Parenting/Family

Going Out

rmiles7721January 26, 20085Blogging, Parenting/Family

I got an email from a friend the other day. Seems that a few bloggers are getting together for dinner tonight in Atlanta. I lucked out on that one. One of my manager’s is supposed to be off this weekend but he is wanting to go skiing the weekend prior to my vacation with some buddies and wanted to know if I would trade days off with him.

I thought that was a pretty good idea. My weekend off wasn’t supposed to roll around until that weekend four days before I start my vacation and I am pretty sure I would have lost at least one of those days off once my boss looked at the schedules. This way I still go on vacation in three weeks AND get THIS weekend off. Sweet. We even found a babysitter for the girls for tonight, so the wife and I will both get to go. She’s made it to a couple of blogmeets with me but not had the opportunity to just go hang out with them.

Today is the boy’s birthday but I will post about that later today. It’s kind of sad because this is the first time he has never been with us on his birthday. I think I will call him shortly and see if he’s awake. He has a pretty bad cold in addition to being miserable because he has no clothing to speak of. Maybe I can send him some Sports Authority coupons 🙂

Actually he already has received his birthday present. He wanted the Orange Box version of Half-Life 2 and since he lost the password for one of my Steam accounts and can’t seem to get it reset, that was perfect.

Getting all my ducks in a row…

rmiles7721January 8, 2008Blogging, Parenting/Family, Travel

I have spent the great majority of the morning going between reading news sites and fooling with paperwork. Since the wife and I are going to the Bahamas next month and I don’t have a passport, while her’s expire ten years ago, there is quite a bit of stuff to do.

It takes two or three weeks to get one if you are willing to pay out the nose, which we are having to do. The first thing we had to do is get online and order our birth certificates. We got hers this weekend but I didn’t get mine until today because a signature is required and of course I am at work during the day. Fortunately I am off today and tomorrow. My first two days off in a row since December 8th. I feel it too.

I was supposed to go to the doctor today at 9:30 or so but they have moved the office and I misunderstood where the location was. Needless to say I missed my appointment. They were nice enough to reschedule it for tomorrow morning for me. That’s cool because I have some writing to do today anyway. Tomorrow I am keeping RePete home with me as she also has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon.

I have to go pick up another copy of my auto insurance policy as well. We have decided that the time has come to get new automobiles and as much as I am a fan of driving a car until the wheels fall off and hate car payments, it’s not worth the inconvenience when one of them breaks down and that will be at some point in the near future. We both take good care of our cars and have over 200k on both of them, but with my job I can’t be car-less. Since I donated the van a few months ago to the Alzheimer’s Association I don’t have an extra vehicle in case something happens with one of these.

I prefer to go through 99% of the car buying process online. Financing all the way up to finding the car. All I should have to do at the dealer is take a test drive and if I like it, drive it the hell out of there. The last car I bought was in 2000 and we ended up spending about 30 minutes in the dealership. The only reason it took that long is that I had not arranged to have it added to my insurance ahead of time. I won’t make that mistake this time. I have to stop and fax my license, insurance and references to the financing company in the morning and then I can start looking at cars. I was hoping to have everything taken care of by yesterday morning so that I could pick the car up today but no such luck. That’s OK, it will give me time for a bit of research. The wife can go get her car this weekend and I will go on my days off next week after researching a few. I still haven’t decided what I want anyway.

Traffic has been pretty heavy (for me) at the site over the last 72 hours, mainly because of the Meredith Emerson posts I put up. Somehow I have landed fairly high at Google and Yahoo! (number 2 and 4, respectively) and I have had something like 16,000 visits on those two posts alone. Several comments as well, which is nice because it means that someone is actually reading it and not just breezing through. If I could just bottle that and figure out how Google picks the top stories I would retire my happy ass tomorrow.

 

Very Quiet

rmiles7721December 29, 2007Parenting/Family, Travel

We had a bit more company earlier today. Michelle and the kids came over this afternoon to hang out for a while and it was nice to see them. Not it’s pretty quiet though. My brother and his wife have started their seven hour drive back home to Cary along with the kids. I know that they are ready to get home and relax after having spent the better part of the last three weeks in Maine or here.

They were up north with his wife’s family when all of that bad weather hit the northeast and the pictures they had of the snow was amazing. At least once I would truly love to just go check out some snowy weather. Perhaps not for long but it would be pretty cool to see and play in, then get the hell out of Dodge for warmer weather.

Speaking of warmer weather I think we may actually be able to manage getting to the Keys in February. If I can get off my ass and make a good deal of money online over the next few weeks we may just do it. It does mean flying down though because we will only be able to go for two or three days without the children, not to mention the fact that the wife will still be at work. Alas, my vacation won’t coincide with their spring break once again.

While I miss my brother already it’s kind of nice to have a few minutes of quiet. I have put both the girls to bead, the wife is relaxing watching the boob tube and the Marine is immersed in a book on the couch. The loudest thing going on now are the fans in my computer and what my son describes as me attacking the keyboard.

Yet Another Lovely Day…

rmiles7721December 27, 20072Parenting/Family

It’s been a pretty doggone long week. I have one more day of work until I get one day off. My brother and his wife are staying in town until Saturday evening so that we can hang out a bit. It’s been pretty nice seeing them this week.

They are moving back down here in a few months and that will be very cool. As far as I know they are going to be on the north side of town which means that while I may not see them on a weekly basis I will be able to get together with them more often that I get to now.

I suppose the only caveat to that is the fact that I am going to turn in my card for promotion in February. If they don’t put me on a development plan they could send me just about anywhere, including out of state. That would be a bit of a bitch now that my family is back in the Atlanta area.

My stress level has risen quite a bit this week while my threshold of dealing with stupidity has gone quite low. I am having a hard time putting up with the amount of bullshit that goes on. One of my managers that has been with us a little less than a year is also having a pretty hard time dealing with the stress of it right now. She calls it her stupidity level. I can understand that. Hopefully it will get a bit easier for her to deal with, that is if she sticks around long enough.

Hopefully she won’t quit before it does get easier but she’s not making enough money as she could. I lost about a grand this month in bonuses due to the fact that I lost that crappy manager last month and while I hate the shitty paycheck it was worth it for her to go. This one I don’t want to lose because she is good at her job, I just need to get in there and show her how to manage some of it a bit better.

One more day… That’s pretty much all I have thought about today. It has been pretty hard to actually get anything done. At least I know I’m not the only one that’s worn out. My boss has worked just as many days as I have and his Thursday meeting only lasted about thirty minutes today as compared to hours just a couple of weeks ago. A blessing in disguise.

It’s obvious here too, being as how this is the first thing I have posted in the last twenty four hours. I have actually been doing some writing on another story/timeline having to do with one of the news reports I write about quite often. Right now it’s probably somewhere over a thousand words and not even a quarter of the way finished. I may try and get it finished on Saturday if I get the chance. That’s about it for tonight. Perhaps I can get something posted in the morning prior to leaving for work.

Merry Christmas!

rmiles7721December 25, 20073Parenting/Family

I just wanted to get on an wish everyone a very merry Christmas. Most likely I will be offline the rest of the day as I will be working from 6AM until about 2AM tomorrow morning and then back at work at 7AM the next day.

We had our Christmas at the house yesterday evening. A good time was had by all. My son is home for the holidays and my brother, his wife and their kids are here as well. We opened the gifts and had a nice traditional Christmas dinner. Now everyone is off playing with their goodies and just chilling out.

I am pretty tired since I had several phone calls from one of my stores up until just after midnight last night. Just as soon as I get staffing from my stores tonight I am going to hit the sack. Tomorrow morning is going to come much too soon.

I hope you all have a joyous holiday season and get to spend time with your loved ones. Time with the family is what it’s all about.

Another Day…

rmiles7721December 23, 2007Parenting/Family

…another dollar, or at least 50 cents.

My brother and his family should be arriving at some point this morning. They called last night and said they were on the way, so I don’t know what time they will be here. Particularly with the rain that has been pretty persistent over the last 24 hours they may have been delayed a bit.

Rain?

Yep, thank goodness. We certainly need it right now. Not that a couple of days of rain is going to fix things here but it certainly won’t hurt. It would actually take about three months of steady rain to get the water table back to where it needs to be, but every bit we get over this winter will help to alleviate the drought once it starts getting warm again.

I am spending the day again at my busiest store. With tomorrow being Christmas Eve, the Wal-Mart is sure to be pretty busy which means that I will as well. We have a bit of prep work to finish up today and tomorrow. Most of it is stuff that is going to have to wait until tomorrow anyway at least. I told them to wait until then to do salads and tomatoes. I will go cut them myself at all three stores in the morning since they would get mushy doing them too early. Most of the managers will be very busy tomorrow so I need to make sure to finish any last minute items.

…

Toward the end of the summer I noticed that we apparently have mice. Over the last few weeks the cat has caught several of the damned thing. Mostly babies but that means that somewhere around here is the momma. Good cat. Better than my plan. I am the kind of guy that would wander the house and pick them off with a .357 but for some reason shooting holes in the floor just doesn’t seem like a real good idea. That and the fact that the local police seem to frown on shooting up houses in my area. I don’t know. One of those things I guess.

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Got the paper towel holders installed in the restrooms at work recently. With the changes in law that the state implemented we are required to have paper towel holders so that people can use them to open the door with. After you wash your hands when you touch the door you have re-contaminated yourself with someone else’s feces. Nice thought this early in the morning. Next thing you know I will be required to install wipes in my restrooms. Actually the paper towels are a great idea, unfortunately what happens is that customers tend to shove them in the toilet and clog it up. My how I would love to come visit them at their houses…

What a Day…

rmiles7721December 22, 2007Parenting/Family

The Marine just got home from the movies. He and a friend went out to the movies and dinner and are both staying here tonight, most likely to play the X-Box 360 all night. He still hasn’t gotten his mom a Christmas gift. I am starting to get really pissed off about it.

The wife drove him to Carrollton first thing this morning. He is to be working at the recruiter’s office the week after Christmas, which is how he got two weeks leave. The problem is that he forgot his service shoes, so his recruiter was supposed to meet him at the station in Carrollton at nine this morning to take him out to Dobbin’s Air Base and get a pair. Apparently the guy never showed so they will have to make the trip tomorrow or Monday. That would be fun…driving to Marietta on Christmas Eve. Not.

I just got him alone and read him the riot act about the gift though, so hopefully he will get it taken care of in the next 48 hours.

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Today was pretty busy. One of my stores sits in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart so I spent the majority of the day there, other than a couple of quick trips to the other two stores and one to pick up my change order from the bank. Crap, I could have used a cart for that. $2300 in ones, fives and rolled change takes a couple of trips from the bank to the car. I probably could have carried it in one trip but had I dropped it picking up $2300 in LOOSE change would have been no fun at all.

…

While I work a lot during the holidays there is a bonus. All of my managers have to work as well, so they are responsible for shift change. Except for Christmas Day I won’t have to go back in at all for shift change or hassle with the employees at all, although since my phone has been ringing off the hook for the last few hours you wouldn’t know it.

Had to cover a shift for a friend of mine in another district and then I spoke for a while with one of my cooks. It was pretty depressing. His mom passed away last night and he was worried about losing his job if he wasn’t able to make it on Christmas Day. I reassured him that he would still have a job regardless of what his manager said. He may be there anyway. He is pretty dedicated and he can’t afford to miss any work. This is a terrible time of year to lose anyone though. I hate it for him and wish him the best.

Mr. Christmas Spirit

rmiles7721December 22, 2007Parenting/Family

Thursday night finally got to me and I don’t think I have fully recovered yet. I had fully planned on sleeping in yesterday since I didn’t get to sleep until after three yesterday morning. The wife and boy had to go out so I was up by eight. They didn’t make it home until the afternoon and we ate and I got to nap for maybe an hour. Just not enough.

At that point the boy and I went out to pick out my Christmas present. They had looked at several different leather coats but it was decided that I needed to go pick it out myself. It just makes it easier to do it that way. I know it’s supposed to be a surprise but I am funny about my clothes and if you are going to spend that kind of money it’s best to try stuff on and see how it looks and fits.

It took forever to get in and out of the mall with the Christmas shoppers. Had to also stop by Wal-mart for a few miscellaneous items that they had forgotten on the trip earlier in the day. It was also pretty crowded but nothing like it will be this weekend. We finally got home around seven last night and had to wrap gifts since the girls were out with a friend.

I had planned on going to bed early last night as well but with the present wrapping and whatnot I didn’t hit the sack until pretty late and it took forever to get to sleep. Maybe tonight I can get to bed at a decent time. I don’t particularly want to face Christmas day with only ten hours of sleep between now and then. Luckily all of my managers are in place until Wednesday so I shouldn’t have to go back in unless there is an emergency. I know a couple of them are behind on the prep work that they need to have finished and it’s not for lack of me trying to have them do it, they are just dragging their damned feet. I guess they just magically expect for it to get done for them.

I will go to the bank this morning as I have to pick up the change for Christmas. It’s a chunk at around $2200 for the two stores. I told them Thursday to make sure and wait on their deposits so that I could get the stuff. One can only hope that they followed directions. I don’t have enough in my checking account to cover the change purchase if they didn’t.

I am somewhat pissed off at the Marine right now. Originally he was going to get something for his mom for Christmas but he just doesn’t have the money, so I told him I would get the expensive present and he needed to order the other one that she really wanted anyway. The kid waits until yesterday and wants to search online for it. Friday night before Christmas. It would be OK, he could just make her something and then get her the gift late but she refuses to help search for the damned program online and I can’t find it. Whatever it is that she wants isn’t something that’s sold at Amazon or Borders and searching on the web doesn’t bring anything up, at least on the first page or two and that is unusual, particularly since I was searching by name. My brother will be in town on Sunday night so they can just go the fuck out on Monday and find her something.

I went ahead and kept him on our cell phone plan because even with the unlimited data plan that he uses it will still only cost him about $50 a month, which is half what he would be paying on his own plan. I just deal with the family minutes and make him pay the $45 for the data plan and another $5 for the extra line, which is half the cost. He is supposed to have set up an automatic transfer to my account every month and hasn’t. When I reminded him on the first he asked if he could pay it on the fifteenth and I told him no problem. I asked him again last night and am still waiting. With the data plan he’s on my cell phone bill is touching just under $400 a month now and this time next month I am going to take the hit and cancel his phone. January thru March are the crappy times at work and aside from what I make online that we will use on vacation in February I am not going to have any extra since most likely I will owe the IRS at least a couple of grand and I have to make sure that’s set aside. I don’t have very much taken out of my check during the year since I’m not particularly impressed with the idea of giving the IRS an interest free loan during the year. I would rather owe them a bit at the end than get a chunk back. I like keeping my paycheck when I earn it personally.

He’ll pay it, that I don’t doubt. I am just slightly pissed off. He’s spent seven months earnings on DVDs, music and game consoles, maxed out his credit card and has no money. I bought the bus ticket for him to come home for Christmas as one of his two Christmas gifts and he just needs to suck it up and start paying his fucking bills and saving some money. He still has yet to sign up for their retirement plan although he’s had the paperwork since June. I guess most of it is the fact that he’s been overwhelmed with his freedom to spend his money any way he wants now. He will figure it out, but with the fact that he will be stationed out in California he needs to figure it out soon if we wants to be able to fly home on leave next year.

I suppose that’s about it this morning. I need to start getting ready for work but don’t really want to. I just needed to rant for a moment. I am actually extremely happy he gets to spend the holiday here. This is just a rough time for me. I spend quite a bit of time at work during the holidays and it seems to get harder every year and there’s not a lot of support from my family on that end and it seems to get worse every year as well. Sometimes it’s hard being Mr Christmas Spirit around here. Sometimes I feel like the lone fucking ranger.

Now that I have that shit out of my system I think I will go listen to some Christmas music…

I don’t normally rant and cuss in my open-trackback posts but since this is the only thing I am posting this morning it is going to be my open-trackback entry for the pre-Christmas weekend.

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The Boy Comes Home Tomorrow…

rmiles7721December 20, 20072Parenting/Family

I don’t know what crawled up my ass and died last night but boy was I in a foul mood while I sat here and type until 11:15 when I should have already been in bed. Nobody pissed me off and nothing particularly bad happened yesterday once you get past the part where I had to crawl out of bed. Just one of those things I suppose. That whole teenage pregnancy thing seems to have touched a vein. Perhaps because my eldest daughter is now ten and I am sure that it will be clobberin’ time on some teenage boys in a few years. If I start selling skin colored lampshades ala Daughmer you’ll know why…Don’t say I didn’t warn ya’

We had our company Christmas party last night. It was held at the same venue as last year, Classic on Noble in Anniston, Alabama. Dinner was nice and there were a few nice gifts and games. It’s pretty nice to see some of the folks that I don’t get to see all of the time. It ran a bit late so we didn’t make it home until around 10 PM or so. The girls were happy to be picked up and it gave me a chance to try and recruit the dad of the house for work. He’s got around 20 years of restaurant experience and in need of a decent paying job now. I am lousy at recruiting people so hopefully he’ll bite. I need to turn in my card for promotion in about three months and they have been on my ass to hire someone anyway…That would go a long way toward a bit of good will on my side.

I am crossing my fingers and hoping that I don’t have my normal Thursday meeting this afternoon. I wouldn’t mind getting a bit of shut-eye this afternoon since I have to leave the house around midnight and make the drive to Atlanta. Why, you ask?

The Marine is home for two weeks! His Greyhound pulls in to Atlanta at 1 AM or thereabouts and I will be waiting for him amidst the crack-heads and winos. It’s bad enough to go down to the Garnett area during the daytime, but at 1 AM. Fucking crazy…

We spoke with him the other night and he was pretty pissed off. Apparently one of the Marines had screwed something up so they canceled every liberty for EVERYONE, made them do a bunch of cleaning, and just to make sure nobody left base they were calling formation every hour on the hour until 0300. That’s fucking three o’clock in the morning for those of you not in the know.

…and this for the boy who would sleep in half the day…

bwahahaha

In A Fog…

rmiles7721December 19, 2007Parenting/Family

After I finally crept off the couch from my nap yesterday afternoon the wife and I picked the girls up and went to the Olive Garden for supper. It was pretty good, particularly since she had received a gift certificate for Christmas. Other than the fact that it was somewhat cold in the are we sat in it was pretty good.

I was (and still am) pretty irritable last night and I am not sure why. I’m pretty stressed out due to work right now and I suppose that is the majority of it. Christmas is always pretty hard for me to get through. Part of that is the fact that the family is getting together and the only time off I normally have is after everyone has gone home. I think that this year my brother and his family will be spending a week with us. If so that will be pretty cool. Other than this coming Friday the 30th will be my next day off and it would be nice to see everyone and spend a bit of time together.

Damn, I am groggy this morning. I knew that after that nap I took I would have a hard time getting to sleep last night, so I took a benadryl around nine or so. I finally hit the sack about ten thirty and still have that fog in my brain.

Today and tomorrow are going to be fairly long days. My company’s Christmas party is this evening, in Anniston, Alabama at around six, which puts me back home about nine PM. Tomorrow we are back to business as usual with the multi-unit manager meeting. I normally don’t finish up with that until at least nine. I’m already dreading the next two days.

…

Have to start getting ready for work shortly. Luckily except for the last couple of hours I won’t have to cook today. I do have a couple of interviews for hourly’s to do this morning and other than that just paperwork and some prep for Christmas. I have this one guy coming in for an interview that put his application in a couple of weeks ago. The first time he came in I could have sworn he had on golf shoes. I don’t know for sure but they certainly looked like it. No big deal except that he didn’t look like a golfer. Probably picked them up at one of the consignment stores or something.

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I disabled the twitter tweets completely on this site. While I thought they were cool there were some issues with them so the simple solution was to just take them off.

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Received a nice Christmas present from my friend Yabu yesterday. A CD with quite a few pictures from the Blogtoberfest earlier in the fall. There were some pictures from prior to my arrival as well as some from the party Saturday night long after I had stopped taking photographs. Hell, I don’t look as drunk as I was feeling…

Merry Christmas to you and your’s dude!