slowly going insane

We did not end up eating at the Asian Buffet the other day, I was hot and irritated and Victor's tooth was hurting. We'll so some other time.

This morning Bonecrusher was so cute. He climbed up on my lap and helped me do my hair, then when he got bored of that he sprawled across my legs. Then finally he ended up asleep in front of my keyboard. (I do my hair in front of my computer using a mirror that's to the side) I had to go make my lunch but I didn't want to disturb him so I crept away and just as I was in the kitchen he came bounding in with the same expression as a child who gets lost at a store and catches a glimpse of mommy around a corner. He sprawled out in front of the door to try and stop me from going to work. Poor kitty.

There was a lot of stupid today at work.

First thing happened as I was going into the parking lot. An old person was ahead of me and decided that it would be the perfect time to start driving at 2mph forcing me to park in the middle of the street in order for them to finally get far enough into the parking lot (and then for some reason they stopped moving entirely) for me to get off the street.

It took nearly an hour to face up because of customers fighting me on that.

The amaretto guy showed up today. Oh, I get tired of him never special ordering and just expecting me to have enough. I'm used to him so I do keep enough on hand. But it's still tiring. What do you do with 15 pints of amaretto coffee creamer in 9 days? (he usually shows up every 7-10 days)

While facing a woman ran up and told me her gallon of milk was leaking. So I took it from her and wiped it off. I was on my way to put it back, because it was wet, not leaking, when she asked what kind it was so she could get another one. How do you not know what kind of milk you got? Anyway, she got hers and I put the other back on the shelf.

And then I'd gotten up to the milk and there was this guy on his cellphone in front of the milk just sorta hovering there. He waited till I'd faced everything before taking a whole gallon, so I fixed that and was about to go on when he put that back and got a 2% instead. ...a 2% he'd just finished watching me move from a lower shelf to the upper shelf in order to make the upper shelf not empty. So I rushed back over there and moved another from the lower shelf to the upper shelf to fill the hole he'd just made.

Then the amaretto guy, who I guess was still hanging around, told me of a gallon of milk that was leaking. At the moment I really didn't care too much so I shoved it to the back and faced over the spot.

I had just gotten to a point where I could start on the milk load when Bret called me to check. And then Chris was. And then Dee was. Um... that was supposed to be Chris first, then Dee, then me. Why was I called first? I checked and then was about to leave. I turned off my light and started walking away when I  saw a guy walk into my lane and offload. Um... turning light off and leaving isn't a clear enough indicator to you? He had two items so I checked him out anyway, besides which Bret was standing right there and refusing to block anyone off even though they're supposed to. And then after I got to the back Bret called me to ask what number I had rung someone's apples under, 4133 or 4135. I happened to remember it was 4135. Apparently he had mixed two types of apples and I had rung them up under the more expensive number by sheer random chance.

Then I was filling the top shelf of eggs which requires me to stand up on the ledge of the egg case. When I got down it was to discover someone was reaching around my legs to get into the markdown bin. She completely ignored me and continued to dig through the bin regardless of my suddenly backing away from her. (well she DID sneak up behind me and get within inches of me)

I found a gallon of 1% someone put in with the 2%.

Chris called me to check but it wasn't needed.

Oh, the Key Retailing walk went well I presume? No news is good news, right? The guy seemed sorta nice anyway, from what I heard. Bonnie especially liked him. We're getting a stacker that moves back and forth as well as up and down. Yay! But they were walking the aisles when I realized they were near my cottage cheese and sour cream and it was empty so I quickly stuffed some on the shelf in hopes they wouldn't say anything. I don't think they did.

Chris was nosy later and asked me things like how I was doing, is Victor working. Go away.

Two guys came through and bought every single one of my Darigold 2% quarts. ????? That was probably about 18 quarts at 1.29 each (thereabouts). Why??? Well this means I'll be out till tomorrow when we get a case in, and then those will sell and we'll be out from Saturday night till Tuesday afternoon. All because they just had to buy ALL of them. Why all of them?? They weren't on sale. It's not a common stock-up item. I've never had anyone buy more than two of those at a time.

My elbow and and whole right arm was achy.

I decided I would fill the yogurt, which always requires facing. But alas! Two old ladies decided to park their cart in front of the yogurt down by the juice while they went to shop in the cottage cheese. At the same time someone else was standing around in front of the yogurt checking ingredients (which is understandable). And someone else was heading towards the yogurt at a slow shamble that would inevitably pick up at the most convenient time as always. Finally I was able to go face. I finished in one door and was about to move to the next when I saw someone staring at the yogurt in that door. Ok, so I faced up the rest of that door and fixed some tags. Finally as I was kneeling down she stuck her hand in the door above my head. So I stood up and jumped away, holding the door open. She completely ignored me. She put the cup of yogurt back down, half off the one she had put it on top of and went back to the first door. Finally she walked away empty handed. Ok... So then someone ripped the door away from me and when I jumped she stuck her hand in to grab something and I made a noise so she mumbled an "excuse me" and left.

I'd just gotten back into the cooler when I saw through the shelf that someone had put a yogurt into a shelf extender! Those are stupid hanger basket things that stick to my doors are have product in them. Someone had put a cup of yogurt in one. Instead of opening the door and putting it back where it belonged, they had to put it in the extender so that it rotted. Thanks, now I had to throw it away!

Then I was filling milk when I pushed some milk from the left to the right and some old guy who had just watched me doing that came up and took from the right. So I moved milk over again to fill that hole. ...so he took from the right again!!!

Oh, and what do two adults and one infant need 6 gallons of milk for?

And what's going on with large curd cottage cheese that people are buying it insanely fast?

Someone put leaking milk in my cart again and it got all over my medium egg repack cartons and I'll probably have to throw away half the stack. Such a waste.

Then I was filling yoplait and someone came up and took a vanilla whip, which is on the top shelf, and then decided she didn't want it and stuffed it in sideways half-off the shelf three shelves down in with the Lite Raspberry. Thanks!! I had to go around to fix that.

Then someone took wrong so I had to run around to fix that. I hadn't been back in the cooler more than 40 seconds when I had to run back around to fix something someone else did. And they wonder why it takes me so long to do anything. Maybe if people weren't so stupid I could get stuff done faster.

The bakery guy commented that I never looked happy. I hate that. Leave me alone.

Someone put a gallon of water in with the eggs.

When I got home Bonecrusher was so happy. *sigh* Even though he was a bad kitty and knocked over my rosemary. Also, he loves my begonia and likes to lay in it until he finds the perfect leaf to pull off and bat around. They're in the window right now, and I have stuff around them so maybe he'll stop.

At least I don't work till 8 tomorrow I guess. I hate 10:30-7 cause I never get to bed till 9. I was hoping to get my bedtime back to 7:30.

And the sad thing is that for most people the rest of their life would be like this. Every day, the same things, until you're so deadened to the pain that you don't even feel it anymore, until the customers have beaten you into submission. But not me. I won't be seeing dead eyes staring at me from the mirror for the rest of my life. I'm escaping this. I'm leaving. I'm leaving and I'll be poorer and have a different kind of work to do, but I will be so much happier and at peace that that won't matter.

Cheating on cleaning

Either Victor's right and you do get used to the torture or FOTR is growing on me. I'm actually almost enjoying it. And I'm almost 300 pages into it, btw.

Today was alright I guess, as far as 10 hour days go. Came home with a hurting back and I had to bandage my wrist again. I had a bunch of cleaning to do because of the visit tomorrow. So by noon I had time to start on that. I dusted behind the fans, for real this time. I only end up actually dusting behind the fans a few times a year, the rest of the time I sweep the ceiling. P&G (health dept) told me that's how they know I haven't dusted is if there's dust on the ceiling, on the light fixtures, on the wall in front of the fans, on the fan casing. So usually I sweep the ceiling and call it good. But today I got back there and dusted. And then I swept the ceiling for good measure. Then I swept and while sweeping I found that the Produce truck was being offloaded and Grocery was waiting. I then "forgot" about Grocery and finished sweeping. Then I pulled all my Key Retailing signs and was about to get started making new ones when Leon, the driver for Grocery today came to get me to help offload. He'd already started, which was good. We got it done and got returns loaded. There was a bale with three wires snapped, only held together by two. Bonnie thought it was too wide to go through the door into the back and wanted me to have the driver back out so I could use the stacker to put it into the truck. But I told her I could probably just shrink wrap it and it would be fine. She said that wouldn't work. So today I wrapped it up all nice and tight and it actually made it inside with room to spare. I can't wait to tell her that.

Anyway, after Grocery I still had to mop, clean the juice shelves, wash the doors, label and date all my products, get some carts and turn one into a donations cart, make the new Key Retailing signs. fill the eggs and milk, and fill the holes and it was 3:00. I was supposed to be off at 2. So I made up my new signs which didn't take too long, actually. Then I, ah, washed my juice shelves... And by wash I mean I took the sliders out and flipped them upside down so the dirty side was down the clean side was up. hehe... I try not to do that often cause it is terribly annoying to go to flip over a slider only to find that I'd already done that and both sides are filthy.

I honestly forgot about labeling.

I decided it wasn't worth my time to wash the doors since they get dirty so fast anyway and besides, Joe was going around cleaning and had just started washing under my doors when I left. I made sure to hopefully ask if he was going to wash my doors while he was at it, but he said that he was going to clean as much as he can until 8. So I don't know, I told newbie to do it if Joe didn't. Newbie is too cheerful and it's annoying. I want to find some way to upset him, but he seems the type who would walk away from anything with a hop and a whistle. Ah, well, it's nice to have someone who isn't always irritated at me for "not getting enough done".

I filled the eggs and while doing so, at 3:45 Bret came by and snapped at me to make sure Dairy was clean.

I left mopping to newbie. I made my acid mix of whatever the pink stuff is the janitors use and bleach. I love that stuff. It makes my floors so clean you could almost eat off them. And the bleach makes the pink color go away so anyone who peeks to see what I'm cleaning with see nothing but murky water. But the pink stuff makes the bleach work extra good. It puts out horrid fumes though so you need to make sure you mop right before a break or something or you'll get lightheaded and stupid. And I just love telling the truth sometimes! I told newbie that he doesn't have to scrub because they only care how it smells. I said, "I could spray bleach under the shelves and no one would notice." *ahem* I should have said, "I know I could..." hehe I do mop though, at least once a month.

I would clean for real a lot more often but there is no time. Everyone thinks I do all this cleaning but I don't. I can't. Not if I can't go home until my holes are filled. If I had that on top of everything else I would work 10 hour days every day. And dairy doesn't really get gross, I mean, I've never failed an inspection. I've had bad marks, but nothing serious.

I told Bret about the stupid mats in front of the shelves and how scraping at the stuff on them scrapes up rubber or plastic or whatever they're made of. I don't think he understood what I meant.

While flipped juice shelves I had trouble with one and kept trying to help the product get up onto the slider and I ended up stabbing myself in the neck not once. Not twice. But thrice. So I have three nice red marks on my throat and I dearly wish it were two so I could call it a vampire bite. Oh, well. They didn't bleed so all's well.

I heard Bret talking to Patty, all mad and upset about something. He said something about someone moving something or other and said, "It probably stupid Darby who moved it". ooo, I gotta tell that one to Bonnie.

I went up front to get some carts and I was half-way through the door back into the store when these two teenage-maybe a little older guys rushed up and tried to cut me off and shove me back into the cart corral. Ha. No. I pushed my way forwards anyway and I overheard them behind me calling me all sorts of nasty names and saying that sometimes you get nice employees and sometimes you really, really don't. So they swore at me because I wouldn't back off and let them cut me off?

I was taking a case of eggs off the top of a pallet and there was a 5-dozen pack on top of it I didn't see and it slid down and hit my glasses. ugh I had to bend them back into shape a bit and then they sat differently on my face and made me nauseous but I think it was for the better in the long run since everything looks a tad more 3D than normal.

And speaking of 3D: http://www.starwars.com/movies/saga/announce3d/index.html eeeeee!!!!! *jumps up and down* *bounce bounce* This is actually one of the first SW things that has made me this excited since ROTS. People always put down TPM, but I love TPM. I really do. I'll write later about that, though, my wrist is sore and I want to do something fun before bed. Not sure, maybe Neopets, maybe Zuma. Dunno. Victor has Decoder Ring Theater on so I'm half-listening to that.

I took a bath when I came home, it was nice. I had trouble getting out cause I was so immersed in my book. eek. Maybe I like it in a "it's so bad it's good" sorta way. We'll see if it gets boring again. This meeting is going on a bit long and has all these names that I won't remember because they don't mean anything to me and I don't feel like flipping to the map at the back to track everything in my mind.

Oh, I forgot to put Batman on my list of angsty characters. I keep telling Victor I need to make him a batsuit but he keeps saying he's got too much of a gut for that. Bleh. I'll make one for him anyway. I think he'd get a kick out of wearing it, regardless of gut. There's ways around that anyway.

Writing

While reading FOTR I came across this paragraph which I shall now take out of context: "At that moment there was a knock on the door, and Sam came in. He ran to Frodo and took his left hand, awkwardly and shyly. He stroked it gently and then he blushed and turned hastily away." Well. The slash just writes itself, doesn't it?

 Slash: Fanfiction depicting two fictional characters as being gay when they actually aren't. I believe Harry Potter fans are the ones who really brought slash writing into light. An example of this is readily available at fanfiction.net. If I search for Snape fanfiction I get 24,297 results. Now, if I remove certain words, such as "Slash, Harry, James, Sirius, Dumbledore, and Voldemort" we are left with 14,101 results. I'd have removed the word Lupin as well but they didn't leave enough text space in the "search without these words" box. And I know from experience this still doesn't mean all the slash is gone. There are other parings that are less popular, such as Lucius/Snape, Krakornof (sp?)/Snape, and the such. And then there's fics that don't advertise what they are. I am going to, sometime when I have time, make a motivational poster with images of every character I can think of and title it "Harry Potter Fans: We'll ship anything". Cause we will. Trust me, we will. The only ship I ever really got into was Snape/Lily, and this was before DH, when I thought I was just another weird shipper. Oh, the delight I had when my ship turned canon. I also dabbled in Draco/Hermoine, even though I knew it wouldn't happen. I do admit it was seeing SS in movie format that really bumped Snape up into the running for favorite character. But I justify this by telling myself that if OOTP had come out before the SS movie I would have liked Snape anyway due to the "Snape's Worst Memory" chapter. Now there is no contest. Snape is far, beyond, and without a doubt my favorite character. Harry? Pfft, Harry's a twat. He's not even in my top three. Not sure who those spots belong to. Probably Ginny has one of them. Lupin would have if he'd been played by Ewan McGregor like everyone wanted. Bleh. Snape is my favorite character because he takes angst and manliness to create a delicious combination I'm sure many a woman would not be able to resist. From being a child watching his parents fight to being an outcast at school to developing Best Friend Syndrome to losing Lily to having to endure not only everyone hating him and being suspicious of him but watching Harry grow up. One fanfiction I can't remember the name of said it best, it's about Snape's viewpoint of the Snape's Worst Memory chapter of OOTP, and this is only a loose quote as I don't remember it word for word: "He pushed Harry against the wall, *bam* it was James he saw sagging against in pain, and he relished in the anger coursing through him, in his causing pain to the man who had made his life a living hell... Harry looked up *bam* it was Lily he saw now, Lily's eyes staring at him. Lily whom he'd just hurt. Hatred for himself swelled within him as he let Harry run from the room. His hands clenched into fists and his eyes closed as pain swelled within him, making his breathing come hard and sharp." Ok, so I added my own flare to that. *sigh* Oh, but wasn't that lovely. I love angst. If you take all my favorite characters from various sources you'll see they all have angst.
Boba Fett: Lost his father at a young age, has no mother, lives alone and prefers it, is dangerous and deadly, the best at what he does. He is silent and strong, and deep down just needs someone who loves him. (Note: I abhor Karen Traviss and tend to 'forget' her books exist.)
Severus Snape: Was raised by parents who often fought, his father was a drunk, he was very poor, he met Lily as a child and they became best friends, later he fell in love with her but her interest in the Dark Arts as well as his being her best friend turned her away and she soon fell in with the cool athletic kid who had spent their childhood tormenting Snape, and then she died and Snape spent the rest of his life being treated with hatred and disrespect and being outcast from most society only finding refuge at Hogwarts. Most people never realized just how much of a hero he really was, living the most dangerous life of all, and all for the woman he loved.
hm, well, actually, the only other angst-ridden guys on the list are people I know so little about that I'm not sure I would be justified in calling myself a fan of any of them. Aragorn, of course, I only know from the movies.  Sasuke Uchiha, from Naruto, I only know from the cartoons up till that main test thing where he gets bitten (or whatever), and of course Victor makes fun of him constantly. Obi-Wan has some angst, but not enough for him to really make the list, unless you want to get into the whole Obi/Siri Tachi, or Obi/Cerasi thing. (personally I prefer Siri Tachi over Cerasi) ...not fictional, but Victor has had an angst-ridden life and angst continues to follow him. Despite what he says, he keeps saying that there is no angst, but he doesn't see his eyes in the dead of night or hear his voice when talking of such things. Sometimes, a lot of times, angst is to be read between the lines. You have to imagine the character and how they feel. You have to imagine how you would feel if every cell in your body cried out for someone, your arms itched and your fingers twitched to hold them, and to know they are outside your grasp for any of various reasons, you believe yourself not good enough and you don't want to drag an angel into the hell of your life, their family would not permit it, they are dead, it would mean the destruction of both your lives (either for losing your positions, titles, jobs, etc, or for compromise that would eat away at you, or literally), etc. And then take whatever else has happened to this character and picture that too, and how they must feel. And then wallow in it. Get worked up about it, fume about it, think on it, feel it, taste it, be it. This is why outside distraction is so bad when writing or reading or watching. You're there, you're in the story... and then suddenly someone's talking to you. And by time you get back into it the moment's over. Like in Jewel of the Nile, the beginning, where she's writing and she's there and a part of the story and she's in it, and then whatshisname says something to her and BAM she's lost it. I totally understand that. Sometimes when I write it's as if the story is there and my fingers are the vessel which carries the words to the screen before me. I have one story now, it came to me in a dream last Thursday and followed me throughout the day. A lot of my stories have the characters titled Him, Her, Her Mom, His Friend, The King, etc, but for this I sat down and made names for most everyone. Maybe it's just because this is a new story and I've gotten tired of the old ones but I really want to write this one out. I can almost feel the story, I see the setting in my mind perfectly, and it cries out to me. This one is unlike any of my others. This one has a sort of cold grit of reality to it that my others don't. This one has a time-period even! Most of my others are just plain fantasy, might happen on this world, might happen on that world, happens in no specific time. But this one, even though it is set on it's own planet (as in I have no setting other than weather and terrain that could be anywhere in the North/West) it has a time period that I will attempt to stick to somewhat faithfully. I write in my mind as a means to fall asleep. I have one story that's just about mostly written... in my mind. I only have so many scenes actually written. I have another I never started putting to reality that's entirely in my mind. And I  have another that is an offshoot of the previous one I mentioned that I did start writing though I haven't made names for anyone. And then I have yet another which I have determined to abandon. And another that is pretty bad and so will probably never be written. Unless I want to do what Ewan McGregor did in A Life Less Ordinary about the book he wrote, "Of course it's rubbish that's the point. You pick it up at the airport, read it on holiday." But back to what I was saying, I just need to sit down and write more. The mood just doesn't strike me as often as it used to. Which is sad since because I'm older and know so much more I could write so much better. And with Victor here I know any fight scenes or problems involving how men think I could just turn around and ask. But therein lies another problem, I get irrationally shy whenever he's in the room while I'm writing. I fear he'll turn around and peek over my shoulder and read what I write and tell me it's bad or correct something and I'll hate what I did. Sometimes the words just strike me and I go with it, even if it's stupid or has nothing to do with anything or has no place in the story or is just totally unrealistic. These parts I usually delete, sometimes I find a grain of gold and edit until it's reasonable. But this new story is so tangible... I must write it to completion.Oh, and there's always a happy ending.

I suppose I shall never get any writing done if I spend my day writing here of how I love to write. lol

Today I am wearing my lovely blue sweater. It's a replacement for one I wore till it had holes in it and was so grimy no amount of washing would clean it. I've had the original since I was about 11 or 12. I was amazed to find almost the same exact sweater at Wal-Mart last year. Different brand, somewhat different styling in places, but overall the same sweater.

Later we're going to go check out the Asian Buffet that opened a week or so ago. First we'll check the prices and if it's reasonable we'll have dinner there. We also have to get cat food and litter.

Last night I took in the shoulder of my tunic but I'll take a picture of that later and upload it.

Work and Cats

 

Isn't Bonecrusher so cute??? And just so Atton doesn't feel left out, he managed to make a graceful, elegant jump to the top of the bookcase (probably to showoff to Bonecrusher who had been coming up behind him at the time) and didn't knock anything over at all and he was so cute up there I had to take his picture.

 

And this is how far along my tunic is. I'm going to bring the shoulders in a little. I have tiny shoulders. Also, you can see that I have stay stitching on one side of the front but not the other. I intend to remedy this.

I spent a lot of yesterday reading FOTR, I'm up around 200 pages now. It's gotten a lot better. Aragorn's so angsty. And he stopped describing every single step they take. I mean, a few days passed without us knowing when they stopped to eat or what trees they passed! Victor doesn't think Aragorn's angsty, he thinks he's silly. pfft, what do men know about angst. He even answered himself on the benefits of Aragorn's angst by saying, "All chicks love him."

Oh, Bronecrusher is adorable. He came up to me just now and meowed at me the cutest little mew. I think he was lonely so I played with him a little. It's fun to laser him around, he'll chase it up and down the hallway so many times. Atton will only run up and down the hallway once or twice before he spends the rest of his time stalking it and pawing at it. Sometimes you can get him going in a good circle, and sometimes he does this thing where he's laying and uses his front claws to pull himself halfway up the hallway chasing it. (at least that's how it looks, he does it so fast it's hard to say exactly how he does it) Boney went for a drink of water and now he's laying on the floor near me. As a long haired cat he needs lots of water to clean himself with.

So we have a Key Retailing Audit on Thursday. A part of me wondered today if maybe that's their cover for coming to investigate my report, but it's all my fancy that, I'm not that important you see. This is just our yearly Key Retailing Certification. Key Retailing is stupid. A big waste of money. I have to have specialized signs up over each pallet space, I believe I've said this before, though. I have a cleaning chart I have to check off on once a week. Which Bret caught me on that today, he asked if I clean the sections or just check them off, to which I neutrally weaseled out of by saying, "If it looks dirty I clean it." Honestly I rarely clean anything the chart tells me to. It has one whole week devoted to the 1% gallons of milk. 1% is clean. I only have to clean the 1% section once every other month or so. 2%, Whole, and Skim are dirty milks and I usually do a shelf or two of each of those sections once a week. And then it wants me to take all the yogurt off the shelves to clean those one week, which if I actually did do that it would take me two days straight without doing anything else. And that's if I went fast. And butter, I haven't cleaned the butter shelves since we got new racks over a year ago and they're just now to the point where a few of them need cleaning. And I like to hit a few juice shelves here and there while I'm doing the milk shelves. I mean, every store is different, and a standardized cleaning schedule just doesn't work. There's some juice sections I've never cleaned and they're shiny and spotless. And then there's other juice sections that I should actually be cleaning every other day (Kroger Value gallons are incredibly dirty). Some things I get away with because my doors get dirty so fast that if I skip washing them I can shrug and go, "I dunno, I washed them yesterday." And I rotate the milk shelves so randomly that their overall cleanliness is a passing score. And some of the cleaning chart is for Wall Deli, like "Pegged Cheese", and some things we just don't have. I don't have a coffin case. (center aisle display case I suppose is the proper term)

Anyway, I hope they get Dustin to get under the shelves tomorrow, I don't want to have to do it. I can't get the shelves back up on the stupid front liners. Ok, first, P&G wanted me to use these pads. One side was sorta plasticy the other was sorta soft papery (gauzey perhaps is a good way of putting it?) and I was supposed to put these liners under my milk shelves. First off, a lot of the guys couldn't figure out that plastic side went down, so I had to scrape the gauze stuff off the floor. Second, even if the plastic side went down it still glued to the floor. They got super nasty super fast, and I even gagged while trying to pull those things off and into garbage bags. And not only did they stink so bad, but they dribbled milk everywhere so it was impossible to get those off the floor without getting spoiled milk all over myself. Finally P&G changed their minds. We painted the floor white. Still not a good idea because milk dried and while scraping dried milk off the floor I'd chip the paint. So they changed their minds again and had us scrape all the paint off which really helped for a while cause I could blame milk spills on paint (them, "What's that white spot?" me, "Oh, that's paint..."). And now they have these plastic rectangular mats we have to put in front of all the shelves, not just the milk, but all the shelves. And they don't even match my shelves or walls. They're more of a creamy off-white. And unless the section is nearly empty I can not get the shelf back up on the mat. I  had to get the guys to put the mats down in the first place. And now there's no way for me to clean under the shelves because I can't roll my racks out of the way and they're too low to the ground for me to crawl under them. I have rolled the milk shelves away when I knew I could get someone to help me push it back into place. But it's still so much effort. And I can't get them clean with cleaners and paper towels. I'd have to move all the shelves away from the walls in order to get them into a sink or something, and then they're so large and unwieldly that I don't think I could wash them even in the big area where the janitors keep the scrubbers, unless they had both scrubbers out on the floor at the time. I can't scrape milk off them, because the scrapers just cut ridges in the plastic and make things worse. I wish they'd quit freaking out about it. I'd pet 99% of all customers don't even notice the mats are there and the 1% that do are the secret shoppers who look for these things. Oh, and btw, milk has traveled under these mats and I just know the day they decide to do away with the mats we will find a mold farm has started under them. I can't get under the mats to clean because of the other shelves holding the mat down. It's about 2 1/2 sections to a mat.

I had the grocery truck to offload first thing at 6AM. The driver was George. He's one of my favorite drivers. Didn't used to be but he is now.

Zhaun told me he saw I wasn't marking the Darigold milk half of cost plus a penny so I told him I am... a day or two before it expires and that I'm marking it kinda cheapish but not giving it away cheap when there's still four or five days on it. For example, today I marked October 1sts down to 2.70, but come Wednesday I'll go 2.00ish and come Friday I'll go 1.50. They'll sell. I know what I'm doing.

Bret came up to me to ask why I scanned out 282 dollars two weeks ago. I pulled it up and showed him. Corp said I scanned 282, my report showed 94. He said that when they were on the phone with him they said it was also Wall Deli on there, and we pulled it up. Sure enough, they had 200-something scanned out. He was surprised and took a look at it. Since he was so interested in it and where the money went I pulled up last week's report, which was 600-dollars. eek. It was mostly Julie and somewhat Zhaun, and 555 dollars of it went to DI. Data Integrity, which means BOH was off. Balance on Hand. That means the computer said we had 12, but we actually had 6, that kind of thing.

I was taking a wheeler to the back with boxes sticking out on either side and this guy was standing in the hallway to the backroom looking at markdown carts. He was sideways, facing me. I said excuse me as I moved towards him. He didn't budge. So I stood there, in front of him, and had to reappearance my boxes so I could get through without hitting him. It's the entranceway to the backroom, why are people so surprised when people need to get through it? They act all shocked, or like we're being rude, some get angry or irritated at having to move. And it's just mind boggling. That's the entranceway to the backroom, you don't expect employees and vendors need to get through it?

Our future house

We didn't end up going to the booksale again because when we got to the mall I realized I had forgotten cash and I didn't want to go back so we went on. We went to my mom's house. Of course the guys ran off to shoot guns while me and my mom talked for a bit. After a time we went to look at various spots for the house. Then we came back and had dinner of what was basically spaghetti made with penne, corn, pineapple, and corn bread. Then we had chocolate zucchini brownies and left. We got home around 8 and I was just so tired. I didn't get to bed till 9 though, and probably not asleep till 9:30. ugh, and ick. It was especially bad because Atton decided it was time to teach Bonecrusher how to hunt and had set a mouse loose in the bedroom!!! It finally escaped down the heater vent, *sigh*. Victor insists the vent leads outside but I was freaking out that the mouse was going to die down there and catch the house on fire ...or climb back up during the night to get revenge and chew my toes off!

Here's pictures of the spot we chose:

 

This is in the driveway looking to the road.

 

This one is taken standing in the driveway, the house will be over on the left there.

 

 

This is facing where the house will be, the door will be facing me.

 

I think this is standing about where the house will be, looking towards an eventual yard/garden area.

 

This is looking at the yard/garden.

 

 This is looking from the garden towards the house.

 

This is from on the hill looking down, by the stumps will be the house and to the left is the garden.

We will be buying bags of cement and heading back up there sometime to get started on the foundation and clearing brush. Not a whole lot of brush to really clear up, though, it looks like. We also have to keep an eye out for barrels, for catching rain. And I'm not sure what all else. But next year is when we'll start on building. I figure my last day of work will be May 21st. My hire date is May 15th and if I stick around till then I get my vacation cash out, which is the store paying me for the vacation time I didn't take. But just to be safe since the 15th is a Sunday I'll finish out the whole week, I don't want to miss out on vacation pay because I left a day or two early. I have 120 hours of vacation time I don't intend to use, plus we'll have our tax refund by then too. That will be a nice boost just as we're moving up there. Actually that might be a good time to get our building materials, with all that money. So sticking around till the 21st is a good idea, and possibly the week after might be better cause then we could wait till my paycheck with the vacation pay comes in on the 27th and then get all our building stuff on Saturday the 28th and haul it up there that day and getting all that bought and hauled up and offloaded would probably take most the day so I don't think we would really get started on the 28th. Of course by then we'll have moved our stuff. Probably spend April and May packing and sorting and getting the house emptied and cleaned. I got itchy and already have a box started. lol, so far all it's got in it is the tang I stocked up on and something else I don't remember what. And of things we already have, we got a chainsaw, and I found a nice clock that's got a humidity reader and a thermometer on it for 11 dollars on summer closeout at Wal-Mart (it was originally, like, 25). And at some point we'll pick up a push vacuum (for lack of better name, cordless? non-electric? like what fancy restaurants use during the day). We still need to figure out what kind of siding to use. Everything on the inside can wait, it's the outside that really needs to be done first. We still need to make an actual parts list of things we'll need, like, I know you use metal sheets to help connect boards but I don't want to go into Home Depot and ask for "metal board connector sheet thingies", lol. And we need to take a closer look at what they have anyway because I think we didn't do a good look-through before. Probably due to me having started on a cold at the time and being somewhat miserable and out of it. We also need to be on the lookout for a gas stove, either store bought if it goes on sale or used if we see an add for one. We also need to get the solar setup going, I need to add together how much money we have saved, I believe it's something like, 1,500 so far, but I would have to double check.

It's hard thinking that it's about 8 months away, that seems so close and yet so far.

And this is what happens if I braid my hair when it's not completely dry:

 

These pictures also sorta show off my SW book collection! That is certainly not all my books, but it's a fair amount. You can also see my garbage can that has eyes on it. I did that because Victor put a wrapper on his desk instead of in the can so I drew eyes on it and then turned it to face him and opened the top saying, "Feed me!!" lol (the tan part slides up and down)

Mah kittehs!

This morning as I was waking up Bonecrusher did his usual morning greet and climbed over us, settling in once or twice to purr and demand being petted. That is until he discovered Victor was shirtless and suddenly Victor jumped, saying, "That's not going to give you milk!" So I picked Bonecrusher up and moved him away as Victor pulled the blankets over himself.  ROTFL Poor kitten. He keeps doing these baby kitty who was taken from his mother too early things. He's tried to nurse on Victor's nose before, too, lol. And last night he curled up on my neck and put his paws on my face. We might get him some kitten milk.

This is the stay-stitching on the back neck of my tunic. You see why it takes me so long to make anything. It's not that the actual process is time-consuming, it's that I'm lazy. I did eventually get the back and front put together but I still need to press the seam. Of course I forgot I had meant to flat fell the seam and I instead serged it, which is ok too. After I press the seam I'll take a picture of that.





Oh, I was showering and I dropped my shaver. As I picked it up my thumb touched the sharp edge. I didn't know if I had cut myself or not, but I figured I'd see blood in a little bit if I did, or perhaps it was a slight cut and it didn't open the skin but using the thumb would. So I continued on with my shower, keeping my left thumb out of the way, and after a bit it did start to hurt and feel achy in the spot I had touched the edge with, like a grating sensation. And then I dropped the shaver again and bent to pick it up again and this time I realized something. The first time I had picked up the shaver I did so with my right hand, which meant I had cut my right thumb.... After I realized this my left thumb stopped hurting and my right one started up. Pretending + Insanity = Psychosomatic. But that's what I mean, think like you'll live till 100 and you'll get a lot further than if you go through life telling yourself you're going to die by 70. Though now everytime I get a headache Victor asks me, "Which thumb hurts?" -_-

Book Sale, yay!!

This morning I finally remembered that since it's been cold in the mornings I should start warming up the car. So I started the car warming up then put my hair in the double braided buns. I then went to go to work but my keys were gone! I looked and looked and I couldn't find them. I woke up Victor and when he got out to the livingroom he was like, "...how are your keys missing if the car's running?" I was like, "!!! .... oh...." Oops... lol!

Once at work Zhaun gave me a bunch of stuff to do. Do his shelf review, put these five or six pallets in the container. Oh, and the schedule might be this or this or this and make sure you do this and you do that. And, ok, Zhaun, make the schedule and I'll check it later, and I know how to do my job. And we have a Key Retailing audit on Thursday. Key Retailing is stupid. I have to have a specialized sign up over each pallet space describing what's in that section. As if you couldn't tell by looking at the stacks of milk that that's where milk goes. Anyway, some of mine are wrong cause when I first did it I missed a pallet space at the very beginning so I'll have to redo all of my signs. And we're supposed to get our boards up to date, which me and Bonnie do ours daily so that part never really applies to us.

I did do Zhaun's shelf review. But I had no time to do the pallets. Oh, well. Dennis got a little mad cause they were in his school and office supplies section but oh well. Have Dustin do it. I also didn't do the scan audit so we'll hit the bad list next week. Oh, well, I don't know why that's my job anyway. I have to go out on the floor and scan 300 tags in beer/wine and 300 tags in grocery and make sure what the computer says matches what the tag says. The computer is always right. This is why it makes me twitch when people say that the computer ripped them off cause the tag says it was this price, not that price. No. If there's a price discrepancy it's because the tag is wrong. The computer is never wrong. Sure, we take the hit and the store gets shrink from selling a product at a lowered price which reflects on the store's profit which in turn affects our paychecks, schedules, and orders, which in turn affects the customer who insists on the lower price just because someone was super far behind and didn't have time to do an audit which resulted in a tag not getting pulled which ultimately is the scan coordinator's fault for not pulling the tag when the price changed anyway.

Deli/Frozen showed up at 9 and the driver told me he wasn't going to help offload because he'd just finished moving furniture. Which I don't know how he was just moving furniture if he's been on the road between here and Layton, Utah since yesterday (probably morning or noon, I know they get to the yard and spend a few hours prepping or something and then take off). So the earliest he could have done that was Wednesday. And you know, I offloaded trucks on Wednesday so by the same logic I shouldn't have had to do it again already. Anyway, before I could come up with anything to say he went out to his truck so after a bit Bonnie went to yell at him. She told him we needed the bay for vendors and he had to help. Which he did cheerfully enough and was fairly pleasant the rest of the time. A bit stupid, but for someone from Doug Andrus he wasn't so bad, really. It only took me telling him which is the meat cooler two or three times before he figured it out. Not bad. But while offloading my wrist started to really hurt and since Victor was heading out to the book sale soon I called to ask if he could bring my ace bandage.

So then about 10ish the Hutterites (not sure if they're all over the country or not, but they're a bit like Amish people) showed up for their special order of fruit snacks. Their special orders are never the same, and I've rarely seen them order the same thing twice. A pallet of tv dinners once, a pallet of cookies, a wheeler of gum... Oh, they do order a pallet of orange juice now and again. But today it was fruit snacks. And of course no one bothered to count them when they stacked them so we had to restack 134 cases. Thanks, night crew. During that Victor called with a list of books he'd picked up, cause I like going over our finds together before we buy anything. He'd gotten a few books for himself and had found a SW OT pack that I was certain I had but I don't see it on my shelf. hm. I forgot to look at the date but if my knowledge of SW collectables is correct I believe it's a 1995 release. It's the black case with the blue Vader helmet on the side.

After he was done there he came over and got my paycheck and gave me my bandage. I put it on and am still wearing it. It's helping a lot, though now it's a bit itchy so I might take it off for a time. I'm so glad I decided to forgo being shy and hiding my injury. Just lifting a gallon of milk was stressing to it. I don't think I blame anything in specific, it's been a long time in coming. It really started to kick in after I started playing first person games, but repeated stress from work didn't help either. No one asked about it, so I don't think anyone noticed it. Or if they did they didn't care a whole lot.

I don't think I have any bad customer stories about today, I was mostly in the back dealing with trucks and loading returns.

I do have one from last night I forgot to say. I was up front checking and this old guy, mid-late 60s maybe, came through my lane with some beer and subtly in a creepy old person way that I didn't quite get he hit on me. Ewww...

Anyway, after work I changed in the big bathroom and went to the mall! I wore my lovely blue with flowers danskin jacket. Anyway, I spent about two hours there. I ended up with 20 dollars worth of books. They're 1.50 an inch. I ended up with two romances (British girl captured by vikings, and ship wreck survivor washes up at a lighthouse), a few kiddie books (American Girl, a Peanuts book, three Choose Your Own Adventures, a Goosebumps Choose Your Own Adventure, two Little Critter, and a book of magic tricks), some horror books (The Shining, Firestarter, and two books about creepy kids), Dracula (yay!), and a book about Ancient Egyptian art and sculpturing. I also stumbled on a large stack of Mad Magazines that Victor priced at being worth 90 dollars, and he was ecstatic about it. Victor's books ended up being one about zombies and two or three ones I didn't read the backs of. It was kinda slow and not crowded at all, which was different.

I want to go back tomorrow and since I ended up with Sunday off I'm going back on Sunday too. Yay! My schedule next week is 6-2 on Monday, 6-2 on Wednesday, 10:30-7:00 on Thursday, 8-4 on Friday, and 10:30-7:00 on Saturday. I almost screwed myself into 6-4 on Wednesday. Dustin was scheduled 6-4 on Wednesday, but he'd requested Wednesday-Saturday. So Julie changed it and she doesn't know Joe can't work any earlier than 4 so when she saw 6-4 for Dustin and 4-10 for Joe and she was swapping Sunday and Wednesday (I was scheduled 10:30-7:00 on Sunday but Dustin has that now) she changed it to 6-2 for me and 2-10 for Joe. I had told her it was 6-4 so there wasn't a gap! But she said that would be overtime for me and I realized what I'd done and hastily agreed that it would be a lot of overtime.

We're having chicken and dumplings tonight. I just took them out of the oven a moment ago.
2 cans Cream of Chicken Soup
1 can Mixed Vegetables
1 can Chicken
Salt
Pepper
Basil
Rosemary
Thyme
You mix all that together in a casserole dish, then you make the dumplings:
1 1/2 cup Flour
3 tbsp Baking Powder
1 1/4 cup milk (more or less, depending on how runny you want them, I find it's easier to spread if they're runny, for some reason today I had to use 1 3/4 cups of milk and it still wasn't as runny as I normally make it, but maybe I had a blonde moment and did something wrong like only putting in 1/4 cups milk the first time and forgetting the 1 cup)
2 tbsp Vegetable Oil
Salt
Pepper
Mix that and dump it on top of the other stuff. 350° for 35 minutes.

Oh, perhaps I should mention that all my recipes are done at high altitude. You'll have to adjust for lower altitudes. I'm at 2,945'. 

Took my bandage off, ahh, sweet freedom. Time to go eat.

Late for Bed

It happened today where I was just leaving the sour cream door and this woman stepped up to take some sour cream and didn't take the door and I didn't want to let it slam on her so I had to hold it. And then I was called to check and guess who I had to check out!

At one point I was facing yogurt and someone in the door next to me took wrong. I waited till she shut the door then popped over and fixed it. Apparently she wasn't done as she went back to taking. Then she left and walked off behind me and then suddenly I hear her very rudely say, "Excuse us, we're trying to get by!" I looked at her, confused, then looked behind me and saw someone in one of the electric carts who refused to go around the display and insisted on going between me and the display. So I stepped forward a bit, plenty of room even if you're a bad driver, and she still sat and glared at me for "being in the way". Well, I'm so sorry I showed you the right way to take yogurt, but I thought you were done, normally people shut the door and act like they're walking away when they're done. Also, these doors are sound proof, if you're over there saying something to me, chances are I won't hear it. So if she had been sitting there mumbling excuse mes at me, well...

Someone lost the clip on the compactor. Again.

The floor around the drain in front of my cooler door is chipping away really fast now. Yesterday I discovered something bad had happened and almost a fourth of the tile that was already chipped had chipped away and I had to sweep it up now the rest of the tile is cracked, but I nudged it with my toe and it didn't move so it might be ok for a bit. I hope they fix it in the remodel next month.

I had to sleep with an ace bandage on my wrist last night and as soon as I put the bandage on I was able to crack my wrist! I haven't been able to make it crack in the last few months. But it cracked twice last night in the bandage and once today without the bandage. It came off during the night but that's ok because I was mostly better until as I was getting into my car to go home from work and decided to boost myself over (my car's far enough off the ground that I get in and then lift myself over to center on the seat) with my bad wrist. Oops. It doesn't hurt too bad and I've been remembering to do the hand squeezies. That always helps.

I broke my desk lamp. I guess if the switch won't move don't force it... Victor can fix it, all he needs is a push button from Radio Shack.
Me, "Can you fix the switch?"
Victor, "Technically it's called a toggle."
Me, "Oh... well that's why you're the one fixing it."

Tomorrow's the book sale. I have a backpack with clothes in it all set and ready. Victor's going to it when it starts at 10 (or later, depending on when he gets out of bed) and he's taking the cellphone so after he's done shopping he can call me to ask if I want any of the books he thought I might like.

For now, though, it's past time to go to bed.

Star Wars

There's some good stuff coming out for Star Wars fans.

First up is the sequel to Star Wars: Death Troopers, which I believe is not out in paperback just yet. Death Troopers was a good book, it held me, gripped me, it was spooky and SWy all at once. An Imperial experiment went wrong and reduced everyone on board to zombies. A prison ship traveling unknowingly in the same area breaks down and heads to the nearby Star Destroyer for repairs. All but a few people onboard get turned into zombies and the people left have to try to escape. What I liked best was that there were no main characters...

*SPOILERS*
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...except Han, who totally did not belong at all. There was neither point nor reason. It was as though the author thought fans wouldn't like his book unless he randomly threw a main character in. But, see, fans like reading books without main characters. And it sort of cheapens the zombie plot to have had Han there because now we read the other books with Han in them and we watch the movies, and while his ANH line, "I've seen a lot of strange stuff..." has more meaning now, we know that the zombies were such a little thing to him that he doesn't mention it to anyone ever. That sort of thing you'd think he'd mention somewhere. He was just very out of place.
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*END*

This is the cover of the next book, courtesy of starwars.com. Not quite as chilling as the first book's cover, unless you really start thinking how terrifying a Sith zombie would be. But I'm uncertain. Does this really mean our next zombie book is about a Sith? The yellow eyes say yes. But then who is it? I would almost want to say that it's Darth Maul, from the face markings, but they're not the same, and he's long, long dead by the time these books take place. It could be Galen Marek, you know, Starkiller. That would be a nice tie-in with the game, but would not be canon at all. Unless it's about the second game, which I hear is about Galen's clone, and he goes to the Dark Side in canon. Then perhaps he's sent off to oversee the operation that caused the zombification. That's my theory anyway, and the only one that makes sense. I just hope the author has taken a few writing lessons since the last book. While, yes, the first book was great, he didn't quite know how to finish writing it. Towards the end it wound down really fast and then the last chapter was just awful. However, I am hopefully optimistic about this sequel. It's due out in December, btw.

Next up is a new comic about Boba Fett called Star Wars Adventures: Boba Fett and the Ship of Fear. Already the title sounds excellent. It's about this lost ship from centuries ago that's said to contain a treasure. Boba finds a map and heads out to go treasure hunting. Two other hunters foolishly follow him hoping to best him and get the prize for themselves. Apparently they're either suicidal or stupid. But the ship's apparently got something spooky lurking in it. Surprisingly it's coming out in February and not October. It sounds fun though.

Yogurt

Today was awful. I woke up in the middle of the night for a while and then I couldn't fall back to sleep. I ended up laying there for a while knowing the alarm was going to go off the second I started to fall asleep. Then I guess I was dreaming cause I was certain the alarm clock turned (I face it to the wall at night) and I saw that it said 3:30, but it was our old alarm clock with the red numbers. This new one (not really new as it's a few months old) has green numbers. Anyway, after that I slept soundly until the alarm went off at 5. I couldn't do it so I set it to 5:30 and attempted to sleep through Victor's snoring and Atton's mews to be let outside. I did a quickie get ready for work and left my hair down. Once at work I put my little mirror up on a stack of butter and put my hair up in a clip.

I had two hours of work, in which I checked in Keebler, before Zhaun came to give me the keys to the backdoor. At that point I had decided to eat a rice candy and then run out to the bathroom. But no, I had deli/frozen out back. So I broke the seal and found the driver who told me grocery as in the dock. So I woke him up and it was a new guy. Another stupid, clueless newbie. I had one last Wednesday too. Anyway, we started offloading that. And I must say, he was the stupidest Little King driver I've encountered. Ok, first, he watched me take all the empty pallets out, not lifting a finger. Then he watched me put all the wheelers down the hallway. Didn't put the dock plate down. As I was taking the empty pallets out I discovered no one had plugged in the jack and it was almost dead... indeed it died before I was done taking the empties out. I  had to plug it in to charge and was doomed to use a manual jack. I told Zhaun who didn't think anything of it. Also, when he said it was a small load today and we only had room for maybe 13 pallets I didn't expect a 21 pallet load. He shrugged it off and told me to stack and put some here and some there, and that would bring it down to 15. He's so optimistic when he's the one who doesn't have to do the work. Finally as I started offloading he decided to ask if he could use a jack and help. So there was a pallet of motor oil we were going to put out on the floor. Our conversation went something like this:
Me, "Put that on Aisle 8."
Him, "..."
Me, "It's the first aisle right out the doors there."
Him, "Where do you want me to go?"
Me, "Aisle 8. In front of that pole with the fire sprayer on it."
Him, "...where?"
Me, "In front of the pole."
Him, "What pole?"
Me, "The one with the fire sprayer on it, right there."
Finally he figured it out.
Then we were doing returns and he kept doing it wrong. Counting wood as chep, iGPS as plastic, then he tried to tell me the four stacks of totes were all 24 high but two were obviously not the same height as the other two, so I counted them and came out with 24, 24, 20, and 25. I told him we load the trailer bale with a stack of pallets next to it, with the bale on alternating sides. (to even the weight) So he didn't and I had to fix it and then he was better about that. Then when we were doing the paperwork I discovered he had no return paperwork, just paperwork for reclamation. So I asked if he was supposed to be getting returns and he didn't know. *facepalm* I had just loaded returns with a manual jack. Hauling bales over the bump into the backroom. I was exhausted. I was not offloading that trailer for anything, even if dispatch called all upset I'd tell them too bad make him swap trailers. I never heard anything on it though so maybe he was supposed to get returns. While we were doing the paperwork I got a call so I took it and it was Pepsi who said their add was for 24 packs and they had delivered 20 packs so they had to fix that and could they deliver today. *sigh* I said yes, give me an hour to offload this other truck first.

I told Zhaun I was exhausted and he laughed. He found it funny and expressed joy in the fact that I'd be in pain later. But that's how he is. I took it in stride cause of that. He's a jerk on the surface but when he says something that really does hurt you and you let him know he will never mention it again.

So then I ran out for a bathroom break while deli/frozen was backing in. Offloaded that. Then I emptied the garbages, both of which were overflowing onto the floor. I discovered no one had crushed the garbage in the compactor so bags of it were piled up on top of each other.

I wanted to go on break as it was about 11, but I waited because Bret wanted me to check in our tortilla vendor. So I did and faxed the paperwork from the trucks and did some other stuff. And then I was going to go on break but he needed to be let out the back door so I was doing that when Pepsi showed up. I put my lunch back in the cooler and Dustin showed up. I decided whatever, and sat on a wheeler and ate my sandwiches while Pepsi offloaded. I checked him in and then got on my regular dairy stuff with. I was filling the eggs and people decided to ignore the other 5 facings of dozens and take the one I was standing in front of. I was just thinking how hellish today had been and how much I hurt, my feet especially for some reason, when Chris called me to check. lol

I did my order with the norm of having people reach around me as if I weren't there. I had one person do that who was taking yogurt wrong and I fixed it, and then she took some more, wrong again. I bit my lip so hard it nearly bled and hurt for a bit afterwards.

During my order my left leg really started hurting. My back was hurting, my legs were a tad unsteady, and my arms and wrist were acting up. The left side of my neck down through my shoulder was also hurting. But somehow I dragged myself through it. I even spent my last 20 minutes (plus 10 more) filling holes.

I know why we were so dead last week. Everyone was waiting to go shopping until this week. We're going to be out of milk by the end of today. It seems to be a running trend these past few months that people buy two-four gallons at a time on the last week before the end of the month and the first week of the month and then hardly touch it the rest of the time. I'm not quite sure how that works out. I tend to buy milk about every four-six days. Isn't that about the normal amount of days between when regular people go shopping? About once a week or less? That's another reason I don't understand people buying three or four cases of yogurt at a time, especially regular customers. They'll be back in a few days wanting more. I had a lady order two cases of key lime weight watchers every Tuesday. Yes, folks, she went through 24 cups of yogurt in 7 days. She did this for a few months before health problems took over her. Gee, I wonder where these health problems stemmed from. Like the crawfish lady, I don't know her name but something about her makes me think of craw fishes. She buys a variety of quart sized coffee-mate, altogether something like 15, and she does it every other week or so. Or at least she used to, I don't see her often anymore. And then there's the amaretto coffee-mate guy who buys a case a week of the pint sized. And then there's the carb masters yogurt people. I understand the point of the yogurt, it's a diet food meant to help you lose weight. However, I see fat people buying them by the cases. And I just want to say to them, "Carb Masters won't make you lose weight if you eat five or six a day." Yogurt people in general astound me. They buy enough to feed a small army, and it makes me wonder if they ever eat anything more. Sometimes I want to post signs saying, "Yogurt has an expiration date and I promise you'll be back to this store at some point in the next month." I mean, if it's on sale I can sorta see it. But not if it's at regular price. And they commit the worst acts of wrong-doing out of any other form of customer I have ever encountered. They knock it over and don't pick it up, they rearrange the shelf (worse than simply putting blue with red, I've watched people actively take whole sections and move them), they take wrong (I'll explain that at some point, I really will, I just need to set it up with my camera for picture taking), ooh, it's the taking wrong that really makes me mad, almost as much as when they knock it over and leave it. And for some reason they like to stack five or six in one arm before they return to their cart (which for some reason is usually parked behind and to the left), and yogurt is the most breakable item in dairy besides eggs. Actually sometimes it's random, I've seen yogurt fall from the top shelf unscathed, but I've also seen it roll off the bottom shelf and splatter. The funnest, I think, was when it landed right side up but the bottom came out in a perfect circle. And of course once they break yogurt they leave it with the broken side down so it drips all over. Or like one person did, they got yogurt on the floor and covered it with an add! Yes, I saw an add on the floor and picked it up to find it had glued to the floor from the yogurt under it! Oh, I could go on and on and on about yogurt and the people who buy it. I don't mean to say I hate yogurt or the people who buy it, I just mean that about 8/10 times the person taking yogurt does something bad. Personally I love the 32oz Mountain High Low Fat Vanilla. Timmy prefers the 32oz Yoplait Creamy Vanilla. I do occasionally buy the little cups too, but since yoplait discontinued the banana in original I really only sometimes buy french vanilla or mixed berry for myself. Victor likes the weird flavors like cherry pomegranate. The kroger yogurts don't have a whole lot of variety for regular, blueberry's the only one I like. All the good flavors are lite. Oh, and, btw, it's amazing how many people buy lite yogurt for their kids. And people say how healthy yogurt is, and I guess compared to other snacks, yeah, but yogurt has a ton of calories and a lot of sugar. I would never use it specifically as a diet food. In the last few months I have switched it for less healthy foods such as ice cream. But I guiltily admit to adding sugar to my low fat vanilla which I guess defeats the purpose... Now the yogurt that's really good is the 3 Gods Greek yogurt I carry, in honey vanilla. Unfortunately it's, like, 3.49 for a 24oz. So I've only gotten it twice when I've had dented in ones that I marked down. I sell lots though, it's my  best selling large size yogurt, I sell roughly 30 a week. (the only other one I sell nearly that much of is the mountain high low fat vanilla, which is why I tried it, can't go wrong with a best seller) I once had a woman complain that the adult yogurts were higher up and the kid yogurts were down below. I believe this is so the kids, who are shorter than adults, see the yogurt, grab the yogurt, and make their parents dish out insane amounts of money for a tiny little product that they're only interested in cause it has Spongebob or Dora on it. I wish the Danoninos had caught on. Their mascot is a dinosaur. But no one wants them. If they weren't expensive I would almost want to buy them for their cuteness. But they're these tiny, tiny little cups of raspberry and vanilla strawberry and peach. ick to all but the vanilla. And of course our only good GoGurt was discontinued, the cotton candy/mixed berry flavored. Now we're stuck with two different packagings, upcs, and wordings for strawberry/blueberry. One is regular, and the other is something like strawberry riptide blueberry bash and has Spongebob on it. Horrible show, it's mind-rotting and kids should not be allowed to see it. Anyway, I don't think much of the other things we have like the Activia. People go crazy over the Activia, but it has bacteria in it! Mold! If you read the warnings (yes they have warnings on them) people with allergies to penicillin can't eat Activia. As we found out with the kroger active lifestyle Activia alternative. We were going to get some cause of the less amount of sugar (about 6 or 8 grams vs the 30-something in regular yogurt), but Victor can't have penicillin due to the mold part of it.

Well, anyway, as I said, I could talk for hours about yogurt. But my wrist is starting to hurt a little, I still haven't read the daily comics, and Victor's in the other room playing Dead Rising and I said I'd join him "in a little bit" so I need to get on that!

btw, lately I've replaced my ill-fated Plants vs Zombies with Zuma's Revenge.

Also, I took a much-needed bath after work

Oh, and the semi-annual used book sale starts at 10 on Friday. :( I hate when that happens. I'll be stuck at work till 2. Zhaun did say to try and get out early sometime later in the week if I can, maybe I'll do so on Friday and head out around 1 or 1:30. I have some overtime to kill anyway. Sometimes the sale starts at 3. I'm beginning to see the pattern as the Spring sale starts at 3 and the Fall sale starts at 10. I love the book sales. I love the anticipation, tables covered with sheets, people gathered in their spots at whichever of the tables most holds their interest, I usually start out over by SciFi or Crafts. The crowds, which normally make me a little anxious and sometimes cause fleeting panic, don't bother me at all during the book sales. I usually spend about three hours there just pouring over the tables and tables of books, going back to look again, sitting on the floor to the side with Victor as we go through our bags and compare our finds and decide if we really want this one or that one. And it's only a 1.50 an inch. I love books. I love the smell of the paper, especially older books. The sound a page makes as you turn it. The yellow tint older books gets. The feel of a book in your hand. I love you you can get so into it you don't realize you're turning the pages. I would never switch to an ereader of any sort. I had to read Dracula in pdf format. Firstly, I had to change the color scheme to something not so eye straining. Second, I couldn't read it anywhere I wanted, which I suppose with a ereader it wouldn't matter. But it was hard to concentrate on the store when I had to keep watching the screen scroll up and I would get lost and have to find my place again. Very annoying. I did sorta get used to it with page down, but it was still not excellent. Plus the light from the screen would be bad for eyes eventually, and the screen would keep you up, whereas a real book stands a better chance of putting you to sleep, granted it doesn't keep you up all night entranced in a story, which has happened to me many, many times. I love books and would love to have a full library room, complete with things like a fireplace, perhaps a second story, a circular staircase, large armchairs, telescope, plush carpeting or perhaps wood floors with a big rug in front of the fireplace. Either a coffee table or end tables to place things like hot chocolate. Snuggies for everyone. Oh, I love my snuggie!!! It was my Valentine's gift from Victor this year and I love it very much. A good book, my snuggie, and some hot chocolate, in front of the woodstove. There's an image that will blow away memories of my work day. And so, with that I will head on out to read the comics and then I'll go to join my dashing husband in the livingroom.

Food

Me and Victor went out and on the way we saw a car with antlers attached to either side. I wish I'd brought the camera.

We wound up at Dairy Queen and I got a double chocolate brownie batter blizzard. Which is odd since I always get the reese's. Anyway, it was good. If it had peanut butter in it it would be exquisite.

Today's dinner is chicken penne with broccoli.
Penne (as much as is needed, I have no set measurement, roughly about a cup and a half I'd say, maybe for two people, maybe a little more or less dunno)
Can of Chicken
5 tbsp Olive Oil
Chopped Garlic (or minced or what have you)
Broccoli
Salt
Pepper
Garlic Powder
You get the penne started in some water, and then while that's cooking you put 3 tbsp olive oil in a frying pan and dump in the chicken and spices. You cook the chicken on medium. I like to use a fork on the chicken so I can shred it up as it's cooking by pushing the fork down on them (like you do when pressing the top of cookies). Once the penne's done strain out the water and leave in the strainer. Reuse the pan for steaming the broccoli. You put a cup of chicken broth in, the spices again, and the chopped garlic, as well as the broccoli. You steam that for about 5 minutes, checking it to see when the broccoli's as soft as you want it to be. Then you pour the broccoli and whatever broth is left over the penne. During all this don't forget to stir the chicken and turn the heat down as needed, because after a bit the chicken starts looking a bit done. You can turn the heat off entirely if you want too. Then you put everything together in the first pan and pour two more tbsp of olive oil over that. Mix it all up and let sit for about 5 minutes or so. Then put on plates and put parmesan on it. Not too much or it'll get dry. Stir that in and eat. This is one of my most favorite meals.

And speaking of this meal, it's about done sitting so I'm going to go warm it up a tad and then serve it and eat.

Tattletale

I just got done sending off a report to the Kroger Co. via the EthicsPoint site with images of scanout reports from over a year ago and a full description of events. I love this, I almost want to report on everything that goes on in that store. I did make sure to state that I want to be anonymous due to fear of retaliation, and you know if Deana ever finds out I'm the one who ratted her out there would be hell to pay. So, obviously I saw Darby working Wall Deli yesterday. And you know, I added it up and she cost the store 1,687 dollars in the month after she left. I forgot to put Julie down on the list of managers involved, but I can edit my report in a few days after it processes. You have to check back in a few days anyway in case they post questions on it.

Not a whole lot else has happened, it took forever to scan 8 pages of scan outs. I made Bonecrusher mad by putting him down when he wanted to sit with me because I was scared he'd mess up what I was doing. I played with him a little to make it up, but I'm going to go spend some more time with him now.

Work

Yesterday the rain wasn't really coming down all that hard, I just thought it was a nice embelleshment.

My newbie couldn't make it in till 4 so I worked an 8-4 today. And when I first came in Zhaun was offloading a truck. It was the second grocery truck of the day. And he hadn't stacked any pallets so we had no room. He did help me finish the truck, although he used the electric jack and made me use a manual one. Bonnie was mad at him for not stacking. We haven't been busy enough for us to have gotten in as much as we did, I don't know what he's doing. It was kinda busyish today, though.

I later had to deal with Doug Andru's stupidest driver. Oh, he just irritates me so bad. He won't listen. I tell him to put a pallet on the left and I come in and find he put it on the right. I had to yell at him to stop once when he started to run a pallet into my shelves. He's also the one who at one point refused to turn a pallet and grab it from the other side even though I warned him repeatedly if he didn't it would fall over. Guess which one of us was right. Today, he asked where to put a meat pallet, in the first one or the second one. (we have a hallway with two freezers and at the very end the meat cooler) I told him to put it in the one that's open. He said there weren't any open ones. I then showed him that there were two freezers and we can not put cooler freight in a freezer and that the meat dept. door was indeed open.  I don't remember what all else he did today.

I was doing markdowns and a man asked me if the kool-aid on the display was 21 cents for a case. What?? Of course not. He then asked if my eggs were salmonella-free. I told him yes. He said, "How do you know?" That seriously ruffled my feathers, the attitude he said it with. How do I know. Well because none of our eggs were on the recall, we don't carry those brands, and if we had any on the recall they would have been dealt with by now.

Right after that someone sneaked up behind me and suddenly there was a hand brushing past my ear on it's way to a carton of eggs.  As if that weren't bad enough she did it again!!!

Later I was getting some keys to lock the back door cause Produce never does that when they're done, and the add for the next week that we lock up and keep secret so Super 1 doesn't steal our adds (like they were doing before) and none of the vendors can see it (because it was vendors stealing them), yeah, Bret had it open and was showing a vendor everything in it and going, "Look at these prices!" Bonnie specifically clips each vendor's items and gives it to them so they know how to order. Zhaun leaves adds on his cart all the time, the office door was open and the box with the adds out and in easy finding range. I guess they stopped caring.

So we have commercials playing at work. Oh, yes, I love our commercials. This one I'm currently hating is the Western Union one. Actually there's two, but it's mainly the one that bothers me. It says what if you're shopping and your sister calls you from school in Alaska to say she needs 50 dollars for boots can you wire her that, and you say yes. No. I say, "So you went to Alaska and didn't bring boots with you? I'd say you need to go back to school. Besides which what kind of boots are you buying with 50 dollars! Don't they have Wal-Mart up there?" The other Western Union one is that your friend calls you and is in a jam and needs 50 dollars. Now, I don't have many friends, but I wouldn't give any of them 50 dollars. I don't have that kind of money, or that kind of friend.

Another one is just a spot, a pet spot giving advice about pets. It says that you're supposed to pull energy from the earth and focus it on your pet to heal it. o_0

Later I was ordering and this fat woman came up and started rearranging the Carb Masters yogurt. Yes, she took a raspberry and moved it into the vanilla spot, and then took another and moved it into the strawberry banana spot! And then just left them there!

I also had a few people attempt to reach through me to get to product. At one point I started feeling a little sick and had an anxiety headache.

I checked a little bit and one of the people was this sour looking woman whom I thought for sure was going to immediately find a CSM and complain about me for Lord knows what.

I had a bagger come back with a gallon of milk in a bag and I told him it was dripping and to dump it out. Several minutes passed and he didn't reappear. I went in search of him and upon opening my door discovered that he had created a little puddle of milk outside my door and left it. I couldn't find the gallon. I tried calling a CSM but no answer. I get in serious trouble if I ignore them and mild trouble if I don't hear them. But they ignore me and no one cares. I walked all the way up front to ask the bagger what happened to that gallon. Turns out he was trained to put it in the vendor damage cart after he dumped it out. What?? I asked him who trained him that way and he said he didn't remember, but that it was either Bonnie or Dustin. Yeah, neither would say that unless Dustin just wanted to make Bonnie mad. Bonnie knows everything and would never tell him to do that. I guess at some point I should let Julie know that someone's telling baggers to do that.

Oh, and those "nitrate free" hot dogs made Victor sick. We figure they used pink salt to color them. Which totally defeats the purpose of being nitrate free. Kinda like this tv dinner I saw that's smoked cheddar macaroni and uncured bacon. The smoked cheddar defeats the purpose of the uncured bacon! Anyway, Victor sent an email of complaint to Oscar Meyer. Pink salt in larger doses is actually fatal to him. As it is he's having a very, very nasty migraine.

I was typing with Bonecrusher on my arm until just now. He managed to wipe my entire entry. Thank God for ctrl-z.

Since Victor's sick we're not having a real dinner cause he can't stomach a lot right now. He's eating chips and dip and I just had some Campbell's Chicken and Dumpling soup and a banana. Normally I don't like soup and when I have it I drink the icky water first and leave the actual food for last so I can enjoy it. But the Campbell's Creamy Chicken and Dumpling is great. It's not too watery, though it just barely borders on being too watery, and when you add a little salt it's great.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Ahoy thar, mateys! This be Talk Like a Pirate Day! In celebration me speak twill be Piratese.

I wore a scarf in me hair an' my skull and crossbones necklace about me neck. I set me sails for the life o' a slave. Thar be no celebratory folk abouts. Arr... tis a pity, it is.

Had me a normal kind of day with many a scurvy, mangy, varment underfoot. Usual occurrences of flooding garbages an' bales to be made. Dug in four carts for markdowns, scanouts, an' good product.

Timmy, "So what's the name of your ship?"
Me, "...arrr..."
Timmy, "In the market, as it were?"
Me, "Aye, lock ye doors."
Timmy, "Or what, you'd steal my rowboat?"
(He rides a bike to work.)

Had me a bagger who liked me look today, think she be makin' fun o' me. Arr... what know she o' the life o' a pirate. Friendliness always creeps me out.

Trained me a swabbie today, used t' do frozen at a different store. Me hopes 'e does better than Anthony an' with less the attitude. Aye, had to whip that one into shape I did.

Twas raining fierce as the tears of God imself today.

Had Tuna Helper for dinner, Fettucini Alfreado, wi' mozzarella mixed in.

Atton scored a kill today, a medium sized mouse it was too. Bonecrusher stole the kill an' flipped round with it a bit till Atton stole it back.

I be glad ta be reminded what today be, normally I be forgettin' till it be too late for any fun to be had.

Arrr....

pictures

This is my other cat, Atton.

The cats try to help me cut fabric.

Atton curled up on our printer.

Victor's first sips of egg nog.

Victor's happy eyes. btw, for any old people out there you might recognize that Amiga 500 in the background. Victor restored that earlier this year and spends many happy hours playing it.

Bonecrusher and the back of my tunic.

Bonecrusher and the front of my tunic.

I didn't cut the sleeves or anything else yet because I want to put the front and back together first to see if I might want to adjust the sleeve length or anything. And I heard one report online that the band doesn't go all the way around and you have to lengthen it.

Tonight's dinner will be nitrite free hot dogs from Oscar Meyer. It's a new product at work so we'll test them out today and in a few days here Victor's nitrite allergy will let us know if they actually are good. Looks good on the ingredient label though.

 This is the back of my head today. The pins are unnecessary, as the bun holds itself up! You don't need hair ties or pins or anything. It is the nautilus bun, as shown here: http://www.youtube.com/user/torrinpaige#p/u/48/b86ZH0J7xtE