Today, as I was driving to "work" from home through thoroughly apocalyptic weather, I reflected on the level of drama that has become baseline this year.

For starters, my day off should be tomorrow, not yesterday, but since our challenge department fucked up so royally that we need to reshoot an entire day they wrapped us all and told us to come back Wednesday. Which shouldn't have been surprising but it was. I'm not used to working with incompetents of such magnitude.

Also discovered this week that my suite-mate - you know, the person on the other side of that door in your motel room that goes nowhere unless that other person opens theirs and then suddenly party time! - is the Executive In Charge. The very one I filed a grievance with over payment. The one who knows I ratted her out to my union. I discovered this because she chose my after-work chill-out time (9:30pm until Midnight) to loudly and petulantly fire people on speakerphone. So when I called the union the next morning (over yet another issue) I did it in the bathroom with the exhaust fan on.

Someone she fired the previous day she did so because he flashed a gun in a fight with some of the camera assistants. So we've had sheriffs sitting around, in case he decides to make something of it. It's that show. Also, all the PAs are surly because the budget shortfalls are such that they cut them back to 5 days, instead of 6. Which means (A) they're not making time and a half on their sixth day and (B) they're sitting around in cabins with no internet, no wifi and no cell service with 8 to a room and communal showers, getting drunk. Pennywise and pound foolish; apparently the half million dollars worth of rock and gravel we've dropped on the roads to make them passable up here will have to come up again when we're gone which pretty much dwarfs the expense of paying an army of PAs their measly $225 for a sixth day.

The nice thing is I was able to go home for my daughter's 3rd birthday, which surprised her and my wife, which was super-nice... but also meant that I could deal with our bullshit contractor, who decided that removing and replacing a hot water heater and spending 10 hours replacing a subfloor is $5200 worth. I've got a line item that says "plumbing, labor & materials, $1650". When I called him up to say "Uhhh, I need this broken down more granularly because I need to defend it to not only the property manager who is reimbursing me but also the insurance company" he got all defensive and said "pay what you want, I'm sick of your negative energy." Then when I insisted "well, yeah, I'm not sure how you've got 38 hours at $75 an hour to strip linoleum when you had two guys for three hours but also, I really and truly do need to bounce this off two hostile agencies to get you paid" he doubled down with "you know, we're all really sick of your attitude."

But that's okay because when I called the property manager they've done a turnabout and have decided they owe us nothing because how were they to know that when a hot water heater explodes you need to clean the water up off the floor so it doesn't rot wood? And then she hung up on me. So now I have to get her boss up to speed (and threaten legal action) because getting my house back to "move in ready" while it was being taken care of them has cost me $10k so far. I shotgunned invoices at the property manager and the insurance company anyway and told the contractor I had done so, wish me luck.

Prick.

Meanwhile the car has been through two dead batteries and a tire just getting to and from here, which pretty much indicates how much it wants to find a new home. Unfortunately there's nothing worth driving. Nothing. All new cars suck. All of them. Except the new 'vette which not only costs $70k it has no back seat. Which I kind of need now that I have a three year old.

Featured here, wandering around the stripped-out guts of a future birth center. Thing is, I'm so shell-shocked by all the bullshit that I haven't even internalized that a solid years' worth of combat and bullshit is finally materializing into an actual structure with actual keys that we can actually bill for at some point in the future. Probably because at the end of the day, the only thing I could really do is get everyone to the table and hope it doesn't cost too much money.

Moving cost us about 25 grand. Between the new furnace and the bullshit and the movers (who, by the way, aren't covering ANY of the boxes they lost or ANY of the damage to our shit, with the exception of $300 worth of thrashing they did to our couch) I've been at sea for two months now. On the plus side, I sold two of the last three gadgets from my Todd Soundelux adventure (and the last one is worthless). All told, I spent about $14k to make about $18k. Or, my company did. So my company is gonna buy one hot shit PC for Pro Tools 'cuz I've got a movie to mix when all this bullshit is done.

And about 500 photos from the trip up that I need to ingest.

And somewhere, some time, I need to finish the fucking book.

My wife pointed out that we have six entire months until I need to head back down to Los Angeles. I pointed out that I will have burned two entire months on this bullshit show up in the mountains.

But hey. My mother in law has a friend whose 26-year-old adopted son with Aspberger's is dying of metastasized brain cancer and his 22-year-old sociopathic adopted brother won't even come to visit. Nobody here is a sociopath; nobody here has metastasized brain cancer. There's a roof over our heads, there's money in the bank and the arc bends toward success.

So.f'n.tired of 2015. I live in dread of the idea that the year hasn't had the last of me.