Daily Challenge!!

Here is a glimpse of the fun I had this afternoon!

I spend 60 to 70 hours a week scheduling production for the plant that I work at. Today (at 4:45 PM, no less) I was told that the schedule that I wrote for next week was being revised; we have to send half of our production to one of our competitors because they screwed up their plant. Apparently, it is my job to make up for the diminished capacity of our competitors. We wouldn't want them to miss any of their orders now, would we? All of my scheduling work was for nothing, since someone (who outranks me) apparently has a buddy at our competitors' place. Now I get to re-write the schedule to fit their needs. What a load.

Holy crap, it's winter.

I had ice on my windshield this morning! That sucks! It was 80 degreees last week, now it suddenly sucks. We were wearing shorts and t-shirts just a week ago! What the heck happened?

In other news, my in-laws were here for a short visit. It's nice to have visitors, and I miss them already. We live in the middle of nowhere, and we know very few people in the area, so it is really nice to see friendly faces. Karen's parents are really cool, they even help us out with work around the house when they visit. As a matter of fact, Karen's father and I cut a Bradford Pear tree down in my front yard on Saturday, in the 55 degree drizzling rain. (The tree had sustained serious damage from a nasty ice storm a year ago. It was in really sad shape and needed to be taken down.)

If you want to see some recent pictures of us, including the Alton Brown pictures, go here and follow the pumpkin patch link: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/karenperidot/my_photos

WE MET ALTON BROWN!!

Karen, James and I got to meet Alton Brown on Saturday!!! It was really cool, and his live performance was even funnier than his TV show "Good Eats". It was like watching a scientist-comedian make food. Really brilliant! We even brought in our "unitasker" for him to sign, which I think he got a chuckle out of. (the only unitasker that Alton thinks that everyone should own is a fire extinguisher, everything else in the kitchen should serve multiple purposes) We had a great time, and we were very pleased to find that our favorite TV chef is such a nice man.

Alton Brown rocks.

Spiders and mice.

There seems to be a lot of spiders around here. I had one cruise across my screen in my office today, another one left a web across the arm of my chair during lunchtime. I was about to give James a bath a few minutes ago, and I saw him trying to pet a little spider in the bathroom while I was running his bath. Has anyone else noticed a zillion spiders this year, or am I just in Kansas with a zillion spiders? Not to sound the alarm, but I think global warming is to blame, with El Nino a close second.

There are mice in our distribution center. They are very smart mice, able to avoid snap traps and glue boards while crapping all over the place. There are so many mice in the distribution center that we had to name a guy to head up the vermin eradication program. Since his job is to stop the super-crapping mice, his new job title is the "stop the poopers supervisor". Just thought you should know.

Work still sucks, but I had enough by 4:30 today, so I left. I am actually in charge of the facility tomorrow, so I may not be able to leave quite as early. I hope that everything runs smoothly tomorrow, I don't have a lot of plant manager experience under my belt yet. Wish me luck!

Long hours of fun...

I have a complaint. Why haven't people figured out that nothing is for free, especially when it comes to e-mail? I am so tired of "Forward this to ten people and Bill Gates will send you a twenty million dollar talking fish!" Okay, perhaps I made that one up, but you get the idea. Why do I still get that kind of e-mail? I don't even reply to the senders any more to tell them that they are being bad monkeys, I just delete them. Maybe human nature says that we want to believe that one day it will really happen? It's kind of like buying a lottery ticket. Someone will win a bazillion dollars, but the chances are excellent that it will not be you.

The long hours part. It is Wednesday and I have already put in 36 hours at the office. What the heck did I step in?

Back from vacation again!

Last week, Karen and I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We spent a relaxing week at the the beach. In the rain. Tropical storm Tammy pees on us ALL WEEK. My parents, my sister, and her fiance were also there with us. Karen and I got a timeshare from her parents and we invited my family to go on vacation with us. It was a lot of fun, even if it did rain all week. We got to see gardens in downpours, plantation in drizzle, and a lot of other cool stuff. We took lemons and made lemonade, I guess.

It sure is nice to sleep in my own home again, but work sucks. When do I get to retire? I am going to save a lot of money, pay cash for everything, and retire early. I doubt it will really happen, but it would be pretty cool. Yup, it sure would. I wouldn't stop working, but I would definitely take a less stressful job and live life a little slower.