Yay! Royalties!

I was at the local Barnes & Noble the other day picking up a birthday present for my sister and, while there, decided mosey over to the science section to see if they had any copies of my book. What to my wondering should appear, but a paperback edition of Discovering the Mammoth. It looks very nice. I bought a copy to show people and took it to dinner at my corner brewpub. While I was showing it to some of the regulars, two young women from Seattle asked about it. I ended up selling it to them and autographing it with a cartoon of a mammoth in the snow.

The hardback was paid for by an upfront advance that was gone by this time last year.* For this edition, I'll be paid with royalties that will come twice a year. I don't expect more than a few hundred dollars per check, but it will be a nice little bonus when each arrives.

* That's why I was begging all year, hunting for work, and too depressed to write. Last month, I started receiving Social Security which, while not enough to make me completely independent again, has taken a lot of weight off my shoulders. I've already begun writing again and will have some things for the blogs very soon.

Things are not going well

Too long; didn't read version: I'm unemployed, broke, and the storage place is going to auction off all of my belongings in a few days. Send money.

When I began blogging, about fifteen years ago, I debated with myself over how personal I wanted to get. Should I talk about my depression and other issues or stick to commenting on the rest of the world? I chose the latter. I'm a fairly shy and private person and just wasn't that comfortable opening up to a bunch of strangers. I've opened up a bit on social media, but I still keep the blogs (when I get around to writing anything) pretty much business only. But, I can't do that anymore. I need help and I don't know where else to turn.

In 2012, my life imploded somewhat. Among other things, I lost my house, got divorced, and my baby sister died. I tried living by myself for a while, but that didn't work out. I decided to move back to Alaska where my family and oldest friends are. And there I ran into a snag. When I called around to get estimates from movers, I found out it would cost several times more than I thought, about twice as much as I had to my name to ship my stuff. Two tons of books kind of complicates things.

I haven't been able to get back on my feet up here. My sisters have covered my room and board. I try to cover my other expenses. I sold my comic book collection (which had been at my baby sister's house all these years). I had two jobs, but neither was permanent. I sold my book and lived off the advance. That ran out just before Thanksgiving. At that point I had a few encouraging looking job prospects that might open after the first of the year. My ex, Tessa, set up a GoFundMe to raise, what we hoped would be, enough tide me through to a first paycheck. One by one they each fizzled out. We begged for enough to get me through another month, and then another after that. And, I'm back where I was in December: I'm broke, my bills are overdue, and I have one good job prospect, but, even if it pans out, the first check won't arrive in time.

The only long-term solution is that I get a job that pays an adult wage so I can be independent again. My ideal is a telecommuting job that I can do in Alaska while I save up enough to go to Washington and get my stuff. But anything that pays my bills with some walking around money left over is good. If you know of anything or have any connections, please let me know.

Meanwhile, this is where I am. I need $450 by EOD Thursday to save my belongings**, my life. Soon after that, another round of bills hits.

PS - My hard drive is making funny noises.

* My bills. I's hard to rank them. Obviously the storage unit worries me the most. I have a phone. Everyone needs a phone. I also need mine for data since there is no internet where I live. I have an old credit card that I'm trying to pay off. Medicaid pays most, but not all of my medical and medication bills. That leaves food and walking around money. I'm out of coffee for the first time in about forty years, but the storage unit is more important (see below).

** About my stuff. I'm clinically a bit of a hoarder. Hence the 110 boxes of books. Just not living with my stuff is a big source of anxiety. But, I'm also the family historian. The storage unit includes about 150 years worth of photographs, family bibles, Masonic paraphernalia, my dad's papers from the Atomic Energy Commission, and a china hutch hand-made in the 1890s. I live 1500 miles away from the storage unit. I can't borrow someone's van and drive over to rescue the best stuff before the unit becomes reality show prop. It's either all saved or all gone.

Adventures in pointless paperwork

When the oil money started to pour in from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline at the end of the seventies, there was a spirited public debate over the best way to spend it. There were some good decisions and some bad decisions. One of the best was to create a rainy day account which we named the Permanent Fund. Under the law, 25% of the state's oil revenue goes into the account. According to a complex formula, a certain amount is paid out in dividends to all the permanent residents of the state.

Since I've been back for almost two years, I'm entitled to a dividend this year. The deadline for filing the paperwork was back in February. The checks start going out in three weeks. Naturally, the Permanent Fund has waited till now to let me know they want more documentation. They have records of me from when I lived here in the seventies and eighties. They want me to prove that I'm that guy. I've already given them my birth date, Social Security number, and Alaska driver's license number. Now they want a birth certificate.

I go to the California Department of Vital Statistics where I find out it will take me over six months to get one. A helpful note tells me that it might be faster for me to go to the county registrar's office. I go to the County of Los Angeles' registrar's office where I find out it costs $28, it could take up to three weeks, and they don't take payments over the internet. They do, however, work with a third party vendor who will take my payment and make my request for me. I go to VitalCheck where I fill out the forms and find out it will cost me $6 more. Oh, and I need to prove who I am first.

Monday was a bank holiday. This morning I trotted down to my bank, found the clerk with the notary stamp, and had him attest that I am who I say I am. Of course, I had to prove that to him first. How did I do that? I showed him the driver's license issued to me by the state of Alaska. Back home, I scanned the signed and stamped form and sent it to VitalCheck. They'll look it over and send it to the County of Los Angeles. They'll look it over and send me my birth certificate. Since the clock is running out, I asked for the overnight mail which will cost me $26.50 more.

To sum up: The State of Alaska wants me to prove I am who I say I am. To do that, I'm spending $60.50 to have a piece of ID, issued to me by the State of Alaska, shipped down and up the West Coast. There is a fair chance that I'll miss the deadline. And it's completely pointless. Not only am I wasting time and money to tell one part of the state about a piece of ID issued by another part of the state that I already told them about, none of this proves that I'm that baby that was born in California. And, whether I am or am not that baby is irrelevant to the requirements of the Permanent Fund law. They need to know whether I met Alaska residency requirements for all of 2014. They're still just taking my word for that.

Now, I'm going to have a salami sandwich. It's the only way I could think of to end this on an up note.

I'm the best and why that sucks

Well, that was anticlimactic. At 3:00 I was sitting in my cubicle making progress writing something that fixed a bit of text I had been very unsatisfied with. The woman I reported to came by to thank me for my excellent work and say goodbye. I was more than a little shocked. After staring at her for a few weeks while I tried to find some way other than the obvious one to interpret what she was saying, I finally said "am I done?" She said yes, she thought that all the details been taken care of and I knew I was done. This was supposed to be a six to eight week job and today was the end of week three.

I filled out my last timesheet, cleaned up my corner, and went through my document, filling in placeholders with clear notes on what I had planned to put there. I wrote to the agency telling them what had happened and asking them what I should do next. Then I turned everything off, put on my hat, and started walking home.

About halfway there--after stopping to tell the police about a couple of people I had passed arguing over a gun--my phone rang and I dipped into a parking lot to take the call. As I expected, it was the person at the agency who had hired me. She apologized and said she had sent me an email yesterday morning, explaining the situation, but apparently it bounced off their servers. This is almost certainly true. When I filled out my timesheet, I tried to mail it to myself from the scanner and found I no longer had an email account at the place I was working. Looking over the last few days, I saw the the only emails I had received yesterday and today were company-wide reports and announcements.

So, what happened? It seems I'm just so good at what I do that I finished eight weeks of work in three. The client looked over my work on Wednesday and thought it looked so close to what they had been expecting that they figured I was winding things up. They called the agency and told them to close out the contract. In fact, I figured I was going to finish it next week and was hoping they would find other projects for me work on for the other four weeks.

There's a political lesson to be learned from this. Many people think (or, from what they say and advocate, appear to think) that the unemployed are just lazy. Or that unemployment is caused by greedy unions--and laziness. Or that unemployment is caused by undocumented immigrants--and laziness. Or that unemployment is caused by crafty foreigners--and laziness. In any case, the unemployed are contemptible and deserve no compassion or help--or help qualified by humiliation. The unspoken part of this belief is that the reason enemployment goes up must be because millions of gainfully employed American workers suddenly get lazy, quit their jobs, and refuse to go back to work.

Even if every part of that is true (and it's not), it's only half of the story. We could achieve full employment and be begging for foreigners to come work here if were weren't so damn productive. American workers put in more hours per year than any other developed country, with the exception of South Korea. As for productivity during those hours, we're number three (South Korea is near the bottom of that list). Those two statistics combined make us the most productive workers in the developed world. You can pick different bench marks and crunch the numbers in different ways, but you'll still find out that we're very good. You'd have to work really hard, and hate America, to give us an even moderately bad rating.

Since 1980, American productivity has risen about eighty percent while pay has risen about ten percent. If the wealth created by that productivity isn't going to the people who did the creating, where is it going? I can't say, because that would be engaging in class warfare.

Jeb Bush, a multi-millionaire who has done squat to create wealth or jobs for anyone outside his immediate family and friends, says American workers need to be more productive. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt on the "work more hours" part of that comment and focus on the "be more productive" part. Why should we be more productive? None of that created wealth comes to us. The very upper middle class are the only ones who actually make back the results of working harder. Everyone below them barely hangs on while all their wealth production goes to those above the upper middle class. Oh dear, I'm veering into class warfare again.

Though I impressed some people on this job, I'm not sure I impressed the right people. The agency that placed me expected to collect their share of my wealth creation for at least six weeks and only got three. I actually feel a little guilty about that and hope it doesn't work against me.

Let's get back to my situation. I just screwed myself out of 62.5% of the expected pay for this job by being so productive. The client was willing to pay for eight weeks for me to meet their expectations. I did that in three weeks. What I wanted to give them would have taken four weeks. To put it another way: If I had had my way, I would have exceeded expectations while coming far under budget and ahead of schedule.

If millions of people like me would goof off more, the totality of American society would be better off. Millions of other people like me would be employed. Those above the upper middle class would still do well, just not quite as well while Americans below the upper middle class would do anywhere for somewhat better to life-savingly better.

If I wasn't so damn good at what I do, I'd still have a job.

Note 1: So what is it that I do? I'm a writer. I'm a damn good writer. If you've read archy or any of my social media postings for any length of time, you've probably figured out that I'm chronically depressed and that my self-confidence and self-respect are in the toilet of the sub-sub-basement. Even from there, I have enough perspective to know that I'm a damn good writer and that I'm a damn good value for any any employer.

Note 2: Well, if I'm so good and such a great value, why don't I have a job? FUCK YOU! Fuck the horse you rode in on and fuck anyone who looks like you! This is the same as asking, if you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Once and for all, being skilled, talented, or brilliant in one thing does not mean you are the best in all other things. Einstein wasn't even close to being the richest man in the world. Bill Gates isn't close to being the smartest man in the world. But, they were each the best in what they did. I'm damn good at the thing I do, which is ferret out information and explain it in terms that are relevant to the people who need it. However, one of the things that I'm worst at is selling myself and maintaining the social connections necessary to do that. In other terms, I'm great at working, I'm awful at getting work.

Note 3: That wealth production thing, my example is one present-time event; other than statistics can I give you another real life example? Yes I can. My bid on this contract was two thirds what I was making for the same work fourteen years ago. Even adding in the agency's share, this is a huge transfer of wealth from the wealth creators to the wealth collectors (whatever you want to call them that isn't class warfare). As recently as when we lost the house, Clever Ex-wife thought two dollars more than this per hour for what we do was a humiliation. Several months ago, I thought I was a sure winner on a bid where I asked ten percent less than I made in 2001. The winner asked almost half what I did. Was he, she, or it going to be half as productive as I was fourteen years ago? Of course not. They planned to give it their best. I would have given better, but I can't communicate that. So good for them on winning the contract.

Note 4: I really need a job. I live in Alaska, but I'm a great telecommuter. And I'm really good at what I do. Really.

Update: I guess I'm done publicly wallowing in self-pity for now. What's the next Kubler-Ross stage?

My less than optimal day

We're having a record breaking heatwave here in the northland. Every day new records are being set in Alaska and the Yukon. I really hate hot weather. There are major forest fires on both sides of the town, not close enough to threaten Anchorage (other towns are less fortunate) but, depending which way the wind blows, close enough to choke some people. The Cub Scout camp near the bigger fire has respirators ready for the kids with asthma. My bus pass expires today and my sister's away on a road trip, meaning I'm on my own for food. I like cooking and I like my cooking, but I'm less fond of trudging to and back from the store (a little over a mile each direction).

Getting a new bus pass is no big deal. My afternoon transfer is right in front of the library and I can buy a pass there. If the weather was the same as yesterday, my plan was to get a pass, come home, and get groceries tomorrow. If it was cooler, I planned to get the pass, walk the few blocks to where I could catch a bus to the store, shop, and walk home from there. It's still hot today, possibly another record, but the smoke isn't too bad.

This morning, after arriving at my workfare job, I noticed that I didn't have my wallet. I tried to call my sister to see if I had left it behind when I put on clean pants this morning, but she was already on the road. I called the bus office to see if it was in the lost-and-found and they said they wouldn't know until the end of the day.

I thought about this for a bit. The first thing I'll have to do if it's gone will be to call the credit union, cancel my card, and order a new one. That will take one to two weeks. Meanwhile I'll have to withdraw some cash to buy groceries and a new bus pass. But I can't do that without ID. Okay, I'll have to call the DMV and find out how to get a new ID without a different ID to prove who I am. And, this will involve a lot of time and trudging.

I decided to go straight home and look for my wallet. I ran out and caught the first bus heading my direction. This means I'm losing a half day's pay. On the way, I looked at the bus schedules to check my transfer and found out it would be a 45 minute wait. Fine, dammit! I'll walk. I got off at the nearest stop to my sister's. Happily, part of the walk was along a bike path on a greenbelt and much cooler than the streets. My sister's neighborhood was also cooler.

My wallet was just where I hoped it would be. I washed up and put on some dry clothes. I got a big glass of water and sat down to let my panic level and core temperature return to something resembling normal. As I sat staring vacantly into space, I decided there really wasn't a good reason for not going to the store. I'm home early and tomorrow is going to be just as hot. I checked the bus schedules and discovered there were convenient buses to take me halfway there and halfway back.

I headed out the door, pausing briefly to lament the fact that all of my summer shirts are still in storage in Washington. The bus was on time and most of the walk to the store was on the shady side of the street. Then it became time to cross the street. Anchorage is not a pedestrian friendly town (that's a rant for another day). Standing across the street from the store, the peculiarities of Anchorage road planning and summer construction had mad it so I would have to walk three blocks and wait through three light cycles to legally cross the street. I jay-walked.

Finally, at the store. After a day like this, I told myself, I deserve a treat; I'll make a pizza. After picking up an apple fritter for breakfast (I also deserve that), I went around comparison shopping for ingredients. Cheapest crust. Cheapest cheese. Cheapest sauce (I'm going to add my own seasonings). Cheapest toppings.

On my way to the Italian sausage, I passed the butcher's case and saw thick-cut, porterhouse steaks for $ 8.88 /pound. To paraphrase Eeyore, "Porterhouse. My favorite steak. Sigh. Thick. My favorite cut. Sigh." There is no way I can justify a $ 15.00 steak! I paced back and forth looking wistfully at the steaks until a butcher started moving in my direction. Knowing my will would collapse if he asked me if he could help me, I averted his eyes and rushed away. I unconvincingly told myself putting fresh tomato slices on the pizza would make up for it.

I also told myself I deserve some sweets. Oh, look, I said to myself, chocolate covered almonds. They will be one not-so-solid mass by the time you get them home in this heat, I also said to myself. I'd really like some ice cream. Do you remember what I said about chocolate covered almonds? Multiply that times seven. Cookies? We'll check. Blue! Berry! Newtons! $ 5.49 a package! Oreos are half price. Okay, but don't get one of the weird flavors.

I went to check out and there were lines at all the cashiers and at the self-check stations. If there is no difference in the lines, I'd rather keep someone employed by using a real cashier. Besides, if there's no difference in the lines, the self-check will take longer because most people don't know how to check themselves out. I picked a line that everyone was avoiding because the customer had lots of groceries. I figured her one big cart would go through faster than four smaller carts. When I stepped into the line the cashier looked up and asked me to put up the closed rope since it was her break time. An older Philippina woman just walking up looked very sad. The cashier said, "put it behind her."

This left me feeling better about the day. I decides I deserved some wine with my pizza meals. I went next door to the liquor store and picked out a low priced box of okay red. There was a line, but everyone cooperated and it progressed smoothly. The cashier had a cheerful "we're all in this together" attitude. I made sure I had all my cards in order before I got to the front. We finished the transaction, I politely said thanks as I always do do service people. She gave me a stone cold stare and said in a flat voice, "Thank. You." What did I do? Did an old hippie kill her dog?

More jay-walking. In front of one of the stores I passed was a guy, close to my age, collecting donations for some veterans' cause. He wore a cap that said "Vietnam Vet" and was cheerfully greeting everyone who went by. When I passed, he stepped back and saluted me. I returned his salute. It's a common mistake. These days, I look old enough to have been in that war. In fact, I was in the last draft, but my number wasn't called. When I was in the Cub Scouts, Dad taught me how to do a correct salute and I still do it very well.

I caught the return bus with no problem. I walked back to my sister's house. I hadn't lost the keys, so I entered with no problem. As I was unpacking the groceries, I was still thinking about that porterhouse and crunching numbers. I finally worked it out. If I bought two steaks in the family pack, which is cheaper still, and had them with mushrooms, potatoes, and the salad makings already in the fridge, I could get at least three meals out of a $ 15.00 steak. That's still not a price that I can afford every day, but it's a comparable price per meal price to this pizza I'm making. I might have to go back, buy the family pack, and keep it till my sister gets back.

Altogether, this has been a less than optimal day, but it could have been worse.

Really, why do I try?

In all my years of blogging, the post that got the most comments was the simple question "Am I the only one who still thinks of unlined paper as 'typing paper?'"

Today on Twitter, I repeated someone else's mild joke about President's Day and, so far, I've had fifty favorites and retweets, by far the most I've had for anything I've ever said.

Instead of spending all this time researching a book, I should have just gone on social media, written "So, what's the deal with mammoths?" and appended a hashtag for Jerry Seinfeld. It would have instantly made me Mr. Mammoth throughout the internet and gotten me an appearance on the Tonight Show and a fifteen minute NPR feature.

Why I hate my life: Reason 4264 (unrelated to being single on St. V Day)

Well, I just did the stupidest thing I've in a long while.

My browser slowed down and eventually froze up. This occasionally happens. Usually, I just close everything and restart. The whole thing takes less than five minutes. It's annoying but an easy fix. That didn't work this time. This occasionally happens. When it does I run the Restore function. This is a little more of an inconvenience since it usually takes over ten minutes. That didn't work. So, I ran it a second time. It still didn't work.

I've never been in this spot. At the bottom of the Restore window that informed the operation was a failure was a link that said consider refreshing your settings. "Okay," I thought, "why not?" I clicked the link and hit go. As soon as I did, I had second thoughts: "Maybe I should find out more about this before going through with it." I tried to to stop it. I even turned off the computer. When I turned it back on, the reset process was still chugging along.

When it was finished, my worst fears were realized. The computer began running through the "Welcome to Your New Computer" presentation. After impatiently waiting through that nonsense and actually getting to part of the computer that I actually use, I began assessing the damage. The good news is that all of my files are still there, though that would have been easy to fix since I back them up regularly. The bad news is that all of my programs are gone. All. Of. Them.

I started by reinstalling Google Chrome. That was the one bright spot in this. Once I logged in to Google it asked if I wanted to restore all of my customizations and promptly downloaded all of my bookmarks, add-ons, and my auto-fill file. That was the last good news. I tried opening up some files and discovered that Office is gone. I can download Office without charge. All I need to do is enter the 85 digit serial number on the disk. That's in a box along with the rest of the contents of my desk, and the desk, in a storage unit in Washington. I can probably muddle along with Google Documents though I won't have any of the language modules that I bought for Office. Those disks were in the desk drawer and are in the same box, in the same storage unit, in the same state that I am not in. The disk for my OCR program was also in that drawer (my desk was pretty well organized). My solitaire games are gone, but I wasted too much time on them anyway. And on and on.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

Well, this sucks

I just read an article on Buzz Feed by a woman talking about dating for the first time after her marriage fell apart. It's not really about dating in general, it's about a dramatic turn of events specific to her story. What struck me at a personal level was the way she described the appalling prospects for a woman in her late fifties (i.e., women my age). She "watched half in fascination, half in horror as eHarmony’s computerized compatibility matrix churned out a slew of Santa Claus look-alikes." Ever since my beard rather abruptly turned snow-white a few years back, I've been a little put aback by the sudden display of grand-parent respect shown by young people and offers of senior discounts by public employees. Now, I find that, for some educated women my age, the very existence of single men who look like me is considered a "horror."

I can't tell you how eager I'll be to begin dating, if ever.

Heading home

You may remember that I was planning to move to Alaska on Monday. This has been a tremendously anxiety generating process. Tuesday before, I had to admit that I can't afford to move. I don't have enough money to pay for the move. This meant, I had to put everything back into storage and head to AK with nothing more than a suitcase and a carry-on. After factoring in a few more panic attacks, unexpected delays, and other crises, I reached Friday night a full day behind schedule. Still, I got a lot done on Saturday. I had a tight, but feasible, schedule for Sunday. Everything was packed and in the staging position to move. The rental truck was backed up at the bottom of the stairs.

I got up according to schedule. There was some sort of hullabaloo going on out on the driveway between Joe and Suzi, the landlord and landlady. It seemed to involve her running back and forth between her car and the house while clutching a pillow. After she was gone, I got to work. One box, four boxes, six boxes, a small piece of furniture into the truck. Stop to stretch and have a drink of water after every four loads. Everything was on schedule at 10:15, though I would rather have been a bit ahead of schedule. Then I tried to take the big rocking chair down the stairs. Halfway down, I lost control and it flipped me head first into the door at the bottom of the stairs.

I woke up about fifteen minutes later in a puddle of blood. I stuck both hands into it before I was able to get up. Then, I staggered over to the landlord's house with blood covered hands and face. He reacted appropriately and rushed me into his bathroom to wash up. Almost all of the blood was coming from a big gash over my left ear. The rest was from minor scrapes on my arms. I called Tessa to cry about not being able to finish the move on time. I told her I was thinking of laying down for a minute before going back to work. She told me that, No, I was not going to do that; I was going to get myself to a hospital. Joe had come to the same conclusion and was getting changed.

An actual puddle of blood. I need to drop everything and parlay this empirical knowledge into writing hard-boiled detective stories.

Joe dropped me off at the emergency entrance to the Skagit Valley Hospital in Mount Vernon, almost forty miles from the apartment. He left me at the desk and ran off to work. It turns out that the hullabaloo in the morning was one of their girls going into labor and Suzi rushing to her side. This meant no one would available to take me home. That was not my top worry at the moment. I was checked in right away and sent to a nurse who took my vitals. She took me to an examination room to wait for the doctor.

A clerk came in to get my information. "Insurance?" "None." "Job?" "No, and I'm leaving the state tomorrow."

A friendly woman came in to ask some more specifically medical questions. She told me I'd need a tetanus booster. I asked if it would make me autistic. She paused. I said that Jenny McCarthy, a great medical expert, said it would. She realized I was joking and we had a great time filling out the rest of the form.

Next, came the doctor, very busy, but friendly and listening. He had me retell the story of my crash. By now, it was forming its standard narrative. When I said I thought I was thrown head-first into the door, he lost all interest in my scalp and began examining my neck to make sure it wasn't broken. It wasn't. His next concern was to make sure my skull wasn't broken. For that, he sent me for a cat scan. That was kind of cool. The machine wasn't nearly as noisy as the ones on teevee and in movies where it symbolizes the sterile and impersonal nature of modern medicine. After another wait in the examination room, the doctor returned to tell me the cat scan looked fine.

After one final wait, he came in to sew me up. By then, I was starting to feel the many other bangs and scrapes on my body. He asked if I had anything else that needed attention. I held up my arm and showed him a bloody scrape, "I have an owie on my elbow." He looked at it, "we call that a boo-boo." "Sweet," I thought, "I can't wait to impress my medical blogger friends with my new knowledge of technical jargon." The actual sewing up was anticlimactic. He washed around the wound, clipped a little hair, and stapled me shut. He finished with a quick review of the care and feeding of a head wound and concussion and the warning signs that I should rush back to the ER. A few minutes later, the friendly woman came in with my discharge papers.

And I was done. It was around five. I hadn't eaten or had caffeine all day. I wasn't sure how to get back to the apartment. I decided to start with food. Some wandering led me to the cafeteria but the cook was on break. I bought a large coffee and a bag of chips and began calling people. At some earlier point I had called Number One Sister. It's a sign of my confusion that I was more concerned about telling her I wasn't going to make my flight the next day than I was about telling her that I was in the ER, covered in blood, with several possible bad prognoses in the outing. In my mind, the headline was "Fuck-up Little Brother Fucks up Again." The flight was not her top priority. Her headline was more along the lines of "OMG Is This the One That Finally Does Him In?" She questioned me about what the doctor said, gave me my new flight information, and let me know the lady at Alaska Airlines had told me to stop bashing my head in. The correct headline was "This aging hippie tried to move his furniture without help. What happened next will have you facepalming till your nose bleeds." I called Tessa and gave her another update.

Now, I needed to get to the apartment and find something to eat. I tried calling my nephew who is a brewer near Mount Baker, but he wasn't home (probably ski boarding on the mountain). I sat around for a while pondering my situation. I wondered if the city busses from Mt. Vernon connected with the Island bus service and if they ran on Sunday evening. Number One called again to see how I was managing the last hurdles. I told her about needing a ride. She was typically practical and blunt, "take a cab." The woman at information recommended a local cab that she thought would take me that far out of town. The cab was there in a few minutes and we were on our way. That left food. Because I expected to be gone that day, I had already disposed of all the food in the apartment. While I was wondering if I could afford to have the cab wait while I ran (shuffled?) into a store, the driver came to my rescue by asking if I minded stopping at a store so he could get some water. I bought him a bottle of blue vitamin water and myself a frozen pizza.

Back in the almost empty apartment, I made a few weak comments on Facebook about my situation while waiting for the pizza to cook. I made a nest on the floor out of the blankets and pillows I had kept out to use as padding around the furniture. After eating most of the pizza, I took a handful of ibuprofen and crawled into the nest hoping this really was the bottom.

LATER: The next morning, Tessa came over to help me with the last pieces of furniture. She looked them over and told me to hire someone younger and stronger. A local labor exchange sent over two guys who finished loading the truck and followed us to the storage place to do all the unloading. I spent the night at Tessa's and, in the morning, she made sure I made it to the airport on time. I lost my debit card at the airport and my luggage didn't make it to Alaska with me. I went to bed on Christmas Eve hoping this really was the bottom.

Where have you been, young man?

While putting up my last post, I noticed That it's been five weeks since my last post. What's that all about? As I said in the last post, I planned to spend the month of November just writing the damn book, no research, no translations. I didn't quite make my goal, but I wrote over two chapters and about 18,000 words. Another month and a half at that speed and I could have produced a complete (very) rough draft.

I'm not getting that month and a half just yet. I'm down to my last few thousand dollars and paying work has not exactly leaped into my lap. In November, I sent my resume to a couple jobs that I thought I was exceptionally well qualified for and lost out on all of them. So, with the crisis at hand, I finally gave into the inevitable and decided I have to go back to Alaska. I'm not thrilled about the choice--I feel like I'm admitting complete failure and running home with my tail between my legs--but it's probably the best thing for me. I have family and old friends--a "social support network"--there. This means I've spent most of the last two weeks having non-stop anxiety attacks interrupted only by paralytic panic attacks. Good times. Good times.

It's almost over. I have ten days left. Today, I talked to the mover I'm pretty sure I'll hire. My biggest problems now are getting rid of some stuff in storage and figuring out how to get to the airport after I sell the car (it's 75 miles and two counties away). Then Christmas in AK, followed by a new panic over getting an apartment and a job. If things stabilize then, I'll jump back into the book and finish a draft by the end of February.

And that's the way it is, December 12, 2013.

Lack of internet

Day One

1:52 - What I thought was a mere slowdown has turned into full-blown no internet. I have decided to leave this journal so that when they find my lifeless hulk they will know I did not go down without a fight.

2:12 - I can handle this. I have work to do. The writing has been going well today. I can get by on my existing research. I don't have to look anything up. And there are dishes that need to be done. I probably wouldn't have had time to look at the internet anyway.

2:19 - Why does Chrome even have a refresh button when it won't refresh? They could easily make something that would replace the refresh button with a we're sorry button. Would that be so hard? But no, they choose to temp me with the promise of internet and then break my heart. What kind of sadistic torture is this?

2:25 - I'm out of coffee. I'm out of coffee!!!! What the hell is going on here?!? Is the whole world breaking down???????

2:36 - Nothing.

3:22 - The stove is looking nice and clean. Maybe I should do this more often.

4:38 - I wonder if they still make Zagnut candy bars. I can't even remember what they tasted like, but the name sure was fun to say. Zaaaaag-nut. Zagnut.

5:40 - Is it too early for a glass of wine? I was planning to have wine with dinner tonight. It's not like there's rule against having a glass or two before dinner. But if I have it now, I might not have enough for dinner. That would be bad. And after I have wine, I won't be able to go get more wine. The nearest store is two miles away, and I won't want to drive then. Maybe I should save it. Yes. That's what I'll do.

5:54 - Was that a flicker? It looked like a flicker. The number of tweets on Chrome bird just went up. So why can't I connect to anything else? Why is this happening???!!?

6:49 - Hmm. That's a new sound. Has it always done that?

7:37 - Ever since my baby left me,
I've found a new place to dwell,
Down at the end of Lonesome Street,
At the Heartbreak Hotel.
And I'm feelin' so lonesome, baby,
I'm feelin' so lonesome I could cry.

Or is it die? Cry? Die? I'd know, if could look it up ON THE INTERNET!

8:07 - CURSE YOU OBAMACARE!!!!!!!!!!!

8:14 - Wait a minute. I was just able to use my cell phone to bludgeon my way into Facebook. It took several tries, but I was able to do it. I think this means "unplug it. Plug it back in. Goodbye. Call my friend if that doesn't work." Let's try that.

8:22 - The internet is back!!!!! Hello, everyone. Call back the dogs; I'm still alive!!

Well, that was interesting. I think I handled it well.

Life is one unending good news, bad news joke

Today, I had my eyes checked. The good news is I don't have glaucoma. The bad news is I do have cataracts. So far it's not bad enough to need treatment; it's just one more damn thing that I have to monitor. Anyhow, thanks to the Kenyan tyrant, when it does get that bad, I'll have affordable insurance. And, when I buy that insurance, they won't be able to refuse to cover the cataracts as a previously existing condition.

Glaucoma and GOP health solutions

This morning my glasses disintegrated beyond even the ability of paperclips to repair. Fortunately, when I packed up, I made sure to put a few pairs of old glasses in the box of desk things. I picked out the pair that is best for driving and went to the nearest optometrist (about twelve miles away). The receptionist asked if I just wanted the glasses replaced or if I wanted a check-up. The old lenses are over five years old and I'm going through the middle-aged phase of my close-up vision changing, so I cringed over the cost and said yes to a checkup. Glaucoma runs in my family. I really should have a full exam every year and it's been two years since my last exam. That means I'm getting the full exam, which means I'll have to wait a few extra days to replace my glasses. Meanwhile, none of the old glasses I have any any good for reading or computering. This means I'm trying out the handicapped settings on the computer. Right now, I have the browser set at 200%. I can't take three or more days off from writing. I'm typing this on Notepad in 28 point font. Those modifications are good enough for reading and writing, though the keyboard is a bit fuzzy.

This is more than an inconvenience for me. It's a solid reminder of the problems of being unemployed and uninsured. Skipping my glaucoma check is Russian roulette. My grandmother, my mom, and my late little sister all had serious glaucoma. Bonnie lost half the vision in one eye because of it. If my glasses had held together, I would have continued to put off the exam. Having to make cost/benefit calculations over something as important as my vision is a terrible thing to do. And it pisses me off. While I sat here trying to figure out how to tape, glue, or wire my glasses back together, I kept thinking of two particular conservative arguments about healthcare and how they relate to my risk of glaucoma.

The first was their mantra that no one lacks medical care in the US because there are emergency rooms. That argument is disingenuous and laughable from several different perspectives. The primary purpose of the argument is to deny that there is a healthcare crisis. Not long ago I had it thrown at me by a relative when I mentioned that an old friend of mine with cancer had died from a lack of insurance. Emergency rooms are for emergencies. They are for accidents and victims of violent crime. They are not a place for me to go for a routine eye exam. And, if I do get glaucoma they will not be the place for me to get my medications or monitoring any more than they are for diabetics. And when Chuck had his cancer, at what point, exactly, did his pain become an emergency? Would an ER have performed the surgery to remove his tumors or supplied the chemotherapy he needed? Emergency rooms are the most expensive way to acquire healthcare. They drive up costs for all of us, and they don't give it away. Hospitals bill patients for ER visits. If the patient can't pay that bill, the cost gets passed on to everyone else who uses the hospital.

The second argument builds on the problem of delay and cost. Even the most rabid conservatives can't deny that healthcare costs have been rising much faster than the rate of inflation or people's incomes. They have three explanations for this problem, all of which are lame. First, people get too much in malpractice settlements. Malpractice insurance is a tiny part of the cost of doing business for doctors and hospitals and hasn't gone up anywhere nearly as much as medical costs. In may states it has gone down. Second, regulations. It's always regulations with these guys. Can they point to the specific new regulations over the last ten or twenty years that have driven the rise in costs? No. When medical professionals complain about paperwork, most of it comes from insurance companies. Third, people using too much healthcare. What? People ("those" people, not us) going to the doctor too often. The first two are so old and worn out that it's not worth spending any more time on them than I already have. It's that third one that I want to beat up on.

Like the ER mantra, this an argument that someone came up with not long ago that has now been repeated enough that it has become accepted wisdom on the right, even though it's completely stupid. The way it is usually described is: insurance pays for too much; because insurance pays for going to the doctor, people go to the doctor too often; if insurance paid for less, people would not go to the doctor and make the insurance companies pay as often; this would lead to more profit for the insurance companies; when the insurance companies feel they are making enough profit, they'll stop raising prices. This, my friends, is how the magic of the free market brings prices down.

Aside from its utter ridiculousness, this argument is also mean-spirited and irresponsible. It's mean-spirited in that it's victim blaming. In saying too many people go to the doctor too often, conservative pundits are not telling their audiences that they go to the doctor too often. No. They are saying that "those people" go to the doctor too often. Who are "those people"? Illogically, "those people" are the undeserving people who want the government to step in and help them with their health costs. That is to say, the people who use too much health insurance are the people without health insurance: the poor, minorities, and older people who aren't quite old enough for Medicare.

If the plan embodied in this argument was actually enacted, it would have almost the exact same negative effect as the current ER situation. Make it more expensive to go to the doctor and people will go to the doctor less often, even if they should. People will get less preventative care and catch fewer problems early on when they are cheaper to treat and when the prospects of total recovery are much higher. The actual effect of this plan, like the ER plan, is that total costs are actually higher and more people die, are permanently disabled, or, in my own example, go blind.

I hope, that when I finally get my glaucoma check on Wednesday, nothing will be wrong. I would be a lot more confident if I were able to have this check-up every year like the doctor recommends. As for the rest of my body, I haven't had a full check-up in three years and don't expect to have one anytime soon unless I get that insurance that the Republican Party is determined to make sure I do not get.

My life is an episode of Monk

I just copied a pair of 18th Century scientific illustrations and, looking at them, thought "My God, these things are crooked! I cannot use them like this." So I opened them each in a cheap graphics program and grabbed the rotate tool where I discovered the first illustration was one whole degree out of alignment. Clearly, the OCD meds are not working as well as they used to. Worse, the second illustration was one and a half degrees out of alignment and the cheap tool I was using could only make full degree adjustments. If I wasn't so poor, that half degree would be enough to drive me to get a full-fledged graphics program.

Best dating advice

Based on the picture, I'm betting the advice is "don't go out with a fifteen year-old; you'll end up in jail."

Life's lessons

I'm living with my own dishwasher for the first time. It's taken a while to figure out the best places to put things and which things do not go in the washer. I also needed to figure out which pieces of stemware were too tall. At this point, none of the surviving glasses are too tall.

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da

On Friday the 11th, at 9:00 pm, I ceased to be a home owner. The following Tuesday, at 2:00 pm, I ceased to be a married man. I'll spare you the whining, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments that this has involved. The last twelve months have constituted one of the worst years of my life. Right now, I'm running on the assumption that I've bottomed out. Because of those first two sentences, I can't just rise back up; I need to reinvent my life. To a certain extent, I even have to reinvent who I am. Here's a progress report.

Even without the divorce, Tessa and I would have been forced to sell the house this year because we were broke. The house took longer than we expected to sell. We came so close to the end that we would not have been able to pay our bills this month if the house hadn't sold. When we were fairly sure that a sale really was happening (six previous bids fell through), Tessa took most of our money to make first, last, and deposit on an apartment. I stayed in the house until the last day and borrowed money from my sisters to get into an apartment. Because the last few years have been so rough, my credit rating completely sucks. The only way I was able to get into an apartment was to rent from real people and not from a property management company. Fortunately, someone at the market has parents with a mother-in-law apartment over their garage.

So here I am. The apartment is great and so are my landlords. It's not perfect. It's way out in the country; about ten miles from the nearest small town. I'm going to have to leave more stuff in storage than would have been ideal, but the cost is somewhat made up for by the landlords covering all of the utilities, including internet. And I can't have a cat, which is real heart-breaker for me. But I'm making the best of it. I'm figuring out how I want to arrange things. I spent way too much time staring at the kitchen cabinets. It has a gas stove. The house was electric, so I'm relearning the techniques of gas. So far I haven't set fire to anything on the stove top, but I did set fire to some garlic bread in the oven.

My Facebook friends are aware of my adventures in getting my computer set. When we cleaned out the house to show it, I put my desktop unit in storage and started using a tiny laptop. It's a good as a temporary of traveling computer, but it is just too small for everyday use. One of the things I was looking forward to in getting settled was to set up the big machine. Better performance would be nice, but what I was really looking forward to was a full-sized keyboard and monitor. The computer came over in my first carload. Even before I'd built the bed, I'd set up the computer and discovered that I didn't have the power cords. After several trips to the storage unit, which is an hour away, I finally found them and discovered the computer no longer works. A friend said it sounds like a cracked mother board. So, I have to find a new repair place and decide if it's worth the cost of repairing. That calculation has to include losing all of the software on the old machine as well as my solitaire high scores. I'm still on the tiny laptop, but I'm using a full-sized keyboard.

So far, getting acquainted with the neighborhood has involved getting comfortable with the route--getting so I don't miss any turns--and figuring out where to shop. I've only gotten lost once. I managed to miss running into a deer once, which means my crappy reflexes are probably adequate to driving curving forest roads. One thing that still gives me problems is the fact that the speed limit changes eight times between here and the freeway. I know I'm going to get a ticket before I'm comfortable with that. Shopping is also something that needs exploring and learning. There are three grocery stores within fifteen miles. The closest is the smallest and the furthest has the best selections. So far it looks like the closest one is a little more expensive, but that its sales are better deals. On a whim, I checked the bulk spices in the big store and was quite pleased to find culinary lavender. I bought some. Choices, choices.

I suppose the last matter is my mental and financial health. They need some help. As I said, my apartment is out in the country, in fact, in the forest. On the one hand, it's quiet and the air smells much better than in the city. Quiet is a very good thing right now. On the other hand, I have a dangerous habit of going hermit and getting a little spooky if left to my own devices. When thinking of my ideal place to move, I thought being within walking distance of a coffeeshop would have been nice. I would spend an afternoon or two each week using their wi-fi and get to know some of the regulars. Driving a dozen miles to that is much less appealing. That means I should look toward a job as my main social venue.

I haven't had a full time job in five years. I had a part time job for a year, I've had some contract writing gigs, and I've tried to help Tessa with the soap company. I've looked for a full time job, but had no luck. I have had, I think, four interviews in that time. I don't have to give up on tech writing; I can telecommute and I'm only a little over an hour out of Seattle and Bellevue, so I could handle weekly staff meetings for someone who wants that. But, in reality, it's getting less and less likely that I'll get much more of that kind of work. My knowledge and even the software on my computer get more and more out of date every day. When I look around here for on-premises work, I find mostly service-sector jobs. I'm really, really resistant to that. I've spent far too much of my life working jobs I hated just to get a paycheck. I know, I might not have a choice.

America is extraordinarily hard on failure. At my age, if I do take a service-sector it means I am never, ever going to have another professional job, or even get a shot at one. No one is going to give a second glance at a resume that goes from Lead Technical Writer to Walmart Greeter. And where does that leave me in looking for a social life through work? In most service jobs, the people I'll have the most in common with will be bitter, over-educated, downwardly-mobile geezers.

I can think of one service venue where could be comfortable. As grown up life has become more and more stressful, I have come took back om my bookstore days with greater and greater nostalgia. It's retail and there will always be assholes who try to ruin your day, but most book people behave pretty well around the objects of their love. When I think about bookstores, it seems that I could be comfortable in a lot of hipster venues such as coffee shops. I'm an intellectual snob and age gives me an advantage in that culture. "You've probably never heard of them." "I've been a fan since before you were born." Geezer-hipster could be fun. I could also be comfortable in a lot of small stores. For the last four years, the best part of every week has been selling at the market. It's really a big corporate store with uniforms or a yuppie dress code that strikes me as living death. If anyone knows of an opening around Everett or points north, email me.

There you have it. I try to write a little every day. Whether I like it or not, Life goes on.

Diary of a newly single middle-age guy

Friday: Helped Tessa and Marlowe move out. Realtor called to say we have a deal on the house. Must wait for closing before I can afford to get a place. Made paella for dinner. It turned out a little dry. Tried to compensate by having more wine. May have overcompensated. Watched my first (and last) Tyler Perry movie.

Day one of my wild single life: Slept late because of paella compensation and lack of small cat alarm clock. Drove to Bremerton to help Tessa assemble furniture. I don't remember the bed being that difficult the first time. Marlowe is adjusting to the move. Drove home. Researched Siberian maps for a while. Had leftover paella for dinner. Went to bed early.

Day two: Had huevos rancheros for brunch. Did dishes. Found some good map articles. Planning to do research for the rest of the day. Leftover paella for dinner. Maybe some Oreos. Call sisters to tell them the news about the house.

To be continued...

A question

I've been working for almost forty years.
I've had over thirty jobs.
From Reagan to Bush II, none of the attempts at trickle down economics has ever trickled a dollar down to me.
None of the tax breaks for job creators has ever created a job for me.
I'm not alone.
Why should I think it will work this time?

I'm sure this would have been more effective if I had posted a shady picture of me with the message written on a piece of cardboard. I'm just not that photogenic.

On this day

Today is the 238th day of the year. There are 121 shopping days until Christmas. It is the feast day of St. Genisius, patron of clowns and torture victims. On this day in history Pliny the Elder died in the eruption of Vesuvius. Genghis Khan died on his wedding bed. Galileo Galilei demonstrated his first telesduringcope. The Pirate Henry Morgan died. The New York Sun began what would become known as the Great Moon Hoax. The Polish-Soviet War ended, twelve days after it began, with a decisive Polish victory. General Dietrich von Choltitz defied Hitler's orders by surrendering Paris to the Allies without first burning it to the ground. Voyager 2 flew past Saturn. Ivan the Terrible was born on this day as were Johann Gottfried von Herder, Mad Ludwig of Bavaria, Walt Kelly, Sean Connery, Elvis Costello...

...and me.

Update: And Neil Armstrong just died.