The little Inn by the wayside

[Railwaymodeler]

Well, I am back now.

Tormuse is right, most of the antics with the bus line were posted on OG and BD. I'll tell the story here too:

Maria and I met in 2005. She had been at Pace for a couple years at that time. While I had my eye on her, and she had hers on mine, it turned out, we were introduced by another driver.

We hit it off quite well, and started going on dates, and fell into a relationship.

It was around this time she had had some obscene comments made to her by the safety manager (This position is equal to an Inspector, as he would be called over in Europe).

The safety manager was and is a very rough person, who fires drivers over the smallest incident, and is overall, a control freak.

Maria complained to system headquarters and to the dept. of labor about the sexually crude comments made to her. The safety manager would not stop them though.

By a couple years later, the safety manager fired Maria for having an intimate relationship with a passenger (Me). The safety manager noticed that she would sometimes come in wearing the clothes she wore the day before, and he would hear through friends of his that he had hired in as drivers, that she was spending the night with me. What he did, was VERY illegal!

About this time, several other drivers, who were either female, or ethnic minorities, or for the most part, both, were fired for no reasonable reason, one was fired on make-believe charges even!

Maria moved to South Division, on the other end of the suburbs, to drive there, where she got re-hired as a driver. Then she quit working for them, and started driving for Megabus out of Chicago. She still lives down there.

Meanwhile, management here has spiraled out of control, and about a year or so ago, a class-action suit was brought up for harassment and discrimination.

Maria is part of that suit. Pace, not liking to lose any case, and being as stubborn as they have, have bullied around constantly, one of the other drivers they brought back. My testimony for this driver, was a big factor in bringing her back, as I was on her bus when an incident that was supposed to take place, but never really did, supposedly happened.

So management doesn't like me much either!

Last spring, a few new drivers were hired, who turned out to be friends of the safety manager. Maria and I got on one of their buses one day, and the driver called a phony complaint with the police, as per management. Maria spent a couple nights in jail on false accusations. I responded harshly, with calls to the press, called in favors with the politicians in town here, and had charges dropped. Sadly she spent her birthday in jail then, and it was around then that she conceived our first child, which is on the way!

A month and a half later, she was on a bus up here, not wanting to drive to the mall for something. Another driver friend of management called the police. THIS time, they took her to the ground, had a gun to her head, and almost broke her arm. She was called in as supposed to have had a gun on her, which was completely false.

Management has been trying to discredit us, as they know if we win, Pace might not have the money to pay our restitution, and if we do win, it paves the way for the class action suit that will be following this.

We are looking at millions of dollars in restitution now!

Now a week ago, we had our meeting with state investigators, Pace management, their lawyers and our lawyers were there. We NAILED THEM!

Managment was trapped in a number of lies, and paperwork seized when the state investigators came in with a search warrant, found evidence that the safety manager and one of his buddies, had a wager on who could bed Maria first even! Plus they found internal memos about "ridding themselves" of this "problem driver", as well as me.

Maria comes from a family of transport workers. Her grandfather, uncle, and father were all rail industry workers. Her family came to the USA after her father died in a train derailment. Working in transport is in her blood, and she isn't going to give up fighting for this!

So that's the story in a nutshell. Should make sense now.

[Tormuse]

Those people at Pace continue to astound me! They actually put stuff like that in writing? Words fail me... Any ideas about what you'll do with all your millions?

[Chroelle]

:O

What a story! PLease dont forget to fill us in on what is going on in the future with this case...

[eMTe]

Does any law actually work in your country?

[Railwaymodeler]

It isn't a matter of laws working or not working in this country. The state of Illinois, is widely known for being corrupt. It's often said that Illinois is where our governors make our license plates, even. (License plates being typically associated with being made by prison labor!). Seems that any politician has a price here. That's the primary reason I will never trust President Obama: He's an Illinois politician!

Locally, I have many political friends, and their clout has helped this case along, actually.

Right now Maria is at her apartment, I am at mine. We decided that she has best not come to Waukegan for a while. I miss her so much, even though we just spent over an hour on the phone together.

[eMTe]

If the state is corrupted than we can assume law doesnt work there, to some degree.

Anyway, we all wish you both luck, because you got into some really weird and uncomfortable situation.

[Railwaymodeler]

This whole thing has put a lot of stress on my shoulders as well as Maria's. We figure that the stress is why it was so hard for her to conceive.

In other news, had a customer at my shop yesterday that told me about his father-in-law's old trains. Said there are five big boxes of the stuff, mostly from before WWII. Said he'll bring them in today or tomorrow and see if I want to make an offer.

[Chroelle]

Knowing you - you will.

[eMTe]

Changing topic, I borrowed a Danish course for beginners from my bookstore. We had a supply of many less popular language courses and I thought that since this is the ugliest period of the year and I rarely spend time outside and I have more free time I might just do something really weird. So Im going to learn the basics of Danish.

I could have chosen Swedish, Dutch or Chinese to name only few, but I chose Danish because of the sentiment towards CWF.

[Chroelle]

Du skal være velkommen. Hyg dig med det.
Rødgrød med fløde!

[eMTe]

Well, each language is funny for certain groups of people. This video, I dont want to offend anybody, reminded me of Idiots by Von Trier. Trying to speak o and u at the same time somehow resembles mentally challenged people.

The common misconception is that Czech is similar to Polish, to some degree. The truth is 90% (or more) of Czech and Polish nouns, adjectives and verbs are totally different, making the communication impossible. If youd take 1000 so-called basic words you use in everyday life from both languages youll discover the sad fact 990 of them are TOTALLY different. By "TOTALLY" I mean they are not even similar, they are composed of totally different sets of vowels and consonants.

As for Danish. I dont think Ill have trouble with Danish pronunciation. Polish is the most complex language in the world, spoken or written, outcompeting even oriental languages, so when it comes to pronunciation I am able to mimic any vowel, consonant and meme you can imagine, because we deal with the issue, involuntarily, everyday.

I have a very negative approach towards English (to be precise - internet-based English), which becomes simplier with time. While languages like Polish become more complex, incorporating foreign words and various language plays English becomes sort of a communication tool for everybody. It deteriorates. It makes "communication"(?) easier, but it at the same time makes expressing true thoughts harder, because it aims at the simplicity, not complexity.

Sorry for this hard-boiled comment to this funny video.

[Railwaymodeler]

The fellow with the trains stopped by yesterday. He wanted $300 for the lot.

Looked inside one of the boxes and said "deal".

The first box was filled with prewar HO scale locomotives! Lots of them were Varney and Mantua, which were big names in the prewar days. Some Walthers models, which is a company still around today. All metal locomotives, some brass, some die cast, some bronze.

There's at least $1,000 worth of locomotive here!

Then tomorrow Maria and I are heading to Train Fest in Milwaukee, which is one of the largest train shows in the country.

There's a seller there that sells old model trains. He called me last month, asked if I was coming, as he had a deal for me. 20 unassembled passenger car kits, for $200. Said I could pick them up at the show.

So this week I am spending at least $500 on my railroad collection, and I spent about the same on Maria. Bought her some new clothes, a necklace, and some other things.

Yeah, spent a thousand dollars this week, but sold double that in sales, so all is good!

[eMTe]

You had lucky week then.

I always wanted to ask you, do you deal only with ancient stuff or have also some modern or at least not pre-war locomotives and cars. Like this ugly (but still common) one?

[Tormuse]

Polish is the most complex language in the world, spoken or written, outcompeting even oriental languages, so when it comes to pronunciation I am able to mimic any vowel, consonant and meme you can imagine, because we deal with the issue, involuntarily, everyday.

Really? I've heard from a number of sources that Hungarian is the hardest language to learn. When I started learning it recently, I found the fact that present tense verbs have 44 possible suffixes rather daunting.

[Zyx]

Suffixes are fun.

[Chroelle]

:O - yet another reason why I am not taking Finnish, Hungarian or Polish classes...

BTW: Just stopped by the PW-ads-statistics and saw that the 3rd most visiting country for the tall ad on the gamedownloadspages was Iran...

[eMTe]

So, freeware gaming spirit will kill the regime. None of the political scientists predicted this, Im sure!

[Zyx]

That is odd, Google Analytics claims just 18 visitors from Iran. Maybe Google Analytics is blocked there?

[eMTe]

Or maybe the 18-person elite squad is going to change the world?

[Zyx]

So, you guys remember a while ago I told you about the site I did with a couple of friends that ended up being in all the newspapers and everything? Well, we also entered into this one competition and made it into the finals. The finals are held next week in gala attended among others the culture minister. There are six other finalists in our series so we might have a good chance to make it into the top 3, which would be great.

And then there was that sauna business, which had a record of bookings this month.

Things could be worse.