My Story of Backpack
Tuesday, January 7th, 2025 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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13F and holding tonight, with cloudy skies.
Mark, my supervisor, will be going in for a knee-replacement surgery in the near future... I found out today.
And that means he'll be out, on leave, for about two months.
And that means, Kristina will be covering for him!
Kristina is the woman who interviewed me over the phone, that fateful day in August of 2022, and hired me on the spot... for Geostaff!
She's also the one who showed up at Cloud, in person, back in October of 2023, to talk me out of leaving... after I'd been hired by district 313 to be a janitor at Odlaw Junior high... just 3 blocks from Melody Manor.
And again, in May of 2024, Kristina is the one who talked Don & Mark into giving me an interview, for their maintenance position at Potawatomi... after they'd been rejected by several out-of-house candidates, who didn't like the pay.
So, in other words, Kristina is more or less solely responsible for where I am right now.
Mark had his other knee replaced last year, when I was still at Cloud, and Kristina took over for him then... becoming universally loved by everybody at Potawatomi... including Tom, who told me last summer that she's definitely gonna succeed him, upon his retirement.
SO... this is gonna be a great moment, coming soon this winter, to experience working directly under Kristina for the first time, as well as getting a glimpse of what it will be like at Potawatomi, down the road, if I choose to stay working there.
And because Kristina works directly for GeoStaff (Mark works for the school district), I'll finally have a supervisor on site who can help me straighten out the issues I've been having, logging into the employee portal.
Which will be critical for applying here in the tower, for an upgrade to a 1BR... because I'll need modern paystubs to show I make a lot more money this year, than when I first applied here last summer!
It's also critical for switching my direct deposit over to 5/3rd bank.
Because even though I've discerned that I can afford to keep paying PNC their loan payment?..
If I move my paycheck to a different bank... that could give me an edge in re-negotiating that monthly payment!
Like, This is an unsecured loan, guys, and... you don't have my paycheck to raid anymore so... I really could just bail on you soon... OR... maybe we stretch it out and lower that payment?.. and maybe I switch the direct deposit back, huh? Whadd'ya think?.. No? OKAY!
I can also use those paystubs to apply for a job with Armada, and if, by some slim chance, they offer me more money, or a better deal than GeoStaff... that's a bargaining chip with Potawatomi, to give me some incentive to stay!
However you look at it, Kristina has been, and continues to be the key to my future, so it IS good that she's coming to Potawatomi soon.
And I'm incorporating that turn of events into my still-developing plans for 2025.
Okay!.. in other news... I have a new backpack in my shopping cart, as of this afternoon.
Another quality of life improvement, because the old one is driving me nuts!.. which I'll explain below.
I went with Yellow and black, because those are the colors of all my DeWalt tools?
And like... this is for work... and I'm a maintenance guy... so I felt it should reflect that?.. even though I won't be using it for tools.
I was there for the advent of student backpacks, in the mid 1980s, when I was in grade school.
They went from non-existant, to a must have item.
But it became immediately uncool to wear one with both straps!
Only dorks did that!.. but cooler kids just hung it over one shoulder with one strap!
So... I did have a backpack all through grade school and high school... and even into the college years.
I remember accidentally leaving my backpack at my girlfriend Jenny's house one night, and being terrified, because my notebook journal was in there!
She said she didn't read it, but I'm sure that was a lie!
But after dropping out of college in 1989, at the age of 20... I did not need a backpack again for nearly thirty years!
And even in 2015, I didn't need one that badly.
At the time, I was working at the hospital, and was required to do a weekend shift at their old building every other week.
The building was nearly vacant, but all the systems were still running, so they needed a man with a pulse to sit in the mechanical room and make sure nothing caught fire, or exploded... and they were too cheep to just hire somebody for that role, so they made us guys from the main building rotate over there... through all three shifts.
So each of us had to do a weekend on day shift... then two weeks later, a weekend on 2nd shift... then two weeks later, a weekend on graveyard shift!
But there was nothing to do over there, and, by 2015 I had some money (because I was living with Dad) so I bought a laptop to keep myself entertained over there, on those long, boring weekends.
And because of that... I needed a backpack.
The backpack only needed to hold a laptop and it's power cord... so it didn't have to be some big, fat thing with tons of space.
Being more fashion conscious back then, I went for this flimsy canvas backpack, with floppy flaps, and leather straps with buckles... and it worked just fine!
And a few years later, they finally sold off the old building, and we no longer had to rotate over there anymore... and that floppy canvas backpack went onto a hook by the closet upstairs, and hung there, unused, for another six years.
When I worked at the hospital, I used to always just buy my lunch in the cafeteria, or go to a nearby restaurant, so all I ever needed to bring for the commute was my coffee and a bottle of water.
And there were coffeemakers, with styrofoam cups in every department of the building, so all I needed to bring in from the car with me, was my water bottle.
And that was only to keep the water from freezing in the winter, or boiling in the summer... cuz there were plenty of ice machines with water in every department too!
And whether I lived at Autumnwood, or later at Melody Manor, my car was never more than a few steps from the door, which meant carrying the thermos and water bottle back and forth, on the home end of things, wasn't very difficult.
When I started working full time at Cloud, after Dad passed, I did now need to bring a lunch, which complicated things a bit.
But my routine was simply to take the lunchbox, coffee & water out to the car before I had to go... kind of in the midst of the whole house checking routine, before leaving.
That routine would be like;
- get fresh coffee going for the drive.
- make my lunch while it was brewing.
- Feed the cats and the dog.
- Check upstairs to make sure nothing was on, and the toilet wasn't running.
- Grab the mail.
- Check the basement and downstairs, and the back door.
- Take the coffee, water, and lunch out to the car.
- Back on the porch, reboot the power to the security cameras, then lock the side door.
- Take a final pee.
- Say goodbye to the puppy.
- Go out the front door, making sure it locked behind me, and drive to work.
Before driving home, I'd be able to put the water bottle and the thermos into the empty lunchbox, and then I could just bring that lunchbox back inside with me, calling, "Puppy puppy pup! Puppy pup! Puppy pup!"
And Yvette would go crazy.
And we go for a walk immediately.
And the cats would find us outside.
And then I'd feed them all when we got back inside.
And if I had beer in the car, I'd grab it later, after everything settled down.
So... no need for a backpack!
These days it's a different story, because to get to the car, I need to walk down a hall, take an elevator to the ground, then walk a block... take another elevator up to L4... and then go find my car in the garage.
And if I plan to get beer that day, I have to bring with me not just the coffee, water, and lunchbox, but a collapsable luggage dolly as well!
So yeah!.. these days I need need, a backpack, like I haven't since the college days!
And back in July, when I moved here, I thought, That's okay, because I have one! And it's great to finally have a use for it again!
But it's not great!
Because that formless, flimsy bakpack, with the floppy flaps and the flippy buckle straps just fights me, every step of the way, trying to get it packed, or unpacked!
The lunch box, which has a fabric exterior, just hates to friction it's way into or out of the floppy canvas bag!... and it and the thermos and water bottle always want to get stuck inside a stupid interior pocket in there... that has no purpose, and no zipper!
It just hangs loosely open in there, waiting to catch whatever I try to shove into the bag!
And then the only way to tighten the opening of the bag up, after everything's been forced in there, is with a leather drawstring!... before you can flop the floppy top flap over it.
And the straps are also so floppy that after I get the left one over my shoulder, I cannot find the right strap, no matter how much I blindly claw around behind my back for it!
Then once I get to the car and need my coffee back out of there, I have to flip back the floppy flap, and undo the high-friction drawstring... then dig around for where the thermos moved!.. usually under the high-friction lunch box!
So it's just been this maddening ass pain with that thing, for the past six months!
But I've been putting up with it because part of me didn't want to admit it was just a shitty purchase, back in 2015, like, This is a perfectly good back pack, and I'm finally getting my money's worth out of it!
And another part of me didn't want to let go of this nostalgic little piece of a life that no longer exists!
Those three and a half years where I did use that backpack for the laptop, on my weekend adventures to the solitude of the old building... were the peak years of life upstairs at Melody Manor...
When Dad was still doing well.
I had Jet & Mauli upstairs, and he had Yvette downstairs.
And we'd hang out on my days off a bit, but mostly lived our independant lives.
And, I'll tell ya... it really takes a lot, for me to go from being sentimental about an item like that... to loathing it!
But that canvas backpack is so BAD at being a backpack?... that I have nothing left in my soul now, but contempt for it!
So in a situation like that, the only way to go is to the opposite extreme!
And this one in my shopping cart is the most backpacky of backpacks!.. made of smooth, synthetic materials, with zippers and clips!.. that holds it's shape!
And I'm getting it in bright yellow, because I want it to scream, "I AM AN ADEQUATE BACKPACK!.. AND THIS IS A NEW DAY!"
But, of course, to guarantee that Amazon doesn't lose it in transit... because this is just the kind of thing they love to lose in transit!..
It has to stay in the shopping cart for at least 24 hours before I buy it!
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