Friday, June 26, 2015
Thursday, June 25, 2015
I am of the world just not in it.
I just spoke with my sister a couple days ago and brought up a subject that I don't think any of my family knows: I probably have 2 children out there (since this was in the early 70s, there are probably grandchildren). I am not much on self-examination; in fact, I used to reverse the quote to "an examined life is not worth living". This will be brought up later as an explanation so keep it in mind while I appear to digress.
I got out of the Marine Corps in December 1969 (I will leave that story for another time). I moved to Seattle in 1972. Somehow, between 69 and 72, I managed to cram about 8 years worth of living. I have very strong, very definite memories of what I did during those years but I cannot order them. I went back to college for a year buy getting a $100 loan from my dad on my Winchester Centennial model .30-30 (worked an entire summer putting money down $20 at a time until I owned - it is a beauty! I got the carbine model because the octagonal barrel made the rifle too 'barrel-heavy'; the carbine is perfectly balanced and a joy to hold and to shoot. There are tricks I can do with the lever-action like balance it parallel to the ground and lever in a round without upsetting the balance or holding the lever-action level and rocking the rifle forward and back (these are tricks I learned from the t.v. show "Rifleman")) So, anyway, that must have been winter and spring quarter at EMC I can't for the life of me remember where I lived for those 6 months. Damn, too much detail - try again.
I went to college, I worked at a glass factory assembling windows (damn, another good story there for later), I went to business school, I shared an apartment with Wendell 'Wendy' Powell (my first black friend) and another guy whose name is gone forever, was a bartender at a place called Jekyll & Hyde's (because it was a steakhouse during the day and a rock club at night), I worked as an artist's model at the college, became a clothes-horse with hundreds of dollars worth of clothing (I lost weight - I think I weighed about 150 pounds at 5'8"), started doing acid (well, actually I did my first acid in the USMC) smoking pot (in 1967, I was the first person on campus to have their dorm room raided for pot - they didn't find any because they did not check my pockets, pot was a hard-time felony at the time - I think 10 to 20 years in the State Pen. this could be another good story for later), did some speed, lived in a shooting-gallery (a place where junkies went to inject drugs)with about 9 other people, got an entire wedding party high on acid and we ended up on my water-bed playing a game we invented called 'submarine' where everyone jumped up and down on the bed until only one person was left standing (the groom was someone from Plentywood who graduated about a year or 2 after I did the bride was a mutual friend who I met while at the business school - he died a short time later when a truck he was working on fell of the jack and crushed him), I went to Kalispell where I learned to be a lumberjack training on a chainsaw with a 36 inch bar (most people put the chainsaw on the ground and pull-start it - I would hold on to the starter rope at chest level and drop the saw so it would start itself -- keep in mind that chain revved up as it started so part of trick was to turn as the saw dropped so that it would not cut my legs off (this may not have been one of my smarter tricks)).
Okay, before I went to Kalispell, I met a woman, we hit it off, and we lost our virginity together. We screwed a lot, danced a lot - I worked graveyard shift so we had 'interesting' time together but I think we both started to bored with the way things were so this is when I took off for Kalispell; I told her I was leaving the night before I left. We went up (long story, a guy I knew from college and guy I knew from business school went up there together) got into this training program for loggers - gawd, just imagine testosterone-fuled 21 year olds turned lose in the woods with these huge chain saws - I was all grace and style I danced through the trees and once they were down, trimming them was poetry (we were pretty damned cocky, eh?). I first learned the undercut then back-cut method but that wasted wood; my instructor taught me to know the tree. All trees want to fall south (the most sunshine produces the most branches hence it was heaviest on the south side - once you know that then you look at the tree for things that work against the tree falling south (is south uphill? is it tangled with other trees,etc,etc). Once you determined where it wants to fall, you decide where you want it to fall so you start back cutting it until you hear the tree beginning to creep,snap and tremble - now that the tree is leaning where it wants to you start cutting on the opposite side of where you want it to land. As this huge tree is beginning to fall, you watch the top of the tree start to describe a circle. Once you get tree aimed in the direction you want. So winter weather moved in so we headed back into the south, back to Billings; it was a long snow
drive pulling a trailer but we got back. We'd drive up to Rimrocks with wrist-rockets and cherry bombs; The surgical tubing slings could fire bomb out over the heart of the city.
So I called the woman and chatted with her some (you know - thinking of hooking up again) She got enough information out of me for her an her 'friend' Rocky tracked me down to where I worked. They said a bunch of stuff about I had better meet them after work or the whole mc gang would hunt me down. Long story short, I fought them to a standstill - they could not touch me (karate and USMC training) and I beat the crap out of one of them. The point of this story is that part of Rocky's complaint with me was that her parents gave him the stink-eye for knocking up their daughter but the kid was mine not his. So, as you can imagine, I do not know much about this child other than she was pregnant and it would be doubtful that this child or this child's child would look me up.
maybe more later
I got out of the Marine Corps in December 1969 (I will leave that story for another time). I moved to Seattle in 1972. Somehow, between 69 and 72, I managed to cram about 8 years worth of living. I have very strong, very definite memories of what I did during those years but I cannot order them. I went back to college for a year buy getting a $100 loan from my dad on my Winchester Centennial model .30-30 (worked an entire summer putting money down $20 at a time until I owned - it is a beauty! I got the carbine model because the octagonal barrel made the rifle too 'barrel-heavy'; the carbine is perfectly balanced and a joy to hold and to shoot. There are tricks I can do with the lever-action like balance it parallel to the ground and lever in a round without upsetting the balance or holding the lever-action level and rocking the rifle forward and back (these are tricks I learned from the t.v. show "Rifleman")) So, anyway, that must have been winter and spring quarter at EMC I can't for the life of me remember where I lived for those 6 months. Damn, too much detail - try again.
I went to college, I worked at a glass factory assembling windows (damn, another good story there for later), I went to business school, I shared an apartment with Wendell 'Wendy' Powell (my first black friend) and another guy whose name is gone forever, was a bartender at a place called Jekyll & Hyde's (because it was a steakhouse during the day and a rock club at night), I worked as an artist's model at the college, became a clothes-horse with hundreds of dollars worth of clothing (I lost weight - I think I weighed about 150 pounds at 5'8"), started doing acid (well, actually I did my first acid in the USMC) smoking pot (in 1967, I was the first person on campus to have their dorm room raided for pot - they didn't find any because they did not check my pockets, pot was a hard-time felony at the time - I think 10 to 20 years in the State Pen. this could be another good story for later), did some speed, lived in a shooting-gallery (a place where junkies went to inject drugs)with about 9 other people, got an entire wedding party high on acid and we ended up on my water-bed playing a game we invented called 'submarine' where everyone jumped up and down on the bed until only one person was left standing (the groom was someone from Plentywood who graduated about a year or 2 after I did the bride was a mutual friend who I met while at the business school - he died a short time later when a truck he was working on fell of the jack and crushed him), I went to Kalispell where I learned to be a lumberjack training on a chainsaw with a 36 inch bar (most people put the chainsaw on the ground and pull-start it - I would hold on to the starter rope at chest level and drop the saw so it would start itself -- keep in mind that chain revved up as it started so part of trick was to turn as the saw dropped so that it would not cut my legs off (this may not have been one of my smarter tricks)).
Okay, before I went to Kalispell, I met a woman, we hit it off, and we lost our virginity together. We screwed a lot, danced a lot - I worked graveyard shift so we had 'interesting' time together but I think we both started to bored with the way things were so this is when I took off for Kalispell; I told her I was leaving the night before I left. We went up (long story, a guy I knew from college and guy I knew from business school went up there together) got into this training program for loggers - gawd, just imagine testosterone-fuled 21 year olds turned lose in the woods with these huge chain saws - I was all grace and style I danced through the trees and once they were down, trimming them was poetry (we were pretty damned cocky, eh?). I first learned the undercut then back-cut method but that wasted wood; my instructor taught me to know the tree. All trees want to fall south (the most sunshine produces the most branches hence it was heaviest on the south side - once you know that then you look at the tree for things that work against the tree falling south (is south uphill? is it tangled with other trees,etc,etc). Once you determined where it wants to fall, you decide where you want it to fall so you start back cutting it until you hear the tree beginning to creep,snap and tremble - now that the tree is leaning where it wants to you start cutting on the opposite side of where you want it to land. As this huge tree is beginning to fall, you watch the top of the tree start to describe a circle. Once you get tree aimed in the direction you want. So winter weather moved in so we headed back into the south, back to Billings; it was a long snow
drive pulling a trailer but we got back. We'd drive up to Rimrocks with wrist-rockets and cherry bombs; The surgical tubing slings could fire bomb out over the heart of the city.
So I called the woman and chatted with her some (you know - thinking of hooking up again) She got enough information out of me for her an her 'friend' Rocky tracked me down to where I worked. They said a bunch of stuff about I had better meet them after work or the whole mc gang would hunt me down. Long story short, I fought them to a standstill - they could not touch me (karate and USMC training) and I beat the crap out of one of them. The point of this story is that part of Rocky's complaint with me was that her parents gave him the stink-eye for knocking up their daughter but the kid was mine not his. So, as you can imagine, I do not know much about this child other than she was pregnant and it would be doubtful that this child or this child's child would look me up.
maybe more later
Sunday, December 16, 2012
The Giant Rat of Sumatra Coffee Co-op
I know I was going to stop naming my posts but this one just had to start somewhere. In the late 1970s I was convinced to start a coffee co-op for Starbucks coffee. It ran from 1978 to 1983. I bring this up because I am just a little nostalgic for the time when I was still an air-headed himbo; since the ex-Mrs.Grumpy left, the house was kind of stark - then she took V.I. (our kitty) and now the house is empty and kind of echo-y. No one stayed in my life longer than a year or two and when they left, I forgot them - adult attention deficit disorder can wreak havoc with friendships. When I ran the co-op people called me, wanted to get together, invited me to visit - all those social things. When people don't touch me, I forget them; you would not believe the number of partners who went away because I forgot them. I would take off to Montana for a couple weeks and when I came back, I would have forgotten them or I could not think of a reason to call, or it had been so long that I was too embarrassed to call.
Letting(?) her take the kitty without a fight seemed best for Kitty; cats are very conservative and do not like to do things for the first time. Once they have done something, then it is probably okay and they will do it again; so I did not want to let the ex take the cat until I could find a place to live that accepted cats then try and get Kitty to adjust to another new situation (I drove the ex to her home the other night and Kitty already forgot who I am and ran and hid in a box). VeeVee was a rescue kitty that we found in a PAWS cat outlet; she was almost completely shutdown, she did not even respond when we picked her up; she had been un-adopted for about 6 months from what they told us. Then things got weird for her when the ex told me she was leaving; got worse when she was gone. I just found where she was pooping; I was suspicious that in cleaning the litter box, it was all urine and only a little poop. I guess I should have looked more, she found a nice spot on a rug in a nice deep hidey-hole. It is petrified so god know how long it was there (Kitty has been gone for a week or 2 now so there may be more surprises in store for me). Kitty seemed to pee and poop in odd places at odd times. Sometimes she even peed behind the TV while we were watching. I think the ex had been building up to leaving and the cat picked up on the bad vibes - I didn't pick up on it, or actually I think I just glossed over all the signs that the ex was ready to leave.
I am listening to some Pink Floyd right now and that takes me back to my blissful himbo-hood. I saw my first concert in 1969 in San Diego CA; I was in the Marine Corps. Well, actually I was on my way out of the Corps. A Corps buddy and I rented a Carmen Ghia and drove route 66 from CA to Chicago in 1969 (I will tell that story sometime later). While we were on the way back, we were pulled over by the IHP - one thing lead to another and we were arrested escorted to the Great Lakes Brig then flown back to MCRD San Diego. We got separated, Mike (my buddy) was taken back to his/our company and he continued his career in the MC while I got side-tracked to Casual Company (yes, there is/was an Headquarters company named Casual Company where people whose MC career was on hold or ending) and eventually I was mustered out with an Honorable Discharge for medical reasons (another story for another day). While I was in C.C., I started doing acid and smoking pot; CC was for people getting in-service and pre-service use of drug discharges; at the time, you could almost get a discharge just by asking for one but it would have been either a General or an 'Other than hororable'(aka Undesirable). My first concert was Janis Joplin; I think I also saw Frank Zappa, and others that I no longer remember.
Well, more later
Letting(?) her take the kitty without a fight seemed best for Kitty; cats are very conservative and do not like to do things for the first time. Once they have done something, then it is probably okay and they will do it again; so I did not want to let the ex take the cat until I could find a place to live that accepted cats then try and get Kitty to adjust to another new situation (I drove the ex to her home the other night and Kitty already forgot who I am and ran and hid in a box). VeeVee was a rescue kitty that we found in a PAWS cat outlet; she was almost completely shutdown, she did not even respond when we picked her up; she had been un-adopted for about 6 months from what they told us. Then things got weird for her when the ex told me she was leaving; got worse when she was gone. I just found where she was pooping; I was suspicious that in cleaning the litter box, it was all urine and only a little poop. I guess I should have looked more, she found a nice spot on a rug in a nice deep hidey-hole. It is petrified so god know how long it was there (Kitty has been gone for a week or 2 now so there may be more surprises in store for me). Kitty seemed to pee and poop in odd places at odd times. Sometimes she even peed behind the TV while we were watching. I think the ex had been building up to leaving and the cat picked up on the bad vibes - I didn't pick up on it, or actually I think I just glossed over all the signs that the ex was ready to leave.
I am listening to some Pink Floyd right now and that takes me back to my blissful himbo-hood. I saw my first concert in 1969 in San Diego CA; I was in the Marine Corps. Well, actually I was on my way out of the Corps. A Corps buddy and I rented a Carmen Ghia and drove route 66 from CA to Chicago in 1969 (I will tell that story sometime later). While we were on the way back, we were pulled over by the IHP - one thing lead to another and we were arrested escorted to the Great Lakes Brig then flown back to MCRD San Diego. We got separated, Mike (my buddy) was taken back to his/our company and he continued his career in the MC while I got side-tracked to Casual Company (yes, there is/was an Headquarters company named Casual Company where people whose MC career was on hold or ending) and eventually I was mustered out with an Honorable Discharge for medical reasons (another story for another day). While I was in C.C., I started doing acid and smoking pot; CC was for people getting in-service and pre-service use of drug discharges; at the time, you could almost get a discharge just by asking for one but it would have been either a General or an 'Other than hororable'(aka Undesirable). My first concert was Janis Joplin; I think I also saw Frank Zappa, and others that I no longer remember.
Well, more later
Monday, October 29, 2012
October 29, 2012
My ex has closed on her condo; she was able to cut $2k off the price because the water heater was 17 years old - kool, she just had a guy in to replace it for a cost of $1,000. It is a super efficient and earthquake proofed and it has already paid for itself!! She called to let me know she had to wait for the installation and might not make it 'home' - I said I would come by to get her if she wanted; on the way home, we were chatting and I missed a hitch in the road and hit a curb at about 30 and blew a tire. Heh,heh - what a bummer but I made sure to let her know there was 'no blame' it was just something that happened and not to worry or let it bother her, it did not bother me.
I have finished most of my ballot - I think I just have a couple odd technical votes to work out. So I guess I have almost done my duty, just need to get it into the mail. We here in Washington almost completely vote my mail. I miss the community of going to my polling place and chatting with neighbors but we don't have to deal with east coast anti-voter hysteria (okay, okay, Ohio is not east coast but all those states over there sort of blur together).
I have finished most of my ballot - I think I just have a couple odd technical votes to work out. So I guess I have almost done my duty, just need to get it into the mail. We here in Washington almost completely vote my mail. I miss the community of going to my polling place and chatting with neighbors but we don't have to deal with east coast anti-voter hysteria (okay, okay, Ohio is not east coast but all those states over there sort of blur together).
Saturday, October 27, 2012
October 27,2012
Well, Mrs. Grumpy closed yesterday on her condo. We had breakfast this morning at the 4 Spoons, picked up some kitty litter, and went by the condo today. It is pretty nice - I am kind of jealous; it has 2 bedroom + a bonus room, a narrow deck that faces south so it will be pretty warm in the summer, has a fire-place yadda,yadda,yadda. The lease on our current apartment does not expire until February so she has plenty of time to get the place ready for her to move in. So, enough about that for now.
This is V.I. - she is our rescue kitty from PAWS KittyCity; we have had her for a couple of years now (yes, she does not look too happy in this picture - she is normally in a better mood but - who wants a vet poking and prodding them?). Since Mrs. Grumpy owns her place, I think it is best for VeeVee to go with her - probably permanently since just getting kitty healthy has been a work in progress and I don't want to upset her too much by moving her from here to there to another place - or, worse yet, try to share her back and forth. Kitty is kind of bi-polar in that sometimes she is very quiet and hides and at other times she is active and runs around. At her low times she will not come into the bedroom at night; on high times she sleeps on us - spends sometime purring on Mrs.'s hips and moves onto my chest to purr and get some petting. She loves her Greenies so were have (mostly) trained her to use the litter box - whenever we see her using it, we put some greenies down for her. Sometimes, she only goes into the box to move some litter around like she is doing something then hops out for her treat - that's okay with us as long as she does not pee or poo on the carpet.
I have worked the entire year so far - no furlough this year due to all the ID theft/fraudulent returns filed; Seattle was one of 2 sites in the US and we handled 80% of the nation's IDTheft calls. It has been pretty tough spending 8 hours a day trying to help people who have had a fraudulent return filed - way too many people depend on getting their tax refund to cover expenses and it takes about 204 days just for a caseworker to get assigned. And the people who perpetuate the fraud - it is a federal crime worth up to 5 years + up to $250,000 per incident and some of these people filed hundreds of returns. Plea deals can get the sentences reduced to 10 years or so. Penalties for purposeful tax fraud can be up to 75% of the amount received. And it goes on and on - there is a law moving through congress to add tax fraud to the list of offenses as a predicate for aggravated id theft that requires a minimum of 2-5 years mandatory sentencing guidelines. Since I am not legally trained do not hold me to any of the details since each case would be prosecuted on its own merits and plea deals save everyone time and money.
This is V.I. - she is our rescue kitty from PAWS KittyCity; we have had her for a couple of years now (yes, she does not look too happy in this picture - she is normally in a better mood but - who wants a vet poking and prodding them?). Since Mrs. Grumpy owns her place, I think it is best for VeeVee to go with her - probably permanently since just getting kitty healthy has been a work in progress and I don't want to upset her too much by moving her from here to there to another place - or, worse yet, try to share her back and forth. Kitty is kind of bi-polar in that sometimes she is very quiet and hides and at other times she is active and runs around. At her low times she will not come into the bedroom at night; on high times she sleeps on us - spends sometime purring on Mrs.'s hips and moves onto my chest to purr and get some petting. She loves her Greenies so were have (mostly) trained her to use the litter box - whenever we see her using it, we put some greenies down for her. Sometimes, she only goes into the box to move some litter around like she is doing something then hops out for her treat - that's okay with us as long as she does not pee or poo on the carpet.
I have worked the entire year so far - no furlough this year due to all the ID theft/fraudulent returns filed; Seattle was one of 2 sites in the US and we handled 80% of the nation's IDTheft calls. It has been pretty tough spending 8 hours a day trying to help people who have had a fraudulent return filed - way too many people depend on getting their tax refund to cover expenses and it takes about 204 days just for a caseworker to get assigned. And the people who perpetuate the fraud - it is a federal crime worth up to 5 years + up to $250,000 per incident and some of these people filed hundreds of returns. Plea deals can get the sentences reduced to 10 years or so. Penalties for purposeful tax fraud can be up to 75% of the amount received. And it goes on and on - there is a law moving through congress to add tax fraud to the list of offenses as a predicate for aggravated id theft that requires a minimum of 2-5 years mandatory sentencing guidelines. Since I am not legally trained do not hold me to any of the details since each case would be prosecuted on its own merits and plea deals save everyone time and money.
Friday, September 21, 2012
September 21, 2012
"It is better to go to the hospital to find out it is nothing than to stay home and die of diphtheria."
Advice to a friend last week while we were in Argentina - he had been suffering for 5 days and it was getting worse rather than better. We were in Argentina for 2 weeks of major beef fest! That is pretty much what tied us together as a group, we were the major partners in buying a cow each fall and parting it out. Mrs. Grumpy worked with the sick dude, the older couple were his girlfriend's parents. It was a really fun time but like all such vacations they end on an airplane which can only really, really suck - though on good days it just sucks.
Two days before we left for AR. Mrs. Grumpy declared that she was 50 (I knew that) and that she did not want to be 51 and still living with me (I should have known that but kept talking myself out of believing it). Kind of sucks too since we have been together for about 23 years. We both cried a bunch, promised we would stay friends, and she really did want me to go on this vacation (though I am not sure if it was my company or my share of the expenses that she wanted). Of course, the awkward part is we have a lease that does not run out until February but she is looking to buy a condo. Who knows how this will end. I am not really good at seeing how events will unfold until it actually happens but this does not really bode well. Since she she is the one who is breaking up and moving out, she says that she will continue to pay her share of the expenses until such time as....
For some reason, in the back of my mind I assumed that all the gay people knew all about each other and talked freely amongst themselves but 'Big Guy' asked us "what is with 'The Cop'? Is she/he in the process of changing genders?" she is just herself, I have no idea and would not ask her even if I was interested in the answer. Big Guy is in a 10 relationship and his partner is transitioning to womanhood - Big Guy is gay and proud and it sort of bothers him that when he is walking with his partner, he is considered straight; so I told him about Other Big Guy who has been married for 20 years and his wife is transitioning to man. Other Big Guy is absolutely straight but when he and his wife walk down the street everyone thinks he is gay. What do I know?? b-t-b I use 'Big Guy' for both because both are over 6'4", over 300 pounds and each can bench 400 pounds. Big Guy is able to use a concrete cutter on a wall - think about that for a minute, he can lift that big fucking gas-driven hunk of metal and cut a door-frame out of a concrete wall. Other Big Guy plays with boomerangs.
So there is a couple thousand dollars of electronics in the room - the only sound is of clicking keyboards and/or tippy-taps of smart phones as everyone but me is blogging about Argentina as it happens. Anyway, we came back the beginning of the week (yeah I am blogging about it but after not during).
The trip back was hell for me; I ran out of Vicodin a couple days before the trip home and it was really difficult to get NSAIDs out of the AR pharmacies so I ended up spending 24 hours with no pain-relievers. Now you have to realize that I have a problem with pain - I have peripheral neuropathy (translates as unexplained pain in my hands and feet - they kind of burn all the time), rheumatoid arthritis, and carpal tunnel - and, temporarily, tennis elbow) and so I was in pain for the entire trip and only fell asleep a couple times for about 2 or 3 hours. There was no distraction which is my usual way to combat the peripheral neuropathy. My doctor laughs and says that I have a prescription to play first person shooters for pain as needed.
Advice to a friend last week while we were in Argentina - he had been suffering for 5 days and it was getting worse rather than better. We were in Argentina for 2 weeks of major beef fest! That is pretty much what tied us together as a group, we were the major partners in buying a cow each fall and parting it out. Mrs. Grumpy worked with the sick dude, the older couple were his girlfriend's parents. It was a really fun time but like all such vacations they end on an airplane which can only really, really suck - though on good days it just sucks.
Two days before we left for AR. Mrs. Grumpy declared that she was 50 (I knew that) and that she did not want to be 51 and still living with me (I should have known that but kept talking myself out of believing it). Kind of sucks too since we have been together for about 23 years. We both cried a bunch, promised we would stay friends, and she really did want me to go on this vacation (though I am not sure if it was my company or my share of the expenses that she wanted). Of course, the awkward part is we have a lease that does not run out until February but she is looking to buy a condo. Who knows how this will end. I am not really good at seeing how events will unfold until it actually happens but this does not really bode well. Since she she is the one who is breaking up and moving out, she says that she will continue to pay her share of the expenses until such time as....
For some reason, in the back of my mind I assumed that all the gay people knew all about each other and talked freely amongst themselves but 'Big Guy' asked us "what is with 'The Cop'? Is she/he in the process of changing genders?"
So there is a couple thousand dollars of electronics in the room - the only sound is of clicking keyboards and/or tippy-taps of smart phones as everyone but me is blogging about Argentina as it happens. Anyway, we came back the beginning of the week (yeah I am blogging about it but after not during).
The trip back was hell for me; I ran out of Vicodin a couple days before the trip home and it was really difficult to get NSAIDs out of the AR pharmacies so I ended up spending 24 hours with no pain-relievers. Now you have to realize that I have a problem with pain - I have peripheral neuropathy (translates as unexplained pain in my hands and feet - they kind of burn all the time), rheumatoid arthritis, and carpal tunnel - and, temporarily, tennis elbow) and so I was in pain for the entire trip and only fell asleep a couple times for about 2 or 3 hours. There was no distraction which is my usual way to combat the peripheral neuropathy. My doctor laughs and says that I have a prescription to play first person shooters for pain as needed.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
June 12,2012
We have learned that a furlough is coming soon - at first, I thought it was this week but they have to give us at least 5 days notice. I was talking on the elevator with a couple of the managers and they said that the temp. seasonals (they are so temp that they do not get benefits) were kept on past their 'due date' and now get benefits; this is hint that there might not be much of a furlough. The rule for seasonals is that they have to be furloughed for at least one pay period each year or they become permanent (or some other harsh punishment). Yesterday, I had my 2 vacation requests okay-ed; 2 weeks in September so I can go to Argentina with beef crowd (we buy a cow every year and split the meat after it is butchered. Our farmer is a Mennonite from across the mountains gets them at 6 months and finishes them on grass. Anyway, we are 6 couples who are renting a 6 bedroom house for 2 weeks in Buenos Aires - should be fun. I am taking my birthday off + the rest of the week. They denied my request for the week of the 4th of July.
The issue with the furlough this year is that there has been so much ID theft (you know, where people buy ss#s and names so they can file a couple hundred return hoping that a couple get past the internal testing. Most of the returns are stopped from refunding out but it causes an immense burden on the real people who have to go through the process. It generally takes 120 days for the ID theft unit to send a letter of confirmation that they are indeed victims of ID theft and that we will watch their account for the next 3 years. We have no time frame for when the refund will come out - it could be 6-8 weeks, it could before Christmas, or you might get next years refund before this years. Some estimates are that there are of a million victims of ID theft this year. We are swamped; we log on in the morning and do support all da
The issue with the furlough this year is that there has been so much ID theft (you know, where people buy ss#s and names so they can file a couple hundred return hoping that a couple get past the internal testing. Most of the returns are stopped from refunding out but it causes an immense burden on the real people who have to go through the process. It generally takes 120 days for the ID theft unit to send a letter of confirmation that they are indeed victims of ID theft and that we will watch their account for the next 3 years. We have no time frame for when the refund will come out - it could be 6-8 weeks, it could before Christmas, or you might get next years refund before this years. Some estimates are that there are of a million victims of ID theft this year. We are swamped; we log on in the morning and do support all da
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