Still angry

Here's a picture of Greg with his truck.
I'm not having a good day. I feel like all my emotions have come spilling out today. At the beginning of the week Greg told me he probably wouldn't make it home this weekend yet again. Last night we talked and he actually seemed optimistic that he might get to come home if his dispatcher routed him in the direction of home, which got me optimistic too. Then this morning he got yet another impossible assignment that will take him further from home, so he is back to not being able to come home. It just sucks because it took me to higher place to fall from and hearing the news put me into a total depression on everything. I actually cried in my office upon hearing the news and I fear even now that I'm teetering on the border of going into a cry again because I'm in such a low place about everything.
He plans on quitting later today once he has picked up his latest load. Rumor has it that you can't quit this company, they always claim they fired you, so he's trying to handle the situation carefully. He still plans on doing the right thing and giving two weeks notice, but at this point I don't care. I kinda just want him to say "I'm done" and come home now.
I feel like I'm just becoming totally pessimistic about everything. It's been a whole year since the furlough, and we're really just back to square one. He's about to quit this job and we'll be worse off than we were when we started the furlough a year ago, because now he doesn't even have unemployment to fall back on. I'm not overly optimistic that he'll easily find another job when he's been applying for stuff all along that hasn't panned out. I feel like nothing I do really helps either. I find stuff for him to apply for, apply for him myself, pass his resume on to people, be there for him, push him, nothing seems to help because we are back to where we started. I don't think he's going to get called back from furlough anytime soon and I see no way for this to really be resolved. It's just depressing.
My friends keep encouraging me and trying to be constructive with advice, but I just feel like they don't get it. There is no easy fix. It's been over a year. This just sucks, and we have tried everything again and again and nothing is getting resolved. I feel like I deserve to feel defeated and upset about it. Being positive and upbeat is not really helping and all my effort isn't getting us anywhere.
Ugh!

I hate Greg's job!!!

So this week isn't going much better than last week for Greg. He was sent to Canada at the beginning of the week and is now on his way to Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Earlier in the week I had talked with some friends about a wine festival coming up this weekend in Charlotte. I remembered that I have a free night's stay at a hotel within walking distance of the wine fest, so I went ahead and booked Saturday night for us there, thinking of course that it would allow us both to drink and not have to drive and we could finally use that gift certificate I won at last year's Christmas party that has been gathering dust all year. Well, Greg did the math and he said it is not looking promising that he'll get home this weekend based on being up in Green Bay and having to get back to Charlotte in the next two days before he maxes out on hours for the week. So, not only am I bummed about the wine fest plans (I'll still go even if he can't and cancel the hotel), but I miss him terribly, he hasn't been home since Sept 20th, and his job is getting more and more unbearable. I want him to quit. They are just torturing him, it's getting ridiculous.
I found a Postal service mail delivery job for Greg that looked promising in our town. I went ahead and did the application for him, which was actually a HUGE pain the ass. It was a typical govt. application, so I guess I should have known. They wanted 7 years of job history, 5 years of residence history, his selective service number (there's a site where you can look it up), etc... PAIN IN THE BUTT! My effort was probably futile. I can't seem to get myself promoted to another job, so why would I think that I can do anything for him- but oh well, maybe it'll pan out. I hope so!
In other news the weather is FANTASTIC right now. Mid 70's every day and the heat and humidity is gone. I am loving it. Great running weather. I'm off to run now in fact!

Weekend Recap

The weekend was good. My plan to get into pajamas and not leave the couch Friday night was foiled by my friends calling and dangling a night out for tapas in front of me. I kinda played fifth wheel to two couples, but I didn't feel too fifth-wheelish and had a good time. We went to a place called Las Ramblas for the Tapas, and then to Pewter Rose for some more wine and conversation. Over the course of the chatter Greg was brought up and I described what kind of programs he has written. My friend Brad is a programmer and thought Greg's experience sounded worthy of further consideration and possibly an interview at his company and told me to send Greg's info to him so he could try and promote him to his higher-ups. Usually Greg shies away from computer type jobs, even though I've been saying since day one of the furlough that I thought that's what he should be pursuing as his alternate career. He's got his degree in Management Information Systems, has been programming for a long time, and I really think he's just got a knack for it and is creative with it. His biggest downfall is that he has no real career experience with it and thus he always worries about this and doesn't think he's got enough experience to really apply for most things. I think he sells himself short and could find a computer job if he had some confidence. I still think if the right person were to take a look at him they would see that he would be an asset. So anyway, Saturday when I talked to Greg I had him send me all his resume and computer skills stuff and attempted to organize a resume that showcased his experience to send to Brad. Hopefully it will get him somewhere.
Greg finally got to a truck stop Saturday and had his first shower in about 5 days, did laundry, and stocked up on food. I felt so bad that he didn't get to come home, but was glad he went to the truck stop to kind of get recharged.
Saturday I managed to follow through with my original plan for Friday- ie sitting on the couch in my pajamas for the better part of the day. It was perfect weather for it too, nice and rainy out! I love rainy weather. I've really come to appreciate it more since the norm down here is hot and sunny almost every day. I welcome a cool rainy day to break of the monotony of sunshine in the south! LOL! Saturday night I went out with Sarah for her 35th birthday as planned. The girl does not look 35 at all (see picture- I'm on the left, Sarah in middle, and her friend Christa on the right).

I'd say she looks younger than me. We went to Nikko for sushi, which is a modern clubby type sushi place. There seemed to be at least one bachelor party going on there, complete with the groom grinding on random people with lots of cat-calling to go with it. Pretty entertaining. After dinner we proceeded to this club opening Sarah had found out about. The place was called Dharma Lounge and had sort of a yoga/indian theme going on. The good news was that because it was the grand opening, they had open bar til 11pm, which was a welcome surprise! We ran into this crew of people Sarah knew from a meet-up group she's in and kinda hung out with them most of the night. They were a younger group of 20 somethings and even though Sarah kind of had a crush on one of the guys, she declared him to young for her as we were leaving the club. We didn't really stay out that late- left around 12:30ish, which was fine by me (I'm not a huge night owl, and live further out, so I usually welcome a chance to get home when out late), but I think Sarah would have stayed out later if we could have come up with a plan of what else to do. Oh well, hopefully she had fun.
Sunday I finally saw "The Hangover". Funny, but disturbing.
All in all a great weekend. That was a lot of night life packed into a weekend for me.

Greg's job sucks.

Greg's having another hellish week on the road. He hasn't had a shower since Sunday (and it's Friday!) and he isn't going to get to come home this weekend. I think his company is intent on punishing him for being away a couple days last week for the wedding. The way trucking works, he'll still have to be off for at least 34 hours since he's maxed out his work time for the week, but he's just going to end up timing out in PA, so he'll be stuck at the truck for 34 hours there. I feel so bad for him. He desperately wants to come home. Plus since we were away and I wasn't home when he left for this trip, he left without the usual plethora of food so is running very low on stuff to eat. He also only brought a week's worth of clothes.
I actually told him to quit. It's the first time I've said to. Usually I say, "I'd love to tell you to quit, but I can't support us both". This time I don't care. They are abusing him every way they can, he's miserable, and I'm convinced he's not making much anyway. The company cheats him on tolls that he pays hundreds of dollars for and never gets reimbursed for. It's not worth it.
So, I apparently am on my own for the weekend. I think tonight is going to be all about downtime for me. I have only had one night off since I got back from NJ, and am itching to catch up on TIVO and watch the Netflix movie I've had sitting on the counter for 2 weeks plus. Tomorrow night is my friend Sarah's b-day, so I think we're doing a girls night out. That should be cool. Sunday I might catch "The Informant" with my friend Kerrie. I think it'll be a good weekend, but I wish Greg would be home to enjoy some of it with. :(

Social Scene

This is a busy week for me. I got back from NJ on Sunday and had a little down time on Monday night after work, but pretty much every other night this week I have plans. Last night I went running with my friend Kelly. I met her in my running group. She lives downtown in a condo with her boyfriend a few times she's asked me if I wanted to run with her. It's nice because I can just stay after work and then meet her at her place. We do a run through the city then go back to the condo, shower, change, and go for dinner. So far our thing has been sushi at a couple different places. The place we went last night was called Press. It's kind of a wine bar with food. The sushi was actually really good. We ordered the Hisshimo rolls (I think that's what they were called), and the Venom rolls and shared a mini bottle of Shiraz. The Hisshimo rolls had baked scallops in some kind of sauce on top. It was funny because when it came out it looked like sushi rolls with mac and cheese on top because the color of the sauce was the color of cheese in mac and cheese. Anyway, it was good.
Tonight I have a sorority alumni gathering after work. Tomorrow I have my Thursday night running group. We run four miles then drink beer after.
My social life in Charlotte has been an interesting thing. At times it's been kind of drama filled, which I'm really not used to, or into. Initially, when I moved to Charlotte, I was about the third youngest person in my whole office. Greg and I quickly realized we were the youngest people in our immediate area of the neighborhood. Basically, for the first time in a while, I realized it was going to be kind of difficult to meet people to hang out with. I ended up becoming really close friends with a girl in my office who was a couple years older than me. We really didn't have a lot in common other than that we worked at the same place and lived in the same town, but for a while the friendship just kind of worked. I was warned about her from some people in the office, but wanted to make up my own mind. In hind sight I probably should have heeded the warnings. Basically, she ended up burning me big time. It's kind of sad, because it's honestly changed how I approach friendships and how close I let people get. I only have a few friends that I really feel like I want to let my guard down with. After my friendship with her ended, there was about 6 months to a year, where I was really pretty miserable about things in respect to my social life. Around the beginning of 2009 I finally started to come out of it a little more and decided to take some initiative in meeting some new people. I joined my sorority alumni association and met some nice girls. In the spring my friend Gibson started at our office and we became friends. Gibson didn't know many people here at all and started doing Meetup.com groups and told me about the running group and encouraged me to come to it. I'm really glad he did, because I met Kelly, and a bunch of other cool people. I also met a newer guy named Brent and he introduced me to his wife Becky, who is also a friend.
I'm a friendly and relatively outgoing person. I really enjoy being out with people. It's one thing that is kind of different about Greg and I. He likes people too, but likes more alone time and more home time than I do. I have to prod him to go out.
I've lived all over and Charlotte has been the most difficult place I've lived socially so far. I have theories that it is because I'm a Northern girl at heart and a lot of Southern women are different from me. They are into the sugar-coating of everything and will go out of their way to be sweet to you and then stab you in the back. I don't like that. If I don't like someone, I wouldn't go out of my way to be nice to them, but I also wouldn't be mean. I'd just be neutral.
Anyway, things are pretty good right now socially, so I'm happy about that. It makes a big difference to at least have stability there when everything else is in upheaval.

Wedding and the trucking blues.

I got back from my brother's wedding in NJ. It was great, a beautiful day and lots of fun. I was a bridesmaid and really enjoyed being part of everything. I can't believe my little brother is married. Wow, we're getting old!
Greg was able to get non-rev there, but I had gotten a round-trip ticket a couple months ago so I flew up and back with my parents. I'm not really big into flying standby. I know a lot of pilot's wives swear by it and use the privilege all the time, but I sometimes think it's more trouble than it's worth. The last time I tried it was about a year ago (maybe more than..?). I flew up to EWR and then planned on non-revving back. We checked the loads (checked to see how many open seats/stand-bys there were) days in advance and leading right up to the day we wanted to come back. They looked ok right up til we checked when we were about to head to the airport. Everything on Continental was booked solid with multiple standbys for like a week. I ended up buying a ticket on US Air to get home which was about $200 one-way. Therefore, I always say that if you can find a fairly cheap ticket, you're better off just buying a ticket and having a positive space. I just don't really have time to mess around with flying standby and not getting on flights. I have a full time job and can't be leaving it up to chance whether I'm going to get home or not. I think it's a great privilege for retired people or people more flexible than me. My in-laws use it a lot. I just feel like when I'm flying somewhere, it's usually for something important, like a wedding or baby shower and it's not something I want to wait til the last minute and see if I can make it there or not. Also, lately I think the airlines have done their research and figured out how many flights they need to and from most places and streamlined to make sure they aren't flying half filled planes around as much, because they can't make money off empty planes. Therefore, most planes aren't flying around with tons of empty seats. Although, our flights did have a bunch of seats open, but I think right now we are in that September end of summer lull, and that's why. I'm still glad we booked tickets. Peace of mind.
In any case, Greg got there and back fine on standby, so it worked out good. He also was able to take a train directly down to where the wedding was in NJ, which was also great. I didn't have to duck out and drive an hour away to pick him up, so I was happy because I worried I'd be cutting it close to making it to the rehearsal or something I needed to be at.
Trucking has gone from awful to worse lately. Greg fought with his dispatcher a lot last week about getting off for the wedding. In training they told everyone if they needed to be off for something to let them know and they would work around it and it shouldn't be a big deal. Greg purposely let his dispatcher know over a month ago that he had a family wedding coming up and consistently reminded him of this each week leading up to it. Come the week of the wedding he got really ridiculous with Greg about letting him go home and go to the wedding. Finally after a lot of hassle he let him go. This was after trying to make it seem like it was Greg's fault for not "planning" better for it. It's like "hello???? A MONTH'S NOTICE!!!" Whatever, jerk.
Greg flew back a day early to be back for work and they were already bugging him with an assignment. He got back on the road and hit a deer the first day. Then he had a bad tire that the company didn't want to fix and Greg finally said he wouldn't do anything else til they fixed it because he could tell it wasn't safe. He hates this job... I don't blame him.
On a lighter note, I heard about this funny blog written by a guy that is using that unlimited flight pass on JetBlue. http://www.wired.com/autopia/tag/terminal-man/
Pretty funny reading.

The scare

Yesterday I had a scare. When Greg was flying he usually called to check in once a day (at least), but there were occasionally times where we didn't connect in a day. It never really worried me too much because I felt like he was safe and just getting in too late to talk to me. Obviously with flying and having to have a cell phone turned off, there are just times where it isn't possible to call.
With truck driving so far, he's called me every single day, usually we even talk a couple times a day. He pretty much always has his phone on and/or answers it, unless he's out of the truck loading or something. It's usually fairly easy for me to get a hold of him. Even so, if I don't, I don't usually worry. He always calls me at some point. Well, yesterday was one of those days. I called a couple times during the day and he didn't answer. I didn't think much of it. Then I went to my running group after work. Finally on my way home around 9 or so, I tried him again, still nothing. I figured I would have a message on the machine at home, so still wasn't that worried. Got home, nothing on the machine. I then started to worry. I called and left a message telling him I was worried. Sent him a text. I suddenly realized we had no emergency plan in place for this type of situation. What if I really needed to get a hold of him? I had no contact number for his company for after hours. I waited a while and tried a couple more times, then finally went online and found the main line for his truck company and dialed. I was routed through a phone tree and got a line that just rang and rang. Dead end. I really had no idea what to do and finally just had to go to bed. But I laid in bed very worried. Truck driving isn't like flying a plane. I feel like it's a lot more dangerous and he's by himself most of the time. I worried that he had fallen while tarping or injured himself somehow. I worried he had rolled the truck, been in an accident, or something. I worried that he had left his truck unlocked or been attacked at a truck stop or rest area. The wheels were just turning about all the bad things that could/might have happened to him to cause him to not call or to not answer his phone. Finally he did call. Turned out he had taken his truck for maintenance and they had it up on a lift and he'd left the cell in the cab, so couldn't get to it. Logical. He was profusely apologetic for worrying me. I was just so relieved he was ok.