Everything is starting to go to hell around here. The only news I found elsewhere was this little bit in an international newspaper: http://www.indiadaily.com/breaking_news/68355.asp The local newspapers are loaded with information and apocalyptic scenarios. Really interesting reads, but in Spanish:
http://www.endi.com/
http://www.primerahora.com/
http://www.vocero.com/ <--- What a shitty newspaper! Erm, sorry L!

The main focus has been on the closing of the Education Department, which affects 75,000 employees and half million students. What worries me more is the fact that the police force, the prison custody workers and the courts are also closing down if they don't get paid. Some say it could be the governor crying wolf as he always does. But then, many different people in the know have said that the crisis is real. The clincher is Rossellini, airing a TV message laying the blame elsewhere but not admitting his huge share of it, plus, packing his bags and leaving for Washington to steal the spotlight from Fortuño. Yes, Fortuño and Rossellini are up there drinking cocktails with Congress and dealing with the statehood issue, when people here are on the border of mass hysteria.

The solution: a direct intervention by the United States, just like Washington DC in 1995. The problem is: we are not THAT important in the whole scheme of things.

What a bunch of pussies.

As I told you last, I've been having oodles of fun. Apparently, the cosmos believes it is not enough and in the past 48 hours somebody stole a door and the water pipes of my mother's other house. So now I have to cough up the cash to get PVC plumbing and a door made of some material that is cat and thief resistant. Damned druggies with their joneses. Why don't they go to el Cerro Las Mesas and steal from the rich, huh?

Called the Police, which didn't help much, since they cannot do anything. Soon after, I dropped my cell phone and broke it. If I had your phone number please send it again so I can text message you frequently and obnoxiously as is my custom.

I have had enough with the copy shop. I am presenting my resignation letter next week. Nine years of abuse for $7/hour = $35/week is enough. My weekly five hour shift on Saturdays went something like this yesterday: punch in at work, find the worst job nobody "understands" assigned to me (340 drilled sets, 200 pages each, some are single side, some are double side, must be careful it is not a random thing.). The other production machine is down, must do all the jobs that come in through the door on the self serve machine which is a good 45-50 feet walk from the babysitting job I am doing in the main copier).

Co-worker is new so she needs a lot of help (in other words, I have to do everything except ring transactions on the register, BUT OF COURSE, she doesn't know how to do a check transaction, or a return, or credit card, arrgh, ok, I have to do everything.) A customer comes in and her job, supposedly finished a week ago, is not finished. She gets pissed at me, since we are all the same in our blue and khaki uniforms. In an effort to please her, I try to do the job: 7 eight-foot-long banners taped and laminated). My coworker gets another difficult customer. Drop everything I am doing to wait on him, transaction total: $2.16.

At 1:30 pm was my punching out time, and the manager had the gall to ask me if I could stay because they had no one who could accompany the new girl until 6 pm. Thankfully I had another commitment at the new job (work from 2:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.) so I could say no with a totally clean conscience. God knows my convoluted sense of responsibility, teamwork, good old Catholic guilt mixed with a Puritan work ethic, would have made me say OK if I had been free.

So I have decided that in order to keep my sanity (writing more than four sentences about this is the online version of a foaming at the mouth shouting rant), this kind of abusive work environment must be let go. I won't have it anymore, especially after the horror and pity I felt when I learned that said manager has a 2 inch tumor in his head. Working at Omax as the last job you held in life MUST suck big time and I am sure is subject to ridicule on judgement day, when all humanity will be eating popcorn while sitting back watching the movie of your life.

As I told my best friend yesterday, I have been doing the disappearing act because of a new job. Yes, I now have a grand total of 3 part time jobs and I still barely can make ends meet. Credit card debt is evil, EEEVIL. I just have to stay put until I graduate, when I hope I can snatch one good job that lets me have some little time for myself.

Any tiny amount of time I thought I had left over has been occupied by this:

Meet Hannibal the Cannibal, aka Hannah.
(Despite appearance, she is not some exotic rodent.)

A "thoughtful neighbor" gave three kittens to my mother, and being who she is, she didn't give him hell for it. Despite my best efforts I could not save two of them. Their eyes were still closed, they wouldn't eat, the Pedialyte didn't seem to work, and I was at wits end. Bought a thermal pad but it wasn't enough, they were too far gone when I got to them. This one is the trooper, really demanding temper, no wonder she survived. Has me feeding her every four hours like clockwork, though thankfully she now sleeps overnight.

So this is what I have been doing during Holy Week: penance for past sins, apparently.