I came across Joe Sparks’ work back around ’99 or 2000 and I never get tired of the Radiskull and Devil Doll cartoons. The are hilarious.
There are links to all eight of the episodes at Joe Sparks’ home page. This is the third one. Go check out all eight of them if you get the chance. They are pretty good for a laugh.
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.
…
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.
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.
If you are interested in showcasing your best work and getting more traffic to your blog, consider participating in the open trackback alliance. You can find out more information at the link for Linkfest Haven and learn what it’s all about at The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns.
I had one of the guys I used to work with call me a few days ago trying to come back to work. We have a long history together. I actually worked for him for a while back in 1988. He has been in and out of our company for several years until he sued us a while back for a worker’s comp issue. I honestly don’t know if the claim was real or not but what I do know is that he settled for a couple of grand because his shoulder hurt. I have had a couple of worker’s compensation claims before, that’s what we have WC insurance for. No big deal, they take care of you and you get your self back to work. Settling for a couple of grand and being out of a career forever just doesn’t seem like a real wise move to me.
The last few years he has had some issues with diet pills along with some other stronger prescription medicines he shouldn’t be taking. They can be real helpful when used as directed but otherwise I have seen too many people abuse them.
He called me suggesting that I work him under somebody else’s social security number and that stuff just isn’t going to happen. There is no way I am going to endanger my career just so he can get a couple of weeks of work in. I don’t like very many people enough to do something like that for them.
The wife and the Marine had to run to Douglasville this morning. They are going ahead and getting some Christmas shopping taken care of this morning at the Mall. She hates going to the mall even more than she hates shopping but it’s one of those things I suppose.
I was reading this story over at CNN last night about one mall where the police are really creating a presence and they had some news crews out there filming some of the things people would do. Purses and phones in plain view in their cars, expensive gifts left in eyeshot and even worse, some of them wore open.
Even if you keep your stuff locked in the trunk there is still the danger of it coming up missing. This time of year criminals are out because they know that people hide stuff in their cars. That can make a car more of a target and even effect your car insurance policy.
I had to get online last night and renew my car insurance. The company had called me day before yesterday and told me I had underpaid them by $15 by mistake so I had to get on their site. Most of them allow you to pay online which certainly makes life easier. Fifteen years ago it would have just been canceled and I would have had to deal with going out and getting car insurance quotes and renewing the policy. Cheap car insurance is easy to find but I prefer to keep the same company rather than having to switch every couple of years.
I guess I am on a video kick tonight, so here’s another for ya’
Just pretty much trying to stay awake now. I have to drive in to Atlanta in an hour and a half or so to pick up my son at the Greyhound station and have been up for about 20 hours now.
This looks pretty cool. I have enjoyed the movies from Marvel the last few years and this looks pretty neat.
I guess the trailer has been out for a while but this was the first time I have come across it.
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
Out of all the stuff I have posted the last couple of days, I put up a pretty short one this morning before I left for work linking to this CNN report about Jamie Lynn Spears being pregnant.
I’ve had more hits today for that than anything else this week. So what, she’s pregnant. I like what Below the Beltway had to say though,
‘Because, ya know, we can’t figure out how this happened’.
bwahahaha.
That was in response to this:
NEW YORK (AP) — Another Spears baby is reportedly on the way — and it’s not Britney’s.
Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old “Zoey 101? star and sister of Britney, told OK! magazine that she’s pregnant and that the father is her boyfriend, Casey Aldridge.
“It was a shock for both of us, so unexpected,” she said. “I was in complete and total shock and so was he.”
Like I said this morning, put it in a sock.
Updated 10:55 PM – Apparently the paparazzi caught Britney Spears unawares at which point in time she denied that her sister was pregnant. What a way to find out that your 16-year-old sister is pregnant.
Jamie Lynn Spears told OK! Magazine that she plans on raising the baby at home in Louisiana away from the bright lights of show business. Somehow I don’t guess there is any place in Zoey 101’s world for a baby anyhow.
BlondeBlogger sees it a bit from Spear’s point of view. I was a pretty crappy teenager myself and never used condoms but that certainly doesn’t mean I will even remotely seem to condone it. My son made it to the Marine Corps a virgin and we are trying to instill the same values in our girls as we did with him. The fact is that if either of them make it to 18 a virgin I will consider myself lucky, but either way they are damn sure going to use protection for the simple fact that pregnancy aside, there is some mean shit to be caught out there. It’s not like it was 20+ years ago.