Brian Fields

Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve updated. I’ve meant to a couple of times, but for some reason I just wouldn’t finish or I’d lose what I typed and just get fed up and leave. Quite a bit has happened, but it seems like I’m the same old Brian.

I’ve been living in Cincinnati for just over 3 months now and I’m loving it more and more everyday. It seems like everything I need is no more than a few minutes away and if the weather were nice, I could walk to a lot of places with no effort. There were many things that were nearby in Franklin, but you still had to drive to get there. The house is great. There are things that I don’t like about it, but I guess that’s going to happen no matter where we are. I still have a couple boxes in the attic at home (mostly stuff that is waiting to be thrown away.) and few things in the closet, but I’ll probably bring those with my on my next trip and be able to say I’m entirely moved out. I just feel like mentioning that Joe is still working on unpacking all of his stuff… haha.

Work sucks. That’s my biggest gripe right now, and calling it a “big gripe” is a bit of an understatement. With the exception of holiday weekends, I’ve worked every weekend since I’ve moved in. That’s just flat out too much. To top it off, other people have gotten the opportunity to have weekends off since then. There have been some weekends where we’ve had light nights and just didn’t need everyone, but on the couple of weekends I going to be off, the lab guy that started in October wouldn’t show up a few days prior, and I would end up being needed to cover the lab for a few days straight, including the weekend, screwing over my chance at going out and enjoying myself. It’s causing loads of stress to me right now and I’m almost to the point where I could end up quitting if I have to keep doing it. They are over-working us, too. Not only are we working a lot of weekends, but we’re working close to 50 hours during the course of the regular week, making each week nearly 60 hours (after working Saturday.) I don’t mind doing it every so often, but working that much in a physical job really takes its toll on a person. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned to everyone before, having only Sunday off in a week doesn’t seem like a weekend at all, because technically you’re working at least part of a shift on every day of the week. You get home Sunday morning, go to bed, and wake up in the afternoon and nobody wants to do anything on a Sunday.

I got hurt this past Friday, too. I was cleaning a glass tube on a piece of my equipment when it shattered in my hand. A large piece of the glass sliced directly through my glove and into the palm of my hand, by the base of my thumb. Looking at it now, it doesn’t look too bad, but when it happened, it was bleeding pretty bad, so my boss, Mike, had me go to the hospital to have it checked out. Because I’m a bit squeamish about blood, I had to wait for a cab to take me there. Luckily, once it was wrapped, the bleeding subsided a bit. This was the first time I’ve been to the emergency room since I was an infant. Once there, a nurse did the usual checks and put me in a room after re-wrapping my wound with fresh bandages. I had to wait about 45 minutes until the doctor could come take a look at it. He said he had some patients that were critical so I told him that I don’t mind waiting as long as he needs. He had some nurses X-Ray my hand to make sure there were no pieces of glass left in there and then the nurses cleaned the wound to prepare it for stitches. While cleaning it, my squeamishness kicked in and I went pale, got dizzy and had to lie down for a little while before he could start stitching. He gave me a few shots of lidocane directly into my hand (which hurt) to numb the pain. I didn’t even feel the stitches go in… just a little tugging on my hand. I ended up with 4 stitches, and it was the first time in my life I’ve ever had to get them. After a tetanus shot and a drug test that was required by work (which is really hard to do without feeling in one hand) I called Mikey to come pick me up. I was given a voucher to cover the cost of a cab back, but they said it would be an hour wait before they could get a cab to me. I was there for about 3 and a half hours, which not mentioning the part where my hand had a hole in it, sucked because I had to leave work a mere two hours before they got done for the night.

As if work isn’t enough, I’m trying to finish school while working this much. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I come home, get a shower, and I get about 2-4 hours of sleep before I have to wake up and go to my co-op. It’s not going to the co-op that I don’t like, because that’s actually quite enjoyable, it’s that because they are making me work late and long weeks, I’m dead tired and I don’t feel like I’m giving 100% to my co-op. Luckily, at the end of this month I will have my college credits, and all that I’ll have to do is finish the job before I can go back to a normal schedule. The co-op itself is going slow right now. I’m at a point where I’m waiting for other people to do their part of the job before I can continue mine. Really, once they are done, it may only take a few hours before I’m totally finished. I’ve enjoyed doing this work, but I really just want to not dread Tuesdays and Thursdays anymore. I think that once that is done, that will make me a bit more accepting of the large work schedule I have.

I’d still really prefer to just quit and get some half-assed job where I can enjoy myself at least one day a week. The more and more I think about it, the more I’d just love to find a restaurant job for a few months while I’m working on getting a real job, just so I can be on a first shift schedule and have some time to enjoy myself. The only big downside to that right now is that I have a goal to pay off my car by the end of February, so I’m not going to be able to achieve that if my pay is cut nearly in half.

Now on to the sad news. In late November, Casey, my buddy, was put down. He started losing control of his body and his mind and my mom just couldn’t bear it any longer. It seems like things were a roller coaster ride with his health. He would be doing quite well one week and the next week seem like he couldn’t go another, only to bounce back for a few days. I miss him. I really wish I could just lay next to him on the loveseat one more time as he laid there thinking about whatever it is dogs think about.

Not soon after Casey left us, Mom found out about a real cute dalmatian that was for sale. In December, Cameron, who is no more than a few months old, joined the family. Except for some chewed -up electronics (which dad is not the least bit happy about.) he’s doing quite well. He was really timid at first and would run at the first sign of approaching him, but now I think he’s warmed up to people and is happy to come greet a person.

Thanksgiving and Christmas came and passed and were enjoyable. It felt a bit odd because I didn’t live at home, but I still stayed in Franklin on Christmas Eve so that I would be there in the morning for the traditional Fields Christmas breakfast. The week after Christmas I had off of work until the Tuesday after New Year’s. I was so excited to have this week off, and no more than a day into it I got sick and was miserable the entire time. I wanted to go out and enjoy myself every night, but I felt horrible that whole week, so I ended up sitting on my rump playing video games the entire time, which isn’t a bad way to spend a break, but I really just wanted to get out of the house and not feel like crap.

Remember the incident where I was hit in the Bigg’s parking lot only a few days after moving in? Well just this past week my car FINALLY started being repaired. At first, the father of the girl that hit me wanted to handle it without insurance, but after their non-response for a month, I sent an estimate via certified mail that they didn’t respond to, so I finally got angry and called their insurance company. After a couple of days, they told me that the next step was to contact the other party and they’d call me back when they did. After a few more weeks, I ended up having to call them to find out that they had approved the claim, but didn’t bother calling or anything. So, aside from the pain in the ass the company repairing it caused by not scheduling a rental car like they were supposed to, things are now going smoothly and I should have my car back in a week or so. They didn’t give me an idea of how long it would take, but it for some reason it took more than a couple of weeks, I wouldn’t mind because I’m driving a nice 2005… black Nissan Sentra.

So if I took the time to tell each and every thing that happened… this post wouldn’t be too much longer! Haha. Not that much goes on when you don’t have the time to let it go on.

But for now, I guess that’s enough to read. I’ll try to updated more, but I guess that’s more a matter of how busy my work schedule is, and it doesn’t look like it’s letting up the near future.

See ya.