk job I was hired in for is about to disappear. The Troll wants that job and she's planning some sort of stunt to railroad me out of the position. Today I overheard her saying something about how she recently had a talk with our supervisor about the Material Coordinator job. That can mean only one thing. She's making some sneaky deal with the boss.

The Drunk is my boss here in Spokane. Squirmy hired me back into the company, but The Drunk is who I report to. I hardly ever see her around. Most of the time she is sitting drunk at her desk doing paperwork. So the only time I see her is in meetings or staggering by in the hallways. She's a big butch lesbian that dresses like a tough auto mechanic and has her light blonde hair buzzed short and spikes it up with gel. Most days she shows up to work hammered out of her mind. Some of the Spokane employees have taken note of this and mention it to our people, but there isn't anything we can do really. What are you supposed to say to someone when they come up to you and announce, "You know your boss showed up to work drunk again today".

I haven't been paid yet so I've been using my company corporate credit card to charge up all my gas and meals. I am worried that at this rate my first paycheck will be decimated.

Last weekend was really boring so Sunday in an attempt to force myself to get outside and do something I drove 85 miles out of Spokane to see the Grand Coulee Dam. The Dam itself I wasn't too interested in, but the drive on highway 2 was very nice. There was nothing but lush green wheat fields that carpeted rolling hills on either side of the freeway as far as the eye could see. For a while as I drove I thought I might have been driving somewhere in the midwest instead of Washington. It reminded me of pictures I've seen of the great plains. I stopped along the side of the road and watched the wind blowing in waves across the wheat fields. It looked like a peaceful green ocean as each burst of wind hit and moved through the hills. There was some areas that looked completely different out there though. They looked blasted like the moon. The only things I saw was rocks and powdery light brown dust. People have told me they call it the high desert of Washington.

I also spent some more time in Coeur d' Alene. There is a nice old Masonic lodge on the main street. I got out to see when the next stated meeting was going to take place as I wanted to do some traveling, but there didn't seem to be any way inside and there wasn't anything posted on their board. I asked a man who worked in a nearby antique store if he knew anything about the lodge and he said they moved out of that building seven or eight years ago. He didn't know where they went or if any of them were even still in the area. I'm going to try to find out what happened to them. It's been a while since I attended lodge.

Thinking About Jennifer

I have never been able to bring Jennifer to orgasm when I'm inside her. Ever. It makes me feel like I'm less of a man for it. As time goes on I am more insecure and unsure of myself. In the past I have become so frustrated with Jennifer for not wanting to have sex with me that I would be verbally abusive to her. She in turn, would be upset and some of the time got revenge on me by holding back having any sex with me for even longer periods of time. I guess that gave her a sense of power which made her feel better. I know for a fact now she's been doing this because she admitted it to me recently. In any case holding out on me was probably really easy for her to do. She seems to have alot of problems in the bedroom. I'm almost convinced that she doesn't like having sex at all and I have no idea why. She won't talk about it and believe me I've asked numerous times over the years.

Since I can't work anything out with her our relationship will ultimately fail. I'm tired of trying to figure out what's wrong and rectify the situation. I've thought of everything I can do, everything I could say. Jennifer has never told me anything about what I can do in the bedroom that she really likes. She's always left me guessing. I'm not a mind reader. Well, there's some things she likes, but I'm totally bored by them or I hated doing these things in the first place.

There's a routine I have to follow in the bedroom every damn time we have sex that's so boring. I have to stimulate Jennifer in a couple of certain ways. First, when she is naked she likes to lie down on her stomach and have me very lightly touch her back. I gently use my fingertips to brush her skin. After a while my arm starts to fall asleep and my shoulder aches. To try to keep the pain down I started touching her on the insides of her legs and across her ass. Sometimes I use both arms or alternate from one to the other. It's very tedious, unarousing, and generally weak. On a number of occassions I started to fall asleep.

After doing this for a long time and if I'm still awake, Jennifer will roll over onto her back and let me put my fingers inside her. Or I'll notice she's become wet while still on her belly and I'll rub her clit. I usually bring her to climax this way. Then she will let me climb on top of her and do my dirty business. That's the way she seems to act about it anyway. It's real fun. While I'm inside her she acts like she's asleep. Her eyes are closed most of the time and she becomes extremely quiet as if she is trying to hide. Seldom will she breathe deeply and it's even more rare that she will make any kind of racket. Most of the time she remains silent.

Jennifer doesn't like to experiment with different sexual positions at all, which is the worst. It takes the variety and excitement out of making love. It's so boring I've got to the point with her where I'm having a difficult time getting an erection when I'm in bed with her. I think it's a combination of not having anything new to look forward to, and mentally I find myself thinking about how inadequate I must be. It's terrible. More often I find myself interested in looking at other women as they pass me by on the street, or when I'm in a store or wherever I happen to be. I think about old girlfriends like Jacinda, whom I always had a great time with in bed. That crazy little red head sure loved to fuck. No matter where Jacinda and I were, what time of day or night, she wanted me. That was a good thing. With Jennifer it's always been the exact opposite. I've always had to expend a great amount of effort to coax her into doing something with me that she just doesn't seem to want to do. I think she only has sex with me just to shut me up. I feel rotten.

'It' Arrives

There's been talk of a few stragglers from California finally showing up to work in the Spokane site over the past few days. One of them happens to be a technician, and people here have been acting really strange when they mention the person's name in conversation. Some start to snicker, others shake their head in disgust. Nobody really tells me anything around here so I've noted they act weird when bringing this technician up and then I promptly forget about it.

My eyesight isn't so great anymore. It's perfect for working with electronics at a workbench but after about ten feet or so everything gets blurry. Sometimes when I'm working on stuff that doesn't require safety glasses I take my spectacles off and bury my nose in the work. I didn't have my glasses on when It walked past me in the hallway.

What I thought I saw with my blurry eyesight was a tall dirty hippy guy lumber past my desk wearing women's clothes. It was wearing a knee length jean skirt, heels, and a tight pink fuzzy sweater. It's hair was blonde and appeared long and straight which hung almost down to It's behind. Something about the hair didn't look right for a woman though. I thought it looked more like a guy's hair, because it was kind of dull and ratty. Women don't do that to their hair. Hippy guys do though. Also, the way It walked in the hallway didn't seem right for a woman. You can tell alot about someone by the way they move, and women don't walk like that. The It walk was wide stepped and fast paced with no girlie butt wiggle. The hands were too large for a lady as well. I was confused.

By the time I put my glasses on, It had trucked on down the hallway and was far off disappearing into a wall of test equipment. I decided to investigate. I got up from my desk and followed It into a test area that belonged to another instrument line. I didn't know any of the people there so I wandered in acting like I was looking for something and kept moving so no one could ask if I needed some help. Sure enough when I caught up with It, I realized it was a dude. It was attempting to be a woman, and the act was not passable as female at all. Just looked to me like an old hippy guy wearing women's clothes. There were scrawny boobies under that tight fuzzy pink sweater. Yuk. Oh yeah and he was wearing gold butterfly earrings. Whoa. This was so bad It was comical. I mean, if you're gonna do this kind of thing at least try to do a good enough job of it to fool a few people. Please.

This kind of action is not going to go over well with the Spokane crowd. I can already tell.

Friday, January 07, 2005

Spokane Opinion

I asked Sharon and Don about all the negativity I've been hearing coming from Spokane people towards us Californians. We're all part of the same great country here, so what gives with all the hatred? Instead of bullshitting me or trying to candy coat some sort of response Sharon just came right out with it while Don looked on and occassionally nodded at what she was telling me. The people of Spokane hate people from California for a bunch of reasons. According to Sharon:

1. Californians come to Washington to retire and can afford to pay cash for real estate. So many have moved north that real estate prices have been driven upwards significantly in recent years and now many of the locals can't afford to buy in their own area anymore.

2. People from California are anti-family.

3. Californians are homosexuals (see item number two).

4. People from California are all about committing crimes and participate in mass riots like in L.A. (They've seen it on television so it must be true).

5. Californians are anti-religion.

6. People from California are stealing the jobs from Spokane.

I've been thinking about what Sharon told me over the past couple of days and I think there is alot of truth to 1 and 6. But the rest of it is all complete stupidity. Californians are anti-family? Run that by me again? What? Anti-religion you say? Hmmmm. There's a whole lot of churches in that state. Guess they haven't seen any of them on the TV programs they watch up here. Sure, there's gays running around loose. So what.

And number 4, how ironic they mention California is all about crimes against society. Well check this out. In my boredom I've been watching Spokane cable TV. Crime is so fucking bad in this town that the Spokane County Sheriff has a channel dedicated to showing the mugshots of every person wanted for crimes in the area, and there's a whole bunch of them on the run. The program comes on every other half hour and I'm fascinated by it. I've never seen anything like this before... anywhere. I think it's safe to say that crime is off the richter scale in the city of Spokane. Most of them appear to be wanted for drug charges, but there's plenty of bizarre murders, prostitution, and other oddball shit. I hear there's a ton of Meth labs about. Some people are wanted for really abstract crimes like "Eluding". What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I can see it now, some guy shows up in jail and a prisoner against the wall says, "Hey buddy. What are you in for?" The reply: "I was eludin'". That's hardcore crime right there, fella.

Thank God For Hertz

Squirmy finally made an appearance at the factory. He had alot to do apparently, but he found some time to come by the area and see how I was doing. I told him the company car situation was a real problem for me and I asked him to figure out a way to score me a ride. Other divisions had ferried company cars up here to the Spokane site but now they too were low on cars and couldn't spare anything more. It was a real dilemma. Squirmy thought about it for a little bit and decided to try working out a deal with our rental car company, Hertz. Corporate had chosen Hertz as the only rental car company we would deal with and as a result they cut us a break of some kind on rental cars. He thought he could get me a set of wheels through them for the duration I was going to be in Spokane but we would have to go back to the airport to talk to the Hertz people there.

After work that day Squirmy drove me back to the airport which was a long trip west from the plant. On the drive there he talked at me about golf and other shit I wasn't even remotely interested in. Each time he finished a sentence he'd laugh in that hiss like Mutley way. I was glad to get out of the car when we arrived at the airport. When we reached the Hertz desk Squirmy talked with the manager to try and work something out for me. Then he did what he does best- he squirmed them into a deal. The situation was that I could have a car but only for a month at a time.

Hertz had some rule about keeping the car any longer than a month and said it would need to be back for servicing. When I brought the car back in at the end of each month they would have a new rental car waiting for me. Cool. The price was steep though. It was going to cost the company about a thousand dollars a month. Ouch. I felt a little bad about that but at the same time I was happy I wouldn't have to be at the whim of Uni-Burn for car availability or have to suffer through the daily commute to work with him anymore. I could do my own thing now, whatever it was going to be I didn't know. I had been stir crazy in my apartment the past couple of weekends. I didn't want to call Uni-Burn up to use the car because I knew he'd want to tag along and that was a fate worse than death. So I just stayed home writing in my journal or using the typewriter I brought with me to write letters home. There usually wasn't much on television to watch. I dislike TV anyway.

The other thing about the Hertz car rental that was a huge advantage, was it had Washington plates. No one was gonna fuck with me. I've been hearing nothing but bad stuff from employees who either brought their own cars up from California or got stuck with a company car that had California plates. The locals here have been harassing our people with the CA plates by following them around and flipping them off, yelling shit at them when stopped at a red light, throwing shit at their cars, and in a few cases I've heard of Spokane dirtbags following the California people until they got to their destination and then confronting them in the parking lot of wherever they were at. Two of our guys here on the transfer are black and they've really been getting fucked with. Around here it's bad enough if you've got a California plate on your car, that's one strike against you. If your skin happens to be anything other than white, well that's a big old strike number two.

I won't have to worry about any of that crap now though. I'm a white boy in a brand new 1996 Ford Taurus with Washington plates. I'm gonna blend right in to the Twilight Zone city of Spokane...

California Trainees

On this transfer project there are three main product groups that will be leaving the Spokane factory for good. The products I'm working on came out of Bill and Dave's R&D Labs in the 1970s and are still a very capable instrument. Aerospace and Defense sectors love it for it's incredibly low phase noise specifications, and newer follow on products can't match some of it's performance features. In comparison to the other two product groups we are medium sized as far as employees go. The biggest one has about 30 California trainees and the small group has just a few people. Overall I guess there's about 50 or 60 California folks up here and at least an equal amount of SKD people training them. I don't get to talk to the people in the other two groups much so I don't know what they are working on or anything about them really. I'm isolated in my own little product world here.

The California employees I've had to deal with day in and day out seem to me to be real losers. Instead of keeping their mouths shut and pay attention to our work, they spend most of the time wandering around or just yapping all day. I get the feeling some of them are trying to prove to the Spokane people how cool and stylish they are. It's backfiring in a big way. Sharon has told me there is growing anger among the Spokane people, not just because they know they are losing their jobs to us, but because they were told by management they were going to get "highly skilled" people to train. So far they realize most of the California people sent here are total fools. Some are almost untrainable. Because I have been working for the past two years in a military environment on classified defense products and smart weapon systems I am coming back to this company with a very strict work ethic. I keep my mouth shut and my hands busy. You can't do anything other than that or you find yourself fired immediately when you're working for the military. Here things seem to be out of control and if these people were working at TDS they probably wouldn't have survived their first week employed there. Most if not all of them would have been thrown out. That's the real world.

My no frills work habits have put a bunch of my fellow Californians off. Sharon tells me they think I have a superiority complex. In reality all I'm trying to do is learn this product. That's what I'm here for, after all. They aren't paying me to fuck around and bullshit all day.

Slobbering Mouth Kid is one of the most dangerous employees to talk with here. He's a gossip that spends his entire shift ranting about other people's private business who are working on the transfer. I don't dare tell this jerkoff anything about myself because I know it will instantly be all over the fucking factory shop floor. I try to deflect his personal questions and change the subject as much as possible. I suppose this has contributed to my "superiority complex". Slobbering Mouth Kid is overweight, short, and very young. He's extremely stupid. Each night after work he goes out to bars with some of the other employees and gets completely hammered. Most days he comes in to work severely hung over. His head is shaved and he likes to put a pencil behind one ear. His job requires him to do alot of soldering and while he is mindlessly yapping away he scratches the side of his noggin with the pencil stashed behind his dopey looking ear. Sometimes he forgets that he put the pencil down on his workbench. Still yapping away about nothing I want to hear from his lips, he will scratch the side of his head while he's holding a 750 degree flat tipped soldering iron and burn the shit out of his skull. It's kinda funny.

Toothless is a black girl that is an item with Golden Boy. She likes to wear skin tight minidresses and push up bras. Sometimes I can't help but stare at her bootay when she isn't looking. She doesn't seem very experienced in electronics or too bright, but she is nice enough to talk to. Sometimes when she's with the other ladies I get a feeling she's talking shit about people here and being somewhat of a backstabber, but I can't prove it. It's just a hunch from the way she carries herself. She is actually missing a few teeth, hence the nickname.

Speaking of weirdness, let me tell you about the Troll. This woman is about as short as she is wide. She is going bald and has legs the size of large tree trunks. Her uniform of choice is frequently loose fitting shorts and white tennis shoes. Her shirts generally are pastel colored. Her face reminds me of an old worn out bulldog. Troll has been fake nice to me since I got here and she seems angry or annoyed somehow because I'm here. I haven't been able to figure out why but something is definetly going on that's not good. Troll has a really bad personality and I don't like her. Hope I can figure out what it is that's bugging her whenever I'm around.

Golden Boy is a kiss ass (K.A.) supreme. I don't know what his job functions are. I never see him doing anything though except run his mouth. He wanders in and out of production areas wearing power t-shirts and skin tight short shorts. A couple of times I think he has come into the plant wearing Toothless' clothes, like her coats and maybe a shirt or two. It's kinda funky. His nose looks like it's been broken a couple of times in fights. I call it the boxer nose look. There's a small patch of his black hair he has bleached golden blonde, so I call him Golden Boy because he's the project manager's kiss ass and because of his stupid hairdo. The guy annoys the shit out of me every time he's around.

The Squirrel and The Fisherman I don't know very well yet. Squirrel is just that- squirrelly. She's goofy and dingbat weird all the time every day. Another one of Malta's products, she talks funny and can't spell just like every person from Malta that I've met in my lifetime. She has beady eyes and acts shifty around me. The Fisherman is a nice enough guy. He's older and has white hair. Seems like he has a good sense of humor and he likes to spend alot of time in the great outdoors fly fishing and hiking around.

The Spokane Crew

Before I continue much further with what's been going on up here I should do a proper job of introducing the main players in this factory soap opera.

Sharon is a red headed lady in her late 40s or early 50s. She's really pleasant to deal with and so far has gone out of her way to make me feel welcome. She has been doing an excellent job showing me the ropes in the product area and she's been very up front and honest with me. I've asked her alot of tough questions in the past couple of weeks and she has come back on me with some brutal honesty. I'm grateful to her for that. Sharon has been in the company for some years and she is a veteran on this instrument line. Out of all the Spokane employees I deal with every day, she's my favorite.

Don is another of the SKD employees. He's also in that late 40s to early 50s age group. He's got a slight southern drawl and he's a Vietnam veteran. During the war he worked on mini guns when the U.S. military first experimented with them in the field on attack helicopters, and later when they began installing them on tracked vehicles. He's a mini gun guru of sorts. Don has told me alot of stories about working with the mini guns and one of his favorites took place when they installed some on a light armored vehicle and started firing them into the jungle tree line. His account of that day is vivid, the trees and foliage disintigrated before his eyes. Trees exploded and were chopped in half by the volume of fire. When they were finished all of the plants left standing were only a few feet tall. Don is in constant pain. He did alot of heavy lifting while working in the military and he crushed a couple of the discs in his back so badly that he says he was a little shorter after the injury. I get along with Don well. Seems like a good guy to me.

There is a hideous mutant in our midst. This individual is one of the strangest looking women I have ever seen. Remember those cartoons from the fifties where a character is shown a pair of really hot female legs behind curtains, a moment later the rest of the curtains are pulled back and the woman becomes completely visible. Only then the hapless cartoon victim is thrown into complete terror by what he sees. The woman's face is hideous and makes the cartoon character flee screaming into distant hills. That's what this mutant is like. She comes in to work almost every day in black nylons and spiked high heels. The mutant usually wears a miniskirt and tight top which I wish she would never do. It causes my eyes much pain. Her face is stretched back tight like she's had too many face lifts and her teeth seem to poke out of her mouth uncontrollably because her skin is under so much strain. She wears coke bottle thick glasses and I suspect went totally bald. The hair on her head looks unnatural, like it's a long wig. The mutant gives me the creeps and I talk to her only when I have to just to remain polite.

Then there's Chuck. Chuck is a fucking nuisance. He's a good old boy from Ohio and he used to be an electrician for Bill and Dave's company here in the Spokane site. Bill and Dave's went through some serious turmoil a few years ago. They employed their people for building maintenance, groundskeeping, electrical maintenance, and custodial work. Someone in upper management got rid of them all and went to outside contractors. Many of them lost their jobs outright but Chuck was one of them that somehow squeaked through. He was a building electrician but he is now just an assembler on the product line. In his eyes this was a huge insult and a major step backwards. He's very bitter about it to this day. Chuck is also ignorant, racist, condescending, and completely fucking rude to me. He's my trainer at Final Assembly, and I hate him.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

First Day In Skid



Uni-Burn and I drove in to work together for our first day in the Spokane site. I didn't know what to expect since I had never set foot in this division before, but I was reassured by the familiar grey architecture of the main building as we drove through the front security gate. It looked just like a number of the sites I had worked in before down in California. It also reminded me of the Boise site although it was drastically smaller in comparison. The site itself was east of Spokane proper and close to the Idaho border. It was just off the interstate and only took Uni-Burn and I about ten minutes on the freeway to get there. We passed an automotive graveyard and a sod farm on the way. There wasn't much else out there. I thought to myself on the drive to work that short commutes with a weirdo like Uni-burn in the car fucking rule. Yeah!

Strangers came and got us in the lobby and Uni-Burn was headed to some other product line. I was glad about that. I definetly didn't want to commute to work every day with that moron and then get stuck having to work shoulder to shoulder with him all day. I was lead to an area on the first floor of the building all the way at the back, near the cafeteria. I was a little nervous and felt awkward being introduced to everyone on the product team I was to work with. None of them were familiar to me. I had hoped some of the people on this transfer project would have been from the PC board department I worked in a couple of years ago. None of them seemed to have PC board experience.

There was a mix of Spokane employees and California employees on the line. I suppose the idea was that for every Spokane worker there would be a Calfornian to train on what they did. Pretty straightforward really. Of the Spokane folks there was Sharon, Don, a mutant, and Chuck all in the assembly area. They were the trainers. We had plenty of technicians but I wasn't going to be dealing with them for some time so I was focused on getting to know the assembly people as quickly as possible. The California employees had all been here for weeks or months already and were fairly well established in the area and already friendly with the Spokane employees. I was the odd man out. No matter, I was going to do my best and try to get along with everyone. From our divison back home there was a pudgy guy we called Slobbering Mouth Kid, The Fisherman, The Squirrel, Troll, Toothless, and Golden Boy.

My training started with working on a test and measurement product family and they wanted me to learn it from the ground up. I would be a much more effective line Material Coordinator if I knew everything about the boxes. So, they got me buried in building the instrument's sub-assemblies right away. I was dealing with a bunch of mechanical stuff which was easy enough but what made me smile was all of the PC boards were immediately familiar to me. I used to build hundreds of these PC boards when I worked at Bill and Dave's previously. That was kind of cool since I always wondered what they were for and what kinds of products the boards went into. It was like seeing what was on the other side of the fence at long last.

A couple of years ago when I was building Spokane division PC boards they always came through our process areas with a tag maked "SKD". We used to joke about it and call the division "Skid". Like being on Skid Row, a bunch of derelict bums lying face down on cold sidewalks in a puddle of pee with a bottle wrapped up in a paper bag clutched tightly in their fists.

The supervisor I was to be working for didn't seem to be available or around anywhere. Even though I was hired in by Squirmy, my boss here was going to be some woman I didn't know. The manager I used to work for in the PC board days remembered me and heard I was going to be coming back to the company. She apparently put in a recommendation to snag me and vouched that I was a top-notch worker. She was friends with my new boss here in Spokane, and that good word she put in carried alot of weight apparently. That was nice of her to do, but I still despise my old PC board supervisor for being such a hands-off dingbat. She caused me alot of headaches. I never forgot about it. Squirmy was supposed to show up in a few days to take care of some business and check in on me. First thing we were gonna talk about when I saw him was the company car problem. Sharing the ride with Uni-Burn was not going to do. No sir.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Why No, Ma'am

Today I walked to a smaller grocery store that's just down the street from my apartment complex. Since I've got no wheels this was the best I could do. What the hell, I thought. Couldn't be that bad of a place. I walked into the store to discover a heavy amount of activity at the registers. The place was bigger than I thought initially. Cool. I grabbed a shopping cart with a squeaky wheel and was thinking rum and coke would be good for the evening. I made a lap around the store, then walked each and every aisle. Hmmm. No booze besides wine and beer. I must have missed it. Silly me. I walked the entire floorplan again. Still no boozes. Twenty three laps later and still no booze I was fucking irritated. I asked some random customer on the floor, "Hey man, where's the booze?" This person looked at me like I was a purple chimpanzee and said there was no booze to be had in grocery stores. What the fuck? They went on to say that I had to go to a State-run liquor store. "And where would I find one of these places?" I asked. Oh, they're around was the reply.

This is so fucked up. I'm in one of those blue states or some shit. Hey isn't the state of Washington on the west coast? Did I just somehow step off the plane into 1950s Utah or something? I thought Washington was progessive and hip like California. Didn't cool stuff come from Seattle all the time? Huh?

Thoroughly pissed off but maintaining my composure I went up to the cash register with my basket of grub and a poor substitute for my precious rum and cokes. A single bottle of red wine. Naturally the youngish looking lady asked for my ID as she was about to ring up the bottle of wine. I pulled my driver's license out and she said, "Oh, you're from California. How do you like it here so far?" I pondered for a moment. All I saw here was hicks and churches. That's it. I didn't have a polite way of breaking the news to her that my initial reaction to Spokane was that it's a backwards shithole. A portal into total white trash hell of epic proportions. So I replied, "It's not what I expected really. The area here has more of a down home sort of feel to it."

The lady behind the register got bright red in the face. Uh oh. I must have screwed the pooch with that comment. Then she yelled in my face, "Boy, are you callin' us rednecks?" Everything on the front end of the store completely stopped. Customers in all of the busy checkstands were staring at me. I looked over my shoulder behind me. Same thing. Everyone was frozen and silent. None of the other checkers were ringing anyone's items up. I was fucked now. I meekly responded to her, "Why no, ma'am." She stared at me for at least another thirty seconds and then grudgingly scanned in my bottle of wine. I paid cash for my items and I got the fuck out of that store. I am never going back. Ever. I'm sure I'm a marked man there now.

Uni-Burn

When I arrived at the Spokane International Airport last week, there was supposed to be a company car waiting for me. An employee was supposed to be there to greet me and make sure I made it to my apartment. She eventually found me after I had been wandering around aimlessly for about 20 minutes looking for anyone with a company shirt on or a sign with my name on it. When she did finally figure out I was one of the two guys she was supposed to be looking for I got a bunch of attitude about how I should have been wearing a company shirt or had a sign to display so she could find me. Fuck me. I wasn't even given a name of who to look for.

As we were leaving the airport this woman informs me that the company doesn't have any available cars and I'd have to share one for a while with this other guy I had never met before. She gave the car to him, so I was to be at this guy's mercy for rides to work and elsewhere until who knew when. Junk. We drove across the city to an apartment complex that was a long way east from the downtown area. A manager at the apartment complex was supposed to be there waiting for us so we could get front door keys. No one was around. Now what the fuck was I supposed to do? No car, No front door keys. There wasn't even a note like "Sorry I'll be back by three" or something. I could tell I was off to a great start back at Bill and Dave's. There was nothing for us to do but stand around and wait.

I made small talk with the other new guy. He was a strange looking fellow. His side burns had been shaved into a pin stripe width of stubble that followed the edge of his jaw line all the way to his chin. It wasn't a beard or a goatee sort of look. He didn't have the burly mutton-chop side burns going, and I couldn't really figure out if he was trying for some modern Honest Abe sort of vibe. I'd never seen anything like it before so I started calling him Uni-Burn. He appears to have one long wrap around side burn growing on his face. A couple of hours later the apartment manager showed up and gave us our keys. What a relief.

Uni-burn and I went to the grocery store after we were able to get into our apartments. We didn't really know where we were in the city so we hopped in the company car and took it to the first large grocery store we saw. It was a Safeway. Upon entering the store the theme song to "The Odd Couple" television show should have been playing over the P.A. system. I was Felix, Uni-Burn was Oscar. Each of us had a shopping cart. Uni-Burn loaded his basket up with frozen pizzas, frozen cheeseburgers, tons of junk food treats, and bags of greasy potato chips. I went for fresh stuff to make some salads, pasta, good red wine, granola, and a bunch of assorted health food items. The only frozen thing I got was some raviolis. I was planning on doing some serious cooking that night and I could tell by our food selections me and Uni-Burn were as different as night and day. I wasn't planning on hanging out with this guy any more than I'd have to. The car thing was a huge problem.

Day after next we went and saw a new movie out in the theaters. Uni-Burn said it was going to be great, I didn't have much hope for it. He wanted to go see a film called "Independence Day". It looked really stupid to me. I watched it. It was in fact, really stupid. I was the only person in the packed theater who did think it was a steaming pile of dogshit. I didn't whoop and holler everytime a U.S. jet was plastered all across the screen. I didn't clap and high five the persons in the seats on either side of me when a goofy looking UFO was blowed up real good. I've never seen a crowd become so animated and gung-ho like I did that afternoon.

One of the things I kept thinking about over and over again during the film was, "Where are the F-16s? How come I haven't seen any F-15s yet? Why are there no SR-71s or B-52s in this film?" I was irked about it. I mean, all I saw was F-18s everywhere thick like locusts in the skies and one B-2 stealth bomber. I think. In this fantasy world of the near future did the U.S. Government only produce the F-18 Hornet in mass quantities? This left me watching the film in a perplexed state of mind. I have to assume the film's production team ran out of cash to fund the computer modeling and settled for just one kind of fighter aircraft. In conclusion, heavy doses of computer animation, bad acting, stupid plot, and a whole theater packed full of podunk hicks does not make for a good movie experience.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

The Factor

I met The Factor at one of Bill and Dave's manufacturing plants a few weeks before leaving TDS. She had scheduled an appointment with me to discuss my living arrangements and transportation once I arrived in Spokane. It was exciting, I was being given a corporate credit card, a company car, a fully furnished apartment rent free, maid service, and a per diem per day. I was being paid for my inconvenience of having to work far away from home (poor me). The Factor had to go over all the options with me and I would have to make some tough choices before flying to Spokane.

She said the appointment would take a couple of hours, but the whole thing took me about 30 minutes once we sat down. The Factor was completely scattered and her head kept bobbling about as she spoke to me. I told her I had to have my own apartment and car while I was in Spokane, no exceptions. I was not going to be room mates with strangers or share a car. No thanks. She attempted to entice me into sharing an apartment and a car by saying the per diem per day would be significantly larger but I didn't take the bait. Then she showed me the floorplans of a number of apartment complexes the company was putting us up in. I didn't want a long drive to the factory there so I asked which complex was the closest to work. The Factor told me which one it was and that's the one I took. Simple as that. She commented how easy I was to get through all this stuff and I thought all of the other people she had helped get set up for the transfer must have been stupid, or were just wasting time on the company clock. Maybe it was a mixture of both.

The Factor has some problems. She's an older woman, very unattractive with a huge beak on her face. Her hair is black with loose curls and she wears skin tight tube tops and spandex shorts like she's still some eighteen year old high school girlie. I think she's actually in her early 50s and I left the building with severe eye burns after having to look at her for a half hour. I think she must have done alot of Meth or Speed or Crank in her day because she's totally fucked up. All twitchy and shit. Luckily since I arrived at the Spokane site I haven't had to work with or be near The Factor.

I've been hired back in as a Material Coordinator. It's basically a desk job and I will be responsible for the product line's parts supply. I'll have to manage databases and accounts and keep an eye on inventory levels while making sure the line gets all it's supplies in a timely manner. I have to ensure there's no parts shortages that might keep things from running smoothly. A tall order, but I can handle it. For now though I have to become familiar with the products and to do that I'll be training on the line with the assemblers to learn the instruments from the ground up.