5,282 words!

Thursday was my 10:30-7:00 day. I don't get a lot of time on Thursdays cause I tend to wake up around 6. Then I force myself to have lunch around 9 because even though I'm usually not hungry I know I will be soon but would be at work by then. Then I get home around 7:15 and am in bed around 8:30.

Well, anyway, it was a hair washing day so I did that as soon as the space heater got the bathroom up to a decent temperature.

I also spent some of the morning playing Plants Vs. Zombies. I link to that one as it's the original. I got the game on Steam and so automatically upgraded to the Plants vs Zombies Game of the Year Limited Edition. There are some changes in the Game of the Year edition I just didn't like. For starters it reset all my achievements and I had to go through and earn them all again. Fortunately I only had about three or four achievements at the time so it wasn't difficult. One of these achievements was the Walk This Way achievement that I accidentally earned when I decided to see what would happen if I fed a Hypno-Shroom to the Michael Jackson Lead Dancer Zombie. Whilst re-earning that one (which was renamed, btw, to "Disco is Undead") I discovered they had changed the dancer zombie into a random disco guy. Bleh. That was probably out of respect, or something, but I rather enjoyed having the original dancer zombie around. There are more achievements, however, which was nice. On Thursday I earned the Good Morning achievement. I decided to try it on Survival - Day, and managed to make all 5 flags with only shrooms. Those Gloom Shrooms are fearsome. I also won Survival - Fog - Hard. It was rather hard too, I only won on my second try. Anyway, other changes in the Game of the Year Edition are that you get to make a Zombitar. This is a customized Zombie you make yourself. I've only made one so far, and she's the flag bearer with each new wave of zombies. I would presume the more you make the more of your own creations you get to fight. But I haven't tested that yet. I'm not sure how the game is for people buying it regular, but I know only Steam gives you achievements, but now to see your achievements you get to go down into the grave under that tombstone on the menu page and here's a hint: When you get to the bottom of the list of achievements, keep scrolling! I thought it was rather clever what they did there. I just can't go on enough about how much I love this game. I've been playing it since it came out and I'm still not bored with it. Usually I tend to cycle my favorite games. I play The Sims for a month or two, then switch to Sim Societies, then after that I switch to Fallout 3 for a while (or rather, this one is going into my rotation as I only just started playing a few months ago), and so on and so forth and generally I just switch between my various Sim games. But not Plants vs Zombies, oh no. I usually play that a few times a week. It's great for if you have 15 minutes to kill but nothing to do with the time. It usually only takes about 10-15 minutes to win a regular level or min-game (besides Last Stand which takes about 25-30 minutes) and about 30 minutes to win a survival level. There is one more game section called Puzzle Games I think, where there's I, Zombie which I totally suck at and just barely won the 10-flag achievement on survival mode but my average is more like 4 or 5, and then Vase Breaker which I love. I easily average 13-15 flags on survival mode with 16 being my  highest reached flag. And then there's the Zen Garden. I love my garden. You can have day plants, water plants, and night plants, as well as the Tree of Knowledge. I don't go into the Tree of Knowledge too much, not yet anyway, not until I have more money. I'm still saving up to buy the night garden. You start with the day garden but the other two cost 30,000. I'm almost there, though, I have 28,000-some. And in the shop you can also buy upgrades for your plants (which is where you get gloom shrooms, they upgrade regular whatsit shrooms (the fat ones that cost 75 sun). And you know, talking about this game makes me want to abandon the rest of this post and go play it now, lol. That is such a good game, I love that game, it is totally awesome and I very highly recommend it to anyone and everyone with only one warning: You will become a zombie yourself because it is very addictive! As for where to buy it, I got it on Steam which I regret because I don't have a box because Steam thinks that collectors are worthless people who don't deserve the common decency of owning a box to display on a shelf to the pride of their eyes. However I kinda fell to them when they had it on sale for, like 7 dollars and I do love having achievements... But I also love having a box. And I didn't want that auto upgrade to the game of the year edition! I loved my little MJ zombie. If not for that and losing all my previous achievements I would have been happy with the upgrade. Oh, and there's new sound too. It's like they took the soundtrack and added to it. You can hear what almost sounds like a separate song behind the original. And some of the effects are a little different too. No complaints there though. So, all in all, it's really up to you which to buy. But do buy it. I could play this game over and over and never get bored of it.

Anyway, on to the rest of my day! lol I had oriental ramen for lunch. I'm out of chicken and oriental is the only other flavor I like.

At work it was milk load day. We're running a tiny bit heavy on milk but not bad. 1% is the problem right now I have way too much 1%. Which is odd cause last weekend people bought me out of 1% and they couldn't have enough. I wonder what this weekend's fad milk will be. Weekend before last it was skim. Maybe this week it'll be 2%. Ugh, I hope not, I didn't order enough to cover milk crazies.

I saw a man pulling skim half gallons out of one single row, reaching, straining, struggling to the back of the shelf for a later date. The milk he pulled out of the way? He put them in with the gallons. He saw me watching him. He left the half gallons and walked away. What this means is that I had to walk around to fix it. And skim being the very last product in my cooler means I had to walk allllllll the way around, wade through customers, get stopped to be asked something, stop to fix some yogurt someone knocked over, fix the milk, fix the other milk while I'm out there, stop and fix the sour cream and cottage cheese, stop and fix the yogurt again, check the eggs, then finally make my way back down to what I had been doing before. Just put the half gallons back where you found them, it's not difficult and you spending 5 seconds doing that saves me at least 60 seconds and at most 5-10 minutes.

The rest of my day wasn't too bad, despite having to check a lot I finished working all the backstock by 5:30. I spent the rest of my night cleaning and catching up my loss report. I don't understand that report at all. I understand the BOH Adjustment part, that's Balance on Hand, that's when I see the computer says I have 8 but I have 6 I have to adjust it to 6 and tell the computer why I'm missing 2. A lot of the time there's no explanation and this is shrink and you put it under data integrity. As the computer training explained it, shrink is this: The warehouse sends the store 5 apples. The store puts 5 apples on the shelf. The store sells 2 apples. There are 2 apples on the shelf. Where is the missing apple? No one knows. And there's too many things that could have happened. Theft. It gets dropped on the floor and rolls under a shelf or something. It gets damaged and some idiot throws it away. Which reminds me of a funny story. Ok, once, our store director was walking towards the garbage holding a yogurt that was broken. He asked me, "Is it ok if I throw this away?" I said, "No! I  have to scan it out first." I went and told our ICM about this and we just looked at each other with barely restrained laughter until she said, "Yeah. Our 'fearless leader'." Our Store Director: #1 cause of shrink. *eyeroll*

Anyway, the part of the loss report I don't get is the markdown sales and loss part. It shows some things I marked down to sell cheap but not everything. It shows things I haven't marked down in over a year. It shows them at weird prices and costs that have never been. And then it shows my loss as being some random number that makes no sense in relation to any other number no matter which way I add it up. But there happens to be a Total Loss section so that's where I get my number. And it's always huge. Usually 80-200 dollar daily. But whatever, if that's the number Mr. Corporate wants me to send him that's what I'll send him. I don't like him He came in, telling everyone what to do, no one had ever seen him before, he changed all the rules, told this and that and was mad at everyone for not already having been following these new rules he just made up. Our ICM was brave enough to go up to him in front of the entire group of corporate people and say to our assistant store director, "Would you introduce me to this gentleman, he's been back there telling me how to run my backroom but never told me his name." Oh, she's great. Some of the vendors for a while thought I was her daughter. Which I take as a compliment.

Anyway, Bonecrusher decided chewing on wires was a good idea. So my husband, Victor, went out to get some spray Bitter Yuck 16oz pump. Ours is 8oz and has a picture of a cat on the front but this looks like the exact same thing. It really worked well. Bonecrusher leaves the wires alone now. I got some on my hands (and in Victor's eyes... oops...) but all's well cause it kinda tasted like ear wax I think? But not quite. It's rosemary and "bittering agent" which our ICM said might be a product called bitter which is used in the making of alcohol. *shrug*

I broke the fingernail on the middle finger of my left hand. It's pretty bad too, no white part left and the top layer of the first bit of pink was torn away.

We had sloppy joes that night, which I like to put a little garlic powder into. While eating Victor got a migraine in his other eye. Usually the spot is in one eye but it was in the other that time. Those are usually the super-bad migraines. When they're in the normal eye it's food or smell that sets it off. In his rare eye it's either whey (like what fake valveeta's made out of) or it's his body fixing itself. His body's been doing that a lot in the last year and a half. Like after one migraine his hearing was sharper, after another his taste was better, after one series of a few days of migraines his eyes could see color better (gray and green had been more or less the same color before, and reds appeared kinda 3d, and etc), and after one he could feel in his left pinkie again (which has been numb since the migraine-stroke he had when he was 27).

Then yesterday I got up early by accident. Due to his migraine Victor slept in the livingroom so as not to wake me up with his tossing and turning. And he sleeps with sound on, like radio or tv. When I woke up I heard the tv and went out to turn it down. Looking at the screen made me wide awake. I laid  back down and was cold so I had to turn up the heat. Then I could still hear the tv so I had to go turn it down some more. I could still hear it. So I reached down for my spare pillow and it wasn't there so I had to go look for it. I had put it over my ear, gave a happy sigh, and started to sink down into sleep when.... the alarm clock went off. I shut it off, threw the spare pillow to the floor, and looked up into the darkness with despair.

And then I discovered we were out of bread which meant no lunch. And I refuse to buy from service deli while Darby's working there. I dunno, but I don't trust food prepared by someone who left her previous department with 1,500 dollars of expired product (in just one section, that department is split into two) in order to boost her inventory. I'm sure the service deli manager, who is awesome, has a good grip on things, but still. Besides, their sandwiches are 1.99! They have a chicken sandwich that is a fillet of chicken on a Kroger Value bun (in other words the lowest quality possible), with two slices of pickles. They're too cheap to even give you mayonnaise. I mean, I go to Burger King and get a high quality spicy chicken sandwich that's on an excellent bun with plenty of mayonnaise and lots of lettuce, and all that for a dollar. Our chicken sandwiches aren't worth more than 75 cents though I have paid 99 cents with a coupon. So anyway, I packed a blueberry pudding cup and brought 50 cents to buy a peanut butter cup with.

Once at work our grocery manager threatened that if I didn't take the dump bins into the container I would have to tell the store director why they got destroyed. They're not assembled yet, we don't need them, and they've been behind the store under tarps for two months. They're not my bins. And if I did have to tell our store director why they're damaged I would simply say, "Zhaun didn't get them into the container, they're his bins, it was his responsibility, Bonnie's been telling him to get it done and for a while he was promising Steve would do it." But honestly, he did tell me to do it on Sunday and I just never had time to. I had time yesterday though so when it got light out I went and did it. Those containers are a mess. There's markdown carts hidden out there, and fireworks! Yes, a whole pallet of fireworks. And I believe there's a pallet of christmas stuff left over from last year, but I didn't climb back in there to look. Otherwise it's all empty pallets and the stuff we use to put up the greenhouse when and if we ever put it up again, we didn't this year I don't think.

For anyone who believes in brand loyalty here this: In the hallway by the offices I saw a case of Great Value drinking water. Yes, shipped from our warehouse. They sent us Wal-Mart water instead of our brand. Which leads me to believe they're packaged at the same company. Well, it's the same with the milk. Meadowgold distributes store brand milk to 5 or 6 stores around town.

Also, one of the checkers called me to check, early in the morning when she was the only one up there. Which usually means there's one person standing out with two items who could have easily been sent to self-scan. But 2 out of the 4 times I was called no one was up there. I think our store director was getting mad at me for not checking when called and went out on the aisles to grab someone and make them checkout for the self satisfaction of forcing me to check because he called me that 4th time and turned my light on and left me. Bad idea. If you turn my light on and ignore me guess what? Eventually I turn around and discover two or three checkers are on the line waiting for someone to check out and I'm stuck checking because lemmings will go where they see other people already in line. I hate having my light on cause I never get out. Indeed, as I was checking another checker came on which I guess the first one took as a sign she could close off and go stand around and pretend to help people at self checkout. About 15-20 minutes after I got stuck in the checkstand the store director wandered by and said I could turn my light off and go in a tone of voice that suggested I was an idiot for being up there as long as I had been. Well, gee, I wonder who turned my light on, huh? I thought rules were we couldn't turn our lights off until our last customer was gone. If I "forget" to turn my light on it's ok, but if someone else turns my light on I'm not allowed to touch it and have actually been yelled at for turning it off. Yes, yelled at. Albeit it was by Chris who has no business being a CSM and should have been fired by now.

Oh, did you know we take Canadian money? I didn't. In all my 7 1/4 years of working there I have not once seen Canadian money, and mind you I spent the first two years as a bagger and a year as a checker. So was I was so wrong to tell them we don't accept Canadian money? No. Was Chris wrong to tell me to figure out how to key it in on my own? Yes. He's a csm it's his job to help people when they're checking! I had to call our front end manager who of course didn't answer. I finally tracked down the bookkeeper who helped me out. Course she's the human resources manager now, but she still bookkeeps nearly all the time. I wouldn't go to her for anything important though. I don't trust her enough. I'd go to our assistant store director for most things.

Anyway, Zhaun had done the grocery truck *gasp!* and returns *clutches at heart*. I had to do deli/frozen though, which was ok. It was that old guy and his wife again. I've been seeing them a lot. I think the old guy finally figured out I think he's an idiot  because we handed off. He'd haul the pallets out of the truck and I'd put them away. Seriously though, Doug Andus does hire all the idiots. Everyone I've said it to agrees with me. While we were offloading that produce showed up hauled by George. I started off not liking George but now we get along great. He's my favorite driver. And I see him very often because he's in federal trouble and can't leave the state. Knowing George I think it's best if I never find out what he did. A brief description is that he has several kids each by a different woman ranging from infant to my age, he has anger problems, but is all around a good guy. And he has the cutest little boy, I've seen him a few times when he's rode along, he's about 5 I think, and just the sweetest little kid. So polite, so cute. Looks just like I imagine George would have at that age. Me and Bonnie want to steal him for ourselves, lol.

While doing this truck our store director made a point of coming up to me like he was going to put his hand on my shoulder, but he stopped himself, and said that my backroom was excellent, thank you. And then he made a point of turning to my backup (who is Darby's brother and our front end manager's son, that whole family is a bunch of backstabbers and he's been after my job for nearly a year) and saying, "Doesn't dairy look great???" to which he had no choice but to agree. So that made me very happy. Also made me happy that Dustin wanted Mondays and Sundays off but there is no second shift on Thursday so Zhaun gave him Sunday, Monday, and Thursday off and cut his hours. Haha. Oh, he'll go running to mommy over that for sure.

After that I was ordering and as I was doing yogurt out of the corner of my eye I see a cart stop. Which means someone's lurking behind me. So since she was silent I ignored her. If she can't give me the common courtesy of acknowledging my existence as a human being then I can't be bothered to turn around and ask if she wants in the door I'm in. I don't have eyes in the back of my head and shouldn't pretend I do. She was pretty mad by time I moved on to the next door. Didn't say anything, didn't acknowledge me, no excuse me, no thank you, not even a huffy "about time", but I saw it in her actions. She knocked over a yogurt and left it. There happened to be a display in the center of the aisle in front of that door so after she was done in that door I stepped over, opened it wide, all the way, so that no one could pass through between the door and the display and made a production of setting the yogurt back up right and then I went back to my own door and let her pass. I was rather amused by all this. Well, if you want something speak up. "Excuse me, but can I get in there?" is a sure way to get you what you want with me saying a polite, "Sure." I'll even hold the door open for you while you take, because, well, I don't have anything else to do until you leave.

Right after that I had a guy ask for five of the 24oz fat free cottage cheese that's on sale that we were out of on the shelf because I forgot to order any. We had some on the load though so I dug out three of them. I then proceeded to tell him off for it. I said, "I don't keep a lot of that on hand so if you want large quantities let us know ahead of time so there's enough for everyone." HA!

The warehouse decided not to send us any of the fridge pack yoplait so I had a huge hole. And they wanted it filled. I didn't have anything else. My backstock was so incredibly low. However... I did notice the overstock of coffee creamer I had accidentally ordered in. So I filled it with that! I was so proud of myself. I had been despairing all day with trying to figure out a place to display the coffee creamer at without letting everyone know I had over ordered. So this worked out delightfully perfect.

Anita paid me for hemming her pants, yay! 9 dollars. She insists she owes me three more dollars but I don't care if she never gives it to me, I was only going to charge her 10 anyway.

I took my paycheck to the bank and the person behind the counter could have been Devin's identical twin before he cut his hair. ...and this person was a woman. hehe Devin was a pretty boy before he got married, got taken off night crew, and switched to a checker. Now he's kinda flabby and his hair's all short. Devin was very pretty though, I used to have a case of the giggles over him back when he had his hair dyed black and blue, and I've always found him attractive. Even now sometimes I have trouble looking into his eyes because it starts to bring up the giggles again. He has these puppy-dog eyes that you just fall into and get lost in their cute and seemingly innocent intensity. But I just thought it was great that I saw a girl who looked just like him. Who was insulted? Him or her? hehe


I have a kitten in front of my keyboard demanding attention.

After I got home we went back out for caselot. We're almost out of caselot at work so I figured best get it while I can before it runs out. While there we were told we had more coming in on Saturday. Oh, that's not too bad then. Good, cause we were out chicken and I really, really wanted chicken. Be wary when you go to buy ham cause I saw chicken mixed in with it. (not the chicken I wanted, I wanted Valley Fresh, Hormel chicken isn't on the caselot sale) We got tuna, oriental ramen (we were out of chicken), chili, peanut butter cups, and I think that was it, actually. Plus we got hamburger meat, chicken breasts, water chestnuts, and some other things like Peace Tea and stuff.

Then we stopped at the mall where Victor wanted to preorder Intellivion Lives on the DS but the stupid kid was working at the game store and had to have Victor spell out the name of the game and still couldn't figure it out. So he'll have to wait till the regular guy is working. I managed to drag Victor into Claires where they had buy one get one half off so I found two hair pretties. Pins with flowers on them. I guess he had fun though cause he saw a display for Vampire Diaries and started writing out a fake entry for what the life of a gay vampire is like. I found it hilarious.

We had soft tacos for dinner. I put Great Value taco seasoning in the meat, spread it on tortillas, glopped some sour cream on, then lettuce, then mild cheddar and monteray jack shredded cheese. Then I cooked them in the oven for 4 minutes. Delicious!

After eating we were on the computers and Victor got a spot. So he had a migraine again, in the same eye as before. During the night the spot returned. He wants me to wake him up at noon so I don't know yet if anything fixed itself.

And the older folk here will know what I mean when I say we've been watching older tv shows with dinner. It's been Mork and Mindy for a while now. When we were first watching it I didn't know Robin Williams was in it and I saw him and went, "Gracious, is that who I think it is? He's so young." And he reminds me of Victor so much. You catch him in the midst of an ADHD episode and give him a shove in the right direction and watch him go. Maybe it's why I don't really like the show much. Some of the jokes are funny but otherwise it's very bland. Maybe because I live with someone who actually IS hyper like that. Anyway, last night we started on Happy Days, and I like it already. At least I think I do, I have to watch a few more, but I think I'm going to enjoy it a lot more than the other show.

And now for some pictures of my kitten:

Goodness I look fat at this angle.

Apparently someone doesn't want me to use my computer! lol He slept with me some last night which was really cute. He's still in the kitten stage where he bats at your lips and eyes, which always puts me in a panic since I hate anything to do with the loss of eyesight or eyes. And he likes to sit on my desk in front of computer, as you can see. He's such the cutest little thing. We got him a kitty brush and I love brushing him with it. :) He won't sit still long, but I manage to do a decent job of it.



Well, it's time to do other things now. I have today off. I was going to go out and get Victor a new set of earbuds (since Bonecrusher chewed through the wire on his old ones) so he can sleep with me tonight. He can't sleep unless there's something on, radio or tv or something, and I can't sleep with these things on, usually he uses his Nintendo DS with radio serials loaded onto it. (to listen to these same serials go to Town Park Radio after 7PM, which is run by Victor himself) And I was going to go over to JoAnns and look at fabric. I'm still undecided about my Halloween costume. I was going to make a pioneer costume but maybe I'll just redo my tunic and be a Jedi again. I also want fleece or flannel to make jamie pants out of. It's getting too cold to sleep in my husband's boxers all the time. But I tend to bust out the thighs on anything I wear often so I'll make them myself with lots of extra hip/thigh room and then reinforce that area. But it's so close to noon now that I might as well just wait until Victor's awake and take him with me.

Our plan for dinner tonight is a delicious Asian dish. Yes, that's right. I said Asian and delicious in the same sentence without the word "not" in between. It's chicken, buckwheat noodles, and some seasonings. I know mimi or something is in it and sesame seeds and some other stuff. We used bamboo shoots last time but today we need to use up some of our tofu so we'll use that instead. And of course we'll use Sun Luck - Sliced Water Chestnuts 8.0 Oz.. Water chestnuts are awesome. Just awesome. We bought Kroger brand though. So anyway, they're round, and they snap in your mouth. It's like something between a carrot and an apple kind of snap. And they taste like a fruit and a vegetable all in one. mmm...

Oh, and I'm wearing my Michael Jackson toe-stand Billie Jean tshirt. It's a girl's XL. But I love it. It's one of my favorite shirts. It's surprisingly easy to do the toe-stand, actually. I can do it no problem depending on the shoes I have on. I can do the spin before hand too. Spinning is easy too. As for my hair I haven't decided. On Thursday I wore Leia's hair on Endor before the run-in with the Ewoks. On Friday I wore it up in a clip. Today, hmm... maybe Hair Taping and I'll test out some of my new flower pins.

And apparently vitamin B deficiency, as stated in a new study, causes headaches and dementia. huh.