Here I go again. It’s been a rainy Thursday in August. Everything is wet. Usually, everything has felt wet the past couple of weeks but today (and yesterday) it’s been wet. The sky is white with clouds obscuring Manhattan. Bill is off to the Hamptons, driving the elites from the Hudson Yards on the West Side out to Long Island, ending in East Hampton. I’ve never been.

I’ve never made it to Fire Island either. I saw Fire Island in the distance over 50 years ago on my Uncle Tommy’s boat. Sailing out from Babylon for a short trip with my father, my cousins, and more than likely my brother Brian. It was pointed out where Fire Island was and that was as far as I got.

Work has been odd. It was a job I started in June 2021 and it was a job I actually looked forward to going to five days a week. But things have gotten strange, the people I started with are no longer there. Friendly co-workers are no longer friendly. Still, I go in and do the best job I can.

There’s a group of women that work near me and we get along fine. But the rest, ugh. Humor, wit among other things are suspect and I find that they’re best avoided. But me being me and having that mouth of mine…

I was helping a client and getting them some water. I declared myself the water boy and then joked about having 2 atoms of hydrogen and 1 atom of oxygen. That might have made someone uncomfortable and could add another strike to the two I already have. I mentioned that to a co-worker and she remarked that those strikes would eventually go away. I had never heard that before and I still don’t believe it.

I feel like Sisyphus pushing that rock up the hill with the sword of Damocles over my head. If I said that aloud it might raise some eyebrows and signal to the umpires that that third strike could be imminent. “John said he wanted to throw rocks and swing a sword around” some twenty-something would probably say as it alerted the authorities.

My once-admired Legume took what that particular twenty-something as gospel truth and included it in my mid-year review. It’s funny how these people who supervise do not get reviewed by the people who work underneath them. Now that would be a review worth posting. When they announced the mid-year reviews I almost replied just that, when will we get to review the supervisors? It was the rare instance where I did not react.

I once again have the idea to write about the jobs that I’ve had. I did try that once a few years ago and posted exactly one story about my first job. I was shot down by one of the two regular readers I had, the one not related to me, the male one. If I remember correctly, he called it boring and uninteresting which wounded me and I did not proceed. But the idea is still there and I don’t think Harry will read it anyhow.