I spent the night at Ticonderoga (home of Fort Ticonderoga) before deciding to head out to Lake Placid the next day. Vermont was gorgeous, but I couldn’t decide on any place to stay, so I went for the familiar and hopped back over to NY for the remainder of my trip. I got up, feeling refreshed and charged after staying a night at an awesome Best Western here, then decided to make a quick stop at Walmart (yes I’m ashamed of myself, but there was no Target nearby, so nyah.)

I walked in and checked the men’s section, deciding to check out the jeans and see if there might be one or two worth getting. I bent over to check the tags when

*RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP*

Did I say I might get jeans? Because I’m pretty sure I was gonna need a pair like, right now.

All I could do now was hold the shattered parts of my old jeans together with one hand and a new pair with the other as I waggled my way to the checkout lines as fast as I could. And of course, this would be one of those Walmarts that didn’t have self-checkouts either. FAIL. And, the express line was closed too. FAIL.

And now I’m stuck behind this woman who had literally, two carts, TWO carts worth of junk. Who does that? Still, I try to look as natural as possible even while I can feel the breeze go right through my undies, waiting for this land whale to finally check out her ten boxes of Ramen noodles and other assorted goods. Finally it was my turn. I quickly I paid up, then waggled as fast as I could to the car.

In hindsight, I probably should have just gone back into the store and changed in the fitting rooms, but this was not a day where logic prevailed.

I got in my car and drove around the back, figuring I could change in the backseat without anyone getting a peep show from me. So of course, as soon as I find a spot and park, a door to the building opens and out comes this woman who was probably on a cigarette break. She’s talking to someone behind her but she is looking right at my car and STARING. I figure I’d wait a minute or two to see if she’d go back in, but she didn’t and she never stopped staring either. I hadn’t even done anything yet, I was just parked. What is this lady’s problem??

I gave up and drove to the side of the building instead, and while I’m driving the woman actually walked out the door so she could continue staring as I drove away. Good grief. I parked next to a truck that was unoccupied, got into the backseat as fast as I could, then started changing. While I’m changing, all of a sudden the back of the truck opens all the way up and out comes this trucker, looking curiously at my car, and I’m wondering if he could see me (I had tinted windows, thank God.) Still, I finished changing, and opened the door to get out. Except… I couldn’t, because the child locks were engaged.

Why would I keep the child locks on? Why, WHY would I do that?? I sat there for a few minutes, wondering which way I should opt to crawl over so I could get out of the ride that had suddenly become my prison. I finally opted for the passenger seat, then grunted, jerked, banged my head on the rearview mirror, and wiggled my way over, before finally landing flat on my hiney as I opened the passenger door and free fell to the ground. Owie.

Mercifully, that was the end of it. I was now wearing my new pair of jeans and a new jacket (which I also bought) and feeling much better about things. I drove out and headed to a nearby ATM machine to get some cash (which charged me $2.75 for the convenience, what the flip!?!)

I then headed north, trying to put the unpleasantness of the morning behind me as I started taking in the views of Lake Champlain.

Then I passed by a state trooper. And sure enough I could see him in the rearview mirror as he screeched to a halt and made a quick u-turn. Oh no. No, no, no…

Well maybe he was going after someone else. Nope. I could see the lights go on and I sighed heavily as I pulled over. This was going to be one of those days.

“Can I see your license and registration please?” All business.

“Sure, here’s my registration, hold on I’ll get my license.” I pulled it out of my wallet.

“Do you know why I stopped you, sir?”

“Because I’m awesome?”

“No sir, you were speeding. The speed limit here is 45 and you were driving 15 miles above the limit.”

“Really? I was going that slow?”

“I noticed you had another ID card in your wallet. Can you show it to me?”

“Sure.” He had seen my work ID so I pulled it out and gave it to him.

“How long have you been working for this agency, sir?”

“About ten years.”

“Have you ever been pulled over or received a speeding ticket?”

“Been a while since I was pulled over, never received a speeding ticket. I never speed though, I just go faster sometimes.”

“I would like to verify this ID as well. Please wait in your car, sir, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

My humor was completely lost on him. He took my ID, probably to see if I did in fact work for THE MAN, and after a few lengthy minutes he got back out again. I could see he was holding a ticket.

You son of of a___

“Sir, instead of citing you for speeding, I will issue a parking citation. You will not have to worry about receiving any points on your license or having your license suspended as long as you pay the fine in time. Please fill out the form here and here, and mail it in, or you can stop in person if you so desire. Do you understand everything I’ve just explained to you?”

“Yes sir, thank you sir.”

“Have a nice day, and please drive safely.”

“Thank you, you’re not going to follow me now right?”

“…Do I have reason to?”

“Oh no no, in fact I’m right by Stewart’s here, I think I’ll go in for some coffee.”

“Have a nice day, sir.”

He finally drove off.

I looked the ticket over, and one thing bugged me: it had no fine amount listed, which made no sense to me. I was in town though, so I figured I could stop by and pay the fine in person, just to get it over with.

Despite having Google Maps on my iPod, (which was going on and off because the signal was weak here,) it took me 30 minutes of wrong turns and head banging to find this fricking building. I had this preconceived notion of what a court building should look like, so I certainly didn’t expect THIS:

Seriously?

I walked up to the door, which had a sign that said:

“Court temporarily moved to Town Supervisor and Clerk’s Office.”

Sigh.

I should have mailed it in, but I’m just not wired that way. I like to get things over with NOW instead of having something like this hanging over my head and ruining my vacation mood. So I pressed onward, and spent another 20 minutes looking for the Town Supervisor and Clerk’s office before finally locating it inside an RV park. Yes, seriously.

I walked up to the door and read another sign:

“Closed for lunch.”

You get it? The entire town government was closed for lunch. Really? Gads.

Lunch was close to over, so I decided to wait another few minutes, pondering over why this blasted ticket did not have a fine amount on it, and absolutely convinced that if I mailed it in they’d somehow lose it for sure. I was putting myself through this grief primarily because I didn’t know before then that the fine amount would be determined by the judge himself.

That’s not how we do things downtown though. Our traffic violations have fines that are predetermined by statute. When you get cited, the fine amount is clearly listed on the ticket itself, and you can just stop by in person or mail in the guilty verdict along with a check. Here I could mail a guilty plea, but there was no indication as to how much I needed to pay, which completely threw me.

It was after lunch now, so I went back and entered the “building,” which to me really looked more like an oversized trailer home.

I walked in and saw a pair of clerks chatting it up.

“Hey there, I just wanted to see where I could find out about paying a ticket?”

“Oh, you’re here for the court?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I’m sorry, court doesn’t start until 4PM. If you want you could come back then.”

I just looked at her.

“Um, what? What kind of town court STARTS at 4 o’ clock in the afternoon??”

“That’s usually when session begins. Sorry.”

Sigh.

I got back to my car and thought about what I could do. I COULD let it go, but I’m too OCD for that, so I decided what I could do is drive to Lake Placid, check into my hotel, then drive back to the court, a round trip of 120 something miles. Yes, I’m an idiot.

So that’s what I did. I finally drove to Lake Placid and made it here at long last around 4PM, checked in, then cleaned my car out to get things ready for my quick trip back, this time using the interstate so I could make better time.

I tossed some of the trash in my car into the garbage can and walked out again, only to realize too late that I had just thrown my key card into the trash as well. I was now locked out of my hotel room, AND the building itself, because each door needed a key card to gain entrance. And I had to go to the bathroom too. Like, really badly.

Funny thing, this would be one of those buildings that didn’t have a lobby either, since it was a sister hotel that was now part of a bigger resort complex. So I’m frantically going around the building looking for an unlocked opening while doing the bathroom dance, trying to figure out what to do. Thankfully, somebody else had also checked in and were about to walk in, so I tried to be as nonchalant as I could as they opened up the door with their keycard and I walked up behind them. They held the door open for me, and I RACED back to my room like a bat out of hell itself.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……………..

Finally, I went back to the trash can and started diving around for my key card, getting my arm soaked in day old coffee before finally locating the card. I went back to my room to clean myself up a little, then went off to start the drive back to the town that I was now swearing I would never drive through ever again, never ever, amen and amen.

After an hour and a half of intense driving, half terrified that I was going to get pulled over again, I finally made it into town, got out and quickly jogged into the building again. I noticed by now the RV park was hopping. There were trailers and RVs everywhere.

There was also now a line of people at the door, all waiting for their day in court I suppose, yet I couldn’t see anything that remotely passed for a court room. I did see the judge though, who looked like he had just gotten back from a day of working at the steel mills. The court clerk asked if she could help me.

“Yeah I’d like to see about paying this ticket.”

“Oh, well you’ll have to wait until the judge is ready to see you, though I don’t know how long that will be.”

“I can’t just pay the ticket now?”

“No, he has to see the case first, then he decides what the fine amount will be.”

“Seriously? Because where I live, the fines are predetermined. I’ve never heard of a judge determining traffic fines like this before.”

“Wow, that would make things a lot easier here.” She said this as if it were the most brilliant thing she had ever heard.

“So… what do I do then?”

“Well let me get your casefile. When did you get the ticket?”

“Today.”

“Oh… we’re not going to have the casefile then. It takes a few days before we get the next batch of caseloads from state police. I won’t be able to do anything for you until then.”

Sigh. “So, what do I do?”

“Well, you can sign a guilty plea now, and then when we get the casefile, the judge will set a fine and send you the bill by mail. Since you handed this in person, you just have to mail the payment.”

“Ok…” I signed the forms. “Thanks for your time.”

“Oh by the way,” she called out. “No personal checks! Has to be cashier checks or money orders!”

Good Lord. “Yes, ma’am.”

There was nothing left to do now but start the long drive back to Lake Placid. I drove in pitch blackness, half wondering if this day would end with me barreling into a stray moose or driving off a ledge somewhere, but fortunately, it seemed the worst was over. I got back to the hotel around 8PM completely exhausted, and thinking up creative, violent things I’d like to do to state troopers (even though the dweeb had done me a favor by only citing me for a non-moving violation.)

Yep, I think I’d just as soon pretend this day never happened.

Tags: car, clerk, driving, funny, government, lake placid, locked out, new york, pants, police, state police, ticket, ticonderoga, town, upstate, vacation, walmart
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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Well not quite yet, but I am kicking off October with a 5 day reprieve, to which the current forecast is predicting rain, rain, and more rain for 4 of those 5 days. Sigh.

Interesting day though, filled with Yankee Candles and pizza, two of my very favorite things in the world.

The pizza came as a result of our new supervisor sucking up to us in the vain hope that showering us with free food would get us to look the other way while he’s prancing around in his office in his Superman undies, but also for catching up on some work and like, stuff.

I had to do THE RUN this week, so I went out to grab an unmarked car from fleet, only… there was no car.

“There’s no car left at all? ALL of them were signed out??”

“Yep, and there’s one missing too.”

“….what do you mean it’s missing?”

“It’s just, gone. Nobody knows where it is.”

“Dude what am I supposed to do? I need a car.”

“Can’t you walk?”

I muttered something about his mother, then walked out again. I ended up taking my car, placed an official decal on my dash, and basically had a ball breaking as many moving violations as I could while I did the run. You haven’t quite lived until you’ve jumped the curb outside some official government building and parked on the grass just so you can be right next to the door. I swear this is how it should always be.

Just don’t drive really fast or you might upset the security guards when they come running out half scared that you were about to kamikaze the building in an attempted terrorist attack. Have to remember that for next time.

Since I was already out and about I decided to take a slight detour to say, the mall, and spent about 30 minutes or so sniffing Yankee candles, before deciding on some fall harvest candles that should keep me sufficiently ensconced in the scents of Autumn until Thanksgiving.

Speaking of harvest, I’m planning to go out as far east as I can possibly muster this Sunday (easily a 4 hour drive), so I can watch the harvest moon unobstructed as it rises from the east. I should be surrounded by ocean then so it should make for some snap-worthy scenery, but, meh. I always plan things like this and then I start getting depressed because I’m going out alone and as such I’m never able to share these tender moments with someone sporting bouncy boom-booms.

In any event, it will probably rain anyway, so instead I’ll likely veg out in front of the computer and immerse myself in Nancy Drew game playing. Either way, a good way to spend a nice, extended weekend if you ask me.

Tags: autumn, government, harvest moon, Nancy Drew, October, pizza, reprieve, yankee candles
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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I have some extended time off coming up in October, so this week I really need to take the opportunity to like, do work and stuff.

I actually take some pride in staying on top of the mass of crap that only an inept, broken system of a bureaucracy could spew forth my way, but there seems to be a hidden alert system somewhere that causes the inner bowels of the system to drop maybe 5-6 months worth of work on my desk in one day, all because I dared to pollute the bureaucratic matrix with my efficiency.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, my coworker (otherwise known as THE MOUTH) gets positively FIXATED on any particularly horrendous backlog we experience at work, and despite having a job title that puts her somewhere between a roadkill remover and a gas attendant, she would proceed to declare herself the boss of the known universe and badger me to half to death to pick up the pace so we can catch up. I just ignore her, yet instead of getting a clue, she only does it more. Since blowing her off doesn’t work, my next option will involve some form of violence. (After all, nothing quite gets the message across that you talk too much like stapling your tongue to your forehead.)

But anyhoo, if I can’t clear the workload by the time I start my vacation, it’s going to be really unpleasant when I come back, and that’s something I would very much like to avoid if I could. So blogging, twittering and facebooking will be light this week until I get ‘er done.

In the meantime, light a candle for me.

Tags: bureaucracy, coworker, efficiency, government, job, vacation, workload
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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So today I hear a story reflecting the sheer brilliance of my coworkers:

Guy comes in, needs to file a report. One of my coworkers gets up to help him out. She checks the computer and tells him:

“There’s already a report here with your name, only the first name is different. Same last name, same date of birth.”

“Yes, that’s my brother, we’re twins.”

Blank look.

“Let me get this straight, same last name, same date of birth, different first name. Are you sure this wasn’t filed by you?”

“Um, no it’s my brother. I said we’re twins.”

Blank look.

“Are you sure it wasn’t you who filed this? Every thing but the first name is the same.”

“I told you my brother filed that. We’re twins, we were born on the same day. You understand?”

Blank look.

At this point someone else takes her aside and says, “Tammy, why don’t you take a break now, I can take it from here.”

As if people like this working in government wasn’t depressing and scary enough, think about this: What if she was handling your health insurance too?

Tags: coworker, coworkers, government, health insurance, job, stupid
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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It was a dark and stormy night.

Actually no, it was a sunny and illuminous day here, with the weather dipping to the low 70s and the skies dancing with the billowing remnant clouds of Tropical Storm Danny. What a great way to end August and unofficially, the end of summer.

This was my week to leave the office for what we call THE RUN. Basically it involves stopping at a slew of government offices for pickups and dropoffs, and while I’m usually not crazy about this part of my job, I definitely welcomed the opportunity today. If you’re quick about it, The Run usually takes about an hour and 45 minutes to do, so naturally it takes me about 3 hours. It also gave me a chance to enjoy the weather and get away from the office’s resident hens, who cannot help but talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk talk talky talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk…

So I’m driving around far and away from the mindless, white noises of the office, and I’m thinking about things. I had been so desperate to move out on my own that I hadn’t really thought about another possibility: What if I could move out of state for real?

I was ready to give up on the idea that I would ever get another job or move out of state, and in that frame of mind I was looking around for any kind of apartment I could find simply to get away from my parents, resigning myself to the reality that my job now was the only job I’d ever have, and while I was lucky to have it, in another sense it was a blackhole too. There’s no promotional path, no training seminars, no chance to expand my skill set at all. In 9 years, I have learned nothing new. And because of it I was pretty much unemployable as far as the private sector goes.

But the public sector… well now, they actually EXPECT you not to have any skills whatsoever.

It also occurred to me that I was in the most ideal place you could ask to be in if your objective was to make a life altering, dramatic move and career change. I have no wife and kids, no debt, no property that I owned, not even furniture. I could up and leave a moment’s notice, literally. And while I’ve been building up my nest egg in preparation to move out, I wonder now if I should stick around for the time being and invest in something even bigger, not simply just to move out and find my own place, but move out of my job and my state altogether.

I always thought the Feds would be my ultimate destiny, mostly because since I graduated it had been my dream to work as a special agent for a law enforcement agency, whether it was the FBI or somebody else, a dream I had to give up on partly because of my disability, and partly because I’m, well, pretty much an idiot.

But now there’s no better time than the present to shoot for the stars again, and maybe even if I couldn’t work as a sworn agent, I could still serve in a civilian capacity somewhere. I have the luxury now of being able to apply and go to any job in the country (except New Jersey, cuz, ewwww). I could also take a salary hit without feeling the squeeze now that all my debts have been taken care of as well.

I think I owe it to myself to at least give it a try before accepting the sentence of life imprisonment in New York. Maybe there is a faux log cabin and a bonnie lass waiting for me in Colorado after all.

Tags: apartment, career, debts, destiny, dream, government, job, law enforcement, life, new york, parents, public sector, weather, white noise
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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I have decided to be a man about things by plunging my head in the sand and going in full on news blackout mode for say, the next four years at least.

Because the world my friend,  is in a drunken stupor of epic proportions, and rather than get upset it, or dwell on the fact that more than half of my fellow Americans are dumbasses with their hands held out waiting for Sugar Daddy Government to coddle them, I have decided instead to focus on more important things.  Like cupcakes and 80s music.  Mostly cupcakes though.

There’s really no sense in getting upset over things I have no influence over and can’t change.  But more importantly, this is the time to realize that whereas I am but a mere speck in the sand, God is above it all, and is more than capable of keeping me in a haven of protection from some of the awful things that’s sure to come.  I’ve seen it over and over before, and I’m sure it will continue on for as long as I have faith in Him.  And that’s all that He really requires of me really, is to have faith that He will take care of me through the good times and the bad, whether we good presidents or bad ones  (or really, REALLY, bad ones).

It’s strange that in spite of everything that’s happened in the past, after being trodden down of family members who either left me or betrayed me, that I could still believe without a second thought God’s infinite ability and desire to put a wall of fire around me, for no other reason than because He is full of grace and mercy.  And if He be for me, then what have I to fear?  Obama may be the president now, but God reigns above him and all the nations of the earth, which all together are as a drop in the bucket to the Lord of hosts.

When that knowledge becomes real to us, then we can rest in it and truly know what it means to have perfect peace in troubled times.

And cupcakes. 

Tags: 80s music, blackout, cupcakes, God, government, lord, nation, Obama, peace, president, world
Categories: Politics and Poker
 
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