When it rains, it rains a lot

It's been 30 days since my employer cancelled my health insurance without any reason or warning. The HR dept. still claims this is a mistake. A mistake?
I'll say.
You know what else is a mistake?
The company's decision to send my boss out-of-town on a job I refused to go to, leaving me and the one other ripped-off and disgruntled employee to muddle through an entire week unsupervised.
Oh yeah-get this- the boss doesn't own a car, so you'd think they'd rent one for him, right? Nope.
We're talking about a bus trip so lengthy that he had to leave yesterday.
Nine Hours.
Jeez, a 9-hour Trailways trip for work? I have never, ever heard of the shit this company pulls- and I used to be a Federal Agent, fer pity's sake... at least we had expense accounts and plane tickets back then...
The only thing worse than working for this new company would be working for this company on salary.

The boss called today and asked me how much progress I'd made on the shitpile project he left me to work on in his absence. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna bust my ass on that mess. Oh yeah...

Almost none, I told him. What did he expect? If I use the computer I might get carpal tunnel or go blind or something, and without health insurance that would be expensive. I'd have to go on worker's comp.

He said he was sending me some Excel sheets to work on. Great. IT recently upgraded our data management software and now my PC crashes when I run Excel and the updated version. Instead of cut and paste I'll have to print and type. I am soooo motivated do do that.


A note on my workstation: upon starting a new job, one of the first things I do is check out my PC's specs- St*te F*rm for instance, had some decent machines; 2.0 ghz, 512 ram, DVD-R , excellent for blogging and watching movies- by contrast my current workstation seems like something that fell out of Skylab on it's flaming descent to Earth in 1979. I'm not sure what sort of processor it has-one involving vacuum tubes , most likely.

One of my early, endearing comments to my new boss was my observation that the only thing my PC is good for is holding the door open while you push a wheel-barrow full of computers just like it out to the dumpster. He didn't laugh.
Since that ill-received quip, I've given up on asking for an upgrade to a machine that uses transistors or even -00000hhhh- microchips - right now I'm even glad that my work-box sucks. It gives me another excuse to slack off. I can't work even when I try to.

Eventually, it was time to go home . Usually I enjoy arriving at home, but that's only on the days that my mailbox isn't stuffed with disconnection notices from the City- so far that's been every single day ever, except today.


Today, I have a door-hanger notice for every unit in my building. These were all in my mailbox, not on the 9 other doors where they belonged, so I was literally the "first on the block" to find out that our landlord hasn't been using our jacked-up rent to pay the water and gas. I don't know what he did with it, but he didn't use it pay the utilities. I had to go door-to-door and inform my neighbors that, come tomorrow, we have NO heat or water. If the City had left the notices in the box of a vacant unit instead of mine, none of us would even know why our gas & water was off-I'm sure the landlord will appreciate the fact that I made sure all my neighbors were stockpiling water and warned to shower before 8 am or forget about bathing at all.

It's good thing that no one I spoke to has paid next month's rent yet.

My calls to the landlord have not been returned, nor have those placed by my neighbors, but I did talk to a nice lady from the City- she was the one who advised me to store some water and get out of the shower by 8- it seems that you have to not pay your bills for long, long time before they'll cut-off a multi-unit building. She wasn't allowed to give details, but asked me if I had a different contact number for the landlord (I didn't) because it's very important that he contact the city immediately. She gave me a number to call if any of us tenants so much as see our landlord. I think it's the phone number of a Detective.
Alas, I don't even know what landlord ( he/she /it) looks like- the building was sold to a P.O. box two years ago and I haven't seen a human rep since, I just mail the check.

That's gonna stop.


I have a job with an invisible health plan and a landlord who seems to be wanted by the law.

I honest-to Godzilla don't know how much longer I can keep dealing with this kind of shit. I'm afraid I might soon snap and wind-up joining some insane UFO doomsday cult or preaching from the hood of a car wearing a barbed-wire girdle or, worst of all, just start drinkng again.
No. Scratch that.
As soon as I wrote that I realized that it was a lie. I haven't got the slightest urge to drink.

If I drank, I'd be dead,-or at least hospitalized-within 72 hours.
No booze for me.
I'm angry, stressed, lonely, depressed and so sad that my own eyes frighten me when I look into the mirror.
But I'm not suicidal.
I haven't given up all hope.

This weekend is gonna rock, for example. Five bands at a gig on friday , two radio shows on Sat -one as DJ and one as producer- and the Steelers win the SuperBowl 30-24 on Sunday. That's worth sticking around for.


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