October 2, 2007

Time To Hit The Sack

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Site News

I guess it’s time to go crash. Unfortunately tomorrow is another day at work. I am not looking forward to it for reasons I explained the other day. I will go spend some time over at the store with my new manager and explain some things to her about how we do things and maybe she will get it. I don’t know but I do know that I am getting more phone calls from the employees complaining about stuff than I ever did before she got the store including when the dumbass ran it.

Thursday is meeting day and this coming weekend is the big race at the Talledega raceway. Should prove to be interesting to say the least particularly since one of my guys starts vacation tomorrow and the others are off Friday through Monday. I think I have plenty of help scheduled but I’ll just have to wait and see.

Quote of the day:
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. – B. F. Skinner

Career Changes

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Site News

I know this guy that I used to work with and we used to be pretty good friends. He has kind of gone off the deep end but I think he’s starting to get it back together again. I wouldn’t mind looking him up and seeing how he’s doing. Anyway, I worked with him off and on for the last 17 years and at one point in time we have both left the company. For a while he decided he wanted to be a real estate agent and after a year he decided to come back to work with us. That was a few years back. Right before Christmas this past year he started freaking out and stuff and ended up getting treated for being Manic Depressive (bipolar) which is something I know quite a bit about from personal experience. He finally burned all of his bridges with us and now he is a massage therapist. I hear he likes it. Nothing against massage therapy, I have another friend that has done it for a couple of decades now, but this guy just doesn’t seem like the type to stick with that for a long period of time.

School Supplies and Other Useless Crap

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Parenting/Family

Back in August we went and did the yearly thing spending a small fortune on school supplies. Pens, pencils, paper and notebooks and as usual we had to send all of it in at one time. This is supposed to be the supplies for the entire year.

Jump forward to today, two months later. I get this email from one of her teachers:

“
”
Dear Parents:
1. Please sign agendas every night, even on Fridays. A lot of behavior problems are happening on Fridays and the parents never see the notes because on Monday they just look at the new week. We are also finding a lot of notes/announcements stuck in agendas that are over a month old and were never taken home to the parents. Some of our parents are not signing the agendas at all. This is really the only way we have to communicate with you on a daily basis, and we have found it to be a very useful tool when everyone participates.
2. Please ask your child if they need notebook paper, pencils, or a red pen. A lot of students are coming to school each day without the basic supplies they need.
3. Yearbook order forms were sent home last Friday.
4. Field trip Oct. 19 to Ag Center in Carrollton.
5. Remember no toys are allowed at school.
As always, we appreciate your support.
4th Grade Team

???

Ask them if they need notebook paper, pencils, or a red pen? What the fuck happened to all of the stuff I sent in two and a half months ago. Oh, hell no. If I am supplying stuff for the kids whose parents are too damned lazy or cheap to send stuff in then they need to come right out and say so, otherwise I may just start keeping the shit at home next year and dole it out as I see fit. I don’t have a problem donating stuff if they let me know exactly what it’s going to be used for but if I recall we sent in plenty of stuff.

Christmas Coming…

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Site News

It’s funny how the girls are. Last year I bought one of them this mat that sits on the floor and includes a pen filled with water that you draw on the mat with. The year before that it was magna-doodle and the year before that was some type of rainbow thing. I can get them the weirdest as seen on TV gift and they love the darned things. Certainly makes it easy to shop for them anyway.

Top 100 Banned Books

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Entertainment

Christine Anne Piesyk has gotten hold of the list of the 100 top banned books in schools and libraries in America and there is some discussion going on at Clarksville Online. So what’s on the list? It’s not just the usual suspects like Catcher in the Rye, although that’s on there. Mark Twain, J.K. Rowling, RONALD DAHL, Judy Blume. All have books on the list. As a matter of fact Judy Blume has the distinction of having three on the list. Go check out the article and then come back, the list is in the extended entry here.

Which ones have you read? Are there any that you wouldn’t want your children to read? My parents always had the unwritten policy that if I could understand it I could read it, which is one of the reasons I have been reading since prior to turning four.

Darn. You know, here I am trying to write in Windows Live Writer and I don’t know how to make an extended entry. Guess I can put in the HTML and hope it works.

 

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Concert Tickets

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Entertainment

Viagogo is an online partner selling Konzert tickets to the hottest shows in Deutschland (Germany) such as Nine Inch Nails and Gwen Stefani. Neither band currently has a tour in Germany coming up but there are several really good bands playing currently or getting ready to such as the Kaiser Chiefs who are on tour in Germany starting at the end of October and on into November. It would be really nice to be able to get tickets and see the Kaiser Chiefs in Germany. They are playing in Bremen on November 12th at Pier 2.

viagogo

In addition to concert tickets, theater tickets are also available for musicals, several comedy shows, the Cirque Du Soleil as well as the Opera. One of the things I regret not having done when we went to Disney a couple of years ago was not going to see the Cirque Du Soleil while we were there.  They are doing three shows at the SAP Arena in Mannheim next week as well as three more later in the month at the Olympiahalle München in München.

Be aware that the site is in Deutsch so if you cannot read German you might want to go to the U.S. site at Viagogo.com

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The Mist

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Entertainment

Just got an email from Simon and Schuster about The Mist. The Stephen King movie based on his short story is due to be released in theaters next month. I am looking forward to going to see it as this is one of my favorites.

The email had some kind of contest going on where if I forward it to five of my friends I get entered into some kind of contest to get a $50 gift card for online downloads. I’m not particularly interested, at least this morning but if you are here is the link.

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Anniversary Furniture?

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Home & Garden, Travel

I think the wife and I have two different viewpoints about what we are going to do for our 20th anniversary next May. She wants to redo the entire bedroom. New furniture, paint, all that good stuff, and I want to spend the money on a trip to the Caribbean. Originally I was thinking Hawaii but just the thought of spending the greater part of the day in a flying coffin makes me want to hurl. Since I am the man in this household what I say goes…

…

As I was saying, we are getting a new bedroom suite for our anniversary next May, and I have looked at around 100+ different web sites and types of furniture trying to decide what I want. Or at least what the wife wants that I can live with.

Home & Bedroom furniture online has all different types of stuff to look at for the bedroom including Hillsdale Furniture. What’s nice is that they have all sorts of discount bedroom furniture and for me, anything that’s on discount is worth looking at.

Regardless of the type of bed that we get I do know that I want a big old armoire for my stuff. I don’t have a ton of things that I really have to hang up aside from my work uniforms and it would be nice to have them all accessible right there together. As far as beds go I have been thinking about a nice big poster bed although Canopy beds are pretty cool as well.

Either way I will bow to she who must be obeyed and just go about my business as usual. It may be that we can do both, go on a nice vacation in the Caribbean AND get a new bedroom suite if I play my cards right and do what I am told…Happy

Lovely Sleep

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Site News

Man, I was sleeping good this morning. I didn’t want to get out of bed today, that’s for sure but I told the girls last night that they could wake me up if they wanted. They decided that they wanted to ride the bus to school and then back home today, which is fine by me except that one of them has chorus this afternoon, so they need to stay at the afterschool program.

The school won’t take transportation instructions over the phone any more, so I actually have to go in and speak to them and give them written instructions at some point before noon. That’s kind of a pain in the ass but it keeps the kids safer I suppose. The only problem I see with that is that sometimes in emergencies you CAN’T get there or fax them anything and that might cause a problem.

…

I haven’t received any work calls yet this morning to ignore, which is a good thing. I finally received my last one around nine last night. This shit is getting ridiculous.

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Our baby sitter for the weekend of Helen has canceled so I don’t know what the heck we are going to do now. I do know that I have to work part of the weekend at least but I had at least planned on having the wife and a friend go and then I was just going to drive up there after work on Friday and Saturday afternoons.

I am still going to get up there for at least a while but I may have to cancel my reservations. I need to speak with my boss first and see how feasible it’s going to be for me to get the weekend off since one of the other district managers is on vacation. I am seriously pissed about the whole thing right now and it makes me want to tell them to go fuck themselves. Gotta work though so that’s not happening…

Quote of the day:
I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first, I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down. – Mitch Hedberg

Puerto Rico

rmiles7721October 2, 2007Travel

I’m such a chicken about flying that I have been seriously considering going to Puerto Rico next summer rather than trying to get up the guts to try and fly to Hawaii. Either way I am going to try and book everything early. I’ve been doing some reading on Puerto Rico and figured I would share some of it here (of course.)

I have an acquaintance that I also used to work for that grew up in Puerto Rico and whenever he talks about the place it was mostly in glowing terms.

Garita at Fort San Felipe del Morro

One of the really cool things I like about Puerto Rico is the fact that there are so many different types of terrain there. I enjoy going up into the mountains but I also love the beach. The wife and I have had discussions about retirement before and sometimes I want to live at the beach and other days it’s the mountains. Puerto Rico has both. Puerto Rico also has the only tropical rainforest in the United States National Forest System, El Yunque National Forest.

One of the other nice things is that the year round temperature is generally around 80 degrees and there really isn’t that much of a change between summer and winter. Of course between June and November you have to deal with Hurricane season but other than that the weather is perfect.

Unless things have changed recently, since Puerto Rico is a United States territory you don’t have to have a passport or visa to visit unlike the rest of the Caribbean, although it’s probably a good idea to call the State Department just to make sure. I’ve also found several different places on the Internet to get information about the Caribbean as well.

 

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