When it rains it pours

And sometimes that's a good thing.   Just got cast for several days on a new movie.  Will have to go in for costume fittings Monday... shooting Wednesday and Thursday.   So I won't be working day labor ( with the immediate pay) next week... I'll have to wait two weeks for the check... that's 210 + 15 costume bump and 15 haircut bump, -taxes.  I got it covered tho.  This day job I have now has already given me 40 hours,  and Saturday will pay me 9 hours overtime.  And the check from astronaut wives club just came in. 

All I have to cover is my rent and some food... so I'm good.  And since St Vincent's finally fixed their community kitchen, I can cook my own stuff for cheap, and of course, on the set you are fed.  Very Very well fed. 

Of course after next week it's back to the temp grind.  There will be more filming days coming up on this project over the next 2 month's.  I'm not supposed to give out many details, and they keep us from doing that by not giving us many. 

Its called Geostorm, as far as I can tell it's a sci-fi disaster kind of thing,  and I'll be NASA mission control. .. other than that, can't tell you much...cause I don't know anything else. 

And life goes on

All right folks... disaster averted... not homeless.  Too close for my taste... but there we are... lots of things are happening in my life tho...,

I am of course watching American Horror Story this year.  Turns out its being filmed down the street, about 3 blocks away, and one of the stars, Mat Fraser, whip plays seal boy is living in the neighbourhood.   I've seen him twice now, and yesterday he was set the coffee house where I get my cafe au lait when I have the funds for a $4 cup of coffee (not lately) but I didn't see him because I was at work. 

You read right... work... day Labour people FINALLY came through... at the last minute on my last day. 

Grunt work for grunt pay, but it's a three week job.

They're turning a 1920's bank building into condos, and I do things like scrape the walls for the plaster crew, move materials up 18 flights, sweep floors... you know... grunt work.  And I thankfully get underpaid every day.

So.  There we are. 

This is the fire escape stairwell.  As access stairs they're actually impressive.  Marble floors, and under that bad 1940s green enamel paint, those stair banisters are solid copper. 

In modern stairs, you're lucky if you get unpainted drywall, these are being replastered, and yes, ive scraped all 18 floors of it.  Not fun.

You see,  after Katrina and Gustav,  so many people had left NOLA that businesses didn't have workers... so the businesses relocated.  This left downtown a wasteland if empty buildings, and many of them are now being repurposed into condos or apartments. 

And of course, tbey have major cool architectural details.... and solid bronze elevator doors.

And stuff.

About this PayPal thing...

Well... yesterdays post was not about me begging for money.  It was just me venting frustration. 

Yeah, things are a little bad at the moment, And yeah I may end up spending a few days in a shelter... but worse things have happened. 

It's very heartwarming to know that there are people out there who want me to.set up a donation button so they can send me money.  Well,  I'm confined to an android at the moment And copying code into html files is kind of beyond this phones capabilities... 

All I can say is that if you really want to send me something,  for which I will be eternally grateful, you can send it via PayPal to blueukeduke@yahoo.com

This is not good...

In the interest of being totally honest... I'm going to admit publicly, on my blog, something I'm not proud of...

Basically, I'm out of funds. 

A little over 4 dollars is all the cash that is gracing me with its presence at the moment. 

Well, I have funds coming in... in a little over a week, but I don't have money now. 

Just in case you think I'm exaggerating and being a drama queen... I spent the morning looking into homeless shelters on line. 
If I don't get a day labor job on Monday, I may be forced to avail myself off their facilities. 

So crap.

But hell, I'm tough,  I'll survive it. 

I'll admit that my first week here I didnt exactly hit the ground running.  I thought I had time... is not like there aren't jobs... there are lots of jobs... It's just that the hiring guys have a maddening quality of being too Damn mellow about hiring... (I actually had one guy cancel an interview because he'd gotten too drunk the night before And just couldn't deal with it)  It's not something I'm used to dealing with.   In Texas... they need to fill a position in a week... here,  they give it qa couple of months and see what happens. 

Maddening.

But I do have food.   One of the local charities hand s out food and Friday I went by.  I was drsperate... there we are.  There were these cardboard cups of soup in the bag.   More upscale than Ramen noodles, and marked organic vegan.  I tried one.  Tasted OK. 

I shoulda known better.  I don't eat things markets vegan for a reason. .. soy makes me violently ill.

So today was spent in the bathroom with occasional dizzy spells.  

Obviously I didn't go in for day labor... I was having a hard time standing upright... all I could do is wait it out, and this afternoon,  after assuring people that no, I don't have Ebola, I'm doing better.   Still getting chills, but better. 

And that's the state of things at the moment. 

And there we are. 

Well, I was in this movie...

For 16 bloody hours I was in this movie... actually, 15 3/4 hours,  and its not a movie, it's a new series that premiers either in December or early next year... Its called Astronaut Wives Club, it's based on a best-selling novel of the same name, set in 1962, and I spent most of my cameta time walking back and forth down one block of New Orleans which is now New York in the winter, past some truly georgous vintage cars. There's a large green screen... and I understand that they're gonna put in the Chrysler building... there was another shot in a dive bar, where I was buying cigarettes from a machine while chatting up a lady... but I doubt seriously that I'm visible.

So...there we are.  Will get paid rate + overtime + costume fitting + hair.  I let them cut  my hair so I got 16 bucks extra.  Woo hoo.  But that money is still a couple weeks off... And I want cash now...

So back to that temp labor place... this morning I filled out paperwork, she saw my resume and she has a definite job next week that actually looks pretty good, and I'm waiting to see if I can get something along the lines of dishwasher or clean up tonight,  and I'm definitely gonna do something tomorrow and Friday... maybe see about over the weekend.  I've always been like that... you pay me, I'll do it... don't care what is...

That's the way seems to go for me.  1 good little positive thing happens and everything snowballs. 

Fallen Blossoms

As many of you may have realized, I keep a daily journal.  Occasionally I post a page from it... if I think it's interesting of relevant for some reason. 

Today, I am sitting with my morning coffee, at the patio table in front of St. V's .  

It's a nice enough spot, between the street and myself is a 3 tiered cast iron fountain that's just off balance enough to make all the water drip down one side and its shaded by an ancient clump of banana plants that tower 15 feet in the air.  Of course the gardener in me wants to get a sharp knife and clean out dead leaves and maybe hack out a spent trunk or two, but it's perfectly healthy and producing several bunches of bananas.

One of 

these bunches hangs directly over the table, and having already produced fruit, it continues to produce non-fruiting male flowers, daily peeling back a brick red petal from its growing tip to expose a dozen or so 3 inch long, nectar oozing flowers which detach and scatter over the table below.  These florets may have fallen, but they are still full of sugary liquid, a fact hardly lost on the local honey bees who crawl and buzz around the mass like conventioneers around a complimentary buffet.

I wonder if, like these bees, we on New Orleans, are feeding on past glories.

While it's true that this is one of the most important docks in the United States, its also true that large parts of this town are already, technically,  below sea level.  

As global warming progresses, as sea levels rise, and hurricanes become stronger and more frequent, there may come a time that it no longer becomes practical or possible to keep the waters at bay. 

We may be, like my morning honeybees, squeezing sustenance from a still productive, but no longer living, blossom.  

And the saga continues...

So... just to share the continuing job hunting drama...  as I mentioned yesterday, I was told to call in this morning.  So I did. 

And I was basically told to not bother them untill next Tuesday. 

So... just to make myself clear... this is a day labor service.   This is grunt work... sweeping warehouses, cleaning construction sites, ripping out old carpet in hotels.  The advantage to this work is that it pays the same day you do it.  But nobody is mistaking this for a career or even a real job.  This is cash, slightly over minimum wage.  To be blunt... when I worked in warehouses before, this kind of work was usually handed to any vagrant that came by, but big companies hire this labor through services like this.  I should also point out that men working in factories part-time, use services like this for a little extra cash on their days off.   And drunks and addicts on the street use these services to get extra cash, which just shows you how stupid the "are you a meth head?" questionnaire is.

Well, despite the fact that I was instructed to call and then treated like I was a nuisance, I suddenly developed an intense stubborn streak... and I decided there are more than one way to skin a cat and looked over the papers that I was given.

This company, national company actually, has three offices locally, and one of them does intake on Thursday.  So I schlep my tookas to a bus stop, get to the office, and there's a sign on the door saying "no applications"

I'm pissed.  I am perfectly willing to go through hoops to get a job.  But I tend to reserve such efforts for jobs that are worth having. 

Since it is a national company, I'm tempted to get on the website and lodge a complaint.  And I probably will... after next week.  I'm stretching my 3 strike rule... complaints can achieve good things, but they're just as likely to whack you upside the head. 

So... will I go in there on Tuesday?  No, I will go in on Wednesday.  

Why not Tuesday you ask?

Because on Tuesday, I will be on a film set. 

Yep... snuck that in on you at the end, didn't I? 

You see, after all that rigamorole,  and I'm in a rather deadly mood, I get a call telling me to come in for costume and hair tomorrow so that I can be on the set Tuesday. 

I'm not allowed to say too much... it's a new tv series that hasn't premiered yet called Astronaut Wives Club.  Set in the early 60s, so I'm gonna get buzz cut tomorrow, (my poor curls) I'll be in two scenes. 
But yeah, I'll still look into day labor.  Like I said, it pays the same day, and that kind of manual labor keeps you fit, and I can pick and choose what days I work... so it would be convenient. 

All before noon

So... yesterday I went to apply at a temp agency.  Was told I couldn't apply because lightning had struck the building and their computers were fried, could I please come back today?  Well there had been a storm Monday night, so ok...

So, I went this morning.  Was told that I needed to fill out an online questionnaire.  No,  They don't provide internet access to do that, But there is a public library 1 mile away.  (I'm sorry, but 1.  If you require applicants to do online questionnaires you should have internet to do that, 2. You could have told me this yesterday so I could have done this last night, and do you really expect the unemployed to walk a mile to do your questionaire?)y

Anyway... I walked about 3 blocks and found a little coffee house ran by the Catholic church and walked in, because many of the coffee houses have internet access for a small fee.  This one didn't,  but when I asked if there was anyplace around that did because I needed to use it for a job application,  a nun grabbed me, and escorted me to the office and sat me down in front of a computer with a cup of coffee.

I then proceeded to answer a gazillion idiotic questions,  maybe 10% of which had something to do with an actual job The rest of them various permutations of 'Are you a crack head?'

Seriously... no matter how many times you ask, and no matter how you ask, the answer is goin to be... no I don't do crack.  Or meth.  Or heroin or anything else you need be concerned about.  And quite frankly, after you've asked me 12 times, you're starting to piss me off, and I'm wondering if you're on crack. 

Finally got thru,  checked the clock, and I had time to get back because they stopped doing intake at 10 am.  Got there at 9:55.  Receptionist looked at me all surprised and said, "you've finished it?" 

"Yes Ma'am"

"Well... she left to do a job fair... can you come back tomorrow?"

I pointed out the sign that said they only do intake on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

"Oh... I'll tell her about you, it'll be fine..."

So, I've now spent big chunks of 2 days on this damn temp service, and we're looking at more tomorrow.  Fun. 

Then I started walking back and I was waylaid on the sidewalk by a woman who may or may not have been drunk at 10 am, but she was definitely feeling just FINE! And she had felt compelled to chase me down to tell me that I looked just like that girl in the TV show... I don't know which girl, but she evidently is 6 foot tall and has a 5 o'clock shadow.

And then... a couple more blocks of walking and a blank eyed man with a beard dyed the most astonishing shade of fuchsia felt called upon to tell me that I looked like a swan.  He seemed happy about it... so I'll assume it was a compliment. 

And I may have to change the route I walk tho...

Did take some pics in my meanderings tho...  another hand painted vehicle...

And pool noodles + frisbee makes a lovely pop art flower. 

And just to put a cherry on the cake of it all....

Its my birthday.

Keeping NOLA Wierd...

Yet another painted vehicle.  I actually like this one better.

Trees...

Don't know these trees, but they're fairly common in the parks.  The blooms should be outstanding... the thing is tho... despite the color and size, you don't notice them at first. 

Dense leaves seem to overwhelm them.  Anyone know an ID?

Update:  i finally wised up and googled the phrase "red flower tree New Orleans" and came up with Erythrina x sykesii, aka the Australian Coral Tree.   If im right this is a popular seedless hybrid in a genus that has over 100 species, so I may have got it wrong but im pretty confident.  

Skull crochet

Just finished a skull vase and decided to show it off before it goes online for sale.  

Not bad if I say so myself.

Pics

Just a few shots of plants i see as im walking the neughborhood...  the first two are an unidentified Aloe... im afraid i don't know one aloe from another... but this one is blooming easier impressively. 

And then a rather impresive night blooming.cereus.