Well, I’m officially up to 50 hours as of today; with tomorrow to go. Wednesday I ended up working from 3am until past 4pm. I can’t wait to see the check, although I have a bad feeling that the government is going to jack me for most of it anyway. Hell I will probably make less than I would if I just worked a normal week. It’s been an interesting week to say the least. I’ve helped do the reset, scanned out product to send to another store (the poor bastards) and even got to call some of the shots as far as where we should move stuff. I even got them to change their mind on a few different things as far as where they would be putting stuff. The one good thing is that tomorrow is Friday and I can rest tomorrow with two days off in a row coming up. Yesterday I came home with a headache and I didn’t even turn my computer on. I just came home and took it easy and couldn’t wait until it was time to go to sleep.

That’s the funny thing about a headache, at least for me… when I wake up in the morning or even three hours later it feels like the greatest day of my life if that headache is gone. I wake up and it’s like oh right, I felt like shit last night and now I don’t. Life is grand isn’t it?

By the way, with the way this week is going… I’m totally burned out.

Yeah, it looks that way. In case you’re hip hop illiterate I’ll school you. MC Serch is 1/3 of the rap group 3rd Bass (Prime Minister Pete Nice being the other mic man and Daddy Rich being the DJ). Of course if you’ve been paying attention you’d know that the other website I run is a fan site all about 3rd Bass. Is this big? Yeah, it sure the fuck is… bigger than words can express… so I digress.
I went to the urgent care last week because I was having stomach problems. I guess it was just a pulled muscle because I’m fine now, but when I was there the doctor I happened to see that day mentioned that I was way overdue for a full physical including a cholesterol test and a diabetes test. Well, that ended up being today. I now remember why I have put off a physical for so long. It’s not the drawing of blood, I can deal with that. It’s not even the doctor holding my nuts and making me cough. It’s the finger up the ass checking my prostate health. You have no idea how glad I am that I’m not a woman. He was only up there for about 30 seconds tops and I couldn’t take it. Imagine if I had another hole to look into; it’s times like this I’m glad I have a penis.

Well, next week begins hell week at work, in fact it’s two weeks of hell. We are going to have a total store reset. The bad part is the first reset they drew up was pretty extravagant and it involved moving almost everything in the store to places it actually made sense. For instance they were going to move all of the bottled water and sport drinks down the same aisle as the pop. Well now they aren’t going to. Why you ask, because the other way would have made more sense and apparently we don’t like doing shit like that. They are going to totally butcher the HBC department still. Honestly it’s about time because it’s sat like it is now since I did my resets way back in the day. It still pisses me off that they showed us this awesome reset that made a lot of sense and then they come back and give us this reset that at best I’d call lazy. It’s like someone telling you they’re going to give you a Harley, then they come back and go… here’s your Huffy. Bastards.

So our gas has gone up 40¢ within the last week. It had been $2.74 sometime last week and as of tonight it’s up to $3.19. Wow, another person bitching about gas prices you’re thinking? Nope, not tonight. I don’t like to pay this much money to fill my car up but what are you going to do? Gas at $3.19 a gallon is crazy, but you know what? A loaf of bread for $4.29 is fucking outrageous. The only place I really drive is to and from work and I do put about 40 miles a day on when I drive. It’s a little bit of a pain in the ass but like I said… what are you going to do? People will just have to tighten up their pocket books a little bit. Maybe cut back on the cigarettes you’re buying, give up alcohol for a little while, buy the shitty bread that only costs 99¢. There are other options out there. This hurricane fucked up a lot of stuff and it did hurt the oil business. Shit when you see their rigs that are supposed to be out in the middle of the ocean sitting on the beach or stuck to a bridge, you know some shit is up. As far as I’m concerned if the only damage I’m going to suffer from Hurricane Katrina is higher gas prices… I consider myself pretty fucking lucky.

Watching this shit on the news is weird. It’s the whole tsunami all over again. I’m hoping we don’t get to that level of dead people, but if they don’t do something down there pretty soon it could rise even higher. There are still people stranded and we are going on almost a week here. People are starving and they will begin to rely on their animal instincts soon enough to try and survive.
Speaking of the tsunami that happened last Christmas I have a question. Where are all of the foreign countries that should be stepping up to the plate to donate money to us for this natural disaster? I seem to remember quite well that the United States pledged to donate 35 million dollars to the tsunami victims and we were called cheapskates so we bumped it up to 350 million dollars. I don’t seem to recall in the last few days any country giving us 350 million dollars. Shit, I don’t seem to recall any country giving us 35 million dollars now that I think of it. It’s always nice to know that we are expected to be the welfare wagon to the whole world but when we have a problem everyone just looks the other way.

Since we’re on the subject of looking the other way, I was watching MSNBC tonight checking out what’s going on in the hurricane aftermath and there was some show on with Rita Cosby. I’ve never seen her do a show before but apparently she’s been on Fox News before and now she’s on MSNBC. She annoys the hell out of me. I put the lockout function on MSNBC so I never have to watch her again. She’s interviewing all of these hurricane victims and other people involved in the rescue efforts with the same charisma you’d want if you were interviewing someone who just won a national pig calling contest. How the hell did she get her own show anyway? I wasn’t even watching her I was just listening to her and I thought, well maybe she’s related to Bill Cosby. Then I looked and she was white so it’s obviously not that. I never thought Fox News would look attractive to me.

Come on now, I can’t be the only one who thought of that can I? Big ass monster fucking hurricane heading for the shoreline down there and its name is Katrina… and they’re talking about huge ass waves from the storm surge. Come on people, nostalgia. You know damn well you’re humming Walking on Sunshine right now. I am watching this coverage once again in amazement that these retard reporters go out and risk their lives to let us know how dangerous it is out there. You know that they aren’t trying to warn the people that are there… they already fucking know. The show is for people like me, sitting on my couch in Wisconsin wondering what it’s like to get blown around like that. In fact that gives me a great entrepreneurial idea… quick to the screen printers. My new T-Shirt line coming out to benefit the people of the south… “I got blown by Katrina.”

Not much else fun going on around here, just thought I’d get my blog count up for the month of August since I’m only at three posts so far; four counting this one. I’m trying to get all my bills paid and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to afford being able to drive to work in about a week. It’s kind of funny that this hurricane kind of took care of some oil rigs just before Labor Day Weekend. We might have to drive the price of gas up past $3 a gallon to make up for this. I know it’s simple economics, the losers are all going to be going on vacation this coming weekend and what better way to make some money than charge them a ton of money to get where they’re going. Oh well, what can you do about it but pay. Maybe I’ll convert my car to run off of old cooking grease that I can steal from out behind Mc Donald’s. That or maybe I can convert my car to run off of farts. That’d be revolutionary. Quick… to the drawing boards.

I’ve been missing for a little while again, it kind of seems like a pattern developing doesn’t it? Well, last weekend I took a few days off and went back to Warren’s Jellystone Park. It was pretty fun and it didn’t even storm… which was a plus. Most of the stuff we did down there was water related although there was mini golf too. There were water slides, the lazy river and the wave pool. There was also the balloon wars battleground. That’s where you fill up water balloons and slingshot them at total strangers. Wow, what fun… and damn is that water cold. Well, that explains last weekend, but of course it’s already this weekend so where has the time gone?

I think my lack of time on here is due to my job and my hours. This week was just like week one once again. Last week, Friday, Saturday and Sunday I stayed up until past 11 and then I slept until 9am the next mornings. Coming back to work was nothing more than a bitch slap from reality for me. I had to get up at 4am again on Tuesday morning and I wasn’t ready one bit. I think it was Thursday or Friday before my body got used to it. Then I’ve been dealing with ab and back pain since getting back, which I think are related to all of the shit I did down in Warrens. Take someone who really doesn’t do anything physical except a half hour on a stationery bicycle and then have me running around a huge ass park and golfing and climbing up water slides and using a massive slingshot to shoot water balloons at people you get a little sore. I’ve been milking those injuries and watching my digital cable as well. The funny thing about the digital cable is I find myself watching all of the movies I already own on DVD. I’ll be flipping through and it’s like ooh, Spiderman 2 is on, let’s watch that. Well if I really wanted to watch it, why not pull down the DVD and watch it? I’m weird like that I guess. I will have to admit though I’m seeing a few more movies that I would have never wasted money renting, like My Baby’s Daddy. I figured if I watch it and I don’t like it, at least I’m not out $3.

So while I’m at work taking a rare lunch (did I ever mention I hate taking a lunch now that I have this new job?) and I’m reading through the paper and I see that Hillary Duff is releasing a greatest hits CD. What the fuck is that about? What does she have out there, two releases total so far? There needs to be a rule put into place right now that says if you only have two albums out you aren’t allowed to put out a greatest hits album. Here’s how a greatest hits album works. You have like 10 albums out there and they take the biggest hits off of each album (usually two per album) and you end up with a 20 track greatest hits album. Now if you have two albums then you probably only have a total of 40 songs tops… how are you going to find the greatest hits out of that shit? Oh, that’s the song I played and they didn’t throw rotten tomatoes at me, put that one on the album. I guess to be fair to Hillary, she’s no Ashlee Simpson.

As far as the website front, it’s been busy although I really have no new content to show for it. I apparently am getting some fans out there for my site. Someone has thrown my links up in various forums and a few places where people post links at and I’ve been getting extra traffic thrown my way. Then we get to the 3rd Bass site and it’s been phenomenal. I know that most of my bandwidth from that site is all the mp3’s but the hits are excellent too, and the message board is finally booming. When I first started that 3rd Bass message board I was lucky to get 3 posts a month. I’m nearing 900 posts now and they’re not all coming from me. Just recently I found a link to my fan site on a site by Sam Sever. The link was pointing to the old site so I emailed and asked if it could be updated and got an email back saying it would within the next few weeks. Sam Sever was a big time producer for 3rd Bass, not to mention many other production credits for the likes of the Beastie Boys and many other hip hop groups. It just feels great to know that someone in the world of hip hop has paid homage to my fan site… you have no idea.

I’ve noticed that my new position at work has really taken its toll on my dedication to the internet. What am I doing now, like a blog every other week? However, I do believe that I am adjusted to waking up early every day. In fact I’m too accustomed to it because it happens even when I have a day off… whenever in the fuck that happens. Oh wait, that will be happening starting tomorrow whenever I jet out of there and will continue through Monday. That’s right, I’m getting a three day weekend. I’m going down to Warren’s Wisconsin again. Let’s do a quick history lesson here. I went to Warren’s a few years ago and we got hit by a nasty ass thunderstorm with pounding rains and hail. Last year Warren’s got hit by a tornado; and now this year I’m going back there. I’ll tell you what, if it so much as fucking thunders; I’m done camping forever… at least until Jayco invents a camper with a basement in it.

Speaking of work, or bitching of work, however the story may go… it’s been going surprisingly well. We are going to have a major reset within a month and I can’t wait. From everything I’ve seen so far of the plans, the entire layout looks pretty good and makes a lot more sense than our current layout. I’m still not too enthused about the fact everyone thinks I should still be ready willing and able to do my old job. I just want to say “hey look fuckers, if I could handle both jobs I wouldn’t be getting over 40 hours just doing this one.” See what you did; now you got me all pissy and I’m going to start bitching. Couldn’t resist could you? Yesterday we got all new checkout racks. You know the ones that all your favorite stupid magazines are on? Well this was supposed to happen on Friday, you know tomorrow? Well, I get a call at home Tuesday night letting me know that they would be setting it up on Wednesday instead and they would need the tags in the morning. Well no sweat because I go in two hours earlier than the store opens so I can handle that. Well there were two planograms for the racks, one for the candy side and one for the general merchandise side. In the morning when the crew got there I gave them all the tags that they needed. They had the candy finished on one of them and were going to wheel it up front and I asked what they were putting on the GM side and they didn’t know. They actually told me that there was no planogram for that side, so I had to print a new planogram and give it to them. We also had a big to do at work yesterday outside with a cookout and all, so the store was filled with people. I decided to jet early because it’s very hard to do stuff in the aisles when you are answering every fucking question under the sun. I left around 11am and I decided to go in at 3am today, because it’s my only chance at sanity when I’m alone. Of course I come in and guess what I see right away? They didn’t put a fucking thing on the pegboard side. Imagine that shit. Life is grand.

I signed up for digital cable and high speed internet a couple days ago. I’ve had a cable modem for over 5 years now, but I was at the 300kbs service and now I’ve got the 3mbs service. It’s rather noticeable when you download something. I also did have cable TV, but not any of the pay channels like HBO, Cinemax or Starz. Well last night I was flipping through the channels and Shrek 2 was on so I decided to watch that since I saw the first one and liked it. Well, since I work so early I ended up dozing off in the middle of Shrek 2 and woke up to people fucking… ahh, the glory of pay TV.

What a weekend. The good part was that I didn’t have to work on Saturday, although it would have probably been easier on me if I had. My friend Mike was having his graduation party on Saturday. He was going to have it in one of our city parks and they do not let you reserve a park, they are on a first come first serve basis. Well, the park he wanted, not to mention the park he put on all the invitations was rumored to have a giant family reunion in it that same day. According to the city parks website it says you can’t go into the parks until 7am although a quick call to the police squashed that little factoid. We were thinking that these people would come up and try to set up around 7am so him and his girlfriend headed up to the park at 4:30am… did I mention they live an hour away from the park? Anyway at 4:30 in the morning the entire fucking park is decked out for this reunion, complete with people sitting in the park waiting and holding. Those old bastards. Anyway I get a phone call around 10 to 5 in the morning letting me know that these bastards took the park and we were moving to the other site. I got up there around 5 and shortly after we were there rearranging picnic tables, someone else pulled up to set up shop. Luckily this park had three rather large separate areas to set up for a get together. Lucky because around 7 another couple showed up to set up the third party in that park. The party went well, attendance was slightly lower than expected which I feel had some to do with the change of venue at the last minute; that or some of the invites were over at that other park eating food wondering where the fuck Mike was at.

Sunday was for the least bit, a little different. Last Wednesday we had an ad batch downloaded with the wrong dates on it. Shortly after on the same day the correct batch was downloaded but the wrong one was not deleted. As I was talking to my tech guy we got the people that wrote this program on the phone with us in a conference call and they told us that this batch with the wrong dates would pose absolutely no problems and to not worry about it. I had my reservations about this but since the people that wrote this fucking program are telling us not to worry about it and that everything will be fine I just went with the flow… well after I asked who I could call at 5am on Sunday when it didn’t go fine. On Friday I mentioned again that I was a little worried about that renegade batch sitting in my computer and was told again not to worry about it. Fast forward to Sunday at work… well; that batch knocked the shit out of the correct batch and I didn’t have an ad running. I noticed this right around 5 and I called our helpless desk immediately. For whatever reason they have an outside service running our support line up until 6am, and I ended up talking to someone who doesn’t even have a fucking clue about anything to do with retail grocery. Imagine that huh? Anyway she told me that she would forward the problem to someone and they would get back to me on Monday. Yeah, what the fuck ever. I called back at 6am because I knew at least our people would be in there although I didn’t expect anything more to come out of it. When I called and talked to him and explained the problem he said he would have to page out someone and it probably wouldn’t be until 9 or 10 am. I had to “nicely” remind him that the store was opening in less than an hour and I needed someone paged out immediately. Well I don’t know when someone was paged out but I didn’t get an ad running until 10am. Ah the fun of retail pricing.

In other news I am working on a possible new design for my website, although if I do anything different, I want it to be radically different and not just some color scheme change. I’m also working on a few new articles for the site so I’m hoping I can add some more content as well. That is if I can ever get a fucking day off.

I’ve been gone a little while and I haven’t been keeping as keen an eye on the world as I should have been and a couple of things have happened in my absence that must be addressed. First off, my old friends over at KFC… what the fuck are you thinking? I’m sitting down doing not much of anything and your newest commercial comes on and it’s apparently got something to do with chicken and I’m pretty sure your logo is pimped out all over the place on there; which is fine considering it’s your commercial. My problem is that the song you’re playing in the background on that commercial is Sweet Home Alabama. I know it’s a cool southern rock song and all and you’re from the south but lest we not forget that you’re name is KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN. It is not Alabama Fried Chicken right? What’s next, are you going to play On Wisconsin during one of your commercials? Let’s clear up the bullshit right now KFC, either find a song reflecting your own state or don’t play music in your commercials anymore.

What else has happened that’s pissed me off lately? Oh yeah, these god damn sex offenders I keep seeing on the news that are abducting and killing kids. What the fuck is that all about? What is up with having trials for these dumb fuckers either? Especially that one bastard out in Idaho; they caught him with the girl of the family that he murdered, found the brother’s body dead and now they have to have a trial to see if he’s guilty. Am I the only one not seeing the logic in this shit? He’s fucking guilty, no ifs ands or buts about it and now they have to waste hundreds of thousands if not millions of state money on a trial. You know, last time I checked a bullet cost less than a dollar. That’s right, shoot the fucker and get it over with. I don’t give a damn about his history or if his uncle touched him or whatever, it’s too late and he is not salvageable. If you are going to worry about anyone, worry about the little girl who was sexually abused and had all of her family killed, most likely in front of her. That’s who you need to psychologically help out. Look at the two that took Elizabeth Smart, they have been deemed incompetent to stand trial for her abduction and will be put in a state mental institution until he is capable of standing trial. Well if he’s that mentally incompetent why not throw him in the gas room and tell him it’s the fucking YMCA.

See if I was in charge there wouldn’t be any of this plea bargaining shit or this mentally incompetent shit. If you did the crime you do the time. I don’t give a shit if you wear a sock on your left hand and have in depth conversations about the universe with it, you’re fucking guilty bitch. Another thing I’d do is make it a federal crime punishable by death for doing anything sexual to a child; and if you’re found innocent, we’re still chopping your dick off. You can piss into a bag for the rest of your life because you don’t need that for anything else anymore jackass.

Ok, enough of my world domination plans for now… back to reality for a few moments.

My Job: Honestly I like it better now that I did when I was doing HBC/GM. Some people have to do shit now like order spring and summer for next year and I don’t have that kind of pressure to deal with. Some people have to be watching their back to school sections everyday and make sure it’s full and will be getting Halloween in the store within the next three weeks… not me. Some people are named Lisa… hahaha.

The Weather: Well, the last week has been beautiful outside, about average temps in the 80’s and then at night in the low 50’s, which is perfect sleeping weather in my opinion. Of course everything good has to end and starting as I write this entry the humidity is creeping up and those assholes that call themselves meteorologists are saying we are going to be in the 90’s for a few days starting tomorrow. Speaking of meteorologists, what happened to Jim Guy?

The Website: It’s finally done over there at thirdbass.net. I have officially closed the 3rd Bass website that was on my sub domain and all that is left is a link to the new site and a message telling people to update their bookmarks. Now what am I going to do? Oh yeah, probably start scheming up a redesign for the 3rd Bass site soon. I don’t like the look too much because I learned all of the nifty graphic designing stuff through my online classes and I wound up doing the site in mostly CSS. At the very least I will be doing a new flash banner because the one I did was pretty basic. Then again with me being done with the 3rd Bass site I may just have to redesign my main site once again… hmm, the possibilities are endless.

Harry Potter Mania
So I’m watching the news and I see that the new Harry Potter book comes out on Saturday. But of course since everyone in the world that gives a shit about it is a Harry Potter freak, it will be released at 12:01am on Saturday. The news however has focused on the security surrounding the release of the book. How the fuck does the release of a book get better security than our government gives? These books are more heavily guarded than our nation’s capital for Christ’s sake. Here the government was going to cut transportation security and a book is being guarded like it’s the Pope or the President. Maybe we should hire J.K. Rowling’s people to provide security for our country. At least they mean business.

INXS
Why? Look, I wasn’t the biggest fan of INXS back when I was in school, but I liked them enough to buy one of their albums. I bought Kick back in the day because there were enough songs on the album for me to justify buying it. I can’t even think of the words to describe the stupidity of the thought of a reality show that is going to name the new lead singer of the band. First off, why the hell did a record studio sign the band to a record deal in the first place? Now we are supposed to help find you a replacement lead singer? Why the fuck do the fans have to do all the work? Wait, who am I kidding, you haven’t had any fans since your old lead singer was doing his impersonation of a ceiling fan pull chain. In honor of Michael Hutchence wouldn’t you think you should just not record any more albums? I would think the fans wouldn’t really appreciate it that much. The only band I can remember that fared somewhat well with a replacement after the death of their lead singer was Van Halen with Sammy Hagar replacing David Lee Roth. Oh wait a minute, Roth didn’t die, his career did. Much thanks goes out to CBS for putting this shit on television. In fact I just had a brilliant idea… I’m going to call up FOX and see if I can pitch the idea of a reality show to them to find the new lead singer of Nirvana. FOX likes to steal other networks reality shows and make it like they are their own. Of course nothing else would bring the Starbucks junkies out in full force like desecrating the memory of Curt Cobain… not that Courtney Love hasn’t done enough of that already. Next up on my list on ABC… the new 2Pac.

A Nice Cup of Hot Coffee
So I’m reading that Joseph Lieberman and Hilary Clinton are upset that there is some sort of sex scene in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto. I don’t really picture either of these two sitting around playing the video game and finding the scenes, so the only logical explanation I have is that Bill found it. Honestly, if there’s someone that can find even a picture of a naked chick on her knees… it’s Bill. Anyway, all I’m hearing in the brief parts I saw on TV and read on the internet were how horrible it was to have these sexual images in the game. Why are we so uptight about sex in this country? If it wasn’t for sex, you wouldn’t be here. As gross as it may be to think about your parents fucking, they did indeed fuck in order for you to show up here. My question is why is the sex so horrible in this game? The name of the fucking game is Grand Theft Auto. Grand Theft Fucking Auto people… when the name of the game is also a felony according to law, a little sex is probably the least of your concerns. Lets see; car jacking, no problem. Shooting at police officers, hey, who hasn’t done that? Drugs and alcohol, why not. Sex?? Oh my god, call a special session of Congress, we have to protect the children. Don’t you think the Democrats have better things to do, like maybe plan to take back DC in the future? Nah, screw 2008, lets worry about a little sexual pixilation in a video game.

Ever go through a dry time in your life when you’re just exhausted with everything? Well, I’m there. I think 90% of my problem is work although I’m not sure. Ah, who am I kidding? I’m definitely sure it’s work. I’m on day seven in a row right now. The only thing I can say is that the job is actually less stressful than my older job. There is a lot to it, and luckily I’m a very computer orientated person and I’ve been able to handle everything that’s been thrown my way. Of course if anything is wrong price wise… it’s really not my problem, because all I’m able to do is email it in to corporate and await the changes they send down. One of my biggest time consumers this last week has been our new bookkeeper. See, I don’t do books anymore, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to erase that portion of my job from my brain and now that the head bookkeeper is up in Northern Michigan on vacation and out of cell phone reach, I become the go to guy. Here’s the problem: The fill in bookkeeper was hired not too long ago and she got a whopping 5 days of training before her first weekend she was alone. Then on her first weekend, our computers crashed and she wasn’t able to use any of the technology to do anything. Let’s just say that is a hard way to being your first couple times solo. The second time she was alone was the first day of vacation for the head bookkeeper. Since she didn’t really work a lot on Sunday or Monday before there were many extra things that had to be done on those days she hadn’t been trained for. This is the part where me wishing I could have forgotten how to do books would have come in handy. I did spend the better part of Sunday and Monday in the books office showing her things she didn’t get taught. Oh well, a much bigger paycheck for me… I smell overtime!

What else is going on? Oh, I have a beard. I was pretty much the clean cut shaven guy up until sometime around 1996 or so, and then I grew a goatee. I had the goatee until about last weekend or so. I decided that since I had a few days off in a row I’d see how much I could grow in those few days. Well, I got quite a bit of facial hair going quickly and then on Sunday the 3rd I went to the beach and played football and Frisbee in the water and got a little tanned. Let’s examine the situation here. If my face is now tan and I shave off what I’ve grown, I’ll have white streaks down the side of my face… shit, I’m stuck with this for a while now. I had two of the women at work tell me they like it… unfortunately it’s the older married women.

I am still feverishly working on the 3rd Bass site trying to get it done. It’s almost gotten to the point where it feels too much like work and not like fun. Like I said earlier, I’m pretty sure most of this is work related. Give me a day off and I’ll most likely have most of the site thrown together. Actually, the biggest hold up is trying to get the menu and the flash banner looking like I want it too. Once that is done, the rest of the site should be smooth sailing. I’m thinking if I don’t get it finished by Wednesday I’ll probably upload the old site up there and then it will take a little of the pressure off.

It’s been a little while, and yes, I’ve been rather busy. Well first things first, school is done except for the two finals that I need to take before July 8th. Once those are done then I guess I’m officially educated and I will need to take a next step somewhere. Where that is I don’t know yet. Why haven’t I taken them yet you’re asking? Well…

My backup quit at work, Friday was her last day so I kind of took an impromptu vacation day and another day off to make up for it. I was off Wednesday and Friday this last week. I worked Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Technically I should have taken my finals on Wednesday, but I had some odd stuff to do around the house. Then of course, Wednesday night was a fun one. Since Monday night or maybe it was Tuesday, they were predicting nasty severe weather for Wednesday. When the severe weather expert on the Weather Channel says they are expecting a major severe weather outbreak with a great chance of tornadoes, you think… damn. Anyway I was kind of tired and I was supposed to work on Thursday so I wanted to get to bed early, but like always, the storms didn’t really start up until almost bed time. I watched many tornado warnings over in Minnesota and then between 9 and 10 they really died off and there were just severe thunderstorm warnings going on. Well I was dead ass tired so I ended up nodding off around 10:30 and then I woke up around 11:30. About that time they said our county was under a severe thunderstorm warning. About that time I decided to move from the couch to the bed because I figured it was not really a big deal. Of course I didn’t make it to the bed before the lightning and thunder almost became a non stop sound. The wind picked up slightly and it rained a little bit. Six minutes into it I figured that it was almost over and then this fucking wind hit up.

So I’m standing somewhere between my bed and my couch. About 12 feet in front of me is my open window and all I hear is extremely loud roaring wind, loud snap, crackle and popping minus the Rice Krispies outside my window. That and the fact that rain shot in my window roughly 10 feet soaking my carpet and couch and anything else unlucky enough to be in the way. The storm siren got set off too, unfortunately about a half hour after everything came crashing down in town.

When everything calmed down I open up the front door and I notice that a good portion of the tree is now laying in the driveway and the yard. The gutter is also partially missing. Fucking summer.

Remember how I was bitching not too long ago how it was pretty chilly out for whatever month it was that I was bitching in? Well apparently someone heard me and decided to make it warmer… much warmer. I can handle the heat; it really doesn’t bother me anymore. The humidity on the other hand is a quite annoying. Of course it’s nothing that me, myself and my A/C can’t handle.

My schooling is finally done now, well all except the final exams. I have until July 8th to take those and I probably will on the next day I have off, which may just be tomorrow considering I worked over 8 hours today. I’m extremely happy I took the schooling because I think it has helped me a lot learning Flash and Fireworks. I’m by no means a professional but I think I do pretty well for an amateur with only 6 weeks of learning.

As of yesterday, the Looking Glass Lounge is no more. Although I was only there for roughly a year, maybe a little more, it’s sad to see it go. What did the lounge mean to me, and how the hell did I get there in the first place? I believe I was stumbling through Yahoo Chat and I was actually checking out peoples profiles looking at their web pages to basically get ideas for my own sites and I saw Nola in there and I went to her site (which was nolatoyou.com at the time) and from there I got to the Lounge. I know I signed up within the next couple days. The Looking Glass Lounge was the first online forum that I ever signed up for and participated in; and yes I’ve been online for almost 10 years now. For whatever reason I signed up and started putting my two cents in whenever I could. I met a lot of different people in there and shortly after coming in I started being a moderator and eventually co-administrator.

At any rate, it’s kind of hard to watch something you took part in go away like that, and I was for the most part just a participant. I know it was hard for Nola to make the decision to shut it down. Some people may say; well you’ve still got your other website (onlynola.com), but honestly that’s like saying sorry your dog died, but you still have the other one. Websites are for the most part unique to themselves, and to have to close down something you’ve put two years of your life into is a harder decision than most people may think it is.
So with that I bid the Lounge farewell, and as far as most of the people from the lounge; see you soon.

Oh, by the way, if you’re wondering who Willis Haviland Carrier is; Google it.