Finished

I have been looking for a Christmas ornament that I can send out to this group that started this year.  An ornament club.  Well,  it sounded like a good idea and you would be surprised at some of the quality ornaments I have received.  In fact, some very nice home made ornaments.  Umm, well I wasn't going to do that, but I did finally find some great Indian-made stuff that I figured to fit the bill perfectly.

Since I had to buy so many of them, I was able to get them down on the price by a buck each.  I got the bubble envelopes from Walmart, it is done and ready to take to the post office and send out.  A bit late, perhaps, but should be a most people's homes by midweek next week, no biggies.

I witnessed an accident today.  Well, it wasn't really an accident.  In fact, it was pure aggression and road rage as far as I'm concerned.  Now that I think about it, I should have pulled over and told the police what I saw, but I was on the freeway and no way I could stop, in fact, I had to swerve to avoid this nonsense and do some hard braking as well.

I was Westbound on the Superstition Freeway.  The on ramp from Country Club drive is  2 lanes, not 1.  At the "end", you have to merge into the 1 lane if there are cars close to each other.  Merging is exactly what didn't happen today.  To the contrary, in fact, very much to  the contrary.

You see, I was going to get off there - that lane to get on the freeway also goes to get off the freeway.  I noticed out of the corner of my eye some strange movements of the cars and I looked over.  2 cars, side by side, neither of them budging to move out of the other's way in that 2 lane to 1 lane scenario.  The dude closer to me looks at the other dude and out of anger, I guess, SLAMS his car into the other car!  I have never personally witnessed anything like this!!

4 cars behind them pulled over as I was looking at this through my rear view mirror - those cars were sliding all over the place and I was in the next lane over slightly behind them, I was avoiding this garbage at all costs to the point that either stopping or getting past them was the objective: in this case, I got past them.  I was satisfied that they saw the same thing I did and moved on.  IF I had been in a position to pull over behind this crap, I definitely would have.

Well whatever.  Who knows how much of this intentional stuff goes on out here every day.

Whatever the case, I had to vent that.  Get it out of my system.  Unbelievable, really.

Time for bed.

ben

Thursday 12/8/2011

So, I am reading this story about a woman who could no longer afford her apartment somewhere in New York and has had to put her stuff into storage and move in with a friend.  She makes 50k per year.  She has lots of bills - don't we all.  I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but if you are making 50k per year and can't make it, it probably means you are living above your means and you need to - for one - find a cheaper place/area to live.  I know, that's the cold harsh reality of it, but a person making 50k per year is doing a lot better than the 14 million Americans who are unemployed and not making anything per year besides perhaps unemployment insurance if they are covered by it.

What does she need 2 bedrooms for if she's living alone?  Why does it seem that we all pressured, somehow, to live so far beyond our means that eventually, people seem to lose everything, including their hope.  I guess I'm just happy to have a place to live and be able to cover my bills, at least presently, and even though living in a rotten neighborhood, just sort of shut that all out and mind my own business.

I was informed yesterday that, because of all the work presently going on, my hours would be re-instated to 40 per week.  Not that I have not been getting that, anyway, at least recently.  Today? After 4 hours I will be into "real" overtime hours and carry that into Friday. If I show up on Sunday, all the more - though I am resisting this Sunday thing, I have a lot of stuff I need to get done and working on Sunday is not going to help that situation, at all.

I have to sit back and at least attempt to understand where some of these "higher" level managers at work are coming from.  More junk being thrown at both of us.  We did half a million in sales last month, which is a GREAT month, especially for a 2 man operation.  The claim was that I screwed up on an order.  This pertaining to some new type of material that I had never seen before coming into our yard.  Well, we already went through all of this last week: this particular part gets these particular bolts.  They are supposed to go together, but no-one told either of us at the branch about that little aspect of it and apparently we were supposed to intrinsically know that X goes with Y.

You have to understand that we just moved, the place is still half in chaos and while the move was being made, literally hundreds of pallets of material for 2 jobs came in.  When I finally got a chance to get over there and see what was going on, that stuff was all shoved into a huge sea of pallets and crates that were not organized at all.  Anyway, I was supposed to pull an 18 adapter and get an 18 box of bolts to go with it the other day.  I triple-checked my work.  I KNOW I pulled the right material.  But, a big to-do was made about it and my manager ended up doing an inventory count.  Our inventory is RIGHT on.  This apparently doesn't phase these managers, however, and apparently gave a tongue-lashing to my manager.

I have no idea what these people expect of us at this point.  I do have an idea that 2 of them dislike me and my work and - again - it's probably time for a plan B here.  These 2 individuals are - well I won't go into it here.  I won't go into Plan B here, either, for obvious reasons.  At the end of this road, I will go into all of it, but not now.  There is no point in it, because I am only reading into what I have been hearing - the actual reality of what I think is going on and what is really going on could be 2 completely different things.  This is a play-it-out situation and that's exactly what I'm going to do.  Play it out.  In fact, ........... no, inadvisable to go into any of it on a journal that anyone in the world can read.

My time is almost up for today's pre-work rituals.  I have Christmas lights to put up; yardwork; landscaping and other things such as the trailer though admittedly, the trailer doesn't have to be done anytime soon.  They received my parts for the AC but I haven't had the time to get over there and get them.  Once I do get them, however, I want to install them to make sure it's going to work.  The point? I have been getting off of work later and later, it's hard to get anything done in the afternoons while any daylight is left when you are getting home at 4:30 or 5:00 pm.  I am not necessarily complaining, my next paycheck should be wonderful.

G'day.
ben