5/31/17 An Awkward Idea?

    I did not begin letting people stay with us because I needed help financially, I was trying to help people I care about that seemed to need a hand up.  With the surprise beat down I got a couple weeks ago by my higher ups at work, it seems I am the one in need of saving.  All of a sudden, Wife surpassed me in take home salary, and I don't see that changing.  I am fine with that, as I have carried her for the last twenty plus years, she can now carry me for a while.
    An interesting idea that is sort of building itself is Girlie has a friend that might be interested in staying with us, and although we don't have more rooms, our house is a 5 bedroom 3 bath two story beauty.  I will do whatever within reason to keep it, so if I take in another renter, so be it.  Wife is only here on the weekends, and I work during the week at nights, so I end up sleeping all day. 
    What if I get serious about this and do like the houses in Florida?  I could convert the room downstairs where we have the pool table into another bedroom and get another renter.  People don't bother me, they might bother Wife, but I always say, the more the merrier, as long as I choose them, and they got boobs, preferably.
    My rules have pretty much been followed.  I don't want extra people I don't know that might get out of hand and put my kids at risk.  Boy's friend has not had anyone over, other than another of Boy's friends from Del Valle.  This kid was in Houston, and just graduated this year with a degree in hotel management, I always thought it was a weird degree, but he started with it and finished, so congratulations.  Girlie brings other girls over occasionally, and her siblings, which hasn't been a problem, so far.  Chubs is the same age as her youngest brother, so they kind of get along with the video games.
    I almost wish I could move the walls around and make more and smaller rooms right now.  Boy has an extremely long room, Chubs room is almost as big as the garage below it.  Our bedroom is split into two rooms in some of the floorplans we saw when we were building our house, in order to have a bedroom and a reading/TV room in the same room.  These plans are probably too grandiose, but at least I'm not thinking I am going to lose everything like I was last week.  I believe I will probably walk away with my ego bruised, but no physical damage, as long as the worst is behind us.

5/30/17 Uber As My Hero?

    If it comes to this, I hope my first passenger is my boss.  The fuck I go and get a college degree if I can't keep my shit unless I take on a second job.  I am fast running out of time and have some decisions to make.  With the raping I got in regards to my pay, I have a few choices to make to stay as I am.  I can hope and pray that something good happens by itself, maybe Wife gets a huge promotion to come back to Austin or somewhere else, maybe we get the contract we've been waiting for and all of a sudden we get some much needed overtime.  This is not the best way to go about things, Wife says I should be proactive, not reactive.  If I am going to be proactive, I have a couple of choices.  First and foremost is probably selling my truck, which I love, but at almost $700 a month, it has to go to stay within the budget we had a month ago.  This only gets me halfway to my goal, as my pay was cut $1300.  Luckily, I still have some old AMD stock and I can sell it and pay off my RV which I owe less than a year on.  This and the truck puts me at about $1100 when you include insurance.  We also called our insurance and dropped some unneeded things like rental car if we can't drive ours, and we are returning some cable boxes, which together save us another $50-60 bucks.  I may still be short $150-200, I will figure elsewhere to thin things.
    Wife woke me Sunday morning saying the governor had overturned the ruling on Uber and Lyft, they can both operate here in the city, so anyone with a car can transport drunk people and people that don't like owning cars.  I have mixed feelings about this, first because I don't generally like people, and watching some horrible people refusing to get off people's cars and needing proof of their bad behavior for the cops, so setting up your vehicle with cameras seems like a pain in the ass.  The fact that I could target just the evenings when people are running around downtown, such as Thursday and Friday, could be good.  If I could make a couple hundred bucks on Thursday and Fridays, things could still be good.  I still want to keep my truck, but I don't see it happening without some miracle and pronto.
    Wife says I should explore other companies in the area doing what I do, and I already looked, but none of the jobs call for my specific knowledge.  I will keep an eye out, though.  She says my bottom is always to work as a teacher, she could even get me in over there at her school district, but I am afraid I would shoot myself in the head, if I had to go back to Crystal a fucking loser with nothing to show but a U-haul full of old shit and a pocket full of disappointments.

5/29/17 Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume Two

    If anything, Guardians of The Galaxy teaches us that we can be family without looking like each other, and sometimes family can be more lethal than the people you rely on daily.  The story picks up as the guardians are getting ready to fight a big slug on some flat disk out in open space.  By now the team works as one unit, firing and taking their turns at the big bad guy.  They are in the process of taking out this evil thing for pay, so their work is not so much of valor as it is of financial compensation.  Rocket finds it funny to steal some of their energy cells (batteries) and after they are compensated by a group that thinks way too highly of itself, they are chased and hunted down.
    The group is tentatively saved by Star-Lord's father, Ego, and there is a weird reception and eventually Ego invites Star-Lord and a couple of them to go back to his planet to show him proof that he is his father.  Meanwhile, Yondu, who was supposed to steal Star-Lord from earth and deliver him to Ego, but never did, is still around and upon hearing Star-Lord has connected with Ego wants to maybe go save him.
    It turns out, Ego is really a minor god with intentions of making everything into his likeness, destroying life as we see it.  By himself, he is not strong enough to conduct his plan, but by using his son's body, he has access to two celestial bodies and then becomes twice as strong.  About the time, Star-Lord is all convinced about his father being great, he starts revealing himself and the truth.  He put the cancer in his mom's brain, just to get rid of her, and this infuriates Star-Lord enough to break the trance.  Gamora and Drax have joined him on the planet visit, and before long, Gamora's sister is on the planet looking for her tiring revenge.
    The sisters fight it out a little bit and then accept that it is neither of their faults their father was a monster who set them up against each other for his own crazy enjoyment.  Yondu teams up with Rocket and Groot to escape his henchmen who have turned on him, and shows up on the planet just in time to help save Star-Lord.  There is a weird meet-up with Sylvester Stallone telling Yondu he will die without honor, for being the way he is.
    As Ego starts looking like a really bad parent to his one true son, Yondu is ready to do what has to be done, and in the last scene we see him sacrifice himself for Star-Lord who he raised as his son.  Yondu explains that he kept him from Ego because he found out what Ego was trying to do, desperately trying to clone himself in every planet he found to see who could survive holding the light.  Star-Lord wasn't special, Ego was just a dirty pervert procreating all over the universe to try and make more of him.  Yondu dies saving Star-Lord in a very heroic way and it was very touching.  The team and the whole premise for Guardians seems to be to show love and support for each other, as you don't know how quickly it can be taken away.
    I tried my hardest to avoid the previews, I had no idea what to expect, and the movie delivered on entertainment.  It was a little cheesy and cliché, but that is part of the fun, in these movies.

5/28/17 A Year Apart?

    School has just about finished, Wife had her graduation night Friday night, good or bad, there were about 38 graduates and that ended the school year over there.  When she goes back on Tuesday, it will be in summer mode, which means ten hour days, but only four days a week.  I like that she will be up here one more day during the weekends.  Boy finished his classes about a week ago, passed everything, and is trying to work himself into a full forty week schedule, specially because we are asking for him to help us pay for part of his vehicle, at least through the summer.  Chubs has two more days of school, a week off and then he is doing a summer enrichment program for math.  It should keep him busy for a couple weeks, at least.
    So now I can ask "did I like this past year?"  Not particularly.  At the start of the year, when Wife left, I had visions of buying me a high dollar kayak and just enjoying being me.  I had my new truck, I was going to be a fisherman dude, work wasn't demanding too much of me, and I still had a spring in my step.  Wife was starting on a path which I still think is important for her, which is to be a director wherever they will take her to get the experience to hopefully come back.  I still support her doing this.  Chubs was going with mama to go to school in Crystal City and Boy prefers hanging with his friends more than bothering with me.
    It took me about three weeks hearing Chubs saying he missed me and he would do whatever for me to break down and realize I missed having him here too.  He came back, Boy has his friends, but he is a worse homebody than me, and he just seems to be around the house, all the time.  I got my freak accident on my leg, which just totally ruined any ideas of being around open waters, so no fishing for this fat boy.
    During the year, I got two renters, Girlie, and Boy's friend, I thought this was going to be the free money for my wallet, or to help pay for my Rolex addiction, or that high dollar kayak, but no.  My company is going through some troubled waters mostly from buying shit we didn't need in Boston, but our pays were cut, and now this fun money which has been medical bills money will now barely keeping me afloat while we figure out the next step.
    Basically, things are the same as always, except Wife is not around for the occasional quickie during the week.  She comes through like a hurricane wanting the house cleaned this and that.  It never looks that bad to me.  We can do another year, but she needs to learn to chill out when she is here.

5/27/17 The Break-Up (Movie)

    Sorry for so many movie comments, but I have been stuck at work and there is nothing else going on.  The boys are pretty much done with school, we are waiting on summertime and my leg to heal to see if we go swimming anywhere.  But here goes another shitty movie review....
    I did not like this movie mainly on the fact that Vince Vaughn was not the right actor for the role.  I think he can be funny, loved him in Old School where he was larger than life and took over everybody.  That type of personality does not work in a relationship with a classy type of chick like Aniston is trying to be in this movie.  I like her too, and she mostly fills in the role of smart, educated chick who wants the perfect life mixed in with her loving family, but she chose the wrong guy.  The Vaughn character is a slob who would rather sit around playing video games when he knows the wife needs him acting like a man.  He seems overwhelmed around her and they don't even have kids yet.
    I don't like to see a man playing video games, it screams man-child, even as they get more common place in the adult world, I refuse to think a real man is going to sit and waste hours playing video games if he has bills and other real world shit to take care of.
    When they are having dinner with both families he seems genuinely repulsed by the idea of the brother singing and involving everybody in a sing along, big deal that he is gay, it seemed like a fun moment, just clap your hands or whatever.  No, he sits there insisting that's not his thing.  Jackass!
    Once they get into the meat of the movie, the actual break up, he is just like a piece of furniture, refusing to do anything to show his girlfriend he gives two shits about her, other than refusing to abandon the apartment.  She walks around nude, he acts like he doesn't notice, she brings over guys, he continues playing video games.  If he wanted her back, make a move, Bozo.  No, he is too busy acting like a man-child refusing to show any growth, depth of character, or ability to learn and adjust to a situation before him.
    In the last scene, it takes his friend to tell him "yeah, you're a selfish, self-centered asshole, good in a bar, but a horrible human being" to even start getting him to try something different.  She still breaks up with him, smartest thing she does, but like most stupid good looking girls, she'll go back and wonder why am I in a loveless marriage?  Because you insisted on marrying a dick.
    I liked everybody in this movie, I just didn't buy the love aspect of it.

5/26/17 Queen Of The South? (Netflix Series)

    This is not a Netflix original, although it started like one.  The first episodes were full of thrills and emotional roller coasters.  Teresa (Alice Braga) just wanted out after the love of her life was murdered, but that is not how it works when working with "bad hombres".  Through luck and happenstance, she manages to escape the boss's murderers and she ends up in the hands of the boss's wife.  Lucky for Teresa, the wife, played by a smoldering Veronica Falcon, older but sexy as can be for a woman with murder in her eyes.
    The wife keeps Teresa and lies to her husband, as she is making plans to steal the business from her husband.  She is settled in Dallas, Texas, and he is in Sinaloa, Mexico.  He wants to become legitimate and become a governor, she is fully interested in keeping her business booming, at whatever costs.  For no reason, trust is slowly given to Teresa and soon she is running drugs for the wife in the Dallas area.  She keeps being in the right place at the right time, and soon has enough trust that she is making deliveries on her own.
    Teresa has a couple things going on, first her boyfriend gave her a book, which she managed to hide before capture and her best friend (Brenda) who is not very bright, and kind of dumb, actually.  Teresa is constantly trying to keep them all alive, and it becomes even more emotionally involving because Brenda is dumb but she has a little boy, and you can feel she isn't going to make it all season.
    Teresa sees herself in a sort of vision, her alter ego keeps telling herself to fight and survive another day, soon she will be on top.  Several times, it looks pretty bad, and her alter ego almost summons her to be more than she is, when she is getting raped, her lifeless body almost given up entirely fights one last time and reaches for a gun, blasts the bad guy in the side of the head, and thus makes her escape.
    My problem with the storylines is I live in Texas, you can't run from Dallas to the border and back and have enough energy to act like now what are we doing the rest of the afternoon?  That is a draining at least 14 hour trip, and they do it constantly on the show. 
    I can respect the aspect of the mafia families, but when the wife starts getting desperate, she starts making some shitty decisions, such as when they decide to kill the Florida guys.  That was just sloppy and just to steal from them, there is no honor in that.  Then her insistence on killing "Birdman" was also shitty, as the reason she was so comfortable and powerful was because her husband provided all the dirty muscle work.  The best part was when her daughter shat all over her, telling her "you hate dad more than you love me, and you are not protecting me, you are just using me as a prize to hurt dad.  Why couldn't it be enough for you to stay with dad, to be my mother?  Why did you have to abandon me and go to Dallas, to prove that you are a strong woman?  Be a mother, be a wife!  That should be enough.  Instead of the daughter of a governor, you just made me the daughter of a drug lord, thank you."
    By the end of the season, Husband and wife have gone to war, Teresa has the book and insists if she has to continue she will no longer just be a pawn, she will be more, Brenda is dead, and just for shits and giggles, Guerro, Teresa's love is alive, looks to be in a CIA/FBI building like he was working undercover, but he identifies Teresa, so we shall see what happens.

5/25/17 What Goes Up, Must Come Down?

    We were all lied to growing up.  Work hard and you will be rewarded.  I am starting to think that is bullshit to get the few of us stupid enough to believe to go along with this nonsensical shit.  I have done nothing but work hard, for what, we were told a couple weeks ago we were all going to get a pay cut.  Instead of doing it diplomatically and at least everyone getting a 10% or 15% cut, they decided to weigh everyone independently. 
    I thought I was being helpful when I offered myself to the chemistry group, since the imaging group has been so lackluster lately.  Here is the smooth way they then turned my generosity into a dull dildo and shoved it right back where the sun doesn't shine.  My salary was then compared to "chemists" in the industry, instead of engineers and word is that chemists make less, so my salary was cut, not once, but twice.  They also made the announcement that all people on nightshift will instead of getting 15% extra will now only get 5%.  That sounds freaking awesome if there were still thousands of us, it might make a savings, but there is only myself left on nightshift.  Apart from the 15% pay cut other day-shifters took, I also had the awesome experience of being hit twice and also lost an additional 10%, so my check is down a whopping 24% from the last normal one.
    Of course, the battle cry is "at least you have a job."  Yeah, but it does not seem fair.  We all make different salaries, it is not my fault every time we got raises, I always managed to do well and got myself up to the top of the list.  This bullshit way of just stripping me is like saying "you got too big for your britches, Boy, let's see you start over."
    There isn't shit to do about it, I'm not even sure if we'll be here as a company in a year the way everyone walks around depressed.  We have a couple of home run opportunities, but we still insist on thinking small.  With a reduced headcount and work piling up, they still insist on no OT.  How the hell are you going to impress new customers if they have to sit and wait for their data? 
    Maybe some people needed to go, and I could agree that maybe our labor costs are high, but something like that should be across the board, not picking the higher paid people and shitting on them.  I am upset right now, I really don't want to lose my truck, but if I can't balance my bills starting tomorrow, it'll be the first thing to go.  All I can say, is thank you roomies, their money appears to be the difference right now, in my theoretical calculations.