Total Lunar Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse 9
Originally uploaded by trellus.

I had a chance to catch the lunar eclipse the other night (by night I mean a few hours before dawn). You may have missed it, maybe you were in the wrong hemisphere, or unaware of it, or maybe you were just asleep like a normal person should be at quarter to five in the morning. I put the best of the pictures I took on my flicr if you'd like to check them out.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

Okay, so nobody actually died, but somebody did quit! I got the call yesterday telling me that the woman who had been my Number One Foe got another job and quit on the spot yesterday. This was after she had been crying, yes crying, and she's in her fifties, because she "didn't get enough hours" (Hey try being available for more hours, or pick up some open shifts). So my boss caved and gave her more hours, and then she quits two days later. I don't even fucking care about being shorthanded at this point.



During the time she has worked there this woman has done everything possible to make work unpleasant. During her first week on the job she tried to get me in trouble right away. She said I wasn't respecting her and she deserved respect because she was older than me. She even said, 'If my daughter talked to me that way I would smack her down.' And was fucking serious! Things pretty much went downhill from there.



You know, I don't even want to go into all of it right now. I'm not going to tarnish this moment of triumph rehashing all the shit she tried to pull, unpleasantness visited upon everyone, gossiping, and vendettas against me that transpired. She's somebody else's problem now!

Invasion of the Undesirables

Ah, it's that time of year again. That one magical weekend where the town transforms. People travel from all over the globe just to be here.

Yes, it's Tractor Pull/Move-in Weekend.

I realize some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. Normally this town has a population of about 30,000. This weekend there will be well over 100,000 people in town. A generous helping of whom don't know where anything is, or the proper traffic flow on any of the roads.

The first reason for this is that it is move in weekend for the college. Also, most of the apartment leases in town start this weekend. You have all the new and returning students, plus their support networks arriving in town. Enrollment this year is over 21,000.

The second reason is that the National Tractor Pulling Championships are being held at the fairgrounds this weekend. They take what have been described as "tractors on steroids" and pull shit, competitively......because that's exciting, or something. One of my friends lives close to the fairgrounds and all weekend she'll here the roar of hopped up farm machinery punctuated by the occasional cry of "FULL PULL!" from a crowd of over 60,000.

So, that's what we've got going on this weekend. Rednecks and Freshmen.

Understaffed. Mortified. Pestered.

*Well, today was supposed to be my day off. Supposed. I had to go in to work on the employee schedule. Normally I'd have it done on Monday, but having lost a third of our employees (for various reasons) over the last couple weeks, well, let's just say we're boned. I also did an interview ("You have a pulse? You're hired."), and called more people to set up interviews.

*I was actually supposed to have two interviews today, the second at 4:30. I went up to the front at 4:30 to see if he had shown up. The girl there told me that no one had. While I was talking to her I noticed this goofy looking old man (one of our customers) standing there, but thought nothing of it. He looked slightly cross eyed and like his mouth was an imploding turtle beak. Since that was a washout I returned to the office. A few minutes later the girl who had been up in the front came back. She told me that after I had walked away the wizened fossil had commented on my being rather buxom. Something along the lines of "having a big set". He then apparently ripped a loud, rank fart and laughed about it before shuffling off.

*There are gnats in my kitchen. Ack! I hate gnats. Damn you summer and your bugs. So I've spent quite a bit of time today cleaning and bleaching the crap out of things. And because I'm like that, once I start I don't stop for a while.

Roll Call

So I happened to glance at my site meter yesterday, and I noticed I've reached 2000 hits. Woohoo, I guess. Sure, there are people out there who are like, "2000 hits? I eat that for breakfast." Hey, at my low traffic levels that's some kind of milestone.

Visit number 2000 came from some Canadian googling "event horizon uncut". I do get a lot of hits from people looking for stuff about the movie. I hazard I never considered when choosing my blog's name.

Anyway, in honor of this auspicious occasion I think everybody who reads this post should comment. Just say 'hi' or something, dammit. I don't bite. I swear.

Thursday

Okay, I realize that it's now Saturday, but whatever. I procrastinate. Also, I slept until I had to go to work yesterday at 4, and I was still slightly hungover. Damn you, slow metabolism!

Thursday was interesting. I started work at 6am. It was the second morning in a row I had to be at work that early. Both days welcomed the sunrise with the particular combination of clouds and sun that I guess you could call stormlight. So, I was pretty sure it was going to storm on Thursday. By 7:30am there was a tornado warning, sirens going off and everything. Don't worry, the storm was at the other end of the county, and I don't think it ever actually produced a tornado. Still, few things grab your attention and wake you up like that. 7:30 is the wrong time of day for thunderstorms in general, so it was kind of weird.


Thursday night ended with me drinking beer with my boss and doing shots with her boss. Yeah. All of the general managers, along with our two district managers, were going out (to celebrate the one GM getting engaged and buying a house). They invited any other managers who wanted to come as well. I was a bit skeptical when then told me this bar (new in Toledo) was supposed to be a country bar. The decor was country themed, and there were lots of cowboy hats and boots in attendance, but the music was a mix (pop, 80's, country, what-have-you). They did have a mechanical bull. Which some of our number did decide to ride after a few drinks. I was not one of them, but I have some cell phone video of the fools who did. There was also some laughable dancing with a Random Cowboy on their part.


As for me, I had a false sense of security about the night. We met up at 8:30 (*way* earlier then my friends usually hit the bars), and we just had a couple beers and played pool to start. Everything was all good, the bar had dollar cans, and I thought five beers over the course of four hours was not over doing it. And it would have been fine, but then they started handing me shots. It wasn't like I was like, "Oh, shots. Get me some of that." I just walked up to my dm and was standing there, holding my beer(s), and they started handing me shit. It was a conspiracy I tell ya.

My boss teased me about being hungover too, and I wasn't even that bad off, just headachy. She kept saying things like, "You can't run with the big girls." Which sounded even dumber out loud, trust me. It's not like I could argue that I was hungover. When I started grumbling about it she said, "If it was me, you would be making fun of me." To which I replied, "You're damn right I would. You had just better take full enjoyment of this one opportunity to make fun of me." I'll get her back one of these days. Sweet, sarcasticy Justice shall be mine.

Or something.

A Little Tiny Follow Up

*Sleeping on the new bed is divine. Except the mattress is really thick, so none of my sheets are quite big enough. This had resulted in me waking up twisted up in the sheets, which is not so awesome.

*My birthday has come and gone. We played charades, drank, wandered up to the bars, drank, purchased some Taco Bell, wandered home. Some of us wandered more than others. It was a pretty good time, even if I did get a bit paranoid. I tend to think I'm being far dumber than I actually am. My roommate and friends have assured me that I was not being supertarded. No crazy stories to report, guess we're just not the crazy drunken shenanigans sort. Just regular drunken shenanigans.

*On a non-follow up note: I definitely hate when people type "prolly" when they mean "probably". Also let's say what we mean. If you know you want five of something, don't say "a couple".

I Declare...

...An end to all the crap that is going on. Seriously, I command it. Actually I commanded it at six o'clock this evening when I got home. Six was the time that we started changing over from the bad:

*I was very late to work today. The really bad kind of late. The kind where your boss's boss had to come and unlock the doors. Luckily I only live about two minutes from work. And, yes, I got in trouble, but not really bad trouble. She wasn't irate at me, and left not long after I got there. Pretty much there was nothing that could have made me madder or more disgusted with myself (stupid insomnia and alarm trouble). Later she asked me how things went and when I said they had gone perfectly fine she said she had known that I'd be just fine. Which shows some faith in me, which is nice.

*We were completely out of a bunch of crap that is vital to the running of our business. I had to call and get stuff from other places three times today.

*I had to field a serious customer complaint today. Not fun. It was one of those things that got blown out of proportion. However, we resolved it on our end with little drama.

*I had to write up another one of my guys today for a minor infraction, but it was unavoidable. He's transfering in a couple weeks. Hopefully he won't mess up again before that.

*It was humid as hell today. Then, this afternoon, the wind kicked up and it started to pour. And then got even more humid. I'm not sure how that was possible. We have humidity that seems to defy the laws of meteorology.

*I called my dad. He was supposed to stop down after work and help me get my mattress home from the store (it finally came in Tuesday). When I asked him what the plan was he said, "Oh, I forgot about you." Gee, thanks, Dad. He did turn around and come right down.

To the good:

*I now have all the parts of my bed (frame, boxspring, mattress). I had been sleeping on my futon mattress thrown on the boxspring for about two weeks which was better than the futon mattress on the floor, and *way* better than the futon mattress on the futon frame. Tonight I will be sleeping in a (real) bed of my own for the first time in seven years.

*I went shopping w/Julia to get some stuff for the party tomorrow chips, cake mix, booze, what have you. Of course, when I got home I realized I don't have any eggs to make the cake with, so I will have to hit up a store first thing tomorrow.

Hopefully we're going to keep this trend of good things going. Hmm, need to go make a to do list for tomorrow. Laters.

What happened on the way to work on Monday

So yeah, the last two weeks were kind of crappy for me. I was in a bit of a funk. Some people get all depressed in the winter. I get lazy and crabby in the summer. It's been really hot and humid, two things I hate. Although, I almost made it to August this year before I started finding the heat intolerable. Usually by the beginning of June I'm ready for it to be September.

I was driving back from Toledo on Monday when I noticed that the needle on my car's temperature gauge was in the red and the "check guages" light was on. (Which, while we're on the subject, has to be in the top ten most useless things ever. I mean, it's red. It lights up when you need to check your gauges. Gauges which are right there in the same panel with the check gauges light, literally inches away. It's not like the gauges are in the trunk.) So I took the next exit off the highway and quickly sought out a gas station to pull into. Let me just tell you that if you get off I-75 at Route 24 and head into Maumee there are no service stations right by the highway.

I pulled in and popped the hood. I checked everything, and it was fine. Which makes no sense, but whatever. Oh, I forgot to mention. I called work as I was driving, looking for a place to pull over, hoping that my car wasn't going to explode. Because I was now going to be late, and he was trying to make jokes, whilst I was in peril. I was sitting there, waiting for my car to cool down so I could attempt to drive the 15 miles remaining before me and get to work under an hour late, when this woman wandered over.

Imagine it, I'm sitting in my car with the hood open on a day when it's already close to ninety degrees and it's not even 11am. This woman comes over, cigarette in hand (at least she was away from the gas pumps), she's over fifty, waddling along, wearing a shirt that's committing atrocities against yellow.

Her: Hey, I work here. Car overheat?
Me: Yeah.
Her: Was it, like, steam coming out?
Me: No, I stopped before that happened.
Her: You going to add water to it?
Me: No, the coolant is full.
Her: Huh. You call somebody?
Me: No, I'm going to let it cool, and then head back. I'm already supposed to be at work.
Her: In Maumee?
Me: No, in Bowling Green.
Her: Well, you're Monday's gone all to shit.

And then she toddled off.

Those damn weirdos, they always find me.