Blogging in the middle of a work day

Coolest day ever today. At 9:00 some jerk ran the red light outside the main entrance of the school. He hit a transformer and shut off the power for the entire school, probably the entire block. As a result the campus shut down and we all got to come home. Pretty sweeeet! Chad and I had lunch, I played some video games and now I'm gonna nap...on a Thursday afternoon. Sometimes life rewards you just a little and you gotta carpe diem baby!

You take the good with the bad

I should have posted yesterday since I could remember what was good. I can only remember the bad right now. Basically, this jerk at work is trying to make my life hell and this is not the first time. I don't want to mention names but he has had it out for me for 5 years. When I first started I had a rough start. Something happened to his books that was pretty much completely not my fault but he can't let it go and he is constantly looking for something else to tattle on me about. So now he has his chance and although this time I am more to blame then the first time the blame can be shared by him and his co-workers but do you think he agrees? Absolutely not. So he gets his boss to schedule a meeting with me in 3 weeks. Well I can't make it so I ask his boss if I can just come in today and lets talk about it now. Well no we'll just postpone it for an extra week. If it's sooo bad then why are we waiting to talk abou it until a month from now? I'll tell you why. Cause this guy is a Jerk with a capital J. He hates me, my staff and the bookstore as a whole. He tried to lynch me once in front of his cohorts a few years back and, much to his dismay, they all came to my defense saying what a great job I was doing and how much service has improved at the bookstore since I took over. I've never seen a grown man act like such a boy in protest. He threw his hands up in the air like he was 5 and just got scolded. So now he finally got me again and it really chaps my hide that he just can't make peace with me. I say hi and am very pleasant when he's around. If others are watching he is civil with me but if no one else is around he completely ignores me when I greet him. He thinks he's sooo important. Well I hope he realizes that karma is a bitch and when you undeservingly pick on others, your bound to get it back. Amy bought me an office voodoo kit a few years back. I finally know who I'm using it on.

Okay I remembered my good part. I've lost another 4lbs this week. That makes a total 17lbs lost, with Weight Watchers taking 11lbs of credit. I am not too far away from my goal weight. It's definetly geting easier for me. I don't want to jump off a cliff every other day like I did at first. I'm proud of myself.

Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

Another rush is behind me! WooHoo! I am tired but overall pleased with my week of non-stop work. First off, Monday morning the air isn't working too well and it's a bit toasty. It has been like this all summer but now it will be much worse with 200 people trying to cram themselves in to my small store. Well, one cashier turns green and has a panic attack. She couldn't hack it and left. She did not return or even call me to tell me as much. Then another cashier made it for Monday but had a huge family glitch and didn't show up for the rest of the week. So guess who ran register all morning long? I also got Chad to run one. So me, Chad and one temp who did show up when he was supposed to ran the front of the store for 5 hours straight without a break in the line. Then my greeter at night turned out to have ADHD. He told me as much but I could certainly tell from the way he would wonder off outside with friends he hadn't seen in a while or when he'd just break out in to song or rap. He managed to greet every pretty girl and made friends with all the guys. He meant well but by the end I had to pull him aside 2 different occasions to remind him that he was working and that he had to stay focused. By Thursday I stopped calling him by name and just called him Spaz Attack. The best part of my week was my second audit from the evil witches at the Weights and Measures Dept. As you might remember the shrews with badges came and ruined my week back in January.
Failing my store with a score of 96% and 94%. Well, most of the thanks goes to my dear assistant manager who has been on the pricing rampage since that awful day in January. We passed both tests with 100%. I was beaming. By the end of the week Kristian and I were pretty tired having worked 7:00a.m. to 8:30 p.m. for 3 nights straight and until 6:00 on Thursday. By Friday we were trying to sneak out by 2:00 but it didn't happen. My boss, the suit not the cool boss, came for a visit. Luckily we were more then prepared for it and he didn't stay for more than 30 minutes. He patted me and Kristian on the back for a job well done. However I think if the roof had caved in he would still be happy seeing as he had just been in a confrontation at my former store with their text manager who ultimately ended up quitting. He was mad but he kept it together for my visit. It was a successful week thanks to Kristian and Aimee and Patrick who worked lots of overtime in the worst post of them all...The refund line. I have never ever had two temps drop off the schedule let alone one but there's nothing I can't handle in this job. I am a 10 year veteran. I was only yelled at once, got attitude from only one instructor but thanks to my B.S.ing skills I diffused both situations and avoided any unpleasantness!

Yes I am pretty proud but I couldn't have done it without my core staff and my few faithful temps who stuck it out thru the ugly moments. I feel like I've won the oscar for best rush performance. Clearly I'm delirious from exhaustion so I will sign off now.

I saw this in the parking lot the other day and it made me laugh. Then I got sad for those poor children who's mother is cancelled out on the back of their hideous Honda minivan.  

I took this with my cell phone. I thought it was crazy the colors coming out from behind the sun light. It doesn't do it justice. As I drove home it changed from black to red and yellow. It was beautiful. 

I like the way it's chaos facing west and just fluffiness facing south. 

In my drive way. Wickenburg was getting destroyed. Us...not so much. 

Business is slow...damn the good economy! Not slow enough that I can play on the internet or enjoy my day but slow enough that I am not running around like a chicken with my head cut off like I usually do this time of year. I don't have anything interesting to say but I thought you'd enjoy these pics I took of our yearly rain storm yesterday. I did however lose 3 more pounds and Kristian said he can definetly tell I am getting skinnier. It's getting easier, still not any fun but I will manage. My stomach is shrinking. I don't feel so hungry after having my tiny portions any more. Today I had subway for lunch. It's very low in points so I get the foot long and have one half at lunch and the other at dinner and still have points left over. Well I dropped my second half on my foot while I was trying to wrap it up. It took every ounce of strengh I had not to yell out "FUCK!" so I just yelled out "Ah, damn it" because I knew I had at least one customer outside my office door watching me wipe mustard off my shoe. Oh well.

The drawer opens in both directions.  

upclose on one corner. 

Ikea, Zen and the Art of shopping

Yesterday Jackie and I ventured to Ikea. It's all the way on the other side of town so you have to plan ahead for this sort of thing. We both had items in mind that we wanted. Credit cards in hand and with a spark in our eyes we went for it. We shopped like mad. We were a small time limit of 4 hours so we had to work together. Now, let me take a minute to explain the wonder that is Ikea...for those who have never been. It's the biggest, coolest most fantastic, gigantic furniture store ever. It's about the size of 3 football fields, two floors. It is jam packed with awesome furniture that's stylish and affordable (you save money by putting it together yourself.) It's so well managed and organized but still overwhelming. There is a path that most people follow so that even when it is nut-to-butt people inside, it's still very easy to get around as long as everyone sticks to the direction of traffic. Well I don't know how it happend but Jackie and I were peeing against the wind the whole time. We both picked out furniture and accessories. By the end we had two carts. One for furniture and one for the smaller stuff. Then I realized that we needed to be back upstairs, which is no small task. Plus we only had about an hour left and we still hadn't picked up all the furniture boxes. We worked as a team. I lead the front and Jackie drove the back and we got thru those crowds in record time. By the end we were just exhausted. Chad was kind enough to get my peices together this morning. I went and bought some sand for my table and let me just say that 50lbs of sand is not the same as 50lbs if cotton balls. I have sand all over my trunk, a bit in my living room, dining room and back patio. I have found a portion of my sea shells that I've been collection over the years. Most of them my mom picked up so they mean a lot to me. I am not great with presentation so the pics up top are a preliminary display until I figure it out. But the really relaxing part was laying down the sand in the drawers. It was calming and now I have a new fondness for sand gardening. I love Ikea. I have had a picture in my head of this table for years and to find it yesterday was so awesome that I completely ignored the price tag and also bought the matching sofa table to match. It's nice when the universe balances, even if it's just for a moment.