Like every year, there are the highest of highs and lowest of lows. My year has been, in one word, interesting.
Was laid off for the first time and got a new job three weeks later.
-On 10/26/2018, I was laid off from my job. I worked as an Image Processor I for US Bancorp. My job had me scanning and processing financial documents all day. A few weeks before I was laid off, our big boss, Jane Biessener, had come in from Milwaukee, where she works. Apparently changes had been underway and of course, my department had no knowledge. The week of 10/26, we were told that changes would be happening. That Wednesday before I got laid off, I was called into a meeting with our boss Jane along with two of my coworkers, Pixie and Carrie. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that the Cincinnati location would be shut down due to that magical word called "restructuring". In my opinion, that means "We don't need you. Find a new job!" Of course, I cried because I had never had that happen. And as always, the HR rep told us that he would help us find a job. YEAH RIGHT! He did fuck all to help us. We were on our own. But, enough on the negativity. I applied for jobs and I did it hard. I was thankful and lucky enough to land a new job three weeks later. In fact, on the very day that I would have had to file for my severance pay, which was 11/26, that was my first day in a new department, still in US Bank. I am now a Lockbox Clerk 2. I process payments for retail. I have been working there for four happy weeks. I feel a lot calmer and a lot less stressed out here than at my last job. I only have two words- THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Got two more tattoos.
-I should really post photos. I had gotten two more tattoos. I have a tattoo on the inside of my left forearm. I have always been fascinated by those tear away tattoos that tattoo artists refer to as "skin rips". I have a "skin rip" tattoo on the inside of my left forearm with the English flag inside. It's to represent part of my heritage, since I found out that I have 8% Great Britain in my heritage. Boy, that certainly does explain a thing or two. The other tattoo I have is on the inside of my right calf. It's of the Disney character Mulan. It represents my love of/appreciation for/interest in Chinese culture and history.
Bought tickets to see Iron Maiden
-Yes, that's right. This girl and her family are going to see Iron Maiden. Ironically enough, the day that the tickets went on sale for Iron Maiden Fan Club members is also the day I was interviewing for my current job. While waiting for the manager to come to the lobby, I was playing Beat the Clock and trying to buy the best Iron Maiden tickets I could. It was hard doing it on a smartphone and trying to be fast about getting four tickets. But, I got them, and strangely enough, I am in the same exact general vicinity as I was when me and my family had gone to see Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd. Which means I will have excellent photos!!!!!
Seen Lynyrd Skynyrd/.38 Special
-What really irritated me about this night was that .38 Special was supposed to play for an hour. They only got 45 minutes, which confuses me. Then, of course, Hank Williams Jr. comes on and does a two hour show like he thinks he's the headliner. He is, no offense to any fans, trashy to me. He had to keep changing hats for every song. He spit on the stage, which is about as uncouth as it is possible to be, and he had to keep throwing politics in between his songs. He is just absurdly trashy and uncouth. Not only that, these two older gentlemen kept hitting on me and my sister with their wives right there. But, all in all, seeing Lynyrd Skynyrd was amazing. My sister had bought the tickets, which were thankfully very reasonable. I know it made my mom happy because she said that "Free Bird" was played at her graduation. She had been a fan since she was a kid and it made her feel almost on the verge of tears to know she could see them on the tour they dubbed "Last of the Street Survivors" tour, named after their album Street Survivors. That show was amazing!!!!! If .38 Special ever goes on tour again, I'm buying tickets so that we can see two hours of .38 Special, not two hours of some hillbilly hick who changes hats repeatedly and basically believes everyone should support our idiot president and who spits on the stage like he owns it.
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| .38 Special |
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| Lynyrd Skynyrd |
Seen Judas Priest/Deep Purple again
-Yes, we have now seen these two bands twice. We saw Deep Purple for the first time in September of last year when they had come to Cincinnati to play at the Riverbend Music Center with Alice Cooper. And just this past August, they had come once again to play with Judas Priest, who was touring their recently released
Firepower album. Man oh man does Judas Priest know how to rock!! I loved seeing the look on my sister's face when Rob Halford rode out on his Harley, done up in Firepower artwork to sing "Hell Bent for Leather". Another cool thing is that two of the roadies for Priest were raising money for Parkinson's Disease research by charging $5 to get a photo on the motorcycle Rob would ride. Of course, me and my sister both chipped in for three good reasons: A.) it goes to a good cause, B.) We're fans of Judas Priest and we both knew Rob would ride that bike C.) It was because of Glenn Tipton recently being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and we both thought he was the good looking one.
-As for Deep Purple, they were good, but a lot of their songs were long extended jam sessions. A lot of the songs they played I was not familiar with, like "Maybe I'm a Leo", "Wring That Neck", "Lazy" "Perfect Strangers", "It's Good to Be King". The songs they played that I did know were "Knocking At Your Back Door", "Strange Kind of Woman", "Woman from Tokyo", "Space Truckin'", "Hush", "Smoke on the Water", "Highway Star". When we had seen Deep Purple the first time, they had ended the show with "Smoke on the Water". This past time they ended with "Hush". No disrespect to Ian Gillan, his voice seems to have taken on a nasally tone. He bobs and dodges around the high notes. I mean, I know he's getting older and probably can't do that high stuff anymore, which is fine. But it does seem like his voice is going out. Sadly, I think I'm starting to know what Ritchie Blackmore was thinking when he did those last few albums with Deep Purple and and how Ian's voice is just awful.
Found two more autobiographies that I read and loved
-That's right. I'm constantly looking for interesting rock or metal bios. I found two that I read and loved. Black Knight: Ritchie Blackmore by Jerry Bloom and Heavy Duty: Days and Nights in Judas Priest by K.K. Downing. The book about Ritchie Blackmore is a biography while the book about K.K. was written by him. I love books like this because sometimes the person will inject their own little thoughts and they are hilarious. Reading about K.K. certainly was eye opening. I never knew that he had such deep resentment for Glenn Tipton. Of course, they got along, but it seemed like it was just for the band's sake and not personal sake. As for Ritchie, reading that book was interesting. Of course, with him talking about the band Rainbow, I ended up going on the internet and listening to Rainbow's music and am now a fan. I want to get some of their albums. The song I like best is "Street of Dreams" from their album Bent Out of Shape. It has that nice pop-rock melody to it. No wonder it's Ritchie's favorite song.
Seen a cool movie about the band Queen called Bohemian Rhapsody. Also saw the new Halloween movie.
-The new movie
Bohemian Rhapsody is awesome. It's essentially about how the band formed and how they played their famous gig at Live Aid. It's awesome. The new
Halloween movie is interesting as well. It's definitely not for kids, which leads me to wonder why people had their children, aged 10 or under, in there. There was one part where the psychiatrist looking after Michael Myers gets his head stomped on and it bursts like a pumpkin dropped off a freeway overpass. Another part involves two police officers getting killed, one with a bullet to the heart and the other with his head removed, hollowed out like a pumpkin and his flashlight inserted inside. Not suitable for children
My mom had her first car crash in 41 years and was robbed highway robbery-style
-My mom had her first car crash when she was 16. A car had rear ended her not paying attention. Once again, things have come full circle. Friday night my mom had been rear ended by a box truck on I-75, coming back from Florence, Kentucky, where she works. It had been raining, which almost always guarantees the roads will be slick. My mom, of course, was taking her time because it was stop-and-go traffic. This box truck, not paying attention, had no time to stop and it rear ended her. Luckily, she was able to get off to the right side of the road. She was ready to murder the driver, lol. She was swearing left, right and center at him and of course, he says that there's no need to cuss, lady. The Fort Mitchell Police had come and collected her purse along with the ambulance who was there to take her to St. Elizabeth in Edgewood. After finding out that, thankfully, she had no broken bones, but mostly just a sprained back, wrist and shoulders, she was allowed to go home. Yesterday morning, we had gone out to collect her bag from work, which contains her Amazon Kindle Fire table, which she uses to read e-books, her MP3 player, a couple of spare phone chargers and a pair of brand new eyeglasses, which she uses when she takes out her contacts, we find the car is unlocked and the bag gone. Someone had robbed my mother. It's that old highway logic-broken down car, let's see what valuables are inside. And with it being right before Christmas, there might be Christmas gifts inside. My mom had been robbed!!
-The Fort Mitchell Police HAD NOT locked up my mom's car, as she was told. She was enraged, on fire, furious, every word for angry. And if you know her like me and my sister do, she cries when she gets angry. She kept saying "I hate people". I do not blame her. Luckily, my sister was able to contact Amazon customer service and have the Kindle shut down, unable to be re-registered. Because when my mom would buy e-books, her credit card information was on it. My sister talked to Amazon and told them the situation. That my mom's Kindle had been stolen. That she wanted it wiped completely clean so no one could use it. That it was only her Kindle that would be wiped clean, not her actual Amazon account. That all the books she had bought would still be available via the Amazon Cloud. So now, whoever gets that Kindle, thinking they have a new one, will be unable to use it. When they contact Customer Service to get it activated and read off the serial number, it will register as stolen. So it's now a $50 coffee table decoration. As for the MP3 player, the cord to charge it was also in there, so they now have a used MP3 player. Just hope they mind the buttons sticking. Sucks to be them! Luckily, me and my sister have my mom covered. My sister ordered my mom a new canvas bag with dolphins on it (my mom has a thing for dolphins) and I ordered a new Kindle Fire after Christmas, when they go on sale, for my mom. I'm even ordering a new tablet cover for her. I want purple because my mom loves purple; it's her favorite color. But she went ahead and bought herself a new 16 GB MP3 player. So, essentially, me and my sister did our good deed for the day. I also did another good deed- buying lunch for my mom. She's diabetic and if her sugar drops, she gets lethargic. I bought Subway for her since she didn't have breakfast.
-The point of this little situation is-I HATE PEOPLE! I've always hated people who think of only themselves and no one else. It seems to get increasingly worse the closer it gets to Christmas. People want to fight and be stupid over the things that don't even matter. To make matters worse, because of the idiots at the Fort Mitchell Police Department, my mom was robbed. She called them and told them she was robbed and they didn't seem to take it seriously. Like they thought a $50 Amazon Kindle Fire, a $60 MP3 player and a pair of $200 progressive-lens glasses was no big deal. Like it was low priority for them, when they had more important things to worry about, like useless idiots OD'ing on heroin or other drugs. They blew it off, saying they would "look into it". Which translates into "Lady, we have more important things to worry about than some tablet, glasses and an MP3 player". It's because of police officers like this that I have a hard time respecting men in uniform sometimes. These kind of police officers don't seem to take their job seriously, investigating a robbery, which is their job, look at it like "what do you want me to do about it?" while the ones who DO take their job seriously are not trusted by others. They do their job and investigate it and get nothing in return.
Saw Def Leppard/Journey
-We saw these two bands in May. I saw Def Leppard already, so it was my second time seeing them while for my sister, it was her first time seeing Def Leppard. It was both our first time seeing Journey live, though. My sister had bought the tickets and when she looked at the price later, it was hideously expensive. She couldn't figure out why until she looked at the breakdown of costs on the tickets. She had, unknowingly, bought a VIP meet-and-greet with Def Leppard. When she realized that, I think she blew a few microchips. The thought of meeting Def Leppard and getting a photo next to Joe Elliott and Phil Collen was enough to make my sister happy. When the blessed night came, she made sure to wear all her Leppard gear. What cracked me and my sister up, though, was when we got inside US Bank Arena, where the concert was, there were two lines-one for VIP meet-and-greet with Journey and one for Def Leppard. Everyone got in the line they thought was for Leppard, but turned out to be Journey. I never seen a line of people move so fast, rofl. Anyway, me and my sister, and about a hundred other people, mostly women, were in line to do the meet-and-greet. There was a black woman holding a child backstage with them and of course, now the rumor mill was up and running about who it was. Every one there thought it was Phil Collen's wife Helen, but it couldn't be. She was in L.A. and had just given birth to a baby. She wouldn't be able to fly just yet. It might have been the girlfriend or even wife of one of the other band members. I didn't ask because I felt it was not my concern. We got the photo, the photographer telling my sister to relax, lol. For her, it's hard to relax when Joe Elliott and Phil Collen are RIGHT BEHIND YOU! I was calm as ever, being near Vivian Campbell and Rick Savage, but inside, I was dancing like an idiot, jumping for joy! The concert, both bands, were amazing. When Def Leppard came on, they did a mix of early and new material, like "Rock Rock ('til You Drop)", "Let It Go", "Pour Some Sugar on Me", "Hysteria", "Animal", "Foolin'", "Love Bites", "Armageddon It", "Man Enough", "Invincible", "Undefeated", etc.
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| Journey |
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| Def Leppard |
