March 2008

When the heck does it get easier?

rmiles7721March 31, 20081Site News

Getting ready to hit the sack but I wanted to make sure and post before I go to bed. Nothing particularly exciting happened today and I am in a foul mood which is one of the reasons I haven’t posted since this morning.

Fortunately the audits came out OK at the one store I mentioned might have some issues today. That’s a freaking miracle considering that the waitresses ran the store for 24 hours. Not that I think they are dishonest but too many hands in the pie tend to skew things.

I still haven’t smoked and I want one more today than I have all week. I’m just ready to beat someone’s ass. I didn’t stop and buy a pack although I damn sure wanted to today. When the heck does it start getting easier. 100 hours now. Just over four days since my last cigarette. It’s probably a good thing the girls are in another state right now. That worked out pretty well (for them anyway) since I don’t have anyone here to pick a fight with.

I’ll tell you one thing though, quitting smoking gives you some serious gas. Of course since I severely curtailed the smoking starting about eight weeks ago I have noticed it before but since Friday it’s been getting worse. It’s fucking rancid too. Smells like something crawled up my ass and died there. Even the dog is staying away from me. I have to keep moving at work so as to not be noticed. That’s fine as long as it’s silent but once you start getting those noisy walking farts there’s just no hiding.

I skipped the gym yesterday so made sure that I went back today. I tried to take it a bit easy on myself today and worked out for a little over half an hour. I am increasing the weights I am lifting with my legs and thighs but haven’t been able to do a lot with my upper body yet. It pisses me off because I used to have a lot of upper body strength. Guess that’s what I get for 41 sedentary years. I may start doing pushups in the morning as well to help get a bit of strength back in my shoulders and arms.

Did the tanning bed thing again today too. I’ve only noticed a tiny difference thus far, maybe I need to get them to keep it on longer.

There are some nice benefits to going to the gym. There are quite a few hotties that go as well. Something to look at while I exercise. Just have to make sure to wear the pants with the tent attachment I guess 🙂 Most of them are too damn young but they are nice to look at.

I don’t have anything more to bitch about tonight. Now that I napped for two hours this afternoon I’m going to try and get a bit of shut-eye if I can.

Another Sleepless Night

rmiles7721March 31, 2008Site News

I didn’t sleep any better last night than the couple before. I guess it’s my body craving the nicotine or something. That or I’m just not used to sleeping by myself any more in combination with the other. I tossed and turned and finally managed to get to sleep after midnight. I woke up two or three times and looked at the clock.

I had intended to mention a couple of more things in that post about work but my browser crashed and I ended up publishing just what I had auto-saved at that point.

It’s pretty cool. Her (the manager I was writing about last night) is graduating from boot camp the last weekend in April. Good for her. He’s in the Navy and although he’s a squid I can’t disparage him too much for doing what he believes in. We need more young people like him to participate. Anyhow, the weekend he graduates is also Talladega Race weekend. Nothing to be done for it, I have moved her vacation so she can go to graduation. It will be a rough weekend because I have another manager off the very same weekend as well and it will be pretty busy that week. I will also have two of my managers taking back-to-back vacations and that’s going to be hard.

The only reason I really don’t like it is because I was going to make her take her vacation the week of the Rodeo. She is the owner and one of the organizers for the Waco (Georgia) redoe and always misses several days of work during the rodeo and even when she is at work is even less involved than normal. I know she’ll miss at least three days during the weekend of the rodeo in May, so I will just have to make sure she only gets one the week prior and count those days she misses as her days off. I don’t know why they just haven’t scheduled it that way before anyway. I need to find out the date so I can go ahead and get my itinerary finished and turned in pretty quickly.

It’s about time to go to work. Hopefully even with the bullshit today won’t be too long of a day. I want to try and work out this afternoon and have a bunch of stuff here at the house that needs to be done as well.

There’s always one…

rmiles7721March 30, 2008Site News

So I ended up doing nothing but lying on the couch attempting to nap and then went back to work this evening. I figured the nap would take my mind off of why I am having trouble sleeping in the first place, which is wanting a cigarette. I would kill for a smoke tonight but I didn’t go buy any. I didn’t even bum any. Normally one of the first shift waitresses keeps an extra pack in the filing cabinet but it wasn’t there tonight. Fucking foiled again!

I skipped the workout today, which is probably not such a great idea but I had originally planned on being productive and getting some work done here. I am behind the eight ball on some stuff. I’ve got taxes to file, not only for myself but for the Marine as well. He finally sent his W-2s and it struck me as funny for some reason. His Marine Corps W2 comes from Defense Finance and Accounting (listed as the company). I already knew that but for some reason it had slipped my mind and caught me in a minute or something. Rambling…fuck

Anyhow, if I didn’t have at least one incompetent under me I don’t suppose I would know what to do. One of my managers does whatever the fuck she wants. Literally. She doesn’t do her job and the last district manager she had couldn’t get her to do it either. MY last district manager before I got promoted, and she is good, so it’s not her fault. She has been in the store where she is at four weeks shy of five years. Holy cow, she got it right before I left the corporate office because they were talking about putting me in that store. Doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.

Anyway, she refuses to cook (part of the manager’s job description in a 24-hour diner), she refuses to come back and do shift changes when she is supposed to, she treats people unfairly and is generally pretty much high-maintenance, and needs to be replace. If she would take ownership of her problems and not just the successes and at least show she wants to fix things then the other stuff wouldn’t be a big deal but as it is she needs to be replaced. So eventually she will quit or they will get tired of her and offer her a position as a trainee again. Which means I will take her as a loss and lose $500 in retention money. It’s not yet worth it, but a couple more months of bullshit and then it will be. She left at 10:30 this morning because she was having an anxiety attack. This is apparently quite common with her. Now before anyone who really seriously suffers from anxiety attacks me, I just don’t give a fuck. If she can’t because of her physical/psychological makeup handle the job of running a 24 hour restaurant then she needs to find a new fucking career.

Anyhow, like I said, she just up and left at 10:30 this morning. The busiest shift of the week, she just up and leaves. She pulled her hostess off the door and put him in her place on the grill. I’m sure that went over like a lead balloon. No cash or commissary audits. No bank deposits. The waitresses have had the keys all day doing the drawer changes and pulling food to the floor when they needed it. No paperwork done this morning. They even paid themselves. No truck order, which should have gone in this morning. I had to run a $173 shortage on the woman last week as it is, which I really don’t like doing and it looks like chances are she’s going to eat another one this week. I was going to cook the next two days but I went ahead and called in one of the guys that helps me out now and then to cook tomorrow because I’m not touching any money or food tomorrow until I have had the chance to do a thorough audit of it, along with all of her paperwork.

I was there at 8:30 this morning and she was fine, so at least the paperwork (which should have been done at 7am) could have been done. My visit was probably the reason for her anxiety attack, because I expect her to do her job and have very quickly started being a dick about it. At least I consider it being a dick, I don’t yell at folks (often), I just don’t give her any alternative to what I want her to do. Her costs are way out of control and we have given her several ways to fix it. She refuses to implement any of them. I told her on Thursday after the meeting that I had to attend on my day off because of her food cost that if she couldn’t get it fixed this week that she would have to let someone go and that if she couldn’t figure out who was stealing, I would just start firing people randomly. Her biggest thieves are working 1st shift with her anyway, so that should be easy. I’ll start by letting the newest folks go and when the food cost drops I know I’ve gotten the right one. Every single one of them has had more than enough cash register shortages over the last three months to where I have reason to fire them anyway.

There she is, calling me on my cell phone, finally. 9:35pm. That’s what fucking voice mail is for.

Did I tell you I needed a cigarette. Just damn. Three days, four hours.

The Sahara

rmiles7721March 30, 20082Travel

When I went to Las Vegas in 1987 we stayed at the Holiday Inn. I think it was called the Holiday Inn Circus or something along those lines. I don’t really remember. We weren’t there all that long. We walked up and down the strip but it was late, so the only Las Vegas Casino that we visited was Caesar’s Palace. There are a couple of ‘iconic’ casino/hotels I think of when I’m talking about Vegas. Caesar’s Palace of course is one, but the Sahara is another. Remember the TV show Vegas with Robert Urich? Dan Tanna was the man. Of course I was twelve when the show aired, so anything even remotely resembling an action series like that got me all excited. Ocean’s Eleven was set there too, at least the original was. I don’t remember where the remake was set. Anyhow, the point is that the TV show and movies set in Las Vegas always show glimpses of the familiar landmarks, including the Sahara.

Would you believe the Sahara is 55 years old? Holy cow! As a result you know right now you can get a really good Las Vegas deal on a vacation at the Sahara. It’s changed immensely over the last 55 years too. Some of the city’s coolest rides are at the Sahara, they have great restaurants on site including the NASCAR cafe, and over 1700 rooms and suites to choose from. Check out the Roller Coaster…

That going backwards stuff is enough to make me want to hurl…

Even though I have already made plans for our 20th anniversary it would be kind of cool to plan a Las Vegas wedding and surprise the wife. Not that I would want the kids there or anything, although I suppose if we were going to be that close to the Marine (he’s at Twentynine Palms, California) we would have to take them and pay him a visit.

Anyway, the point is it’s been a long time since I’ve been to Las Vegas or anywhere else out west for that matter, and it’s high time we went out that way on a vacation.

Just a So-So Day…

rmiles7721March 30, 20081Blogging

So I think I mentioned yesterday the Temple PD was out raising money at one of my stores this weekend. Either they must have hit the $5k mark or they just decided to throw in the towel early because they cleared out around 3pm today. If they just decided to shut down I don’t blame them. The weather this weekend has been pretty crappy and it’s been pretty darned slow this weekend as well.

The girls have left for South Carolina. I spoke with the wife shortly after I left work this afternoon and they had just gotten to Bluffton. I guess they will be back later in the week. I have Friday off so I think they are planning on being back by then.

I unfortunately have to go back to work tonight. I was supposed to be working a double shift today but with the wife and kids leaving town I decided to come home for a while to let the dog out. They are fine anyway and don’t need my non-smoking stressed out personage up their butts all evening.

I think I will spend some time surfing a couple of blogs I haven’t had the chance to visit in a few days. Speaking of blogs I like to visit, if you go to Parkway Rest Stop on occasion tell the guy with the big hair my fucking IP address is banned and neither myself or my wife can get to his site from here. I need to just get Jim’s email from someone else I guess and send him a not but I just haven’t had the time.

48 Hours

rmiles7721March 29, 20082Site News

So the girls are leaving in the morning for Hilton Head. Kind of sucks that I won’t get to go because it means that I will never get to see our friends again as they are moving overseas. Some days my job sucks.

I’ve been pretty busy this weekend as my store in Temple has been hosting the local police department. They are raising money for Special Olympics (in case some of my employees need a second career as a retard) and they sit on the roof until tomorrow night or until they raise $5,000. It’s a pretty cool thing to do and they all seem to be having a good time, at least when it’s not raining.

I don’t know how much fun I am having though. Two of my three stores have gotten a bit out of hand with some of their costs and employees just flat out stealing and in the case of the one in Bremen, the manager just doesn’t seem to care less, at least not enough to change anything and fix the problem so I, along with one of the other district managers, have to go in for every single shift change now. That means being out of the house until 10pm every night but still getting back up by 5am, AND I have to work three doubles over the next seven days. I am not all that excited about it, as a matter of fact, combined with the fact that I’m not smoking I have pretty much been a bastard to several people that work for me and unless they fix the shit I don’t plan on changing that anytime soon.

Speaking of the smoking it’s been 48 hours since my last one. Actually it’s more like 53 now. 3,180 minutes. 190,800 seconds. I started writing this post prior to going in for drawer change earlier this evening but I didn’t get it finished in time. Even if I had, we had no Internet until a short while ago. Anytime it thunders within 150 miles Charter High Speed goes down and tonight was no exception.

I haven’t slept since Wednesday night, even tried to nap today and was unsuccessful until about 15 minutes before the wife came in to wake me up. I guess it’s because of the lack of nicotine. This sucks and I really want a smoke, even with the Chantix. It would be much worse without it though. The next few days are going to be the toughest though. With the wife and kids not being at home I won’t have any reason to feel guilty if I smoke. Now that I’ve managed to go two days though I really don’t want to screw that up.

I’ve been trying to keep busy so that I don’t think about it but that only works for so long. The working out is part of that. I did make myself go to the gym this afternoon after I went ans spent a hundred bucks on a freaking new tire. I had apparently gotten a nail in it but it was so close to the inside edge that they wouldn’t plug it. I made sure that they showed it to me first. The Wal-Mart folks are usually pretty cool about it anyway. They are more than happy to patch or plug a tire if that’s all it needs.

I suppose that’s about it for today. I am rambling, even more than normal and I thing maybe a hit of nyquil might just do the trick and let me sleep for a while. I have even been dreaming about smoking when I do manage to catch some sleep and I would like to avoid those if at all possible. Anyone have a couple of ludes available? That might just do the trick 🙂 Maybe I just need a new hobby to take my mind off of it. Working out at the gym is only good for an hour a day or so. Perhaps I can take a couple of hours and go down to Fulton Industrial and sodomize winos or something. Any takers?

Spring Break

rmiles7721March 28, 2008Parenting/Family, Travel

So the girls are officially on spring break for the next nine days, including the wife. Unfortunately I will only have one of those days off 🙁

I think they are planning on going to the Atlanta Zoo tomorrow and then Sunday they are driving back down to Hilton Head to spend a few days with our friend Niqui before she moves. I wish that I could go down but I am unfortunately going to be stuck at work all week. As a matter of fact I am going to have to work doubles on Sunday and Thursday. I’m not particularly looking forward to that. I hate working doubles but unfortunately sometimes this business calls for it. My profits haven’t been all they could be and I need to make sure I have plenty of money when it comes time to go to Disney, and that’s the money I am making now.

…I was looking at the local wally world when I was picking up some supplies for work on Wednesday and I came across a pair of skate shoes. Pete was dying for a pair of these toward the end of the school year last year and I almost got them but I don’t know if she wants them anymore. I think I will wait. Don’t really want to spend any money right now as it is.

I think I will surf the web for a while and then shower. I want to hit the sack at a decent time tonight. We are doing a benefit

The IRS owns me…

rmiles7721March 28, 20084Site News

I worked out again for the fifth day in a row. Although it burned a bit I am starting to have a much easier time of it than I was the first day or two. In a few more days I am going to add the elliptical or treadmill to it as well, at least for 20 minutes or so.

I also checked out the tanning bed as well. That was just weird. I’ve never used a tanning bed and for the most part have considered it pretty stupid. If you want a tan go hang in the sun. I tan very easily but the problem is that I get the one-armed tan from driving so much, or the farmer’s tan when I am working in the yard. It’s not as if I am going to cut the yard in my speedos, although I wouldn’t mind checking out some of my neighbors cutting grass in their lingerie. SOME of them, mind you. The others just need to keep their pants on. Anyhow, I lay in the tanning bed for seven minutes. The dude didn’t want me to stay in any longer since I had never used one. I felt like I was getting in an oven and except for the loud buzzing I probably could have taken a nap. I guess you get used to the sound because at least once or twice a year one of my waitresses comes in burned to a crisp because they fell asleep. The ones at the gym I go to are on a timer, I guess that maybe all of them aren’t or something.

Anyhow, a couple of the guys up there use the tanning bed after they work out, so I didn’t feel so self-conscious about it anymore. Besides, with quitting smoking and working out I have to have something to kill me. Skin cancer is as good as anything 🙂

Speaking of smoking, I’ve now gone about 26 hours without one. I know I have been working on it for a couple of months now, but this is the first time I have gone over an entire day without a cigarette. Darn hard too. I an a bit snappy tonight, so am just keeping to myself. I have a bunch of stuff to write about anyway and if I finish that I need to work on taxes.

I am not looking forward to filing this year. I don’t know how much but I will end up owing probably several thousand. I though about filing an extension, but the only people that are going to be receiving the rebates are the ones that file. If anything I can file and then work out a payment plan with the IRS. I took about a $20k increase in pay myself this year, not counting the $10k I made online, and none of it taxed. Hopefully with working out of the house more some of my office expenses will cover a bit of it. I think maybe I should move my office back down into the basement. The back room is a MUCH larger area than I have set up right now, and thus the percentage that I can claim of the utilities and mortgage is more. I hate taxes. The IRS is going to own my last month’s pay for this year on top of what they already keep. I wish that our politicians would take things seriously and fix the darned tax system.

Beer Pong

rmiles7721March 28, 2008Site News

So I came across this video earlier today about Beer Pong. I am 41 years old and have never seen anyone play Beer Pong in my entire life. I came across a link to a couple of sites earlier and so went looking for videos on YouTube. I found this one.

#1, this is a drinking game so if you don’t like beer don’t play. The premise is that you get some beers, ping pong balls, one of those beer pong tables and a few willing players. You try to get your balls into your opponent’s beer cups and as each plater loses they have to drink the beer.

I’n not a real huge partier or anything but this looks like it could be a nice addition to this years trip to Helen in October. Substitute Chatham Artillery Punch for the beer and nobody’s walking out of there 🙂

So Much for the Day Off…

rmiles7721March 27, 2008Site News

This is the first week in about six that I will actually have two days off in a row and I had really planned to enjoy it. I made an appointment to have my car serviced this morning out off of Thornton Road at around 8:30 or so and I figured once I finally get out of there I would come home and work in the yard, then nap for a while.

Unfortunately my boss has other ideas. I am going to be stuck in a meeting from 3pm until around 5 or 6 tonight. On my day off. Needless to say I’m not particularly happy about having to go to a meeting on my day off but there’s nothing to be done for it except to suck it up and go.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. Just felt like posting before I have to go.