This Week - Journal

One thing I noticed about this past week is I'm a lot more active when I don't have to work so once I go back to work, I'm sure these posts will be a lot less wordy. 

Monday (December 26th)

When I woke up, I shot off a text to my mom and asked if we were doing breakfast. She usually does breakfast with my aunt and uncle on Monday's and I've been tagging along with them since I was home the previous 2 Mondays. They weren't doing breakfast because my aunt and uncle's grandkids and great grandkid were in town so they were hanging with them before they went home. So Cheri and I went out with just my mom and stepdad to Copper Creek, which is a favorite breakfast spot of mine. It's a small diner kind of place but great food and they have the Greek Skillet that I love to have for breakfast. It was a nice breakfast, especially since Cheri went as she doesn't go out with us all the time. I always enjoy just hanging out with my family so it was a good time.

We came home and I headed for my card room to get the cards I got for Christmas logged in and scanned. Cheri started taking down the Christmas stuff. Just as I finished the cards I got yesterday, Cheri sent me a text saying that she should log all her ornaments into a spreadsheet. Her mom buys all of us ornaments, every Christmas so we have a ton of ornaments. We downsized our tree a year or two ago so we barely use any compared to how many we have. Of course, she text me that because I'm the king of spreadsheets so I went back upstairs and sat down and we worked all day on logging all the ornaments, then we logged all her Jim Shore stuff all while taking everything down. So we ended up spending the majority of the afternoon and evening doing all that stuff. It was a good time as well just because we usually just sit around and do casual chit chat, I always enjoy doing projects with her, but I hate projects in general so it's always a toss up on whether I'll enjoy the project. Spreadsheets are my jam though, so I enjoyed that one.

I need to make sure I silence my phone tonight because a few people are going back to work in the morning and I already know the line is going to be down for the first 4 hours because my plant manager didn't respond to my text last week about how to fix it and I don't want to be woke up at 6 am about it.

Tuesday (December 27th)

I didn't wake up to any missed phone calls, that's always a bonus. I knew they would be able to handle it, I was more worried the plant manager was going to call me to bitch about it. I talked to Ken and he did say they had all kinds of issues with the boiler all day but maintenance was there to work on it.

My cousin and I went out to the local card shop to do some shopping. When we walked in, a couple of the guys that set up at the card shows with us were there. One guy left not long after but the guy that sets up behind us at the Fort Wayne show hung out the whole time we were there (just over 3 hours) so we all were talking about sports and cards in general, I enjoyed it. That's part of the reason I like doing card shows is just the standing around with a bunch of guys and talking sports and such. I bought a few cheaper things for myself. I may go in next week with my cousin and help the card shop owner sort cards, which I love to do anyways. He'll pay me in cards, which I'm definitely cool with. We'll see.

Just hung out and did our usual this evening, watched TV while screwing around on the internet. We're thinking about ditching cable since we can stream most of the shows on services that we already have. I'll have to call the cable company in the next day or two.

Wednesday (December 28th)

Stayed home most of the day. Called the cable company and he lowered our bill a little but I think we're still going to cancel. It just isn't worth it. I hung out in my card room most of the day, logged and scanned the cards I got at the card shop yesterday and then started pulling all the cards that I need to scan for the TCDB. That took most of the day, I didn't realize how many I needed to scan. There were 3 pages and I only got the first 2 pulled.

Ken called from work and said they decided that a few people were coming in next week as well. They just can't make a decision in that place.

Samantha came over to use the shower and once she left and my son went to work, Cheri and I decided to go to Barnaby's for supper so we got dressed and headed out. You can tell it's the week that a lot of people have off because it was packed and loud, Cheri and I could barely stand it, we're getting old. By the time we got our pizza, most of the place had cleared out and it was better. The pizza was better than usual as well so there was that.

We hit Walmart on the way home to grab a headlight bulb for my car and I grabbed a strap for my Fitbit watch because I'm going nuts without having it on me and the one we ordered on Amazon isn't supposed to be here until next week.

Thursday (December 29th)

Worked in my card room in the morning. Finally finished pulling all the cards that need scanned (photo below). That is going to be a chore but at least I cleared my desk off of all the other cards since everything is pulled now, I put everything else away in my card room is back to being organized.

Each stack is a page on TCDB and there are 100 cards to a page. I've got to scan fronts and backs so it'll be a project. I should be able to get most of it (hopefully all of it) done while I'm off work.

The HR lady called me today, they call everyone on Thursdays on the weeks we are off to make sure everyone is doing ok because a lot people can't handle the time off because of the lack of money coming in. I told her I'm great, that's why I save all my vacation and personal time. I'm covered for the whole 3 weeks. She said they were discussing only having 70% of the work force coming back on the 9th. Yikes! I should be part of that 70% but I won't count on that until I know for sure. As much as I like having to not work, I only have so many vacation days and I don't want to burn them all up in January so hopefully I'll get called back. I should.

Went over to my mom's at 3 and met my brother, his buddy and my mom and stepdad and we left for Ann Arbor. We were heading up to the Michigan basketball game. We ended up being late because we didn't plan enough time to stop and eat. I kept throwing hints out that that was going to be the case but nobody listened. You would think they'd listen to the guy who's on time for everything. I had a great time, it was my first men's basketball game there. I've been to a woman's game before. The only part of the evening that sucked was we lost to somebody we should have beaten pretty easily. The team does not look as good as we had hoped. We didn't get home until after midnight.

Friday (December 30th)

Cheri had to go to the chiropractor so I tagged along as I usually do when I'm home and she goes. I didn't even get out of my pj's because I sit in the car while she's in there and listen to music. When she came out, we headed over to the Culver's where my daughter works and grabbed some food and said hi. We sat in the parking lot and ate, as we always do and then came home.

Apparently when I talked to the cable guy to lower our bill, he did a bunch of changes that I didn't ask for. I'm definitely ditching them next week. I'm just going to take everything and set it on their counter and tell the to cancel everything but the internet. We signed up for Philo just to see if we like it so we're probably use that to watch a bunch of stuff.

I went down and did some organizing in my card room in the afternoon. I moved a small desk into it and made a shelf of my "other" collectibles (photo below).

These are all things (mainly ornaments) that people have given me, I haven't paid for any of it but I like them so I put everything in my room but my sports collectibles keep growing and I needed the shelves for that stuff. So I added this small desk next to the desk that I actually use. I don't know if I'll keep it or not but it's definitely more organized than it was before. The top left is the Walking Dead with Groot from the Guardians of the Galaxy in front of it. The middle is Game of Thrones with Star Trek in the front and the whole right side is Star Wars.

Saturday (December 31st)

I actually had to wake up to an alarm clock today. I got up at 7:45 and headed over to my cousins where we drove to Lake Station and set up at the VFW for a card show. It was a pretty slow show but a couple of pretty big sales helped make it a good show financially. My brother came down and hung out with us for an hour or so. We were going to shut down about half an hour early so I could get to my brother's house for the Michigan playoff game but there was a guy still looking at cards so I called my mom and they picked me up early. Which was a good thing because that guy ended up spending $500.

I'm not even going to talk about the game, that was embarrassing and that wasn't the Michigan team I watched all year long. As always, I enjoyed hanging out with the family. Especially my brother as I don't get to see him much anymore since he moved an hour away.

Came home and chilled in the living room, watching TV until a couple of minutes before the ball dropped, we switched it over to watch the ball drop. We had to turn the TV way up once it did to block out the fireworks going off around us otherwise our dog freaks out. They went on for awhile so we flipped it over to the Nashville one where they were playing country music until the ball dropped there. We went to bed not long after that. We're such party animals in our old age.

Sunday (January 1st)

I pretty much spent the day in my card room and was working on blogs. I typed up everything above this and about half the music blog post. From here on out, I plan on working on those posts daily so it doesn't feel like it's taking nearly the amount of time that it did today.

I also scanned and logged 5 or 6 cards that my brother gave me yesterday.

The rest of the afternoon/evening I spent screwing around on the computer and watched some TV. Mainly the Michigan basketball (that was not the team I saw on Thursday) until Yellowstone came on. We also finished the last couple of episodes of Night Sky. I enjoyed that show, wish they wouldn't have cancelled it after 1 season. Not really sure what I think of 1923, it's ok so far but hasn't been as great as the previous season, whatever year that was.