rmiles7721

The day that is…

It’s sprinkling outside at the moment and the local news says that it’s supposed to change over to snow later in the morning and we should get 1-3″ of snow by this afternoon.

Darn, I am not particularly looking forward to that.

Snow always means quite a bit of the staff calls in because they are afraid to get out on the roads and I have to pick up the other half and bring them to work as well as find them a way home.

It’s great for business if it’s during the week but it actually hurts my weekend business because that is when we are normally busy anyway. People are in less of a hurry and it takes a crowbar to get them out of the booths, particularly if it’s snowing hard.

The last time I think we really had any amount of snow at all was January 2005 or maybe even 2004. Although I drove back and forth from my house I ended up getting a hotel room across the street from the store for my employees. If the roads get ugly today I will do the same thing this year.

The bad part is that after it snows it’s supposed to get really cold which means the stuff will stick around another day and also freeze anything left on the roads.

While it’s still somewhat tenuous right now there are some similarities between the disappearance of 29-year-old Rossana Miliani in December 2005 and the deaths of Meredith Emerson and Cheryl Dunlap.

Rossana was last seen in Bryson City, North Carolina on December 7th 2005. A store clerk from Bryson City told a private investigator that Miliani came into her store with a white man in his 60s and appeared extremely nervous when they bought a backpack. She also rented a storage space there. The State Bureau of Investigation is considering the possibility of a connection but won’t comment any further.

Miliani had been vacationing in Cherokee, North Carolina at the time of her disappearance. She called her father on that day and had spoken of hiking the Appalachian Trail.

———————————————————————————————

The 2nd white van belonging to Gary Michael Hilton has also been found. It had been abandoned on a road in White County and towed to a scrap-metal yard. Apparently the van has been stripped and is in bad shape but investigators will be processing it for evidence next week.

———————————————————————

One bit of information I was unaware of is that Transylvania County Sheriff David Mahoney (where the Bryants disappeared/died) confirmed that the North Carolina license plate on the back of Hilton’s van when he was arrested had been stolen from a vehicle registered in Transylvania County.

Have to get back to work today. With the interruption of a bit of snow and having to go in for a couple of hours yesterday it sure seems like my days off were awful short.

My boss is on vacation this week so that means not quite as many meeting I hope. The talking heads are mumbling about more snow on Saturday but that doesn’t particularly bother me as I already have to work anyway.

I really don’t have a hell of a lot to say this morning. I’m still trying to drag my head out of the sleeping fog and having a hard time of it. A shower should cure that.

Have a wonderful day everyone…

It’s been interesting trying to implement all of the changes at work to follow some of the new laws that the state of Georgia is requiring as far as the health code. It seems as if it wouldn’t be that hard to make everyone do what they are told but the big problem in my company as well as the couple of other’s that offer the same type of service is that we don’t pay our hourly employees enough. Facts are facts but the majority of them make between $6.85/hr to $7.25/hr. It’s not a lot and hardly enough to support a family without working two or three jobs.

I have my own opinions about the poor and how they keep themselves poor but the fact is that we don’t pay very much and until we offer higher wages they pretty much have us over a barrel. I certainly can’t fire everyone in my organization because I just physically can’t work that many hours.

Some of the changes are stuff such as wearing gloves when preparing ready to eat foods, proper hand washing, having hair restrained, and no jewelry on the hands and arms, even including medical jewelry. I think all of the changes are great and will make for a much safer and healthier environment but actually executing the changes has been a challenge. Heck, I can’t even get all of my managers to follow the rules, which makes it doubly hard to get the hourly employees to. I am going to end up having to give the managers written warnings I guess. If I can start wearing stupid gloves after doing it one way for 21 years, they can certainly make the change.

Here is this week’s Wednesday Hero:

Cpl. Phillip E. Baucus
28 years old from Wolf Creek, Montana
3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force
July 29, 2006

<

p align=”center”>Marine Cpl. Phillip E. Baucus was the nephew of Montana Senator Max Baucus. He joined the corps in 2002 and was sent to Iraq in March of 2005.

Cpl. Baucus was killed alongside fellow Marines Sgt. Christian Williams, 27 yrs old from Winter Haven, Fla. and Lance Cpl. Anthony E. Butterfield, 19 yrs old from Clovis, Calif. during combat operations in Al Anbar province.

“Phillip was an incredible person, a dedicated Marine, a loving son and husband, and a proud Montanan and American,” Sen. Baucus said. “He heroically served the country he loved and he gave it his all.”

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

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.