Let’s start it off with another Rockies loss. With this one against San Diego, 8-2 (We barely avoided a shutout and a no hitter with a two run homer by Mark Ellis) we officially have a losing season at home. There are only a handful of games left until we can get ready for next season. I know it is early, but I am going to try to put some money away every payday so that we can travel down to Arizona next season for spring training. I’m officially declaring that the reason we didn’t go to the World Series this year much less the playoffs was because my wife and I didn’t make it down there this year. So, this season is on us. We’ll make up for it next year. On the other hand, the Bronco’s beat the Bengals. It was a good game. We had some very good drives. And, we were out like five of our starters. During the game Eddie Royal got hurt. It looked like he pulled a groin muscle. Hopefully he and the others will be better next week. We won by two points, and it was one of those games that came down to the minute. (The best kind) Since we were short people, Tim Tebow came in as a wide receiver. They didn’t throw it to him or even in his direction. I would have liked to see if he can catch. I also watched the Kansas City game. It was a blowout. They started off with a good running game, but floundered after that first drive. The Raiders and San Diego did well again, even though they both lost. This is only the second week, but the three of us, Broncos, Raiders, and Chargers are all tied in our division with 1-1 records. We’ll see how it goes next week against the Titans. They are also 1-1. It should be a good game.
My mom got back from her trip to Arizona this weekend. I went over to visit today. She said that she had a great time except she really wished she would have had her car. She went down with my Uncle. He was moving some of his stuff from Douglas Wyoming to Wickenburg Arizona where he bought my cousin’s house and is planning on retiring. My cousin actually built the entire house. They went for the wedding of the same cousin and said that it was very nice. They had it outside and the day was perfect. My cousin actually designed the wedding dress and prepared all of the food. I had no idea he was so diversified. My mom spent hours talking about all the stuff they did. It was surprising it could all fit into a one week visit. She said that all of my uncles and aunties were there along with most of my cousins. None of the kids in my family went, unfortunately. I wouldn’t have been able to get any time off, not after taking time off to go see my daughter graduate boot camp. We’re still recovering from that.
Speaking of our trip, I took five days off and arranged it so that I worked on days off before and after. But, our pay period is funky. It ends on Thursday and starts on Friday. To make matters worse, we get paid every two weeks, and the vacation was between the two pay periods. That meant that I had two checks that were missing days of work. The first week, I was missing two and this last one I was missing only one. But, when I got my check it was two days short. Needless to say, I was a little concerned. I was expecting only one day’s worth of money being short and arranged the bills for it. I made a stink and everyone was looking into what was wrong. We get paid on Thursday, but we don’t get our pay stubs until Monday in the mail. So, all weekend, I was griping to my bosses about getting the money they owed me. Then, in the shower this morning, I was thinking about it. And, since I work graveyard, I finally realized that the hours I worked on the Thursday to close out the pay period wasn’t on the check from midnight until six in the morning. Those six hours would be on the next check in two weeks. So, I wasn’t really short. When my check stub came in, that was the problem. So, I’m going to have to re-arrange the bills again. Then, there was a memo on the counter when I came to work today. One of the office personal was fired over the weekend. It also said that if anyone was interested in her job to send their resume. She was an operations manager and I’ve done that type of work before. I think I’m going to send in my resume. It will be day work and I would be on salary. I’ve heard some horror stories about long shifts from the field managers, but I don’t think that extends to the office. We’ll see. I think I’m going to send my resume in and see what happens. If it isn’t more money, I’m not even going to consider it.
My daughter went to the eye doctor today. She has some kind of sty in the inside of her eyelid. It looks pretty gnarly. They gave her some cream to put on it twice a day. They said that if it doesn’t get rid of it, they might have to dig it out with a knife. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
On Friday, the guy I work with decided he was going to clean out the refrigerator at work. He came in on that day and I was already in. The two people we were replacing were ready to go and he came in complaining on how dirty it was. He announced to everyone what he was planning and the first thing out of the two people that were leaving were to not throw out any of their stuff. Laughing, he said he wouldn’t do anything like that. So, I didn’t even mention the brand new unopened pack of M&Ms I had in the freezer. We spend one hour in the control room and one hour out, switching all night. I was the first one in that day so, he went on his cleaning rampage. After we switched, I just happened to go down into the break room to find that he threw out not only my M&Ms, but everyone else’s stuff too. Then, he threw the full bag of trash into the dumpster so even if I wanted to retrieve my M&Ms from the wastebasket, I couldn’t get them. He didn’t seem to realize that he did something wrong. I made sure he understood that my stuff was my stuff and he shouldn’t ever mess with it. Today when I came in, I found a new bag down in the freezer. Unfortunately for him, everyone else that works here wasn’t as nice as I was. Over the weekend, he didn’t get it too bad because it was only weekend workers were here. But, today all of the regular people found out what he did. He’s not the most popular person at the moment. It looks like he might have to spend his paycheck replacing everything and I am sure that he will be replacing food that was never in the refrigerator. (That’s what you get for messing with other people’s stuff)
My son and his girlfriend might be breaking up. They had a big blowout over the weekend and it got messy. I don’t want to get into it here, but I’m hoping everything will work out between them whether they break up or stay together. He called my wife today while we were driving somewhere and they were at the Halloween store. He was going to get her her costume already. But, my wife talked him into waiting until we could go with them. I want her to be a superhero. I saw some really cute Batgirl, Supergirl, and Wonder Woman costumes. But, all she wants to be is a princess. She was Belle last year, and it looks like she wants to be Cinderella this year.
Well, I better get busy. I’m putting Boston, Journey, and Chicago into the playlist tonight. I’m going to work on The Great Detective and the River of Magic today. I got my daughter’s address, so I have to send her a detective case. She’s doing really well in Georgia. She’s out of phase 4 and into phase 5. Now, she can go off of the base and wear regular clothes when she is off duty. She might not be able to come down for Thanksgiving because of a rule about traveling more than four states on extended weekends. So, she looked into how much it would cost for my wife and I to fly down there. But, I don’t want her spending all her money on us especially when she’ll be coming home a month later. I know, she wants to have some family around during the holiday, but that’s a lot of money. She’s going to need it when she gets back here and goes into college. But, more on that later. I have to get going. My hour is almost up and I have to post this.
-Thom
Monday, September 19, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Sep 12
Ok, this is starting to become a habit. It is Tuesday again instead of Monday. I was all ready to get this blog entry done yesterday, but the Broncos were playing Monday Night Football and after the game, I had to do real work. But, more of that later. Let’s start this off with my youngest daughter. She got her driver’s license yesterday. I think I was more worried about her getting it than I was about my other daughter. When my eldest daughter was preparing for her driver’s test, we let her drive much more often than we let my younger daughter. But, then we had two cars and gas was still high, but not as expensive as it has been this year. I don’t really know what happened, maybe the year just got away from me. But, we just didn’t have enough opportunity to let her drive. Over the last few months, however, we have been giving her a lot more chances. And, she was steadily getting better and better. Yesterday, when we went in for the test, I just had a bad feeling. Then, they finally called her name. I had brought a book to read while I was waiting, and I think I only managed to read two pages before the test was done. She was all happy, telling me that she passed. She said that she really just drove around the block. There was a school zone that they went through, but she said that she didn’t get over twenty miles an hour during any of the test so it didn’t matter. I wasted a bunch of worrying for nothing. Until we get another car, I don’t think she’s going to have as much opportunity as she would like to drive on her own. But, I can already see that I’m not going to be able to drive for quite some time unless I’m going to work.
The first Bronco game of the season was yesterday on Monday night. I was all amped for it. We were playing the Raiders, our main rivalry. The last time we played them, we lost 59-14. It was embarrassing. They beat us both games last year. It really sucked. I thought we were going to see some serious payback. I had to work, so I was only expecting to be able to see the first quarter. There is a radio at work where I would be able to listen to the rest of the game. It’s not ideal, but what was I gonna do. So, I started watching the pre-game, and the more I watched, the better I thought the Broncos were going to do. It took forever for the game to actually get started. It was on a weird channel that I never watch. I had everything ready to go. I had my feet up and the rest of the family in the other room. I was ready to go. It was supposed to start at 8:15, but it didn’t start until nearly 8:30. I was getting a little upset. For a minute I didn’t think I was going to get to see any of the game. Then, right as the kickoff was about to begin, the feed switched to the New England Patriots game. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I had the wrong channel. I quickly grabbed the remote and looked up the information on the channel I was on. It said it was the Bronco game. Frantically I looked for another channel that might be showing the game. I found ESPN. It said it was showing it. I flipped it over, and it was also the Patriots game. I was getting mad now. I flipped it back, and the Patriots were still on. Then, it suddenly switched to the correct game. I missed the kick off and we were lined up for the first play. We didn’t do very well on our first possession. We scored first with a field goal, but from where I sat, it looked like we blew a couple of opportunities. We lost the lead after that and never got it back. I did manage to watch the entire first quarter. Then, I had to go to work. I have never seen the streets of Denver so empty. I think I was the only person in town that wasn’t watching the game. The radio wasn’t the best way to listen to the game. The stadium was so loud that I couldn’t hear most of the commentary. Then, I had work stuff I had to do and missed the last quarter entirely. We ended up losing 23-20. Not the start I was looking for. I am defiantly not missing next week’s game.
To add insult to injury, the Rockies lost again today. We took two games from the Cubs over the weekend. I didn’t get to see either of them because they were day games and I had to work some overtime on Saturday. That meant that I slept through both games. We were doing pretty good today against Milwaukee. We put up a run in the fourth and we had a bunch of opportunities to get more runs. But, it just wasn’t to be. Prince Fielder homered in the sixth to tie us and then we took it into extra innings trying to pull out the win. We went eleven innings before they shut us down. We’re going to play them again tomorrow. It is just a two game series then we take on the Giants. We are officially 69-78. If you would have asked me at the beginning of the year, there is no way that we would be that many games under five hundred. We should be at least a dozen games over. We had a great team and started with a bang. I don’t know what happened this season. It just didn’t go our way. But, there is always next year. I’m sure we’ll have an entirely different pitching staff and some of the new guys they brought up look pretty good. We’ll see how it goes. We don’t have any chance to make the playoffs this year, but I’m still going to root for them.
Just thinking about the games is bringing me down. So, I’m going to put White Lion, Pink Floyd, and Guns and Roses into the playlist tonight for background music and I’m going to work on the River of Magic.
-Thom
The first Bronco game of the season was yesterday on Monday night. I was all amped for it. We were playing the Raiders, our main rivalry. The last time we played them, we lost 59-14. It was embarrassing. They beat us both games last year. It really sucked. I thought we were going to see some serious payback. I had to work, so I was only expecting to be able to see the first quarter. There is a radio at work where I would be able to listen to the rest of the game. It’s not ideal, but what was I gonna do. So, I started watching the pre-game, and the more I watched, the better I thought the Broncos were going to do. It took forever for the game to actually get started. It was on a weird channel that I never watch. I had everything ready to go. I had my feet up and the rest of the family in the other room. I was ready to go. It was supposed to start at 8:15, but it didn’t start until nearly 8:30. I was getting a little upset. For a minute I didn’t think I was going to get to see any of the game. Then, right as the kickoff was about to begin, the feed switched to the New England Patriots game. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I had the wrong channel. I quickly grabbed the remote and looked up the information on the channel I was on. It said it was the Bronco game. Frantically I looked for another channel that might be showing the game. I found ESPN. It said it was showing it. I flipped it over, and it was also the Patriots game. I was getting mad now. I flipped it back, and the Patriots were still on. Then, it suddenly switched to the correct game. I missed the kick off and we were lined up for the first play. We didn’t do very well on our first possession. We scored first with a field goal, but from where I sat, it looked like we blew a couple of opportunities. We lost the lead after that and never got it back. I did manage to watch the entire first quarter. Then, I had to go to work. I have never seen the streets of Denver so empty. I think I was the only person in town that wasn’t watching the game. The radio wasn’t the best way to listen to the game. The stadium was so loud that I couldn’t hear most of the commentary. Then, I had work stuff I had to do and missed the last quarter entirely. We ended up losing 23-20. Not the start I was looking for. I am defiantly not missing next week’s game.
To add insult to injury, the Rockies lost again today. We took two games from the Cubs over the weekend. I didn’t get to see either of them because they were day games and I had to work some overtime on Saturday. That meant that I slept through both games. We were doing pretty good today against Milwaukee. We put up a run in the fourth and we had a bunch of opportunities to get more runs. But, it just wasn’t to be. Prince Fielder homered in the sixth to tie us and then we took it into extra innings trying to pull out the win. We went eleven innings before they shut us down. We’re going to play them again tomorrow. It is just a two game series then we take on the Giants. We are officially 69-78. If you would have asked me at the beginning of the year, there is no way that we would be that many games under five hundred. We should be at least a dozen games over. We had a great team and started with a bang. I don’t know what happened this season. It just didn’t go our way. But, there is always next year. I’m sure we’ll have an entirely different pitching staff and some of the new guys they brought up look pretty good. We’ll see how it goes. We don’t have any chance to make the playoffs this year, but I’m still going to root for them.
Just thinking about the games is bringing me down. So, I’m going to put White Lion, Pink Floyd, and Guns and Roses into the playlist tonight for background music and I’m going to work on the River of Magic.
-Thom
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Sep 6
It was very nice having a week to relax after the long trip to S. Carolina and Georgia. I did as little as humanly possible. So, I guess it is time to get back into the groove of things. It’s Tuesday instead of Monday. I’ve been putting weekly blog entries instead of daily entries because most of the time I’m just boring and don’t have anything to say. But, it was the Taste of Colorado the four day weekend that I didn’t get. So, I’m doing it today.
The Taste of Colorado is a nice little party they have downtown. They shut off a bunch of streets, even Broadway, the main thoroughfare through Denver, and they set up all kinds of booths where you can do pretty much anything legal. Everyone comes over to my building, a block away, to do all the illegal stuff. We were chasing people away all four days. You wouldn’t believe how many people will just whip it out and pee right in the middle of everything. Our building was painted in pee over the last few days. But, other than a lack of bathrooms, it is a fun event. I only went once, but my kids usually go. This year, I don’t think they did. But, it’s been one of those years.
We had a family reunion on my wife’s father’s side. That meant that there were a lot of people. Only half of them spoke English. And, I didn’t know most of them. That didn’t stop everyone from trying to talk to me. This one guy with a sunflower seed shell stuck to his chest acted like we were best friends. I was pretty sure I had never seen him before in my life. Last year, we had one of these. It was a potluck. We brought potato salad and the stuff no one ever brings like plates, napkins, forks, condiments, and stuff like that. One guy brought hamburgers. Out of the other seventy five people that attended, I think one of them brought something besides chips. This one was much more organized. Whoever organized it told everyone what to bring. So, there was food. They also told every family to bring a generic gift. There was supposed to be games and they were going to use the gifts as the prizes. Everyone did bring gifts, but no one wanted to play any of the games. So, they raffled off the prizes. They sold the tickets for a dollar each and the money was going to go to recovering costs of the party. My wife is usually pretty lucky and Saturday wasn’t the exception. She won about five times. After the first two wins, people tried to enforce a rule to only allow one win per family. But, they sold the tickets and didn’t want to give the money back for the tickets that didn’t win. So, my wife kept winning. Several people shouted out that the game was fixed, but what could anyone do. Overall, it wasn’t the best party. Most people paired off in groups of families and didn’t socialize with the other families. So, there probably won’t be one next year. At the end of the party, some girl got in a screaming match with her mother and grandmother. I’m glad she wasn’t my kid with a mouth like that. You would have thought that she was a sailor. But, if it was my kid, she wouldn’t have been shouting like that.
Good news. The Rockies won today. We played the Arizona Diamondbacks. They had beaten us the last six times in a row. It looked like they were going to do it again. We were down 3-1 when the eighth inning came up. We spanked out 7 runs putting us up 3-8 for the win. We play them again tomorrow. It would be nice to take the series from them.
The Broncos play their first game this Monday against the Raiders. That should be a great game. I am anxious to see how the boys are going to do. I think they will do better than people think. But, because I am a fan, I am bias. So, we’ll see.
I took my daughter out driving this weekend. We were just going to Subway and back to pick up lunch. She was and has been doing much better. But, she went over a curb on the way out of the parking garage. Instead of pulling off the curb and correcting herself on the road, her first reaction was to release the steering wheel and cover her eyes with her hands. Yes, I did shout. We were still rolling and I expressed rather loudly the problems taking her hands off the wheel could create. I really flustered her, but she recovered and drove the rest of the way home flawlessly. Earlier today, she drove to the school without incident also. She has her driver’s test on Monday. So we need to get some more work in. We did do a little parallel parking over the weekend and she is getting the hang of it. On her last attempt it only took her two tries to get in correctly.
My mom is going on vacation this Thursday. She is driving down to Arizona with my uncle. They are going to spend a few days down there and have some fun. Of course, I forgot to give her back the suitcase we borrowed and her camera. I’m going to have to do that before she leaves.
I went over to my brother’s house and we got to talking about my vacation. When we got around to talking about the kids, they asked about my son. He has bought a bunch of landscaping equipment, mowers, weed eaters, power washers, snow blowers, etc… He is starting his own landscaping business and has already had a few jobs. But, my brother is a district supervisor for Burger King. He has also been a supervisor for McDonalds and Carl’s Jr. He told me that he could make more money with the power washer than all of the other stuff if he signs on at fast food restaurants. They hire outside contractors to power wash their drive through lanes and all restaurants are required by law to power wash their hoods every three months. So, my son is going to look into that. He will need liability insurance. I asked about how much that would cost and was told that a million dollar liability policy would only be about five or six hundred dollars a year with experience. Since my son doesn’t have experience, it will probably cost a little more. But, he could make all kinds of money with those power washers.
My wife still hasn’t gone to get her front tooth fixed. We don’t have all of the money yet, so it might be about a month so that we can recover from the vacation before we can make up the rest of the money she needs. After she gets it fixed, she is going to go to bartending school. It is only two weeks long and it only costs a hundred and fifty bucks. She has wanted to be a bartender for a long time. I always thought that she was kidding, but she was serious. So, when I talked to a bartender that works out at the airport and he told me that he makes nineteen dollars an hour and he brings home about five hundred to eight hundred dollars every day in tips, I decided to encourage my wife to fulfill her dream. She’s going to do it after her tooth is fixed. She doesn’t feel comfortable interviewing with it chipped like it is now.
My daughter still hasn’t had a full week of school yet. They got off on Friday and didn’t go yesterday for the holiday. She only has a few classes a day because she is a senior, but she has to be there for several empty periods in the morning so that she can continue to do after school activities. She is an assistant on the soccer team. They went to Colorado Springs this weekend and came in third in the competition. I haven’t heard anything about homework, but she did a bunch of make-up work while we were down south.
Well, it’s getting late and this is turning out to be a long blog entry. So, I’m putting White Lion, Ratt, and Aerosmith into the playlist for background music and I’m going to get started on the River of Magic.
-Thom
The Taste of Colorado is a nice little party they have downtown. They shut off a bunch of streets, even Broadway, the main thoroughfare through Denver, and they set up all kinds of booths where you can do pretty much anything legal. Everyone comes over to my building, a block away, to do all the illegal stuff. We were chasing people away all four days. You wouldn’t believe how many people will just whip it out and pee right in the middle of everything. Our building was painted in pee over the last few days. But, other than a lack of bathrooms, it is a fun event. I only went once, but my kids usually go. This year, I don’t think they did. But, it’s been one of those years.
We had a family reunion on my wife’s father’s side. That meant that there were a lot of people. Only half of them spoke English. And, I didn’t know most of them. That didn’t stop everyone from trying to talk to me. This one guy with a sunflower seed shell stuck to his chest acted like we were best friends. I was pretty sure I had never seen him before in my life. Last year, we had one of these. It was a potluck. We brought potato salad and the stuff no one ever brings like plates, napkins, forks, condiments, and stuff like that. One guy brought hamburgers. Out of the other seventy five people that attended, I think one of them brought something besides chips. This one was much more organized. Whoever organized it told everyone what to bring. So, there was food. They also told every family to bring a generic gift. There was supposed to be games and they were going to use the gifts as the prizes. Everyone did bring gifts, but no one wanted to play any of the games. So, they raffled off the prizes. They sold the tickets for a dollar each and the money was going to go to recovering costs of the party. My wife is usually pretty lucky and Saturday wasn’t the exception. She won about five times. After the first two wins, people tried to enforce a rule to only allow one win per family. But, they sold the tickets and didn’t want to give the money back for the tickets that didn’t win. So, my wife kept winning. Several people shouted out that the game was fixed, but what could anyone do. Overall, it wasn’t the best party. Most people paired off in groups of families and didn’t socialize with the other families. So, there probably won’t be one next year. At the end of the party, some girl got in a screaming match with her mother and grandmother. I’m glad she wasn’t my kid with a mouth like that. You would have thought that she was a sailor. But, if it was my kid, she wouldn’t have been shouting like that.
Good news. The Rockies won today. We played the Arizona Diamondbacks. They had beaten us the last six times in a row. It looked like they were going to do it again. We were down 3-1 when the eighth inning came up. We spanked out 7 runs putting us up 3-8 for the win. We play them again tomorrow. It would be nice to take the series from them.
The Broncos play their first game this Monday against the Raiders. That should be a great game. I am anxious to see how the boys are going to do. I think they will do better than people think. But, because I am a fan, I am bias. So, we’ll see.
I took my daughter out driving this weekend. We were just going to Subway and back to pick up lunch. She was and has been doing much better. But, she went over a curb on the way out of the parking garage. Instead of pulling off the curb and correcting herself on the road, her first reaction was to release the steering wheel and cover her eyes with her hands. Yes, I did shout. We were still rolling and I expressed rather loudly the problems taking her hands off the wheel could create. I really flustered her, but she recovered and drove the rest of the way home flawlessly. Earlier today, she drove to the school without incident also. She has her driver’s test on Monday. So we need to get some more work in. We did do a little parallel parking over the weekend and she is getting the hang of it. On her last attempt it only took her two tries to get in correctly.
My mom is going on vacation this Thursday. She is driving down to Arizona with my uncle. They are going to spend a few days down there and have some fun. Of course, I forgot to give her back the suitcase we borrowed and her camera. I’m going to have to do that before she leaves.
I went over to my brother’s house and we got to talking about my vacation. When we got around to talking about the kids, they asked about my son. He has bought a bunch of landscaping equipment, mowers, weed eaters, power washers, snow blowers, etc… He is starting his own landscaping business and has already had a few jobs. But, my brother is a district supervisor for Burger King. He has also been a supervisor for McDonalds and Carl’s Jr. He told me that he could make more money with the power washer than all of the other stuff if he signs on at fast food restaurants. They hire outside contractors to power wash their drive through lanes and all restaurants are required by law to power wash their hoods every three months. So, my son is going to look into that. He will need liability insurance. I asked about how much that would cost and was told that a million dollar liability policy would only be about five or six hundred dollars a year with experience. Since my son doesn’t have experience, it will probably cost a little more. But, he could make all kinds of money with those power washers.
My wife still hasn’t gone to get her front tooth fixed. We don’t have all of the money yet, so it might be about a month so that we can recover from the vacation before we can make up the rest of the money she needs. After she gets it fixed, she is going to go to bartending school. It is only two weeks long and it only costs a hundred and fifty bucks. She has wanted to be a bartender for a long time. I always thought that she was kidding, but she was serious. So, when I talked to a bartender that works out at the airport and he told me that he makes nineteen dollars an hour and he brings home about five hundred to eight hundred dollars every day in tips, I decided to encourage my wife to fulfill her dream. She’s going to do it after her tooth is fixed. She doesn’t feel comfortable interviewing with it chipped like it is now.
My daughter still hasn’t had a full week of school yet. They got off on Friday and didn’t go yesterday for the holiday. She only has a few classes a day because she is a senior, but she has to be there for several empty periods in the morning so that she can continue to do after school activities. She is an assistant on the soccer team. They went to Colorado Springs this weekend and came in third in the competition. I haven’t heard anything about homework, but she did a bunch of make-up work while we were down south.
Well, it’s getting late and this is turning out to be a long blog entry. So, I’m putting White Lion, Ratt, and Aerosmith into the playlist for background music and I’m going to get started on the River of Magic.
-Thom
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)