August 2008 Archives

So I went outside to cut the grass earlier today. I did manage to get the back yard cut but that was about it.

Occasionally I will get busy doing other stuff and forget to eat. duh. When I don't eat I can really tell. I start getting shaky and while I was cutting the grass I though I was going to pass out. Man, I can be a dumbass at times. I have my blood sugar checked twice a year when my cholesterol check is done and it's always been fine but I do have diabetes in my family so it worries me.

Now that I've had a small bite to eat and a cool shower I feel much better but I think it's nap time for bonzo...

This week's Tramp Stamp comes courtesy of Malingering over at Flickr. You can view the original photo here as well as other's in the photostream.

Maybe it's just me but I like it when the pants sit on the hips. When they start pooching over the side dontcha think it's time to go up a size or two?

.

Today started out the same way the last couple of days have. Force myself out of bed, drink coffee and drag my sorry ass into work. I have not been the least bit interested in going to work and have pretty much felt like crap as I mentioned the other day. My ear still hurts and is slightly swollen around it. I'm assuming it's infected. Nothing nasty coming out yet, which is a good thing.

Most of my employees know not to mess with me first thing in the morning and the one's that don't learn fast. It's not that I am an ass or anything but even with getting up at 4:30 AM I am still groggy as hell two hours later. The older I get the longer it seems to take to get my day started properly. Should I sleep late and not be able to get my wake-up shower, I'm fucked for the entire day.

So I get to work and get my days started. First thing the tell me I've got a drifter that's been in the store since 4PM the day before and I would probably need to run him out. The police had been up the afternoon before and I guess the Bremen PD has some sort of a budget that they can put drifters up in a hotel overnight if they don't have any money. This guy had some so they just left his ass sitting there.

Fast forward 17 hours. I waited until about 8AM and asked the dude if he had someone he could call for a ride. He said he was waiting out the rain. Being as how he had been there 17 hours and not left I told him as soon as it let up a bit (it was pouring) he was going to have to leave. He started out with "I'm a paying customer..." which is when I interrupted him.

Just because you have paid for a cup of coffee or even a meal it doesn't entitle you to sit on my property, my private property, for seventeen fucking hours, which I let him know. I also told him that if it was an issue I could just let the police handle it as I was sure they would offer him a ride somewhere and I left it at that and went back to cooking.

A couple of minutes later and I hear this fool running his fucking mouth and all of my employees and customer's looking at him like he had lost his mind. He's down on the far end of the restaurant being loud talking about it being public property and him being entitled, suing me, suing the police department, etc...blah blah blah. I stopped what I was doing and went on down and explained that if he couldn't be quiet he would be immediately leaving, rain or no rain. So then the stupid fucker says "why don't we go on out in the parking lot and see about it".

YOU FUCKING RETARD. He just doesn't know how much I would love to take him up on that but my company has a policy that ANYONE involved in a fight is terminated, no questions asked. Now if he came across the counter into the employee area I am reasonably sure I could beat him down without worry but you never know, so I told him "no thanks" and let him know that if he couldn't keep his mouth shut I would have the law remove him immediately.

The day pretty much went downhill from there and while there was no further excitement it just dragged on and on. I have to work in my Temple store tomorrow and then I actually get a day off before the holiday weekend. I don't have to cook tomorrow which means I can get some paperwork and whatnot finished.

Just another day in paradise...

Just in case you were wondering....

It's been too serious around here lately...

There once was a man with a weird fetish. He liked to window shop for Colanders. In itself this seems a bit harmless until you add in the fact that he had to put them on his head and try them out for size...

...and then he joined the collective...

All was well until the rest of his family was assimilated...

...I was sitting here minding my own business wondering about what murdering bastard to write about when in walks another member of the collective....

Holy Crap said I in 100 words by god...!

I've been feeling a bit under the weather the last few days. Today has been the worst. My throat is starting to feel swollen, my ears fucking hurt, I'm dizzy and my balance is off. I think I may have an ear infection. Hell, it's even red on the outside. I darn sure hate being sick. Other than a few sniffles here and there I don't think I've been sick all year. Maybe once.

Unfortunately I don't have a day off until Thursday so unless it gets really bad the doctor is just going to have to wait until then, Hopefully I will sleep a little better tonight than last night. Every time I would shift and roll onto my ear it would start hurting again, the bastard.

I mentioned yesterday that I had had enough of Disney by this time. For our last day there we decided to spend the first part of it at one of the water parks and then go to Downtown Disney that afternoon.

I'm glad we got to be able to go. While I didn't particularly want to go spend a fortune on stuff in the stores there I did want to go do some window shopping and have a bite to eat there. We canceled our dinner reservations at the Animal Kingdom and decided to just eat somewhere at Downtown Disney instead.

Although there is a ton of entertainment and we really enjoyed the several story arcade it's mostly made up of Disney shopping and boy do they have some stuff to check out.

There were a ton of Disney pins. If you haven't been to Disney before you won't know the import of the pins. See the lanyard around Pete's neck? It's full of the collectable pins. All of us, including myself succumbed to this and we now have a shitload of Disney pins. You can trade them with some of the Disney cast members for other ones you might want and apparently it's a pretty lucrative business on eBay as well.

I can understand that. We also give pins to our employees at work and they just love to collect, buy and trade the pins with each other and really love it when they have something someone else doesn't. I have an entire desk drawer full of that crap at home. 22 years of working for them. I may just have to put some of them up on eBay. The Olympics pins we gave out during the '96 games might actually be worth something to someone.

Anyway, they all got to get a couple of pins. I think all total I probably spent two hundred bucks on pins and freaking lanyards while we were there.

There was also a store that sold nothing by Mr. Potato Head. It was pretty cool. There were a couple of tables inside where the kids could put together Mr. Potato Head so we let them play for awhile. There was also an area with Star Wars Potato Head and I had to make sure and get a couple of pictures of these guys.

I particularly like Darth Potato Head and the Sith Potato Head.

We let them run around and play in there for awhile and then moved on to something else.










We thought about going to the Crab House but then decided on something else. I still wanted the picture of the old steamboat restaurant though.

I think that the favorite part of Downtown Disney for everyone was the Lego store. Man, they had some really cool stuff.



THIS is the Lego guy...

Lego guy and I got to talking for awhile and he was form some place in bumblefuck midwest who quit his life and job to move to Florida and work at the Lego place...

Lego guy was working outside where they have several tables for folks to build stuff out of. He's in charge of making sure everything is cool and nobody takes the Legos. He also makes sure to let everyone know that he's the one with the wheels. If you wanted wheels on your Lego car you had to see him and god forbid you lose the fucking wheels.

I see a fucking serial rapist in the makings...

I caught a case of the crabs there...

Maybe not but it certainly sounded good at the time...

After wandering around we decided to have dinner at the Wolfgang Puck Cafe. It was ok. Pete decided she wanted Sushi.

The only problem with Sushi is that if you are eating outside and it's 85 degrees it doesn't take long for that shit to get nastified.


Even Pete agrees...They screwed up her order the first time but finally got it right. What with the heat and humidity she didn't eat very much of it.

That was pretty much it. We went back to the resort and may have swam for a while but the next morning we high-tailed it back to Georgia. Unfortunately I had chosen to let them automatically charge me for everything so as to save time so I wasn't able to ditch the final bill. Since we paid for the lodging, food and park tickets way ahead of time the only stuff I had to pay for was what we actually purchased and any extra meals. I think it came out to around another $1100 so the damage could have been worse.

I love going to Disney but for us the time constraints just kill you. Even with having a week there we still weren't able to do everything we wanted to without cramming it into 15-18 hour days. I think the best way to go would be to spend about three days in each park. 14-21 days. I'll have to hock my fucking retirement for that one though...

Last week I posted about Hollywood Studios and Epcot. The same day we went to Epcot we had reservations at 1900 Park Place (I think that's the name of the restaurant) at thr Grand Floridian Resort. Since it was a character meal we didn't want to miss it. For some reason I thought it was an Alice in Wonderland type thing but apparently it was Cinderella and family. Here are some of the photos.

The pictures are pretty crappy. I had not had the chance to experiment with the camera's lighting settings yet. It's not like I'm trying to sell them or anything, it's the memories that count.

The girls were very happy to see Cinderella but it was the evil stepmother and stepsisters that stole the show.

Mean faces...

The wife is going to kill me for posting that one...

A very content RePete.

We had intended on going back to the Animal Kingdom the next day as there were several things I wanted to do that we didn't get to do on our short day there but by the time that last day rolled around I was so fucking tired of being there that I wanted an easy day....The last day of our trip next time...

I know it's late but I certainly wouldn't want to leave on a dreary note after posting about all of the scumags. This weeks Thursday Thong is pretty nice but like so many of themm probably not safe for work...

Updated 10/14/08 - Casey Anthony has been indicted by a grand jury on seven counts including 1st Degree Murder and is in police custody. More info here.

Update August 29th 10:50PM - Casey has been rearrested for writing bad checks.

Updated August 29th 5:33PM

Casey Anthony's bond revoked, to return to jail on Saturday?

I received an email earlier from someone asking about the Orange County Florida criminal database and after looking at the thing it seems as though we were mistaken and what we were looking at had no bearing on anything going on right now. Confused yet? Doesn't matter.

Anyway, one of the sites run by that psychic Gale was brought up and I mentioned that I had been there as well as some of the other sites run by her cohorts. I was not particularly impressed.

I believe in psychics. I also believe in ghosts and magic and all sorts of weird shit. What I don't believe are the 90% of people that say that they have seen it or experienced it, particularly if they have to send out a fucking press release to let the whole world know. Bigfoot anyone?

Personally I think that if that Gale was for real she would have just driven down and checked out the place for vibes or whatever it is she does and then quietly called the Anthonys to let them know what she thought. It's not as if they aren't taking calls from the rest of the crackpots around the state of Florida. Their home number is posted on the Find Caylee web site fer christ's sake! Why issue press releases about what you are going to be doing and how? Does that serve some purpose in psychic land? Do the vibes get stronger when the greater part of the population of the United States read on CNN that you were going to 'blind drive' around the area to find Caylee? There's a reason that psychic and psychosis look so much alike. Hell, for all I know they tuned in with the psychic psilocybin and pslythered around like psloths in the pslippery mud...

I do so want to believe in it, just not their brand of bullshit...

Everyone is right sooner or later. My personal opinion is that Caylee Anthony is dead (for those of you that have no fucking clue as to what I am talking about, there ya' go) and that she either died in the hot car driven by her mother or accidently drowned in the pool, her mother freaked the hell out, didn't know what to do and passed the buck onto a make-believe babysitter. If I'm right does that make me a psychic? If so just send your donations through paypal. The fucking link's around here somewhere.

Technorati Tags: Wordless Wednesday, Photography

I spent the great majority of the evening just surfing the web looking at different news sites. Man there are some seriously fucked up people out there. That of course is why I started thinking about a couple of the folks that work for me.

There's this one girl that works for me, I guess I hired her back in October of 2006 when I opened the last store I had as a manager. She lives with her mom and siblings, her mom's boyfriend, her husband who I suspect of being an illegal, and her three month old baby. She's 18 or 19 now and the only one that works. She dropped out of high school to work. I guess because of ADD and the fact that she is a little slow, until she hit 18 they got a check for her disability from the government. Of course that stopped the day she became a legal adult. Now her mom is trying to get her to quit and go back on disability so they can get that check again.

What a load of crap. She tried to move out recently but I guess her mother got wind of it and told her she would call DFACS and have the baby taken away from her, so the girl decided to stay. Whether or not that would actually happen is a different story but it scared her into staying.

I think her mother wants her to quit because she is figuring out that the girl is saving money and will eventually leave. It took me several months but I finally got her to enroll in the stock plan we offer. With waitress pay it doesn't deduct a hell of a lot out of your check but saving a thousand bucks a year for 30 years at 7% or 8% still adds up. This was the worst year I have ever seen us have in the 22 years I have been there and we earned 7.7%. Hey, but the stock just split again. That's a damn good thing. Anyway, I have been trying to get her to also open a savings account near the store so that she can put five or ten bucks a day in it. At least that way she can save up enough to eventually move out. It's fucking people like her free loading mother that just piss me off.

I keep expecting to see someone from her family amongst some of the folks that are out murdering and killing kids.

I have no clue as to why I am so morbid tonight. I have been in a pissy mood most of the day and shot out of there as soon as I could, picked up the girls early (boy were they pissed) and came home to basically do nothing. The girls both go to late stay after school. They really enjoy it and get mad if I pick them up prior to 5:30, particularly the oldest. I showed up at 3:30 today :)

So here's my question. Is it still a tramp stamp if it's on the front?...

The next morning (June 3rd) we went to Epcot. I had never been to Epcot before and I was really impressed.

The week was finally getting to us and we overslept. We had a Princess Breakfast scheduled for something like 8:30 in the morning for the girls at Epcot and we woke up at something like 7:30. Since the Wife and Pete had stayed up much later than RePete and nyself they decided they did not want to get out of bed. Repete and I made the mad dash to Epcot. It seemed like we had to wait forever. First we had to ride the monorail to the transit center and switch to another train and ride that all the way to Epcot. We had to wait forever. Then we got lost in Epcot :)

We ended up getting to breakfast 30 or 40 minutes late but they were gracious enough to seat us anyway. Repete got to meet several of the princesses she had not met before...

RePete and I had a really great time and since the breakfast was held in the Norse(?) area there were lots of cool new foods to try for her. I had a bit of smoked salmon with my eggs and she got to try several different types of cheeses. RePete LOVES cheese.

The wife and Pete showed up around 10:30 and we spent the rest of the day wandering around Epcot. There's some more pictures in the extended entry.

I haven't posted anything else about our trip to Disney since around the beginning of July so I thought it a good time to put up some more pictures from the trip.

The last time I was talking about it I had gotten to our day at Hollywood Studios.

We had to drag the kids to see the Lights, Motors, Action! show. It was pretty hot that day and neither of them seemed to want to see it but once we got there they enjoyed it.

This is the set from Lights, Motors, Action!

One of the favorite things for the kids on both of our trips to Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Studios) is to play in the "Honey I shrunk the Kids" area. They always have a blast and it's nice to get into the shade after walking around the park for a while.

We didn't spend the entire day at Hollywood Studios as we had dinner reservations somewhere at the Magic Kingdom I believe. So we rode the bus back to our resort and then caught the boat over to the Magic Kingdom.

I honestly can't remember where we ate that night. I don't have any pictures so it must not have been one of the character meals. I do remember that we stayed awhile and since it was open late that night RePete and I caught the boat back to the hotel while Pete and the wife stayed past midnight. We were already getting toward the end of the trip and by that time it had kicked my ass good. We went to Epcot the next day. I had never been to Epcot before and I really enjoyed it. The next time it's just the wife and I we are definitely going back.

Well you should. It's damn sure not the meaning of life although it might just be the meaning of my life thus far.

A couple of days ago Eric posted about tuna salad and some of the fixin's that go into it. If you do it the right way egg whites go in. That's the way I ate it growing up here in the south anyway.

Flash forward to the night before last and he posted about eggs again and the inability to crack them well. That's OK dude. It's a learned art form. I of course had to butt in and let him know that I can crack two at a time. When it's busy and I am jamming right along I can hold one in each palm while cracking another in the fingers of each hand...

I also performed a feat unimagined here in the Miles casa. I performed a bit of legerdemain called "math". At least that's what the wife says it's called. I think 'witchcraft' is more like it. Anyway, I work an average of 260 days per calender year. More now that I have three stores. I cook at least 300 eggs a day. That's less than a case and in some of my busier stores and on weekends I can go through a case and a half to two cases in seven hours. That means I have prepared at least 1,482,000 eggs since 1987. That's a fuckload of cholesterol. No wonder mine's so high, the shit probably seeps through my gloves into my skin.

Just another bit of useless trivia from yours truly...

I was just watching the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a couple of days ago when I ran across a story this evening that said that the release would be moved from November of this year until July of 2009 due to the writer's strike.

That sort of sucks. I enjoyed the Potter books and the girls and I go see each movie when it comes out, which is a big deal since I am only willing to pay for two or three movies a year.

Wanna see the short trailer? Not a lot to see yet but if you've read the books you already know what it's about.

...unfortunately the wife of the man she was sleeping with found them in her bed along with an opened condom packet.

There is an auction currently on eBay for a photo of the panties and the used condom packet. Originally it was the panties themselves but it's a TOS violation to sell secondhand panties on the auction site. Damn, there goes my next fortune...

The seller, known on eBay as annastella007 lives in Queensland, Australia and apparently had been at work for a couple of hours when she received a text message from her husband clearly meant for his lover. She goes into GREAT detail on the whole thing in the auction description. Head over for a good laugh. There are currently 92 bids and it's up to over a million right now, so i see these being relisted soon. Here's part of the ad:

Oh by the way, hubby apparently had a Harley Davidson that's going to be listed soon...

A British man has been banned by the court from visiting his girlfriend at her home after the neighbors complained about the noisy sex, not too mention the loud music, headboards banging and nude sunbathing...

Some people just don't appreciate the finer things in life. Of course the girlfriend might have been a two-bagger, thus the fact that her neighbors don't want her sunbathing...

Yahoo

This week's Thursday Thong is actually tame in comparison to some I have posted...

Technorati: Wordless Wednesday

This week's Tramp Stamp Tuesday is definitely not safe for work so it's in the extended entry just in case. Thanks to Tattoo Beautiful for the pic.

I've posted about the Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk a couple of times before over the last couple of years. There are a few "causes" I try and support. MS is one of them and Alzheimer's is another. I always try and donate something, even if very small to the Montel Williams foundation and the Alzheimer's Association but I also post about them here at the site. Last year I donated my custom van to the Alzheimer's Association. It's probably a good thing too considering the cost of gas right now...

Anyhow, the Alzheimer's Memory Walk is the country's biggest fundraiser for Alzheimer's research. There are walks in over 600 different places around the country. Although the walks take place at different times of the year they are usually during the fall and are around two or three miles. The closest one to me is actually during the weekend I will be on vacation and out of town in October but there are several more in Kennesaw and Atlanta on different weekends.

Did you know that the 6th leading cause of death in the U.S. is now Alzheimer's Disease? Someone new is diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease every 71 seconds. That's pretty scary and it's not just something that occurs in old people. That's sort of a myth. While it's most common in people 65 and older even folks much younger than that can have it happen to them. Some notable folks that have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's include of course Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston in addition to Terry Pratchett, Harold Wilson and Rita Hayworth.

Go check out the links I gave you and get involved if you have the inclination. They are always looking for teams, team captains and individuals to participate and even if you can't walk in one of the events they will always take donations!

It's been another pretty long weekend. I was hoping for a lazy day at work since all of my managers were working but no such luck. I ended up at least working in the one closest to my house so I shot out of there a bit early and picked up my prescriptions before coming home. Other than that it has been a very quiet week. I have spent the great majority of my time writing about that missing little girl Caylee Anthony and updating my posts on her and her freakish family.

I also spent a bit of time redoing the site. There is still quite a bit of work to do but I like the way it is starting to come together. Any opinions? They are certainly most welcome. In the end I will do whatever I want but it's always nice to get some feedback from people.

That's about it for tonight. It's been after midnight the last couple of nights before I hit the sack so I am going to try and get an extra hours sleep. I'm sure the girls I will be working with tomorrow will appreciate it...

So how many of you folks actually think that holding the Olympic Games in China was a good idea now?

Let's see...

1. For years now China has seriously oppressed the Chinese people economically, politically and religiously. The rioting and killing that took place relating to Tibet was a direct result of the way they have treated the folks there since they took back Tibet in 1951. Yeah, the Tibetans were rioting and killing folks so of course they had to crack down but you have to look at the deeper causes of it than a bunch of angry monks.

2. Two words. Tiananmen Square. According to the Chinese Red Cross somewhere between 2000-3000 people were killed in the government crackdown on the demonstrators. The 1989 protests are a forbidden topic in China. News of it completely disappeared from everything in China and people are not allowed to talk about it. Just this past week the Chinese police dragged Christians out of the square right in front of the media. Three Americans (of course we were the dumbass protesters) put on a protest on the edge of the square against religious repression as well as the abortionist policies that limit people to a single child. Now I don't have any problem with the population control. Judging from some of the dumb fuckers over here we could do with a little control. If I believed in the government doing those sorts of things I would be all for it. Since I hate government intrusion I will just have to be satisfied knowing that many of them will be up for the Darwin awards in future years. I don't particularly like Christian activists but they have every right to share their opinion. Anyway, to get back to the subject at hand, I think that a serious revolution akin to the French or Russian revolution is coming. It may take decades but China is going to burn from the inside if they aren't careful.

3. Pollution is rampant in China. They are becoming an extremely industrialized nation and have little control over emissions and pollution there. All of the damned idiots that are always complaining about our country and the pollution need to take a long visit to several other countries including China to see what it's like there. We have some of the strictest controls from the EPA of any country in the world.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the politics of China (I am assuming) but a Chinese man with a knife attacked an American couple in Beijing killing the man before jumping to his death off of the Drum Tower.

I've sort of lost my train of thought. I started out typing this prior to dinner and having eaten I am now brain dead. I went to bed around midnight last night and then was awakened by a call from one of my stores shortly after 1AM because they had an emergency and the manager wouldn't answer the fucking phone. I got back up around 5AM and finally dragged myself in to work so the rest of the day has seemed a blur.

This one is surely not safe for work unless your boss is a pig like myself...

When the wife arrived home late this evening the first thing she did was to start playing with my wenis. It is pretty dry and cracked so it feels pretty good when she starts rubbing it but she did so in front of the children. Is that legal?

Sometimes she plays with my wenis in public as well. It makes me nervous when she plays with my body parts in front of other people.

Sometimes I will rub it with this thing in the shower that's got like a sandpaper substance on it to get rid of the built up skin. Then I put moisturizer on it.

I hate it when my damned wenis gets all dried out, but the elbow is a tough part of your body so it can take a bit of abuse...

:)

I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to post this for Tramp Stamp Tuesday or Thursday Thongs but I figured the sooner I got it online the better. Louisa Glover is just smokin'...

I don't do much with the LOLCats. I mean hey, they are funny and all but who gives a fuck. I can got to any of 5,000 web sites right now and see them. I came across what has to be the creepiest fucking LOLCat ever...

Sorry if the site was screwed up for a little while. I managed to hose some of the code in my header and it caused everything to disappear. Shit happens. It's fixed.

I should be in bed by now but I made the mistake of lying down for a short nap around 4PM this afternoon. Apparently my ten year old came in and asked me at some point what time I wanted to get up and I must have told her not to wake me up. BAD mistake. She let me sleep until the phone rang at seven. I may end up drugging myself tonight just so I can go to sleep. As opposed to drugging myself so I can stay awake I guess :) You know what they say though, sleep is just a cheap caffeine substitute...

I posted this review yesterday for something called the Cabin Cuddler that is basically a travel blanket and pillow. They are like $30 or so. Not too bad considering that you can't get a damn blanket when you fly half the time now.

So I'm over at CNN today and notice in the Money section that now Jetblue is going to charge people $7 that want a pillow and blanket. fuck. Makes that cabin cuddler thing more worth it. Then again, I prefer driving anyway if it's within twelve hours...

I am assuming that you get to keep the "eco-friendly" pillow and blanket from JetBlue so we'll have to see what kind of quality it is compared to the ones I reviewed.

Anyone who has listened to the Braves on the radio knows who Skip Caray is. The Voice of the Braves passed away this weekend. I hate baseball on television and have always listened to it on the radio with Skip Caray.

One never knows when you might need a bit of help in case of a Zombie outbreak and of course I would prefer to have my friend Eric, he who hates Zombies, by my side.

I came across this Zombie Survival Quiz and knew I had to post a link. I scored a Z+ on the damned thing. Made a good grade on all portions except emotional integrity. Something about having no problem killing a friend that was turned into a Zombie...

Thanks to The Trenchcoat for the link...

Oh, and if the quiz isn't enough for you, go check out the Zombie Survival Guide...

While I much prefer driving when we travel sometimes there are just instances where you have to fly such as when we went to Nassau back in February or when our son comes home from California at Christmas. It's just too far to drive in one instance and impossible in the other.

I hate flying and as the years go by it keeps getting more and more uncomfortable. First they took away most if not all of the food on domestic flights. Then they start charging you for ALL of your luggage. Now, even though it hasn't really been covered in the press, they aren't even carrying pillows or blankets on board. That just plain sucks. Flying is uncomfortable enough and that just adds to it.

When we flew home from Nassau we ended up getting diverted to the other side of the state and sat there for several hours due to storms that were over Atlanta. What should have taken us and hour to an hour and a half ended up taking several hours. It was hot and then it was cold, the flight was awful due to the storms we had to fly through and I was just ready to walk home by the time we finally arrived.

It's hard to travel prepared for all emergencies that might come up but the Cabin Cuddler does take care of some of it. Believe it or not but most of us get cold flying in the winter, not the summer. That's because we travel for comfort. Shorts and a T-Shirt are my traveling clothes of choice but when you get on a plane and the AC is cranked to max then you start getting cold. If there is a blanket at all on the plane now there's no telling when the last time is that they did laundry. On my last flight the crew had flown several different routes over a 15 hour period, basically just landing long enough to take on fuel and passengers. The sure don't wash anything in between stops. Yuck!

The Cabin Cuddler comes with it's own inflatable pillow and the tote bad turns into a pillow case. The travel blanket completely covers you and there is a pocket at the bottom that keeps your feet warm. As often as we drive around the southeast U.S. it would come in handy in the car as well. Instead of carrying three or four pillows and blankets I could just throw a couple of these in the trunk.

The girls love to go on vacation with us but they are always cold as well. When I drive, particularly in the summer, I always crank the air conditioning. Since I am right there in front of the windshield I am usually several degrees warmer than they are in the back seat and the air also helps to keep me awake as well. When I showed the girls the Cabin Cuddler video on the linked website they were amazed. Of course they are children but their comfort is even more important to me than my own.

Let me know if you have one of these or have used one before. I am really interested in hearing from folks that have some experience with them.

This was my weekend off and it was a pretty restful one as well. I didn't get out of bed until after nine yesterday morning and after working in the yard for a while I ended up taking a pretty long nap as well. Very nice. I haven't had two days off in the same week since out barbecue back in the middle of July. I only have to work three days this week and then will end up being off on Thursday as well. Normally I would be off next Sunday but since the boss is going on his ten day vacation I have to work. The good thing is that I will have a manager trainee with me most of the week and all of my managers are working Sunday so I will shoot out of there pretty early.

I posted a while back that I had sent in my application for advancement last month. My area vice president finally received the stuff from corporate and he is supposed to be coming out to interview me later this week. I'm crossing my fingers. If I can get on the promotable list it might only mean a four or five month wait as long as I am willing to commute. I had the wife trim my hair a little while ago in preparation for the interview. The last couple of years I have kept it shaved but for some reason I have let it grow out a bit lately. It was getting a bit shaggy around the ears and back so she fixed me right up.

I've already started thinking about my Christmas shopping. This year I am going to attempt to get everything done as early as I can, including sending out Christmas cards. I was looking for a place to get them pretty cheap online so as to avoid getting out amidst the Christmas shoppers this fall. I figured if I do it early and just have them shipped here then It will save me quite a bit of unwanted stress (and maybe some money as well).

I found some Christmas Cards that I like over at ChristmasCardsDirect.com. There are some really cool designs and you can also get Christmas photo cards as well. One of the things I find interesting is that people I work for and with send those out and I don't even know half of their children. I would love to be able to send photo cards to my family and friends and then send normal cards out to everyone else. Who the heck wants pictures of my children unless they are close to me anyway. I never did see the point of that.

Anyhow, they have a really good selection of cards over there and at a decent price so if you want to get a jump on things and have them sent right to your door go check 'em out.

In Shelbyville, Tennessee more than half of the plant workers are Muslims. That in itself is no big issue. Other than the fact that they worship a religion that specifically tells them to enslave and kill unbelievers it's just another crappy religion. The problem lies in the fact that the Union negotiated into their newest contract with Tyson Chicken that in the eight paid holidays workers get off they have to ditch Labor Day, a non-religious holiday for workers and they now get the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr off of work. It only effects union members. Non-union workers still get labor day off with pay.

In addition to the Muslim holiday the Tyson chicken plant in Shelbyville also has a special Muslim prayer room inside. You think their is a chapel for christians or jews? Fuck no. So why should the Muslims be treated any different?

My personal opinion is that Tyson is a chicken business and as such has nothing whatsoever to do with religion and they just need to tell people to take care of their religious bullshit on their own time. I don't even have a problem with folks taking off special days for their religious beliefs but why the heck should a company have to pay them for their off time? Take a personal day if you want to go pray to some blood-sucking spiritual higher power.

I read a story over at CNN Money last year which tells how some businesses deal with Muslim staff and thought it had some pretty good ideas. It's kind of a give and take. Tyson should never have signed that contract with the union. Instead, they should allow for the eight paid holidays and leave it up to the individual workers as to which day they want to be off. Their answer is just another way to act like the dumbasses in Britain that are making concessions so as to not rock the boat.

I am a pretty big horror fan and Stephen King is one of my favorites. I received the link to the animated episodes of "N" based on the short story which will be released in November in a new collection. A new episode is being released each day (a total of 25 ) so check back here through August 29th for more. You have to have Flash enabled in your browser to watch it.

You can also check them out at http://www.simonsays.com/specials/stephen-king-nishere/