September 2023 Monthly Entry
After my vacation last month, the sunny weather around the Lowe Mainland from the tail end of August and into September has been pretty warm. For about a couple weeks though, the nights have become colder, ranging from 9-13C so a pretty sharp drop compared to the day. From the look at the forecast, the rain will be coming in soon. I'll miss the good summer weather we had this year and I'm looking forward to the first half of autumn when it isn't raining.
I returned to work from my time off for August 31 and September 1. For that Thursday morning, I was sent to Montecito. I came in and found some of my things missing and all over the place that I had to spend some time getting my run back together. It seems that my trip to Denver didn't leave things on a good note as I got one major shock: I found that my idiot co-workers that were under my leadership in early July did NOT finish waxing my upstairs classroom floors at all! They knew to do it as I waxed two out of four classrooms with two coats each while a third room got only one coat as I didn't have any time left to put the final coat (as I was going to Denver the following day.) Also, the fourth room was not waxed at all! I know they had to scrub the kindergarten portable as a priority, but it doesn't take an entire day and putting a coat of wax doesn't take long either. I may have to wait until spring break to give that bare-floor classroom a single coat of wax if I'm able to re-scrub the floor in limited time. One of the rooms in which I put two coats of wax, I find that the stupid teacher dragged her desks against the floor, scratching the wax finish! You can kind of see the whitish marks in the picture above. Fuck! For the rest of that Thursday, I moved some furniture downstairs and did some quick cleaning. I was told that from Monday to Wednesday there was a casual who came in to mainly wash the carpets and rugs since none of that could be done when we were scrubbing in July. That's fine I guess. For Friday, I was at Rosser. I did a little bit of furniture moving but my main job was adjusting the height on desks. One new teacher wanted me to do almost all her tables, but I only had time to do at least half of them, specifically ones that had bolts with square recess heads but I left the ones that need the use of an allen key for the first day of school, hoping David, my sub-foreman, would do them. One minor thing in my run at Rosser is that the music room has returned to its original classroom - since September 2018 I've been dealing with it on the upper gym stage for the last five years. This makes my run at Rosser a little easier though this may not change much for David. It does mean that the stage won't be used as much and I no longer have to vacuum any rugs on it when needed. It is currently bare and I hope it stays that way for a long time. As for changes at Montecito, there a small handful and it will make my run harder. While the kindergarten portable, music room, computer lab, upstairs washrooms, and two classrooms haven't changed, others have in major or minor ways. The grade 6/7 classroom I do early has gotten easier as students' individual desks were taken out and replaced with the trapezoid tables, making sweeping easier and tables faster to wipe. The messiness has remained the same though. Four classrooms have changed their rug positions, making it a little harder to get my cannister vacuum to plug in and do the vacuuming compared to how closer and convenient they were before. Because the rugs were moved, the unwaxed sections underneath are now exposed, making for an inconsistent look on the floors. One classroom with a new teacher has put his rug in the middle of the room, another (the teacher who dragged her desks and scratched the finish) put it on the opposite of her room and away from another small rug that kids relax and read books on (last school year, I used to vacuum them both together each night.) The Head Teacher's classroom has put her trapezoid desks individually, which I don't think I've dealt with for about a couple of years. This slows my wiping them down a bit, and she also now no longer has her students stack their chairs at the end of the day up against the wall - they are now stacked in twos at their desks. Grrr. Downstairs in the final part of my nightly run, room #3 has more tables and now takes longer to clean while room #7 -usually the final room I clean each night- has reverted back to a classroom (after two or three years) and has become more difficult to clean! Some of the furniture from room #7 has moved into #3 as I guess it has become the room for EAs to work in. Early last week, Jay, the new Principal, and I went down to the dungeon and brought up a rug for room #7 together. I was surprised on how strong the Principal was! Unrolling it, we remembered the big stains left on that carpet from two or three years ago. It'll have to be shampooed someday. But the return of a rug in room #7 plus two other smaller ones from the new teacher makes that classroom a lot longer to clean now. Last year, I only had to vacuum the music room's rug within the final hour of my run, but now, I have more to vacuum. Total bullshit. One thing I did back upstairs was take out three extra garbage containers in the classroom. Given they were added because of the pandemic, I felt they weren't needed anymore. Two classrooms seemed to be okay with it, but one wouldn't have of it and she took one of the hallway garbage cans and puts it where I took hers! WTF? I put it back outside and the next day, she takes it again! Passive-aggressive bitch. I gave up and replaced it with one of the containers I took out before. The first couple weeks of September were relatively easy, but last week I noticed some normality in my run as things were getting messier and I struggled a bit. I'm sure by October, I'll know just how normal my entire run will be and how I'll continue to struggle for the rest of the school year, thanks to these teachers!
In Parts 2 and 3 of my trip last month, I mentioned that I was looking around for my favourite snack: Snyder's Sourdough Hard Pretzels. We looked all over Wisconsin and couldn't find them. Last week, my mom found them at a Fred Meyer in Washington State. It turns out that they changed the packaging from box to bag! The problem with this is that it looks very similar to some of their other products that it can easily blend in if you don't look carefully. It begs the question of my overlooking this in WI as I didn't know. Well, I thanked mom for picking up a couple of bags for me anyways. I've been eating these pretzels off and on for over 25 years.
After only a few days after seeing him while in Round Rock last month, Daddy Eric texted me that his friend and our host Larry, had died suddenly. I believe he was 51 or 52 years old. His roommates must have found him unresponsive and called the ambulance. We don't know the cause of death (heart attack?) and foul play was ruled out. He has since been cremated though I haven't seen any obituary appear online, hoping to know a little more about him. The only things I know is that he was a former US Marine and was in the leather community for years. For the short time we got to know each other and parting from him in Taylor, it was a shock that someone can be taken from you so quickly and out of nowhere. If I know anything more, I'll add it here. All I can say is: Thank You, Larry. You're hospitality for Daddy Eric and I was most welcome. For the little time we got to know each other, I regret that we'll not get to know each other more. You were a nice, kind-hearted bear!
A quick note on my current health: my recent blood test has my A1 at 7.8 but my last test in March was (I think) 6.8. I was happy to find out that the medication I've been taking and change in my diet had got my blood sugars in the normal range compared to my diagnosis last year in the summer in which my A1 was at 12. Likely because of my travels last month, my sugars went back up a bit. My doctor in Walnut Grove found that I re-gained my weight and she wants me to go on weekly Ozempic injections to try and shed off some pounds. It'll have to wait until I hear back from the BC government if I qualify for the MSP Fair Pharmacare program, given the costs associated with this fourth medication I'll be taking! We'll see how this goes this fall season.
On last month's trip, I watched about five films. Here are some quick thoughts on them.
On my flight to Austin last month, I watched 2002's musical Chicago. I haven't seen it in years, and was an enjoyable watch. Despite winning the Best Picture Oscar in 2003, you never hear about it these days. I remember it being talked about in 2003 and some drag queens performed a couple of songs that year. But the hype died down and I don't think anyone much bothers with the film. I still think it's a fun musical, and would encourage any of you to re-watch it if you haven't seen it in a long time.
From Dallas to Madison, I watched the 2008 Disney/Pixar film WALL-E. I've never really seen this film before and I don't know why. I heard it was good and after my first viewing, thought it was well written and somewhat original. I'm probably not a fan of its themes of corporate greed, consumerism, our neglect of the environment and to a lesser degree, sloth - though I find Captain McCrea to be a sexy chub! On the one hand, I find that in a film aimed mostly at children, they portray these themes too simplistically. We wrestle with these issues today because there is no good answer to satisfy everyone. On the other hand, humanity kind of redeems itself in wanting to return to Earth and returning it healthy and livable as before. I do like the film's art direction and characters, giving it a lot of heart. Maybe I'll pick up a copy on Blu-Ray someday.
I mentioned that I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete a second time this summer as I purchased a copy of the 4K Blu-Ray for my leather family on Ebay. No need to re- review it and my leather family enjoyed the film.
A movie that I've been wondering about why it had a cult following for years, my leather family showed me Disney's Hocus Pocus on Blu-Ray. I thought it was... okay. While I'll admit that the Sanderson sisters are entertaining, campy, and just good casting, I find the younger Dennison protagonists as "meh". Michael & Donovan lived about a couple of blocks away from the Dennison house back in the 1990s and were able to point out the various locales used in the film. I may watch the sequel, we'll see.
The flight from Dallas to Fresno I watched 1942's Casablanca, which I've haven't seen in over 11 years. Still a great romance film and enjoyed the good writing plus Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman's acting. A tip of the hat to the handsome Sydney Greenstreet even though there were few scenes with him. I later found out that he and Bogart were in The Maltese Falcon a year earlier. Someday I'll check that film out.
My brother-in-law passed me his copy of 2006's The Darwin Awards on DVD. I've heard of the Darwin Awards group and website, which have been around for a long time. Basically it's about individuals who get killed or sterilized in fantastical and/or stupid ways as to do humanity a favour and remove themselves from the gene pool. This film plays on that and could have been a great idea, but I find the execution wasn't very good and I hardly laughed at it. There are cameos of Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters in the film, plus Metallica was included. Honestly, this film is mostly a pass and will have to tell my brother-in-law I didn't think it was that great of a comedy.
I've begun Suikoden II and should get it done hopefully before the end of the month or early next month. I don't think I'll get Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Ages done until around November as I want to play one or two horror games for the Halloween season. I'm afraid the current Star Trek shows on CraveTV have been taken off since the end of July as Paramount+ is now hosting them on their streaming service. So watching the final season of Picard, second season of Lower Decks, and beginning Strange New Worlds will be on hiatus for a long while. I'm still working on Sailor Moon on CraveTV and until I complete that and sometime watch Deadwood, I'm going to hold off on getting a Paramount+ subscription. I'll still be working on Star Trek: TOS on Netflix though.
Last Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (Theatrical), The Darwin Awards (DVD)
Last Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - The Screwtape Letters
Last Game: The Last Story (Wii)
Current Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - Miracles
Current Games: Suikoden II (PSN - PSone) & The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons & Oracle of Ages (3DS Virtual Console - GBC)