Dysmey Post Archive > Pages for 2004 > Early May Edition
Today is the birthday of my favorite actress, Caitlin Clarke.
I keep a tradition of having a steak dinner on her birthday. It dates from when I won a coupon for a steak dinner at Ponderosa Steakhouse in a XMas raffle in 1992. I decided to spend the coupon on Ms. Clarke's birthday the following year. It was a good meal, so every year on the third of May I would eat a steak dinner at a steakhouse in Ms. Clarke's honor.
This year I will be eating my steak dinner at home. I can't afford to go to a steakhouse, and all the decent ones (Ponderosa) have closed shop in my area. So I bought a couple of sirloin tips and marinated them in red wine and herbs. They will taste good after they are broiled.
The search has not been going well, for I have yet to land a job. I am competing with a sea of workers dumped by factories all over the area. That sea has swelled with a thousand people from the closed Thomson plant in Marion. I am better educated than they, and have skills that give me a competitive edge. Yet I have gotten nothing.
Sometimes I feel the dread of my immediate future in my viscera. I ignore it. It is just a feeling. I know in my head the One who holds the future, including mine; and if my belly refuses to acknowledge it, I pay it no mind.
I have been asked if I hold any animus against my ex-employer and my ex-bosses. I don't. I'm supposed to forgive my enemies, right? Besides, the waves of problems that beat on them now, and will beat on them in the future, are bad enough without my adding to them.
As an example, two of my ex-bosses live in a township with a newly-built sewer system. It turns out the county commission in charge of the sewer project is not only incompetent but so arrogant as to resist advice. The first contractor the commission hired to lay the sewer lines was a crook who milked other municipalities in the Midwest. The commission was warned, but hired the contractor anyway, because it gave the lowest bid. In the end the commission fired the contractor and hired another to repair the damage and complete the work.
As a result, the project is late and spent far more than budgeted. The township residents (including the two bosses) must pay $65 a month (in contrast to my average $16 bill) for the service. Naturally, residents are in an uproar. There are two criminal investigations, and the promise of more. But, the bosses still have to pay or get liens slapped on their houses. And they have to use the service, because all the residential septic systems in the township are failing, which is why the sewer system was built in the first place.
Now, how can I possibly compete with that?