This month has been pretty much a shit show.  Here's the update to prove it.

Mon Oct 1, Just when I didn't think these dopes couldn't arrive any earlier than 7am, my cousin's kids and her husband arrived this morning at fucking 6:29am.  They left for school early as well, but come on.  A reasonable person would not even wake us up that early.  If I was in the situation I would arrive earlier, but I would just go straight to school.  I wouldn't be a dummy and go inside the house.  But these dopes are not considerate.  ARGH!  Fuck everyone!

I'm still doing the desk shift on Mondays.  But thankfully the phones went out for about an hour.  I sure didn't mind.  I have some new assignments, but today pseudo supervisor said that she wants to stop doing her current job.  She's just tired of it.  Burnt out, you may say.  I'm not sure what the future of the library is even if she stays.  She's burnt out, and I'm just going through the motions.

LaFlor looked nice today.  That's not a new thing.  But today she was super nice to me.  OK, maybe "super nice" is a relative term, but she lent me her ear buds today.  I was in the lounge having lunch, watching a political show, when the commentator says something about anal sex.  T turns around and asks, "What are you watching?" I told her it had to do with the Supreme Court confirmations hearings.  I add, "I would listen to it in private, but I forgot my headphones in my car."  LaFlor then offers me her ear buds.  That's super nice of her.  I can't make too much of it, but I know I wouldn't be lending my ear buds to other people.

If I wasn't a total coward I would ask this woman to dinner and hopefully explore the possibilities of a relationship with her.  Let's be real though, what do I have to offer her?

For dinner I wanted something other than a burger tonight.  I went to a fast food Chinese food place.  I should really put "Chinese" in quotes to denote the irony of calling it that.  Either way, I went and found that the old location was closed, but that it had moved next door.  When I entered I was surprised to find that the new place was nice and fancy.  Fancier than most of these places.  The food was nearly the same, with some additions.  But for the most part it was the same stuff.  A little fancier decor, but it wasn't bad.

It has been two weeks since the anniversary of my last merit raise.  Kvon was out last week, and stupid me had this idea that he WOULD give me the raise without me asking him.  But of course he didn't.  This is why I felt that I had to email him so that I could get this process going.  As you can see, I wrote the first email last week.  I expected him to respond today, and he did.

Kvon's response was short, but not sweet.  I heard from someone that works in another department in the city that the managers have been told to not give raises.  That means that unless some poor part time dope asks they are not to give the raises.  That's some major bullshit.  But, not unexpected knowing this city.  As someone said to me, "The money for those raises are going into someone's pockets."  Oh they know.  They also mentioned the thing about how the managers all received raises.  But of course us peons don't get a raise.  Fucking shit, I'm getting my raise.  I need to work less and make more.

Finally I took out the big guns and put them away.  Because the big guns would mean telling Kvon the truth about the managers being told to not give part timers their raise, and the rest.  But, I felt that I should just state my case in plain and simple words based on the TRUTH.  I left a line out of the email that a friend said I should take out that basically said if this doesn't deserve a raise I don't know what does.  I think leaving that out was the best thing I could do to assure that I get a raise.  They owe me.

Tue Oct 2, When I arrived at work this morning I didn't have a pile of book bins waiting for me.  It was back to a "normal" Tuesday in terms of bins.  Actually, there might have been a smaller amount today.  Which I was OK with, seeing as last week was so rough.  Not much to report here, since I finished the route pretty fast.  Despite taking an hour lunch, I was still ahead of schedule.  I ended up taking a little longer since I talked to my buddy Dane in the late afternoon.  That pushed my end time to my normal 4pm time.s

The dummy managers have a monthly meeting, and I guess today was the date for the latest one.  If it was regularly scheduled or not, all I know is that the lot of them were going to meet the new director.  My buddy wants to call him Doctor Death, but I'm not sure about that name yet.  Whatever his nickname turns out to be, all I know is that when I walked by the conference room the entire bunch seemed to be gushing over him.  My running joke for today was that they were all there to, "Kiss the ring."  I don't doubt that they did that.  I didn't want to stick around to see.  I already met the guy, and while he might be an OK guy, the dopes in that room are not OK.

The managers bought some fruit and some breakfast pizzas for the new director's meet and greet meeting.  The circulation folks went upstairs after the meeting, and after everyone had left the conference room, and took a pizza down to circulation.  I had a slice.

The dopes up in administration must think I'm like them, slacking off on the job.  I say this, because they have had this tendency to question me going to the graphics department in the city hall complex.  I go EVER FUCKING TIME I drive the route to the graphics department.  If I have missed a run to graphics it must have been because something came up.  I have to go and drop off the mail from the previous day's run to the graphics department.

Anyway... whatever!  These dopes upstairs can eat shit, because I go to graphics ever fucking day that I drive.

Wed Oct 3, My cousin's kids arrived early yet again.  I asked my aunt why they were arriving early, she said it was because they have also been going to school earlier.  School starts around 8am, from what I understand.  But for some reason these folks have been going at around 7:20am.  Makes no sense to me.  My aunt told that they went to the school so early the other day that they arrived to find the gate closed.  I mean come on, what the fuck is going on?  Why does my cousin's husband suddenly want them to go into school half an hour to forty minutes earlier than before?  Just stop.

When my cousin's kids came in this morning I was just about to start showering.  He came in like a pack of elephants.  Why even come into the house?  Why not just go straight to school?  This pattern of coming early, entering the house like elephants, and then leaving early only to have disturbed my aunt, who is usually asleep at that time, and me, has to stop.  Just go straight to school!  This is very frustrating.

Chan got to show off his new hoodie today.  Specially bought so if it was raining hims wouldn't get too wet.  Also, everything thinks he looks adorable in it.  I've said it before, I don't know who designed his stuffed monkey, but they did a GREAT job.  He has such a photogenic face.

Work was kinda just work today.  Nothing big to report.  I've been uploading things to my online storage, since I lost yet another external hard drive last year.  It's frustrating since the external kinda works, but you can't really write to it.  The computer says it's damaged.  But the good thing is that most of the stuff on it has already been backed up.  The things I haven't backed up I'm doing slowly.  I'm able to mount the hard drive by using a utility on the computer.  Otherwise it won't mount.  Then I upload it to my cloud drive.  It's slow, but necessary.

There was a threat of rain for tonight, so the weather liars said.  It didn't really materialize, but the clouds were still hanging around by dinnertime.  TheGirl suggested she leave Cheyenne at home, since it would limit our choices to eat.  And with the rain we would have to eat outside.  We've had to do that in the past, and she wasn't too keen on repeating that again.  This is how we ended up at the Irish pub that we used to frequent more often.  She suggested it, we went.  I hadn't had that Reuben in a long time, and it REALLY hit the spot tonight.  They had a yummy mac & cheese as well.  I vacuumed up my entire meal.  Too bad they made my drink wrong.  They put my Manhattan in a tumbler, and they didn't add the cherry.  Also, they got the ratio of vermouth and whiskey wrong.  Oh well, I had my own whiskey in the car that I drank before we even arrived.  It was good times... as always.

Thu Oct 4, Kvon emailed me to say that I would be showing someone the route ropes today.  But, when I arrived there was no one.  As I was packing the van Kvon came into the office to tell me that the soon to be back-up driver wasn't going to be there, since he had jury duty.  What a riot.

When I arrived at Pasadena I reached for my phone.  Every time I've reached for my phone the cute girl in the sorting area is magically not there.  I decided to leave my phone in the car.  Which meant I was ready for her to appear.  Almost as if from a script, I enter the sorting area in Pasadena and sure enough she's not there.  A beat later she's coming into the room with a cart full of books, looking like a vision to me.  Her dress was nothing special, but it clung to her body via some sort of magic, or static cling.  Whatever it was, it showed that she was wearing, scandal, a thong!  And then it happened.  She turned to look at me... and then... and then, she gave me the stink eye.  I was devastated.  I've told people that you will know when a woman is interested in you.  She won't and can't hide it.  This girl is not interested.  Sad.  I'm sad.  Oh well.  A man dreams, and those dreams are gone when you wake up.

I had to go to the basement today to drop off some dopey donated books.  While there I saw the self-checkout machines that have arrived over six months ago.  I like how they're just sitting there, gathering dust.  What a waste of money.

I saw TheDesire for a moment while she walked to circulation and back to the slaughter desk.  Moments later I see her go downstairs on the elevator.  Moments after that she sends me a text (shown above), telling me that tomorrow is her last day.  I knew this day was coming, but now here it is a reality.  I'm going to miss randomly bumping into TheDesire.  I feel that I have to be the one that makes more of an effort to keep in touch.  I'm fine with that, because I still adore TheDesire.  And I still want to be a part of her life.  Like with all good friends, the loss of that friendship would diminish my life.

Fri Oct 5, Last night I needed to jerk-off, because it had been too long.  As luck would have it, there was a girl on the front page of the porn video site I visited that had a relatively similar body to the page at Pasadena (shown above).  I could not resist.  It's the closest I'll get to being intimate with the girl at Pasadena.  And that's pretty sad and pathetic, because I'm a chicken.  Even if I'm doomed to fail asking this woman out, I should at least try to talk to her before I just give up.  But the thing is these days I don't have any kind of want to do anything.  Which is sad, because what if things could work out?  What if she is interested as well, and that sideways look she gave me wasn't a rejection?  I mean, I'm nearly 100% sure it was her looking at me look at her and saying to herself, "This guy ain't right."`

I had a big pick-up on the route early on, so I figured I would get one of my later stops over and done with earlier rather than later in the route.  I went to Adams first, instead of last, today.  While there I noticed the calendar of events, which contained their statistics for the programs they run there.  I have other photos, but I will simply share one of the squares.  The month was September, and the day is of course the fifth.  They had three programs and of the three only one had a person attend.  And that person was alone.  Talk about a waste.

Mesa's husband is going to die soon.  The doctors have given him six months to live.  She obviously has a ton of bills, medical and otherwise.  She started a social media funding account.  I want to give her a couple of bucks, but I have to pay some bills before I can commit.  It's too bad I can't win the lottery and help my friend.

As is now a Friday tradition while on the route, I didn't bring a lunch from home.  I actually did have a frozen lasagna with me, but I didn't really feel like eating that.  Especially since I can't have a peaceful lunch at Brand, which is where I usually have lunch these days.  The last time I had lunch there I wanted to bolt, and I did.  Too many dopes know I'm having lunch there and they go into the kitchen.  This is why I can't have lunch there anymore.  What I did end up having was a pair of hot dogs from the home improvement store parking lot hot dog cart.  I have to say that the two hot dogs really hit the spot.

Sat Oct 6, I forgot to mention that I decided to make a reservation in a Carmel restaurant for Thanksgiving.  In years past I would eat some burger at a fast food joint in Pacific Grove.  Not only was last year's meal at the fast food joint terrible, but the last time I ate at that place here in town the burger was absolutely awful.  Also, why shouldn't I treat myself to a good meal for Thanksgiving?

Sun Oct 7, I told my aunt that I we should go somewhere other than IHOP for breakfast today.  We went to the Honeybake store in Toluca Lake, which has some good food.  Lately the food at IHOP has really been sucky.

I found and picked up my aunt.  We went to Fatburger and I bought a nice big burger and bought my aunt a chicken sandwich.  We went home and I ate the burger with some steak fries.  That fucking hit the spot, to say the least.  I don't have to tell you that I passed out after dinner.  Fucking hit the spot.

My buddy Dane gave me a TV that he found.  I wanted a TV for the backyard, so tonight I figured I would take a couple of drinks and see how easy it is to set up the TV and connect to the computer.  It was fairly easy, but I think I won't run it from my computer.  And I still need to calibrate the monitor.  But, as a proof of "concept" it passes the first test.

Mon Oct 8, As is a Monday tradition, I went over to TheGirl's place after work and played with puppy.  She had a lot of energy tonight, and went full tilt when it came to playing tonight.  But at the end she was completely pooped.  I mean out, like a light (see above).  TheGirl took a picture of her laying next to me.  Cheyenne is at least six years old.  By any measure she's getting to the age zone where she's going to start slowing down.  She may live another six years, but it's likely she will live less.  I absolutely dread the day she is gone.  I have faced so many deaths in my life.  My Mother, my Grandmother, and my best friend.  Not to mention countless pets that I loved.  But I dare say that Cheyenne's death would be one of the most devastating of my life.  Up there with my Mother and Grandmother.  She has given me nothing but joy, and she nothing but love.  My life will truly be diminished the moment she dies.  But, it has definitely been better for knowing and loving her.

Tue Oct 9, For days on the route people have asked me about the kid's events flier.  Here it is, nine days into October, and I just today picked up the flier everyone has been asking for for two weeks.  Because, in any normal place the person in charge of this would have preemptively worked on the flier and had it ready BEORE the start of the new month.  But, that's not how things are done in the slaughterhouse.  They wait until it's past the date to work on it.  Today I went and picked up the kid's event flier at graphics.  I have to take pictures of everything these days, in order to prove that I did my fucking job.

Wed Oct 10, For as far back as I can remember Wednesdays have JUST been, "Dinner with," TheGirl nights.  It actually started when we were dating and TheGirl had moved out of her home with TheHusband.  She was living in a guest house.  I got off work at 5pm, and I would go over to her house and have dinner.  It has been our special night since then.

It's actually is pretty amazing that even through all our tribulations that we have somehow been able to keep this Wednesday night tradition going for pretty much the entire time we have known each other.  I'm sure there were a few Wednesday nights in which we didn't see each other.  Especially when we had broken up.  Nevertheless, I know for sure that we have spent at least 85% of our Wednesday nights together.  In short, we have made an effort to keep this day special.

At the beginning of dinner TheGirl looked to me and told me that she wanted to let me know how much she appreciates me.  She went on to say that I have been the only man to show her respect.  This, I have.

I asked TheGirl why she was saying this and all she told me was that she wanted me to know how she felt.  I suspect there's another reason.  Soon enough I'll find out the reason.

Thu Oct 11, I was supposed to show the new "back-up" driver the route last week.  He had jury duty, so we didn't get a chance to drive last week.  But this week is another week.  This particular person has worked at the library for as long as I can remember.  He's easily been there as long as I have.  He's a good guy, but I wonder if he's the right one for the back-up driver job.  But, at this point I don't care either way.  If these dopes want to have him drive, so be it.  I have no ego at this job any more.

One of the pages, who happens to have the biggest eyes, showed me the new self-checkout machines in the children's room.  It worked as advertised.  But, I know that this is not going to last.  There is no way this thing works as well as it did today.

The route today happened to be easy, and having help made the route go super fast.  It also doesn't hurt that I didn't really dilly dally when it came to chatting with people on the route.  I think I need to do more of that, because fuck everyone.  But, at the same time I need to maximize my hours.  The hours I work now keeps me below the twenty-five hour limit per week that the city has.  Since I'll never be on the desk again, I have to do what I can to get my hours on the route.  Today, with help, there was no way I was going to be able to finish at my regular time.  Oh well.

Fri Oct 12, I did my usual thing to pack up the van and when I was coming down to the side door I decided to go into the children's room to see what might be out of place.  I didn't know what I was looking for, but I definitely felt a disturbance in the Force.  My coworker surprised me from behind.  I'm sure she wondered what I was doing in the empty children's room.  But, we got to talking and I mentioned how the self-checkout machine in children's was similar to the one at Casa.  She turns to me and mentions how the one in children's isn't working.  Mind you, this is day two of thing machine being in operation.  Sure enough, I turn around and see a sign saying it's out of order.  "It worked for one day," my coworker says to me.  I'm sure it didn't work the entire day.  What a load of shit.  Later Vagabundo told me that AD's idea was that there would be no desk, and that all checkouts would be via the self-checkout machines.  But the machines literally say to take the books to the desk to check out.  Idiots.

The route today was pretty chill.  About the same as yesterday.  I know that if I put the peddle down I can finish this route fast.  But there is no incentive to finishing fast.  I wanted to finish fast today though.  But something slowed me down and at the end I finished about the same time I always do.  Oh well.

I finished the route and headed to my car.  But, before that I stopped to talk to the security guard.  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a figure of a woman, and I turned to look.  This particular woman was not wearing a bra, and her top pretty much showed everything, by the sheer fact that it was sheer.  I'm not used to seeing this lately.  Which is why I had to mention it here.

The weather people said that there was a storm approaching.  I was sitting in my back yard when in the distance I noticed some lightening.  But I didn't hear any thunder.  Still, that was my cue to take my metal table and get under some shelter.  The rain didn't come down very hard at first.  I could hear drops on the roof, but nothing seemed to be sticking to the ground.  And then it become really windy and the frequency of the lightening quickened.  I watched as it became more windy and finally the rain came.  It was nice to finally get some rain.

Sat Oct 13, I was drinking last night while I sat outside.  In the distance I saw lightening and I knew it was time to go inside.  But, the rain wasn't super bad, so I decided to sit under the roof outside.  It was good.  I continued drinking and eventually I passed out in the backyard.  I woke up to find it very dark.  There was still some glow in the fog.  However, when I went inside I noticed all the night lights were off.  Once I got to my room I could confirm that the power had gone out.  I lit some candles and checked online (see above) to see the status of the power outage.  Sure enough, DWP already knew about it.  I decided to just go to sleep.

A photo from my old CSUN days came up on my feed.  The photo was taken while I was in a photo class with my gorgeous professor, Grafia del Sol.  The short version is that she took a shine to me, and vice versa.  Of course my inept moves prevented me from getting anywhere with her.  That's all I'll say for now.  The story is best left for another day.  But back on this day I felt that I had a chance with Grafia.  Oh well.

Sun Oct 14, As if things weren't bad enough this year, I received many alerts on one of my bank apps this afternoon.  I don't know what's going on, but it doesn't look kosher.  From what I can gather right now, there have been several inquiries on my credit, many of them made by car dealerships.  I don't know what's going on, but this is disheartening to have happen to me.  I am careful, at least I think I am.  I guess no one is safe from this sort of violation.  I'm afraid of what this means for the next few weeks, months, and possibly years.

Mon Oct 15, Day two of Fraud continued with me calling the credit bureaus to "freeze" my accounts.  This blocks any attempts to check on my credit score.  This means no one can issue credit.  By this I hope to prevent this bastard from using my good credit.  Anything he already did isn't stopped, but anything from this point forward will be questioned.  He shouldn't be able to waltz into anywhere and try to get something on credit.  I wasn't able to get the third credit bureau to freeze my account.  I didn't have the right answer about my student loan.  I'll get that information and call them back.  In the meantime I was glad to get what I could this morning before I had to be on the reference desk this morning.

I don't want to stand around while this happens to me.  Freezing the accounts is one thing, but I feel I need to do more.  I've been calling the dealerships that I could track down to ask them questions about this crime.  I got a hold of one of them today.  I talked to them, and they said that a guy did come into the dealership.  My heart was beating harder when I heard that.  But, that wasn't the end of it.

I went to go visit TheGirl.  I got her up to speed with everything that was happening.  And as I was telling her the car dealership called me.  They had a sheriff's deputy there, and he asked me some questions.  At one point he did tell me that the guy did drive off with a truck.  He used my good credit and left a check that bounced.  And now he's out there with a truck and my good name/credit.  Fuck!  I nearly threw up when the deputy told me about the truck.  This is completely fucked up.

The only thing that cheered me up was playing with Cheyenne.  Honestly, that's what I needed.  Nothing else would have made me happy at this point.

Tue Oct 16, I woke up this morning determined to get the last of the three credit bureaus to put a freeze on the ability to check my credit.  Putting this last freeze is necessary to make sure all of the credit bureaus are locked down and this scum that's using my social security number can't just go about trying to buy cars with my good credit.  It's closing the barn door after the horse has run out, but I'm trying to keep the other horses in the barn.  It feels so horrible to be the subject of this shit.  I question just how easy it is to do certain things, while other things are made extremely difficult.  I mean to say that it surprises me that someone can do what this guy did without any difficultly.  Fucking shit!  On to to other things.

I called another car dealer today, one I couldn't get a hold of yesterday.  They told me that they had a guy come in the other day and try to buy a car.  They checked his credit, my credit, and noticed that his date of birth didn't match.  They tried to keep him around for a while, but he bolted.  I wish they had called the cops faster.  Oh well, at least the two dealerships in Nevada that I contacted didn't let him leave with a car.

I stepped into the library and noticed some trash cans being used as buckets to catch water coming down from the ceiling.  The rains we had were days ago The roof was probably filled up with water, since it pools up there.  And eventually it had to come down.  Ha!  Good job, dopes.  This roof isn't two years old and we have had leakage every time it rains.  EVERY time!  I wonder if this will require action from the new director.  Something tells me he's very hands off when it comes to these sorts of issues at the library.

This is the continuing saga of the family event fliers.  I picked them up from graphics on October 9th.  Jade took them upstairs.  But they have not been distributed to the branches.  Jade mentioned today that they ordered about two-thousand fliers.  Now I don't remember bringing THAT many fliers from graphics, but there are certainly enough for every branch to have some.  At least some.  On the route I got some intel from Emma.  She mentioned that there was a huge riff between Snow and the new lady that handles marketing.  The fliers are now under the new marketing woman's umbrella.  She's the one that came up with the design for the fliers.  She plugs in the events into a template.  What Emma tells me Snow isn't too happy about this new lady taking over the flier.  Jade later told me that they were having Emma's father be in charge of distributing the fliers in the future.  What a clusterfuck.  Meanwhile, many of the branches asked me when they were going to get the family events.  I told them to ask the children's room.

I can't say much about the rest of the route.  It was pretty standard.  I told my buddy Dane about my credit problems.  She said he was sorry this was happening to me.  Yeah, that makes two of us.

Wed Oct 17, My photo feed showed a picture from way back in 2006.  I took the photo from my vantage point at the information desk at the Oviatt library at CSUN.  Those were the fucking days.  Some of the best.  Nothing that good could last forever.  Even if I had somehow stayed at the library there, I would see so many changes.  Because, in the last decade the library interior has changed.  It would have been cool to go through many of those changes.  Oh well.

It would seem that the pings on my credit have stopped.  At least I can say that there weren't any more inquiries thanks to freezing my accounts.  There is still a lot of work to do to find out the extent of the thief's damage to my credit.

Today was TheDesire's last day at Glendale.  Of course the library threw a party for her.  I worked my San Marino job, which meant that I couldn't attend.  I did text her that I was sorry I couldn't make it.  It's going to suck not being able to just bump into TheDesire at work.  But, she did say we'll have to hang out.  Not sure when THAT will happen.  I was talking to my buddy about the friendship I now have with TheDesire.  It's good.  I like being her friend.  I'm not going to lie and say that I still sometimes wish we could be more than friends.  I still desire her.  I still find her attractive.  And that's not to say I'm "settling" for a friendship.  I love our friendship.

After the week I've had I NEEDED dinner with TheGirl.  Wednesday is always the best day of the week.  I don't ever go out these days.  This is my one going out day.  We went to get a burger.  The last two weeks we left Cheyenne at home, because one week TheGirl wanted to have a margarita.  The place where she likes them doesn't allow dogs.  We took Cheyenne there once, after she asked someone if it was OK to bring dogs if she ate on the "patio."  I put that word in quotes, because it's really an enclosed patio.  She asked, they said yes, and then when we took Cheyenne with us they told her that dogs weren't allowed.  They let us stay that time, but TheGirl has not taken Cheyenne with us since.  Then last week TheGirl thought it was too cold to take Cheyenne, because it would mean we would have to sit outside.  Therefore, poor Cheyenne hasn't had the pleasure of going out with us in three weeks.  I don't mind the cold.  With a little whiskey and then a little wine in me I don't feel the cold.  It reminds me of the time when we were in Carmel.  The weather was SUPER cold.  We had to sit outside, because we had Cheyenne with us.  I could feel the cold on my face, the food in my mouth actually warmed the rest of my body, but it was the greatest.  The only one missing from our group was Chan.  But it was still great.  I wish I had the money for us to be able to have a place up in Carmel.  Somewhere we could visit whenever we wanted.  Dreams.

Thu Oct 18, There's a whole drama going on with the monthly children's events fliers.  Snow seems to be holding them back from the branches.  I picked them up on October 9th, so I know they have them upstairs.  The branches have been asking me about them since the end of September.  But, for some reason Snow hasn't distributed those fliers.  More information is needed.  All I know is that Emma's father asked me to check the children's room to see if the fliers were there.

There's a mosquito problem in the library.  It shouldn't be a surprise that the library has a mosquito infestation.  The library has already had cockroaches and termites, so why not mosquitoes.  These dopes plugged in some dopey sonic devices that I've tried at home for insect problems.  Maybe they shouldn't have standing water on the lawn just outside the old entrance.

Ilsa, which is what I'm nicknaming my coworker from San Marino that went to Brazil for nearly a year, gave me some lentil soup yesterday.  A couple of weeks ago she made some split pea soup and she gave me some of that.  I had the soup for lunch today and it was great.  I need to marry this girl.  Ha!

Emma told me later in the day that they were going to take away Snow's privilege to distribute the children's event fliers.  They were going to let the "marketing team" do it.  Snow played this completely wrong.  She overplayed her hand by trying to force this issue of the fliers design.  She doesn't like it, but not distributing them after they were already late was not the way of going about fixing this.  What a fool.  Now she looks bad and the new director sees that she's not reasonable.  There are two new people in charge at the library, AD and now Dr. Killpatient.  They are from outside this library system, and so don't have a long and established relationship with Snow.  They know Snow as much as they know the "Marketing team."  And, I know that Mala isn't going to be much help upstairs with AD and Dr. Killpatient, because she's spineless.

Sun Oct 21, I drove over to the Honeybake ham in Toluca Lake store for breakfast.  This is our second time in a row going there instead of IHOP.  I just can't stand the food at IHOP.  The only reason I liked IHOP was because of that cute girl at the counter.  But, I hardly see her, nor do I ever get to talk to her.  And even if I did talk to her I'm know she's not interested.  I don't want to be like those creeps that chat up my female coworkers at the library.  What's the point, anyway?

Tue Oct 23, I had a rough night last night.  I woke up around 2am after going to bed early to bed.  Even as I write this I find that my diaphragm hurts.  I've experienced this in the past when I've dry heaved.  But, I didn't do that last night, but rather Saturday night.  This in addition to have to poop twice most mornings since last week.  I feel so bloated, as well.  In short, I have not been feeling well lately.  It's probably my own fault for not taking a break from drinking.  Most night I think to myself that I don't need a drink.  And then soon after I'm having a shot.  Not good.

But to go back to last night, I don't know why, of course, but I just felt sick.  Today I had no energy nearly the entire day.  It wasn't until I was almost leaving work that I felt better.  Of course.  That's some bullshit.

The entire route was a struggle today.  I had a dull pain in my stomach the entire route.  I hate it when I don't feel well and I still have to work.  It was hard to move around and to be sore and achy.  I hope I don't feel like this tomorrow.  I really have to cut down on the drinking.  But after that whole credit fiasco I wanted to drown my sorrows.

Kvon wants me to participate in a program for the mockery space involving photography.  I don't want to participate, but Kvon thinks that I'm all for it.  There is something about how I talk to people that makes them think I'm agreeing with them, even when I'm not.  This is why Kvon thinks I'm super enthusiastic to participate in some workshop that will most likely suck dick.  ARGH!

Wed Oct 24, Work was nothing to talk about today.  Simply the same old grind that is my life these days.  These days TheGirl and I tend to have a plan B for dinner, since we almost always have Cheyenne in tow.  Plan A was a place called Novo in Burbank that's OK.  I had one solid meal there, and since then it's ranged from good and mostly just OK.  I was kinda hoping for our plan B, which was Dog Haus.  Alas, we ended up having dinner at Novo.

I say alas because our waiter for dinner was bad.  I could go into details, but I'll simply mention two things that illustrate what happened.  TheGirl brought some wine with us in order to save a couple of bucks.  She said she was "broke," and wanted to save those couple of bucks.  On other trips the wait staff has offered to place the wine on ice.  This one particular waitress put the bottle in an ice bucket.  This guy also offered and bought us out an ice bucket.  But, it was so full of ice that I couldn't get the bottle in the ice bucket, defeating the purpose.  I ended up taking some of the ice out of the bucket in order to try and fit the bottle.  It didn't quite work though.  Then when our food showed up he threw our plates at us, and not once did he come by to ask how we were doing.  This will motivate me to suggest other places to TheGirl when she mentions this place.  What I should do is find other potential places we can eat with puppy in tow.

When I arrived home I saw a fleet of helicopters hovering above the freeway by my house.  I went inside and turned on the TV to see what was going on, since at least four helicopters were from the TV stations.  Eventually the news showed that the police was pursuing someone, and that someone tried to use the galleria parking lot as cover for their getaway.  They locked down the entire galleria, and were not letting anyone leave or enter.  THAT must have been "fun."

Thu Oct 25, These days there is this idea that automation is the way to go in the service industries.  In super markets and libraries there's been a push towards having the patron help themselves out.  In other words, cutting labor costs.  Because ultimately the idea is that there would be fewer library employees since a patron would be able to search for a book by themselves, find it by themselves, and then check it out by themselves.  The problem is the majority of patrons are not regular patrons that know every one of those steps very well.

Way back when I was going to CSUN trying to finish up my degree I had to go tot he library downtown for a book I needed.  I looked it up, thought I knew were it was, and then spent the next half hour looking around on my own because I was too chicken to ask the library staff where the book was.  I guess I was afraid to look like dumb.  And this is where I garner the knowledge that people would rather not ask a question for fear of looking dumb or like they don't know what they're doing.  Because, I've been there.  I finally bucked up and asked someone for help.  It was super simple for them to find the book.  Embarrassingly simple.  But it taught me a lesson.  Always ask.  Not everyone is going to do what I did and ask.  And it proves a point.  I didn't know what I was doing, but the staff knew where the book was.  Because, that's what they're there for.  To fucking help!  They're there to check out the books.  They're there to help me with my questions.  This automation may sound "glamorous" to the dopes upstairs in administration, but it's really awful.  Just look at the picture of the self checkout machine above.  It is a mishmash of items placed together in a haphazard manner.  There should be a unifying look to the process, so that it doesn't look temporary and unusable.  This is the way of the world now at the library.  The best thing is, these machines don't work.  They are done so wrong that they often disconnect from the server.  They are not intuitive enough to have people know automatically what's going on.  And because of this, and other factors, the machines actually end up creating more work.  Oh the stupidity of it all.

On my way to Pasadena a bank of fog slowed me down, or so I thought.  Or should I say that that was the excuse that my traffic app said was slowing me down.  It turned out that CalTrans decided that rush hour was a best time to do repairs on the freeway.  The delay turned out not to be as bad as I expected it to be.  Especially when I was standing still for what seemed like minutes, but was probably just moments.  Still, I did arrive at Pasadena later than usual.  Thanks CalTrans.  Thanks fog.

Most mornings I don't like to eat much food at home mainly because I'm not very hungry.  But I have to have something to eat, so I usually have a store bought quesadilla that my aunt will microwave.  But that's pretty much what I eat every morning.  Because of the small breakfast I often get hungry around 10am.  And this isn't just on the route, it happens at San Marino as well.  Almost as soon as I arrive I'm ready to have something to eat.  Today was no different.  On my way back to Glendale my stomach started to rumble, so I got off in Eagle Rock and got myself a Tommy's burger.  Oh man did it hit the spot.  I think I need to change my pattern a bit and have some sort of late morning snack with me.  But what?

As I drove away from Tommy's and towards Glendale I drove past a place formally the Coffee Table Lounge.  When TheGirl and I were dating we would often go there for dinner.  She didn't have Cheyenne back then, and she also lived in Glendale just a few minutes away.  I don't remember how we ended up going there as regulars, but it was a nice joint.  Was, because now it's been replaced by a pizza and ice cream shop.  I found an article online about the closing of the place.  TheGirl and I haven't been there in years.  I texted her about it.  That was some good times.  I not only took TheGirl there, but also TheDesire and I had a couple of meals there.  Again, good times.

Back in Glendale I picked up the November children's events from graphics.  I took them upstairs to one of the administration dopes and they told me they were going to distribute them.  Ha!  Snow played this so wrong that now it's out of her hands.  I kinda liked being able to take the fliers upstairs.  What can I say, I'm morally ambivalent these days when it comes to dealing with library issues.  I'm out for myself.  And to watch them all burn.  None of these dopes have done right by the library.

Talk about a disgrace.  Often when I go to Grandview I find that they have but a few books in their bins.  I posted a picture a while back of them having no books in their bins.  Why am I mentioning that they only had three books in their bins today?  It shows that they are not circulating many books.  It shows that people that visit the other branches don't visit this one.  It shows that no one is using the library as a library, but rather as a resting spot after school.  They can talk about how they're building a mockery space here and how it's going to bring people into the library, but it won't.  It's all lies.  This branch was never super busy.  It wasn't the biggest or have any special quality to it, but it was a library.  The so-called renovation on it was another disgrace.  It took out the service desk in favor of a rinky dink desk that serves no one.  I know these dopes want to break free of the "paradigm" of what libraries were in the past.  No service desk, just open floor.  I get that.  It's not right, I believe, but I get it.  But why replace the desk with nothing?  It's not the only reason why this branch if failing, but it does go to the core thinking of what is failing the entire library system.  You could say that Grandview is the canary in the coal mine.  It is, along with the Pacific branch, the first place that the failure of the "grand plan" shows the administrator's failure to understand what's happening, what's REALLY happening.

Fri Oct 26, After my cousin's kids showed her with her husband at 6:40am I told my aunt that pretty soon they will be showing up at midnight.  I had a reprieve from the stupidity earlier this week due to the fact that my cousin's husband was sick.  He was feeling well enough today to drive her girls to school.  He is the reason for this early shit.  When he missed coming earlier this week my cousin was showing up at a more reasonable 7:25am.  Even that's a bit early, but she had to head to work.  I honestly wish I could tell him not to show up so early.  It's so fucking rude, and it forces my aunt and me to wake up earlier than we want to accommodate their early arrival.

The head librarian told me a couple of weeks ago that she isn't allowed to ask me to take books to shut-ins any more.  The dopes upstairs said so.  But I still deliver books to this one shut-in out in Sun Valley.  I figured today I would try something different and drive out there myself.  This way I would still make the delivery, but at the same time I could get home earlier thanks to not having to return to Glendale after going out to Sun Valley.  It wasn't quite perfect, but it did work to prevent me from getting home at 6pm or later.  I think I might continue doing this shut-in delivery this way.  We shall see.

Sat Oct 27, My watch shows my activity during the day.  But of course I had zero intention of doing anything today.

Mon Oct 29, A few years ago I lost one of my external hard drives.  And then I lost another earlier this year, before I could back it up online.  It wasn't totally lost, but I couldn't write to it, only read the contents.  And this was only possible after repeatedly trying to mount it.  Well, today I was able to finally back-up the last of the most crucial data that I had on that hard drive.  There are still some things, but I can take or leave that stuff.  Everything else I definitely didn't have a back-up for at all.

Emma forwarded me an article featuring the new director at Glendale, DrDeath.  Oh boy, where to start with this tripe?  One thing my buddy pointed out was the line that says, One project that predates DrDeath's hiring that he plans to realize is Mayor what's his name's dream of turning [the] Grandview Library into a children's library.  Oh that's some bullshit.  They should just turn that library into storage.  It's not good for anything else.  And having it just be a children's library is following a dumb idea down the pipes.  That's how this city rolls though.  I didn't think things could get any worse at the library, but they somehow not reached the bottom yet.  I'm pretty sure they have a long way to go before the library hits rock bottom.

Today is TheDesire's first day at her new job for the county system.  I sent her a "Good luck" text and she responded.  I was talking to a former coworker last night before the library closed and she mentioned how at county even those who work part time get benefits.  That's for me.  So, the text was a bit selfish.  But I really do wish her luck.  And I wish she hires me as a page.  The former coworker also mentioned that as a branch manager TheDesire can hire pages.  Anyone else at a higher position and she would have to go through the usual channels.  Pages are different.  And they start them at $15 an hour.  That's not super great, and taking that job would mean a pay cut.  However, moving to county would be better in the long run.

I went to visit TheGirl, and is the usual Cheyenne was happy to see me.  But soon after arriving and playing a little she became calm and didn't seem to be feeling well.  She ate some grass outside, and was generally just lethargic.  Poor thing.  As you can see from the picture above, she was in no mood to play.  Poor thing.

Tue Oct 30, As I drove up to the Pasadena central library this morning I thought of how when I go to Pasadena I try to "manifest" the cute page into appearing by leaving my phone in the van.  For some reason it just seems like any time I take my phone with me to the work room the cute page isn't there.  Today I thought to myself, "Why do I think that these superstitious things like whether I leave my phone in the car will actually influence if she's there?" So, I grabbed my phone, exited the van and walked into the Pasadena sorting room.  The cute page was there.  I honestly don't know how to start talking to her, but it's all I can think of.  I REALLY want to talk to her.

The treasury department has been working on installing a new desk and then glass for months.  They finally installed the glass yesterday, and boy this installation is a total mess.  First, the protective glass doesn't go from floor to ceiling.  There's a substantial gap on the top.  Talking through the wall is not ideal since there's no hole to make it easier to hear.  I told this to the women at treasury, but the supervisor mentioned that this was how the window was going to be.  It's so badly done, but I shouldn't be surprised since this is how this city works.  Everything done wrong.  Voices sound muffled, and I could hear TreasuryGirl better than I could the lady in front of me, and TreasuryGirl was about fifteen feet and at her desk.  Dumb.  There was also talk that the window would have a little transfer box where larger items could pass through.  Nope.  Nothing, and no plans for it.  The whole thing is a fucking mess.

I ordered the Batman the animated series on blu-ray weeks ago.  I've been waiting for over a year since they first announced it was going to be coming out on blu-ray.  The picture looks AMAZING.  A small tear came to my eye when I watched the first episode.  The transfer looks pretty damn good.  I watched this show so many years ago, on standard definition TV.  It's so great that they had the films of each episode and that they had that as a resource.

Wed Oct 31, For years a former hot dog joint on the corner of Ventura and Dickens has been vacant.  I'd say about twenty years ago they opened the hot dog joint across the street from the galleria.  I went and ate there once, maybe twice.  I don't remember.  What I do remember is that it was nothing special, and it was expensive.  Oh well.  The place closed, and the building was empty for all those years.  Recently there has been some action.  And what I didn't realize is that the property runs over two hundred feet from the boulevard.  It's not a super wide property, but there is room for some features.  I saw an article online that mentions how the owner is thinking of using that space for people to sit.  There's even talk of a garden.  That would be pretty cool.  I hope they open it soon, so I can check it out.  And hopefully they will make some awesome food.

Dinner with TheGirl was pretty chill tonight.  She talked about her concerns about not having enough to retire on in Los Angeles.  It's certainly the same concern I have, and this is why I'm focused on saving as much as I can for the future.  Thankfully Cheyenne was back to normal tonight.  I'm glad this past month is over.  This has been a terrible month.

I had leftovers from Wednesday night dinner for lunch a couple of weeks prior.  That lunch of leftovers really hit the spot.

I went down to the Santa Monica pier to take some pictures of by buddy and his lady.

I went to a market near where my Godmother lives.  It was pretty nice.

I went to the Santa Monica pier to take some pictures of my buddy and his fiance.