rmiles7721

Mississippi Storm Damage

rmiles7721April 5, 2008Site News

With all of the powerful storms that have moved through the south and southeast over the last couple of days, there has been quite a bit of damage. As I am typing this Friday night, offline, we are currently under a severe thunderstorm warning for the next hour or two and a tornado watch for the next three hours.
This is a bit of AP video from the Jackson, Mississippi area.



At least 20 people have been transported to hospitals in the Jackson area by ambulances.
We certainly need the rain in my area but I could do without the storms that are bringing it.
This short bit of video was from Arkansas, after a tornado swept through the area.


CBS reports the tornadoes and thunderstorms that have ripped through Arkansas. Rivers are overflowing their banks in Kentucky and there may be more flooding and bad weather to come.

Finally…

rmiles7721April 4, 2008Travel

So I paid off the trip to Disney when I woke up this morning. W00t. $5400 in six weeks. That kicked my tail, trying to make sure I made enough to pay for it as well as the bills. I know it’s still eight weeks away but time flies and the end of May will be here before you know it.

With both of us working out trying to lose weight, we may end up having to get new clothes before we leave. Of course I very rarely buy clothes so the same stuff that’s been in my dresser for the last six or twenty years should fit me through several size decreases. The wife may want to get more stuff, at least for the pool. I’m sure we’ll end up looking for bathing suits, if not for her then for the girls. I think one piece swimwear is called for in this case 🙂

You would think that going to Disney that we wouldn’t spend much time in the pool, but even at the end of May it’s pretty darned hot in Central Florida. The last time we went to Disney was in the middle of October and we swam then too. I expect that we will spend a bit of time in the pool every day and I know we’re planning on going to at least one of the water parks.

Feels like Saturday

rmiles7721April 4, 2008Site News

For some reason it has felt like Saturday since I got up this morning. I think that’s due to the fact that the girls are on Spring Break. Since they’ve been out of town all week I haven’t gotten used to them being here and now that they are it feels like a weekend.

I managed to sleep late for the first time this week. I don’t think I have gotten to sleep in on my day off in quite some time. Crawled out of bed around nine and just bummed around the house for a while, which was nice. Pete made muffins for breakfast. Even though she forgot to grease the muffin cups I managed to get most of them out without mishap. It’s been pretty quiet here today, much more quiet than usual when the girls are home, that’s for sure.

I did get to work out this morning, spending quite a bit more time there than I have. I worked out on all the weight machines, then spent 35 minutes on the elliptical. Talk about sweating your ass off, but that’s what it’s designed for. All in all I spent a couple of hours at the gym today and once I got home the wife went to do the same thing. I believe she’s out grocery shopping right now so once I get a couple of posts up I think I may just have to take a nap. Nap-time is a good thing 🙂

…and another thing!

rmiles7721April 2, 20084Site News

You know what I’ve noticed about not smoking. Today is day number six oh by the way. That’s not what I’ve noticed though. My house smells like shit!

I don’t know if it’s eight years of smoking in it or if my dog is just making it smell but damn! I’m starting to smell all kinds of stuff that I couldn’t a week ago and you know what? I may just have to get some nose plugs because most of what I have smelled so far sucks. It’s enough to make me want to smoke again, although right now ANYTHING is enough to make me want to smoke.

Know what else? I’m blogging nekked right now. Probably more than you needed to know but that’s why you really come here anyway, I know it is. You guys are just waiting for a webcam shot of my ballsack hanging over my computer chair while I merrily type away. I can do that. The wife and girls are in Hilton Head right now. Actually they are in Bluffton but unless you are from the lowlands or visit there often most people don’t have a fucking clue as to where Bluffton is, which is due west of Hilton Head Island, on the mainland. The only thing separating the two towns now is the water. If they could build shopping centers on the bridge you’d never notice the difference anymore except that Bluffton doesn’t restrict builders quite as much in what they are tearing down. I don’t know when they are coming home but since my paycheck won’t be in the bank until Friday morning it’s a pretty safe bet they will be there until at least Friday.

Hey! Only $1054 left to pay on my Disney trip. I’m taking care of that on Friday and there went a quick five big ones. That pays for just about everything though, except for my gas to get down there. Six nights and seven days. Sweet. I’m looking forward to the trip and judging from the way things have been at work lately I’ll damn sure need the vacation. I have two of my managers going on back-to-back vacations in three week, which pretty much means me working 20 days straight. I may manage to get a day off during that time, it just depends on if I am staffed.

So the manager called me this afternoon from the store I was at the last two days. Apparently the waitress I sent home yesterday was upset and the manager wanted an explanation. I told her that when her employees call me five minutes after they should have already been there to tell me they are going to be late, chances are I will send them the fuck home if I can get it covered before they get there. If I can’t get it covered, then they get to work. Kind of like the lottery for stupid fucking people that are consistently late.

I went and worked out this afternoon. I ended up skipping yesterday. I got out of work two hours later than I had planned, so I came home and wrote for awhile, planning on going back after I did shift change last night. I got to the gym and there were three or four buff dudes and their girlfriends there all working out and showing off. I didn’t even get out of the fucking car. Fat old man syndrome kicked in and I beat a hasty retreat home. I like going early in the day when all of the old fat people are there. Makes me feel much better about myself 🙂 I am much less self-conscious when nobody else is around, so when I can manage to shoot out of work by 2:15 that’s the best time, although on my days off last week I went in the morning. That was cool because it’s just the owner or his father-in-law working and all the milfs coming in to use the tanning beds. Speaking of tanning, I did that as well today. I sort of varied it though. I worked out on the weights, tanned and then used the elliptical for half an hour. I have been using it for shorter periods of time the couple of occasions that I have tried it and it hasn’t really been a big deal but damn I got a workout on it today. I was sweating my ass off. That’s a good thing because I need to burn this tire off the middle. I was fine until it told me to go backwards. Backwards? I can barely get on the fucking thing and move in a semi-forward direction and you want me to move backwards? Damn.

So here I sit. Nekked. Munching on microwave Burritos. Can it get any better than this? I suppose if I moved my chair to the front porch that would be better, but most likely short lived.

Wednesday Hero

rmiles7721April 2, 2008Site News

I am running a bit behind getting to work but wanted to get these two posts up before I left.
This Weeks Hero Was Suggested By Mary Ann

Spc. Jeffrey Jamaleldine

Spc. Jeffrey Jamaleldine
Company C, 1st Battalion, 77th Armor

“How can I say to my sons, stand up for something, fight for what you think is right, if I don’t do anything myself?”
The Jeffrey Jamaleldine that you speak to today is a complete 180 from the Jeffrey Jamaleldine that you would have spoke to in the past. In 1991, Jamaleldin was living in Germany when joined in anti-American protests on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm boulevard during Operation Desert Storm. “That was the way it was back then,” he says. He was 15 and “America was simply the enemy.” And today, Jeffery Jamaleldine is a wounded veteran of the U.S. Army. On June 6, 2005, after the terror bombing in Madrid, Spain, in the middle of the Iraq war, he showed up at the U.S. Army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas, to enlist. His father, Bashir, told him at the time: “Son, this won’t be a picnic.”
On June 30, Jamaleldine was on patrol in Ramadi, Iraq. The patrol ahead of him had been ambushed by at least 70 combatants and were now under fire. During the fight, Spc. Jeffrey Jamaleldine was hit in the face by a bullet. In the end, the battle lasted into the next morning and the soldiers were able to stop the enemy from returning to Ramadi.
The article on Spc. Jeffrey Jamaleldine is five pages long, and I simply can not condense it down to only a few paragraphs. You can read the entire story here.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived</font SIZE></font COLOR>
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.
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Wordless Wednesday

rmiles7721April 2, 2008Photography

wordless.jpg

I may have posted this already, or one like it, when I was discussing the wedding last month but I adore this photo.

Sonya's Wedding 224.JPG


I don’t feel tardy…

rmiles7721April 1, 2008Site News

bwahaha. I think I need to hire this teacher who resigned from Delta High School to handle some of the attendance problems in my three stores.

Check out the video.


So this teacher makes his students do pushups and situps if they are tardy. Good deal. Apparently this one student could not do them so the teacher told his students to BEAT HIM. Holy shit! What a reTARD!

If it were my kids I guess I would have gone up and kicked the motherfucker’s ass, but then again, I expect my children to be on time. Actually I insist upon them, and my employees being on time.

That of course fits right in to my afternoon at work. Shift change is at ten minutes until the hour, regardless of the shift. That way you have ten to fifteen minutes of overlap and any remaining work can be completed, waitresses can let the oncoming servers know what’s going on, etc…

I get a phone call at 1:30 from my cook. She’s waiting for her ride and babysitter and will be late. OK, kind of irritating but at least she called as soon as she found out. I did try to cover her shift anyway but was unsuccesful. Five minutes till two (five minutes AFTER she should have been there) the waitress calls and says “I’m up here at the red light, I’ll be right there”. I stood at the window and watched the light change several times over the nect five minutes before calling another waitress in. At fifteen minutes AFTER two (25 minutes late) the waitress shows up and she’s pissed off because I replaced her after she called. Fuck you, how was I to know you meant the red light two towns north you stupid bitch? I sent her ass home. She called me back in tears a few minutes later wanting to know if she was still working tomorrow. I told her yes, as long as she’s there by ten ’til. Actually I could give a rat’s ass because I will be at one of my other stores making them happy tomorrow 🙂 Thus far nobody has jammed a cigarette in my mouth but I see that shit coming soon. Two more days and I get a day off…

April Fools!

rmiles7721April 1, 2008Site News

Happy April Fool’s Day you foolish folks. No fooling around here, at least not right now. Everyone left me alone at work today as well which is probably a good thing because I pity the fool that messes with me today. It’s been exactly five days now and all I am thinking about right now is having just one smoke. Only one. Not two or three. Just one and that could be my last one.
Bullshit.
That’s the thing about smoking, just like drugs for drug addicts or alcohol for the drunk. One is too many and a thousand are never enough.
Doesn’t mean I won’t bum a smoke from someone later tonight but it’s been enough to keep me from buying any up until this point.
So it’s April Fool’s Day and of course across the web different sites have their form of April Fool’s jokes up. I thought about redoing my template but it just seemed like too much work. Since I don’t have anything up, here’s some links to various sites I have come across or had emailed to me.
Gmail has one up. Gmail Custom Time that lets you date your email with a prior time or date so that it shows up in someone’s inbox in the appropriate chronological order. You can even mark it as having been ‘read’. I can see how that would be a useful feature were it to be something they really had.
On the main page at Google.com they have a link for you to become a ‘Virgle” pioneer. Apparently Virgle is an open-source effort between Google and Virgin to colonize Mars over the next 100 years. Someone put a lot of work into getting this up. Wish I got paid to sit around and come up with cool jokes…It’s pretty entertaining stuff and if you are the geeky star wars crowd, almost believable. Check out some of the dorks in the message boards. Personally I think something along the lines of Open Virgin Assholes would have been much more entertaining but that’s why I’m typing this from prison my house. On to another subject.
Google Australia has introduced a way to search tomorrow’s web, today at Google gDay using MATE technology. Go check it out.
Half of the people I know use Twitter. Even Elisson is on occasionally! Darren Rowse, Problogger, has decided to cash in and is releasing PayPerTweet, as service that pays you to send tweets out for companies.
Michael Arrington has announced that he (TechCrunch) is suing Facebook for $25 million over it’s users posting ads using his image.
Here’s another one. TechCrunch has acquired Tiger Beat (magazine and website), is closing down the magazine and renaming the web site CrunchKids.

Cher at Caesar’s Palace

rmiles7721April 1, 2008Entertainment

It’s kind of funny that I came across this a little while ago since I was writing about Vegas and getting kicked OUT OF Caesar’s Palace in 1987. The thing is, although I was 18 (almost 19), I had no valid ID. Heck, I didn’t even bother getting a driver’s license until I was 20 and almost married. I didn’t have a car, what did I need a license for. It’s not like it is today. Back in the eighties I opened my first checking account so I could deposit my paychecks, without identification. Today you can barely buy bottled water without ID.

Anyhow, while I have never been a huge fan of Cher, some of her stuff is pretty memorable and I can certainly see the value she has added to the music genre, particularly the dance scene, over the last forty years. Holy cow, has it been 40 years? Cher has been performing for over 40 years actually and has released something like 25 different albums during that time, selling over 200 million records, not including the stuff she did with Sonny Bono while they were together.

I had thought Cher was finished with liver performances after her farewell tour that lasted from 2002 until 2005, but apparently not. She is going to be performing at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Her show is called, aptly enough, Cher at the Colosseum and debuts early next month (May 6th). It’s going to have something like 18 dancers, flying acrobats and (of course) tons of costumes. She is rotating out with Bette Midler and Elton John, who also do shows at the Colosseum. I would be interested in checking out the show just to see what kind of effects she is able to add in with her music. From what I was reading, she is replacing Celine Dion, so that will certainly be a big improvement. They are also already selling Cher tickets at Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas if you are interested.

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.