You Look At Me and It's Like You Hit Me With Lightning

So, I haven't posted in something like 2 years.

A few things have happened. Quick recap:

Rebecca moved in, we dated for a year, then I decided to end things. She moved out a little while later. We're still friends.

I (finally) graduated in May '11 with a double major in Math and CS. That was super, super, super exciting. There was a long time where I didn't think I would ever accomplish that. It really scared me to think that I would be spending the rest of my life working at places like Sonic and Domino's, that that's all I would ever amount to. I don't mean to impugn the people that do work there; I only mean to say that it's not where I should be. After graduation, i began applying at places in Austin, and got great responses - I was interviewing with several different place, got a job offer from a place called Starmount, and accepted immediately. I mean, I suppose it might have been prudent to wait and compare the offers, see which one was best, and which company would be the best fit / opportunity for me, but I was so desperate to get out of Domino's, I wasn't going to wait another day if I didn't have to.

It was actually an interesting (well, kinda) story how it happened. I did a phone interview on Wednesday or Thursday, and he said he'd call me back within a week to let me know if they wanted to bring me onsite for another interview. He then called me back 10 minutes later (!) to ask me about coming in for an interview. The soonest they could do it was Wednesday, so that's when I went in. It went pretty well, and again, he said he'd call me back within a week with their decision. I couldn't think about much else the next two days (other than the other jobs I was also applying for), but Friday evening at 5pm rolls around, and I'm very sad, because I thought there was no way I was going to hear from them over the weekend, which meant I had to wait until Monday to hear anything, either way. However, my phone rang around 530, and it was Starmount, calling me to offer a job! I was totally freaked, and accepted immediately. There were some formalities involved, but that Sunday was my last day (ever) at Domino's. That was 8 months ago, and I've been pretty awesome ever since.

I moved out of the house (finally) and got a town house on the upper east side. Well, I'm leasing one in a complex that's literally at 183 and 35. Ended up with Ambra as a roommate again, not sure how I feel about that. Sometimes, it's cool; other times, she can be a little annoying. I mean, I'm sure she'd say roughly the same thing about me, so at least it's balanced.

So, life for the most part is pretty awesome. I've been working out a little and lost some weight, now I just need to lose like 200 more pounds. I have a few goals, and I'm definitely going skydiving as soon as I'm able.

Oh, and there's a girl - Katie. Met her at work (what else is new?), and we've been hanging out a lot lately. Like, she came over Saturday at 9 pm, stayed all the way 'til Sunday at 8 pm, and then sent me a text that says "So yeah that was cool. We're totally weird but I think it's pretty awesome."

I'm finishing this up right now, but don't worry, there'll be plenty of over-analyzing, stupid obsessing, and overthinking things in the posts to come.

Also, I can't believe this is still online.

Ellie Goulding -- Starry Eyed

You're my star, shining at night

I haven't written in quite a while, at least, nothing of any subsequence. There hasn't really been much to write about lately - work and school have just been a blur, there haven't been any major events in my life, and I've found better things to do with my spare time than whine about the mundane. Well, kinda.

Whatever.

So, yeah.   Work this weekend was horrendous.  All three days, I walked into the store at 5 pm in the middle of all hell breaking loose.  They were busy as heck during the day, and never really got caught up at any point.  Friday was horrendous.  Saturday started to look the same way, until about six.  I was on the oven, could barely keep my head above water trying to get everything routed, keep everything up to speed.  The door opened just like normal, someone comes in.  I did a double take 'cause the face looked familiar, and eventually realized it was Rebecca.  Yes, that Rebecca.  I totally freaked, 'cause I hadn't seen her in quite a few months, since she had moved to daytime deli "to have a more normal life".  I did see her a week or three ago at Walmart in the morning one time, but I didn't even get to talk to her.  It was really exciting, 'cause I was afraid that she'd gone out of my life forever.  I didn't know anything about her that would help me find her (sounds stalker-ish, almost), so that was the only tenuous link I had.

But back to the story at hand.  I caught eye contact with her a few times, but I couldn't go up to her or anything, we were so busy.  Janelle ended up taking her order; if I had a chance, I would have told her not to charge her.  I did get a chance to go give her her order when it was ready, and I was helping another customer at the same time.  I couldn't really talk to her much even at that point - Gina was standing right there, we were crazy busy, it just wasn't in the cards.  She told me she had a letter for me, and I told her I'd love to read it.  She produced a small, unmarked, sealed envelope.

It was crazy busy for the next few hours, and even once it slowed down, it took me a while to work up the nerve to read it.  I mean, it's hard to imagine someone coming into your place of work, giving you a letter, and having it be a bad thing.  I'm trying to remember who it was, someone kept saying it was probably an invitation to her wedding.  I said that was highly unlikely, and he (she?) said that girls are kind of bitches, and it was likely.  I doubted it.  I constructed a few likely scenarios - did the whole Big O thing, best case, worst case, average case, and most likely case.

Finally, when the drivers were all out on runs and I had an empty screen, I opened it up and started reading it.  I mean, she worked up the nerve to walk into the lion's den, it was the least I could do to match her courage.  More to come.

Jessy - My Star

I st-st-stuttered when you asked me what I'm thinkin' about

I try not to get too caught up in ranting about work. Everyone gets frustrated with their job at times; everyone has to deal with incompetent people, and everyone hates it. I don't think my case is overly unique or special, or that I'm the first person that's had to go through things like this. But some times, I really, really need some catharsis. So, this is really just going to be a bunch of bitching about incompetent people that I have to deal with at work. If that doesn't interest you at all, stop reading.

The first thing that really annoys me is that I suspect *everyone* bitches about everyone else being incompetent. However, I find it hard to believe that everyone is incompetent. I must firmly believe that there are people who get things done, and people who fuck things up. Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but how they're handled, and further mistakes avoided, is a huge indicator of a person's worth. I'm not expecting perfection; everyone makes mistakes. However, you have to learn from them, treat them as a learning mistake, not just a pile of shit that needs to be cleaned up.

As an example of that, and my first official rant, there are several people in our franchise office. I don't like to name names, so I'll call them "M" and "J". They both handle the issues with Pulse, our new point-of-sale system. They're also handling all the issues that come up with the new products, sandwiches and pasta. There's a lot of new products that we have. Those all have to be entered in the inventory screen. They all have vendor codes, prices, inventory units, etc. It's a lot of stuff, but this is a huge paradigm shift for, much more so than anything else I've seen (other than the Pulse adoption, of course) in the three years I've worked for the company.

And they keep fucking up THE EXACT SAME THINGS.

I'll let them know that an inventory item doesn't appear on the ordering screen, or the inventory screen (I'm particularly interested in learning how they manage that in the first place), and they'll put it back on. Of course, in doing so, another item will be wrong. Or they'll erase the vendor code from another item, so we can't place any food orders until they correct that. Or they'll mess up the ideal use system, so that the automated inventory system doesn't realize that yes, every sandwich uses three full pieces of sliced provolone.

There's the same issues with HR. We submit vacation requests, and never hear back from them. We hadn't heard back about the request by the time that week started, so the employee, living paycheck to paycheck, made the decision to work that week, being unable to take a chance of messing out on an entire week's work. Of course, two weeks later, we find out he had approved it, and just not bothered to let us know. The only message we had received was something cryptic about how his start date wasn't until this next pay week, which we weren't 100% what that meant.

Then, of course, there's the referral bonus situation. That's one of my favorites. We have a referral bonus system; if you refer another person that becomes an employee and works at least 100 hours, you get a bonus (the amount varies based on the position the person you referred works in). We had three people receive referral bonuses fro four employees (one person had referred two people). However, instead of giving the bonuses to the people that did the referring, as it should have been, they gave the bonuses to the people that got referred.

What was really, really frustrating, but not surprising about the entire thing, is that when the company was late in paying out money it was supposed to, it was an incredibly long, uphill battle, but when they were owed money, they reacted to the situation immediately. Nice example to set. I'm especially sensitive to this issue, as I'm currently waiting for a referral bonus for Janelle. She hit her 100 hour mark almost a month ago. They have until our next paycheck to have it show up; after that, I'm going to raise hell. I'm also ready for them to screw up my vacation. What's really fun about that is that they're going to figure out a new way to screw it up, due to the year between the first and second times I worked for the company. It affected my service shirt, but in a hugely detrimental way. I'll give them a chance to do it right, but I'm completely prepared for them to fuck it up.

Of course, none of that matters if we don't get some new people working on the inside. We definitely couldn't handle me not working for a week. Hell, I can't even take an extra day off during the week right now (though if school gets very hectic, I might have to. At that point, it'll be an ultimatum).

Then there's commissary. I'm prepared to cut them a lot of slack, as the issues they deal with are bigger and more widespread than our franchise office. However, they also fuck a ton of shit up. On a delivery almost a month ago, they gave us a case of blue cheese instead of marinara. No big deal, everyone screws up. The issue I have is that here we are A MONTH LATER, and we're still trying to get the problem corrected. There was a case of cheese they marked as damaged that we never got, and we still haven't received a credit for it.

Miley Cyrus -- See You Again

Now are you sure you want a piece of me?

So I've had a couple weird dreams lately.

I want to start blogging again more regularly, especially what dreams I can remember.

I had a sex dream last night> I don't have many dreams where I'm having sex. There wasn't anything strange or terribly notable about that dream other than that, though - I think it was Faith Nelson that I was having sex with. Good stuff.

Another dream I had recently saw me as a police officer for San Marcos. We were in front of Domino's, and a monster was attacking, it was a lot like Cloverfield. We were running to our car, which was on the other side of the parking lot. We got in our car as a huge tentacle hit the parking lot behind us, and a lot of little monsters disgorged. One jumped through the car window next to me; it looked kind of like an armadillo. Very weird.

Those are the only two that I can really remember recently.

Britney Spears -- Piece of Me

Now are you sure you want a piece of me?

Grr. So, I walked out of my shift at Wal-Mart (this was like a year and a half ago, don't get confused) to accept a position at Sonic with Javi as an assistant manager. I knew it was going to suck, and it didn't disappoint. It really, really sucked. I mean, it wasn't a surprise, I can't stress that enough. I knew it was going to suck. I was just sick of Wal-Mart, and was ready to return to an environment I knew.

Of course, I did the same thing in four (?) months when Sergio called and asked me if I wanted to come be an assistant for him, now that he had the store. I did that, and haven't really looked back since.

Until now.

Things have been pretty crappy lately. I mean, this sounds like just a lot of whining. Dylan keeps saying "Any day you're above ground is a good one" and "Things could always be a lot worse". I know both of those things, and I don't get all melodramatic or lost perspective on things. However, I'm a passionate person with strong emotions, and I'm not good at controlling, restraining, or hiding those emotions. Today, I was really thinking about quitting. Things are getting bad. We've only hired ONE new insider, and he SUCKS. I should clarify, that I don't expect too much from new people. They're going to be rough. They're going to have a lot of questions. It's a lot of stuff to pick up all at once. I can understand all that. I encourage them to ask questions when I'm training them. I let them know that it's much, much worse to not ask than to ask a question you think might make you look stupid. However, we do expect you to start learning things at *some* point. You have to ask a question once or twice, no problem. When you ask it the fifth time, maybe there's starting to be an issue. I mean, we've got Katy working inside now; she's been a driver for a while now, but she's probably only got a little more experience than he does, and she's orders of magnitude better. We've already given her the ability to authorize stuff on carryouts, edit orders, the whole package. That sounds pretty dumb and insignificant, but it's a measure of her progress.

So that's fun. It's alleviated a little bit by Sandra's return next week. There's a bit of an issue, though, since her, Josh, and Lease all want to open. There's only seven opening shifts; well, nine, if we do two on Saturday and Sunday (and we'll need 'em once football starts), although I suspect Q will cover some of those by work 12-10 shifts on the weekend. So some of them are going to have to work nights, which is good, 'cause that will put some major strength back in our night crew. I mean, it's a far cry from when our inside crew consisted of myself, Joe, Ashley, Sergio, Jess, and Jen. Any one of us could open or close at the drop of a hat, and any two of us could handle a 50 pie hour (to say nothing of the time Jess and I had an 111 pie hour).

To make things even worse, Jenni and Gina were both there when I went in to work today. Seeing Gina always makes things suck; normally, having Jenni there would be more than enough to make things great. Of course, that wouldn't be the case today. She came by the store for two reasons - one, to tell Q about who he needed to talk to about the dorm stuff (which is also what Gina was there for, kinda; I suspect she was there to talk about sandwiches and pasta, but that's what they were talking about when I was there). The second reason was to let us know that she wouldn't be returning to us. It wasn't really a big surprise; she'd been gone all summer, and had only been working one shift a week before that. I'll finish this later.

Piece of Me -- Britney Spears

Grr. So, I walked out of my shift at Wal-Mart (this was like a year and a half ago, don't get confused) to accept a position at Sonic with Javi as an assistant manager. I knew it was going to suck, and it didn't disappoint. It really, really sucked. I mean, it wasn't a surprise, I can't stress that enough. I knew it was going to suck. I was just sick of Wal-Mart, and was ready to return to an environment I knew.

Of course, I did the same thing in four (?) months when Sergio called and asked me if I wanted to come be an assistant for him, now that he had the store. I did that, and haven't really looked back since.

Until now.

Things have been pretty crappy lately. I mean, this sounds like just a lot of whining. Dylan keeps saying "Any day you're above ground is a good one" and "Things could always be a lot worse". I know both of those things, and I don't get all melodramatic or lost perspective on things. However, I'm a passionate person with strong emotions, and I'm not good at controlling, restraining, or hiding those emotions. Today, I was really thinking about quitting. Things are getting bad. We've only hired ONE new insider, and he SUCKS. I should clarify, that I don't expect too much from new people. They're going to be rough. They're going to have a lot of questions. It's a lot of stuff to pick up all at once. I can understand all that. I encourage them to ask questions when I'm training them. I let them know that it's much, much worse to not ask than to ask a question you think might make you look stupid. However, we do expect you to start learning things at *some* point. You have to ask a question once or twice, no problem. When you ask it the fifth time, maybe there's starting to be an issue. I mean, we've got Katy working inside now; she's been a driver for a while now, but she's probably only got a little more experience than he does, and she's orders of magnitude better. We've already given her the ability to authorize stuff on carryouts, edit orders, the whole package. That sounds pretty dumb and insignificant, but it's a measure of her progress.

So that's fun. It's alleviated a little bit by Sandra's return next week. There's a bit of an issue, though, since her, Josh, and Lease all want to open. There's only seven opening shifts; well, nine, if we do two on Saturday and Sunday (and we'll need 'em once football starts), although I suspect Q will cover some of those by work 12-10 shifts on the weekend. So some of them are going to have to work nights, which is good, 'cause that will put some major strength back in our night crew. I mean, it's a far cry from when our inside crew consisted of myself, Joe, Ashley, Sergio, Jess, and Jen. Any one of us could open or close at the drop of a hat, and any two of us could handle a 50 pie hour (to say nothing of the time Jess and I had an 111 pie hour).

To make things even worse, Jenni and Gina were both there when I went in to work today. Seeing Gina always makes things suck; normally, having Jenni there would be more than enough to make things great. Of course, that wouldn't be the case today. She came by the store for two reasons - one, to tell Q about who he needed to talk to about the dorm stuff (which is also what Gina was there for, kinda; I suspect she was there to talk about sandwiches and pasta, but that's what they were talking about when I was there)

Take the glitz back, I want the soul instead

Five months.

It's been about five months since I've posted. I'll try to catch up with what I've missed.

School:

School's going really well so far. Took those three classes during the Spring semester, got a 4.0. That was pretty neat. The day of Finals was kind of funny. They schedule like 2 hours for each final, and mine were back to back to back. Each final took me around thirty to forty-five minutes to do, giving me between forty-five minutes and an hour to kill between each final, in addition to the half hour break they already build in to the schedule. The obvious answer would be to use that time to review the material and/or study for the next final; the only problem with that, of course, is that I don't like to count on such intangible, unsure variables like that, so I was completely ready for each final. I went to a dining hall and grabbed some breakfast during one break, and I don't recall what I did during the other final. After the last one, I had to walk to work where Mom was picking me up to give me a ride home.

Something had gone crazy wrong with my truck. Ended up dropping quite a bit on new tires, then I had to have the engine remounted and stuff (they did it wrong during the original installation). That was fun. I ended up only taking three hours during summer school, one class during Summer I. Phil 1305, Introduction to Philosophy and Critical Thinking. The class was okay, I guess. Every morning at 8 am, for two hours, Monday through Friday. I ended up late to work quite a few days because of it, which was fun. I pulled a strong A in that class as well, which was really good, 'cause it was a Writing Intensive class, and I hate writing. It seemed like the more outlandish I made my conclusion, the better my grade on the test was. I don't know if it just did a better job of making my point, or my writing just got stronger as the semester went on, or the professor just appreciated someone who could effectively communicate the material and their understanding thereof, while still making their conclusion fun to read. I hope it was the latter, but I'm not counting on it. Whatever.

So I didn't take any classes during Summer II, 'cause of the money I had to drop on my truck. I'm registered for 13 hours, 4 classes and 1 lab, for the Fall. Chem II, Chem II Lab, Prob & Stat, Data Structures, and Intro to Fine Arts. I even got some financial aid for this and the Spring semesters. It's pretty awesome. Class starts in about two weeks. I've got most of my textbooks, bought two textbooks online - ebay and amazon are pretty neat, around half price of what the bookstore wanted, *and* I could flip them back for most of the price. I still have to pick up my Chem book/lab manual at the bookstore; the professor wrote both of them. So that's fun. Got my classes blocked Monday/Wednesday, which works out well. I start at 9:30 both mornings; Monday, I go to 6-something, on Wednesday, I'm out around 3-something. Long days, but I'll be taking both days off work so I don't have to go in that night. I might take the occasional Tuesday night off as well, to give me some time to get some real sleep. Of course, that's all depending on the work situation, which will have to get better before I'm able to do so, but we'll get to that later.

And I'm officially a senior.

So I don't feel like going into work just yet, so I guess I'll go with personal stuff next. I finally started a good diet that I'm comfortable with, and I feel confident that I can stick with it, for the most part. Coupling that with the amounts of exercise I have lined up, I hope, I really hope, that I can finally lose some weight.

Socially, it's just as much of an abyss as always. Didn't talk to anyone in any of my classes over the fall semester, or the one I had in the summer. I ended up sitting behind this semi-cute girl over the summer, didn't really get her name or anything. She was a hippie (Wait. Her parents were hippies. I'm not sure?) from Austin. Anyway.

So still friends with Matt, we work out and/or play racquetball in the mornings when our schedules work out. Haven't talked to Cullen recently, though I hope to remedy that soon. Rose is moving out of her parents place, which is cool, getting a little one bedroom; I'm helping her move (no big surprise there). Haven't made any new friends (except at work, but that gets covered in the work section) lately. Maybe that'll change in the Fall. I doubt it, but whatever.

Work's been interesting. Our new GM is working out really well, he's a really cool guy. We're getting pasta and sandwiches in the next few weeks (Sh! Nobody's allowed to know that!), which means we have to regear a lot of things, and find room for a bunch of new products, and retrain everyone on new stuff. It's going to be somewhat more labor-intensive, which kind of sucks. The only good part is that we're getting some good stuff, like sliced provolone, genoa salami, and chicken. Of course, they don't really fit in with my diet, so I'll only taste them sparingly, but it'll probably positively impact sales.

Bill no longer works there; he left to go to Colorado or something, leaving me as the only MiT right now. Jen Fee almost came back, but she went to Kyle instead. I've mentioned to Ambra that she should come back and be an MiT for us; new gm, new dm, there's a good chance they'll let her. They should - she's well trained, she's smart, they let her GM a store for over six months. Oh, and we're NOT DATING, nor WERE WE EVER. They're cracking down ever harder on employee dating, transferred a GM to a completely different district because she was dating another GM. Whatever. We did hire this awesome insider named Becky, but she only worked here for the summer. That made me sad, especially when she left like two weeks ago. Thanks to that, we're still working on improving our inside staff. We need another shift runner or MiT, probably another insider or two. We did hire Janelle as a driver, that's pretty neat. She might be moving back here for her last semester and/or year of school, which would be interesting. Her and Mom don't get along as well as her and I do, so she's a little worried that it might not work out, that they're going to clash too hard much for her to live here. I keep telling her that it was hard for me at first, but that it got a lot better, especially once school started.

Anyway.

So that's what's going on with that.

Vanessa Carlton -- Nolita Fairytale

Finally got to get into it with a customer today about the whole "You Got 30 Minutes" thing. First, I do think it's really, really dumb for them to be using that. I mean, yeah, the vast majority of our orders do get to our customers within thirty minutes, and I don't think it's necessarily wrong to play up that; the problem, however, is that we did that 30 minute guarantee in the 80's, so *anything* with Domino's and the number 30 is automatically going to make that connection in people's minds. It's pretty unfortunate. Anyway. He also got pretty mad that our drivers don't carry parmesan or crushed red peppers on them. Seriously, though. I mean, if you can't eat something without a given condiment, that condiment has ceased to be a condiment, and is instead an integral part of the dish. Well, those aren't. Deal with it. We do charge for them. Think that's ridiculous? Shop somewhere else. Customer's choice, and all that.

So the guy placed his order, and I told him at the end of the order that it'd be 35-45 minutes. The guy calls back at thirty-one minutes, almost exactly. I know this because when someone calls back that's already placed an order, when you bring up that phone line, it says when they ordered. There's that, and there's the clock right next to that, so it's pretty easy to see how long ago they ordered. So yeah, he called back right at thirty-one, thirty-two minutes. He was calling about our 30-minute guarantee, which we don't have. He kept bringing up the commercial, which just says "You've got 30 minutes". It doesn't say "You've got 30 minutes, or it's free." It definitely doesn't say "You've got 30 minutes (or it's free)". It says "You've got 30 minutes (or keep waiting)". Again, I'm not defending the fact that they're almost definitely playing to the fact that we did have one, a long, LONG time ago, and people are definitely going to make that association whenever they see the 30. Whatever. But it's there, and we're doing the best we can.

So yeah, the guy calls at 32 minutes, and I explain about it being an estimate, not a guarantee. We go through this several times.

He then calls back another twenty-ish minutes later, to make another complaint. Basically, (a) his pizza took 40 minutes, and (b) the driver didn't have any peppers or cheese on him. I would have had a little more sympathy for this complaint if we hadn't already discussed (a) when he called back ONE MINUTE after thirty minutes, and I told him that it'd be 35-45 minutes for delivery. And (b), well, there's not a lot I can do about (b). It's how our franchise operates. I can't really defend it.

Moving on.

Four of

Hmm. I got caught up playing around on Facebook, and I'm really not sure where I was going with that "Four of" thing. I'll get back to that, if possible.

Oh! I remember. Maybe. I might have been going to say something about I've done four of my eleven consecutive shifts? Probably not. I can't see me saying "Four of" as the beginning of that sentence. Anyway.

So yeah, been dealing with a lot of ex's lately, primarily through Facebook. I let it do the 'automatic friend finder thing' with my gmail inbox, and that brought up Chelsea and Lilie, got to see them. Oh, and Terri. Saw Mindy while going through some photos to upload, and Carrie, and Nikki. Ashley ordered pizza last night.

They don't love you like I love you

I'm in kind of a bad place right now.

I fully realize that everything I'm going to complain about in this post is, in the grand scheme of things, relatively minor. I'm completely aware that my life is pretty good - decent job, loving and supportive family, health, etc.

That being said, it's bitching time.

WORK

Work is the source of my current bad mood. Things are changing, and mostly, not for the better. First and foremost, Q. I mean, he's a great guy. But I'm starting to have some issues with him. Let's start with putting the truck up. I mean, we organize the walk-in a specific way. He just kind of throws all the shit in. I should clarify, I'm not dead-set on OUR specific way of organizing everything. If he wants to reorganize stuff and put things in different places, that's fine. But it definitely needs to have specific places, keep everything together. We're too busy, our walk-in is too small, we get three trucks a week, we can't do inventory until a little before close. Seriously, I'm not an organizational freak or anything, but I recognize that there's time when it's necessary. This is one of those times. I mean, seriously. Gina instilled it in me that we have to keep that walk-in organized, and it's true. I'm going to ask him about it tomorrow, see if there's a reason, maybe it was just the last two trucks with mitigating circumstances. Whatever.

It's kind of annoying. I came back to Domino's to work for Sergio, not for Domino's. Fuck Domino's. I mean, I'll grant that it's definitely a better gig for Sonic, but that's not saying too much amongst menial service jobs (especially when they restructure our MiT bonus plan, see below). Whatever.

Then, they're changing the MiT bonus plan structure. They're making it more of a 'pay-for-performance' thing, which I don't disagree with.

In principle.

However, there's a few things they need to point out that they're not really saying. They're presenting it as removing the current cap on the MiT bonus, and replacing it with 2% of the store's EBITDA. In principle, it's reasonable. The better the store is doing, both in sales and translating that sales to profit, the higher the bonus the assistant managers get. However, it's worth noting that we have the second highest EBITDA in the company, and it would make our new cap 180-something instead of 200. Everyone else's goes down substantially. They don't really mention that in the flyer that EVERYONE's bonus cap is going to go down. DRASTICALLY. It follows from the information presented, but you have to dig down a little to really look at it. The other caveats aren't really that big a deal - an 80 or above on your MiT eval, no criticals, and a minimum of a 4 on your WCMSC. That last one is basically just a grading of your store across a variety of metrics - labor, food, personnel, sales, etc. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll be getting a 4 any time soon. Our last one was a 2, and we need something like 20 points to raise that to a 4. 21 points, I think. I mean, the reasoning underneath all of it is sound, I guess. The idea that we influence the WCMSC and profitability is understandable, and they're trying to reflect that. Whatever. It's just annoying.

What's next, what's next? Oh, they're making that 3.99 medium 1-topping carryout special a periodic thing. It's really, really annoying. The drivers hate it. The insiders hate it. The MiTs hate it. Basically, it's only really good for boosting sales in low-sales stores. It didn't really help ours.

Hmm.

What else?

Co-workers.

Some of them are kind of annoying. I mean, hell, it'd be too easy to pick on Adam or Kyle here, but that's too easy. I'm talking about inside people. I'm really trying not to dwell on this one, because I'll start going nuts. Trey kind of reminds me of Ben from Sonic. It's frustrating. Yes, our job is simplistic, menial, entry-level, unskilled, etc. But there are specific ways to do those jobs, ways they have to be done. I hate sounding as stupid as I know it does, but you have to do things the way they're supposed to be done.

Anyway.

And Bill, the rush is so, so much easier if you MAKE PRESLAPS and PREP BREAD.

I don't mean to sound all high and mighty. I'm just venting.

Moving on.

I'm going to dye my hair pink on Tuesday. Well, Rose is going to. Very, very, very pink. That should be fun.

What else, what else?

Rebecca, I s'pose. We talk every time I'm in there. I haven't lost touch with reality or anything, I'm not getting my hopes up or anything. It's weird, we are sort of slowly becoming friends. Maybe, I guess? I'm not going to overthink this one. I overthink every single one of our interactions and encounters as it is, I'm not going to ruin the whole thing.

Moving on.

Paid off one of my student loans, that was really exciting.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- Maps

'Cause I found some kind of fairy tale

Life's pretty good right now.

Work's been interesting. Q, our new GM, has finally moved down to San Marcos and is going to be opening five days a week, moving Bill back to sharing the closing shifts with me. As it should be, and all that. I'm getting my near-50 hours a week, so my paychecks are pretty decent right now - not nearly the ones from Sonic when I was getting 70+, but nothing to sneeze at either. I did take off three days this week - Tuesday through Thursday, so I can rest and do stuff and generally enjoy life. Good times.

I was off on Valentine's Day, and I was going to take Mom out for dinner, since her and Billy had just broken up. I stopped by work to turn in my new insurance; they were somewhere between forty and fifty pies down. That was... well, crazy. Trey and Michelle were there, but I couldn't see how they managed to get that far down. I love Bill to death, but I wonder sometimes. Anyway. I was in my pajama pants, a t-shirt, and wearing sandals (yes, I was wearing pajama pants at seven pm. I had gone to sleep after class, having closed the night before and staying up for my eight o'clock class), but I threw on an apron, a hat, washed my hands and arms thoroughly, and jumped in. Two hours later, things were finally calming down. I hate nights like that - not because I mind having to work really hard, or that I was annoyed having to help out on my day off or anything, but because we gave a lot of people terrible service. I've taken to referring to it as the 'Valentine's Day Massacre', which I think sounds neat. I'm trying to remember if there was actually a V-Day massacre, or I'm thinking of another day. Either way. Bill and Q both thought it would be slow on V-Day, but Stan seemed to think we should have anticipated the high volume better.

They decided to do a 3.99 medium 1-topping carryout special, open to close, all this week, ending Thursday night at close. Interesting choice. It did boost sales above last year (the stated goal behind this) for a lot of stores - not ours, of course. Despite doing 2066, we were still down almost six hundred dollars from last year. Of course, we're down over twelve thousand for the period - second on an absolute level (one store is down seventeen!), and not doing *that* bad on a percentage level.

Other than that, work's been pretty much the same lately. Been on a huge Vanessa Carlton kick lately. Not sure why, but I keep queuing up her stuff to listen to. I mean, I like some contemporary singer-songwriters, at least the commercially successfully ones that I don't have to dig too deep to find - Vanessa Carlton, Michelle Branch, Jewel, being the three that come readily to mind. But Vanessa's stuff especially has really been resonating with me lately. In fact, I might (a) change my profile song to reflect that and (b) my ringtone. It's been 'Boyfriend' by Ashlee Simpson basically since I started importing mp3s, and it might be time for a change. We'll see.

I bought the drums for Rock Band. Holy crap, that's fun. I mean, crazy fun. Michelle, of course, made the snarky comment about learning to play a real instrument, instead of pretending to play a fake one, but whatever. I can learn this one in five minutes, don't have to buy an expensive drum set, and can play it along with my friends playing their fake instruments. Besides, I did play trombone for seven years, so it's not like I'm musically illiterate or something. Anyway, lots of fun. I'm working out how to get Matt and Cullen and Ambra and Rose all together for some group fun. As for the drums, I'm still having coordination issues, especially with the kick drum, but I'm quickly getting better.

School's going well. Took my second chemistry test this morning, have my first discrete test on Thursday. Good times. Still haven't talked to anybody in any of my classes or anything, still working on that one.

I talked to Rebecca last night at Wal-Mart, that was cool. She asked me if I was avoiding her on Thursday (V-Day) or something, I told her that no, I was just anxious to get home and play drums, and that Rose wasn't feeling well, so we didn't want to dilly-dally (didn't manage to work that in there, or anything). She was all, "Oh, 'cause I wanted to wish you a happy Valentine's Day." That was awesome. We talked about stuff. I told her what I ended up doing on Valentine's Day, learned that the guy she's dating right now is only her second boyfriend. And, of course, today. Josh and I played our usual two hours of racquetball, I took the set 4-2 (putting our total record at something like 12-3 or thereabouts). Anyway. After dropping him off at the store, I went to the bank to deposit my paycheck. The first three or four lanes had a car at the kiosk, but the next one was both open and empty, so I pulled in there and started filling out my deposit slip. I glanced over at the car next to me, and lo and behold, she was sitting in the passenger set. Holy crap! She was earing like a pink shirt. It was the first time I'd seen her outside of her current place of employment. She definitely saw me too, but she didn't really openly acknowledge me or anything, leading me to draw one of a few conclusions. (A) She could have been with her boyfriend, and didn't really feel like explaining who I was ("Him? Oh, he's this guy that's had a crush on me for like two years; he comes by Wal-Mart a lot just 'cause I work there and we've started talking a little bit more each time. Basically, just some guy.") (B) Boyfriend might be a little possessive? (C) Regardless of who she was wiht, she just really didn't want to deal with me outside of work at all, perhaps fearing I'm now following her around or something (like I know what other kind of vehicle she might be riding around in? That would be scary.)

But I had this huge grin on my face as I sat there filling out my stuff, with her right there. I didn't really turn back or anything, because I was following her lead, regardless of the reason. They left fairly soon, but it was awesome.

Anyway.

Vanessa Carlton -- Nolita Fairytale

You like me and I like you

So life's been interesting lately. Let's see...

Sergio's been officially fired. Well, that happened like, what, two weeks ago? Three? Something like that. We've got this new guy, Q, who's alright so far. We're still trying to get him to do things our way, instead of just some random way (it's not like he's trying to introduce some better way), but overall, I think he'll do okay. I kind of pissed of a lot of drivers tonight, but they'll live. We've hired three new insiders - Julianne, Michelle, and Trey, who are all doing pretty well. Michelle is SO cute, and I'm halfway thinking about asking her out or something. I don't know, though - the difference in work levels might be an issue (though it's not like this is a real job, so I don't know, whatever). Haven't been working with Jenni very often, which makes me sad, but she came in the other day and gave me a huge hug and was like "Aw, I haven't seen you in forever!" That made me happy.

School's going good so far too. Had my first test last week, in Chemistry; didn't go to class on Thursday, but I'll get it back in a few days, we'll see how it goes. Have my first assignment coming up in Assembly Language, but it's just converting to different binary interpretations (mostly), so that'll be pretty easy. This semester is just a warm-up, anyway.

Not much has happened with Rebecca, beside me getting my creepy bastard on. Sandra made a halfway comment along those lines, and it really hurt. I thought I'd been so careful at every step *not* to be a creepy bastard, just to show some sincere interest. Whatever.

I think Mom and Billy broke up. That sucks, she seemed kind of happy with him. Kinda. Janelle and Mike are still going strong; that's cool.

Befour -- How Do You Do

The dreamers get punished most

So I saw Rebecca at Wal-Mart the other day (gosh, a lot of posts are starting this way. whatever).

Actually, I'm going to come back to Rebecca, and start with school and stuff.

School's going okay so far. I was really tired yesterday (because of work), but got through school okay. The way my classes are set up, my least favorite, most boring is first, and I end with my favorite, least boring class. Here's a breakdown so far:

Chem 1341, Lippman:
This one is kinda boring. The professor is really, really old. I can't stress that enough. Extremely old. He talks a lot, and has a habit of trying to bring in anecdotes that are in NO WAY INTERESTING. We were talking about uncertainty in measurements, and he starts talking about engineers and small parts and tolerance for uncertainty as an example of applications of that principle. You'll notice I used about half a sentence to explain it. That's all it takes. Not ten minutes. Whatever.

CS 2308, Drissi
I love this guy. He has this crazy accent - we say character CARE - ick - ter. He says ka - RACK - ter. It's awesome. Just trying to follow what he's saying can at time keep me on my toes. Still don't have any idea what the assignments or tests are going to be like in this class. Oh, and it's a CS class, so there are very few actual human beings in the class, it's predominately introverted geniuses.

Math something, Discrete I, Wu
So far, this is my favorite class. It has the most class participation, the most theoretical work (Math professors don't give two shits about real-world applications), and there's this deaf guy that I usually sit behind. Now, that in and of itself has no bearing on the class, but one of the interpretors is SO cute. Not hot or anything, and she's older, probably mid-30's to early 40's, but SO CUTE. She gets her whole face into it, really expressive. SO CUTE.

So that's school so far.

On to work.

Work sucks. They just fired Sergio, so we have no GM. Additionally, if he hadn't sent me a text telling me as much, we wouldn't know, as they haven't seen fit to let us know. I don't know what's going to happen now. I really don't think it should continue as this little triad thing we're doing right now, as there's too many cracks for stuff to fall through. There needs to be one person in charge, and receiving compensation as such. I'm definitely not going to do it - the time commitment is such that it could create an issue with school, which is by far my top priority right now. Terrance definitely doesn't want it either, that leaves Bill. He's a great guy and all, and he sorta expressed some interest in doing it, although his management experience is somewhat limited. We'll see how that goes. I mean, he's light years better than the alternatives - bringing in someone from San Antonio, or hiring someone from outside, or keeping on as we are right now.

Our order dates just changed, so Monday night, we ran out of medium dough, provolone cheese, green peppers, onions, chicken kickers, and medium and large deep dish. It was fun.

Now, on to the good stuff. We hired this cute insider named Michelle. She hasn't had her first official day yet, though she did work on Monday. Taller - about 5'7"-ish, kinda chunky, blond. So cute.

Went to Wal-Mart the other night, saw Rebecca. We talked for a little while, probably fifteen minutes. It was good stuff. She's left-handed, played french horn in high school, and is possibly hispanic. I ran into her again a few nights later, she was asking me about a ladder, which I helped her find. I talked to that other girl that's really cool that used to work in softlines that I went to high school with. She asked me how my night was going, I told her 'fantastic!', she asked why, I gestured with my head to where Rebecca was, her eyes went wide with understanding. I ended up standing next to her while she checked out, we had the following conversation - "Hey, don't tell anyone about that, please." "Sure, no problem. Hey, you know she has a boyfriend, right?" "Yeah, I found out when I asked her out." "Oh, wow. Yeah, I thought I saw her smile like this (smiles) while she was helping you." "Actually, I was helping her find a ladder." Robyn was our cashier during that whole thing, which was cool.

Got my computer hooked up to output audio through my new speaker system, and video to my tv, which is cool. I can even have it do the SNES emulator to the TV, which is cool. Kind of old school.

Vanessa Carlton -- Fools Like Me

Seasons don't fear the reaper

So today was an interesting day at work. Nothing really notable until the last hour or so. Fifteen minutes. Whatever.

I get a call from Margaret in Oltorf that they got another call from the Motel 6 in San Marcos (long story). So I take the order, make it, send it out. It ends up being the last order of the night, leaves the store maybe ten minutes before close. Nick takes it out. He calls back a little bit later, saying the guy had wanted to play with his credit card. I was kind of annoyed at the whole situation (It's Motel 6's fault they got key cards from another motel, which their contract explicitly forbids doing, quite possibly for exactly this reason), so I just told Nick to give him the pizza for free.

Nothing terribly weird just yet.

I get a call a few minutes later, we're already closed. It's the front desk lady, apparently, there's a complaint about our driver banging on random doors or something. She's not sure if he's not sure where to deliver to or what, what kind of protocols we have. I'm a little confused at this point - none of our drivers, if the room they were delivering to wasn't right, would just go knocking on random doors, they'd call back to find out what's going on. This was further compounded by the fact that I had *just* talked to Nick, I knew he had found the correct room.

While I'm talking to her, trying to figure out what's going on, a second line rings. I go to tell that person we're closed, and it's the police. They're calling because they received a call from the front desk lady that some people were banging on my driver's car, they were worried about it. He asked me to call my driver by cell if possible, and see if he was okay, and that I could just put him on hold. I get back with the front desk lady, explain that no, our drivers wouldn't just go bang on random doors, and I'll talk to him and find out what's going on.

I go to call Nick, ask him what's up. By the time he picks up, he's pulling back into the store. Guess he got back okay, then. I pick the cop off of hold and let him know that the driver's back safely. That concludes that call.

Nick comes in, lets me know what happened. While he was talking to the guy he was supposed to deliver to, some other guy, drunk as hell, comes out of his room, starts yelling at Nick about if we've got any more pizzas or whatever. Nick tells him that no, we're closed. The dude starts banging on Nick's window - loud enough that it disturbs another guest, two doors down, who comes out to see what's going on (I'm guessing he's the one that called the front desk to lodge a complaint about the whole situation.

Overall, it was just kind of weird. I was picturing a huge group of people, banging on Nick's car, surrounding it and preventing him from driving off or something, like a zombie horror movie or something.

Blue Oyster Cult -- Don't Fear the Reaper

Don't you have somewhere to go?

So I know it's clichè, but what with time being an arbitrary concept and all, New Year's provides just as good a time to reflect as anything. A good time to look back at the last year, see where I am, where I'm going, what's coming up.

Let's start with what happened recently. I worked New Year's Eve, which isn't a big deal. I usually do - last year, the year before that, the year before that, but the year before that, I think I was with Suzie in Galveston. I remember three New Year's ago, when I got off from Sonic, was driving home, Mom called me from All Niter, her and Jerry were there, we sat on the patio and had breakfast. Lilie drove by. Good times. So anyway.

I spent this New Year's making pizzas. Luckily, I wasn't taking an order or anything when the ball dropped (which is my way of saying "Midnight struck"). Just kind of standing there. I was very aware of when it was. Bill and Chris were my closing drivers, but they were both out on runs. They were pretty much running nonstop 'til the end of the night. I got a few calls around midnight - Danielle called, that was awesome. Hadn't really talked to her or anything in quite a while. Danielle and Jenni both called, that was fun. Had a few drunks order some pizza in person, that's always fun. I think part of my aversion to drinking is how very, very much I hate talking to drunk people. I hear it's not so bad when you're also drunk. Whatever.

I went to Wal-Mart after work, picked up some juice and stuff. Of course, Rebecca was my cashier. Good times. She was smiling a lot. I'm not naive enough to think she was smiling because of me, but it was definitely at, and I'll take my victories where I can get them.

[Sidenote: I'm watching "Blonde Ambition" while typing this. Atrocious movie. Jessica Simpson's character is a country bumpkin stuck in the big city. She doesn't know how to ride a bike. I'll let that sink in a for a moment. At least Rachael Leigh Cook is in it. She's awesome. Also, apparently, she did the voice of Tifa Lockhart in most of the Final Fantasy adaptations, post-VII. Good stuff.]

Anyway, it really helped dispel all the bad vibes I got from her on Christmas Eve with Jenni. Moving on. I had to give Rose a ride home the next night, she needed to go to Wal-Mart that night. We spent about fifteen minutes in the hair care aisle, she needed some conditioner without certain chemicals in it. Or something, I don't know. I keep my head shaved. Whatever. We had to go through sporting goods for a thermos or something. For whatever reason, I picked up a baseball bat. I started carrying that around for a while. It's a guy thing. Whatever.

So we took the corner towards electronics, and she's standing there right next to the Guitar Hero demo. Long story short, she's watching electronics during lunch, and the other girl, the one playing very badly in training mode, was on lunch. I felt kind of weird holding on to the bat, but I went with it. Rose kind of took off, went to finish her shopping. The girl playing finished the song, realized the game probably wasn't for her. Rebecca and I talked a little while the other girl (she needs a name if I'm going to bring her up very many more times in this story; 'other girl' and 'that girl' is starting to get a little repetitive). She said something about her brother who 'has like, every video game system ever' and apparently doesn't like girls that much because they talk to much and prevent him from playing his games. Good times. She thinks he might be gay. Or something. She didn't want to play, because her eyes don't focus fast enough. She said something about the doctor telling her she needs to exercise her eyes more, and she's annoyed, because the last thing she wants is another doctor telling her she needs to exercise more. Or something.

[How the F did they get Rachael Leigh Cook for this piece of crap? It's awesomely tragic. Oh, crap, Willie Nelson. He must really like Jessica Simpson, or something.]

So she - that other girl - finishes, and asks Rebecca if she wants to play, so she turns to me and asks me if I want to. I hesitantly accepted. I went with 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot', because I know the song really well. I did 98%-ish. It was great, because my hands were sweaty. I'm a big, big guy, and I like to think I do some physically demanding things - I play racquetball, I play DDR. I sweat a lot during those times, but my hands stay dry. They don't sweat at all. Ever.

But they were sweating the whole time I played the song. I guess that means I was really, really nervous. Which I was. Which means I actually like her.

Crazy.

Moving on.

So I finished the song, put down the guitar, said something to the effect of "That's not really fair, 'cause I play this all the time.", picked up the baseball bat I set down by the demo unit, and walked off. I had no idea what was going on. I found Rose, and we went about our shopping. She asked me where the latex gloves were, so I went and asked Rebecca. We talked a bit.

Oh, I was still holding the baseball bat. It wouldn't be right without it.

We talked a little bit; she told me a story about her boyfriend. I'm still debating the point of the story. It could go any number of ways - maybe she was just making small talk (it was a funny story, after all), or just sharing about her New Year's Eve / life stuff, or, quite possibly,

[Major plot hole. This is what I don't get. If they want Jessica Simpson's character to be that idiot's secretary so they can manipulate her, why are they constantly sabotaging her plans? Wouldn't they want to help her and have her do well, so she would gain his trust and thus be a more valuable asset in their plan? I guess that's what I get for trying to actually follow the plot of a movie that makes fun of Norwegians for no real reason. It's not so much making fun of them, as it is randomly having them do karaoke - 'Baby Got Back', no less - in the most horrendous accents I've ever heard.]

[Oh gosh. Here comes the montage where the small-town girl grows accustomed to her big-city job, but turns her back on her small-town roots. I'm already looking forward to the moment of truth where she decides, momentously, to re-embrace her values.]

or, quite possibly, as a way to remind me that she has a boyfriend. (Of course, best-case is that she was reminding herself, because she was afraid she was forgetting. Probably not, but it's fun to dream.)

Moving on.

We got the gloves, we went home.

So yeah, that was fun.

Now, about reminiscing and stuff.

Let's start with work.

I started the New Year working at Wal-Mart. Literally - as usual, I was working that night. Worked there until early April, when Javi called me and asked me if I wanted to come back to Sonic. Ashley Hopkins lent a lot of credence to that argument, and I walked out. That was fun. What was really, really fun about that was that Ambra had started working there by that point, she was also working that night. Lots of freight, understaffed, all the greatest hits we know and love from working at Wal-Mart.

I started at Sonic a week later. It was, well, interesting. Ashley ended up quitting, so did Javi. I ended up working around seventy hours a week. I didn't mind the hours - one week, I had about ninety hours, that was a nice paycheck. Overall, it was a good turning point - allowed me to build a decent reserve really fast (I moved back home around the same time, worked out well). The problem I had at Sonic? Well, it was two-fold. First, as it often the case with crappy service jobs, everyone there hated working it. Now, the thing about these jobs is that the co-workers often make it bearable. That wasn't the case - they had really, really bad attitudes. I can name a few off the top of my head, but it's really not worth it. The second issue was Bubba. He was cool at first, until I got to know him. Not hiring people, not taking an active hand in his store, underordering, argh. I got sick of it.

Luckily, Sergio called from Domino's and asked me if I wanted to come be an assistant for him, as he had just gotten the store. I thought about it, but I was afraid. I hate big decisions; I seem to always mess them up. Of course, I felt pretty good about that one. I put in my two weeks at Sonic, walked out a week later. I've been working at Domino's ever since. Of course, my work history now goes Sonic - Domino's - Wal-Mart - Sonic - Domino's. Good stuff. There was a two day stint at CRI, which isn't really even worth mentioning (well, except for that).

So, yeah. Been working 40-50 (more like 45, not so much 50 anymore) hours a week there, 5-C five times a week.

There's work.

Living Situation.

Not much to talk about here. I was living at Les Chateaux, but I moved home. It does make me feel kind of a loser and all, being twenty-five, working at Domino's, being completely single, morbidly obese, good times. Of course, I'm working on all of those things. I'm twenty-five and don't have a degree, but I am back in school. I'm funding that with Domino's, and I'm working on my weight. Good stuff. Oh, and I pay rent.

[Holy crap, this movie sucks.]

Social:

HAHAHAHAHAHA. Not much to say here. Thankfully, Lilie is no longer a part of my life in any way. Passed her on Thanksgiving, didn't answer when she called. I still think about her occasionally, during depression spirals,

[This scene is actually humorous.]

but that's not really specific to her - that's more about her being the last person I was that close to, and her being such a major part of my life for so long. Comparatively speaking, of course.

So yeah, single and probably going to stay that way for a while. No real prospects or anything. I mean, I kind of have a thing for Rebecca,

[Extreme Sports Bonanza? I miss Rachael Leigh Cook pretending to be part of the marina group.]

Moving on.

but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that anything's going to happen there.

[Now the running to find his true love and prevent a misunderstanding from becoming a tragedy. Gyp and Buddy could have written a more imaginative, if more cheese-oriented, screenplay.]

So what's in store for this year? School. Work. Getting in shape. Taking control of my life, maybe growing up a little (not too much, don't worry).

So, resolutions? Not sure. I'm cutting dairy almost entirely out of my diet, but that's not a resolution so much as it is a 'I don't want to feel like crap, I'm lactose intolerant' kind of thing. I'm going to be back in school, but that's too much of a thing that's like, interwoven into your life to be a New Year's Resolution. The same goes for health things. I'll get back to you on that one.

Ashlee Simpson -- Boyfriend

I can see the things I'd like to be

So I had this weird, crazy dream. It's starting to fade already - I don't know if everyone's fade like mine. As long as I don't get out of bed, I can remember them just fine. But as soon as I stand up, they start fading really, really quick. The parts that I've already gone over in my head a few times, I remember. Even then, though, they fade. I come back two days later to a blog post I've made about them, and I don't remember that at all. It's weird.

Anyway. This one starts off on Scrubs, probably because I've been watching so much of it lately. I really like the show - the more I watch, the more I like it (even episodes I've already watched). I can't really remember that part. But then it goes to me being at home. There's a flier about someone coming home from California to do a lecture about something. I eventually realize it's Chelsea (had to have her in there somehow), and decide I'm definitely not going to that. Then, somehow, it ends up me being at a big house on a hill, and she's living nearby, training some weird, giant aquatic mammal. Then one day, I'm in the pool, and it's there - swims right in front of me. I'm really scared it's going to bite me, but it swims less than a foot away from me, and it just looks at me. Kinda scary. Oh, and Chelsea's swimming nearby. I really don't get it.

To be fair, this description doesn't do this dream justice at all. It was long and epic. I'm talking plots, recurring sub-themes, the whole ball.

In other news, Christmas was pretty good. Got a new desk, a new car seat, a chess set that moves its own pieces, and the Game of Thrones series. Good stuff. It was a lot of fun on Christmas Eve's party at work, we had a small party. It was me, Sergio, Bill, and Jenni working, and we were slow. Bill left at 5-ish, so it was just the three of us for the next four hours. We made cookies and had punch and wore Christmas hats. Well, Jenni wore one. I had a pair of reindeer antlers with bells on them that Jenni had been able to get the girl at Wal-Mart to give her. We ended up going to IHOP after work - the two of us - then talked a little about how she was going to be alone all night and wake up on Christmas Eve by herself, which sucks. Long story short, I drove her to Austin so she could spend the night at her grandmother's, a sweet little Hispanic lady. (Memorable quote: "Now do you believe I'm Hispanic?") Had some rum cake and hot cocoa, got lost on the way back. Well, not really lost, just went the long way. The *long* way. Came home from Austin by way of Dripping Springs - 290 to Ranch Road 12 - and it ended up taking quite a while to get home. That was cool, though.

Anyway, really enjoyed spending that much time with her. Super neat girl. Not like we'll ever date or anything, because that would be awesome. But she's too good for me. Not like that - not in a low self-esteem way, but in a purity kind of way. She even told me I shouldn't shave my head.

Bought my books online this year, saved a *ton* of money - $100 used versus $35 new, and $100 new/non-resellable versus $50 used. Good stuff. Seventeen days left until everything starts up.

Amber G -- Passing Time

They can't hurt you now

Quick updates.

I think I might have adult-onset Lactose Intolerance. Probably not, kinda far out there, but worth a thought. I've had, well, issues after both big birthday dinners, both cheese-heavy, and more or less, for the last two weeks. Mom suggested eating really soft foods - rice and bananas, mainly. Stopped by Wal-Mart after work, bought six pounds of bananas (since I can't eat pizza at work right now). Ran into Rebecca, talked briefly. She mentioned that she was covered in flour; I, like an idiot, didn't ask her why. Ah, well, it's a guaranteed conversation starter next time I see her.

I was really, really depressed for a while about a week ago. I'm basically over it, but it was weird. I don't know why, there wasn't any trigger, no recurring theme, nothing. Good times.

Work's going to be interesting; we're getting Pulse next week, which is this great new snazzy PoS (Point of Sales, not the other one) system that's supposed to really just be the bees' knees. Or something like that. Speaking of which, Jenn, the training director, is an idiot. In an email sent to the company regarding the transition to Pulse, she meant to say "Thank you for your patience." Of course, she went the wrong way on the patience/patients homophones, and tried to write patients. That would have been pretty bad, kinda dumb. Of course, she had to make it worse. She misspelled patients "paitents". It was awesome.

Cascada -- Because of the Night

Seemed like you and me could wait forever

I was feeling pretty depressed, so I asked Bill to close for me tonight, I ended up leaving around 9-ish. Came home, took a nap, been up since around 3-ish. Been kind of puttering around ever since. Managed to finish 5-starring everything on Medium on GH2, thanks to Ambra. She did 5 stars on all the easy and about 95% of the medium. That made things a *lot* easier on me. I've now beat GH1 on expert, GH2 on hard, I just have Free Bird to beat to beat 2 on expert, and two songs in the final set on GH3. I'm not sure where I'm at on Rock the '80's. I think I'm going to deactivate my WoW account once school starts back up, I'm not sure that I'll have any time at all to play, other than the occasional evening I happen to not have any homework. At some point soon, I plan to post a list of things I need to do before January 14th, the beginning of the spring '08 semester. I know I need to redo parts of my room, work on my current paperwork filing system, clean out my dresser, and get below 300 pounds.

Alex Megane -- Hurricane

This is the story of the lalala girl, from lalala land

So, a quick update of various facets of my life, in a rare moment where I'm not doing anything else.

Domino's is going fine. I'm closing five nights a week, working around fifty hours. It's a cut in pay from Sonic, to be sure, but only because I'm working fifteen to twenty hours a week less than I was at Sonic. However, working here doesn't leave me emotionally and psychologically drained - I don't spend my entire first day off sleeping and/or lying in bed, unable to move. That's nice. The drivers have pretty much accepted me as a manager - not that they had a *ton* of choice in the matter - I just mean that they listen to what I say with only minimal resistance. I don't get any "But Sergio does it this way" or "But Bill would let me do that!". That's nice. The inside crew is pretty cool, too. Sergio has really opened up, talks a lot more now. Part of that is being GM, he pretty much has to, though if he were really determined, I'm sure he could find a way to continue being really quiet while GMing, but he's not.

I went through the drive-through at Jack-in-the-Box a while back, and holy crap! Rebecca was there! I wasn't going to say anything, because I, well, really had no idea what *to* say. However, she initiated conversation with me! - "Hey, haven't seen you here in a while!" I told her I was working at Domino's again, and she told me how she didn't like working at JitB, how she was thinking of going to apply at Wal-Mart or something. I took all that as a positive sign, that she wouldn't have said any of that if she thought I was just a creepy bastard that she dreaded dealing with. I've only seen her once since then, which is kind of a drag. Ah, well. It's usually this two random douchèbag guys working the window when I go through, which makes me sad. Ah, well. I've been referring to her as my pretend girlfriend, which I guess is kind of creepy, but it's not like I'm stalking her or anything.

Lilie called me a few days ago, I actually called her back. Nothing terribly notable there, she sounded sad and said she missed me, that she was sorry we hadn't talked in like two (four) months. I don't know how to tell her that she's just not an important part of my life anymore, that I've moved on. Completely. Whatever.

Still set for going back to school in January, and I'm both excited and nervous about it. I mean, I'll be graduating around the time I'm twenty-seven or so, be fresh out of college with no real experience, having had worked in food service for the last seven - nine years. Yeah, that's *really* going to impress potential employers. Obviously, I need to get some experience between then and now, I guess through internships or whatever.

Got my account back from David, that's fun.

Paffendorf -- Lalala Girl

This shit is bananas, B - A - N - A - N - A - S

I just spent the last six hours making pizzas.

And it was, at a conservative estimate, about a hundred times better than working at Sonic, with the exception of the three people I truly miss.

I mean, the attitude was totally different. Everyone was joking around, having a good time. It reminded me of the good days at Sonic, when I had a great crew. Of course, with 10-14 people on a shift, the possibility of a few bad apples ruining it for me was a lot greater. I think at our peak yesterday, there were four people inside, which was too many. They immediately accepted me as on of their own, possibly because I already knew how to do everything - I didn't start slapping dough until everyone but Juan was gone, but I can still do that really well, as well. The night went fine, even when it was just Sergio and me; I handled just about all of the closing duties myself, and I think I'll be closing by myself next week.

Of course, there were a *few* low points of the evening. I had a bad headache most of the night, but of course, I don't really blame Domino's for that. Oh, being back in the store also brings back a lot of memories. Most of them are really good, but a few, well, are ones I don't really dwell on anymore - most notably Lilie. I mean, I'm over her. Well, as over anyone as I ever get, which is mostly.

Gwen Stefani -- Hollaback Girl

Now, that this love has overcome me

So, it's been quite a while since I've done an in-depth post about what's going on in my life, so I'm going to try to provide a brief history of what I've been up to.

So, I was working at Wal-Mart, doing overnight stocking on the grocery side of the store. I really liked it, for a few reasons. First, I didn't really have to deal with any customers at all. Well, I did occasionally, but it was stuff like "Hey dude, where's the Gatorade?" "Aisle six, right side, halfway down the aisle after the Kool-Aid." Usually, two to three of those a night, more on Fridays and Saturdays. The time period was great - 10 pm to 7 (8/9/10) am, which was fantastic. Work all night, sleep all day. I loved it. Had two days off, which didn't change from week to week. I was working with Matt, which meant we never had scheduling conflicts (at least, not work-based) for playing racquetball, and it made transportation fairly simple. There was even a cute girl, Robyn, to look at from time to time.

However, there were some definite downsides. First, we were constantly understaffed. I mean, systemically and intentionally. (In a related side-note, they've recently laid off even more people, causing massive understaffing throughout the entire store. Productivity has suffered as a result.) We were often running behind due to our lack of sufficient people. Of course, management didn't see it that way - we were "slackers" and "needed to pick up our pace." Juan constantly threatened us, saying that when the remodel was over, we were going to all be replaced by the remodel workers that they hired. That kind of frustrated me. At some point, Javi called me on my cell, asking if I still wanted to work there (in desperation, while searching for a job before Wal-Mart called, I stopped by there to see if they would hire me back. Dave waffled on it, but eventually left the option up to Javi, who called me, though by the time he did, Wal-Mart had called, so I declined.). He told me that Bubba, the former GM of Buda, was now our GM, and that things were totally different. Also, Ashley (of Domino's fame) was also an assistant there now, which was really neat. I really like working with her. We talked about it briefly, and I told him I'd call him back.

As luck would have it, a few days later, we had a ton of freight come in, a few people call in, and Juan was in particularly rare form. Ambra had started working there at this point, and Mindy was gone. Well, at that point, I decided I'd had enough. I went to the bathroom, called Ashley, confirmed that they still had a place for me, and walked out. It was fun. I clocked out, went up to Juan, and handed him my discount card that had my clock in bar code on the opposite side. He was kind of caught off-guard, as a good walk-out will always catch management. It was awesome. He told me that he'd always confirmed (excused) my absences - I had like four or so - and that he certainly wasn't referring to me when he talked about how much we suck. I wasn't going to be dissuaded, though, and I left. I kind of apologized to Ambra on the way out, because she was still there with all this terrible freight to have to deal with. On the way out, I stopped to talk to Robyn, let her know I enjoyed working with her but that I was leaving, and that I thought she was fantastically cute.

The personnel lady called me a few days later about why I left. I told her about Juan, she said something like "Well, that's certainly not true." Not the point. "Well, he shouldn't have done that." Yeah, I believe I indicated I already thought as much by leaving. She asked me if I wanted to talk to Terry (our GM), I half-heartedly accepted, but never showed up.

The next day, I was talking to Javi and Bubba at Sonic. One week after that, I walked into my first day of Sonic. That was interesting, because only Javi, Ashley, Bubba, and a few people who were still there - Larry, Cruz, Pedro - knew who I was. Everyone else just saw this new guy - goofy looking - in a shirt and tie, walking around like he knew the store like the back of his hand. Which I do. Anyway. I knew it was going to suck going in to it, but I figured, hey, Javi and Ashley are there, so how bad could it really be?

I quickly became acquainted with the new crew, which was in some ways better, some ways worse than the old crew I dealt with. Well, the old crew was probably better in most respects. I won't go too much into specifics, but there were some very constant things that really defined the new crew. Whining, for one thing. Attitude problems, for another. There were a few people I really despised, and a few people I really liked (Emily, Ashley S, Katie). Things started off pretty good. I started getting around 70 hours a week, which was nice, since it amounted to a FUCKTON of overtime, and very nice paychecks.

Then Ashley left.

That really, really, really sucked. I was really sad that she left, but I totally understand her decision to leave. She was really frustrated, since she had only wanted to be part time, and she hadn't worked less than 50 hours on any week since she started. She felt that either Bubba or upper management, whoever was responsible for it, just wasn't doing enough to get us more assistants, and Bubba kept scheduling her a ton (more on this later). That, and how frustrating and stressful of a job it is to begin with, made her leave. We didn't get another manager or anything for a quite a while, and we had a bit of a staffing crisis for a while. We got through that.

Then Javi left. That was really the beginning of the end for me, as well. Javi's last week, I worked 90 hours without a day off. Now, I was used to 70 hours a week with one day off, and that was okay. However, 90/0 wasn't really okay. Well, it would have been okay, but Bubba didn't see fit to warn me or anything. I mean, he knew about it as early as Sunday morning, possibly earlier. I wish he would have warned me or something, since he wasn't releasing the schedule for the week until Monday afternoon, which was also really frustrating. So I had to take this annoying Serv-Safe class (8 hours, 90 multiple-choice question test, test took about six and a half minutes), then go in and close afterwards. That was alright, since the early draft of the schedule had me off on Tuesday. However, I walk in around 6:30, look at the schedule, and find out I don't have a day off that week. Yeah, I was kind of upset. I mean, I know a lot of people work seven days a week, at jobs much harder than mine. I just wish Bubba would have warned me or something.

So Javi left, and it was just me, Angie, and Bubba. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Bubba took over doing the order and the schedule. We'd run out of stuff a lot more - tater tots, ranch, barbecue sauce, M&M's, spoons, bananas, sugar, you name it. That, and people would get scheduled when they weren't available, which, to be fair, stopped for the most part eventually. There were several weeks, though, where a lot of people couldn't come in when they were scheduled and it was our fault. Good times. The other fun thing about having Bubba in charge of scheduling... well, it really had nothing to do with him being in charge of scheduling, but something systemic about him managing, was that he expected every employee to be 100% devoted to the Drive-In. I'm not talking about just while they're on the clock, which I agree with, but ALL THE TIME. Every time someone called in, he'd ask people to stay late, and come in early, and come in on their only day off, and would get annoyed when they couldn't. I mean, I'm talking about people who'd already worked eight, ten hours, or had worked six days and it was their only day off. We didn't seem to be pursuing the long term solution, hiring more people so we didn't have to keep asking people to work stupid amounts of hours.

So yeah, I have a few grievances with Bubba as a GM. I think part of it might be the difference between Buda and San Marcos. Most of our crew members, at least non-cook, are college kids, who aren't looking for 40 hours a week, and will work that much if you need them to, but didn't apply for that. They're going to highly value their time outside of work, and place a greater premium on social time and interaction then on being at work, hence the frustration with always, ALWAYS being called in. Now, most of them are more than happy to help out occasionally. However, it starts to get annoying, when every other day, you're asked to stay late or come in early, when every day you "have off", you're asked to come in for a bit. There's a line between "helping out" and "being expected to be overly devoted to your job". That's one of the reasons Ashley left, as well.

So yeah, I put in my two weeks notice almost two weeks ago, on Saturday the fourth. I walked out on Friday the tenth. Almost made it. I didn't really tell anyone that I was leaving, except for Aaron, the assistant we were borrowing from Montopolis (who was a friend of Bubba's) a few days a week. That week, we finally had a new assistant start; he was an ex-GM from Round Rock or something.

Yeah, I feel pretty bad about walking out. Sort of. I mean, not really. I was really pissed off. Oh, yeah, forgot to mention, Sergio got the store, and called to offer me an MIT position. So I took that; I'll be starting there in a week. That's fun.

So that's where I am in terms of work. On to other matters.

I moved out of Les Chateaux a month or so after starting at Sonic. Moved back home instead of getting a 3-bedroom place with Ambra and David, decided to go back to school and the cheap rent offered at home would be a huge help towards that goal. I'm just now, three months later, that I'm finally starting to move in and get everything unpacked. I'm almost done there. Janelle moved out the other day, that was interesting. Not just into a dorm for the semester, but into a four bedroom apartment at University Springs with three dudes. That's cool. Spent Monday picking her up from the airport, then helping her move out. Got a decent entertainment center out of the deal, so I came out ahead.

Haven't talked to Lilie in, oh, probably two months now. I was going up to Austin every day off to play DDR and/or ITG2, and I'd usually call her before or during to see if she was around to see if she'd like to meet up, say hi, that kind of thing. The first time, I actually got a hold of her, and she didn't really seem very enthusiastic or anything. Every subsequent time, no answer whatsoever. A few weeks of that, and no reply whatsoever to any IMs/phone calls/emails, and I got the hint.

So yeah, I've already put in my application at SWT. I got re-accepted as well, so that's neat. I just have to go in for an academic advising appointment, then I'll be good to go. I'm starting in the Spring, and I'm pretty sure of what classes I'd like to take - Discrete I, Data Structures, Chem I, whatever CS course is next in my progression, and possibly Probability, depending on scheduling.

Oh, I sold my WoW account to David. Just didn't have the time working 70 hours a week, usually in 12-14 hour days. That, and the internet connection here SUCKED. It's getting better; we've upgraded our connection, and are on our third modem. So, we'll see. I'm contemplating buying it back, but I want to see how things go at Domino's first. Oh, Gina marked me down as non-rehireable, so that's fun. Eileen let Sergio rehire me anyway, so that's cool.

I think that's a sufficient return to blogging. More to come as updates warrant.

DJ Smooth -- DUI 091406