One of the things I share with my mother is a serious fear of spiders. While not as bad as her’s I can’t stand the damn things. I know that they eat all kinds of other nasties that I wouldn’t particularly want around my house but that doesn’t seem to alleviate my fears.
So what am I doing awake this fine evening? Watching Arachnophobia on TV. I suspect that I may be up late with nightmares…Hell, the hard part will be actually getting to sleep.
My grandmother used to have an old grandfather clock that she gave my mom and dad several years ago. Actually it was more like 30 years ago. Time flies when you’re having fun I guess. I love that old clock but I am not even sure if it works anymore. Although clocks have pretty much stayed the same over the centuries, technology has made them much more accurate and I would love to have one of the Howard Miller Clocks like the one in the picture. We have a couple of clocks around the house but there is nothing as majestic as a beautiful grandfather clock.
The one in the picture is the Howard Miller Taylor Grandfather clock and lists for around nine grand but they currently have it online for $6300, which is a pretty steep discount. It sets around seven feet tall and is fairly heavy, around 135 pounds. It would look great right next to my entertainment center. A couple of years back when we picked up new living room furniture I made sure that the TV/entertainment center was more of a cabinet. It’s pretty large and heavy and the doors on the front close so that you can’t see the TV at all, which was the whole point of it. The coloring on this clock fits right in with the rest of the furniture in the living room.
One thing that I wasn’t aware of when I started pricing clocks is the fact that you can pick different chimes for the clocks. You aren’t necessarily stuck with a certain chime just because you like the look of a certain clock. The clocks blog has a bit more information on different chimes in this post about them and provides links where you can even listen to the chimes on the web site.
In addition to grandfather clocks they also sell mantel clocks, wall clocks and all sorts of other things to spruce of your home decor. I wouldn’t mind having a nice mantel clock to put over my fireplace. Right now it’s full of Christmas decorations but they will be coming down next month and something other than the mirror that usually sits there would be nice.
An Aruban judge ordered the release of Joran van der Sloot earlier today. This could possibly end any hopes for prosecutions in the disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in 2005.
It has finally rolled around to where I actually get a weekend off, which is going to be very nice. My schedule for the month of December is so messed up it’s not even funny. I’m off this weekend of course and between then and the end of the month I think I am taking three days off including the 21st and 29th. I know those are the only two I managed to schedule myself off for but don’t really remember when I am off prior to that.
Either way I will get to enjoy the weekend with the kids, which will be very cool.
I also managed to get out of my weekly meeting last night. The high school local to my stores asked me if I would participate in their advisory board for stuff like DECA and FBLA. Basically the advisory board helps them out and lets the school know where to focus some of the attention on what kids need to do to join the workforce. Teaching them to add and subtract and count back change are pretty damned high on my list since 90% of the young people I hire don’t seem to have any of the skills. Of course times have changed. When I started working for my company the waiters and waitresses were not allowed to use calculators. If it was a particularly large order they could use the one in the manager’s office, otherwise if you didn’t know how to add you needed to go to work for someone else. Sounds harsh but it was effective. Now I am required to have several calculators in each of my restaurants. You can always tell if someone has been doing it for a while because they, as well as myself, can usually add up a guest check on paper faster than most people do it with the calculator and with less mistakes.
Why less mistakes? Because people that know how to add properly know how to do it and people that can’t use basic simple math that they are teaching my girls trust the calculator and don’t double check their math to make sure they have pushed the right buttons. The same thing goes for counting back change. I have more cash register shortages because people trust what the cash register says. The problem comes when they put in too much cash tendered. Knowing how to count back change solves that problem.
I spoke for a few minutes with one gentleman that knows a friend of mine that used to work with us. We talked about our mutual friend for a while. He isn’t working with us anymore, he actually went into real estate a few years back and is doing pretty well for himself.
Shortly after making it home last night one of the cooks cut his hand open and while the manager went in to the store to get him taken care of and sent to the hospital I picked up one of my other cooks and took him on into work. I had planned on writing a bit last night but since I made it home after 7pm last night I just didn’t feel like it.
The Omaha Police released this statement yesterday evening on the mall shooting which killed nine people including the shooter and injured five others. The shootings took place inside the Von Maur department store at Westroads Mall in Omaha.
Police Chief Thomas Warren called the shootings premeditated but did say that they appeared to be randomly selected and unprovoked.
Rather than his mother, it was Hawkins’ landlord, Debora Kovac that found the suicide note at 1pm, just a few minutes prior to the shootings.
The shootings began at 1:42pm and police responded within six minutes.
With all of the posting I have done recently on Joran van der Sloot I have done a bit of reading and visiting of sites related to the Netherlands as well as Aruba. This sort of combines my love for different places with blogging. I haven’t written about any kind of vacation spots lately so it was about time anyway.
Although they have a pretty decent Europe Hotel Guide I like visiting HotelsByCity.net for the pictures and links to other local sites in addition to blog posts and hotels.
The guide for Amsterdam has some pretty useful information about the city itself, links to cheap Amsterdam hotels as well as links to the cities home page and blog posts. While not on the top of my list of places to visit I wouldn’t mind spending some time in Amsterdam just to check out the canals and architecture.
You can also find information about the weather in Amsterdam as well as other cities and local attractions in the city. Amsterdam is full of Museums and art houses and the night life in the city is one of the bright spots in Europe. In addition to art work there is also the museum of the resistance which I would like to visit one day. It provides information about the holocaust and World War II.
I don’t know where to get one but I came across this picture a little while ago and got a good laugh out of it.
Still feeling a bit under the weather here. My birthday was laid back and pretty uneventful, which is just the way I wanted. Not even any phone calls from family, but 10 or 12 of my coworkers and ex-employees called during the day. We hung out and had burgers and peach cobbler and the girls and I watched TV on the couch while I drifted in and out, thus the lack of posts last night. After they went to bed I did stay up to watch the 3rd and last installment of Tin Man on SciFi. While not the best acting in the world I enjoyed the movie.
Hopefully the next three days will go well at work. I am not at all in the mood to deal with any bullshit. One good thing, although I will most likely have the normal weekly food cost meeting after work today I won’t be stuck in one tomorrow until nine as I have been the last few Thursdays. I am trying to get out of the Thursday meeting entirely since the local high school is interested in me being on the FBLA advisory board and their meeting is tomorrow. Not much there, basically just let them know what it is that I need for them to do to prepare kids for jobs. Pretty easy stuff.
One of my hard drives went out last night, which sucks. My system has been slowing down for a few weeks and the extra HD pretty much bit the dust yesterday when I was trying to run Spinrite on it. It sucks because it had backups for most of my TV and movies on it. I can still recover most of it and will maybe work on that this weekend. I have a bunch of other ones I need to work on as well. If I can get some extra posting finished I will try to get that done as well.
Obviously nothing exciting is going on in my world today. It is my youngest’s birthday today. RePete is five years old today. Happy birthday RePete.
This Week’s Hero Was Suggested By Mark Bell
Born in Philadelphia, Marty Horn spent 20 years in the Army as a Military Policeman, retiring in 1993 and going to work in Internet technologies. In 2003, his son Brian Horn deployed to Iraq. Trying to support their son’s unit, Marty and his wife Sue, who also served as in the Military Police, put together the concept of Any Soldier. In essence, Any Soldier is an effort to provide support and encouragement to those who are in harm’s way. Due to overwhelming requests for ready-made care packages on the AnySoldier.com site, Sue Horn started TreatAnySoldier.com.
Using his background in Internet technologies, Marty built and maintains the web site. The Any Soldier program slowly expanded to include other Army units. In 2004, the program opened up to include all service branches.. In 2005, the websites for AnyMarine.com., AnySailor.com, AnyAirman.com, and AnyCoastguardsman.com were launched.
In the words of the Any Soldier web site: “The success of Any Soldier has far exceeded expectations and continues to grow with the invaluable help and guidance of our supporters, board members and Support Team.”
In the words of Marty Horn: “It is the supporters who deserve the credit.”
Thanks to the efforts of Marty and Sue, their son Brian, and a dedicated staff, over 950,000 servicemen and women received support and encouragement they would never have been able to get through the Any Soldier program.
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 blog, you can go here.
Sifting through the photos I came across this one. It is probably the only picture from My 28th, 1988 in which I don’t look particularly hung over to the point of dying.