February 2008 Archives

Killing Time...

Killing Time...

KILLING Time...

I've spent most of the day on edge and that almost came to a fruition around two this afternoon when I thought I would be forced to rip a customer's fucking windpipe out of his throat. Then someone else would get to blog about me being on trial. How's that for a laugh?

I wonder if the nicotine withdrawal defense has ever been used...

Anyway, my store that is closest to the house is the one I opened back in October of 2006. Man, time flies.

I took it back, along with another one close by, two weeks ago and I have inherited a few folks that probably should not be working there. Pieces of crap in other words. The day shift is the same on I picked and hired back when we opened but there are some new faces on the evening shift. One of them is this gentleman that runs his mouth so much that if he shut the hell up and moved his arms and legs a bit he might be able to get something done.

From two until four we only have one waitress on the floor because it's generally slow. Today I was closing out my paperwork so that I could leave and I look up out the office window. She's trying to wait on customers and cook at the same time. Where's the cook? Sitting at the fucking high counter jacking his jaws with a customer.

It's not the first time I've gotten onto the kid about doing his work so I just leaned out the door and hollered his name, and told him that the unnamed waitress had customers to wait on so he needed to cook. I left it at that but it was pretty fucking clear what I wanted. I might have been a bit nicer about it but she had already called for his help once while he just blithely ignored her.

A couple of minutes later the asked me to come out front. The customer wanted to speak with me. I was behind one of the booths and he was on the other side. He says to me in a low tone of voice "Maybe you weren't aware of the fact but he was discussing something very serious with me. Perhaps you need to learn not to publicly chastise people. I can make a world of shit for you. You just don't know how much. I used to be a district manager with [your company]".

I was fucking flabbergasted. I let the dude know in no uncertain terms that this wasn't the first time it's happened and that they needed to take care of their pressing business off my clock. I think once he realized that I didn't give a flying fuck about his unshaven scrawny out of work ex-district manager self he decided to get polite with me and shut the fuck up. That or maybe it was the look that came over me like I was getting ready to jump over the booth and cold-cock the bastard. This just would not be the week to fuck with me.

Anyway, I was nice and polite with the guy, so let his ass complain. I've been with them for 21 years and been investigated for embezzlement, racism, favoritism, fucking my waitresses, firing people with undue cause. I've been robbed, threatened by people with knives, broken up fights and cleaned up shit from places you wouldn't believe. Bring it on you stupid fucker.

What really flew all over me was his criticizing the fact that I hollered for the dude to get back on the grill. What the fuck does he know about managing people since he obviously doesn't do it anymore. Of course you don't normally say negative things to people in front of other people, but instructing them as to where they need to be IS one of them, particularly when they haven't been listening to any other way. I hate public embarrassment but that's all some people will react to, particularly if they are self-aggrandizing lying sacks of shit in the first place.

Did I tell you I want a cigarette?

Would a nice big stogie count?

I had two today. Best day yet. I smoked one at eight or nine and then another one around eleven and that's it. I even refrained from bumming a smoke from one of them when I had to go back to shift change a little while ago, but I did make my trip as short as possible.

This has got to be the hardest fucking thing I have ever done in my life. I am eating so much candy I will need to go to lard watchers by the time all is said and done. If given a choice between dying because I'm fat and dying because I smoke, I would rather be skinny.

What do you do with your hands when you don't smoke?

I can only jerk off to Internet porn so much before the damn thing starts hurting. I suppose that's why they have fluff girls at the porn movies. Maybe I need to get one to hide under my desk...

We all gotta dream right?

I'll tell you one thing. This Chantix shit really works. I've tried the patch, gum, lozenges, wellbutrin, all that crap and smoked right along with all of it. I've tried to cut down to the point where I could quit and always ended up lying and smoking more than I said.

I've smoked two to three packs a day for 28 years. Used to smoke Pall Malls, then Winstons, finally switched to Winston Lights a few years ago. That's 408,800 cigarettes at just two packs a day. I don't care what anyone says, it's not something you can just give up if you smoke as much as I do. This stuff has really helped. I had two day and tomorrow if I smoke at all it will only be one and then I'm done.

Unless of course I get convicted of ripping someone's head off and then who gives a fuck if I'm smoking or not.

I'm back to scanning some photos. You can't find cartridges for the printer I use locally anymore. I'm sure that I can probably order them online but I find that the more and more I use it for work I have been wanting a printer anyway.

Since I got a gift cart for Wal-Mart at the awards banquet tonight I decided to use it to buy an HP scanner/copier/printer combo. The prices on these things has dropped immensely. The last time I checked was five or six years ago and they were about three or four times the cost.

Since I now have a scanner that will work with Windows Vista I can start copying all these old pictures. Here's one from the late sixties. That's my great-aunt and myself.

This is about the only thing I am going to post today. As I mentioned, I had a meeting tonight and being as how it's been a long day on top of feeling like shit I am going to bed as soon as my managers call me with their sales and staffing.

I bummed a smoke around 7am, another around 11am and then got one from one of the managers after supper tonight, around 6. Not too bad. I had a pretty hard time with it today and have been in an extremely foul mood but I think I may have forgotten to take the Chantix this morning. I've caught up tonight and maybe tomorrow won't be such a hard day. If it's any worse than today I may end up cussing someone out at work.

Wish me luck as I am going to try and go without having a cigarette at all tomorrow.

Here's another redhead for you guys!

It's been a pretty uneventful day here at the Miles Casa. I have a ton of things on my to-do list and haven't managed to get very many of them done today. I need to pay some bills and start working on my 2007 taxes but somehow just don't want to.

I did manage to get about ten hours of sleep. Maybe a bit too much but damn I am behind. I need to find a way to balance my sleep/job/stuff at home so that I can get enough rest and spend some time with the family as well. It's pretty difficult at times.

I am doing so-so quitting smoking. I managed to get down to a pack every couple of days and then quit Monday night when I went to bed. I didn't smoke at all at work yesterday. Ended up going about 16 hours, which is quite a long time. What I didn't realize is that I apparently had a pack in my car that I found on the way home from work yesterday afternoon. So much for that. I had thought the wife was going to take them with her this morning but apparently she forgot. It's almost gone and once it is I will quit once again. I feel like such a darned lightweight.

I have a nice dinner planned. The wife thawed a couple of pork loins so I marinated them in olive oil and rubbed them with a some different spices. They are sitting in the refrigerator now just waiting to go in the oven. I figure around four I will pop them in and decided what else to have with them.

I have mentioned a few times that I really hate the Samsung i760 that I picked up. In theory I like the idea of a pocket PC phone, but in practice I don't like the implementation. I guess it's all about what you like. Apparently it's still pretty popular as far as PDA/phones go. I got a blackberry last week instead and will put the Samsung up on eBay later this afternoon. I have a few reviews I need to get written first.

We are still talking about redoing our bedroom later this spring. I think the wife and I both have different ideas about what we want so I am just going to stay out of it now. Doesn't really matter anyway as long as the bed is comfortable. I am going to end up putting a TV on the wall and make it into a small home theater. The wife seems to prefer the idea of having it in the room. That's fine, I can put on in the bedroom and another in the living room. Eventually it would be kind of cool to put some home theater seating down in the basement and set up an HTPC down there, but that may be a while. It's more of a wish list thing that is down near the bottom.

Technorati: Wordless Wednesday

Just something I ran across on the web a few weeks back.

I have been doing pretty well with the smoking this week. I've gone from two to three packs a day down to a pack every three days. I am going to try and quit again come Tuesday. That's when I start the new week of Chantix, which is why I picked Tuesday. I am actually starting to feel a bit better, but I seem to be sleeping a lot.

The wife quit smoking a couple of years ago and she's done great. She also walks a lot. Two to four miles a day. Man. That's a bunch. I don't particularly think I would mind the exercise part but I walk from six a.m. until well after lunch at work every day. I think I need to get some exercise equipment, ellipticals or something. There are a couple of local gyms I am thinking about using as well. The hard part is actually getting motivated and using them.

I think the wife and girls are going to be going back to Bluffton for spring break again this year. Our friend Niqui is going to be moving pretty soon. I think she may have found someone to buy the Art Cafe on Hilton Head and that means she and her kids will be moving to Cyprus. I don't know if the South Carolina land for sale is doing any better than it is here, but the market has really slowed down in my area. There must be 25 houses for sale in my subdivision.

The bad thing about my job is that our vacations don't overlap as often as I would like. We were lucky in that she was able to take and extra day while I was on vacation and they were all home on President's day as well. That was nice. We also get to take one together at the end of May as well. I still don't know if we will do anything since we are going to be redoing the bedroom, but it is our 20th anniversary.

This is a pretty cool deal. I've used VistaPrint before for business cards and came across a pretty nice deal this afternoon while I was over there. First off, VistaPrint offers custom design and print solutions for businesses, homes, web sites, just about anything you could think of, at a pretty decent price. A box of 250 of their premium business cards are just under $20 and they offer free logo design to go along with it. Business cards aren't the only thing they offer though. Letterheads, car door magnets, marketing materials such as postcards, brochures and rack cards, clothing such as hats and T-shirts, stationary, rubber stamps, labels and more.

I used to print out my own business cards using my deskjet printer, but the quality is just never the same as using a professional service. The ones I did myself printed out in sheets and either I had to cut them (they were always uneven) or they were the ones that were perforated (and they look it too). There's just no substitute for a professional job well done.

Anyway, back to the deal I mentioned at the beginning of the post. I was browsing through their custom magnets section and found out that if you use the coupon code "Blog25FreeMag" you can get 25 free magnets. Put your business name on them, your website, your phone number to hand out to the ladies, whatever you want to do with them, it's entirely up to you. I have a ton of magnets on my refrigerator holding up my kid's artwork, calendars, appointments and other important stuff and they are there. When I want to order pizza I know which magnet to look for, I even have one for the vet when the dog isn't feeling well. Actually I lie. I don't really call and order pizza on the phone any more. I order it through their web site, but the magnet's still there! Anyway, if you want to get 25 free customized magnets head on over to VistaPrint and use the code Blog25FreeMag.

It was a pretty uneventful day, although it was kind of long. For some reason I started waking up at 2 a.m. this morning and had a hard time sleeping, so when the alarm finally started going off at 5 I kept hitting snooze and didn't get up until almost 6 a.m. I still made it to work shortly after 6:30 though. That's one of the nice things about having the districts realigned. All three of my stores are within seven and a half miles of my front door. Not only that but it will (should) be an increase in pay for me as well. I lost my slowest store and picked one up that should make me an extra $600 a month or so. Can't complain about that.

The ladies were pretty happy with me this morning. Apparently they and the customers are used to having their food take 30-40 minutes when it's busy. The store is nasty, nasty and production crawls when it's busy, such as on the weekends. There's nothing on our menu that takes longer than eight to ten minutes to cook and our table turn time is supposed to be 22 minutes. The girls couldn't keep up today. Most of the day their food was up before they could even get the drinks on the tables. What's really funny is that although the store has been in a sales decrease for two years straight, my sales were up 15% this morning over last year. Funny how that works.

I think my biggest challenge their will be to get it clean. The restaurant is just extremely filthy. The floors, walls, vents, windows, even the light fixtures need to be cleaned. I left them a short cleaning list when I finally managed to get out of there at 5 this evening, hopefully it will get finished.

I was going to come home and post for a while, but the nasty nap monster caught hold of me and then mean Mr. gravity finished the job and I took a nap for a couple of hours, and THEN I watched Gladiator. I love the movie even if old what's his name is a jerk.

I do have a couple of things to post, as well as a review and then I think I will hit the sack. I have to go back out to that store tomorrow and I don't foresee getting out of there prior to six tomorrow night.

As much as I've been reading and hearing about Lindsay Lohan's now famous photo shoot with Bert Stern (the photographer that did Marylin's last photo shoot) you would have thought she hosted Jesus at the last supper. And why? It's a poor imitation of an extremely sensual set of photos.

You can check out Lohan's photos over at New York Magazine. Have you ever seen the ones of Marylin Monroe. Lohan is missing something vital in the photos. Marylin Monroe looks sensual, naughty, like she was having fun. Lindsay Lohan just looks like she's trying to be something she's not. A very poor imitation.

This is why I don't like to fly. I know in theory that it's safer than being in a car but take my manager that was in a car wreck two weeks ago. She was hit head-on by what they think might have been a drunk driver. The toxicology tests haven't come back yet, so it's entirely possible that he wasn't drunk. Anyway, it completely destroyed both vehicles. He's in a neck brace and may lose a leg. She had a compound fracture of one leg and broke the other in eight places, busted up her pelvis and punctured her spleen. She had at least two surgeries that I know of. It will be twelve weeks before she can even put any pressure on her leg and start some kind of physical therapy, probably the end of the summer before she could even consider working again, and even that will most likely only be for short periods of time. Her three kids were in the car as well but they are OK. She was very lucky.

Two planes hit head-on, there ain't no OK, jack. You're screwed. At least if I am in a car accident I am a bit closer to the ground.

American Airlines flight 862 was heading from West Palm Beach to Chicago and was diverted to Miami with nose gear trouble. They were lucky it was caught so early in the flight.

The flight back to Atlanta from Nassau on this past Sunday was really ugly.

The plane arrived in Nassau early on Sunday and the crew had it ready to go 25 minutes before scheduled departure. We were getting ready to take off when they figured out that someone with Delta had filed the wrong paperwork with customs and listed the crew and pilot completely wrong. They had to re-file the corrected paperwork with customs, so we left late after sitting there for 40 minutes. What sucked about it is that although all over the Bahamas you can smoke in places it's not welcome in the U.S., there is no place in the Nassau airport to smoke. I have cut down, but sitting in the airport for two hours prior to the flight without nicotine had me somewhat jumpy.

The flight to Atlanta was pretty uneventful, almost peaceful. It was really cool (both flights) watching the coastline recede into the distance. If not for nasty weather I could probably get used to flying.

Anyway, Atlanta had some really ugly weather Sunday afternoon. Tornadoes in East Point, which is somewhat near the airport. Wind gusts of 25 mph, heavy thunder storms, that kind of stuff. We had made up quite a bit of time, but had we made it 40 minutes early like we would have if Delta hadn't screwed up our paperwork we would have missed the storms and probably landed. As it is, they had a bunch of planes circling Atlanta.

We circled and circled for an hour or so and then the pilot came on to let us know we didn't have enough gas to keep circling (this made me feel great) and we were being diverted to Augusta. It's less than a thirty minute flight, so we got there safely and landed. Only problem is, they wouldn't let us off the plane since we were an international flight. Forget the fact that we had already cleared TSA and customs prior to leaving Nassau and when we got to Atlanta we could get in the car to leave. For whatever fucking reasons you can't get off the plane in an unscheduled landing. Either that or they don't let international flights into Augusta normally. It was a pretty tiny airport. There were 10 other flights that had been diverted to Augusta as well.

We sat there until eight or so, finally got fueled up and returned to Atlanta in the flight that seemed to last forever. It was closer to an hour returning because the were going up and down and around the individual storm cells. Hell, until the captain announced what he was doing I thought we were in the worst of it. White knuckle stuff there for this big chicken.

Obviously we made it back OK. It's not Delta's fault that the storms were around Atlanta but it certainly is there fault that they filed the wrong paperwork in the Bahamas, so I am pretty pissed off at Delta for turning my two hour flight into one that lasted seven and a half hours. What did Delta have to say? Thanks for flying and hope you fly with us again.

bwahahaha.

You know what the sad thing is?

I probably will.

fuck.

A lovely redhead for ya'

Don't click if you don't want to be offended. Heck, if you want to be offended just read some of my stuff...

Technorati: Wordless Wednesday

Something Eric posted while I was out of town got me to thinking. That's a pretty mean feat in itself, but I digress.

I'm not sure what it is about Atlanta but Heavy Metal acts have just never done very well here in the ATL. Huge bands that sell out two and three shows in NYC, Miami, LA and other cities barely fill the arena here. Hell, some of them just skip us altogether. They will play in podunk, Missouri and buttfuck, Alabama but just scoot on past Atlanta.

When I went to shows more often back in my teens, up until I hit about thirty, quite often a band would tour and I just wouldn't get to see them. The first big tour that Metallica did in the southeast was opening for Ozzy Osbourne. I caught that show in Knoxville, TN. I think I've even posted about meeting the band and road tripping to that show.

So what is it that Eric said that caught my eye? Other than the fact that I enjoy Tom Waits quite a bit more now than I did when I was sixteen? I saw John Waite's (obviously no relation) solo tour after leaving The Babys in the early eighties and the first of two opening bands for a particular act. He sucked. The second opening act was Steve Marriott and Humble Pie (exactly how it was being billed). Now don't get me wrong. I like Humble Pie. A lot. As a teenager in 1983 I wasn't particularly excited about seeing them though.

Imagine if you can, the lobby area at the civic center filled with the screaming hordes of fans (sort of like chipmunks in effect) of pop has-been John Waite, All of the stoners and other hippies going to see Humble Pie. Sort of an age difference for one thing but then you add in the fans for the man they were going to see and there is what makes it so utterly fucking ridiculous.

Ronnie James Dio on his first solo tour after leaving Black Sabbath.

I guess the promoters thought that Dio was going to be doing stuff from his days with Elf and Rainbow and didn't bother listening to any Sabbath, much less any of his solo album. That or they weren't thinking at all. Rainbow in the dark indeed.

Waite, Humble Pie, Dio? Not exactly a match made in heaven. Almost as ridiculous as Tom Waits opening for Buffalo Bob, which is what prompted me to write this. It actually started out as a comment to Eric's post but obviously ran a bit long.

Walking through downtown Nassau we came across this in the window of one of the duty free liquor stores.

I didn't know whether to drink it or fuck it?

Fire In De Hole Erotic Rum of the Bahamas. I didn't buy it but somehow I have regretted it ever since. Although you are allowed to bring back two liters of alcohol duty free into the U.S. I wasn't sure how that would jibe with the anti-liquid laws since all I had was a carry-on bag and no checked luggage. Anyone know how this would work?

Hey! If I can get everything to cooperate I am planning a new feature on here on Shadowscope. Drunk. Satan. Karaoke!

Whatcha think?

The trip down to Nassau was fantastic! Just what I needed but not nearly long enough. That combined with the nasty plane ride home was enough to slightly tarnish the trip. Oh yeah, and I've been fucking cold ever since I got home.

We dropped the girls off early at school on Friday morning so we could get down to the airport. The drive down wasn't too terribly bad, we managed to get in the airport at around 7:30 Friday morning. It was actually very crowded and we had to wait through the line at security forever. Once we made it through the obligatory cavity search and managed to get to the gate I took one of the Xanax and settled down to wait for the plane. The ride down was pretty uneventful and I actually enjoyed it once we had been in the air for awhile. The Xanax didn't do shit to calm me down but I seem to be getting a little better at flying. At least I thought so until the flight home.

The airport in Nassau looks like it was built around the time that JFK was hanging out in the Bahamas although they seem to be trying to update it. We had to wait awhile to get through customs but we did have these guys hanging out playing the entire time.

Can't help the graininess of the shot. I was afraid one of the security guys was going to stomp my ass if I turned the flash on.

Anyway, once we made it through security and out into the general terminal, Breezes has a booth there that directed us to a shuttle bus. They provide transportation to and from the resort as part of the deal.

I really regret not renting a car or scooter while we were there. The caves where the pirates used to hide their shit and the villas all along the coast were truly a site to see and I would have liked to stop and take more photos than I did. We spent an inordinant amount of time either walking or riding the bus and while it's nice to let someone else do the driving, perhaps a taxi would be the best bet. A tad bit more expensive but at least they will stop when I want them to.

We got to the resort around noon and check-in isn't until 3 so they stuck armbands on us and let us roam around to check the place out until we could get our room. We tried their native brewed, called Kalik. It pretty much sucked. If you like Budweiser with a higher alcohol content and more carbonation you might like Kalik. It was probably closer to Corona than Bud but it was still crappy piss water. I much prefer Sam Adams and Guinness as well as other dark, full beers. They also had serve-yourself daiquiri dispensers there so I settled on Pina Coladas. I didn't drink much on this trip anyway. I wanted to make sure and enjoy the island in my own self-created stupor without adding too much alcohol to the mix. The water was too cool to get in, either the ocean or the pool, so we just sort of hung out. It was pretty overcast when we arrived and it had started drizzling shortly after we got there. You can see the rain arriving in this photo.

Normally you can see clearly to Long Cay and to the right the coastline as well, that's rain coming. It never did rain very hard unless it was while we were napping, which we did shortly after we finally got our room, which was closer to four rather than the three p.m. check-in time. It was actually starting to get pretty fucking irritating that they didn't have the room ready. I think we were both crabby and tired.

After a nice nap we checked the place out some more and then had dinner. There are a couple of different restaurants in the joint as well as the buffet. We chose the buffet and the fare was actually pretty decent. Nothing to write home about but I certainly had my fill. We made a trip to the Crystal Palace Casino right down the street where the wife won $100 on the slots. Some of that was profit :)

After the Casino we hung out on the beach for awhile where they were doing a circus show. Two of the four acrobats couldn't be there so it was OK, but nothing fantastic. After that we just hit the sack. Flying screws with my ears and we were both tired.

I will post more pictures and more about the trip later this evening. I've got a bit of house cleaning to take care of and then I have some work to do this evening as well. I have posted most of the pictures to my Flickr page if you want to see them before I post them here.

I am on vacation this week and provided I didn't miss my flight Sunday I am at home now (yeah, I scheduled this prior to leaving town).

This is just the hint of a Tramp Stamp, leaving what it is to your imagination. No need for the extended entry this week as it's PG material. What do you think this thing is peeking out of her butt?

Technorati: Tramp Stamp Tuesday

First check out the video...

We went down to Potter's Cay early on Saturday afternoon. Actually we left the resort very early on Saturday and spent the morning walking around Nassau shopping and eating. It's beautiful down there. I'll tell you one thing though, fuck the walking and buses. Next time I take my own advice and drive, call a cab or rent scooters. I enjoyed the sites and being able to take pictures but we wasted about four hours on Saturday just walking so by the time we got back to Breezes I was ready for a nap.

After walking forever we got down to Potter's Cay. Here's what it looks like on the dry side.

I don't guess anyone had used this boat in quite some time...

This gull flew by at just the right moment...

These guys were playing dominoes right next to the conch salad booth where we stopped. I'll tell you one thing, they take their dominoes seriously. NOT a child's game at all.

I guess because of where I was sitting in the shade and the fact that it was so bright everywhere else, the exposures in a couple of these were really crappy. I had my dark shades on and wasn't really paying attention or I would have most likely noticed in time to fix it. This is the dude that made the conch salad. He's in the booth right next to the domino players and was extremely happy to chat with us while he made the salads. I forgot his damned name or I would have posted it here and told you guys to go visit him.

The guy has been doing this for seventeen years. He buys conch from fishermen in the morning and makes salads all day long for both locals and tourists alike. Just a few bucks for a Heineken and Conch salad and it took both of us to eat it. Think cole slaw without the cabbage and with seafood. It really kicks ass. This is how he makes his living though and as he was so gracious and the food kicked so much ass I figured I would tell ya' to go see him.

Those are the fixin's above. He was making them two or three at a time to save on wasted food I am sure but for the three he made while we sat there He took and entire onion, a couple of tomatoes and a bell pepper and diced them up small, as well as one slice from a jabenero or some other type of hot pepper and a bit of sea salt. I found a recipe at the Hot Sauce Zone that has more involved ingredients and it sounds pretty good as well. Anyway he also diced up small a couple of fresh (raw) Conchs right out of the water behind his place, popped a hole in the shell to release the muscle that holds it in and pulled the damned thing out and started washing and cutting. After mixing all of the up he stuck it in a bowl and squeezed the juice out of a couple of limes and an orange as well. It was pretty damn refreshing after a hot walk to get down there.

Here are a couple of shots of Potter's Cay from the water side.

That big ugly pink thing behind the bridge? That's the Atlantis resort. It's not as close as it looks, it's just fucking huge.

Oh yeah, the conch penis. The dude making the salad brings out these wiggly looking clear things to us and the bahamian sitting with his girlfriend right next to us. The other guy says "Conch Penis, better than Viagra" and down the fucker goes. I don't think it's the penis, but I ate it whatever the hell it was because I'm a guy and you can't let one guy eat it and think you're a pussy or anything. I wasn't bad actually, supposedly has plenty of protein. Work like Viagra? I'll never tattle...

...bored as hell.

Just got back from the Bahamas but unfortunately I am sitting on the plane in Augusta, GA. The weather is supposed to be really bad in Atlanta and we didn't have enough gas to keep circling Atlanta for much longer.

Someone at Delta filed incorrect paperwork with customs so we were stuck there an extra 30 minutes, otherwise we might have beat the weather.

Hopefully I will be home soon.

I think I may have found the cause of my blog not wanting to rebuild the main page. It was the "most viewed entries" widget. You may not have seen it because the MT wouldn't reindex the main page with it included in the sidebar. whoduthunkit.

Anyway, I did manage to squeak in a few minutes this morning. I woke up at around a quarter 'till four and the wife had already been awake for an hour. Pre-flight jitters or just looking forward to the weekend in the Bahamas? I don't know but I have the prescription for Xanax in my overnight bag. Just as soon as I get cleared of security I'm taking one of those bad boys and as long as I don't start chasing peruvian midgets through the airport we'll be alright. If I do by chance see one, I have a call to make (and you know who you are).

I think the girls are looking forward to the weekend. Michelle is coming to look after the house and the girls and provided they don't whine her to death they will all have a good time. Most likely they will be very good since she's not their parent. That's the way that shit works.

I can't remember if I have mentioned it or not but this they have been planning on re-aligning the districts and their stores. It is a highly feared and anticipated 'event'. It's actually been about four years since they changed the stores around other than my promotion and I just picked up the same stores the last guy had. I almost feel as if I have dodged a bullet on this one. One of my managers has been promoted and while I am out of town this week he is running my stores. As of Wednesday he picks up the Mirror Lake store and my slowest store. That's actually a good deal. I lose money on that one and the manager there is the one that hates my guts. I am keeping my busiest store. That's the one where the girl is in the hospital. I am somewhat upset because they are most likely going ahead and putting her on leave of absence and putting another manager in there, probably the third district manager, who has been demoted. I am getting the Temple store back and one of the stores just to the west of we. Now all three of my shops are within seven miles of me and they are all money makers. Except for the fact that one of the girls has some serious issues I picked up the best district out of the three. I must have gotten seven phone calls last night about it after the meeting.

Enough about all that crap. I am off work for the next six days now and looking forward to it. Just as soon as I get finished typing I will go shower, shit and shave and start getting ready. Hell, I would leave now if I though I could leave the girls at the school. They would probably frown on two little girls standing outside in the Elementary school parking lot at 5 a.m. though.

So has anyone heard that Greene County is going to start segregating their schools next year? Not by race though, by gender. They will be separating the boys and girls and hope to see a drastic change in test scores as well as teen pregnancies. Here's a tip you may not have heard. They're not getting pregnant while they are at school. Doh! I know it's unheard of but most likely it's when they are skipping or out doing other things. Not only that but you know what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder. That and the fact that if you tell a teenager they can't have or do something you are generally creating a reason to go looking for it. I wouldn't be surprised to see a rise in more than the boy's pants by this time next year as the rate of teenage pregnancies gets higher. Then again, what the fuck do I know, I'm not an edukashun expert like the people making these decisions.

I guess that's all my ranting for today. Time to start getting ready.

I'm off to bed. We are getting up early tomorrow and I may post a bit but probably not. We are spending the weekend in Nassau and I don't know that I will have a chance to get online although I am sure to have some good pictures to post when we get back Sunday evening.

I do have the usual weekend stuff lined up though. Some open trackback posts (if you get thrown in the spam folder I'll fix it Monday), Saturday photohunt, Green Thumb Sunday, that sort of stuff and if my brother is cool he might even stop by to say hello, although I haven't had the chance to ask him so I don't know what he's doing this weekend.

I ended up not going down to Grady to see my friend. They won't let anyone in as she spent the morning in surgery and is in ICU waiting for another surgery. Her husband said she is doing terrible. That sucks. I ended up calling my bosses' boss to see what we are going to be able to help them out with and am just going to have to wait for an answer on that one. I looked at my local paper's web site and haven't seen anything there

I napped for awhile and then went and picked up a new pair of jeans and a shirt for the trip. Unfortunately none of my jeans fit me comfortably anymore. I think that perhaps the Marine snatched the wrong pair before he went to California and I need at least one pair of jeans for the trip and a sleeved shirt for dinner one of the nights. Nothing fancy certainly but it can't be jeans and a t-shirt. I am just about ready to go, just need to gather a few more things.

I didn't realize that you can't do the online check-in for international flights, so we are going to have to push it and be driving away from the school by 6:30 tomorrow morning so that we have a couple of hours before the flight. It will take at least an hour to get there at that time of the morning and our flight leaves at 9:40. Kind of pushing it but the airport shouldn't be too busy at 7:30 in the morning.

Today is the first day of my vacation and hopefully by this time tomorrow afternoon I will be on the beach in the Bahamas looking at the real thing.

Oh by the way, Happy Valentine's Day, here's a twofer.

Also by the way, NSFW (as if anything with THONG in the title would be considered safe)...

:)

Have I told you lately what a self-centered selfish bastard I am?

No?

hmm.

My phone rang about a quarter 'till twelve last night and I checked the caller-id. It was one of my waitresses. I ignored it, figuring if it was something important they would call the manager. Ten minutes later the phone rang again and it was the store where she works (the first one was from her cell phone). I ignored that one as well.

I'm on vacation dammit!

So I check my voice mail. The waitress is blabbering about a cop being in the store with one of my bank deposits. My manager had had some sort of accident and they needed to turn the money over.

I lay there for a couple of minutes.

I could either call and take care of the problem and most likely have my vacation canceled on me or just let them continue calling up the food chain of command. Someone else could handle it.

I'm on fucking vacation.

So I call the store and end up speaking with the officer from the Carroll County Sheriff's Department. My manager had been on the way home last night from handling shift change with her three boys in the car when a drunk driver hit her head on. I got dressed, cursing drunk bastards the entire time

Her boys are all OK and they life-flighted her to Grady hospital. The cop seemed to think she would be OK but she had broken both of her legs and her pelvis. He didn't seem to think that the drunk driver was going to survive and said that if you had looked at the collision you wouldn't think anyone could. She got lucky I guess.

I got to the store shortly after midnight and took care of the money and then drove down to Grady hospital, which is about forty minutes away, after speaking to my boss. I let him know what had happened and told him that I would most likely be late this morning but to call me and let me know what to do. He told me they would be fine for the week and to go ahead and stay on vacation. I made sure he repeated it again.

I never made it to the hospital last night. I know (or at least used to) how to get to Grady from the north side of town but have never driven there from the south and didn't see any signs so I drove a couple exits past and turned around to get off at the correct one. Once I got off I ended up making a right and got fucking lost. I drove around and saw it above other buildings several times but never could make it to the hospital. Courtland, Harris, Piedmont Avenue. Fuck. It's right there but I couldn't find the fucking building or parking area themselves. Bear in mind that I had been up almost 24 hours by then and I moved out of Atlanta nineteen years ago. Three cars is heavy traffic for me. Somehow I ended up finding 85 south again and went the fuck home.

I have to take Riley to the vet this morning and then I will drive back downtown to find the hospital in the daylight after a quick stop at Google Maps. I feel dumb as hell sometimes. Heck, there wasn't even a cop to be found to get directions from.

I received this email earlier while at work it best to just reproduce it here in it's entirety. If you are in favor of the act make sure and contact your congressional representatives.

Technorati: Wordless Wednesday

Part of this video is Willie Nelson's new single Gravedigger. He does a passable job with the Dave Matthews cover. Boy is Willie starting to look old or what?

Yuck is all I have to say. Rat meat (also eaten in China and Vietnam) became popular in Taiwan in the 1940s and 1950s among people who couldn't afford chicken or pork. Ho-la, a rural restaurant in Chiayi county serves ten rat-themed meals including rat soup, black pepper-dipped and deep-fried rat. The diner goes through about 40 pounds of rat meat per day.

The rat is also part of the Hawaiian and Polynesian cultures as some of the traditional diet.

My web host has suggested that I move to a new server they have online. That will be nice as it should make things a bit faster. I received this email earlier:

That will be pretty darned nice. I have had to disable 90% of the plugins and addons for MT due to CPU usage and the fact that I couldn't even log in. I even had to disable my server stats plugin, MT-VisitorStats because the MT dashboard refused to load even after upgrading to the newest release. It will be nice to be able to use some of them again.

Here's a triple threat tramp stamp!

I will be in Nassau this coming weekend so hopefully I can get a few pics down there to post.

It was a pretty uneventful day. I spent the great majority of the morning running around and didn't make it back to the house until early this afternoon. I actually had written a couple of posts on my phone but for some reason Pocket SharptMT keeps losing my darn settings and won't post. Guess I need to look into that before the weekend. I won't do a ton of blogging but I am bound to post at least something from the phone. While I won't have any cell phone service on the island there is bound to be someplace with wireless I can upload a couple of offline entries.

That's what I am referring to in the title. 90 Hours from now the wife and I will be on New Providence Island in the Bahamas hanging out on Cable Beach. I don't see us doing much of anything on Friday after we get there around noon other than hanging out at the resort, although I do want to check out the Crystal Palace Casino on Friday night. Saturday we'll go into Nassau and do some sightseeing and shopping as well as head over to Paradise Island and check out Atlantis.

We were going to rent a car but the wife has pretty much talked me out of it. I am still pretty hesitant about not renting but since I don't know anything about available parking downtown I suppose we'll be fine. If we get stuck somewhere there's always the taxi. There is some type of pretty cheap bus service (privately, individually owned) that costs a buck according to Fodor's we will most likely use.

I think we are pretty much decided on taking only carry on bags, maybe with a cloth bag stuffed in there in case we buy a bunch of junk and need to have it checked on the return trip. The less time I have to spend in the airport the better I will feel about the whole trip. Jeans and T-Shirts are going to be the order of the weekend, with shorts during the day. I guess I need to take my camera vest too but that will be about it. If it were later in the year I could probably pack even lighter but I have to dress for Atlanta weather and since we have to leave the house at 6 a.m. Friday it's sure to be pretty cool.

Anyway, I started the post writing about my day. I spent the greater part of the morning at Douglas County Dodge. My airbag light has been coming on constantly since the day after I bought the thing, so I set up an appointment at CarMax to get it looked at. It's still under manufacturer's warranty so I was only there long enough to get directions to the Dodge dealership. Why they didn't fucking send me there in the first place I'll never know. Ends up they couldn't do anything today. They have ordered a part and are going to call me when it comes in. Something about a spring. All I could picture in my head was this big old bed spring pushing out this little airbag into my damn face when I hit the breaks...

I also had to stop by one of my stores and leave my expense report for my boss to approve. He and all of the great muckety mucks and the rest of the dog and pony show are going to be in Colorado for the next two days for their annual meeting and I start my vacation the day they come back. I thought that was good planning on my part even if I wasn't aware of it. That means I won't get hassled too much when I have a cook in my restaurant on Wednesday morning. I may run one tomorrow as well if I can get in touch with the girl. I have a ton of stuff I need to get finished between now and then.

I went ahead and had a tasty cheese steak and hash browns for lunch while I was there dropping off my paperwork. Sitting in the damned waiting room was famishing. I did type a couple of posts but as I said above the stupid program lost them.

I also had to stop at the vets and make an appointment for Riley on Thursday morning. His ears seem to be bothering him lately. Most likely he's got another infection and needs some antibiotics. I don't particularly want to leave town with him sick.

That's about it for today. I have to Blogs for Borders thing to post after this but I think I am going to hit the sack early. I didn't sleep for shit last night and am nodding off sitting here at my desk. Me drooling on my desk is not a sight anyone needs to see.

We didn't plan on another 100% Preventable week so soon, but there were so many stories this week that will be ignored by the media we felt we had to. So without further ado we give you 100% 100% Preventable week!

You can download the show for your iPod here.

Here is the donation info for the Clark family:

This has been the Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst. The Blogs For Borders Blogroll is dedicated to American sovereignty, border security and a sane immigration policy. If you'd like to join find out how right here.

Technorati Tags: illegal immigration, deportation, john clark, lily clark, napa valley, rape, murder, criminal aliens, open borders, border security, pedophile, child molester, hit and run, drunk driving, mexico, podcast, vlod, video blog, blogs for borders, media bias,

Back when the wife and I were much younger we got talked into purchasing a membership in one of those member only warehouses. The membership itself was several hundred dollars, so I'm sure the guys selling them made a good bit for each one the sold. I was way out toward the area where I live now and we never did use it very often so it was certainly not worth it at the time, not to mention the fact that I wasn't making much money at the time either.

Just one of those things I guess. Now that I am making enough I don't use anything like that, although with directbuy you get to choose from brand name stuff at manufacturer prices. That's why they have to offer a membership, otherwise the company wouldn't be able to make any money since there is absolutely no markup on the stuff. That's pretty nice, particularly for stuff like furniture, which has HUGE markups.

I've been looking at home theater equipment again in preparation for setting my HTPC back up. I had to put it off right before Christmas so we could pay for the Marine to come home for the holidays. There always seems to be something else that needs to be paid for. I already have most of what I need anyway. I have the TV tuners, one of those HDMI switches and most of the PC components to go inside the PC case as well. I may even use the Marine's old computer instead of picking up a new barebones setup, although I sort of wanted something newer. As long as it's going to be a dedicated media box I can probably get away with using his old one though.

Today was a pretty long day. The girl that was supposed to cook with me got sick and called me yesterday afternoon so I ended up having to use probably the weakest cook in my entire district as my backup cook today. I couldn't leave my two managers that worked with a weak staff so I left the good cooks at their stores. Not to say I wasn't sorely tempted to call one of them and make them send me someone but that just wouldn't be right. Heck if I were them I would have just told me to fuck off anyway.

He didn't do as bad as I thought he was going to but I also ended up running most of the grill and did most of the cleanup as well, so by the time I had been there eight hours and the next shift started I was able to BEGIN my paperwork and pulling food and operating supplies to get through the next day or so.

I don't know what the hell has been going around but this stuff needs to stop. The local middle school had 200+ students out one day this past week. About halfway through last week the attendance office at the girl's school called me. Most of the time when your kid is out they are pressing you to get the kids back in and not miss any school but all the woman would say to me is to make sure NOT to bring them back until they were over it.

I've now had about 40% of my staff get sick with either the flu or a stomach virus at one point or another over the last two weeks. The big problem is that when you are most contagious you most likely don't know you are sick. Too fucking late then. Not only that but most of these folks make between minimum wage to a couple bucks over, at least the cooks do. If they are any good the waitresses make $12-15 an hour. What that means for most of them is that if they miss a day they miss a bill or the kids don't get snack or they have no gas for the car. Therefore most of them come to work, sick or not and it's our responsibility to catch it and send them home, particularly since the health code changes last December.

Speaking of the health code, back last fall my company was all about  "NOBODY works sick, including managers". What a crock of fucking shit. Being out of work is frowned upon and if you are sick you are expected to handle taking care of business from bed (which is as it should be) and you HAVE to make up the loss in productive hours that week. So if I were to be out sick tomorrow I would be expected to work my day off on Monday or work a double on my first day back. Spend the day in bed worn out and you expect to go back and try to take it easy. Not in my fucking world.

The main reason I mention that is that I've had the damned sniffles all day, a runny nose, and the shits. I'll tell you one thing, I had damn well better be over this shit before next weekend! I don't particularly want to spend the weekend in the Caribbean fucking blowing my nose and generally acting like a dumbass.

I don't get a lot of time to surf too many web sites lately. Mostly news sites and I try to hit my favorite blogs on a daily basis as well, although as much as I have been working lately I haven't even been able to get to those. Every once in awhile I will get the chance to review something more adult in nature such as Sexy TLX (Not Safe For Work!). It's an adult site that's updated daily with free videos and pics.

The also have a Free Adult Gallery as well but the cool thing about the site is that there aren't any irritating pop-ups, pop-unders or any of that other junk. Of course the wife will probably kick my rear end later in the evening for going over to the site so I could post this but hey, that's life. I've been married almost twenty years, I'm used to the occasional beat down by now :)

Oh, BTW, there are also some pretty cool Hot Porn Videos if you are into that sort of stuff. I guess it's pretty tame around here. About the only stuff I post is Thursday Thongs and Tramp Stamp Tuesday. I was pretty well chastised the other day for not putting a NSFW work label on it. I will make sure and do that from now on.

I woke up this morning seriously hurting. At the time I wasn't sure if it was my chest or if I had pulled something. It was actually closer to my back but every time I coughed (or moved for that matter) I had a seriously sharp pain. Ends up I have pulled a muscle or something. I don't know if it's something I did at work or if I just slept wrong but it's been a pretty rough day at work. I picked up some Alieve, which helped to dull the pain somewhat, but it's still pretty sore.

This has just been one of those months I suppose. I was somewhat sick a couple of weeks ago, the wife had a cold for a while, both girls have had the flu and Pete's turned into pneumonia, and even the Marine had a cold or the flu his first week at Twentynine Palms. Good thing we have insurance. A couple of folks I work with have individual health insurance but it looks to be as expensive as the group health policy we are covered under through the state (the wife is a teacher).

I have about five more days of work until my vacation. It would be six but I'm taking Monday off if I can get away with it. I will have worked six days and I'm only taking three or four days off in the month of February not including my vacation so hopefully nobody will mess with me for being off. Starting to count the days until I fly to Nassau.

Found this by way of a message board I don't normally read but what the hey. If you have any you want me to post send 'em my way.

Oh my god, when I saw this I knew I had to post it.

Technorati: Wordless Wednesday

As I mentioned last Thursday I had a couple of people ask me to start doing Tramp Stamp Tuesday again, so here it is. As with Thursday Thongs, be aware that if you click the link you are taking your life into your own hands and I cannot be held responsible for anything that happens... :)

Here's this weeks blogs for borders video blogburst. Go check out Freedom Folks for more information.

In this weeks edition...

Does Mexico exert 'undue influence' inside America?  We take a look.

Sanctuary II: In the 'proud' footsteps of Elvira Arellano the same church offers 'sanctuary' to yet another illegal alien.  We're on the scene.

100% Preventable!  More Americans suffer for open borders!

You can download the show for your IPod here.

This has been the Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst. The Blogs For Borders Blogroll is dedicated to American sovereignty, border security and a sane immigration policy. If you’d like to join find out how right here.

Technorati Tags: illegal immigration, deportation, mexico, felippe calderon,

Wouldn't you know it? One day off and all kinds of stuff to do when all I really want to do is lie around on the couch eating bon bons. Fucking real life.

I have to drive to Carrollton today and pick up tags for the new cars. I'll just transfer the old tag from the Oldsmobile. The guy I am selling it too has paid most of it off so I went ahead and dropped it at his house yesterday along with the keys and title. No big deal. He needs to get brakes and then can finish paying me. Since I get his paycheck first I'm not particularly worried about not getting paid. We are keeping the other one. Although the Plymouth has 200k+ miles on it it is still in great shape so we will garage it and keep it here so that the Marine has something to drive when he's at home. Besides, it's a good idea to keep an extra just in case.

RePete has finally returned to school today but Pete has a dentist's appointment at 11 a.m. and I have a doctor's appointment at 2:30. It's pretty much pointless to take her to school today since she has a mid-day visit with the doctor. She's still got a lot of that crap from the Pneumonia in her lungs anyway. One more day won't kill her although I'm sure the school will think so. What the fuck do they know anyway? Not a damned thing about proper parenting, that's for sure.

I haven't been doing as well with the non-smoking the last couple of days, although I am still smoking way less than I was. I am working on that today. Even with the Chantix this has been pretty darned hard. One day I want to quit and the next I don't.

Once I get home this afternoon and get some bills taken care of there is quite a bit of writing I intend to do. We'll see if I get it accomplished or not...

I was pretty stressed out yesterday when I arrived home I ended up not getting online except to briefly check my email, then just watched TV with the girls for the evening. I needed the break for awhile.

Yesterday was just one of those days at work that make you not want to be there. I was at my slow store yesterday and for the most part the manager at the store pretty much just lets the employees do whatever they want. I don't know if he just doesn't care or if he is afraid to couch and train them for some reason. Either way that makes it difficult for me to go in, particularly when it is busy during the weekend, and have them doing 90% of their job wrong.

I was short-handed to begin with, and two of the three waitresses are really weak. One of those two is extremely lazy to boot. Normally I will make sure to correct mistakes throughout the day, whether in what they are doing, or how they are calling orders out but I actually snapped one her at least twice yesterday. The second time I was a real dick and felt pretty bad about it afterward but I am getting real tired of going in and explaining the same things week after week and then going back the next week and seeing the same stupid shit.

Toward the end of the day she really got worthless. The end of the shift is the time for cleanup and sidework. About 1:30 I gave the waitresses a list of the things they needed to finish. While the place looked like it had been extremely busy it really hadn't and they should have been able to finish their stuff. I had already finished my cleanup, as well as caught up their dishes that had been behind all day and was sitting in the office doing paperwork when I look up to see one of the waitresses working her ass off and the other two sitting on their asses at the counter. One of them was at least checking the credit cards. The other was just sitting there eating like nothing was going on. I though my fucking head was going to pop off. I flew out front and told them they needed to finish their sidework and they weren't getting paid to just sit around. The one girl checking the credit cards got up and the other just blithely ignored me and continued eating. Rather than get in the midst of something I couldn't fix I just clocked her out at quarter 'til and she won't be working with me on the weekend again. It's been awhile since I've had anyone show that much fucking disrespect and lack of giveashit about the people that they work with.

24 hours later and the blog is publishing again. I am still not sure what the heck was up with that. I made some changes in my templates and cut out some overhead but I still think it was some sort of database issue. Either way it pisses me off but I won't bitch too much. Any time I have a complaint my host will stay on it until they get it fixed.

Two more weeks and I will be on vacation. Damn, I am seriously looking forward to that.

Both girls are still sick. I mentioned earlier in the week that RePete had tested positive for Flu and Pete had all of the symptoms. Now they have ear infections and Pete has the beginnings of Pneumonia. We have a small pharmacy going on here on the kitchen counter. Both of them are pretty miserable. I felt a bit under the weather earlier in the week and it seemed like it was going away but now the crud seems to be creeping back into my chest. Crap, I can't miss work. Nobody to call in to as the boss...