Came across this by way of Trench, the other dude with the awesome hair. Thanks dude.
Damn, Dio really sounds old.
Have a Very Metal Holiday!
Damn, Dio really sounds old.
Christmas
Damn, Dio really sounds old.
It’s Coming…
I’ve already started thinking about my Christmas shopping. This year I am going to attempt to get everything done as early as I can, including sending out Christmas cards. I was looking for a place to get them pretty cheap online so as to avoid getting out amidst the Christmas shoppers this fall. I figured if I do it early and just have them shipped here then It will save me quite a bit of unwanted stress (and maybe some money as well).
I found some Christmas Cards that I like over at ChristmasCardsDirect.com. There are some really cool designs and you can also get Christmas photo cards as well. One of the things I find interesting is that people I work for and with send those out and I don’t even know half of their children. I would love to be able to send photo cards to my family and friends and then send normal cards out to everyone else. Who the heck wants pictures of my children unless they are close to me anyway. I never did see the point of that.
Anyhow, they have a really good selection of cards over there and at a decent price so if you want to get a jump on things and have them sent right to your door go check ’em out.
Merry Christmas!
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.
Mr. Christmas Spirit
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.
Thursday Thirteen #7 – The Best Call-In Excuses I’ve Heard Recently
- Last Christmas one of my cooks and his wife, a waitress, called in on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Apparently he had gotten drunk and in a fight with his neighbors, so the police came and locked him up. Needless to say he was unemployed the next day. Christmas is by far one of the busiest days of the year for us and unless you are in the hospital or someone has died, EVERYONE works Christmas. I know, it sucks, but it’s just the nature of the business and I always make sure to tell people BEFORE they take the job that they will be expected to work ALL holidays and weekends.
- A couple of years ago I posted about this one. A waitress called in on me because her dog had died. Perhaps I am just an insensitive bastard but I feel like when you make a commitment to something like a job you take that commitment seriously.
- ‘My Chicken Died’ The same lady that hung me because her dog died, a few months later a chicken died and she called in as well. NOW you see why I was so pissed off about her missing work when the dog died.
- ‘I ran over a snake’. Guess who called in because of this. Yep, the SAME damn crazy lady.
- ‘I have a dentist’s appointment and I have to go to probation’. Now these are both darn good reasons to not go to work but since my managers hang their schedules up at least a week in advance one would think that the person referred to would have let their manager know well ahead of time what was going on. Nope, he waited until 30 minutes prior to his shift starting. Got this one yesterday!
- ‘I fell down the steps and broke two toes and have to keep my foot elevated for a week’. This was just a couple of months ago and was one of my managers.
- Ran out of gas. I hear this at least once a month. They don’t call and say they are going to be LATE, they run out of gas and I suppose it’s so traumatic that they have to miss an entire day of work.
- ‘I’m on my period’. No offense to all of the lovely ladies out there but I’ve been married for almost twenty years and when my wife is on her period she still goes to work. As a manager I kept a supply of multiple sizes of tampons in the office and you just didn’t call in with this excuse unless you wanted to be unemployed. My managers are a bit too nice and will believe anything.
- ‘My Clothes are Still Wet’. This happens when you are too damned stupid to do your laundry in a timely manner. My stock answer is generally that once you get to work if you walk real fast your clothes will dry faster.
- Too drunk to work. At least he was honest with me. I let him keep his job because he had the guts to at least tell me the truth unlike others that just show up drunk and have to be sent home. Been there, done that (on both accounts). I even slept under my cubicle at the office with the phone next to my head after one particularly drunk episode a few years back.
- ‘My husband stole my car and got arrested and they impounded my car’. Oh yeah, this was recently. Now that I have three times the number of employees I did as a manager I get three times the garbage.
- ‘I have to clean my house before Family and Children Services get here’. WTF? Apparently there are some other issues aside from your house being f’ing nasty.
- ‘I have a pimple’. ??? Not even an excuse like ‘My herpes sores are oozing’ but ‘I have a PIMPLE!’ You need to find a job where you do nothing but talk on a phone or speaker apparently.
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
Christmas Lights and LED String Lighting
It’s a bit early for me to be thinking about Christmas being as how it’s not even Halloween yet but I have been thinking about them the last few days because some of the stores are starting to put decorations out. I went in to the Home Depot the other day to get some of the clear rope light. I needed a couple of strands to go around the new pond and garden and I was thinking about getting it for my daughter’s room as well. Since the boy shipped off to boot camp the girls now have their own rooms. We moved one of the beds out from under the bunk and now the youngest girl has a sitting and reading area underneath and we wanted lights for it. I was kind of worried about putting a light within her reach since she’s just four but now you can get the LED version. It’s a little more expensive but they last much much longer, are cool to the touch and use less energy which means that in the long run I will save more money than I would have otherwise. I went ahead and got the LEDs for the pond area too.
That’s what got me to thinking about Christmas lighting. If I can afford it this year I want to spend a little extra and get LED Christmas tree lights rather than the same old ones I have been using for the last 20 years. Aside from the same benefits I would get from the LED string lighting they are also much clearer and brighter. I love Christmas decorations and never really thought that there would be much difference until I actually some some of the outdoor LED christmas lights in action. They have a bunch of them at the local Wal-mart already and they are pretty sharp.