Monday, February 1, 2010

Random Thoughts

I will turn 46 on Friday. I guess it doesn't really hit me as hard as when I first turned 40 - or 41 - or 42. I have never really thought I have wasted my life because I have spent much of it - adult version of it anyway - doing missionary work and helping people that are in less fortunate circumstances. I am still doing it now - to a lessor degree of course because of financial setbacks, but I don't see a time when I will ever stop trying to help people. The only reason I say that is because I look at other people my age who have big bank accounts and toys and all kinds of goodies with higher paying jobs. I then look at what all of that means.

Would I like to have a higher paying job than I have now? Wouldn't anyone? I would like to be able to support myself without HAVING to have tenants living in my house -definitely, but I am not envious of richer - or much richer people. That isn't any way to live life, in fact, that isn't living at all.

Let's move on, I will undoubtedly spend and entire entry's worth on Friday about my life up to 46, no sense in going there now. JD's brothers get out of kiddie prison on Thursday - that would be juvenile detention. They were on probation, smoking pot, getting pee tests - showing positive, probation officer insisted the judge give them 30 days. I think he was only going to give them a week. They dissed the probation officer, went to kid prison. Will they change when they come out? I have sincere doubts. It is, apparently, nothing like adult prison - which from what I have seen is nothing short of living, earthly hell.

I will be very interested to see if any change at all has occured - and if so - is it a lasting change. I want to have faith that they will change, but there is no adult male role model in their lives (their father is a life-long loser in spending more time in prison than in the free world - all 4 of those kids/brothers HATE their father) and I just have serious doubts that, without the right influences, they are going to make it. I used to let them over here until they started stealing from both me and tenants - a BIG no-no in my book. ANY and ALL kids that come over here are told the first time they enter the door, bluntly and to their face, that if they take anything, I don't care what it is, that doesn't belong to them from my house, they will be banned from my house, goodbye, don't let the get hit you in your @$$ on your way out.

I was going to stop at Home Depot today and start looking at pricing on the things I will need for the trailer - but I was very tired. I did not sleep well last night, probably due to the situation at work - I got maybe 5 hours of sleep. Extra-cirricular activities are always put on hold on days after nights when I don't sleep well. I totally forgot to even think about going to Stardust - a non-profit org., I believe, that goes into houses that are being gutted, remove anything that can be re-used and then sell it at a good discount.

Shifting gears again, I haven't been to the casino in a long, long time now. I'm going to get on the online trainer and play a thousand hands or so of blackjack, make sure I'm good for the game, and think about going soon. Maybe on my birthday. Yes, probably on my birthday - or this coming weekend anyway. I keep thinking about going but I have reservations - and when that happens, I refuse to shadow the doors of any casino. The feel must be right - I have said this countless times on my blogs, but my "feel" for the game stands and if it isn't there, well, I'm not a big fan of throwing $100 away to a casino just because. No, I want to go to the casino bank and make a withdrawal - turn my $100 into $200/$300 - or my best to-date: almost 2 grand. I thoroughly enjoy most of my casino trips. Some of the people at the tables are totally cool, which is great conversation. Others are desperate for money and come to - of all places - a casino to try and win. Others are blindly rich and will lose 10k in a matter of an hour or less and think nothing of it. It's totally crazy the huge mix of people that go into those places. Which is what makes it so entertaining for me. I do not, however, enjoy the cigarette smoke that permeates every casino I have been too. They just built a huge, Vegas-stay hotel/resort/casino about 7 miles straight down I-10 from where I get on I-10 - I want to go there just to see the place and maybe play a few hands and see what happens.

The tenant that went to CA for a funeral of a friend? Still a no-show and still a no-contact. He has enough stuff in his room - including an entire wardrobe of some rather expensive-looking clothing to make me think that he would want to come back for that stuff. I'm contemplating the 5-Day Notice Of Abandonment. I just don't see this guy like that - yet, I am only a phone call away. I have to figure he is broke and wondering how he is going to attempt to justify paying to stay here when he has no money. That or he landed a job over there and arrivaderche. Or however that's spelled. I'm still pondering to give the notice or not. I think I'll wait another day, the 1st of the month is today, I can't get anyone in here, legally, for the 1st anyway - though I would never do tenancy issues out of alignment with the law, anyway. Not worth it, don't want the trouble.

Oh, the situation at work? No word one way or the other. Strange, really. Leaves it up in the air as far as I'm concerned. Hard to treat something as if it never happened when - it definitely happened and there is no resolution. I need resolution to things like that, not "it's water under the bridge". Or if it IS water under the bridge - in other words it isn't going to happen again - then let me KNOW it's water under the bridge.

Well that's enough for one entry, I am exhausted - but - I am going to go out and make a list of materials I need for the trailer.

G'day.

ben

Monday

Yes, I'm at work, no I'm not on the clock and yes, I decided that I am not going to forsake my daily rituals because of one person's sour attitude towards me - a person I don't even know.
Until someone says something different, I will continue to do so. I suppose I could just as easily sit at home and drink coffee and surf the internet before leaving for work, but it's much easier to do it here - get done with surfing go straight into work mode. I'll be waiting for whatever news is going to come my way because of all of this.

Meanwhile, I'm reading of 13 students that were killed in Juarez, Mexico. Rather shocking, really, I spent a lot of time in that city from 1985 until 1990 doing missionary work. At least once a week I would drive over there and hand out food, clothing and blankets, but many weeks I would be over there every single day. We had found the orphanages and the old people that couldn't fend for themselves and would make it a point to help them. It's crazy, but neighborhood kids would see some of these old people walking to the store and would simply take their money from them.

I say shocking - the killings - just because of the time I spent over there. I never witnessed anything like that, but that was a long time ago and now I am reading that some of the leaders of these drug cartels actually live in Juarez. For those that don't know, Juarez is directly across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. It is also the largest border city in Mexico that I know of, much larger than Tijuana.

I would venture to guess that many Americans are not necessarily including any kind of trip to any point in Mexico as a vacation destination at this point. I wonder what the missionaries are doing nowadays. I was always of the mindset that if I was there doing the Lord's work - providing that He actually wanted me to go - He would protect me. I could tell some pretty crazy stories, in fact, I did have many of them written into my old JS blog, which is, of course, gone.

Anyway, overshadowing even that is this new budget proposal of Obama's. Money really does grow on trees! Oh, wait, no, they can just print more! How long is it going to be before the U.S. dollar is as worthless as a twig laying in the gutter on a street? No guesses here, but at this rate, I can't imagine it being forever.

I digress. If people think the Bush administration - or President Bush specifically - will go down as the worst president ever, let's try rethinking that. This Obama character has done absolutely NOTHING as far as I'm concerned, excepting to spend trillions of dollars and apparently wants to spend trillions more. The 4 years of his presidency will not be over fast enough, I cannot imagine that man getting a second term.

Well, the work day approaches and certainly, I don't want to be even one second over in getting off the internet and about the day's business. However, and realistically, I have so many breaks that have gone unused - those are half hour breaks that come off of my time automatically, every day whether I take it or not - I could legitimately sit here for days and days doing nothing but spending my breaks. Seriously. I wouldn't do that, of course, but I'm just sayin'.

G'day.

ben

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