Author Archives: johnozed

About johnozed

I'm 50+ years old, 210-ish#, 6'2", reddish blonde, blue eyes with glasses (and without) masculine, funny, relatively intelligent, enjoy the company of assorted friends and family especially sordid friends and family. I love music, reading, writing, conversing, laughing, going to films, shows, concerts and smoking cigars. And I also enjoy looking nice in a suit and tie. Looking more like Lewis Lapham than Tom Wolfe. I'm sure there is more, but we'll just have to find out when I write about it. In a lifetime relationship with partner Bill Vila.

I Never Told You

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I just got back from 5 hours of volunteering at the local bibliothèque. I enjoy working with them, the ladies. They enjoy me working there, and being a male they seem to feel safer having a guy around. In this case, I am the guy or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. And today it was all about doing whatever they wanted me to do. And so that meant putting a lot of items today. Notin the nonfiction department though. That resembles the office set from Being John Malkovich, a very low ceiling with only an inch between my head and the ceiling.

A good part of the time was in the Audio Visual room which is a mess. DVD’s and CD’s are kept in a very loose alphabetical sense. A through Z basically. Breaking it down further is near impossible since it is probably the most popular room and to maintain order someone would have to stay in there the whole time. But there isn’t anyone there the whole time and things fall out of order constantly. Then there are the people who hide DVD’s or CD’s to pick up later. They don’t get very far, at least not on my watch.

It was fairly busy, I worked with two women, Diane and Pat. Diane has seniority over Pat. I like them both very much. Diane was pulling for me to get in good with the library which I am doing with my volunteering. The last part of my time today was placing the items on hold for library patrons on the shrinking shelves. There is simply not enough room for all the books on hold and so some items have to be placed on the shelves an inch or two above the floor. And of course every time I situated myself on the floor, I had to get up since Pat or Diane needed to get by.

Finally at one point I was able to stand up as a patron walked in. She walked up to the counter and asked for an item that was on hold. I just said ‘Yay!’ and Diane and Pat lost it. Really laughing so hard for the next 20 minutes and in so doing the remaining time flew by. Apparently they just don’t have someone like me helping out. I am just glad I was able to help out and add some laughter to their day.

Now I am home, with Bill and waiting for the second debate. I hope it goes well for Obama, none of the narcolepsy that affected him during the last debate while Romney lied, lied and lied some more. And he got away with it since Obama did not point out his lies and backtracking and contradictory statements. Bill has been under the weather the past two days so to have him up and about is a good thing. Once again he worked really hard for about three weeks, driving, the day job and preparing for the reading last week, and also the Yankee game.

He was destined to crash as he usually does when he works for weeks on end. So his day was spent in bed today. I was out and about earlier, made the trip to the really big supermarket where I ran into my dear friend Ro Da. We talked for quite a while, his tales of woe, my tales of woe. Despite that it was great to see him as it always is. I’ve known him for almost 30 years which is a mind blower. He is a sweetheart and I certainly wish him on the very best.



Reminiscing

I Never Said I Was Deep

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A rainy Monday. It hasn’t been raining all day, just started a few hours ago when I was off to the bibliothèque to do some volunteering. Just a few hours putting away DVD’s and CD’s and a ton of non-fiction books and also helping out customers who couldn’t find certain items. One guy had an interview tomorrow and was looking for a book on how to ‘ace’ the interview. His thing is at Conde Nast and I wished him well. He kept calling me ‘sir’ which I found unnerving but it is something that I should probably get used to.

Yesterday was also spent volunteering at the bibliothèque. It was a quiet day inside, and I helped in when I could. Saturday was the busy day and I heard several times how grateful they were that I was there to help out. They’re good people and I don’t mind helping them out. The staff there likes me and I like them so it all works out. It would be nice to get a full time job there but we’ll see how that goes. It’s a civil service job and that’s a job one does not walk away from.

There was the chance to work part time but that salary would pay considerably less than the unemployment insurance I get. If I was collecting from NJ then NJ would make up the difference between the part time pay and the unemployment benefit. But since I am collecting from New York State, where I worked, it’s not that easy. For each day you work, it is a 25% deduction from your already low benefit. So if you work 4 or more days, you are screwed. In NJ they’re willing to do the math, in New York State they really don’t want to.

Today I had an interview finally. It was with a staffing agency in midtown, an agency I signed up for years ago, perhaps when I was still living in Weehawken. They sent me out on one gig, I showed up in a suit and tie, working for a publisher that puts out legal newsletters and books. They had me in the mail room and I was dressed more like the executives than the mail room personnel. That made everyone uncomfortable and the job ended only an hour or two later, not the full day I was told I would be working.

It was unnerving, the agency visit. I showed up early, suit & tie, looking fly. The appointment was at 1:00, I was there at 12:45. I brought the attachments they sent in an email, all filled out, plus proper identification and the resume with references attached. An hour later I hadn’t seen anyone. I mentioned that I had somewhere to go downtown at 2:30 and the receptionist said something that I didn’t quite hear since they play Pandora quite loudly in the reception area. Not relaxing stuff, not music, but ‘what the kids are listening to nowadays’.

That meant One Republic, Maroon 5, Gusttavo Lima, Muse and Spoon (whom I do like) all at a really loud volume. People are stressed to begin with looking for work and while they stress out sitting for their counselor, they get to listen to alternative Top 40 radio with songs picked by an algorithm in Kansas. I was certainly stressed when they set me up with some tests and I did not do well at all. I did better than I expected but overall, I was just above a passing grade.

My counselor did come out and we talked. He told me he would send me the test again to do at home and practice to that I could get a higher score. At the elevator he told me to stay in touch, maybe email him twice a week to let him know if I am still looking. It seemed like a brush off but I remain hopeful. So far there is nothing from the counselor in my mail box. I just found it, it wasn’t from the counselor it was from a third party and therefore wound up in the Spam folder. Now I have something to do tomorrow.

Last night Bill did not come home from driving until late. I watched Rent on HBO and it was good, not as good as when I saw it with Bill. A little too earnest and watching the opening 15 minutes I was reminded of the scene from Team America, Everyone’s Got AIDS, because of the first four characters in the movie Rent, 3 of them have AIDS. Still it was good to see Jesse L. Martin singing and it made me wonder whatever happened to the Marvin Gaye bio that he filmed a few years ago. Never released, not even straight to DVD.

last of the sunflowers?