Odd jobs

As I wind down my working years, I have been looking back at some of the odd jobs I have had over the years. Side hustles are not anything new among working class people with a high school education like me. Recent college graduates seem to think they have discovered moonlighting.

I hate to give you the bad news, but times are about to get worse. Side hustles,odd jobs, moonlighting, whatever you want to call it; picking up an extra source of income is important. Learning new skills while earning that income is going to be critical going forward.

Cats win, Finals race crowded

Geelong got the expected win over hapless North Melbourne. The large margin of victory boosted their scoring percentage, which is the tiebreaker. With twelve of the eighteen teams having records between 10-6 and 6-10 with six games to play, the race for the last five finals berths is starting to heat up. Geelong currently holds the eighth and last finals position. Except for Fremantle, every one of the Cats’ opponents is above them on the ladder. Most of the other contenders are in a similar position. July is proving to be Big Boy month in the AFL

Cabinet Maker Blues

For some reason cabinet companies are among the poorest paying places to work.  The pay is low, the working conditions lower, and the risk of injury is higher than average.  The industry is known for cutting corners in more ways than one.  When I lived in Phoenix one of my neighbors got a job as a temp at a cabinet company.  The job paid just above minimum wage and the hours were long. Fifty to sixty hours a week was the norm..

  After a couple of months, he got hired by the company.  The company would hire them in the middle of the week.  During that week he worked thirty hours for the temp agency and thirty hours for the company, all for straight time pay.  He then had to wait a year to get a raise. Of course he got fired before he was due to get the raise. Turnover was high, but the company didn’t seem to care. I don’t know if they wanted high turnover, but I actually worked for a company that had high turnover as part of their business plan. I will post on that tomorrow.

The worst of heat

As I near the anniversary of my move to Kansas, I often think about the years I spent in Arizona. Usually, this is prompted by the Weather Hype Channel’s drama queens talking about the temperatures in the Valley of the Sun. Yes it can get over 110 degrees during the day. The moderate humidity makes swamp coolers ineffective during July, August, and September. What the Atlanta based morons can’t seem to understand is it’s not the 115 degrees during the day that is so bad. It’s the 100 degrees at bedtime and the lows of 85-90 that making the heat intolerable.

Still in drought

In spite of the rain we have received over the past three weeks, we are still in severe drought status according to droughtmonitor.unl.edu.

The corn is head high as it should be on the fourth of July. The recent wheat harvest is a mixed bag of nuts. Weight and protein content are high, but there’s not as much as hoped for. Normally all of the wheat is harvested by now, but much needed rain in recent weeks have delayed the harvest, but saved the crop.

Independence Day

Since hardly anyone has a public display of fireworks today, I decided to shoot off a few of my own. Since I work in retail, I rarely get a holiday off. In fact, this is the first time I have had Independence night off since I started working for Wally World. It will be the last time until 2028 I get the night off.

Even on a limited budget, I got to shoot off a lot of fireworks since I had leftover fireworks from previous years. Some of them had a little more boom than I remember, but the neighbors didn’t complain. Most of them couldn’t hear mine because of the ones they were shooting off. Depending on how the economy does, I might shoot some off a little early next year.

So so social media

I am not a social animal, so I do the bare minimum with social media. I do not have snapchat, tiptoe, or whatever the fad of the day is. I use Facebook to keep track of people back home, but I rarely post on it. I had a Twitter account for following a couple of local sportswriters and a couple of bloggers, but rarely replied or posted on it. I haven’t been able to see my Twitter account for the last week. Apparently I have to log in to see posts instead of using the app. For what little use I get out of Twitter, I can’t be bothered to log in each time. Goodbye Twitter, can’t say I miss you.

Happy Bobby Bonilla Day

Baseball fans mockingly celebrate the deferred contract with former outfielder Bobby Bonilla. Every July 1st from 2011 through 2035 the New York Mets have to cut a check for approximately 1.2 million dollars to Bonilla. He will be 72 when he gets his last check. Perhaps we should call it Dennis Gilbert Day in honor of the agent who negotiated this clause in Bonilla’s contract.