Penske Trucks Blow People’s Minds

“There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.” ~ William S. Burroughs

Apartment complexes are starting to become a fascinating hobby. Especially the one that I reside in.

Early this morning there was a Penske moving truck in the parking lot.

Neighbors were amazed at the presence of the vehicle. I personally did not see it though. I guess it was on the other side of the property from where I am.

I did hear about it over today’s episode of morning coffee. It seemed as if nobody could figure out why the moving truck was in the parking lot at all. Nor could they figure out who it belonged to.

They failed to remember that they live in an apartment complex. A place of residence. A place where people actually come and go.

I believe that where I live, could be the exception for a majority of its residents as they are elderly and they have made their own decision to live here for the rest of their days.

That could be why they get all worked up whenever they see someone in the actual and physical process of moving their stuff out.

From what I was told, people flocked around the moving truck this morning as if they were holding a vigil for the truck gods. But they just could not figure out on their own WHO exactly was leaving.

Later on during morning coffee, a gentleman walked in to get his own cup of java. He stood back with a proud smile on his face and sheepishly announced, “I’m moving.”

Well, that answered that question!

And it should have sufficed. But you know what? This is SGC. It is never going to be enough.

I bet the guy felt like he was holding a press conference as everyone moved from where they were seated and crowded around him. Flooding his attention with more questions.

Where are you going?
When are you leaving?
Why are you leaving?
What are you going to do when you get there?
Who do you know that lives there?

Geez people. Calm the piss down!!

But the man was kind enough to go through the questions one by one and answer with them with brief responses.

He said that he was moving to Michigan.

Annnnnnd…. round TWO began!

Round two really didn’t have much in the way of asking newer questions. Just the same questions over again. This time around, asked with more curiosity and enthusiasm.

He got to the point where he stopped answering questions. And I cannot say that I blame him.

When the Q&A session was done, next came the input.

“It’s freaking cold in Michigan!”

Ummm… yeah, it is. Most of the time. Especially during winter.

But there they all stood. Eager and willing to inform him of the obvious.

After he had enough of the lecture, he spoke up and said that he had lived in Michigan for twenty years before moving to Texas.

The moment he said that, I tuned out mentally from the ongoing conversation. But it did seem as if everything wrapped up at that point. After all, if he had been there for that long … I don’t think that these Texas born citizens could offer any further knowledge that he didn’t already know.

Since I tuned out, I cannot even say for sure that anyone had wished him well as he said that he was leaving in about a week’s time. Poor guy.

Usually from what I have experienced with other people in the past who have moved out. They’ve either found a better living condition OR they had made the decision to go be with or around family. And that’s exactly what this gentleman’s plan was.

Not that it is truly any of our business. But SGC seems to think so!

And with each person that moves out, we know that in a few weeks that someone else will be moving in. The turn around rate is crazy!

Most of us get to the point where we start to see a stranger walking around on the property and don’t even give them the benefit of the doubt that they could be a new neighbor and instead, they hound them like private investigators. But that is for another blog post.

I am slowly and surely beginning to understand why more than 50% of the residents who move from SGC, do so at night. And why even a higher percentage of them don’t bother with farewells.

I would hate to see what they would do or not do if/when I leave SGC.

At least it killed the monotony of a typical Friday morning.

800

“Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.”~  Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Last night I was looking at this blog and its stats and there were a few things that I noticed.

First and foremost, since the beginning of this blog I have now reached a total of 800 individual posts.

This being the 800th post. I find it amazing.

And in that time, there are 145 of you who decided that this blog’s content was important enough that you wanted to keep up with it and subscribed for whatever your individual reasons were.

There are blogs out there that have so much more for sure. But then there are blogs that have so much less. And I am grateful for all of you being here and sticking it out. Especially over the last three years or so that this blog nearly went silent and was on the edge of disappearing into extinction.

It is true. There were times where I thought about just deleting the entire blog website.

But I did not, and so here it is.

The other thing that I noticed was the list of countries where this blog website had been accessed. To me, seven years is a short time. Especially knowing the fact that this blog has reached every nation on the planet. With the exception of about seven countries in Africa. And the Federation States of Micronesia.

There are tiny islands are also not accounted for. For example: South Georgia Island. A tiny island that is claimed by the country of Argentina. Population of only thirty people! I don’t expect anyone to just happen to cross this blog from there any time soon.

Bigger surprises were countries like: China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba just to name a few. All of which had at least viewed the blog webpage ONCE.

Greenland was also a country that had not viewed the blog webpage for the longest time. But I guess it happened over the past year. So thank you, Greenland.

It was funny about Greenland because at the time nobody from there had read the blog webpage. And I thought about trying to draw them in by putting their country in the list of tags and then talk shit about them in the blog posts. Thankfully, I didn’t have to.

Maybe I should for the Federation States of Micronesia to get them on board????

At some point around 2015, I stopped writing blog posts about different live music shows that I went to. It didn’t appear that they were getting a lot of traffic. And that greatly decreased the traffic to the site. I’m not sure if that was a mistake or not. I know that a number of you who are subscribed to this blog are from the music scene, but I just could not tell if that was something that people were reading at all.

As with everything in life, this blog constantly evolves because of time, source material, and the thought of “Will anyone actually read this?”.

There was a lot that kept me busy in life in between 2015 and 2017 that I was not able to write as much here as I used to. Maybe it can pick back up again?

Now that I don’t have that burning desire to just delete this entire beast, I can once again come back and fill it with content. I still struggle to figure out what will make it and what will not. But that’s for another time.

This is 800. It seems so crazy! But in all of its insanity, thank you to all of you. Hang in there. There is more to come.

Pain Vs. The Doctor

“Vicodin, I got addicted to that little pill. The reason I don’t talk about it too much in the press is because it isn’t funny, and I love to be funny in interviews. If you joke about that period in your life, it doesn’t seem right.”~ Matthew Perry

This past Monday I was visited by my doctor.

In recent past, I haven’t found it to be a bother. But ever since Norco (Vicodin) was placed higher on the classification scale, ultimately deeming it an addictive substance, things haven’t really been the same between he and I.

It comes from a serious injury that I sustained many years ago from a situation that I was in with a man who was high on drugs and it turned violent. I was left with chronic pain in my back and he went to jail. There’s a blog post here some where that talks briefly about it.

My doctor however has been quite “stubborn” for lack of a better term. I understand completely that he could lose his license if he is audited and they think that he’s pushing Vicodin. But because of this chronic injury, I believe that I have had a legitimate case to use it. I’ve lost the argument so many times with the doctor that I just gave up fighting because apparently playing CYA is more important.

Anyways before I get off track some more, on Monday when he finally arrived at my home, I was particularly not feeling too well and had one hell of a migraine and was suffering the moment he arrived.

The companion nurse could even tell that I was miserable due to the fact that my blood pressure was higher than usual.

I was also sitting there looking at them with my head crooked and turned to the side because it was the most comfortable position to sit in. My intention was to lay down after they left and hoped that I would take a nap and it would dissolve when I woke up.

The very moment that the doctor heard that my blood pressure was unusually high and the fact that I admitted to being in severe pain, he pulled away (for once) from his tablet and stopped typing and clicking and looked at me and said that he was going to prescribe Norco for me for five days.

Are you serious?

Wait, what?!??

Some how that captured his attention.

I thought I was dreaming when I heard him say it. Could it be real? Could he be totally serious?? I looked at him funny and he stared back with a straight face awaiting my decision as to whether or not five days of Norco was something that I wanted.

He asked if I wanted the prescription to be sent to a local pharmacy that would have delivered it directly to me. Probably the next day.

However the shenanigans doesn’t stop there.

During the time that I DID have a 30 day prescription of it, my insurance was switched and then suddenly the pharmacy was not accepting it to take care of the co-pay.

Instead of Norco costing me a few dollars out of pocket, it was well over $60!!

My insurance information at that pharmacy apparently has not changed either. So I said “No, send it to the pharmacy company that you guys use. I am dead broke right now that I cannot afford the co-pay.” And that means that five days of painkillers would be delivered to me in the mail. And I wouldn’t be receiving it right away. I would have to wait for it.

I could just HEAR the doctor sneering about it. Damnit, just do as I ask!! It is not like you’re going to go back to prescribing this stuff to me again. That is obvious.

So he did. And Tuesday I received a call from the company informing me that they received a new prescription for Norco.

But then over the phone I could just sense the confusion they had when they realized that it was only a five day supply. They knew that in my history that I was at one time receiving a 30 day supply. So only receiving a five day prescription was totally mind blowing to them for whatever reason.

Me too!!

I was told that it would be delivered and I should expect it on Friday. And because it is a painkiller that I was going to need to sign for it. Which is not a big deal.

Naturally that migraine did go away. And the medicine is still going to arrive. But it is going to help with all of this serious back pain I am currently dealing with because of the fact that I keep killing wheelchairs and keep having to switch to another temporary one. Even though it was only a year ago when I ordered a brand new one. I’m currently battling for a new one that would be taken care of by Medicare and not getting anywhere with it. But the point being that even though the migraine is gone, this medicine is going to help with all this chronic pain. All of that is for another post.

I just found it wildly interesting that I would go to war with the doctor for many months over painkillers and finally surrender the fight and trying to live with the pain and deal with it in other ways, only to be given five days worth simply because I had a headache that was temporary.

Blinded By Rent

“Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.”~ Kinky Friedman

Welcome to April!

And for those of you who are keeping track: 25% of the year has now gone by.

As it is for so many of us, this week is rent week. A week that we all feel so much good fuzzy feelings for! Am I right? No?!?? Oh well. It can be a chore and a hassle but we do it because we want to keep having a place to live.

This morning as I was going to grab my coffee, I remembered that I needed to grab the money order that I had for my own rent.

Well, April in Texas is also stormy season. A cold front blew in so it was a bit chilly outside. Very windy too!

I picked up the money order and headed back outside. But the wind nearly pulled the money order out of my hand. I do have pockets, but they aren’t that deep and I didn’t feel secure enough with all this wind that it would stay in there. I did the next best thing that I could think of.

I stuck the money order in between my teeth and bit down and proceeded to move forward.

The moment I turned the corner at top speed and was facing a northern direction, that crazy wind got in the way.

As I was accelerating in speed because I was going down a hill, the wind got stronger and flipped that flimsy piece of paper upwards and back into my face. The width of the paper and its placement between my teeth literally caused a blind spot.

Before I knew it, the wheelchair had turned off of the sidewalk and I went tumbling down the rest of the hill, head over heels, over and over and over again. The money order never coming out of my mouth.

It took quite a while for the empty wheelchair to catch up to me. And I climbed back in. All the while gritting down on the money order so it would not fly away in the wind.

I am fine though. I didn’t seriously hurt myself. I wasn’t bleeding or anything like that. I had the sense to roll with the roll so to speak.

But I have always said that rent was going to kill me one day. It came a little bit closer today than before!!!

Everyone enjoy a laugh from the story. Happy April to everyone!!!!!!!