Cat Stew

GROSS. I was reading an article online about some famous Italian chef who started going on about cat stew and how wonderful "feline flesh" is. I cannot possibly fathom eating any kind of cat meat, ever. The idea of it is totally and absolutely repulsive to me. Not because I'm a cat lover - I happen to HATE cats actually - but I just don't see cats as an edible substance.`

Of course there was a public outcry and charges of animal cruelty - which I find totally bogus. We eat cows and chickens and pigs with impunity, there is no public outcry about that. Many countries eat dog meat as if it were ground beef, it's that popular. Horse flesh and all kinds of other animals are eaten - including raw bird meat in certain Asian countries - where's the outcry about that?

I personally could care less if a person wants to eat any kind of animal, but if you happen to love dog flesh, PLEASE stay AWAY from my dogs and my property: I have video surveillance, I will see who you are and you will hope that I never find you after you've eaten my beloved Great Danes. Get your OWN dogs/cats/horses/donkeys/whatever to eat.

You see, I don't see the correlation here. If it isn't animal cruelty to shoot a cow in the head to kill it, then drain it, then use every last part of it for everything from leather jackets to dog feed, how is it different with any other kind of animal? I can see such in a case of an endangered species. Lol, cats are certainly not an endangered species. Because I don't like it doesn't mean that those that do should be stopped from "enjoying" such. I couldn't even put a thimbleful of cat meat into my mouth, the idea of eating it is THAT repulsive to me, but to each his own. What moral arguments can you produce about eating a cat? If it's someone else's property, sure, otherwise, all bets are off. In the eyes of the law, that I know of, animals are chattel and nothing more.

Onto other things. I took a delivery out to a jobsite today - that's a daily thing for me, of course, that's pretty much my job description. I pulled that order and loaded it - anymore, I am pulling most of the orders I am delivering - I am responsible for screwups. The salesman on that account calls my manager and asks to know why I hadn't delivered the bolts and gaskets that were on that order?

Manager says hole'on, lemee look at the ticket - giving me the benefit of the doubt, he wants to SEE that stuff on the delivery ticket. NOT there. I am not a big fan of taking the blame for something I haven't done, but I've done it many times over to take the pressure off of the salesman who will look stupid in the eyes of the contractor. This salesman starts drilling my manager: well, there was (this that and the other item)on the ticket - you should have known they needed this stuff with it. Lol

LolX1,000. This is the salesman for the account. He has an inside salesman assigned to him to speak with purchasing agents at contractor's offices and write up tickets. WE are NOT mind readers, we get the ticket, we pull the order. Sometimes we question things based on what the order contains, most of the time we don't have time for that, pull the order and deliver it. To try and shift blame to people who have NOTHING to do with writing up the order is very lame, imo. We KNOW they will need those other parts to be able to do the job, but we don't know if they already have the stuff. We assume since it's not on the order - and certainly any salesman would know to ask if they need those parts - they don't need it, they must already have that stuff on hand. Happens frequently - contractors have leftover parts from jobs they have already completed.

I thought, gee, if you want us to contact the contractor and ask them every time whether they need this, that and the other thing to go along with all of that, maybe they should just get rid of the in and outside salesmen and we'll just do their job for them.

NOT. If that were possible, I'm sure it would already be implemented. Instead - we all have X amount of hours in the day to get X amount of whatever our assigned duties are. It's called TEAMWORK, a very good idea that works very well when all players are on the same page.

I have, actually, no problem in making duplicate trips to a jobsite in the same day, it's my job, take out parts to contractors that need them. I do, however, have a problem being blamed for something I had nothing to do with. Not that I will ever voice that (excepting here, where I write out my thoughts freely for the world to see) - I tend to try and keep a good attitude regardless of what's going on - or what fingers or judgments are being given to a person that are unjust at best. It's the idea that a person or persons will NOT own up to taking responsibility for their actions - or in this case, lack of action. Because the salesmen missed this imputes responsiblity to me? HOW, is my question. It does NOT, is my definitive answer.

However, I have determined that since this particular salesman thinks we should double-check his work and his inside salesman's work - which is all he has to do, all day long - his total, complete job description: contact contractors, take orders and write them up - find the materials if we don't have them and order them - I will start calling the foreman at the jobsite in advance to determine that the material being delivered is correct, complete and that nothing is being left out. I did that today before taking the 4 parts - a total weight of about 2 pounds - out there.

Do I have time for that? No. I don't. I have plenty of tasks to do in a day that keep my plate full. Guess I'll have to heap that plate now.

You could call this a rant or venting, I suppose it's a little of that. Mostly, I dislike people who never own up to their own junk - they ALWAYS have to blame someone else.

Fortunately - I am also able to brush such things off after a short period of time. I can guarantee you this will not be going to bed with me tonight, in fact, it's already history -I just like to write about the things that happen in my daily life, such as the man that decided he was going to come into my lane today. Ummm, the problem with that? He was NEXT to me. What kind of moron drives a vehicle and doesn't even bother to look beside them to see a vehicle is RIGHT there? I'm a very alert driver - I saw it happening and laid on the horn to get his attention. He swerved back into his own lane and then - proceeded to flip me off. ROFL!!! I find this amusing because this guy was the driver making the error, not me in any way, shape or form, yet - he gets angry at ME? LOL!!! I was in my car, btw, not the semi. Yes, well the beautiful blonde next to him in the front seat undoubtedly was the cause of the "distraction".

I am done with this, I have things to do and I want to get them done before the sun goes down.
G'day.
ben

Friday

So, this blind woman with seeing eye dog started writing me about the room available for rent on the 1st. I have received something like 15 emails from her, all of them long, drawn-out, rambling about how her friends have to come over here and look at the place and on, and on, and on. Redundancy up the ying-yang. I was thinking, since she kept referring to her friends so much, why THEY don't just put her up? Yeah, I can imagine. Probably not a good fit, this person and my house.

Things I saw yesterday:
I was driving the semi down 40th street - a surface street in Phoenix - going to a vendor. I'm in the middle turning lane. I car comes ROARING by me - I'm guessing at least 80 mph in a 45 zone. Instead of slowing down for traffic in front of him (or her), he decides to use the middle/turning lane to pass! Freaking scary - taking everyone's lives in their hands by virtue of the fact that if that driver crashes, their probably going to die and they're probably going to take someone or several someone's with them. One of those "where are the cops when you need them?" type of deals. Going that fast on a street like that - they would have taken that driver to jail.

Our street where my company's building is located. They shut half the street down at the intersection where our street ends and T's into the main surface street. They put up barricades for traffic to come into the street and exit. The lanes were so narrow, I had to move the semi side to side as I was navigating through the barricades. I had to pull straight out across 3 lanes of traffic, across the center lane and into oncoming traffic to execute a turn out of that mess.

There was a cop sitting there, in his car - doing nothing. I came back later - same mess and same cop, seeing all of this going on, not directing traffic, not doing anything. Took several minutes of waiting before the street was completely clear of traffic so I could execute the turn that needed to be made to get into the street.

Coming back out. Same cop, same nothingness. This time, a utility truck was in front of me. He made a turn out of the street onto the major street - too sharp. The barricades were so close, the rear of his vehicle took out a sign, then a barricade, then 2 more barricades, knocking them all over. I thought maybe I had stepped into the Twilight Zone and was watching a real-live showing of the 3 Stooges with all of this nonsense going on and the cop - doing NOTHING at all. What's the point of him being there? Take a nap all day long and get paid for it?

Well, anyway, it's Friday. I got my new rollerblades and tried them out yesterday. Whatta hoot. The extra money spent was well worth it. I bought the most expensive pair in the store - for several reasons. 1, the construction of the blades was much better than anything else they had. I figured they would last several years if treated well. 2, the bearings and the wheels were high quality - ABEC 5 bearings, where are good bearings and the wheels were much higher quality than anything else they had. 3 - and foremost - it was the only pair there that had a good fit. The rest of the blades there were too tight a fit and would have caused a lot of discomfort in using them.

I took all 3 dogs - consecutively - for a walk - well call it a galloping run, actually. Prince about knocked me over a couple of times - he has a mind of his own and when something gets into that pea brain, look out, he's going to do what he's going to do regardless.

Anyway, those blades performed very nicely.

Well, here we are again: work day almost upon me, gotta get offa here and get ready to start the day.

Later.
ben