The End (for now)

This is my last blog post for April, I made it through the entire month! Hoo-ray. Not a lot of content though. I'm going to take a break for awhile, until writing doesn't feel like work. I have enough work at work, and I may be getting more. Stay tuned for the gory details, and thanks for reading, all three of you. :D

I don't think I will be doing NaBloPoMo in May. I like to write, but writing just makes me go to the computer, from which I have a very hard time extricating myself. I know, I just need some willpower, but they don't sell that at Wal-Mart yet.

Maybe if I just blog once in awhile I will be able to put more thought into it. Sometimes I have planned on what I want to write, but it doesn't come out the way I want, and it's disappointing. I don't think I could totally let this blog go like I have with pasy blogs of mine, I've out too much into it now.

The main reason for not doing NaBloPoMo next month is vacation. We're going to Scranton for our 15th wedding anniversary, and I don't have any kind of mobile internet device to post from the road. I'm sure as hell not going to a library or some such to post a blog while I'm on vacation either.

Quality, not quantity, right?

everyone knows it's windy

The heat has abated slightly. It's very windy today, so that actually helps. I cannot fathom turning on the central air conditioning in April, so we had a few sleepless nights this week. It's supposed to break even more tomorrow, but it's also supposed to rain. But that's from the Weather Channel, so it's subject to change.

It's windy here quite often. Our backyard is on the edge of a huge farmed field, and we get a lot of wind from that. It's nice in the summertime, because we can have the windows open when it's hot and it's not too bad in the house. But the wind has created an unexpected problem this year. I came home from work today to find the dishes that I left in the drainboard covered in pollen. That's never happened before. I have to wash them again, but I'm also cooking tonight, so I have to close that window (it messes up the stove burners). The drainboard will be safe. Does anyone say drainboard anymore? The spell check doesn't like it.

Should we talk about the weather?

TI-RED.

I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night because it was HOT and I forgot to change the flannel sheets. Sarah came to bed at 11 and I was still tossing and turning, so I decided to just get up and go to work, but slowly. I took a shower so I wouldn't be a sweaty mess for the dentist, which was right after work. I don't have any cavities, but I may have a cracked tooth. Oh well. We are running some errands tonight so I am going to attempt to take a nap. Sarah changed the sheets after I got up. I need some lunch first. Bye!

Sunny

Sunny is currently head cat in our house. It's a very demanding job, since there are 7 of them, which is probably why he's cranky all the time.

As I mentioned in the blog about Bruiser, Sunny came to live with us when we moved to DE. He lived in my parent's basement crawlspace, with his brother, mother, and other relatives. Some of these cats made the cross country trip with my parents when they moved to Arizona. Imagine 2 people, 4 cats in a chicken coop, and 2 cockatiels driving to AZ in a 2 person pick up truck. 7 cats on a daily basis looks pretty good right about now. :)

When we moved to our house, we brought Sunny's brother (creatively named "Brother" by my parents) to live with us and keep Sunny company so he would leave Bruiser alone. My dad and my sister drove him down from NJ and they stayed in the house with Sarah while I stayed in the apartment, as I had to work the next morning. I was at the house during the day, and Sunny and Brother set up camp behind the toilet and would not come out. I guess their collective fear of this new place was more than the year and a half separation from each other (we were afraid that they wouldn't remember each other). While at work at 4 am, I got a frantic phone call from Sarah. Brother had flown the coop. Our new house had different windows than what we were used to. There was the actual window part, but the only other part was a window-sized screen that popped into the window frame. There weren't any storm windows like we had in NJ, but you could open the window from the top or the bottom. Sarah had opened them from the top so the cats would not escape. She did not factor in poor Brother's fear of our house. He somehow climbed up to the top of the window (I don't know how, there were no curtains or hardware by the windows yet) and pushed his way out. They all went out to look for him, but we never saw him again. :(

Back to Sunny. Sunny was very playful and sweet when we first got him. He always tried to play with Bruiser but was constantly rebuffed. I don't know if that's why he's cranky now, but he is getting up there (he's around 13, details are hazy). There was a long stretch of time when all he would do was eat and he gained a lot of weight, and we were afraid that he would become diabetic like Bruiser. But then we got a lot more inside cats, and he actually lost a lot of the weight, trying to keep everyone in line. He likes to sit on the couch with us, and does not like anyone else to do that. He will either bat at them until they leave, or he will flop down on top of them with his ass in their face until they get the message. We shove him off the couch if he does that, or worse, give him kisses. He HATES getting kisses!

Sunny has the distinction of being the first cat to soil the carpet! This basically was our fault. We had a helium balloon from Sarah's birthday or some other holiday, with the ribbon that hung down from it. Sunny would grab the ribbon and run through the house with it. Ha ha, so cute! We were not aware of cats' fascination with string and ribbon, mainly how they like to eat it. I cam home from work one day and saw the ribbon was a lot shorter. I thought Sunny chewed it off, and I would find it later in the house somewhere. I did find it, but it wasn't where I expected. I went upstairs and saw poop prints on the landing, leading into the bathroom. There was Sunny, behind the toilet again, yowling in distress. I didn't see the problem until he flopped over, and there was the ribbon. I didn't know what else to do, so I pulled the ribbon out. I know now that you're not supposed to do that, but at the time, I panicked. It was a learning experience for all of us (except Sunny of course).

One of the funniest things that I remember Sunny doing was running through the house with a roll of paper towels in his mouth. That's one of those Kodak moments; if you don't capture it, you'll never see it again, and people might not believe you if you don't have proof. In the not-so-funny department (which was again my fault), Sunny ate half of a 4 pound roast that I had put on the counter to thaw. I guess he smelled it as it was thawing, and he dragged it off the counter in the kitchen to the living room. I was expecting lots of carpet stains from that one, but strangely enough, he was fine. So now we keep the thawing meats on top of the refrigerator. We also have to keep our bread on top of the refrigerator, because he started eating that too.

Sunny is a bit of a pain to the other cats these days, but he's healthy and he likes to snuggle with us. And that's what cats are supposed to do.

Wow.

So it's summer time today, it's actually hot out there. Well, not hot, but warmer than it has been. We never got our frost either. Hopefully the weather will stay the same for awhile and I can stop being reminded that I totally missed the fall (which is my favorite season) and get on with my miserable life. Nay, not miserable, it's looking up!

Spring cleaning has been delayed, but now I have to cut the grass. If you hear someone faintly singing beneath the roar of a Briggs and Stratton, please don't get all Simon Cowell on me. Let me enjoy myself. :)

3 seasons in one day.

Yesterday afternoon was a bit chilly and windy.

Our area had a FROST warning for this morning.

This afternoon was close to 75 degrees.

My nose is very, very angry. I think the Earth is probably going to explode soon.

Bruiser

A few posts back I mentioned our first cat, Bruiser. I think that since we have so many cats, I will dedicate a post to each one of them, past and present. They won't be all in a row, I will get to each of them eventually.

We got married and moved into our first apartment together in June 1994. I think by July, Bruiser had adopted us. He showed up on our doorstep (we have cat magnets hidden inside our bodies, I guess) with a smaller black cat. We called him Bruiser because he looked like he could kick the smaller cat's butt. But he was a very sweet cat, and when you picked him up, he would give you a hug.

We fed him outside for awhile, but of course, he wormed his way inside at some point. We bought a disposable litter box, which I think he used only one time, if that. He would hold it until we let him outside, but he never wanted to go back out, we almost always had to force him to go out so there wouldn't be any accidents. We used to call him in at night; we lived at the bottom of a slope, the top of which was the parking lot. He used to take naps up by the parking lot, and when we called his name, he would perk up and start running down the hill, just like the Ingalls kids at the beginning of Little House on the Prairie.

Bruiser stayed with us for the entire 4 years we were in that apartment. Along the way, we found out from a lady in the building next to us that he was born in the complex, and they all called him Gizmo, after the Gremlin. She had been taking him to the vet, which we then took over, since he was pretty much an indoor cat at that point. When we began planning to move to DE, we asked the woman if we could take him with us, and she said that was fine. It was NOT fine with Bruiser.

We got another cat to take with us to DE, Sunny, from a set of strays that my parents had in their basement. We introduced the two of them in our NJ apartment, and Bruiser hated Sunny on sight. We thought that if we brought Sunny to DE first, Bruiser wouldn't be able to be so mad at him. Wrong! They fought constantly, and sometimes you didn't want to stick your hand in that writhing mass of feline bodies. It was scary!

I think that the combination of Sunny and the move to DE (which included becoming a permanent indoor cat, we were afraid that he would take off if we let him out) took its toll on his health. He would just mope a lot and wouldn't play or fight with Sunny that much. We started to let him out on the balcony, hoping that would make him feel better, but he couldn't really go anywhere, and he could still see Sunny. He developed heart problems and had to be put in an oxygen tank a few times (which the vet said cats don't usually come out of). Then we moved again, but we were still afraid to let him out for fear that he would run away. At least he had more room to get away from Sunny, because we now lived in our own home. But then Bruiser started marking his territory, so to speak. We took him to the vet and found out that he had developed diabetes. Twice after that, I came home from work and found him sprawled on the floor, not able to move. He had gone into diabetic shock because his insulin wasn't quite figured out yet. It was very scary, because I thought he was dead both times.

He got a little better after he got the correct amount of insulin. Bu he started peeing out of the litter box again, and we had to isolate him in our upstairs walk-in closet. He had pills he had to take in addition to his insulin, but he was very bad about taking them. He was constantly spitting them out. When I though he had taken the pill, I would come back later and find it on the floor. We started mashing it up and putting it in wet food, then tuna, then canned salmon. He eventually stopped wanting to eat any of that, and we had to face the fact that it was time for him to go. We had to put a cat to sleep the year before, a stray named Hilary, and she was the first. It was very hard for both of us. They asked us if we wanted to stay with her while it was done, but we couldn't do it. I regret that with every fiber of my being.

So we stayed with Bruiser while the vet put him to sleep. Again, it was very hard on both of us. Sarah was very attached to him, and I hated that we had to let him go. But he was miserable and not eating, it was the best thing for him. We had him cremated and we took some of his ashes back to NJ. There was a recessed, walled in area in front of our apartment that had a large tree in it. Bruiser used to nap in there, and he would scratch on the railroad ties on the top. We put some of his ashes near the tree so he could be with us and in one of his old favorite spots.

I know this is kind of sad, but it seems like the sad stuff is all that I remember, except for one thing. In our first apartment, we had two bookcases that were a few feet from the wall. Sarah's collection of Barbies and salt and pepper shakers were on these bookcases, and we kept our comic book boxes behind them. One time, Bruiser was in a very, very weird mood. I heard him rustling behind the bookcases and came over to see what he was doing. (I am already laughing, but I don't know if I will be able to make you see this.) I approached the bookcases just as Bruiser came up to the top from the back. He had a wild look in his eyes, and he flailed his front paws for purchase, which knocked all of the Barbies off the top shelf. Then he fell back down with a thump, and eventually ran into the bedroom. I swear, I was laughing for ten minutes, it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I only wished that Sarah could have seen it.

We both still miss him.

ADDENDUM: Sarah let me know that the vet told us that it was time to let Bruiser go, I had forgotten about that (or I blocked it out). We didn't drag his life out just to save our feelings, which is how it sounds.

I got nothin'.

Sorry.

I think I just waited too long today. I had some thoughts earlier but they are gone now.

Poof!

My cat can't write, he has no thumbs.

I was inspired my Monica's post about her terrible problem with Rite Aid to write about something ridiculous that happened to me there. It's not anywhere near as bad as Monica's experience though.

This is Bruiser. He was our cat for many years. More importantly, he was our first cat. We moved him from NJ to DE and he became very sickly once he got here. He was in an oxygen chamber twice and was diabetic. Anyway, at one point we had to get him a prescription at a regular pharmacy, so we chose Rite Aid, because it was on the way home from the vet. So the vet wrote out the prescription to Bruiser The Cat Ferguson. I brought it up to the pharmacy area and waited my 15 minutes. When they called Bruiser's name, I went to pick it up. Only the lady wouldn't give it to me, because she said that Bruiser had to sign for it. I told her that Bruiser was a cat, and showed her on the scrip. She said again that Bruiser had to sign for it. This sounds like I am joking, but sadly I am not. This went on for a few more minutes and I was absolutely furious. I was about to go and get Bruiser out of the car (he was fine in the car, thank you for your concern) and bring him inside, when I guess the pharmacist who filled the scrip heard what was going on and came over to tell the lady that Bruiser was a cat. I guess I, being said cat's owner, wasn't qualified enough to know if Bruiser was a cat or not. We stopped going to Rite Aid after that. :P

Cats.

Bunky had to go to the vet today, his nose swelled up over the weekend and he looks like Richard Nixon (seriously). This happened to him before, the vet said it was in 2002, but she's not sure if it's the same thing. So he has to go back on Wednesday morning for a biopsy (and a teeth cleaning while he's out). So much for the tax refund. Another bummer was picking up Spunky's remains at the vet. She was a sick stray that Sarah found, and she stayed at my in-law's house for the entire summer while my in-laws were on an Airstream caravan. Yes, she had the whole house to herself, and we had to go over there 3 times a day to give her medicine. It's only 9 miles to their house, but remember how much gas was last summer? Yeah.

She got evicted when my in-laws came back, so she came to stay with us, albeit outside. We were worried that Spunky was going to wander off, but she never made it farther than the neighbor's driveway. It was easier giving her medicine since she was right outside, and she was doing pretty well. When it got cold I made her a little shelter out of a couple of storage containers and insulation, and she liked that a lot (it was better than her cardboard lean-to). But towards the end of winter, she wouldn't eat and lost a lot of weight. It seemed so sudden. We even brought her inside, but she still wasn't eating. When we took her to the vet, they told us that it would cost around $700 just to see what was wrong, and that there wasn't a guarantee that it could be fixed. So we had to put her to sleep, because we could not afford that at all.

Picking up her remains today brought all of that back, plus it made me feel like I didn't do enough to help her. I complain about the cats a lot (we have 7 indoors and 2 permanent outside, plus a few floaters), but it is absolute hell to look them in the eyes and watch them die because I don't have enough money. This is also why we have 7 cats in the first place.

The worst part is that we never took any pictures of Spunky. I thought we did, but when I checked iPhoto, I couldn't find any. We had a cat for a day that we had to put to sleep, and we have pictures of her.

I realize that 7 cats is too many, but I can't give any of them up now. Even the one that is peeing all over everywhere.

Sorry for the bummer today. :(

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!!!

I am almost always lazing about the house on Sundays, I sleep late and go to bed early and watch a lot of TV or scamper around the internets. But not today! Sort of.

I got out of bed at 6 this morning, after waking up at 1.45 and spending a full 5 minutes wondering if I had to go to work (I didn't, but I did come close to getting up and going because I thought I overslept). I spent a little bit of time splashing in the intertubes before I went to tackle the DVR. After 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, Chuck, and half of last week's SNL, Sarah came downstairs. We watched the rest of that SNL and then the one from last night (Best of Amy Poehler). Sarah was half watching and half reading a book about Albert Fish. After that, I went outside and cut the grass. It was cool and windy, so it was perfect, because the grass was totally dry. Thank goodness, because it was very high, it's been over a week and we've had a lot of rain since then. I sat on the porch with Frank for awhile before I went back inside.

Cutting the grass with my bad back and bad heel pretty much ruined me for the rest of the day, so I took a nap while Sarah cleaned out her craft room and went through the house looking for yard sale stuff for her Brownies Bingo on Wednesday. When I got up, I made some cheeseburgers for dinner, out on the grill. Frank was not a big help with this. We watched the Unusuals while we had dinner and now Sarah is reading and I am done with my blog for today. How exciting!

I went to work at 11 last night. normally I am there around 2 am, but I needed to get in and out before everyone else came in. I've been having some crowding issues at work, mainly because of Easter. Plus I really like working by myself, I get much more done that way, and I don't really have to clean up while I go, I can leave it till the end. I don't see the crowding part getting any better unless they do some major renovations to the store. I am also busy enough that I am going to need some help before the major 4th quarter holidays get here (I sound like I know what I'm talking about!). Hopefully this will happen, I have to talk with Liz and the store managers about it. It needs to happen, because the holidays are going to do me in this year if it doesn't, and I really hate missing the entire fall, which is my favorite season.

I was coming back from the freezer around midnight (the freezer is located on the opposite end of the building from the bakery). I was rolling my noisy cart along with my head down when I heard "Good morning Robert," which scared the living hell out of me. It was Nick, from the warehouse. Then he said, "I didn't want to scare you," which is what people who come in super early and unannounced always say to me right after they scare me. He is going to be working at midnight every Saturday now, because he goes to school and has been married for a little over a year. He's working a few hours each morning, and then working the whole day Saturday. Which is good, because he can get stock out on the floor before the Saturday rush. There is not much stocking going on on Saturdays, because the warehouse people always end up bagging at the registers.

When I started this job, my supervisor was one of the store managers, and she was also doing the baking to help us get started (I started on the first day that the bakery opened). We went in at 7 the first week, then I convinced her that we needed to come in early. So we started coming in at 4, she made the cinnamon rolls (which I have since taken over), and I made the breads and rolls. After a few weeks of this, she got tired of coming in early and gave me a key to the store, so I became the first one in the store. I also told them to put in a doorbell for the back door, because you can't hear someone knocking from inside the bakery. Unfortunately, someone told them to put it in the kitchen I guess, because that's where it is. If I have all three of the mixers going and the radio up loud (which I have to, because all three of the mixers are going), then I can barely hear the door. The people who ring it know this, and they tend to lean on it. :)

Since I was there early, they started telling delivery people that they could come in early, so I had to let them in. Then some of the workers started coming in early on a daily basis, instead of just during holidays. Everyone is scheduled to start at 7.30, but some started coming at 6.30. Then last year, the warehouse was scheduled to start at 5 am. I was losing my alone time, which I cherished very much. I like listening to loud music that I enjoy or can sing along to, it helps me work a lot faster. It's hard to do that when you have Amish people in at 5.30 who aren't supposed to be listening to music at all. I don't really care about the other departments being in there early, because I only see them when they come for coffee. There just isn't enough room in the bakery for a lot of people, plus we have very limited oven space, and there are things that we can bake only in particular ovens. And the oven are not the best. They are deck ovens, which have an awful lot of bottom heat, so we have to bake some stuff inside another pan (kind of like Air-Bake pans). Plus the ovens were older than me when I started, and they're not very reliable. In the early days (I've been there 7 and 1/2 years), the ovens used to get a gas buildup in the door where the burner was, and occasionally would blow the oven door open, which was VERY loud and totally unexpected. When this happens at 4 am when you're there by yourself, you have to make sure that you have a clean pair of underwear with you. :P

Like I said, I do like working by myself, even though it can be scary sometimes. I've been doing it since I was 17, so I'm used to it by now. I don't know if I am being selfish here or if I'm right. Time will tell hopefully.

Desperately seeking vacation.

I have a little less than a month to go before I have a smidge of vacation. It is our 15th wedding anniversary next month, and we are celebrating by spending a few days in...

Wait for it...

That's right! Scranton, PA! And no, it's not because of the Office, although we may try to hit some of those spots. There's a giant flea market and lots of good diners in Scranton, and that's what we like to do. Our original plan was to renew our vows in Las Vegas in the Elvis wedding chapel, but lo, the economy. So hopefully that will be the 20th.

I am hoping I make it to vacation without going postal at work. It's been pretty hard not exploding lately. But I do not own a gun, so there's that.

1 for you, 19 for me.

This morning I realized that I forgot to listen to "Taxman" by the Beatles yesterday. This is the first year in a long while that I haven't listened to the song on April 15th. I did listen to it today, however. I don't do our taxes anymore, Sarah does them now. She itemizes, which is something I've never done before. We paid a local preparer to do it the first tax year after we got our house, but it turned out to be really expensive, so I did it for awhile, then Sarah took over. Which is how I prefer it, I don't think I would have the patience to do itemizing.

Sarah usually e-files in February, but this year was a little screwed up, which we can thank Steve Jobs for, indirectly. The DVD burner on our 1.5 year old Mac broke, and we didn't get the extended warranty, so it would have cost over 400 bucks to get fixed. We opted to get an external DVD burner, but a) they are few and far between for Mac in a decent price range, and b) we haven't had the money for it yet. I still have my old PC (8 years running, CD burner is just fine thanks), and I use it to burn CDs, but Sarah won't use it. So the problem was that Sarah bought the Turbo Tax disc at Target so she could do the taxes. I told her she had to return it and buy the download online, because she wouldn't be able to put it on the Mac. For some reason, the download was more expensive than the actual disc, so she planned on doing it at work, off hours. No one really wants to stay at work off hours to do anything, so it didn't get done right away, which was fine. We're not hurting, but we had to cut down on purchases (until September 9th, that is). She finished them on Tuesday, which is when she found out that she had to pay an extra 20 bucks to e-file one of the returns, I forget which one. Oh well, at least we're getting money back, which we are putting towards getting the bat poop out of our attic (no, Batman does not have his Batroom in our attic, it's a long story).

Scary guy-guy!

This morning Sarah and I took our nephew up to NJ to see Bubboon's Tunes. We took his sister Erin to see them perform in DE in 2006, when she was 5. We hadn't heard of them at the time, but it was a really great show. Erin and I got to go onstage for a spelling competition, and Erin won their CD, Songs To Blather By. I am friends with Bubboon on Facebook, and I saw the show mentioned in his status, and I thought that the kids might like to go, since they still listen to the CD. It was an hour and a half drive, but the show would be free and they don't really play too many gigs, plus it was my day off, so it was perfect! But Erin didn't want to go, she's too old for that stuff now, she listens to Gogol Bordello (I'm not kidding, she does a pretty good Eugene Hutz impression).

So we took Ian, and he was excited to go. It was raining pretty hard during the drive, but there weren't many people on the road, so it was fine. We made a wrong turn once we got into NJ, but we still made it with 15 minutes to spare. The three of us went inside (it was held in a county government office building, how odd) and sat in the front row. Everything was fine until Bubboon came out of the back in all his finery (see picture) to check the microphones. Ian totally lost it. His face crumpled up and he started crying loudly, and he said he wanted to go home. Sarah got up to bring him outside for a bit, and Bubboon came over and waved to him and said hi, and even pushed up his frown into a smile (on his own face, not Ian's), but I think that made it worse. Sarah told me to wait until she got him calmed down, which I did. But there was no calming him down, so I went out into the lobby with him, where we could still hear and see the show. We kept inching him closer to the door, but he really wanted to leave, so we did, after about 3 songs. Oh well, I guess when he's older it won't be as scary.

The day wasn't a total wash, we found a very interesting thrift shop near the building, where I got an Atari 2600 game that I didn't already have for just a dollar (that probably doesn't mean anything to you, but I have around 350 unique Atari 2600 games, and to find one in the wild like that for that price is very rare indeed!). We also found an excellent restaurant, Antoinette's at Masso's. It smelled really good when we got out of the car, and the food was excellent (the mozzarella sticks were exquisite). I think the restaurant part is a recent addition, it looks like the Masso's own an entire block of shops that is dedicated to weddings. Banquet rooms, catering, and formal wear are all located right next to each other. It was weird, but like I said, the food was excellent, definitely worth your while if you are in the area. Which is Clayton NJ, by the way.

Everything sucks.

I don't want to talk about it. >:(

The Aftermath.

Tired, tired tired. As expected, the shelves were very bare when I got into work this morning. We sold 102 loaves of bread, yay! I made the bare minimum today, plus I washed a rack of pans, it's been awhile since anyone has had the chance to wash any. Tomorrow will be busy, I must pay for my work sins then. Shower, dinner, and bed. Hope my new cpap mask comes soon so's I can sleep a little better. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, can't cut the grass, and there's no way I can do it today. I have to read up for book club this week. Okay, I'm rambling, happy trails.

Happy Easter!

It's late, we just got home from my sister's where the food was good and plentiful and everyone was together. It's way past my bedtime, so I'm off, I hope you all had an enjoyable day!

Yay, it's over!

To-day was busier than yesterday. I made 96 loaves of bread and 672 dinner rolls, among lots of other things (I had some help with the rolls). I've never sold 100 loaves of bread in a day, that would be cool if that happened. I used to want to try and sell 40 large danish in a day, that took a couple of years, but I've done it a few times since then. I'm just very happy that I have a job and I can keep very busy at it!

So I'm off tomorrow, thank goodness. We are having Easter at my sister's house this year, and the whole DE crew is going, I'm really looking forward to it. So another thankfully abbreviated post tomorrow. G'night!

Holiday Leadup

Today at work I made 540 dinner rolls and 80 loaves of bread.

I am tired, I'm going to bed.

When I get up tonight at 7, my eyes will be red.

Dr. Seuss I ain't.

Sky Blue Please!

Yesterday as I was getting ready for bed (at 5.45 PM), an ice cream truck came down our street, which is a cul-de-sac (French for "Dead End"). I have heard the ice cream truck already this year, but there was something different about the tune it was playing. Then I placed it: it was the exact same tune that the ice cream truck from my childhood neighborhood used to play! It was "Sailing Sailing (Over The Bounding Main)," and this is kind of what it sounded like. The tune I heard yesterday sounded more like a Nintendo music version of it. But it was still a kick in the heart. Back then, blue raspberry was called sky blue, and it was my favorite flavor. (I should point out that this was more of an Italian Ice truck than an ice cream truck.) And they had the little paper cups that you could pull apart until it was flat, remember those? I almost never had enough cash for a large, which was a dollar, and it was in a 16 oz. cup and they really heaped it in there. See what fun childhood memories do? They make you blurt.

Getting Ready.

I'm taking it easy today (how is that different from any other day? I hear you cry), because I'm going to have 3 very busy days at work for the rest of the week. I thankfully don't have to do much cooking for Easter, just mashed potatoes and bread (which I will be doing at work). I decided to do the egg dyeing for work at home this year. I probably shouldn't, but it will take less time and free me up to do other stuff at work. I brought the eggs home yesterday and I will dye them today. I should probably get started, I have a lot to do today for not having a lot to do!

Beatles Remasters! Finally.

Well, it was finally announced this morning, the new Beatles remastered catalog will hit stores on September 9th, the same day Beatles Rock Band is released. I am going to have an empty, sad wallet that day. :(

The best news for me is that they are releasing all the albums in stereo AND mono (where applicable). I really like the mono versions of the albums, in some cases they sound much different from their stereo counterparts. Some can't tell the difference, but when you've pretty much been breathing the Beatles for most of your life, you appreciate any minute difference here and there.

I saw in the press release that Pro Tools was mentioned, which is a digtal mastering tool (this is an extremely simple description). I am a member of the Steve Hoffman Music Forums, where Pro Tools is a dirty word (Steve Hoffman is a well respected remastering engineer). I would have cared about this a year ago, but now I don't. I loved the way the Love soundtrack sounded, which I believe used Pro Tools, so I am really looking forward to hearing the remasters. The only thing that bothers me is the fact that they are fixing edits and extraneous recording noise. This may seem like a small detail, but I think that the "mistakes" (as Sarah put it) lend character to the songs. Probably my favorite Beatles song of all, Strawberry Fields Forever, has a huge glaring edit in it, and I would be heartbroken if it was fixed, because I would never hear it the same way again. I guess this is a minor quibble, we will see what happens on September 9th.

I was planning on buying the limited edition Beatles Rock Band on September 9th. It is supposed to come with limited edition reproduction Beatles instruments, but I was really excited about the music, because I knew that the songs included in the game would most likely be the remastered versions. But now, with both the game and the remasters coming out on the same day, I don't know what to do. I would like to have the instruments, but the music matters more to me. I suppose I could buy both, but I'm estimating (conservatively) that both box sets and the game will cost at least 500 bucks. I'd better start saving my pennies now!

I was Lars Ulrich's nightmare.

Yesterday I helped my friend Adam with iTunes. He has a PC and we have a Mac, and we were extolling the virtues of iTunes to him, because he is really into music and we were trying to get him interested in podcasts. I neglected to tell him to not mess with the iTunes folder, which I learned the hard way. He downloaded an album, but he couldn't burn it to a CD nor put it on his mp3 player (I think it was a Philips brand, but I'm not sure). We went over there yesterday and I helped him fix it. He said that he had been using Napster to download music in the interim, as it came bundled with his PC or Vista, I'm not sure which. I hadn't thought of Napster in a long time, despite seeing ads for it on TV and around the internet. I remember those halcyon days of Napster, when paying for music on the internet seemed ridiculous...

I downloaded my first mp3 in 1998. I had no idea what it was or why it was important. All I knew was that R.E.M. was putting out a new album (this was right after Bill Berry left the band), and I could hear the song Daysleeper before it was released. I read up on it and discovered that I had to download an mp3 player in order to hear the song, as well as the mp3 of course. I downloaded the player first and installed it, then I downloaded the song, which I think was a little over 3 MB. 1 hour later (we still had 56K dialup), I was listening to the new R.E.M. song! I thought it was amazing. Music was never a big thing on my PC as the wav files were too big, although I did have a collection of sounds and soundbites that I made and downloaded.

As mp3s became more popular, there were many more places to go to get them. I was really into Usenet back then, mainly for the conversation. mp3 Usenet groups started popping up, and are still very popular today. Then the peer-to-peer programs, mainly Napster, started up, and for me, there was no turning back. I started downloading Beatles bootlegs that I could only dream of getting. They were usually 30 to 40 bucks for a single CD and were hard to find. Now they were free and right in my computer! I downloaded tons of R.E.M. concerts that I also never would have found "in the wild." My downloading got out of hand when we got a cable modem, and instead of setting the PC to download stuff all night long, I could download the same stuff in minutes. I crammed my hard drive to bursting with music that I wanted to hear but couldn't afford, which included a lot of indie stuff like Guided By Voices, Sleater-Kinney, Superchunk, Wilco, Aimee Mann, etc. I had to burn a lot of stuff to disc and take it off the hard drive to make room for more! At this time, I was still a member at Sam's Club, and I would buy the 100 pack of blank CDs in the slimline cases (without the spine). I would print a makeshift label for the case and write on the CD with a felt-tip marker, then put the CD in with my store-bought CDs. This eventually created a problem, as I was rapidly running out of room on the CD shelf.

The bottom fell out of the whole Napster thing and then I was left with just Usenet, but that quickly lost its appeal. I started to have a crisis of conscience; I felt bad that I had taken all that indie music for free, as most of those artists were not as well off as the Beatles or R.E.M. (R.E.M. doesn't really care about bootlegs, and I always buy whatever they and the Beatles put out. The Beatles have a LOT of my money, so I don't feel guilty about the bootlegs). I started to root through the stuff I stole and threw away a lot of it, mostly because I never even listened to it. I saved the stuff that I did listen to, and I slowly began to replace it with the store bought versions. I hated the way that the slimline cases looked in my CD shelf, so I bought some bookshelf-style CD books and put them in there. It looks much better now. :)

Lately I have noticed that there is still stuff that I don't ever listen to in those bookshelf cases, so I'm going to go through them again soon. I think that as I have gotten older, music is more of a comfort to me than an adventure, because I tend to listen to the same stuff over and over again, which is too bad. I love to buy CDs, but I just can't afford everything I want, and I don't want to get it illegally anymore. I'm the kind of guy that would rather have a CD or record in my hand than buy it from iTunes. Who knows, maybe that will change in my future, but for right now, I still enjoy the physical part of music along with the mental (and aural) part.

Ready for Easter?

I must be feeling a bit better today, because I started cleaning when I got up. But then I had some cereal (Golden Graham knockoffs from Target) and plopped my ample butt down in front of the computer, so that was the end of that. But this is the last thing I'm going to do here, I have to scoop the cats and clean up a bit more.

I think I said yesterday that Easter at work is much busier than it has been. This year, on Friday night, Liz and I are going in around 9 pm, and Sarah is coming with us to help. Sarah always comes to help me during the holidays, because I'm usually swamped and that's the only time we ever see each other, pretty much. When I say holidays I am referring to Thanksgiving and Christmas, this is the first year she's coming for Easter. She has off on Good Friday, so she is coming with me on Thursday night as well. All the Amish women also have off on Good Friday, which is bad, because that's most of the other bakers. The only other non-Amish baker is doing the packaging that day, so it's just me and her all day, which is why I asked Sarah to come in and help.

Our bakery is like a cross between a supermarket bakery and a real bakery. Here is the difference between the two as I see it. In a real bakery, all the stuff is put out into showcases, and people come in and choose what they want and how much of it that they want. Whatever isn't sold is packaged as day-old, or given to charity, or thrown away, or used in other baked goods (don't ask). In a supermarket bakery, everything is prepackaged in a set quantity and has a longer shelf life. I don't think that scratch baking vs. everything coming in frozen really applies here, because it varies wherever you go. We are mostly a scratch bakery, and we are trying very hard to keep it that way. If we get anything in frozen, we actually bake it on premises. We also make a lot of stuff ahead of time and put it in the freezer, and bake it as we need it. So that's what Sarah does when she comes in to help. She takes my production sheet and counts up what is left and what goes on the stale rack (to be sold at half price). Then I figure out what was sold the day before and decide what will be produced that day, and she sets up all the frozen stuff that needs to be set up. She can also drop out quick breads and muffins (all are premade by us and refrigerated or frozen), prep the sticky bun pans, put fruit on the cheese danish, and she has even made up cheese puffs (we get puff pastry squares in frozen, and we make them up ourselves into puffs or turnovers). And even though it's sometimes a long while between her trips to the bakery, she remembers how to do a lot of it. Thank you sweetie. :)

PS-The pictures are of the things I mentioned in yesterday's blog.

STILL SICK for heaven's sake. Make it stop. :(

Welcome to the pity party. :)

I got up at 4 yesterday afternoon to get ready for the Middle School Dance, and I was still sick. Sarah came home from work and took one look at me and said it was okay if I stayed home, which I did. She put on a nice dress and I made myself a sandwich. I was eating said sandwich and Watching South Park when Sarah pulled up. They sent her home because she was wearing a nice dress, and everyone else was wearing jeans and t-shirts, including the adults. I was planning on wearing a shirt and tie (yes, pants too!), so I would have been sent home as well. But she said there wasn't much dancing, more giggling than anything. She said she felt like Principal Vernon from the Breakfast Club. :( That's not good. Oh well, like she said in her note to me, Sorry you missed it?

Work was pretty long as usual for a Saturday, I was feeling better than yesterday but still not 100%, so Liz came in with me again and helped me out. Next week is going to be pretty bad, Easter has gotten a lot busier for us in the last 3 or 4 years. But I like that I can dye Easter eggs at work and bake them into a bread braid, and people snap them right up. :) Last year I made a coconut cake with a basket weave on the side and green coconut on top and some jelly beans too. Again, snapped right up. I wish there was more TIME. Like Sarah said, if they ever gave me a salary instead of an hourly wage, I would never come home. Unfortunately, she's probably right.

Nap Required.

My co-worker Liz was able to come in and help me and get her hours for the week, as she had to take an extra day off for family stuff. I left after 6 hours, which hasn't happened in awhile (I left some stuff in the proofbox and oven that Liz is able to take care of). I'm eating my breakfast and then I'm going to bed. Tonight is the middle school dance that Sarah and I are chaperoning, it's a benefit for a local food pantry, so it's for a good cause. I can sleep when I come home tomorrow afternoon. Liz is coming in with me again at 2 am, so that will be good, even though we're going to have to make a lot more stuff tomorrow, and we have less people.

I'm sure none of this makes sense but I just wanted to get my blog in for the day. Thank you.

Triple bleh.

I am still sick, I've been taking lots of naps and taking all kinds of over the counter medications, to no avail. Cutting the grass is shot today (also because it's wet), and book club tonight is most likely shot. I was hoping to call out tomorrow, but there aren't enough people left to do the work. I did call my co-worker to see if she could come in with me and help me get out earlier tomorrow, hopefully I will hear back. Tomorrow night Sarah and I are chaperoning a middle school dance, and she's really excited about going, so I want to be okay for that. This will be my first middle school dance.

Being sick sucks. :P

Drip drip drop, little April shower.

The Blomo theme this month is Growing (Up). I don't know if I will do too much with that throughout the month, but I will today. The grass is growing! I was planning on cutting the grass today because the stupid Weather Channel said (on Monday) that it would be nice today, and I am off of work. However, it now looks like rain and I am still sick, and if you've ever cut tall grass when it's humid, you know how much of a mess that makes. I can't be too lax with the grass, because our town has an ordinance that says we need to keep the grass below 10 inches, and Sarah is the town clerk. So that would look bad.

I hate doing yardwork, except for cutting the grass. It's practically the only exercise I get. I like to listen to music while I'm cutting, I bought a pair of those big 70s headphones so I wouldn't have to turn the volume up so loud (my ears are pretty bad already). I use Sarah's iPod now when I cut the grass, but I used to use a Walkman which would hitch a little every time I took a step. It sounds a bit like rhythmically hitting your turntable while the record's playing. Um, a Walkman plays cassettes. Just in case there are young folks reading. :) I have a couple of Discmans as well, and Sarah bought me a belted holder for it so I could walk around with it. Sadly, I don't remember ever using it (sorry sweetie). I like to sing along when I'm listening to music, and I did that when I cut the grass. Until Sarah said she could hear me over the mower, which was good to know. I sing much quieter now.

I'll have to cut the grass tomorrow, because they're calling for rain on Friday too. Tomorrow is going to be rough, I have a lot of work to do, and I have Book Club at night, and I have to make something for dinner. So today I will be resting up. I am supposed to go out to dinner tonight with Sarah's family for her mom's birthday, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea at this point. I don't want to make anyone else sick.

Hmm, it seems like only one sentence fit the theme. Oh well.