26 Years and other randomness

'Tis be Friday again! For most people Friday is the end of their work week....For me it's just the beginning. I'm hoping that this week is a little bit better at work than the last two weeks have been. It's been a little bit rough for me....We're waxing the floors at work and the smell from the wax and floor stripper gives me migraines. Toss in being treated poorly by a supervisor and a fellow team member two times in two weeks and you have me being pretty miserable. This two shall pass and I can hardly WAIT!

Yesterday was my parents 26th wedding anniversary. It was a pretty nice day too. Weather was decent....minus the wind. But we were still in the low 50's which is better than the last couple of days around here, where it's been pretty dreary.

I joined another Favorite Things Swap....Seriously, these bloggy swaps are a TON of fun. Now that I've done one I have a little bit better idea of what to expect. Flying by the seat of your pants isn't always the most fun. If you want to participate, please click on the words "Favorite Things Swap" to go to the post with all the instructions in it.

I'm still waiting on Spring to actually show up and stick around. I'm pretty tired of this one or two days here and there. That sucks pond sludge.

Yesterday, I posted the "100 Movies You Must See Before You Die" according to Yahoo. I'm in the process of coming up with my OWN list of movies that I think you should see before you die. You might be pretty surprised to see how ecclectic my taste in movies really is.

I've been doing some "studying" on some of my money saving blogs that I've added to my blogroll recently and will of course continue to study until I find/figure out a system that works for me to help me save money on my everyday needs in this rather "shaky" economy. Of course I'll be sure to share with all of you so that you can test these idea's out for yourself if you'd like.

I'm coming up on my FIRST ever blog giveaway. I can hardly wait!

Ms. Laci went to the groomer yesterday to get her Spring 'do done. Is it sad that my dog has her own stylist? She said that Laci was a good girl until she tried to trim around her face...then not so much. I thought that Laci would give her grief when it came time to brush her teeth but according to the groomer she actually enjoyed having her teeth brushed.

Well there it is....My week in a nutshell....Complete with a few blessings thrown in too. Have a great weekend for me!

Jamie

Less than 2 weeks!

We're less than 2 weeks away from my first ever blog giveaway! I can hardly wait! I've seen them done all over bloggy land but I've never done one myself. So it'll be a learning experience for me.

Now I'm going to ask for some advice from all my bloggy friends. I've been having a boat load of problems at work. One of our ETL's (Executive Team Lead, AKA My boss) has been causing a lot of problems. Basically, if your some one who has an opinion and you voice it and it's not something she wants to hear/like she retaliates against you (we have a no retaliation policy). Those of us how have suffered because of this have had our hours drastically cut (I'm working only 2 days this next schedule) or have had other things come up as well. Basically, I'm considering transfering to another store, I don't want to leave the company all together because I have a lot of time put into it. There is a new store opening up soon in our area that I've seriously considered transfering too, so here are some pro's and con's and you tell me what you think I should do.

Pro's:

1. It's a new store with a Brand New team who have more than likely never done stocking before (I'm sure that there are some who have but I'll bet the majority haven't) and I have almost 3 years experience.
2. It'll be during the day (4 am unload) so I'll actually get to see the sun again...I haven't seen much sun in almost 3 years.
3. I more than likely will get the hours I need to actually be able to pay my bills and have a little money left over.
4. I might actually get to go to family functions again (I've been to 3 events in the last 3 years that I've worked overnights).

Con's:

1. It'll be further for me to drive to work.
2. I'll be the low man on the totem pole again.
3. I may have to give up my 4 day work week (I work 4 10 hour shifts right now).
4. I'd have to learn a new store's routine.
5. What if there aren't any stores who want me?

What would you do if you were me?

The boom has been lowered, complete with some Yumminess!

The boom has finally been lowered on some of our more "special" team members at work. Apparently, on Thursday night during our nightly huddle our team leads made it crystal clear that if you get caught burning your pulls (saying you pulled something when you really didn't) it is grounds for immediate termination. All I can say about that is it's about dang time. There is a small select group of people you seem to be able to pull pulls that are supposed to take over 1 hour to pull (where we pull product from our stockroom that has been purchased throughout the day) in less than 15 minutes.

I am SOOOOOO excited that my Pittsburgh Steelers have made it to the final 4 teams in the playoffs! Which brings me to this "interesting" little tidbit....One of my co-workers thinks that football season is just NOW starting. I can't even tell you the rest of the story because I was too shocked by what she had said that I can't remember it.

Is it sad that I enjoy watching my Cocker Spaniel slide across our new floors into things, like doors, door frames, dishwashers, etc.? Does that make me a bad doggy mommy?

In honor of my Steelers making it to the final 4, I give you.....Ben Roethlisberger, quarterback extraordinaire and some SUPER YUMMINESS!

The Giant Wave....

I try to very rarely post about my job here on my blog. There are a lot of things that I like about my job but there are even more things that I DON'T like about my job that if I posted them here and someone found it and turned it over to my big boss, well it could cost me my job, so I just don't. Well today, I'm kinda throwing caution to the wind and posting about our "Giant Wave" thing that we have going on at work.

Here's a little info about our store. On the overnight side of things the layout of the store is broken down into "waves." For example, we have the infants wave (which is all the baby stuff minus 90% of the clothes, toys, sporting goods and luggage), the middle wave (which is auto, chemicals, domestics, and plastics), the front wave (which is the office supplies, small appliances and kitchen gadgets), then there is softlines, H&B, Electronics, market and a couple of smaller areas in the store that are assigned to one or two people to complete before their shift is over.

Now on to the "Giant Wave." The people who aren't assigned to area's like softlines, H&B or the other smaller area's of the store make up the "Team Wave" (which is what I refer to as the "Giant Wave"), which is usually about 10+ people who work each wave in the store as a group before moving on to the next wave. In the beginning of the "Giant Wave" it was run soooo inefficiently that I hated it. Then Christmas came along and we hired some real "winners" that made being a part of the "Giant Wave" completely unbearable. You have to work TWICE as hard because these people don't feel that they have to do anything.

Well now that Christmas is over and all the "winners" are no longer with us, thank God for the term "SEASONAL Employment!" The "Giant Wave" is running much smoother these days and we're actually getting all the work done with time to spare. I still hate it, just not as bad as at the beginning.

An oldie but a goodie.....

I was looking through my really old Blogger blog (well 3 blogs ago anyway) and I found the following post....It made me giggle so I thought that I would share it with you too.

Well last night at work was pretty uneventful. Boring to be blunt. Well that was until I was told to rearrange the cooler. It was pretty much rearranged and sorted by pull group (we pull things from our stockrooms to replenish what our store's guests purchased during the day). The only real problem that there was in the cooler was there wasn't much moving around room due to three pallets of milk in the cooler. Two pallets were just your basic different types of milk, the third was a pallet of Silk soy milk. After I was done tweaking the cooler I was to put the cases of Silk up on top of the shelving that we have in our cooler....Now each case had 6 1/2 gallon containers in it and after about the 10th one they started getting really heavy! And 90 minutes it took me to get the whole pallet put up, because I had to start over. Apparently, I was not putting the cases up the way I was supposed to or something of that nature. So now as a result of this project I am not a big fan of Silk. But in the word's of Stewie from Family Guy ..... "Victory is MINE!"

I'll be knitting (complete with candy dish/urn photo).....

We, as in my coworkers and I, learned the other night at work that everyone's hours in the month of January and possibly February (they haven't seen the forecasted hour allottment yet) will be cut by at LEAST 1 day. This actually kind of sucks more than a little bit but with the way the economy is right now very understandable. So as a result of being in debt to the Bank of Dad, trying to save money for my trip to Nampa (which I'm still going on because I was approved the time off before my car went "boom" on me), and my hours being cut I went out and spent a little bit of money on some more yarn, knitting needles, and a book (complete with patterns) so I can learn more than the basic stitch, since I won't be going much of anywhere or doing much of anything really fun for a little while.

I was successful in my quest to find pictures of the candy dish/urn that I described in a prior post, so without further adue here is the candy dish/urn:

J

And then there was the candy dish....

I saw this post over at Terri's blog and felt that I should share this story with you. This past Saturday night at work I spent the vast majority of my shift working out the majority of our remaining Christmas merchandise out to the sales floor with a couple of coworkers. It was all pretty unexciting stuff until we came to this box that had candy dishes in it. Now these were no ordinary candy dishes...Well really they looked like urns but that's besides the point. Well to say that the handle on the lid of these candy dishes were inapporpriate looking is being nice. To be totally honest the handle on these candy dishes/urns looked like the tip of a vibrator. And because it was near the end of the night for most of us we showed them to anyone who would look!

The moral of the story: Don't let tired overnight workers "play" with "inappropriate" holiday merchandise, if you don't want everyone to know about it.

Pride and Prejudice

I started reading Pride and Prejudice yesterday afternoon and so far I'm loving it. I've never read any of the classics really so I'm super excited about being drawn into this book. Jane Austen is on my list of "cool" authors now!

Starting next Friday I will be restarting my weekly blessings. I haven't been feeling very blessed the last couple of weeks so I haven't posted any blessings. Between putting our dog down, me getting hurt, and spending a fortune to get my car to just run again (my AC compressor has completely seized) not feeling very blessed at all. I guess the upside to the car thing is that I'm driving around in a really NICE Lincoln Zeyphor...I'll take a picture this morning when the son comes up and share with you all.

It Sucks being hurt

I got hurt again last night at work. This year it's the right hand, last year it was the left (the one that I write with). The diagnosis for now is Bone Contusion but if I experience anymore pain at the base of my thumb in a week I'm supposed to go have another X-Ray done by my doctor to see if there is a potential acute fracture in my wrist somewhere. I promise to go into more detail later....it's kind of hard to do much with this big bulky splint on my hand....What's worse, is I mouse right handed.