This is where I bitch.

It's been an interesting week.

I took Tuesday off form work to wait for a home gym to be delivered. Paul has less time to go to the gym now with school, so this is an option for working out at home. But the gym was in three packages weighing over 300 lbs. I did not want to have to pick it up from the front office. So I waited at home all day for it, then put it together that afternoon. The morning I was able to get a lot done on my cousin's bakery website and do updates for next year's Milmaids Bowling tournament website. (Thanks to my friends who took a look at the bakery site.)

Wednesday I took a half day off work for my first day at Barnes & Nobel. It was fine, half off Starbucks is going to be a bad temptation. I have my next shift then next Thursday. I'm liking the "borrow a book" policy, so that workers can be up to speed on new books coming out.

Thursday we had a really bad storm. It rained like 2 inches in like 2 hours. I left the apartment at 5:20ish to go to work at the mall, not raining. By the time I was at the intersection to get into the mall, 20 minutes later, it had rained so much that the water was up to the headlights on the cars, you couldn't see the medians and there were cars stalled everywhere. My car sputtered a bit, but I made it in.

I tweeted a pic

Friday my car started acting up. After about 5 minutes of driving, the engine temp would sky rocket, topping out around 290F. I left early from work and took it to the shop. It turns out the water on Thursday had gotten high enough that it reached my cooling fan. The fan speed combined with hitting the water cause all three fan blades to sheared off, sending them flying into my radiator, and putting a hole in it. So today I am car-less, Paul brought me into work, but flood damage is covered by my car insurance, so it should be fully covered. Waiting to hear back.

Might need a ride into work on Monday though.

All though this was work. So stressful and busy there. Huge project with a looming deadline. We are making good progress, but I'm not sure we will finish in time. Going to have to put in some hours form home this weekend.

Tonight we are off to a house warming party for a co-worker of Paul's, which will be fun. I also have a growing list of art to work on, need to get on that, ASAP.

Time to look for a new job. But a 2nd job this time.

The mall where the clock store is that I work is going to start renovating the building soon, and where my store sits will soon be a road. We have the option to move to a new location, but between how much business we have and the rent, it doesn't sound like the store will stay open. If they do stay open and move, it will be more geared towards repair, and less retail. So there will be no need for an evening shift. So I will be loosing my job in November. No hard feelings, though the logic the mall is running with is kinda suspect.

So I'm looking for a new part time job. I'd love to go down to one main job, but that still won't pay all the bills. (That is one of my life goals, survive on only 1 job--you'd hope that at 35 I could be there, but alas.) I considered Best Buy again, but too stressful, even if I could get out of sales. I'm really hopping for Barns & Nobel, as I like books, but we will see, I've tried there before. Might try PDQ gas station as well, as I could walk there. It's a good time, with the holiday season coming up to look as well.

Main job is still really stressful, as we are entering our really busy season and I am still working two jobs, until my replacement for the old job can take over. Lots of juggling meetings, tasks and shifting head spaces (to switch thought processes for both jobs).

Yesterday I took off from the mall (and am working today instead) so we could go to Wisconsin Dells as sort of an end of the summer vacation day. We went on the zip line course, had a horse ride, wandered the main strip and then had dinner at Graze back in Madison. Nice day all around, though today my abs and butt are sore from the horse ride.

The weekend was long. Had a big company meeting on Saturday. I've never worked at a place where we have a "fire up the employees" meeting like that. It was interesting. Then I worked a lot. And on Sunday we were so busy that they just let me loose on the sales floor. It was a little crazy, and seemed a bit fast. But everyone I talked to (managers and such) said that I was doing a good job. Lots of training yet, but I've already been given my blue shirt. Which sounds like a big deal. So that is cool. I sold a decent amount of stuff, but not as much as I felt I should have. Seems like most people were out looking and planning for Black Friday.

The rumors are also that a decent amount of seasonal employees get jobs after, and I've heard that departments are already fighting over me. Which feels good.

But boy do my feet hurt. And after getting done my mind is just buzzing with all of the personal interaction.

More working this week. I'll have Thanksgiving off and then Christmas, but otherwise I expect to work every day until mid January. And it looks like I can keep some hours at the mall, which is good.

It's been a long time since I worked a Sunday at the mall. I normally don't because I have volleyball in the afternoon and the Sunday shift is 7 hours by yourself (it's slow). But we need the money, no one else really could (unless my boss/friend canceled plans) and I really can't afford volleyball at the moment. Which also means I'll have to take a season off or two. Which sucks, I was planning on getting on a team with my cousin Nate and his girl friend Courtney. That'd have been a lot of fun.

Not sure what I'll do today while working. Usually a lot of slow times. The Olympics are on across the hall at the sports/shoe store. And men's volleyball is on. Not the easiest thing to watch across a hallway though. I have the disks for Roswell season 1 and Glee season 1. Plus I have Merlin season 2 saved on Hulu. And I've been meaning to check out the Hulu original Battleground (with Allison Hayslip), which is about a political battle in Wisconsin. Then I have the tablet, so I could draw (have art to do for Gwen) or read.

I do feel bad the dogs will be in their cage 8 hours without a potty break though.

Just wish at this point in my life I didn't have to sacrifice things like that and have to have a second job. It's getting to the point where I'm thinking it actually won't really get better and constantly feeling behind on life will be it.

Work has calmed down to a dull roar. Still busy, but there is the occasional half hour or hour of slow time. Where I either have nothing to do, and spend it organizing and planning for future due dates, or I'm waiting on like two or three clients to get back to me on something. (Three project activities is about my max to juggle at one time.)

It looks like we won't be hiring a new person for my department at this time. Early summer is slow for my department and the sales figures they were hoping for are not there yet. So we have less work coming in than we expected. Hopefully we can manage it. My only worry is if I get one or two more really high maintenance clients. Those are the ones that fill up my day.

The boy friend and I have been on a cleaning kick. I guess one can chalk that up to Spring cleaning. It's nice having a really clean house some times, when we have the time to focus on it.

Softball has kind of started. Last weekend we had a preseason cook out at our house. Not a lot of the team showed up, but we had fun meeting those that did. We were supposed to have a scrimmage game last Monday, but it was rained out. So we will meet everyone else this Monday. It sounds like one of our top players got hurt and might not be able to play. And while winning isn't everything, it's discouraging for the players if we loose all the time. So I might talk to the commissioner and see if the guy who can't play will transfer to another team to help coach (with Jess and I we really don't need a third) and then we can get some higher skilled players from that team.

Today I am also now working Thursday and Fridays at the mall. I had to switch off of Mondays cause that is when the softball games are.

Summer sand volleyball starts in a few weeks. I missed that sport so much, I can't wait to start up again.

Do you know what one of the busiest weekends of the year is at a clock shop? Not Christmas or Thanksgiving. Daylight Savings change weekend. 'Cause no one can set their own watch/clock. Fun times.

And this afternoon I have to go and argue with AT&T, always a fun time...

I am supposed to be at day one of the two day, end of the season, tournament for the gay volleyball league. Our team ended up like 1st in rankings, I think. Not sure how...

But instead my coworker at the mall (I was supposed to work open, 10am, to 2pm) got sick and needed to go home before he threw up on the customers. So I agreed to stay and work the entire 11 hour shift. I'm a great guy. Plus he gave me $40 to cover for him. so that helped. I was looking forward to playing, so it kinda sucks. If the team makes it through today, then I can play with them tomorrow.

The real job is good but still stressful. I've almost messed up a few times, due to not knowing what I should be doing in some cases. But I have some good coworkers that I can talk to and will point out any mistakes. I haven't cost us thousands of dollars or pissed of a customer yet. I look forward to the day when I know my job.

I had a weird dream last night, and I remember it, which is odd for me. It was kinda long and involved, but the only part I really remember was talking with Paul about how many party's and events we had to go to in the next week. We had to go to an AIDs fundraiser (which dose exist, but we can't make it), Ben's house warming party (which also exists and we are going to tonight), some event of channonyarrow's (I don't remember exactly what), a cookout thrown by Shannon, and a party thrown by exairian (she had drag queen strippers at it--I don't know why, but she did). Bizarre.

No weekend word at Omnipress, though I did get to bring home an iPad so I can play around with eBooks on it. I've used them a few times, but am not nearly experienced enough with one to do tech support for our products with our clients--something I think will be happening. I do need to swing into the office today and send out an email I forgot to send on Friday.

Working at the mall this morning, then I have an organization project at home. Paul has been redecorating, moving stuff around so that the house's Chi flows better. Things are a lot less cluttered and there is lots more open space. But I have a bunch of things to put away that he shouldn't have to do. Then tonight is Ben's house warming party, where I get to see my college/gaming friends again. It's been a while.

I have some freelancing plans in the works. More on that as they develop. I was really happy that when I asked my new boss if it's OK for me to do freelance book design and eBook conversion she said yes. She told me they encourage that, as I'll pick up more skills that I can then use at work. As long as I'm not working for a customer or a competitor it's no problem. The new company is pretty cool.

And as a random side, here is our little dragon slayer.

I honestly didn't get any gay vibe from this add when I saw it. I just figured the two guys are brothers. :shrug: Totally normal. I did like Bryan Safi's take on it.



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In other news, it is way too nice out to be working at the mall. I'm done in an hour or so, so I can mow the lawn and take the puppy to the dog park, and enjoy the sun some.

I called mom, she liked the CDs of Nathan Lowell's first Trader's Tale book I burned for her. If she likes it I'll burn her the other five books. I also set up a gmail account for her, so she can see my sister's shared google calendar for their plans for the summer while they are in the states. I'm looking forward to seeing some family soon, and I think I'm making good head way on not having to pay too much out of pocket to drive up there.

I decided to join the "Jane in June" read along of Pride and Prejudice over at Book Rat, a book blog I follow and have won a few books from. One of my favorites.

I haven't read P&P yet, but did enjoy Little Women last year. The boyfriend is a big Jane Austen fan, so I've become interested in it.

I've tried one of these read alongs before, I think it was with Dorian Gray, but got too busy and then got behind on the reading and fell out of the group. That copy was online though, and I find it hard to read long prose on the laptop. I picked up a paper back of P&P today used, so I can read from that. Should be fun.

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It's been a good day. I went book shopping--see above--but also picked up some cheap, discount supernatural fiction. I got to have lunch with Wendy, she is in town for a day dropping the kiddies off at the grandparents while she is at navy reserve for two weeks. I went running. And took a nap.

Tomorrow is a shift at the mall, yard work and the dog park.