What Irks Me - The Day Off Edition

A little backstory for the new people. Up until about 6 months ago I had been working 6 Days a week on average around 10 hours a day at the Restaurant. This led to me having essentially no life to speak of. My one day off was consumed utterly by Bill Payments, Grocery Shopping and spending time with my wife. Unlike most people I worked (and still work) Split Shifts while my wife works regular day shifts and the occasional evening.

That meant I dropped her off at work, went in to the Restaurant, came home in the afternoon for 2.5 hours then went back to work about 30 minutes before she got home. I’d get back from the Split shift around 9:30 most nights, later if it was really busy, eat dinner, do laundry and pretty much be ready for bed.

That was my life for almost 3 years. Yes the money was nice, yes my wife understood that I was sorely needed due to lack of staff at the Restaurant but none of that helped me when I took a good long look at my wife and realized I had no life. I had work and a day to catch up. That is not a life.

My friends hardly ever saw me, I missed pretty much every single get together any of them had and I worked every weekend so when I DID have some time it was on a Monday when everyone else was getting back to work themselves.

About 6 months or so ago I went to my Boss and said I could not do it any longer, the toll it was taking on me personally was just getting to be too much. Thankfully she understood and I started to get two days off. It’s been nice for the most part, having one day to do my running and another to just do whatever I felt like doing.

Now we get to my problem (sorry it took so long…) I have SO much saved up to do, books purchased along the way that I wanted to read, DVDs with the same intention, Video Games for various consoles and things of that sort. What this has led to is a bit of paralysis. I have free time and I guess too much I want to do so I end up getting to do nothing while I try to figure it out.

I used to be part of a great PBeM (Play By Email) game a long time ago but the demands of work forced me to retire from it because I could not uphold my commitments to the game. Unfortunately I also lost a valued friendship as a result of all that. I miss the participation in creating something larger and now that I have the time again I have looked around for something else to invest myself in as I did once before. Sadly I have yet to find anything that has given me the same ‘buzz’.

I’ve tried to just pick one thing and do that exclusively but it’s not as easy as it might seem. Not for me at least. So I turn to the people I have met on the Interbaun. What do you do to help you make up your mind when you have multiple things to do?

I need something to occupy my mind and videogames just can’t do that for me, nor can the Movies.

Longwinded…Sorry =/

Anime

It has been brought to my fleeting attention span that I perhaps watch too much Anime. Let us examine this.

Yesterday a friend of mine came over to visit and asked me if I had seen the latest Naruto and Bleach DVDs out for sale. Now I know he only asks me because he likes to borrow them from me when I pick them up so he can watch them. I told my friend that I had them, loaned them to him and a few hours later got a call from him wanting to talk about the latest Episode of Naruto. I said sure I’d love to talk about it but when he started in I was confused. I had just watched the latest Episode of Naruto a few days ago (the ‘latest’ Episode being #220 or so) and he was describing things from years ago. Then I remembered he was watching the DVDs which are only up to around Episode 80ish.

I told him my mistake and he said I was an Anime-Geek. So out of spite I told him that the latest Episode of Bleach I had seen was #166 and he was only on 33 to which I got a lovely, “You asshole!” Somehow though it made me feel better.

It’s not MY fault he can’t stand to read Subs so he has to wait for the Dubs =P So yeah, I suppose that makes me an entry level Otaku. It’s a burden I bear with broad shoulders *nod*

Allow me to make a horrible segue for a moment and ask the Bloggy Community in general, “Has anyone seen our dear Pandora? I haven’t heard a peep out of her in what seems like forever.”

Guest Blogging!

So my good friend over at Pandora’s Box is taking flight to see the world in all its glory in the coming days and I have volunteered my services along with some of her other frequent Blog Associates (I like that term I think I shall keep it). I find now that I have moved my Blog over here to WordPress that I am having much more fun with it in general so I am happy to lend a hand in keeping the Posts coming to Pandora who is a part of the Blog 365 Challenge this year.

Blogging along with me in Pandora’s SandBox are Yoshi as well as Daniel thus far. We will unleash much chaos upon Pandora’s Box while she is away. And yes..that does sound bad.

Edit to Add: Colin is also joining us in our effort to keep Pandora’s Box stuffed (I planned that one, I figure if I have a theme going I’ll stick with it eh?)

Quality Assurance (96.7)

It’s that time of the year again at the Restaurant. Every few months they send us an ‘expert’ to assess whether or not we are doing things correctly with proper food safety procedures and such like. It’s a pain in the ass and I have to say that I resent it more than a little bit. This guy comes in, checks on our prep, temps etc etc and watches us over a dinner service to ensure things are going out correctly and properly plated. That’s all he does, one dinner service. And based on that we get our mark out of 100. We scored a 96.7 this year which is about what we usually do.

Be that as it may it chafes my hide that based on one evening he is allowed to judge us. Since I don’t want to rant all over the place I’ll leave it at that. So yeah, we did well, Management is pleased and that is all that matters to me in the end.

My friend Pandora mentioned to me last night in her Blog that today is Pi Day! So Happy Pi Day folks! Also in Japan it is White Day which my wife and I actually do celebrate. Briefly Valentines in Japan is for the Girls to buy the Boys Chocolates and such and one month later to the day White Day is when the Boys return the favor and buy the Girls the goodies. So I brought Christina a nice arrangement of white lily’s and other complimentary colors to go along with some white chocolate cookies (theme eh?).

Next week I am losing one of my days off, well half of it anyway. Not too pleased with that but I understand the reason why so I am not raising hell about it as I normally would.

Dear Ms. J

In case you don’t happen to see the Post I made to my old LJ Account I shall ask again here because my curious nature compels me. When did you send me that Parcel in the mail?

Barbers from Hell

No this has nothing to do with Sweeney Todd. I think I had his sister as my Barber today though.

Since I work in a Kitchen for a living I keep my hair quite short by necessity to avoid the hassles that come with longer hair and hairnets. Also it is MUCH easier to deal with in the summer months because it doesn’t get all heavy and weighted down in the humidity. But that is neither here nor there right now.

As most people do I frequent one particular hair stylist to get mine cut. She knows how I like it and we’re fairly friendly so it’s a pleasant diversion from my days tasks to talk with her while she takes care of my hair. Apparently she is on vacation and has a stunt double doing hair for her.

Why do I call her a ‘Stunt Double’ you ask? Well it’s simple. Stunt Doubles handle stunts while the Actors do the acting. You can draw the parallels here I hope. I can’t say she butchered my hair (score 1 for me on the extra Sweeney Todd reference!) but she didn’t exactly get it right either. Upon closer inspection it’s not terribly even at the front and sine I carry it short it tends to stand straight up so the uneven area is REALLY noticeable.

Needless to say I shall be having words with my usual Stylist when she returns.

My Post Hair Care fun today was buying a spiffy leather carrying case/stand for my PSP and scoring a free EB Games Calendar with it and snagging lunch with the nice lady at Mr. Sub. I loves me my Subbage.

Day Two of Tattoo Recovery has me mightily impressed with the work I had done yesterday, it looks amazing!

All things strange and wonderful

This is the place where I freely admit that I have only a very simplistic understanding of the many intricacies of Blogs and their function. I know enough to Post an entry but add a link, photo, poll or Cut and I will give you the cutest blank look you can ever remember seeing outside a kitten or 1 year old.

So for anyone who happens to stumble into the sticky web of my learning process please feel free to offer up any advice sage or otherwise that might contribute to my learning curve which, at present, resembles more of a learning bump.