Countdown 15/9

No Spider-Man yet. I am still not feeling real well and when you are a one finger typist it takes longer doing a post. My blood pressure is down a little. I am going to work tomorrow night even if I have to drag myself.

Countdown 16/10

I was going to do my Spider-Man post, but I am getting tired and am going to bed. Since I am wanting to do daily posts this little blurb fills that. For some reason I have been having trouble sleeping. That may be from my blood pressure out of whack. I am going to check my blood pressure tomorrow and see if the medicine is working. Well I will write the Spider-Man post when I get up. Good night.

Countdown 17/10

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I usually get up at 9:30 PM, get dressed and arrive at work at 10:00. (It only takes 5 minutes to get to work.) Last night I woke up at 8:00 PM with my heart racing and I felt very nauseous. I sat up for a few minutes and decided to call in. I don't do that very often but there was no way I would have made it. I also called in at Taco Bell this morning, which is the first time I have done that. I saw the doctor this morning instead of waiting until tomorrow. My blood pressure was 160/110. He put me back on blood pressure medicine. I have already filled it and have taken the first pill. It is one of the medicines that Wal-Mart sells for $4.00 and I get a 10% employee discount on that. I am going to bed shortly and hopefully will feel up to going to work tonight, but if I don't feel better than I do now, I won't. Well that is all for today. If everything goes as planned tomorrow will be a longer post about Spider-Man.

Countdown 18/11

I have not been posting because I have been sick. I finally realized why. I had been taking blood pressure medicine but a few months ago I didn't have the money to go see the doctor so I had no medicine. Since the October Incident that I have spoken about I have had the money, but I kept putting it off. Tuesday I will see the doctor and get back on the medicine. I also will be picking up my new glasses that day. That is another thing overdue. My old glasses broke a couple of years ago and once again finances prevented new ones. I had an eye exam Thursday and was told yesterday they were in. I got the call as I was getting ready for bed so I decided to just wait until Tuesday. I will get my prescription filled and get the glasses at the same time.

Now to explain the title. In 18 days it will be Valentines Day. No, there is no romantic involvement for me on that day. At 2:25 AM I will be boarding a Greyhound bus which will arrive in Springfield, Illinois at 3:05 PM. I will be picked up by my parents. This is a vacation, not a move. The reason I am going by bus is my parents bought a new car and they are giving me their old one. Considering my car currently has 182,000 miles on it, I am very happy to go there. It will probably cost me more money driving back than it did going up there. I have already bought my ticket. Since I bought it more than 14 days before departure it only cost $45.00. It would have been $109.00 had I purchased it just before I left. My inner Jack Benny is ecstatic.

The 11 means I have 11 more days at Taco Bell and then I cut that back to 2 days a week, Wednesday and Saturday. Those are the days their truck arrives. I am planning on making daily posts here but Saturdays may become picture days, where I will post pictures that make me laugh. I will be posting daily from now on, but depending on the time factor the post may mainly be the countdown. When I return from Illinois I will also start buying comic books again, which I will be reviewing here.

Update on my previous post, that was a firing offense. To quote Stan Lee "Nuff said!"

What does it take to get fired?

I realize that today we are in a society that is overly cautious on some things, but sometimes it is ridiculous. I have a co-worker, in the frozen food department, who does very little. I have complained about him, the department manager has complained about him, and nothing has happened. Almost every manager in the store has observed him not working, yet the only thing that has been done has been talk. They talk to him, he straightens up and does more for a couple of days, then it is back to doing nothing. He leaves one hour after I start so usually I have little contact with him. Last Saturday night he was working with me. At 10:20 he went to put something in one of the freezer doors at the end of the aisle. For 10 minutes I didn't see him. I had something to go in the end doors, and there he is standing talking to a couple. I know the couple are friends of his because I have seen him talking to the before. I then said something really bad to him. I told him we have a lot of work to do. I realize now just how mean and vicious that was. He walked away with that couple. A few minutes later he came back and handed me a package with 2 pacifiers in it and said that was for me and then walked away. I got angry but kept working. At 10:50 I went to stock the freezer doors on another aisle. I saw my co-worker standing in the produce section, which is next to frozen foods, talking on his cell phone. I finished what I had to put out and decided I was going to say something about the pacifier and his not working to an assistant manager.
The office I talked to the manager in is next to the time clock. As I left guess who was clocking out. I was heading back to the department but did not get far when my co-worker came charging at me, got in my face, poked me in the chest, and told me if I ever went to a manger about him again he would stomp my ass. He did this in front of another store employee. To avoid further confrontation I headed back to the office. I don't remember him doing so, but I am told he tried to block me from going to the back and gave me a shove which caused my arm to go up. To me the grounds for firing are there. Most of the incident are on video. Of course the chest poke isn't, but the rest of it is. His 40 minutes of goofing off is on video, including the cell phone call, which is a direct violation of corporate policy. Threatening a fellow employee is grounds for dismissal, yet he has still worked for 2 days. The incident is under investigation. There is more than enough evidence, but they are letting corporate personnel make that decision. To say I am disgusted is an understatement. I am sure he is going to be fired, but this delay is ridiculous. I will post an update when the decision is made.

I should have seen it coming.

The signs were all there. We barely talked any more. I worked third shift and she did not have a job. When I came home in the mornings she was in bed. When I went to bed she got up. On my days off I had to leave the apartment for 3 hours. The reason given was she was dancing every night for exercise and she was too embarrassed to do it in front of me. Before when I went to pick up anything she went with me. Now she rarely left. Phone calls were taken in the bathroom. Reason given: the calls were from her sister and her sister did not their conversations overheard. She had always told me I would not have to work 2 jobs. I didn't want to either, but she was putting in applications and getting no responses. She had a very spotty work record and that went against her. I started working part time at Taco Bell as well as full time at Wal-Mart. Like I said, the signs were there.

In late October I was on vacation. I still had to leave each night. On the second night I was supposed to leave around 11:00 PM like I always did. I had fallen asleep and she woke me at about 1:30 AM. She told me I had been working so hard she wanted me to have the extra sleep. I returned about 5:00 AM and she wasn't in the front room. I thought she was in the bathroom so I went to talk to her. She wasn't there. Then I saw the note. It was taped to the computer monitor. Mainly it said that she had left to go live with a friend, that we were both unhappy and we needed some time apart. The first thing I did was check out what she had been doing on line. I quickly found out her friend was male, they had been planning this for at least two months, and they were engaged. The note did not tell me where in the country she was going, but I now knew it was several states away. The extra sleep I was 'given' that night was because the guys arrival was later. I began reviewing what had been going on and the truth slapped me in the face. How stupid could I have been? (That is a rhetorical question. You don't have to answer. I know the truth.) I now put all the signs together and saw the truth of what had been going on. Was I mad? Of course I was, who wouldn't be. More than angry though, I was relieved. I knew the relationship had been over for some time. She had no where to go, or so I thought, so I had resigned myself to making the best of it. The biggest regret is that she did not tell me she was leaving. Had she told me that I would have helped her pack.

I did not hear from her for over two weeks. She called me and did not leave a message on my voice mail. I thought it was her but wasn't sure so I called back. When she answered I hung up. I didn't think I was ready to talk yet. She called right back and we talked. She apologized for leaving the way she did. She apologized for several things she had put me through during the relationship. I apologized for some of the things I did. The failure of the relationship was both of our faults. We have decided to remain friends. We will stay in touch. We even exchanged Christmas presents this year. I am sincere in wishing her the best for the rest of her life.

I could have written this as a hatchet job on her but the anger is gone. As I write this I am happier than I have been in a long time. My life is going well. After February 11 I am cutting Taco Bell back to 2 days a week. I had a goal I was aiming for and I have reached it. On Valentines day I am taking Greyhound to Illinois, where my parents are going to give me their old car. It has about 130,000 less miles on it than my car does. When I return home I am going to stop in Memphis, Tennessee where I hope to meet as many friends from the Captain Comics board as I can. After I get home this blog will be updated almost daily. I will be buying comic books again and I will be reviewing what I buy. The future is bright. I am looking forward to the adventure ahead.

Looking Forward

Before I look forward I want to look back one day. Yesterdays post took on a life of its own. I was just going to use the Babylon 5 quote when I realized just how well that fit the year. I like it when things like that happen. Sometimes you simply drop your plans and go with the flow.

This year I want to accomplish several things. I am not calling these resolutions, just things i want to do and see.
To get done:
Organize my baseball card and comic book collections.
Organize my DVD's and CD's.
Go through everything in the house and get rid of anything I don't need.
Set up and sell that stuff at a flea market.
Meet as many of my friends from the Captain Comics Board as I can.
Small trips at least once a month.
Go to Illinois in February and September.
Get out of the house more, quit being a hermit.
Blog more.

To go see:
Memphis, TN
Chickamauga battlefield
Kennesaw battlefield
Lookout Mountain
Chattanooga Zoo
Colonel Sanders Museum, Corbin, KY
More will be added later.

How much of this will get done? Stay tuned. Same Bat Channel, Same Bat Time.

Pictures and quotes return with the next post. The next 10 days posts will be a little more frequent as I am taking some time off from Taco Bell. Then the almost daily posts start late February.

2007

Borrowing an idea from a friend, who did something similar.

2007 was an interesting year. To borrow from Babylon 5, this is the introduction to season 4.
It was the year of fire,
the year of destruction,
the year we took back what was ours.
It was the year of rebirth,
the year of great sadness,
the year of pain,
and the year of joy.
It was a new age.
It was the end of history.
It was the year everything changed.
The year is 2261; the place: Babylon 5."

This sums up my year. Most of it revolves around last October. Forgive me some of this seems redundant. For me it is therapy. I tend to keep a lot inside, but this year I am going to try and open up. After 51 years I really am getting to know myself because I am analyzing myself.

It was the year of fire. My relationship with Cindy had been falling apart for awhile. it was not constantly arguing, but enough.

The year of destruction. That of course was the relationship.

The year we took back what was ours. I got my life back. No more answering to someone else, no more stress that the relationship was causing. I will not be specific here, that is between Cindy and me, and I will not use this to strike out at her.

It was the year of rebirth. Again, I got my life back. I am changing some things here and going forward.

The year of great sadness, the year of pain. This two are the same. I knew the relationship was over, but I really thought we just struggle through. I did not think Cindy had anywhere to go and I was not going to simply toss her out in the street. After she left the pain was there, but life goes on. You can sit and mope or you can go forward. I choose to keep going.

And the year of joy. As much as her leaving caused pain, the fact that she did have somewhere to go and we both can move on with our lives is great. Right now I am happier than I have been in a long time. I am enjoying life and will enjoy it a whole lot more next month when I cut Taco Bell back to 2 days a week. I will also be able to collect comic books again.

It was a new age. Using what I have learned about myself, and making some necessary changes, I am looking forward to this year.

It was the end of history. OK, that one might just a bit of an exaggeration.

It was the year everything changed. That pretty much sums it up. My life was turned upside down, but the future looks bright. I enjoy my jobs, especially when Taco Bell gets cut back. I like it now, but I am putting in too many hours. There will be regular postings on this blog starting late February. I am going to Illinois and see my parents then. when I return the daily postings start. Until then, there will be at least one post a week on my days off. More if I can work them in. 2008 should be a very good year. Thank you for reading this and thanks to all who have posted comments here. It is nice knowing you are just not shouting at the wind.