the passionate ailurophile

Mike’s company has been hiring!  However, you need to have a degree in electrical engineering and appropriate work experience to qualify.  But anyway, since Mike is one of the senior engineers, he gets to help decide who gets hired and who doesn’t.

Years ago, when Mike was working for Evil Bossman (the guy who only paid his employees when he felt like it), he had to share an office with this guy called Oleg.  This was a time when almost everyone in the company was seeking other employment, Mike included, because not getting paid was no fun.  I think Evil Bossman kept this Oleg guy around because that way, he’d be guaranteed to have at least one employee left.  This was because no one else would want to hire this guy.

Why?  For one thing, he STUNK!  I mean literally, as in, not showering or washing his clothes on a regular basis.  The guy also smoked like a chimney, and he had this really gross leather jacket that he never had cleaned, it stunk of stale cigarette smoke.  I had always thought that Mike was exaggerating about how bad this guy stunk, until on day, I found out for myself.

I used to pick Mike up from work every night.  I really didn’t want to go into the building and run into Evil Bossman, because I probably would have gotten into it with him over the no-pay thing.  So I’d just park in the lot behind his decrepit building, and call Mike from my cell to let him know I was there.

One night, the battery in my phone had died, and I didn’t have a car charger at the time.  So I had no choice but to go into the building to let him know I was there.  Usually, when I’ve been inside the building before, Oleg would already be gone for the day.  I had never actually met the guy.

But this time, he WAS there.  And Mike wasn’t kidding about the stink, it almost knocked me to the ground, it was so bad.  I guess it must be true that the nose fatigues after smelling something like this for a while, as I couldn’t see how Mike could put up with this day after day.

I told Mike that I’d be waiting down in the car, and I hightailed it out of there as quickly as possible, before I started gagging.  He understood completely.

Oleg was also not a very good engineer, according to Mike.  As it was, he did very little work.  When he wasn’t outside smoking cigarettes, he was looking at porn on his office computer.  It seemed he did just enough work to skate by.  Most companies would fire someone just for being stinky, or just for looking at porn at work.  I thought that most companies blocked porn from their networks, anyway.  But it goes to show you how badly Evil Bossman’s company was run.

Mike got another job a few months later, and that was the last he saw or heard of Stinky Oleg – until today.  A new batch of resumes crossed his desk for him to look at, and pick the best ones from.  And one of them was from Stinky Oleg.

Stinky Oleg had left the Evil Bossman company about a year ago.  He didn’t say why.  We do know that Evil Bossman no longer owns that company, someone else does.  Apparently, EB got himself sued and lost the company.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy!  So maybe the new owner fired Stinky Oleg.  I would have!  The only work that Oleg has had since then were a couple of crappy temp jobs.

So Mike told his higher-up that he knew this Oleg guy, and that he was bad news.  He told them about the stink, the porn, and the fact that this guy just was a lousy engineer.  The higher-up guy was grateful for this advice, and decided that Oleg would not be called in for an interview.  Mike was very relieved to not have to face the possibility of having to interview this guy.

It would not have been a good fit, anyway.  Mike’s company blocks porn from their network.  And gambling sites, too – Mike can’t even go to masslottery.com from work.  So this means that Oleg would actually be expected to spend his time doing actual WORK!

It’s good to have enough seniority where you can help keep undesirables from being hired!

I was VERY nervous about the fact that Mike had to go for a heart stress test and EKG today.  The cardiologist set this up because he was concerned about potential problems with Mike’s heart.  Mike already has an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, that he had put in last year.  So far it’s been fine, it’s never had to kick in.

I was scared that they’d find something wrong and put hm back in the hospital.  We’ve had more than enough of damned hospitals, we don’t want to be dealing with that crap again.  We just want a nice summer of fun, not of hospitals, as half of last summer was like.

Fortunately, the tests went okay, Mike is home, and not in the hospital.  Better safe than sorry when it comes to doing these tests, I know, but I still get worried.

Even though I’d been worried about the outcome, I tried not to think about it.  We had a very nice weekend, we went to Brockton Rox games on both Saturday and Sunday.  On Sunday, we tried to go to dinner at the Uno Chicago Grill in Brockton, only to find that it was closed permanently.  Apparently, the company had filed for bankruptcy after closing 16 restaurants.  Apparently, they closed more since, as this other article said that only three Massachusetts locations had closed – Kingston, Methuen, and Fairhaven.  Nothing about Brockton.  And who knows how many more may close?  So far, the Sturbridge one is still open, but who knows how much longer that will be?

The thing is that we had $20 in gift cards to use, which we got as part of the package o’stuph that the New Hampshire Fisher Cats gave us for buying our season mini-plan.  They actually gave me a choice between Uno and T-Bones/Cactus Jack’s (a small NH chain).  I picked Uno, thinking we’d use them after a Rox game, as we used to always go there when in Brockton.  How was I supposed to know way back then that the restaurant would no longer be there?  I wish I’d picked the T-Bones cards; they had given those to us the year before, we used them at the one in Salem, NH, and it was really good.  If we had them this year, we could have used them to try CJ’s in Manchester, or gone back to the Salem location.

They still have plenty of locations open in Boston and Cambridge, but we never really go there much.  There are other places there we like better when we are there, anyway.  The nearest suburban locations are in the Woburn Mall and the Burlington Mall.  As you well know, I absolutely HATE malls and try to avoid going into one.  Even though you can enter the restaurants without actually having to walk through the mall, at both places, parking is ridiculous, miles away, and it’s like playing a game of human Frogger to make it to the restaurant without getting killed.

The Burlington Mall is my idea of hell on earth.  If Dante’s Inferno had been written today, one of the seven circles of hell would be just like the Burlington Mall.  The last time we ate at the Uno there, there was some Hugh Jass kiddie song and dance festival crap right outside the place, and the noise was deafening.  Apparently, they stage similar noisy crap in this part of the mall on a regular basis.  There is not enough beer in that restaurant to drown out the horrible racket, in fact, there is probably not enough beer in the WORLD to make it feel better.  Even if they had never ending faucets with FREE beer flowing from them, still, not enough.

Frankly, I’m not going to bust my ass looking for an Uno to go to just to use the stupid gift cards.  We don’t have time, for one thing, when we go up to ManchVegas for ball games, we have our fave places there, ditto when we go to Portland, Pawtucket, etc.  It took a while to find a decent place to eat after an afternoon PawSox game, as Pawtucket has little to offer food-wise that’s good.  It’s mostly fast-food crap.  This year, though, we’ve taken to stopping at the British Beer Company in Walpole, which is pretty much on the way home for us.  The food and beer there is fantastic, even if there were an Uno down there, why would we want to go there?  I had planned to use the cards in Brockton, because there’s not much else good to eat there.  We used to go to this place called Christo’s, a Greek place that’s really good.  But after hearing about shootings and stuff going on, and knowing we’d have to drive through some rather sketchy parts of Brockton to get to Christo’s from the ballpark, no more Christo’s.  Oh well.

We could have saved the gift cards for our fall trip to Sturbridge.  But I decided not to, because for all we know, that one might be gone by then.  I posted something on Facebook saying that I’d just give them to the first person who says they want them.  We have a taker.  Some people like the Burlington Mall.

Anyway, I’m sure that when we buy our FULL season tickets for next year (that’s right, we love the Fisher Cats so much that we’re going the whole hog!), Uno gift cards will no longer be an option in the swag package (which will have a lot more stuph because it’s for FULL season tickets).  As long as T-Bone’s Cactus Jack’s continues to be a team sponsor, it’ll be those gift cards.  Fine with me!

Anyhoo, when we saw that the Uno place was closed, we tried the nearby Texas Roadhouse.  We wanted to sit at the bar and watch the Sox game, but they only had it on one TV, and that TV was almost impossible to see from any seat at the bar.  The TVs we could see had dumb crap on, like the World Cup, and some other crap sport that I could not identify.  I was also pissed that there was no Sam Adams Boston Lager on tap.  Not that I was planning to drink any, but Mike was, they did have Sam Summer on tap, but Mike doesn’t like that.  They did have Boston lager in bottles, but he prefers it on tap.  It all pissed us off, so we left without ordering anything.

We got back onto route 24, and then to I-93 North.  I was watching for those road signs that say what restaurants are at various exits.  I spotted one for a Piccadilly Pub in Randolph, so we went there.  It was okay, just like any other PicPub, nothing special.  There was space at the bar, they had the Sox on all TVs except for the one in the far corner with Keno on it.  Damn, but I HATE Keno, and usually try to avoid patronizing places that have it.  Half the time, you have to wait forever to get a beer because the bartenders are forced to spend too much time dispensing Keno tickets.  Mostly to skeevy guys who sit there for hours, gambling and nursing a $2 Bud Lite.  There was such as guy at the bar in Randolph yesterday.  Fortunately, this did not affect the quality of our service, but it most certainly has at the Tewksbury location, which is part of why we hardly ever go there any more.  The best Pic is in Sturbridge, mostly because it does NOT have Keno.  I’m sorry, but that damned game attracts the worst clientele.

Next time we go to a Rox game, I’ll do some research first and see what other restaurants are around, and plan ahead.

(picture above is from the second Dr. Tinycat T-shirt, from LOLMart Shirts)

Srsly.

I am very pissed off at our landladies right now.  For one thing that piece of shit stove they forced upon us last year is being even more of a piece of shit.  Just as I’d read in reviews of the thing, the computer in it might be going.  I already knew, from reading the reviews that it would almost likely go if I were to use the self-cleaning feature.  But now it seems to be starting to crap out if we so much as use the oven and the timer at the same time.  It was doing some annoying crap, like beeping EVERY MINUTE the timer was on, after the first 30 minutes.  I finally shut the timer off, and it shut the oven off, too, something that has not happened before.  So I had to start to preheating process again, only to deal with more annoying beeping when it hit the proper temp.

We did not buy this stove, it was forced upon us.  There was nothing wrong with the old stove, and I weep over the fact that Sears probably threw it into a landfill somewhere.  While we are stuck with a stove that is only good for making your kitchen look snazzy, provided you do not actually do any cooking.  If I were you, I’d ignore the positive reviews on the Sears site, most of them say that only had the stove for a few weeks, a month, whatever.  We’ve had this piece of crap for almost a year now.

The oven has not died yet, but I have to be careful.  Not only no self-cleaning thing, but no timer, either.  Once the computer inside the thing dies, it will cost $400 to fix, which is almost as much as this piece o’shit cost!  The landladies would likely dispatch one of their down-on-their-luck friends or relatives to fix it if it goes, and if we tell them that it went, that is.  And then we’d have to deal with some loser who spends half the day chain-smoking in our place rather than working, completely polluting it with smoke so that Mike can’t breathe (he’s allergic), and STILL not getting the job done.  And it would likely take two or three days, as well.  No way would they just let us pick our own person to fix it, or just buy another stove and then deduct the cost from our rent.

I’m also pissed because the landladies changed the locks on the back door, and have yet to provide us with keys.  So, if we go out, and come back to find that yet another douchebag stuck a toothpick in our front door lock, and we can’t pry it out with the little tweezers we bought for this purpose, we are FUCT when it comes to getting in via the back door, unless the landladies are home.

And I’m also pissed because they made us sign a two year lease that would keep us here until July 2012, even though the current lease is not supposed to expire until July 2011.  We signed because we don’t have anywhere else to go set up at the moment, but we are not happy about it.  But believe me, this will be the LAST lease we will sign for this dump!

Anyhoo, I was also pissed off at Mike, because we were talking about bills, and he said he was going to pay the rent early, since we have the money.  He deserves a smack upside the head for that one, because this came right after I cussed more than Craig Ferguson’s bunny puppet about the effin’ stove acting up.  Yet he wants to pay them EARLY?  Eff that shit up the ass with a splintery flagpole, no lube!  Why not just pay for pulse oximeters and whatever else they need for their health issues? I’m sorry they have health issues, but still! Paying the rent ON the first of the month is good enough. We used to pay it early a lot because were were being nice, but now they are not nice to us!

So first of the month it is from now on, no sooner, no later.  Also, last month they took nearly two weeks to cash the damned check (which we paid early, as well), which was also annoying.  Well, if they don’t need the money until the first, they are not getting it until then.

But they probably do not realize how badly they are shooting themselves in the foot by doing this shit.  We have been working very hard to pay down our bills and reduce our debt, and we are doing so well with it.  Mike’s MIT school loans are GONE.  His Department of Education loans will be paid off in less than a year.  The Cat-mobile will be paid off in two years on a regular payment schedule, but we might pay it off sooner once the DOE loan is gone.  Credit cards are getting paid down as well.

Anyhoo, with all of this money freed up, that will make it all the easier for us to be able to move, at last.  We’ve tried so many times in the past, but credit problems and just not having enough cash made it difficult.  But the problems caused by Evil Bossman have rolled away, we’re paying off debts, not charging anything more unless we can pay it fast, and are starting to have more cash freed up…moving might FINALLY be a reality.

Not to Maine, though.  Now we want New Hampshire.  The fact is that Mike will still have to show up for work, the boss isn’t really cool on working from home too much, and Maine is not practical for that.  But Manchester would work.  Same commute, just the other direction.  Yes, since he works in MA, we’d still have to pay some MA income taxes, but NH has no sales tax.  Car insurance would be about half what we pay now for the exact same coverage.

Plus, in Manchester, we’d be living in a community we can be proud of.  They have their own minor league baseball and hockey teams.  They have many cool bars and restaurants that we know and love.  They even have a first class theatre that puts on some great Broadway plays and musicals!

What the f**K is there to be proud of in Malden?  Absolutely effin’ NOTHING!  Sure, there was some lame-assed magazine that named this place the best place to raise kids, but I am sure they must have meant that it’s the best place to raise kids if you want them to act like little punks and get away with it.  Because that’s how it is around here.  Teen thuggery gets worse and worse as the years go by.

So, between that, and the landladies being douchebags, we have no reason to stay here.  The landladies should be kissing our asses to get us to stay, they should buy us a new stove OF OUR CHOICE to get us to stay, at the very least.  Because what will happen to them when we leave will make them wish they never even thought about that stove, or not giving us the back door key, or anything else they did to annoy us.

They will likely have to go Section 8 to get a new tenant, because now, nobody with money will rent anything in this neighborhood, not with all of the yuppie apartments springing up near the T station.  This used to be a much nicer neighborhood, but it’s gone down the toilet over the years.  Mike used to rent his old condo out to a Section 8 tenant, and it was a royal pain in the ass.  He was happy to be able to unload that property.

Section 8 also requires that the place not have lead paint, which ours does.  They were allowed to rent to us because we weren’t moving in with small children.  Otherwise, they’d have to spend thousands of dollars to remove it.  They’ll also have to remove it if we leave and they rent to ANYONE via Section 8.

But I guess they never thought about any of this, they just continue to piss us off, never thinking that one day we might want to leave.  They have no control over the condition of the neighborhood, I know.  But the dumb shit that are doing now is not helping their case any.  Once we have enough money to pack up and go, why stay here?  No reason I can think of!

I was checking the status of my recent orders from Buy.com, and came upon this – it’s an under-the cabinet-mounted TV/radio/DVD/CD player.  Being that I now have in my kitchen Mike’s ancient TV that is on its last legs, and a radio/CD player that hasn’t worked properly in years, maybe it’s time to pick up one of these gizmos, and get rid of the old crap.  I have too much old crap that needs getting rid of.  Also, the old TV has to use a converter box, being that it’s old and not connected to cable or satellite.  And I’ve getting VERY sick of the cats knocking it off of the TV onto the floor.  The description says that it has both an ATSC and NTSC tuner, ATSC meaning that it meets the new digital standards, and would not require a converter box in order to watch TV.

It’s at a good sale price, so I might go ahead and get it soon.  Just not sure where a good place would be to mount the thing, I hardly have any cabinets.  The one I do have is over the sink, and I don’t want to mount the thing there.  But I have shelves and stuph, I can figure something out.

This also has an alarm clock and a cooking timer.  So it pretty much has everything I need for a multi-tasking kitchen gadget!

I wanted to listen to the New Hampshire Fisher Cats game online, but the stoopid radio station decided to try to make me listen to conservative nutjob Michael Savage instead.  No thanks.  But I can take some comfort knowing that we will be at the actual game tomorrow night.  Rather than having Mike drive home on I-93 south to come and get me, and them drive all the way back up, I will be taking the Boston Express Bus up to Manchester, and he’ll just come straight up from work.  I bought a reserved parking space, I gave him the ticket, so he’ll be okay to park close by.  I can’t wait, it’s gonna be nice tomorrow for the game!

As I said in my last post, I ordered all sorts of stuff for the “Renew Your Wedding Vows Night” at the Fisher Cats ballpark.  One of them was this tux-printed T-shirt for Mike, which I found on eBay.  It’s already been shipped.

He doesn’t like wearing neckties, and although I did try to find mens ties, specifically a clip-on bow-tie with a baseball theme, they are too hard to find. So we’re going with the tux-printed T-shirt. I like this one because it happens to be the Fisher Cats’ team colors.

Me?  I am wearing a Fisher Cats jersey with white capris, green baseball stirrup socks with white socks underneath, sneakers on my feet, and a veil on my head, if I can fit the headband of the veil I ordered over a baseball cap, all the better.

It will be a good time.  It will take place on August 7, at MerchantsAuto.com Stadium up in Manchester, NH.  If you want to come and see us and a bunch of other couples renew wedding vows, tickets are still available.  This will be our tenth anniversary celebration!

And now, I’m not so cranky any more!