Suzanne Calling

First off, I did say that I wouldn't be blogging much with the new job. I didn't lie about that! The first week was spent doing all the prep work, and it was an *early* day. 3 or 3:30 AM. Yep, before dawn. It's a wonder I didn't oversleep, and when Saturday came, sleeping in was 7:30! This week, I'm running shifts. 7am to whenever. Once the guests come in, you hit the ground running and don't stop until everything is ready for the night team. It's hectic, crazy, fast, and ever changing. Perfect in every way for a hyper person! :) No two days ever are the same. Monotony is the bane of my existence. More later...

What is it with singers trying to turn the "Star Spangled Banner" into an R&B/Gospel song? All the vocal gymnastics are not what I expect of a performance of our national anthem. Do you hear this garbage when someone sings "God Save the Queen" or "O, Canada"? No, because there is a respect that is implicit in performing one's country's anthem. And for the record, the line "Oh, say does that star spangled banner yet wave?", Banner is three notes, not the four that most people sing. "Ba" is one note, "ner" is two. I listen to see if a perform er was formally trained on this-and apparently, not many have. BTW, I sing the tenor part instead of trying to sing that throat shredding melody. Rant off. And now you're saying I get peeved about the *strangest* things. Yep, I won't deny that!

Have you ever played the 'what if' game? Where you'd wonder about something you'd love to do, but there was some obstacle in the way, whether it was money, time, education or lack of ability? Thanks to my Mom, I developed a love of cooking very young. She was an amazing cook. I took a lot of what I learned and ran with it. It was so much fun to experiment and learn from mistakes and rejoice in successes. With my first husband, I'd end up inviting most of our friends for dinner, because I'd been taught to cook for an army, lol. It was fun to hang out in the kitchen, cook and socialize. That factored into each home I've purchased. From my early 20's, I always daydreamed and played the 'what if' game. What if I opened a restaurant? What would the name be? What would I serve? I'd even go so far as to play the location game, where would be the best place to open one? It was a fun diversion from time to time. I knew it'd never hap...

Yep, 9:08 and it is past my bedtime. I'm on 3:30am duty this week and that means getting up at 2:15 or 2:30! Yikes. Loving the new job. Awesome people, fun work and my ears have to get used to the occasional four letter word uttered by coworkers! I'm way too used to having children around. If you don't hear from me much, lets just say I'm dealing with the typical crunch stuff inherent in opening a new store: finding staff, lots of meetings with my bosses and lots of learning going on. I'll be back to posting on a more frequent basis soon. Shout out to Jill's mom, I got a sweet e card the other day. She's headed to town this week and I'm hoping to have both of them over for dinner one night (hint hint!)

Five years, eleven months. That's how long I'd been employed by my most recent employer. Those who know me from my 20's are probably scratching your heads, because I grew bored with jobs at a year to eighteen months. Except for Gimbels...I was there for almost three years until they closed, and I may have stayed there forever. Today was my last day. It passed as any other has, with me working as hard as I usually do. A couple of my employees brought me balloons and a cake. (BTW, it was my favorite, which they had no clue-black forest cherry). My boss later came in with flowers, cards a book and a bottle of wine (she knows me well, in some respects!). The last six months were a roller coaster, and fortunately, the air had been cleared on several issues in the time since I gave my notice. I feel like I'm leaving with my happy ending. I'm really looking forward to Monday and the adventure that awaits.

It started poorly. Sore throat that felt like someone glued a pink pearl eraser to the back of my mouth where it meets the throat. The next day, that was gone and just a little bit more coughing than normal. Next, feeling like someone rubbed a grater on the throat, thanks to drainage! Other than coughing, there were a couple of days of *almost* normal behavior. Back to sore throat, but now it is-drum roll, please-Bronchitis! I got to sleep on the couch last night, because the head had to be propped up. This bad boy still takes me by surprise. I suppose since there aren't as many colds to be had in a warm climate, and most of my other issues are okay, I've been lulled into a false sense of security that I won't get it. Damn, and the doctor cancelled out on my appointment tomorrow. How the heck am I going to get some Guiatuss to get rid of it? Don't say urgent care. That's a guaranteed five hour wait. One of my employees hit the urgent care this weekend for a...

Retail is not a business that is quick to embrace technology's many contributions to making things quicker and more efficient. To whit: my current employer has IBM registers that have been around as long as their stores have been in existence. Granted, some of the stores got thermal printers, but the dinosaur registers still rule the retail landscape. My new employers are technology people. As a result, we've got emails going back and forth on a regular basis (and at late hours, too). We've got multiple laptops available for use in the one location. We've got a great remote email server. So, here I sit at 12 midnight and I can be on top of what is going on at work, without being there. Okay, I know full well that in six months I'll probably curse the people who've brought us to this level of communication, but right now, it's rather cool!

We have a prolific DVD collection here in the Suzanne and Ed household. The kids probably get the most enjoyment out of the assortment, but we all watch pretty much everything. The kids have seen some pretty interesting movies, fortunately, there's hardly an R rated movie in the bunch. Several years ago, we realized we needed adequate storage for said DVDs. At the time, we had not one, not two, but THREE Ikeas within a short drive, dependent on which direction we felt like going that day. So, off we trekked to Ikea to find appropriate storage for our 70 or 80 (at the time) titles. We found several items on display that were designed for the purpose of storing CDs or DVDs, but didn't like them. Rather cheesy looking things. In typical Ikea fashion, they had empty DVD cases to show shoppers "look, you can store DVDs on this ugly wire contraption", as if we couldn't figure out that was the intended use. No, we had to be different, and so, Ed and I ventured ove...

Fortunately, this time it was our decision to change the plans. My first order of business today was to hit $tarbuck$ and meet my assistant manager. Like Ed, she's a worrier. I can deal with that. We had a nice hour chatting. It just makes me anxious for the coming week to go by fast. I wanna start already! I stopped at Krispy Krack to get a dozen donuts to appease for leaving. As soon as I walked in the door, little man says "cool, Dunky doneybutts!", which is Ed's nickname for dunkin donuts (said in a thick indian accent, btw). We were planning on going over to Animal Kingdom while it's still free for us. Ed still hasn't been on Expedition Everest, and I'm sorry, one trip wasn't enough for me, the coaster junkie. We've both been battling sore throats and we just couldn't get the motivation to head over to WDW. Instead, we decided to run some errands. Got some hanging Tiki lanterns for the lanai, hooks to hang them (we're waiting...

Forgive me for blathering, but hey, I feel like blathering, dammit. I think SIL Jane's blog should be titled "Jane Says", though I don't know if she's ever heard the Jane's Addiction song. FWIW, I like the song. Why is it that everybody on My Space insists on putting a song on their blog? Maybe it creates dissonance with the soundtrack in my mind! Why have I bookmarked more Blogger pages than My Space Pages? Why don't I have any Live Journal pages? (those of you who ARE there don't put anything up in a dog's age, so there's no point in bookmarking it, now is there?) How long is it going to take to purge upc's and other numbers out of my head? I can tell you my credit card number from Gimbel's (closed in '87) because I had to use it to receive my discount. I can tell you the sku for Myst CD Rom (600300) from Babbage's, and I left there in '96. I can tell you the presale UPCs for the last 10 movies my store has presold ...

Ugh, it's an hour past his bed time and yet we're here, doing his *punishment* homework. His refrain to everything is 'that's not fair'. EVERYTHING! Kid, blow your nose (that's not fair!). Kid, clean your room (that's NOT fair). It's an hour past bedtime, go to sleep! (Awww, mom, that's not fair). C'mon we're going over to Disney (that's not fair, I want to stay home). His teacher has given him an assignment to write the dictionary definition of the word 'fair', and then write five positive sentences that include the word fair, as it relates to his classroom. All due to her frustration about how much the child complains about how things are not fair. Welcome to my life, dear teacher. We've spent over two hours with the child screaming, yelling, begging me to do this damn assignment for him. He does this for anything that is asked of him. Then ask him what the word 'fair' means. The word that he yells...

I spent another three hours with the owners yesterday and accepted the offer. I will be the Manager of the new location, and train for two weeks at the existing location. Resignation was turned in today, and fortunately, was not an acrimonious event. I was told it was unprofessional that she'd heard of my plans to leave from the part timers. Whatever, I've heard all the unprofessional things she's said about me the past six months. Looks like the next two weeks will go smoothly, thank God! I'm nervous about the unknown, but excited about the possibilities.

So, I received my offer package an hour ago. It's pretty comprehensive, and a little different than what I'm used to in the way of bonus compensation. Let's just say that its a respectable base, with potential to double my salary with management of controllable expenses. Everything I'd mentioned about a previous employer's wonderful bonus plan came into play. It is quite obvious that the owners spent a long time scrutinizing the business trends of their first location to determine realistic goals for the new location. Perhaps since that three hour conversation a few weeks ago. I meet with them again tomorrow to go over the package, because they were concerned that without particulars, it might be a little confusing. Nope, here with the trusty cell phone calculator, analyzing the way I love to do. If I book this many customers, this is what my bonus will be. If x amount of customers book into the two sessions run during four employees 8 hour shifts at a payra...

I got an email late Thursday night. My offer package for the job I sent the email and had the three hour interview will be completed by Sunday night. Yay! I understand why they can't do it before then (end of month, table changes, etc.) but it still doesn't take away the impatience. My old boss emailed me yesterday morning that she'd done my reference check with them, and my other two haven't been called. Thanks, boss! What you said must have been more than enough for them to decide. Venturing out today. The kids have been invited to a birthday party, so I'll be driving. I haven't taken any painkillers in almost two days, so I suppose I don't have to worry about operating heavy machinery. Fortunately, I don't own a stick shift anymore, which means the foot won't get a clutch workout it can't handle.