31 in Summer 2017

Phone interview this afternoon. We’ll see how it goes. The position looks eerily-similar to the one I took in the summer of 2007. If I could get back to that money with those benefits, I’d be very happy.

One of the podcasts I listen to talks a lot about how people haven’t had a raise since 2005. Yeah? I resemble that in light of my descent since January 2013.

There’s very little I have to show for the past ten years of work, certainly for the last five.

On top of it, I’ve lost so much due to my condition.

Others would be angrier about it, but I really don’t have the energy to dwell on things.

Today’s prompt seems oddly appropriate.

What was the most precious thing you ever gave up willingly?

In the exit from The Botetourt, I gave away a bunch of my dated IT stuff. Two Macs. A Cisco switch, which was one of the few things I gook from the dissolution of a small business where I was once a partner. A NeXTstation with a barely-working monitor, and 40GB SCSI drive that made weird noises.

At first, I wasn’t planning on giving that away to an acquaintance who took the Macs and switch. As I thought about it, however, I realized that I hadn’t done anything with it in probably three years, and he’d get some use out of it.

Before the mass clean-out of my near decade-long residence, I let my Mustang go for a song. (I think the KBB value on it was something like $10K; I sold for $6600.) It wasn’t like I could drive it, anymore, anyway. The money from it helped sustain us through the second layoff in a year.

In the summer of 2012, atop the Berkley Bridge in Norfolk, a pickup truck dropped its spare tire in the lane ahead of me. Traffic was heavy at rush hour, so there was no way I could avoid hitting it. I popped the radiator, which left me without transpiration. The company I was working for at the time had started letting me work from home part-time. Without a car, they let me work remotely a lot more.

After I got it out of the repair shop, it sat parked until between Christmas and New Year’s. I tried to drive it during that week, and was scared to death. I couldn’t read the speedometer, and was trying to stay near the speed limit by selecting the right gear.

I know the speed limit here is 30, so third gear. Even if I couldn’t read the speedometer, I could tell how fast I was going.

But the other issue with my vision raised its ugly head. I couldn’t make out red stop lights against green trees.

The sailor who bought it had recently wrapped his around a guardrail, and was looking for something similar. I hope it’s served him well.

With that, that’s the end of the July bit. 21 entries forthcoming for August.