Kayla started her new job just a few days ago, but already things are kinda fishy. They've hired her, in so much as they have her working there, clocking in, wearing the official uniform... but they haven't had her fill out any paperwork. They told her yesterday that they would call if they didn't need her today, and when she arrived today they told her she could work because they didn't even have her phone number to call and tell her one way or the other. That just seems weird.

First of all, why not have her fill out the W4s and that sort of thing? Second, if the management realized today that they didn't even have her phone number, wouldn't that be the best time to think "Oh, I better have this woman fill out her paperwork!" She's also dealing with the inevitable "give the new person crap" crap, which I also never understood. Someone that is there to work with you, to help you... yeah, let's give them shit since they are new, so they can start off the job hating it.

I don't think it helps that most of the people working there are very young. Adults are pissy enough with coworkers, so I imagine that teenagers would be five times as worse. It's just the same stupid crap that you'll find anywhere... people telling her to do the wrong things, people complaining about whatever she does, people discussing what they think of "the new girl" just loud enough to be sure that they are being overheard. Seriously... what she's told me tonight helps me dislike humans that much more.

But yeah... no paperwork filed. I wonder if they are just using her in test mode, waiting to see if she meets their standards or something. I'd like to think they won't do anything shitty like try to fire or "not hire" her and then not pay her for the days she's worked there. I wouldn't want to have to go over to that place and start shaking people.

It's funny though... when they hired her, the hiring manager remarked how many people come and go at that place. Gee. I wonder.

I'm taking another stab at my Social Security Disability stuff... Mom just got done filling out her part of it, where she has to describe (just like I had to do) what's wrong with me, how it affects my life, etc. I'm not sure why they require a second person to verify things like this. I mean, I'm not faking any of my crap, but even if I was I would just tell whoever "the second person" is that they should agree with what I already said. But Mom knows exactly how this crap affects me, so I'm not worried.

She worked on the paper yesterday, and Aunt Sharon is going to fax it out from the center today so that they will have it before their deadline that they put on the forms. Hopefully this time will have better results than last time. And if not, now the lawyers will be involved.

Kayla's new wireless phone arrived today. She started working a couple of days ago, so we figured it'd be a good idea for her to have one in case she needed to get ahold of me for a ride home or whatever. It's just a pre-pay, like mine, so it was only twenty bucks for the phone, 60 minutes in airtime, and a "double minutes for life" thing which will double the minutes of whatever cards she buys to put on the thing. It's a nice little phone though... VGA camera, built-in radio, a few games, etc. Can't complain for twenty bucks.

Oh, and my car repairs... worse than I thought. I went to one of the local places and told them the symptoms and what the oil change places have thought it might be, and after checking out my car they told me something completely different. He immediately said that there was no problem with the tie rods, tie rod ends, or any other part of the front suspension - but that it was actually my wheel bearings that are going bad. He said the right front needed replaced asap, but while the left front is getting bad it could wait a while longer. Rather than putting off the inevitable, I decided to bite the bullet and just have them both replaced. It's gonna be more than if it was the tie rod ends, but what are ya gonna do, ya know?

Before they start the work I'm gonna make sure they can give me some kind of guarantee or at least "strong assurance" that this is gonna solve the problem. I don't wanna get all that shit done only to have my car still make the same noises and then have someone else tell me that the tie rod ends still need replaced. No... that won't do.

The last couple of times that I got my oil changed they did the free inspection thing, and I was told that my tie rod ends need replaced by both different shops. I've been putting it off for a while, partially thinking that they were just thinking of a creative way to pad their bill - but since this was over six months ago, I figure I better go ahead and really get it checked out.

I'm gonna take the advice that someone gave me... take it in to one of the local "well known" service shops, tell them that my car has been a little wobbly and making humming noises at certain speeds, and that I think I need an alignment. In getting ready to do the alignment, if the tie rod ends are indeed bad, then they will be able to notice it and let me know that repairs are needed.

There are two potential faults with this plan. First, they might do the alignment and then notice the tie rod ends, meaning they'd have to replace those parts and do the alignment again - opening the window for potentially more costs. And the second thing that might happen is that they will do the alignment and give me my car back, with nothing said about the tie rod ends. That sounds like it'd be a good thing, but when two places in the past several months have said that I needed to have them replaced - if the shop just misses that problem because I don't mention it... well, the alignment isn't gonna do me much good.

I'm still debating where / when / how I'm gonna handle this.



Heh... almost makes me think I could do it myself. But probably not.

Kayla and I have been doing our best to get the entire house clean, and while we were at it I decided that I wanted to move the furniture around in the bedroom a bit. There isn't a ton of room in there as it is, so I decided to get rid of the big table that the big TV used to be on. (The big TV bit it a week or so ago, and should already be sitting in a landfill somewhere as we speak.) We've already filled up the dumpster with enough crap for this week, so I'm gonna wait a bit before I actually drag this table out.

But yeah, even though I've been up on my pills, that little bit of work pretty much kicked my ass for the evening. Probably tomorrow too... heh. But at least the bedroom is in decent shape, there is more room, and it is plenty cool due to the air conditioner we picked up at the auction this week. It was $40, which was about $15 more than we spent for the one that is in the living room, but it gets the bedroom icy cold within about 15 minutes.

That air conditioner was a good purchase, and then we also picked up a Sunbeam water cooler / heater for seven bucks. We haven't gotten one of the big water jug things for it yet, but we plugged it in and found that it does cool the water, and the little fridge at the bottom seems to work as well. The hot water tap feels like it is jammed up, but if I want hot water I can use the microwave. It's nice that each feature has its own switch, so we can have the fridge part and the water cooler part running while the option for hot water can remain off. Hopefully that'll help us get off all the soda.

Mom's rest and recovery at the care center is going pretty good... except for the fact that the insurance company is now complaining (and refusing to pay) because she is there without doing any physical therapy. I'd like someone to explain this to me, seriously. Mom's doctor said that she was to do nothing, take it easy, and move her neck as little as possible when she was released after surgery.

Now, when the surgeon says something like that, you'd think that it would be a good idea to do what he said, right? Well, within a couple of days of checking in at the care center they were trying to get her to do physical therapy. Just as I would do, and just as probably anyone else would do, Mom said that it hurt to much and that she didn't want to do it because her doctor told her to baby herself and do nothing. Well, the folks at the insurance company read that as "refusing to do physical therapy" and so now they don't want to pay for the days she's already stayed there.

Somewhere between the hospital and the care center the information must have gotten lost or misunderstood. Mom knows what the surgeon said, the care center knows what they want to do with mom - and the two just didn't match. Within the past few days several of us family members went in and had a meeting with a few of the folks at the center, and I think we've finally got things headed in the right direction. I mean, I'm not doing that much... confirming information, listening to the conversations and trying to pick out the BS, passing information to Dad when he can't be there, etc.

But I'm still trying to understand how an insurance company can say that someone doesn't deserve to be in a care center like that because they are too disabled to even do physical therapy. The doctor said for her to do nothing, because the surgery was that serious, yet the insurance company apparently prefers that she be at home. She needs help doing pretty much anything right now, but that's not enough for the insurance folks. Dad has to work, Mom can't care for herself... so what are they supposed to do? Gah... very irritating.

But like I said... all that crap is slowly but surely being taken care of, and hopefully in a few days we'll have gotten it figured out for either insurance or Medicaid or something to be able to foot the bill for the time that she's going to need in there. No worries.

We had a Father's Day gathering as usual, but much of the family wasn't able to attend this year. No Dad, because he's been busy dealing with Mom and her surgery. No Uncle Jay and Aunt Peggy, because they already had plans to see Chicago in concert that evening. No Chris and Shannon because Hayden wasn't feeling well. No Big Maggie, Little Maggie, Dusty, and the rest of their clan... I think because something was going on with their air conditioning and they either weren't feeling well due to the heat, or they were needing to hang around the house to fix the problem. But anyway... yeah... low turnout this year.

Those of us that were there had a great time though. Jim brought our Cornhole boards, so many of us played that before and after we grubbed on all the good food. Hamburgers, hot dogs, brats, beans, pasta salads, chips, etc... and I ate so much I felt like I was gonna pop the button on my jeans. Kayla made up a plate with a little bit of everything on it, and after we got done at Uncle Rick's we took it to her in the rehab center. She's still not getting very hungry, but she kinda sampled a little bit of everything.

Pics here: LINK

We finally got Mom out of the hospital, after having stayed there for nine days after her surgery, and now she's settled in at a local "nursing home" here in town. It's kinda funny, because most of the people staying there are obviously there because they are so old that they are unable to care for themselves - and then there is mom, who is alert, happy, relaxing, etc... she's like the new kid on the block.

As serious as her surgery was, there was really no way that she could go back home and deal with climbing up and down stairs to go to the bathroom, go to the kitchen, go to the bedroom, etc... so really this was the best choice. And for what it is worth, Mom was the one that was most excited about the idea. I might have mentioned it, but she was already familiar with the place from the time that Grandma had to spend there last year, so she really went into it thinking of it as a little vacation.

These first few days I'm sure she'll be swamped with local family going in to visit her, but after that it should calm down and the visits should be short and sweet, letting Mom have all the "me time" that she needs. I haven't heard anything that the doctors have said, but I'm guessing that she'll get a week of "doing nothing" - maybe even two - and then they will start her physical therapy. After doing that for a week or so, I bet she'll know exactly what she needs to keep doing at home to keep everyone loosened up, so I'm thinking she'll be out of there after a total of about three weeks. Hopefully.

Another one of my Terragen animations finally finished rendering yesterday. The first image was started on April 30th... heh... so that means it took over fifty days to render all of the frames. That's a lot of work for a two-and-a-half minute animation. And it's funny, with the capability of good computers and next-gen game systems - this sort of thing almost seems pointless to do. Some of those systems can run equally visually impressive animations like that in realtime... heh... but like I said, a month and a half on my old PC.



Don't get me wrong... I'm still very pleased with the results. It is at a higher resolution than I'd normally do, plus it has some pretty nice lighting, shadow, and fog effects... not to mention moving clouds. It wasn't any bother for me, because I generated the landscape and plotted the flight path on the good computer - then took those files over to the old computer so it could just sit and chug away on the animation, while occassionally running the webcam. I think I might try to do another good 3D stereoscopic one for my next project.

A skit video produced for the CMT awards last night... funny thing is, I actually like it.

I went up to Columbus to hang out with Mom in the hospital. Her surgery went well, but she had some complications afterwards that ended up having her go through another small surgery today. I got up there early in the morning and got to spend a little time with her before they took her away, but even after she came back from surgery a few hours later she was still doing good. I thought she'd be kinda grogged-out, but apparently the drugs they used to put her under weren't as strong as they had been before. Dad showed up right when they were bringing her back in the room, and he was pretty surprised at how well she seemed. I guess yesterday she was pretty loopy from the meds. I'm glad that I was there to see the improvement.

After I left from there I met Toni, Matt, Anna, and Kayla at Chuck E Cheese. Toni had already planned to come to Columbus to see mom, but I convinced her to wait a day or two - because I thought Mom would be messed up after the surgery, and likely not even remember if anyone came to see her. So instead of going to the hospital, they went for a little bit of fun at the pizza place and I was able to join them. See pics from the day here: LINK

After that we actually all went over to Eastland to walk around. It's been quite a while since I'd been there, and Kayla had never been there... so yeah, another little distraction from all of our real life crap. I picked up a couple two-dollar PS2 games, and Matt bought another ball cap. The rest of the time we all walked around wishing we had money so we could really buy some goodies.

A couple of weeks ago I put in a lowball bid on an Optio W30 waterproof digital camera. It was listed as being AS-IS, no battery or charger, and no way to test the functions. For whatever reason, nobody else ended up bidding on it and I won it for $6.49 only plus shipping. Now, this is a waterproof 7.1 megapixel digital camera with 3x optical zoom. Six bucks. Crazy.

Heh... so anyway, I figured it'd probably be non-working but I went ahead and bought a cheap battery for it anyway. The battery arrived today, about a week after the camera, and I finally got to test it. It turned on right away, with the only apparent problem being with the LCD screen. On the left 1/5 of the screen there is some distortion and white lines. I took it out for a few test shots, hoping that the problem was just with the screen and not with the CCD sensor itself, and luckily that's what it was.



While taking the pics that part of the screen is distorted, but when the pictures are downloaded from the camera they are fine. I tested out the zoom, digital zoom, self-timer, macro mode, etc... and everything works fine. This is definitely the best deal I've gotten on a digital camera. Happy happy.

We went over to Toni and Matt's for a while last night after she called and said she was gonna have a little bonfire / cookout in the backyard. It actually was good timing, because I had just gotten the big wheel fixed up and I was wanting to take it over there for some short term storage anyway. (Too much crap in this house already... heh)



I got the big wheel at the auction a while back for a dollar, and all it needed was a new innertube. It was originally intended for Squirtman to use, but once Joe came over to the house one night and saw it he knew he wanted to take it to the local skate park. And once we all got over to the cookout last night we started coming up with all kinds of good ideas for it. We're gonna do the skate park thing, maybe some other local stunts, and then hopefully it'll still be okay for riding at the Athen's halloween thing and maybe the Chillicothe rodeo.

It's a shame what's been going on over at Jim's place lately. After all of the nice things that they had done for Nikki, Alex's little sister, she ends up dating a guy who broke into his apartment and stole his XBOX 360 and a bunch of his games. If she wasn't aware of it it would be one thing, but Nikki actually went over to Jim and Alex's place the other day and TOLD them that she knew that her boyfriend and his brother took the XBOX - because she said it was sitting in their living room right now. Heh... wtf?

Now, Jim already has the cops involved with this, although they don't seem to be doing much of anything... especially considering that Jim knows right where they live, and that Nikki even said that the XBOX is sitting in their apartment right now. Jim says he is just getting the run-around from the cop on his case... info isn't acted on, phone calls aren't returned, etc. The other day one of the kids even went over to Jim's place and started mouthing off to him about all of it, because he was upset that Jim gave the cops his name when he said it was actually his brother that broke in and stole the stuff.

Regardless of which brother theef'd the stuff, they ALL know about it... John, Chris, and Nikki.

I don't even really care about the two guys, or even Jim's XBOX stuff... it's what's happened to Nikki that is so sad. She was starting to turn her crap around, with a considerable amount of help from Jim and Alex, but she went and shit it all away by hooking up with those two d00ds that have somehow convinced her to completely turn her back on them. You'd think that so soon after her friend Tiffany overdosed and died that she'd wanna keep her family close... I mean, the good people in her family (like Jim and Alex) that actually give a shit about her.

But no, instead of keeping the good people close, she's chosen the guys that steal from her sister and Jim, and she chooses the family that tolerates (if not encourages) her partying and drug use. Six months ago I would have said that there was a good chance that Nikki would eventually turn out okay and on her way to a "normal" life... but now I hate to think what she's gonna be like in another five years or so. Probably either like her druggy parents... or maybe dead like her party friend Tiffany.

We've been busy the past few days. I've had several appointments for my knee and neck / shoulder stuff, Mom had to go in to Mt Carmel for surgery on her neck, and then Kayla also had a few doctor things she had to do. I guess I should be glad that it all came in one clump, eh? My knee is doing as well as it should be, Mom made it through her surgery with flying colors - but with much discomfort afterwards, and Kayla's stuff is ongoing as usual. All in all, everything went well for everyone.

Mom's spinal surgery took about 4 hours, and she was in pretty good spirits when she got out of recovery and was taken to her room. Kayla and I stayed there a while with dad, talking to mom, but I'm pretty sure she'll remember very little of it. Luckily I took my camera so I will have some documentation for her once she's ready to sit at the PC and look. We'll probably be going back up to Columbus during a few days next week to keep Mom company during the day while Dad returns to work.

After we left the hospital we hung around the city for a while, making a side trip to the airport to watch some planes come and go, as well as making a quick stop over in the kewl part of Gahanna where all the neat buildings are. We're gonna try to go back sometime when something is going on... a show or a band or whatever. It was kinda slow there when we stopped... even the fountain / lake thing was empty. *shrug*

We've made some good progress on getting all the yard stuff compiled and ready for pricing, and once again we went to the auction this week to get even more cheap goodies. One of the nicer things that I got was a portable Sony Color Watchman television. After today it won't be able to pick up broadcasts over the air (analog signals going away, switching to digital) but it has A/V inputs for game systems, DVD players, whatever. A neat little toy for three bucks. We also got a new answering machine for three bucks... pretty much the same as the one we had, but this one also has separate "boxes" for incoming messages. So soon I'll be able to have one of those "Press 1 for Rob, press 2 for Kayla" type messages.

I'm feelin' better about my recent thrift / auction purchases. Anything that I get for myself has been cheap, and most of the other stuff we've gotten has been cheap enough that it'll turn a good profit at the yard sale or on eBay. You know me... even though I don't have to explain my purchases to anyone, I still have to justify it to myself.

See recent batch of pix from all these activities here: LINKY