Blogger 365 Day 180 - Clean up week

    This is nice.  I think today is the first day since Dee left that I have actually not been in the store.   I have my phone with me, just in case, but the day is half over and no major emergencies have arisen yet, so I am starting to like my chances that I will not be going in at all

      Okay, I took a little break from the blog.  Original plan was to take my Sunday walk and half way through it stop and write for a bit and then walk home.  I went and got my coffee and had picked out a decent spot to write, outside the Pitt student union, across from the panther statue.  When I first left out on my walk it had started raining, nothing to heavy , but it was coming down steadily, but by the time I had reached my blogging destination it had stopped and all seemed well.  But every time the wind blew the rain would fall off the tree leaves and right onto my iPad, plus it started raining again, less than when I first started but enough to interrupt the blogging conditions.

     So I left,now I am picking up while doing some laundry.  Usually this is one of those tasks I save for late night, when no one is here and I can have the place pretty much to myself, but if today is going to be a day off (work still hasn't called) then I probably should make use of it.

    While I was on my walk I was taking notice of things and thinking what all I should write about.  Sammy has come up with a phrase, "clean up week", where he goes through all of the products from a specific vendor and makes sure that anything that is out of date gets returned.  I think that might be a good approach today, just things that I may have missed at one point that should probably be dealt with in some manner.

     For instance, while I was on my walk today I went by Peet's Coffee, one of a chain of such coffee shops.  I was there once shortly after they first opened and I tried a large dark roasted something or other.  Normally I am not one to complain about coffee,for me it is a purpose drink, that purpose being to stay awake.  I am not a coffee snob, I will not go into details about which coffee beans do what, or different brewing processes, just make me a cup that I can swallow and that keeps me up and I am good.  Except that wasn't what happened, what I got was something that tasted like it was burnt.  Now I understand that there is a special skill set involved in burning a liquid (Cleveland will always be special in this regard for catching a river on fire), I just have no desire to drink a burnt beverage.  Maybe I am just not hip enough to understand the full bodied coffee flavor that was crossing my tongue, but it was still burnt.  I didn't complain. I just have never been back and have no intention of doing so.   Still, as I walked by Peet's today there was one of those a-frame signs on the side walk, some new trendy coffee they had with flowers of some type in it.  Personally I think they should come up with Vanity Blend, with clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee and.......

      Of the things that I have forgotten to mention recently, I had, count them, two different sightings of The Sexican.  I hadn't seen her since her family had closed the Mexican restaurant next door to Smithfield News and pretty much had not planned on seeing her again.  But one day Sammy and I were taking the weekend deposits to the bank, we were chatting with Gillian and Denise and who should come into the bank right after us but The Sexican.  My heart got all fluttery, as it is prone to do in such instances but I tried to maintain a relative cool demeanor, lest I come off as a twelve year old who is seeing boobs for the first time in National Geographic.  The second time was about a week later, I was on my way to the casino after work, just to blow off some free slot play I had accumulated and as I was getting on the subway who should be getting off but The Sexican.  She was wearing these baby blue denim pants that on most people would have looked odd, but on her they looked great.   Then again I am a biased observer, she could be wearing a tarp and I am sure I would still be stunned by the ensemble.

     Yesterday I went into work, something that I do pretty much every Saturday.  My day started around 11:30am with a trip to the store formerly known as Gus Millers, where I picked up a cigarette order for Monday and then I made my way into Smithfield News.  I had been there maybe a half hour or so when Lauren, who was the primary on duty, had told me there was a call off on the next shift.  I called Ed to see if it had been taken care of yet and he said another person tried calling off as well, then he went on a tangent about whether he should hire someone, but he doesn't want to cut hours.  I just said, if they aren't here, they are already cutting their own hours, it does us know good to give someone 40 hours and they show up for say, 30 of them.  All we can do is what is right for the business, and that is to make sure the store is always staffed, if people want hours they will be here for them.   Then I welcomed him to the world Dee dealt with on a daily basis.  I know I am not liked enough for people to call me about calling off and Brian just will not tolerate it, leaving Ed to catch those phone calls because he is the most soft hearted of the three of us.  It is like when you were a kid and you wanted to do something, you always picked the parent that would give you the best chance of getting the answer you wanted.  Ed is that parent now when it comes to our employees.

     My family reunion is coming up in a couple of weeks and I am in a bit of a dilemma about what to do.  I would like to go, I haven't see some people in my family in years that will be there, but I did take on this new job title and the responsibility that goes with it.  Plus Brian is already going to be away on vacation, he is spending 10 days in Mexico, and I don't want to shoulder Ed with everything.  Mind you, I would only miss a Saturday shift and I could possibly transfer most of my Saturday work to an extra long day on Friday, but that would mean getting about 6 other people on board with that because of all of the orders I usually do on Saturday.


     Anyway the laundry is done, which I guess is a good thing.  All I know is I am sweating a lot, lugging clothes to and from the laundrymat is not a fun process when it is humid outside.  The temp isn't that bad, probably upper 70s ( it was 78 when I went on my walk earlier) but unlike Arizona, there is no such thing as a dry heat here, so even days that should be comfortable like today can make the sweat just come pouring off of you.  On the bright side, maybe I will lose some weight, I could use it.  Toodles for now.