Updates, we don't need no stinking updates

Okay, I think I have a few minutes to myself here, once again sitting at the Squirrel Cage, awaiting my soon to be coming dinner of a Cajun chicken sandwich and French fries. I really wanted to get to writing much sooner than I have, there have been an abundance of things that have went into my cranium as potential blog ideas, but as has been the case recently, I just haven't had the time to actually sit down and write.



Most recently the biggest culprit to taking up my time has been work. I used to have a pretty set schedule, 7-3 M-F, followed by a few hours at my discretion on Saturday where I go and do the Monday ordering as well as finish up my paperwork from the week and make any necessary price changes to keep our margins at a comfortable level. But a couple of weeks ago that all began to change. First was the fact that over a weekend nothing got done in my absence, coolers went completely untouched for two straight days, so when I came in on Monday morning we were literally without a lot of product to sell. Not that we didn't have it, just nobody bothered to restock it, so god only knows how many potential sales we lost over that time frame, but I do know that we were not nearly busy enough to be losing any potential sales, our numbers recently have been damn near horrible. So I picked up a phone and called Ed in Florida (he is once again opting not to take in the glories that are single digit temperatures here in Pennsylvania) and I told him that if I need to work a couple of 7-7 shifts just to make sure things get done, then that is what I will do.

Little did I realize that not more than one day later one of the guys that works the overnight shift would be fired, and the person scheduled to work 3-11 would be moved to overnights to fix that hole in the schedule, so last week went from my normal schedule to something more along the lines of 7-7 M-F and a 2-11 shift on Saturday thrown in for good measure. This week is more of the same, I was 7-5 on Monday, 7-7 on T-H, 7 -3 on Friday and 3-11 again this Saturday. Even now as I sit here, waiting on my dinner and typing to you, I am only here because of work.

This past weekend someone took it upon themselves to pour some sort of beverage all over the notebook computer we have upstairs. The computer is there because we used it in order to take payments on Cricket phone bills as well as to sell phone cards, and now, with its new found coating of beverage the computer is all but unusable. Why that matters now is that because of this I have been tasked with going out and acquiring a new notebook computer, I will just order one off of Amazon and have it shipped to the store, but to do that I had to venture out and get a gift card to add the requisite amount to my Amazon account. Yes, I am one of those Luddites that does not have a credit card, so most of my purchases through Amazon are because I have the money in gift cards saved up there, so in order to make this purchase I had to go out and buy the gift card so I could add it to my account to make the purchase. Admittedly, a Squirrel Cage stop on company time is an added plus to all of this, but still it just means that more of my time is being consumed by work related projects.

Later on tonight when I get home, I get to continue the fun, the boss wants to post a help wanted add on Craig’s List and you can pretty much guess who got tasked with writing the copy for that add as well as who gets to actually place it when it is done. By the end of this little two week sojourn I am on, I can easily figure I will have 120+ hours on the books. If you are wondering why I haven't written much, there is the biggest time suck right there.

It has been a while since I have written, probably the best thing I could do at this point is just a quick catch up on all the things that have been happening here. All of my fantasy football leagues have completed their seasons, but as I said when the drafts were taking place, there was only one that I really cared about, the bar league where I play against my friends for a little bit of money, and bragging rights to boot. At one point this year I almost thought I had a chance to do something, I started the year 5-1 and was alone in first place, but I finished the year on a 1-6 tear (or would that be an anti-tear) to go 6-7 and miss the playoffs. I was bitten with the injury bug to say the least, two running backs ended up getting hurt (DeMarco Murray - foot, Johnathon Stewart - High ankle sprain), as did my starting quarterback (Ben Roethlisberger - Broken ribs), and don't even get me started on the horrible quarterbacks that the Arizona Cardinals were trotting out there to make Larry Fitzgerald all but useless at wide receiver. Not saying my team would have won it all had they stayed healthy, but I would have been a tad more competitive at least. The other two leagues I barely paid attention to, I actually joined them simply because I was getting swagbucks to do so, yet I managed to win one of those. I didn't even show up for the draft in either league, letting the computer just auto pick for me, then I just played with the players that I got.

Now we are onto fantasy hockey, where I am in a small little 6 team league that was formed back in the days when I worked in radio. I am obviously no longer in radio (though this past two weeks the hours almost feel like it) but I have stayed in the league for a few years now. Because of the NHL lockout, our draft kept getting pushed back until an agreement could be reached between the players and owners and finally a couple of weeks ago, with an agreement in place, we could get about the business of hockey, both professional and fantasy. Our draft was last Thursday, I managed to make it to the online draft on time but honestly I did very little preparation ahead of time, no knowledge of who might and might not be injured, no idea of the new players who may breakout this season, I went in with almost a blank slate as far as any players I might target during the draft. The league is a free one, so if I screw up it doesn't cost me anything, save for maybe pride, but still I would usually put forth a better effort than that.

I guess while I am updating things I am long overdue for a change meter update. It has been a couple of months since I mentioned it, perhaps you thought I had given up on the project, but no, I really haven't. In fact I have a neat little tidy sum to add to the total, $21.86 to be precise, so our new total stands at $367.67.

As for news that has happened since I have been away, probably the biggest story would have been the Sandy Hook elementary shooting. It is a topic I am loathe to venture into, if for no other reason that both camps are so entrenched in their mindset that any sort of common sense compromise seems pretty much impossible. There are those on one side who would just as soon seek to abolish guns altogether, even though most gun owners are law abiding citizens; people who hunt, or collect guns and what not, who get treated a some sort of social pariah for the acts of a few misguided, or perhaps even evil, individuals to whom a gun is a tool to bring about unspeakable destruction and carnage. On the other side of the aisle are those to whom any sort of legislation, whether that be even simple things like closing the gun show loophole, or waiting periods for background checks are akin to living in Nazi Germany. They bandy about in a litany of nonsense from Wayne Lapierre of the NRA, who seems to think there is no problem that a gun can't solve (lest we forget that more guns would ultimately result in more money in Mr. Lapierre's pocket), to the moonbats who believe that Sandy Hook actually didn't happen, it was just a staged event complete with actors as a way to come and get the guns of law abiding citizens, to those that shout about the Constitution, as if they had actually read the document even though the 2nd Amendment clearly states a "well regulated militia", so the prospects of government regulation are right there in black and white, and there are plenty of instances in which the rights addressed in the Constitution are not absolutes (freedom of speech and freedom of the press are still held in check with libel and slander for example). But both sides are so steadfast in not seeking any sort of common ground that the only thing to be said about Sandy Hook is that dead kids are really just the cost of doing business. It's not the first time children were shot, it will not be the last. The earth will continue to spin on its axis no matter how many senseless deaths take place.

Okay, I just got a little too preachy, thankfully I am done with my dinner so I can wrap this up and drag my ass home, so I can go back to work on that Craig’s List ad. The fun, well it just never stops, does it?