Archive for May 14th, 2004:
Ok, here we go again. Its been a very interesting week… I finally started my job, which is good, I was getting bored as hell. On the downside (this may be a long paragraph), I am not in the water department as which I interviewed for and also as what my classification states, Water Service Techinician, I am actually in the sewer department. Yeah, shit flows down hill, along with piss and toilet paper, oh yeah, and the occasional condom. If you cant really tell, I’m not too happy about the whole situation. From what I understood in the interview, I would be working for the water department, the CLEAN water department. But now im a shithead. Enough about that, lets move on to another aspect of Flagstaff. It really is beautiful country up here, and believe me I dont use that word very often so feel priveledged you get to see it, but the jobs within the area don’t pay shit, especially my job. I kind of realized why now; All the residents of Arizona want to live up in Flagstaff so they really don’t have to pay that much because of the demand for jobs up here, BUT, along with that demand is the demand for a place to live… get this shit, I pay $640 a month(utilities included thank God) for a studio apartment. For those of you who do not know what a studio apartment is, picture a hotel room, with a kitchen tucked away in the far corner, I’m afraid that if I fart I might blow the windows out of this place. I’m sure most of you remember Casserole, aka my apartment/refuge camp for two years, well the rent there was only $630 a month… SO maybe that will put things in perspective for you guys, and the sad thing is, I have one of the cheapest places in the city as far as studios go. The nice thing that makes me feel oh so great, is that they do have “affordable” or “low income” housing up here, which consists of a single wide mobile home for only, yeah ONLY, $150,000!! So pack up all your things everybody and come on out, you don’t need much money to live out here! Its a poor persons dream. On the plus side, the weather here is spectacular (another word I hardly use), for the two weeks Ive been up here, I have seen one cloud, and its the same cloud that hovers around the San Francisco Peaks, the highest mountains in Arizona, which still have snow on them, which is why the clouds are there. Anyways, it stays around 75 during the day and trust me, you get sun burned here very easily, about a mile and a half closer to the sun than GR and the air is alot thinner, so yeah, Im nice and red. Anyways, if you’ve read this far I’ve got more for ya, so hang on; My second day on the job, the first time I actually get to go out on the road, was very interesting. First off I work with a guy named Jimbo, yeah, Jimbo. Anyways, he’s kind of a character, after we help some catering service out with a sewage back up in their kitchen we run over to the Sonic for lunch, yeah Jord, Sonic. After that we go on another service call and end up filling our truck up with water before we head back in. So we pull up to a fire hydrant in the back of a grocery store parking lot and begin to fill up the truck, while I’m filling out paperwork I notice our truck is just about overfull, and look over at Jimbo and he is picking through trash in the parking lot, while he is looking through a Happy Meal kaliedoscope thirty feet away, the truck cab is starting to fill up with water, so I run over and try to shut down the fire hydrant. Well, the hydrant wouldn’t close and we have water going absolutely everywhere. So Jimbo runs over to the hydrant to “assist” me, and ends up turning the hydrant the wrong way and we end up with about 10 more gallons coming out a minute than what I had it at. So, in the middle of all this, Jimbo has to take a piss, so he runs, actually runs, to the grocery store, fifteen fucking minutes later he comes strolling back out with 2 bags of groceries, meanwhile I have the entire parking lot flooded, some old lady drenched and a semi trailer starting to sink in the dirt lot next to us. It gets better, of course some of you may find this stupid, Jimbo removes the hose from the fire hydrant and procedes to absolutely soak himself. I laughed, naturally. So we leave the fire hydrant going full blast so we can get back to the shop and punch out on time, city work, and Jimbo tells someone from the water department about the hydrant mishap. Well, of course he tells everyone it was my fault and I already earn a bad rep(come to find out the valve on the bottom of the hydrant was stuck so it would have happened to anyone) so yeah, I am trying to adapt out here. Anyways, I hope to hear from you guys in the near future. My address, for anyone who wants it, is
James Postema
3765 S. Yaqui Dr. Apt. 1A
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
So hopefully you guys will keep in touch because I miss all of you, plus you can always email me at Elwood7171@hotmail.com or Ungifted1@aol.com or Ungifted1@budweiser.com… Hope to hear from ya and remember, Life in the City ain’t pretty.