Shittier

I just got done watching a video with our head maintenance man of one of our janitors possibly fucking a window installer in the kindergarten room.

Fuck this shit.

Feel like shit

I just wrote a very damning letter against one of my coworkers at the request of my boss. I can't go into much detail because it is regarding a matter that has been under investigation for several months, but what I said in my statement is probably the last nail in the coffin for termination of this person. I feel especially bad because work is extremely hard to find out here in the boonies.

Basically, there were shortcuts taken regarding a large sum of money being spent and it has come down to he-said-she-said over the details of what happened. I was asked to write a formal statement detailing what happened. I was entirely truthful in my statement, but it didn't do any good for the person on the shit end of the stick, and in a way it kind of covered my bosses ass.

I feel like I was used to help transfer a little bit of blame from my boss to the other person. I've been experiencing a lot of that lately. My boss is kind of a two timing, two faced back stabber. And the principal here micromanages me like I'm one of the students. And I feel the entire reason is because I'm young and in a management type of position. I went from one bull shit public sector job to the next. The private business world wouldn't be any better there, instead of political motivation the shit would would be fueled by profit. I just need to get away from it all.

I feel like I ruined someones entire life before 9:00 a.m.

The Deer Hunter

Yesterday was opening day for deer season up here, so I spent the day out in the woods with my trusty rifle.

First we tried a chunk of state land along Beaver Creek Bay, but that was a bust.

Then in the afternoon we went to a piece of land owned by Avista on Marten Creek Road and bordering Tuscor Creek and the reservoir. We parked on the road and split up, my uncle and cousin went north east and I went north west. I had an arial photo with me so I knew I would hit some power lines eventually and I did. Then the trees started getting real dense and moving quietly was difficult. I found a road eventually and hung a right and crept along that. After a while my cousin called me on the radio and said they were heading back to the pickup. I figured I was going north-ish, then went right to the east, so if I went right again I would be heading south and hit the power lines soon, then the pickup. Man was I wrong! I walked and walked for a long time and never hit the power lines. Eventually I got to some water, which wasn't there when I walked in. The shorline went pretty much north-south, and the only shorline that went that direction on the map was Tuscor Creek Bay. I radioed back to my cousin and told him I got turned around ass backwards and that I was on my way out for real. All in all, from the time I start heading back to the pickup till the time I actually got there I wasted about an hour and a half and walked an extra 3 miles more than necessary.

Then we went back to their place to hunt there for the remainder of the evening. We say quite a few does, but most of them had fawns with them. The lone ones were always either out of range or were between us and the neighbors house. We had one good shot though that we didn't take. We were coming out of some thick trees and this lone doe came bounding by and stopped about 20 yards away for just long enough to freeze in position, then it bounded off and out of sight.

Its raining pretty hard and isn't suppose to stop today, which is never fun and can be problematic for black powder. I haven't decided of I'm heading out on my own today, probably not but I want to maximize my time in the field. Tomorrow I have robot club after school so I won't be able to get out before dark, which means Wednesday is the next day I might have a decent chance of getting my kill. I've got until the 8th to fill my tag with either sex of white tail, after that the gender and species switches every couple of days so the sooner I get my kill the better.

Fuck College

I've been struggling a lot lately. I hate my job to put it simply. Not only my job, but my whole career choice. But I'm fucked because it is all I know how to do.

I blame college. I went to college for IT work and now I'm stuck with it. When I was out of high school I was educated enough to do almost anything to make money. But instead I fell into the false sense of hope that is success and prosperity. Once you are educated in a field and have a few years of doing that work under your belt, you're stuck doing it. And with the costs of higher education escalating, it is damn near impossible to get a different education. Especially for me, I'm white, middle class, married (and we both have jobs), not terminally ill, and have no kids. So I probably won't get any scholarships, I don't qualify for any grants or other tuition assistance, and I will not be tied down with another debt like a student loan or something.

So the corporate, mass produced, globalized society is incredibly against the people who make an effort. I got educated and employed, and now I'm stuck with it. If I would have just simply entered the work force straight out of high school I would be better off. I could have gotten some sort of trade work and by now almost 5 years later I'd have good experience under my belt and be quite successful and in demand.

I almost hit the road Christopher McCandless style. After I moved out of my parents house at the age of 17 to go to college for robotics they canceled my degree program and I was stuck on my own. I started studying a map and was contemplating getting the fuck out and dissappearing, remembering when someone had asked me if I was going to spend a year or two traveling the country to "find myself" and decide who I wanted to be. I don't know what it was, but something kept me from just getting in the car and driving until I ran out of gas and then hitching to anywhere. I can't figure out what kept me from doing it. I wish I would have.

I can't take part in the business man illusion, I'll take my chance with the real world confusion.

Finally a local!

I've been told that you're not really a local or a Trout Creek resident until you've hit a deer on the highway. Suckers! Now I am! Not that that's a good thing or anything... I was on my way to work this morning after 7:30 and I was passing a guy I know named Harold Hudson. He hit his brakes all of a sudden and missed the deer, but I got 'em. BLAMMO! I just winged it with the front right corner of my jeep. The deer was killed instantly, and the only damage to my jeep is a broken turn signal and the little plastic frame around the headlight is busted, but the headlight still works.

Closer to self sustaining

I did some work over at my uncles place this weekend, I like manual labor. My uncles garden has turned into a small farm plus a few extra goodies. His garden is close to a half acre in size now, which is about twice as big as it ever has been, and he is adding a green house to extend his growing season. As of now though the green house is just a concrete foundation and I'm not sure if we'll get that built before winter or not. But the really cool addition is an 8x16 root cellar. He dug out the hole and had concrete poured to create the cask. So far he has maintained about 38 degrees inside which is perfect, the goal is anywhere from 32 to 40. But the work that we did was finishing that off. We ran around his yard like a team of mules pulling an antique harrow that has been in our family for decades, then spread annual and perrenial rye, creeping red fescue, and clover seed. Then we spread hay over all that to hold in moisture and help the seeds germinate. Its so weird, all weekend (I took Friday off) I was beat to a pulp doing manual labor for my uncle and splitting fire wood and stuff, but I loved it. Now this morning I am sitting at my desk barely for an hour and I am bored to death already. I did all that hard work and never felt any back pains, but this morning when I was trying to wake up it was hurting. I'm pretty convinced that my back problems are stress related and not an actual injury.

Fuck the system

We went to Sandpoint to run some errands and buy some shit on Saturday, and it wasn't fun. First we went to bum fuck walkmart to get the oil and stuff changed in the car. I know, I know, I always say "TO HELL WITH WALMART" and that everyone should change their own oil. We'll I don't own any ramps to drive the car up on, and my floor jack is a piece of shit, and I just can't justify the amount of money other lube shops cost. But those walmart idiots are morons. This is the second time we've gotten oil changed on that car, and both times they checked the oil before they started and told us is was bone dry. Uh, fuck you, it isn't, we just drove 65 fucking miles with no problems. There was plenty of oil, they just don't know how to read a dipstick. Either that or they are covering their asses and saying that just as an excuse in case something goes wrong, then they can play dumb and say the problem was there before they fucked with it.

But while we were there we decided to get a few things, a cookie sheet and a bathroom rug and stuff. With the oil change and the 8 or 10 other bargain bin things we bought, we still managed to spend over $100 on shit from walmart.

Then we went on to Yokes to get our normal groceries. We got a whole chicken, a small roast, some flat iron steaks, veggies and fruit, just normal groceries. About the only thing we bought that wasn't on our list was a case of Labatt Blue beer, I love that stuff and I can't get it anywhere near Trout Creek. Our bill came to $128.

So that was over $225 for a fucking grocery shopping list. What the fuck is happening? I'm making $48k a year, but we are still barely able to scratch by on that. We spend a thousand bucks a month of bare necessities, another thousand on rent and insurance and propane and shit, and the rest goes to the debt collector scum. We watched a documentary last night on how credit cards have turned for the worse in the last couple years. It use to be that a credit card would have a thousand dollar limit with a 5 or 10% interest and you would have to have good credit and a full time job to get one. Nowadays there are $10,000 credit limits with 28% interest and any 18 year old unemployed college kid can get one. People are using their credit cards to pay off their loans for their big fancy trucks and speed boats and shit. Their using money they don't have to pay off debts they can't afford. The system is incedibly against the hard working majority.

Grievance

I gotta get this off my chest.

At my school I have a computer lab in the high school that is run by a teacher who "teaches" technology and business and stuff. She does things like into to computer sciences and web design and video editing and stuff. I had always noticed that she doesn't really teach her students anything, she just gives them a text book and they work on their own. Mid terms were recently, and teachers were required to turn in all their grades. So one day I get called into the principals office because she had turned in a list of stuff that needed done ASAP and was complaining that students were weeks behind on their work because the computers weren't working right. She never told me there were problems and if she had I could have fixed them a lot sooner.

What pisses me off though is that I am being the scape goat because she fucked up. She wasn't monitoring her students work until she had a close deadline to meet and somehow that was my fault. And I can see this from the students side too. I'm only a couple years older than these kids and I still kind of think like them and understand what being a 21st century teenager is like. In school if I could have gotten out of school work by just keeping my mouth shut, you can be damn sure I wouldn't have made a peep! So they weren't able to work, and then the "teacher" realized that at the last moment and needed an excuse, that is where I come in. I hate it when people stab you in the back like that.

Close call?

We got our first bit of snow up high in the West Cabinets on the 3rd, that was cool. So yesterday I decided to drive up Chicago Peak and play in some snow. I took my dog with me because she likes going on jeep drives. So we go up Rock Creek road, start up Government Mountain, then turn up Chicago Peak. We made it about a fourth or third up but had to stop. We've had some wicked winds all weekend and trees are down all over the place, including up the mountain. There was one mountain hemlock leaner that I could have driven under, but not even 50 feet farther there was a bunch of other trees totally covering the road. There must have been 7 or 8 trees down right there. So I got my dog and we side hilled up to see what was beyond the blow down. But she was acting all weird, she was kind of frantic and kept sniffing the air like crazy. I'm still getting over my cold a little bit but I could smell it too. There was an awful stench in the air. I've always been told that when you are in dense brush or trees that you will smell bears before you see them, they have a musky odor because they are in the same animal family as skunks and badgers and weasels. I left my bear spray in the jeep down the hill, so I didn't want to stick around and we went back. I never saw it or heard it, but I'm pretty sure we were in close proximity to a bear and I have seen black bears up there before. So that was my excitement for the weekend... I saw a concert by a guy named Jack Gladstone too, he was pretty good, kind of a western folk music type of thing.

But when I was coming down the mountain after that (not to change the subject) I got to thinking. It was still pretty windy while I was up there and it was a real possibility that another tree could have come down between me and the highway, effectively trapping me on the mountain. I don't own a chain saw, but it would probably be a good idea to have one.

Jeep update

Ok I finally fucking got around to getting my jeep fixed. I know, I'm a lazy ass. But this stuff is expensive. I decided that rather than spending hundreds of dollars on parts that may not fix the death wobble problem I would go with the most obvious thing first. I had a lot of wear on the outer edge of my front drivers side tire, which would indicate too much toe in. An alignment should fix that, I've got one scheduled for this afternoon in Thompson Falls.

But the wear on that tire was pretty severe, so I decided to dump some cash for new tires. It wasn't that hard of a decision, those tires sucked and I've hated them for the couple of years I had them. The old ones were Medalist Sport Kings, and I replaced them with Maxxis Bighorn MT's. Thats a pretty big upgrade in offroad ability! But that is beside the point, the point is that in preliminary highway testing I officially have no more death wobble! It would shake violently at about 50 mph, so I started there first. Everything was good so I slowly eased it up to 55, then 60, then 70 miles an hour. All was good without the slightest bit of vibration. As far as I'm concerned, the problem is fixed now. w0ot!

And on top of all that, I am sick as a dog today. Terribble head cold. Deep and intense inner ear ache, stuffed up and running nose, sore throat and coughing up yellow goo. The only good thing about being sick is getting to take a sick day from work.