This is my story.

Last week at my new job they had the annual Employee Appreciation picnic. Free food, music, games, and such. I almost won a $50 pre-paid credit card in a 'name that tune' type contest. I was tied with another woman and we each needed one point. The winning song for her was "500 Miles" by The Proclaimers, and I was just a split second slower in raising my hand than she was.

Also, they had an arcade tent with several free arcade games and 4 Nintendo Wiis. With the Nintendo Wiis in addition to just playing for fun, they were having a contest. The people with the highest scores on Guitar Hero III, Wii Bowling, Mario Kart, and the lowest score on Wii Golf all would win a Nintendo Wii. I tried Wii Bowling and sucked pretty hardcore. So I thought, what the hell? I'll give Guitar Hero a shot. I'm okay at Guitar Hero. I'm halfway through the Hard level here at home. For the contest you played on Medium and you could choose your own song. I played "Bulls On Parade" by Rage Against the Machine and got over 140,000 points, which got me the high score for the contest at that point. Honestly, I figured since the picnic went from 11:00 a.m. until 12 midnight (for the night shifts) someone would surely knock me off the top. I played at 12 noon. Well, I was wrong. I won a Nintendo Wii! I rock!

Downside is that I already own one. Well, I don't know if you could consider it a downside, but it would probably be a much more satisfying win if I didn't own one already. Anyhoo, I'll try selling it. I figure I could probably get around $200 for it. I'm pretty sure it's just the basic console, although it might include Wii Sports.

I'm just all bouncy because this is the biggest prize I've ever won.

In other less exciting work news, I posted a payment today for one of the local sportscasters, and last week I posted one for a player on the St. Louis Blues.

Wiiiiiiiiiiii!

I have two Dreamwidth invite codes up for grabs. If you want one, let me know where to send it.

Katie went to Vintage Vinyl (local new/used music store) yesterday to trade in some CDs and DVDs so she could hopefully get enough money to buy the new Utada Hikaru CD. She asked me if there was anything I wanted in case she had enough money left over to get it. I discovered that Lacuna Coil just released a new album last month, and Katie did end up with enough money to get the CD for me. I've listened to it four times since last night, and I have to say it fucking rocks! Love it.

My oldest sis and her family were in the area this weekend so all the family (except for my oldest brother and his son, who are in North Carolina) went to The Old Spaghetti Factory in St. Louis. Yummy food. We were a little bummed because due to our rather large group of 10 we were relegated to an upstairs seating area where it appeared they put all the big groups, and it didn't quite have the same ambiance as sitting downstairs. The ambiance was pretty much the main reason we went there. We could have had similar food for similar prices at Olive Garden and wouldn't have had to drive as far. Oh well, it was still fun. The kids were all pretty well behaved, and we all got to chat and visit. I was sitting next to my youngest niece, Anna, who is two. They brought out our spumoni, but they didn't bring us new spoons. Anna had used her spoon for her mac and cheese, so I wiped it off with a napkin and handed it to her. She immediately said 'Thank you!' without prompting. I was so surprised because usually with kids that young, they always have to be prompted by mom and dad to use please and thank you.

Worked at the Hut for five and a half hours today. Shipment day. Blargh. Then I mowed the front lawn when I got home. I think I can sufficiently count putting shipment away and mowing the lawn as my exercise for the day. You try lugging 20 to 40 pound boxes of frozen dough around and then using a push mower on a horribly uneven lawn and tell me you didn't get some exercise. :p

*pokes Imp* Tori's new album, Abnormally Attracted To Sin, which is due to release on Tuesday can be heard in its entirety, streaming on her MySpace page.

As I posted a while ago, I was hired at a new job after over a year of unemployment/part-time employment. The second week is almost over and I think I'm doing well. My supervisor walked by my desk this morning and said someone was bragging about me, meaning my trainer. I guess based on past new hires, I'm catching on to procedures quickly and not needing to ask too many questions. It's not a difficult job at all, so far. I've heard them talking about some stuff that's apparently more complicated, but I've got a 90-day probationary training period. So I'm sure I'll be fine. My trainer had to leave early today for her regular dialysis treatment and she left me alone with some tasks to do. I'm pretty sure I did everything correctly while I was on my own. I guess we'll see tomorrow when she double-checks my work.

The rest of life is pretty typical. I'm still going to work at Pizza Hut every Sunday and every other Friday. The choir concert went very well. We'll be singing at both St. Louis Pride and Metro-East Pride in June, and then we'll be on summer hiatus. My bowling league is on summer break. My life is pretty much just going to be work and some social engagements here and there.

Life isn't too bad for me right now. The only real stress-point continues to be finances. I racked up a lot of debt over the past year, and when I get my first pay check from the new job, I'm going to figure out how much money I'm going to have to divide amongst the credit card companies once all the other bills are paid. I'm really not sure what I'm going to be able to do. I doubt I'll be making enough to make any kind of progress on my credit card bills. I fear I might not have enough left over each month to even pay the interest on each card, let alone minimum payments. I guess we'll see in about a week.

I've apparently become the gay authority at Pizza Hut. I guess, yeah, I'm the only one there, as far as I know. I just find it funny when my co-workers come to me with questions, whether they apply to me or not. Well, Rachel brings it up in some form every time she sees me because she's crazy and goofy. I don't really care much about that. I really don't care much about it at all.

Anyway, today it was pretty dead. I left an hour early. But before I left, the manager, Nick, told me that he was having a conversation with some friends and one girl said something about believing gay people are born that way. Nick doesn't agree and thinks it's about the environment they grew up in. The girl got really, really mad at him about that and wouldn't let the discussion remain civil. So basically Nick was telling me this to ask me what I think, since I am the token gay at Pizza Hut, apparently. lol

Like I said, I really don't care because everybody there is cool about it, including Nick. I just find it funny. I guess when you work at a restaurant in a small town like ours this kind of thing happens. I become ever so fascinating.

If I were a teenager right now and still in high school, I don't know if I'd have the guts to do the Day of Silence. Especially in Mascoutah. Good luck to anyone out there participating.

Today will be a busy day, and I'm kind of dreading it because I didn't get very good sleep last night. I've been having sinus issues the past couple days and have been too congested to use my bipap machine. Then last night I woke up about 4 a.m. with a major headache. So I took some Excedrin and moved out to the recliner where I finally fell asleep and managed to stay asleep until about 7:30.

But anyway, today:

-Go to court to get my license back. I got a speeding ticket last week, and the managers at the Hut have been kind of annoyed that I haven't been able to make deliveries to the Air Force base because I haven't had photo I.D.
-Go pick up Katie's prescriptions at Walgreens and Walmart.
-Go to Katie's old high school in St. Charles, MO so she can get her high school transcripts.
-Work at the Hut from 5:30 until midnight.

Hopefully I'll be able to get some good sleep tonight. All I have to do tomorrow is help do set work for CHARIS that involves sitting and cutting and pasting colored paper, and then I have awards for my bowling league at 7 p.m. Probably one of the least busy Saturdays I've had in a while. But first, I have today.

Boy, I wasn't prepared to work a 10 hour shift today, especially after having a job interview this morning before my shift. But hey, I made $75 in tips. Yay for more tips. Now, yay for bed time. I'm closing driver tomorrow which means I'm working until midnight. Blah.

You'd think with beautiful spring weather, I would be in delivery driver heaven. I don't have to wear a jacket. I can drive with my windows open and get some fresh air. I don't have to worry about bad road conditions or freezing my butt off tromping through snow to get to customers' doors.

The downside to delivery driving in the spring? There are children everywhere. It's like a freakin' obstacle course. Children of all ages. Teenagers playing basketball in the street. Ten-year-olds riding their bikes all over creation. Kids 7 and younger unsupervised playing in driveways and threatening any second to dart out into the street for no reason.

Today I was turning around in a cul de sac, and as I was coming to the straight part of the street, this young boy--surely no older than 7--was walking along the small curb on my side of the street toward me. He was walking on it kind of like a balance beam. Because that's what kids do. I used to do that. It looked like he saw me as he kept his straight line on the curb, but then as I straightened my wheel to head off that street, he took three quick steps out into the street in my direction. Only then, apparently, did I register on his radar and he stopped, just as I put on my brakes (although I wasn't going any faster than 5 mph anyway). Luckily for him I'm a careful driver and he was on my radar much longer than I was on his.

Yet there wasn't a parent in sight. No adults or even older children anywhere.

People in subdivisions are getting too lax about stuff like this. I see this in my sister's subdivision, too. Kids all over the street not paying attention to cars moving around and not an adult in sight. I'm not speeding through these subdivisions like Speed Racer. The kid who was using the curb as a balance beam was in an area that was 15 mph on an Air Force base (Scott AFB, IL, if you care). Sure 15 mph (or the 5 to 10 I was doing as I came around the cul de sac) wouldn't kill the kid, but I'm sure it would hurt and cause some injury that his parents would've sued me and Pizza Hut over. Because of course it would've been my fault, right?

There was another time on Scott that I was driving through a subdivision similar to the one where I almost ran over the curb walker today. I was doing the limit or less. I drive slow when I have to find houses. There were cars parked on my side of the street, and all of a sudden this kid came flying out of a driveway right in front of a parked car and right into my path. Even though I was driving slow, I still had to slam on my brakes so hard that my tires squealed and the delivery bag and 2-liter of soda in my passenger seat flew off the seat to the floor board. Luckily for the kid, I didn't hit him, and luckily for my customer the pizzas weren't messed up from flying around in my car. I did warn them about the soda, though.

So the moral of this rant, ladies and gentlemen, is to supervise your damn kids and don't take subdivisions for granted. Streets are mostly meant for cars. Cars are heavy and can squash people. Get a clue.

Mild carpal tunnel sucks. I'm trying to fill out a job application by hand and it's hurting like a bitch. I actually am using typing this entry as a break. I have braces for carpal tunnel, but putting one on didn't help when I was writing. I would consider checking with my doctor, but I kind of don't have insurance right now.

I really think Pizza Hut is a large reason why I have carpal tunnel to begin with. I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel shortly after I started work at the law firm, and it stopped giving me problems not long after I quit Pizza Hut. Now I'm back at Pizza Hut and it's acting up again. Not just when writing either. I was on the computer the other night and needed to put the brace on my right wrist. It's that damn cut table. If you've never seen how Pizza Hut cuts pizzas, we have these huge rocker knives. They're basically half circle shaped blades so we can quickly cut the pizzas and stuff. Problem is you generally have to use a fair amount of force to be sure you get through the crust. I think that jarring motion is what has aggravated my carpal tunnel.

Last night I got pulled over while I was working. Thankfully the officer gave me a written warning rather than a ticket. I honestly think that he gave me a warning because I was on my way to a delivery. Well, and also my driving record has been clean for over 5 years.

In order to get some extra cash, Katie had me put her DJ set up for sale. I tried twice on eBay and it didn't sell. So I tried Craigslist. Yesterday, I got what appeared to be someone interested in buying the set for my asking price of $400. Unfortunately it was too good to be true. It was a scam. The shipping address was in Nigeria, and they sent me some bogus Paypal e-mails in an attempt to get me to click through the e-mails to confirm things and make it look like they paid. Luckily I'm not stupid and I went directly to Paypal and saw that there was no money being transferred to my account.

Sadly some people are gullible enough to fall for stuff like this. If there weren't people falling for this crap, the scammers would eventually give up.

Anybody want to buy a DJ set? :op $400 or best offer. I'll ship within the U.S. :o)

Okay, so I love snow...when all I have to do is play in it and watch it melt away. However, driving and working in it, not so much.

My day started with having Katie and our neighbor, Lynn, push me over the snow drift at the end of the driveway that the plows left behind while I gassed it in reverse. The drive out to Mascoutah was slow and uneventful.

Then I arrived at the Hut. The parking lot hadn't been plowed. The plow guys were supposed to be there at 9:30 a.m. like they were yesterday when there was less snow. They never showed. It would've been bad enough because as a delivery driver I go in and out of the parking lot repeatedly. Six to seven inches of snow makes that rather difficult to do. But to compound the matter, Wednesday is shipment day, when we receive all our new inventory to last us until the next shipment day on Sunday. So aside from our lot being difficult to navigate for normal cars, we had this huge semi trying to keep his truck from getting stuck while also making sure he wasn't blocking up too much of the lot from our customers. I had a couple incidents where I got stuck and had to do the forward-reverse-forward-reverse trick to get unstuck.

Throughout the day I saw many other parking lots that were perfectly clear. Even the schools, which were canceled, had nicely plowed lots. But not us.

So that was a huge frustration, as was dealing with putting away shipment in between deliveries. I really hate doing shipment. But if doing shipment means regularly getting a 7.5 hour shift on Wednesday, I'll deal with it.

Then there are the people who order delivery and they haven't done anything to clear any kind of path to their door. So I'm stuck traipsing through 6 inches of snow. In one of my last deliveries, I headed for their door and didn't realize there was a ditch underneath the snow I was going to step on. So I ended up thigh deep in the snow. Gee thanks people.

Hopefully things will be better tomorrow. I didn't get the chance to play in the snow today, but maybe tomorrow. Katie attempted to shovel the driveway and managed to shovel out my tire tracks so I could get back in. I think I'll try to clear away the rest of the snow in the driveway and maybe after that I can make a snowman...or woman!

It's been snowing pretty much non-stop all evening and it's still going. It's really pretty to watch, and if I get up early enough before work tomorrow, I may go out and make a snowman or something.

Although, I'm not looking forward to working my 11:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. driver shift in this stuff tomorrow. On the one hand, I secretly hope there's a power outage or something in Mascoutah so I don't have to work in this. On the other hand, I need the money and don't want to lose a 7.5 hour shift. Although, even if the power went out, Nancy would need people to help move all the frozen/refrigerated stuff to another Pizza Hut like that one summer a couple years ago. And god knows what would happen to the inventory shipment that normally arrives on Wednesdays. I wonder if it would be possible to have the truck driver take it to another Pizza Hut for us or if he would deliver it and make us schlep it off to wherever we can to keep it from going to waste.

Oi. On second thought, I'd rather work in this than deal with a power outage. The only thing I can think of is that Nancy would cancel all out of town deliveries like Rhonda did once back when I first worked for the Hut. That would mean no deliveries to the AFB, no deliveries to New Baden, no deliveries to the airport, and no deliveries to the farms or other places out in the outskirts of town.

Things at the Hut seem to have become a smidge busier now. This is very much due to the fact that the Domino's in town went out of business a week ago. This really doesn't upset me in the least. I've never liked their pizza, I found out a year or two ago that the CEO of Domino's has horridly conflicting ideologies with mine, and now that the Hut's only competition in that town is gone, business has increased quite a bit. This means more tips for me. In the past, day shift just wasn't all that great because you took fewer deliveries than on night shift, meaning fewer tips. Today I took 12 deliveries in a 4 hour day shift. That's rather amazing. Including my wages from the Hut, I made $19.50 an hour today.

We have almost no competition in the realm of pizza delivery now. The only competition is on our deliveries to the Air Force base, as Papa John's also delivers there. But for in town and the New Baden deliveries, no competition whatsoever. It's nice. There might be some people who just absolutely hate Pizza Hut in the way that I absolutely hate Domino's, but I'm sure the percentage of those who will order Pizza Hut now that Domino's is gone is higher than those who would give up ordering pizza altogether.

Not much else going on here. I found a legal secretary job opening listed for Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation. They provide free legal assistance in Illinois to people who can't afford it for certain types of cases. I'll be mailing my resume out tomorrow. It would be really awesome if I could get this job. It would totally be my kind of job.