This is going to be short because it’s 2:26 am in Floriduh.

Whew! I’ve been busy. I’m changing up my way of earning a living. I’m still working at Sprouts in Winter Park, but I’m going to be doing Uber Eats. I was miserable working nights so I took the chance of changing my availability. I’m available to that employer 7am-6:00pm.

I knew my hours would get cut—even though I’m still available for 77 hours per week. Fucking retail. It’s an entity in which management, and owners think they are offering a service on par with medical professionals who save lives, and patch up the broken people, or that retail is as important as curing cancer, cleaning up environmental hazards, keeping the populace informed, educating our children, and college students. In short, they expect everyone to have open availability. Thus, they own their employees and all their time. It’s ridiculous.

The only place this really wasn’t a problem was when I lived and worked in Portland, Oregon. With pretty much every job I had there, one of the first questions posed to me after being hired was, “So, what two days would you like to have as your weekend?” No shit. They cared! But, that was in the 90’s. I’m not sure if that’s still a thing.

I guess I’ll find out soon enough. I’m focusing on saving money to, at least, go out for a lengthy visit, or to possibly relocate. I have to say that when I let myself feel the sensation of actually living out there again, I get excited.

I even spoke to a potential roommate. And a few hints about employment were tossed to me. I’d be living kind of way out from downtown, almost in Gresham.

I just really need to see, smell, touch, and walk in deep forests, and gaze at humongously huge, snowcapped mountains again. And drink incredible coffee, wine, and beer.

I’m so sick of Floriduh politics. Florida has been ruined by 16 years (Rick Scott and Ron De Santis) of con men Republican governors. Ron DeSantis (duh Satan) has decimated our state universities. so much that I have no appetite to take the four remaining anthropology classes I need to finish my second BA. I’m so glad I got, Sex, Gender, and Culture done before the duh Satan era. It wouldn’t be the same course as it once was.

I could finish it up at Portland State (PSU), but since it is so few classes, I’d have to take additional ones before I’d earn a PSU degree. It’s a requirement literally every institution of higher education has. The thought is that the student has to have a minimum number of credits at the institution from which the degree is conferred. I get it. I wouldn’t even mind the extra work load. It’s the money that scares me.

Of course (pun? Perhaps), the fact that I’m in my mid-sixties SHOULD be a concern, but it’s not. I’ll probably be enrolled somewhere as I enter my death bed. My mind still thinks I’m in my 20’s. Sometimes my body thinks my mind is an idiot.

Anyhoo, I’ve got a lot on my mind. My fantasy is that the Money Fairy brings me a few huge bags of high denomination paper bills and I can move somewhere local and live solo to decompress and digest the last surreal 19 years of my life and think about what I really want. And, just for entertainment I let the wonderful doctors I have here ( they are one of three great things I’ve experienced living in Orlando) fix my rotator cuffs, carpel tunnel, and my bunion, so I can get back to hiking in the breathtakingly beautiful Pacific Northwest.

Well, just wanted to let you know I’m back. I got a new phone. I know we know the headaches of moving apps and finding the passwords we had for those apps. What a pain in the ass, right? I finally retired my iPhone 7, which most of these posts have been composed on, and upgraded to a iPhone 17 Pro —yeah, I like big, huge, sudden changes. It took me about 13 milliseconds to fall madly in love with it. The old phone could no longer be updated and would not support some of gigs I want to earn money from. The new phone literally has 7 times the storage space than the old one. I’m having a blast with it.

Sorry, this us longer than planned.

And, I’m wondering if my Six Foot Squirrel AKA Enigma Man has wondered off to new territories. He can be so entertaining.

Later gator.