Don't try to make sense of this

Saturday 9:31pm

I am thinking that the idea of time stamping my entries might be a good one, given how often I walk away from a blog entry only to come back to it at a later moment in time. And trust me, I will be walking away from this one too, I have no intention of blogging tonight and then turning around and glogging tomorrow.

I did suggest that I would keep everyone posted on the radio matter that came up last week and all I can tell you now is just about what I knew then, which is little to nothing. I do know that KDKA AM did hire someone to host the 6pm-10pm slot, so if that was what the phone call was about then that position is no longer available, but if it had anything to do with the FM sports station they are launching then I am still all kind of Alicia Silverstone "Clueless". I know they have been hiring some people as hosts, but if that was the station they were asking me about I tend to think it would have been as a show producer and not a host. Since they don't have their lineup completely squared away as of yet, I doubt they are done with looking into who to hire for all of the positions that they will need to fill. I may drop Marshall Adams another note this week, just to see if I can't pry some info from him, but as of this here very typing I am still a full time employee of Smithfield News and nothing more.

A few entries ago I had mentioned that the plan this year was to see if I could get to 2000 Coke points, just so I could claim something from the highest prize level they offer. Well so far that has been a pipe dream and little more. I have 129 points so far but my main cash stream for points, work, has all but shriveled up. Bad enough we are once again in a dispute over our pricing levels and are not receiving any products from Coke until it is resolved, worse is that Coke has joined our other vendors in now taking their out of date product back rather than crediting us on sight for it. So before if I had say a case of out of date Sprite, the vendor would come in, see it was out of date, give us credit for it and then it was our responsibility to dispose of it. That was fine with me, I could just dump it down our slop sink and then keep the caps, bring them home and redeem them to my total, but now it looks like we have to actually return the returns, that is, put the out of date stuff back on the truck when and if they ever deliver again. The policy isn't new, most of our vendors work that way, but I was happy to take advantage of the fact Coke doesn't, or at least didn't. Now I have to do more scrounging to come up with the points for my free stuff.

Sunday 11:29am

Okay, I am getting settled in for the glog portion of this blog. While some weekends this would be about the time I was getting out of bed, today I was, dare I say, motivated. I actually got up before 6am and got dressed, with a plan of going to WalMart to spend the last monies left on my gift card and maybe sneak in breakfast as well. Of course the temps are not helping out around here, as I left my place and made it to the corner gas station for a cup of coffee to jostle me into a relative state of consciousness, the spinning bank sign with the time and temp had the temperature at a robust 14 degrees. Definitely not for the weak willed. The plusses were that it wasn't snowing and the wind wasn't blowing, so there wasn't much of a wind chill to worry about, but still standing outside in that weather can prove to be a bit bone numbing. I made it out to WalMart by about 7:30am which gave me time to do a hearty breakfast at Kings, where I learned the answer to one of the mysteries that has plagued my mind. Some may remember on my last trip there I had mentioned about The Castle, which was their large ass dessert made for slobs like me, and the fact I couldn't find it on the menu. I wasn't sure if they had gotten rid of it or not, or if anything on the dessert menu had replaced it. I did know that one of their desserts now was the Frownie, which is basically a brownie with a pissed off look on it's icing face. I am sure that it is a play on their primary local competitor, Eat N Park, which sells Smiley cookies. E & P has their Smiley Cookies and King's has it's Frownie Brownie. Well as I am looking at the menu after finding what I wanted for breakfast but before I could place my order I think I have found what replaced The Castle and it is called The Angry Mob. From what I gathered about the dessert from the menu it consists of 24 scoops of ice cream and 24 mini Frownie Brownies. I didn't look at all of the toppings that come with it, I would assume hot fudge is one of them, but my waitress showed up before I had a chance to get a list of all of the ingredients involved in a Mob.

Anyway, after breakfast I made my way to WalMart, bought a pair of jeans, a pair of sweat pants, some AA batteries for my flashlight, some pens for work and some groceries that I needed around the apartment. All told, after my gift card I spent $15 and left with 6 bags of stuff, so I can't complain.

On the way home I stopped by the newsstand to use the little boys room and buy some lottery tickets. I ended up spending $25 and winning $30, so I guess it pays to pee.

I have some other stories about the trip that I hope to get to through the course of this entry, I actually made some notes at breakfast, but for now I am going to set the scene for today's hockey game.

On tap for today is a tilt between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins live from our very own little hamlet of Pittsburgh. This is the first of two meetings between these two clubs this year and the last time they met was the Stanley Cup Final to end last season. Actually the last two Stanley Cup Finals were between these two clubs, with Detroit winning in 2008 4 games to 2 and Pittsburgh last year 4 games to 3. This year Pittsburgh currently finds itself in 4th place in the Eastern Conference and a comfortable 11 points ahead of 7th and 8th place Atlanta and Montreal respectively. The top 8 teams in each conference qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs. In the Western Conference, Detroit is currently on the outside looking in, 9th place overall, but a mere one point behind 8th place Calgary and two behind 7th place Nashville.

Sorry, the pregame is on and already I have something to bitch about. Some of the locals may know this, others I doubt do, but Pennsylvania is one of the states that partakes in the Powerball drawing twice a week. It is a multistate lottery where the jackpots start around $20 million and increases until someone matches all of the numbers. Now apparently Pennsylvania is also going to be a state that is part of the Mega Millions drawing, another multi state game that draws twice a week with jackpots starting at $12 million and increasing until someone matches all of the numbers. So what should pop up on my TV but a teaser for a special report on the Tuesday newscast with the line "Two large jackpot games and you only have one dollar to spend, which game should you play?". Apparently the story will cover which games offer the biggest jackpots and which ones have the best chances to win, but my question is, if you only have one dollar, what the fuck are you doing buying lottery tickets to begin with? Go to Kinko's and make some copies of your resume and find a damn job already. It's one thing if you have a few bucks laying around and can afford a game of chance, if you have one dollar and you are buying a lottery ticket might I suggest your priorities are completely fucked up.

Okay, I have got my sportsline.com window open in case I miss anything important, but we are getting very close to game time so I guess I better start getting a little bit serious here.

And we are underway from Pittsburgh with Detroit taking the opening faceoff. Pittsburgh has been controlling the play early here in the first period, registering a few shots, but nothing that got past Jimmy Howard, who is in goal for Detroit this afternoon. Howard has been a bit of a surprise for Detroit this year, clearly outplaying Chris Osgood in goal and all but winning the job, at least teporarily. We saw this last year when Ty Conklin was the back up and posted very good numbers but come playoff time it was Osgood who carried the bulk of the work.

Pittsburgh will get the game's first power play opportunity, Pavel Datsyuk gets called for a high stick and it is 2 minutes in the sin bin for Mr. Datsyuk.

The power play ends, with little action by the Penguins until very late and no goals to show for their rather lethargic effort with the man advantage. And we have our first TV timeout.

McDonald's commercial about their breakfast menu and some guy telling poeple around him "Not before I had my coffee". He proceeds to walk into McDonald's and when greeted by the cashier, he cuts her off with the :not before my coffee" line. She proceeds to offer him McDonald's coffee. This is why I don't work there, someone cuts me off like that I would just tell him to fuck off.

Matt Cooke had the games first really good scoring chance on a breakaway but shot the puck high, over the net and up against the end board glass, so technically it wasn't even a shot, the goaltender didn't have to make a save on it. Still we are halfway through the first period and the Penguins have the advantage in shots, 9-3, but on the scoreboard it is still 0-0.

We have learned one thing early on, I need to dust off my TV screen. Just too much crap on it.

Second power play of the game and again Pittsburgh will get the man advantage, this time Valtteri Filppula gets called for a hook and it is two more minutes of 5 on 4 action for Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh has been a little more active on their second power play, but again Jimmy Howard has been up to the task and the game remains scoreless.

I think I found a dead body under all of the gunk that was on my TV screen. If not a body, then at least its fossilized remains.

4:01 left in the first period and now Detroit will enjoy a man advantage, Sergei Gonchar is sent off two minutes for tripping and Detroit will have a chance of applying some extended pressure on the Penguins for the first time this game. As of now the Penguins have enjoyed a 15-4 advantage in shots, so maybe this is what is needed to get Detroit back into the flow of this game.

Nothing for Detroit on the power play, Gonchar is back out of the box and we are once again skating 5 on 5.

Pittsburgh has another flurry of activity in the Detroit end in the last minute of play in the first period, a period they pretty much dominated from a puck possession and actual gameplay perspective, but Detroit has weathered the storm to this point and after the first period it is still 0-0.

I am using this opportunity to break out my newest present from work, a big cigar ashtray that one of our vendors gave us and management subsequently gave to me. And also to get a little more comfy, ditching the sweat pants and throwing away some trash. Sadly it is not nearly enough trash, but it will have to do for the time being. God forbid I am trying to make some sense of my desk. I also needed to dig up my blog notes from breakfast. By the looks of things I will not be getting to them just yet, we are getting close to the start of the second period.

Second period is officially underway.

Detroit has come out with a little more jump here to start the second period. Nothing that would change the score, but they are just a little more active in the offensive zone.

Over 5 minutes into the second period, the shots this period are in favor of Pittsburgh, but just 2-1, good defensive hockey for those that like that sort of thing, but it will not win many new fans to the game. This is a game that would be far better to see in person than on TV, you would get a better appreciation of just what everyone is doing on the ice to keep the game scoreless.

Penalty on the Penguins, setting up power play #2 for the Red Wings, it looks like Evgeni Malkin is the culprit here, tripping and that's two minutes for you young man.

During the commercial break we were treated to the fact that NBC will have golf on next weekend. Apparently the game exists even without Tiger Woods, it's just that no one will watch it. And the sad part is I doubt the announcers talk about Tiger all that much either, for fear they will not have access to him when he does eventually come back. Here is a piece of advice, you want access to Tiger Woods, grow a vagina.

The Penguins killed off the second power play opportunity and the game remains scoreless.

Finally we are starting to see some end to end action, a good scoring opportunity by Crosby is denied on a rebound and two Penguins go to check the same man, creating an odd man rush the other way forcing Marc Andre Fleury to make a big save on his end to keep the game scoreless.

5:38 left in the second period and Pittsburgh will once again go a man down, not that either team has done anything with the man advantage to this point, but Mark Eaton is the guilty party, 2 minutes for holding.

And like the other four power plays this game, no goal comes from it and we remain scoreless.

We have a goal, Sidney Crosby with a pretty backhand move on Jimmy Howard on a pretty pass from Alex Goligoski. The goal is Crosby's 34th on the season and Evgeni Malkin gets credit for the other assist.

The second period comes to an end, after some rather uneventful play the last few minutes of that stanza and after two periods it is Pittsburgh leading 1-0.

I will use the second intermission to play off my remaining few scratchix cards. Barring an unforseen miracle I will one again be losing DVD of the month token. Unless I can pull another 9 tokens in one day I am not going to be winning that prize.

The change meter broke the $140 mark. I added another .55 since my last update, so the new total is $140.33 since it began many, many moons ago.

During the intermission we are treated to a Touch of Gray commercial, which is basically a hair dye for men, with two people allegedly deciding which guy to hire for a job from behind, based soley on their hair color, even though it turns out both are the exact same guy. Trust me, the amount of gray has nothing to do with how good or bad a worker is, I have met plenty of lazy fucks with a full head of undyed hair.

Back to hockey and the start of the third period.

Detroit gets the first shot of the third period but Marc Andre Fleury turns it away and coming back the other way Jordan Staal is denied by Jimmy Howard keeing it a one goal game.

Matt Cooke gets called for goal tender interference and Detroit will get their fourth power play of the game. Valtteri Filppula misses a wide open net and Detroit is called for a penalty, 2 minutes on Drew Miller for high sticking and we skate 4 on 4 for a bit and then Pittsburgh will get a shortened power play.

Neither power play amounts to anything and we go back to 5 on 5 action with 6 minutes gone in the third period and Pittsburgh clinging to a 1-0 lead.

Almost halfway through the third period and scoring chances are few and far betwen with theses clubs, Pittsburgh has a 33-15 advantage in shots, but not many shots by either team here in the third period so far.

8:30 left in the third period and Daniel Cleary ties the game on a deflection of a Brad Stuart slapshot from the point, his 11th goal on the year, and Detroit is playing with more energy now than I have seen all game. Pittsburgh is just trying to get the puck out of their own end, nevermind actually getting any pressure. Stuart and Henrik Zetterberg get credit for assists on the goal.

Mmmm, chocolatey goodness. I forgot that I bought a couple of Reese Big Cups yesterday, they were on sale 2/$1 so I had to get me two. Now sounds like as good a time as any for a snack.

We come back from commercial break and Pittsburgh has two good scoring chances but Jordan Staal misses on a backhand off the crossbar and a deflection by Staal also hits the crossbar and stays out of the net, keeping the game tied at 1.

Wow, Pittsburgh with lots of pressure here but Jimmy Howard has been up to the task. When they hand out the three stars after this game, if he doesn't get one it is a crime. He has singlehandedly kept Detroit in this game, 37 saves on 38 shots so far.

Another deflection by Staal goes just wide, a redirection by Howard keeping the puck out of the net.

2 and a half minutes remaining and Howard's save total is now 40. He has been outstanding for Detroit in this game.

1 minute remaining and Pittsburgh with another rush up ice and a shot by Tyler Kennedy is also denied by Howard. Two more shots, one by Malkin and one by Brooks Orpik in the final 20 seconds are also turned away and we are headed to overtime tied at 1-1. Worst case scenario both clubs will get at least one point out of this contest, now we are just playing for the additional point in the standings.

5 minutes of overtime here in Pittsburgh have gotten underway. In overtime teams skate 4 on 4 and early on it is Pittsburgh controlling the play.

1:38 left, Pittsburgh continues to build on their shot advantage but they have nothing to show for it on the scoreboard. Instead it is Sergei Gonchar taking a penalty and for the remainder of OT Detroit will be on the power play on the hooking call.

Pittsburgh kills off yet another power play and after OT we are still tied at 1-1 and are now headed to a shootout to detremine a winner.

Kris Letang leads off for the Penguins and is turned away by Howard

For Detroit it is Pavel Datsyuk and he too fails to score

Sidney Crosby for Pittsburgh and he beats Howard up high and Pittsburgh leads in the shootout 1-0

Jason Williams for Detroit and Fleury again makes the save.

Evgeni Malkin for Pittsburgh in the third and final round of the shoout out and he slides the puck in behind Howard and that clinches the win for Pittsburgh, the final score is 2-1.

Now I am going to take a nap. I am sleepy after getting up so early.

Monday 9:37pm

Quite a nap wasn't it? Actually it was just a nap, but when I woke up The Simpsons were on, then Family Guy and I just couldn't be bothered with blogging. Now tonight I have watched Chuck and followed that up with a link I found in a chat session that allowed me to watch the Pittsburgh-Buffalo hockey game tonight on Versus. Of course by the time I learned of this link and actually tested it I only got to watch the third period, but that has been pretty much my lot today. It was just one of those days where I felt like I was spinning my wheels. First my grocery order arrived very early, 7:30am to be exact. Normally early wouldn't be a proble, but when I come in at 7am and I spend the first half hour mostly fixing weekend fuckups, I haven't even got about stocking the coolers and all of a sudden I have a bunch of other stuff to put away, plus sort out three different cigarette orders and try to find some place for a rack that Ed ordered that we have absolutely no use for. Plus Wayne, my partner in crime most mornings, wasn't scheduled until 9am (usually he works 7-3 with me) so by the time he arrived I had all but put away most of the order but hadn't had the remotest of chances to start stocking the coolers. I no more than start putting together cooler lists and begin that task when another one gets thrown my way, finish that and lo and behold it is another truck I end up catching and putting away myself. All of a sudden it's 12pm and I haven't done a damn thing that I need to do yet. Throw in a visit from one of our vendors who was pushing some new items and I was happy to be close to done by 3pm, though I am sure I missed quite a few things.

Well I didn't get to finish reading my fourth book in Jan. I came close, I have probably 20 or so pages left but I just couldn't find the time to finish it before the calendar flipped.

I did get credit for another $5 amazon gift card from Swagbucks today, which is good because I really bled the account down considerably. First I had gotten my Andrew Vachss book, then on the ride back from my aunt's house picking up the subs that I mentioned in my last blog, part of the conversation my uncle and I had involved the fact that he tinkers with a guitar. I am not sure how good he is with it, but he did mention that he was watching some instructional videos on Youtube and then trying the stuff he saw there. With that in mind I remembered that while looking at Keb' Mo' videos a while back, one of the things I came across was a video he put out on playing blues guitar. So I looked it up on Youtube and got the title, then sought it out on Amazon. Sure enough they had it, so I spent some cash ordering it and sending it to him. It was almost a blog giveaway except it didn't really involve the blog, save for me telling you about it and the winner of the prize was predetermined. I don't get to do enough for my family, so sometimes if I can sneak in an out of the blue gesture like that by simply paying attention to a conversation and then acting on it, well it almost makes me feel like I did something decent, which is not par for the course by any stretch of the imagination.

Prime example, I was sitting here alone on Saturday night when I got the not so wise idea to see what names I could come across and since I had Facebook open I decided to just pop a few names into the search to see what I could come up with. Of course anyone with half a brain knows exactly where this is going, I ended up looking up ex girlfriend names and did come up with two. I guess I should be thankful that I only messaged one, not that I did anything mean spirited mind you, just a hey, saw you on here, blah, blah blah. Not that I would want to revisit that in any event, as the addage goes, there is an ex in front of that for a reason, but just sort of a semi polite saying of hello and much belated congratulations on her nuptuals (her new last name being the big clue). I didn't try to go two for two because the other one was the one where the last time I treaded down that crazy path (and that would be crazy with a capital PSYCHOPATH) it ended up with her shooting herself . Not fatally mind you, but that would have more to do with the skill of some doctors than her lack of effort. As luck would have it, I got an equally nice reply to my message to the one I did send out. No long drawn out diatribe, just a "hey, what's up" kinda thing, along the lines of what I had sent as well.

Sorry but I have to turn up the radio here. I am listening to The Spy online from Oklahoma and they are playing some good old Annie Lennox, "Missionary Man". What an awesome song and I haven't heard it in ages. This may be Karaoke Friday worthy.

Tuesday 10:33pm

This really needs to be my last entry, this is turning into less and less of a blog entry each time I put off writing. Besides there is enough on my plate in the coming days that the chance I am going to want to sit down and blog about any of it is slim and none and slim just left town.

Basically it comes down to this, Ed is coming back for a brief visit. He does this every year, sticks his head in the shop for a day or two mid winter then goes back to Florida to finish out winter before coming back for good in March. It is sort of like the swallows and Capistrano, minus the coolness. Not that I dislike Ed, or Brian for that matter, but this is when the clashing of cultures takes place, Brian's desire to keep everything running on the lean side versus Ed's desire to have a bunch of back stock. Now Brian is all nervous that we will not have enough stuff in shop, so he takes his frustrations out on everyone. Meanwhile I am just stuck in the middle, trying to be all things to all people and instead being no things to no people. It is frustrating to say the least.

Worse still is that I am still trying to break in a new Pepsi vendor and at the same time trying to deal with new drivers as well. Heck if it wasn't for my extraordinary ability at recall they wouldn't even have pulled all of our stuff off of the truck on Tuesday, it wasn't until I asked about stuff that I requested that didn't drop down the chute that they went back to the truck and saw in fact it was there and they didn't grab it. Wayne was impressed that I didn't even need to look at the invoice to know some things were missing, I just knew.

And all told, I can't complain about how things have went in Ed's absense, we managed to dig ourselves out from under some bookings that he did that left us with way to much product, like the $13,000 of Easter candy he dropped on us the Friday before Easter, or the 40 cases of frosting that, trust me, you really do not need in a news stand, or the great pop tart disaster of 2009 that saw us we three cases of blueberry pop tarts. It has been a productive winter and I am happy with the successes we have had. I have gotten most of the ordering under control, though by running lean we do occasionally run out of a thing or two between deliveries, now I am catching flack for those things, even though we can get them usually within a day or two. I would like to sit these guys down and just say 'hey, I got this" but I don't think simple reason will work right now. I'll admit that it all can be quite draining, an 8 hour day at work this week feels like a 12 hour day most anywhere else.

I came home from work today and was asleep by 5pm. Of course that now means I am up and who actually knows when I will get back to sleep. Probably doesn't help that I have put down a pot of coffee, but I didn't feel like drinking water so coffee it is.

There are a number of things I could get into right now but this blog has been so long and disjointed that maybe I am better off just not going there. Not that any of them are bad per se, just this doesn't seem to be the time or place. Plus I'll be honest, I just don't know if I have the gumption to do it, motivation is somewhat lacking. Plus typing is becoming harder and harder because I think I broke my thumb. Well maybe not broke it, but there is definitely something wrong with it. Anytime I push it toward the middle of my palm there is a decent amount of pain involved, as there is any time I bend it. I have no idea when it even occurred, it just seems like I woke up one day and it hurt and has been doing so for the better part of a week now. I wish I could say there was a defining moment where I might have fucked it up, like shutting it in a door or something, but there really isn't and it is becoming quite the annoyance and it doesn't get any better with me sitting around typing. So I guess I will just do a spell check, where I will miss at least a couple of errors, and call it a night.