This is kind of cool. Maybe it’s not a new feature, but I just discovered it. Youtube allows you to send videos from your cell phone and post them. Very cool for stealthily blogging nasty shit you don’t have time to write about. It also allows you to post to certain blogs, unfortunately movabletype is not one of them. Maybe later.
Anyway, this was taken at the oldest girls lunch last week. She was very excited that I came to eat lunch with her.
Powered by Zoundry
Not completely, but I am pretty much in a non-posting mood this morning. I stayed up too late last night. We watched the season premier for one of the few shows that I watch on TV, 24. For some reason, even though 90% of the stuff is just incredulous, I still enjoy it. Last night was no different. I did get a good laugh though, right about the time that Jack Bauer ripped into the jugular of one of his captors with his teeth to escape. All I could think of was “Lost Boys”.
After TV I read until a bit after 11PM, well after I should have been asleep which is why I am feeling crappy this morning. I should be finished with One Bullet Away this afternoon if I get a chance to read at all today.
Apparently Barzan Hassan and Awad Bandar were hanged right before I went to bed last night. Barzad was Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and the former chief of his secret police and Awad was the former chief judge.
It’s supposed to start getting back down into the 30’s here at night tomorrow. This is some weird damn weather. It’s been in the high 60’s to mid 70’s the last two afternoons. I’m ready to get winter over with but I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop. As soon as I get out and do something in the yard, we’ll get ice or snow. Just fricking weird.
Damn, gotta get me one of these for my rear view mirror.
$24.95 for the Dope on a Rope. Damn, they even have a Jesus action figure. Oh crap. I could have some fun with these guys.
There’s a big deal going on at work right now about monster.com. I have had my resume there for several years, but haven’t updated it in quite some time. Apparently one of the recruiters, or some nosy bastard at the corporate office discovered that several people in management with my company had theirs up, and they were updated and actively searching for new jobs. Apparently about half of the management team in the area a bit closer to Atlanta from me has theirs up, and the have been told that they HAVE to take them down. Damn. I don’t particularly want to get involved in this little brouhaha, but it would really piss me off if they demanded that I take my resume down. The fact is though, that even though I have been with them for twenty years, if the right job came along, with the right $$$, I would probably jump on it, but unfortunately tech jobs at my level of education pay about half what I make now, so I have no interest in looking for one, and I am not interested in working for any other restaurant. Most of them pay less, have less benefits, and are certainly not as financially stable as my company. If we shut the doors to our restaurants right now we could continue to pay everyone, including our hourly associates, for about a year.
The wife turns 40 this week. Everyone get their asses over there and wish her a happy birthday.
Powered by Zoundry
…is where we are at this week. The holidays are over and it’s back to work for the wife today. The smallest one went back to the daycare yesterday, and the two oldest start school tomorrow, just in time for my two days off. I am still a little congested, but I feel much better today than I have in a week. Still pretty weak, but nothing a day of rest won’t cure.
Unfortunately that won’t be today. It’s my seventh day at work, and shaping up to be long one. I managed to bugger up my schedule and I originally had the gentleman I have cooking last night coming back in at noon. Don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I made the schedule. I told him on the phone this morning that I would just cook for him until 4PM or so. Considering that I get my food delivery around noon today, that is going to make for a fun-filled day. I will be lucky if I get to leave before nine tonight.
The wife was not particularly happy with me yesterday. You see, she was pulled over on her way to the Doctor’s office yesterday afternoon for having an expired tag. If you recall, my birthday was December Fourth. Just a wee bit late. I have remedied that situation online, and printed the necessary documentation to leave in the cars until the stickers actually get here. Damn, a $150.00 fine. Not good, and one of us is bound to get pulled over at least once more before the stickers get here. The paperwork and receipts should be enough to convince the officer not to write a citation, but you never know. Thank goodness for online transactions though…saved me from waiting in line.
Powered by Zoundry
It is in my house. Tomorrow is my only day off until after Christmas. I am working at least 15 hours on Christmas Day, and Chris has to work as well, 7am-9pm.
Since my children are Santa’s “favorites” he comes to visit us a week early most years, coinciding with whatever my days off might be. We will get up and let them open gifts tomorrow, and then have some friends over for Christmas dinner tomorrow evening. Most years I have managed to take a couple of days off, but that’s not going to work out this year.
This evening I have another Christmas party to go to, with the family. At some point after the kids go to bed we will wrap everything and get it ready.
So Merry Christmas all (just a bit early).
Powered by Zoundry
Chris has an all day wrestling tournament to attend, so I will be leaving shortly to drop him off at the school. I have stuff that has to be done at work anyway, so will just go in a bit early.
As long as I don’t end up working a double today I may finally get around to decorating the house for next week as well. I have been extremely remiss in that department this year.
Powered by Zoundry
Amazon is doing this thing where users can vote on what is going to be on sale, and then on Thursdays they offer 1000 of them at a pretty decent discount. Last week it was for the Xbox 360 Core System
I was checking out some of the forums over there and there are a bunch of whiners claiming that Amazon did a bait and switch, or that the people who got one used bots or were hackers, and even one claiming he is filing a class-action lawsuit. They are all dumb-asses. The whole thing is akin to Wal-Mart at 6am on Black Friday. Lot’s of people there at the same time, pushing and shoving and all trying to get the same five toys that are left in stock. Most people left disappointed. That’s life. I thought that the whole thing was a pretty darn good idea, and even if Chris didn’t get the system, at least he tried. No loss, other than a few minutes of sit-down time at the computer. Much better than people clubbing each other over the head for a few damn toys.
I managed to sleep through the kids getting ready for school today. I vaguely remember at least one of them waking me up, but went right back to sleep. Managed to nap until about 8:30 or so. Very nice.
Since Divx converter does not work in Windows Vista, I am experimenting with Xvid and AutoGK on my PC to see if I can compress a couple of shows that I want to keep. I also have several movies from Netflix that I want to rip and compress that we have not seen yet. Seems like an awful lot of work just to watch a couple of videos that I will end up deleting later anyway, but space is at a premium on my entertainment PC, and I will keep a couple of them for the kids to watch. over and over and over again. Then I will get sick of them and delete them.
I had thought about decorating the house for Christmas today, but I am going to skip that. Maybe next week when I actually have two days off. Today I am going to plan Ruth’s birthday party. Kind of late, but I haven’t had much time away from work due to the holiday. Just a few friends and some beer for the adults as it is my birthday as well. I am looking at the links that my wife sent me and still don’t have a clue what to do, but will find something cool. Maybe I will drive to the party store in Carrollton tomorrow afternoon for some more ideas. Cheap is always good.
I did order her a birthday gift, should be here Wednesday. Some game called Cranium Hullabaloo and an Aquadoodle drawing mat. Hopefully the wife hasn’t already gotten her anything, or else this will be a Christmas gift instead.
Speaking of Christmas, we are going to take the girls to see Santa on Sunday afternoon. One of the cooler things that we do as a company each year is something called Santa’s Sleigh. We will set up at one of the restaurants in the parking lot. Some years we have rented an RV, others we set up a tent and stuff. We have food and Hot Chocolate for everyone, and all of the kids get to sit in Santa’s lap and they each get a gift. All of the children of our employees that are under ten years old participate. It’s pretty fun, and for a lot of them, it’s the only trip to see Santa that they will get. I damn sure won’t take my kids to the mall to see Santa Claus. That’s one of my childhood memories that is really cool, but nowadays it is a great big goat fuck that I try to avoid like the plague.
Around eight months ago, my oldest child got a job. Originally it was to pay for auto insurance, as I think that he needs to pay his portion if he wants the responsibility of driving (that and it doubles my freaking rates to put him on the policy). Needless to say, I have yet to get any insurance money, and he has driven maybe once since he got his license in February.
He works for the same company that I do. Initially he asked if he could work for me, and I let him know that I could get him a job, but it would be working for someone else. I love my family, but the last thing I want is to have them working for me. I’ve been there. My wife worked for me off and on for several years, and I always expected more from her than my other employees, was harder on her, and then there were the employees. Half of them think that you are getting the gravy train because you are related to the boss, and the other half go to you with questions that they don’t want to ask the boss. I figured that I would save him from this. There’s always the fact that he is a smart-ass punk and I have enough of those working for me already.
He went to work at the new store that they opened up on me last year. He only works weekends, and breaks from school, so that works out well. For awhile he worked mornings which worked out well. I would just drop him off on my way to work. After awhile he was put on the 2pm to 9pm shift. Big pain in the ass. It meant that my wife got to start taking him to work because I had already been there for eight hours at that point. Still, not too bad. Just as soon as I left the Carrollton store and opened one here in Temple, they put him back on day shift, which means he has to be there prior to 7am. No fucking way that I am going to drive him to work on a regular basis, then turn around and drive back to my town. One of the reasons I wanted to open a store here so badly is so that I DON’T have to drive anymore. I fill the tank once every two weeks or so now. Nor is my wife going to drag the girls out of bed at 6am to drive him to work. So far, he has been able to catch a ride with one of the waitresses who actually lives here in town. That is, until now. She is off tomorrow. Apparently he has know that since about 1pm this afternoon. He waits until 7pm to come down and tell me that he doesn’t have a ride to work.
Of course my response was along the lines of “what the fuck do you want me to do about it?” Maybe not in those words, but pretty close. I asked him who he had called for a ride. Nobody. I told him I guessed he needed to call his bosses and see if they could find him a ride. He called, and they can’t come get him. I then explained that he needed to call them back and find out who was working and see if he could not get in touch with one of them. A couple of them could come by here and get him, and it really wouldn’t be out of the way. It ends up that I am going to take him one town over and his boss is going to pick him up. If it came down to it, I would probably spend the extra 45 minutes to drive him to work, but I can’t tell him that I will take him if he doesn’t find a ride, because then he won’t look for one. Just like the rest of my employees.
Fucking pain in the ass kids.
Originally I had not planned to join my family in Atlanta this year for Thanksgiving. I was able to change plans this afternoon and we drove to Roswell and had supper with my family. My Grandmother and Great Aunt were there, as well as my Mom and Dad, and a couple of Aunts. It was nice being able to see them, as I only seem to get to a couple of times a year.
Apparently my family is catching on to this internet thing and at least a couple of them have blogs now. I was not particularly forthcoming about the fact that I have a blog, although my folks now and everyone knows that I had had a web site for several years now. I figure being the only Libertarian in the bunch sort of makes me stand out and I am already pretty good at hurting peoples feelings without trying to hard (made another waitress cry today) so I don’t advertise anymore. I did add links to a couple of my relatives though over in my blogroll.
I had a pretty good time, and wish I could have stayed longer. Since I had to drive home and was already nodding off we decided to go ahead and make the drive home about 7:30 or so. This is the first Thanksgiving that I can remember that wasn’t all rush. Normally I rush out of work at 2pm or 2:30, change, drive to wherever we are eating, then have to rusg back to work and be there by 8pm. Big pain in the ass. Even though we didn’t stay particularly late, I didn’t feel the need to rush back. I did shift change at work last night, and will tommorow night, so my new boss didn’t want me going back in tonight. Works for me.
This will probably be my only entry tonight. With everyone having their Black Friday sales tommorow, I will be extremely busy, so I plan on being in the shop by 5:30, and have my entire first shift scheduled in at 6am. If I don’t get a chance to post again this weekend, I am off on Monday, so maybe I will get a chance then.
Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year. I really haven’t gotten into it much this year, I have been so busy with work, and opening the restaurant. That actually went pretty smoothly. I ended up getting out of there at 10pm last night, and turned around and went back at 6am this morning. I have managed to get out of there long enough for the kids to go trick-or-treating tonight, although I may end up sleeping on the couch. With the kids and my wife all having mostly gotten over the creeping crud, I figured that I had dodged that particular bullet, but such is not to be the case. The last couple of days I have felt a bit under the weather, but I chalked that up to the hours I’ve been working. That is probably part of it, but now I am hacking up my lungs, and have never ending snot running from my nose, and to top it off, I have a fever of 100. At least I only have one more day to go before I get two off. As long as I can make it through tomorrow without passing out I will be OK. The only problem that I can foresee is that I am short a cook tomorrow night, so I may end up working third shift.
