I'm back, and why it took so long...
Posted: 06 Jan 2021 05:47
Hi Forum!
Usually being a relatively active member of this board, I managed to post 4 entries in all of 2020, and that was in October.
Life has been pretty rough since Christmas 2019... I really don't want to bother you, so if you don't want to read me ranting about life, skip this thread.
In November, my second daughter was born. Cute, but a bad sleeper, woke up up to 12 times (!) a night. And the big girl was jealous, becoming very mean at times. So especially my wife was very tired and wrecked all the time. Just after Christmas 2019, a girl (16) from the youth group that my wife was running, died in a car accident. The other three people were uninjured. She was one of the kindest girls, always helpful, friends with everyone. My wife broke down, and went to the hospital until after New Year's Day. During January, our little girl got very high fever and needed to go to the hospital for two nights to be checked. They found nothing. End of January, my boss came to my desk and said "We need to talk". He took my pass and put me out the door. I had no idea why. A few days later we had the talk, and I learned that a coworker I thought was a nice guy, and with whom I had lunch some times, filed a few very hefty accusations against me, none of which were true. Then came the Corona virus, and life stopped. I had a wife who was a bit under the weather, a little girl who was crying all night, a big girl who was mean to her sister, and was unemployed for no reason. My girls couldn't go to daycare, to friends, even the playgrounds were closed, and they got really grumpy and didn't sleep well, because they couldn't get rid of their energy. It took months until I at least had the mediation hearing at the court. My termination without notice was changed into a regular termination and I was given a "good" reference and a small compensation. In the second half of the year ot looked like my grandfather in law wouldn't make it to Christmas, which he did, but it is nerve wrecking to see someone die over such a long time.
Up to now I wrote 120 job applications, but no success. I have a small job where I check health and safety documentation for nearly nothing, because if I work too many hours or earn to much money I fall out of the unemployment status, losing my unemployment money and other benefits. They will run out mid of 2021 anyways, but it doesn't look too good to find a new job until then.
But if that wasn't enough, the really gave us a beating in our gun laws, too. Just before Christmas 2019, an new gun law was accepted. It took full effect September 2020. Before that, the regulated parts of a gun were barrel and bolt. Now a gun can have up to 6 regulated parts, each of which must be registered separately (!), so a gun can have up to seven numbers including serial number, and all need to be registered. We have a complete ban on magazines (which were unregulated before, you just had to block rifle magazines to 10 rounds when using in competition) above 10 rounds for long guns and 20 rounds for handguns. This includes the disassembled, empty hulls! We can register magazines that already were in our possession before mid of 2017 (the law was written end of 2019), if we have proof of purchase. Which nobody has, because it was deemed unnecessary to keep those. Currently I'm in contact with a lawyer to convince my authorities that I don't need proof of purchase. If this doesn't work, all of the magazines for my Thompson need to be destroyed. The financial loss is limited, but there are no 10 rounds magazines available, which makes the gun useless. Also the gun was changed from category B (permission to own) to category A (forbidden), which doesn't yet affect me, but most probably will in the next update of the law, when they realized they forgot to ban forbidden weapons (yes, they actually did that!).
The only good thing of the year was the birth of my daughter's cousin Amelie. My brother in law and his fiance have a really lovely (and huge) little girl.
So you see the past year was very stressful in every possible way. I so much hope live will be a bit more normal in 2021. My #1 priority is to find a job again, which it is absolutely the wrong time for right now.
Hope to read and write more positive stuff for the rest of 2021.
Cheers,
Jochen
Usually being a relatively active member of this board, I managed to post 4 entries in all of 2020, and that was in October.
Life has been pretty rough since Christmas 2019... I really don't want to bother you, so if you don't want to read me ranting about life, skip this thread.
In November, my second daughter was born. Cute, but a bad sleeper, woke up up to 12 times (!) a night. And the big girl was jealous, becoming very mean at times. So especially my wife was very tired and wrecked all the time. Just after Christmas 2019, a girl (16) from the youth group that my wife was running, died in a car accident. The other three people were uninjured. She was one of the kindest girls, always helpful, friends with everyone. My wife broke down, and went to the hospital until after New Year's Day. During January, our little girl got very high fever and needed to go to the hospital for two nights to be checked. They found nothing. End of January, my boss came to my desk and said "We need to talk". He took my pass and put me out the door. I had no idea why. A few days later we had the talk, and I learned that a coworker I thought was a nice guy, and with whom I had lunch some times, filed a few very hefty accusations against me, none of which were true. Then came the Corona virus, and life stopped. I had a wife who was a bit under the weather, a little girl who was crying all night, a big girl who was mean to her sister, and was unemployed for no reason. My girls couldn't go to daycare, to friends, even the playgrounds were closed, and they got really grumpy and didn't sleep well, because they couldn't get rid of their energy. It took months until I at least had the mediation hearing at the court. My termination without notice was changed into a regular termination and I was given a "good" reference and a small compensation. In the second half of the year ot looked like my grandfather in law wouldn't make it to Christmas, which he did, but it is nerve wrecking to see someone die over such a long time.
Up to now I wrote 120 job applications, but no success. I have a small job where I check health and safety documentation for nearly nothing, because if I work too many hours or earn to much money I fall out of the unemployment status, losing my unemployment money and other benefits. They will run out mid of 2021 anyways, but it doesn't look too good to find a new job until then.
But if that wasn't enough, the really gave us a beating in our gun laws, too. Just before Christmas 2019, an new gun law was accepted. It took full effect September 2020. Before that, the regulated parts of a gun were barrel and bolt. Now a gun can have up to 6 regulated parts, each of which must be registered separately (!), so a gun can have up to seven numbers including serial number, and all need to be registered. We have a complete ban on magazines (which were unregulated before, you just had to block rifle magazines to 10 rounds when using in competition) above 10 rounds for long guns and 20 rounds for handguns. This includes the disassembled, empty hulls! We can register magazines that already were in our possession before mid of 2017 (the law was written end of 2019), if we have proof of purchase. Which nobody has, because it was deemed unnecessary to keep those. Currently I'm in contact with a lawyer to convince my authorities that I don't need proof of purchase. If this doesn't work, all of the magazines for my Thompson need to be destroyed. The financial loss is limited, but there are no 10 rounds magazines available, which makes the gun useless. Also the gun was changed from category B (permission to own) to category A (forbidden), which doesn't yet affect me, but most probably will in the next update of the law, when they realized they forgot to ban forbidden weapons (yes, they actually did that!).
The only good thing of the year was the birth of my daughter's cousin Amelie. My brother in law and his fiance have a really lovely (and huge) little girl.
So you see the past year was very stressful in every possible way. I so much hope live will be a bit more normal in 2021. My #1 priority is to find a job again, which it is absolutely the wrong time for right now.
Hope to read and write more positive stuff for the rest of 2021.
Cheers,
Jochen