The Adventures of Being Me

Tonight was the last night of my coworker's work at our job. Now he has to move into his house in another town this coming week. He is psyched up and looking forward to it. He got a new job at some manufacturing plant. I told him when he clocked out to not let the door hit him on his way out. Before that, I said that I was informed that this was his last night here and I didn't have a present for him, I'm sorry (sniff, sniff). At least, I made him smile. He said Good Night. I said Good Night back. I am good displaying warm and touching farewells to coworkers who quit. At one job I had, it was tradition to saran wrap your manager's car when you quit. Pouring milk, whip cream, and eggs on the car was optional. When I quit I had to assure a nervous manager that I was not going to destroy her car with whip cream and saran wrap. I am grown up. But I told my coworkers they could if they wanted to. I think someone actually did trash her car and lucky for me I had the day off s...

Hello again. Today I heard on the news that a 70-year-old man drove through the gate of the Air National Guard last night and led a chase over the tarmac and taxiways of the Des Moines Airport causing the airport to shut down for 15 minutes. A police officer said they were considering using deadly force on the man. Lucky for the man arrested they did not. He was just arrested charged with trespassing and resisting arrest. Security breaches like that tighten security for all. Thanks, we need our security officers paranoid and edgy. They are not stressed enough already. Post later. Bye!

Today was a big day. Not because I started my volunteer work, because I had several things going on. Yesterday I got a box of baking soda to attempt to rid the rotten smell still lingering in the microwave because it is too damn cold to open the windows all day to air my apartment. It just won't stop raining keeping the temperatures in the 50's. Then coming back I saw a notice above the mailboxes saying the water will be shut off 9-5 the next day (today). So took my shower late at night instead of the daytime. I tried so hard today to get my bangs to go backwards. I lost. My hair refused to obey. I got ready for my volunteer job and scooted right over. Of course all the doors to the museum are locked so I had to ask how I was suppose to get in. I was guided over a rope and opened the unlocked door. Then there was school going through the house when I entered so I introduced myself to the lady when she came around. I remembered after a minute which door was to the basement and p...

It has happened again. People are demanding the state of Iowa reinstate the death penalty after the murder of a child. According to the news the death penalty for state crimes (not federal) was dissolved 40 years ago. For as long as I can remember (29 years), every time a child is murdered people petition to reinstate the death penalty. I noticed when an adult is murdered this petition demand does not occur. I recall once in high school when the legislature defended voted against reinstating the death penalty because the latest child murderer would not fall under the law and forcing a person live with the consequences to their actions sitting in jail the rest of their natural life is a much worse punishment that the easy way out to only answer to God. Or something like that. Though, every time the murdered child is eventually forgotten and the demand for the death penalty disappears, until the next child murder. Go figure. Post later. Bye!

I have been informed the manager will be sending out an email regarding personal phone calls at work. The manager warned this coworker it was coming saying it is not directed specifically at her. It is meant for everyone. I told her she can blame me for the upcoming email. I emailed my manager a week ago about an incident where a coworker talking to his wife on the phone asked me to get the ringing phone. I was helping a customer at the time he said that. Then had to ask the customer what he said since I was interrupted. I hope my coworkers won't me hate too much from this. Customers should take precedence over personal phone calls. If you find yourself in the situation where an associate ignoring you as they talk on the phone, do not be shy about complaining. Associates resent it too. At one job, a coworker often glued to the phone said that our jobs are so easy. I said that was because I'm doing all the work. Today a coworker called in sick. Nobody believes he is sick. He was...

Today I still have people at work asking when I am quitting my job to work at a museum and how much will I make doing hard labor. Apparently, I have not made the word "volunteering" clear enough. And trust me that nobody would do hard labor for free. Volunteers are not in a chain gang. I have yet to start, Tuesday is my first day. But then few ever listen to me anyway. Then I ticked off the post office by neglecting the four-digit secret code numbers needed to explain what street and what floor I live on. Gee, I thought the house number, street name, and apartment number explained where I live. Every apartment complex begins the 1st floor with a 1 or A and so forth. The letter explained the high speed mail sorter can only read zip codes (so why write the rest of the address?) so it is most important that I include my full address to receive my mail in a timely fashion. Sorry I never noticed it being slow. Post later. Bye!

I don't believe this. The past couple weeks we have received many customers complaining over our reservation line operators. They don't speak English, when speaking in English their accent is so strong they can't understand them, and extremely ignorant on American geography. One customer asked if the reservation line is located in India. No, I said, They probably hired a bunch of immigrants because the center is in the States. I emailed my manager about what the customer said. She emailed back saying it was in India. I emailed asking if she was joking, people in India making American reservations. She emailed back the it was not a joke, the reservation line was moved to Inida to save money. Yeah, angering mulitudes of customers is really going to save them money. I foresee a sinking ship that will be bought by yet another company (on the corporate level). I wonder who the genius is who thought up moving the reservation center to another country would save them money. Moron....

Hey there. I did my good deed for the today. A woman comes to me begging to wait for her husband arriving after we close. Um, no, we only wait for people with reservations who have flight info in. She asks, So if he makes a reservation you will wait. Yep. So she retrieves the 800 numbers from me to call for a reservation. Her husband calls me wanting me to make the reservation because he can't understand the operator (very common complaint). SO out of the kindness of my heart I make him one. We normally transfer people to the reservation line because we can get customers coming to our counter and it becomes awkward when someone will not get off the phone. Of course I know a trick to get the reservation in the operator didn't know. We close at 12:00 midnight. Placing the reservation time at 11:59 PM will let the reservation go through. The man's plane comes at 1:09 AM. My good deed for the day. A guy at work teases me how I set myself up to wait for this person's flight....

Yesterday, I had such a bad day I thought for a second someone placed a voo doo curse on me. First I can't get out of bed, my brain wants to go back to sleep and does. Soon, I have 20 minutes to get ready for work. Next I burn my frozen breaded fish fillet in the microwave. It looked like a steaming lump of coal. And my entire apartment reeks of burnt food. It still does. Open all windows and turn on all fans. 15 minutes and counting. Place new fish over burned glass plate. Finish dressing for work, eat fish, and close windows because it is too cold to leave them open. Outside the apartment is a crew scraping the top layer of concrete off the repave the street with tar. So I begin to wonder if this will effect my coming and going out to work. I am 5 minutes late to work. Next I get to know my coworkers too well. I hear a tale of a shower with a neighbor's dog my coworker is petsitting. The dog jumped in the shower and refused to leave. Next I hear a tale of seeing a woman's...

Hey there. I saw the Oprah show where a columnist wrote a horrific article about her wonderful sex life and not devote every waking moment to her four children. Mothers were outraged she did not love her children and put her husband above her children. Such cruelity. OK, what are these mothers plan on doing when their babies move out and they are left alone with a husband who is a complete stranger. I can't tell what they are planning for that day, but I know what they will do. Empty nest syndrome will hit them like a ton of bricks on their heads. They will constantly call their children at college worried they are starving, not brushing their teeth, not studying, and wearing dirty clothes because they are lost without their mothers doing everything for them. They will hear, I'm fine Mom, stop worrying. When children get married their mother will insist on planning everything as if it were her wedding. They will hear, It's my wedding Mom, not yours. They will spoil the gran...

I saw the Dr. Phil show today where a woman was still angry and bitter of somone who tormented her in high school after graduating 30 years ago. She did not know how to stop hating this person. The tormenter came on the show and claimed not to remember this girl at all in high school. This really made the victim angrier at this insenstivity and lack of remorse from this tormenter. What did this woman expect after 30 years? People grow up and move on. I did. I forgave all schoolmates for the mean things they said and did years ago. I went to my 10 year reunion with a smile on my face proud of the novel I was completing and took a copy of the outline for anyone there to read. I got several people excited about it. That night I shared french fries on the plate of a classmate who was not so nice in childhood and adolescence. It felt weird, but a good weird. We both grew up and moved on. I hold no grudges against anyone I once knew because I want to be happy. A man on the Oprah show grew up...

It was the best of the times, it was the worst of times. That is how Charles Dickens began his tale of the French Revolution. Today while Rome with Cathloics and non-Catholics around the world celebrated the election of a new pope, Oklahoma City mourned the 10th anniversary of the bombing of a building by an decorated American soldier. Concerning the Pope, some question his Hitler youth days and wonder if he is the right candidate to lead the religion. Are we forever going to define a person by what he/she did during World War II, or more currently Vietnam? That was a short period of time a long time ago. If we condemn the Pope for not rebelling against the violent and oppressive Nazi regime, then we condemn every German, Pole, French, Czech, Dane, etc. who watched the horrors of the Holocaust and beyond. I say if he is not guilty of mass murder then let it go. What good is a rebel being dead? Timothy McVeigh was executed several years ago over the Oklahoma City bombing, in retrospect ...

Hey there. It took a day to get get over the thing my coworker did on Sunday night. Let's just say I could physically feel the steam rising out my face from my rage exploding inside of me. Another coworker says he is socially inept and never figures out when his coworkers are mad at him. He figures out when I'm infuriated. I must act like his wife or something for him to pick up on my social cues instantly. I took deep breaths to calm down. Ripping into a man just makes them defensive and nothing is accomplished. I learned that trick from Oprah. Breathing deeply when highly stressed does work. Anyway my coworker's crime Sunday night: When I was helping a customer and he was on the phone with his wife, the phone rang. I heard him ask me to get it because he was already on the phone. I grabbed it and tried placing the person on hold. She quickly asked her question and I answered it. I then ask my customer his answer again since I was interupted in the middle of my question an...

I am so sorry I ever got my laptop computer on the internet. All it has done is ruin my computer programs I already had before I got on the internet. Tonight for the second time I can not play a DVD. Last time I practically broke the CD/DVD drive from shoving it in and jerking it out trying to play a DVD that required I join a website I don't want to join. DVDs played just fine before I was on the internet. Now I try to play a DVD to read I don't have a capatible DVD decorder on my computer. I tried to order one online. Can't order one either because the order form demands a password to a paypal account I do not have. Don't want one either. I am so pissed I am ready to smash my computer with a hammer. I had enough of this crap. I will just go back to my shitty cell phone internet that can't connect or navigate from one webpage to another without difficulty or halting completely refusing to let me continue to the next page. I think I was better off not having interne...

Hello again. I read the pet sponsor ads for the animal rescue leagues in this area. Animal shelters do not just take care of cats and dogs. Guinea pigs, hamsters, rats, rabbits, and a rooster are also are at the animal shelter waiting to be adopted. Someone sponsored a pet ad for a rooster. I told my coworker that I thought most people call chickens lunch. I do. Post later. Bye!

Hello again. We just had a coworker hand in his 2 weeks notice. He is moving to another town so he is quitting this one and thinking of going back to delivering pizzas like he did before this job. So there is a job opening at my car rental. This is no big suprise since there is a high turnover rate (frequency of employees quitting) for the car jockeys. They are out in the elements, cold in winter and hot in summer, clean cars inside and out, shuttle cars between parking lots, and are suppose to turn things found in cars into we inside people who make more than they do. Needless to say the outside people don't like the indoor people who sit in air conditioning all day. Plus the pay is lousy, like $6 or $7 at any of the car rentals. That is why many of the outdoor car jockeys quit for better paying jobs. I heard today that one former employee had his probation revoked and sent back to jail. He quit because he finally got tired of washing cars all day because he could not drive them s...

I heard sad news today. In Wisconsin, despite protests and a petition with 17,000 names signed onto it against a new law allowing stray cats without a collar to be hunted and shot was voted in. Minnesota and South Dakota already have such laws. I will be sure to not live there when I get a pet cat. Though if my neighbor shot my pet dead, does that give me the right to shoot the neighbor. I didn't think so. Animals and humans are not the same in the eyes of the law. Pet owners disagree on that. It is acceptable in this country to kill unadopted animals in shelters the exact same way the prison guards execute human criminals, lethal injection. And this country is pro-life? I find that hard to believe. I was happy in high school to learn a new word: no-kill shelter. I see they have gained in popularity. I donate money to one to help support a cat with a disease that will very unlikely be adopted. It has been in the shelter for 6 years. Poor thing. Let me share some stray animal storie...

Hello again. I just heard on the news about a party being busted by police because some neighbors noticed a lot of traffic going to a certain house and called police. The officers are trying to track down who supplied the booze for teens at the party. Often that is hard because no one talks about it. Another problem often said by police is that the parents of these teens most often are the suppliers. When parents teach teens that one must have beer to have fun, what does one expect but a bunch of drunk teens. I suppose the word "No" is not in these parents' vocabularies. I worked with a girl who just graduated from high school and she went into shock when I said my fridge is not stocked with wine coolers. She thought all adults need alcohol after work to calm down. Um, sorry, not all adults need alcohol to be happy. I just never felt the need to get drunk and have hangovers on a regular basis. In addition, not all teens need beer and drugs to have fun either. My 17-year-o...

Hello again. Last night, I went to see Motley Crue in concert. I showed up plenty early to get a Tshirt and get to my seat. I found a long snaky twisted line to get through security. The line was so long it was hard to know where it ended. Soon the lines disapppeared and it was just a mob pushing to get in. I played solitaire on my cell phone inching toward the gate. I finally reached the gate after an hour of standing to be barely touched by the lady searcher. She did get excited over the cell phone in my jacket pocket and asked me to take out. I showed it and she let me go. Then there was a mob at the Tshirt stand. But the show was scheduled to start at 8 and it was already 8:30 so I sprinted up to my seat stepping on a few feet to get to my assigned chair. I sat exhausted and dripping with sweat for about a minute when the stage curtain rose. There were a couple acrobats on a box before that. The funny parts of the concert were Nikki Sixx tossing and spitting water at the audience, ...

I was flipping channels today and viewed the tail end of the Charles and Camilla wedding. Was that today? Maybe it was yesterday, I don't know. St. George's Chapel looked the same as when I saw it, in 2002. Lucky for us that plane tickets shot down when we were planning the trip after September 11. My sisters are huge royalty fans so on the family trip to England we had to view everything that to do with royalty, Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, Kensington Palace, Osborne Manor, Tower of London, etc. Let's just say I'm guessing Windsor Castle is the size of my hometown. I did manage to attract attention from one of the groundskeepers by trying to take a photo of a sunken garden's waterfall and people kept walking in front of me. Needless to say I was getting frustrated. The lady who asked what I was doing was kind enough to direct people behind me so I can get my shot. I said thank you and she said something about the garden I wanted a picture of. I forgot what she sa...

Shout...Shout...Shout...Shout at the Devil. If that popular song is not familiar, it's from Motley Crue. That bad ass 80's heavy metal band is coming to my city tomorrow (Monday). I'm so excited I can't stop talking about it. I read every piece in the papers about them. I didn't know Nikki Sixx had a biography about him. And here I read the band's autobiography twice. Silly me. I have to look up Nikki Sixx's book on Amazon.com. I also didn't know he wrote songs for a rock and roll Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde movie or play. He's been busy. He is my favorite one in the band. Can't really explain why, it is just an innate magnetic pull towards him. My obsession about him didn't really start until 1998 when out of nowhere I wanted to know everything about him. I once read in magazine about his hating to leave his kids behind when he went on tour. I sent him a Father's day card I handmade myself. I bet he never received it and it was tossed in th...

I tried on my volunteer uniform today. It was not as heavy as I feared. Light, see-through cotton fabric in a plaid print. I like plaid even if Mama hates me wearing it. She says I look like a farmer (big no-no) when I wear plaid. Which I find strange she hates the farmer look when she grew up on a farm and married a man who also grew up on a farm, and farms land still though we live in town. I know my Mama is strange sometimes. We discussed my hair that is in between long and short. My bangs grown out give me shaggy dog look. Guess I will growing my hair out this summer so I can pull it back. I think I look ugly with my bangs pulled back with bobby pins. So naturally I had to go shopping for hair accessories. I could tell prom season is coming by the vast selection. I even found tiaras. I picked my selection of items and went home to play with my hair. My Dr. Phil show was interupted with Breaking News of the President with other people has arrived to pay their respects to the Pope. S...

Well the new meth law is causing headaches already and it has only been in effect for 3 days, according to the news. It says only 7500 milligrams of pseudoephedrine in any medication may be purchased by a person during the course of a month (is that 30 or 31 days?)and must register their name in a log at the pharmacy. I just bought my allergy medicine before the law took effect so it will be a while before I need to purchase more. Looking at my medicine box to check the milligrams of my medicine doses, it has 30 milligrams of pseudoephedrine per pill. Figuring for 30 days, to reach the 7500 I would have to take 8 1/3 pills per day. That equals to 4 recomended doses per day. The medicine lasts for 4 hours and it says not to take more than 8 tablets over a 24 hour period. So I'm safe when ragweed season hits me like the plague. All I can say is that it is good I don't have other people in my place (or be a single mother) because I would otherwise be breaking the law if my kid or ...

Hey there. I just heard of numerous complaints from residents who live next to train tracks of train whistles disturbing them in the middle of the night and demand a noise ordinance. I suppose they never noticed the tracks outside the window when they toured the place before moving in. Guess what, Trains make noise and vibrations as they pass too. But I suppose the rumbling and the walls trembling is easy to sleep through. I notice train whistles where I sleep, even though I can't see trains where I live, and they never disturbed my slumber. I live between the train tracks and the airport so I hear much noise anyway, in addition to traffic driving by. Some planes are so loud they block the sound of my TV completely and sound like they are landing on my roof making my walls shake too. Annoying yes, but I am not about to petition the city council to put a noise ordinance over the airport. The Air Force would laugh at that petition I'm sure. Post later. Bye!

I can tell spring is here and not by our warm weather. I have been using my asthma inhaler every day the past week. The thing I hate the most about asthma is the splitting headache I get after I start breathing normally again. The second thing I hate the most is people not taking my asthma seriously. After sucking in the medicine at work, people have to come up and start talking to me or try to make me laugh, which wastes the medicine I just inhaled. I'm suppose to hold my breath for 15 seconds to let it absorb into my lungs. My Mom was the worst about accepting my asthma. She actually told to me breathe normally and it will go away. After my lips turned blue and I had an out of body experience, did my Mom figure out I was not just trying to get out of yardwork. My family still jokes how I'm allergic to work. Though my asthma should not had been such a shock for my Mom to handle since my cousin started having asthma attacks before I did. I had to resort to explaining how I fel...

Hey there. One of our car rentals within our chain closed March 31, permanently. At first it made me think about another car rental a couple years ago closed within our chain and we had to scramble to find another company to match our price because the reservation was leaving the car in the closed city. Today that leaves just 3 cities in Iowa within our car rental chain. I hope I don't have to look for another job someday from my car rental location closing. And financial advisors advise investing in your employer, like 401K and stocks. I read a page of financial advice one day in the paper encouraging the public to invest in their 401Ks to get matching contributions from their employers. Not contributing to your employer provided 401K is passing up free money. An stocks prove your loyalty and faith and trust in your employer. Yeah, whatever. The problem with the sales pitch is that my employer does not match contributions so I'm not getting free money and the what if your comp...

Hello again. I read an opinion brief in today's paper of an outraged teen who voiced disgust at someone who earlier said the Iraq war was pointless and defended her father serving in Iraq. I know many think supporting the war and supporting the troops are the same thing. Let me explain why some of us think they are not. It is simply a matter of choices: Politicans can begin and end a war with the flick of a pen. They dictate to the Generals and Admirals the objectives and strategies of the war with the enemy chosen by the politicians. Soldiers, at the bottom of the hierarchy, sent to fight the war have no choice who their enemy is, where they fight, what their mission is, whether they have the supplies to complete the mission, which comrades are killed, and whether they come back in one piece or even alive. In short, Supporting the War equates to supporting the politicians we elect and Supporting the Soldiers equates to supporting the actual fighters who obey orders handed to them....