You know it’s an ominimous start. My employer is partially a union shop. Given the unionized population dwarfs the nonunion, what they say goes for everybody. Something about that doesn’t seem right. My current health care provider is dropping said employer because of lack of volume. Employer responded by finding a decent solution and pitched it on Monday to the masses. Those types of presentations aren’t exciting, but it did the job. The union workers just voted and just picked something else, for no foreseeable reason, because of a few intimidated everybody else. So, I lost healthcare for the second time this week and have to scramble yet again, this time without the virtue of any materials or prep or any foresight. That’s great. Please note the dripping sarcasm from that last sentence. Largely just an unnecessary pain in the ass, but the union's need for pettiness might cost us a sponsor as well.

Knew the day was going to be an odd one. Had to run a meeting of volunteers who are so apathetic, they barely represent at the meeting, hence the donuts of the title.

We’re having an opening tonight, so we get the treat of staying at work another three hours. This is usually a grim prospect, but it was made a little better hearing my boss order extra beer.

I have a good boss.

I'm wondering if I'll need to start paying royalties to Tina Fey as that came up inadvertingly in two distinctly different conversations.

Came up during a sponsorship discussion at work when a potential vendor wanted too much for too little money. Stifling a smirk after realizing what I said and that I watch too much tv, I got our money.

Came up again last night. I'm trying to move a stubborn force (my older sister) into action. She is clinging to the 11th hour for just "the" miracle in terms of subletting her place and catching up on expenses and whatnot in Buffalo for the summer. She has a rent controlled two bed room spot in Chelsea and found great tenants. Her original mover bailed so she's spending way too much kvetching about another, trying out ideas as wacky as U-Haul's and bringing all her worldly goods to Buffalo only to ship them all back again in September. She was curious about this one moving firm in Chinatown, but has a guy who is willing to do the job already. I'm trying to get quit worrying about the Cantonese moving crew and just a committment made. My Dad is going to fly down there at the end of next week to drive a minivan back with actual valuables. My younger sister has people organized there so he is sidewalk supervising and not dragging his recently pronounced healthy (yet 72 year old self) up and down stairs. Not used to being this voice of reason crap. I've grown up accustomed to having to struggle to be heard.

So, trying to keep her off her ass has been a fulltime chore. It's easy to wallow. Anybody can do that, but the folks can't do everything for her. I can only imagine how it is messing with my folks, so my younger sister and I took on the roles of pushing her along as there will be plenty of time to feel sorry later.

Can't let that be a dealbreaker. Stuff is happening.

A couple of America's dumbest criminals broke into my former house on Anderson this morning. Aside from the icky feeling you get from somebody touching your stuff, I'm not sure what to make of it. I left work as soon as my ex called, to straighten, clean, batten down the hatches and prop the kids up. Number one son got cleaned out of Game Cube games, but we haven't been able to find out what else might be missing. Both of my daughters have I-Home stereos that went untouched. These geniuses ran room to room in search of well, I'm not sure what, bypassing computers, tvs, and the like.

I'm grateful everybody is safe, that nobody was home that may have had to deal with intruders of whatever variety. For my part, aside from watching my poor son's face melt when we told him about it, I along with an uncle and brother and law worked until about 9:30 tonight replacing the broken window that let them into the basement and battening down the other first floor windows so nobody can enter without a helluva lot of effort.

Building deterrants.

When my former spouse was returning from a pizza run, she saw two chuckleheads sauntering up a neighbors driveway and stopped them. A call to the gendarmes followed. A police detective showed up shortly thereafter. Given that he was followed by a uniformed gentleman in short order makes me think that this stuff is not exactly news in the neighborhood.

But again, I'm glad my merry band is safe and has pretty much everything they started the day with. So, watch out for anybody cruising through the hood folks.

They might be fixing to pull a heist.

Oy!

Because I'm a good sort, I've been springing for the internet and cable at the house formerly known as mine. Makes me feel like I'm doing something for my fellow co-residents, part of the we are one big happy circle thing. Signed up for paperless billing. You'd think a big telecommunications conglomerate would be able to send an email. You'd think that wouldn't be an issue. You'd think that failing that, they could get something in the actual mail in a timely manner, you'd think they would find a way to get in touch with you. If only, there was some kind of telephonic device that I could carry with me, that would permit us to talk...whenever they friggen need to. You'd think being the shameless capitalistic pigs that they are, they would want to talk to make sure the flow of funds kept a rolling.

Oh no, gentle reader, you'd be incorrect. Without word one to anybody, the darling system at the communications giant deprovisioned my former spouse's modem. I arrive at my abode and discover a you will be disconnected on May 10th letter. Its arrival on the 11th makes it art. In their "defense,' they wrote it on the 5th, apparently sitting on it for gestational sake for a few days.

Foolish mortals, with a wave of the credit card, my mighty trio and their lovely mom were able to connect back with the latest "What kind of comic book villiain are you" poll that might have appeared in their 9 hour absence from cyber space.

Which I guess is the latter day equivalent of "making it all better."

It's not often you get a round of cheers from two blocks away.

Rounded up the youngins and we broke bread at Amy's place last night. It was the first time I had been there in ages and omigod it was so worth it. I don't what kept me away for so long, but I won't make that mistake again. I had a business lunch on Friday that left my digestive tract in a state and thanks to Amy's Place, my insides are speaking to me once more. Chicken Kabob breakfast nearly put me in a state of afterglow.

My lovely middle child wants to see Star Trek bad enough, that she is even willing to come to the Imax expedition on Saturday and be seen in-wait for it-in my company. So, I snagged another ticket at Fandango's stupidly marked up prices.

So, I can't be doing all that badly.

Should I be a little concerned that a tv show hostess went through a lot of time and effort to make really sure that I got an autographed picture? Probably reading too much into that. It just seemed like an unusual gesture, but again, I'm thinking too hard.

Hey (e:paul) , if there are 100 estrip bumper stickers left over, I can utilize them for some grassroots promotion if you like. My office is having a small intimate gathering of 2400 people at the Zoo in July. 100 of those will be VIPs who get goodie bags along with their larger admission fee. We can put the stickers in if you are interested in promotion.

Not sure why this fascinates me so, but it does

The caller-id on tv from Time Warner can be a mixed blessing. I do most of my calling with my cell phone, but when the TW phone rang and displayed my older sister's number on Tuesday night, I couldn't help but cringe. Love her dearly, but she makes me nuts. It's a call I knew I had to deal with but I wasn't looking forward to it.

She is in epic streak of bad luck. She is in the graphic arts/printing industry in Manhattan. Her firm got sold and the new owners started running the business into the ground by bouncing her in late 07. The industry is both changing and rapidly deserting NYC. She hooked on with another firm for a while and booted around this time last year. Since she is by herself, that wasn't an immediate source of panic. This was before the economy took its current swan dive.

Unemployment and 401K draws later, so drastic steps have to be taken. She was busy holding out for the miracle offer and associating way too much with coming back to our parents house. It's for a few months and a chance to attack the job problem from another angle and a little more support, not to mention some relief from the pressure of looking for work around NYC while living in New York.

She had herself wrapped up that coming home meant the end, that she envisioned returning to Buffalo to take care of an ailing parent (which we don't have) or our disabled brother. He has a job and his own place. Somebody had to be an asshole and tell her to prioritize, that those past couple of sentences don't exist as issues, that our younger sister lives in Harlem and has all kinds of experiences in subletting, so she keeps the place, she had their place to stay for interviews as the economy improves and yields more chances. She just needs to accept the offers.

So, a little respect as I took one for the team. She got rolling today and enable my dad and younger sis to get the ball rolling with local storage of her stuff in NYC, getting going with a sublet, prioritizing what to bring to Buffalo for the summer, and more.

I'm still tired from the one man intervention, but if you need a short term sublet -- I know a 2 bed room in Chelsea that could be had for the summer for a comparitive steal.

Sometimes it pays to be the jerk.

I LOVE MY JOB

Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 FM in Ft. Wayne , Indiana , who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.

Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it’s not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature.. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I’ve used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water.. It’s like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch.

So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. With in a few seconds my butt started to burn. Â I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don’t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn’t stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn’t poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.

So, next time you’re having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.

Now repeat to yourself, ‘I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.’ Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day?

I get the feeling the Bisons just don't care. It used to be that you didn't have to be a baseball fan to enjoy a game at SodaBeverage Field. They used to sell the place out. I went to a game last year with my Dad and we couldn't help but wonder what happened. Limited open gates, desolate corridors, oh, where have you gone Mike Billoni? It just seemed fairly lifeless.

The Bisons changed major league affiliations over the winter and I thought that might inject a little more life. They are hooked up with the Mets and you'd thinking the prospect of sucking in HD on SNY might liven the place up a bit. Nope. As part of my reward for being a marketing judge at UB's departmental presentation, I was given a ticket to tonight's game by one of their teachers, a good guy who helps the Zoo out from time to time. Access to beer and burgers, I'm a happy guy, especially when the students are to scared to touch food that is still covered. Risking the wratch of the concessions workers and generally not giving a damn in the first place, I got things going at the grill.

Properly satiated, I settled in to watch a little ball and there is nothing so desolate as a sparse ballpark. I've always been intrigued with baseball architecture a little bit (as I am quite the dork) and the game wasted my interest, so this is what happened. I set off looking for dessert and found the following along the way. Enjoy