The stitches are out

Last night I went and had my stithes removed. For those of you that don't know, I had 3 stitches in the tip of my right index finder. We had a broken window that I was removing glass out of a week and a half ago and my finger caught one of the edges.

I really didn't want to go to the InstaCare, but I did anyway. So, last night, I'm happy that they are now out. My finger is healing fine. It still feels a little funny because there is a scab under the tip that hasn't disolved yet, but soon.

So, I can type a little better these days.

Life

Recently, my wife and I have been discussing our life in general. I can't say we are entirely excited about the position we are in. Not to say we are in a bad position, we just want something different.

I, myself, am tired of the 8-5 desk job. I want something different. I have a few ideas, but don't know that I'm 100% into being able to do it or wanting to do it. Plus the fact that I make a certain amount that I need to maintain to provide for my family.

Second, I think we are fed up with the Salt Lake area. It was so nice to get out of town this weekend and go to Manti. We passed through Manti, Ephraim, and a couple of other small towns south east of Salt Lake. Here's a good example of the differences.

I drive about a mile to get to the local Smith's store. It's not that long of a drive but with all the other "drivers" out there and all the lights, it is extremely frustrating. THEN, when I get there, its a hassle to find a parking spot, shop, buy, and get out. Everyone you run into is so rude. They cut you off on the roads and then with the shopping carts too.

Compare that with the shopping trip to Ephraim (which does have a Walmart by the way). We lost the pin for our trailer hitch. I needed a $2 part but we were in Manti Canyon. It took me 1/2 hour to 45 minutes to get down the canyon, drive through Manti down the road to the end of Ephraim. I get there, not at all minding the drive because it was peaceful for the most part (no one cutting me off) and get to Walmart. Most of the people I passed coming down the canyon are very courteous and most of them wave. I get to the Walmart in Ephraim and find a parking space pretty close to the store. I get inside and its not that crowded. Those that are there, make sure they are kind and courteous. I get to the check out without much of a problem. I drive back up the canyon with similar results as before.

There you have it. We haven't figured out what we want to do yet, but we have tossed around a few ideas. We are not going to do anything drastic in the next little while, but we are definately looking at making some changes. Hopefully in the next couple of years if we can manage to make changes that we would like.

Blog time

Well I haven't been on for a while but I feel I could blog for days. But here is one issue that strikes me hard. So we are here traveling around to new places working in these walmarts. Pros for them are well obviously money, working in the same place for 4 to 6 weeks, seeing new places, and well money. The cons are that we aren't at home. Being here for me does and is a lot better then being home alone. But here is my issue. Rick has had two employees/friends/family that I think have shown some interesting sides to them. One (his bestfriend) quit to make a lot less money and go to live in a city about 15 minutes outside of Casper, WY. I just don't understand. Knowing what Rick offered him and well offered to take his wife and baby too. I guess I am greedy I would have jumped all over it. Well he leaves mind you without any notice, then when he finds out we are going to work in Casper so he calls Rick and asks if he can come help out a little bit. I think "no" you jipped my hubby and now you want a favor and anyhow how much do we pay him. Its not fair to pay him what we were. Who knows its all frustrating. Then on to the second employee (his cousin) right after the first quits Rick and I ask very specifically are you gonna stick around and do this with us for a long while. Walmarts I mean. The answer is yes. So Rick and I figured that would be for at least 1 or 2 years. Well he gets a $2.00 an hour raise in town and he is definitely getting paid way too much for working here. Considering I myself could work faster then him. We find out earlier this week that he is quitting after Casper. Unless we have work in town then he might stick around for a little while but is no longer traveling. I know its hard to travel when you have a girlfriend at home but since what we are paying him will pretty much get him completely out of debt. He doesn't need us any more. I guess I am just so damn tired of false promises and people who can't be straight forward. It may upset us for a moment when you come out with things and feelings but finding out via the grapevine and stuff upsets us for much longer. This business is fun but hard to do with family and friends. Hell its hard period. So what do you do with an over generous hubby and people that take advantage of him? It hurts me to see it and well Rick just takes it with a F#$% it attitude. The other hard part too is knowing how much my hubby wants to do these Walmarts and how hard it is to find good hard working employees that will stick around. Who knows. Well that felt good to get of my chest. Beats paying a counselor for it. HAHA. Until the next blog.

Bowling for Lunch

Ok, so today has been a good day and I'm ready to go home. We went bowling for lunch today, it was a lot of fun. I shot a 178 and won out of everyone that went, there were 11 of us. It was just fun to go bowling again. Well now that I've wasted a few minutes I should get back to work.

Updated....

So, it's been a week since my last post and it has been a somewhat tramatic and fun week. Last Thursday, I met up with Aly, Harold and the two oldest at Lagoon. It was a lot of fun. Mason is barely 46" which means that he now qualifies for almost all of the rides. He was pretty excited.

Friday was another "event" filled night. We went to the main library branch for Muggle Maddness to celebrate the release of Harry Potter 6. Very interesting night. They had a variety of classes from Transfiguration to Potions. They had wand making and the sorting hat. They also had Quidditch out on the lawn. Thanks to my son, Griffindor won the match. He was the seeker and made a spectacular show of it. Then it was off to Media Play to collect our books.

Saturday, Aly was in bed sick all day which was convienent for her so she could read HP6. Sunday, she was still down so we didn't go to church but, thanks to my sister's dog, I had to have 3 stitches in the tip of my index finger on my right hand. She had helped to break a window and, glass being what glass is, well, there ya have it...

The rest of the week has been pretty standard. We are going camping this weekend. I have Friday and Monday off so we are going to go camping for 4 days which will be really nice for us. We are excited to get out of town for a while. Help clear the head and give us an opportunity to be together and think about what we want for the future. So....

I'll post next week to tell you of our adventures.

So Many Ideas

Ok, so I have had a head full of ideas that will probably go nowhere, but I'm going to share a few with you anyway. The first one is that I think I want to write a book... Ok, if you are done rolling on the floor laughing, let me explain. I want to write a book about "Managers" from the peon perspective. The idea is basically that as peons will help "Managers" better understand what we think makes them good. Not always the fun and games that work should be but from all aspects. Right now I have an awesome manager who gives his team free reign to do what we want, as long as it's in the scope of the project that we are working on. Which is nice because we are building a web app that is going to be done in Spring and Java. So we get a lot of chances to learn at our own pace and what we feel is important to learn. Anyway, I think it would be a short book, but it might be worth it. We'll see.

Secondly...now that I rambled that out my idea bank has closed for lunch or something, which is weird because lunch was like 2 and a half hours ago. Anyway, I have had a load of ideas and they won't leave me alone, so I think I'm going to have to act on them. Just have to finish HP and the Half-Blood Prince and I'll be set to go.

If you are a peon and want to contribute to the book, leave me a comment, clean comments please, and I'll see if it will fit into the book.

What a Nice Weekend

Well this weekend was one of the best weekends I've had in a while. I've been really big on getting stuff done in the yard, but this weekend it was just to hot to even think about going outside. So on Saturday, I got out of bed and made some pancakes for the family, then did the dishes and sat down to watch whatever cartoon that Tiaree was watching. She wanted to play a game on the computer so I gladly turned it on and let her play and I went and watched golf on TV. It was one of the majors, the British Open played in St. Andrews, the Old Course. It was nice to sit in the house and do what I wanted to. My wife, she was tied to the new Harry Potter book and she finished it during lunch on Sunday. She would have finished it on Saturday, but we watched Ocean's 11 instead. Now I'm reading HP and I'm into it about 45 pages and so far I like it. My wife and I talked about it, so I know who dies and so on and so forth, but I'm reading it because I want to see all the stuff for myself so I can speculate with her. My wife liked it and one of my friends who finished seemed unimpressed. When asked if he liked it he said "Not really". We'll discuss it after I finish the book. Anyway, it was a nice weekend and now the week has started and I have a friday, a weekend, and a vacation to look forward to next week, so I have a lot to do.

Give Peace A Chance.....

It has finally got me to a point where I'm going to complain about it. I've made mention off-blog regarding terrorism and the state of affairs in the world today. I think I've reached my limit with the past couple of events. First, London. What a bunch of wimpy, cowardice terrorists. Instead of fighting the people that are fighting against them, they are involving civilians. Of course, they may occasionally hurt or kill a soldier that fights against their kinsmen, but more often then not, it is innocent bystanders who's only crime is to have been born where they were. You're not winning very much sympathy you IDIOTS!!!! (Sorry about yelling, but I'm a little upset at the moment.)

NEXT, they kill their own kids. How stupid! To send a bomb filled SUV into a group of kids that could be your nephew/niece or other relative and blow it up ONLY because they are accepting gifts from soldiers. What kind of stupid, idiotic, cold, heartless, perosn would think up CRAP like that? The worst part, the PARENTS blame the soldiers? Does the word MENTAL mean anything to you? Sure, someone is nice to my kids and another person kills them but I'm going to blame the nice person for my child's death? If that's what wearing a burka or a towel around your head causes, count me out. If you ask me, the masses are just plain stupid.

So, now that I got that off my chest, I do REALLY hope that things will calm down. We have fellow citizens in extreme situations that they shouldn't be into. There are families without mother's and father's because we can't all get along. We can't allow someone else to be who they want to be. What a sad world we live in.

Friends

I just have to say how awesome friends are. And that I totally miss mine. The only 2 really good friends I've ever had, people that I can talk to about absolutly anything, have both moved 5 or 6 hours away. It sucks. But they can still be good friends. My one friend from St. George just emailed me and gave me some advice on some hard things that have been happening to me. She's been through it and so it really helps. She said she is there if I need to talk and I know that she means it. It really is so cool so have such good friends. I hope that I can make others eventually, some that live closer to me, but I will alway cherish the friendships that I've made and I know that I'll always be able to count on those people. They can always count on me. They will always, always be my best friends!

Time to Blog

Ok, so today is Monday, July 11th and I'm in the mood to blog. About what, is a good question. First off, I just finished an excellent bowl of this awesome pasta salad that my wife made. Yum! It was great. Next, I want to tell you that things are going alright. I spent most of the weekend asleep, which was nice. I also got a few things done. Chels and I put up the fence posts on the north side of the house and soon there will be a fence there. It was a lot of fun. Last week I finished "Speaker for the Dead". Great book, that and "Ender's Game". I think there is one more in there, but I don't have it and so I haven't started reading it yet. I'm not much of a reader, unless I ride the bus. So now I'm reading William Goldman's "good parts" version of "The Princess Bride". It is a fun read, I can picture the movie a lot as I read and it makes for a lot of fun. If you haven't read it, William Goldman is the one who did the screen play for the movie and a lot of the dialouge between characters is word for word from the book. You learn a lot more of the history of the characters, like Fezzik and Inigo. You learn how Inigo's father died and why Inigo says "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die." It's a good book and I'm almost half-way through it. Well it's time to get back to programming. Have a good day.

Weekend Plans

So, as I signed on earlier, I was asked what plans I have for the weekend and the more I think about it, I realized something very profound. I really don't have anything specific planned this weekend. I mean, I have plenty to keep me busy, but I don't have a specific function this weekend as I have had with the past 2 months. It is almost mind boggling. I hope I can function without a weekend schedule.

Stupid Glue

You know what I hate? I hate it when I get the bug to scrapbook and end up not being able to because I'm out of glue, or something like that. I really need to scrapbook, I've only done up to Tiaree's first birthday and she is now 5, but I have to be in the mood. Well today I'm really in the mood and I have no stupid glue. GRRRRRR. I can't go to the store becaue of sleeping children and by the time they wake up I will have to start dinner and such. So that's my complaint. Stupid glue.

Rock in My Shoe

So I put my shoes on this morning and as I got them all tied up and stepped out the door I felt this little pebble in the bottom of my shoe. Instead of sitting down on the steps and taking care of it, I decided that I was going to go ahead and start walking and take the rock out of my shoe at the bus stop, a one mile walk. As I started walking I could tell the rock was there and tried to adjust it in my shoe so it wouldn't hurt as bad. I finally took the rock out of my shoe after about 5 minutes of walking because it was just to annoying to leave it in there for the full 1 mile journey. Which brings me to this point, no matter how big the smallest pebble in you shoe is, it will be an huge annoyance and pain in the foot.

Rough Weekend

We originally planned on camping in the Mt. Nebo area for the weekend of the 4th but things didn't turn out very well. After reaching the point and coasting down towards Lehi, our engine overheated. We were VERY upset about it thinking that we were going to make some pretty significant repairs to the van or that it was just not capable of towing a loaded trailer long distances. Nic came and rescued us. She towed the trailer back while we babied the van back to SL.

Determined to have a good weekend, we planned on hanging out and doing different activities. So, we still had our regular camping meals, eat outside, and tried to do family oriented things.

We decided to go target shooting Saturday night and hung out in the west desert for the night. Still had problems with the van but we think that they have been solved (for the most part). We think we know what is wrong its just a matter of getting them fixed.

Went out and took the .22 caliber rifles and the pistol. We really enjoyed going out. I designed and built target holders from 1/2 PVC pipe. They turned out really well and luckily, they are pretty easy to build. A .22 caliber rifle is strong enough to go through PVC. (I kind of figured that, but now it is no longer a theory, it is fact.)

We taught the kids gun safety and they did REALLY well around the firearms. They didn't hit much, but it was a lot of fun.

Harold went with us and he enjoyed it. I think we got the bug to go on a "guy's day out" type adventure with those interested. We are also thinking of taking out the shotguns and shooting up a whole mess of clay pigeons.

Anyway, don't have a joke of the day. Work has been busy so my usual "goof around" time is reduced. I have less time to look for things to make you laugh, so I hope you won't be to offended.