B365V2.25 - Passing hope

.    So birthday month is in full effect (holla!) and it seems likeeverydaynowanother someone I know is having a birthday as well.  Stop hogging my spotlight you greedy bastards, this is my time.

     Anyway birthday month is in full effect.  Ed is back from Florida and he and I have butted heads once already, I swear at some places I would have been fired for insubordination at this point, but apparently my value outweighs my negatives.  Or at least I think, I was told today that tomorrow is my employee evaluation.  I could be a stickler and say when I first took my current job I was promised one at 6 months,but since I am getting the company baseball tickets Saturday night, no sense in being too greedy.  Too greedy if for the annual Christmas list anyway.

    But Friday I get my evaluation for the "How's my driving?"  of the store after 12 months.  Hey we kept the doors open, that is always a plus.  I have had my good days and bad ones, though I would like to think more good than bad.  We caught another thief at work this week.  It all started when I went to do our order, I am going up and down the aisles scanning the shelf tags for items I need.  When you do this long enough, you get a feel for what sells quickly and what moves slower, but is what I call a just in case item, that being just in cases done needs it.  Laundry detergent would be such an item, anyone who does planning would go to the grocery store, or wal mart or even Cvs if it is on sale, before they would buy it from us, but some people do wait until the last minute, and we are the only place open they can get to, so we carry laundry detergent.  Except as I get to that section of the store I see that a bunch of bottles are gone.  Which is odd, because they were there the last time I did an order, so unless we had a run on the stuff, it obviously was stolen.

     So I start rolling our camera on the aisle back, the last time I recalled seeing it their was Monday when the grocery order came in late and I helped Sammy put it away.  So I have a starting point, 3 pm Monday and an ending point, 12 pm on Wednesday when I noticed it was missing.  I start at 3 pm Monday and move the cameras ahead, one hour at a time.  3 pm  - good, 4 pm - good, 5 pm - good, 6 pm - gone.  It's like playing the Clock Game on the Price is Right, not I have my hour down I can cut it into half hours. Then 15 minute increments, until I find the quarter hour I need, and then I can just start the cameras rolling in fast forward.  Sure enough at 5:07pn, their is a lady ( that is me being politically correct, I should have said fatblack crack whore) stuffing a personal bag full of bottles of laundry detergent, probably so she could go sell them on the street to buy her next fucking crack hit.

      I get a picture of her, save it to my flash drive and print off a copy of it so everyone upstairs can see what she looks like should she come back in.  Not more than an hour later she was back in the store, stealing more shit and asking for a job application.  Steve recognized her from the picture and because he was also working on Monday, so he and Ed chased her down, while I was pulling up her latest and greatest caper in the cameras.  I catch up to the whole party of them four blocks down Smithfield Street, and there are two bicycle cops there as well. Of course the cops do t do anything that doesn't involve eating a donut and drinking coffee, so despite us Catching this person with stolen merchandise from our store, they do nothing.  It is one of the complaints I have about my job, the cops never do anything.  I wish I could get me one of those cushy ass government jobs where I let criminals walk at the taxpayers expense.

     As I was saying about birthday month though, there have been a few things of note that have happened or will happen.  I saw Hope the other day, she was driving by the store, taking her niece to the Three Rivers Arts Festival, so we didn't get to chat for long, more like a wave and yelled hellos bak and forth while she was at the stop light.  It wasn't one of those cinema type reunions after 20 plus years, where people go bounding towards each other in slow motion, but those of you long time readers would realize how cool a moment that was for me.

     And a couple of my friends from high school are going to be back in the area this weekend, hoping to hook up with them since the only chatting we have done recently has been via Facebook, which I why I asked for the company baseball tix for Saturday.  So it looks like my social calendar just got a little more occupied.  And hey, no zoo pics this weekend.

B365V2.24 - Nothing left to give

Have you ever let yourself get tied up a little too much in someone else's drama?  It is by far one of the major perils of Facebook for me, the idea that I might be able to offer insight or assistance to someone who I realistically don't know.  And such is the place I find myself in these days.

I made a mistake a few days ago, one of the people who pops up on my newsfeed from time to time contacted me.  Now we have shared some conversations in the past via messenger and what not, which from my perspective seemed like I was passing on fatherly advice.  I am much to old to be trolling Facebook looking for a date and with my luck with women and the internet, why would I bother anyway?  As long time readers are aware, that shit don't work for me. 

That being said, we have had conversations in the past when I get a message out of the blue the other day that she needs help paying for meds she needs.  Now I was at a point where I had a couple of extra shekels laying around so I decided to help.  I was told that I would be paid back in a few days, which  didn't care one way or the other, if I am helping a friend out, then that is just the way I am.  I don't loan people money because I don't want to be all busting kneecaps to get it back, if I have something and a friend needs it, I will gladly offer it.   So I wire $50 to help out, then a couple days later I get another message, could I help again.  So I do, mind you it was only because I had it.  Then a day after that I am actually busy with something important and I am being nagged again for still even more money.  And now all of a sudden I am Scrooge McDuck swimming in my gold coins or something, and anytime I get a message from her I cringe because I know it is going to involve asking for more money and I was stupid enough to enable the process to begin with.  Fact of the matter is I am far from independently wealthy and it has only been in the last 6 months or so that my job has me at the point where I am not robbing Peter to pay Paul with my own bills.  It was not that long ago that a part of every paycheck I got was put aside just to pay my rent, one pay period did not cover that financial burden.  But that doesn't mean I am making enough money, nor am I volunteering to be someone's sugar daddy either. 

I gave up on the damsel in distress nonsense a long time ago, sometimes people have to live with the consequences of their own decisions and I can't fix that.  Hell I can't even fix me, good thing I don't break down very much.

B365 V2.23 - Almost an off day

Just sitting down to breakfast in what is possibly the best 24 me hours I will have during my birthday month of June.  Yes, the birthday is coming up, 46 years old in the 18th, which means my time in this earth is probably half over at least.  That is a pleasant thought to kick off what promises to be a good day and a half.

Last night, after work, I made it home with a $5 Antoon's pizza in tow and watched a hockey game.  It might have been the first time this entire hockey season where I got to sit down and watch an entire game.  Usually life or not having cable gets in the way of such things and with the weather being as ice as it has been I thought I would take my day off and go to the zoo and after that take in some of the Three Rivers Arts Festival.

It has been a while since I have had breakfast at Pamela's, I forgot how much I like their potatoes and chorizo sausage, both of which are yummy.  On the plus side I also got here early, before 8 am, so no wait for a table either.  Of course I would have been here even sooner had I not left my cell phone at home and had to go back and get it.  Honestly I would like to leave it in the bottom of the Mon river.  The only time it rings is when somebody wants something.

As well as this being my birthday month, it is also the one year mark since I accepted a promotion at work to my current position.  Not sure what that position is, but I have held for 365 days so far.  So far we have celebrated by having one person quit this week and another get fired.   And I may lose a third person, who was interviewing for another (and better) job.

Okay I made it through the zoo relatively unscathed, though I learned again why it is best I don't have kids.    I was in the aquarium section, with the sharks and what not when I heard this kid in front of me alternating between a high pitched scream and some guttural phleghmy noise.  I first I thought he had blown his noise on the glass which would have been bad enough, but there was no snot and he kept alternating between that noise and his screams.  The noise sounded familiar but I couldn't quite place it immediately, but then it licked, I knew where I had heard that type of noise before,while watching The Exorcist.   Needless to say, I beat feet and put some distance between myself and the kid before he started chanting in Latin and the aquariums started to crack.

I also forgot how big the zoo actually was.  I was taking pictures which was slowing me down a little but even so it took me an hour and a half to go through the entire place, and that was spending very little time in the snake and lizard section.

Now I am headed back into work to post next weeks schedule.  It normally gets posted on Friday but the person we were firing was scheduled to work Saturday night and rather than have them not show up, I am stuck posting it on Sunday instead.   So I ride the zoo bus back to Oakland, then switch for a downtown bus.

Okay, that's done.  I took a short nap on my first bus, then transferred and went into work where I posted the schedule and fixed the western union money order machine,then took a quick stroll through the TRAF,but I will spend more time there on Saturday night, when Neko Case is playing.  There is a cute brunette standing about 10 feet to my left, I should say something but she is too well dressed for downtown on a Sunday, especially with me in my plaid shorts.  Plus I know my luck with women,if she reciprocates any sort of interest then she must be crazy. If there is one thing I don't need today it is a cupful of crazy.

Well we ended up on the same bus out of town,perhaps she is stalking me.  Fat chance of that, I haven't had a stalker of sorts since I produced Doug's radio show and someone wrote in saying that they wanted to meet me.  Doug suggested that I follow up, I said it speaks volumes of someone when they are sending letters to an AM radio station because they want to meet the guy who pushes the buttons.  That my friends, is as close as I have come to having a stalker.   Well that and I have one person who visits this page that thinks so highly of me that they have a reader set up for my blog.  Don't get me wrong, I am all for people stopping by the page, but I can tell the difference between someone  who comes here as a visitor and someone who downloads my page to read at a later date.

Well looks like I lost my potential stalker.  Truth be told I did get off of the bus one stop earlier than normal though.  When I was at work I bought a $10 scratch off ticket and it won $50, so I was going to take it to cvs to cash it in, as well as see what goodies they had.  I didn't get much, just a roll of paper towels, some bread and a pint of Ben and jerry's.  Then I made the walk home and proceeded to take a nap, now I am debating if I want to get back up, since tonight is the first night of free cinema in the park.  The Sandlot is playing, not sure I want to see it, but it would get me out of the house on my day off.  That would be a plus.

Anyway I have prattled on enough, perhaps some pictures to look at are in order.