Catching up...

Wow, it's been over a month since my last entry. Might as well catch up on a few things. Work isn't too bad so far. I think I'm getting a lot better at everything, so I'm a little more confident about being able to keep my job once I'm out of mentoring, which is in a week or two. No one's talked to me about anything in particular that I need to work on, so I'm taking that as a good sign. One thing I really hate is that the two-facedness of this job is much worse than my previous one. It's not real wide spread, which is good; but the people that are two-faced are really horrible. It's literally like one minute your having a friendly conversation with them about something you have in common, and the next they're over at the supervisors desk talking about how "John can't do this" or "John's not staying on task" or some other bullshit, when they fuck around much more than I do.

I'm definitely liking the pay though, which makes everything else completely worth putting up with. I'm able to save about $800 a month towards my car, which should keep me on track for early to mid-August to save up ~$5000. The month of June is going to take a huge chunk out though. I have at least four birthdays, plus Father's Day, so I'll probably end up spending ~$350 or more for all of that. Something else that got me really excited is that apparently I have 3 weeks of PTO to use up before the end of the year. For some reason I thought I only had a week, and what's even better, is I can use it all at one time (if approved). I'm really planning on going to Washington around Thanksgiving, my brother's birthday (Dec 5th) or Christmas, for three weeks. I love surprising my parents, so although they know I plan on coming up around that time, they think it's only for a week, so I'm going to keep the three weeks part from them until the last minute.

I went out to lunch with Stacy the Friday before Mother's Day, and got to see her new daughter for the first time. Had a good time. We went to Applebee's, and talked for two hours or so, which was really cool. Was also able to hang out with Stefanie a couple times in the past few weeks. She got a new 2004 Cavalier and was all excited about it. It's a much nicer car than she's ever had before, and she got a pretty decent deal as well. The dealer actually took her old Grand Am at Blue Book value, which was pretty crazy.

My best friend Mike and his girlfriend are going through some pretty rough times. Probably the worst since they got together ~3 years ago. Tiffany's parents aren't real fond of Mike because he's not religious, and they claim that Tiffany's "mixing the yolk" by being with him. They're such fucking hypocrites. Their family didn't even go to church until right before Mike and Tiffany got together. This is a huge reason why I don't believe in Christianity, even though I was brought up in it. 90+% of the people don't practice what they preach in the slightest. I'm not talking about the people that lie on occasion. I'm talking about the people that make conscious decisions to push someone away simply because they don't believe in their religion, rather than using it as an opportunity to reach out to them. To top things off, she blames herself for me and Mike not hanging out as much as we did before they got together. To be honest, I used to think the same thing, but not so much anymore. Me and Mike used to hang out a lot because we worked in the same department at the same store, and many times, on the same shift, so we could work out our schedules much easier. Now we work different jobs, with much different schedules, and it just doesn't work out as well. She also feels like the 3rd wheel when all three of us are hanging out together. I think this is mainly because she can get irritated at Mike fairly easily (and often, with good reason) and when she gets mad, Mike tends to ignore her, and thus, the feeling of being the 3rd wheel. We didn't hang out last weekend, so hopefully they've worked some things out.

Dennis isn't doing well with his wife either. Although they're still together, he recently talked about divorce again, and about how he can't forget some of the shit she said when they were going to get one last year, and that he can't see things ever being the same. I try to tell him to have patience, as it hasn't even been a year since that all happened, and it's obvious he's not going to snap right back to where things were a couple years back, but I don't think he's really listening. Fact is, he and his wife got married for the wrong reasons (their first kid) and way too young (19). He claims he loves her, but fact is, if it weren't for the kids, he'd have divorced her long ago (had they have gotten married even without her getting pregnant first). He said before his wife had their first kid, he had never planned on getting married, ever. Of course in my opinion that kind of mindset can easily be changed if he met the right person. I'm not even sure if he's ever actually been in love. He was extremely upset when his wife first wanted to get a divorce, but I think that was more over the thought of losing his kids than the thought of losing her. It's too bad. His wife's really cool, and when they're getting along, it actually seems like they might love each other, and that things never went wrong in the first place. Unfortunately that doesn't happen as often as it should. I have a bad feeling things aren't going to last another year.