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Yesterday one of my former co-workers, named Bob, Liv, and I went to Seattle to watch a Mariners game. Bob and I sometimes go to shows together, and he suggested that this summer we go to a ball game. It was a great idea. Safeco field is pretty amazing. I've been there three times, and I wish I could go more often. Whenever I go to a baseball game I think about how great it would be to live in a city with a professional baseball team. I wish Portland had one, but as the years go by its becoming clear that this is a one sport town: Basketball. I made my first season ticket payment a few weeks ago, and when Martin returns from Wisconsin I will make my second. Being a season ticket holder adds about $45 a month to my expenses. Its not a whole lot, but it means that I am going to have to save some money for those times at the end of the term before the next terms financial aide check arrives. I might be able to pay Martin two months at a time sometimes, though, and that would lower the chances of me being broke when the payments are due. I'm still thinking about buying a bike, but I'm not sure where I will be able to keep it. I also was running some numbers the other day, and I could theoretically afford an iPhone. I would have to start paying my own phone bill, and I've never done that. I probably won't buy an iPhone, but they are super sweet.
Today was a pretty rough day for the good folks at the St Johns Community Center. Around four thirty a group of regulars to the outdoor program, actually the only people that are there every day, got a little rowdy. After many clear warnings, Jason, my co worker, decided that the best course of action was to send ALL of them home for the rest of the afternoon. It took about twenty minutes to get everyone to calm down, get there stuff together, and get home. In the end there were some pretty upset kids, but sometimes these kids have almost no respect for rules or authority. The hardest part of the job is disciplining the kids. I really hate having to be the bad guy. Plus these kids aren't in school; they are in need of a place to blow off steam. I feel like a jerk, and almost totally out of line, when I tell them to stop doing something. I'm not there parent or teacher, and most of the time the things they are doing aren't hurting anyone. Most of the time they are just annoying. That doesn't really seem like grounds for removal from the park. If I annoy them are they allowed to ask me to leave? Or does the fact that I am a paid employee make all the difference. I know that the kids that pay to be on the park never get sent home. I know last year we only sent a kid home once, and by the time we did it was long overdue. I want to feel like I'm being a friend to these kids, but at the same time we are the authority figures on the park. Jason and Scott, the day camp leader this summer, said it best: these kids just need to find another place to be for a while. They are literally at the park from the minute I arrive at ten to after I leave at six. Five days a week for the last five weeks. That today was the first incident is pretty incredible in and of itself. I really hope that they come back tomorrow. I would hate for something like this to keep them off the park for the rest of the summer. Also these kids are pretty cool, all things considered, and without them there would just be a bunch of lame kids.
I had to work today because it was over 90 degrees and the wading pool was open. I was making time and a half which meant I sat under a tent and read for five hours and made almost eighty dollars. After work I went to REI and bought some new shoes. I wanted to get these Keens that I saw online, but they weren't as cool in real life as they were on the internet. I ended up getting a different type of Keens. These are slip ons. I'm not sure how smart that was, but I am looking forward to never having to wear socks again. Chris is on his way over here and then we are going out to NE to celebrate Bastille Day. I'm not sure what Bastille Day is, but I know that there is a metro stop in Paris where the Bastille used to be. I also think that there are some movies that talk about the Bastille. I had a pretty un-interesting week of work. We had a barbeque on friday, which was fun. I think its pretty interesting how the whole playground program thing works. All this week there would be no one on the park from about 10 to 11:30. At around 11:30 about a hundred and fifty people would show up. They were all there for the lunch, and as soon as they had eaten it they would leave. That would leave about fifty people for the rest of the afternoon. I know that is what the free lunch program is for, but sometimes it feels a little like we are being taken advantage of. Next week will be the halfway point of the summer. Week Five. Only four weeks left after this week.
Seth Raleigh is getting married this coming weekend. I've known about it for almost a year. For the longest time I have been trying to get Bobby to secure me an invitation, and I finally got one about a month or two ago. However it now looks like Bobby and Nate are either going down to Corvallis on Wednesday or Thursday. If that happens I won't be able to go. I can't miss work for anything. After all that work I'm going to have to miss it! Damn you life. Any way, it looks like Jake is going to be up here this weekend. He just got back from eight months in Prague. You know the "you'll never know how bad American beer is thing." If you haven't seen Noah Bombach's Kicking and Screaming, I recommend it highly. It is an incredibly funny movie.
Liv and I just got back from the coast for the fourth of july. It was pretty fun. It has been awhile since I've seen all my parents friends and my uncles. Its pretty amazing that this group of folks has been doing the same thing for almost thirty years. Right now Olivia is listening to something in Spanish that is making me glad that I have completed all the school Spanish I ever need. If I am going to learn Spanish at any future time in my life, I hope it will be while living in a Spanish speaking country. Preferably Mexico. Its the closest and might be the cheapest. Plus I've heard that there are a lot of jobs available down there. I am about to leave to see a documentary about high school kids who want to play basketball in the NBA. It should be a lot like the city league game that I just had, except these kids are probably a lot better at basketball. Really the only thing that my game and this film will have in common is that there will be basketballs involved. Today during the game one of the refs who was waiting to work the next game pretty much told me that most of the people in our league lack any type of fundamental basketball skill. I couldn't really argue. The RecBasketball.com D/E league is not the next step to the pros. On the plus side Still Hung Over won its second game of the season. Pat reminded me that we won twice last season too. The second win, though, came by forfeit, which in my book doesn't exactly count. Today's game was one of my first since last season scoring under double digits. I finished with nine points. I shot pretty horribly. I really need to play more. When I was playing four or five times a week I would go out on Sundays and have twenty on an off night. Now I'm lucky if I make more than one three a game.
So I said yesterday that high temperature and rain and thunder and lightning doesn't sound like Portland. Right now it is around 80 degrees and it just started raining and I think I just heard thunder. So I guess that I was wrong in saying that type of climate isn't something that Portland usually experiences.
I was going to work this afternoon out in St Johns. The city of Portland just passed a law, or something, that requires some of the city's wading pools to be open when the temperature reaches 90 degrees on the weekends. This weekend is supposed to be 96 both days, and St Johns is one of the pools designated to be open. During work this week I was asked several times if I would like to take one of the available seven hour shifts. For me it would have meant seven hours of overtime. I am obviously broke, and I could really use that extra money. I could also use both days off. That way I will be able to make it through the whole summer without completely losing my mind. After a fair amount of hemming and hawing, I agreed to work Saturday. One of my supervisors asked if I wanted the whole shift. I said that I would take it, but that if they could find someone to share it with me that I would not object to that. As of the beginning of work yesterday it seemed like the good folks at SJCC were unable to come up with someone to come in Saturday from either 1-5 or 5-8. Towards the afternoon I was not excited, but at least not upset about having to work. Next week is a short one, because of the fourth, and time and a half for me means $15.25 per hour. When you owe as many people as much money as I do, you would be insane to turn down that money, even if it meant you might go crazy. So I had pretty much resigned myself to working Saturday. Then at around 4:30 one of my supervisors came out, and told me that he had gotten me "off the hook". I asked if he meant for half the shift, and he said, that they had found someone to work the whole day. He sounded like he thought he was doing me a favor, which I guess he probably was. I glad I don't have to work, especially since it is going to be hot today, but I really could have used the money. Plus, I felt like I made it pretty clear that I was willing to work at least a little bit. Maybe they felt it was better to bring in someone that hadn't already logged forty hours this week. I'm sure it wasn't a city decision to bring in someone to cover that shift, but I bet the supervisors are told to try and limit the amount of overtime seasonal workers get. Oh well. If it gets over ninety some other weekend this summer I will probably ask to work. I think I want to buy a bike, and I really need money right now too.
Work officially started thursday of last week, but because I did CPR on monday, and trained on tuesday and wednesday, this is really our first week. Its a lot like last summer except that now I am going to be outside all day. Its pretty incredible how many kids I remember from last year, and how weird it is that kids can't remember anything, or at least pretend that they don't remember anything. Almost all of the kids that I recognized from last summer had to be reminded who I was. Some of them I saw every day. So far everything has gone pretty well. I won't get ahead of myself and say things are going great because we've only really be at it for four days. During the training all of the summer staff were supposed to make signs for each of their respective sights. Jason and I, Jason is my co-worker, were so "busy" getting prepped for kids coming we forgot to make ours. Surprise, surprise, we were the only group that forgot. Our sight supervisor was not too thrilled, which of course is not a good way to start the season, and we had to lead the entire group in an activity as a punishment. Today something worse than that happened. Some kid on the park stole my lunch. I make my lunch every morning before I leave for work. This afternoon I took my lunch out of the shed on the playground and set it on the picnic table. I went over to the front of the community center to wait for the truck to arrive with the lunches for the kids, and while I was over there some kid walked off with my lunch. Jason said he saw a kid with it, and this other kid, who talked almost for an hour about Halo, also said he saw someone. Neither did anything about it. Jason said he hadn't seen me put my lunch on the table, and didn't feel confidant in approaching the kid. The other kid said something, but it was hard to understand over all his Halo talk. Jason thinks its possible that the kid who took my lunch mistook it for the free lunches. That being the case though he or she must have seen that he was the only kid in line, and he probably would have left the garbage all over the playground. There was no garbage. Not a single shred of evidence. This leads me to believe that some kid saw it on the table, saw that there was no one around, and took. Opportunity knocks. In St Johns the rule stands that if it is not nailed down, its getting taken. At least the kids don't live in a subway station and huff paint.
I have a friend that works the door at Dante's in downtown. Last night Chris and Bobby and I were walking around near there and I suggested we swing by and see what's up. There was a huge crowd outside the door, and my friend told me that Ron Jeremy and Snoop Dogg were inside. He let us in, and there was an enormous crowd of people, all in varying stages of undress. Dante's is popular for things like Sinferno, I think that is a burlesque show, and other things involving drunk people and naked women. Last night was the pimps and hos ball. Ron Jeremy was there, but Snoop Dogg wasn't actually performing. Another one of my friends that works there told me that Snoop and Ron are buddies, and because Snoop was up the street at the Roseland theater that he was going to come by and hang out with Ron. He wasn't actually going to go on stage. There was, however, a band scheduled to perform. It was a local group with the classy moniker Smooch Knob. Bobby actually had seen them before on accident. They weren't terrible. Definitely not a band that I would ever pay for, and definitely not a band that is going to ever get a lot of love from anyone other than Marconi. Marconi, for those who don't know, is a DJ in Portland. He was fired a few years back by KNRK for saying some pretty stupid stuff about a guy who was executed in Afghanistan. He got rehired not to long after by KUFO, proving that no one has any sort of long term memory.
Actually its going to be work time. I just finished two days of training for my summer job, which is going to be working out in St Johns with little kids for eight weeks. It is kind of the same job I did last summer, except this time I will be outside all day. The training was totally draining, but the job should be fun. I am only going to be working eight weeks, but I am making $10.50 an hour. After all is said and done I will really only bank about a thousand dollars. All that is being said and done includes paying off all my outstanding debts, to those outstanding people that I owe, and paying for the trip to San Fran for the sweet festival at the end of the summer. I will probably spend all the money I made in September, like I have done before, and once again I will be cashing in on those sweet old student loans. Awesome!!!!!
