What a week...

Yesterday was the start of my VERY busy season at work. I have an ice cream promo to accept, and stayed until well after 6pm last night to get half of it done. Today I knew would be a "slower" day, so my plan was to start on it by noon and have it done by 3pm, so then I can check all the orders, move things where I need to move them, and make preparations to have them shipped. Well, when I got to work, I went to say hi to my boss. That took 1/2 hour. My bad! Sometimes, he and I get to talking and I don't know how to shut up and walk away. Oh well, that's OK. I still have my day planned and know I have plenty of time to get it all done. As I started my day, my ice cream boss came to me about some issues. About 1/2 hour later, we figured that out. OK, now an hour is shot, my coffee cup is empty and I need a cigarette. Fill the cup, go for a smoke, realize it's almost 9:00, time for my conference call. Get on the call, there's another 45 minutes. Worked through part of it, but not all of it. OK, this is NOT going well. Now I'm about 2 hours behind. And here come my daily orders. Have to work on those, finish my reports, and hopefully can start on the promo orders by 1:30pm. Start work, get 3 return requests. OK, stop work, take care of those. OK, back to work. Send out a couple of reports. Where did this day go? It's 11:45 already! Damn, I'm way behind. 11:50am, cell rings. Ann calling, Anthony fell in gym, hurt his wrist "bad" and the nurse at school "suggests" getting an x-ray. Definition: Nurse thinks it may be a broken wrist, get here NOW! So, I go running (and I do mean RUNNING) through my office, letting the powers that be know what's going on, pack up the laptop, fly to the school, get to the child. He JUST got his color back when I got there, nurse said he was very pale. I could see he was in ALOT of pain. I looked at the wrist and agreed with the nurse...yep it looks broken. Shit! Get into the car, get to the hospital, it's 12:53pm. Triage takes him about 1:12pm, do the blood pressure, pulse, weight thing, get basic information. OK that's done. About 1:40pm, go for x-rays. OK, I'll wait out here. Call Ann to let her know what's going on. He's back, it's about 2pm. Now I hear that another family who is there, with THEIR son's arm in a sling (Anthony's was too at this point) have been there THREE hours! Oh crap! Now we wait. Tell Ann to please come to the ER after her day is done at work so I can get to work for a short time. She gets there at 4pm, I go into the office. At 4:40pm he finally goes into a room in the ER. I get there about 5:20pm, send Ann home. At about 6:10 doctor looks at the x-ray and says no break, just a BAD sprain. Anthony gets a soft velcro cast, I get to pay $100, and off we go. What a friggin' day! And I got almost NOTHING done at work that I planned to get done. Thank you to my bosses for being understanding, and knowing that I will be in the office tomorrow (provided Anthony is OK enough to go to school) and will be staying all day and late to make sure ALL of my work is caught up.

Great Saturday...

Had the best day yesterday. Went out early to pay my car loan (now only 4 payments to go). Actually went to the location I bought it to make sure they posted as a double payment, so I don't have to go next week. The woman at the counter asked if I was ready to trade in my car. Told her nope! Car gets too good gas mileage, even at 11 years old. Plus, the next car we get is for Ann. I'll be taking her to Car-Mart for one in a few months, after we get mine done and save a few dollars to pay the sales tax. After that I went to Wal-Mart to buy a couple of rain ponchos, as the weather yesterday was not the best, and we had outdoor plans for the evening. When I got home, Ann was at work, so Anthony and I sat and watched a program I DVR every week. Then we had lunch, and he asked to play Sorry! with me. It's a board game I played when I was a kid, and I love being able to share that with him. We have so much fun, and we play it with kind of a twist. Instead of just playing ONE game, we play until someone wins X amount of games. But we don't start over after each win...we just reset our own pawns and start there. The other person still has to get all of their pawns home before THEY can start at the start. Yesterday, we played to 10. I beat him 10-9, but not without some real nail biting moments. And we finished just minutes before Ann got home from work.

We relaxed a little while, and then at 5:30 we left. Time to go to opening weekend of the NWA Naturals baseball game. Had GREAT seats. Third row, just to the left of home plate. Weather was iffy, but there was no rain when the game started. We got there, had dinner, walked around, got some pictures (they are on my Facebook page...wanna see them? Go there!) and found our seats. Amazing! When the game started, there were MAYBE 1,000 people there, and everyone was "spread out" through the stadium, so it made it rather intimate. Kinda like what you see on older TV shows, with a handful of people at minor league games. You could hear almost everything, and almost everyONE. We had 3 people behind us, one of them was also from NY, wearing a Mets jacket. We had the best time chatting with them during the game.

In the 5th inning, down by 2 runs, we tied it up. That's when the umpire FINALLY saw the lightning that had been flashing the past few minutes. I finally got to experience my first rain delay at a game. We walked around some, took some more pictures, and waited it out. The rain stopped fairly quickly but had to wait for the lightning to move out of the area. Total delay was around an hour maybe. Not bad at all. They resumed the game, and we won 5-2. GREAT game. We have the same seats for 3 more games this season. Can't wait!

The drive home was a little more adventurous. I think I started getting a little too tired to drive, because I had a mild "accident" on the way home. Not with another car. With a construction marker on the side of the road. I clipped it with my passenger side mirror. That's now cracked and broken. Yes, BOTH! Thankfully no other damage to the car, and all IN the car are fine. Made it home the rest of the way safely. Mirror still useable I think. If not, I'll get it fixed eventually.

We were going to go to today's game, but everyone is tired, Anthony has a cold (it wasn't a very warm night last night), and the weather is holding doubts of its own. So we're going to stay in and play some 3-player Sorry! instead. Hopefully will be a relaxing day for all to enjoy before we start another week of work and school.

Not the golden child...

Then again, never said I was. Heard others at work call me that, and it wasn't because I am so well tanned. I can't help that I'm good at my job. Customer support is my life, I've been doing this type of work (bank teller, UPS phone rep, receptionist, customer support analyst) for over 20 years. It's a matter of being courteous to your customers, some basic data entry, and LEARNING your job. I never had ANYTHING at ANY job handed to me, I busted my ass for it.

Today, however, I landed on my ass and busted it. Because of the back pain from last week (yeah, I know, it's a lame excuse) and a non-routine email, I neglected a part of my job. And did not even know it until today. Well, the first thing I did was let my team know that I messed up, how it was going to affect business, and what I was doing to correct it. After reviewing this with my supervisor, I let my customer know (not EVERY detail) the issue, and how it would be corrected. Luckily, the customer knows what I do and how well I usually do to service the account. AND, being this was the first error in a LONG time, and knowing how fast it could be corrected rather than letting it "ride out" he understood and let me do what I know to do to correct this.

So, I am not a golden child. I am also, in my opinion, not the best at my job in my office. Some may disagree, but hey! To each his/her own opinion. I'm fine with it. I do know one thing though. The ONE person who I consider to be better than me? Yeah, that person is VERY good at their job, but I am VERY good at their job too. I also know that this person would NOT learn my job or be able to perform it as well as me as quickly as I caught on to it. That's my personal gloat :) Do I know everything about all of my items? Nope. Don't try to. My concern is not the items themselves, but getting the entire order to the customer. THAT'S my concern. I do not worry about an item on rollback, that's not my job right now. My job is to make sure all of my items ON THE ORDER get delivered. I know when I'll need to learn the items, and then I'll turn my attention to that. Right now? Making sure everyone in the U.S. who shop at Wal-Mart are able to purchase their chilled side dishes, their frozen meals for two to enjoy on a romantic eveninig with a loved one, and their ice cream to enjoy on a warm summer day or while sitting as a family enjoying it as a dessert is in the stores for consumers to purchase. I have my goals, I know what they are, but I'm a realist. When it's time for me to move up and/or over, THEN I'll go. Until then, what I already know just may surprise you ;)

Easter Sunday...

Today, unfortunately, has come to mean nothing to me. For me, it's a rainy Sunday. My wife is at work until 5pm, it's raining outside, so my son and I are sitting watching whatever we can find on the TV. Holidays such as this are no longer celebrated in our house. I've lost all religion a long time ago, and through the years, my wife, who remains Catholic, but non-practicing. Friends on Facebook have wished all a Happy Easter (or Passover if you are Jewish), and I just ignore those. I don't respond. I've never been a phony, and I'm not going to start now.

Ann will be home for dinner, we will make our normal Sunday meal, and sit and enjoy the evening in each other's company. Then tomorrow it's back to work. Hopefully I will get the strength to go in tomorrow. I did what I wasn't supposed to do yesterday, and that was clean the backyard.It's what put my back out last week. But now it's done, for the most part. There are some straggling branches out there to cut, but the next big job will be mowing it and bagging it up. Normally I mulch the lawn, but it's just way too much. There are also a lot of weed things that I would like to pull up before mowing. I am also thinking of bringing in a lawn service to have them fertilize the lawn, but it depends on the cost.

Want some good news? OK :) In a few days, I am closing out 2 credit cards. The Lowe's bill, which was never high to begin with, was closed because my credit is bad. Made no sense to me. Yes, my credit sucks, but the limit was only $500, I've been paying over 300% of the minimum every month, always 2 weeks early, yet they don't want my business. Home Depot wins there! Well, that balance is down to nothing, so I'm paying it off and then Lowe's can go fuck themselves, because they will NEVER get any of my business. I go in there to look at their prices, then when they ask if they can help me, I say "Yeah, where is the closest Home Depot, because that's where I'm shopping because Lowe's sucks!" There is also another credit card that I had for years, but unfortunately a while back, didn't pay. They closed the account, put it in collections, and I paid what I could. They were still charging interest though. Well, I made a deal with collections to pay them 3x in equal payments as a settlement. Next week is payment #3. Then that's done. PLUS I have only 6 more car payments (weekly) until THAT'S paid in full.

April and May are looking like good months so far. Now if I can just get rid of the pain in my back, I'd be all set. Eighth day of pain today, and no relief in sight in the immediate future. Ah well, such is life. An ounce of pleasure brings a pound of pain. I listed 3 ounces above, my back pain is the 3 pounds.

But not today...

Today was not my best day. I took Anthony to track practice this morning, then went to the office. From the moment I woke up, I knew there was something going wrong, because my back was bugging me more than it should have when I wake up. Normally, my back doesn't start stiffening up and pinching until I've been up and around about an hour. But not today. I felt it when I got out of bed. I took a nice hot shower, hoping it would help, but no such luck. When I got to my office and to my desk, I was sore as hell. I stayed about an hour before requesting (and granted approval) to go and work from home for the rest of the day. When I got home, I set up in the kitchen, put my pillow behind me on the chair, and took 2 pain pills, not thinking they were going to help. Usually, they do much of nothing. But not today. They hit fast, and they hit hard. Wheeeeee! I don't have an idea of how I made it through the day without my head hitting the keyboard or me hitting the floor. I even stayed on later than usual because there were orders that needed taking care of. Now I'm sitting on the couch, my laptop on my lap (good name for a laptop huh?), watching TV for a little while longer until I start cooking dinner.

Also, I had blood taken yesterday for tests. Called the doctor this morning for the results, and he called me back about 2 hours ago. I was expecting him to find something wrong with me. But not today. Everything came back good. There are no diseases, no infections, and no worries. Now I have to get rid of this back pain.

Lovin' the Vicodin

Howdy folks! What a weekend. Friday, I worked all day at a different office, so I was unable to pay my car loan like I normally do. Saturday, the fun began. I was out at 9am to get grocery shopping done. When I got home, we unpacked everything, and back out I went. Paid the car loan, then had to stop at the office to unpack. We moved desks around, and we were allowed in Saturday to arrange our stuff. Once that was done, I came home and sat around a little while. But, being it was such a beautiful day out, and my backyard still needs some "cleaning" Anthony and I went out to work on it. The job went rather well, considering how windy it was. I even brought out my boombox to listen to my Queen CD while working. I was squatting, cutting limbs up, rockin' out. A little while went by, Ann came home from work for lunch, and I attempted to get up. I say attempted because I didn't succeed. My back went again. Luckily, Ann and Anthony were able to lift me and get me in the house. I sat on the couch and that's pretty much where I stayed. The pain was tremendous, and hasn't been that bad in a long time. I managed to get off the couch, into the bed, and slept the best I could.

Sunday morning, I woke up, turned and heard "POP!" and felt a wondrous pain in my lower back. I screamed loud enough for my friends in New York to hear me. Everyone told me to go to the hospital, but I knew what they would do. They would take me in (seeing I could walk), do a couple of x-rays, tell me "if you could walk in, you could walk out" minus the $100 ER fee. So I layed in my bed with my legs elevated. It seemed to help a little.

Today, I went to the doctor, and he is treating me for tightness and spasm. If it's not better in a few days, then I'll go in for the x-ray and MRI thing. He gave me some great pills that I started taking tonight. Hopefully I can go to work tomorrow. Wish me luck!

The Week from Hell...

What a week. I had an ice cream promotion to write this week, totalling 115 orders. Then, to make matters worse, I had to write MORE to make it all work. Add to that we are introducing new frozen items, and I had to write those orders as well.

Monday...started writing Ice Cream orders (over 6 hours)
Tuesday...finished writing Ice Cream orders (4 more hours)
Wednesday...write frozen orders (15 minutes .. gotta love it!)
Thursday...organize and write ship-withs for Ice Cream orders (2 1/2 hours)
Friday...finished writing ship-withs for Ice Cream orders (forgot to time it)

Add on to all of this my normal duties, meetings, the occassional basketball game (I'm going to miss those!), but 5 skipped lunches, and I did it! The frozen business is now second nature to me. They know what to do, I know what to do, and we do it. That's why it was only a 15 minute process. Ice Cream, on the other hand, is on a learning curve. I know what they expect, they know what to do, but it's finding the right routine to do it. Ship-with's were new to me, and that's why I forgot to time it today. But, next time I'll be ready for it. I also found new ways to write the original promotional orders which will save me time for the next one.

The best of all of this? I love it! I really do. It's challenging, it's exciting, and I'm learning. When work gets "routine" I get A.D.D. ... ok I get MORE of it than I already ... oh that's a funny commercial! Did you see that one where ... oh good, weather report!