For meandering thoughts, and mindful walks... |
The White Board For meandering thoughts, and mindful walks...for rants and pouts, and blowing off steam. For happy days and sad days, for crazy adventures and delightful victories! :) |
(above is upc version of 55 and clear) and speaking of upc symbols...I've come to the conclusion that they are devised to drive all retailers completely, totally and most assuredly NUTS/INSANE/CRAAAAAZY! You see, upc symbols are supposed to (theoretically) make life easier, more scanable and therefore quicker. NOT. Especially when the folks at kraft or Frito Lays or Nabisco (to name just a few) decide to change the darned things on a fairly regular basis. When those people change the upc symbol on a product, it no longer scans through the registers. So one (usually the manager...me in this case) has to go into the computer, find the old one, modify the entry and enter the new upc. Now the cashier can ring up the product rather than putting it in as an unknown object. When you figure that my store (in this case) has something like maybe 20000 different products and this happens just about every grocery order or delivery, this add up to at least an hour a day changing the durned things. Multiply this times the number of stores in (for example) the US, and the amount of time all those managers must spend changing/updating...this translates to a rediculous amount of wasted time. Sigh. Frick! *_^&%%@#%$#^$ IIII II IIII I IIIII IIIIII I I!!!!!! |
And Homecoming weather!!! Pinckney's Homecoming parade was today and darn near everyone in town turned out for it....Streets were lined several people deep , cheering and clapping and just supporting the Pinckney Pirates. I LOVE THIS TOWN! Parade lasted almost half an hour, we closed off the lot at the gas station so folks could sit in the driveways...and boy was our store ever busy!! Cold weather translates to lots of coffee and hot chocolate!!!! Go Pinckney!!! Big game is tonight and the Homecoming Ball is tomorrow night...*thinks back to the days several lifetimes ago when she went to Homecoming Dances...* Now if only my other half would get his deer!! Maybe tomorrow am...he didn't see much of anything tonight...except a squirrel who was having fun in the apple pile...too cute for words and at least it was something to watch! |
Just bopped in between work and bank and home office to grab some change so i can get to the home office and I thought I'd share the grand plan that we, at work today, decided should be implimented world-wide today. We think we should declare that today should be a world wide 'Day Off' and that everyone should go back to bed! |
so in my neck of the woods there is a flurry of last minute fussing to be sure my other half has everything ready. Of course he does...silly man. At 20 yards he can fit three arrows inside a quarter...his gear is packed and waiting, my screened in porch looks like a mini Cabellas with all the gear and he is hyped city! Tomorrow morning at O-dark-thirty he'll be awakened by Ted Nugent's 'Fred bear' playing at FULL BLAST and we will proceed to wake up the entire neighborhood with it!! (Good thing EVERYONE will be getting up anyway to head out to hunt or to see their other half out the door.) With luck and skill working together, it will be backstraps for dinner tomorrow night! Today I'm heading into work for a while...probably a long while. The end of the month 'stuff' that needs doing. I've got a gazillion price changes to put in the computer, all the new POP to put up for October and I'm going to get a couple of reports out of the way to make things easier for Monday morning when my mind will be out in the woods in the treestand. We also (it looks like) will have the statewide shutdown of Michigan to contend with. They may manage to avoid a shutdown, but I'd rather have the shutdown than their raising both the state income tax and the state sales tax!!!!!! If it goes the way it is looking like, another 600 bucks a year will go to the state on the state income tax alone! They are adding a bunch more to the 'taxable' items for sales tax too... *imagines*.....let's see what else can we tax? Greens fees-yeah, let's get the golfers, (they do already tax the hunting licenses along with raising those fees this year)...oh yes...a car tax...on top of all the taxes and fees already in place....another tax on gas sales (oh gee...why not raise prices HIGHER?)-and that's on top of Mich being one of the few states to charge sales tax on gas!...'intangible sales'...what ever THAT might be..... Folks are leaving Michigan in droves....wish Grantholm and all her cronies would vacate....haven't heard a positive word about her yet...guessing the folks who voted for her live elsewhere in the state...but they aren't around here! In Pinckney, people get out and vote and we all (basically) voted against her!--and 93% of voters in my town voted! (Pretty good, eh?)--for all the good it did...lol ANYwho...if they shut down, no lottery sales, we can only get smokes until the ones tagged already are sold out, no liquor sales, no licenses or registration type stuff will be done, --least the hunting areas on state land are open...guess they do not even want to mess with all the hunters who they've already gotten with the new license fees!!! Then i come home and will be able to write my newsletter (research is all finished...just need to write it), and a short story for
Oh yes, and clean the house as an appraiser is coming Monday or Tuesday and we want the house to appraise for as much as possible :) Busy, busy day :) Have a good one all! |
The week from flipping HELL...and i do not mean the town! My boss was fired this Monday. Don't know why...doesn't much matter, the why. But with the folks i work for, it must have been really, really bad! You trust someone...you have faith in them and they do something ridiculously STUPID, blow their future with the company and possibly their future existence and let down a whole lot of people and for what???? Nothing is that important. I am so disappointed in him. He let all of us managers down big time! Sigh....... |
Geography lesson. Michigan has a few towns with shall we say unusual names. For example we have Paradise, Perdition and then we have Hell. I happen to live 4 miles North/Northeast of Hell. I manage a gas station, which is on the way to Hell. So, given the nature of the beast, a lot of folks stop in to ask directions. You can imagine the questions....'Can you tell me how to get to hell?' and 'How do I get to Hell?' Which of course is answered by, 'You want me to tell you how to go to Hell? Oh do we ever have fun with it! The other day a 'little old lady and her little old man...stereotypical...grey haired, both with canes...sweet little old grandparents came in looking for Hell. They were meeting their children there because their kids said they had to go to Hell. Too funny. She actually blushed when asking. So I told them to take the road my station is on up to the last stop sign and take a right....go four miles and they'd be in Hell. 'Oh', she said, 'You folks are really close to hell then.' 'Yeah,' I answered, ' We are pretty much next door to hell.' We have a race here in Michigan called the "Press On Regardless" which goes from Hell to Perdition to Limbo to Paradise and back again...24 hours of back roads, dirt roads, off roads, lousy roads and about 1000 cars hell bent for leather to win. Got to love it tho...makes for lots of jokes....and you can even get a post card sent from the Hell Post Office with burned edges! Looks kind of cool on your driver's license too! |
Jerky!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Home-made, still hot from the oven venison jerky!!!! YUM! It just doesn't get any better than this!!!!!! YUM YUM YUM!!!!!!!! Another 'yummy' thing is tonight I talked to a friend I haven't been able to yack with in AGES! Lisa loves2mumble has surfaced again after a time away and we were able to get all caught up! I've really missed her!!! All kinds of wonderful things are going on in her life now and it was so exciting to hear all the new and happy stuff going on with her! Someone else i am missing tho is Lexi...now that she's 'on the road' it is hard to catch up with her. I'm awfully happy that her new job is going so well tho! Well, off to grab some more jerky.....fall is so coming! That will mean fresh backstraps!! Double-yum! |
I got my wdc ceramic mug in the mail today!! I love it!!! Been wanting one for over two years now. It arrived on a day when I was less than a happy camper. Why? I'll tell you. I am an American. Generations ago my family came to the US from Holland, Germany, Ireland, France, England and Scotland. Somewhere along the way, I am also part mohawk as well. But I am an American. I'm not Caucasion-American, nor am I Someotherpartoftheworld-American. I am an American. I was born in the US, therefore i am an American as is every single other person born here. I am not hyphenated! I speak English. I speak a smattering of several other languages...just about enough anymore to get myself in trouble. But when I lived in Denmark, I learned (and have since forgotten) Danish. When I lived in Canada, in a French speaking town, I learned enough French to get by, deal with my children's teachers in French and to buy what i needed at the stores where the products were labeled in French. Today at the bank, I had to 'press one' to get the menu in English. On the phone to a vendor, I had the choice of 'press 1 for Spanish or press 2 for English. When i had to assemble the new rack that arrived, I had to search to even FIND directions in English. What the hell is going on? I live in a tiny town. In America. Yet the signs in my store are now English/Spanish. I don't live in Spain. I don't live in Mexico. I live in Michigan, US of A. Why the hell should I need signs in Spanish? I someone wants to move here, then they darn well should learn to speak English!!!! And if someone is born here, then they are American, not some hyphenated mumbo-jumbo about whence they came several generation ago! Who cares? I can just see if I were to say I was an English-Scots-French-Irish-Dutch-German-Native American-American. How silly is that? *steps off her soapbox---I feel better now!* *smile* |
White woolly puffballs are grazing across the sky, the hummingbirds are doing the fly-thru at the feeder and it is Saturday and I am off! (now, now, be nice! *grin* Canada geese are shaft-less arrows piercing the sky with their raucous plight plans and ken is talking deer stands and why he won't use carbon-fiber arrows. We have a new mascot at work. Sort of. He's taken up residence in the large flowerpot out front. We've nicknamed him 'manti.' Ok, so we weren't terribly creative, but hey, it works. We have a new lady at work now. She's awesome and will fit in well! She got a 100% on her first mystery shop and she was still in training! Got to love it! Her name is Quela and she's a newbie here at wdc as well. Check out her port! Kayla Sullivan Part of my daughter's job as a journalist for the US Navy is to interview folks visiting the USS Ronald Reagan. Here is a shot of her interviewing Gary Sinise! |
wdc keeps insisting I update my blog....ok...it is updated! Seriously...just a cool week...it is payday (always a plus...well, at least till brokeday (which is tomorrow!)) Hired a new cashier and she's awesome and, hopefully, will be showing up here shortly!!! She's a good writer too! I'll be editing the 'For Authors' Newsletter starting the end of this month. I am so very excited about this as i have wanted to be involved with the newsletters oh since about a day after i turned yellow!!!! Wrote the Mystery one a couple of weeks ago and I am SO hooked! *grin* On another subject entirely, as long as I am blathering along,...I HATE VISTA!!! I miss my old XP :( It seems to take three times as long to do something...sigh...progress.... We had a horrific storm the other night...trees down every where...what a mess....but then we looked up...and everyone stopped and simply appreciated.... It was so beautiful! Looks kinda purple-y (is that a word? Do I care? Nope! It fits) But that's what it was :) Been reading some other folks blogs of late....runs the gamut...when folks are up...because they seem 'top of the world' up. Or bone-dead-tired exhausted, or frizzle-frazzle frustrated, or 'oh gosh I wish i could reach thru the puter and give 'em a hug' sad. Guessing that's one of the things I love about wdc...we are such a comglomeration of folks experiencing all sorts of things/emotions at any given time....And 'some' (albeit the sadly uninformed...lol) folks would say that people you meet on the net or relationships formed there are not 'real.' Hah!!!!! Lot they know! *grin* |
hmmmm thinking it is time to take a new white board pic....what should i put up on my white board/bulletin board....any ideas? |
Some oddball thoughts I've had today that translated into some , well, I'll call it poetry for lack of a better word. Just doodles, really. Reactions to things I've stumbled across or seen while out ...mind's in a weird place I suppose.... there is something intrinsically sad about seeing a grave festooned with gaily flying helium balloons. Set loose the balloons, be glad and let them soar to heaven's height don't keep them earthly bound, tied tight. For what there was they one time had is no longer there, their soul is free, it 's long since flown beyond earth and tree. ********************** It is said by experts of bamboo and as they study it, i expect it is true... the straighter grows the shoot the more complex the root. It seems as if there's an analogy here but just what it is, isn't yet quite clear..... ah...some other day. ******************************** the very first corn on the cob of the season loses something when it needs to be cut off the cob. It just is not the same. *frown* ********************************* If one is going to spend a Sunday painting the bathroom a type of color/paint requiring 2 coats, 2 different rollers and 2 types of brushes, one should start in the morning...not after the wall and floor tile suddenly demand being laid and grouted. |
Sometimes, being the boss is hard. I love my job, but I'm not so thrilled with the 'occasionally you have to play hardball' part of it. The majority of my employees are an excellent team. At one point i thought they all were, but now one of them seems to be not pulling her weight. Everyone else gives 110%, but she doesn't. I've talked to her, but there's always the excuse. So I'm holding a meeting on friday and (at my request) my disctrict manager will also be there. The stuff that is not getting done, the jobs being done half-assed, the attitude is beginning to affect the rest of the team and I need to nip this in the bud. Nothing thus far that is 'fire-able' thus the meeting which I'm hoping will get the point across for once and for all. Point is, we (with the one exception) are an awesome team. Our store can be one of the best in the district...but it will take all of us pulling our weight. The sense of pride and joy in the store is there for the rest of the crew...but the rumblings are getting louder and I need to find the words to convey this to the group as a whole in such a manner that a) they have the opportunity to speak out and b) not alienate her because I don't want to fire her, just get her on board and with the rest of the team. Any and all ideas would be appreciated. I need to handle this right. This then, is the hard part. |
Ever have one of those days where it seems everything isn't going quite right, and then it starts to go downhill...and then it just flat out goes bad? Been one of those days although none of it is all that terrible. But it was just a slew of little miserable things. Work over the weekend (which I didn't) didn't go as well as I expected. That is some of the folks who worked....didn't! It should have been the same old, same old routine...but things weren't done for some odd reason.....no biggie...like coffee not made.....smokes not counted... I mean, Hello? Now this wasn't new people or folks who didn't know any better...this was just not being bothered. Sigh. We have a meeting come friday and the velvet gloves are off and Fyn's going to start playing hardball. A shame really...these aren't kids. Adults. Mature adults. Argh! Then there is the soap opera that some folks seem to feel the need to be a part of. Some folks apparently have no lives of their own or are pathetically bored and just like to jump in the middle of stuff and then react without sufficient information to make the judgment calls they are making. All of which results in upset people, indignation and more definitions of integrity and honor that have nothing to do with any denotation or connotations of those words that I've ever heard of. So sad. So needless. So stupid!!! Soap opera belong on tv. Drama queens and kings belong in...um...what is the name of that 'tabloid?' Sure hope none of those people ever are called to be on a jury. I would question their veracity, heck I wonder if they'd have the capacity to make a good judgment call even when presented with both sides of an issue. Worse, I simply do not understand why some people feel the need to create scenarios that are completely false! For example. A phone call to work with someone calling out because they had a child at the emergency room with a badly broken leg. Ok....sure, I'll get someone to cover. No problem. Then not three hours later said kid goes riding blithely by on her bike. Same person, different day. 'I can't come in because I'm really sick. and I need to go to the hospital because they say i need some big tests...and OHHH I'm so worried cuz they think I might have cancer or something.' Sure (What else can you really say) We'll cover for you. This, of course being the last day they work before 4 days off......A week later...I ask....so...'how'd the tests come out?' 'What tests?' 'At the hospital.' 'Oh those tests.......*you can see wheels turning as they try to come up with something to say*....'we don't know yet'. Really.....hmmmmm........ok....... Problem is....another employee saw them at the fair the afternoon they should have been at work....... Why not just ask if there was any way they could get the afternoon off to go to the fair...or get someone to work their shift? Why the elaborate lies? The mind games? The flipping bullshit? I do not understand why folks feel the need to create such stuff. Anyway...that's been my day...sure hope yours was a heck of a lot better. |
It's FRIDAY!!!! Ya hhoooo~ And Ter's
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I neither know nor care what the temperature is!! I'm blue! Beautifully, bodaciously, blissfuly, cobaltly, periwinkly, navy-ily, royally, azurely, sky-ly, federally, aqua-marine-ily, ceruleanily, denim-ly, midnightly, persian-ily, sapphire-ily, prussianily, tiffanie-ly, idigo-ily, smurfily BLUE!!! |
but who cares! The fireworks were awesome! I live in a really tiny town and the next tinier town 5 miles west of us just had the greatest 20 minute fireworks display! People were parked all along the road and we sat there in the car ooohhhhing and ahhhhing as we watched....it was such fun!!!!!!! |
Happy 4th of July to all my American friends! This is another one of those holidays that means a lot to me. Maybe it is because I grew up near Boston and American history was something I lived and breathed for many years. Perhaps because I served in our military and because I'm a Navy Mom and Army Mom-in-law or because my dad fought in WWII and my grampa in WWI. I learned the words to 'Paul Revere's Ride in 4th grade...one if by land, two if by sea' and the 'freedom trail' in Boston was a regular walk.. I've traveled much of the world, and seen pictures of another huge chunk that my daughter took or my son-in-law in Iraq took...and being an American is a darned special thing to be! An Asian man and his family came into my store yesterday. He had two little girls with him that were totally precious. (perhaps they were 5 and 6...or twins possibly) and they were so excited to see the balloons I had gotten to decorate the store. The littlest one, jumping and pointing almost yelled, 'Look at the American fag balloons!!!! ' Her sister immediately said 'American FLAG! fl fl FLAG!' 'American FLag balloons!' her little sister dutifully repeated. I gave them each one and they were SO excited to have 'American flag balloons.' Their father said this was their first 4th of July that they were celebrating as Americans as he and his wife had just taken the US Citizenship exam and passed it with 'flying red, white and blue colors'. How very awesome!!!!! And it got me thinking...how many American could actually pass the exam? Why don't you try! http://encarta.msn.com/quiz_14/U_S_Citizenship_Test_Could_You_Pass.html Yes, this is more than just a day for b-b-qs and fireworks....it is a day for pride in this great country, for being proud to be an AmerICAN! |
and the space station in the sky overhead.....pretty awesome! Amazing to think about...and wish I could be up there too.... Long, rough, emotionally draining day.....my best girlfriend's husband passed away tuesday after a long illness...diabetes complicated by cancer. He's been sick for 6 years, blind, with virtually no quality of life these past 2 years or so. So. on one hand, he's at peace, no longer hurting etc. His final hours were miserable, pain wracked and truely awful. My girlfriend is torn between knowing he no longer hurts and being glad that part is over and then feeling guilty she feels that way. The funeral was nice, he was accorded full military honors with a 21 gun salute. I was fine, except for when she lost it and then i did too. Sigh. I think i was crying more for her....I ache for her...... |