My turn now

 

 Sonofabitch. 

    Well, I'm getting ganked tomorrow. After my partner B got ganked last week, pulled off the HQ to work at a less pleasant place to work to fill a need, it's my turn now. So, tomorrow, in the middle of the first winter gale that will be hitting us, I get to go ashore, pick up a week's worth of food for myself, and do a ruckhump with a bunch of grub bags too down a pier at a refinery, there to go aboard an oil barge. 

 Funny thing, not the last time, but the time I got ganked before, it was to fill in for the same guy who wasn't there. Huh. I'm crossing him off my Christmas card list for sure.  

     Christmas at work is never fun as it is, and now I will be getting no Christmas dinner, and I doubt that the barge where I'm going has been decorated festively like the HQ, or has a Christmas tree like we do. I always figured that what with missing 2/3 of all Christmases because of my career, we should have a big ass meal, presents and just a little fuckin' cheer aboard in the galley.  Well, I can't be dragging a goddamn whole ham and 5 courses along with my clothes, winter gear, boots, foul weather gear and greenstuff to eat. 

 And to be fair I am not going to be feeling festive. I'm 90% sure I'm going to be working with a guy whom I like a great deal, but who is green as grass, so I don't want to be all cunty and shit up his holiday, too, but I just got fucked, and I'm not in a turkey-cooking mood, yo, so i plan on just being quietly dyspeptic. 

         Ah well. It's not the work, I don't mind work. I was expecting we'd have a cargo ourselves on Christmas day. It's that I believed that I would have a nice day with my shipmate, eat well, get some work done, maybe let off a 12 second belch into the VHF mic on the house VHF channel and make all the other juvenile man-children in the harbor laugh or curse, or both. This is just a nice little impersonal fuck you for Christmas from fate. 

 And shit, I shouldn't whine. Hell, my brother's dog died last night. People are out there with real problems, I know. It definitely could be worse. 

 I'm usually a Christmas enthusiast, I confess. I like the holidays.  

 Better luck next year.