Stove

 First of all, it was Emily's birthday yesterday. She's 17 now. Which is weird, cause to me she'll always be my little baby sister.

 Work
Yesterday when I left for work it was nasty out. It was windy and the wind bit into you and there was snow and ice. If I didn't have to go to work I wouldn't have left the house.

Work itself wasn't too bad. I got the feeling foodstamps renewed early or something because of the amount of super large orders we had. I had to check some and we had a lot of big orders, though come to think of it most people were paying with credit or debit cards. hm. Must have just been bad weather crazies. On the ickiest days you think no one in their right mind would take two steps outside their front door are among the busiest days at work cause everyone panics and goes shopping for food.

Anyway, I tried to get ready for inventory. I got about half the cooler stacked and organized just so. All boxes turned so I can see what they are, stacked by flavor. I don't remember my inventory code. But luckily I saved the printouts from last year so I can look it up.

I under ordered. One of the hardest things about inventory is keeping a low backstock without running out. So you try to order truck to shelf and go with your previous week's sales as a guide. And then after two weeks of selling 4-8 cups of yogurt a day on one flavor someone comes in and buys 24 cups of it and you're out. Joy. I have most of my yogurt holes filled with other flavors I did have, but without me there this morning to super face Bret will know I'm out. I just hope Dustin's smart enough to face over for me. He has the morning shift today. I wonder how early I can sneak in without anyone getting mad. I came in an hour early one year and Bret threw a total fit, even though I was there 11 hours and coming in an hour early saved me from working until 1AM. Considering that yesterday I got the markdowns for the next three days done I won't have to worry about that today. And I did all the scanouts yesterday so I'll only have a little bit to take care of today. And I did get half the cooler organized. Right now the biggest thing will be getting the truck offloaded and the freight worked.

Grocery truck called yesterday to ask when they the earliest is he could be offloaded and we decided he could beg night crew. Which I know already probably didn't work. We get trucks in between midnight and 3AM only to have Zhaun tell them no and make them wait till I get there at 6. Cause you know, night crew could get three of those guys on it and get it offloaded in ten minutes, in the middle of the night. Instead of making me do it at 6AM while Bonnie's trying to receive vendors, it takes me about 45 minutes. Either way, I'm glad I won't have to deal with him. It was the black guy again. Nothing against him for being what he is or anything, and no offense meant, but he has this really thick "black city boy" speech that's near impossible to understand. Mostly I hear him say something that doesn't sound remotely English, then I pause and let the words sink in and I organize them into a proper sentence in words that make sense to me, then I respond. It's seriously almost as if it's another language. He's a nice guy though, always polite, always helps offload, Bonnie's never had an issue with him.

While doing yogurt, which is always entertaining, a woman came up to me to say she found a purse in a cart by the milk and there was no one else around. I looked and indeed, no one was around. So I figured I'd watch it for a few minutes, cause I know how customers love abandoning their cart to run half-way across the store for something, and I didn't want them to be mad when they got back and found I'd touched their cart. So I left it and waited. A few minutes later another woman came up to me and was all upset and said she couldn't find her cart with her purse in it. I asked what color it was and it was the right color so I took her down to it and she looked to make sure her stuff was there and it was. Later me and Joe in produce were talking about it and he said he'd found a markdown cart in produce. The woman had come from produce and had said she was over there last she knew and hadn't know how her cart had gotten over by the milk. Me and Joe deduced she had grabbed a markdown cart by mistake and took it over to produce. Which is funny. But I have seen this happen before, just not to this extent. Most people realize what they're doing after a few steps. Most people don't get all the way to the other side of the store. And I don't think she ever did realize she'd taken the markdown cart, I bet she left it for a moment to get some produce, then saw that her own cart wasn't anywhere around and panicked.

I had a man ask for some Dreyer's chocolate ice cream that we were out of. He said that he'd been in three times already and hadn't found it, and that the person up front had said that every time we got a load in someone came in and bought all of this flavor. And if we had any in back he'd take 20 of them. Wow, the fact that he'd been in three times this week, and the fact that he was unable to get his product because of someone buying us out... maybe he'd think to special order? He's not the only person on this planet, maybe someone else wants some too. So I looked, and none, then I told him when they deliver next. He insisted he needed that many of them because the tag said you had to get ten. It's amazing how many people don't understand mega events. Yeah, right next to that "buy 10" there are large bold capitalized words that say "MIX AND MATCH". Thus, anything in the entire store that has this "buy 10" tag is a valid item. I even explained this to that guy but it was like talking to a brick wall. I doubt he even heard me.

Moving Stuff
I brought home a regular egg box and a small egg box last night. I figure I'll pack my old Threads, Sew Stylish, and sewing books in it. I doubt I'll get much sewing done in the next few months so I'm going to start packing it all up. I'll leave some basics out, like my machines and thread and stuff, but other things like my grommet setter and patches and appliques and stuff can all be packed up. And I won't tape the box with the books in it so if I need to get in it I can, and so that when I finish the newest magazines I can store them in it. I'm not sure what I'll use the big box for. I just know at some point someone's going to notice I'm taking home a lot of boxes. So far Tina's the only one who's really been there every time I've taken home boxes. So I need to find nights when she's not working. I would really rather Zhaun not find out just yet. I know he'd spend the next four months "punishing" me. He does that when people go on vacation. He'll let them go, but he schedules them for, like, 9-10 days straight before or after their vacations as punishment. So I can only imagine what he'd do if he found out I was quitting. I figure I'll let them know in early May. May 2nd or May 8th or something. Or maybe me bringing home boxes will let it out early. If it's, like, March or something then I wouldn't mind. I don't think I really need to be bringing home a whole lot more boxes, in fact I don't think I will for another week or so because there's only so much I can reasonably pack right now. I don't want to pack any of our books because we might want to read them or I might need to look something up. I could pack my reference books, like my archeology and earth ones. I could pack my Sims 2 expansion packs, that's almost one entire box just by themselves cause I think I have all of them except the stories packs.

We found a stove on amazon for 184 dollars, it has two burners and fits two cookie sheets or a cake pan. It's a camp stove, but Victor says it will work great. Out of, like, 40 reviews he looked at on various sites there were only three that were negative, the majority gave it 5 stars and a handful gave it 4. It has a lid so you can close it. We'll need something to set it on, like a cabinet or something. But I'm sure we can find a metal cabinet and that will give us more kitchen space. So we ordered it, and it had free super saver shipping! Yay! Plus it was on sale for 10 dollars off. Camp Chef Camping Outdoor Oven with 2 Burner Camping Stove That's the one.

Soap Fixes

I slept until almost 8:00. 0_0 I guess I needed it, I do feel somewhat well-rested, it's different. Now if I didn't have work in an hour and a half I wouldn't be wearing jamies right now.

The consensus at the soap forums I posted at is that I need to use a scale. My mom's bringing me one, so that will fix that problem. I didn't think it would be that big a deal. The difference between weight and volume ounces. Oh, well. Anyway, I also learned that I need to use a soap calculator. And that I should do 50-50 on hard to liquid fats. So I bet my next batch is spectacular. I'm not sure when I'll try another one. Maybe tomorrow morning if I'm not too depressed about having to go to work at 2:00. I think I might try to sneak in ten or fifteen minutes early. And this batch of soap will be a simple tester one. Nothing fancy, maybe just some chamomile eo. And I still need to cut the pipe in half. I might try to get Victor to do that, it would probably take him less time than it would me, and I'll hold the end for him. And the soap calculator is really neat, it tells you what properties each oil has and what your end soap will be, like, hardness, bubbles, cleansing, etc. And then it tells you how many ounces of each fat to put in. The prepper in me wants to find a chart or something to print out with the math and stuff on it so that if the internet goes away I'd still be able to make soap without having that crutch. And then Victor would be very useful, cause he's good with math.

Me and Victor played some Battlefield Bad Company 2 last night. I'm getting much better. My kill/death ratio is up to .33. Not bad. I thought I'd be playing primarily as a sniper, but I've actually been doing mostly assault.

Soap Failure

Clearly, my soap was a disaster. It was going great. It traced at about 40 minutes, it smelled good, it looked good. I went over to the pipe and started pouring. The first problem was the paper kept getting in the way so I tore a bit off so I could get at the pipe easier. Pouring at first was easy after that, then it started getting harder and it started moving the paper around and some got between the paper and the pipe. And it went downhill from there. When I looked into the pipe I saw that a lot of the soap had clung to the sides of the paper and hadn't even made it to the bottom! So I started scraping at it with a spatula and I dropped the spatula in. I rolled up my sleeve and plunged my arm into the pipe up to my elbow. Yes, my bare arm. Up to the elbow. In freshly poured soap. Something that is never, ever, ever recommended by anyone because of just how dangerous lye is. Well, I got my spatula back and I was happy and my arm felt fine. And then suddenly it was like it was covered in ants. I didn't really want to let Victor know so I walked slowly by him and once I was out of sight I made a dash for the bathroom to wash my arm off in cold water (it felt better than hot). I had red burny marks all over my arm but they're gone now. It still kinda tingled a bit after that but all's good. My soap, on the other hand, is not so good. A recipe that normally gives me eight bars got me these two, plus a third I'm too embarrassed to show because it's pretty bad. Plus there's the crumbling. The marbeling came out nice, though. So I just made a thread asking what I did wrong at this forums I stumbled across on google. The most I can find is that it could be because I don't have a scale and my lye to fats ratio is wrong. It could be because I'm not using enough of the right kind of fats. My theory about our air being too dry here didn't really work because I cut my soap after it being in the mold overnight. But I've always had issues with cutting, that's why I went for those 4-bar molds. *sigh*

A few things for next time: I'm cutting my pipe in half so it's more manageable. I'm going to tape the paper to the pipe. And I'm going to use a funnel. Those will deal with the pipe issues. But for my cutting issues I'm going to need help from more experienced soapers.

My schedule for next week, at work, is 10-6 on Sunday, which has been the norm lately. Then on Monday it's 2-10. Which is stupid. I always work 10 hours on Inventory. Bring me in at noon. There's no reason to make me work until midnight. And I don't care, as soon as I'm done counting I'm out. Even if it's 8:00. There's not really anything to do after I'm done counting anyway. Then I go back in at 10 or 10:30 I can't tell (Zhaun's handwriting) and then work till 7. Back in at 6 on Wednesday. So I won't be able to read that book until after work on Wednesday. Which is ok I guess since I have Thursday off and can curl up reading all day.

That picture I posted of the pizza looked so good I had to make another yesterday. It was so delicious. And such a difference from store-bought pizza. With one of those me and Victor split it and then need to eat something else later. Yesterday with my home-made one we each ate three pieces and I wasn't hungry the rest of the evening.

Today I want chicken and dumplings.

A few more purchases

First, here's a picture of a pizza I made on the 17th that I quite forgot about:

I was really proud of how it came out. It is cheese and sausage.

 And this one is from last night. Victor made us some sorta Asian thing and it was really delicious.

This is our carpet sweeper that we got. And it actually works better than a vacuum! You have to stop and clean it, but that's ok. It cleans deeper and better and doesn't use any electric.

We went to Home Depot originally, yesterday, to look for a pipe so I can make batches of round soap, but they didn't have any that I liked, so we went to Lowe's and saw these on the markdown cart. I'm holding the sticker cause the corner was flopping over. The cord set was 3 dollars marked down from 7.

 

And here is the pipe I got. It came in that length, which is what I wanted. I didn't want to have to get one of those really long ones and cut it, but this was cheap and the right length. I bought a "test cap" to put on the end so that the soap doesn't come out the end. Now what I do is stand it on end, with the cap side down, put parchment paper inside the pipe, pour the soap in, let sit until it's solid enough to remove, then wait another day or until it's solid enough not to squish when I cut, then I cut and dry like normal. I read a tutorial on this. My pipe is 3" diameter, but the one in the tutorial was 2 1/2". I couldn't find 2 1/2" and 2" seemed too small.

We had gone out to get cat food and lye yesterday. Because I was out of lye. I bought two things of it this time so I wouldn't run out as fast. I'm not sure what kind of soap to make. I kind of want to do a chocolate scented one but I don't even know where to get cocoa butter, other than online, cause everywhere I'm finding it it's in the form of hand lotion. I could do a lavender batch but I don't know where to find alkanet root, which is what you use to dye it lavender color. I just don't know. I'll look around and see what I come up with. I want to do a normal water batch, then after that I'll try a milk batch.

On the Faerie's Ruin plot prizes, I bought another stamp and put it up for sale, it's sitting at around 13,000 on the auctions right now (up from the 8,000 I think I put it up for), and I grabbed a potion that's at about 18,000, up from 4,000. I got another stamp and another potion that's in my safety deposit box. Now I have 910 points left and I'm trying to decide between the Xandra bobblehead to put in my gallery, or the containment field toy to sell. Either way I'll have 10 points left for a keychain. If I go with the bobblehead I'll have 200 points to spend on stone pies (100 points each). I might eventually try to buy the guyliner and the crashing faerieland background. Everyone wants the background, though, so that might have to wait until it drops in price.

I decided to look up Green Rider fanfiction to get me through until Tuesday. I kinda don't want to cause I don't want to go into book 4 hoping for this or that (I do kinda want something to happen with Karigan/Zachery, but I don't think I'd mind if she dragged it out through another book), but I was curious. I am impressed with the fan following. There was 85 pages of fanfics, total, 42 of them are romance. Out of that only 3 were rated M and two of them should have been rated K and one of them T. This means the fans are loyal to how the characters actually are, and don't go running off shipping everyone in tons and tons of M-rated shipping goodness. Or rather, badness. Think Harry Potter fans. We're scary when we get shipping. But all the ships I saw were actually really good, things I would have thought of on my own. Like Fergal/Mel, and Stevic/Laren, Alton/Dale, and Garth/Tegan. The only weird ones included Fastion, which I guess makes sense? And then the token slash, Allesandros/Hadriax, which does kinda make sense, all of the "I love you as my best friend, as my brother" stuff. And almost all of the fics are fluffy angst. I was too tired to explore the other sections, like the humor or the adventure, and stuff. And I usually avoid the fics that have tons of chapters and lots of words. If there's eight chapters and each one has five paragraphs, that's fine. But if each chapter is very long I avoid it. Basically. Because I don't want to get drawn into this big story that's more or less someone's idea for another book in the series because if I like it then the next book will seem not-canon, or it will be disappointing.

I  have to go in to work later to order. I should be leaving in a minute here cause I had wanted to get there around 8 or so and do my orders and stuff then get my check right at 9 when the desk opened. But it can wait, I still need breakfast, I haven't eaten yet this morning and I got up around 6:40!

Cheese?

At work yesterday they paged grocery for a phone call, which was me at that point, so I took it and it was about bulk food. I could have just ran off and did it myself but hadn't the time so I called Anita, because she's the one who works the bulk food. A little bit later Bret walked by and got mad at me and told me, "She never picked up! You have to go back and check!!!" Um... if I didn't have time to take care of another person's department myself I sure don't have time to run back into the office every two minutes to make sure they picked up a phone call. Bizarre. But I guess that was his Rule of the Day.

Much later I was filling yogurt, which always seems to be so much fun. This short guy came up and was all irritated and saying that he's wandered the store for TEN MINUTES and can't find ANYTHING and would I help him find this thing. It was some sort of meat base that comes in flavors like beef and clam and is a sort of paste. Having no idea what he was talking about I admitted that and directed him to the broth since there's bullion there and stuff, or the canned meats. He started to get mad at me for not knowing so I walked him over to the canned meats and nothing. I would have told him to walk down by the mexican stuff since it might have gotten shoved in there, but he started saying how he can't find anything since the remodel, he hates this store, and he's leaving. He reassured me that he didn't hate me. Well, that's good. Everyone else was gone or I would have asked someone. I almost sent him to meat department, but he got upset too fast. Pretty much the only other person there was Deana, and maybe I should have gotten her, but I didn't.

Then after that I had this guy ask for velveeta, nothing strange, I've been getting that one since before the remodel. So I told him and he looked at me funny and said, "It's not refrigerated?" No, it's not, at least not at our store. We sell slices cold, but not the blocks. Some "cold" foods are ok up to so many days, in fact a lot of butters/margarines even say that they're shelf stable up to this many days (country crock for one), sunny delight is, tampico is, and etc. And then there's those that you refrigerate after opening, such as ketchup and parmesan. Anyways, he got his cheese and came back and wanted to know where rotel is.
Me, "Service deli."
Guy, "...do you even know what it is?"
Me, "Sure, it's a cheese, or dip, or something."
Guy, "It's canned tomatoes."
Me, "Oh! Well, I was way off. Canned tomatoes are down aisle 6."
I asked Victor when I got home and he said I was correct, there is some sorta cheese or dip or something similar sold in service deli that sounds a lot like rotel. I'm going to ask Nora (service deli manager) next time I see her or that will drive me nuts. And once the guy said it, I remembered we do have a brand of tomatoes called Ro-Tel. I believe they're on sale right now.

The bakery is selling cakes shaped like footballs. I dunno, isn't that taking it a bit far? I mean, not like it was hard, just use their easter egg mold, but still. I dunno, I just don't get into football. People treat super bowl like it's a major holiday or something. It's just a group of big guys rolling in the mud and slamming into each other. I suppose the gay community gets a thrill out of that. Otherwise I don't see much point to it.

Update on hurts: Back is still kinda touchy but hasn't been in much pain in a while, nor has it actually hurt. My hand is getting better too, it didn't help to wake up last night to find it curled under my head at a weird angle. Yesterday's shoulder pain, which I thought felt different and was in a different place than normal, is because the left shoulder is growing new muscle, so that's good.

And that reminds me. One of the things work has done for me that's been good is that I'm more muscley. In fact when I quit I have to find stuff to do to keep my thighs looking good, and my upper arms are large enough that some shirts don't fit quite right. In fact, if it weren't for my stomach I would need very little work (though I would need to work a little) to fit the Mara catsuit perfectly. It is still in my to-sew list and I still have all the information saved, and I bought the pattern for it years ago. It doesn't seem too terribly difficult. The hardest thing will be working with pvc fabric. And then after that the hardest things will be to make the belt and kneepads, getting a blaster and lightsaber. Since I'll be doing an actual character I'll need to work extra hard to get the lightsaber perfect since I'll be copying someone else's. Which might make it easier since there's probably plans out there for it. Or perhaps it doesn't matter since I believe at that point in time she was using one Palpatine gave her, in which case if it doesn't look right I can say she lost hers and he gave her a new one or something. And she did switch colors some, I think she's had pinkish and blue, maybe green but I don't remember. hm. I've had Victor try to start reading some of my SW books and he's finished very few of them. I know he's getting into it when it winds up in the bathroom. Which is where I found Star Wars: Allegiance yesterday. I tried the Bane book, which he wasn't really into, I tried the Thrawn Trilogy, which he hates Thrawn (bah), I tried the Han Solo Adventures since they're by Brian Daley who did the radio dramas, but he didn't like them. I almost want to sic Barbara Hambly on him. lol I would make him read the Bounty Hunter Wars but I think he's read them before. He might like Survivor's Quest since Mara and Luke are cuddley and cute in that one. He didn't like the X-Wing books cause he finds Stackpole incapable of writing (I LOVE the X-Wing books... Yay, Wedge!!!), but liked the Wraith Squadron portion cause Aaron Allston is excellent, which I agree. I might give him Vector Prime to read at some point, see how he does with the NJO. But that will have to wait until after I finish the NJO. I have three books left. And I'll get to that after Green Rider 4 I think.

I guess it's time for breakfast. I'm on cinnamon toast crunch right now.

Edit: I see no reason to make a separate post just for this. The prize store for The Faeries Ruin plot at Neopets has been open since Tuesday. I bought three books, a stamp, and the Brynso plushie. I also bought another stamp to sell. I started it in the auctions at 10,000np. ...it ended up selling for 89,100np. 0_0 I almost want to go get me another stamp to sell! I bought a charm and I have it in my safety deposit box to sell in a year, which is when they expect it to be worth the most. But I still have something like, 24,000 points to spend and I don't know what to dooo! I kinda wanted the crashing faerieland background but my greed won out and now I don't have enough points for it. I'd have had more points to spend if the battledome had ever worked for me. I spent 10,000np on a sword and everything and then every time I went to the battledome it said all the enemies had been defeated already. And then I totally missed one whole step that closed when the next chapter went up. Bleh. I wound up with 61,000 points total. Anyway, my choices now are: Get another charm to put into my safety depost box, buy another stamp, get the petpet to sell, or maybe the Nox Memoirs book since everyone seems so obsessed with Nox. Or I could buy stuff for me, like the Guyliner. I don't know what to do! I have to do something, though. hm. The petpet costs 15,000, the charm costs 12,000, the stamp costs 4,000. I could get the petpet and the guyliner, and have 910 points left. Or I could get the charm, the guyliner, a book, and have 410 points left. Or I could get the charm, and three stamps. Or two more charms. augh.

Shortest visit ever

I didn't sleep very well, I woke up for a while at some point during the night and was awake for quite a while.

The visit wasn't actually so bad. I'm not filthy and sweaty like normal. Probably because Dustin did the doors last night.

At first Zhaun was saying that he was going to give me 300 dollars to take across the street to Super 1 to buy some Lean Cuisine we were out of. I did not feel at all comfortable about that. Not the money bit, I don't care about running 300 dollars across the street. I cared about the poor employee who would have to explain why they were out to the boss (Dennis, he's nice and would understand what happened and why) and the customers who would show no mercy. I hate it when people buy me out of something, and then they were going to make me do that. It's a form of cheating and weaselry that would hurt others. They have customers too, you know. I was going to find a way to weasel out of it. And I came up with a plan to look busier than I was so no one would bother me. It either worked or they changed their minds cause I never heard anything about it again.

So after all that preparing and everything finally around 12:30 I saw the new HR guy and he talked to me for a few minutes, just an introduction cause he's new. But that's somewhat of a first. Usually the only corporate person who pays any attention to me is Renee, but since her brother took some high position she hasn't been as in charge of us as she used to be. It was actually her brother everyone was so scared of today. But he came in, stormed around the outer edges of the store, and left. 10 minutes tops. Well. Ok, then.

I ended up leaving around 1:30ish because Zhaun had me and Dustin get the markdown carts out of hiding. And then I talked with Bonnie a little and she gave me a cookie from this pack one of the vendors gave her as a sample. And I marked some stuff down.

We tried a Chicken Helper today, it's been in the cabinet a while and I decided it's about time we tried it. It was whole grain, lemon and herb. And it was disgusting, even Victor had trouble finishing it. The lemon was overpowering. I think I bought two of them so when I make the second one I'll leave off the glaze. I think if I did that it would taste good.

I'm fidgety because I don't have a book. My Tales comics have been keeping me fairly entertained, though. I'd forgotten how much I liked the Tales series.

I forget which episode of Clone Wars we're on, but it's the one where Barriss Offee and Ahsoka team up. It was pretty good. I like the voices they gave them, and they were very in character. I didn't like the end when Luminara and Anakin couldn't even find their own Padawans. What kind of a Master-Padawan Force-bond do they have that they can't even find each other in such a small area? Even if Anakin couldn't find Ahsoka I'm more than certain Luminara could find Barriss. Otherwise no complaints and it was a good episode.

My hand/wrist is still bothering me.

But I'm not tired

I read through one of my Tales comics today, and I guess having to call the people by their names in order for them to be recognizable isn't too uncommon. I guess I'd just forgotten. Maybe Invasion should have been a Tales comic. Those are basically pick and choose on what's canon, as far as I know. For example, Tag and Bink aren't canon. But Ghost (the one where Han meets Quinlan Vos), I can see that one as being canon.

Anyway, today wasn't bad at work. Someone must have told Bret about McDonalds being cheaper because he was making the announcements today claiming our sandwich is better, but he didn't say anything about whose is cheaper.

I go in at 5 tomorrow, Zhaun asked me to. I would rather not, but I will. It's just hard to get motivated to go to bed. My "normal" shift has become 11-7, which means I'm used to not getting home till nearly 8 most days (cause I usually have to stay a half hour over) and then I don't get to bed till after 9, and I probably don't get to sleep till 9:30 or so. I like to try to aim for 8 as a bedtime, which means today it's 7. And I'm not at all tired. I suppose I'll take a vitamin b and see what happens.

I played some more of the challenges in that Batman game, but I'm not very good at it.

Also, I think I was a little hard on the Kreameries. I think me and Bonnie are that way with almost all the new vendors. When Bimbo (yes, that is their company name) first started me and Bonnie hated them. Anyway, the delivery guy is a lot nicer now, I think he's scared of us. I moved the empty crates off to the side to give him room to get to the backstock area and he put the new stuff where the empty crates had been. lol Anyway, I also found out that why their fax machine has an answering machine message is because their fax and phone number is the same. I've been getting it a lot where the rep answers the fax like it's a phone call and then puts it through to fax. Once she hung up on me and I had to redial, which was amusing and annoying at the same time.

My hand's been crampy today, I think I slept on it wrong. I almost fell off the bed last night because Bonecrusher was sleeping next to me and I kept moving over to give him more room and he kept moving closer and eventually I found myself rolling off the edge, but I caught myself. It was funny.

I might have to work Saturday for a while to help get ready for inventory. It will be a fun one. Inventory, I mean. Having it on the first of the month. The time when we're supposed to have a ton of product on hand for the "omg I my foodstamps renewed so I have to immediately run out and spend every last cent of it on milk that's going to expire in ten days so I can spend the other 20 days of the month without milk" rush. And a week after a visit from corporate, which we are supposed to be very well stocked on product for. And me with sour cream, cottage cheese, and yoplait on sale next week. I wonder if I played the positive shrink game well enough. I seem to have done something with the yoplait cause I've thrown away about four or five cases of strawberry/banana yogurt that expired, without scanning it out, and the computer says I have two cases less than I actually do. huh. Yay me!

Well, I really should go to bed now. ugh I know the shower I took today will be meaningless tomorrow because I always come home sweaty, filthy, and stinking like bleach after a visit. Pity, cause I feel clean and pretty. My hair is light and drapes perfectly. bleh. Only four more months, probably means only four more times I'll have to do this.

NJO Comic: Should have remained an April Fool's Joke

Today Zhaun was in on his day off preparing for a CAO Audit. This time it was real easy for me, I pulled the tags and faced over my holes. Took me five minutes. Then I did all the shelf reviews and on the last aisle Zhaun told me I didn't have to do his cause he'd already done it. He'd cheated on it though and told me just to go ahead and keep the one I did.

We had three checkers total today. Wow. I checked a little but not really as much as I thought I might. Sundays are always shop days, but I don't think we had one today. They changed the checker numbers for everyone who's not actually a checker so they can start tracking how much other people have to check. Good. It's not so bad as it once was, used to be I'd be up there an hour every day, but it's gotten a lot better. Sundays are really the only days we have problems with it other than the occasional once in a while thing. I think we had a bad week in December where they were calling us a lot but that's expected that time of year. Once tourist season hits is when we'll be called up a lot again.

Bret did something funny last Monday that I keep forgetting to mention. We have a chicken sandwich in the service deli. It comes on what's probably among the lowest quality buns available and has two slices of pickle on it. No mayonnaise or lettuce or anything. Meat's alright. Anyway, Bret was advertising it over the intercom and went, "Much better than McDonalds, and cheaper too!" We sell ours for 1.99. McDonalds has decent buns, lots of lettuce, plenty of mayonnaise, meat that's usually good, and they're only 1.29! I face palmed and was so going to go tell him that McDonalds is actually cheaper, but I'm not that friendly with him.

Someone today asked me what the difference was between greek yogurt and regular yogurt. And you know, I don't actually know. I've been meaning to find out since we started carrying greek yogurt a while back but I never looked that up. I know the Greek Gods yogurt is, well, heavenly, but the yoplait and kroger greek is grainy and gross. Anyway, I told her that "There's a taste difference", and when I realized that wasn't very informative I told her that there was also nutritional difference on the nutrition information bar. I should look that up sometime.

Today wasn't so bad, other than back pain, which has been near-constant (a lot of times dulling down to almost nothing) since Tuesday. Though today it seemed mainly centered around my hips.

I finished Green Rider 3 yesterday. I have so long to go before book 4! I don't know what to doooo! Yesterday I read a comic book, this morning I read a Goosebumps Choose Your Own Adventure. I don't want to get into anything with a real story because I want to maintain where I'm at in the Green Rider series so I can pretend like I'm reading a continuous story when book 4 comes out. So the next NJO is out, and not just because I wouldn't be able to finish it in a week. The next LOTR book is out. Maybe I'll re-read Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. I like it better than Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. hmm. Maybe I'll just keep up with the Choose Your Own Adventures. I don't know if I want to re-read any of my comics, I don't think I have any new ones I haven't read yet. I could re-read the Star Wars Tales Volumes, all the comics collected in those are one-shots and don't have a whole lot of story to them. I wonder if I have any Tag and Bink tpbs. I passed up a collection of them to get Invasion, part one of the NJO comic. Which originally started out as an April Fools joke about how Dark Horse or whatever was going to redo the NJO in comic form. Then it eventually ended up being a reality, but based on someone else's adventures, which I took to mean there'd be no big name people in it, which I was wrong.

So, here's the review for: Star Wars: Invasion Volume 1 - Refugees
Finn Galfridian, our main hero, is basically a Marty Stu. He's the prince of his planet, who's also Force Sensitive and gets whisked away by Luke himself to train on Yavin IV, which in and of itself isn't so bad. I could buy that he's a prince, I can see him on Yavin IV, everyone goes to Yavin IV. Luke finding him isn't so abnormal either. The fact that he immediately becomes best friends with the Solo kids and especially Jaina? That's pushing it. His little droid and the goggles are kinda stupid, me thinks the writer wore goggles when he was a teenager. Then Luke senses something big and important about him. Something he's never sensed in anyone else before ever! Then he sends Finn away with Leia and the Solo kids to meet with some smuggler, but first they need to find him or something? And the guy who is going to lead them to him heads away then circles back and the smuggler had been in the same cantina the whole time and had been besides him when they had originally talked with him? And why did the crazy homeless guy know his name? And the smuggler gives them a holocron with information on it for who in the galaxy are actually Yuuzhan Vong in ooglith masquers. Except holocrons can only be opened with the Force (and someone even says that in the comic and then goes on to say they don't know how the smuggler had gotten it open), and the first man to pop up on the list is non other than someone Finn knows! The whole character of Finn cries Marty Stu and is very uninteresting and too much like a fanfiction, I almost have trouble believing it got published at all.

However, there is a redeeming factor to this! Kaye, Finn's sister. She and her mother are captured by Yuuzhan Vong and Kaye helps everyone escape, including a lone warrior from a planet that had already been destroyed by the Vong. This story I like. She's believable enough, and I like her interactions with this warrior whose name slips my mind. Her story is fun, and while she, too, has the whole "I know what you really are" thing going on with them trying to push it on us that she's a warrior too, but it comes off as interesting, enjoyable, and believable. Her side of the story has no one famous in it. They could have easily slipped in Tsavong Lah or someone and had him leave the ship moments before she breaks out. But they didn't. And this makes her story nice. If I continue buying these comics it'll be to read her side of the story.

I also don't quite get the family history. So the dad is king. But he was also at the Battle of Hoth, but he mentioned having "returned home to this planet", so I take it while he was a prince he ran away and joined the Rebellion? Being a far outer rim planet I doubt the Empire had much to do with them. But anyway. I also take it that he trained his kids how to fight, and that's how Kaye did so well on her own.

The art is awful. Except that their names were Jacen, Jaina, Anakin, and Leia I would not have recognized them.for who they were. Especially Leia! Jaina looked more like Leia than Leia did. Whoever the artist was they made Leia squat and her face round. Also, some of the sequences were hard to follow, but that might just be because I haven't read a comic in so long. But it seems to me that most others are much easier, I didn't have any trouble with Mara Jade: By the Emperor's Hand, or Crimson Empire, those two being the last two I've read. Anyway, off to bed with me.

Bleeding soap!

I took the soap out of the oven and was going to pop them out of the molds when I noticed that there were little droplets of stuff on top. Odd. When I actually did pop them out I realized that they were wet on the five sides that hadn't been exposed to air. Different other spots just had droplets, and it was smeared in places, exactly like the soap was bleeding. In fact I believe that's what it is, too, because it seems to have seeped from inside the soap. It's this dark brownish stuff. So that gives an even bigger impression of blood. It's probably the tea/lye mixture. I do hope the inside of the bar is solid. It feels solid enough. I'm in the process of wiping them off. Before I put any of these up for sale I'm going to cut one open (the one I intend to keep for myself) and make sure it's ok inside. For now I'll set them to dry and cure like normal and hope all goes well.

Also, I packed all but two bolts of fabric into an egg box. I also crammed my bolts of interfacing in as well. So I labeled it Box #002.

Generator

Yesterday I ended up working from 11-8. And I didn't take a break. I didn't really have time. And I left quite a bit that should have been done that I didn't get to. Like a pallet that only had five cases of eggs I could have stacked out of the way, and the crate juice. And I forgot to give Bonnie the totals for this week on the dsd milk I threw away. I really need to get that to her today because I need to push about 90 dollars into this week so that I only have about 160 to get rid of next week, which I won't, I'll only get rid of another 80 or 90 and then give her about 70 for the week of Inventory. That should scatter my massive amount of milk shrink that's floating around. I also didn't break down any of the freight. I didn't do the scan audit again, either. I keep thinking I should print this out and post it by the timeclock: (click to enlarge)

What's kinda funny is that I wasn't hungry till about 5:30 when I was doing the order, and then it stopped and I wasn't hungry even after I got home. I ate anyway, though. Well, and I did eat a tiny bit at work, I had a rice candy with me and I had one fruit snack left in my lunch bag. (not a whole bag of fruit snacks, just one single one left, because I've been munching out of it for a while now)

Yesterday Timmy was all, "Remember last year when someone announced a birthday? Well guess who's birthday's coming up now? Do you work on that day?"
Me, "Yes."
Tim, "Good, I'll come in even if I have that day off!"
Me, "What day do you think it's on?"
Tim, "I don't know, the 25th?"
Me, "No."
Tim, "The 23rd?"
Me, "No."
Tim, "The 29th?"
Me, "No."
Tim, "I'll ask Emily."
I then teased him for not remember when my birthday was. I figure I'll let him know on Sunday that he missed it. I didn't want to tell him yesterday because he could have still gone up to Bret and let him know that it was on Thursday cause then Bret could have announced it by saying it was "yesterday". And when Bret announces a birthday he makes sure he embarrasses you as much as possible. He's done it to me before.

And it happened again, as I was filling yogurt some old lady elbowed me out of the way. Turned around and it was my mom! And Emily. It was good to see them. They said I'll probably sell three more soaps. Since I seem to be having success so far and it's something I really enjoy, I think after I move I'll start branching out into other things, shampoo, liquid hand soap, bath salts, and other assorted things.

I need to pop my soap out of the molds this morning. I was going to make more soap today, just to get a big variety ready, but I'm out of lye, I forgot. Victor says he saw a big thing of it at Home Depot (why he didn't get I don't know, because I remember telling him I was out of lye, but then he had a migraine that night so he might not have remembered), but I don't know if I can justify going all the way out there just for that. It'll probably have to wait until next time we need something else too. Today I guess I'll make more fizzies.

I brought home some buckets, I'm not sure how many, I was too exhausted last night and I haven't made my way to the kitchen yet this morning. I'm guessing it was something like seven though, it was an odd amount. And I have another egg box because I intend to see if those bolts of fabric I bought at Wal-Mart will fit into it. I know they wouldn't all fit into one, cause I have too many for that, but if they're not too long to fit the boxes that would be a good place to put them.

Victor indeed got us a generator. It was 499.00 at Home Depot. There was a cheaper one at Lowe's but it was not a brand he'd ever heard of, so he went with the other one, Husky I think? Anyway, us hauling it into the house last night ripped the box a little so he wants us to assemble it today to get it out of the box. He says next time we pick it up it'll pop out of the box. So we'll do that later.

Today for dinner I want to make baked ziti, and this time I'm going to try and make a half recipe in the casserole dish. Usually I make a full recipe in a cake pan but we always struggle to eat the leftovers. But with a half recipe that should easy.

I woke up this morning to find Bonecrusher curled up against the back of my head. Aww!

Late Plaque

Yesterday no one at work knew it was my birthday, not even Timmy. lol, good. I didn't want anyone to make a big deal of it, asking me about it. "So are you going to do anything fun?" Nope. I'm boring, remember? I don't mind the how old are you question except I'm afraid that will lead to the whole, "So do/did you have plans for your future besides being a grocery slave?" or the dreaded college question. Anyway, it turns out yesterday was Brittany's birthday as well! I think that's really cool. Remember, she's the bagger I would be friends with if I weren't anti-social? She's kinda mousy, but seems very capable and intelligent. And now that she's 18 she was begging asking all the departments if she could get into their department, even if it's just for one day a week because she hates the front end. I would actually take her in an instant, give her a four hour shift every Saturday and Sunday. Like, have an 8-4 person and then she could have 4-8. But, no, in fact the only reason we have even one day with two people next week is because we have a visit on Tuesday so we need two people on Monday to get ready for it. I don't actually know what I work next week, except I'm working Monday and Tuesday for sure because Dustin is staying late on Monday to get cleaning done so in return Zhaun's giving him Tuesday off. He'll probably give me Thursday and Saturday.

I got a plaque last night that says something about thanks for working with us for 5 years. It's dated 2008, which was my 5-year mark. I found it hilarious and had to ask the front desk (who are the ones who sent it back to me) if it had been up there for three years. Tim (who brought it back to me) said that they said they'd been forgetting to give it to me. I'll say!! Turns out, though, that it had only just now come in.

Mike wished me a happy anniversary, said he saw it was coming up. I said thanks, but it took a few minutes to figure out what he meant. At first I thought it was some odd birthday greeting. Then I thought maybe he was wishing me and Victor happy anniversary, which is in May. Then I realized he meant happy work anniversary, which is odd, since that's not till May 15th. Why say congrats if it's 4 months away? Oh, well, maybe he saw the plaque and got confused?

Victor's going to be going out today to get my paycheck and put it in the bank. It's just a lot easier than me trying to time it for before work. I tried that yesterday because I needed to put gas in the car. I left early so I'd have time and ended up clocking in 7 minutes early. But depending on the lines and traffic I don't know how well I could time a bank run today. Besides, Victor suggested he could get the generator today while he's out. I asked if he wanted me to go with him, but he said no, he knows what to get. I guess it is an electrical thing and he does know more about it than me. He did a good job on getting the wood stove piping on his own. I'll make some room for it in a corner later.

I hate the food game on 11-7 days. Yesterday I had a bowl of cereal around 6:30, then a bowl of chili around 9:45. After that I wasn't hungry at all and forced myself to go on break at 4:00 (an hour late) because I knew I should eat. When I got home from work I still wasn't hungry but ate anyway, and after I was done eating I was hungry. o_0 So now today I woke up late so I had cereal at 7:30 and in about 45 minutes here I should start making something to eat, and all this thinking about eating has me confused as to whether I'm hungry, munchy, or not hungry. I don't think I'm hungry. But I'm anxious about the whole thing which I think is making me believe I'm munchy.

I know I'm eventually going to get in trouble for having not done the scan audit in the last month. But I just don't have the time. One person can't be expected to do dairy on their own. How can bakery have the hours for two or three people a day and dairy doesn't? Bakery makes 12,000 a week and I make 25,000. By the logic they use in dairy this means bakery should have enough hours for a 6 hour shift most days and a 4 hour shift on an off day or two. Yet somehow they get 16 hours a day min.

The soap is now a kind of a light brownish-greenish-yellow. I'll be able to pop it out of the molds soon, I'll probably do so tomorrow.

Happy birthday to me

It's my birthday today and I'm now 24. I feel that I have more years than accomplishments. I'm mid-20s and in another few years I'll be closer to 30 than 20. What have I to show for the last several years? Back/neck pain, hair that I'm trying to heal, and icky fingernails, as well as a hatred of all holidays and dislike of humanity in general. I mean, I guess there are some big things, like, I did get married, and I got a new cat, and Sims 3 expansion packs, and a few new books, and I got much further into the NJO. But that's not something to tell eventual grandchildren. "...and then my Sim was going to go to France, but her next lifetime achievement thing was going to give me a ton of points if she went to Egypt instead so she went there and started a quest..." I want photo albums full of pictures of me and Victor out doing stuff. Almost all our pictures are of the cats. We're very boring people. That will change though.

We're doing pretty good on saving money, actually. We have enough right now to easily afford the generator and all the stuff we'd need for it. But I'm not sure when we'll do that. I know I looked at Wal-Mart last time we were there for a non-electric vacuum but I couldn't find any. So I'll look on Amazon.

Yesterday I used three buckets for various noodles that I got during all the remodel markdowns. I now have a bucket of bow ties, macaroni, and spaghetti. Spaghetti doesn't quite fit right, so I might find something else to do with it. I have a bag of rigatoni (or something), some boxes of ziti, and some various Asian noodles that are still in the cabinet. I don't have enough of those to need a bucket for each one. I have six more buckets that need washing. I still haven't really packed fabric. Or the rest of that one box I had started.

Today I think is a non-day. The sort of day where I pretend I don't exist. I'll research vacuums, and stuff, but overall, eh.

I checked on my soap. It's a light brown (sorta like milk chocolate frosting, only the slightest shade lighter), and I can see the speckles of tea in it. It's very pretty. I'm sure it will lighten up over the next few days. I'm not sure how many more batches of soap these molds will be able to handle. One of them's already cracked. I'll look into wooden box molds, they're more expensive, but if I'll be replacing plastic my molds every year it will end up cheaper.

We tried a new kind of TVP last night. Beef Flavored Textured Vegetable Protein TVP - 2.5 Pound Can It was sealed like a regular canned food and we had to open it with a can opener. It also has a plastic lid to put on it. It tasted really, really good. I made too much by accident, so next time I'll reduce it. It was also apparently nutrition we needed because we were both full half-way through and wanted fruit, so I opened a can of fruit and we put the leftover dinner in the fridge.

I have no complaints about these last two episodes of Clone Wars. Yay for them.

Also, I reserved Green Rider 4. It ended up costing 10.57! For a new release hardcover! I got a big discount by ordering it through Borders, then I used my Borders Bucks to get even more money off it. And from the sound of things I'll probably have February 1st off. ooo...

poisonous fudge

Made that green tea soap tonight. I should have taken pictures but I didn't feel like it. I liked watching how it changed color. The tea was a normal looking greenish/yellow I guess, then as I poured in the lye it gradually got more and more brown and weak coffee looking. As I stirred in the fats and kept stirring it started looking more and more dark, until it was finally a sort of brownish/black. After trace when I put it into the molds it was looking more like a dark chocolate fudge, it looks nummy. Also, when I first mixed the lye and tea the stench was horrible and I started coughing. But that passed, I had read that was normal. I really should start wearing gloves to do this. As usual I have specks all over my arms where I splattered myself. Nothing major, just irritation and itching. In fact I haven't been done a half hour and it's already gone. I used that new hand crank mixer (egg beater I suppose it's called) and it worked great. The grip started hurting my hands after a while and I kept switching hands. It took a little longer than the electric mixer but faster than a whisk. The grip was the only problem, and that's another reason I might start wearing gloves to do this, whenever I use this mixer. I guess I was also used to making oatmeal batches because I had cut the recipe to 16oz and I ended up with only enough for seven bars. Oops. Oatmeal adds a lot of bulk I guess. So next time I'll make 20oz. If you assume each bar is roughly 2oz in the 16oz batch and each bar is slightly smaller than I would have preferred... then 20oz would mean each bar would be 2.5oz, which is about right I guess. Of course I will keep one bar for myself. And if it works great I'll make another batch. But of course I won't be able to tell for some weeks, roughly a month in fact. In the meantime I'll make a batch of something else. But I'm done for now and it's well past bedtime.

There was nothing so very remarkable about work. Bonnie might be irritated with me but I'll act all confused and go, "Well how did THAT happen?" Coke delivered to the wrong store so I did a store transfer of the product and, well, basically Coke billed us for 1,200 and then we billed 168 for 1,400. And I honestly don't know how that happened. It shouldn't have. There's not really any reason for it to. Perhaps I should have done it by eaches instead of cases. But I didn't want to try that and have to void one of them. Besides I was rushing to get on a conference call I was 15 minutes late to. ...and Bret told me to transfer them anyway, so worse comes to worse I can tell her that I did it in cases cause that's how I always do it (which is true) and that Bret authorized the transfer. She probably won't get too mad, though.

We had tuna casserole for dinner yesterday and some of that ice cream. And Victor gave me my present yesterday too, a mortar and pestle. :) This makes me happy. After we've moved and I start collecting herbs it will be very useful. And for soaping too. Victor likes to tease me for having owned a black cat and said that "every witch needs one of these". lol You know, I really, really enjoy making soap and bath products. I can't wait to make more bath fizzies just because of how incredibly fun and relaxing it is. I don't quite understand how the chemicals work with each other on a scientific level, and while that information would be very interesting to know, for now it's enough to know that this mixed with this equals that.

Which brings me to my next thought: Strange as it is I would almost prefer using an abacus to a calculator because then I can SEE how we get to the answer. With a calculator it just tells you, with the other thing you can see how you get there and that helps you understand it better, which helps you learn how to do math better. You can count how many there are, find different combinations, and why is spell check marking "combinations" as wrong? It's right. huh. Well I am very sleepy and am going to go to bed now.
Edit: I would only use it for a learning tool, not in everyday life, I think.

I sold soap!

Yesterday was really slow at work. I worked 6-2. And we had deli/frozen right at the start, but I guess that was ok.

I did see something yesterday that made me hate my job all the more. I still feel sick thinking about it, I think that's why I didn't tell Victor like I'd meant to, because I'd blocked it from memory. Ok, first off, there's this checker named Kenny. He's this sweet old grandfatherly type. Has a hearing aid, grandkids, wife's very polite and nice, totally understands the hardships of grocery and tries to make everyone's life easier. His family's always in shopping. Yesterday me and Bonnie heard Bret screaming at someone (you could almost hear him out on the floor, and he was in the back-most office). We wondered who he was yelling at, Bob? Zhaun wasn't around. He normally doesn't use that voice with anyone else. After a while it died down so I went to see if we had any ads in so I could order. When I got to the doorway I saw Deana standing behind Kenny who was seated and Bret was there too. No one noticed me so I quickly backed away. From what I heard it sounded like Kenny had obeyed policy and rules and hadn't used someone's coupon, because the customer hadn't followed the rules of the coupon. I guess this must have made the customer upset enough to complain about him. And thus Bret got mad at Kenny for making us lose a sale, so I guess the customer hadn't bought the product. Basically, if we use a coupon without the rules having been met (such as "when you buy two") we lose money. Bret is willing to lose money to get a sale. Nevermind that the sale of the product is a complete loss to us, what matters is we made a customer happy and let the world know it can walk all over us. And Kenny got in trouble for following the rules. Not only that, but it was the customer who insisted he break the rules that got him in trouble! I have no idea how that ended, but Bret seemed in a fairly decent mood a half hour later when I returned to see about an ad.

In other, more happy news, I partially constructed a recipe for green tea soap and in a while here I'm going to go make it. I sold four bars of my other soap, the stuff I made in November, online. Yay! Altogether that's seven bars I've sold. So I'll make this new kind, and more bath fizzies, and get those ready for sale. And maybe in another week here I'll make another batch of soap, maybe this time some form of milk. I need to order cocoa butter, because I can't seem to find any in stores and I keep wishing I had some. I should also find some aloe vera sometime so I can make some summer soap, you know for when you're sunburnt. Maybe combine that with coconut oil. We sell big things of it at work. I also need to get some grapeseed oil, which we also have for a reasonable price, as well as sweet almond oil, which is also a good price. Oh, and I said I had partially made the recipe because I don't know how many bags of tea I'm going to use. I got a cheap thing of kroger brand green tea yesterday at work (48 bags for 2.69, but I had my employee discount of 10% which, I think, brings it down to about 2.43 if I did the math correctly). I found a notebook and I'm going to be using it for recipes. I left plenty of room to write additional details, like, "touch more of this" or "use less next time" or stuff. Because I don't really write down my recipes. But if I'm going to be selling this stuff I should really write it down somewhere I can access easily. This way if I want to do more batches in the future I have it right here. And I should measure things like how much essential oils I'm using. I'll probably wait for Victor to wake up to make this batch because he's the one with the awesome nose. He cooks with his nose, he smells the food, and knows exactly what and how much to add to make it perfect. So I shall use him for making soap. I used him to help make the bath fizzies I made last month.

When I got home from work yesterday I took a bath and Bonecrusher took up his position on the corner of the tub acting all worried. He noticed my toes were sticking out of the bubbles and started pawing at my food trying to "save" it and get it up out of the bubbles and water. Once he'd cleared off my foot he started trying to unbury my ankle. It was adorable. He couldn't reach any further, though, and left.

Since I work 6-2 tomorrow and 11-7 on Thursday we were going to celebrate my birthday tomorrow, but Victor thinks we should do it today since I have the day off. And what's kinda odd is that I don't really want a cake. But if I don't have a cake what else am I going to put candles in? I did buy some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, but you can't really put candles in that. It is very odd, because I have frosting and cake mix I was saving for this. And I always like to stir in peanut butter. It's just not a birthday without cake, though. hm.

I've read 476/678 pages of Green Rider 3. I'll have it done before the next book comes out for sure since I have two weeks exactly.

Kitty in a bucket!

Work today was pretty non-descript. I got a lot done, though.

For some reason the back of my neck was hurting and it made me nauseous at times, and hurt when I tried to rub it. Victor fixed it though. I must have slept wrong.

Remember how cold it was earlier this week? Below 0? Now a lot of the snow's gone, the rest is ice, and it's been raining almost non-stop.

I brought 6 buckets home from work, and when I come home I always pick up Bonecrusher in greeting. Today after I was done with him I deposited him into the stack of buckets:

Thrift Store Find

Found this at the thrift store on Thursday for a dollar. It squeaks a little but I'll try oiling it. I know this won't be able to do anything really thick, but that's ok. I can use it in pudding, pancakes, and etc. And for soap. It's small enough I can stick it in the pyrex I use for soaping.

We got some other things at the thrift store as well. We got some pants for Victor, two sweaters for Victor, and a sweater for me.

Also on Thursday I took down the Christmas tree and other decorations. I left a few things up, like the lights that are run down the hallway and the lights in the kitchen. We've mostly switched to the LED ones but we have some strands of the regular kind from previous years so I tested those to see what worked and didn't work and I ended up throwing out two strands that didn't work. Even if we don't use the regular kind again I don't want to throw out perfectly good lights so I kept the ones that worked.

Yesterday I packed some yarn, and five skeins seem to fit to a bucket. Which worked because I have five blue ones so now I have a bucket just for blue. I have some other colors somewhere I'll put away later.

Also yesterday I started another box. So far this one has my puzzles in it, some activity books (logic puzzles for me, crosswords for Victor), and some of Victor's collectibles. Like his Transformers, some anime girl, a Tails figure, some Indiana Jones lego, and one or two other things I didn't really know what fandom they were from. I wrapped those in old work pants that are too holey to wear, and an old sweater that's faded and has a hole in the front that's fixable. The box isn't full yet but I'll add to it some other time.

I got rid of a lot of stuff while packing that box. A road atlas from years and years ago. Some newsletters from work that didn't have anything important in them. The old employee handguide. An old name badge. An old "here's how to sign up for benefits" booklet. The bag our sheets came in (no idea why that was laying around, it wasn't the zippered sort so it's not one I would have kept. I keep the zippered ones cause they might come in handy some day). The instruction manual for my old printer that broke that we got rid of over a year ago. And other assorted things like that. Old bank receipts and paycheck stubs. Old store ads. And I found a little pile of things to try and sell. Like a Spiderman squirty toy from a cereal box and stuff.

I won Arkham Asylum last night. It was a really fun game. I went through some of the challenge modes and they're kinda fun. I'll be playing through the game again to get all the bonus stuff I missed the first time.

I made tuna helper for dinner and we watched the second episode of season 2 of Clone Wars. The only thing putting a crystal inside a holocron would do is put it somewhere for safe storage. That is if the holocron accepts the crystal at all. You can hack holocrons, but Darth Bane found that this nearly costs you your life, and in most cases you would probably die. I don't understand why the holocron took on a different shape after he opened it anyway. I don't think it's supposed to come apart like that.

Also, Anakin was being stupid. If he planned to have the airlock opened anyway he could have just done that from the beginning instead of opening the holocron first. Also, they're Jedi. Open the airlock, grab Ahsoka with the Force. Also, you can use the Force to keep yourself alive in space, as Kyp Durron did when the forward viewscreen of his X-Wing shattered. And Ahsoka was being stupid, running into the door like that. What did she think that was going to accomplish? Oh, and "specially designed for Jedi" handcuffs that shock you when you struggle? How does that make any sense? He needs to update to Boba's method. Handcuffs that shock you when you use the Force. Any Jedi can sit perfectly still and use the Force to unlock the handcuffs Bane was using.

I've been saying this since ROTS but they gave the droids too much personality. They all need a memory wipe. The whole ideal behind the droids vs clones is that clones have imagination and can think for themselves and come up with crazy ideals for winning the war. But to have a droid that gets scared of being killed and says he hates his job? And a droid that points to someone else and pretends they're the commander when he's clearly the yellow-headed droid? Why would the clone believe him? Even I know the yellow-head droids are commanders.

I agree with Victor, Boba could have gotten the job done faster and easier. He wouldn't have shown off the next target anyway, which would have prevented the entire thing where the Jedi know where to go next. He would have taken Slave I and snuck down to the surface, grabbed the Jedi, and taken off. He would have dealt with interrogation once he was safely hidden away somewhere. And he would have gotten what he wanted. But we'll see Boba later on, running around helmetless for some bizarre reason. He wore the helmet almost non-stop from the moment he left Geonosis after AOTC. And he also seems to still be wearing the Kamino outfit, from what I saw. But we'll see how it goes. He seems to be teamed up with Aurra Sing, which would never happen as the last time they were together they were trying to kill each other and there's no way she would take orders from him.

About the only good thing is that the good guys aren't invincible and you do see clones and the occasional Jedi dying.

Yesterday's Work

Yesterday the deli/frozen truck was backed in and waiting the moment I got there at 11. So I got the hallway and coolers ready only to find that he had grocery too. So I had to put stuff back in the coolers and get the backroom ready instead. Then after that I had to get the coolers ready again, and of course meat dept. hadn't bothered to get theirs ready at all so I figured I'd just drop their freight around all their carts and empty pallets. And the freezers were too full so I had to stack two pallets, and of course the driver came in to ask if there was anything he could do to help but I was done by that point.

A little after noon as I was doing the paperwork I heard them call me for a phone call. I knew it was meadowgold, so I ignored it. I figured I could say the refer on the truck was too loud and they would give up. They were persistent, however and I was called three times. Bret went into the cooler to look for me, then saw me rushing by with the paperwork from the truck to fax it and got mad at me and said, "Are you going to get that call!?" Well, no, obviously I hadn't heard it or I would have gotten it, wouldn't I? Idiot. Dennis, the old store director, he would have realized this and taken the call for me then informed me what it was about. Bret, oh no, he doesn't have that kind of sense. So I was forced to listen to meadowgold being snide about the order not being in so I explained I had only got there at 11 and trucks take #1 priority over anything and everything.

But I couldn't get the order out right away, I didn't end up faxing it till 1:00. This is because I spent an hour filling milk that's how bad it was. I decided to order by 5s. I figure the most this means is that on a pallet of 9 stacks five of them will be stacked 6 high and the other four will be 5 high. Good enough for me. And just as I was starting to write the order Bonnie told me returns needed to be done. I told her I had to get the order out by 1. So she started doing them, which was ok.

I finished returns around 1:30ish and was faxing the paperwork when Bret called me to the egg case. He didn't even give me 10 seconds before he ran around the corner to come find me with this disgusted "I can't believe a person like you even exists" look on his face and got mad that one of the eggs didn't have a tag on it and then told me to get this one product for this guy. So I ran around and found the price and the product then filled the eggs, which took a half hour because of how empty they were.

Then I did markdowns until 3:15 at which point I went on break. Then when I got back I made some pallets of empty crates then did the order until a little after 5. While doing the order I was by the yogurt and this woman and her mom were having an argument. The mom wanted to buy her grandkids all this neat yogurt, like the gogurts and danimals and the woman was all, "My kids don't get sugar, sugar is evil, I'm their mother and I decide what they eat". After her mom wandered off she explained to me that her kids get bouncy on sugar. Eh.I just thought her tone of voice was funny when she said sugar was evil.

Then I was by butter and this couple asked for the caselot cheese, which we did get in on yesterday's load.
Me, "How many do you want?"
Guy, "A couple."
Me, "...how many?"
Guy, "A couple."
Me, "How many so I know how many to bring out."
Guy, "A couple!"
Woman, "Two."
Ok, thanks. I know the technical meaning of "couple" is two. But according to who you ask you'll find that the answer is usually somewhere between 2 and 8. If I'd brought out two and they'd said, "Oh, can I get one more" I would have had to run all the way to the back again. Is it so hard to answer a simple question? But then both of them seemed to have rather blank eyes.

After I ordered I filled coffee mate and broke down and worked the pallet of crate juice, then broke down a pallet of UNFI and put it on a wheeler (special nutrition freight), then stacked the remainder of a pallet of eggs onto one of the new ones and moved it out of the way. Then I filled yogurt. And that's about all I did. Also, someone seems to have misplaced my damaged product cart because I can't find it.

I ended up working until 8:00. When I came home we had chicken patties and I didn't get to bed until after 9 and probably didn't fall asleep until 10:00.

And I forgot to say that Activia went on sale for 5 cents off a week and a half ago and people were buying it like it was good sale or something. lol

And, on Wednesday I discovered that they had moved a portion of the non-foods backstock in order to put a metal cage in. Odd. Is it to put misbehaving employees? I asked Dennis and turns out it's for high-theft items. Because putting high-theft items in an obvious cage that's only 6' high is so secure. Without the cage even I wouldn't know where the high-theft items are. Now they're all going to be grouped conveniently in a cage. Dennis agrees it's stupid and anyone could jump over it easy. Apparently razor blades are considered high theft items. I really, really do not get this. Medicine I can understand, formula I can understand, even batteries, but razor blades? Anyway, so far we haven't been using it for anything but getting carts out of the way.

Oh, and usually Dennis gets in the way, but yesterday he was just super good at it. Left a cart in front of my cooler door while I was offloading the truck and I had to pull the pallet one handed and push his cart out of the way with the other. Later he was going through two carts of videos directly in front of the brown doors to the back room so no one could get through. Then as he was going home he left two carts in the middle of the back hall so it was hard to get to the offices, down the meat/frozen hall, or the backroom. How he managed it with only two carts was impressive. So I had to move those.

Snowman! Yay!

These are our woodstove pipes. We still need an insulated one for going through the roof. They were kind of expensive-ish so we were going to keep looking around. I set them here for the sake of the picture and afterward I put them in the shed.

 These next pictures are of the snow-woman I built today. I spent about an hour on her. Yes, she has no arms. I'll call it an artistic decision. Since she's got more of a human resemblance than an actual snowman one I figured putting sticks in her shoulders wouldn't look so great. That's also why I didn't give her an actual face. I did kinda draw one with my fingers, though. Her necklace is made of the spiral things that grew winding it's way up my rose bush. The pendant is a dead rose bud. Her belt and it's adornments are made of the same spiral things. Her headband is a willow branch. Her hair I found next to the rose bush.

Hunger experiment: Fail!

A little bit more whining about Clone Wars: In that episode Ahsoka has to go before the council because she's misbehaved... by being a Jedi. She was going with her instinct, not the logic of a regular official of the Republic forces. A Jedi is supposed to feel, not think, use their instincts. So by being what a Jedi is... she gets in trouble? Perhaps the Jedi have been too caught up in this war and being in command of the troops and have forgotten themselves.

Work:
Remember how I always complain that I'm not hungry before work when I go in at 11, but I eat because I know I'll get hungry? Today I decided I wasn't going to eat before work. By 12:30 I was hungry, by 2:00 I was starting to feel weird. I considered going on break at 2, but decided to wait till 3. I knew if I did the truck would show up at 3. I was wrong. The truck showed up at 2:50. After the truck I had to fill 2%. So I didn't get to eat till 4:00. By that point I was a little shaky. Which is understandable considering I'd had a bowl of cereal around 6:30 and then a bit of yogurt around 9:00 and that was it.

The canvas bag guy was in today, he wears canvas bags tied around his feet like shoes and this is the second time I've seen him. He had on his big backpack again too. But he bought 8 quarts of egg beaters and then an 18 pack of eggs. I reckon he's just insane.

In the evening I decided to fill yogurt and this guy asked if we had any more of the cheese that's on caselot. I went and looked, none, I asked Julie, none. I told him.
Guy, haughty all-important voice, "Do I get a raincheck?"
Me, "It's not a product we usually carry, so no." Well, cause if we gave you one and got your hopes up you wouldn't be able to use it would you? We can't give rainchecks on caselot prices anyway.
Guy, "You do carry it, I buy a bag once a month."
Really? You buy this cheese once a month? This cheese that we carry three times a year for caselot? I didn't feel like arguing, I dunno, maybe we do carry it normally, but I don't think so. I've faced wall deli enough times to know this.
Me, "Well, you'll have to ask the checkers."
Guy,*frown bordering on glare*
Me, "They're the ones who do the rainchecks."
Then I turned away and ignored him.

Also while filling yogurt two employees and an ex-employee were standing near me chatting away. At one point they start asking each other where parmesan cheese is. Well I knew but they seemed content to discuss it amongst themselves and I was busy. Besides, they said, "We could ask someone but there's no one working tonight." Um, hello? What am I???

Also while filling yogurt this guy asked where corn dogs were so I pointed him to frozen and he said no, the other kind, ok, service deli. He asked what aisle that is. Uh, service deli isn't an aisle, and I told him so. Finally he asked where chips were. He came back a little later and showed me a bag of corn nuts. Oops.. I wonder who's fault that one was. Mine for not understanding him or his for not speaking more clear.

No one said anything about the milk. But I did have a note from Bonnie saying that Meadowgold is shipping on smaller pallets and can only fit 54 on them. Oh. Great. So 9 stacks of 6 crates basically. That is going to be just lovely on my neck/shoulder. I can slide a stack of 5 crates off a pallet easy, but if it's 6 high I'll have to down-stack that top layer. Which means milk loads are going to take even longer to do now. And ordering was very difficult because I was trying to order by sixes instead of fives. And, yes, it really did make that much difference. I thought how many I would normally order, say, 32 cases of skim, then figure that's 140, so what's the 6 times equivalent and I'd go up the times table on the calculator till I hit on 144. It wasn't until much later I realized that maybe I can still order by 5s? I dunno. I'll have to figure something out cause I can't spend a half hour on just the milk order. I'll probably just order by fives and let them deal with it.

Why tv is lesser canon

Sorry to post twice in one day but we just finished watching the first episode of Clone Wars Season 2. *sigh*

First of all, congratulations for dumbing it down for everyone, I guess they don't expect kids these days to be smart enough to know what "Port" means and simply call it "Left" even though no one in the Republic Navy would ever call if "Left", and especially not an officer. In fact no one in any Navy would use the word "Left".

Technically Clawdites don't need to be touching someone to assume their form.

Ahsoka's always misbehaving and running off and she hasn't been in so much trouble as to go before the council before, so why start now?

Why would the ventilation shaft lead directly to a door that goes into the holocron vault? And why would there be a section of wall that randomly has a slanted vent leading off of it if there was nothing to be, well, vented as it was a solid wall? People don't just make slanted vents leading up to blank walls.

The holocron vault has Sith holocrons as well. Also, there are really not that many holocrons in existence at this point at time as they are extremely difficult to make. I expected the "vault" to have maybe five or six at most. And for as much information as you can put on one of them you really wouldn't need a "disc 2" or something. Also, holocrons come in all shapes and sizes, not just squares. They are not uniform or identical. A holocron is basically your mind imprinted on an object. There is a basic size, shape, color, inscriptions, etc, as part of the making process, but they are unique to the individual. They wouldn't all be squares with blue outlinings. As shown in Legacy of the Force by Jude Watson there is deffinately at least one Sith holocron in there and if you disobey the rules any Jedi can get in, even children.

A non-Force user wielding a lightsaber isn't unheard of, but I find doubtful anyone could use one. They are very different from swords, which I doubt a lot of people have training in. In one of the Jedi Apprentice books (also by Jude Watson) Obi-Wan is forced to use a sword and, though he is one of the best saber fighters in the Order, he struggles. That's why it was so important in Tales #7 when Boba uses a saber against Vader, and in ESB when Han barely manages to use Luke's to cut the tauntaun. One could say that by that period in time people were so unused to lightsabers that it was different then than it would be at the height of the Clone Wars.

The jetpacks on Bane's feet would merely serve to tip him over and would require great skill in balance. I can believe the droid could manage it, but not Bane himself.

While, yes, the Keibarr crystal does exist in canon (though it's origin was decidedly not canon as I believe no one considers Splinter of the Mind's Eye to be canon) there is no possible way to record a list onto a crystal who's sole property is to enhance your Force abilities.

So, yes, I was quite correct years ago when I first said that a SW tv show would be the death of canon and SW as we know it. And to everyone who insisted we get one because beating a dead horse is just so much fun: I told ya so. Get what you wanted, did you all? Thanks. Say hi to the idiot kids who don't know anything about SW because no one bothers to even pick up a book anymore (which is especially crucial for the people who write this show), because they are going to be the majority of the fanbase now.

oh, btw, I hear there are Nightsisters in season 3. *goes to a corner to weep, holding Courtship of Princess Leia and stroking it sadly* Canon says Nightsisters weren't discovered until 8 years after ANH, which is 18 years after ROTS and Clone Wars is set a year or two before ROTS. And yet this tv show is claiming they're not only known to the galaxy at that time they are Asajj Ventress's "kinswomen", nevermind that Asajj Ventress is not a Nightsister!

I love packing

So far I haven't done anything with the buckets except wash them. They're still wet because someone decided to wash them for me because he thought they were lined up in the bathtub as a hint, when in fact they were like that to dry. Oh, well, at least he thought he was helping.

I packed one box, and it was fun. I love packing because you get to go through everything. You get to organize, decide what's tossed, what's kept, and then when you unpack you start anew with a clean, blank room. Moving eliminates clutter. And I do have packrat tendencies. Anyway, I put my old notebook journals in the box. While doing this I got to page through my stamp collection that I haven't added to in forever. I have a pile of stamps somewhere to put in it some day. I also put my pencil collection in it, it's in an old Mickey Mouse lunch box that I'm sure must be worth some money but it is mine. All the clothes I have that need mending, such as a pair of shorts Victor bought before he met me that have the lining twisted (as though it was sewn that way!), a shirt that has the underarm ripping, a larger shirt I want to take in to fit me, and etc. My Neopets and other stuffed animals, My Little Ponies (of which I only have four, I believe I have a whole crate of them at my mom's house), I also put in my Yoshi action figure thing. As well as the fake roses Victor's bought for me over the years.

I have chicken and dumplings in the oven right now, Victor's playing Fallout: New Vegas while listening to Christmas music *sigh*. Earlier I was playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, it's very good. I have to play through it again when I'm done though because I didn't know how to solve the Riddler's extra challenge thing and now that I do I need to go back through the game and get all those done. I've been playing some these past few days and I have about 7 hours on it. The nightmare worlds were creepy and cool. You know, I would call myself a Batman fan except the only knowledge I have is what I saw in the movies and some vague details I've gleamed from conversations with Victor. I have seen a few of the cartoons. What I need is to just sit down one day with Wikipedia and read up. Because of the vast number of comics I'm not really interested in preserving spoilers. *gasp* I know, me saying that. Normally I hate spoilers.

This is actually one of my first attempts at french braiding. It turned out extremely well. At the bottom I split into two braids and hair taped it. Not bad for the first time I've done this hair do. Credit goes to whomever has this style as their icon at the Long Hair Community, which I am a fairly recent lurker at.

Bonecrusher decided to help me pack my Neopets. That white corner is because I cut the picture because I didn't want to show off just how bad the floor under Victor's chair needs vacuuming.

Atton decided to help me with the regular stuffed animals.

Then Atton attacked some through the handle on the box.