A library sight the other week:

Two very thin almost like fiberboard wall sidings, just laying on the floor on a side aisle.

I stopped and had to look close, to see if they were part of the tile, or were just laying on them, and when you walked on them like I did after I checked them out, you really didn't notice much of a difference in what you were walking on.

After I noticed them, too, I wondered how they got there.

I also thought that with that I was a lot like an Alzheimer's patient, since due to loss of thinking skills they often stop when tiles become carpet or a carpet becomes tile, since they see a difference between the materials but can't process exactly what's happening, a lot of times.

So, I like my tutoring job.

So, I finally started my tutoring job helping local community college students.

I only got three students, but all are smart and engaged, and in all of our very first sessions I was able to help them a lot.

Two are Mexican heritage, and when I was chit-chatting with one, she mentioned that she used to work streetfairs doing fruit and corn at her family's food booth!

I got very energized from interacting with them, but I wish the job gave me more hours, and was more permanent.

It's for stuff like this that I got into education.

It really is too bad; the entire higher education system just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  How sad.

Two Wisconsin sights, of young workers.

The other weekend I was in Wisconsin for a friend's birthday party.

While there, I hit up a jam shop.

The worker was a (young) (white) (female), and when I came in she was just leaning back against a pie-making table with her arms crossed, just staring out into space and looking bored.

The shop was otherwise empty, and she seemed to have been doing that for a while, and she wasn't on her phone or anything, but was just staring out into space.

Later, at a hotdog place, there was this (skinny) (white) (female) teenage worker with two tightly braided reddish-brown pigtails, and they were on either side of her head under a fastfood brim cap, and her shirt was a bit big and her sleeves hung off her thin arms, and she was just running around frantically in the small kitchen place behind the register and frying fries and prepping hotdogs, and she seemed so exasperated.

Landlord brusqueness.

The other Sunday night at like 9pm, I had gotten back from the beach and was heading out to go to the grocery store before it closed at 10pm, and for the first time ever in my life, I accidentally locked myself out of my apartment.

So, I called my landlord, and he was *pissed*, and he said something about how everyone else was locking themselves out lately, and he should start charging $25 for it, and when he came over I said I was sorry, but he said that he didn't want to hear about it.

Anyhow, the next day he called me when I was at work, but I didn't pick up and he left no message.

On Tuesday, the same thing, and afterwards he texted to call him.

So, I said something about how I was starting a new job, and would call during a break, and I called him later.

He said to get keys made and hide them so it wouldn't happen again, and then he was very apologetic and said that he had gone to bed early and I had woken him up, so that if he said anything, he was half-asleep and didn't mean it.

I felt so relieved afterwards; I was actually worried that he was still pissed at me.

The state of work nowadays.

The other week when I was at a new bar, a lounge in a new theater complex, I ended up talking with the (white) (male) bartender and one of his (white) (male) friends who was sitting there, with a (white) woman he was dating.

Both of the guys had done MFA degrees and were saying that even despite that, it was hard to find steady work, and the one friend said that he's from Wisconsin, and older generations he knows just don't get it, and even if they recognize the problem, from stuff they say you can tell they really just don't get how it actually plays out on the ground-level, since they've never lived it.

"Like when my one part-time job gave me 3 hours instead of 10, my mom said I should have looked out for signals more that they were undependable, so I wouldn't make that same mistake in the future," I was like.  "But, that's assuming that I have a selection of jobs, and that part-time job and another one was the best I could come up with, after a year of applying for jobs."

"Yeah, like that," he was like, and he grimaced.

The bartender said that he's originally from Florida, and a friend of his has a good tech system degree, and couldn't find work in Florida, so he moved to our city.

"It's been two to three months, and still no job," he was like.  "And he has a good field and a good degree."

I didn't say anything, but that got me thinking that people have told me to move to find work, but that means you go to a new place where you have no social networks, so it's not like that's better.

Our economy is so fucked right now.

Campaign observations:

1) My fight against higher education corruption is very appealing to people, since they think the student crisis is whack, and I've been calling out the right people.

2) Going to a lot of community events can be tiring, after a long day at work... I had Tues. / Wed. / Thurs. evening events one week (and I went to a concert Mon. night!), and I got so tired by Wed. that I ended up cancelling a day of work at my library job on Thurs., so I could rest and be fresh... 

Most weeks aren't like that, but I'm going to have to get very disciplined and regimented, if I want to be a serious candidate.

A dream of an object:

The other week, I dreamnt -

I have a large glass bottle in my hand, about the size of a soda water bottle, and it's a bit dingy with sand here and there on the interior, since it has a bunch of round stones in it.

There's also a large-ish broken area on the side, and the glass from the broken area is there amongst the stones.  I can see some dirty white plastic bottle caps at the bottom, and I'm carefully reaching in through the broken gap to try to work them out and remove them.

"People say this is natural," someone I can't see says to me.

. . .