If I could update my Facebook status at work

...doesn't care that you had to stay up until 5am doing homework that you had all three months of summer vacation to do, but waited until the night before the first day back to finish.

...will take the recommendation of her friends whose opinions she trusts on new movies, not those of the girl who said that "The Ugly Truth" was the best movie she's ever seen.

....hates when grown women talk in that breathy little girl voice. Do they think it is cute? Sexy? It is an annoying, obvious affectation if you ask her. Knock it off!

...thinks if a man initiates a conversation about penises more than 3 times in a half hour than he can be moved onto the "Might Be Gay" list, especially if it's not about his own.

...hates people.

... to Douchey McDoucherton "I'm sure you have never made a mistake in your life, sir. That would fully justify your holier than thou attitude."

...wishes her POS car would qualify for Cash for Clunkers.

...just realized that it has only been 30 minutes since she looked at the clock. Fuck.

...doesn't care what gender(s) Lady Gaga is in, but thinks it would be hilarious if she was 100% male.

...is tired of doing all the thinking.

Lazy Picture Post

Did you miss me?

Everybody keeps asking me how my vacation went. All I can tell them is, "It was okay." Which seems to thoroughly disappoint them. Look, it wasn't bad...it just wasn't awesometastically awesome either.

So here are some pictures. Some are from my vacation, some aren't. As it turns out, all the pictures I uploaded are in the exact opposite order I wanted. Whatev's.


This is the flower that my pumpkin came from. I never realized how big they were.







This is my garden, at the height of its greenness and glory.








These are my pepper plants. The ones on the left are cayenne peppers. I am going to have enough of those to last a decade.






Itteh Bitteh Watermelon Committeh











Here's the only pumpkin I have so far, and probably the only pumpkin I'm going to get. I'm happy to have any as this year was trial and error for my garden. I'm hoping it will get a little bigger and actually turn orange before the plant dies off. If it doesn't turn I will have to employ some tricks to get it ripen off the vine.








This is the waterfall at the grotto Conkle's Hollow. You can see too well because of the mist, and, you know, it's August there's not a lot of water.

These are the 200 ft Blackhand Sandstone cliffs @ Conkle's Hollow.





I always think that this rock looks like some sort of gargantuan beast sleeping away the millenia.

Conkle's Hollow: Trees









This is the bridge over Pine Creek that you have to cross to get into the gorge @ Conkle's Hollow. Conkle's Creek empties into Pine Creek on the other side of the bridge. I've always liked this bridge.







This is Cedar Falls. By volume it is the largest waterfall in the Hocking Hills area, but being August it isn't terribly impressive.

There were some teabags down there with their giant tripods and cameras griping about the lack of water who were almost on the receiving end of some punches to the face. It's August, what do you expect. If you want lots of water come in the spring. Sorry that Nature is inconveniencing you with its cycles that have been going on for eons and all.



This is a big bug. Glad I look before I put my hand on things, and yes, my finger is in this shot on purpose, you know, for scale. It was a quick shot because as soon as I touched the tree this guy was interested in investigating me.


Ash Cave from the top. Those are people down there.


Ash Cave from the bottom. Biggest recess cave in ohio.







Awww, look at my cute little tent.
I put it up myself.










The T-Rex sez, "OMNOMNOMNOM!!! TOURISTS TASTE DELICIOUS! HOLD STILL STEVE!"




"I hope you are enjoying the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Becky. By the way, have you seen my boyfriend? Wait, is that him behind me, breathing heavily down my neck?......"







And this is my tattoo. This is right after I got it, so it's a little red in the picture. I have to go back to get some shading done in the middle. This is the only part of my vacation that exceeded expectations. I am really happy with the way it turned out, and it isn't weird having it. I thought I would keep noticing it in mirrors and out of the corner of my eye and be like "whoa!" but it's like it has always been there.

I realize you can't see all the detail in this shot, so I will have to take a better one. It took almost two hours to do. The guy did an awesome job. He only stenciled the outline from the picture, and did all the detail work referring off that which I think is impressive. It didn't hurt hardly at all. Other than a little chitchat with the artist I spent the time reading a book, which apparently is very bad ass to do whilst getting a tattoo.

How does your garden grow?

Mine has issues.

Things started out pretty well. I got all my plants outside. I thought some were on the shrimpy side, but they all took off growing once they went out. The watermelons got out later than everything else. I thought they were just piddling around and not growing, but I realized today that they have grown quite a lot, just behind and under and through other plants so I didn't notice. And I think they have a baby watermelon coming along.

My inside garden got a little over watered which gave me gnats. I fucking hate those itty bitty bastards. I moved some of the offending plants outside and got some spray. Gnats are nigh impossible to get rid of until it gets cold, but the genocide of insecticide seems to have been fairly effective. I'm waiting to see if there's a resurgence in the next week or so, they may have laid eggs in my plants (ick). If so I will be waiting with the spray of death.

The outside garden was humming along nicely, but in the last week or so we've had some problems. The two cucumber plants have given me 9 cucumbers so far, but they've rather outgrown their bucket and have to be watered at least once a day. My tomato plants are loaded with fruit, so loaded that they are in danger of being killed by the weight of their own fruit. There needs to be some serious staking action. My pumpkins have two fruit now. One is getting quite large and has bent its trellis all the way over because, of course, the fruit came in right at the top of the trellis I had constructed. Also, the pumpkin plants have contracted the mange. Okay, it's actually powdery mildew, which is annoying, but less fun to say. I don't think there's any help for it but to hope that the white blotches don't kill off all the leaves before the fruit matures. Oh, and now I think the cucumbers have the mange too. My tomato plants also have issues. They either have blight or blossom end rot. The latter, which I think is the problem as it is a common problem for container grown plants, comes from a calcium deficiency and can be fixed. Now, I don't want to jinx it, but my peppers, both kinds, are doing awesome.

So that's what's up in the wide world of plants.

Bringing the Hate for Julys

Wow I can't believe I haven't written anything in, like, a month. July sucked. July always seems to suck for me. It's hot and muggy and I always seem to end up in a crabby-mooded funk. This year was no exception.

Work has been an extra slice of annoying with a double serving of stressful. At the beginning of the month my boss had vacation which kind of left me in charge. Which at first I thought, "Cool. Authority without responsibility." But actually it was a bit on the vice versa side. And I had to work a shitload of open shifts that week, and "not a morning person" doesn't even begin to cover it. And all summer I've had to suppress the urge to (lightly) maim our junior managers on a daily basis. And we had a bi-yearly inspection some parts of which we sucked donkey balls on. And it's not like at the debriefing when the honchos are asking for suggestions you can actually tell the truth about what needs done (beatings for everybody).

::

This week I found out that my boss is going to have to take at least 6 weeks off to have heart surgery. Yikes! She's only in her forties. I also found out that we are not getting raises this year. According to my irate boss this is partly because they've paid us so much in bonuses even though our store made a lot of money over our budget. Given the choice I would take the bonuses. They're more money, not that hard to get, based on measurable goals and a good indicator of how the store is doing, but that's not the point is it?

You know, I'm not even mad. Why? Because I'm not surprised. Not all the stores in the franchise are doing as well as us and the economy is extra shitty right now. My boss, however, was surprised. And hella angry. Which was hilarious. I normally find her rather silly, so seeing her filled with indignant rage pretty much took the sting out of not getting the raise.

I also found out that one of my crew I trusted was doing some very stupid shit on one of my shifts when I wasn't watching them like a hawk. Which wouldn't be so bad, but they took a video of it with their phone, and showed that around. Which maybe wouldn't be horrible, but they were bragging about getting away with it. Which might not be absolutely unforgivable, but they weren't just bragging about getting away with it in general, but specifically on my shift. And my crew do not understand discretion, or acoustics. And my boss found out. Luckily she had plenty of other crap to be mad about this week, and even if she didn't I think the fact that they made a slip'n'slide out of trash bags and tried it out wouldn't get her too riled up normally.

I was mad though. Stupidity + tangible proof (cell phone video) + bragging about getting away with it on my shift = Sacred Trust Broken. And there's no fixing that. All the krazy glue in the world won't do you any good, and you can't get another one off of ebay, douchepile.

::

But today was the first day of my 9 day vacation.

And there was much, much rejoicing. [Whoa, need to stop starting all my sentences with conjunctions.]

::::::

One more story from work though before we move on. The other day I had to explain to one of my teen aged employees how laws work. She was complaining about the fees she has to pay to get her driver's license reinstated. How she got it taken away at the tender age of 16 is beyond me. Okay, she's technically 17, but I've repeatedly informed her that she is one of those people who is going to be 16 for a long, long time. I don't think my mother has ever stopped being 16... Any rate, she they went on to express as sense of incredulousness that the state of Ohio actually requires drivers to have car insurance. I wondered aloud how she could not have known/believed this as it is posted everywhere dealing with cars, you have to sign a form saying you have insurance when you get your license, and every other commercial talks about having state required insurance. To which she replied, and I quote, "Yeah, but I didn't think they were serious."

I was flabbergasted. I could not understand the kind of logic you would have to use to come to that conclusion, and said so. To answer my "WTF?" she said, "I just thought they, like, gave you a ticket, not like it's a law or something."

"The reason you get a ticket is because you broke a law. That's why they give out tickets, for breaking laws. That's how laws work." I think I may have had a small aneurysm at that point because I was certainly stupider for having had that conversation. This is why I advocate a course for high school students called Real Life 101 because some of them certainly aren't getting it from their parents.

:::::::

Hopefully that's all the negativity for a while. Fun plans for this week are in motion. Pictures and details to follow.