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Off to visit the folks

2003-08-14 - 7:36 p.m.

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So how bout that power outtage, huh?

We're supposed to be leaving for Ohio tomorrow morning, but I called my grandma as soon as I heard that the blackout had reached Cleveland, and sure enough, the power is out all over my hometown as well. Apparently the grandparents were out and about when the power went off and had quite a time getting home with the traffic signals being down.

They didn't even have a clue what was going on until I called. Battery-operated radio? What kind of newfangled contraption is that? Well, grandma thinks maybe one of the radios will run on batteries, so she did set grandpa to scrounging some up. Meanwhile, I filled her in on the goings-on in the news and told her I'd call if there were any significant updates.

"They" say that the power is starting to come back in Toledo and Cleveland, and hopefully it will only take a few hours to get everyone up and running, but I'm still nervous about traveling in that direction tomorrow. Even if they do get the power back tonight, does that mean the situation is stable? "They" are not being any too specific about what caused the outtage in the first place. I'd hate to have the power go out again after we get there. I really don't want to cancel, though. I've been really homesick this summer and I'm not sure if we'd be able to reschedule any time soon if we have to cancel. I guess we'll go ahead and go if the power is back up tomorrow morning.

Things seem to be going pretty well in New York City, except for all the people who spent hours stuck in the subway system. Can you imagine being trapped underground in a hot, dark subway car, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of frightened, sweaty, smelly, annoying strangers? Gawd, I'd be a piss-soaked, shrieking, hysterical ball of sub-human goo by the time the rescuers got me the hell out of there. I wonder if they had any idea what was going on, if there was any way for those above-ground to communicate with the conductors so they could let people know it was just a plain old power outtage and not a terrorist attack? Man, I hope so... how much scarier would it be to not know what was going on?

I've been watching the news, and they've been filming all the people walking home on the streets of New York City. People are such dorks... they just loooooooove that news camera, don't they? Waving, mugging for the camera, making goofy faces and guestures... what a bunch of goobers. I thought New Yorkers were supposed to be all sophisticated and unimpressed by everything? Maybe it's only the tourists that are acting goofy. At least everyone seems in decent spirits, not all pissy and scowly like I would be. Speaking of which...

I haven't had a lot I've felt like writing about lately. I've been spending way too much time online scaring myself silly reading the news and various message boards and worrying about the sorry state of the economy. Unemployment is not getting any better. The figures that are showing a slight decrease in the unemployment rate are misleading, as they don't count among the unemployed anyone who is not actively looking for a job. Hence the hundreds of thousands of people who have halted their fruitless job search out of frustration and hopelessness are not counted in the unemployment figures.

I keep reading about people who have been unemployed for a year or more, and I can't imagine how they are surviving. We are living paycheck to paycheck, with no savings whatsoever. If we miss one paycheck we'd be screwed, never mind what a whole year on unemployment would do to us. Our rent is high, our car payment is high... if we got evicted, we'd very shortly find ourselves without even a car to live in.

Part of the unemployment problem is that so many jobs are going overseas... especially jobs in the Prince's field, computer programming. According to what I've read, "offshoring" jobs to dirt-cheap programmers in India is a trend that is here to stay, unless we can get the government to regulate it, and regulating big business does not seem to be high on the agenda of the Bush administration.

Those who have commented on the situation in the news have said rather snidely that "programmers will just have to get themselves retrained, just like industrial workers had to"--snidely, as if tech workers should have EXPECTED this... as if it were unreasonable to think, as they were spending 4 years and $40,000 getting a college degree in computer science, that they were preparing themselves for a lifetime career. Sheesh... some people and their over-inflated expectations!

Even if a person had another 4 years and $40,000 to spend getting retrained, the question would be, retrained to do WHAT? I'm not finding a whole lot of current information on which job sectors are expected to grow... apparently because no one has any real idea, what with the economy being so unbelievably fuckered up right now. Service jobs are thought to be a good bet, as are medical jobs. So all these white-collar people, many of whom are still up to their eyeballs in school-loan debt for the computer science degrees which may be turning into highly-decorative toilet paper as I type this, are supposed to become janitors, bartenders, and hairdressers? And just suck up the ensuing pay cut in spite of the massive debt most of us (unwisely) incurred back in the day when a computer geek of almost any flavor could practically name his or her own salary? That's assuming a white-collar person could even get hired for such a job... discrimination on the basis of over-qualification is still extremely common.

Yeah, it WAS unwise to take on so much debt, and to strap ourselves in to such high living expenses, but who knew the corporate bastards would find a way to screw the entire industry? After all, THEY'RE the ones who, just a few short years ago, were pouting seductively and blowing kisses and waving enormous paychecks at techies in order to entice them away from the lucrative jobs they already had. Hell, when I worked as a receptionist at a fiberoptics company a few years ago, I was strictly forbidden to give out the names of any of our engineers or IT staff to unknown callers, lest we unwittingly aid predatory recruiters intent on wooing our tech talent away. And now the very same corporations that jacked tech salaries sky high in an attempt to outbid their competitors for the best talent are now blaming the situation on the greed and lack of loyalty among tech workers, while the corporations themselves further hobble our country's shaky economy by taking jobs offshore where programmers are willing to work for a pittance. Nice.

I know I should stay off the news sites, because I really don't need to be made any more depressed and anxious than I already am. I just keep hoping somebody somewhere can put a brighter face on all this, can put forward a convincing argument that things are not as bad as they seem and that this will all be turning around any day now; or at least recommend a smart strategy we can all adopt that will carry us through the worst of the downturn until we emerge safe and sound in the upward swing on the other side.

But all I'm finding is much agreement that things really do suck right now, and impressive theories on WHY they suck, and glum predictions on the various ways they are likely to keep right on sucking for the foreseeable future; and there are no coping strategies being put forth except to tighten the financial belt to whatever extent possible, and hope like hell your job isn't the next one being booked on a fast boat to India.

So that's MY cheery frame of mind lately. Other than that...

My home computer is acting stupid and I'm hoping we haven't caught some kind of virus. My "paste" function seems to have disappeared, and for some reason I can't open certain links on IE. Weird. And annoying as shit.

The Prince has been working really long hours... he's tired and I'm lonely and worst of all, we won't even have any overtime pay to show for it. Not that it's legal for his company to do that, but who is going to raise a stink about it in this crappy job market? Not us.

The weight thing is going ok, I guess. Supposedly I lost 3.5 pounds last week, making for a total of 18.5 lost since last summer when I gained about 20. Supposedly I'm just about back at my pre-depression weight... so how come the clothes I was wearing comfortably back then are still unwearably tight? I'm hoping maybe I'll drop a few more after my period is over.

Which brings me to another thing I'm irritated about... why do I always start my period right before we travel? I HATE being on the rag when I'm on the road, and I especially hate it when we have to stay in someone else's house. It's so much easier to deal with the disgusting mess in the privacy of my own bathroom, where I don't have to worry about staining someone else's good guest towels or making mountains of stinky trash in their wastebasket. But no, I have to start flowing like the Amazon the day before we leave, so I can leave a bloody trail from Illinois to Ohio. Not my idea of fun.

Hopefully I'll be in a better mood when I get back on Tuesday... or at least have some good white-trash family stories with which to write a more entertaining entry than this one.








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Last Five
Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27





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