Happy Halloween

Halloween used to be one of my favourite times of the year but then things happened which changed it all. Now I am starting to put some of it behind me and can enjoy Halloween again even if I don't go all out about it any more. I am not going to go into all of it tonight, but I will tell you the story of the straw that broke the camel's back.

I used to go to haunted houses whenever I had the chance and then a few years back I started working at one. I worked two or three nights a week for the duration of the season, the month of October, at least until the owners decided that I wasn't allowed to work there anymore. The reason they gave was that I was too scary.

So I was too scary to work at some place called "The Haunted Mansion" whose whole purpose was to scare people.

Yeah, it made that much sense to me as well.

Now, the part of it which really upset me and turned me off the whole thing wasn't that they decided not to let me work there any more, what pissed me off was that I heard about it when other people who worked there started contacting me and saying "I heard what happened and I'm sorry." To which my reply was "What the hell are you talking about?"

Eventually I was able to piece together the story, no thanks to the owners or operators of the house. I called and emailed them but they would not respond. Nothing. They acknowledged my attempts to friends of mine, but that was it.

Apparently it was one parent who complained and had me removed from the house. She said I scared her daughter too much. Since the owners of the house wouldn't talk to me, let alone listen to my side of things, I am going to tell you what happened.

The girl in question came through and I did my job and tried to scare her. At this point her only reaction was to threaten to "mace" me. She then immediately reached into her purse, pulled out a small spray canister, and sprayed me in the face. Needless to say I was caught off guard and it took a couple of seconds before I realized it wasn't mace, pepper spray, or anything like that. It was perfume.

I don't think I have to say that I was not happy with this girl. So I pulled out the stops, without breaking any of the house rules (I didn't touch, trap, or block her in any way) and gave her a scare. Adding my anger into the mix was enough to actually scare her and while she left the one area, she did not leave the house. I know this because she came back later and mouthed off some more. This got a scowl as a reply but nothing else. I knew that if I did more I would have used language which would have made a gangsta rapper blush. Safer to not say anything. But as it turns out not safe either.

And that was the end of that.

That was three years ago and this weekend was the first time I have been back. I was back there as a customer, and to see friends of mine who still work there. I had seen these friends in the meantime, I work with one of them, but I hadn't seen them in this environment. It is too late for me to go into what happened, but I will say that I enjoyed it. Look for that story in the coming week.

In the meantime I am off to bed and, hopefully, to sleep.

Peace.

Can a Narcoleptic get Insomnia?

As those of you I talk to personally may know, I have been having trouble sleeping for a while. This happens to me from time to time and has recently come back.

It has been going on for a while and I have talked to my doctor about it. She gave me some advice along with a list of things to do which should help. This list includes some standard things like "Don't ingest any thing containing caffeine past noon", "Maintain constant bed/wake times even when you don't have to get up", etc. Some of these are common sense (although that doesn't mean I was doing them) while others I never would have thought of. I am doing my best to follow them.

She also gave me a prescription for a "sleep aid" with the caveat not to take it every night. She said I should only take it when things get too bad. If you take it too much you can become dependent on it.

I think I'll be taking it tonight, and possibly for the weekend as well.

For the past couple of weeks I have been getting about 3-4 hours of sleep a night during the week and then getting 10-12 hours a night on the weekend. None of this sleep has been very restful. And now it has gotten to the point where I can barely sleep at night and can barely stay awake during the day.

I feel like I have insomnia and narcolepsy at the same time. If I lie down I'm awake. If I sit or stand I can't keep my eyes open.

It's enough to drive a sane man round the bend, and I am making no claims as to which side of that bend I was on when this started.

Maybe I should just try sleeping in a nice comfy chair instead of lying in bed tonight. However, while getting to sleep tonight might be difficult, I think getting out of bed at the normal (read: workday) time over the weekend will be even more difficult.

Geez, I feel like taking a nap.

Do the Yankees really suck?

I need to preface this by saying that I am not a big baseball fan and I would much rather watch hockey or curling. However, I do live in Boston these days and have been unable to avoid baseball due to the Red Sox playing for, and now winning, the American League Championship. (Against the New York Yankees for anyone who didn't know, or care.)

Game 7 of the series (Best of 7) was last night and the Red Sox won. Now everyone around me is talking about it today. This is not really surprising since this is one of the bitterest rivalries in any sport. Well, the comments can be summed up in two lines:

About half the people have been saying: "The Red Sox won!"

And about 75% of the people (There is some overlap, I can do math.) have been saying: "Yankees Suck!!"

With a lot of people then continuing by going on about how the Yankees choked, couldn't beat a Little League team, or some even more degrading and disparaging remark.

Not to defend the Yankees, but I watched most of the game and the Yankees didn't play badly, the Red Sox just played that much better.

I guess my point here is that by tearing down the Yankees by going on about how bad they are and how badly they played these Red Sox fans are, in effect, taking credit away from the Red Sox for how well they played.

I have seen this type of behaviour quite a bit, including in several areas outside of sports, and think it is horrible. Constantly tearing down the other side will do nothing for your side. Except lead to the possible diminishment of your side, as I noted above, by taking away due credit.

I guess that is why I try to give credit where, and when, it is due.

I've been thinking too much...

I've had several things on my mind over the last month or two, many of which I was going to write about here. The problem is that they were weighing on me so heavily that I just kept thinking about and analyzing them until they were even less clear than when I started thinking about them.

This is a recurring theme in my life. And now with these in particular, things are so twisted around that I don't even have a starting point from which to write.

I don't know what I am going to do to work all this out, but I am going to try to prevent it in the future. I'm going to try not to over analyze things. If this means writing more short entries instead of working on it and then writing longer ones, so be it.

I am still going to try to avoid talking too much about work here. Also, so far I have avoided talking about politics here for various reasons.

Come to think about it, that may be part of the problem right there. Work and politics have been a large part of what has been weighing me down. Not everything, but a large part. I might rethink this and start posting about politics and work, but who knows. If I do, it is more likely that I will talk politics than work. There have been too many stories of people getting in trouble for posting ANYTHING work-related on the web.

I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I think I can figure it out. It just may take me a while. And a couple of tries.

Peace.