Halloween

Honestly, aside from the candy, I could care less. Although granted, the candy is good, but dressing up was never my thing.

Today was a bit of a day of horrors for me personally. I hate to say it, but I think I dislike my job. Of course I know this doesn't seperate me out from most other people in the world, and I know there are worse jobs out there. But, the job just give me total fits. Getting into printing the way I'm doing it seems to be right now the most absolutely difficult, frustrating, befuddling thing possible. I try my damnedest to be as accurate as possible, but I've never been a person who works with pinpoint accuracy, and thats what printing calls for. Sometimes I don't understand people at all either. Sometimes I don't understand their emotions at all. Sometimes they just aren't clear enough. Or sometimes I make the fatal mistake of assuming what I know they are talking about (which I don't). And mistakes--yes I make them in spades. Yeah, I know I've only been at it for 3 months, and I know I'm probably just bitching and moaning. But maybe the writing's on the wall, and I'm not cut out at all for this stuff, you know? It's not that I'm afraid of a challenge, but there are so many more considerations at work than just me. I can handle messing up when the only person I have to answer for is myself. But for some reason, I have extreme difficulty when someone else is in play and at stake.

I don't know, again, maybe I'm just complaining. But, blah...

I got the new Who album though...pretty cool stuff!

Sick

Woke up this morning and threw up, so I decided it was best to stay home from work today. That was probably a prudent decision, as I could barely sit up for most of the day. Just now am I able to get some energy back.

I friggin hate this though. At least Firefox v2.0 isn't too shabby.

Indian Summer rages on

It had to be in the mid 80s today. Typical, yet a-typical weather here for Northern California. We expect it to cool off by the time late October rolls around, yet we still get these little warm spells. Sometimes they last well into November, as was the case during my Santa Cruz excursion last year.

Ah yes, Sunday night, that bittersweet time, when the final fleeting hours of freedom tick away before I have to go my adult obligation, aka, my job. It's great to kick back and relax, but its hard to get out of my mind that the end of this glory time is near. Such an irony too, as before I had tons of relaxation time, and I longed to be busy. Now that I'm busy, I long for that relaxation time. I guess there is no happy medium, or maybe, just perhaps, I just need to learn to mellow the fuck out.

My job was fairly busy this past week, but I have a feeling things are going to really quiet down, which I'm looking forward too.

Last night I worked a few hours at my old job for the City of Walnut Creek. Dare I say...it was *great*! Yeah, the work is totally beneath me, but it's nice to have that sense of familiarity and control that one has after being somewhere for years. I think I'm far more a creature of habit than I wish to realise. I am prone to bouts of spontanity, but I do settle into routines. For example, for breakfast, I almost always prefer a glass of juice, and a cup of yogurt. In the mornings, I always prefer to take my shower first, before I do anything else. I almost always go the same route to and from work. I almost always put my clothes on the same way--shirt, then pants, then socks, then shoes.

But I do like to mix things up from time to time. Really, I do.

I wonder occasionally if I have some kind of neurosis, or if this is just how I am, incredibly normal. Sometimes I wonder if taking up some kind of hobby, or abusing a substance might make my life more interesting.

Bt most of all, I need to realise that my job is not my life, even if it consumes most of it these days.

Addressing that realisation, and actually implimenting it, are two different things.

Tower Records

Just thought I'd say a few words on the passing of this music institution. Tower Records was, for a long time, *the* record store. Started in Sacramento, California, they prided themselves on their incredibly music selection. Personally, I haven't been too pleased with them for the last...oh 8 years or so. Thats when I discovered independant places like the local San Francisco area chains Rasputin's, and Amoeba. both those stores far outweigh, both in terms of price and selection. Tower was still the grandaddy of them all it seemed, and their selection was still immense. Their prices, on the other hand, were godawful--the main reason why I shopped there only a handful of times a year. When they had a sale though--oh boy! Most of my jazz and classical collection, meager as it is, was built upon Tower Records sales. And for better or worse, at least in my immediate neighborhood, they had the best selection of both Jazz and Classical albums. Amoeba and Rasputins in Berkeley/SF are fantastic, but I rarely have the time to make it out there (especially these days). And of course places like Best Buy, Frys, and Circuit City are downright pathetic. They have a lot of music, granted, but very little of it is really worth buying. They CDs they have are really only there to get you to buy electronics.

Tower was where I cut my musical teeth, so to speak. Tower was the first place I ever bought a CD from (and a cassette). Its where, at least to begin with, where I would turn first if I needed something. Music is an important part of my life, and while Tower was flawed in several ways, I still am upset to see them fall by the wayside. Could this really be the beginning of the end for the music store as a whole? Sure, the internet is usually better in terms of both price and selection (the two things that ultimately count I guess), but what about the experience?

Okay, I'm probably rambling far too much here.

Middle of the month

So I've switched to Beta Blogger. I'm not quite sure what the advantage of it is, except for the fact that people using regular blogger can't comment on the beta blogs. So if you're using the regular blogger, sorry folks. Signing up was easy for me, as I already had a google account.

I didn't comment at all last weekend, because I didn't really have much to say. Actually I did, I just didn't want to say it.

I got my lovely Thunderbird worked on last weekend--yes thats right, I actually allowed someone else to touch my precious car. The reason? The water pump went kaput. This normally would be a job my stepdad and i would do, but he was out of town, and I had to work again for Walnut Creek the day they were coming back. The day after that of course I had to go back to work for the rest of the week. So obviously, there was no one to help me work on the damn thing, and even if there was, there was no time to do it. In fact, I had to practically beg a friend of mine just to give me a ride home from the shop on Saturday morning when I dropped it off.

They did a decent job of it, but I paid...lets just say in excess of $400 for the thing. The day after though, it was leaking again! ARGH>*&$#*. They looked it over again and said the radiator was going bad, and they wanted another $400 to do that. I said no way, and took it back. Ironically enough, the day after I did that, it stopped leaking, at least with visible drips of water, alltogether. The radiator still isn't in great shape (you can still see some wetness at the bottom of the radiator), but the car is still very driveable--in fact other than that the thing runs *great*! So for now, it's not a big thing.

Work is slowing down. Considerably so in fact. However, many things still piss me off, like the fact that my past mistakes from a month or so ago, when 1) it was so busy I could barely keep up and 2) I was so green I could barely keep up, are still coming back to haunt me. I really hate people sometimes. Honestly, I do. I like printing, but in many ways it goes against my tendancies. For example, you have to be very organized, almost anally so, and I am far from that. Oddly enough, the typesetter, who is a very talented artist and designer in her own right, is almost exactly the same way I am. She did what I did for years though. I've only been doing it 2 and a half months, and already I'm approaching burn out stage, heh. Oh well, I guess evreything will work out int he end.

Ahh...Sunday Again

The past week at work was much, much better than the one before. It was still somewhat busy all week, but after what happened on the previous Friday, I tried to come in with a fresh start and put all that behind me. It worked...somewhat...I mean, I felt much more confident this week, and I didn't discover any huge, egregious errors in what I had done. Of course theres still a lot I don't know, but I'm going to try to not let that get me down...well, not as much anyway.

The big news at my shop is that the Production Manager is leaving at the end of October. This is going to be a big change for everyone there, as the PM is really the glue that holds the place together. They're the one that makes sure, above all, that things get done, and that they get done correctly. The PM has the power, even above the owner of the shop, to say yay or nay to the possibility of a certain job. She's also been the person I've most communicated with at my job over the first two months. I don't want to sound selfish or anything, but only within the past week have I been really starting to get to the point where I feel confident in what I do. I'm able to look at some jobs and see how they are put together, what paper stock is used, etc. Adjusting to someone new, and what they expect out of me and everyone else there, may be extremely difficult. I don't blame the PM for wanting to leave though; she spends a minimum of 10 hours a day there, sometimes more, and when theres a crisis (and there are many!), she's the one that deals with them directly.

Well my family is gone again for the week, presumably camping along the north coast at a place 18 miles north of Fort Bragg, CA (I know I've talked about that place before here...). I wanted to go originally, but of course the new job kind of got in the way. I thought about going up for the weekend, however its a good 3 1/2 hour drive just to get there, and seeing as how they didn't even leave until yesterday morning, I would have had to come back today, and thats probably 7+ hours of driving just to stay over somewhere one night. Considering the hours I've been working (and the fact that I'm going to do another city job next weekend), I just kind of wanted to chill out this weekend. I did find some new shoes for work, as well as a new dress shirt. The weather is cloudy, cool, and breezy. And its October! Only 3 months left for 2006...