Soul Eater 'Blair'

My wife drew another picture for me recently. I saved it for the upcoming Halloween festival. Another holiday that lost its original meaning and replaced with the commercialization of candy, partying and watching women parade in sexy cosplay outfits. Niiiiice.

Customers

One of the top complaints from vendors is that when they have filled up the shelf and all other displays, there will be that one customer that comes in and buys up all of one package type you have. Leaving a big gapping hole for the next customer to see and request that very same item. So, as you proceed to leave the store you notice that said customer with a shopping cart filled up with your product in it. Therefore, you walk over to your section and sure enough, there is a huge gapping hole with a manager and customers just begging and waiting for you to fill it up again.

A local grocery store chain had a huge sale going on with my company’s product. And people were going crazy grocery shopping Thursday and Friday because a group of storm cells had bunched up together with weather phobia weathermen acting like ‘Chicken Little’ thinking that Tropical Storm Danny is going to be the next Katrina. Therefore, it was a little extra busy at work lately. I mean it’s not like last year when Food Lion ‘MADE’ every store remove all their Produce, Meat, Frozen and Dairy items from the shelf only to put it back out a few hours later when the so-call threat of a non-hurricane turned out to be nothing more than a night time rain event. I mean my kids toys never moved from where they were laying outside.

Anyway, as I am filling up the shelf area, a customer approaches with the look as if he planned to do some shopping. As some spaces on the shelf were still empty, this customer began complaining the usual speech. The one where every time he comes into the store he can never find what he’s looking for. The shelf is empty or doesn’t have enough speech. After he finished flexing his feathers to prove he was ‘the customer’ with ‘the customer is always right’ speech I asked what item he was looking for. He stated the item and at that point, I asked him to follow me.

As we came to the end of the isle we were on, he noticed a pallet display of our product. We continued to the next isle where there are three more pallet displays of our product and by the following isle, he saw two more pallet display of the product he was looking for. He could barely utter a thank you, as we both knew his whole speech meant nothing more than a man in dire need of a breath mint. Of course, he was busy loading up his shopping cart as quickly as he could. Lord knows you can never have enough although sometimes I think he wonders as well about these kinds of people. Usually it’s the gas stations and small restaurants that come in and buy all of our products but there are many individuals like this guy who stock up for weeks and months at a time.

One of the tricks told to me by other vendors and co-workers was that as you prepare to leave the stores, never walk down the isle you service. If you do then you take the chance of seeing empty holes that need filling up. Of course, if any of my supervisors are reading this, don’t worry, I always walk down the isle I service. Trust me.

Have Hair, Will Travel

While he wanted so much to have a Samurai hairstyle it was inevitable that a hair cut was not that far behind. At one point he look just like Gackt when the lady was cutting his hair. He didn't cry or get upset but he did want to carry as much hair with him that he could carry. He stated he is looking forward to growing it long again.

Afterburner

Now that my sunburn is getting better and the pain has gone down to were I don't have to take medicine to sleep at night, I do have a new situation that requires a little assistance. My skin is starting to peel and as it increases, my wife, against her will, is pulling out all the bits and pieces of that skin from all over my body. Pretty cool in some area's of my body. But as that skin comes off, a lot of my burnt areas are discolored a bit with a little sensitive. But I still have my wife to apply ointment to take care of that.

It's good to be married.

A few beach shots

Sunburn

A few days ago, I went to the hospital for my sunburn. I was hoping that I would just get some cream from the local grocery store and that would be it. The response I got from the Hospital was something different. After one of the first Doctors has a good look at me, I became a traveling medical show and tell within the hospital. Sure, I was half-naked with women giving me ohh’s and ahh’s sympathy while the men were just laughing. I knew I would.

The first Doctor said it was sunburn but a second Doctor stated it was a combination of sun and wind damage to my skin. Nevertheless, they confirmed I have second-degree burns. Seeing, as my skin was hot enough to cook a steak, they had to cool me down first. Therefore, a young female nurse prepared to put a lot of cream all over my burnt areas. Normally this is something one would dream about or see in a porno movie. However, on this day, the last anything I wanted was anything or anyone touching my burnt areas. Just getting my shirt off at the hospital was extremely painful.

I was biting down on my teeth so hard I might have pushed a few teeth further into my gums as she was putting the cream on me. It’s not everyday one can say ‘Oh man, I can’t believe this is happening, I just want to die’. She had to put a lot of cream on me for it was melting the moment it was exposed to my burnt areas. I went from looking like Mr. Krab’s from SpongeBob Squarepants to Frosty the Snowman. Nevertheless, once the cream took out a lot of heat from my body and a few pictures later, I was able to leave the hospital.

Oh the joy. I have sunburn on my upper body area and after removing the heat part, I could go home with the pain part of sunburn. The Doctor was concerned that a few skin parts were located on the inside of my shirt. She contemplated giving me a steroid shot plus pain killing medicine. But once I got my shirt back on without passing out from the pain she just gave me a prescription for pain killers and more of the gel. Once home, I continued my adventure of trying to get some rest were I didn’t have to lay on my back, sides or chest area.

But oh those pain killers, once I took that first pill I didn’t care about the pain or anything relating to the pain. The only part I did not like about those pain pills was that I missed my TV show. In addition, waking up in searing pain from resting on a sun burnt area. And so I spend my time trying to not move my arms over my head or have anything or anyone touch me but with five cats and two boys who wanted to pick the yellow puss holes all over my back, it was not easy.

Just beachy

Long car rides can be exciting or they can be the road trip to hell. Either way getting there is have the fun. Surviving is the other half. I took my family to Havelock, NC for a few days. For me it was to visit a few places and second, to take my family to the beach for a while. Luckily, both of my boys have a Nintendo DS so they stayed quiet for an hour before they started complaining. My wife wanted to take pictures of every road sigh, water tower, and pretty much everything we drove passed.

When we finally got to Havelock and unpacked we all took part in a family nap. A few hours later, we ate, made a few phone calls and by the afternoon, the boys were playing in the ocean and my wife resting in a beach chair. So I stayed with two boys who wanted to swim to England. At times, they went so deep that even I couldn’t touch the bottom. Nevertheless, they swam around me like sharks on a Big Mac. As the sun was setting I was able to net in the boys then pick up a pizza and watched two boys complaining about having to leave the ocean and pass out from exhaustion at the same time. They fell asleep while eating dinner.

With a baby sitter on stand by, my wife and I went riding around with a camera in hand and a Wal-Mart near by. Nothing like taking your wife shopping so she can buy every postcard, key chains and whatnots made in creation. She also bought a few shot glasses for a friend of ours in Fukuoka, Japan. When we visited the Military base, she took tons of pictures of military equipment, badges, planes, guns and everything else in the place. She did enjoy the huge gun by the entrance. She wanted to buy it but we were a few hundred thousand dollars short.

Even though we were there for a couple of days, everyone had a great time and got to do many activities. One last trip to the beach and family outing before the boys go back to school. One more very long car ride listening to two boys complaining they forgot to charge up their Nintendo DS’s and a wife who didn’t charge up the camera battery. In addition, huge sunburn on my entire back, shoulders and belly area. If I paint my feet greenish blue I would look like a stop sign.

Through headaches, sunburn, a growing lack of money and non-stop complaining one would be screaming every curse word known to mankind. Seeing as I know many Japanese curse words as well, the eloquence would be grand. After returning home and having two boys running inside to start recharging their DS’s, a wife complaining about all the cats refusing to eat dry food while we were away and having to feed five Steven King’s Cu-Jo’s I was faced with a huge question growing in my mind.

As I with sunburn, unpacked the car and after settling down with the AC and TV on, I relaxed with another fan blowing on my back to cool down the burning. Could I go to work the next day with severe sunburn or stay home and keep applying ointment to my burnt area? I stayed home and planned to rest. Rest after I took my wife to the Post Office to pick up a package and a trip to the grocery store followed by two boys fighting over Lego toys. By this time, I wished I had gone to work instead.

But as I was finally resting with gel all over my back and shoulders watching NCIS on the USA channel, two boys came to me at different times saying they had a great time at the beach. They enjoyed shopping at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store, Wings beach store, looking for seashells, making sand castles and all the other activities. The way and how they said it was pure magical. My wife rubbing ointment all over me and two boys coming up to us saying they had a great time being together. It was not rehearsed or planned out. It was one of those moments where all the pain I was going through just disappeared.

I felt like I was king of the world.

I did listen

A few days ago, I was working around Louisburg, North Carolina. I like working in this area even though it’s a long drive home. The people here are nice with an almost the exact opposite attitude towards life than people around Cary and Apex. People in Louisburg are mainly farmers and or people who work on farmers. A place where you can be at a stop light right next to a tractor.

However, there are certain types of people as seen on TV shows like Maury Povich and Jerry Springer. To tell you the truth, experiencing it up close and personal, I do have to admit that I find myself laughing when I see these types of people. But to protect the dignity of everyone that‘s when I head to the backroom as soon as I can.

One early morning I was in Louisburg working a Food Lion when a family made there way down the isle another vendor and I was on. They were talking up a storm and the only thing the other vendor and I could do was try not to look. Nevertheless, we did. This family consisted of a mother and her two daughters. The mother, whose skin, was turning to a nice golden mummified leather look. Her cigarette had the surgically affixed to the side of her mouth affect. She was wearing a wonderfully beautiful dress that doubled for a nightgown. She is talking to someone on the phone even though her first daughter has the phone.

The first daughter was wearing very short nearly transparent white pants with bikini style striped underwear. Her shirt is a pink tank top with thin straps going over the shoulder and a bra with very thick straps going over the shoulder. Flip flop shoes and no socks with a hairdo that screams ‘rinse, lather and repeat’. In addition, a cell phone connecting her hand to her head and a mouth on auto talk.

The second daughter, who everybody was watching, attracted the most attention. She didn’t really look fat, she just had a little more meat on the bone so to speak. She was wearing a bikini top for a bra with a jersey mesh t-shirt that was cut off just below the breast area. She is wearing flip flops and her mini skirt looked more like two dish towels that were sown together that an actual mini skirt. It was just barely hanging around her hips and just did cover the bottom part of her underwear. When she bent over to get something on the bottom of the shelf the other vendor and I nearly turned to stone. Her skimpy underwear had a huge hole in it. Let’s just say she shaves and it was wet. Moreover, she is about six months pregnant.

All three of these people were talking non-stop while in the store. Apparently, the second daughter is upset with her boyfriend because he took a pack of cigarettes from her car the day before. In addition, he came home late the other night, which means he is sleeping around with someone else. Mind you, I’m leaving out the curse words from their conversation. The first daughter was talking to her boyfriend who wanted her to spend the night with him. Her mother wanted to make sure he came over to pick her up because she didn’t want to leave the house and miss her TV shows.

It wasn’t too long before everyone working in the store was in the backroom talking about these three women. A few of us were putting these women conversations together to figure out what was going on. The first daughter may be pregnant. Therefore, she is sleeping with one of her current boyfriends because he is the only one who has a job. The girls’ dad is at home with a handover from drinking with his no-good friends. The second daughter apparently needs batteries for her “personal massager”. In addition, she wants to buy a new skirt to impress a guy she met at Wendy’s and his English is getting better. Mom wants to stop at the liquor store and have the first daughter to pay for it because she borrowed $20 to buy cigarettes last week and never paid her back.

These type of women will love you with all their heart until one of three things happen. You stop buying them things, stop giving them money or you disagree with them. You see these women on websites posing nude with a beer can in their hands. Get them drunk and alone and they will let you take all the pictures you want in any position you can think of. Give them some money afterwards and she’ll be more willing to let you take more pictures or videos of her next time.

The reason I know a lot about these types of women came from my dad. After my parents divorced when I was four years old, he moved to Middlesex, NC. I would spend weekends with him from time to time and he would honestly tell me about the different types of women out there. I clearly remembering one day I was with my dad and one of his friends while we were driving through Middlesex when we saw about 5 girls walking together. My dad friends told me to look carefully at their faces. We then drove to my dad’s friends place. He went in his house then brought out a photo album with pictures of a lot of naked women and girls on. Sure enough, I recognized a few of those girls walking through town.

A few girls in these Polaroid pictures, I’m told, will do anything just to get naked. Some for alcohol, some for money but mostly for sex. Their ages in this photo album ranged from 15 to 20 and every one of them was very sexually active. A few of them already had babies of their own; they just didn’t know who the father might have been.

This guy told me the only thing you had to do for a get-together was simply wait for them to go walking around and just drive up to them and hand them a can of beer to sip on for a while. Less than five minutes, they’ll be heading over to your place or as simple as just getting in the car with you. I was advised if these types of women came to your home, to hide money and other valuables. Never let them see your checkbook or know how much money you really have.

My dad made sure I didn’t get near these girls. It’s one of those few times he did his job and those talks with my dad is by far the best memory I have of him. While he was married to my mother, he was an alcoholic and he cheated on her. The one quality he did have was he knew when he made a huge mistake. The time we did spend together he wanted to made sure I did not make an ass of myself and destroy a perfect relationship he did have with my mother.

My dad passed away March 1994. My wife and I were blessed together in August 1995. If my dad never talked to me about sex and the different types of women out there, I would never have been able to meet my wife. The few moments with my dad gave me better protection for my future than any high school sex education class that I can remember. He never met his daughter in law or his only grandchildren. He never knew that I was able to avoid being in a relationship with these types of women, especially those I saw that early morning at a Food Lion in Louisburg, NC.

He never knew that I was listening.

Feeding time

Our baby cat Vanilla, is a very loving cat. She has a very feminine attitude but she also has a darker side. For anyone who has read or seen Full Metal Alchemist will know of the character called Gluttony. Vanilla may be related to this character. When she eats, the other cats do not get near her for fear of an attacked by her.

The picture below is when she is eating her favorite food item. A can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli.

Wal-Mart policy

Wal-Mart for years have been offering low prices on many products and giving jobs to people ranging from teenagers to senior citizens. The chain store has a lot of pros and cons dealing with their business practices with most of the complaints coming from the Unions. Nevertheless, after what happened the other day, I was sure Wal-Mart practices were becoming more unionized.

Any vendor knows that if you have a lot of shelf space and displays in a store that it will take a while to make sure everything is full before you leave the store. When I serviced one of the many Wal-Mart’s in Cary, little joke there, I had a huge wall display by the customer service area, a pallet display, the main shelf area, a four foot section near the garden center plus registers displays. With so much to do, I started on the area’s that required to most attention first.

Everything was going great. I was lucky to find a decent cart to quickly do my job but as I was preparing to finish up within the next 30 minutes, union style management started to step in and make my nearly completed task drag on forever. I was filling up the one pallet display we had and then I just had the register displays and the garden center display to take care of. Two more minutes and I would be heading back to the receiving area to load up the last cart for the store and then it happened.

I work the store from time to time so I have gotten to know a few people who work there. The pallet display was close to the register so I easily notice one of their many assistant managers go and call someone on the phone. This person walked pass me saying hello and I greeted him as well as he continued to head to the register area and call someone from within the store. After he got off the phone, I heard a page over the intercom paging me to go back to the receiving area. Upon arriving and speaking with the receiver, I couldn’t believe our conversation.

She said she was called by the assistant manager, the same person who I exchanged greetings with, to ask if I was going to take care of the display in the garden shop. I told her that as soon as I finished with taking care of the pallet display that the garden shop display was next on the list along with the register displays as well. She said OK and she would let the assistant manager know. After she called him and gave a reply I then left to continue to work. As I finished the pallet display within one minute, I was heading to the backroom with the now empty cart the assistant manager came and spoke with me.

Now, this is the same person I exchanged greeting with, the same one who called the receiver and received a reply from her. This same person walked up to me and asked me the same question he asked the receiver and already knew my reply. He was now talking to me as if he owned the place. Like he was the sheriff and I was under arrest kind of conversation. I repeated the same response I gave the receiver and then I said something that he did not like.

I asked him if the receiver had contacted him already with my response. It was one of those situations where I knew and he knew that I knew. He made it clear that if the display wasn’t taken care of then I would have to take everything off so they could make room for something else. I almost laughed in his face but I was able to compose myself, somewhat.

First, that display is a paid display so he couldn’t do anything anyways. Second, two cases filled it back up. I could have easily fronted it up to make it look full. Technically it did look full. Third, I was having a kid with more pimples on his face than on my but talking to me as if my life was in his hands. Being on an airplane in South America and having a run-in with Peruvian officials carrying automatic rifles informing me to not exit the plane which didn't work, experiencing the military in Korea, nearly getting killed by a Native American in upper California for video taping a sponsored Native American event just to name a few experiences in my life. To basically put it in a nut shell, his shit didn’t stink.

He did inform me that he would have asked me personally instead of calling the receiver but he didn’t want to bother me. He was followed policy and contacted the receiver so instead of me finishing within 30 minutes, I spent an extra 15 minutes going though company policy sounding like an infomercial when the one guy who started it all could have just simply have spoken with me to begin with. Even the garden Center cashiers were asked me about the display while I was filling up the display by the resgister. This is the same Wal-Mart that years ago once wanted credit for a pallet of damaged 12 pack can drinks that they put outside in the rain to make more room in the receiving area.

Where to go

As the war goes on about where is the best place for people to live at, that being the city or in the country, there are many pro’s and con’s that will always leave it at a stalemate. I live in the country so if I have to do any kind of shopping in the city, I try to go to the least amount of places as to not waste my entire day. I have to drive a few miles to do grocery shopping and at least 20 miles to do any kind of major shopping like for clothes, going to the movies, restaurants. Typical forms of shopping that only a city can offer.

Case in point 1. Wednesday, I went to Wal-Mart to buy my wife Full Metal Alchemist Premium Collection OVA on DVD. As I looked upon empty spaces where DVD’s usually are kept, I ask an employee about the DVD to where she looked at the shelf and questioned whether I have my info correct about the release date. I assured her but in the end she new more about selling B.S. than DVD’s so I left.

To maintain brownie points with my wife, I drove 25 miles from Wal Mart in Smithfield to Best Buy in Knightdale and as soon as I entered the store, I saw a wonderful selection of the DVD in question. I will shop at Wal Mart from time to time. But instead of looking at empty shelves and a shopping cart full of new DVD’s in boxes with a sales person who can’t seem to understand how to open them up and look instead of telling a customer to ‘come back later and we might have it out by then’, I’ll just go somewhere else. And to think I still remember their commercials saying ‘NEW MOVIES EVERY TUESDAY’.

Case in point 2. Wendy’s has UB Funkey kid’s meal toy. One Wendy’s in Clayton had story time book on DVD. In Smithfield, they had the UB Funkeys display but only had I Spy DVD computer game. I have two boys and a wife begging to go to as many Wendy’s as possible to find these toys and all I’m finding is a fast food business that doesn’t watch their own commercials to know what they’re selling. I do love the spicy chicken sandwich. I did find the UB Funkeys toys at a Wendy’s in Knightdale.

And at the end of the day with a happy wife and two wonderful kids playing, I go outside on the back porch to look at a starry sky. I have my kid’s night vision goggles and use them to get a good look at some deer that are walking across the field by our house. The only sounds around are those of crickets and bugs making out, fire flies doing their thing, the wind blowing fresh air around with an occasional car driving by the house.

As the battle rages for the best place to live goes on, I plan to one day get a boat and go fishing out in the middle of a lake and think really hard about it.

Gatorade experiment

This may seem gross and immature but it's really cool for grossing out your wife and kids for free. Go to a local store and buy a few bottles of Gatorade Fierce grape flavor drink. It may take a few days of drinking this flavor but after a couple of days you will notice as you use the bathroom, your #2 (poo-poo) will appear green in color. After a few more days of continuing to drink your Gatorade, your (poo-poo) will appear almost like a neon color of green.

At this point, call the wife and kids and freak them out. Unless you have boys who want to try it out as well. Plus everytime you go to the bathroom, they'll want to tag along to see the results.

Dream Weaver

It is amazing what cartoons can teach people these days. From an episode of Batman the Animated Series, I learned that while you are dreaming, using one side of your brain, one cannot read in your dreams, which is done using the other side of the brain. So the dream I had yesterday is a really ‘message in the bottle’ dream or eating a pack of frozen hot dogs and two bottles of chocolate Nesquik is not good for me.

In the dream there are a lot of people in our house. The phone is ringing and I go and answer the phone. As I am looking at the call screen I see the name clearly saying Susan on it. I answer the phone and she tells me that I have to move my whole family to Japan within two years. She then tells me that top religious leaders have already started moving to Japan. Even though I prefer Okinawa, the feeling I was getting was Hokkaido.

After the conversation ends I take my wife for a drive to look at the Christmas decorations at other houses in the area. There were a lot of windmill decorations. I then wake up at 2:33 AM were my wife didn’t like that I woke her up to talk with her about the dream. I then went back to sleep for a couple more hours before I had to get up and go to work. But even though it was a very short dream, I still remember it very clearly. I think I’ll eat Chef Boyardee Ravioli right out of the can tonight for dinner. No telling what I’ll dream about.

Four Oaks, NC

Everybody has their favorite place to shop at. Wealth people may shop at places that sell expensive items while people on a budget will look for sales and specials. But the majority of people will always do their business at a store where they feel welcomed and the people are friendly and the area is safe. There is this one store in Four Oaks, North Carolina where I always look forward to working in.

This was one of the last few stores that use to have an ash tray bucket at the end of every shopping isle. Where the Store Manager, who is in his 50’s, walks around dressed like a farmer. The whole store has no dress code because everyone who shops there are on first name bases with the employee’s. The building is very old and has at least three different floor patters so as the place is located next to a rail road track, whenever a train goes by, everyone in the store can hear it.

The one thing I really admire about this store is that the people who work and shop here are really nice. Everyone who goes inside this store talks to one another. I was in this store Sunday morning for over an hour and I had four conversations with four different people. It’s hard to have a lot of stress when you’re in this store.