Sorry, sorry sorry
Unplanned moratorium, I guess. Not much news. Have Rendezvous with the Boy Scouts this weekend. The very last one. Ever. They're selling Camp Butterfield next spring. I don't know what the reasons behind the sale are, but I'm pretty sure there are politics involved. Other than that, just work eat sleep repeat, with a change up now and then. Trying to stay out of trouble. :)

Dum de dum
Topic: Wedding Plans
I had a stroke of luck, or something. Went to the library last week, and they have a couple of short shelves in the entryway where they have books and magazines that have been taken out of circulation for sale or giveaway. There was a stack of outdated Bride's magazines from 2000 in the giveaway pile. I, of course, grabbed the whole stack and ran, giggling wildly. I have since pored through 6 of them, torn out pictures of dresses I like, and read articles until my eyes crossed. No wonder the dishes are stacked all the way from the counter to the bottom of the cupboards! heh heh (grimace) In the course of said perusing, I have realized that the pattern I bought intending to have made is no longer really what I want. I'm not changing my mind drastically. I'm just considering the practicality of a 2 layer dress. I've found several with the elements I want combined into one dress. In fact I found what is most likely the PERFECT dress. Unfortunately, it was in one of the 5 yr old magazines, and by one of the designers that is no longer as widely spread. (Or so I presume by the fact that there are about a third as many dresses by this company in the current issues.) Today I returned the movies we borrowed on Saturday, and borrowed the 2 most recent issues of Bride's, just to see how the styles have changed. As expected, the things I like are no longer very popular, which will make finding an inexpensive dress off the rack that much harder. But, I still have hope. I plan to go through the David's Bridal website again, and look for something close to my current ideal, which is both similar and different than the picture previously posted. (whee, a bit of alliteration for you poets out there...) If I find another picture that's closer to what I'm looking for, I'll try to put it on here for all o' y'all to look at! :)

I want bells to ring, a choir to sing...
Topic: Wedding Plans
a white dress, the guests, the cake, the car, the whole darn thing. But, unlike Shania, I think EVERYONE needs to know right now. Well, maybe right now is a bit of an exaggeration. Tomorrow would be ok. :) James Ashton Vaughn and I will be joined in holy moley on June 3, 2006. The irreverent event will take place at the Group Lodge in Niobrara State Park. I have a dress design figured out, but have yet to decide the most cost effective route. I have three options: 1. buy off the rack; 2. buy a base dress and make a jacket to go over it; 3. make the whole thing from scratch. Still don't know who is going to do all this magic sewing. I have Andy's phone number, but I am uncertain whether I should trust him. He seems a little flighty, and this is important. It's not a costume for a play, it's a wedding gown. Then again, I guess a wedding is a play of a different kind. Anyway, I digress. We have very few details figured out at this point, but are discussing things on a daily basis. Will update this as often as possible.

Huh, something I just realized. He still hasn't actually proposed...hmmm. Hope he doesn't forget! :)

It's me again, Margaret
Mood:  chatty
Sorry I haven't posted anything in the last two weeks. I've become highly addicted to Neopets, and am spending far too much time doing that than anything else. But, at least I'm staying out of trouble, right? Let's see, what's happened since the second...
On August 7th, Jim and I attended the Vaughn Family Reunion at TahaZouka Park in Norfolk. It was good to see some of the more distant relatives, and some I hadn't met yet. The food was good, but we didn't win any of the door prizes. Oh well. Some excitement when it came to picture taking time, as Jerry's girlfriend tried to decide whether she was welcome in the picture. Maybe she's starting to get the hint that the rest of us don't like her very much.
August 8th, Jim has moved to third shift with me, saving us at least $150 in gas each month because we only have to drive one vehicle. Yay! The prodigal employee Mandy has returned and taken over Jim's former shift.
August 9-14, work, eat, sleep, repeat.
August 15th, Jim's 11yr old son Robert comes to visit for a couple of days. Jess gets burned out of the mommy scene after 4 hours. (Thank God I'm not pregnant. That on top of preteen trauma would probably drive me over the deep end.)
August 16th, bad news from the East Coast. Jim's adoptive father Steve Roy has colon cancer, and it's spreading to his liver. Keep him in your prayers.
August 17th, Jim takes Robert to his first day of 6th grade in Wayne. Jess and Jim meet back at home and collapse into a 5 hour long power nap. We did a couple loads of laundry, had supper, then took a drive out to Grove Lake. Saw an elderly gent there who was on the tail end of a 5 day camping trip. He'd caught 30 decent sized crappie yesterday. He said that should be enough fish to last him and his wife through the winter. I like fish now and then, but not THAT much... :)
Well, that's about all the news that is news up here in Lake Wanahakalugi. See ya next time.

New Quiz
I put a new quiz on my quizzes blog. Not that it matters, because it looks like nobody's done any of the other ones on there. But, if for some reason you're so bored out of your mind that you feel like taking a look, here's the link.

stupid blogger glitch

Short n sweet
Mood:  mischievious
Slept in the new house yesterday. Took a shower too. That's about the most exciting thing that's happened in the past week. Well, that I can talk about anyway. :) Point is, I'm alive, we're moving. Nuff said.

Curses, foiled again!
Well, I called the lady at Camera Concepts on Friday. She said she'd been doing some thinking, and would probably be restructuring the open position. As a result, she won't be making a decision for a couple of weeks. She said she'd call me. Yeah, sure. I'll call her if I haven't heard from her by Aug 1.

On a more positive note, a former coworker of mine will be coming back to work soon. This is very good news, for a couple of reasons. First, I miss the girl, she makes me laugh. Second, she'll take over second shift, so Jim and I will both be on third. This means we'll be able to use only one vehicle, and will be able to afford things like...food...lol. Or an occasional night on the town. The manager says she'll try to make sure Jim still has at least 35 hours a week. So, our budget should stay about the same. The best part about this is that if we're both on the same shift, we'll see a LOT more of each other. Right now, I get home from work at about 8:30am. Jim wakes up (sort of) and talks to me for a little bit. He gets up, and I go to sleep. Later that day, Jim wakes me up to tell me he's going to work, and I get up. I putter around for a while, and I usually end up calling Jim at work. Sometimes, I go and pick up (or fix, God help us both) dinner, and take it to him. Then, at about 10:45, I go to work. Jim comes home about 11:30. So, on a typical day, we spend about an hour together, sometimes up to three. We rarely have days off together, when I have a day off, Jim works my shift. On his day(s) off we see more of each other, but still no more than about 5 hours. How on earth we can call that a relationship, I don't know. But, we're doing the best we can. Things are bound to get better before too long. God willing, they won't get much worse.

Eh?!?
Mood:  not sure
Called the lady at Camera Concepts on Friday, she'd had someone with more experience come in, and was going to interview her and another person, but said she'd call me on Monday. Well, as of 10:30 Wed night, I haven't heard from her. Plan to call her in the morning. By the time anyone reads this, I should know whether I got the job or not. I'd be crossing my fingers if it wasn't so hard to type that way. :p

In other news, the write up I signed on Tuesday morning was indeed for sleeping. I did my best to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't budge. So, I may fly off the handle a little when I talk to her this morning. I'm going to ask her why we still have 2 people on staff when I've repeatedly reported them using messenger. She can't pick and choose the rules she's going to enforce. If she's going to enforce one, she's got to enforce all of them. And if her reasoning is that she didn't catch them personally, well, then we have a problem. At that point I will be angry enough to contact the owner.

In other other news, we bought a truck today. We traded Jim's 88 Bronco in for a 93 Ranger. It sounds old, but it only has 62000 miles, and really looks like it's new. It has the sport package, but it's only a 4 cyl. And, it's a manual. I can drive it, but it may get on my nerves. No perks, no power locks or power windows, but it has a really nice cd player. It's a step side, short box. I'll try to get a picture of it on here soon. Jim was really fond of his Bronco, and is having trouble adjusting, but he should be ok. :) He says it doesn't sound right when he steps on the gas. He's used to a huge v8 vroom, and what he's getting is more like a lawnmower. lol. Poor guy, he's suffering from power withdrawal. This is the first vehicle he's had in about 20 years that isn't a 4x4. We looked and looked, but couldn't find a truck that was both a 4x4 and in our price range. With any luck, we'll do ok with what we got. I'm pretty happy with it, but it is more my style than Jim's. I hope he doesn't hate it too much, but on the other hand, he did pick it out...(sigh)

Meh
I'm still here, and more agitated every day. Most mornings my manager comes in, I give her a shift report, we talk a little about this and that, and I go home and go to bed. Lately, we've had things to do, so either I take a short nap, and get up again at noonish, or I don't go to bed at all until the afternoon. Neither one is a good option, because the very act of changing my sleep habits is likely to change my brain chemistry and bring on a hypomanic episode. That very thing happened last week, in my opinion. That's the only explanation I can come up with for surviving four days on 10 hours of sleep. And that's not 10 hours at once, it was three installments of 2, 3, and 5 hours. It's not that I didn't have the opportunity to sleep. I just had trouble falling asleep because my mind was so crammed full of stuff racing around, and once I did get to sleep, I woke up a couple of hours later, and couldn't get back to sleep. So, when I got home on Friday, we loaded Jerry's truck and Janet's truck and headed up to Plainview. "I'll have you home and in bed by noon" Jim says. Well, it was closer to two, but I crashed. In fact, I crashed so hard that I didn't get up until 9am on Sunday, 19 hours later. Even that wasn't enough. I worked Sunday night, went with Jim and Robert to pick chokecherries Monday morning, and was in bed again at two. Got up at 11 (9 more hours), and came into work at midnight on Monday. It's now 6:30am, and I'm feeling pretty good. When I got here, I was in a pretty foul mood, but I'm much better now. I was in a pretty foul mood when I got home yesterday morning too. During my talk with the manager, an employee's name came up. I was under the impression that this person had quit, as she had reportedly told one of the other supervisors that, and she was nc/ns for a shift. (That means no call/no show, in case you didn't know.) Well, turns out this person had mentioned a couple of months ago that she was planning a leave of absence to go out of state and visit her mom. She had discussed her plans with the manager, but hadn't selected a date yet. The manager asked her to let us know as soon as she decided when she'd be leaving. Well, I guess she forgot. The girl didn't even call us, we had to call her to find out why she didn't show up for her shift. Well, she was in Ohio by then. All of this is well and good, but what really ticks me off is this: we have a three strikes program for disciplinary action, with the exception of nc/ns. You only get two strikes, in other words, your first nc/ns, you get a written warning. If you nc/ns for another shift, you're terminated. This was her second offense. Thus, either she quit or she's fired, right? WRONG! Huh? you say? Me too. Apparently, if the manager feels that we're short staffed, she has the right to override this policy. I have no problem with granting her that power, but we have 20 people on staff right now. We are far from short staffed. Her secondary reasoning for not firing this person (who, in my opinion should have been fired long ago, for a variety of reasons), is that the girl was an alternate supervisor. That means, in order for the regular supervisors to have a weekend off, one of the alternates has to work. Well, while it was nice having a couple of weekends off the past 6 weeks, this person should never have been allowed to run a shift. She let people download messenger, a big no-no as that's how we got viruses on the dialer in the first place. (I have proof, she admitted it in writing on the system messenger, and neglected to remove the record.) She is not what I would call mature, and I don't appreciate her attitude. What I'm trying to say, is the (bleep) has to go. I don't care if she's been here longer than me, and I don't care if I have to work every weekend between now and Christmas. I'm not going to sit here and be "good" and follow all of the rules if she can get away with everything but murder and not get even a slap on the wrist. She's habitually late, sometimes up to a couple of hours. Sometimes she doesn't show up at all. Why should I work my butt off if she doesn't have to? The answer is simple. I can sum it up in one word: ETHICS. I am punctual, respectful (most of the time), and enforce the rules because I, unlike her, have ETHICS. And boy, does it suck. Why? Because my damn sense of ethics prevents me from acting like she does just because I can. Oh, and it gets better. Last week, during my period of sleep deprivation, I dozed off for about 15 minutes from 7:30 - 7:45. Trouble is, I got caught. Today, when I got here, there were several little notes taped to the time clock. One of them had my name on it. It said, "Jess, contact me. I have a write up for you to sign from the other day. Andrea" If this has anything to do with my dozing off, I'm going to be livid. There are no less than three people currently working here that should have been fired for repeated downloading and use of messenger. To my knowledge, they may have been written up once, if that. I've reported them dozens of times. Why are they still here? Like I said, livid. I'm angry enough to walk out, but my damn ethics won't let me. Well, them and my car payment. I really like my car, I don't want to lose it. And I REALLY don't want to make the guy who cosigned the loan angry. (No, it wasn't my dad. Even if it was, I still couldn't do it.) So, I will just continue to suffer. I'm not exactly suffering in silence, but persevere I must. I am, however, rapidly drawing near to the point that I no longer care what the manager thinks of me. If (when?) I get to that point, I will be contacting the owner. If things don't change then, I don't know what I'll do. Probably have myself committed. Meh. "Crazy? I was once crazy. They locked me in a padded cell. There were ants in that cell. Ants make me crazy. Crazy? I was once crazy..."