Christmas Week 2012

I only had to work four hours on Sunday. :)

A friend of mine on Facebook posted about how Christmas was anticlimactic, being six weeks of build up and then it's all over. For me, it was more like three months of build up. All I wanted to do when Christmas Day finally hit was veg out and watch TV, and I pretty much got to do that.

This week is going by too fast. Before I know it, my brother will be back in Louisiana.

The End...of Peak Madness 2012

This part was written on December 14th: Only 11 days left of the Christmas Shopping Madness season, about 7.5 to 8 of which I'm working. This week wasn't as bad as the last week of 11-hour days that I worked. I think not having a new episode of The Walking Dead to watch on Monday morning probably helped. The reason I have to watch The Walking Dead after I get home on Monday mornings is because I can't get on Facebook until I've watched it due to people spoiling it. Hell, I can hardly go online anywhere until I've watched it, seeing as that Yahoo just about spoiled one episode, showing a picture of one of the cast who died on the show.

December 20th: It was announced on Sunday (the 23rd) that we would have Christmas Eve off, would come in on Christmas Day at 11:30 p.m. and work half a shift, and that we also have New Year's Eve off. I also found out that my vacation request for the 26th was confirmed. I originally figured that we would work Christmas Eve and have Christmas Day off, and then I'd have five days off in a row, but I figured that only having to work five hours between Christmas Eve morning and December 30th wasn't a bad deal. On Monday, they said that if we beat our own picking record, that they would give us all of Christmas Day off as well. Well, we broke the record, and now I have Christmas Day off as well! On Wednesday, it was announced that mandatory overtime was cancelled, which I was glad for because there was something I wanted to do this Friday, and wouldn't have gotten to if I had to work. To sum it all up, I'm off until Sunday, then after this Sunday I don't have to come back in until the following Sunday, then I get a night off and come back in on Tuesday. Pretty sweet, but was it really worth all the frustration of the past three months?

Meh, not really. At least I can kinda enjoy my Christmas now, though.

Got no time for livin'... 2012 Edition

During the last week of November, I worked 11-hour days from Sunday through Wednesday. I worked less than ten hours on Thursday, but that week was so excruciating that that still felt about four or five hours too long.

This week, we only had to work ten hours, BUT I was sick. Yes, just a couple of weeks after getting over a sinus infection, I end up getting a cold, or something. I was thinking it could have been the flu, but the only time I really felt flu-ish was Monday night. Before I went to work that night, I went and got some Nyquil/Dayquil Sinex stuff. I left work that night about four hours early. I managed to work all night on Tuesday and Wednesday. I was hoping that my overtime night this week would be Friday since the month changed, so I could get a little rest before my OT night, but they're now flipping the OT nights every two weeks, so I had to work on Thursday, and will be working the next two Fridays. I only worked half of Thursday night since I'm still kinda sick, and was hoping to add to recovery time.

I've realized that me getting sick over the past month seems to coincide with the times when it actually gets warm here. So not only is Climate Change/Global Warming bad for the planet, it also tends to make me sick during the few times in the Fall and Winter when I can hypothetically enjoy myself. I guess I could deal with some cooler temperatures if it meant not having to physically feel like shit on top of the mentally feeling like shit. Or fuck it, I'll just move to California.

So, I have two days off. I was kinda hoping to spend both days recovering from whatever it is I have, but my girlfriend is moving on Saturday, and if I want to stay in her good graces, I should help her. She seems to be a little under the weather too, and has to move whether she's sick or not. To add to the fun, we go back to 11-hour days at work this Sunday! To recap: Worked over 50 hours last week, worked under 50 hours this week while sick, get to help move on Saturday, and get to start a possibly 50+ hour work week on Sunday. And people wonder why I hate this time of year! I'd hate to say it, but I'm kinda glad that I wasn't dating this time last year. This time of year, I tend to live to work, and it's a lot easier to do when I have only myself to worry about. I feel like I've been a bad boyfriend since I really wasn't much help with the apartment search, but it seemed like any time away from work was spent just trying to recover from work. Hell, I spend so much time doing Christmas shopping for other people that I've almost forgotten that I need to shop for other people. Unlike me, she has an 8-hour-a-day job. Not even 8 hours + a 30 minute lunch, I mean 8 hours! She works fewer hours in a six day work week than I work in a five day work week. If I had a job with hours like that, I might not feel so overwhelmed. And for the record, I've applied with her employer twice, and never heard back from them.

Ugh, fuck Christmas! About two and a half weeks of this shit left.

The Thanksgiving calm before the X-mas storm.

This week has turned out much better than I thought it would. My mom and dad told me that I didn't have to go to my uncle's funeral if I didn't want to, which lightened some of my stress load, as did the postponement of the pre-Thanksgiving thing they were supposed to have on Wednesday. I do kind of regret missing my uncle's funeral, but I needed all the energy I could get for work. I would have gone had it landed on a day off, or if I could get bereavement time for people outside my immediate family. I was "lucky" with the last few major family deaths that I was either unemployed or had a job with a flexible schedule. I strongly disagreed with most of his views, but I couldn't help but get a little sad when I saw his obituary picture.

We didn't have a lot of work this week, in fact we got to leave early on Monday and Tuesday, and only volunteers will have to work on Wednesday, and I opted out of working. So, I have Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday off, but I still have to work 11 hours on Black Friday. Boo! I should be getting Holiday Pay for Thursday and Friday.

Do you see what I see?

Written Thursday night (11-15-2012)

I so wish I had had another vacation day to use so I wouldn't have had to work any this week. Work actually wasn't that bad, but it was pretty jarring to come in and see the place in full Peak Mode. Well before I even got there, there were cops at a few intersections directing traffic. Then I found that the parking lot was pretty well congested. There was Christmas music playing in the break area. Ugh. The Christmas music in the break area was a temporary thing, but it plays continuously in the restroom closest to the main entrance/breakroom. If you ask me, no time is a good time for Christmas music. If you want to listen to it all-year-round, more power to you, but I think broadcasting it for a large audience should start no earlier than Black Friday, and should end at 11:59 pm on December 25th. (I can allow some exceptions to these rules, but I don't feel like going into it because fuck you, that's why.) Point blank, it's still too early to be hearing Christmas music. The only joy I've gotten out of it these past couple of nights was hearing the "rooty-toot-toots and rummy-tum-tums" part in "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town." Why must stores and radio stations try to start Christmas earlier and earlier every year?* If they showed that much enthusiasm for other holidays, then they'd probably sell Valentine's Day stuff around Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Week looks like it's going to be stressful. On Wednesday, we're having some of the extended family over for some kind of pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner. Wednesday is a regular work night for me, so I'm not sure if I'll be actively participating in that or not. Since Thursday is my OT night for November, it's looking pretty likely that I'll work on Thanksgiving night. I'd almost bet that they'll have my entire shift crew work on Black Friday instead. All I know is that there WILL be overtime next weekend. (Meanwhile, my girlfriend has Thanksgiving off.)

I've considered leaving this place and applying for similar jobs, especially some places that are supposed to be closer to what Main ex-Employer was like when I first started there, but I don't want to take a chance on getting dumped at the end of the season, and unemployed again. Besides, I really want to get out of this line of work entirely, if possible.

*I actually know the answer, it's just a rhetorical question.

Written Saturday night (11-17-2012)

I didn't think this coming week could get any more stressful. Then I got the news on Saturday morning that one of my uncles died. He had been on his deathbed for a while, so it was a matter of "when" rather than "if". His funeral will be during my work week, and if I go, it will severely affect my routine, mostly in that I'm hellbent on getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep since my work night is so long. The same pretty much goes for if I have to work on Thanksgiving, and that's a night that's not part of my normal work week. I see quite a bit of Lorazepam being consumed in my future. I find it harder to deal with death during the Fall/early Winter holidays.

I know that the routine thing might sound stupid to most people, but that is one of my quirks. It's something that I've brought up with therapists, but for some reason they never seemed to find it as significant as I do.

(Update: Who knew that "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was actually a response to the Cuban Missile Crisis?  Read about it here. To be honest, I've never paid much attention to the lyrics, nor did I know that the song was only written within the past 50 years. I did think when I heard it recently that it would be fun to see someone sing it creepily, like in some serial killer movie.)

Six nights off.

I've had a pretty okay six-day weekend, would've been way better if I didn't have a sinus infection the entire time, and if it hadn't gotten so freaking cold on Monday and Tuesday. I wish every weekend was a six-day weekend, then maybe I could get something accomplished! I didn't get to do everything I intended to do. The lack of stress from not working and the feeling of shittiness from chest congestion sort of demotivated me from updating my resume or putting in applications. I'm sure the anger will return when I go back to work tomorrow night. At least I'll only have to work two nights at the most this week, only one if they call off overtime.

I'd write more, but I want to enjoy the rest of my last night of "vacation".

Little Big Brother, and other stories.

The following was written approximately November 2nd, with some editing tonight.

Here's how the weekend of October 25-27 went. Normally, if I had to work on a Friday, I would stay home and do laundry on Thursday, and go out and hang out with the girlfriend on Saturday. But with last Thursday seeming to be the only "nice" day of the two, I decided to go out. My gf managed to get off work early, and we actually got to hang out. I did laundry on Saturday, and started it right after I got out of bed so I could possibly go out, with or without the gf, but was too exhausted to go anywhere due to sleeping like shit early on Friday followed by working most of that night. I spent the rest of my Saturday watching horror movies, trying to get into the Halloween spirit.

One thing that's struck me about my place of work these past couple of years is how little I actually see the upper management. It's like the more the place has grown, the more they try to seclude themselves from the proletariat. I wouldn't know the upper-upper guy who has forced us to work overtime for the past month if I walked by him. I've been on my shift for three months now, and had never heard the name of my manager's manager until two or three weeks ago. I finally did see him a couple of days ago when he came to our start-up meeting to make an announcement. He didn't even bother to tell us who he was, he just stopped by and made the announcement, and I couldn't help but think, "Who the fuck are you, and why should I listen to you?" I suspected that he was this mythical creature I had heard about, and found out later that it was him. I should note that the main thing that bugged me about him is how he comes off, like he's angry all the time. Despite my initial impressions, I heard rumors that people actually liked him, or never really had a problem with him, so I tried to give him a benefit of a doubt. That changed when I came in to work overtime tonight, and everybody on my shift was told to go to another department per this guy's orders. Things in my department have gotten even slower this week, but overtime is still on. If I didn't hate this guy before, I sure do now. I think I'll refer to him from now on as Little Big Brother. I almost wish I had asked for Halloween night off so I could not only have Halloween off, but avoid the overtime as well. (Basically, if I ask for a Wednesday or Sunday off, I can get out of OT that weekend.) I got to thinking, beginning with the upper-upper guy who is forcing the overtime on us, and continuing with my manager's manager, that this is only one guy, and there are hundreds of us, so what's stopping us from dragging this guy out into the streets by his testicles and demanding we have the weekend off? Then I think about history, and how the company could probably get the National Guard, or worse, some privately owned army, to keep us in line. They could also fire us all and replace us with ease.

While I'm on the subject of upper management, I should note that most of the upper management who had been with Main ex-Employer before the buy-out have jumped ship in the past couple of years, and now I see why.

While I'm not the biggest fan of holidays, I wonder if any holiday, besides Christmas Day, is sacred to them?  With all the overtime from early October through Christmas, it's like, "We'll let you have Christmas Day off, but you can have no life in the three months leading up to it, bwahahahaha!" People who regularly work on Thursdays will have to work on Thanksgiving, and since Thursday is my overtime night for November, there is the possibility that I'll have to work on Thanksgiving as well. I worked there on Thanksgiving night in 2009, and it was really depressing. I wouldn't be surprised if they just had all the OT'ers work on Black Friday instead. Not that I want anything to do with Black Friday from a shopping or working perspective, but I think I'd rather work that night than on Thanksgiving night.

This part was written tonight.

Overtime this week was cancelled for all shifts but mine. Little Big Brother decided to have a good chunk of the people from my shift cross training in Putaway. Now the work load is back up, and my team will have to work OT this weekend. I don't have to work it since I have Sunday off, but I'm still pissed at the management for making us work OT the last weeekend or two when we weren't needed, gutting our shift this week, and then making them work OT this weekend.

Speaking of Little Big Brother, we were about a half hour away from the end of the shift on Sunday night when we got a message on our RF guns from one of our lead people, saying that LBB was watching to make sure we didn't quit picking early, so try to pick until the very end of the shift. I usually don't stop working until five minutes before the end of shift, which is about how long it takes to go return my RF gun and get to the time clock by the end of the shift. But anyway, this was only one night, and the rest of the week was pretty much back to normal, but this pissed me off for the same reason that the "10 minute breaks disguised as 15 minute breaks" ordeal I mentioned a few posts ago does. If I have to work until the very end of the long ass shift, then I won't get to clock out until five minutes after the end end of the shift, and as far as I'm concerned, even though we're not technically clocked out at the end-of-shift time, any time after that is OUR time, not theirs, so they're intruding on our time when they make us stay any later than is absolutely needed.

On Tuesday night, we had a meeting about some policy changes. The one I found most ridiculous was that you'll lose your job if you lose your temper. I understand that there should be some consequences for severe degrees of temper-losing, like actively threatening somebody, but I think it's ridiculous to get fired for more minor forms of venting. If they expect me to go to the breakroom or something every time I need to chill, I'll get nothing done.

I am so glad that this election is over! I was going to do another "Freaking out about the future" post involving the elections, but didn't have time. I'm relieved that Obama was reelected and that the Democrats still have the Senate majority, but not happy that the Republicans still have the majority in the House Of Representatives. I see at least two more years of Tea Party obstruction, but who knows, maybe we'll get something accomplished despite it?

I may elaborate some more on these last two points some other time.

I Don't Wanna Grow Up

I believe this first part was written on October 18th:

I've got somewhat good news on the overtime front. While it seems that the overtime might not be going away soon, the OT nights have changed. Instead of my shift crew being split into three groups to work Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, we're now split into two groups to work Thursday or Friday. While I'm not excited about the thought of working 50 to 55 hour weeks for almost every week until the end of the year, I am glad that I won't have to worry about working on Saturdays. I've realized recently that I've been on the night shift for about two and a half months now, and that 2.5 months has flown by, so hopefully the next two and a half months will fly by as well.

The rest of this is new:

Our work load is back down to relatively normal levels, but they've still got us on overtime. I thought for sure  that they would have cancelled it, and I was really hoping they would because my girlfriend actually has Friday night off, and is hanging out with some friends on Saturday, so we were going to hang out on Friday if there was no overtime. But since it looks like I'll be working on Friday, no can do. I'd love to have whatever it is that the upper management where I work is smoking.

There were two things that happened at work on Tuesday that pissed me off. The first was the news that management weren't budging on the OT. The second was when one of our lead people sent a message over our RF guns saying that we started off terrible, about an hour after our direct manager sent us a message saying that we were kicking butt. It's like, which is it, are we doing good, or are we sucking? Just the day before, I heard Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You", which is one of those songs that I like because it came out at a time when it seemed like there wasn't a whole lot to life except watching TV and playing with toys.Well, there was also The Cold War, but that's another story. And there was school, but then again, another story. But anyway, I was a spoiled middle class brat, and my dad busted his ass to provide for us, and eventually retire early. (Granted, my dad seemed to spend most of his time either at work or at the little podunk bar down the road, but again, 'nother story.) So after getting pissed off about the two situations at work, the song popped up in my head, which got me to thinking about toys and stuff, then got me to thinking that if I knew what my dad had to put up with in order for me to have those toys, or what I was having to put up with at that moment, I probably would've been like, "Eh, fuck it." And by "it", I mean life. I then kind of retreated into my head. I thought a lot about what I would want to write in here about that part of my childhood, and had some other weird ideas, one inspired by the overdose scene in the movie "Trainspotting", except instead of overdosing on heroin and having Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" playing, I'd just go catatonic and be in my mental happy place, with "I Just Called To Say I Love You" playing. I don't really want to talk any more about it, but going in that direction in my head was probably preferable to the seething white hot hatred that I had felt before then. One more thing though, I just remembered that the piss-offedness wasn't just about work, but also had to do with reading some comments on Facebook that some people that I went to school with made about the Presidential election. I think the less said about that, the better.

(Update: while talking to my brother about this, he reminded me of a better example of someone retreating into their "happy place", and that would be the in the movie "Brazil".)

I am so freaking fed up with with this job. (Update: evidently I'm not the only one that feels this way.) They say that it's easier to get a job when you have a job, but I'm pretty sure it's easier to look for a job when you don't have a job. Eh, I guess I'll take some time to look for another job when I go on my extended weekend in two weeks.

Here's the Ramones version of Tom Waits' "I Don't Want To Grow Up".

October, or, "I was up above it..."

I've written plenty about how much I hate the Fall/Winter seasons, and why. Some of the cold snaps we've had recently remind me of just how irritable I can get, and especially how irritable I was in October of 2008. The only pleasure I get out of October is that Halloween gives me an excuse to watch lots of horror movies, especially when my favorite theater shows classic horror films as part of their midnight movie series. I found out earlier this week that Saturday is my overtime night for October. There is never a good time to work Saturdays, but between the October midnight movie series and the fact that Saturday is the only day of the week that I get to spend a good chunk of time with my girlfriend, October is the absolute worst month to have to work Saturdays on. We are crazy busy this week, and I don't see me getting out of overtime this weekend. I'm really hoping that either the next two weeks won't be quite so crazy, or we'll bring in enough people to keep it from being quite so crazy, thus giving me either one or both of the following Saturdays this month off. Oh, and the 31st falls on one of my regular work nights, too! If I have to work both of those Saturdays, then my October will officially be ruined. The only good thing I can say is that working Saturdays this month should free up my Saturdays next month.

I intended to mention in my previous entry that another part of my peak season dread is the feeling that not only have I done this before, but that I got to escape it for a couple of years, and shouldn't have to go through it again. Or as Trent Reznor said, "I was up above it, now I'm down in it." 2009/10 were somewhat bearable since we still had the old picking system, and the place hadn't been filled to capacity yet, but I miss 2004/05, when it was still a relatively small company in a smaller warehouse, and my main work days were Tuesday through Friday. Hell, I probably would've stayed on the day shift if I got to work those days, instead of having to choose between a couple of shifts where I had to work every Sunday or one where I had to work every Saturday.

Something I've realized about 10-hour shifts is that no matter how much sleep I get, it's never enough. (Ha, now I've referenced The Cure!) I'm much better rested on those days where I worked 8 hours or less the night before.

The downward spiral of work insanity continues...

I realized last Tuesday that one of the things I hate about working is that it gives me entirely too much time to overthink. When you overthink about stupid shit you've done for the span of 8 to 10 hours, whether it was something embarrassing, something that alienated acquaintances, or something that has set you back financially, it can be pure Hell. Sure, there have been times where something has been eating me up inside, and going to work actually made me feel better, but that seems to have been mostly when I was working 8-hour-a-day jobs.

To add insult to injury, the Peak Season seems to have started, and I am so not ready for it. The only thing that will make this year better than last year is that I'm not a temp this time around, and I'll be getting paid about $2.25 more per hour than I was last year. (Or, $2.85 more than I did at Megalomart!) For the record, I'm getting paid $10.50 right now, and so my overtime pay will be $15.75. You know, if I were getting paid $15.75 for regular pay, I'd be MUCH happier. So while the money will be nice, I just can't stand the thought of working 50, sometimes 55, hours a week for the next two or three months. I am hoping to take two or three days off for the week of my birthday, so I should have a five day break in November before the real onslaught is supposed to start.

One thing that has always bugged me about this place are the breaks. Most places where I've worked give you 15-minute breaks for an 8-hour day, and may give you 20 if you have to work over. Here, they work you ten hours and only give you 15-minute breaks. When I worked in the Photo department working 8-hour days, our breaks were only ten minutes. But back to my current department: when I was on day shift, they gave us a couple of minutes to walk to and from the break area. On the night shift, the "travel time" is included in our breaks, thus really only giving us ten minutes of actual break time. That is complete and utter bullshit! We fucking work on our feet for nine hours and thirty minutes, and they're basically asking, no, telling us to spend another ten minutes on our feet when that time is supposed to go towards resting. I don't know why it took me so long to realize that this shit is made up by people who get to sit on their asses all or most of the day.

The only way I can see myself continuing to work there without going completely nuts is if I go Part Time, but then I'd need to get a second job to go along with it.

I've come to the realization in the past few years that no matter where I work, even if I start out enjoying it, I'll probably be miserable. If I could get a job that pays a somewhat liveable wage and doesn't make me work more than 8 hours in a day, then I could possibly live with it. I wish I didn't like "stuff" so much, then I could probably go drifting around and enjoying more of what this world has to offer. But getting to do things like listening to well recorded music on a very good sounding system can be therapeutic, and I hope to get to do that someday.

Shift Change update

I've been on the night shift for about a month now. There is quite a bit that I like about it, like the extra pay, not having to get up at 5-something in the morning, having the ability to stay up well past midnight on my nights off, and getting to spend an entire damn Saturday night with my girlfriend. But unfortunately, I still have to work ten hours a day. I was hoping that somehow I'd sleep less on night shift than on day shift, thus giving me more time to do stuff like go to the gym, but I sleep roughly the same amount of hours now as I did then. So, I still have to save most activities for the weekend.

Wednesday night was my last night working as an employee of Main Employer (formerly Main ex-Employer). When I go in to work on Sunday night, it will be as an employee of their parent company. Though I'm pretty sick of this line of work, and especially of the fact that most of this line of work are ten-hour jobs, I'm halfway tempted to stick around just so I can transfer to a warehouse in a totally different part of the country. Or hell, if things really suck in November, relocating to a warehouse outside the U.S.

I didn't even realize until today that this coming Monday is Labor Day. Of course I would forget, seeing as that I have to work that day so we can make our customers happy. The only holiday we're guaranteed off is Christmas Day, so I hope all of you internet retail customers who get holidays off are happy with the sacrifices we have to make to please you.

Here is a video that I posted last year on Labor Day, it's "The Machineries of Joy" by Die Krupps with Nitzer Ebb, which if I remember correctly was sort of an English language remake of Die Krupps' own "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn". That basically translates to "True Work, True Pay."

Shift change

I put in a shift change request a few weeks ago. I mentioned in my previous entry which shifts I was thinking about going for. My top pick was the Sunday-through-Wednesday night shift (6pm to 4:30am). I found out yesterday that it was approved, and I start my new shift this Sunday. I'll miss the crew, but I just couldn't stand getting up at 5-something in the morning anymore.

I've also been thinking about what I'm going to do with this job in the long term. With my birthday coming up in November, I really want to take advantage of my vacation time and take a couple of days off, and then maybe start looking for a better job after that. Or, I'll wait until February, when The Who plays in Louisville. After all, I'd hate to end up getting a night shift job somewhere else and have to miss that show because I don't have vacation time. The show is on a Saturday, and it would be lovely if I got a job where I wouldn't have to worry about weekends. Yeah, right. Anyway, all I do know is that I can't really see myself working there forever.

Big changes at work.

Disclaimer: I'm totally not naming company names so as not to draw attention to myself in Google searches, but I do feel the need to talk about this stuff somewhere, so here it is. It's been a work in progress for the past month and a half, and is pretty much old news.

Big things have been going on at my job. My employer is handing over control of the warehouses to their parent company (the company who bought them in 2009), so that my current actual employer can concentrate on stuff involving their headquarters and offices on the west coast. So basically, we'll be a (parent company) warehouse that happens to fulfill orders for my current employer's website. I'm kinda holding out judgment on if that's a good or bad thing, but I can tell you that the parent company has already had a negative effect on the warehouse. Last September, they changed "our" picking system over to "their" picking system, and it's pretty terrible. I don't want to go into too much detail, but it keeps us from picking to our full potential, so for the most part it was a step back instead of a step forward. The only good thing I can say about it is that if I need to use the restroom, I can log out of the system, and it won't count against my "rate".

Something that I was hoping might be changed with the change-over is shifts, but I think they'll be keeping the current shifts. I absolutely loathe working Sundays and Wednesdays*, and between that and the crappiness of the picking system, I'm seriously thinking about transferring to a department where I can get a Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday shift. Besides having the choice of that shift, another thing that sets it apart from my current department is that when they have an overtime day, they only have to work eight hours, as opposed to my department where you have to work a full ten-hour day, or even an eleven hour day if we're doing 11s during the holiday peak season. The downside is that their shift starts at 6:30, but I've already been coming in before 6:30 since the Photo and Inbound departments (Inbound being the one I'm thinking about transferring to) come in at 6:00 and 6:30 respectively, thus snatching up the best parking spots, and to get a good spot you have to get there stupid early. I'm already getting up at around 5:20, if I did this transfer, I'd only have to get up at 5:00! But there are things about that department that I'm not sure I could put up with, and I think working that job for ten hours would drive me even battier than my current job. I've also been thinking of staying in Picking, but doing a Sunday-Monday-Tuesday-Thursday shift so I can at least avoid Wednesdays, as well as not have to work more than four days a week on certain months. I've thought more recently about going to night shift. Sure, I would miss out on a lot of evening things and would probably even have to use vacation time just to go to concerts, but I'm seriously sick of having to get up at 5-something in the morning. Plus, it would be an extra 75 cents per hour.

*I don't necessarily mind working on Sundays, I just hate getting up so damn early on Sundays. I hate working Sunday mornings since it ruins my Saturdays, giving it that "Oh, I have to work tomorrow" dread that's usually reserved for Sundays, plus I drag ass at work if I stay up late on a Saturday night. There are two things that I absolutely hate hearing on Sundays when I have to work. The first is my clock radio waking me up to Woody's Roadhouse on 91.9 WFPK. I associate Woody's Roadhouse with ending a night, not beginning a day, and having it wake me up at the start of a work day is just wrong! If I'm lucky, I'm usually awake before the alarm is set to go off, so I can get up and turn it off before it can come on. The other thing I hate hearing is the CBS Sunday Morning theme. It's something that I associate with lazy Sunday mornings at home, or at a home-away-from-home, and hearing it at work is also just wrong. If a TV at work is on CBS on a sunday morning during my first break, I try to leave the room before I hear it. As for Wednesdays, I hate them because we have almost twice the amount of people. Having more people doesn't necessarily help with the way the picking system currently works, and we have a hard enough time trying to get carts and other resources that we need to work with on a regular work day, it becomes nearly impossible to get those things on Wednesdays.

The Photo department (the department I was working in for two and a half years, until I got laid off there the first time) seems to be the most heavily affected. Long story short, some people in that department will have to decide if they're staying in Kentucky, or moving to my direct employer's home in Vegas. If they had asked me four or five years ago if I wanted to take my job to Vegas, I would've totally jumped on it. Now, I'd be more like "maybe", but only because I have a girlfriend here now, and don't necessarily think moving her over there with me would be the greatest idea for her. I have a feeling though that I'd probably rather go to Vegas and continue working for the original employer than stay here and work for The Parent Company.

The Tooth, conclusion (hopefully)

I started an entry three weeks ago about my trip to Indianapolis to see Danzig, and have yet to finish it. It was a way more massive undertaking than I expected, and in the end it probably won't be so massive. Last weekend, I started an entry about some of the big (and I mean BIG) goings on at work, and some other workplace-related gripes. I meant to finish it, but might end up posting it "as is". The one thing that those weekends had in common were that they were four-day weekends. Evidently, four days still isn't enough time for me to work on an entry longer than a short paragraph or two.

This past Thursday, I had a permanent crown put on The Tooth. Now that that debacle is over, my next health project will be getting new glasses. My current pair are six years old, have tape holding one side together, and the lenses have developed a rosy tint in the past year, probably having something to do with the fact that they are old Transitions lenses. You can see the rosiness in my current thumbnail pic (current as of June 2012, it might change in the future). It's important that I get this done in the next month or two before my warehouse is completely taken over by my employer's owner. You'll see more about that if I get around to posting my last attempted entry.

That's all  have for now.

Tooth update

I got to go to the dentist two weeks ago. The main thing I wanted to find out was what was going on with my problem tooth. I found out that it was abscessed, and needed a root canal. The root canal was done on Friday the 18th. The hardest part for me to deal with was just waiting for them to get it started. In about two weeks, I get to go to the dentist to have the tooth permanently filled and crowned. I mentioned back in January that a tiny part of the old filling broke off while I was eating. A lot of it had worn away since then. Anyway, I noticed later in that week that it broke off that I was in a down mood, and feeling less energetic than usual. I had a feeling that it was due to the filling, but wasn't sure. For the most part, things stayed that way until my root canal. I've been feeling a lot better mentally this week, probably because I don't have all that mercury in my mouth. At some point in the near future, I'd like to replace the rest of my silver fillings with white ones.

Hmmm, forgot what the hell else I wanted to write about. :(

Nothing to see here.

I ended up working four out of five Saturdays in March. Orders finally wound down towards the end of the month, and I got to have two full weekends off in a row. Orders started picking up again during the second week of this month, and I had to work last Friday for overtime. Freakin' fun, I tell you what. Thankfully, orders slowed down some this week, and I've actually got a full weekend off.

God damn it, I get all these ideas for what to write about in my blog when I'm away from the computer, but once I get to the computer, I can't type shit. I'm pretty sure I started on that first paragraph last week, and wanted to add more to it, but never got around to adding anything. I spent these past couple of days modifying that paragraph, and have been meaning to add to it. I go back to work tomorrow, and the window is closing fast. Guess I'll just post this.

I wish I had more time for blogging.

I appreciate the job security, but geez...

The "honeymoon" portion of my employment has officially ended, and just in time to get my benefits! I'm sick of ten-hour days, and I'm sick of working Sundays. And so far this month, I've only had one Saturday off. I haven't even gotten to go to a Midnight Movie at my favorite theater since November, specifically the day after my birthday. As I mentioned in my previous entry, I don't have much time on my regular work days to do anything but work and sleep. The only good thing about them is that I get three-day weekends. Having to work an extra day for overtime fucks up my entire week, and I have to cram three days worth of weekend into two days. While I guess that can still be considered rest from work, it can still be pretty stressful. I appreciate the job security, but a little more time for myself would be nice. Here's some good reading: Why we have to go back to a 40-hour work week to keep our sanity. Note that they mean 40 hours split into five 8-hour days, because working more than 8 hours in a day is counterproductive.

The only good things I can say about this week are that I got to see and meet Henry Rollins again, and I'm getting to go see Jane's Addiction for the first time tonight. In other concert news, I found out that The Psychedelic Furs will be playing in Louisville on April 4th, and the Danzig Legacy tour will play in Indianapolis on June 1st. My overtime day in June is Friday, so I'll have to remind myself to try to get a vacation day for May 30th so I can get out of working that day if OT is called, and to get a four-day weekend. I actually have a blog entry idea brewing in my head that involves both Jane's Addiction and The Psychedelic Furs, I hope I'll actually have the time sometime soon to actually write it.

Brief update, March 10, 2012

Having a regular income is nice, but I really miss having time to write my blog, or read blogs that I follow. Working ten hours a day kinda sucks. After work, I only have time to eat dinner and take a shower, then I might have an hour or so to fool around online or watch TV, then it's off to bed. I feel like I do have quite a bit that I want to say these days, but don't have the time to type it down. When I do get the rare chance to write in here, I usually find myself too exhausted mentally to write, so I just quit and go watch some stuff on the DVR instead.

In February 2011, I wrote What have I gotten myself into?, where I decided to buy a Lifetime Membership into Louisville Mojo. These days, that place is so dead that I would delete my profile if I didn't feel compelled to keep it due to my lifetime membership. Back in 2004, Mojo was so entertaining that it replaced TV as my choice of prime time entertainment. That's definitely not the case now.

I'm trying to make some lifestyle changes, and the first one has been to try to wean myself off of sodas, in this case I'm referring to both regular and diet sodas. I'm not necessarily eliminating them from my life altogether, just trying to get to where I don't drink them at home or work. I grew up drinking sodas like most people probably drink water, and it's been one of the hardest things I've ever tried to give up. Reducing my soda intake has been easier this time around, probably because I seem to be getting tired of them anyway. The time I find it hardest to not drink a soda is when I sit down to type up a blog entry, or do some other task online that's going to take up a lot of time, like doing taxes or filling out an application. I am happy to say that I have no drink beside me at the moment.

2012 so far...

Sorry for the lack of entries lately. Starting up entries has been easier than finishing them. Other than the tooth (more on that in a minute) and the wild weather, I haven't had much to complain about. It hasn't been real eventful either, since I'm mostly either working or hanging out with my favorite girl. Sometimes, no news is good news. :)

I spent the first few hours of the year with my favorite girl, and I couldn't think of a better way to start it. I can't say that the rest of the day was all that great, since I had to be in at work at 9:00 a.m., and then later on while eating dinner, part of a filling broke off. The tooth it came from was the one that should have just been pulled instead of filled back in. The tooth really bothered me the first few days, but doesn't bother me now. I've been trying to decide whether to take care of it soon, or in two months when I'll actually have insurance.

Work has slowed down quite a bit. I've had no overtime this year, and I got to leave early every day this past week. Next week's check is going to suck, but I'm trying to enjoy the time off that I get, especially after having worked 44-55 hours a week for over a month. One thing I like about working day shift is that I actually get to see the sun when I get off from work early. Before too long, I'll get to see it every day when I get off at my regular time.

One of the perks of having a steady full time day job is getting to go to concerts. I get to see Anthrax pretty soon. This will be my fifth time seeing them, but only my first with Joey Belladonna on lead vocals. And in March I'll get to see a Henry Rollins spoken word show AND Jane's Addiction in the same week! This is the first time I know of that Jane's Addiction has ever played Louisville. Van Halen is playing in February, and I'm debating on whether to go see them.

One of the few brick-and-mortar Blockbuster Videos that I know of is going out of business. Like Borders and Ear X-tacy, I'm kinda sad to see it go. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying the sale.

I've recently decided to give up watching "Star Wars:Clone Wars". When watching a show starts to feel like a chore, then it's time to stop watching. I never was a huge fan, but it did seem to get more interesting at some point. This season is supposed to have some good shit, but it's mostly been a dud so far. You especially know it sucks when Gungans are featured in two or three episodes in a row. But anyway, I'm really glad that I was recently able to get both volumes of Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars micro series that aired between Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3. It's not only the definitive Clone Wars series for me, but it's also better than the prequel trilogy.