Rain

It’s 3:40 pm and I’m in Hemingway’s.  The $1.50 big draft special is Shock Top.  It’s not bad.  It’s great for $1.50.  I take off my jacket but leave on my long shoreman’s cloth cap, muffler and hoodie and it feels good.  St. Joe’s and Texas play basketball on two of the flat screen TVs.  The jukebox plays a song I don’t know but it’s jammin’.  The singer is beggin’ for mercy against a funky back beat.

I wonder what’s going to be on my voicemail when I get home.  Since I didn’t have enough money to pay my rent Thursday I might as well pay my $100 phone bill and send $50 to Sallie Mae.  My first social security check is due around Christmas and can’t get here fast enough.  I know I must be suffering from depression.

People walk along Forbes Avenue under open wet umbrellas.  I won’t know until the first week of December if I’ll be called back for a second interview with the data company I first interviewed with several days ago.  I need a job.

GHH

Lunch Break

Lunch break is almost over here at the employment and training center in Braddock.  I downloaded some useful documents from the US Census Bureau and I’ll be filling out the documents and going over the mock test over the Thanksgiving break.  I had a candy bar for lunch.  I must really be under intense stress if I’m eating all this chocolate.

It’s a gray day outside, chilly and damp.  I wonder if maintenace went into my apartment to adjust the radiators to keep them from knocking.  They only knock at night; it sounds like someone in the downstairs garage pounding on the pipes with a hammer.  I didn’t want to say anything at all to the building super because I’m so far behind in my rent but you can’t go without your sleep.

The other students are coming back from lunch.  It’s time to get back to work.  I want to do some typing drills to keep up my accuracy and speed .

GHH

Break Time

It’s break time at the employment and training center here in Braddock.  Man, it’s freezing in this break room; but I’m eating healthy: a banana and a small tomato washed down with a small plastic bottle of water, water from the tap.

The majority of the class will return to Room 210 to finish giving their Power Point presentations.  I’m in Room 211 with a couple of other students.  I’ve been at the center so long that I’m excused from sitting through the presentations.  So, I’ll do some typing drills and maybe work on some more assessments in my MS Word book and Google the US Census 2010 website.

The US Census Bureau is hiring.

GHH

Creative Laziness

Yes, I’ve become a lazy writer.  No, that’s not true.  I post something on this blog at least once every day.  I’ve become a lazy flash fiction writer.  Good flash fiction is so difficult to write.  And although I have enough stories stockpiled from a more creative period of my life (enough stories to post one every weekend for the next thirty weeks) the stockpile won’t last forever.

Of course, if I wasn’t worried about being several months behing in my rent and worried about finding a job maybe I could work more on creating new flash fiction stories.

Still, life must go on and flash fiction is very much a part of my life.

GHH

A Short Week

It’ll be a short week at the employment and training center.  Today and Tuesday will be regular days but Wednesday is the party and of course we have Thursday and Friday off.  I still don’t know what to bring to the party.  Maybe a couple of pound cakes from the Shure Save supermarket in Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s “Little Italy”.  Why go to another neighborhood to shop when I live in North Oakland?  Because the other nearest supermarket, the Giant Eagle on Center Avenue in Shadyside has outrageous prices.  I went there a couple of times just to check the place out.  It’s no place to shop for a working class bloke who’s out of work.

I won’t know until around the first week of December if I get the call for a second interview at the data services company that I interviewed with earlier this month.

GHH

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 847 other followers