[SamIam]

Events at the Bates continue to spiral down the toilet. Carmen has been sick since Thanksgiving and has finally been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She had to resign as manager and she and her hubby have moved to an actual house of their own. The Bates is REALLY spooky now with no one living there anymore. I clip my pepper spray/mace to my belt every time before I go on shift. I hate hanging out alone with only $2,000 in cash to keep me company and a bunch of ever more disgruntled drunk/meth-addicted/mean "guests" wandering in through the door. Did I mention the druggie who tried to break in via the laundry room a few weeks back? He tried to crawl in through the 12 inch re-enforced rectangle of glass in the laundry room door. He had shattered the glass with his bare hands and was trying to pull the rest of the door apart by time the cops arrived.

The owner has decided to cope with security problems by making my 65 year old female coworker sleep in one of the extra rooms at night. She doesn't even have mace or anything else. Motel Maintenance Man (3 M guy, remember him?) slinks off to his room by 6pm every night and puts his phone off the hook while he smokes and drinks himself into oblivion. I think my coworker is insane to stay there by herself every night - no extra pay, no back-up - so she can "guard" the money. No one around there, especially the owner, has ever thought of just throwing the money in the lock box, hiding the key and removing the cash from the property at 10pm when the office closes. Like, you know, the owner could just stop by for the money at closing, put it in the (locked) trunk of his car, and deposit it into the bank in the morning the way other businesses do. Well, it IS the Bates, after all.

There were hints that I should relieve my coworker and stay over myself on some nights. I countered this notion with a demand for a loaded shot gun and $50.00/night hazardous duty pay for any night I might stay over. Needless to say, I go home and sleep with my trained attack kitties, instead.

As penance for my disobliging attitude, the owner has decided that I should be responsible for creating a data base listing all the past and present undesirables, so that we can just enter each potential customer's name in the computer and see if they come up "clean" or not. Its amazing how many people will steal the fridge and the microwave from the room, break the screens and windows, run a small time prostitution ring out of their room, and expect to be met with open arms a week or two later.

Well, I actually don't mind creating and refining my data base of crime (me and the FBI). It helps pass the time, and I put the owner's name into it just for kicks (he had a major drunken run-in with a Navajo man in the parking lot, broke out his bathroom window, and stole all the bedding, as well as the pictures on the walls). I figure I'll be long gone when and if my little joke is ever discovered.

The owner wants to refurbish the apartment that the new manager will live in before he hires anyone, and 3 M guy has been given the job. Yesterday, 3 M pulled all the molding off from around the bathroom window - a half hour job - before calling it quits for the day and breaking out his medical marijuana and Coors. At this rate the apartment won't be ready for a month or more which is fine by me.

Once the new manager is in place, I'm out of a job because I was only hired to cover some of the hours Carmen couldn't do. I imagine the new person will be healthier and put in the standard number of hours/week. My coworker, having seniority, as well as the drooling loyalty of a golden retriever, will catch the weekends. I wish her well. I truly do.

I have no idea what I will do for work. I have asked at every place I can think of, and I peruse carefully all 3 or 4 help wanted classifieds that show up in our twice weekly paper. NOTHING.

I am trying to convince a friend that we should go into the medical marijuana production business on the 7 acres he has outside of town. In Colorado, its a perfectly legal sideline as long as you pay the fees and get the permits. As I understand it, one can make a tidy profit, especially since I have no desire to sample my half of the crop. My friend isn't so sure. Mostly I think because he WOULD be tempted to skim some of our crop.

Well, I can always go down to the rec center and hope to get into good enough shape so that I could join one of the groups of illegals who weed and tend the grounds of the houses and condos of the 1% who have property up in nearby Telluride and its obscenely wealthy suburb of Mountain Village. Colorado is a strange state. I can grow weed legally, but if I go pull weeds in Mountain Village, la Migra will be asking me for my green card. Heh!