A Week of Changes

Its weird to look back on exactly a week ago from my last post, and think how different things were for me. I quit my job, packed half of my belongings into luggage, and moved 800 miles away for the summer. Actually all of that took less then 72 hours, but who's counting? So now here I am.. Santa Maria, CA on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. Its more isolated then I originally had thought it would be, but in a good way. Its 25 minutes of dirt road just to get to a secluded highway, which is still 15 minutes from the next town. Isolation has its advantages; Jake (the friend I'm living with) and I have free reign to do what we'd like when we'd like it. The last 3 nights we've golfed while Tivo'ing playoff basketball, then came home and ate steaks, drink beer, and watched the game we Tivo'd. If thats not a hard life I don't know what is.

The house is hilarious, totally custom and not in the good way. Windows are scattered and scarce, most of them custom cut and obnoxious, sliding glass doors dominate the entries, and its a two story house with only one level.. if that makes sense. There is a downstairs and an upstairs, but downstairs is not below the upstairs. Don't try to figure it out, its not worth it. But really I don't care, in fact I've never cared where I sleep. In the last year I've lived 3 different places, slept on over 10 couches and floors, and never had a greater or worse sleep in between. I'm very lucky to have the ability to be comfortable just about anywhere I go, or at least the illusion of comfort.

Its also hard to complain about where you are when the view is 360 degrees, and never a disappointment. In the morning the central California coast line fog rolls in, blanketing all the surrounding valleys and occasionally the house itself which sits upon a hill. In all directions less then 5 houses can be seen, and the closest ones are still a few football fields away. Mules and horses are the only lawn mowers around here, and deer are as common as people. Jake has attested to seeing a tarantula, 2 scorpion, deer, a couple foxes. I've seen the latter of the two, and hope to see more.

Its now 1:30 in the morning, and I better get to bed because I have a big day of.. well I'm sure I'll find something to do. But if I don't, all the better. :)

FYI: Click the title of the post to go to my flickr page.. otherwise use this link http://flickr.com/photos/84316050@N00/

One More Day

I have only one more day of work, thats it, just one.

I don't think the feeling has quite set in yet, I'm so used to working, I don't really know what it feels like to not have 5 days of the week committed to something I can't control. More then anything I'll appreciate the lack of stress related to simple human drama that exists in the workplace of a grocery store. I've worked many jobs, but for some reason grocery stores seem to be a little microcosm of rumors and vicarious living. Everybody has their nose where it doesn't belong, and it starts to grind on you. Its like a local tabloid kind of, where if you do something exciting, wrong, or even just plain different, someone will find out which means everyone will find out. Most of the time its not what people know, but the fact that they know that bothers me.

I'm thinking about writing about my work in that store, maybe a book or screenplay, even though I don't have a clue as to how to do either. But I see movies based on the workplace that are funny, and have quality scenes, but some of the crap we pulled off in that store I have yet to see in any movie, even Clerks. Example: we had many different football competitions, and if you notice next time you go into your local grocery store, most aisles don't reach higher then 10 or 11 feet. So we (we being my best friend and former manager, Jacob, also the person who's house I'm going to live in in Santa Maria) would throw the ball as far as we could without hitting the ceiling, and see how many aisles we could get. I still hold the record for going from aisle 15 to 8. I took out some Clorox bleach in the process though. Casualties of war.

Poker in the backroom with rolls of quarters, racing on pallet jacks, throwing produce on the roof, ice fights. I need to at least write notes about these stories, if nothing more then to just not forget.

I will miss the job some, I will miss Jim, my dept. manager. He was a funny, very dry humor, well kept guy in his fifties. He was an early arriver and late leaver, always extremely stressed out, even if it was for little things. But the guy is a dream to work for, couldn't have any more respect for him, and I hope he gets in a better situation because he deserves it. In fact, if it wasn't for Jim I probably would have quit months ago.

Its nearing 1:00, so I'll be finishing my last shift on 4 hours of sleep. I thought about actually washing my work clothes so I look presentable on my last day, but it donned on me that I just plain don't give a rats ass. :D

Personal karma delivery

Tonight I was supposed to do two different things. Both of them were parties, and one's I would have very much enjoyed, but now I'm sitting here typing this. Actually its probably a blessing in disguise because its rare I get a night to just relax and do things I promise myself I'll do all week. I relied on someone for transportation, someone who has proved useless and flaky in the past, and that was most definitely not a wise decision. Maybe this is some tricky foreshadowing, a silent warning to not trust another flaky guy, the aforementioned DUI. I'll need to call him tomorrow, because he hasn't shown up to work the last couple days. Smart move on his part, he was going to get fired as soon as he showed up.

The irony of having this new powerbook is that despite its amazing ability to enhance my productivity, I think my overall productivity level has gone down. Using the word 'productive' in such a general context is always up for interpretation, but as far as simple goals go, I'm falling behind: reading more, keeping up with my bike maintenance (especially in this wet weather), stretching.

Update on transportation situation: girl called asking for a bailout "yah our night went sour and can you grab a guy friend so we can hang out for a couple hours".. I won't deny I felt a tinge of satisfaction in telling her it wasn't worth it for me or my potential friend. That isn't a lie, I was planning on going to a party, disregarding any misconceptions this girl may have had about my intentions, I wanted to go meet other people, not hang out with her. I'm trying in general to be a better person when it comes to things like this though, not taking pleasure in the sorrows of other people. But in this special case, with this very special person, I just don't care. Every once in awhile, I feel a sense of duty to live up to another person's karma. :)

Reverting back to what I was talking about, I think that California will give me all the opportunities I could want to achieve those goals, its up to me then. I like that challenge though, these little things are the hardest for me. Big colossal achievements are never that big of a deal, but the little things that I should be doing everyday seem like the most daunting of tasks to keep up on; this is the biggest problem I need a remedy for before I head off to college.

Now I will do something productive, expand my music collection on my mp3 player. I'm going to dig through my brothers stack of a hundred or so CD's and see whats the what. He has a tremendous jazz collection, how can I not look?

-Nate

The first, don't screw up.

I've had a lot of firsts, so I'm not stressing this first post too much.. but mainly I'm thinking right now -don't suck-

In one week a I journey to Santa Maria, Ca - http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=Santa+Maria,+CA - to live with my best friend for a couple months before I head off to school in Colorado. His family bought property and needed someone to sit on it for 6 months so he volunteered, and being the great sitter I am, I was kind enough to offer my services also. From the description I got from him, its very isolated up in the hills, 20 minutes from the nearest highway. But its also 25 minutes from the beach, rent free, and perfect weather. There was no arm twisting on his part to get me to quit my ridiculous grocery store gig (last day is next wednesday), and now its just a waiting game. Which brings me to my first dilemma, transportation.

I have a bike, thats it, thats all. I've never really needed to drive - my work is about 6 miles each way from my current house, and with gas prices and insurance through the roof, it just doesn't seem worth it; my bike or public transportation gets the job done. So in mentioning my plans to go to CA, a crazy farm kid from eastern Oregon we call DUI (pronounced dooey),offered to drive down there with me, insisting his grandmother lived in the same area. Well, in actuality his grandmother lives in San Diego, not Santa Maria, which is an understandable mistake considering how much alcohol and THC this kid has consumed. But regardless, the difference is about 8 hours of driving, so instead we're just turning it into a productive road trip, with only one person returning. However, I'm concerned by the tremendous flakiness of DUI, because he only shows up to work about 60% of the time, and I'm not sure if I want to be putting all my eggs in a stoners basket. I'm going to make it clear to him tomorrow at work that if he for whatever reason decides to flake on me, I will be forced to kick his ass.

Its nearing midnight, and being that I am getting up at 5:00, its in my best interest to sleep, something I've never been a big fan of. Actually, its not so much the sleep that bothers me, its the getting up. That feeling of absolute dread that washes over your entire body as you realize you're getting up before dawn to waste away another 8 hours of your life, one shift at a time. I've been working at this store for almost a year and a half, and looking back I would have liked to have done a lot more then what I have in that time, namely not drink and party so much. But without this labor experience under my belt, I don't think I would have been able to appreciate school as much, and would not have pursued UC Boulder. Now that I have I'm very pleased to soon be in an educational environment, an environment a year ago I would have given an arm and a leg to avoid.


-Nate