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Well, still feeling like shit today. It was also truck day, which means a semi brings in about $6k worth of food, around 120 cases and I get to take the shit out of the boxes and put it up. Damn, I am dog tired.

I still got out of there at a decent time and picked up the small one at day care and came home. Stephanie is just going to have to pick up the others. I’ve already straightened the house and vacuumed, and did the couple of coffee cups that were left from this morning. All that is left to do is dinner and whatever chores the kids have to do. We may have to do take-out as I damn sure don’t feel like cooking tonight. The only thing it is time for right now is a muscle relaxer and a bit of Lenny Kravitz.

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A couple of months ago I ran across the 2996 project and thought that this would be something very nice to be involved in. I am so busy making fun of the news and other stupid people that I don’t give myself much of a chance to look at things emotionally, and this is a good chance.

Brendan Dolan was 37 years old when he died. He was a quarterback in High School and loved sports until the day he died. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1986. He worked for Carr Futures as a broker and a Senior Vice President. He lived in Glen Rock, New Jersey. He had two small children and a family that loved him very much and I am sure still misses him. He worked on the 92nd floor, two floors below the impact in the North Tower.

Those are the basic facts.

How do I write about someone I have never met?

Did he love his children and wife?

Apparently he did. Since he had to travel a lot, he treasured the time that he spent with his wife and his children. He had been married to his wife Stacey for seven years. She said that he husband was a “terrific” father to their young daughters. “We were kind of thinking of possibly having a third child”, she said.

I dote on my two daughters, and they return the love. I cannot imagine the great loss these two little girls must feel every day.

He would gather friends and family around him on weekends and take charge, always the quarterback, arranging vacations for the entire family, his parents, and siblings.

He told his brother Charles, who is still single: “Forget business. You don’t get it yet. Work will never bring you the kind of satisfaction you’ll have from a family.”

His friends and clients were all very fond of him, and he had a great sense of humor. From what I have read about him, he also treated all of his clients as his friends. He was looked upon as an “icon” by his co-workers.

His cousin, Susan says some really nice things about him in another tribute:

There are few people you meet in this life that are as sincere and easygoing as Brendan Dolan. Growing up, myself, my brothers and my sisters often said, “If there was anybody else in the world I could be like, it would be Brendan.” Brendan had an amazing way with people. He often went out of his way to do things for us. I consider myself blessed to have known Brendan. Brendan was well loved by all of us, and will be very much missed in our lives.

When he got up in the morning and went to read the paper he didn’t turn to the business or news sections. He read the sports page. That seems such a small thing, but it shows that although he was a go-getter in the business, there were more important things in his life than business.

The last that was heard from or about him was when one of his co-workers spoke to his wife about 10:20 AM and confirmed that Brendan was with him. This was just a few minutes before the tower crumbled. 67 Carr Futures employees were there that morning, quite a few of them for a special meeting that had been called.

When his high school class had it’s 20th reunion in 2002, instead of going ahead and getting the party started, they held a memorial mass for Brendan.

Brendan Dolan is also survived by his parents, Mary and Brendan of Crestwood, N.Y.; three brothers, and a sister.

I was working in the office on September 11th, 2001. I remember right after the first plane hit the WTC being worried about my parents. The were living in Arlington at the time, and my dad worked right down the street from the Pentagon. My little brother was also living up there, and he worked in DC at the time, so this was all very real to me. Most of us just stood around the office watching the television, dumbfounded by what we saw.

Most of this is just snippets of stuff that I have found on the Internet, mainly from reading other memorials. I am posting this a couple of days early, since I am going to be out of town this weekend, and it will stay on top until the 11th. I will be sure to light a candle for all of the dead on Monday.

There is a pretty good tribute that I have seen in several different places of the last 102 minutes at the World Trade Center. You can find a copy of it here.

I am updating this again to put a few links to some tributes that I have come across. Obviously I don’t have the time to put links to them all, and they are already there at the project site, but I wanted to link to the sites that I visit on a daily basis, or belong to people I have met. I have also updated the time of this post so that it will stay on top until midnight, as anything I might post today is nowhere near as important as this one.

I do not know her, but I visit Michelle Malkin’s site pretty much daily. Here is her tribute to Giovanna Porras.

Shoe has posted her tribute to Valerie Joan Hanna. I had heard her speaking of Valerie over the weekend and was looking forward to reading it.

RSM has posted his here. I think he had the same problems that I did, not enough information. I really wanted to post something thoughtful and insightful, but that can be difficult when you don’t know anything.

T1G has written about Rahma Salie.

Redneck hasn’t posted one at least not yet, but he feels the same as I do, that there are more important things to be posted about than the normal daily drivel.

Lisa did the same thing that I did, and posted a few days early, knowing (rightly) that the effects of the weekend might drag over until today, particularly since she had a long flight to look forward to as well.

Gennie has posted a touching tribute to Darya Lin.

Eric offers up his post in honor of Calvin Dawson.

I’ve only posted links and trackbacks to those sites I have been to this morning that have their tributes up. In most cases I have attempted to link to the permanent entry and send a trackback. Those that are hosted at MuNu, well, still not sure if your trackbacks are working, when I click the link it gives me something weird. I will add more links when I get home later today if there are more posts.

Updated – Here is the full updated list of victims, along with links to the blogs that are doing tributes for them.

Updated – If you have tried to get to the 2996 site, it exceeded it’s bandwidth. Here is a mirror site.

Also, Elisson posted a touching tribute to one of the firemen.

References

http://cf.newsday.com/911/victimsearch.cfm?id=1481

http://www.legacy.com/Sept11.asp?Page=TributeStory&PersonId=96905

New York Times, 12-29-2001

http://www.irishtribute.com/tributes/view.adp@d=236920&t=237669.html

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2,996 Blog Roll

Chattahoochee River

Originally uploaded by rmiles.

The view from the door of the hotel room

Apparently the auditor is back at my store this morning. That’s actually a good thing. My boss tends to try and manipulate numbers to make things look better than they are. For instance (and I am sure that is why the lady is there), I was off last Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday is the last day of the week. We close out our weekly numbers on Wednesday morning. My boss in her infinite wisdom took food $ off of her Tuesday food pull in the computer and added them to Wednesday. The end result of this is to make the food cost on the weekly report look good. The only problem is that it doesn’t fix any problem. It just moves it to the next week and makes it that much harder to fix whatever the real problem is.

The good thing is that I trained the auditor about 18 years ago, and while not really friends, I respect her, and think she is smart enough to figure out what is going on, and to charge whatever shortages she runs to the rightful person. I also have her cell number and will call her shortly to make sure that she knows EXACTLY what is going on, because my boss will lie and throw me under the bus in order to protect herself. That kind of sucks because I like her, and she is supposed to be a friend.

Damn, I wish they had come before I went on vacation. That is the only thing that worries me.

Update – Well, everything was cool. I guess maybe I worry too much. I have seen too many people that work for my company get fucked by people with no integrity, and I always have it in the back of my head that I could get shit-canned any day. That’s a pretty shitty feeling, considering how long I have been with them and how valuable I am to them.

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…until I start my vacation. Thank god. It’s going to be a long weekend though, I can already tell. Had to get up early so that I can go in and do audits before my day starts. My boss called me last night to let me know that she has given my cook the day off (thanks) and sticking me with the manager trainee who will be taking my store. That pretty much guarantees that I will be on the grill for seven hours today. She also wanted to let me know that somehow she is short in the food. Fuck if I am going to pay another shortage. She is going to have to pay this one.

Thursday is also meeting day, so I may end up being late this evening as well. Perhaps not if I am lucky though. Just have to keep an eye out for butt munching zombies while I am there.

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My dad called me a little while ago to let me know that my Great Aunt “Big Helen” is getting ready to have surgery. She has apparently fallen and broken her hip again. Damn. She already has it pretty tough, so this is not good.
I know I have posted about my Aunt before, but I couldn’t find anything relevant doing a search.
I love my real grandmother very much, but growing up I always considered Big Helen my Grandmother. As a kid, she just seemed more “grandmotherly”. My little brother and I would spend weekends with her as often as we could, and we spent a big portion of summer vacation with her as well. It is a pain in the ass for both parents to be working (trust me, I know) when the kids are out of school, so I am sure that it also helped my parents out immensely.
She was the first adult that I ever smoked around, and she was the first person to let me drive as well. I spent my 14th or 15th summer vacation driving her around her neighborhood in Florida. Was pretty cool. Not that I really needed it. Living in Atlanta I mostly used public transportation or walked, so didn’t even get my license until I was 20 or 21. Right before I got married.
Like everyone else in the world she has issues. Since I haven’t had the opportunity over the last few years to deal with her or my grandmother on a regular basis like the rest of my family, that colors my judgement, and she was always bigger than life to me, particularly as a child.
I know that one day she is going to pass away, and I hope that she gets to meet God like she believes. It hurts to think about losing anyone in my family.

4:30am

It is for me anyhow.

Another pretty long week, but this one has not been as bad as the last couple. I may end up having a long day, but I should be at home by 11pm or so. Tommorow is the Queensryche concert in Atlanta. I am looking forward to seeing it with Chris. Everyone else has to work/go to school on Wednesday, I think that S id dreading being up too late. The last show I went to (I think) was the Metallica show at the OMNI right before they tore it down.

We are taking Chris, so this will be the first concert he has ever been to. He wanted to go see the RHCP show, but told me too late, three days after the tickets had gone on sale. Hell, the show sold out the same Saturday that they went on sale.

5pm

It’s about 5pm now. I managed to shoot out of there about 1:30 this afternoon, and got a bit of a nap. I am going to have to go back for the next five hours or so.

I may do a bit of posting once I get home. I have been stressing all day over something but really don’t know what I want to write, if anything at all.

11:30pm

Finally finished up. I had a buttload of paperwork to finish before taking my days off, so I worked the floor for a few hours, and then finished my stuff. I think I may watch a bit of TV and then hit the sack.

Apparently my parents have been reading my blog, for some reason I feel ashamed, like I am a little kid and have done something wrong. I would assume this post in particular. That is what I was referring to earlier this afternoon. I don’t know. Have to sort my thoughts out on that one, and maybe post some more tommorow.

I know that I tend to post whatever is floating around in my itty bitty head without thinking too much about it beforehand, so I can see where it would be easy to get your feelings hurt if you didn’t realize that I am not trying to do it on purpose.

Well, hell, I think it is TV time.

It has been so fricking hot at work, I have developed a heat rash over the last few days and it is just irritating the crap out of me. Right behind my fucking ball sack, so now I feel miserable and walk like a fool too. What a fucking bonus. Maybe I will stop and buy some diaper rash ointment this afternoon, and keep it in my office at work. That will be a fun conversation starter. I can keep it right next to the two boxes of tampons that I ALWAYS get comments about.

That is actually very simple. I have 25-30 employees at any given time, most of them female. Having your period is no fucking excuse to have to go home (unless it is just nasty, in which case I will send you).

I think I stayed up too late. I got to sleep after midnight last night, and have been up for about 15 minutes now. I think a nap may be in order this afternoon, if I manage to stay awake at work all day.

I have had a pretty crappy day.

It started crappy, stayed that way most of the day, and ended pretty crappy.

I got to work this morning, and all would have been fine, but one of my third shift cooks started running his fucking mouth about another persons lack of work and would not shut the fuck up, so I let him know exactly what HE had not done for the last three days. Noone is perfect, and so long as they are trying to get most of it done, and particularly not bitching about it, I leave them the hell alone.

The rest of the day just kind of dragged along. Around 2pm, I was checking the waitresses sidework before they got off the floor and asked one of them to make tea. Rather than doing what I asked, she decided to argue with me. I ended up repeating myself three times, and finally hollered at her on the floor. She made the fucking tea. The bad part is that I just don’t raise my voice to ANYONE, particularly in front of other employees, or customers. I just don’t believe in management by intimidation. It doesn’t work for the long term, and never has. Guess I am just a bit stressed or something.

I’ve been with them for two decades, but since I worked for awhile as a consultant for the IT department, my service anniversary is in August, rather than when it is supposed to be. I opened my mail today and their was a card from my Senior Vice President. Cool, or so I thought until I read it. “I used to know you when you were in a sales increase. Wishing you the very best and looking forward to many more”

Nice sentiment, but the first line sort of ruins it. Fuck you. I used to know you when you had more hair, and paid less alimony. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. My boss thinks I should forward the card to the President, but I won’t. I WILL save it, you never know when shit like that is needed. One of the big things nowadays with harrasment suits is bullying. Very big deal in court right now. Another example (albeit very small) of management by intimidation. This is the same guy that ten years ago had me, my boss, and his boss out in the customer are calling us losers and rebels. Nice folks I work for, huh?