Marco?......Polo!

Okay, I guess vacation is over. Sorry I haven't been around much. I would like to say that it is because my life has been so hectic that I haven't had time to blog, but that would be only partially true. Part of it is that I just simply haven't had the desire to blog. There certainly has been lots I could have blogged about, but a combination of lack of time and energy has ruined most blogging attempts to my recycle bin.

Let's get the big thing out of the way and go from there. I once again lost my radio job. This had absolutely nothing to do with my abilities or lack thereof in producing a radio show, rather the station which we work doing the show from was sold, as was the other two stations owned by the same company in Pittsburgh. Sheridan Broadcasting sold WAMO FM, WAMO AM and WGSR AM to some religious non profit for 9 million dollars. I wish I could go into details about the new owners, but I have been very unlucky in finding any information, I just know that they only recently received non profit status, as of Feb of this year. I don't know if they are a legitimate non profit, or if they petitioned for such status so as to avoid paying taxes. All I know is that it went down something like this.

Apparently at 4pm on Friday, May 15th a staff meeting was called at the station. The employees gathered into a room and told that they no longer had jobs. The whole thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts save for the fact we have no parting gifts speech. Because I wasn't an employee of the station, I was not included in the meeting, rather when I arrived at the station for our 5pm show, around 4:15pm or so, I was told that the general manager wanted to see me. I thought maybe I had screwed the pooch royally or something and didn't even realize it, but nonetheless I trek downstairs to his office where I was told that the station was sold and the show cancelled, effective immediately. The news was such a shock to everyone that the log, the pages that show us what is airing and when that is in the studio, hadn't even been changed, it still was set up like we were doing a show. Worse, we were about to have our best advertising run yet, we had 4 different advertisers that wanted Lynn to do live reads for them duiring the show, and we were set to bring on two more the following week, sadly we were doing more live spots on our show on the AM side than either of the other two stations were doiong during any of their shows/shifts. But it speaks volumes when someone can come in with $9 million and walk away with not one, but three radio stations.

As much as I was disappointed in hearing the news, let's not kid anyone, this was just a part time gig for me, and was not what was paying jmy bills, it was just the occasional spending cash and an opportunity to, as Doug Hoerth used to say, play in the sandbox a little. It was far worse watching people who had dedicated years of time to the station be given little to no notice and be told to clean out their desks and go home. Many of them don't have the fall back of a full time job that I do, that station was their full time gig. I felt far worse for them especially as a bunch of older white guys in suits patrolled the halls, making sure they didn't take anything, as if these guys really could have stopped anyone, they weren't all that imposing of figures, and watching people trudge over to the elevators with all of their radio belongings in tow. Lynn showed up around 4:30pm, I broke the news to her and we went down to Laurence's office, he is the producer of Bev Smith's show (which was unaffected as it is a network show and has affiliates outside of Pittsburgh) and said our goodbyes to he and Brook, his assistant producer. Laurence helped us land the radio gig to begin with, and those of the local radio scene would probably best remember him as Doug's old producer at 1250 AM back in the day, and he is what we like to say in the vernacular, good people. Anyway, we did our goodbyes and keep in touches and headed to the bar next door to the station for a farewell beverage. A couple of sales people stopped by and joined us, two of the 35 people that were show the door and we chatted a bit before everyone went on their merry way.

That's it in a nutshell kids. Not that all of my work has been going so poorly, prior to the sale I was actually starting to find my radio groove again, which is sort of hard to explain. In that regard radio is just a feel thing, you either feel like you did a good job, or a not so good one. I thought that I was finally getting my brain back in order and sounding semi intelligent on the air again, which is harder that it sounds when you are working a full time gig on the side. Harder still because the full time gig is handing me more and more responsibility. I am now the head of the stock people, for whatever that is worth. Basically it means when Ed comes in and sees me working, he tells me I can have somebody else do that, I am allowed to boss around people as I see fit, but I tend not too. Not that he hasn't noticed my work ethic, just Friday he called me aside and handed me an extra $60 and told me to go do something nice for myself since he always sees me busting my ass while I am working.

I'll say this, he couldn't have picked a better day for that little cash pick me up. We had been in a dispute with our Coca Cola vendor, so much so that we hadn't taken an order from them in probably a month and a half, so our Coke coler upstairs was stuffed with what was left of our Coke products, mainly Sprite, and two flavors of Fanta, grape and orange, as that was all we had left. Well of course the dispute with Coke was settled, and as a result, they sent us a giant order on Friday to compensate for everything we sold out of. Over 150 cases of product, plus Friday is also our Pepsi delivery day, and another 120 cases came from them, so by the end of the day, after catching 270-280 cases of product off of the trucks, my arms felt pretty much like they would fall off. I was none too happy, save for the bonus cash, which helped alleviate my suffering, and the fact the boss said I could take as much Mudd home as I wanted. Mudd is a coffee type drink that comes in cans that we sell. We have been selling them as BOGO because we are trying to get rid of them, and I have been known to buy them at work for the quick jolt of caffiene, they come in two flavors, esspresso and vanilla, and I find them quite tasty. Well, since we are trying to just get rid of them, Ed told me to take whatever I wanted, so I snagged a 4 pack for my fridge at home. I could have taken more, but I didn't want to abuse the offer too much. I try not to be too hoggish on such things, I passed on the free Djarum cigarettes that Ed offered previously, though they are clove and I am not a clove kind of guy, but I am thinking that I may be snagging some more of the Mudd because it is just way tasty.

If that were the only thing good about the newstand that would be one thing, but it has also been helping the change meter quite considerably. Since I last wrote about it many moons ago I added another $18.27 to the kitty, so the new total is $97.06. I am very near the $100 dollar mark, which I didn't expect to happen this year let alone this quickly this year. Plus as an added bonus one of the tasks I gave myself at work was to get rid of all of the returned products that we had that were never dispatched of even though we had received credit for them. Included in that was a few cases of Coke products that had literally been in the basement for years, but still had Coke reward caps on them, so I kept the caps and continue to add them to my account. So far, just from the stuff I have gathered since my move to stock person, I have gathered enough points for a year subscription to Esquire (which I previously gave away here), a couple of contest entries where I won free songs from Rhapsody (they need added to the Imeem list yet) and four more free months of Pogo once my yearly subscription runs out next year. And I still have a bunch that I haven't even entered yet. I have 208 points in the account, I could easily buy a few more things but I am waiting to see just how many more I can find before I go on another online spending spree.

One of the few things I have been keeping up on here is the Stanley Cup playoffs, because while they may not be a big thing where you are, they ae quite an event round these parts. Right now the Penguins are one win away from making their second consecutive Stanley Cup Final, while Detroit leads the Western Final so we could be looking at a rematch of last year's final that Detroit won 4 games to 2. When I say the games are a big thing here, I am not overexaggerating. Game 7 of their second round matchup against Washington pulled a 24.97 rating locally. In laymen's terms that means one out of every four TV's in the area were on the hockey game, this despite the fact that the broadcast was only available on cable, so people like myself who just have ye olde rabbit ears couldn't possibly watch the game at home. Last year the Penguins started a tradition with their fans, where they set up a large screen outside the Civic Arena, so if you don't have a ticket to the game (another sign of how big hockey is here, the Pens have sold out their last 100+ games) you can still go down to the arena and watch them. The games are shown outside whether the Pens are home or away, and their last home game, as well as having 17,000+ fans in the building, another 6000 or so opted to sit outside and watch the game with the hockey faithful.

I still have a fantasy baseball team going over on Facebook. I am in a group of 22 other teams and for the most part I have been in the top 5 most of the year. I don't do enough day to day tweaking of the roster, which might have cost me a spot or two in the standings, but overall I am happy with how I have been doing there.

Truth be told, baseball is one of the few things I do with Facebook. By and large I just play games there, either my fantasy baseball team, or Bejeweled Blitz where they have a contest every week where they give away free games based on the cumulative scores of you and everyone on your friends list, and I have just started playing Texas Hold Em. I am not the best poker player, but I am getting better. I entered my first weekly tournament, and unless siomething goes vastly wrong, I will be winning some bonus chips, as everyone who finishes in the top 20% of wionners for the week shares in the pool. I was helped immensely last night when I got to wipe out three different players from the table, all of which went all in against me, and I ended up having a better hand.

I am still playing the ESPN challenge off and on. I think I mentioned this before, the object is to put together the longest winning streak by the end of the year by correctly picking from a daily list of contests. You can pick more once a day, but only if your first pick has concluded for the day can you go and pick a second contest. Usually I just stick with one per day, when I even bother to think about it. The best I have done so far is a ten game winning streak, far behind the best so far this year at 24, but decent nonetheless. I was doing great until I picked Roger Federer to beat some Russian guy I never heard of in a tennis tournament, and Federer folded like an orgami swan. The ten game winning streak looked something like this....

4/19 Which player would score more points, Chris Paul or Carmelo Anthony, where I correctly picked Chris Paul (21-13)

4/20 Who will win this matchup, Chicago Blackhawks or Calgary Flames? The winner and my pick was Calgary.

4/21 Match rersult for Arsenal (win or draw) vs. Liverpool (win)? Again I nailed it taking Arsenal in a 4-4 tie.

4/23 Who will win this matchup, Boston Celtics @ Chicago Bulls? Another winner taking Boston (107-86)

4/24 Which player will score more points, Dwight Howard or Andre Iquodala? Winner number 5 with Dwight Howard (36-29)

4/25 Would the listed weight of the #8 pick in the NFL draft be 240 pounds or less or greater than 240? I took greater and again I nailed it (309)

4/26 Which driver would have a better final position, Clint Bowyer or Matt Kenseth? #7 in the streak was Kenseth (17th place vs. 41st)

4/27 Which side will have a higher total, Deron Williams assists or Los Angeles Lakers winning margin? The Lakers made it 8 (11-6)

4/30 Who would have the lower first round score, Phil Mickelson or Anthony Kim? A pick of Phil and we are at 9 (67-70)

5/1 Who will win this matchup, Atlanta Hawks @ Miami Heat? Miami was correct pick 10 in the streak (98-72)

Then I had Federer and he lost a match to Novak Djokovic. Fuck Roger Federer, I hope Nadal owns his ass at the French Open.

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Sorry, took some time off to slep and when I got up, even though I wasn't scheduled, I checked in at work for about an hour. I had reason to believe someone had mispriced a display (I was correct) and wanted to fix the problem before it started costing us money. Plus there were a couple things I wanted to put on the shelves that I knew we had, but was unsure if they would have gotten put out if I didn't do it. Truth be told, many of the people I work with are fine, including Grey, who I sometimes refer to as my protege, since I was told to train him all of a day after I was put on the stock person duty. Still he has turned out fine, enough so that they use him in a couple different stores. Some of the others though haven't worked out as well, and I would just as soon work around them than with them. I suppose Ed would want me to crack the whip on them, I prefer just to do the job myself, that way I am sure it gets done.

Anyway, so even though I was off for the holiday, I didn't request it and it actually cost me making time and a half, so I wasn't all gung ho about being off, I did take the opportunity to go to the bar and imbibe a few and since Coke rewards reset this morning, I went ahead and added a full 120 points to my account, the limit you can enter in one week, and it got rid of most of the caps I have laying around, which is fine with me and means I don't have to worry about it for another 7 days.

I also used some cigarette coupons I got in the mail. Since the dreaded tax increase on smokes, I took it upon myself to sign up with the major players (Camel, Marlboro) in hopes I could get some offers mailed to me to help defray smoking costs. Marlboro has sent me three so far, a 2.50 off and two 1.50 off coupons, Camel keeps sending me coupons for free tins of Snus, which I don't care for, but I take to work and staple to my charge sheet so I can get credit for their monetary value on my paycheck (4.27).

I am taking a moment to see just how much I won in the weekly poker tournament on Facebook. I finished in the top 20%, but am not sure what my actual take is. Turns out it was about 20,000 in chips. Not sure iof it was worth it or not, but there it is.

Well I should probably put a wrap on my ramblings, I still have a few things I would like to do before turning in, and if I get up early enough, I may take myself to breakfast before work in the morn. A quick spell check and I am outta here.